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
October 31, 2023
Automakers Wake Up to Reality on Electric Vehicles
Driving through rural Georgia, I have yet to see an electric vehicle or a charging station. After promising the Biden administration that they would eliminate most of the cars Americans want to buy from dealer lots by 2035, GM and Ford are now waking up to reality. They are cutting back on projections of EV sales and lowering production targets for the cars and batteries.
Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said Thursday on a media call, “Given the dynamic EV environment, we are being judicious about our production and adjusting future capacity to better match market demand.” He announced that Ford is postponing $12 billion of spending and investment on EVs, including a Kentucky battery plant, after it halted its $3.5 billion Michigan-China battery partnership in September.
This follows an announcement by General Motors on Oct. 17 that it is pausing expansion of electric pickups “due to evolving EV demand.”
About 6% of new vehicle sales were electric in 2022, and President Joe Biden wants to bring this share up to 60% in 2030 and 66% in 2032 through regulations from the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. These regulations would penalize automakers for selling gasoline-powered cars. California is going further, requiring all new vehicle sales to be electric after 2035.
But there are four reasons that most Americans prefer to buy cars with internal combustion engines: cost, convenience, climate, and China.
Cost
New electric vehicles cost more than gasoline-powered vehicles. As I drive around the Clayton area (median household income $47,000), I see two-door and four-door pickup trucks, some battered and some shiny.
The electric version of the base version of the Ford F-150 pickup truck, the best-selling vehicle in America, costs an additional $26,000. And Tesla’s base prices start at about $40,000 for a Model 3 and go up to almost $100,000 for a Model X. Few Americans can afford these vehicles.
Convenience
Many people who love their EVs recharge them at home, overnight. But not everyone has a garage at home. Some live in apartments and homes without garages. Many of these people have to rely on charging stations for their EVs if they can’t run extension cords from their residences to the parking lot.
At the local Walmart in nearby Tiger, Georgia, and in local gas stations, I didn’t see any charging stations. A lack of charging stations is a major problem in rural areas. Plus, gasoline-powered cars can be refueled in five or 10 minutes at a gas station. Recharging an electric vehicle can take 45 minutes—or much longer if you want a full charge. If someone is in front of you at the charging station, the wait can double. Most people don’t want to let their EV battery go below 20%, and the charging rate goes down when it is charged over 80%.
Climate
Batteries lose range in cold weather. Many of us have awakened on a cold winter morning to find our car batteries dead and in need of a jump start or a replacement. The American Automobile Association has a fleet of small vehicles whose sole purpose is to rescue troubled motorists in chilly situations.
A study by truck manufacturer Autocar shows that electric vehicles lose, on average, a third of their range in the winter, which reduces the typical 240-mile range to 160 miles. If a heat pump is added to the car, the loss is less, but still, the 240-mile range would shrink to 180.
In cold climates, batteries lose 20% to 40% of their range. That’s one reason only 380 North Dakota residents chose EVs in 2021 and Alaska had just 1,300.
Temperatures got down to 13 degrees in Georgia last Christmas, and it gets hot in the summer. Batteries lose range in weather above 85 degrees, too, according to a study by the electric battery company Recurrent. Additionally, car air conditioning uses electricity, and so the range is lower when the air conditioning is running—something people prefer in hot weather.
China
The forced push to EVs is making America weaker and China stronger, because almost 80% of batteries are made in China.
America is energy independent due to vast resources of oil and natural gas that have been discovered and produced through innovative technology. However, should Biden’s EV goal come to pass, America would become less energy independent and more dependent on China for electric batteries and associated components. One major reason is because China is buying up many of the world’s mines where rare earth minerals used in batteries are found.
As the world has seen from Russia’s cutoff of natural gas supplies to Europe, it is not prudent to rely on an unfriendly country for a vital resource such as energy, because restrictions can raise energy prices and carry disastrous economic and social consequences.
Moreover, the Biden administration’s push for EVs is to supposedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in order to produce supplies of batteries for EVs and other components, China is increasing its construction of coal-fired power plants. America has 225 coal-fired power plants (which the Biden administration is trying to put out of business), and China has 1,118 (half of all the coal-fired plants in the world).
Research by Kevin Dayaratna, chief statistician and senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has shown that even completely eliminating all fossil fuels from the United States would result in less than 0.2 degrees Celsius in temperature mitigation by 2100. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)
Biden says that EVs will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that regulations on tailpipe and power plant emissions reduce global warming. But this is a fantasy. Emissions will not be reduced until the biggest producers of so-called greenhouse gases—China, India, and Russia—reduce their emissions, which they show no signs of doing.
Ford and GM are finally realizing that Americans are smarter than their government and are not buying the EV fantasy. If Georgia is any guide, the automakers’ “pause” on EV investment might end up as a permanent stop.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/27/automakers-wake-up-reality-electric-vehicles
******************************************************NOAA Rejects Misguided Gulf of Mexico Vessel Speed Rule
The Biden administration has killed a proposed vessel speed rule in the Gulf of Mexico billed as a measure to protect endangered Rice’s whale.
On October 27th, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries- housed under the Commerce Department helmed by Secretary Gina Raimondo - announced it was denying this petition filed by radical environmental groups Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife.
“NOAA Fisheries denied a petition from several non-government organizations to establish a mandatory 10-knot speed limit and other vessel-related mitigation measures to protect endangered Rice’s whales in the Gulf of Mexico and will not proceed with rulemaking at this time,” the NOAA website fact sheet read. “We have concluded that fundamental conservation tasks, including finalizing the critical habitat designation, drafting a species recovery plan, and conducting a quantitative vessel risk assessment, are all needed before we consider vessel regulations.”
The aforementioned groups filed a petition entitled “Endangered and Threatened Species; Petition To Establish a Vessel Speed Restriction and Other Vessel-Related Measures To Protect Rice's Whales” in May 2021 that blamed commercial and recreational anglers, along with boaters - without citing any concrete evidence - for harming this rare yet recently discovered whale. These groups, unsurprisingly, ignored NOAA Fisheries Marine Recreational Information Program trip data and vessel registration data that determined the likelihood of a recreational vessel striking an endangered whale is “less than one in a million.” Clearly, this draft petition wasn’t following the science.
Had the rule gone into effect, a year-round 11 mph slow-down zone stretching from “Pensacola, Fla. to south of Tampa '' would have been enforced to the detriment of law-abiding anglers and boaters. As I noted here at Townhall in July, this draft rule would have deliberately conflated commercial vessels with recreational ones and would impose unenforceable conditions on recreationists. I wrote, “The rule, if adopted, will bar recreational vessels from hosting overnight offshore trips, mandate observers on all trips in the proposed speed zone, and embolden radical environmentalists to report on “non-compliant” recreational vessels, for instance.``
More concerning, this petition undermined actual conservation work involving anglers and boaters - the true conservationists, unlike the aforementioned environmental groups - to bolster diminishing whale numbers. This is typical of powerful, litigious ambulance chasers masquerading as conservationists.
During the summer, recreational fishing and boating groups expressed their dismay with NOAA over considering this rule. They said adopting such a strident rule would disincentivize stakeholders from assisting with whale conservation efforts.
“As more is learned about the recently-discovered Rice’s whale, it is critical that NOAA focus from the outset on collaborating with stakeholders instead of leaping to drastic restrictions,” said American Sportfishing Association president Glenn Hughes “As an industry that cares deeply about conservation of the marine environment, the recreational fishing and boating industry is ready, willing and able to help develop solutions to support whale conservation. Relying on massive speed restrictions that effectively shut down boating and fishing is not a viable path forward for the Rice’s whale or the economy.”
“This would be a huge detriment to the Western panhandle of Florida and they would really be severely impacted in the number of vessels transiting that area would just be incredible,” said Captain Dyland Hubbard of Hubbard’s Marina in St. Petersburg, Florida. “NOAA Fisheries doesn't have the logistics to be able to handle those phone calls. This would be a huge detriment to NOAA Fisheries and an already strenuous environment where they're underfunded and their budget is maxed out. It would cripple NOAA Fisheries to be able to handle that volume of calls so that's totally impossible. Vessel Safety is a huge concern with this.”
The federal government, unsurprisingly, is aiding and abetting the plight of the Rice’s whale in the Gulf and endangered North Atlantic right whale in the Atlantic Ocean.
Instead of greenlighting questionable offshore wind turbines or regulating vessel speeds, the Biden administration should enhance whale monitoring capabilities instead of exploiting their plight.
Both Fiscal Year 2023 appropriations funds and the Green New Deal lite “Inflation Reduction Act '' gave NOAA Fisheries $82 million to expand whale monitoring programs. Has that program started? Has the money actually been used or not? I’m not confident this administration properly stewards these funds since they prioritize DEI and wokeism above all else.
Some legislative remedies exist to resolve this issue, especially concerning the North Atlantic right whale, without displacing this multibillion-dollar industry.
The Protecting Whales, Human Safety, and the Economy Act of 2023 - co-sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Boozman (R-AR) - would prohibit NOAA from issuing rules “that modifies or replaces the North Atlantic Right Whale vessel strike reduction regulation” until technological solutions are deployed.
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The actual 'climate change' agenda
The latest edition of the State of the Climate Report, published this week in the journal BioScience, begins rather ominously: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.” These sentences are meant to instill abject fear and evoke a sense of doom in the general public. However, they are patently absurd and ought to be disregarded outright.
Like almost every climate change report I’ve come across, the 2023 State of the Climate Report is full of red herrings and bombastic assertions that are intended to alarm the public into believing that climate change is an existential threat that must be stopped at all costs, regardless of the collateral damage and unintended consequences that their so-called solutions would inevitably bring to bear.
But what I find most alarming about this particular report, which 15,000 scientists signed, is the anti-human and anti-progress message that lies at the heart of it.
These messages are most prevalent in the part of the report titled “Scientists’ warning recommendations,” which includes “coordinated efforts” intended to “support a broader agenda focused on holistic and equitable climate policy.”
The authors erroneously claim that “economic growth” is the driver of the climate crisis and that it prevents them from achieving their “social, climate, and biodiversity goals.” Unsurprisingly, they lay the blame on the world’s most prosperous nations, particularly those located in the “global north,” which they argue are preventing the need for “decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts.” As such, they suggest we “change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy.” As it turns out, this type of economic system has been implemented many times over, most notably in the Soviet Union. The results, in every single case, were downright dreadful.
In other words, these scientists dismiss the fact that economic growth under a free-market capitalist system, which has produced myriad technological advancements and innovations that have significantly improved the human experience in recent centuries, is a net positive. Casting economic growth and free enterprise in a mostly negative light is ludicrous. Thanks to economic growth over the past few decades alone, humans are living longer than ever before, in less poverty than ever before, are able to communicate across the world in the blink of an eye, and live more comfortably than ever before.
In their misguided worldview, economic growth is a net harm because it does not automatically allocate resources in an equitable manner. Spoiler alert: neither does socialism. Apparently, these scientists are unaware that as President John F. Kennedy famously put it, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Aside from their anti-economic growth stance, the authors also recommend “eliminating” “fossil fuels” and “transitioning away from coal” while calling for “funding to build out renewable energy capacity.” Based on statements like these, I wonder if the scientists who produce these types of reports are delusional. If we were to eliminate fossil fuels and stop using coal as a fuel source, the entire global economy would grind to a halt, billions of people would suffer, and millions would die.
But maybe that is the point, or at least a part of it. One of the last recommendations the scientists make is downright chilling: “gradually decrease the human population.”
Make no mistake, for decades, climate-change zealots have been calling for degrowth and depopulation. From Paul Ehrlich to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the list is too long to catalogue. For some strange reason, this call for depopulation and degrowth is resonating across academia and the illiberal Left. Even worse, it seems to be in vogue among today’s youth.
Across the West or “global north,” birth rates have been declining precipitously. In many countries, including the United States, the birth rate has dropped below the level of replacement.
Sadly, the climate change-industrial complex, a multi-trillion-dollar money machine, has irrevocably corrupted the once-hallowed scientific community. As most scientists know, though are probably less-than-willing to go on record for fear of cancelation and loss of grants and such, climate change is not an existential threat. However, if we unflinchingly take their recommendations as gospel, and plow forward with their idiotic degrowth and depopulation agenda, you better believe humanity will face an existential crisis like none before: the possible extinction of the human species.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/the_actual_climate_change_agenda.html
***************************************************1.5°C Target is ‘Currently Out the Window’ as Global Carbon Budget Shrinks
The world’s available carbon budget is running out faster than scientists expected, meaning that average global warming could routinely exceed 1.5°C by 2029 rather than the mid-2030s, warns a new study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“The window to avoid 1.5°C of warming is shrinking, because we continue to emit and because of our improved understanding of atmospheric physics,” lead author Dr. Robin Lamboll of Imperial College London told the BBC. “We now estimate that we can only afford to release about six years’ worth of current emissions before we are likely to exceed this key Paris agreement reference point.”
Holding average global warming to no more than 1.5°C was the signature goal in the 2015 Paris deal. In its latest assessment report earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said countries would have to cut their emissions 43% from 2019 levels by 2030, 60% by 2035, 69% by 2040, and 84% by 2050 for even a 50-50 chance of hitting that target.
But the IPCC’s assessment was limited to scientific papers published through 2020. This week’s study adjusted the carbon budget estimate to include record carbon dioxide emissions over the last three years, along with the impact of other pollutants in the atmosphere.
“One of the most critical are sooty particles called aerosols, which mainly arise from the burning of fossil fuels,” the BBC explains. “They contribute heavily to air pollution but have an unexpected benefit for the climate because they help cool the atmosphere by reflecting sunlight back into space.”
It turns out that cooling impact has been far greater than scientists previously believed, the new paper concludes.
The difference is enough to remove 100 billion tonnes of carbon from a global budget that the IPCC estimated at 500 billion tonnes, the news story states. Add that to the last three years of emissions, and the remaining budget adds up to just 250 billion tonnes—at a moment when human activity is still generating about 40 billion tonnes of CO2 or equivalent per year. To avoid overshooting the 1.5°C target, the paper says, humanity would have to bring emissions to net-zero by 2034—16 years ahead of the 2050 deadline that has been at the core climate policy and action for years.
“There are no socio-technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that would support that that is actually possible, or even describe how that would be possible,” study co-author Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College London told the BBC. “So that really shows that having a 50% or higher likelihood that we limit warming to 1.5°C, irrespective of how much political action and policy action there is, is currently out of the window.”
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October 30, 2023
Stuff You Aren’t Allowed To Know: Global Greening
The next topic in the Alimonti article that your intellectual superiors have decreed you are not supposed to learn about is the riotous growth of trees, plants, grasses and all the other inhabitants of the Earth for whom rising CO2 levels are nutritious food, not poisonous “pollution”.
The authors summarize several independent studies that have used changes in atmospheric chemistry and satellite imagery, all of which conclude that the world is getting greener. Even deserts are starting to green up. And rising CO2 is behind it, at least in part, though agricultural practices have also improved. The combination means rising food production per hectare, and the authors point to evidence that a return to pre-industrial CO2 levels would entail an 18 percent drop in global agricultural productivity. We’re willing to go way out on a limb here and say such a drop would be a bad thing due to the mass starvation facing poor nations if humans overall grew a fifth less food.
The authors acknowledge that rising CO2 and the general greening effect is a complex issue, and without adaptation it is not always beneficial. For example, they cite a study that showed that more rapid plant growth in the early spring can lead to drier soils in the summer. So farmers need to adapt practises accordingly. But we know they are good at adapting and increasing productivity for the simple reason that agricultural productivity has been rising for decades. And millennia, we might add. But especially recently. The authors present the output per hectare record for maize, rice, soybean and wheat since 1961, which taken together provide 64 percent of the world’s caloric intake.
These are remarkable growth rates ranging from 2.4 to 3.8 percent per year, which translates into food growth outstripping population growth. The authors also point out that variations in extreme weather events have not had any effect on agricultural productivity growth. In sum, rising CO2 has contributed to overall global greening and improved agricultural productivity. Which is one reason why alarmists remain so silent on the subject.
https://principia-scientific.com/stuff-you-arent-allowed-to-know-global-greening/
*********************************************Siemens Energy’s faulty wind turbines become Germany’s €16 billion problem
With its biggest shareholder Siemens withdrawing support, the gas turbine and grid technology maker was forced to seek a €16 billion backstop from the government.
The history of Siemens is the history of electricity. After Werner von Siemens set up shop in a Berlin workshop in 1847, his improved design for the electric telegraph won him the contract to build Europe’s first long-distance cable. His company became an industrial behemoth, making everything from light bulbs to giant turbines for power stations.
The company has morphed many times since, and more recently spawned multiple listed businesses making chips, healthcare screening equipment — and wind turbines. Just like other parts of German industry, one of Siemens AG’s former units has hit a roadblock as the green energy transition reshapes global business.
In 2017, Siemens, already a major builder of offshore wind turbines, bought Spanish rival Gamesa SA to create the world’s biggest installer. Then-Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser described the move as having a “clear and compelling industrial logic.”
Six years later and the sure-fire bet on surging appetite for carbon-free electricity has turned close to catastrophic. A fault in thousands of wind turbines has left Siemens Energy AG, spun out of the mothership in 2020, on the hook for a repair bill of at least €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion) alongside an expected €4.5 billion net loss for the year.
With its biggest shareholder Siemens withdrawing support, the gas turbine and grid technology maker was forced to seek a €16 billion backstop from the government, while it’s still working on how to address the faulty turbines.
Investors responded by wiping out more than a third of the company’s value, the second such move this year.
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Shell takes axe to its eco-friendly business as oil giant focuses on digging up fossil fuels
Shell has taken another axe to its once lofty decarbonization plans, as the U.K. oil giant’s pivot back to fossil fuels picks up steam.
The group plans to cut at least 15% of staff working in its low-carbon solutions division while scaling back its hydrogen business, Reuters first reported Wednesday.
The move will see 200 jobs go in 2024, with another 130 placed under review by the company, according to a statement from Shell.
The division specializes in solutions to decarbonize the transport and industry sector, but is separate from its renewables business. The focus of the cuts is its hydrogen light mobility unit, which develops technologies for passenger vehicles. The unit’s ambitions have been clipped as customers opt for EVs.
“We are transforming our Low Carbon Solutions (LCS) business to strengthen its delivery on our core low-carbon business areas such as transport and industry,” a representative for Shell told Fortune.
“We remain committed to investing in viable low-carbon business models and focusing on our strengths as we play our part in decarbonization of the global energy system.”
There are 1,300 people working in the LCS division, Reuters reported, but the company has said that isn’t a full reflection of the people contributing to the unit.
It’s the latest move from CEO Wael Sawan, who joined in January, that pivots Shell back to fossil fuels.
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Climate change hurts the poor: but not the way you think it does
Moves to “fight climate change” are precisely what is hurting the poor most. It is not “climate change” but the policies adopted in response to it that are the problem afflicting the poor the most.
“Climate impacts hit the world's poor the hardest”. By sheer dint of repetition in countless “expert” reports and mass media articles, this line in the climate change narrative has become a truism. According to the International Monetary Fund, “by hitting the poorest hardest, climate change risks both increasing existing economic inequalities and causing people to fall into poverty.” The World Economic Forum states that “the lowest income countries produce one-tenth of emissions, but are the most heavily impacted by climate change.”
It would seem straightforward that resolving the “climate change” problem would serve the poor the most, given that they are the hardest hit. But, by a tragic turn of irony, moves to “fight climate change” are precisely what is hurting the poor most. It is not “climate change” but the policies adopted in response to it that are the problem afflicting the poor the most.
“Fighting climate change” — which for most Western politicians and policy makers means achieving the “net-zero [carbon emissions] by 2050” policy target of the UN Paris Agreement — has thus also become a fight for the world’s most poor and vulnerable. That the climate industrial complex claims the interests of the world’s poor within its ‘net zero’ agenda is a powerful lever in public relations.
The call to “save the planet” includes, by definition, ensuring the welfare of the world’s poor. But making the fight even more so about helping “the most vulnerable” gives the narrative of “fighting climate change” a philanthropic edge. Philanthropy is universally admired, like Mother Theresa. It is a particularly attractive hobby for the rich who have made their fortune and want to “give back” to society. Thus, Bill Gates’ or Michael Bloomberg’s self-proclaimed philanthropic interests in the global poor, public health and climate change.
When discussions of climate change issues turn to helping the poor and the vulnerable, Africa quickly becomes the center of attention. Africa is the world's second largest and second-most populous continent, both after Asia. The share of the sub-Sahara African population living in extreme poverty, defined as those living on less than $2.15 per day (in international dollars adjusted for cost-of-living differences among countries), was 35% in 2021. This compared to the world average of 8.4%.
In 2019, out of the world total of almost 760 million people without access to electricity, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for almost 590 million or approximately 78%. Without electricity or clean fuels such as natural gas, keeping warm (or cool), getting drinking water, cooking food cleanly, and getting enough light to read after the sun sets is not possible.
Most of us who take affordable electricity ‘24/7’ supply for granted are unaware of the existential constraint on people’s daily lives that a lack of electricity implies. This was brought home brilliantly by Geoff Hill at a talk in House of Lords in Westminster on Monday. Geoff is Africa correspondent for The Washington Times, the first non-American John Steinbeck Award winner and has published with the Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), The East African (Nairobi) and across the African continent.
With electricity unavailable or too expensive for 600-million people in Africa, vast areas of forest are being denuded for fuelwood or charcoal to cook and to warm homes by those who have no other fuel. Faced with buying logs from a plantation or cutting them for free in the wild, people who don’t have enough money for food choose the latter. With deforestation, the land degrades and soon enough there’s a desert where the jungle once stood.
As Geoff points out, “Africa is losing its forest. Not just a few trees here and there: an area the size of Switzerland is cleared every year… A staggering 90% of the timber is used as firewood, commonly turned into charcoal, and sold in markets across the continent.” There is a need for reliable energy, and at a price local people can afford. Without this, Geoff observes, the forest will continue to decline and, ultimately, vanish.
The impact of indoor pollution due to cooking with dirty solid fuels like charcoal and firewood on respiratory health and mortality on Africans is severe. The death rate in Africa from indoor pollution in 2019 was three times that of the global average. While 69% of the world's population had access to clean fuels for cooking (such as LPG or electricity), only 19% of Africa’s population did so in 2020. Conversely, the percentage of Africa’s population using dirty solid fuels (such as dung, firewood, or charcoal) for cooking was 77% in 2010; the world average was 41%. Mr. Hill cites a global study which puts the mortality rate in Africa as higher than AIDS, malaria and TB combined.
Africa — home to giant river systems including the Nile, Congo, Zambezi and Volta — has abundant water. Dams and lakes are plentiful. But the challenge lies in getting water to where it is needed. Urbanization in Africa has been very rapid over the past 50 years, creating some of the world’s largest cities. Urban demand for water is huge and supply is often pitiful. “Without water, hospitals can’t function, schools close, factories often must shut for hours at a time, food can’t be washed and diseases such as typhoid and cholera begin to spread.” As Mr. Hill shows, the chronic water problems of African cities – either poor or undrinkable supply – mostly come down to a shortage of electricity required to pump water to where it is needed.
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29 October, 2023
Don’t Follow Net-Zero Lemmings Over the Energy Cliff
Seventeen states – including Virginia – tie their vehicle emission standards and electric vehicle sale mandates to California, the most climate-centric state in the Union. Unless current laws change, by 2035 all their new cars, pickups and SUVs must be electric (or hydrogen-powered).
In further obeisance to California, most of these states also require that their utility companies generate 100% of their electricity from “renewable sources” by 2045 or 2050. They and the federal government are also mandating that electric models replace gas-fueled furnaces, water heaters, driers, stoves and ovens within a decade or less.
This means electricity demand will double in the very near future – at the same time that reliable, affordable fossil-fuel (and nuclear and hydroelectric) electricity generation plummets. Charging massive batteries to ensure power on windless, sunless days would double demand again.
Home, hospital, school and business lighting, heating, cooling, cooking and computing costs will likely double or triple, hitting poor and minority families hardest. Blackouts will become commonplace.
No wonder citizens in Germany, Luxembourg and other European countries are revolting against net zero laws, forcing politicians to delay or terminate their green dictates.
And yet Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere have refused to budge. They’re so convinced that climate cataclysms are imminent – and government mandates will magically usher in a renewable energy era – that they are willing to compel families and businesses to follow them and other virtue-signaling lemmings off the net-zero cliff.
That’s why – even with attention now focused on Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other global hot spots – voters also need to think long and hard about looming US energy cataclysms.
Democrats, some Republicans, and their media and environmentalist allies are determined to sweep vitally important energy realities under the rug. Voters mustn’t that happen.
First and foremost, not one village on Earth – much less a city or state – has shown that wind and solar power backed up by grid-scale batteries can enable them to function normally ... or merely survive ... for even a week, winter or summer. And yet President Biden and many others want to impose a “green energy transformation” on the entire United States.
Such a transformation would require literally millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Billions of Tesla-EV-equivalent battery modules would be needed to stabilize increasingly large and complex electricity grids ... and back up sporadic, weather-dependent electricity ... to prevent widespread blackouts.
Building this equipment would involve billions of tons of steel, aluminum, copper, cobalt, lithium, concrete, plastics and other materials; hundreds of billions of tons of ore and overburden from thousands of mines; fossil fuels for mining, processing and manufacturing; and unprecedented greenhouse gas emissions, toxic air, water and ground pollution, and wildlife habitat destruction.
Installing all that equipment would impact thousands of square miles of habitats, scenic areas and croplands – decimating wildlife all across rural America – to serve major urban areas that have the votes to impose their views, but not the room or desire to have those impacts in their own backyards. Disposing of worn out and broken solar panels and wind turbine blades would require hundreds of huge landfills, also in rural America’s backyards.
The costs would be astronomical. Net Zero Reality Coalition experts have calculated that grid-balancing and backup batteries alone would cost up to $290-trillion, depending on which capital cost, hourly or daily electricity generation data and other factors are employed.
The wind industry loves to say such-and-such wind or solar project has the “capacity” to power 100,000 homes. That may be true – when the wind is blowing or sun is shining at optimal levels. However, that rarely happens. On an annual basis, those unreliable systems would likely generate electricity 20-40% of the year, in short intervals, at totally unpredictable times.
Since the Biden Administration and environmentalists steadfastly oppose mining in the USA, most resource extraction will be done overseas. The raw materials will mostly come from or through China, which often employs slave and child labor, zero to minimal environmental standards, subpar wage and workplace safety standards, and minerals as a political weapon.
That means wind, solar and battery power is actually the antithesis of clean, green, renewable, sustainable and ethical. All the dirty, evil, unsustainable activities just take place in faraway places, where they can be ignored; where they needn’t be factored into slick product and campaign ads.
An all-electric economy also requires that home, neighborhood, local, state and national transmission systems be significantly upgraded to handle the massive additional electric loads. That’s more trillions of dollars, further increasing the cost of electricity and every product and service.
Personal needs and choices will disappear. You will be told what cars you can buy and how far you can drive them; how big your home can be, and how warm or cool you can keep it; how often and how far you can travel on vacation; even what foods you can eat.
Where’s the beef? Not on the menu. And just imagine being in your EV, in a massive traffic jam, during a blizzard or hurricane evacuation. But as California goes, so will you. Your legislators demand it.
Delving into specifics: President Biden wants 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind electricity by 2030. That would require 2,500 gigantic 12-MW wind turbines. But even if the wind is blowing optimally, their output would barely meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs.
Equally crazy, New York’s plan for 24,000 megawatt-hours of battery storage would provide backup for barely 45 minutes on a sweltering windless day. And even that minuscule storage would require 300,000 Tesla 80-kilowatt-hour battery modules.
The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act requires that utilities have 3,100 megawatt-hours of electricity storage. If those are to be 19-MWh Tesla Megapack battery modules, costing $10-million apiece, Virginia taxpayers and ratepayers would have to lay out $1.6 billion. For that they’d get one-half-hour of statewide windless/sunless day backup!
Ask your elected officials how many offshore turbines would be needed to power your state – or the entire USA. How many onshore turbines with a nameplate capacity of perhaps 6 MW. How many solar panels sprawling across vast scenic areas, croplands and wildlife habitats – in sunny Arizona or frosty Wisconsin. How many battery modules for a full week of backup storage.
Demand to know costs – and how much mining, processing, manufacturing, toxic pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, child labor, and habitat destruction would go into making all that equipment.
Watch them bob and weave, run for cover, or have the police remove you for asking such impertinent questions.
Mandates for electric vehicles, wind and solar power, and a magical transition to a fossil-fuel-free energy utopia are critical issues this year and in 2024. Ponder them carefully before you head to the polls.
Your vote – and whether you encourage your friends to vote – will determine whether we end this insanity or must live with the iron fists of increasingly oppressive climate authoritarians.
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Top Wind Firm Profits Tumble 98% in New Blow to alternative Energy
Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., the largest wind-turbine maker, said third-quarter profit tumbled in another blow to a renewables sector reeling from the impact of lower prices even as demand jumps.
The producer’s net income fell 98% to 9.4 million yuan ($1.29 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, the company said Thursday in a statement. Sales volumes in the first nine months were 8.9 gigawatts, up more than a quarter on the same period in 2022. Goldwind’s shares fell as much as 5% intraday in Shenzhen on Friday.
Asia’s largest economy is accelerating deployment of renewable energy as it works to curb emissions and meet rising electricity demand. Though installations are rising, competition is intensifying among China’s wind turbine producers and pushing prices lower.
The sharp quarterly profit drop is due to higher selling expenses and research-and-development costs, Citigroup analyst Pierre Lau wrote in a note. Wind developers are facing higher project costs since all national subsidies expired in 2021 and regional governments require more local-economy contributions, Bloomberg NEF analyst Xiangyu Chen wrote last month.
Clean energy technology manufacturers globally are struggling with rising costs and delays to some projects. Siemens Energy AG plunged more than a third Thursday after confirming it is in talks with the German government about state guarantees as it grapples with weakness in its wind-turbine unit.
Vattenfall AB and Iberdrola SA have already scrapped some developments this year, and the bleak outlook threatens to hamper efforts by Goldwind and other Chinese turbine producers to expand outside their home market.
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Chasing idiocy: how subsidies power Australia's energy price hikes
If we looked at the picture for Australia in the mid-90s, the electricity industry was massively overstaffed and the gas industry was dissipating the wealth that Exxon had discovered in Bass Strait.
In the case of electricity, Victoria led the way, and one simple figure illustrates the benefits brought about by privatisation and the introduction of competition. Generation Victoria was the monopoly supplier. Prior to reforms, which were ironically initiated by socialist Premier Joan Kirner, it employed 25,000 people; by the early 2000s, the numbers employed, including consultants and contractors, were under 3,000. At the same time the output, in terms of the power stations’ availabilities to run, had lifted from somewhere in the mid-70 per cent range to the mid-90s.
So, we had over 20,000 surplus personnel who only gummed up the work. Similar savings can be found in the distribution and transmission businesses, albeit to a lesser degree.
Australia was largely traversing the path that had been trailblazed by Margaret Thatcher’s administration in the UK and, less systematically in the US, where The Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland network (PJM) showed the way in which independent generator businesses could compete while cooperating thereby bringing about lower prices with considerable incentives to invest where investment would be profitable.
Within six or seven years of initiating the reforms, Australia had achieved what was probably the lowest electricity prices in the world and an electricity system, which was no longer plagued with downtime, strikes, and blackouts. We saw new investment responding to commercial, not political, incentives.
This was done as a result of profits-oriented businesses, in retail as well as generation – not all of them privately owned – competing for business within a known framework of rules. These as the very conditions under which capitalism generally has prevailed and brought the wealth of nations we enjoy today.
But the situation in the energy industry was always precarious. Even while the reforms were taking place, Victorian Treasurer Alan Stockdale felt obliged to introduce regulatory arrangements for pricing and for ombudsman arrangements that went far beyond those seen in other industries.
At the start of the 21st Century, and for the next few years, electricity prices (and to a lesser degree gas, having fallen immediately after the reforms), were increasing more or less in line with inflation.
But the germs of the present disaster were already starting to infect the industry – and the economy as a whole.
Spurred on by claims that carbon dioxide emissions were causing global warming, and a fantasy that wind and solar energy would soon become cheaper than ‘dinosaur’ coal and gas and supposedly inherently dangerous nuclear, the first tentative steps were taken to favour renewable industries. Amusingly, we see agencies like CSIRO and others claiming even more stridently that wind and solar is cheaper and – often within the same sentence – adding that they therefore need to continue receiving the subsidies they enjoy.
In response to climate scares and skilful lobbying, John Howard introduced requirements for ‘2 per cent of additional energy’ to be supplied by wind and solar. The method of arranging, for this was through the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) whereby energy certificates, which provided a subsidy to wind and solar, equivalent in those days to about $30 per MWh (providing a 70 per cent premium on the commercial market price).
John Howard has since said that this 2 per cent additional energy policy was his greatest political error. He sought to cap the level of support and appointed an inquiry, chaired by former Senator Tamblyn, to advise on this. As is often the case, the inquiry was captured by the bureaucrats and recommended the expansion of the scheme from what had been quantified at 9,500 GWh to 16,000 GWh. To his credit, Howard rejected this but was quickly replaced by Australia’s new economic and political saviour, Kevin Rudd.
Under Rudd/Gillard, the MRET scheme and its roof-top sister scheme went into break-neck expansion until the Abbott victory in 2013. Abbott wanted to wind back the scheme but, fearing radical advice and conscious of political opposition to this, appointed the sensible Dick Warburton to head the inquiry, and the best he felt he could do was to cap the scheme.
So the subsidies have continued. They have transformed what was a supply comprising 85 per cent coal 10 per cent hydro and 5 per cent gas to the present output of 60 per cent coal 25 per cent solar/wind and 15 per cent hydro and gas. The present government seeks to eliminate coal altogether and, ostensibly at least, the Opposition is not far behind.
In terms of subsidies, the PC has put their effect as follows
In annualised dollar terms, the energy subsidies to renewables, the flip side of which is a tax-type penalty on fossil fuels come to over $9,800 (million):
LRET SRES ACCUs $3,980
RERT, FCAS and system security $400
Clean Energy Regulator $750
Expansion of transmission $510
CEFC $1,333
ARENA $100
Snowy 2 $1,333
State schemes $1,410
The subsidies do far more damage than a simple transfer of money from one party to another. Because wind is subsidised (and is favoured by the market operator’s dispatch algorithm that gives it preferred access), it can bid into the market at anything above negative $40-50 per MWh. This not only displaces coal but forces up its costs since the generators are capital-intensive and designed to operate for much of the day but are being forced to fill in when the wind/sun is not producing.
As a result, we see prices forced down as the coal generators meet the market pressures from wind and solar that will seek to run at anything over its (subsidised) break-even of about $50 per MWh. Prices then shoot up when those distorted market pressures add costs (by forcing the capital-intensive coal plant to operate part-time) and at the same time squeeze prices. That process forces a facility to close once a new lick of new capital is required to supply – not at the steady rate of the original design – but as a filler for when lack of wind and sun prevent intermittent renewables from generating. The pattern can be observed in prices depicted below.
This year’s closure of Liddell brought what the Australian Financial Review called a revelation, ‘Had Liddell’s capacity still been available, prices would have been lower.’ Chanticleer noted, that the average realised wholesale price increased 32 per cent in NSW, 27 per cent in Victoria, 100 per cent in SA and 14 per cent in Queensland.
The pressures on electricity have been increased by regulatory constraints on new developments and tax increases (called royalty increases) on coal and gas. For gas, Australia now has shortages due to regulatory restrictions that largely outlaw developments in all eastern states other than Queensland.
The outcome has seen Australia being transformed from its former position of enjoying very low-cost energy supply. Australian electricity prices are now twice those of China, Russia and Vietnam and much dearer than other nations following us down the climate energy wormhole, like Canada, the US, and Korea.
One solution according to our politicians and those who advise them is to re-nationalise the industry and double up on the subsidies to renewables.
Former Premier Andrews set renationalisation in train for Victoria. Fortunately, his government would be unable to raise sufficient funds to implement this.
The latest subsidy expansion is the Safeguard Mechanism but the Prime Minister has foreshadowed a new array of subsidies and regulatory impediments. And hydrogen is a popular elixir to fix the system but one that cannot conceivably work if only because it takes more energy to produce than if provides.
The further we go along this path of replacing coal with intermittent solar and wind supplies, the more expensive the firming operation becomes. With a 100 per cent renewables supply and no transmission constraints, Global Roam has put the firming costs as the equivalent of 25 Snowy 2’s or 70,000 Hornsdale batteries which would cost some $6 trillion and, even if amortised over a 15-year period would require one-third of annual GDP – and that is just for the batteries. Even larger costs are estimated by others like Francis Menton, who estimates that just to keep the lights on would require a backup of 25 days supply with 100 per cent wind supply. Pumped hydro might have a firming role alongside batteries but it cannot be a major one given Australia’s limited river flows.
One solution proposed by the Opposition is to adopt nuclear but this – at the present time – is nowhere near as economical for Australia as coal. It is even less so in the way Peter Dutton expressed it – as an adjunct and firming mechanism for renewables, a role that nuclear (like coal), with its high fixed costs, is intrinsically ill-placed to perform.
Of course, the real solution is that adopted by China, India, and others
But for the time being Prime Minister Albanese, reeling from the Voice debate, is preparing for a redoubled support for renewable energy. In doing so he is tacitly supported by the finance industry that is cowering from the ‘global boiling’ incandescents and refusing to finance energy sources other than those renewables requiring government subsidies. We therefore, at the very least, face a considerable increase in national misery before sensible energy economic policies are restored.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/chasing-idiocy-how-subsidies-power-our-energy-price-hikes/
************************************Electric-vehicle shares look toppy as car buyer interest wanes
The electric-vehicle boom that spawned multibillion dollar startups overnight and pushed Tesla's value into the stratosphere is starting to flounder just a few years after it began.
A key theme from this earnings season is the waning demand for electric cars. First was Tesla's grim earnings report last week, that was followed by dour commentary from General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Honda and car-rental company Hertz.
The shift has been sobering for investors, as the valuations of most EV stocks assume a rapid industry expansion. Should that fail to materialise, share prices will likely unwind and many startups won't be able to rely on the capital markets to fund their unprofitable ventures.
"People were always too aggressive on EV adoption," said Craig Irwin, analyst at Roth Capital Partners. "What we have now is a market adjustment, a recalibration back to reality."
While Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk placed the blame on high interest rates, others pointed to demand. GM said it was rethinking goals as EV sales were slower than anticipated, and Honda shelved plans to develop affordable EVs with GM. Mercedes called the EV price war "brutal" and unsustainable, and Hertz said it will slow the pace of buying these cars due to high repair costs.
At the same time, Wall Street analysts downgraded EV-exposed companies such as lithium suppliers and charging station operators.
"EVs had a grace period of initial demand enthusiasm, but that appears to be over," said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.
The warning signs appeared early this year as Tesla started aggressively cutting prices in an effort to shore up demand. That sparked a price war as other EV-makers followed, eating into profitability for some carmakers and pushing up already steep losses for others.
But demand stayed weak despite the lower prices, leading some to conclude that the pool of "first-adopter" consumers may have been tapped. Then there are other hurdles like high interest rates and expensive car loans, still inconsistent charging networks and the relatively fewer electric models available.
Even the global political push for cleaner transportation options isn't making a difference.
"Consumers have the final word on where pricing has to go," Mr Colas said. "If demand is already faltering, then margins are going to be tight from here on."
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26 October, 2023
The madness of Net Zero
John Gideon Hartnett
How crazy has the world become? What we are watching is the most insane delusion faced by humankind.
To believe that carbon dioxide, plant food, is a pollutant is an idea that would have put you in the asylum 40 years ago. But not now. The climate cult has taken this bizarre ideology mainstream and the asylum is being run by the inmates…
Some sane voices are still speaking up.
Princeton University’s Emeritus (retired) Professor of Physics William Happer is one of them. The Institute of Public Affairs was proud to host his tour around Australia. A video of his presentation may be viewed on YouTube.
Professor Happer is one of the world’s leading scientists and climate realists, having made extensive contributions to the debate about climate science. He has often spoken on the crusade against carbon dioxide and the importance of integrity within the body of climate science. He has played a vital role in ensuring the community is exposed to information and arguments that many major institutions in our society seek to censor.
As a physics professor (now retired also), I found his approach to fundamental issues, like thermal radiation into space, refreshing. He has looked at the fundamentals of the laws of nature and shown that there cannot be any climate emergency based on carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere.
In recent times, whole communities have suddenly fixed ‘their minds upon one object Net Zero’ and have subsequently gone ‘mad’. He stated, ‘Millions of people [have] become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it.’ This is what has happened regarding the war against alleged anthropogenic global warming caused by carbon dioxide, water vapour, and cow farts (he never said that; the last one was just me).
When it comes to his background, Professor Happer described his involvement in developing artificial stars for the US military. It is a technique that uses a powerful laser and adaptive optics to cancel the speckling effects of temperature variations in the atmosphere from the ground up to high altitudes. Details aside, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this research was declassified and now astronomical observatories routinely use the technique to improve their image quality from light passing through the atmosphere.
A side benefit of this research was that scientists could measure the temperature profiles of the atmosphere precisely up to an altitude of 100 km. This meant they could measure the thermal radiation being emitted into space.
More than 100 years ago, German physicist Max Planck figured out radiation from a ‘blackbody’, beginning what is now known as quantum mechanics. The measurements that Happer et al. made fell within standard predictions of that physics. But more importantly, they discovered that the atmospheric greenhouse gases reduced the emissions into space. This is due to the effects that certain features of those molecules (their vibrational and rotational states and Karl Schwarzschild’s research) have on the emissions at various wavelengths, particularly in the infrared. In total those features reduce the amount of radiation into space by about 30 per cent less than would be radiated if there were no gasses such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour in the atmosphere. CO2 particularly has a very strong effect and it is easily observed how much it reduces emissions. In fact, without CO2 there would be way too much emission of heat into space and the Earth would be too cold to live on.
The physics also showed that ‘if you double CO2 it almost doesn’t affect the radiation to space’. You can hardly tell any difference in the emissions. It is only a 1 per cent increase. Prof. Happer said, ‘100 per cent increase of CO2 [give you a] 1 per cent effect on radiation to space, so of course the mainstream media would never tell you that but the UN knows perfectly well this is true.’ This is hard physics as he says. It is not debatable. It is not consensus physics like the UN IPCC likes to use. It is by measurement with very accurate instruments.
Now I don’t want to get too nerdy into the physics, but Prof. Happer went on to describe the Stefan-Boltzman equation that tells us the relationship between the emission of radiation into space and the temperature of the radiating body (the Earth in this case). It turns out the emission of radiation into space goes as the fourth power of the temperature. That’s a huge effect. It means if you double the temperature you increase the radiation by 16 times. But if you invert this – a 1 per cent change in radiation into space means 0.25 per cent change in absolute temperature and that is not centigrade (C), but absolute temperature measured in kelvin (K). An atmospheric temperature at sea level of 15.5 C is about 288.7 K. That means 0.25 per cent of 288.7 K change, which is about 0.71 of a degree C. In this case that change is the same in C or K. 0.7 degrees is tiny but that is all you would get from a doubling of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, from 400 ppm to 800 ppm, which at current accumulation rates would take a very long time, maybe another hundred years.
There is much more to the story. He explains the invocation of huge positive feedback in all the UN climate models which are not in any normal systems. They have to have these unknown feedback systems to get temperature changes way beyond any understanding in the standard physics. This is because ‘CO2 is too wimpy to be worried about,’ Prof. Happer said. So the climate cult makes up something that Happer called ‘affirmative action for CO2’. He then commented that the French chemist Le Chatelier noted that in most natural processes in nature, feedbacks are negative. Positive feedbacks almost never occur. But unremarkable negative-feedback-stabilised Earth temperatures are hardly likely to secure the next lucrative research grant and so the gravy train continues.
There is nothing to get excited about. Well-established standard physics and experimental observations tell us that it doesn’t matter how much CO2 density in the atmosphere varies around the 400 ppm to 800 ppm range; it does very little to change Earth’s temperatures.
Net Zero emissions is total madness. Even if humans could reduce their CO2 output to the atmosphere it will reduce plant food production, create famines and unnecessarily cool the planet by less than 1 degree. Reject the propaganda!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/the-madness-of-net-zero
************************************************Mega-Jolt: The Costs and Logistics of Plugging In EVs Are About to Become Supercharged
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gave Americans an unintended glimpse of the future during her road trip this summer touting the wonders of electric vehicles. Far from spotlighting the promise of EVs, her public relations misadventure in Georgia involved one of her staff in a gasoline-powered vehicle blocking off a coveted charger in advance of her arrival, leading to frayed tempers and a local EV owner calling the cops. It was an illustration of the challenges drivers could face as governments push the public to embrace plug-in vehicles.
Hyped as technological marvels, EVs are boobytrapped with a host of inconveniences and tradeoffs. By now many people have heard about range anxiety, exploding lithium-ion batteries, and the environmental destruction caused by global mining for battery minerals.
But another wave of challenges is in the offing as the federal government and state officials pump in billions of dollars to build out a massive national infrastructure of charging stations to power the EVs.
The sheer scale of a charging infrastructure means recruiting retailers and businesses to install and maintain chargers that are expected to lose money in the near future, with some likely to be written off as economic losses.
In California, which is slated to ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars in just 12 years, government estimates indicate the state may need to install at least 20 electric chargers for every gas pump now in service to create a reliable, seamless network.
Massive public subsidies will be a crucial part of this effort because private industry is not willing to take the financial risks of betting on an uncertain future. Government subsidies mean complying with recordkeeping and reporting mandates and making sure chargers are online 97% of the time, while bearing the financial risk of vandalism, mechanical malfunctions, daily fluctuations in electricity pricing, and cashflow unpredictability.
A “net zero” society inherently favors the haves over the have-nots. Renters and low-income families aren’t as likely to own private chargers, and electricity purchased from public chargers can cost five to 10 times as much as charging privately in a garage at home. To avoid penalizing the little guy, federal EV mandates require that 40% of benefits pay for public chargers in disadvantaged areas, while California requires that at least half go to such “equity” communities, where relatively few people currently drive EVs.
The rapid transition from a reliable legacy energy infrastructure that’s more than a century old to emerging technologies in just a few decades will require the buy-in of virtually every American, including relearning driving habits and adopting charging patterns that right now constitute the leisurely prerogative of early adopters and trend-setters.
“We need to make sure the infrastructure is overbuilt, oversupplied and over-capacity so that nobody as a driver gets stranded,” said John Eichberger, executive director of the Transportation Energy Institute, a nonprofit research organization. “When you point out the challenges to a believer or a staunch advocate, well now you’re just being negative, you’re just trying to impede progress.”
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Beware the offshore wind oligarchy
The Atlantic coastal states are painting themselves into a financial corner with offshore wind targets and mandates. These purchase requirements may be creating a seller’s market for offshore power providers. Even worse, given that there are only a handful of developers, it may well become an oligopoly market. If so, then the question is how high the prices to the states will go.
This alarming possibility is in sharp contrast to how the situation is being reported. Some developers have bought out their existing power purchase (supply) agreements as uneconomical. In New York, the State rejected a large-scale request from a bunch of developers for price increases averaging over 50% on the grounds that it violated their competitive procurement policy.
These events have been reported as serious setbacks for the industry, but in every case, the developers are expected to rebid the PPAs at much higher prices. In fact, these States are rushing to get new procurements underway. Other states are doing likewise.
The New York developers can hardly be expected to bid lower than they already asked for, as that would suggest their ask was dishonest. They may well bid higher, arguing that their costs have continued to increase. Developers for other states are likely to want similar amounts.
The driver here may be the huge targets already set by the states. Reports often cite the Biden target of 30,000 MW, but the combined state targets are much bigger. Just New York, New Jersey, and Virginia sum to over the Biden target. The combined targets from Maine to North Carolina exceed a whopping 50,000 MW of offshore wind capacity.
Given the huge targets, the question is how high a price will these states eat? If I were the developers, I would come in very high. As the saying goes, it is easy to go down but hard to go up.
Not only is it a mandated seller’s market, it has the makings of an oligopoly. These are short-term procurements, so the only viable bidders are those ready to build. That is a very small number of developers, perhaps a dozen or so, if that. For each state, there may only be a very small number that can deliver to them.
There are lots of leases, but it takes 5 years or more to get to the construction stage. Even though the Environmental Impact Statements are a cruel joke on the environment, they still require a lot of research. Smoke and mirrors take time to build.
So I would not be surprised if the bids on the first state’s procurement were very high and they kept getting higher, state by state and procurement by procurement. Of course, the states will scream and squawk. They may even reject these high prices at first, but they have huge targets and mandates to meet. The developers are mostly big, global companies, so they can afford to take their time, holding out for their high prices.
This particular issue storm is going to be very interesting. Nor will it be over quickly. Green politics meets green business head-on. We are talking about something like $200 billion in offshore wind projects. A titanic struggle.
Of course, it is possible the states will simply ditch the targets or slip them harmlessly into the future so they can repeatedly reject the high bids. This might even wipe out offshore wind, which is what it deserves. Watching that happen, perhaps even helping it along, could be great fun.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/10/22/beware-the-offshore-wind-oligarchy/
*******************************************Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?
It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”? Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more. Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society.
But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not.
I had two important posts on this subject back in 2021: one from January 2, titled “Causation Of Climate Change, And The Scientific Method,” and the other from October 28, titled “‘The Climate Is Changing And Human Activities Are The Cause’: How, Exactly, Do We Know That?” Those posts covered the basics of how causation is generally established under the scientific method. Those posts also reviewed certain articles published at the time that gave good reasons to doubt the truth of the proposition that human greenhouse gas emissions are a main driver of significant climate change. Go to those posts for discussions of and links to the 2020/21 articles that I reviewed at the time.
The reason for today’s post is that a couple of important new articles have come to my attention that further make clear that the proposition that human activities, particularly “greenhouse gas” emissions, are causing significant climate change has not been proved and, based on existing data, cannot be proved. I’ll provide links and summaries, and let you draw your own conclusions as to the significance of these new articles.
But before that, let’s review one more time the basics of how causation is extablished under the scientific method. This is from my January 2, 2021 post:
We start with the basic maxim that “correlation does not prove causation.” Instead, causation is established by disproof of all relevant alternative (“null”) hypotheses. Everybody knows how this works from drug testing. We can’t prove that drug A cures disease X by administering drug A a thousand times and observing that disease X almost always goes away. Disease X might have gone away for other reasons, or on its own. Even if we administer drug A a million times, and disease X almost always goes away, we have only proved correlation, not causation. To prove causation, we must disprove the null hypothesis by testing drug A against a placebo. The placebo represents the null hypothesis that something else (call it “natural factors”) is curing disease X. When drug A is significantly more effective at curing disease X than the placebo, then we have disproved the null hypothesis, and established, at least provisionally, the effectiveness of drug A.
And yet somehow these principles don’t apply in the field of climate science. Instead, all the inside clique of the climate science community have decided to agree that the new way to prove causation is to show really, really good correlation with the preferred hypothesis, in which case subjecting the proposition at issue to a test of invalidation against a null hypothesis can be dispensed with. The climate science community calls its system for establishing causation “detection and attribution” studies. The basic idea is to come up with a model (i.e., a hypothesis) that predicts global warming based on increased greenhouse gases, and then collect data that show a very close match between what the model predicted and the data. Correlation with the model predictions is the claimed proof of causation. There are hundreds of such studies in the climate literature. My January 2, 2021 post linked to a classic of the genre, a 2018 IPCC-sponsored article written by a collection of some 36 co-authors who constitute a virtual “who’s who” of the insiders of the climate science cult (e.g., Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Tom Wigley, Ben Santer, etc., etc., etc.). The title is “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.” Key quote:
There is a wide range of evidence of qualitative consistencies between observed climate changes and model responses to anthropogenic forcing, including global warming, increasing land-ocean temperature contrast, diminishing Arctic sea-ice extent, glacial retreat and increases in precip- itation in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes.
Just get yourself enough “qualitative consistencies” with your hypothesis and proof of causation will be yours!
The authors of the two new papers beg to differ. First, we have a paper by John Dagsvik and Sigmund Moen of Statistics Norway, dated September 2023, titled “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” This paper is particularly significant because it has been issued by a governmental agency — the government statistical agencies being otherwise all in lockstep in support of the human-caused global warming narrative. Excerpt from the Dagsvik and Moen paper (page 5):
At present, there is apparently a high degree of consensus among many climate researchers that the temperature increase of the last decades is systematic (and partly man-made). This is certainly the impression conveyed by the mass media. For non-experts, it is very difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the research in this field, and it is almost impossible to obtain an overview and understanding of the scientific basis for such a consensus (Koonin, 2021, Curry, 2023). By looking at these issues in more detail, this article reviews past observed and reconstructed temperature data as well as properties and tests of the global climate models (GCMs). Moreover, we conduct statistical analyses of observed and reconstructed temperature series and test whether the recent fluctuation in temperatures differs systematically from previous temperature cycles, due possibly to emission of greenhouse gases.
And the conclusion of Dagsvik and Moen (from the abstract):
[W]e find, . . . that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.
A good deal of the discussion in Dagsvik and Moen covers various deficiencies and inadequacies of the existing temperature data series — inadequacies that make it impossible to draw conclusions from existing data about causation of temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions. Here is one comment on the data from page 10 that I find particularly significant:
For all three surface air temperature records, but especially NCDC and GISS, administrative changes to anomaly values are quite often introduced, even for observations several years back in time. Some changes may be due to the delayed reductions of stations or addition of new station data, while others probably have their origin in a change of technique to calculate average values. It is impossible to evaluate the validity of such administrative changes for an outside user of these records.
For more than you will ever want to know on that subject, see my thirty part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Bureaucrats altering the data to support their preferred narrative have rendered the data completely useless for any legitimate public policy purpose.
A second important new paper is from Antonis Christofides and co-authors dated September 26, 2023. They introduce their paper with a long post of that date at Climate, Etc. titled “Causality and Climate.” The part of the full technical paper relating to the climate science application can be found at this link. If you go to that last link and try to read through it, you will find technical math that will quickly have your head swimming, even if you are a quasi math geek like myself. However, their fundamental point as to causality in climate science is not very complicated: if you plot recent temperature increases against increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, it’s the temperature increases that come first, and the CO2 increases follow. Thus, if there is causality, it must be that the temperature increase is causing the CO2 increase, rather than the other way around.
More here:
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24 October, 2023
Humans have 'lost control' of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting - and it could cause global sea levels to rise by 3.2 FEET by 2100, study warns
Here we go again! Yes. The volcanoes under it do cause West Antarctic glaciers to calve at times but it is nothing to do with global warming. Otherwise the whole ice-sheet would melt. The East is actually gaining mass. It is just a fraudulent scare below
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey say that the inevitable melting from heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions is set to raise sea levels throughout the following decades.
Even if emissions are controlled to achieve the best possible scenario, melting of the ice sheet will continue to accelerate this century, at a speed three times faster than during the 20th century.
If it melts completely, the ice sheet will release enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 17ft (5.3 metres).
However, scientists say that it is 'only' likely to make them rise by 3.2ft (one metre) by the end of the century.
Warming oceans, that are absorbing excess heat from the atmosphere, erode the ice sheet from underneath and this effect is most pronounced on the western side of the continent.
Scientists are unsure how much this is likely to contribute towards global sea level rise but if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted it would contribute around five metres, though this scenario is seen as unlikely to happen.
East Antarctica, which contains around 95 per cent of the continent's ice, remains stable as far as scientists can see, with a recent study finding the amount of ice has been increasing there over the past 30 years, though it is rapidly melting in the west with a net loss of around 7.5 trillion tonnes of ice.
How much this melting will contribute to rising oceans is not as well understood as other polar regions such as the Greenland glaciers.
Dr Kaitlin Naughten of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and lead author of the study said other research beyond her own points to it contributing to around one metre of sea level rise by 2100.
Describing her findings, she said: 'It appears we may have lost control of the West Antarctic Ice Shelf melting over the 21st century.
'Our actions today likely will make a difference further down the line in the 22nd century and beyond, but that's a timescale that probably none of us here will be around to see.'
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has been described by scientists as 'sobering' as it points to an inevitable rising of sea levels that will likely devastate many coastal communities if they do not adapt.
Already in the UK the Welsh village of Fairbourne is scheduled for abandonment in the 2050s by Gwynedd Council after it announced it will no longer keep up sea defences.
Millions of people around the world live by the coast and will either have to 'build around' the threat or 'be abandoned', Dr Naughten said, who added that controlling emissions would result in slower sea level rise which would give people more time to adapt.
For the current study, Dr Naughten's BAS team simulated four scenarios for the current century against a historic baseline of the previous one, imagining that emissions are either controlled to rein in the global temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels or that emissions continue at a medium or high level.
Every scenario showed there would be widespread warming of the Amundsen sea, which borders West Antarctica, resulting in faster melting of the ice sheets.
The various emissions pathways did not show much difference until around 2045, when the high-emissions simulation began to increase the rate of melting faster than the other scenarios.
Other scientists cautioned against viewing the results of the study as being absolutely conclusive as they are based on a single model, but that it is in line with other similar studies.
Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, said: 'This is a sobering piece of research.
'It illustrates how our past choices have likely committed us to substantial melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its consequent sea level rise – to which we will inevitably have to adapt as a society over coming decades and centuries.
'However, it should also serve as a wake up call. We can still save the rest of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, containing about 10 times as many metres of sea level rise, if we learn from our past inaction and start reducing greenhouse gas emissions now.'
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EU proposes delaying more green rules amid opposition
Europe’s executive arm is proposing a two-year delay in implementing a key element of its sustainable finance framework, as complaints mount that businesses can’t keep up.
The European Commission said cutting red tape is critical to ensuring that the region’s companies remain competitive, according to a document laying out its agenda for 2024. That means extending the deadline for adoption of sectoral elements of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, or ESRS, currently due to come into force in June 2024.
“This will provide an immediate reduction in the reporting burden for in-scope companies,” small and medium-sized firms, the commission said.
The development is the latest sign of a pushback against Europe’s ambitions to swiftly respond to climate change and social inequality, and steer its economy toward a more sustainable model. An 11th-hour attempt on Wednesday by members of the EU’s parliament to entirely rework the ESRS failed, in a vote of 359-261.
Other corners of Europe’s ESG framework are also likely to be reworked. The commission is reviewing the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, its ESG investing rulebook. And this week, the EU announced that it’s seeking stakeholder input as it reconsiders Europe’s taxonomy of sustainable business activities amid a steady drumbeat of complaints that companies can’t meet the welter of new rules within existing deadlines.
The commission has pledged to reduce reporting requirements generally by 25%, and said it will cooperate with the European Parliament and the Council “to ensure all forthcoming proposals take into account the need to reduce burdens while preserving their policy objectives.”
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Much of the world’s gas comes from Hamas headquarters. This war could affect us all
HAMAS is headquartered in Qatar
The brutal Hamas attacks on Israel and the continuing military response to them have given rise to many questions related to regional and global energy security in recent days.
As is always the case whenever new conflicts arise in the Middle East, the direction of oil prices was the first question on many analysts’ minds. The market’s response thus far has been fairly muted, with crude prices rising by about 5 per cent at the start of Friday trading. That trend appears likely to continue absent some significant escalation of the conflict outside of Israel and Gaza, or a decision by officials in the Biden administration to restart enforcement of US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, which they quietly stopped performing late in 2022.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising a ground campaign to eradicate Hamas and President Joe Biden pledging full US support, other questions around regional and global energy security are also being raised. Prominent among them is the status of the government in Qatar, and the country’s exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that serve as a vital source of sorely needed natural gas supplies across Asia, Europe and the UK.
The questions surrounding Qatar arise chiefly from its strong ties to both Hamas and Iran, which serves as Hamas’s major funder and sponsor. Hamas maintains its head office in Qatar’s capital city of Doha and receives a good deal of its funding from the Qatari government. According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Qatar has provided between $360 million-$480 million annually to Hamas in recent years, enabling the funding of social services and strengthening the terrorist group’s grip on power in Gaza.
Qatar’s strong ties to both Hamas and Iran give rise to concerns it could become entangled in the response by Israel and the US to the terrorist attacks. Qatar’s ties to Iran were a factor in an agreement between the US and Iran to pick Doha banks as repositories for the $6 billion in funds released to Iran’s government by the Biden administration as part of a hostage exchange between the two countries in September.
Following Hamas’s attacks on Israel, that $6 billion became a flashpoint of criticism for the Biden government, with allegations Iran had used the money to fund Hamas’s operations. The New York Times reported on Thursday that, following days of negotiations, Qatar’s government has agreed to refreeze those funds and deny Iran’s government access to them.
When asked about such an agreement with Qatar, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken did not overtly confirm it, but did claim, “none of the funds that have now gone to Qatar have actually been spent or accessed in any way by Iran.” White House spokesman John Kirby was similarly noncommittal when asked the same question, but did go on record saying, “Every single dime of that money is still sitting in a Qatari bank. Not one dime of it has been spent.”
Regardless of the actual status of those funds, the reports of Qatari cooperation with the US related to their disposal should somewhat ease concerns about ongoing availability of the country’s LNG exports.
There is little question about the vital role Qatar plays in supplying the global LNG market. Prior to 2022, the UK had regularly sourced the majority of its LNG imports from Qatar. But the vast increase in US LNG exports in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine enabled it to surpass Qatar as the UK’s biggest LNG trading partner, supplying more than half of all UK imports. Records maintained by the UK government show Qatar still supplying more than a 30 per cent share of British LNG needs, and a similar share of overall European imports. Natural gas is vital for power generation, heating, industry and other uses.
Asia is the other main destination for Qatari LNG, receiving 70 per cent of Qatar’s exports during 2021. Major Asian importers include China, South Korea, India, Japan and Pakistan. Any disruptions of Qatar’s LNG exports would result in major economic impacts across both the European and Asian continents.
Qatar’s geographic positioning near the mid-point of the Persian Gulf serves as a key factor here. This reality yet again highlights the critical nature of the ability to maintain the open flow of shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow choke point connecting the Persian Gulf to the world’s oceans and global markets for both crude oil and LNG. This objective has been a key role filled by the US Navy since the end of World War II. Iran, which sits on one side of the Strait, has often sought to impede shipping there, and has recently taken to seizing vessels on various pretexts. The US has moved forces to the area in response.
Any major escalation of this conflict between Israel and Hamas that threatens to disrupt that flow comes with wide-ranging global economic and energy security implications
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Australia: disastrous renewable energy project that's blown out in cost by $10BILLION after it was plagued by sinkholes, gas leaks and flooding
Pumped storage is an attractive idea in many ways but this project should be a warning about how it can go badly wrong in practice
The 'complex' Snowy Hydro 2.0 project continues to face delays, months after a sinkhole and a gas leak caused operational difficulties.
ABC's Four Corners program revealed on Monday the $2bn project, which has since blown out to $12bn, has faced a number of safety and operational delays.
The project's use of a $150m 400-tonne boring machine, called Florence, has caused chaos for workers and planners in recent months.
The tunnel project, which aims to dig the 15km journey below Kosciuszko National Park, was launched in March 2022.
Four Corners reported on Monday Florence has only completed 150m since the project began because of geotechnical issues the workers faced when they hit soft ground 100m into the dig.
The stalled project has added another $2bn to the budget blowout, according to Four Corners.
Despite the initial concerns, the project continued on when the machine became bogged due to water and soft ground.
'We would push forward 50cm then spend the next week clearing out all the mud and water from around the tunnel boring machine,' one worker told Four Corners.
'Sometimes there was 3 to 4 feet of water around the machine.'
To ensure the project could continue, so-called 'slurry system' equipment was ordered but it was designed on inappropriate modelling.
Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes, who was appointed in February, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday the Florence machine continued to operate despite the difficulties it had experienced.
'There's been no point since Florence experienced this soft ground in November 2022 that the machine has not been in some way been able to move forward,' Mr Barnes said. 'It's not bogged, it is able to move.'
Mr Barnes accepted he was naive when he took on the project earlier this year and informed a previous Senate inquiry that the project would be up and running sooner rather than later.
'I'm sorry to have understated the restarting of Florence ... it was far more complex than I anticipated,' he said.
The project also saw a sinkhole open up just before Christmas. Mr Barnes said this sinkhole was just outside the construction boundary.
The tunnel also filled up with toxic gas in July as the work was underway in an attempt to stabilise the ground around the Florence machine.
Mr Barnes told Senate estimates this was caused by a chemical reaction which caused isocyanate, a hazardous chemical.
SafeWork NSW told Four Corners the gas posed a 'serious imminent risk' to 'health and safety' and labelled the Snowy 2.0 project as having 'inadequate control measures ... to prevent exposure to a harmful substance'.
The project had also been issued a number of fines by the NSW Environment and Heritage Department.
Mr Barnes said the project was working with the state government to meet its compliance obligations and assured the Senate estimates hearing on Monday that the project is about 40 per cent complete.
Mr Barnes said while 'design immaturity and geotechnical issues' had initially added to the budget blowout, the project still was important for Australia.
'The market really does need this asset and I would characterise this as something good for the Australian market,' he said.
'We have taken third party modelling and determined that over and above the $12bn there's still a $3bn (estimated portfolio value).'
Snowy 2.0 has been pitched as a critical driver to the renewables transition and will aim to create enough clean energy to power half a million homes.
As of June, $4.3bn had been spent on the project, and is expected to be fully operational in late 2028.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12662139/Snowy-2-0-delays.html
***************************************23 October, 2023
Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable
Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable as analysts struggle to put a price on battery repairs, the researcher for the car insurance industry has said.
Jonathan Hewett, chief executive of Thatcham Research, the motor insurers’ automotive research centre, said a lack of “insight and understanding” about the cost of repairing damaged electric car batteries was pushing up premiums and resulting in some providers declining to provide cover altogether.
Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average than a petrol or diesel vehicle. Experts have previously warned electric vehicles are being written off after minor bumps because of the cost and complexity of fixing their batteries.
Mr Hewett said: “The challenge is that we have no way of understanding whether the battery has been compromised or damaged in any way.
“The threat of thermal runaway means that a catastrophic fire can take place if the cells of the battery have been damaged in a collision.
“What we’re struggling to understand at the moment is how we approach that diagnostic technique.
“It’s like a doctor trying to understand what’s wrong with you without any notes or an X-ray.”
John Lewis Financial Services stopped providing car insurance for electric cars last month for new and existing customers, as its underwriter Covéa analysed risks and costs.
Aviva removed insurance products for the Tesla Model Y earlier this year before restoring them several months later.
Vehicle repair costs rose 33pc over the first quarter of 2023 compared to 2022, helping to push annual premiums to record highs, according to the Association of British Insurers.
Average electric car insurance costs rose 72pc in the year to September, compared to 29pc for petrol and diesel models, according to Confused.com.
Mr Hewett said premiums would eventually begin to level out and match those of petrol and diesel cars once actuaries had the tools needed to better understand the risks of insuring electric cars, saying the issue would likely be “short term”.
However, he added: “The battery is an extremely expensive component of an electric vehicle and until we find efficient ways of dealing with it we have the challenge of high premiums for electric vehicles, which nobody wants.”
Some customers are now being quoted over £100 a week to insure their electric vehicles, with others reporting premiums doubling or tripling compared to a year before.
One reason attributed to the steep rise in the cost of electric car repairs stems from recommendations for electric cars to be kept 50ft apart in repair yards over fears they might explode.
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After $280 Billion Wipeout, Green Stocks Confront Soaring Debt Costs
There appears to be no end in sight for the multi-billion dollar rout in renewable energy stocks, as a surge in borrowing costs threatens to squeeze returns in the sector for years to come.
The industry received a fresh blow on Friday, after a sales warning from equipment provider SolarEdge Technologies Inc. sent shares in solar stocks across the US and Europe tumbling as much as 25%.
Until recently expected to displace oil-and-gas companies from mainstream investment portfolios, clean energy stocks have instead become a no-go zone for many. Investors have been pulling money out, wiping over $280 billion from the market capitalization of green stocks globally since their August 2022 peak — not quite boom-to-bust but a dramatic unraveling nonetheless for a market that was all the rage at the turn of the decade.
Now, with the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond creeping toward 5%, their fortunes could be about to take another hit. Higher yields make it costlier to fund the huge investment that clean energy requires, giving investors reason to fret about returns.
On top of that, the pace of decarbonization is in question and oil’s march back toward $100 a barrel is renewing interest in fossil fuels. Add all that up and it’s got investors asking if it’s worth waiting around for green energy stocks to pay off.
“If companies are rolling out capacity and raising debt, but power prices and profitability are falling, that’s not a combination markets like,” said Sharon Bentley-Hamlyn, a fund manager at Aubrey Capital Management. “Our exposure to the renewables sector is considerably lower than at this time last year.”
SolarEdge Technologies sank as much as 25% in US premarket trading on Friday after it warned its third-quarter revenue will come in below its previous guidance range. Other firms in the sector, including Enphase Energy Inc., Sunrun Inc., SMA Solar Technology AG and Meyer Burger Technology AG also tumbled.
Retail investors have also fled, with global clean energy equity ETFs seeing outflows amounting to over $1.1 billion in total since December 2022. They had attracted more than $15 billion in the previous three years.
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Nearly half of households with non-Tesla electric vehicles (EVs) made an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle their next auto purchase, according to a new analysis.
It doesn’t necessarily mean they sold their EV, as it could also indicate they purchased an additional family vehicle that is gasoline powered.
S&P Global Mobility said its findings indicated that the fuel type loyalty rate for mainstream EV households was 52.1% through July of this year. That figure represents those who remained true to EVs after buying their initial one.
“Between Tesla picking off EV intenders, and the draw of internal combustion strengths such as towing and payload, legacy ICE automakers face a battle to increase EV loyalty as they transition,” S&P Mobility said. “Doubling down on EVs to expand their lineups might be the required path to ensure continued loyalty to brand and fuel type.”
Tom Libby, S&P Global Mobility’s associate director for loyalty solutions and industry analysis, said the results aren’t likely to be welcomed by automakers embracing the EV market.
“The OEMs are spending huge amounts of money to develop EVs,” Libby said. “The last thing they want is for an EV owner to go back to ICE.”
The report attributed the “loyalty struggle,” in part, to an overall decrease in consumer willingness to purchase an EV. S&P data indicates that overall consumer consideration for buying an EV has dropped to 52% from an 81% high in 2021.
“Pricing, infrastructure, and range were the top three reasons consumers listed for not purchasing an EV,” S&P Global Mobility said. “For some consumers, having a traditional ICE or hybrid vehicle is a way to hedge against some of these obstacles.”
Its analysis found that among non-luxury brand households surveyed, Nissan held onto the strongest EV loyalty, with 63.2% of owners sticking to that fuel type for their next purchase. It was followed by Chevrolet with 60.6%, although in neither case does it mean that the buyer remained loyal to the same OEM.
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Greenpeace loses legal challenge to UK's new North Sea oil and gas licences
Britain's decision to authorise new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea was lawful, London's High Court ruled on Thursday, dismissing a legal challenge by Greenpeace.
The environmental campaign group had argued Britain's failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas – so-called end-use or downstream emissions – rendered its offshore energy plan unlawful.
But lawyers representing Britain's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said at a hearing in July that ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them.
Judge David Holgate rejected Greenpeace's case on Thursday, saying in a written ruling that the decision not to assess end-use emissions was not irrational.
"The industry is critical to strengthening our energy security – unlocking new technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen opportunities – and will reduce our reliance on imports while supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and growing the economy," they said in a statement.
Greenpeace said it planned to appeal the ruling.
Last year, Britain held its first oil and gas exploration licensing round since 2019, aiming to boost domestic hydrocarbon output as Europe weans itself off Russian fuel.
Britain says domestic oil and gas production is key to its plan to improve energy security and that doing so is consistent with its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
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China Restricts Exports of Graphite, Key Mineral Used for Making EV Batteries
China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday curbed exports of graphite, a critical mineral used in the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).
The move could make a shortage of graphite more likely at a time when worldwide EV demand is soaring.
China last year accounted for close to two-thirds of global production of graphite and all but 2% of spherical graphite output, the final product used in anodes for lithium-ion batteries.
EV makers such as Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors, as well as traditional automakers that have developed their own EVs in recent years, could be at risk of production shortages.
The move, attributed to national security concerns, comes just days after the U.S. imposed new restrictions on exports of high-tech semiconductor chips to Chinese companies and their overseas units, escalating a trade war that has been brewing since 2018.
A shortage of graphite could present problems for EV makers worldwide, particularly at a time when consumer demand for EVs is booming. In 2020, the World Bank forecast graphite demand could soar 500% over the next three decades as EVs and other clean energy technologies become more widely adopted.1
Counterpoint Research's Ivan Lamb said in an email that the latest export curbs are simply an extension of measures "that have already been in place." He mentioned that graphite export controls are a common practice enacted by governments around the world, a practice not limited to China.
The main concern, according to Lamb, is a spike in graphite prices.
"We believe that the average price of graphite will continue to rise in the future due to supply and demand imbalances, including Russia, which was once one of the major graphite suppliers before the Russia-Ukraine war," he said.
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22 October, 2023
Now bamboo is bad
Plastic is bad, paper is bad. What is left? Ceramics? They take a lot of energy to produce when they are "fired". What should I do with all the bambooo cutlery I have been given with various takeaways?
Charities and retailers are selling “eco-friendly” bamboo cups and children’s tableware containing plastic resin – despite warnings that green claims may be misleading and the products may pose a risk to health.
The bamboo “eco-cups” are promoted as helping to protect the planet, but are usually non-recyclable. Regulators warn the green claims may be tricking consumers into using products they believe to be sustainable.
There are also concerns the products may allow the accelerated degradation of plastic that can contaminate the food or drink and may be a risk to health. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it had advised retailers to withdraw products in June and any further sales would be unlawful.
Despite the ban, the bamboo and plastic products are still widely available online, including children’s cups and plates. They are typically made of bamboo, with a melamine formaldehyde resin, and look like plastic.
WWF-UK, the wildlife charity, was last week selling a reusable bamboo cup for £7.50, which it says “helps protect our planet”. It stated on its website: “Our organically sourced bamboo fibre cup is farmed with minimal impact on the environment.” The cup with a panda design contains 20% melamine. WWF-UK advises shoppers to check with councils on where it may be recycled.
WWF-UK said disposable cups had a negative impact on the environment and tests had shown its bamboo cups were safe for the consumer. But after it was approached by the Observer it removed the cup from sale.
Another charity, the Wild Planet Trust, which runs Paignton zoo in Devon and Newquay zoo in Cornwall, sells a Tiger travel mug for £8.99, made of bamboo, corn powder and melamine. The trust said this weekend it was investigating the product, which it had removed from sale.
Several online retailers continue to sell children’s bamboo and melamine tableware. The online marketplace Etsy was last week selling a Roarsome dinosaur tableware set for £12 and a bamboo tableware set decorated with tractors and fire engines also for £12. The online retailer did not respond to a request for comment.
Another retailer, Caroline Gardner, was last week selling a scattered spot “eco” travel bamboo mug for £6.25, with 25% melamine. Caroline Gardner said it had “swiftly moved away from bamboo cups” last year when it understood the implications and a few remaining mugs were mistakenly put on sale. These have now been removed and would be destroyed, said the firm.
Amazon does not permit its retailers to sell any bamboo and melamine cups or tableware products. The online giant said it had taken the decision to prohibit the sales about two years ago. Tableware made from 100% bamboo or 100% melamine is permitted for sale under EU regulations that still apply in the UK involving products used for food.
Concerns were raised about bamboo products mixed with plastic in November 2019 after tests conducted by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, which warned melamine and formaldehyde could be released from “bambooware” products when filled with hot liquids like tea, coffee or baby formula. It said formaldehyde release from some cups would exceed the tolerable daily intake by 30 times for adults and 120 times for small children. There is no acute health risk from these bambooware products but repeated exposure to elevated levels of melamine and formaldehyde may be a risk to health, with melamine linked to toxic effects in the kidneys.
Last November the European Commission warned that tableware containing bamboo and other unauthorised additives had not been safely assessed under the regulations and their sale was illegal.
In the UK, the FSA said in June that the Committee on Toxicity, an independent scientific advisory body, had concluded the migration of formaldehyde and melamine from bamboo composite cups is a potential concern to human health and a more comprehensive risk assessment should be undertaken.
Some suppliers have already conducted their own tests, which they say show their products do not pose any health risk. The FSA is now consulting on the products and is requesting manufacturers, suppliers and retailers to submit any relevant data.
The FSA said: “Any person placing these products on the market could be committing an offence, as these products contain unauthorised additives. The FSA has taken steps to bring the market back into compliance, similar to steps undertaken in the EU.
“Businesses selling these items are reminded that plastic food contact articles containing unauthorised plant-based additives such as bamboo powder should be withdrawn from the market with immediate effect
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A Skeptical Look at Laudate Deum
A recent teaching document issued by Pope Francis, Laudate Deum (Praise God) has been aggressively promoted by the media for its focus on climate change, especially for the Pope’s criticism of the western world’s heavier energy use and alleged contributions to global warming. Pope Francis says extreme weather is worsening, but respectfully, the Holy Father is wrong.
He is also mistaken in his solutions, namely an energy transition, global deprioritization of economic growth, and the implied need to sacrifice the western standard of living. These will not only fail to stop climate change, but will lead to further human and ecological suffering. He’s not wrong about everything though, so read on.
Pope Francis has always emphasized humans’ responsibility to the environment; the name he took -- Francis -- is in reference to Saint Francis of Assisi, who was known for having a special connection to animals. It is no surprise that he has published two encyclicals on this topic, which to be clear, is something that concerns the religious and nonreligious alike. Scientific matters are also moral matters, especially when possible negative effects are widespread, like when Pope John Paul II addressed nuclear war.
Laudate Deum is the second environment-focused encyclical issued by Pope Francis, and compared to the first, Laudato Si, has its primary focus on the issue of climate change. It also was written in much stronger language, highlighting the lack of “progress” in advancing the goals of the numerous U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conferences.
Pope Francis is incorrect that extreme weather is getting worse, and he’s wrong about other alleged problems caused by climate change, which would require an entire book to debunk individually.
While there may be the appearance of more frequent weather disasters around the globe, this is actually an artifact of media coverage and focus, and our ability to instantly obtain news from everywhere in the world 24 hours a day.
The IPCC itself has essentially come to the same conclusion of a recent study, which found that “on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.” The IPCC says there is low scientific confidence in the existence of any visible trends in the form of most weather extremes that alarmists frequently cite as evidence.
Even better news is that human casualties due to climate-related disasters like floods and extreme temperatures have been declining worldwide.
The reason why these deaths are declining, of course, is because of improvements and expanded access to emergency services, infrastructure, electricity, indoor climate control, and other developments -- all of which come thanks to our continued use of fossil fuels.
More here:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/a_skeptical_look_at_emlaudate_deumem.html
********************************************************Climate Activists Seek to Save the Planet by Cutting, Burying Trees
Cutting down trees to manage wildfires isn't a new thing, although it remains a hotly debated practice.
Tree thinning is a disputed procedure that has drawn as much criticism within the environmental community as support. Many scientists, researchers, and conservationists are against it, saying tree thinning can even worsen wildfires.
However, America's woodlands have been culled for more than two decades for fire management. Now, climate activists are jumping into the conversation with a "carbon capture" argument for tree thinning.
Activists such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates have thrown their weight, and checkbooks, behind the practice of cutting down trees and burying them to address fears over carbon emissions.
Through his foundation Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mr. Gates is a part of the $6.6 million seed investor pool backing Kodama Systems in its proposal to remove trees in California's fire-challenged woodlands and bury them in Nevada to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2).
"We must dramatically accelerate forest thinning treatments," the Boston-based firm says on its website. Kodama calls itself a "technology-driven forest restoration service."
Mr. Gates is well known for his headline-grabbing methods of addressing his climate concerns—from buying up vast swaths of U.S. farmland to backing wild-card experiments such as solar geoengineering and, most recently, criticizing tree planting as a viable means of reducing CO2.
During The New York Times Climate Forward Summit in September, the billionaire didn't hesitate to share his thoughts on the role of planting trees to mitigate climate concerns, calling it "complete nonsense."
In an interview with NY Times reporter David Gelles, Mr. Gates responded dismissively to the idea that planting more trees can reverse adverse climate effects.
"That's complete nonsense ... I mean, are we the science people, or are we the idiots?" Mr. Gates asked rhetorically.
Critics are quick to point out holes in the logic surrounding the claimed benefits of culling trees and burying them.
"This is a spectacularly bad and counter-productive idea," Chad Hanson, a research ecologist and co-founder of the John Muir Project, told The Epoch Times.
He says existing trees and forests are "by far, our best and most effective means" to reduce any "excess of carbon in our atmosphere."
Additionally, selective culling poses a risk to old-growth trees, which research indicates capture vastly more atmospheric carbon than their younger counterparts.
Living trees store a massive amount of atmospheric carbon. One estimate puts the CO2 storage value of U.S. forests and grasslands at 866 million metric tons per year. For perspective, that equates to the annual emissions from 50 million gasoline- or diesel-fueled vehicles.
Some research does support the theory that burying debris from cut trees can work as a form of carbon capture. One 2019 study showed that storing wood biomass can remove billions of tons of carbon annually.
"Trees continue to sequester and store more and more carbon as they get older, and this is true no matter how old they get,” Mr. Hanson said in countering that point. “Cutting existing trees and burying them eliminates their ability to draw down and reduce atmospheric carbon."
No in-depth analysis exists on the asserted benefits or secondary environmental effects of tree thinning and debris storage.
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Biden admin OKs major Pacific Northwest gas pipeline in blow to environmentalists, Dems
The nation's top energy regulator authorized a major energy developer to move forward with a natural gas expansion project in the Pacific Northwest.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a certificate Thursday for the so-called Gas Transmission Northwest XPress Project (GTNXP), which will upgrade three existing compressor stations and increase capacity on an existing system that has transported natural gas for decades. GTNXP developer TC Energy; GOP lawmakers in Oregon, Idaho and Washington; and labor unions have all called on FERC to issue the certificate.
"The GTN XPress project will play a critical role in keeping energy affordable and reliable for consumers in California and the Pacific Northwest," TC Energy spokesperson Michael Tadeo told Fox News Digital. "We appreciate FERC’s bipartisan action today to approve the project and will work diligently to place it into service as soon as possible."
According to TC Energy's application filed with FERC in October 2021, the $75 million project will leverage existing infrastructure to increase GTN's incremental mainline capacity by 150,000 dekatherms per day — enough to power roughly 500,000 additional homes in the region. The operational GTN pipeline travels through Idaho, Washington and Oregon and serves California customers.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission commissioner Willie Phillips waits to testify during the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Thursday, March 3, 2022, to review FERC's recent guidance on natural gas pipelines." (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Willie Phillips. (Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images / File)
The project, which mainly consists of software and other upgrades to TC Energy's existing infrastructure, comes as demand for natural gas transportation on the GTN pipeline system has increased 26% in recent years while nearby natural gas production has dwindled. The pipeline feeds key gas supplies to utility companies which, in turn, provide energy to residential, commercial and industrial customers.
"After I led a bicameral group of my colleagues in urging FERC to act, I’m glad the commission is finally allowing this much-needed energy project to move forward," Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., told Fox News Digital in a statement. "It will support domestic energy production and boost our energy security while also helping lower utility bills for families. Although it’s overdue, this is the right decision."
Earlier this month, Chavez-DeRemer, fellow Oregon GOP Rep. Cliff Bentz, four other House Republicans and Idaho GOP Sens. Mike Crapo and James Risch penned a letter to FERC leadership, urging it to immediately approve the pipeline expansion project that they said would benefit their constituents, help achieve climate goals and provide "energy certainty" for the region.
The letter came after FERC, which is chaired by Willie Phillips, a Democrat appointed by President Biden, opted to delay approval for the project multiple times without offering an explanation amid pressure from Democrats and environmental groups to reject its application.
In July, FERC removed the project from its open-meeting agenda without explanation. One day before the meeting, Democrat Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden wrote to the regulator, imploring it to reject the project and arguing that states through which the pipeline travels are "moving away from fossil fuels."
The commission again opted against discussing the proposal during its following meeting on Sept. 21, which earned a pointed rebuke from TC Energy.
"The Commission's continued inaction has almost certainly exposed GTN's customers, who serve residential and commercial natural gas and electricity users, to more expensive supply sources to meet their load demands this winter," Stanley Chapman III, TC Energy's executive vice president and chief operating officer of natural gas pipelines division, wrote in a letter to FERC commissioners after the September meeting.
"As experience in California and elsewhere shows, delaying natural gas infrastructure projects hurts energy reliability and affordability and burdens families, small businesses, and other energy users," Chapman added. "These types of delays in Commission action also erode the kind of certainty and predictability that gas infrastructure developers rely on for planning, financing, and constructing projects that are in the public's interest."
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20 October, 2023
Study finds up to half of all electric-car owners considering a switch back to petroleum power
Approximately half of the people who already own an electric car are considering a switch back to petrol or diesel power for their next vehicle – unless they own a Tesla.
According to a US study from S&P Global Mobility, first reported on by website Electrek, three-quarters of electric vehicle owners say that would buy another battery-powered car – but that number falls to about half once Tesla owners are removed from the statistics.
On average, the study found households with an electric vehicle are only 52.1 per cent likely to buy another for their next purchase – whether that's as a second car or as a replacement – citing pricing, charging infrastructure, and driving range as their reasons against another zero-emissions car.
However, with Tesla owners included, that figure increases to 72.6 per cent – an increase of almost 25 per cent over the past three years.
Households with an electric Nissan said there was a 63.2 per cent chance of them buying another battery-powered car – though 14.3 per cent said they would consider a Tesla Model Y next time, while 12.4 per cent would choose a Nissan Leaf.
"The [car companies] are spending huge amounts of money to develop [electric vehicles]," associate director for loyalty solutions and industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility Tom Libby said in a written statement.
"So the last thing they want is for an [electric-vehicle] owner to go back to [car with a petrol or diesel engine]."
Among luxury brands, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar saw electric-vehicle preference increase by more than 30 per cent over three years to 56.6 per cent each.
Porsche saw the least amount of growth among luxury marques over the same period, with less than 37 per cent considering another electric car, and while it remains ahead of Porsche, BMW went backwards – with 45.9 per cent agreeing, compared to 46.6 per cent three years ago.
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Yet another well-intentioned green folly
In the small town of Kalkar in Northern Germany, there is an amusement park with an unusual ‘Alpine Experience’ climbing wall that looks like a power station cooling tower … because that is exactly what it is, or rather was.
The decision to build a prototype fast breeder power station in 1972 was taken because this type of reactor would be powered by the plutonium produced in conventional nuclear power stations, and would therefore produce more fuel than it consumed.
This sounds too good to be true because plutonium is extremely radioactive, and when not used to make atomic bombs, must be stored securely for some 200,000 years.
Despite the obvious environmental benefits of such technology, green ignorance stopped the commissioning of the plant simply because it was ‘nuclear’. The explanations for stopping it were all mistaken, as I hope to show. This is crucial as we have a similar non-scientific, feelings-based fear driving our irrational Net Zero panic.
The mistakes were driven by a series of false assumptions and misunderstandings about the risks and problems of nuclear power generation, which will become obvious as we examine the underlying causes.
Built between 1972 and 1991, at a cost of over €3.5 billion (US $4 billion), the Kalkar 327-megawatt nuclear reactor was never commissioned because of green opposition. At the time, this was caused primarily by the fear generated after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident which made any nuclear power plant seem like bad news.
That’s understandable, I hear you saying, but the facts suggest otherwise. Mistake number one led to a series of bad decisions based on misinformation which has since hindered the development of an alternative source of cheap and reliable power to satisfy the apparent need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The Russian conventional water-cooled reactor at Chernobyl exploded during routine testing because of a serious design fault. Radiation then spread over much of Europe because the builders cut costs by omitting the concrete containment walls and pressure vessels that were installed around similar reactors worldwide. That was mistake number two.
The Kalkar reactor was different to Chernobyl, producing more fuel than it consumed by converting plutonium to uranium, surely a win-win situation. Mistake number three…
A fast breeder reactor produces significantly more heat than Chernobyl-type, uranium-fuelled, water-cooled reactors. This excessive heat is cooled with liquid natrium (sodium) which, in turn, is cooled by water, creating the steam to drive normal turbines to make reliable, stable, and cheap electricity. The steam is condensed as it passes through the turbines and the resulting hot water is pumped to the top of the cooling tower, cooling as it falls like rain to the tower floor where it is collected and recycled to again cool the liquid sodium. Some of the steam escapes from the top of the cooling tower as clouds of white water vapour, which alarmists mistakenly imply is evidence of the CO2 pollution created by all such forms of power generation such as coal and gas. Mistake number four.
France generates 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power because, unlike much of Europe, it lacks sufficient oil, gas, coal, or uranium. For the last 50 or so years it has safely used fast breeder technology to produce sufficient fuel reserves for the next 250 years. Using a technology that eliminates the need to store conventional plutonium waste for over 100,000 years is surely a sensible and sustainable way to generate fossil fuel-free electricity. Mistake number five.
However, at Kalkar, emotional consensus and ideology triumphed over science yet again, and the Fast Breeder Reactor was closed down in 1991 without a trial. The reactor building and cooling tower were sold after partial demolition for €2.5 million and symbolically converted into an amusement park which was a pointless and super-expensive taxpayer-funded monument to green folly.
The loss was further compounded by the futile attempt to replace what would have been 327 MW of reliable, year-round, cheap electricity with intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power (which the once intensely green, tree-hugging, environmental lobby, now claim is the cheapest form of power). They studiously ignore the fact that fossil fuel and nuclear power plants cover just a few hectares of land, produce power >90 per cent of the time, come rain or shine, and last for 60 plus years. Heavily subsidised renewables sterilise hundreds of thousands of hectares of countryside and need replacing every 20 or so years. They also need kilometres of powerlines to get the power to where it is needed. Mistake number six.
Renewable supporters claim that renewable power is cheaper than fossil fuels, yet our power bills keep going up. The claim is based on wrongfully using the so-called levelized cost of renewables (LCOR) which is a deceitful accounting sleight of hand. The real cost of unreliable renewables, must also include the subsidies and the stand-by cost of fossil, hydro, or nuclear fuel power stations or batteries that are needed when the wind doesn’t blow at the right speed and the sun doesn’t shine enough. A traditional power station that is kept on subsidised care and maintenance until needed as backup can only make a loss, unless subsidised. Mistake number seven.
In Queensland where roof-top solar has been widely accepted and installed, wind farms are paid not to produce electricity on sunny days, another invisible subsidy, that adds to the real cost of household and industrial electricity. Mistake number eight.
The Kalkar Fast Breeder Reactor was designed to generate fossil fuel-free electricity and to eliminate the production of dangerous long-lived radioactive waste that would need to be safely stored for half the lifetime of homo sapiens. The history of humanity for just the last 10,000 years would suggest that safe storage for as little as one generation would be an impossibility. Now that renewable electricity has proved itself incapable of supplying Germany’s power requirements, coal-fired power stations are being brought back online. Something that should be thought of in Australia, where decommissioned coal-fired power stations are immediately demolished.
Kalkar-type Fast Breeder Reactors could have been used to supply the deficiencies inherent in power produced by intermittent wind and solar, removing at least partially, the need for fossil fuel-powered generation. Fear of nuclear accidents is as understandable as the fear of coal mine disasters and oil and gas well blow-outs, but both are extremely rare and have usually been caused by design faults. Any attempt to improve the living conditions of the majority of people living on the planet carries risks. The unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, but shipbuilding did not stop. Many motor cars, trains, aeroplanes, and spaceships have suffered similar fates, but we continue to build them as each accident makes a repeat far less likely, and the benefits these inventions bring, far exceed the losses.
The nuclear power industry has grown steadily more reliable, as is evidenced by the lack of accidents in nuclear-powered countries like France, or in the many nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers that constantly sail the seas. It was an unnecessary but perhaps understandable mistake to terminate the Kalkar experiment in the 1970s, but ‘the times they are a changing’ and the world needs to move on, particularly if emissions need to be cut.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/yet-another-well-intentioned-green-folly/
*************************************************Britain is turning its back on one of the major successes of this decade
It is the biggest deal in the oil industry for a decade. It will consolidate production. And it will put renewed pressure on the rest of the industry, not least the two British giants Shell and BP. With its acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources for almost $60bn (£50bn), ExxonMobil will cement its grip in the oil industry.
But if the US has been able to create a $60bn company out of the shale oil and gas boom, of which Pioneer was one of the leaders, why couldn’t Britain? There is no reason why the UK should not have developed a whole series of shale giants like Pioneer – and we still could, if we only developed the political will to exploit our own energy resources.
The deal may or may not get finalised, but if it does it will help to consolidate ExxonMobil’s grip on the oil market.
It emerged on Friday that it is in talks to acquire Pioneer, a $50bn business, and if a deal goes through it is likely to have to pay a significant premium, sending the final price up to $60bn, or possibly even higher. It would be Exxon’s biggest corporate move since the merger with Mobil that created the company in 1999.
And perhaps more significantly, it would consolidate its presence in the sprawling Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where Pioneer is one of the strongest players.
For Exxon, it may well prove a smart move. For all the investment in green energy, oil is still above $80 a barrel, and the price has been strong all year. As much as they are hated, fossil fuels are going to be a vital part of the energy mix for many years to come, and there will be plenty of money to be made from extracting oil and gas and delivering it around the world. ExxonMobil was already the largest Western oil company, and if it can drive this acquisition through, it is likely to remain so for many years to come.
Viewed from this side of the Atlantic, however, the interesting question is surely this. Why don’t we have any companies of the size of Pioneer? Founded by Scott Sheffield in 1997, Pioneer is the company that drove the development of the fracking industry in the US.
Along the way, it made the country self-sufficient in energy for the first time in a generation, with surpluses to help out Europe when the Russian gas was turned off, and created vast wealth for the country. A $60bn price tag is a testament to the value of the industry.
The contrast with the UK is painful. The amount of shale oil and gas in the UK is open to debate. After all, it is hard to know for sure until you start drilling. The British Geological Survey put the reserves at 150bn cubic meters. According to a study by Warwick Business School, it could be enough to meet up to 22pc of the UK’s annual energy consumption up to 2050. There are a range of different figures. And yet whichever estimate you take, one point is clear. It is a lot.
The problem is that we have refused to develop it. A bizarre coalition of local protest groups, the same kind of people that stop houses being built, or roads constructed, have joined forces with the kind of extreme environmentalists who object to any kind of fossil fuels being extracted, together with a handful of conspiracy theorists, to bully ministers into banning the UK industry.
It is hard to understand why. Companies such as Pioneer have been developing the technology for a quarter of a century now, and funnily enough Texas does not seem to have been convulsed by earthquakes (and neither has Alberta, the centre of the Canadian shale gas industry).
Neither has there been a huge rise in the number of deformed babies, another favorite scare story of the anti-fracking brigade. Instead, huge new companies such as Pioneer have been created, and ones that are solid and stable enough to be acquired by the giants of the industry.
It is a scandal of epic proportions that the UK has squandered the opportunity to create the same kind of shale businesses in this country. In reality, we should have started this industry seriously when the first licences were handed out fifteen years ago.
By now, we would have major players in the business, with proven expertise, and a record of consistent production. It would be BP or Shell buying a UK fracking giant for billions, instead of an American company buying another American company to consolidate its lead in the industry.
Along the way, we would have created a huge number of jobs, lots of tax revenues, and vastly improved our balance of payments, while securing our own energy supplies, and making sure we were protected from prices dictated by Russia or Saudi Arabia. It was a huge industrial opportunity to turn down simply on a few scare stories about earth tremors that have proved to have no basis elsewhere. If fracking were as dangerous as its opponents argue, Exxon Mobil would not be buying Pioneer.
We could still start if we wanted to. The resources are there, and the technology is well established.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/08/britain-reap-rewards-of-shale-energy/
******************************************************High-quality gas reservoir discovered in southern North Sea
Dana Petroleum, the UK subsidiary of Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), has discovered high-quality gas in the North Sea through exploratory drilling in the 42/27 exploration block.
Dana Petroleum acquired a 50% stake in block 42/27 in the southern North Sea through international bidding in 2020 and secured independent operating rights.
The company started full-scale exploratory drilling this July after deriving a “promising structure” and excavated to a final depth of 3,198 meters at the end of September, discovering gas in the target layer at the Earn prospect.
Following the discovery, Dana is carrying out evaluation drilling to accurately assess the amount of resources and to obtain additional data for future development.
The Earn prospect structure is located approximately 4 kilometers west of the company’s producing Tolmount Main prospect.
Dana is a 50% partner along with operator Harbour Energy in the Tolmount Southern North Sea gas development and its net share is around 20,000 boepd.
The project was given the go-ahead in August 2018. Dana and Kellas Midstream formed a 50:50 infrastructure joint venture to finance the platform and pipeline, known as the Humber Gathering System, and the modifications to Centrica’s Easington terminal to which gas is exported. First gas was achieved in April 2022.
Well clean-up and testing of the Tolmount East development well has been completed including the installation of the Xmas tree and protection structure. The well is now suspended for future tie-in to the subsea infrastructure which will facilitate production via the Tolmount platform.
The project is expected to achieve first gas at the end of this year.
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19 October, 2023
The Problem With the Power Plant Rule
Earlier this year, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) issued a proposed rulemaking on New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions from New and Reconstructed Electric Utility Generating Units (EGUs). It is colloquially known as the “Power Plant Rule.”
This rulemaking suffers from a host of flaws, but one issue—which I focused on in the Institute for Energy Research public comment on the rulemaking—is the issue of grid reliability and the failure to account for a concurrent rulemaking that will have a significant impact on the purview of this rule.
The other proposed rule in question is the Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles Rule, colloquially known as the “Tailpipe Rule.” This rule would require a very low fleetwide average for vehicle emissions for model years 2027 and later. In practice, this would make the manufacture and sale of ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles difficult, if not impossible. The Biden administration has made clear that the intention of the rule is to accelerate the transition to Electric Vehicles.
A rule that would cause a significant portion of the car fleet to transition from gasoline to reliance on the electricity grid would definitionally have an impact on grid requirements and, by extension, on both the volume and variety of generation that the grid requires. Grid reliability might sound like a nebulous and distant concept that will be dealt with far from home, but the impacts of even short blackouts can be both deadly and inconvenient. Power grids mostly fail when it’s very hot or very cold, when people are least equipped to cope without electricity’s ability to insulate them from the weather.
Grid reliability issues are also incredibly costly, and the costs of their disruption are not born only at the utility level. They cause food in people’s refrigerators and freezers to spoil and need to be replaced. Think about how much it would cost you to replace everything in your refrigerator and freezer right now. What if that were happening several times a year? What about a few times a month? These costs would add up quickly and would be most difficult to bear for those who are already struggling to pay for everyday necessities.
Now consider that many employers would be forced to close without electricity. Some people are salaried and might get a free day off of work, but what about unsalaried hourly workers? For many people, this would mean periodic unexpected days without work (and without pay). The economy wide impacts of this are massive, and the personal impacts are daunting. Grid reliability is essential to the functioning of our economy and everyday lives.
Not all electricity sources are equally reliable. In order to adequately meet peak demand, baseload sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear are needed. The Power Plant Rule would have a serious impact on natural gas generation in addition to phasing out coal generation. The EPA study accompanying the Power Plant Rule didn’t take into account the increased volume of electric vehicles on the grid that the Tailpipe Rule would create. This concurrent rulemaking would clearly have an impact on the ability of the grid to meet demand. One rule will raise the demand for electricity, while the other will decrease supply, but we’re to believe that these rulemakings are not substantively related to one another enough to necessitate an analysis from EPA on their compounded impacts.
On the issue of reliability, more broadly, a number of analyses have been performed that demonstrate the flaws in the proposed rulemaking.
The Center of the American Experiment has an excellent analysis of what the rule would do, particularly to the portion of the grid operated by MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator). In their analysis, Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling found that the rule would impose blackouts in MISO, as well as costing $246 billion through 2055 when the economic costs of blackouts and other impacts were taken into account. Their analysis accounted only for the impacts on the portion of the Grid operated by MISO, which covers 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba.
From this, it’s reasonable to conclude that grid impacts would be far outside of the scope of the supposed benefits of the rulemaking, given that the EPA’s estimated annual net benefit of the rule is $5.9 billion and $246 billion over the period from now to 2055 is $7.7 billion, again in the MISO jurisdiction alone.
The costs of this rule to grid reliability would outweigh the benefits of the rule, and studying the extent of those costs is made more difficult by the lack of public availability of the model and data used by EPA.
A rulemaking with impacts this broad should have taken grid reliability concerns more seriously and acknowledged the impacts of the concurrent Tailpipe Rule. Could it be that the Biden administration’s abstract commitment to the vision of an all-electric future is preventing a candid assessment of the cost, in dollars and dysfunction, of getting there?
https://blog.independent.org/2023/10/12/the-problem-with-the-power-plant-rule/
******************************************************Crazy trucking regulations
Pennsylvania's Peter Brothers Trucking delivers goods all across America. Owner Brian Wanner says Pennsylvania bureaucrats now are driving him out of his home state.
"We have no say," complains Wanner in my new video. "We can't do anything about it."
"No say" because Pennsylvania's new rules don't come from Pennsylvania. They come from California.
"I don't want to be anything like California!" complains Wanner.
Too bad for him and other Pennsylvania truck owners, because Pennsylvania's Environmental Quality Board decided their state will automatically copy California regulations.
California's rules will raise the price of a new truck by about one-third. Trucks that once cost $190,000 will now cost about $260,000.
California regulators said this new air-pollution regulation is needed because the trucks Wanner drives "contribute greatly to ... serious health and welfare problems."
That's ridiculous, says Wanner. "We have come so far in the last 40 years. In 1980, one truck produced as much (pollution) as 60 trucks today."
"So to reduce pollution, we want people to buy new trucks," I point out.
"But if you put these costs on us that we cannot afford, we're going to just run the older trucks!" responds Wanner.
"The regulators don't think about that?" I ask.
"They do not!" Wanner replies. "They do not see the consequences of what they're doing."
Now truckers like Wanner will just buy trucks in neighboring states.
"We can go to Ohio and get cheaper trucks," he says.
So there won't be any pollution reduction. The new rule will just hurt Pennsylvanians who sell trucks.
Who are these regulators? Pennsylvania's Environmental Quality Air Board is mostly made up of people from unrelated departments, like the Fish and Boat Commission, the Game Commission, the Historical & Museum Commission. I doubt that many know much about air pollution.
"The whole idea of having a regulatory board like this is, 'Oh, these people are experts,'" says attorney Caleb Kruckenberg of the Pacific Legal Foundation, "'They know what they're talking about. They're smarter than the lawmakers.' But if you look at the board, that's not true. These are just random bureaucrats who work in the government, and they say, 'I don't know. Let's follow California.'"
Kruckenberg is suing Pennsylvania on behalf of truckers like Wanner, arguing that what Pennsylvania does violates the Constitution.
"Nobody in Pennsylvania has ever voted for the standards that now control Pennsylvania."
I push back. "So what? California seems to have a lot of money. I could see a state saying, 'Yeah, let their regulators figure out how we reduce pollution, and we'll save money doing what they do.'"
"If people want something," Kruckenberg replies, "their legislature is supposed to pass it."
California's rules will soon get still more expensive because Gov. Gavin Newsom has decreed that soon, all new vehicles must be electric.
"But electricity comes from fossil fuels!" Kruckenberg points out. In Pennsylvania, some comes from coal, and most comes from natural gas.
So to power all-electric trucks, Pennsylvania will burn more fossil fuels.
Still another problem: electric trucks are heavier.
"That's harder on the roads," says Wanner. Also, "electric trucks have a very low mileage radius, so you can't work all day. It's nothing that you can take across the United States."
Pennsylvania's regulators don't seem to care. They just want to do what California does.
"Why would we allow our state to give away their lawmaking procedures to California?" asks Wanner. "That's not the American way. If we want to follow California, we can move there! I don't want to be anything like California."
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/10/18/california-crushes-pennsylvania-n2629984
**************************************************The climate war on travel
Marc Morano has been all over the Left’s war on travel and reports on Climate Depot that a poll shows 41% of the French population thinks travelers should be restricted to only four flights in their entire lifetimes!
Marc has been appearing on radio and television sounding the alarm before our freedom to move freely is lost forever.
“The French government mandated flights of two and a half hours or less be canceled to save the climate, “Marc explained on Fox.”So this is what the French public has been getting indoctrinated in, that flying is evil. They believe we’re in a climate emergency…
The EU is looking at flight bans and instead riding a train ride that takes under six hours. Bloomberg News said cheap airline flights are now a thing of the past due to ‘climate compliance’ costs. This is truly, ‘You will go nowhere and be happy’. The public is being severely indoctrinated in this, and they’re told that the earth can’t handle it unless we radically change our lives. And most of these decisions are being imposed on us: the ban on gas-powered cars, the agricultural restrictions, the meat restrictions, flight bans. This is our world if we allow it.”
Radicals at Extinction Rebellion are (literally, not figuratively) blocking and gluing themselves to roads to block travel!
Economist Milton Friedman said that, “underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
We would be wise to take these warnings to heart.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/10/16/the-climate-war-on-travel/
**************************************************Fossil folly in Australia
Whitehaven – unapologetically – Coal has scored a $500m-$1bn coup, courtesy of a BHP board of directors determined on its bizarre journey into a fantasy future.
BHP wants to get out of fossil fuels. It sold its oil and gas assets to Woodside, and has now sold a big chunk of its coal operations to Whitehaven.
The rest, and especially, the really wicked – in the very woke eyes of a BHP board and senior management – energy coal are on the market, even if BHP might vociferously deny it.
After all, if you believe oil and gas and coal and most especially energy coal are killing the planet, how could a board of directors of good individual and merged conscience continue to draw some portion of their incomes from it.
Beyond of course, the most reasonable of period of transition. Lord make me pure, but just not too quickly; and all that.
The timing of BHP’s decidedly ‘the final die is cast’ exit from coal could not have been more exquisite.
Just as even Europe, even Dark-Green Germany, have finally woken up to the brutal reality of TINA, as the great Maggie Thatcher used to put it.
Simply, that, There Is No Alternative to fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal. Not that is, if you want to have a functioning economy and indeed society.
For all the trillions of dollars – nay, correction, tens of trillions of dollars – that have been poured into subsidising the, surprisingly expensive, for want of a better word, generation of ‘free’ energy from wind (when it is blowing) and sun (when it’s shining), the world still relies almost totally on, cough, cough, fossil fuels.
In 2019, according to the IEA, over 80 percent of global energy still came from, cough, cough, oil, gas and coal.
Well, gee, so-called renewables must therefore have leapt into double digits?
Well, actually, no.
The next biggest chunk, nearly 10 per cent, came from biofuels.
This is, bluntly, the burning of wood and waste and pumping out even more CO2 than coal.
That’s the burning of wood and waste in developing countries because they have no choice. And the burning of it in developed countries in a mindless charge towards an 18th century future.
After that came nuclear at 5 per cent and hydro – the ‘original’ renewable, now hated by Greens- around 2.5 per cent.
Bottom line: tens, tens of trillions of dollars got the world up to all of around 2-3 per cent from wind and solar.
And now, indirectly the shareholders of Whitehaven are the beneficiaries.
It’s paying $US3.2bn ($5bn) – and a possible further $US900m, depending on profits generated by the mines - to BHP, for two of its major metallurgical mines in Queensland’s coal regions.
Investors quickly pinged who got the better side of the deal, adding more than 10 per cent to Whitehaven’s share price and depositing nearly $600m into shareholder pockets.
One can only conclude by saying that one day a future BHP board will wake up to reality.
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18 October, 2023
Big Green has more money, power and influence than Big Oil could ever dream of. It is a political Goliath
After years as a federal officer helping the Drug Enforcement Administration hunt drug lords across Central Asia, and years more teaching in Maryland classrooms, Robin Shaffer anticipated a quiet retirement watching the deep swells roll across the Atlantic and crash on to the broad Jersey Shore.
Instead, he finds himself embroiled in a fight. As a leader of a grassroots group, Protect Our Coast NJ, Shaffer, 53, is taking on an international company and politicians in Trenton backing Ocean Wind 1, a $10 billion proposal to line the Jersey Shore with 98 wind turbines whose 722-foot propeller whirls would dwarf the Washington Monument and Statue of Liberty.
It’s been an uphill battle, with the group “taking in nickels and dimes” and “selling T-shirts and magnets.” The local press seems indifferent to their cause, he said, noting that no outlets covered a public event he held at a pub, perhaps fittingly, with “Cheers” and "Frasier" actor Kelsey Grammer, one of Hollywood’s few prominent conservatives.
“There’s this argument made that we must be bought off, sort of, ‘Why fight the Green Revolution? Don’t you care about the environment?’” Shaffer said. “But we don’t have any corporate sponsors or major funding. It’s very much a David vs. Goliath kind of thing.”
Protect Our Coast NJ, an all-volunteer outfit with a budget of less than $100,000, is one example of an overwhelming disparity that has emerged in the debate over the aggressive push for renewable energy in response to what President Biden calls the “existential threat” of climate change. While once upon a time there may have been scrappy environmentalists combating the corporate might of Big Oil, major fossil fuel producers and conservative philanthropies provide little supporting research challenging climate change, Shaffer and other people interviewed for this article said. As a result, the money and the muscle and the lawyers are now aligned with what they call Big Green.
Government largesse, shot into the stratosphere by hundreds of taxpayer billions President Biden shoveled to green energy companies and backers through the Inflation Reduction Act, is just the crest of this wave of momentum on behalf of a “climate emergency.”
Powering the apparent juggernaut are philanthropists who have donated billions, corporate sponsors of environmental groups that look like a who’s who of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, attorneys at white-shoe firms and Ivy League law schools, prosecutors paid privately but operating under a district attorney’s umbrella, along with media and academics who hammer the narrative home.
“This whole movement is pushed by a small but very powerful elite that controls Washington and the media, but not the way your average American thinks,” said William Happer, an emeritus physics professor at Princeton University who founded the CO2 Coalition in 2015 to advance the argument that global warming is not an existential threat.
“You think, ‘What can you do?’” Happer said. “They have the media under control, they have politicians, professional and scientific groups and publications are controlled by them, and it’s all driven by money.”
The corporate sponsors of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), for instance, include titans of tech and private enterprise such as Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Meta and others. Google is also working with the Sierra Club, while the Environmental Defense Fund lists General Electric and DuPont as allies on its website.
Liberal billionaire Michael Bloomberg pledged another $500 million to kill the coal industry in September, a massive injection of cash that brings to more than $1 billion the amount he has committed to his Beyond Carbon launched in 2019. Another $1.1 billion was pledged by liberal venture capitalist John Doerr to build a climate change school at Stanford University, and Tom Steyer, like Bloomberg a former Democrat presidential candidate, has put millions of his billions behind similar global warming initiatives.
Shaffer said Protect Our Coast is hiring attorneys he hopes “will do a good job,” but powerful lawyers are already aligned with the “climate emergency” camp. Since 2009 Columbia University Law School has had a Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, while the venerable New York firm of Shearman & Sterling, with 850 attorneys, is partnered with ACORE.
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Scottish couple facing $33k repair bill after driving Tesla in heavy rain
It’s not abnormal for it to rain in Scotland. It is abnormal, however, for it to rain so heavily your electric car battery gives up the ghost.
A couple from Edinburgh was shocked after receiving a £17,374 (A$33,370) bill to replace the battery on their Tesla Model Y, after the vehicle wouldn’t turn on after driving through heavy rain.
The owners told Edinburgh Live they left home to enjoy dinner in Edinburgh on October 7 and arrived at the restaurant with no issue, but say their electric car wouldn’t start once they returned to the vehicle around 10pm.
The couple allege it took nearly five hours for Tesla’s roadside assistance to tow the car to an Edinburgh dealership.
After the car was inspected, the couple was told the battery was damaged “due to water ingress”, and a replacement would cost £17,374 (~A$33,000) – more than a third the price of the SUV. That’s despite the couple denying having driven it through “any huge puddles or anything like that”, let alone submerging it underwater.
“After finally getting to speak to a manager, he told me [the battery] had water in it due to the fact the weather in Scotland has been so bad. That was the issue. They said it’s not necessarily my fault but it’s not Tesla’s to pay under warranty. He reminded me there was a yellow weather warning in some parts of Scotland,” one of the owners told Edinburgh Live.
The news outlet reports as of October 15 the couple still hadn’t had their car returned.
“If I had known the customer service would be so bad I’m not sure I would have bothered buying the car. Do they know that we’re in Scotland? That weather was not abnormal for living here.
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Without Crude Oil, there can be no Electricity
?
Over the last 200 years, after the discovery of crude oil, the world populated from 1 to 8 billion. Today, all the electricity generation options available, such as wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas, are all dependent on the products and components manufactured from crude oil to be able to generate electricity.
Looking back, the history of the petroleum industry illustrated that crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. The more than 6,000 products being used for humanity needs and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.
Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft and more than 50,000 military aircraft that use the fuels manufactured from crude oil. The fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets moving people and products, and the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs, are also dependent on what can be manufactured from crude oil.
For the aircraft and ships, just like that for the various options for the generation of electricity, they all utilize parts and components made from the oil derivatives manufactured from raw crude oil.
Mankind in the pre-1800’s set the stage for the fantastic growth after the mankind’s discovery of crude oil:
Life longevity was around forty years of age and people seldom travelled more than one hundred miles from where they were born.
A world population of about one billion people.
No electricity, as all generation of electricity is only possible with the parts made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil for wind turbines, solar panels, and the coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro power plants.
The following infrastructures were not around a few short centuries ago, because they all need components and parts that were NOT available in the pre-1800’s.
Transportation
Hospitals
Medical equipment
Appliances
Electronics
Telecommunications
Communications systems
Space programs
Heating and ventilating
Military
Today, a few centuries after the discovery of crude oil:
Everything that needs electricity, and every infrastructure, is made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, and all the parts of EV’s, toilets, and spacecraft.
Weather related fatalities have virtually disappeared with all the products and medications available today that were not available a few centuries ago.
Globally, as most of the world leaders in the few wealthy countries continue to focus on ceasing oil production and shuttering the refining of crude oil, the future does not bode well as 20 percent of the almost 700 worldwide refineries are expected to close in the next 5 years, i.e., 140 closures. Further inflation and shortages in perpetuity are guaranteed, as those refineries are manufacturing the oil derivatives for all the products in society, and the fuels for the jets moving people and products, and the merchant ships for global trade flows and the military and space programs.
While the few wealthy countries are pursuing the elimination of crude oil, China has no intentions of abandoning its economic, military, or strategic ambitions – all of which rely on crude oil. Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries. As of 2021, there were 88 new facilities in planning or under construction in Asia.
Policymakers in the few wealthy countries are not cognizant enough to understand that there has yet to be identified a replacement for crude oil that now provides the products and fuels that are being manufactured from crude oil during the last few centuries, that are the basis on every infrastructure segment supporting the 8 billion on this planet!
The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society, as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
Ridding the world of raw crude oil before we have a replacement to produce the oil derivatives currently manufactured from crude oil, we’re back to the 1800’s.
The greatest threat to the world’s populations could be the future for billions to exist and prosper without those oil derivatives that are currently supporting more than 6,000 products for society.
Shockingly, very few parents, teachers, students, politicians, and those in the media, have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products in our daily lives from crude oil! Energy Literacy at its best!!!
https://www.cfact.org/2023/10/17/without-crude-oil-there-can-be-no-electricity/
**********************************************Australia: Two "Teals" have just self-destructed
"Teals" are allegedly middle-of-the-roaders, Green but not too Green. Similar to Britain's Liberal party. Two of them have however shown themselves as extremists. They are so far out of line with the country that they will go down in a heap next election.
Scamps was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and has qualified as a doctor. Tink is a PR guru and has been prominent in leading charity organizations
Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel has added her voice to growing condemnation of teal MPs Kylea Tink and Sophie Scamps, saying she disagrees “emphatically” with her teal parliamentary colleague’s support of the Greens.
Ms Daniel suggested the Greens amendment to Labor's motion on Israel – which sought to accuse the Jewish homeland of war crimes – inappropriately sought to remove support for Israel's right to self-defence.
“I disagree emphatically with those who supported the amendment,” Ms Daniel told The Australian. “I was elected by the Goldstein community to represent their interests and in doing so I unreservedly voted for the bipartisan resolution and spoke in its favour unconditionally.
“Among other things, the effect of the amendment would have been to remove support for Israel’s right to self defence.
“As I said in the chamber yesterday Israel has a right to self defence in line with the rules of war, which would include protection of civilians in Gaza, reiterating what I have said publicly, repeatedly and emphatically.”
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17 October, 2023
Politico Finally Faces Reality When It Comes to Biden Draining Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Earlier this year, Townhall reported on the Biden administration's decision to siphon off millions of barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a political effort to help Democrats in the midterms after Biden and his forced energy "transition" saw strict limits placed on U.S. oil production and the cancelation of infrastructure projects to support oil and gas development.
Back in July, the SPR held 346,758,000 barrels of oil in its underground tanks located in Texas and Louisiana that have the capacity to hold 714,000,000 barrels, according to the Department of Energy. That is, America's emergency backup supply of oil was drained to being more than half empty by Biden in response to an "emergency" that his energy agenda had created.
And even though Townhall has been reporting on Biden's self-inflicted energy crisis and his drastic response to artificially apply pressure to keep prices lower after the national average for a gallon of gas hit its all-time high in the summer of 2022, it appears some in the mainstream media are starting to see the problem with Biden's use of the SPR.
"An energy crisis spawned by a Middle East war 50 years ago spurred the U.S. to create a huge crude oil stockpile to shield the country from threats by unfriendly nations," reminded Politico in a story on the SPR published Monday. "Now the oil lying in half-filled salt caverns along the Gulf Coast is posing a political quandary for President Joe Biden."
Now, apparently, there's concern that "the reserves’ diminished volumes limit Biden’s options to respond to a future shock to the oil markets, including those that could result from a widening of the war in the Middle East," Politico noted.
...having a full reserve would have given the White House a freer hand to enforce sanctions blocking Iran’s oil exports, said Bob Ryan, analyst at BCA Research.
The relatively low levels in the SPR “leaves the U.S. in a position of relying on Saudi Arabia and others with spare capacity to ramp supply in the event of a cutoff” of Iranian oil, Ryan said in an email.
The administration has insisted it’s continuing to enforce the economic sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed on Iran in 2018. But analysts monitoring oil shipments say Iranian exports have risen sharply on Biden’s watch.
It doesn't help that Biden has already been shown to have a weak hand when it comes to requesting increases in the amount of oil from OPEC+, being embarrassed more than once when his begging was rejected by the oil-rich collective of countries. Instead of pumping more oil into the economy, as Biden has requested, OPEC+ has rejected America's requests and even cut production in an added blow to Biden's strategy.
With a less than half-full SPR, as Politico's source explained, Biden has fewer options to hold our country's foes accountable for violating such embargoes. It's another point of weakness for the Biden administration and one that could be fixed by ramping up U.S. energy production and green-lighting the development projects he killed off. The U.S. doesn't need to rely on other countries — and didn't when Biden took office — to increase the supply of oil and gas flowing around the world.
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Wyoming's Electric Buses Constantly Break Down, Crippling Transit
By replacing its fleet of diesel-powered buses with sleek (and taxpayer-subsidized) electric buses, the transit system run by Jackson and Teton County, Wyoming, was set to transition to a green, “climate-friendly” future.
Instead, all eight electric buses purchased by Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) have broken down, and when any of the vehicles will be up and running again is anyone’s guess. Help is not going to be on its way anytime soon because California-based Proterra, the company that manufactured the defective buses, has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once a darling of the Biden administration’s vaunted “energy transition,” the company cannot say when – if ever – spare parts will come to the rescue.
“We’re evaluating our options to see how we can work through that and make sure they can be on the road,” START Director Bruce Abel told Cowboy State Daily (Sept. 26). Local officials are bracing for a long wait, with Jackson Councilman Jimbo Rooks saying the company’s bankruptcy was “a real punch in the gut.”
START still has 23 diesel buses in its fleet, which are working fine. But the electric buses were plagued with problems as soon as they went into service. Winters in Wyoming can be cold, and EV batteries do not perform to standard in freezing temperatures, a fact perspective EV buyers should consider before they shell out real money for these vehicles. Specifically, EV batteries’ efficiency declines markedly in cold weather, curtailing EVs’ already limited range. What’s more, the batteries needed to power electric buses and trucks are so heavy that they tear up roads and bridges at an alarming rate, adding to the infrastructure problems associated with EVs.
Biden and Granholm: Fans of Proterra
Proterra CEO Gareth Joyce could provide little more than a boilerplate when trying to explain his company’s misfortunes, saying in a press release that the company faced “various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to efficiently scale all our opportunities simultaneously.” He didn’t say why the buses he supplied to his customer in Wyoming broke down.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out. The company got its mitts on some of the $5.5 billion in federal handouts for low- and no-emission bus manufacturers contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, along with the cash it got from investors eager to plow money into green projects. As noted by the Cowboy State Daily, President Joe Biden participated in a virtual tour of the company in 2021.
“The fact is, you’re making me look good,” Biden said before touting his plan to provide 50,000 charging stations nationwide.
Biden isn’t the only member of his administration to be a fan of Proterra. Jennifer Granholm invested in the company and sold her stake AFTER she became Biden’s energy secretary for a net capital gain of $1.6 million. She got out before the roof fell in.
On the Road with the Energy Secretary
Granholm’s eagerness to plug EVs led her on an ill-fated, four-day road trip from Charlotte to Memphis in June that included a testy exchange with local law enforcement officers in North Carolina. An Energy Department staffer, prudently driving a gasoline-power car, blocked a family in an EV from recharging to allow Granholm to recharge her vehicle first.
On September 25, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Granholm’s EV excursion.
“This taxpayer-funded publicity stunt illustrates yet again how out of touch the Biden administration is with the consequences of policies it has unleashed on everyday Americans,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-KY, and fellow committee member Pat Fallon, R-TX, wrote in a letter to Granholm.
The committee demanded information by Oct. 10 about the purpose, costs, and planning of the trip, which covered 770 miles. Comer and Fallon also requested a staff-level briefing by Oct. 3, The Washington Times reported (Sept. 27).
Don’t look for a prompt response from Granholm and her minions.
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Largest EV Charging Station In World Powered By Diesel Generators
The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. But to provide that kind of power takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.
In 2017, Tesla CEO said that all Superchargers in the automaker’s network were being converted to solar. “Over time, almost all will disconnect from the electricity grid,” Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. Reporters at SF Gate tried to find out how much of the station's electricity was from the generators, but couldn’t get a response from Tesla.
The station isn’t connected to any dedicated solar farms, which means that absent the diesel generators, the station is powered by California’s grid.
According to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration, in June 2023, natural gas supplied nearly 5,000 megawatt hours of electricity in California, whereas non-hydroelectric renewables supplied about 7,250 megawatt hours.
Another Case
Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon, author of the “Energy Transition Absurdities,” told Cowboy State Daily that the use of diesel-powered generators is not limited to the Harris Ranch station.
He used to shop at a Whole Foods in Houston. The company had installed a charging station in front of the store for its customers. “It was the best parking spot in the lot, and it crowded out a bunch of handicap spaces,” Blackmon said.
He said there were diesel generators behind the store and whenever someone was using the chargers, the generators would kick on.
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EV Battery Factory Will Require So Much Energy It Needs A Coal Plant To Power It
A new electric vehicle battery factory in Kansas is demanding so much energy that the state is delaying the retirement of a coal plant to make sure the facility has enough power.
The Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV.
The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels.
The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city.
In testimony to the the Kansas City Corporation Commission, … , a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates “near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,” according to the newspaper.
[As a result] the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plants to transition units at the plant to natural gas.
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16 October, 2023
The Climate Change-Industrial Complex is an Existential Threat
On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued his Farewell Address, in which he warned that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex.” While Ike was correct in his assessment of the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex during the early years of the Cold War, a new, more dire threat to our nation has emerged in the years after the conclusion of the Cold War: the rise of the climate change-industrial complex.
As a matter of fact, the climate change-industrial complex, which will be explained below, began decades ago when scientists warned of “global cooling” and the coming of a modern ice age. Eventually, the global cooling “crisis” morphed into “global warming,” which then morphed again into what we now know as “climate change.”
Of course, as anyone who has taken middle-school science classes knows, the climate has always changed, and will always change. However, by adopting this vague, catchall term, those behind the climate change-industrial complex executed a rather brilliant bait-and-switch. Plus, utilizing the “climate change” narrative has allowed them to connect any and all “extreme” weather events and social justice causes to climate change, even though these connections are loosely affiliated, at best.
Like the military-industrial complex, which referred to the insidious relationship between the military, defense contractors, and government and their aim to constantly increase military spending, a similar dynamic exists today among the climate change-industrial complex.
However, instead of military officials banging the drums for more spending on national defense less we be overtaken by the Soviets, we now have a parade of so-called experts constantly calling for massive spending and the curbing of our fundamental liberties, less we be overtaken by “climate change.” And, in place of defense contractors, who stood to receive massive federal military contracts, we now have a whole host of cottage industries that benefit from the climate change-industrial complex. Of course, the role of government remains the same, supplying taxpayer money to fund these projects and programs while using its vast power to influence the public that such measures are necessary.
But, unlike the almost quaint military-industrial complex of yesteryear, today’s climate change-industrial complex has a far greater negative impact on our overall economy, way of life, and standard of living, while simultaneously threatening our personal freedoms, destroying our environment, and undermining our dignity.
In the name of “climate change,” our political leaders have run roughshod over our core constitutional freedoms, mandating what products we can buy and censoring those who dare to question the “climate change” narrative.
Meanwhile, countless corporations and “experts” have jumped on the “climate change” bandwagon, some for fear of retribution if they do not, with scores of others willingly doing so because they benefit in some form or fashion from the perpetuation of the “climate change crisis.”
Even worse, our government, via public schools and teacher unions, is pushing the “climate change” fearmongering down the throats of an entire generation, creating a giant cohort of future voters and leaders who buy the falsehood that “climate change” is an existential crisis hook, line, and sinker.
In reality, the climate change-industrial complex is nothing more than a Trojan horse, a guise under which the beneficiaries can implement their vision of how society should be “organized.”
Yet, we would be remiss to downplay the degree of the threat posed by those who seek to re-engineer society based on a nonexistent climate crisis. If we learned anything from the years-long horror show that was our government’s (and the world’s) response to COVID-19, we should be aware that many in the climate change-industrial complex viewed the incredible overreaction to a virus that posed a threat to a small percentage of the population as a trial run for what is too likely to come should they have their way in the future.
Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, laid bare that he believed “the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.” This would include, as Schwab put it, creating a new world order “that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”
Of course, in Schwab’s vision, this new world order would also mean that people “own nothing,” eat bugs instead of meat, live in cramped “15-minute cities,” abstain from air travel, forgo driving (and owning, of course) gasoline-powered vehicles, along with a whole host of unfathomable sacrifices, all in the name of “climate change.” But -- and this is a vital point -- you can bet your bottom dollar that this new world order will not apply to those in positions of power, who make the rules, but conveniently for them, do not have to follow the very rules they make.
Before it is too late, those of us who will pay the ultimate price, both in a degraded standard of living and a less free and open society, must push back against the climate change-industrial complex. For if we do not, we may, as Ike warned, let “public policy… itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
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Era of ‘Unquestioned and Unchallenged’ Climate Change Claims Is Over
Leading voices in the climate community are in an uproar as their warming hypothesis comes under fresh assault by new scientific papers.
The authors of the papers are being attacked and say that “activist scientists” threatened by the new findings are “aggressively conducting an orchestrated disinformation campaign to discredit the papers and the scientific reputation of the authors.”
Indeed, from insults on social media and furious blog posts to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests demanding emails from a journal editor and federal scientist, the controversy is getting heated.
Several scientists who spoke with The Epoch Times expressed shock at the tactics used against those whose latest research is casting renewed doubts on the official climate narrative.
William Happer, Princeton professor emeritus of physics and former climate adviser to President Donald Trump, wasn't surprised by the response to the new findings.
“Of course the climate cult will be dismissive of any information—no matter how scientifically correct—that is politically incorrect," he told The Epoch Times, noting that the new findings made important and valid points.
The reason that climate activists are so upset is that the findings of the new papers—a trio of peer-reviewed studies by astrophysicist Willie Soon and dozens of other scientists from around the world—are casting further doubt on the narrative of man-made global warming.
The papers are also fueling even more public skepticism about the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which the authors say ignores the facts as well as climate science more generally.
The rhetoric employed by taxpayer-funded scientists with a vested interest in the climate change narrative to attack the new research was profoundly unscientific, multiple scientists told The Epoch Times.
Atmospheric science professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, for instance, denounced the authors of one of the new papers as “a group of climate denier [clown emoji]” on X.
Mr. Mann, famous for the now-widely ridiculed “hockey stick” graph purporting to show massive man-made warming, also described the editor of the journal Climate as a “denier clown.”
Gareth S. Jones with the UK Met Office ridiculed the new studies as "nonsense," while smearing the journal publisher for supposedly being "popular with the science denial community."
Mr. Jones also denounced the guest editor of Climate’s special issue, Ned Nikolov, for having a "bit of a reputation, so much so that other climate contrarians distance themselves from him."
Mr. Nikolov authored an earlier paper arguing that atmospheric pressure, not greenhouse gases, plays a primary role in temperatures on Earth and on other celestial bodies.
Also chiming in to attack the new papers and the scientists behind them was Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who's using a FOIA request to demand all of Mr. Nikolov’s emails with relevant scientists.
“The only point of this paper (which every climate denier and their dog has jumped onto), is to launder dirty ‘science’ into a clean made-for-Fox meme,” Mr. Schmidt wrote on X before publishing a more detailed rebuttal on his blog Real Climate.
“The latest contrarian crowd pleaser from Soon et al (2023) is just the latest repetition of the old ‘it was the sun wot done it’ trope[1] that Willie Soon and his colleagues have been pushing for decades,” argued Mr. Schmidt, whose federal salary is almost $200,000 per year. “There is literally nothing new under the sun.”
Scientists Respond
The blog post by Mr. Schmidt “is dismissive in an insubstantive way,” said climatologist Judith Curry, who wasn't involved in the new papers but previously served as chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“The response by Schmidt, Mann, and others, particularly with regard to the FOIA request regarding editorial discussions on this paper, reflects their ongoing attempts to control the scientific as well as public dialogue on climate change,” she told The Epoch Times. “In my opinion, their behavior not only reflects poorly on them but is damaging to climate science.”
Ms. Curry, author of "Climate Uncertainty and Risk," who has a post by the lead authors on her blog Climate Etc. to provide a forum for discussion, said the new paper raises “an important issue that is swept under the rug by the IPCC and many climate scientists.”
In particular, it has major implications for how 20th-century climate records are interpreted, she said.
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New York's Ban on Gas Stoves Hit With Lawsuit by Industry Groups
Several industry groups have filed a lawsuit to block New York's controversial state ban on gas stoves and furnaces that came as dozens of Democrat-controlled cities and local governments took similar measures to fight the supposed dangers of climate change.
The complaint, filed on Oct. 12 by the National Association of Home Builders, the National Propane Gas Association, and others, accuses New York state of violating federal law by banning gas stoves and other appliances in new buildings.
The plaintiffs, which also include several trade unions, argue that the ban is illegal because it conflicts with existing federal laws, and that its adoption would hurt businesses, spark layoffs, and trigger increases in energy prices.
"Hundreds of plumbers on Long Island rely on new construction to feed their families and pay their mortgages," Jimmy Russo, president of the Plumbing Contractors Association of Long Island, said in a statement. "This illegal law has basically ripped the rug out from underneath them."
Environmental groups criticized the lawsuit, citing climate change.
"Don’t believe the wealthy fossil fuel industry’s lies—lives, livelihoods, and wallets are already hugely impacted by climate change, and the All-Electric Buildings Act is critical to protecting all of these for New Yorkers,” a coalition of environmental groups, including the Gas Free NY alliance and Earthjustice, said in a statement.
The case, Mulhern Gas Co. v. Rodriguez, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
In May, New York became the first state in the country to ban natural gas appliances and infrastructure when the state Legislature approved a new state budget that included a prohibition on fossil fuel combustion in most new buildings starting in 2026.
The measure prohibits the installation of fossil fuel equipment in new buildings under seven stories by 2026 and in taller ones by 2029, effectively requiring all-electric heating and cooking.
There are exemptions for places such as hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and restaurants. Existing buildings are also exempt from the ban.
"Everybody who has a gas stove—enjoy it. Keep your gas stove," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in an appearance on FOX 5's "Good Day New York" on May 2, 2023. "But new buildings that are going up, they can go electric, they can do heat pumps."
At the time, Republican leaders in the state Senate opposed the measure, arguing that it would drive up utility bills.
"A first-in-the-nation, unconstitutional ban on natural gas hookups in new construction will drive up utility bills and increase housing costs," New York state Senate Republican leader Rob Ortt said in a statement earlier this year.
Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from Long Island and a former candidate for governor, criticized the Hochul administration’s priorities concerning the gas stove ban.
"New Yorkers are struggling to heat their homes and put gas in their cars," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Instead of approving new pipeline applications and reversing the state’s ban on the safe extraction of natural gas, Kathy Hochul and her allies are tripling down on kicking this state off the cliff."
At the time, climate lobbyists pushed for the New York state gas stove ban to go into effect in 2025, with the final deal amounting to a compromise that pushed implementation back one year.
And now, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are asking the court to declare the ban invalid and block its enforcement.
Challenging the Ban
The industry groups that are suing to block the prohibition are doing so on the legal premise that the ban is preempted by a federal law that regulates energy use, called the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA).
“EPCA reflects Congress’s decision that the nation’s energy policy cannot be dictated by state and local governments,” their complaint states. “Such a patchwork approach would be the antithesis of a national energy policy.”
Earlier this year, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California unanimously struck down a similar ban on gas infrastructure in Berkeley, California, holding that the prohibition fell afoul of the EPCA and was therefore illegal.
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The green energy Net Zero plan will require a command economy
Imagine the USA in 2050 has a net-zero emissions economy, as President Joe Biden has pledged that it will (the UK is also committed to this).
Three very large, interrelated, and multidisciplinary engineering projects will need to have been completed.
Transport will have been electrified. Industrial and domestic heat will have been electrified. The electricity sector – generation, transmission and distribution – will have been greatly expanded in order to cope with the first two projects, and will have ceased to use fossil fuels.
I have had a long career in industrial and academic engineering, and recently retired as Professor of Technology in electrical engineering at Cambridge University. I’ve spent some time looking into the feasibility of these ideas, and these are the facts.
At the moment the USA uses on average 7,768 trillion British Thermal Units of energy every month, most of which is supplied by burning fossil fuel either directly for heat or transport, or indirectly to generate electricity.
Because an internal combustion engine converts the energy stored in its fuel into transport motion with an efficiency of about 30 per cent, while electric motors are more than 90 per cent efficient at using energy stored in a battery, we will need to increase the US electricity supply by about 25 per cent to maintain transport in the USA at today’s level.
Let’s assume that replacing today’s fossil-powered vehicles and trains with electric ones will cost no more than we would have spent replacing them anyway: it’s not really true but the difference is small compared to the rest of this. I should note however that a small part of today’s transport energy is used for aviation and shipping, which are much harder to electrify than ground transport, but we’ll ignore that for now.
Next we need to electrify all the heat. If this heat was provided by ordinary electric heaters, we would need an extra electrical sector equal to the size of today’s. But if we mostly use air-source and ground-source heat pumps, and assume a coefficient of performance of 3:1 – optimistic, but not wildly unreasonable – then we only need new grid capacity equivalent to 35 per cent of the size of the present grid for the heat task.
So far, the grid in 2050 will need to be more than 60 per cent bigger than its present size. We also need to work on the buildings. US building stock is made up of nearly 150 million housing units, commercial and industrial buildings, with an estimated floor space of 367 billion square feet. Some of this is well insulated, much of it is not. All of it would need to be, for our heat pumps to work at the efficiencies we need them to. Based on a UK pilot retrofit programme the national scale cost for this is $1 trillion per 15 million population. The figure in the USA could therefore be about $20 trillion. It might be as high as $35 trillion.
We should note here that as with transport, some specialist types of heating cannot at the moment be done electrically, for instance in primary steel production. These will involve extra costs if net zero is to be reached, but we’ll ignore that for now, even though we’re going to need an awful lot of steel.
Now let’s get the power grid decarbonised and make it 60 per cent bigger and more powerful. Taken together, the US electrical grid has been called the largest machine in the world: 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of local distribution ones. We will need to add a further 120,000 miles of transmission line. This will cost on the order of $0.6 trillion, based on US cost data.
The 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines will have to be upgraded to carry much higher currents. Most houses in the USA have a main circuit-breaker panel that allows between 100 and 200 amps (A) current into the house, although some new ones are rated at 300A. The 100A standard was set nearly a century ago, when the electric kettle was the largest single appliance.
In a modern all-electric home, some of the new appliances draw rather higher currents: ground-source heat pumps may draw 85A on start-up, radiant hobs when starting up draw 37A, fast chargers for electric vehicles draw 46A, and even slow ones may draw 17A, while electric showers draw 46A. The local wiring in streets and local transformers were all sized to the 100-A limit. Most homes will need an upgraded circuit breaker panel and at least some rewiring, and much local wiring and many local substations will need upsizing. The UK costs have been estimated in detail at £1 trillion, which would scale to the order of $6 trillion on a per-capita basis.
As 60 per cent of the current electrical generation is fossil fuelled, we need to close all the fossil stations down and increase the remaining, non-fossil generation capacity four times over. There isn’t much scope for new hydropower, and so far carbon capture doesn’t exist outside fossil fuel production. Using a mixture of wind (onshore $1600/kW, offshore $6500/kW), solar ($1000/kW at the utility level) and nuclear ($6000/kW), the capital cost of this task alone is around $5 trillion, and we have not dealt with the enormous problem of wind and solar being intermittent.
So far we’re up to $32 trillion as the cost of providing the insulated buildings and the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity in a net-zero world. Although not all borne by households, this figure is of the order of $260,000 per US household.
Now let’s think about intermittency. Sometimes there is no wind and no sunshine, and our largely renewables-driven grid will have no power. Current hydropower storage would run a net-zero grid in the USA for a few hours; current battery capacity could do so for a few minutes. Net-zero advocates often suggest simply building huge amounts of battery storage, but the costs of this are colossal: 80 times as much as the power plants, hundreds of trillions of dollars. And indeed this is simply fantasy as the necessary minerals are not available in anything like the required amounts. If prices climbed, more reserves would become economic – but the prices are already impossibly high.
Straight away, we can see that a net-zero grid with a large proportion of renewables simply cannot be built. But for now let’s just ignore the storage problem and look at some more numbers.
The UK engineering firm Atkins estimates that a $1-billion project in the electrical sector over 30 years needs 24 or more professional, graduate engineers and 100 or more skilled tradespeople for the whole period. Scaling up these figures for the $12 trillion of electricity sector projects just described, we will need 300,000 professional electrical engineers and 1.2 million skilled tradespeople, full time, for the 30 years to 2050 on just this part of the net-zero project. Based on the budget, we might expect the buildings retrofit sector to need a similar workforce of roughly three million people. This is a combined workforce roughly the size of the entire existing construction sector.
Now let’s think about materials. A 600-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) needs 300 tonnes of high-performance steels. We would need 360 5-MW wind turbines, each running at an optimistic average 33 per cent efficiency (and a major energy storage facility alongside which we are just ignoring as it would be impossibly expensive) to achieve the same continuous 600-MW supply. In fact, since the life of wind turbines at 25 years is less than half that of CCGT turbines, we would actually need more than 720 of them.
The mass of the nacelle (the turbine at the top of the tower) for a 5-MW wind turbine is comparable to that of a CCGT. Furthermore, the mass of concrete in the plinth of a single CCGT is comparable to the mass of concrete for the foundations of each individual onshore wind turbine, and much smaller than the concrete and ballast for each offshore one. We are going to need enormous amounts of high-energy materials such as steel and concrete: something like a thousand times as much as we need to build CCGT or nuclear powerplants, and renewed more frequently. This vast requirement is probably going to affect prices, both of materials and energy – and not in a good way – but for now we’ll just assume costs remain at something like current levels.
So we can see that the infrastructure parts of the net-zero project which are theoretically possible would cost comfortably in excess of $35 trillion and would require a dedicated and highly skilled workforce comparable to that of the construction sector as well as enormous amounts of materials. Net zero would also require several things which today are completely impossible: scalable non-fossil energy storage, very high temperature electrical industrial processes, serious electrical aviation and shipping. There would also be the matter of decarbonising agriculture. These things, if they can even be achieved, would multiply the cost at least several times over, to more than $100 trillion.
So the real cost of net-zero, or more likely of trying and failing to achieve it, would be similar to – or even more than – total projected US government spending out to 2050. There is no likelihood of that amount of money being diverted from other purposes under anything resembling normal market economics and standards of living.
The idea that net zero can be achieved on the current timelines by any means short of a command economy combined with a drastic decline in standards of living – and several unlikely technological miracles – is a blatant falsehood. The silence of the National Academies and the professional science and engineering bodies about these big picture engineering realities is despicable.
People need to know the realities of net zero.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/11/green-energy-net-zero-biden-command-economy-impossible/
***************************************15 October, 2023
Banks Keep Financing Coal Despite Their Net-Zero Pledges
In recent years, world leaders and leading environmentalists have predicted “the end of coal,” with charts showing how the world’s most polluting fossil fuel has plummeted in use and production in the U.S. and Europe over the last few decades.
Yet coal remains the world’s single largest power source, generating 36% of global power in 2022. And its use has actually increased in Europe and the U.S. in recent years, with U.S. coal production rising almost 8% from 2020 to 2021 and almost 3% from 2021 to 2022. U.S. coal consumption increased 14.5% from 2020 to 2021. Carbon dioxide from coal use is responsible for about 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
That surge in activity would not be possible without financing by banks and other financial institutions. Six global banks — Barclays PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citibank, Wells Fargo & Co. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. — have plowed $83.8 billion into 10 parent companies that operate coal plants since 2016. Overall, financial institutions have injected $166 billion into that coal network since 2016, according to the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance Campaign.
Most of the banks have made high-profile net-zero commitments, such as joining the Net Zero Banking Alliance, whose members pledged to stop financing fossil fuel projects. They often tout their climate action plans in speeches and press releases, emphasizing that they will not finance the building of a new coal plant.
But banks such as JPMorgan and Citibank continue to finance fossil fuels, including the coal sector, via a major loophole that exploits the difference between project financing and corporate financing. They may not be lending money to a specific mine or coal plant, but they generously finance the companies building and operating coal plants. In total, 96% of the world’s 60 largest banks’ financing to the fossil fuel industry from 2016 to 2022 was described as general purpose corporate financing, while only 4% was described as project financing, according to the Sierra Club’s “Banking on Climate Chaos” report.
Coal remains the world’s single largest power source, and its use has increased in Europe and the U.S. in recent years.
“It’s an extremely common loophole for many banks,” said April Merleaux, research manager on the climate and energy team at the Rainforest Action Network. She added that another loophole — the lack of explicit policies to limit corporate financing to companies responsible for maintaining and operating coal plants — allows banks to keep financing coal-fired power plants. “It gives them wiggle room to finance a company developing coal power,” Merleaux said. “These plants still require the production of fossil fuels, and this financing delays really serious transition plans that take into account the people across the value chain.”
For example, JPMorgan Chase announced in February 2020 that it will not finance many coal-related enterprises, including coal-fired power plants. Yet since then, it has continued to finance energy companies that own coal plants. In April 2023, it co-financed the issuance of 650 million euros in bonds by French energy giant Engie SA, which generates electrical power through its coal plants. In March 2022, it co-financed a $5.4 billion revolving credit facility for German energy giant RWE AG, which recently made headlines for dismantling a wind farm to make room for an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Among major American banks, PNC Bank has also been outspoken about its climate commitments ever since it won praise almost a decade ago for announcing that it would stop financing coal companies that rely on mountaintop removal. “The climate crisis requires PNC — and all institutions, from governments to corporations to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and beyond — to work together to apply their expertise and resources in ways that can truly move the needle,” said Lora Phillips, PNC senior vice president and director of environmental, social and governance, in a new release. “PNC is committed to taking action right now on those areas we can control, and to laying a solid foundation for the work that is still to come.”
That strong rhetoric didn’t stop the bank in August from extending a $140 million credit facility to Indiana-based Hallador Energy Co., which owns the state’s second-largest coal producer. One of its coal-fired power plants in the town of Merom, Indiana, was set to retire in 2023, but its life was extended when a crypto mining company, AboutBit LLC, announced that it would buy power generated at the plant. In a December 2022 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Hallador said, “We expect cash from operations generated primarily by our expected higher coal margins in 2023 to fund our capital expenditures and our debt service.” The Merom plant has been cited for violations of the Clean Air Act, according to a consent order with the EPA requiring it to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. When AboutBit’s owner was asked about critics’ claims that the five-year deal would keep a polluting coal plan open, he replied, “It’s 100 percent correct.”
Coal production is increasing for several reasons, principally due to recent spikes in the prices of natural gas and other fuels, which has forced some countries and regions of the U.S. to use coal as a cheaper alternative. In addition, as the International Energy Agency reported, the world’s coal consumption will remain at elevated levels “in the absence of stronger efforts to accelerate the transition to clean energy.”
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A study claims heat suppresses economic growth. It falls apart under scrutiny
Climate change hurts the economy, according to a celebrated 2012 paper by economists Melissa Dell, Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken. That paper is in the top 1% of all academic economics publications by citation count, and it has received glowing coverage in the media. The authors teach at Harvard, Northwestern and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, and have received some of the highest awards in the profession. I took a closer look at their study, and it doesn’t hold up.
The study claims that higher temperatures suppress economic growth in poor countries. The claim falls apart when you look at their definitions. The authors study the period 1961-2003 and assign each country a binary designation as “poor” or “rich” based on whether their per capita gross domestic product was below or above the median for countries in 1960.
But some countries faced drastic changes in fortune at the time.
South Korea is “poor,” according to the authors. In reality, it was very poor in the early 1960s and then became very wealthy. When I simply reclassified South Korea as poor from 1961-76 and rich from 1977-2003, the study’s results nearly disappeared. When I allowed classifications of all countries to change when they moved either above or below median GDP per capita, the results disappeared completely. Any study with results that collapse after such a simple specification change shouldn’t be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal.
I also found that unusual economic circumstances greatly influenced countries’ results. Per capita GDP in Rwanda dropped by 63% in 1994, the year of the genocide. That year happened to be warmer than average, tricking the model into showing that high temperatures cause GDP to fall. Dropping 16 unusual country/year observations out of 4,924 eliminated the main effect the study reported. Other seemingly arbitrary aspects of their technique, when changed, weakened or eliminated their results.
I extended their data from 2003 to 2017 and added additional countries to the sample. I found again that correctly classifying countries as poor or rich eliminated their results. Going back to their original data source, I discovered that monthly temperatures are available, although they used only annual temperature data. If high temperatures really reduce GDP growth, it seems likely that this effect would be greatest in the warmest months of the year. I found no evidence to support that hypothesis in the original or the extended data. I also used a completely different set of data on GDP by country and found no effect of temperature on growth.
Climate activists need evidence that high temperatures reduce economic growth to advance their policies. Responsible economists have found that high temperatures have only small effects on the level of GDP. If temperatures rise as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects—assuming no CO2 mitigation at all—then according to responsible economists, global GDP in 2100 will be about 2.6% lower than if there was no temperature increase. With normal economic growth, GDP per capita in 2100 will be five times today’s level. A 2.6% reduction in GDP in 2100 would mean GDP growth of 4.9 times instead of 5—hardly a catastrophe. But if researchers claim to show that higher temperatures will affect the rate of GDP growth, then the effects of heat by the year 2100 could be significant. That is why pro-climate researchers are so desperate to find an effect of temperature on growth.
Econ Journal Watch, which published my debunking, contacted the authors and gave them an opportunity to respond to my work. They declined. It is astonishing that eminent economists, in universities with vast resources available to marshal evidence, chose to ignore my critique. But the mainstream media will ignore anything that reveals the weaknesses of climate research, and academic journals will continue to publish shoddy research that confirms the dogma of climate hysteria.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/debunking-study-saying-climate-change-hurts-economic-growth-16e07ec3
**************************************************Extraordinary Costs Of Green Energy Creeping Slowly Into Public Awareness
A key claim of the green energy movement has long been that the intermittent “renewables” — wind and solar — provide the cheapest form of energy. Therefore, the advocates say, just build enough wind turbines and solar panels, convert all use of energy to electricity, and sit back and enjoy a future of affordable energy without adverse environmental consequences.
Meanwhile a key theme at this blog has been exposing the incompetence and chicanery of the claims of low cost for electricity from wind and sun. Although it may often seem as if nobody is listening, I reassure myself that when the full costs of wind and solar electricity eventually get exposed, the people will catch on and not allow themselves to be impoverished.
Over in Europe, it looks like enough of the costs have now gotten exposed to cause the beginning of a public awakening. In August I had a post on how the costs of “green” energy were starting to change the “net zero” debate in the UK. Now, add to that report the results of the elections this past weekend in Germany and Luxembourg. In both countries, parties now standing at least somewhat against the green transition scored gains, while Greens lost ground. The process of ultimate political transformation looks to be long and slow; but I have faith that reality will eventually win out.
First, a short refresher on the claims of green energy advocates that the wind and sun provide the cheapest power. If you only read this blog, or other climate skeptic sources, you may find it incredible that anyone could believe such assertions. But you must remember that the self-designated climate advocates repeat these claims to themselves endlessly in an echo chamber where no one ever pushes back. Eventually, it appears, they come to believe that the claims are true.
And thus, here is my blog post from August 16, 2022, reporting on a Soho Forum debate on the energy future, between Steven Koonin and Andrew Dessler. Dessler, arguing for a future of wind and solar power, had as his main contention that those are cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives, and therefore they will inevitably sweep the fossil fuel infrastructure away. Although he is some kind of leader in the climate alarm movement, Dessler appeared to have no clue that there was any counter-information to his contentions about the costs of wind and solar power. In support of his position, Dessler used as his main metric the “Levelized Cost of Energy” (LCOE) as published by investment bank Lazard. The LCOE metric is ridiculously flawed, and should not fool anybody, but seems to have fooled not just Dessler but also the entire green energy movement (and for that matter the entire Democratic Party and the President of the United States).
And nothing about LCOE and fraudulent advocacy based on it is going away. Long after the Soho Forum debate last August, Lazard went right ahead and came out with a new and updated Report in April titled “2023 Levelized Cost of Energy+.”
You can see right there that the cost (measured by LCOE) of solar PV is $24-96/MWh, onshore wind is even less at $24-75/MWh, and the cheapest fossil fuel alternative is combined cycle natural gas at $39-101/MWh. So wind and solar are cheaper — QED! But, as I wrote in my August 16, 2022 post:
[A]n LCOE calculation completely omits the dominant costs of generating reliable electricity using mostly or entirely wind and solar generators. These dominant costs are the costs of energy storage and/or backup, the costs of overbuilding, and the costs of additional transmission.
Meanwhile over in Europe, I doubt that many people are abandoning the green movement based on complex spreadsheet calculations of the costs involved. Rather, most of them are starting to face up to reality because of some combination of skyrocketing electricity bills and plans to ban gas heat and internal combustion cars.
The BBC reports here on the results of yesterday’s regional elections in the German states of Bavaria and Hesse. The swings in voter preferences were not huge, but still enough to be meaningful on the climate issue. For example, in Bavaria the BBC reports that the long-dominant CSU got 36.7% of the vote, and a second conservative party, the Free Voters (Freie Währen) expanded to 15%, while the Greens “slipped slightly” to 15% and the SPD (party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz) got only a “catastrophic” 8%. The BBC has this to say about the issues in the Bavarian election:
In an unusually ferocious campaign in Bavaria, conservatives and right-wingers railed against Berlin's plans to phase out fossil fuel boilers and high levels of migration.
While this was not a one-issue referendum on green energy, still it is clear from the results that opposing green energy in at least some respects was definitely a positive rather than a negative among the electorate.
In Luxembourg, the swings were also mostly small, but included a gain for the conservatives matched with a dramatic loss for the Greens. Bloomberg reports on October 8 that the long-time ruling coalition of Democrats, Socialists and Greens got “toppled.” In a parliament of 60, the Conservatives upped their total to 21 seats, while the Greens went from 9 seats to just 4. The result is likely to be a governing coalition of the conservatives with other parties, but excluding the Greens, which could mean a significant shift in green energy policies.
Back here in the U.S., the Biden administration continues with its wrecking ball approach to destroying our energy economy. But as Europe is showing us, small changes voter preferences can change that quickly after the next election.
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Voice to climate: Can you hear me?
Judith Sloan
The [Australian] Prime Minister has flagged that, post the Voice referendum, his government will turn its full attention to the decarbonisation of the economy and the prospect of Australia becoming an renewable energy superpower.
You really have to wonder whether Albo is smoking something if he thinks that moving from the toxic and divisive issue of the Voice to the fantasy world of climate action is a good idea. But if you live in the world of the vibe, one vibe is as good as another.
By contrast, most of us are living in the real world, wondering how we can cover the mortgage and the bills, getting the kids to school on time and thinking about what’s for dinner. Prosaic stuff to be sure, but beautiful thoughts about identity politics and climate change are generally back of mind, if at all.
To be sure, surveys tell us that people are concerned about climate change, which is not altogether surprising given the unrelenting and misleading conflation of weather and climate change perpetrated by all the mainstream media outlets. Several hot days in Sydney – climate change. Limited flooding in parts of Victoria – climate change. Bushfire warnings for parts of the east coast – climate change.
The implicit message is that Australia alone – or should that be NSW or the city of Sydney – can affect the pace of climate change and therefore reduce the incidence of unwelcome weather events. Most school students – OK, some, OK a few – would realise that this is a complete non sequitur as only global action counts.
But what the surveys also reveal is that, notwithstanding people’s concerns about climate change – economists call this elicitation bias or wanting to sound worthy – when it comes to bearing any additional financial burden to act on climate change, there is a marked reluctance to pay any significant price at all. The recent 20-per-cent rise in electricity prices, for instance, is well above the rate of increase that people are happy to pay for the sake of doing something about the climate.
The real paradox is why Albo thinks it’s an attractive political idea to emphasise the energy transition and the exciting world that lies ahead. Let’s face it, it hasn’t been going well, what with delays in the commissioning of new renewable projects, the growing opposition to the construction of new transmission lines and, let’s not forget, the disastrous Snowy 2.0 project. If I were to run a book on when Snowy 2.0 will be fully up and running, I’m not sure I would have too many bets on this decade.
I could do a similar thing with offshore wind installations, as the economics of these projects overseas deteriorate to the point that most investment is currently stalled. Rising costs, worker and equipment shortages and higher interest rates are an uncongenial mix. The UK government ran a tender for new offshore wind projects recently and there was not a single bid because the strike price was set too low.
The rent-seekers in this space in the US have declared that a doubling of the prices they receive is now necessary to make offshore wind a viable investment. This is another counter to the ludicrous proposition that renewables are the cheapest way to generate electricity, something to which Albo still clings.
The one bright light in the energy transition has been the rapid growth in rooftop solar by households and some businesses. This is seen as one means to save on electricity bills in the context of very limited options. According to the Clean Energy Regulator, ‘Australian households and businesses continue to install rooftop solar at world leading rates. 1.6 gigawatts of capacity from almost 160,000 rooftop systems were added in the first half of 2023. Three gigawatts would bring the amount of rooftop solar capacity added to the grid close to the 2021 record of 3.2 GW’.
There are two reasons for mentioning this. The first is that households’ fondness for their rooftop solar panels often morphs into their support for renewable energy more generally – something recognised by state politicians, in particular. The continued subsidisation of rooftop solar installations, albeit at reduced levels, is partly explained by the ability to cadge additional votes.
Secondly, the unexpected rise in rooftop solar is playing havoc with the economics of large-scale solar installations. For several hours during the day, electricity prices can be deeply negative. Those large-scale solar installations are in effect competing with rooftop solar.
To be sure, most of the large-scale installations have been backed by power purchase agreements or similar (mainly from state governments) which guarantee the investors/operators certain prices. But the reality is that large-scale solar is looking like a particularly bad investment bet at the moment save a substantial step-up in the prices being offered. It is already clear that the expected roll-out of new projects has significantly slowed this year.
Again as the Clean Energy Regulator notes, ‘it was a quiet first half of the year for new large-scale renewable energy investment (including wind) commitments. We’ve downgraded out expectations and now expect 2023 investment may not reach three gigawatts’.
Even the deep-green Australian Energy Market Operator doesn’t expect the 82 per cent renewable energy target by 2030 to be met. No doubt, Albo will have to downplay these real world realities.
And he definitely won’t want to mention the fact that the Victorian government is now propping up not one, but two coal-fired power stations in the anticipation that its energy transition plans are in tatters. The only feasible alternative is to hand out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars – although precise figures are kept under wraps – so they don’t close down. The NSW government will start handing out big bucks to the owner of Eraring to keep that plant going.
Let’s not forget that the cost curve for these plants resembles a bathtub. Towards the end of their lifespans, the costs increase dramatically particularly when they are used to back up intermittent renewable energy, something for which they are not designed.
He might also want to avoid talking too much about the much-vaunted green hydrogen revolution, something for which other rent-seekers are keen to hoover up as much government money as possible. It’s becoming clear that, at best, hydrogen will play a niche role in the energy transition.
Using intermittent energy to power electrolysers to produce hydrogen is inherently inefficient and the problems of transport and bespoke infrastructure just add to the costs. The winners are likely to be close to the demand and blue hydrogen (made from gas) has much more going for it in terms of costs than green hydrogen.
The idea that Australia will become an energy superpower on the basis of green hydrogen is fanciful notwithstanding the ongoing enthusiasm of Twiggy. It’s a bit like the underground electricity cable from the Northern Territory to Singapore – ain’t going to happen.
Albo may need to move onto another vibe – it’s just not clear what it will be.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/voice-to-climate
***************************************13 October, 2023
Antarctica's melting ice shelves have unleashed 7.5 TRILLION tonnes of water into the oceans since 1997, study finds
Here we go again! La de da de da! Once more there is absolutely no mention of the subsurface vulcanism that is common at both poles. In Antarctica it is primarily Western Antactica where the volcanoes are. And if you had a volcano under your bottom you would melt too.
You don't need to read the confused journalism excerpted below. The graph is pretty clear that it is primarily West Antarctica where the ice loss has occurred. The report emphasizes ice loss from the Ronne, Getz and Ross ice-shelves. All are in Western Antarctica, with the biggest loss being at the Getz, which is the most Westerly of the three.
Sorry boys! The melting is due to random fluctuations in volcanic activity, not global warming
Analyzing over 100,000 satellite radar images, researchers from the University of Leeds discovered a steady erosion of the continent's ice sheets, with over 40 per shrinking between 1997 and 2021.
While some ice sheets did grow in size during this time, the data revealed that a third have now lost more than 30 per cent of their initial mass - unleashing vast quantities of freshwater in the process.
Worryingly, scientists say this vast release of fresh water could threaten to destabilise ocean currents and contribute to global sea level rise.
What's more, human-induced climate change means that ice melt will continue to happen faster in the future, the experts warn....
While the Western side is exposed to warm waters which erode the ice shelves from below, East Antarctica is protected by a band of colder water close to the shore.
Overall, 59 trillion tonnes of water have been added to the continent's ice shelves since 1975. However, this was offset by the 67 trillion tonnes that were lost.
The biggest losses took place at the Getz Ice Shelf, which lost 1.9 trillion tonnes of water.
For perspective, one trillion tones of ice would make a cube more than six miles (10 km) in every direction - more than half a mile taller than Mt Everest!
Of this loss, 95 per cent was caused by melting and five per cent by 'calving', where large chunks of ice break off into the ocean.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Antarctica, the Amery Ice Shelf gained 1.2 trillion tonnes of ice due to the colder waters surrounding it.
Dr Benjamin Davison, who led the study, says this evidence points to a distinct change in the Antarctic ice.
'We expected most ice shelves to go through cycles of rapid, but short-lived shrinking, then to regrow slowly,' Dr Davidson said.
'Instead, we see that almost half of them are shrinking with no sign of recovery.'
Dr Davidson and his colleagues believe that this change has been brought about by human-induced global warming.
If the increased rate of melting were due to natural factors such as a variation in climate patterns, there would have also been evidence of ice regrowth in the typically warmer west.
The Getz Ice Shelf, where the worst of the ice melt has occurred, shed 1.9 trillion tonnes of water into the southern ocean over 25 years
Recent research revealed that the ice surrounding Antarctica, known as the sea ice extent, was at a historic low in September measuring less than 6.5 million square miles (17 million sq km), according to the US's National Snow and Ice Data Center.
While this may seem vast it is, in fact, 580,000 square miles (1.5 million sq km) less than average for September - an area equivalent to five times the size of the British Isles.
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Critics Assail Biden’s ‘War on American Energy’ on National Energy Appreciation Day
Sen. Cynthia Lummis sponsored a resolution establishing the first-ever National Energy Appreciation Day, and the Wyoming Republican had much to say about American energy at a panel discussion marking the occasion Wednesday.
“As [the Biden] administration continues to put our domestic energy producers on the back burner with its war on American energy, it is essential that we pause to recognize and celebrate their invaluable contributions to our daily lives that we so often take for granted,” Lummis explained in a press statement.
National Energy Appreciation Day is slated for the first Wednesday in October, which is observed as National Energy Awareness Month in the U.S.
Mandy Gunasekara, director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum, had the idea for Wednesday’s panel discussion, dubbed “American Energy for Prosperity” and held at The Heritage Foundation in Washington. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“Let’s take some time to recognize the fact that we flipped the switch,” Gunasekara said. “The lights, generally speaking, come on.”
The country’s front-line energy workers are the backbone of American energy, she said, noting they power our economy, working “through the night to ensure that there are no disruptions.”
“It is appropriate that we celebrate our front-line energy workers, acknowledge their importance in our economy, and do this annually,” said Lummis, whose state is rich in energy supplies. “Everyone who’s involved in the energy business is keeping America strong. It is a national security issue. It is an American independence issue. It’s a freedom issue.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has been striving to eliminate the fossil-fuel industry in the United States in the name of mitigating climate change. But even “if we got rid of all the fossil fuels in the United States, this would only make a difference of two-tenths of one degree Celsius by the year 2100,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation.
“Over the past 15 years, the United States’ emissions of carbon have gone down by 1,000 million metric tons because of our use of clean natural gas,” she said.
Meanwhile, “China’s emissions have gone up by 5,000 million metric tons [over the past 15 years],” Furchtgott-Roth said, “because they are making the solar panels and the wind turbines with coal-fired power plants.” And the Biden administration’s energy policies give more economic power to China.
Biden’s first executive order revoked the presidential permit granted to the Keystone XL pipeline, halting construction of the natural gas infrastructure. The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to supply U.S. natural gas to markets across North America.
Biden’s determination to shut down American energy production has had ripple effects on the geopolitical stage. “We have China helping support Russia in their war against Ukraine,” Lummis said. “We are buying Chinese technology for wind and solar infrastructure. We buy their batteries, their wind technology, their solar technology. Then they take our money and join with Russia to fight our friends [in Ukraine].”
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Global fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions to rise through 2050, EIA projects
"Energy trade of fossil fuels will continue to evolve as emerging economies demand more energy and the world continues to adapt to current geopolitical events."
In our International Energy Outlook 2023 (IEO2023), we project that global energy-related CO2 emissions will increase by 2050 in a number of IEO2023 cases as global population growth and higher living standards push growth in energy consumption beyond advances in energy efficiency.
In all IEO2023 cases, we expect global primary energy consumption to increase through 2050. Our expectations of global population growth, increased regional manufacturing, and higher living standards indicate that global energy consumption will grow faster than advances in energy efficiency. Non-fossil fuel-based resources, including nuclear and renewables, produce more energy through 2050, but in most of the IEO2023 cases we examined, that growth is not sufficient to reduce global energy-related CO2 emissions under current laws and regulations.
In our IEO2023, we explore long-term world energy trends and present an outlook for energy markets through 2050. We use different scenarios, called cases, to understand how varying assumptions about technological advancement and economic growth affect energy trends. The IEO2023 Reference case—which serves as a baseline, or benchmark—and six side cases consider only the laws and regulations adopted through March 2023. The six side cases in IEO2023 explore differing assumptions of economic growth, crude oil prices, and technology costs.
U.S. projections in IEO2023 are the published projections in the Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023), which assumed that U.S. laws and regulations as of November 2022 remain unchanged.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=60642&mc_cid=b8e6cdffc5&mc_eid=cc88839e92
***********************************************Renewables funds see record outflows as rising rates, costs hit shares
Investors ditched renewable energy funds at the fastest rate on record in the three months to end-September as cleaner energy shares took a beating from higher interest rates and soaring material costs, which are squeezing profit margins.
Renewable energy funds globally suffered a net outflow of US$1.4-billion in the July-September quarter, the biggest ever quarterly outflow, according to LSEG Lipper data.
However, the outflows only partially reversed the trend for the first half of 2023 when investors added a net US$3.36-billion, the data showed.
The sector’s total assets under management now stand at US$65.4-billion, a 23-per-cent decline from end-June, according to the data.
Investors have been exiting traditional energy funds, too, but the rate has slowed – net outflows reached US$438-million in the last quarter compared with US$3.32-billion in the previous three months.
Renewable energy firms with high growth potential are vulnerable to rising interest rates as they eat into the value of future cash flows.
Companies including Denmark’s Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, and U.S. panel maker First Solar have seen sharp share price falls in recent months.
“Renewable energy funds have faced weakened sentiment due to company performances in recent quarters and a shift in investor attention this year toward other themes like AI and U.S. Infrastructure,” said Global X research analyst Madeline Ruid.
Long-permitting timelines, project delays, high rates and elevated material costs – particularly for wind and solar power – have weighed on firms, Ms. Ruid said.
The iShares Global Clean Energy Exchange Traded Fund lost a net US$278.4-million in the last quarter, the data showed. Investors pulled a net US$218.3-million and US$199.1-million from the Hallbar Energi and iShares Global Clean Energy UCITS ETF USD (Dist), respectively.
Demand for exposure to renewable energy had been a major driver of cash flowing into climate-related funds in recent years.
However, “climate transition” funds – which invest in companies that want to decarbonize faster – and “climate solutions” funds are the biggest sectors “as investors look for investment opportunities beyond the renewable energy sector," data provider Morningstar said in a recent report.
The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, comprised of major solar and wind power companies and other renewables-related businesses, has lost 30 per cent in 2023, with nearly all of the decline since July.
By contrast, the oil and gas-heavy S&P 500 Energy Index is up slightly this year.
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12 October, 2023
Another obsessional attack on a common herbicide
The article below occurs under the heading: "Two herbicides detected in up to 98% of children may cause learning and social difficulties, study warns".
The relevant journal article is: "Urinary Glyphosate, 2,4-D and DEET Biomarkers in Relation to Neurobehavioral Performance in Ecuadorian Adolescents in the ESPINA Cohort"
If a weed-killer could have horns and a tail it would be Roundup (glyphosate). It's a huge help to farmers but to Greenies it seems to be the devil incarnate. For years now, they have been obsessed with proving it's harmful to people. Anything so popular has to be bad, seems to be the thinking.
But all their efforts have revealed little. Mostly no harm is found and if it is obscure statistical gyrations have to be enlisted to make any sort of point. The latest study is a case in point.
It is difficult to know where to start unravelling the nonsense below so I will make just a few salient points. For a start it was a study of farm children in Ecuador. Ecuador? Would results from Ecuador be the same as resuts from the USA? Who knows? The possibilities for differences would seem to be many.
Secondly, they gave the kids a whole range of tests to examine what might be wrong with them. Only one, Affect Recognition, was significantly associated with glyphosate presence, and only weakly at that. The result drops to non-ignificance if an experiment-wise error rate approach had been adopted -- which is what should have happened when many candidate influences had been examined at the same time. So that's very thin gruel for the glyphosayte haters.
But wait! There's more, as the steak knife salesman used to say. Let me revert to my first point above: That the study was done in Ecuador. The validity of tests used cross-culturally is often low to non-existent so cannot be assumed. And no cross-cultural validation for the tests used seems to have been done for this study. One one occasion when I attempted a cross cultural validity test for one of my scales, the validity turned out to be zero! See https://jonjayray.tripod.com/collapse.html
But to enlist the steak-knife salesman once more, even that is not the end of it. In the test manual, the reliabilities given for Affect Recognition in the age groups concerned were in the .50 range. Which is below what is normally accepted as adequaate in a research instument
In short, these results were nothing more that a parade of meaningless numbers. If anything, they confirm that gyphosate cannot be shown as harmful
The two most widely used herbicides in the world may cause learning problems and poor memory and social skills in children, a study has warned.
Using urine samples and test performance scores from adolescents, researchers found that traces of glyphosate, the most heavily applied herbicide in the US, and common weed killer 24D, were linked to worse brain function.
Researchers from the University of California San Diego found that glyphosate was present in 98 percent of the 520 samples.
People may be exposed to the chemicals by eating contaminated food or drinking water, and it is thought the substances affect the pathways in the brain linked to memory and learning.
Other research has found that glyphosate is in up to 90 percent of wheat-based products such as pizza, crackers and pasta.
Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial rise in chronic diseases and mental health disorders in young adults worldwide.
'Exposure to neurotoxic contaminants in the environment could play a part of this increase,' said senior study author Dr Jose Ricardo Suarez, associate professor at UC San Diego.
The researchers measured the concentrations of two popular herbicides in urine samples: glyphosate and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, better known as 2,4D.
The urine samples were collected in 2016 from 519 children aged between 11 and 17 living in the agricultural county of Pedro Moncayo, Ecuador.
Herbicides are the most commonly used class of pesticides worldwide, often used to kill weeds.
Elevated PFAS levels linked to higher cancer, low birth weight rates
Cities with the highest levels of toxic 'forever chemicals' in tap water also have above-average rates of disease and pregnancy complications, a DailyMail.com analysis suggests.
Glyphosate, used in crops such as corn and soy, is a nonselective herbicide, meaning it kills all vegetation in an area rather than just weeds.
It was detected in 98 percent of participant samples.
2,4D, a herbicide used to kill leafy weeds, was detected in 66 percent of the urine samples.
The researchers also examined the adolescents' performance in five areas: attention and inhibitory control (how well you can stop impulses), memory and learning, language, spatial awareness, and social perception.
They did this by looking through the test scores from 2016 on things like how quickly the children could understand a set of instructions, how well they could remember faces and how quickly they could solve shape puzzles.
Higher amounts of 2,4D in urine were linked to worse scores in the tests for attention and inhibitory control, memory and learning, and language.
Glyphosate concentration in urine was only connected to lower scores in social perception.
The most common glyphosate product is Roundup weed killer, made by Monsanto.
There have been significant increases in glyphosate and 2,4D use following the introduction of genetically modified, glyphosate-resistant "Roundup-ready" crops in 1996 and 2,4D-resistant crops in 2014, the study authors said.
Bayer, the owner of the chemical manufacturing company, has long maintained that exposure to the weed killer has no negative impacts on human health.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
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Antrctica not blossoming after all
A Sept. 21 Instagram post shows flowering plants growing on land with icebergs floating on water in the background.
"Flowers are now staring (sic) to bloom in Antarctica and experts say this is not good news," reads text around the image. "This would be the first evidence of accelerated ecosystem response in Antarctica that is directly associated as a consequence of global warming, according to Nicoletta Cannone, a professor of ecology at the University of Insubria."
While a 2022 study did find a global warming-related expansion in the range of two Antarctic flowering plants, the photo does not show those plant species. The photo is labeled as being captured in Greenland on a stock photo website.
The photo in the social media post appears on the stock photo website Alamy, where it is labeled, "Iceberg floating in the water off the coast of Greenland. Flowers on the shore. Nature and landscapes of Greenland."
A spokesperson for the British Antarctic Survey told USA TODAY the photo "most definitely does not show Antarctic plants."
"The purple flower looks very much like Saxifraga oppositifolia ? Purple saxifrage ? which is frequent in the Arctic," the spokesperson said.
Skip Walker, director of the Alaska Geobotany Center, also told USA TODAY the plants in the photo are likely from the Arctic. "I can't identify the plants with certainty, but they all look like Arctic plants," he said in an email.
Matt Davey, an ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, told USA TODAY there are only two species of flowering plants in Antarctica: Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica.
"The flowers in (the) photo are definitely not the two Antarctic flowering plants," he said in an email.
The text associated with the image seems to loosely quote a 2022 paper co-authored by Nicoletta Cannone, an ecology professor at the University of Insubria in Italy.
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Thanks, New York Times, For Finally Admitting Honey Bees Are Doing Great
Greenies have been moaning for years about declining bee populations
A recent New York Times (NYT) article titled “The Beekeepers Who Don’t Want You to Buy More Bees,” explains that contrary to popular media narratives, honey bee populations are healthy and numerous. This is true. Colony collapse disorder, the main threat to bees, is largely a commercial bee problem and not necessarily a wild honey bee problem.
In the article, professional bee-keeper Gorazd Trusnovec explains to NYT writer David Segal that the well-intentioned growing popularity of beekeeping is actually misguided, because there are now actually too many honey bees in areas all around the world.
“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”
Segal goes on to describe colony collapse disorder, which is a phenomena seen in commercial beekeeping in which a large portion of a bee hive or colony dies or is wiped out. Segal writes that “experts tend to blame pesticides, an invasive parasite, a reduction in forageable habitat and climate change,” and this tracks with what Climate Realism has seen and combatted previously.
However, climate change is not among the best explanations for the problem, as explained in “Tell the Truth, UPI News, Parasites and Pesticides, NOT Climate Change, Are Killing Honey Bee Colonies,” or in the June Climate Fact Check.
Extreme weather like heat waves and precipitation aren’t occurring more frequently as measured by any metric, so climate change can’t be implicated in increasing numbers of commercial bee hives being damaged across large geographic regions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists the factors it believes are the most likely causes of the decline in bees and other pollinators:
The alarm around colony collapse disorder (CCD) caused a huge spike in interest in beekeeping in order to “save the bees,” however as a another professional conservationist interviewed by Segal explained, CCD is “an agriculture story, not a conservation story[.]” In fact, there are “more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history.” Segal writes that the number of hives in the world has risen 26 percent in just the last 10 years.
The New York Times itself has contributed to spreading fallacious claims about climate change and CCD, like in “Without Bees, We Are in Trouble,” and for bumblebees, “Climate Change: It’s a Buzzkill for Bumblebees, Study Finds,” in the past, so the present story is refreshing for its accuracy.
Beekeeping has become so popular in places like Slovenia, for example, that the NYT reports honey yields are dropping locally despite a huge increase in hives because there is not enough plant nectar for all the bees.
Honey bees are also not the only pollinators around, and an overabundance of them could negatively impact the populations of other bee species, like bumblebees, as well as non-bee pollinators. This is particularly true in places like North America, where honey bees are an introduced species brought over by European settlers as livestock for honey production. They are not native here, and are considered by conservationists to be invasive competitors to native species.
Honey bees are doing more than fine, regardless of climate change. According to this NYT investigation, they are almost doing too well, due to an increase in the number of beekeepers. Commercial beehives experiencing CCD are not indicative of the health of the entire species, and certainly climate change is not to blame for their problems. Thanks, NYT, for looking beyond the narrative that “climate change causes everything,” to get to the true root cause of the struggles of honey bees and other pollinators, at least in this one story.
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'I was kidnapped by my runaway electric car'
A driver has told how he was "kidnapped" by his runaway electric car and forced to dodge red lights and roundabouts.
Brian Morrison, 53, from Glasgow, said he was heading home from work on Sunday night when he said his brand new MG ZS EV became stuck at 30mph.
Police were forced to stop the runaway car by allowing it to slowly crash into their police van.
MG Motor UK said it was trying to resolve the matter.
A spokesman said: "MG Motor UK has been urgently trying to make contact with Mr Morrison so that his vehicle can be fully inspected by our engineering team.
"We take this matter very seriously and now that contact has been made, we are making every effort to resolve matters quickly and comprehensively for him."
Police Scotland confirmed it had responded to "a driver unable to stop his electric car".
Mr Morrison said his car suffered a ''catastrophic malfunction'' and became stuck at 30mph on the A803 heading towards Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow.
He said he was lucky that the incident had taken place after 22:00 on a Sunday night when the roads were quiet.
"I realised something was wrong when I was coming up to a roundabout and went to slow down but it didn't do it," he said.
"Then I heard a loud grinding noise that sounded like brake pads, but because it was such a new car I knew it couldn't be a problem with them.
"I managed to get around the roundabout going at about 30mph and then had a long road ahead of me, so I assumed it would stop without me accelerating - but it didn't."
Mr Morrison has mobility issues, so he was unable to escape the car travelling at 30mph by jumping out.
He added: "It might not sound like it is very fast, but when you have no control over the speed and you're completely stuck inside, it's terrifying."
Mr Morrison initially called his wife in a panic to ask her to warn vehicles ahead of him that he could not stop his car.
He called 999 when he grew concerned about crashing into pedestrians and navigating more roundabouts and traffic lights.
"The car was just running away on its own, there was nothing I could do," he said.
"When I dialled 999, they sent police to help and put some engineers on the line to try and solve the problem, and they were asking if it was a self-driving car.
"It was the first time that the call handlers had experienced the issue, and they had no idea what to do."
Soon after he made the call, three police vehicles arrived and drove in front and behind the car.
He said: "I was 100% concentrating on my steering, so when a police van pulled up besides me and asked if I was Brian and if I was okay, I just yelled 'no I'm not, I can't stop'."
Police asked Mr Morrison to throw his electronic key through their van window before driving off, and then tried forcibly shutting off the engine - but nothing could stop the car.
He was also asked to hold the power button for a couple of seconds which also failed to stop it and the entire dashboard lit up with faults.
Officers decided to get him to crash into the back of their van before he got into a more built-up area.
Mr Morrison said: "Eventually I came up to a roundabout which slowed the car down to about 15mph and the police van was waiting for me on the other side.
"I went into the back of the van while it was moving, before they put on the brakes to stop me.
''After that, a police officer jumped into my car and did something which seemed to keep the car still."
The police could not move their car as the electric vehicle would keep moving, so they had to wait for the RAC to arrive.
"I still have no idea what happened," he said. "But when the RAC got to me about three hours later, he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check and there was pages of faults.
"He said he had never seen anything like it and decided he was not willing to turn the engine on to see what was wrong."
Mr Morrison's insurance said they were investigating the incident, which has left him unsure if he would drive another electric vehicle again.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-67005620
***************************************11 October, 2023
Wrong, CNBC and U.S. Treasury Department, Climate Change Is Unlikely to Impose New Costs on Households
An article published by CNBC cites a recent report by the U.S. Treasury Department to claim that climate change is likely to impose “substantial financial costs” on U.S. households in the coming years and decades. This is misinformation. The costs estimates are based on computer models and emission scenarios that are known to be flawed and data on extreme weather trends do not show they are worsening. As a result, there is no evidence climate change has at the present or will in the future resulting in higher household costs.
Annie Nova’s CNBC article, “Climate change could impose ‘substantial financial costs’ on U.S. household finances, Treasury warns,” reports on a new report from the U.S. Treasury Department which claims that climate change will likely result in rising prices, and supply chain and job disruptions due to “climate disasters” resulting from a warming planet. Nova writes:
Climate change is expected to impose “substantial financial costs” on U.S. households in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Between 2018 and 2022, weather and climate disasters cost more than $617 billion, it found — a record. Within the last year, 13% of Americans reported economic hardship due to severe weather events and disasters.
“Severe flooding, wildfires and extreme heat are imposing significant financial burdens on households across the country,” Graham Steele, assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department, said in a statement.
The first thing to note about the Treasury Department’s report is that, although the data set it used did adjust for inflation, it did not adjust for Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As Climate Realism has discussed previously, here and here, for example, data shows that when GDP growth is accounted for, losses to extreme weather events have declined during the recent period of modest warming.
In addition, the data set it used was truncated, only extending back to 1980. This is important because data shows that hurricanes, wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts, for example, were more numerous, powerful, and impacted larger areas of land in the middle and early part of the 20th century than at present. Yet Treasury’s report fails to compare the economic impact on households of events occurring in these earlier time periods, when weather was more severe, with the present time period. Of course, there were fewer people and less development then, but that would likely make the gap between the GDP adjusted economic impacts even larger than they are now.
In addition, as discussed at Climate at a Glance: Hurricane’s, from 2005 through 2017, the year before the cost data cited by the Treasury Department and CNBC spiked, the United States went through the longest period in history without a major hurricane—a hurricane measuring Category 3 or higher—making landfall. The United States also experienced the fewest number of hurricane strikes in any eight year period in recorded history (2009 through 2017). So the Treasury Department staked its claims of huge increases in losses on a comparison between a period of relatively high hurricane activity with the period of the lowest hurricane activity in history. As a result, it is no wonder Treasury’s cost data seems to have risen dramatically. With that cheery picking of time periods for comparison, how could it not do so?
Then there is the use of computer models to project future rising consumer costs and wage losses. As Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly, here, here, and here for, for example, computer models grossly overstate the amount of warming experienced and the weather impacts of that warming, so damage cost estimate based on such models can’t be relied upon—it’s garbage in, garbage out. In addition, impact projections rely on extremely unlikely or even impossible emission scenarios.
What the data clearly shows as discussed in dozens of previous Climate Realism posts, none of the trends for extreme weather events, droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, or wildfires, are rising. Indeed, most have declined over the period of recent modest warming, so climate change can’t be causing the recent increase in disaster related impacts.
The recent rise in costs is due to a few years of bad weather—by the way, its not unusual historically for years of bad weather to run in short streaks due to the effect that large scale cycles like El Nino and La Nina events have on atmospheric trends—and increasing numbers of people moving to places historically prone to natural disasters and building more, and more expensive, properties there. As explored in Climate Realism previously, here, for instance, rising nominal costs from hurricane damage, and the damage from other natural disasters, are due to what Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D., calls the “expanding bulls-eye effect.”
The Biden administration is deeply committed to combatting climate change, which Biden has asserted, without real evidence by the way, “is a real and present danger.” The Treasury Department is a federal agency in the Biden administration. So it is hardly surprising the Treasury Department would issues an alarming climate report that is short on facts, but long on scary scenarios and supposition. By contrast, the Federal Reserve, an agency independent of the administration has issued repeated reports and statements making it clear that climate change is not increasing banks costs nor does it threaten their continued ability to operate.
Sadly, in its reporting, CNBC ignored the facts, instead choosing to unquestioningly parrot the U.S. Treasury Department’s flawed claims. So much for investigative, independent, journalism.
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Germany brings back mothballed coal plants to keep the lights on
A country on the forefront of the green transition will put several mothballed coal-fired power plants back online ahead of the upcoming winter, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.
Germany, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to enact the green energy transition, will reactivate several coal-fired units in order to meet peak demand and keep the lights on this winter, Bloomberg reported. The country has experienced elevated and inconsistent energy prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, impacting both German customers and companies.
The German government opted to go ahead with its plans to phase out its last nuclear reactors in April, and the war in Ukraine has resulted in diminished flow of relatively inexpensive natural gas from Russia, according to Bloomberg. German officials have cited safety concerns and a desire to focus on developing green energy as their rationale for shuttering the remaining reactors.
The country needed to rely on coal last winter once the flow of Russian gas had slowed, and supply is likely to be even tighter this winter now that the nuclear reactors are out of the picture, Bloomberg reported.
The energy crisis and inconsistencies in the power market have contributed to the decisions of many companies to scale down their operations in Germany and look for more stable, affordable business environments in North America and Asia, according to Politico.
The decision for this winter affects two coal blocks from RWE’s Niederaußem plant — blocks E and F — as well as the Neurath plant’s block C. In the east of the country, LEAG is expected to bring blocks E and F of its Jaenschwalde lignite plant back online. The facilities were operational last winter, put on stand-by in July, and can now be fully reactivated until March 2024 the latest.
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Climate scientists admit they have a 90% chance of being wrong about Arctic sea ice
Arctic sea ice is lowest during the month of September, and its average extent during this month is a useful metric for measuring Arctic sea ice decline during the current period of global warming. During the 1980s and 1990s, September Arctic sea-ice extent (SIE) showed a moderate decline (Figure 1). After the 1997 climate shift, which involved a rather abrupt global atmospheric reorganization, the Arctic entered a period of rapid change that I call the Arctic Shift.
During this period, Arctic SIE declined more rapidly. Scientists noticed this change in trend about a decade later and became increasingly concerned about the prospect of an ice-free Arctic.[2]
The concern about the rapid decline of Arctic SIE in the early years of this century was due to the possibility of a runaway ice-albedo feedback. Loss of sea ice would reduce albedo, and additional solar energy would cause further sea ice loss. Models that reproduced the rapid loss predicted a tipping point that would lead to an ice-free Arctic by 2040, sparking public fears. [3]
However, recent work suggests that up to 60% of the decline in September SIE since 1979 may be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. [4] In addition, the persistence of Arctic summer cloud cover significantly reduces the ice-albedo feedback.[5] The realization that internal variability is a more important factor than expected explains why the rate of decline of Arctic summer SIE has slowed so much since 2007, contrary to all expectations.
The Arctic Shift, a period of adjustment of Arctic climate variables to the new atmospheric regime induced by the 1997 climate shift, ended for Arctic SIE in 2007. Since then, the September Arctic SIE shows no significant trend. However, climate researchers are still unaware of the effects of climate shifts and regimes on climate change, and they were surprised by the recovery of sea ice in 2013 when it became clear that there had been no net loss since 2007. Using models, they calculated a 34% chance of a 7-year pause (Figure 2).[6]
However, the hiatus has now extended to 17 years and the probability has dropped to 10%. In other words, there is a 90% chance that climate scientists’ predictions about Arctic sea ice were wrong. If the hiatus continues until 2027, it will become statistically significant (p<0.05, or less than 5%) and no longer explainable by chance.
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Right, Fox News, Renewable Energy Subsidies Dominate Federal Energy Handouts
Fox News posted an article that analyzes a recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) report which shows that renewable energy subsidies dominate federal energy handouts. This is contrary to claims commonly made by activists and mainstream media sources that green energy is cheaper than traditional sources, and that fossil fuels receive massive federal subsidies.
The Fox News article, “Biden admin quietly released study showing green energy receives far more subsidies than fossil fuels,” performs a basic review of the 59-page report from the Department of Energy’s EIA, and concludes that fossil fuels and nuclear energy receive a pittance of federal backing compared to green energy and energy efficiency programs.
Breaking down the Fox analysis:
From 2016 to 2022, the federal government awarded $183.3 billion in direct and indirect subsidies. More than half was spent in the last three years.
Although renewables like wind and solar account for only 21% of domestic electricity production, they received the largest share of subsidies at $83.8 billion, approximately 46 percent of all subsidies.
Fox reports the next largest category are “[e]nergy end use subsidies, like energy efficiency- and conservation-related tax provisions,” receiving $64.8 billion, meaning consumers, homeowners, and commercial and retail businesses get approximately 35 percent of the subsidies, in the form of write downs on their tax bills.
Fossil fuel sources, which make up more than 60% of electricity production and most transportation energy, got only $24.5 billion, approximately 13 percent of the subsidies, all most all in the form of tax credits for routine business expenses, the kind of credits every other business and industry in America receives.
Nuclear power, alone producing 18% of our electricity, only got $2.9 billion.
Fox writer Thomas Catenacci also discussed what these values mean in terms of how much taxpayer money is being spent per unit of energy produced by renewables versus traditional energy sources, and predictably found that “green” sources are far more costly.
Catenacci writes:
For example, natural gas power generated 44.9 quadrillion British thermal units in 2022, 45% of total energy generated economywide, but received $2.3 billion in taxpayer subsidies that year. That means for every million British thermal units (MMBtu) produced by natural gas, the industry received about $0.05.
By comparison, in 2022, the solar industry generated about 0.6 quadrillion British thermal units, less than 1% of total energy produced economywide in the U.S., but received $7.5 billion in subsidies. That means the solar power industry received $11.9 per MMBtu generated last year.
To those who follow energy issues closely, this should be no surprise.
While the Biden administration and likeminded mainstream media outlets and activists champion ideas like eliminating tax advantages for traditional sources, especially fossil fuels, the reality has always been that these sources already receive very little government help compared to wind and solar, in particular. The reality also is that these supposed “tax advantages” are tax credits common to every industry and business for capital expenditures, equipment, employee benefits, etc. They are not unique, “give aways,” to the fossil fuel industry.
It should be noted that the EIA report emphasizes the fact that its scope is “limited to direct federal financial interventions and subsidies,” This is notable, because individual state renewable portfolio standards and interstate programs like the northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative also add to these subsidies, in part by mandating the increased use of “green” energy. One study found that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cost electricity ratepayers $3.8 billion extra between 2008 to 2020, and more than half of those funds went to energy efficiency programs. In addition, it does not include tax abatements and support given directly to green energy developments by state and local governments.
Solar receives by far the largest share of the federal subsidies in the form of tax expenditures, according to the EIA report and the chart they generated. (See figure below)
Solar alone receives more subsidies in the form of tax expenditures than all energy specific subsidies and support for any given traditional energy source. The EIA report explains this by saying that the industry has grown rapidly, and because the investment tax credit is claimed in full the year an asset enters commercial operation.
Solar power is proving itself to be much less reliable than proponents claim, as discussed in a Climate Realism post, “Two New Reports Detail the Unreliability of Solar Power.” One report found that solar assets were degrading at roughly double the rate the industry claims. The same is true for other renewables, even in states that supply large amounts of support for their development.
Despite the subsidies, states with renewable portfolio standards have seen increases in retail electricity prices.
As amusing as it is that renewables receive so much more “subsidies” in the form of tax expenditures, tax breaks are probably not what most Americans think of when they imagine companies receiving subsidies. That simply means that money is not taken away from the companies by government. But the EIA report also discusses direct expenditures – or money from taxpayers given to companies directly in the form of grants and programs. Examining this data shows that renewables receive the bulk of this funding as well. (See figure below)
Direct expenditures make up only 10 percent of all the subsidies and support natural gas and petroleum liquids receive, and come out negative for coal due to “de-obligation of funds” related to carbon capture and storage and the Clean Coal Power Initiative (two green projects).
The EIA report says the two billion-dollar years for renewables’ direct expenditures came primarily from two sources; Congress created direct-payment programs at the Treasury that renewables companies could opt for instead of tax credits from the Production Tax Credit for renewable electricity generation, as well as the Clean Renewable Energy Bonds and Qualified Energy Conservation Bond programs.
It is also important to note that the direct expenditures for “natural gas and petroleum liquids” does not merely include funding for oilfield operations. The vast majority of the direct expenditures go to U.S. Department of Transportation related projects, like pipeline safety programs, mandated by the government, and U.S. EPA programs like the clean diesel emissions reduction program, and state clean diesel grant program. Because those programs have little to do with the kind of “big oil payouts” the media claims exist, we did not include them in our numbers. What little direct upstream payments do exist are dominated by the Department of the Interior’s “Oil and Gas Royalty Management State and Tribal Coordination” – which covers the federal disbursements given to tribes every year for energy production on their land.
The EIA also separately breaks down where Research and Development (R&D) grants go. Renewables have received a total of $2.364 billion in R&D since 2016, coal got $2.383 billion (the vast majority going towards carbon capture and storage and other “net zero” projects), gas and petroleum liquids saw just $739 million, and nuclear got $1.684 billion.
In fact, among the direct payments, whether by direct expenditure or R&D grants, most money for any given energy source is going towards some form of “green” or net-zero application of the energy source.
The jury is still out on whether or not the mainstream media and Biden administration will stop falsely claiming that fossil fuels receive “significant tax preferences and subsidies,” as stated in the tax plan released in 2021. The EIA report was released in August, and since then, there has not been a peep from the administration.
Fox News did a great job publicizing the facts contained in this EIA report, about the relative amounts of subsidies going to different energy sources compared relative to the amount of power they provide to the American economy and people. It’s a shame other mainstream media outlets ignored the EIA’s findings. Had they discussed it, average Americans would have been more energy literate and able to make better informed choices at the ballot box. The media often claims that part of its job is to produce a well-informed citizenry, not one making personal and political decisions based on misinformation. On energy, it is failing grossly in that job.
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Soil carbon and its magic credits another offset industry fantasy
Australia’s carbon credit system has a new and rapidly growing source of flawed Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs). The “soil carbon” industry is small in scale, but it features the same problems as the increasingly discredited human-induced regeneration (HIR) industry which has produced tens of millions of carbon credits for carbon sequestration that there’s no evidence has taken place.
Soil carbon refers to increasing the storage of carbon in the soil, usually via increasing crop or pasture yields, and keeping the amount of carbon released from soil via decomposition to a minimum. Almost 480 soil carbon projects have been accredited under the government’s ACCU scheme, nearly two-thirds of which have commenced in the past two years, so the industry is in relative infancy, with only a few hundred thousand ACCUs issued.
But from later this decade, it will begin producing millions of ACCUs to be used as offset by heavy CO2 polluters continuing business-as-usual emissions.
A who’s who of Australian primary industries scientists recently outlined four critical failings of the current soil carbon methodology used by the Clean Energy Regulator.
Like HIR projects, changes in soil carbon levels are more likely to reflect external factors such as rainfall or drought than human interventions, which are the basis of crediting ACCUs. And when soil carbon levels fall due to drought or fire, for example, as with HIR projects, there is no requirement to hand back the generated ACCUs — unlike the emissions the ACCUs “offset”, which will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. The only recognition of soil carbon variability is a temporary 25% buffer that initially — but not permanently — reduces the number of ACCUs issued.
But in some ways, soil carbon is even riskier as a form of sequestration than HIR.
Independent measurement of soil carbon levels is far harder than assessing HIR, with project proponents able to pick the best samples from within projects to maximise results without detection, compared with satellite imagery that can identify tree regeneration for HIR projects. And assessment of soil carbon levels isn’t merely dependent on place but on time — projects commenced during drought will naturally record a significant increase in soil carbon levels after the end of drought and subsequent increases in rainfall.
As a long roster of scientists pointed out recently, some soil carbon projects have recorded increases in soil carbon far beyond those suggested as credible in scientific literature, including at unlikely soil depths. As the scientists note, the key problem is transparency, or its lack — just as with HIR.
“Scientists should be granted access to project data. Data could be used to improve models in order to distinguish between climate and management effects. This would ensure the method is fit for purpose,” they conclude.
As with HIR, however, there is minimal access to project data (the “voluntary” additional data provided by HIR proponents in response to criticism of those projects is nearly worthless) and efforts to provide rigorous independent verification meet with hostility from the Clean Energy Regulator and the industry.
The dismissal of strong evidence of the lack of integrity of HIR projects, and the lack of interest in identified and significant flaws in the soil carbon methodology suggests that the goal of the Clean Energy Regulator — acting under direction from successive governments — is less about the quality of ACCUs than the quantity, that the priority is producing a high volume of credits with a pretence of rigour that will be available to heavy emitters to continue polluting.
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10 October, 2023
Terrifying heat maps reveal the countries that will become too HOT to live in if global temperatures increase by just 1.5°C
What arrant nonsense! Amid the large daily temperature variations common in many parts of the world, an increase of 1.5 degrees would hardly be noticed.
I grew up in tropical Australia (FNQ) where a 38 degree Celsius (100F) daytime temperature was not uncommon. And it was usually humid too. We coped perfectly well. And we mostly had fair skin, blue eyes and spoke English. But we drank a lot of cold beer.
But I will concede that a degree of acclimatization may be needed to live comfortably in FNQ. Two generations of my family before me had CHOSEN to live in that area
The mistake made by the authors below may be thinking that residents of the Northern USA are typical of the human race
These frightening heat maps reveal the countries that could soon become too hot to live in if global temperatures increase by as little as 1.5°C (2.7°F).
Some 2.2 billion people in Pakistan and India's Indus River Valley, 1 billion in eastern China and 800 million in sub-Saharan Africa would be among those facing heat that is beyond human tolerance, researchers say.
That could extend to eastern and central parts of the US if temperatures on Earth were to rise by 3°C (5.4°F) above pre-industrial levels.
Residents in Florida, New York, Houston and Chicago would all have to endure dangerous and stifling levels of humidity, while extreme heat could wreak havoc among those living in parts of South America and Australia, according to the new study by Penn State University.
Humans can only endure so much heat before putting themselves at risk of a heart attack or heat stroke.
Record-breaking heatwaves across the US, Europe and China this summer once again threw the spotlight on just how much heat is too much for people.
Last year, researchers from Penn State revealed how the upper temperature limit for human safety was much lower than first thought.
Previously it had been thought that a wet-bulb temperature of 95°F (35°C) – equal to a temperature of 95°F at 100 per cent humidity, or 115°F at 50 per cent humidity – was the upper limit.
At this point the human body would no longer be able to cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to ensure a stable body core temperature.
However, the latest research suggests the upper limit is actually 87°F (31°C) at 100 per cent humidity or 100°F (38°C) at 60 per cent humidity.
The key point to note is that it is not just about what the thermometer says. Instead, it is the combination of heat and humidity - known as the 'wet-bulb temperature'.
This is a direct indicator of how well sweating is cooling the body and is measured by attaching a wet cloth to the bulb of a thermometer.
In human history, temperatures and humidity that exceed human limits have been recorded only a handful of times — and only for a few hours.
In parts of India, Pakistan, eastern China and sub-Saharan Africa, residents would have to endure high-humidity heatwaves if global warming is not curbed.
These can be particularly dangerous because it means the air cannot absorb excess moisture, which in turn limits the amount of sweat that evaporates from the human body.
What is particularly worrying, the researchers said, is that many of the areas that would be worst affected are in lower-to-middle income nations who likely wouldn't have access to air conditioning.
In the worst-case scenario of global temperatures rising by 4°C (7.2°F), the port city of Al Hudaydah in Yemen – which is home to more than 700,000 people on the Red Sea – would be almost uninhabitable.
That is because residents would have to endure temperatures exceeding the limits of human tolerance on 300 days of the year.
'The worst heat stress will occur in regions that are not wealthy and that are expected to experience rapid population growth in the coming decades,' said co-author Matthew Huber, of Purdue University.
'But this research shows that humid heat is going to be a much bigger threat than dry heat.
The new study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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That pesky ozone hole refuses to shrink
The Greenies thought they knew how to close it but their methods have not worked. The hole has never co-operated. It just fluctuates in its own sweet way regardless
A hole in the ozone layer three times larger than Brazil has opened up over Antarctica.
Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite shows that the ozone hole is one of the largest on record, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and measured 26mn square kilometres on September 16, 2023 – roughly three times the size of Brazil.
Satellite data revealed that this year's ozone hole expanded to about twice the size of Antarctica. The eruption of Tonga's underwater volcano in early 2022 is a possible cause for the unusual size of the ozone hole, say scientists.
The ozone layer in Earth's atmosphere is approximately 15 to 30 kilometres above the surface and protects the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. Ozone is a type of oxygen molecule with three atoms instead of the usual two that absorbs the sun's radiation.
The discovery of significant ozone holes above Earth's polar regions was made in 1985. Researchers found that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a common chemical used in aerosol cans, packaging materials and refrigerators at the time, were reacting with ozone in the atmosphere, leading to ozone depletion. In response, the international community banned the use of CFCs in 1989, allowing ozone levels to gradually recover.
However, gaps in the ozone layer still appear above the polar regions during each hemisphere's winter months. This occurs when cold air creates polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), which are exceptionally high clouds composed of tiny ice cr
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In blow to Germany's green agenda, conservatives and right-wing populists win regional elections
After key regional elections on Sunday in Germany conservatives and right-wing populists are celebrating.
But the results are a blow for all three parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-wing-led national coalition. The ramifications will be felt across Germany.
A quarter of voters were able to go to the polls in regional elections in two of Germany's largest and wealthiest states, Bavaria and Hesse.
In both regions, conservative and right-wing populist parties used the election campaign to bash Olaf Scholz's national government over migration and energy policy. It paid off.
In Hesse, according to initial predictions, the conservative incumbent CDU scored 34.5% of the vote, a substantial gain on its solid win last time.
The far-right AfD also upped its previous score by a couple of percent to a predicted 18%, which would be the AfD's highest score in a western German state election and put the party in second place.
All three parties in Scholz's national coalition have slipped a couple of percentage points, with both the Greens and Olaf Scholz's centre-left SPD at around 15%, and the free-market liberal FDP hovering at 4.9% and may miss the 5% threshold to stay in parliament.
In Bavaria the incumbent conservative CSU, who has led the regional government almost continually since 1946, won the most votes. Although with only 36.7%, according to predicted results, it's the party's worst result since 1958.
The CSU looks set to stay in power, but will need to stay in coalition with the right-wing populist Freie Wähler (Free Voters). Having scored their best result yet, at a predicted 15%, the insurgent Free Voters will feel emboldened and are already demanding another ministry.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67049498?mc_cid=4ff0792b62&mc_eid=cc88839e92
************************************************IPCC Global Warming Reports Underestimated Role of Sun in Warming: Study
Reports on global warming issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underestimate the role of the Sun in the warming process while falsely laying blame on human beings, according to a study published last month.
In 2021, Ronan Connolly, a scientist at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Science (CERES), and his colleagues published a review raising concerns about multiple reports issued by the IPCC. The IPCC reports concluded that global warming since the mid-20th century was essentially human-driven, dismissing natural causes behind the process. The 2021 review was disputed in a 2022 article by two climate researchers who claimed that the review was “flawed,” that it “should not be treated as credible,” and that the IPCC’s decision to rule out solar activity as a major driver behind climate change “remains intact.”
In a Sept. 27 study published in IOP Science, a team of 20 climate researchers led by Mr. Connolly sought to debunk the 2022 article and reaffirm the 2021 review. It found that the IPCC may have “substantially underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming,” according to a recent post by CERES.
The 2021 review noted that the IPCC reports had two major flaws:
For their analysis, the IPCC reports used global surface temperature data that was “contaminated by urban warming biases,” meaning that only temperature records from urban regions were considered. Urban areas tend to be warmer than the countryside due to human activity and various structures. Though urban areas only represent a small percentage of land, these places make up the majority of thermometer records used in estimating global temperatures.
The IPCC reports used only a small data set from a large pool of data related to Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), which measures the radiant energy emitted by the sun falling on Earth’s atmosphere. And this small data set used by IPCC mostly came to two conclusions—there have been very few TSI changes over the past centuries or that TSI has slightly decreased since the 1950s.
By analyzing data showing a rise in temperatures in urban regions and little to no change in Total Solar Irradiance, the IPCC reports blamed human activity for global warming, dismissing the sun’s role in the process.
In the 2022 article, the two climate researchers criticized the 2021 review, noting the following:
The mathematical techniques used in the review were inappropriate, and a different set of techniques should have been used.
The TSI records considered in the review were not up-to-date.
In the Sept. 27 study, Mr. Connolly and his team addressed these issues, finding “even more compelling evidence that the IPCC’s statements on the causes of global warming since 1850 are scientifically premature and may need to be revisited,” said the CERES post.
The Study
In the 2022 article, the climate researchers used just a single surface temperature record, which only contained data from urban regions. Meanwhile, the IPCC’s recent 2021 global warming report only considered one Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) data set in their calculations.
The Sept. 27 study took a more comprehensive approach and avoided these limitations of the IPCC’s 2021 report and the climate researchers’ 2022 article:
It used five surface temperature records—(a) only rural weather stations, (b) all available stations whether urban or rural, (c) only sea surface temperatures, (d) tree-ring widths as temperature proxies, and (e) glacier length records as temperature proxies.
It also used 27 updated TSI records, all covering the period between 1850 and 2018.
The study found that depending on the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) dataset and surface temperature records used in the study, the conclusion as to what is driving global warming can change.
Some combinations of TSI and surface temperature records suggested that warming can be explained as being “mostly natural,” like solar activity. Other combinations suggested it was “mostly anthropogenic,” or human-driven. Some suggested warming was “both natural and anthropogenic.”
“While each of us has our own scientific opinions on which of these choices are most realistic, we are concerned by the wide range of scientifically plausible, yet mutually contradictory, conclusions that can still be drawn from the data,” the study said.
Talking about the results, Dr. Willie Soon, an author of the study, said that “if the IPCC had paid more attention to open-minded scientific inquiry than trying to force a premature ‘scientific consensus,’ then the scientific community would be a lot closer to having genuinely resolved the causes of climate change,” according to the CERES post.
Mr. Connolly highlighted the importance of remaining unbiased when conducting research. “In scientific investigations, it is important to avoid beginning your analysis with your conclusions decided in advance. Otherwise, you might end up with a false sense of confidence in your findings. It seems that the IPCC was too quick to jump to their conclusions.”
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9 October, 2023
More Greenie authoritarianism
Climate change activists are calling for airlines to introduce flight quotas, with travellers to instead commute long distances using ground transport.
Dr Helen Hutchinson, social scientist and spokesperson for environmental group Flight Free Australia, believes flying should be scrapped entirely until it's 'safe' or emission-free.
'It's an individual action – it's the worst thing you can do,' Dr Hutchinson told 3AW's Tom Elliott on Thursday.
'A lot of that's due to the fact we've prioritised air [travel]. A lot of other countries have actually put an equal amount of money into ground transport - such as really good buses, really good trains - and we could've done the same in Australia.'
'When you look at what's happening in Australia now, most of our long-distance trains have been privatised,' she continued.
Elliott then questioned the activist on time constraints, explaining he gets a 'week off at this time of year' in which he spent six days in Queensland with his family.
'Now, if we'd driven it's a two-day drive there and a two-day drive back which only leaves two days to enjoy it. It's just not possible,' he argued.
'Well, there's places in the world now where they're asking employers to give people time to get to the destination. And you can go [to Queensland] by train,' Dr Hutchinson said.
The host then cuts Dr Hutchinson off, remarking that it still takes two days to get to Queensland by train to which the activist simply responds: 'Yep, I've just done it.'
'What I'm suggesting is maybe you can ask for an extra four days which you can travel there and travel back,' she added.
Modern day Australia couldn't exist without flying, Elliott responded.
'The Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane air corridor is one of the busiest in the world, and people want to be able to commute and fly between the cities,' he said.
'A lot of modern business and so forth works because of that. You're saying merely we just shouldn't do that?'
Dr Hutchinson said their phone call was an example of how long-distance communication is available in other forms, with a lot of businesses turning to video calling platforms off the back of the pandemic.
'It's not difficult to change your behaviours if you just look at the other options, and what we're encouraging people to do is to just look at the other options,' she continued.
'I went to university in the UK, and every couple of years I like to go visit old friends there - am I allowed to do that or is that not allowed?' Elliott then asked.
'I'm not making a choice for you, as for the people who have joined Flight Free Australia made that choice not to fly until it's safe to do so,' the activist said.
'One of the big problems with emissions is the aviation fuel, and aviation is one of the very few industries where we don't have an alternate means of energy.'
Elliott then asked whether Flight Free Australia would prefer if long-distance travel reverted back to using ships regardless of the drawn-out travel times.
The activist did not respond, before quietly asking 'does it sound good to you?'
'Well, not really. I don't have the time,' he laughed.
'I don't have the time to be travelling two weeks on a ship to get there. I don't think the world is like that anymore.'
'I think what we have to look at is the alternative,' Dr Hutchinson said.
'We're actually living in a climate emergency right now, and every small amount of emissions we can possibly save we really have to do. It's not a question of what we might like to do, it's a question of what we have to do.'
Commerical flights have long since been a point of contention for climate change activists, with Jean-Marc Jancovici proposing a universal quota should be imposed on air travel earlier this year.
The French engineer and climate activist said people should be limited to four long haul flights in their lifetime in order to mitigate climate change.
The call to restrict flying comes as environmentalists were slammed this week after suggesting dogs should go vegan.
Research by the University of Winchester found cats and dogs consume about 9 per cent of all land animals killed for food – about 7 billion animals annually – as well as billions of fish and aquatic animals, The Guardian reported.
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China's growing use of coal including the LONGEST coal transporting railway - which carries 200 MILLION tons of fossil fuel 1,141 MILES annually
China continues to move hundreds of millions of tons of coal across its railway system each year, drawing ire from Western pundits as other countries are forcing citizens to 'go green' and reduce their carbon footprint.
Scottish journalist Andrew Neil recently ripped Western governments in the wake of China's projects, such as the Menghua Railway, which is the longest-coal transporting train in the world.
The 1,141-mile railway moves 200million tons of coal each year as fossil fuel use - and traditional greenhouse gas emissions - continue to skyrocket in the communist nation.
While China continues to see its demand for coal g leaders in countries such as the US and UK continue to impose restrictions on its citizens and push going green to reach 'net zero' emissions across the globe.
The Menghua Railway was built as part of China's 12th five-year plan (a series of social and economic development initiatives issued by the county's communist government to take place over a period of five years). It went into operation in late 2019.
The erection of the railway shattered several world records and has helped facilitate the transport of coal from Inner Mongolia to China's southern provinces.
The railway is the country's longest coal transporting line, and joins a large handful of Chinese coal train lines that move the fossil fuel across the country.
China burns more coal every year than the rest of the world combined, and coal accounts for more than half of the total train cargo shipped across the country annually.
While America and Europe back away from coal, China's usage has only gone up. The country has more than 1,000 coal plants despite a vow from Chinese President Xi Jinping that his country will reach net-zero emissions by 2060.
China emits somewhere around 27 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, and a third of the globe's total greenhouse gases. As Western nations struggle to implement green initiatives that may or may not impact the environment in a significant way, China has made no such effort to curb its emissions.
The Menghua Railway is just one example of a way in which China continues to use fossil fuels to power its country. Any such railroad in Europe or the US would surely attract significant backlash from activists and some politicians.
This week, Neil responded to a video from the Chinese newspaper People's Daily promoting the 1,141-mile railway that was built to transport hundreds of millions of tons of coal from north to south China each year.
He wrote to his 1.2million Twitter followers: 'But you should still swap your boiler for a heat pump to save the planet.' A facetious reference to the UK government's bans on gas boilers.
Neil's comments are a reflection of a widening brand of frustration that Westerners, whose governments are moving to impose lifestyle restrictions in the name of climate change, share.
China is in a strong global position and its power is only on the rise, while its alliances and intentions are uniformly concerning for America and Europe.
Some fear that imposing green initiatives will handicap the ability of Europe and America's citizenry and governments to produce goods, while China is rolling on full-steam ahead with production powered by fossil fuels.
Furthermore, green initiatives generally come with steep price tags, an example of which is the Biden Administration's concentration on Electric Vehicles, which most Americans cannot afford.
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A new Greenie racket
Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.
At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises.
Documents show that the SEC relied on input from the for-profit company to draft the proposed rule. Some critics argue that the estimates from Persefoni low-balled the price tags unrealistically for such accounting to make them more politically palatable.
Persefoni, billing itself as “The Platform for Carbon Accounting – Built For Climate Disclosure,” and similar outfits are emerging as their own service industry as they stand to profit from the new rule, since most companies do not have the staff or expertise to calculate their carbon footprints.
While environmentalists have hailed the rule as an important step in forcing companies to grapple with their impact on the climate by exposing it to the public, critics argue that it goes far beyond the SEC’s core mission of protecting investors. In voting against a draft of the proposal, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Trump appointee, said it “forces investors to view companies through the eyes of a vocal set of stakeholders” – as opposed to traditional shareholders – “for whom a company’s climate reputation is of equal or greater importance than a company’s financial performance.”
The SEC and Persefoni each declined to comment for this article.
Persefoni appears to have had great influence over the proposed rule. Public records from the SEC show the commission held six meetings with representatives from Persefoni and Ceres – a prominent investor advocacy group that supports such climate disclosure – from September 2021 to June 2022.
Lee, a Democrat who joined the SEC as a staff attorney in 2005, was appointed by President Trump as one of the SEC’s five commissioners in 2019 – filling a Democratic vacancy on the commission, which was structured to be nonpartisan. President Biden named her as acting chair in 2021, and she took charge of the public comment period for the proposed rule.
Lee stepped down on March 15, 2022, just six days before the commission unveiled its proposed climate rule. In May 2023, she joined Persefoni as a member of the firm’s “sustainability advisory board.”
At Persefoni, she reunited with Kristina Wyatt, who joined the company’s board in March 2022. Previously, Wyatt had served the SEC as senior counsel for climate and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). In this capacity, she worked directly on developing the proposed rule. Wyatt was also listed as the direct contact when the commission circulated a request for information from the public regarding climate-change disclosures.
In December 2022, Persefoni hired another SEC alum, Emily Pierce, to serve as associate general counsel and vice president of global regulatory climate disclosure.
By all accounts, the SEC leaned heavily on Persefoni’s cost-benefit analysis of the pending rule, which essentially establishes a parallel disclosure regime for the SEC – all in the name of mitigating climate change.
The SEC proposal has many parts, but the most controversial and cumbersome involves the requirement that larger companies must provide soup-to-nuts calculations of their carbon emissions, including those from thousands of their suppliers operating across hundreds of countries.
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The time-bomb in your EV
Lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles are both their biggest plus and most dangerous threat – to owners and the environment.
ABC AM interviewed Catriona Lowe, deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, last Thursday to discuss the fire risk of battery charging. She was speaking after an electric scooter exploded in a fireball at a backpacker hostel in Sydney last Wednesday.
Lowe called for a government consumer awareness campaign about the dangers of lithium-ion batteries that now power everything from phones to vacuum cleaners, power tools and cars.
A few weeks earlier, on September 12, five cars were destroyed at Sydney’s Mascot Airport after a battery detached from a luxury EV ignited.
This column discussed media reporting of EVs on February 6 and on November 15, 2021, but did not mention the difficulty of extinguishing EV fires because of what firefighters call the thermal runway. Global figures make clear EV fires are rare.
But they are an issue. The specialist US motoring website hagerty.com has explained in detail why many country US race tracks are refusing to let EVs or hybrids compete. It says there are only two ways to deal with lithium-ion battery fires: “Douse a fire with water to cool it down: a lot of water, between 3000 gallons (11,356 litres) and 30,000 gallons depending on the incident. Cooling takes 100 times more water than a gasoline fire.” The other method is to let the fire burn out and then submerge the entire smouldering wreck in water.
EV batteries can be compromised in even small vehicle accidents and that is when they become dangerous. This is now feeding into soaring insurance premiums in the UK, where the Guardian and the Express newspapers have reported EV insurance premiums are set to rise by up to 1000 per cent.
The Guardian on September 30 reported on a young man who bought a Tesla Model Y. When his policy renewal fell due his insurer refused to reinsure the car. When he finally found a company that would his annual premium had risen from £1200 ($A2290) to £5000 in one year.
The Guardian mentioned the increased cost of repairing EVs but did not get to the heart of the issue.
The battery is about half the cost of a new EV and batteries that sit under the car floor are easily damaged in quite minor accidents. Repairers say fixing batteries is extremely difficult and insurers are tending to write off even quite new cars if there is even slight damage to the battery.
This was the problem with the Sydney Airport fire. The car’s battery had been damaged, and damaged batteries are more likely to catch fire.
A March 21 Reuters report written from London and Detroit says: “For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or even assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles … And now those battery packs are piling up in scrap yards in some countries …”
The report says the UK has no battery recycling facilities so batteries from damaged cars have to be removed and stored separately in fireproof containers.
Thatcham Research, the UK car insurance industry’s central safety research group, said EVs were 25.5 per cent more expensive to repair than normal cars and repairs took 14 per cent longer.
It identified the most significant challenge for the industry as “insurance claims originating from high-voltage battery damage”. It said batteries “represent a substantial percentage of the original vehicle value” and “negatively impact the economic model of vehicle repair … due to their cost as a percentage of the car’s market value.”
Why do motoring journalists not mention any of this? Surely buyers need to know if their new car insurance premiums are about to soar.
One senior industry figure this column spoke to said the real problem with fires in EVs was a lack of data.
He cited the potential dangers of EVs charging in parking facilities under residential buildings and the possibility fires could spread dangerous chemicals through building airconditioning systems.
A spokesman for the Insurance Council of Australia said it was too early to know what effects EV repair costs would have on premiums here but did suggest the cost of importing parts, scarcity of EV service centres and problems with battery repair and disposal would be an issue.
Taking up the challenge, Fire and Rescue NSW in July launched a two-year project called Safety of Alternative Renewable Energy Technologies looking at lithium-ion fires, end-of-life battery hazards and EV fires in structures such as parking garages.
The website EVFireSafe.com, set up by the federal government, is a good place to start if you want to understand why lithium-ion fires are difficult to control.
Yet the fire risk of batteries to owners pales when compared with the risk the manufacture, transportation, storage and disposal of used batteries poses to the global environment.
Detailed studies on carbon abatement show many EVs in the Western world charged on power grids still largely dominated by fossil fuel electricity production may take up to five years of driving to repay their manufacturing carbon deficit compared with internal combustion engine cars.
That falls to one year on grids powered by renewables or nuclear power.
This initial carbon deficit in the manufacturing stage is about 40 per cent of total vehicle life cycle emissions, according to McKinsey, and “can be attributed to the extraction and refining of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are needed for batteries, as well as the energy-intensive nature of battery manufacture”.
Here’s the rub for planet Earth. Most EVs exported around the world, including Teslas, are made in China, and China also dominates lithium-ion battery manufacture, even for cars assembled elsewhere.
Yet China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2 and its emissions are rising faster than emissions are falling in the West.
That is, Western countries are destroying their domestic motor vehicle manufacturing industries to hand over that comparative advantage, and the corresponding jobs, to China. Yet China is lifting emissions of greenhouse gasses that EV use is designed to reduce.
There are signs consumers are wising up in the US where EV sales have fallen sharply this year, price discounting led by Tesla and Ford has spread, and more than 100,000 new EVs sit in new-car lots. Demand is still strong here.
Few journalists will write it, but it is hard to justify putting up with EV range anxiety and the extra trouble finding charging stations while still paying the large premium over conventional car prices. This is simple technology that won’t do the planet much good, at least until electricity across the world is made without emissions. And the mining of many of the rare earths needed to make batteries is dangerous in some poor countries, both for the people working in mines and for the environment.
EVs, with instant torque and a low centre of gravity, are fun to drive. Not much can go wrong with them, maintenance is generally cheap and they make sense for city driving when constant stopping helps battery recharge.
Just don’t do anything to damage your battery.
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8 October, 2023
Family 'lose everything' after their electric car catches fire and sets their house ablaze while three children were sleeping in their beds
A family of five says it has 'lost everything' after their electric car caught fire and destroyed their home in a devastating blaze.
Julie Hensby, 44, has spoken of the chaos as she fetched her three sleeping children from their beds as a fire spread from their electric car and towards their house.
Mrs Hensby and her husband David, 48, their son Jay, 15, and twin daughters Summer and Aimee, nine, were all asleep when the fire broke out.
Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service were called at 11.14pm on Monday to reports that a car was on fire and threatening a property in Ruddlemoor, near St Austell.
The family say they may not have been aware of the blaze as it spread from the charging point outside to the front door had it not been for some strangers driving by their property and stopping to wake them.
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Laurence Fox: sacrificed to the gods of eco-fascism
The BBC and its kin will insist that Laurence Fox’s ‘crime’ involved taking an on-air dig at a female journalist after she made hurtful remarks about men’s mental health.
It was a single comment using language that mimicked hers and yet Fox, a straight white bloke occupying the lowest tier in the Oppression Olympics, deserved the full witch-burning treatment. There is no forgiveness in a world run by social justice because the punishment is designed for the person – not the crime.
Forget looking for balanced reporting.
What’s not to love about this situation for the press? Fox gave them 48 hours of monetised click-bait heaven and the removal of a powerful voice that threatened their comfy ideological consensus. Bargain.
The flames of outrage quickly spread from Fox’s GB News desk to the host of the show in question, Dan Wootton, and fellow presenter Calvin Robinson.
This swift culling has frightened the remaining presenters into a pact of silence while others are theatrically championing freedom of speech so long as it fits within the rules laid out by people and organisations that are allergic to the concept. Those who remain at GB News are effectively pacing along the bars of a prison cell.
For those who think they will remain safe by pandering to the narrative, be warned – Mark Steyn was axed for speaking the truth about Covid vaccine injuries before it was safe to do so. He was deleted from the conversation for one of the most virtuous public service tasks imaginable by a vindictive and partisan media regulator.
If Mark Steyn can be cancelled for helping victims of Big Pharma, anybody can be cancelled for any reason at any time.
You are safe for as long as your presence on the screen keeps the centre-right calm and preoccupied. At this point, you are a distraction – an ad playing before the scary movie begins. Do not imagine that you will be allowed to achieve any kind of influential position. It serves the Left better to cut down conservative commentators in messy public scandals and in doing so, soil the image of the entire cause. Whether you like GB News is irrelevant, the lesson applies to all conservative news outlets.
The Left play long games, and this is one of them.
Laurence Fox did not go quietly into the night as was intended because his power and his platform are not based on GB News. He has accumulated power outside the reach of regulators, especially when backed by the political machine of the Reclaim Party.
Being fearless in the world of politics is a dangerous game.
Last night we heard that Laurence Fox had been arrested in his home. While his mates at GB News languish in metaphoric jail cells, he inhabits a tangible one. According to sources, he is being held under suspicion for ‘conspiring to damage Ulez cameras’. These are the newly erected devices used to fine citizens for driving around their home suburbs in a worst-case dystopian nightmare dreamt up by car-hating bicycle riders.
In true Fox style, he sat on his couch in a Churchillian fashion, filming police as they searched his home while calmly smoking a cigar. Some joked that there were more police in Fox’s house than patrolling the British shoreline where hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants break the law at the behest of criminal gangs and terror cells.
His subsequent arrest followed comments made on a recent podcast with Maajid Nawaz called Warrior Creed during which Fox said, ‘I encourage them [the people nicknamed Blade Runners] to tear down every single camera there is and I will be joining them to tear down cameras as well, because I’m one of those people that puts my money where my mouth is.’
It’s a bizarre situation.
The Blade Runners are engaging in civil disobedience against what many feel is an unlawful infringement on basic human liberties.
They are condemned, many speculate, because the government is set to make a lot of money out of the Ulez scheme, up to £300 million in the first year.
That same government praises and often endorses civil disobedience and damage to public property when it is caused by a range of ‘green’ movements in the UK, including Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. These protests endorse the establishment of even more coercive ‘Net Zero’ policies. Their civil disobedience is akin to a ‘social licence’ while Ulez protests represent the withdrawal of public support.
The problem is not the existence of civil disobedience – it is whether or not you are supporting the expanding powers of the State or trying to protect individual citizen freedom.
It is, for lack of a better term, an ideological war for the soul of Western Civilisation which has been corroded by do-gooders, corporate seat-warmers, and cardboard cut-out politicians who aspire to nothing more than a glass of champagne at the big table.
Unlike the Black Lives Matter activists who destroyed public monuments and statues central to the cultural heritage of UK towns, Fox hasn’t touched a Ulez camera. Meanwhile police knelt in the rubble of Western Civilisation, honouring the BLM vandals while assaulting British citizens who tried to protect public property.
‘In London’s knife-ridden capital city where a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death with a sword, we have one, two – another three upstairs – going through my house,’ he said. ‘The Ulez “scam” cameras outside of London are a complete scam. There is no scientific evidence. Sadiq Khan rubbished the evidence and had it rewritten to serve his own needs. No one voted for it. This is the bringing in of a surveillance state.’
When the people of Germany tore down the Berlin Wall – dismantling it block-by-block, taking sledgehammers to the symbol of communist occupation and unending civil cruelty – the world cheered.
The dismantling of the physical manifestation of a totalitarian state used to be something praised by the Western world.
In the years since 1990, the West has taken on many of these authoritarian ‘vibes’ seeping out of the noxious hivemind festering within the European Union and United Nations. We are overrun with those who seek to control and extort.
Covid’s assigning of ‘ticks’ and ‘crosses’ to human beings via the issuing of ‘health passes’ to signify obedience to government fear-mongering and corporate interest was horrifying but short-lived. The tyranny of Net Zero is a far greater threat as the existential Boogeyman of Global Boiling has no start date, no clearly defined parameters, and a manifestation so vague that any warm day or light drizzle can be used by its preachers and zealots to justify its ‘truth’.
At least in centuries past, charlatan priests went to the trouble of making bleeding statues and accumulating piles of rusted nails – today’s eco-warriors are the laziest religious practitioners in history.
Still, the Net Zero zealots have a metaphoric volcano and they intend to chuck sacrifices into it.
The discussion we need to have – urgently and preferably before any more sacrifices are made – is what we do with governments that impose restrictions, regulations, and taxes that violate our basic understanding of civil liberty? How do we stop these enormously powerful international groups from turning our society into a tightly controlled police state where public policy, written to benefit the profit margins of corporations, can be stopped?
When does it become acceptable to resist unhinged and dangerous government policies? And we better have these discussions before Online Safety and Misinformation and Disinformation laws silence us forever.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/laurence-fox-sacrificed-to-the-gods-of-eco-fascism/ ?
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Climate of fear. Soon you won’t even be able to talk about the weather
Are you paying more attention to what you say these days? Do you feel you must conform to a prevailing narrative lest you offend someone, or worse, impact your career prospects?
If so, you have succumbed to a doctrine which has been decades in the framing and which now influences every aspect of our democratic way of life.
From school to the workplace, Cultural Marxism is gaining hold, instructing us that freedom of thought is a deadly sin.
Like ancient witchcraft, the doctrine’s authors have twisted natural climate change to increasingly control human behaviour. Whether it’s deciding on what is acceptable speech and how we must vote, prohibiting gas stoves in new homes, deciding which cars we drive and what foods we eat, Big Brother is now everywhere, insisting on our obedience.
The current high priests driving the doctrine reside within the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. With major input from Beijing, they are propagating the ‘Great reset of capitalism’ which promises bigger, ever more controlling governments to ensure ‘better and fairer outcomes’.
Those outcomes are to be achieved by rich countries, responsible for ‘excessive levels of greenhouse gas emissions’, paying trillion of dollars in climate reparations to developing countries, for the environmental damage they cause. Australia has signed up to this.
Meanwhile China, which boasts the world’s second-biggest economy, the most billionaires, the largest standing army, hypersonic missiles and successful Mars and Moon landings, retains ‘developing nation’ status.
Having invented anthropogenic climate change as an existential threat, the globalists driving the agenda have made fear the weapon of choice. They are ably supported by weather bureaus, other government agencies, politicians, academics and the media who reinforce doomsday scenarios at every opportunity.
For example the Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology recently chose a few warm September days to announce the beginning of another El Nino event. Despite cautioning its slow development might limit its strength, the damage was in the headlines.
It’s all Emergency Management Minister, Murray Watt, needed to warn that heatwaves are a silent killer that ‘lead to more deaths each year than other natural disasters’. News agencies as far away as France warned ‘Australia is facing its most intense bushfire season since the “Black Summer” of 2019-2020, when a series of out-of-control infernos raged across the eastern seaboard’.
The declaration was also enough for the University of Melbourne to bleat, ‘The evolving frequency of extreme events and conditions… challenges our conventional understanding of what constitutes “extreme”…’, scarily adding, ‘By failing to deal with the root causes of climate change, we will forever be putting band-aids on a gaping wound’.
They are right about one thing. What once was accepted as normal is now considered extreme.
George Orwell warned us, ‘Those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future’. The Bureau of Meteorology agrees. As scientist Dr Jennifer Marohasy, among others, repeatedly demonstrates, through peer-reviewed publications and elsewhere, Australia’s historical temperatures are dropped to cool the past without scientific justification. Dr Marohasy says, ‘This has the effect of making the present appear hotter – it is a way of generating more global warming for the same weather.’
The Bureau’s regular predictions of the demise of the iconic Great Barrier Reef, due to ‘more frequent and severe bleaching events…’, is a powerful headline grabber. However, a recent Australian Institute of Marine Science report finds that coral coverage on the northern and central parts of the Great Barrier Reef is at its highest level since monitoring began 36 years ago. According to a poll, only three per cent of Australians know this. The media has done its job.
And, should Mother Nature throw a curve ball, the BoM is there to catch it. Like when 2022 looked like being the first in 163 years of Sydney Observatory Hill monitoring, that temperatures would not exceed 32 degrees Celsius, the Bureau leant a solar panel against a hedge directed at the Stevenson screen. It was a good try but alas, Mother Nature prevailed.
One can only imagine the media pile-on should a 163-year high have been recorded.
Sensing the public’s fear of anthropogenic climate change is beginning to wane, officialdom has begun further tightening the net. Already the government’s media censor and global warming disciple, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has stepped up its scrutiny. Only approved narratives escape censure.
For example, worried that viewers may be influenced by the optimistic Aims Barrier Reef report, Acma was quick to jump on a segment on Sky News that failed to mention that the reef’s splendid recovery was still at risk. Who knew Acma employed marine biologists?
Soon it won’t matter. Under the Albanese government’s proposed misinformation and disinformation laws, Acma will gain sweeping powers to require any Australian to appear at a time and place of its choosing to answer questions about misinformation or disinformation. Heavy fines will apply for non-attendance.
That threat alone will put a brake on free speech and evidenced-based judgements.
Except for governments which will be exempt even though, throughout the pandemic, they were the source of much misinformation and disinformation.
Still, climate activists like billionaire renewable energy investor, Michael Cannon-Brookes, seem relaxed about more government intervention and looming mandatory climate-related reporting. Why not? They stand to make more billions from the net-zero 2050 witchcraft.
Meanwhile, a self-satisfied, sensible, ‘developing’ China, ‘will set its own path and not be influenced by outside factors’. As the world’s largest emitter and building two coal-fired power stations a week, Beijing’s determination renders the entire global climate change initiatives crippling Western societies an exercise in complete futility.
Without a concerted fightback, the time will soon come when Millennials and Gen Z will reflect on their own carefree, relatively prosperous youth, and whisper to their children, ‘What we were told was conspiracy theory was Cultural Marxism after all. We’re so sorry for what we’ve bequeathed you.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/climate-of-fear/
****************************************************Australian Greenies silent on planned bulldozing of ‘koala central’ for huge wind farm
Koala habitats will be ripped apart to build wind farms in central Queensland so state and federal Labor governments can chase their fantasy of meeting useless, costly and unobtainable renewable energy targets.
If you need any more evidence that green zealotry has entered the delusional phase, this is it in my opinion.
Federal and state environment ministers Tanya Plibersek and Leanne Linard and previous enviro minister Meaghan Scanlon have, perhaps unwittingly, paved the way for koalas to be sacrificed on the renewable energy altar to appease the green evangelists.
Here I have to say I am on the side of the koalas. And I remind Plibersek and Linard that in 2022 the status of the koala was changed from vulnerable to endangered in Queensland and NSW.
Linard said the Palaszczuk Government was strongly committed to protecting and conserving koalas and their habitat.
Not strong enough, it seems, to dissuade Plibersek from using her ministerial powers to approve Lotus Creek wind farm on the Nebo-Connors Range 175km northwest of Rockhampton.
Earlier this year The Courier-Mail reported the project by the South Korean-owned Ark Energy will have 55 wind turbines able to generate 1.7 million megawatt hours of renewable energy a year – enough to power 305,000 homes.
In approving the project, Plibersek overturned a decision by her Coalition predecessor Sussan Ley, who in 2020 said the wind farm was as “clearly unacceptable” and in breach of federal environment laws, partly because the site was home to koalas and other species afflicted by the previous summer’s catastrophic bushfires.
The Plibersek approval of the Lotus Creek project gave the green light to the bulldozing of old-growth forest containing 341ha of known koala habitat, The Australian reported.
However, The Australian said that figure was likely to be underestimated.
The national daily quoted renowned nature photographer Steven Nowakowski describing the forest as “koala central”.
There are more threats to our beloved koalas. I noticed protesters outside The Courier-Mail’s Bush Summit in Rockhampton waving Save the Koala placards when objecting to state government approval of the Moah Creek wind turbine development on untouched native bushland 30km west of Rockhampton. The project put 380ha of koala habitat at the mercy of the bulldozers, The Courier-Mail reported.
It seems absurd to me that the Labor government refuses to approve dams, coal and gas projects on environmental grounds while approving wind turbines that are clearly a direct threat to an endangered species.
And I haven’t heard a word of protest from animal rights activists, the Queensland Greens, or the Australian Conservation Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund or Friends of the Earth. Why?
More pain may be coming for the endangered koala. Plibersek has now been asked to approve 88 giant turbines in the middle of an upland tropical forest at Chalumbin on the Atherton Tableland, where 844ha of koala habitat were identified in the original plan.
The developer is the same corporation backing Lotus Creek.
The ABC reported the controversial $1 billion wind farm was adjacent to World Heritage-protected rainforests. And that the project was scaled back from the original 200 turbines in an effort to appease conservationists and some traditional owners.
Conservationists opposed to the Chalumbin wind farm, two hours southwest of Cairns, say it would pose a threat to a number of animals including the northern greater glider, the red goshawk, the magnificent brood frog, the masked owl and the spectacled flying fox. I haven’t heard a peep out of Linard or Palaszczuk about this.
Alarm bells are ringing. Documents tabled by federal parliament Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young show the federal Environment Department is assessing 140 proposals with the potential to have a detrimental impact on koalas.
Plibersek is the ultimate decision- maker on developments that affect threatened species.
In state parliament Shane Knuth from Katter’s Australia Party gave a valuable perspective.
“This wind farm will comprise some of the tallest turbines in the Southern Hemisphere which will destroy forest and threaten endangered species,” he told the House.
“To further highlight the renewable fantasy to achieve the government’s 50 per cent renewable target by 2030, this will require an additional 2,200 megawatts of new renewables, which means 540,000 hectares of land has to be cleared for wind farms, excluding transmission lines.
“As long as it is a wind farm, foreign-owned companies can clear whatever they like.
“Governments continue to knock back any new water project proposed while at the same time wind farms are given a free pass to completely destroy natural habitat.’’
Knuth specifically referred to the abandoned Tully-Millstream hydro-electric Scheme that was “a clean, green approved project” that would have powered 100,000 homes.
“It was abandoned in 1988 due to the declaration of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area,” he said.
Knuth is right.
It is clear to me that state and federal Labor environmental ministers are ignoring the serious threats posed by renewable energy projects.
So are the Greens as they continue their long march to gain control of federal, state and local governments.
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5 October, 2023
COP28 boss’ appeal to raise climate targets met with global indifference
Sultan Al Jaber urged governments to update their national climate targets by September. Not one heeded the call
In July, when Cop28 chief Sultan Al Jaber laid out his battle plan for the upcoming climate summit in Dubai, he issued a plea to all governments: raise your climate targets by September.
His appeal has gone totally unanswered. Two and a half months later no country has updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement-mandated blueprint to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
The deafening silence comes as the UN restates the urgency of stepping up action. More ambitious targets are needed as current NDCs are not collectively sufficient to limit warming to 1.5C, the Global Stocktake report said last month.
Tom Evans, a policy advisor at E3G, says it was always “quite unlikely” countries would submit updated NDCs before Cop28. “I don’t think there are tonnes of appetite among governments to revise their targets so often,” he told Climate Home News. “It’s challenging politically because these aren’t light decisions, and it’s challenging technically as it takes time with lots of modelling to do them properly.”
Ambition gap
Current NDCs are short of what is needed. If countries meet their 2030 emission targets in full, global heating could only be limited to 2.4-2.6C this century, according to the UN Emissions Gap report. Emissions need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest report.
NDCs are an integral part of the “ratchet mechanism” built into the agreement: each climate plan should be stronger and more ambitious than the one that is replacing. In 2015 governments agreed to update the documents every five years, but since then many have called for more frequent reviews.
Like with Al Jaber’s plea, they have mostly gone unheeded. At Cop26 in Glasgow, governments agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 emission targets so that they are aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement by the end of 2022.
Only a handful of countries submitted new NDCs within that timeframe and, crucially, none of them produced one that is compatible with keeping global warming below 1.5°C, according to Climate Action Tracker.
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Greenie Pope has his head in the clouds
Pope Francis has taken aim at the US, “irresponsible” Western lifestyles and fossil fuels in a new highly political document on climate change.
Laudato Deum (Praise God), released in Rome on Wednesday, said “emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries”.
The document also took aim at climate-change sceptics who disagreed with him, inside and outside the church, for their “dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions’’.
It said a broad change “in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact. As a result, along with indispensable political decisions, we would be making progress along the way to genuine care for one another”.
The release of the apostolic exhortation, a high level of papal teaching, just below an encyclical, coincided with the first day of the Synod on Synodality, for which 400 church leaders and staff have converged on Rome.
In one of the most controversial proposals in the document, Francis called for “more effective world organisations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty and the sure defence of fundamental human rights”.
Such organisations, he said, “must be endowed with real authority, in such a way as to ‘provide for’ the attainment of certain essential goals. In this way, there could come about a multilateralism that is not dependent on changing political conditions or the interests of a certain few, and possesses a stable efficacy”.
Despite its cost and practical challenges, the Pope championed wind and solar power. “The transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed,’’ he said.
“Consequently, whatever is being done risks being seen only as a ploy to distract attention.”
The Pope praised the work of “activists from very different countries’’ who help and support one another and who can “end up pressuring the sources of power. It is to be hoped that this will happen with respect to the climate crisis”.
He also rejected the view that efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels will lead to a reduction in the number of jobs.
“Millions of people are losing their jobs due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift,’’ he claimed. The transition to renewable energy was capable of “generating countless jobs in different sectors. This demands that politicians and business leaders should even now be concerning themselves with it”.
Laudato Deum comes eight years after the Pope’s green encyclical, Laudato Si.
“With the passage of time, I have realised that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,’’ he wrote. “No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.”
In one paragraph likely to provoke controversy, Francis argued against those “who would place responsibility on the poor, since they have many children, and even attempt to resolve the problem by mutilating women in less developed countries. As usual, it would seem that everything is the fault of the poor. Yet the reality is that a low, richer percentage of the planet contaminates more than the poorest 50 per cent of the total world population, and that per capita emissions of the richer countries are much greater than those of the poorer ones. How can we forget that Africa, home to more than half of the world’s poorest people, is responsible for a minimal portion of historic emissions?”
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Inundated Islands? The Science Says "No"
On September 11, in a hearing before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a group of island nations argued that greenhouse gas emissions emitted by developing nations should be considered pollution. According to Kausea Natano, the prime minister of Tuvalu, “Sea levels are rising rapidly, threatening to sink our lands below the ocean.”
Is this the case? Are nations like the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Antigua and the Maldives likely to be underwater in the next several decades?
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR5), the 20th century average of Global Mean Sea Level Rise was about 0.07 inches (1.7 mm) per year, or 7 inches per century. That means that by 2050 we should expect to see a rise in global sea level of slightly less than 2 inches.
Many of the islands that we are told are threatened to be underwater by 2050 are only tens of feet above sea level today. Bear in mind that 15,000 years ago, those very same islands were also just barely above sea level.
Over the last 15,000 years, sea level has risen nearly 400 feet, yet the islands still remain above the waves. This is because the islands grow as sea level rises. It is a geologic process known as "accretion." Gravels and sediment are transferred from the shore face to the island surface during storm events, gradually raising the island's surface.
We are being told that 400 feet of sea-level rise did not inundate these islands, but the next two inches will!
This is misleading and, thankfully, these islands are not in danger any time soon.
https://co2coalition.org/2023/09/20/inundated-islands-the-science-says-no/#:~:text=Over%20the%20last%2015%2C000%20years%2C%20sea%20level%20has,It%20is%20a%20geologic%20process%20known%20as%20%E2%80%9Caccretion.%E2%80%9D
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Suppressing Good News Is Scaring Our Kids Witless
It’s easy to believe life on Earth is getting ever worse. The media constantly highlight one catastrophe after another and make terrifying predictions.
With the never-ending torrent of doom and gloom about ‘climate change’ and the environment, it’s understandable why many people — especially the young — genuinely believe the world is about to end.
But the fact is that though problems remain the world is getting better. We just rarely hear about it.
We are incessantly told about disasters, whether it is the latest heat wave, flood, wildfire or storm. Yet the data overwhelmingly show that over the past century people have become much, much safer from all these weather events.
In the 1920s, around half a million people were killed by weather disasters, whereas in the last decade the death toll averaged around 18,000. This year, like both 2020 and 2021, is tracking below that. Why? Because when people get richer, they get more resilient.
Weather-fixated television news would make us think disasters are all getting worse. They’re not. Around 1900, about 4.5 per cent of the land area of the world burned every year. Over the last century, this declined to about 3.2 percent In the last two decades, satellites show even further decline: in 2021 just 2.5 percent burned.
This has happened mostly because richer societies prevent fires. Models show that by the end of the century, despite climate change, human adaptation will mean even less burning.
And despite what you may have heard about record-breaking costs from weather disasters — mainly because wealthier populations build more expensive houses along coastlines — damage costs are actually declining, not increasing, as a per cent of GDP.
But it’s not only weather disasters that are getting less damaging despite dire predictions. A decade ago, environmentalists loudly declared that Australia’s magnificent Great Barrier Reef was nearly dead, killed by bleaching caused by ‘climate change’.
The Guardian newspaper even published an obituary. This year, scientists revealed that two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef shows the highest coral cover seen since records began in 1985. The good-news report got a fraction of the attention the bad news did.
Not long ago, environmentalists constantly used pictures of polar bears to highlight the dangers of climate change. Polar bears even featured in Al Gore’s terrifying movie An Inconvenient Truth.
But the reality is that polar bear numbers have been increasing — from somewhere between five and 10,000 polar bears in the 1960s up to around 26,000 today. We don’t hear this news, however. Instead, campaigners just quietly stopped using polar bears in their activism.
There are so many bad-news stories that we seldom stop to consider that on the most important indicators, life is getting much better. Human life expectancy has doubled over the past century, from 36 years in 1920 to more than 72 years today.
A hundred years ago, three-quarters of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today, less than one-tenth does. The deadliest environmental problem, air pollution, was four times more likely to kill you in 1920 than it is today, mostly because a century ago people in poverty cooked and heated with dung and wood.
Despite COVID-related setbacks, humanity has become better and better off. Yet doom-mongers will keep telling you the end is nigh. This is great for their fundraising but the costs to society are sky-high: we make poor, expensive policy choices and our kids are scared witless.
We also end up ignoring much bigger problems. Consider all the attention devoted to heat waves. In the United States and many other parts of the world heat deaths are actually declining, because access to air conditioning helps much more than rising temperatures hurt.
Almost everywhere, however, cold quietly kills many more people than heat does. In the U.S., about 20,000 people die from heat every year, but 170,000 die from cold — something we rarely focus on.
Moreover, cold deaths are rising in the U.S. and our incessant focus on climate change is exacerbating this trend because politicians have introduced green laws that make energy more expensive, meaning fewer people can afford to keep warm.
Lacking perspective means we don’t focus first on where we can help most.
On a broader scale, global warming prompts celebrities and politicians to fly around the world in private jets lecturing the rest of us, while we spend less on problems like hunger, infectious diseases and a lack of basic schooling.
When did politicians and movie stars ever meet for an important cause like de-worming children?
We need balance in our news, but that doesn’t mean ignoring global warming: it is a real problem humanity has caused. We just need perspective.
To know what to expect from a warming planet, we can look at the damage estimates from the economic models used by the Biden and Obama administrations, which reveal that the entire, global cost of ‘climate change’ — not just to economies, but in every sense — will be equivalent to less than a four per cent hit to global GDP by the end of the century.
Humanity is getting more prosperous every day. The United Nations estimates that without global warming the average person in 2100 would be 450 per cent better off than today. Global warming means people will only be 434 per cent richer instead.
That is not a disaster.
https://principia-scientific.com/suppressing-good-news-is-scaring-our-kids-witless/
***************************************4 October, 2023
Carbon offsetting is a 'waste of time': Scientists say tree-planting schemes loved by celebrities as an excuse for flying are actually HARMING nature
Planting trees in vast schemes to 'offset' carbon emissions is harming nature, an Oxford study has claimed.
Celebrities and tycoons including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Elton John, Emma Watson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have all said they have used offsetting to cancel out the greenhouse gases emitted by activities such as flying in private jets.
But when offsetting involves planting large numbers of a single types of tree, it can actually degrade the environment, the authors argued.
Single species plantations are harmful to biodiversity and put forests more at risk of fire, it is argued, while they do little to suck up greenhouse gases.
Instead, the authors said we should prioritise conserving and restoring intact ecosystems.
Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, scientists from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University said the focus on offsetting carbon at all costs damages other aspects of the ecosystem.
Author Dr Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez said: 'Despite the broad range of ecosystem functions and services provided by tropical ecosystems, society has reduced value of these ecosystems to just one metric – carbon.
'Current and new policy should not promote ecosystem degradation via tree plantations with a narrow view on carbon capture.'
Although some projects reforest degraded land, most involve what is known as afforestation – planting forests in undegraded and previously unforested regions such as grasslands.
Tropical ecosystems are highly biodiverse, and provide multiple ecosystem services, such as maintaining water quality, soil health, and pollination.
In comparison, carbon-capture plantations are usually monocultures and are dominated by just five tree species, teak, mahogany, cedar, silk oak, and black wattle, grown for timber, pulp, or agroforestry.
The result is that these plantations usually support a lower level of biodiversity.
For example, in the Brazilian Cerrado savannah, a 40 per cent increase in woody cover reduced the diversity of plants and ants by approximately 30 per cent.
In fact tropical grasslands and savannahs are already carbon sinks and, unlike trees, are less susceptible to disturbances such as drought and fire.
These plantations can also directly degrade ecosystems by reducing stream flow, depleting groundwater, and acidifying soils.
Dr Aguirre-Gutiérrez said: 'The current trend of carbon-focused tree planting' is creating monocultures for 'little carbon gain'.
He added: 'An area equivalent to the total summed area of USA, UK, China, and Russia would have to be forested to sequester one year of emissions.'
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Not the Onion: Climate Change Created a ‘Wetter’ Storm That Hit NYC and Caused Those Insane Floods
Is everyone hitting the crack pipe at The Guardian, or do they think people are this stupid? While this unabashedly left-wing publication has good moments covering international news and live blogging terror attacks in Europe, they did take a rake to the face here regarding the epic New York City floods last weekend. The Big Apple turned into a swimming pool. Anywhere from four to seven inches of rain dumped on the city from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. Subways became raging rivers. At the Central Park Zoo, the water levels got so high that the sea lions could escape. It got so bad that Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency—it was bedlam.
And now, the experts are telling us that the “type of storm” that struck New York City caused—I can’t even believe this is real—the storm to be 10-20 percent “wetter.” Excuse me, what (via Guardian):
The unmistakable influence of the climate crisis helped cause New York City to be inundated by a month’s worth of rain within just a few hours on Friday, scientists have warned, amid concerns over how well the city is prepared for severe climate shocks.
A new rapid attribution study, released by scientists in Europe, has found that the type of storm seen on Friday is now 10-20% wetter than it would have been in the previous century, because of climate change.
Flash flooding soaked large parts of the US’s largest city, turning roads into rivers, following intense rainfall that broke records. John F Kennedy international airport measured 8in of rainfall in one day, the most since records began, while Brooklyn received a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours. People had to be rescued from swamped basement apartments, subway and bus services were canceled and sewage backed up in overwhelmed pipes.
Climate scientists have stressed that such pounding rainfall is a symptom of a warming planet, with a hotter atmosphere able to hold more moisture that is then unleashed in torrential downpours.
“Human-driven climate change plays a dual role, both intensifying these storms and warming the atmosphere,” said Davide Faranda, a scientist at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France. “Deeper storms yield more intense phenomena, while a warmer atmosphere can accommodate a greater amount of rain.”
So, past tropical storms were less wet and hellacious? What is this? Also, I’m chuckling that a tropical storm already known to be a water-logged event is somehow 10-20 percent wetter, thanks to global warming. They had to have known this narrative was dead on arrival.
Water was not as wet, but it’s now wetter due to climate change. Unreal stuff here, folks.
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New York farmers’ futures depend on a single Hochul decision
Gov. Kathy Hochul has a tough decision to make, one that will test her political courage and demonstrate whether she’s a real leader or just another pandering pol.
Hochul must choose whether to sign or veto a bill banning a certain class of insecticides that are used worldwide and save up to 71% of farmers’ crops.
Steamrolled through the Democrat-ruled Legislature after environmental activists’ intense lobbying — including one screaming at a lawmaker at a farmers’ market — the ban would devastate New York’s farmers and upstate communities.
The Natural Resources Defense Council claims “bees and other pollinators are dying off in droves,” endangering “food security,” and neonicotinoid (“neonic”) insecticides are “a primary culprit.”
But even The New York Times just admitted the “bee-pocalypse” hysteria — which it helped foment — is not only bogus but has done more harm than good.
Neonics function by protecting crops as seedlings grow, as well as under the soil line after planting. Because profit margins are thin for many crops, the availability of neonics can make the difference between profitability and foreclosure.
Extensive Cornell University field studies have shown that up to 66% of corn crops grown without neonic-treated seeds suffered economically damaging losses.
These losses were particularly high in fields utilizing cover crops because New York corn’s primary pest, the seedcorn maggot, is attracted to high levels of organic matter.
Cover crops are an essential component of sustainable agriculture, contributing to soil health, water quality, pest management and climate-change mitigation.
Neonics have no suitable replacements. So-called “alternatives” are less effective and more expensive.
If New York bans them, the state’s farmers will have higher input and labor costs, even as they watch their incomes literally being consumed by insects in the field.
They will be at a competitive disadvantage with states that have more enlightened policies, and the population exodus from New York’s rural counties, already the state’s highest, would intensify.
The neonic-ban legislation should be ripe for a veto, but the 800-pound gorilla threatening Hochul in this fight is New York City’s Natural Resources Defense Council.
With a yearly war chest exceeding $200 million and a huge staff of political activists and lawyers, the NRDC wields considerable political clout and has ties to the financial networks of hedge-fund managers, corporate executives and other 1-percenters who raise big money for political campaigns.
In the calculus of electoral politics, these people are probably much more important to the governor’s political survival than the farming families that would be damaged — or even dispossessed — by the neonic ban.
Hochul should have no illusions about the NRDC’s agenda, which is, as usual, based on ideology, not science.
The NRDC still propagandizes against genetically modified crops, for example, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus they’re safe, increase yields and lessen runoff and CO2 emissions.
And for years, the NRDC has campaigned against neonics on the grounds that they’re driving honeybees extinct, even as bee populations were steadily rising.
The Times reports the number of honeybee hives has increased 26% worldwide in the last decade.
The Obama administration created a special White House commission to investigate bee health in 2013.
It tasked the Environmental Protection Agency to perform a special review to ascertain whether neonics are a threat to pollinators.
The regulators examined hundreds of high-quality studies and state-of-the-art field trials. Their determination: Neonics can be used safely without harming bees.
Jim Jones, then-EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, noted neonic seed treatments (which account for up to 98% of neonic usage in many field crops) appear in mature crops at such minute levels that it’s almost as if the neonics are not there.
So how did this ban get passed?
Activists misled legislators with a single Cornell report from 2020 with serious credibility problems that implausibly concluded neonics are unnecessary.
Its flaws included the absence of any new research, confusion about key concepts such as the difference between toxicity and risk, reliance solely on lab studies rather than real-world field data and the failure to understand the difference between systemic and foliar uptake.
It also lacked any consideration of actual pesticide-use patterns by New York farmers.
In the end, lawmakers decided that despite what the EPA, the broader scientific community and farmers think, neonics can be banned.
If a field does happen to be destroyed by insects, the ban proponents reasoned, farmers can always replant it, a hugely costly undertaking and rarely practical in New York because of the short growing season.
If Gov. Hochul truly cares about New York’s $3.3 billion agriculture industry and public policy that makes sense, she will veto the bill.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/03/new-york-farmers-futures-depend-on-a-single-hochul-decision/
*****************************************************Britain's Energy Secretary: Net Zero has ‘become a religion’
Claire Coutinho defended her party’s decision to water down elements of its net zero strategy, including delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.
She said it would be “immoral” to “impoverish” people in the UK because of the net zero by 2050 target when emissions were rising in other countries.
She told Tory activists in Manchester: “The likes of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, funded by the same people who fund Labour, do not get it.
“For them, net zero has become a religion. For us it is a practical mission to be achieved.
“They want to force people to behave a certain way or face punitive taxes. And more than that they show sheer condescension about people’s normal way of life.”
Ms Coutinho added: “For too many people, [net zero] has started to feel like an intolerable cost, at a time when, after the last few years, they feel that they can least afford it.
“Across Europe, we are seeing the consequences when the public feel they are being forced into the wrong decisions for their homes and their families.
“If we are to succeed, net zero can’t be something that is done to people by a privileged elite. We cannot force people to make the wrong decisions for their families, and it’s immoral to put forward policies that will impoverish people here when emissions are rising abroad”.
She concluded by saying it was eco-zealots who posed a greater risk than climate change deniers, because they were putting people off green measures.
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3 October, 2023
No climate signal in heatwave deaths
Judging by the news reports about the latest release of deaths due to excess heat and cold by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) you could be forgiven in thinking that the heatwave of 2022 signalled a climate-induced turn for the worse. According to some alarmist claims, last year’s heat-related deaths are a “stark warning” of the effects of climate change. But looking a little closer at the data shows just how misleading this interpretation is.
Sky News looked at the data for 2018-2022 concluding that London had the highest mortality risk from hot weather of above 29°C. They pointed out that the figures overall showed a dramatic increase in 2022 on the previous year saying that the number of temperature-related deaths on hot days more than doubled from 1990-2022 (2022 – 2,866, 1990 – 1,417).
Only further down the report do you come to the salient point of the recent data, “Despite last year’s steep rise, the overall increase in deaths since 1988 has almost remained static so far, when population growth is taken into consideration.”
The lack of an overall change in death rate per unit of population doesn’t stop some from being alarmist with the unsupportive data. Reacting to the ONS report the head of the World Health Organisation’s Climate Change and Health Unit, Dr Diarmid Campbell-tendon said it was “extremely concerning.”
The BBC also reported the story and said that heat-related deaths had increased in recent years, which is true for 2022 but is far from the complete story. The BBC went on to say that the data suggests that 3,000 more over-65s died than usual in England and Wales last summer. They also did the same as Sky News in finding someone who clearly hadn’t looked too closely at the data. According to Holly Holden of the Centre for Ageing Better “Climate change isn’t something that is happening in the Antarctic or very hot countries, it is impacting lives, and taking lives, here in the UK,” she said.
The Guardian’s coverage was no different misleadingly saying that the number of heat deaths has been increasing over recent years. Those who only read headlines will have seen, “Heat-related deaths in 2022 hit highest level on record in England,” which is an incomplete summary of the statistics.
As well as the lack of change in normalised extreme weather deaths it is clear that there was an increase in 2022 over 2021, but it is similar to the increase seen between 1993-5. The deaths from cold, which greatly exceed heat deaths, in 2010 are a clear outlier.
Given that there is no significant trend in total (hot and cold) deaths seen in the past third of a century in England and Wales, where is the story, and where is the climate signal?
https://www.netzerowatch.com/no-climate-signal-in-heatwave-deaths/
*******************************************Biden admin quietly released study showing green energy receives far more subsidies than fossil fuels
The Biden administration quietly issued a 59-page report outlining the current scope of federal energy-related subsidies revealed that the renewable energy sector enjoys significantly larger taxpayer backing than the fossil fuel industry.
The report — authored by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) and published in August — represents the first of its kind since 2018. The EIA analyzed data from 2016 through 2022, and determined that, during that time period, the federal government doled out $183.3 billion in direct and mainly indirect taxpayer subsidies, more than half of which came over the last three years.
"For years Democrats have claimed technologies like solar energy are cheaper than coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. This report makes clear that solar is largely dependent on heavy subsidies with taxpayer dollars," Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital.
In early 2021, Barrasso and Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., requested the analysis to help inform congressional policymaking in a letter to then-EIA Acting Administrator Stephen Nalley. The pair argued such a report would be particularly relevant "as Congress considers calls for a greater level of federal involvement in the nation’s energy systems and markets."
Fossil fuel industry received $24.5 billion in subsidies last year while renewable energy sources received a staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, the report showed. (Getty Images)
"Under the Biden Administration, American families are paying too much for energy as it is," the Wyoming Republican continued. "They shouldn’t have to fork over their hard-earned money to support liberal special interests. Solar should be competing for sales in the marketplace, not for subsidies in Washington."
According to the EIA report, while renewable energy sources like wind and solar power account for about 21% of domestic electricity production, such sources received a staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, by far the largest share compared to any other category.
Energy end use subsidies, like energy efficiency- and conservation-related tax provisions, represented the next-largest slice of energy sector federal subsidies after renewable power, according to the EIA report. End use sources received $64.8 billion in subsidies, equivalent of 35% of total energy-related subsidies doled out by the federal government.
While renewable and end use sources accounted for more than 80% of total energy industry subsides, fossil fuel sources — namely natural gas, petroleum and oil, which account for more than 60% of electricity production and the vast majority of transportation energy — benefited from $24.5 billion, or 13%, in subsidies.
Nuclear power, which produces another 18% of U.S. electricity, received $2.9 billion in subsidies during the analyzed timeframe, the equivalent of 2% of total subsidies awarded.
The reports findings suggest far more taxpayer money is being spent per energy unit produced by green energy sources than for the equivalent energy until produced by fossil fuel energy.
For example, natural gas power generated 44.9 quadrillion British thermal units in 2022, 45% of total energy generated economywide, but received $2.3 billion in taxpayer subsidies that year. That means for every million British thermal units (MMBtu) produced by natural gas, the industry received about $0.05.
By comparison, in 2022, the solar industry generated about 0.6 quadrillion British thermal units, less than 1% of total energy produced economywide in the U.S., but received $7.5 billion in subsidies. That means the solar power industry received $11.9 per MMBtu generated last year.
The results are as pronounced when comparing coal power which received $873 million in subsidies last year while generating 18 times the amount of power as solar energy.
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GOP Senator Explains What Biden's Green Energy Transition Really Means for America
Not content with President Biden’s goal of having 50 percent of new vehicle sales by 2030 be electric, California took things a step further and said there would be a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. This move opened the door to other states following suit, so long as their regulations are identical. But critics were right to point out that such a sudden and massive transition is like putting the cart before the horse. Many new questions came up, including how California’s grid could handle the new demand. Another dealt with the supply of critical minerals used in electric vehicles, which require two and a half times more copper than a combustion car needs, for example.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resource addressed this and many other issues associated with the transition to electric vehicles in a hearing last week that examined “opportunities to counter the People’s Republic of China’s control of critical mineral supply chains.”
"When it comes to the EV battery supply chain, depending on the mineral, China processes anywhere from 60 to 100 percent of all the minerals needed for batteries and electric motors," Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) pointed out. "And their dominance is not just in minerals, it’s also in battery manufacturing. China is responsible for 74 percent of the world’s cathode production, 92 percent of anode production, and 76 percent of lithium ion battery cell production. They’ve cornered the market."
As one of the U.S.'s biggest adversaries, that's a huge problem. But it's not just the PRC that's dominated the critical minerals market.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a major producer of cobalt and copper," Sen. John Barrasso said, "and Indonesia produces nearly half of the world’s nickel. These nations don’t share our values."
In the U.S., mining projects either face red tape a mile long, drawn out indefinitely by environmental studies, or, like in Northern Minnesota, the administration completely shuts them down, leaving the U.S. beholden to its enemies.
“China ruthlessly exploits a religious and ethnic minority as a source of forced labor in its mining industry," Barrasso continued. “The Congo has tens of thousands of children mining cobalt. Indonesia is clear cutting vast areas of its tropical rainforest to access its nickel reserves. No moral or ethical sacrifice, including slavery and child labor, seems to be too great for Joe Biden’s so-called 'green transition.'"
“America’s dependence on foreign minerals is not only shameful and reckless, is unnecessary," the Republican senator declared. “We have more of the resources we need right here at home, including copper, including lithium, including nickel, graphite, and cobalt. Yet the Biden administration’s boneheaded policies make it nearly impossible to access them."
The Wyoming Republican said there's a transition underway alright, but it's one from "American energy to foreign minerals."
"It is transition from American strength and independence to American weakness and dependence," he said.
To reverse course, the senator argued an administration with "courage and commonsense" is needed to tap into America's abundant mineral and energy supplies, changing the "reckless course" America is on once and for all.
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UK: Electric car owners may face shocking 1000% rise in insurance premiums
Some owners have seen their premiums spike by over £4,000 compared to last year in a move which has baffled owners and left them out of pocket ahead of winter.
Tesla owners have shared their stories in a Facebook group where they have told others about the horror premiums they now have to pay. One owner said Aviva refused to insure him and his Tesla Model Y when his insurance came up for renewal and that other brands had turned him away.
Their experiences come just weeks after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak changed Government policy on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after manufacturers invested millions in the UK’s electric car market.
Tesla driver David told the Guardian: “My insurer was Aviva from July 2022 to July 2023, but when it was coming up for renewal, I received a letter stating that they would not be covering the Tesla Model Y anymore.
“I am a member of a Tesla UK owners forum, and lots of other people seem to be having the same issue. “I spent weeks on every comparison site as well as trying individual insurers and specialist brokers, but either they wouldn’t cover the car or the quotes were £5,000 or more.”
David said the best quote he got was £4,500 from Direct Line, a number that surpassed £5,000 once the monthly interest was added. What’s more, David isn’t the only electric car driver affected.
Alex Gherlis drives a Smart EQ Forfour, a city, that retails from around £20,000.
Before his mid-August renewal date, he was advised by John Lewis Finance that they would no longer insure his electric car because it was not insuring electric vehicles anymore.
For owners like Alex and David, their rejections have come ahead of the hardest time of the year for people in the UK. As the mercury drops and energy prices rise, any rise in premiums will hit harder.
All drivers have faced a rise in premiums, but petrol drivers are seeing much smaller rises, on average just 29 percent according to Confused.com.
Motor expert at Confused.com Louise Thomas said: “Despite electric vehicles becoming more common, they are still the minority on UK roads, and insurers have less experience setting premiums for these types of cars.”
Alongside a rise in premiums, there are other risk factors for electric car drivers too. Chief executive of Green Insurer Paul Baxter explained that their cost and the availability of parts are major factors.
So too is the expertise needed to repair the cars. Mr Baxter explained: “There’s also an issue around technology and skills in the repair networks. They’ve not got to the stage they are with traditional cars in terms of expertise.
“If you dent a door, that’s straightforward, but if something has damaged the battery, in particular, they haven’t caught up with that.”
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2 October, 2023
Fewer hurricanes are hitting New England
With Hurricane Lee churning off the New England coast this past weekend; the mainstream media is now filled with articles claiming climate change will cause more hurricanes to strike New England. In reality, the objective data show New England is experiencing a dramatic and ongoing decline in hurricanes as the climate modestly warms. There is also no indication that the beneficial trend will reverse itself anytime in the foreseeable future.
The Associated Press, USA Today, and ABC News are among the many media entities exploiting the recent offshore storm to make alarmist New England hurricane claims. “Climate change could bring more monster storms like Hurricane Lee to New England,” reads the title of the Associated Press article. “Hurricanes almost never hit New England. That could change as the Earth gets hotter,” reads the USA Today title.
The media articles reference a 2021 paper in which the authors claim they devised a computer model that predicts a warming climate will bring more hurricanes to places like New England. The planet has been modestly warming since the end of the Little Ice Age approximately 150 years ago, so if the computer model is accurate, we should already be seeing a longstanding increase in the frequency of New England hurricanes. The objective data, however, show a dramatic decline in New England hurricanes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) keeps meticulous data on hurricanes and hurricane strikes. On the NOAA webpage, “NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks,” one can see the storm-by-storm path and strength of all U.S.-impacting hurricanes since 1851. One can also focus specifically on hurricanes that have struck New England.
Since 1851, 14 storms have struck or moved over New England at hurricane strength. From the 1850s through the 1950s, New England experienced an average of exactly one hurricane per decade. Since 1960, however, New England is experiencing just 0.65 hurricanes per decade. Moreover, it has now been 32 years and counting since the last New England hurricane, which is the second-longest period without a hurricane in New England history.
It’s not just that New England hurricane frequency is declining. The strength of New England hurricanes is declining, too. The hurricanes from the 1850s through the 1950s had an average maximum strength of 1.8 while over New England. The hurricanes since 1960 have had an average maximum strength of 1.6 while over New England.
Climate alarmists and their media allies try to indoctrinate the public to believe that warmer temperatures directly lead to more frequent and stronger hurricanes. However, many factors determine hurricane formation and strength. Wind shear, for example, rips hurricanes apart before they form and weakens hurricanes after hurricane formation. Scientists have long reported that warming global temperatures may increase wind shear, and that such an increase in wind shear may outweigh any impact of warmer temperatures on hurricanes. In New England, throughout the United States, and throughout the world as a whole, real-world evidence supports that theory.
Ultimately, real-world scientific data trump “expert’” speculation and faulty computer models. Rather than scaring the public into believing climate change is or will make New England hurricanes more frequent and deadlier, the media should report the welcome facts that New England hurricanes are becoming rarer and less deadly as the planet modestly warms.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/fewer_hurricanes_are_hitting_new_england_.html
******************************************************Wind power industry drifts off course
A perfect storm of supply chain delays, design flaws and higher costs in the offshore wind industry has put dozens of projects at risk of not being delivered in time for countries to meet climate goals, industry executives, investors and analysts said.
The race to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is putting pressure on manufacturers and supply chains to keep pace with demand for more clean energy, especially in the European Union which is finalising a legally binding goal to produce 42.5% of energy from renewables by 2030.
Up from 32% now, the new target would require 420 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy including 103 GW offshore, more than double current capacity of 205 GW of which just 17 GW is offshore, according to industry group WindEurope.
But so far this year, projects off Britain, the Netherlands and Norway have been delayed or shelved due to rising costs and supply chain constraints while Britain's renewable energy auction this month failed to attract any bids from offshore wind developers, also because of high industry costs.
"If this turns into a prolonged pause of projects then without a doubt a lot of the 2030 renewables goals will be under pressure," said Jon Wallace, an investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management.
Even before the EU agreed its new renewables target this year, companies including Orsted (ORSTED.CO), Shell (SHEL.L), Equinor (EQNR.OL), wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa and WindEurope had warned that the offshore wind industry was not big enough to deliver on climate targets.
Supply chain disruptions which started during the global pandemic have been exacerbated by the Ukraine war while higher shipping rates, raw material costs, interest rates and inflation have dented profits for some wind developers.
Markus Krebber, CEO of Germany's RWE (RWEG.DE), posted on LinkedIn that a combination of issues, all coming at time when the offshore industry was expected to expand quickly, called into question the achievement of climate protection goals.
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British PM sees popularity surge after watering down Net Zero targets
Rishi Sunak’s popularity among Tory members has surged in the wake of his watering down of net zero targets, a survey has found.
The Prime Minister’s satisfaction rating among the Conservative grassroots has risen out of negative territory to become the eighth-most popular member of Cabinet.
He had placed seventh from bottom last month, having sunk to his lowest approval rating among the membership since taking office.
Mr Sunak was polling at -3.8 ahead of Parliament returning from summer recess, but now sits at +25.8 points.
His popularity bounce comes after he announced a delay to a raft of net zero targets, including pushing back the ban on new petrol car sales to 2035.
He still remains behind Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader, and James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary. They have all remained in the top five Cabinet members for the party’s grassroots.
Kemi Badenoch, the Trade Secretary, came top of the ConservativeHome website’s Cabinet League Table for the second time in a month, leading with a net satisfaction score of +59 percentage points.
Sunak’s ‘brave new approach’ garners favour
The Prime Minister’s popularity had previously rebounded following the Conservative victory in Uxbridge in July, a by-election widely seen as a referendum on the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to outer London.
Mr Sunak also watered down the ban on new oil boiler sales from 2026 to 2035 during his net zero speech last Wednesday, in which he promised a “brave new approach to politics”.
He also increased heat pump grants and promised not to introduce taxes to discourage meat eating or flying.
The latest Cabinet rankings come ahead of the Conservative Party Conference taking place this weekend, the first that Mr Sunak will attend as Prime Minister.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/29/rishi-sunak-net-zero-targets-delay-popularity-surge/
******************************************************UK: Marshals are brought in to police 'charge rage' rows between electric vehicle drivers at motorway power points
Marshals have been brought in to police 'charge rage' between drivers of electric vehicles at motorway services.
The boss of Britain's largest motorway services provider said long waits for plug-in points were making drivers 'very angry and stressed'.
Moto chief executive Ken McMeikan warned that the UK's motorway service stations are facing growing 'public disorder' due to a lack of grid connections preventing him from installing enough car chargers to meet surging demand.
He said angry drivers were confronting staff and each other, and warned of the growing risk of 'charge rage' on motorways.
Drivers in the United States have already been involved in heated disputes as they compete over a shortage of electrical points – dubbed 'charge rage' by US media.
A typical electric car will take at least half an hour to charge, compared to just minutes to fill up a petrol or diesel one. Electric vehicle (EV) drivers were forced to queue for up to six hours at some service stations across the UK last Christmas.
Moto has already introduced marshals at Exeter, Rugby and Wetherby to prevent conflict at busy times.
Mr McMeikan said he had told the Government of the problem and warned ministers that public disorder incidents would grow.
He told the Sunday Telegraph: 'I've been saying to them that the grid does not have sufficient capacity right now to deliver the power we need at the time we need it.
'If we don't get that amount of power guaranteed, then in coming years every Christmas, every Easter, every summer holiday and peak bank holiday will be the equivalent of when we have a fuel crisis on petrol and diesel.' Mr McMeikan said he had repeatedly told Jesse Norman, the minister for decarbonisation, that making EV motorists queue would put his staff and motorists at risk of 'charge rage'.
He added: 'There is a view in Government that, rather than provide the power to guarantee sufficient numbers of chargers, we should be thinking about how we manage queues.'
Last month, Toddington Harper, CEO at EV specialists GridServe, warned that rural areas could be 'left behind' in the transition to EVs, saying they may not see the same investment in charging bays as inner cities. Department for Transport data shows that remote areas have the fewest charging bays.
There are about 850,000 EVs on UK roads and two in ten of the new cars registered in August were EVs.
The Department for Transport said: 'Around 96 per cent of motorway service areas already have charging available. The Government has put more than £2 billion into the transition to electric vehicles, with the number of public charge points across the country increasing by 43 per cent since last year.'
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1 October, 2023
First, They Targeted Your Gas Stove - Now, the Left Wants to Ban Air Conditioners
When the heat waves of 2023 baked many parts of the United States with oven-dry drought conditions, the Biden administration’s newly formed Office of Climate Change and Health Equity (OCCHE) sounded the apocalyptic warning sirens. Admiral Rachel Levine, a pediatrician, leads the bureau with a charge of finding ways to right the wrongs of climate change, particularly when they are believed to disproportionately impact people of color.
The lack of air conditioning in low-income homes seems like a battle perfectly suited for Admiral Levine. An “all-of-government” response to outfit low-income homes with air conditioners seems like the first obvious attack. But, when it comes to household appliances, the fog of political war on the left makes those battle lines far from clear. Health equity never happens when practicalities of achieving it conflict with just about any other cause of the political left.
The pandemic lockdowns highlighted the need for Americans who struggle with poverty to get the air conditioning they need. The solution was obvious. Even the unpopular and politically tone-deaf former mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, responded compassionately by delivering 74,000 air conditioners to low-income New Yorkers.
One would think that as the left moves from the coronavirus to climate change as their driving political force, Levine would follow suit and load trucks with window air conditioning units. After all, asthma affects non-white kids the hardest. Moreover, African American children are more than twice as likely as white kids to visit an emergency room for asthma. And studies have concluded that kids who live in urban areas benefit from air conditioning as a means of preventing and treating asthma.
Last year, Richard Trumka, commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), warned Americans about a killer hiding in plain sight within the kitchens of many American homes. “Spread the word about this hidden hazard before you gather with family and friends for the holidays,” he said of gas stoves, before infamously threatening a ban by 2024. Several groups pointed to a study showing a stove-related increase of 12 percent in childhood asthma as their reason for banning gas stoves. Given the consensus among the administration that gas stoves are bad for asthma and air conditioning good for it, you would think the good folks at CPSC or OCCHE would have a do-gooder plan to trade your gas stove for an electric AC unit. But, of course, things are more complicated than that.
Our betters believe that while asthma is bad for kids, climate change that causes the need for more air conditioners is far worse. In fact, the Biden administration just slapped the industry with new regulations that will make air conditioning units more expensive for low-income Americans to buy, and existing units nearly impossible to fix.
As energy prices soar and low-income Americans struggle to pay their utility bills, the only thing they have to look forward to is the cool fall weather and a momentary break before winter brings its coming heating bills. A recent article from The Lancet explains why (presumably people other than the authors) should not expect air conditioning as a sustainable solution for the heat, promising “a more holistic understanding of the thermal environment at the landscape and urban, building, and individual scales supports the identification of numerous sustainable opportunities to keep people cooler.”
Next spring, that means when poor and asthmatic kids come home from school, they will have to open the windows and grab their inhalers.
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Eco-technocrats in Brussels risk posing a threat to democracy
Any serious politician knows perfectly well by now that net zero 2050 won’t fly democratically. There was an inevitability about Rishi Sunak graciously allowing us longer to keep buying our petrol cars and using our gas boilers, not to mention Emmanuel Macron’s own subsequent climbdown on the gas boiler issue in France earlier this week. Their voters would not have stood for anything else.
But where does this now leave the serious climate activist? Effectively they have two choices: make the best of a democratic process which has turned against them, or move to take such decisions out of the hands of the voters.
What is being demanded here is that future environmental policy be determined in a technocratic way
There are ominous signs that they are increasingly inclined towards the latter, much more dangerous, course. One such straw in the wind is a high-profile case starting today in the European Court of Human Rights.
The nominal claimants are six Portuguese citizens aged between 11 and 24. They are suing 32 European states, including the UK, seeking what is effectively an order from the Strasbourg judges to keep strictly to the Paris accords and immediately act to keep warming below 1.5 degrees centigrade. Anything short of this, they say, threatens their human rights to life, to freedom from torture or degrading treatment, and to privacy, and unduly disadvantages them as against earlier generations.
The public relations accompanying this claim deserve full marks. Graceful pictures of winsome teenagers combine nicely with evocations of David and Goliath, not to mention idealistic youth pitched against selfish middle age. And, it must be admitted, at least some of the money behind the campaign has been crowdfunded rather than handed out by well-heeled foundations. Nevertheless, this is still a development that should give us considerable pause.
For one thing, the claimants, while utterly sincere, are bit players. In reality, this is a fairly ordinary case of pressure groups engaging in lawfare as politics by other means. The whole thing is apparently co-ordinated by something called the Global Legal Action Network, or GLAN, and it has the overt backing of organisations such as Amnesty, Greenpeace and a number of other activist groups.
Secondly, behind all this lies an important bid by human rights lawyers (many of those instructed, incidentally, being English barristers) to stake a claim over what is for human rights law a pretty untouched field. Admittedly, their arguments are not quite as outlandish as you might think if armed merely with the words of the Human Rights Convention.
True, you might be forgiven for reading the right to life as something aimed at state death squads rather than freak weather fatalities, for interpreting torture or degrading treatment as meaning deliberate brutalisation rather than failing to control heatwaves and the duty not to discriminate in respecting human rights as having nothing to do with promoting intergenerational justice. But however correct in 1951 when we ratified the convention, such a view now puts you very firmly on the wrong side of history. All these rights have been creatively extended almost out of recognition, so as to cover not simply deliberate state atrocities but all sorts of activities and omissions that might shorten, blight or unequalise the life of people generally.
Nevertheless, no-one has seriously suggested so far that the convention gives the court the kind of remit that these human rights lawyers are now pressing for: a kind of roving commission to keep governments on their toes on all matters climate, and, whatever voters may think, to intervene in any case where it sees that lives, comfort and the interests of future generations are being hazarded to a greater extent than it regards as acceptable. As a lawyer for GLAN candidly admitted, if he gets what he is asking for – an order from the court to 32 states to ‘rapidly accelerate their climate mitigation efforts’ – this would be a ‘game changer’.
Politics being in the end about the good of human institutions, one must of course still ask: would this be a good thing? Here again, however, there is room for serious doubt.
Backers of this move have pointed out that the involvement of lawyers in climate change is nothing new. This is true: only last month, for example, a group of children in the US state of Montana successfully sued its government for failing to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel use.
But there is an important difference. In Montana the suit was before state judges, and was based on a democratically approved constitution, which explicitly enacted a right to a ‘clean and healthful environment’. In the present case, none of those applies. What is being demanded here is, in effect, that future environmental policy be determined in a technocratic way, by judges owing allegiance to no society or political unit, applying an instrument that is essentially beyond democratic change, and which in addition has never said anything explicit about the environment at all.
What the court will decide is anyone’s guess, though it clearly takes the claim seriously, having assigned it to its highest and most solemn forum, the Grand Chamber. For anyone who believes in democracy, however, such a massive takeover of power needs to be seen as a very big deal indeed.
Voters must be allowed to make up their own minds, which means occasionally getting things wrong. The more an establishment tells them that matters of vital social policy, and of enormous consequence to individuals and their prosperity, are simply too important to be entrusted to them, the more the danger that ordinary people will think democracy itself is not worth the candle.
Whatever your views on climate change, even if you are a firm believer in the enormous reduction in our standard of living that punctilious adherence to net zero would involve, here you must be especially careful what you wish for.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/eco-technocrats-in-brussels-risk-posing-a-threat-to-democracy
**************************************************Biodegradable carrier bags are MORE toxic than conventional plastic versions, study claims
Researchers analysed three types of bags – a compostable bag made of vegetable starch, a recycled plastic bag and a conventional plastic bag.
They exposed them to sunlight to make them break down, and then exposed them to fish cells.
They also then composted them and tested the resulting compost for toxicity.
A 'high level of toxicity' was produced by the biodegradable bags, harming the fish cells, according to the authors from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),
Cinta Porte, lead author of the study, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, said: 'We were surprised that cells exposed to conventional plastic bags showed no trace of toxicity.
'However, we did detect it in biodegradable ones, which decreased cell viability.
'Our hypothesis is that manufacturers add chemical additives to make biodegradable bags that could be particularly toxic.
'In addition, recycled plastic bags also showed higher levels of toxicity than conventional ones, as plastic additives would also be added for reuse.'
In the experiment, the aging process of the bags was simulated with ultraviolet rays (photodegradation).
The small fragments of bags remaining after composting and the compost resulting from the bag breaking down was analysed.
The study found that toxins 'which results in the accumulation of pollutants that can affect the environment and negatively impact the health of the population'.
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‘Trust the Experts’: 1,600 Scientists Sign Declaration Denouncing Climate Change Hoax
“Trust the experts,” we the peasants are exhorted by the governing authorities in all matters at all times – common sense, intuition, individual judgment be damned.
They never bother to explain why some experts are to be mindlessly obeyed while others are to be dismissed.
For instance, I don’t suppose MSNBC or The New York Times will be running articles beseeching us to listen to these 1,600 scientists who recently signed a declaration contradicting the official narrative surrounding something called “climate change.”
Via The College Fix:
“A total of 1,609 scientists, professors and other scholars have signed on to a new declaration that argues there is no climate change crisis.
“There is no climate emergency” is the title of the declaration that consists of 53 pages’ worth of signatories from across the globe, including some Nobel Laureates and other researchers from prestigious universities. Other signers include engineers, attorneys and other professionals.
The declaration, published with its endorsers in mid-August, lists six main arguments against the alleged climate crisis, including that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and is actually “plant food” and “the basis of all life on Earth.”*
*This is the single most important aspect of the “climate change” hoax to grasp: it is a war on carbon, on its face, but, at the core, it is a war on life on Earth, which is comprised primarily of carbon. 18.5% of the human body mass is carbon, which has often been described as the “backbone” element due to its inclusion in many organic molecules.
From the declaration, titled “There Is no Climate Emergency,” signed by 1,600 credentialed scientists, many of whom may coincidentally find their grants dried up in the near future:
“The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming…
The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly…
To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in*. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”
Related to the point made that the climate is naturally evolving, let us not forget that “climate change” was once called “global warming,” but was amended so as to make the term as open-ended and therefore versatile in its social engineering applications as possible. Even the proponents of unprecedented social and economic upheaval in its name can no longer say exactly what “climate change” refers to because it refers to nothing and everything all at once. It’s a cliché, a buzzword, a banal platitude.
https://armageddonprose.substack.com/p/trust-the-experts-1600-scientists
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