GREENIE WATCH -- by Dr. John Ray

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

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. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.

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31 August, 2020

Senate Democrats unveil California-style $400 billion per year climate plan

Senate Democrats on Tuesday rolled out an ambitious climate change plan that calls for spending $400 billion annually to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050, even as California struggles with rolling blackouts under a comparable statewide renewable energy standard.

The 263-page report, the latest of the Democratic Green New Deal-style proposals, seeks to increase federal spending to address climate change by at least 2% of U.S. gross domestic product annually, or about $400 billion, with a guarantee that 40% of the benefits would go to minority and disadvantaged communities.

“The climate crisis is not some distant threat. It is here now, and it will be catastrophic if we don’t strike back immediately,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “Over the next few decades, climate change will affect every part of American life: our health, our economy, our national security, even our geography.”

The plan would create “at least 10 million new jobs” with an aggressive transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy. It also would invest in electric vehicles, retrofit buildings and expand public transportation.

Critics said the plan is unrealistic and wildly expensive, but the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis said in its report that “there is no viable scenario in which our country avoids significant spending.”

“We can wait and spend trillions of dollars in a disorderly, unproductive manner to continuously respond to our changing climate. Or, we strategically invest in climate solutions now,” the report said.

The proposal was introduced while Californians were suffering through power outages during a heat wave. The state hopes to convert its electrical grid to 100% renewable energy by 2045, five years before the Senate Democrats’ goal, raising questions about the feasibility of such plans.

James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, said efforts to achieve net-zero emissions with current technology are “simply pixie dust and wishful thinking with absolutely no basis in reality.”

“It’s impossible to have net-zero energy electricity generation without frequent blackouts and substantial economic pain from higher electricity costs, just as a matter of science,” Mr. Taylor said. “We don’t have the capacity to generate our electricity right now from unreliable intermittent sources and still have a reliable electricity grid, and that’s not going to change anytime in the near future.”

Last year, renewable energy represented about 11% of U.S. total energy consumption and 17% of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“It’s just political grandstanding,” Mr. Taylor said. “The Democrats would either destroy our reliable electricity grid or they would immediately need to break their campaign promise. It has to be one or the other.”

Like the Green New Deal resolution proposed in 2017 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, the program laid out by Democrats on the Special Committee on the Climate Crisis includes a focus on environmental justice while adding a call to expose those who donate to “groups trafficking in climate denial.”

Several pages of the report were devoted to blasting the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute, which have challenged the “climate crisis” narrative, as well as trade associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“This report charts a smart path forward for climate action in Congress. It includes the vital first step of exposing the fossil fuel industry’s decades-old covert operation to scuttle meaningful climate legislation,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat. “To move forward on major climate bills, we’ll need to execute on that recommendation.”

Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and a member of the Trump EPA transition team, said the spending would “accomplish nothing — but at great cost.”

“Regardless of one’s views on climate science, U.S. emissions are an ever-shrinking part of global emissions,” Mr. Milloy said.

Carbon dioxide emissions dropped 12% in the U.S. from 2005 to 2018, according to the EPA, and rose nearly 24% worldwide.

“Democrat plans to ‘decarbonize’ the economy would only raise energy prices, reduce our standard of living and put our national security in jeopardy without changing, much less improving, the weather,” Mr. Milloy said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, Oregon Democrat, drew a connection between climate change and the novel coronavirus. He said the “pandemic is showing us the importance of responding to crises boldly and decisively with science, not ideology.”

SOURCE

The dismal economics of offshore wind

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The generation of electricity by onshore wind turbines has benefited from federal subsidies and state renewable energy mandates for decades. More than 100,000 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity have been constructed in the lower 48 states,[1] 9,000 MW of which came online in 2019. Onshore wind capacity has now surpassed installed nuclear capacity (although because of its “always-on” nature, total electricity generated from nuclear plants far exceeds that of onshore wind) and is exceeded only by natural gas- and coal-fired generating capacity.[2]

But from an economic perspective, the future of onshore wind is unfavorable. The federal production tax credit (PTC)—which was created in 1992 and today pays qualifying wind plant owners about $23 per MWh of electricity generated for 10 years—began to phase out in 2017. The PTC has decreased by 20% per year, and wind projects whose construction begins after January 1, 2021, will no longer be eligible.[3]

The demise of the PTC is not, however, the source of onshore wind power’s troubling future. Instead, given the remote location of many wind farms, expensive transmission lines are necessary to bring the electricity to cities and towns; perhaps most significant, local opposition has intensified over the past few years and stymied the development of new projects.[4]

In response to local pushback, some states are pushing back. In March of this year, for example, New York enacted legislation to overturn the state’s traditional “home rule” deference, which allows local governments to have final say over the types of facilities that can be built. Now, under the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act, almost all renewable energy development in the Empire State will be approved by a new Office of Renewable Energy Siting. Locations will be denied only if there are valid and substantive reasons; local opposition, however, no longer will be considered a valid reason.[5]

Nevertheless, the opposition to additional onshore wind turbines, as well as the decreasing availability of high-quality “windy” locations, has led politicians and policymakers to shift their focus to offshore projects. In January 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for developing 9,000 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2035, up from his previous order that 2,400 MW be developed by 2030.[6] In January 2018, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order requiring 3,500 MW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.[7] A 2016 law in Massachusetts requires that the state’s electric distribution companies procure 1,600 MW of “cost-effective” offshore wind capacity by June 2027 and 3,200 MW by 2035.[8] Similarly, Maryland’s Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 calls for 480 MW of offshore wind capacity to be developed.[9]

Proponents of offshore wind energy tout its clean energy bona fides and rapidly decreasing costs (as evidenced by recent competitive solicitations), which will enable states to meet ambitious targets to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuel and nuclear power. Advocates also see offshore wind as an avenue to create a manufacturing and economic renaissance in their respective states, one that will create thousands of construction jobs and generate billions of dollars of new economic activity.[10]

As this paper will show, the arguments made on behalf of offshore wind are invalid.

SOURCE

Potentially Powerful Pipeline Precedents

Fracking (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) has unleashed bounties of US oil and natural gas, dramatically reduced energy prices from their historic 2008 peak, saved families and industries billions of dollars annually, helped create and sustain millions of American jobs, made the United States stronger militarily and turned it into a net energy exporter.

Those fixated on alleged climate dangers from fossil fuels don’t care. In fact, they are aghast and angry about this oil and gas renaissance. Unable to stop all production, they have focused on blocking pipelines. If companies can’t get oil and gas to markets, they reason production will dwindle, companies will go bankrupt, and the case for supposedly renewable energy will grow stronger.

Acceding to their demands, tunnel-visioned federal judges recently blocked theAtlantic Coast Pipeline, told operators to shut down and drain the fully operational Dakota Access Pipeline, and mandated still more studies for Keystone XL and 75 other pipelines.

The judges issued these decisions in the name of preserving wetlands, preventing stream siltation, protecting endangered species, safeguarding scenic views, stopping greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting other environmental values.

They effectively deemed it irrelevant that fossil fuels still provide over 80% of all the energy that powers American industries, homes and living standards, and that virtually invisible underground pipelines replace much more dangerous alternatives.

TheDakota Access Pipeline alone replaces some 255,000 oil tanker railcars going through our towns and cities, or 730,000 semi-trailer tanker trucks on our highways, every year!

The activists and judges said even short-term scenic, stream sedimentation and ecological impacts during pipeline construction are unacceptable.

Even after aUS Supreme Court decision reversed the ACP decision, the company sponsors cancelled the project anyway, due to threats of more costly lawsuits and delays ad infinitum.

Even more extreme, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want no fossil fuels, and net-zero carbon dioxide emissions, by 2050. They claim this will lead the world in eliminating climate and environmental catastrophes. In reality, the impacts on US and global environments would be monumental.

In 2018, coal and natural gas generated 2.6 billion megawatt-hours of America’s electricity. Natural gas also provided the equivalent of 2.7 billion MWh of fuel for factories, businesses and homes. Internal combustion vehicles used over 2.0 billion MWh equivalent of gasoline and diesel.

Under the Biden-AOC Green New Deal, all those 7.3 billion megawatt-hours of electricity would come from “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” sources. Wind and sunshine certainly fit that description.

However, harnessing this intermittent power definitely does not. That would require unimaginable numbers of wind turbines and solar panels, and warehouses of huge batteries to provide backup power for just week of windless, sunless days – especially since the more wind and solar we demand, the more we must put turbines and panels in low quality locations. Without them, we would be hit by hundreds of rolling blackouts every year, like the ones that have been clobbering California.

A recent analysis suggests that generating all that electricity would require some 17 billion sun-tracking solar panels; or 25 billion fixed thin-film panels; or 3.5 million 1.8-MW onshore wind turbines; or 260,000 monstrous 10-MW offshore turbines; or some combination of those facilities. We’d also need nearly 2 billion half-ton Tesla battery modules, and thousands of miles of new transmission lines across America.

Building and installing these massive facilities would require tens of billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, aluminum, cobalt, rare earth elements, fiberglass composites and dozens of other materials.

Getting those raw materials would require mining, processing and smelting hundreds of billions of tons of ore, from all around the world, but mostly from companies owned or controlled by China – almost all with fossil fuels; without regard for US pollution control, wildlife protection or workplace safety laws; and all too often using child and near-slave labor.

The turbines and panels would sprawl across hundreds of millions of acres of crop, scenic and habitat lands. Construction would scar landscapes, remove mountaintops, rip through forests, destroy scenic vistas, obliterate wildlife habitats, fill streams with sediment during construction, and displace or kill endangered plants, animals and birds.

Dominion Energy alone plans to construct solar panels in rural Virginia on lands totaling eight times Washington, DC, to serve a small fraction of the state’s electricity needs. Multiply that times 50 states and thousands of communities in a 100% electric economy, and you can begin to envision the ecological devastation from this “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy.

The 600- to 850-foot-tall wind turbines would slaughter millions of raptors, other birds and bats annually, completely eradicating them in many areas. Residential, business, hospital and school electricity rates would skyrocket. America’s economy and job market would never recover from Covid.

A few landowners – and a lot of utility company officers and investors – would get rich. But other people would suffer from infrasound and light flicker, watch their beautiful landscapes disappear forever, and get no compensation whatsoever.

The turbines, panels and batteries have short life spans, and are generally non-recyclable. Most would end up in enormous landfills.Vast rural areas would be turned into energy and trash colonies for politically powerful urban centers.

But on one positive note, years of pipeline lawsuits, human rights campaigns, and battles over mining and US and global air and water pollution have set powerful legal precedents.

Landowners, citizen groups, human rights defenders and environmentalists not fixated on climate change will be able to use them to delay, block, bankrupt and scuttle many or most of these destructive pseudo-renewable energy projects. They will also demand that wind, solar, battery and electric vehicle metals, minerals and components be responsibly sourced – in accordance with all US laws and ethics.

Utilities think they hit a buzz saw over pipelines. Radical greens think they won this war. It could be a Pyrrhic victory if those laws, regulations, EIS rules and judicial decisions are applied to wind and solar. In fact, they are potentially powerful pipeline precedents.

And if regulators, politicians and courts apply double standards – one for fossil fuels and one for pseudo-renewables, akin to one for rioters and another for churchgoers – the situation could become extremely troublesome, to say the least. It could turn into real resistance, rebellion and conflict.

It’s time for civilized debates, with no cancel-culture interference, on all these issues, before that happens.

SOURCE

A practical way of using renewables

Kalbarri [in Western Australia] is now the proposed site for a massive 5,000-megawatt renewable hydrogen export operation. Although construction is still 10 years away from breaking ground, should it go ahead, the project will put the tiny town at the bleeding edge of a pioneering technological development in renewable energy.

“The idea is to become a low-cost producer of green, renewable hydrogen,” says Terry Kallis, one of the project’s promoters.

Like solar and wind power, the technology to make “green” hydrogen from water has been around since the 1970s.

Historically the production of hydrogen relied on fossil fuels to make “brown” or “blue” hydrogen by running an electric current through water using an electrolyser – a device that breaks down water into oxygen and hydrogen.

But today the development of renewable energy has advanced enough that coal or natural gas are no longer needed to create the electric current. The entire process can instead be powered by wind and solar – making green hydrogen possible.

For years, technological development in the sector stalled due to a lack of demand, but that is changing rapidly. Each year the world consumes 70m tonnes of hydrogen to make glass, steel and fertiliser. That figure is projected to grow to 90m tonnes by 2050 under the more conservative scenarios.

The Kalbarri proposal aims to take advantage of this by constructing a combined wind and solar plant to power the commercial production of hydrogen from seawater. If all goes well, the gas will then be exported to nations like Korea, Japan and Singapore, countries that – thanks to their geography – cannot make it themselves.

Kallis and his business partner, Peter Sgardelis, have a background in large-scale renewables. Kallis was involved in the construction of the first commercial windfarm in South Australia and Sgardelis worked on the Star of the South offshore windfarm in Victoria.

This experience – along with the growing global interest in renewable hydrogen – has helped attract support from German multinational engineering giant Siemens, which in October last year signed up to build the electrolysers for the project.

“We’ve seen the costs associated with production of green hydrogen coming down, or coming down sooner than expected,” Kallis says. “We’ve also seen the development of the electrolyser to commercial scale and people start talking about demand. That has been a missing link.”

The area around Kalbarri – the traditional land of the Nanda people with whom they are currently negotiating a land use agreement – is an obvious choice, he says.

The landscape offers the right type of wind, good exposure to sun, and is close to both ocean and the Dampier-to-Bunbury pipeline – the longest gas pipeline in Australia.

Since the project is being developed in stages, the earliest phases will see hydrogen blended into the liquid natural gas supply before it then pivots to focus on export.

Like any ambitious project that pushes the boundaries of technological and industrial development, it is not without problems to solve.

While the process of making hydrogen from water is well understood, until recently the electrolysers required for the process have not been large and efficient enough to produce in commercial quantities.

The other issue has been transport.

Moving hydrogen offshore currently requires the gas to be packaged up in ammonia, or cooled 250C below freezing until it forms a liquid that can then be pumped out onto a ship like LNG.

“Those details have yet to be determined, as it will depend on what the buyer wants,” Kallis says. “We’re under no illusions and we make clear this is a very large project, something that will be developed in stages over time.”

Should they succeed, they will be helping to pioneer what may be a whole new industry for Australia.

Many believe hydrogen could play a role in turning Australia into the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.

“Countries such as Japan, Korea and Germany have already come to Australia, asking for us to export renewable hydrogen for their domestic energy consumption,” says Ken Baldwin, the director of the Energy Change Institute at the Australian National University. “We have enormous opportunities … [to create wealth and] jobs due to the demand for our energy from these countries.”

In November last year, the CSIRO released the National Hydrogen Roadmap to plan out how an export industry could be developed.

The potential to get in on the ground floor of a future industry has the private sector excited, with a flurry of 30 new proposals for renewable hydrogen projects in Western Australia alone.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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30 August, 2020

Climate change 'could hamper efforts to wipe out malaria'

Utter rubbish! They can wipe out malaria any time they want by re-authorizing the use of DDT. Australia is a third tropical but it wiped out malaria before DDT was banned

The DDT story is an old one. DDT is toxic to insects only but some poorly substantiated claims that it also hinders reproduction for some birds were enough to get it banned. An unbiased re-examination of the evidence would almost certainly un-ban it.

It is a wonder for killing mosquitoes, bed-bugs etc.

Efforts to eradicate malaria could be hampered by climate change — which could boost mosquito numbers and bring the disease to new areas, a study has found.

Malaria is a climate-sensitive disease which thrives where it is wet and warm enough to provide the still surface waters needed to breed the mosquitoes that spread it.

For more than two decades, experts have warned that the new patterns of temperature and rainfall induced by climate change could change malaria's range.

Experts from Leeds now warn that malaria could remain longer in parts of Africa — such as Botswana and Mozambique — while lessening in areas like South Sudan.

Africa faces the lion's share of the global malaria burden — with the continent facing, for example, 93 per cent of the world's estimated 228 million cases in 2018.

'[Following] the huge efforts to eradicate malaria from parts of the world, the areas where we observe malaria today are only a part of the total area that would otherwise be suitable for malaria transmission,' said paper author Mark Smith.

'But if we are to project the impact of climate change on the geography of malaria transmission, we need to develop more sophisticated ways of representing that envelope of malaria suitability both today and in the future,' he added.

'Our approach aims to lay out the environmental risks of malaria more clearly, so that projections of climate change impacts can help inform public health interventions and support vulnerable communities.'

'But this is only a first step, there is a lot more we can do to embed state-of-the-art hydrological and flood models into estimates of malaria environmental suitability and, potentially, even early warning systems of local malaria epidemics.'

Detailed mapping of the spread of malaria is vital for organising public health resources and aid efforts.

In the past, scientists have estimated the annual spread and duration of the disease — alongside making future predictions — by looking at rainfall and temperature.

But factors affecting how rainfall results in waters suitable for mosquito breeding are complex — including, for example, consideration of how water is absorbed into soil and vegetation, as well as rates of runoff and evaporation.

In their study, the researchers combined a malaria climatic suitability model with a continental-scale hydrological model that represents real-world processes of evaporation, infiltration and flow through rivers.

'This process-focused approach gives a more in-depth picture of malaria-friendly conditions across Africa,' said Dr Smith.

By using future climate scenarios to predict conditions up to the end of the century, the team found a different pattern of future changes in malaria suitability compared to previous works.

'While the findings show only very minor future changes in the total area suitable for malaria transmission, the geographical location of many of those areas shifts substantially,' explained Dr Smith.

'When a hydrological model is used, aridity-driven decreases in suitability are no longer observed across southern Africa, particularly Botswana and Mozambique.'

'Conversely, projected decreases in malaria suitable areas across West Africa are more pronounced.'

The largest change predicted by the team would occur in South Sudan — which is expected to undergo substantial decreases in malaria suitability in the future.

While flowing water in such large rivers does not provide a suitable habitat for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, they can create small ponds and floodplains beside their course which form ideal larvae breeding grounds.

According to the researchers, this is problematic, as human settlements tend to be concentrated close to rivers.

'The shrinking map of malaria in Africa over that last 20 years is primarily due to huge public health efforts underway to tackle this disease, not climate change,' said paper author and health expert Chris Thomas of the University of Lincoln.

'But malaria elimination is made much more difficult where the climate is highly suitable for transmission, so it is key to know where these areas are now and are projected to be in the future.'

'Linking physical geographic processes to the biology helps us get to grips with some of that complexity.'

'The exciting challenge now is to develop this approach at local scales.'

SOURCE

U.S. court rejects bid to halt Kinder Morgan gas pipeline

A nearly-complete $2.3 billion pipeline to carry natural gas from West Texas shale fields to the U.S. Gulf Coast can move ahead, a U.S. judge in Austin, Texas, ruled on Friday, rejecting an environmental group's effort to halt the project.

Sierra Club in April challenged federal approval of the 428-mile (689 km) Kinder Morgan Inc pipeline, alleging regulators reviews under a streamlined process were faulty. The line's path crosses areas with two endangered species and some 400 wetlands, lawyers wrote.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issued permits for the Permian Highway pipeline, said no further reviews are needed. The project is more than 85% mechanically complete, Kinder Morgan has said. A spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

"We are disappointed that the court declined to put an immediate stop to this illegal construction, and we are evaluating our options," said Sierra Club attorney Joshua Smith.

Legal challenges have delayed the Dakota Access, Keystone XL, and Trans Mountain oil pipelines, and led to a cancellation of the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline.

The proposed Kinder Morgan line would bring 2.1 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas from West Texas to the Gulf Coast. Service could begin in January.

U.S. District Court for Western District of Texas Judge Robert Pitman denied the request for a preliminary injunction saying the group did not show continued construction would cause irreparable harm to landowners or endangered species.

"Unfortunately, granting an injunction at this state of the pipeline's completion would not 'unring the bell,'" he wrote in his decision, adding Sierra Club "failed to establish a definitive threat of future harm."

The pipeline is owned by Kinder Morgan, Exxon Mobil, Altus Midstream and Blackstone Group's EagleClaw Midstream Ventures.

SOURCE

An Open Letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren

On August 28, 2020, Dr. Caleb Rossiter, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, published on open letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on the issue of censorship. In it, he states:

Dear Senator Warren:

In July you wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and, to my shock and dismay, asked him to censor me and the CO2 Coalition of climate scientists and energy economists, of which I am the executive director. At issue is an op-ed on the arcane mathematics of computerized climate models that I co-authored in 2019 with our senior fellow Patrick Michaels, a former president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

I've been struggling to find some common ground that would interest you in looking carefully at my opinions, both on the "climate disinformation" you allege and on the concept of censoring rather than debating opinions with which one disagrees. [...]

The energy with which you pursue your argument that the CO2 Coalition should be banned from Facebook for promoting "climate denialism" is impressive, but you've violated our first rule in analysis: understand the other point of view so you can portray it accurately before questioning it.[...]

As I follow your argument for Facebook censoring my views, (1) the CO2 Coalition knowingly lies (that's the definition of disinformation); (2) these lies will reduce public support for "action on climate change" (actually, energy action, since the climatic results of reducing CO2 emissions are precisely what the models have tried, and failed so far, to project); and (3) without such action, "communities and economies...will continue to be ravaged by the climate crisis." (Actually, "continue" is premature, since as noted, there is no climate crisis yet, only a projected one.)

There is much here, of course, that I think is unproven and that I think you didn't prove or even try to prove in your letter. But even if it were all true, wouldn't it be better to tolerate our disagreement, and then defeat my nefarious efforts in debate than to simply silence them? Surely, Facebook users are smart enough to assess evidence and make up their own minds, just like my students were. I still subscribe to the dictum often attributed to Voltaire: I may disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

- Caleb S. Rossiter, Ph.D.

The full letter can be found at http://co2coalition.org/2020/08/28/open-letter-to-senator-elizabeth-warren/

Email from The CO2 Coalition, info@co2coalition.org

We need an inquiry into climate alarmism

Comment from Australia

I hope you are sitting down; this foray into political and media madness over bushfires and climate change starts with recognising some excellent, forensic journalism by the ABC. Investigating last summer’s devastating Gospers Mountain fire, journalist Philippa McDonald took us to the very tree where the fire is believed to have been started when it was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm.

McDonald used this to give us the brilliantly counterintuitive opening line; “It began not with fire, but ice.” In a series of reports, McDonald and her team retraced the history of the fire over a number of weeks, how it was almost extinguished by rain, how bushwalkers in the wrong place at the wrong time thwarted a backburn that might have stopped it, how another prescribed burn got out of control and destroyed houses, and how a fortuitous wind change stopped it encroaching on suburban Sydney.

We might quibble with some of the alarmist language — repeating the silly new “megafire” term and pretending that when fires meet they join and get bigger when, in fact, this reduces the number of fronts and total length of fire perimeter — but overall the reporting was factual and admirable because it explained the many variables in fire behaviour and the factors that can influence whether a fire can be contained or extinguished before weather conditions turn it into an unstoppable beast. Surprisingly, and refreshingly, the reports did not dwell on climate change.

When it comes to our bushfires climate change is so close to being irrelevant, it should hardly warrant a passing reference — we have always faced disastrous bushfire conditions and always will. If climate change makes the worst conditions either marginally more or less common, it matters not; we still need to do the same things to protect ourselves.

In previous articles I have detailed the leading scientific analysis showing the main precondition for the NSW fires — a long drought — cannot be attributed to climate change. Unless climate activists want to argue Australia could do something to alter the global climate sufficiently to reduce our bushfire threat, they are exposed as cynical campaigners who used the sure bet of bushfires to advance their political scare campaign.

The NSW bushfire inquiry released this week took a dive into the climate science — as it was tasked to do — and found, predictably enough, that climate change “clearly played a role in the conditions” that led up to the fires and helped spread them. But thankfully it did not waste much time on climate in its recommendations, merely suggesting climate trends need to be monitored and factored in.

Apart from exercises in politically correct box ticking — Indigenous training for evacuation centre staff so they are “culturally competent”, wildlife rescue training for firefighters, and signs to promote ABC radio stations — most of the recommendations were practical. Better equipment for firefighters, more water bombers, more communication, public education and most importantly, a range of suggestions on fuel reduction around settled areas and planning controls on building in fire prone areas.

The bottom line has always been obvious: the one fire input we can control is fuel, so where we want to slow blazes or protect properties, we must reduce fuel. Planning is also important to prevent housing in indefensible locations, but one crucial phrase missing from the report was “personal responsibility”.

Houses on wooded hilltops or surrounded by bush cannot be protected and their residents should not expect others to risk their lives trying to do so.

People must be educated to clear extensively around properties, sufficient to withstand not a moderate fire but a firestorm, otherwise they must be prepared to surrender their homes and escape early.

“Hazard reduction is not the complete answer,” said report author Mary O’Kane. “People do need to take responsibility, they need to realise that if they live in certain areas it can be very dangerous, and we try to give a strong message of, if you are in a dangerous area and there is one of these big, bad megafires, the message, is get out.”

O’Kane is right, of course. But it seems a hell of a waste to hold a full inquiry only to be told we should do more fuel reduction, be careful where we build houses, and get the hell out of the way rather than try to fight firestorms. We knew all this.

The push for an inquiry was largely driven by the climate catastrophists. Remember, they wanted to blame the blazes on the axing of the carbon tax, and on Scott Morrison. It was inane and rancid stuff.

They will be at it again, this fire season. They love making political capital out of disasters, although they go as quiet as Tim Flannery when it comes to full dams and widespread snowfalls.

The area of land burned in the Australian summer has now been revised down by 25 per cent, and the claims about wildlife deaths revised downwards too, to factor in the mind-blowing realisation that animals actually escape fire when they can — birds fly, wombats burrow, kangaroos hop and even koalas can climb to the treetops and escape all but a crowning blaze.

Remember we had articles in The Guardian, The New York Times, and on CNN and the BBC, saying the bush might never recover. Take a drive through the Blue Mountains, Kangaroo Island or the Australian Alps and see how their predictions turned out.

The sclerophyll forests of southern Australia are not just adapted to fire, they are reliant on it. Therefore, the wildlife also is reliant on it for the rejuvenation of the vegetation — why does basic ecology escape the climate activists? If it is any comfort, the same madness is now playing out in California. Similar climate, similar history of bushfires, and the same maddening political debate. With fires burning more than a million acres in northern California this month, the state’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, sent a recorded message to his party’s national convention; “If you are in denial about climate change, come to California.” The trouble is that while these are bad wildfires, they are not unusual in the natural and settled history of that environment.

Like the Australian bush, the redwood forests that US journalists suggest are being destroyed by fire, depend on fire for propagation. Just like here, one of the issues has been the suppression of bushfire by human interference, leading to the unnatural build up of fuel that can explode when a wildfire does get away in bad conditions.

Environmentalist and author of Apocalypse Never; Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Michael Shellenberger says the climate is warming but the impact of this on fires is overstated. In an article for Forbes.com he quoted Scott Stevens of the University of California, Berkeley, saying climate change is not a major factor, as well as other experts scoffing of the idea that severe fires are anything new.

“California’s fires should indeed serve as a warning to the public, but not that climate change is causing the apocalypse,” wrote Shellenberger. “Rather, it should serve as a warning that mainstream news reporters and California’s politicians cannot be trusted to tell the truth about climate change and fires.”

Ditto for Oz. I have detailed previously how Fran Kelly told ABC audiences in November that “the fire warning had been increased to catastrophic for the first time ever in this country” — but that was wrong, wildly wrong.

Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John accused his political opponents of being “no better than arsonists” and other Greens and Labor MPs said Australia’s climate policies were exacerbating bushfires. Insane as this might be, it was amplified rather than interrogated by most media.

The thick smoke haze in Sydney was portrayed as something “unprecedented” — if it has not been on Twitter before it must never have happened — but a quick search of newspaper files found similar bushfire-induced shrouds in 1951, when airports were closed, and 1936, when a ship couldn’t find the heads.

Fires in rainforest areas of southern Queensland and northern NSW were not “unprecedented” either, with archived reports noting similar fires in the spring of 1951 and even the winter of 1946.

Despite 200,000 media mentions of “unprecedented” tracked by media monitors across December and January, the facts showed none of this was new. Greater areas were burned in 1851 and 1974-75, and human devastation was either as bad or worse on Black Saturday in 2009, Ash Wednesday in 1983, Black Tuesday in 1967, Black Friday in 1939 and Black Thursday 1851.

Bushland was not destroyed forever, koalas were not rendered extinct and Scott Morrison was not to blame. We should have an inquiry into climate alarmism, political posturing and media reporting — we would learn a lot more from that than we have from relearning age-old fire preparedness from yet another bushfire inquiry.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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28 August, 2020

Five decades late to the ballgame: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

It took five decades, but the Democratic Party has finally changed its stance on nuclear energy. In its recently released party platform, the Democrats say they favor a “technology-neutral” approach that includes “all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.”

That statement marks the first time since 1972 that the Democratic Party has said anything positive in its platform about nuclear energy. The change in policy is good — and long overdue — news for the American nuclear-energy sector and for everyone concerned about climate change. The Democrats’ new position means that for the first time since Richard Nixon was in the White House, both the Republican and Democratic parties are officially on record in support of nuclear energy. That’s the good news.

The less-than-good news is that the Democratic Party platform pledges to deploy outlandish quantities of new solar and wind capacity and do so in just five years. Further, the platform ignores the amount of land needed for that effort and how it would end up driving up the cost of electricity for low- and middle-income consumers. (More on that in a moment.)

About a decade ago, a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy told me that a big problem with nuclear energy is that it needs bipartisan support in Congress. That wasn’t happening, he said, because “Democrats are pro-government and anti-nuclear. Republicans are pro-nuclear and anti-government.” That partisan divide is apparent in the polling data. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 65 percent of Republicans strongly favored nuclear energy but only 42 percent of Democrats did so.

The last time the Democratic Party’s platform contained a positive statement about nuclear energy was in 1972, when the party said it supported “greater research and development” into “unconventional energy sources” including solar, geothermal, and “a variety of nuclear power possibilities to design clean breeder fission and fusion techniques.”

Since then, the Democratic Party has either ignored or professed outright opposition to nuclear energy. In 2016, the party’s platform said climate change “poses a real and urgent threat to our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures.” The platform contained 31 uses of the word “nuclear” including “nuclear proliferation,” “nuclear weapon,” and “nuclear annihilation.” It did not contain a single mention of “nuclear energy.”

That stance reflected the orthodoxy of the climate activists and environmental groups who have dominated the Democratic Party’s discussion on energy for decades. For instance, in 2005, about 300 environmental groups – including Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and Public Citizen – signed a manifesto which said “we flatly reject the argument that increased investment in nuclear capacity is an acceptable or necessary solution….[N]uclear power should not be a part of any solution to address global warming.” (The Sierra Club, the biggest environmental group in America, says it remains “unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.”)

What changed the Democrats’ stance on nuclear? I cannot claim any special knowledge about the drafting of the platform, but it appears that science and basic math finally won out. While vying for their party’s nomination, two prominent Democratic presidential hopefuls — Cory Booker and Andrew Yang – both endorsed nuclear energy. In addition, Joe Biden’s energy plan included a shout-out to nuclear.

While the pro-nuclear stance is a welcome change to the Democratic Party’s view on energy, the new platform also says that “Within five years, we will install 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems, and 60,000 wind turbines.”

To call that a stretch goal would be charitable. The Democrats say that there is an “urgent need to decarbonize the power sector.” But attempting to do so with such massive quantities of solar and wind simply isn’t feasible, particularly in just five years. To put those numbers in perspective, the Solar Star project is one of the largest solar facilities in the country. It has about 1.7 million solar panels and at full capacity, can generate 579 megawatts of power. Thus, deploying 500 million solar panels (which would have a capacity of roughly 173,700 megawatts) would require building nearly 300 projects the size of Solar Star.

The wind numbers are equally daunting. The United States currently has about 60,000 wind turbines with a capacity of about 104,000 megawatts. Where are the Democrats planning to put those forests of turbines? In New York, a state dominated by Democrats, the backlash against the siting of large renewable projects has been so widespread that earlier this year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed through a measure that allows the state to override the regulations implemented by local governments when siting energy projects. In California, where Democrats have controlled the state government for decades, wind capacity has been essentially unchanged since 2013. Meanwhile,only 73 megawatts of new wind capacity is being built in New England. No new wind capacity is under construction in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Nor do the Democrats mention what building all that capacity will mean for ratepayers. But some basic estimates show how expensive it will be. Let’s assume each megawatt of solar and wind costs $1 million. At that price, adding 277,000 megawatts for new wind and solar capacity will cost about $277 billion. That figure is far too low as it ignores the cost of high-voltage transmission lines, substations, and the batteries needed to offset the incurable intermittency of the sun and the wind. But even at that price, it works out to more than $800 for each American. (Last year, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie estimated that “full decarbonization of the US power grid” would cost about $4.5 trillion.) Whatever the actual tally, there’s no doubt that overhauling the power grid will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and that cost will ultimately be passed on to low- and middle-income consumers, either through higher taxes or higher electricity rates.

The essential point here is that talking about changing our energy and power systems is easy. Making real change happen takes decades and is staggeringly expensive.

Over the past two years or so, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill has led to new laws, including the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act and the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act that will help stimulate the development and deployment of new nuclear fuels, materials, and advanced reactors. So yes, the Democratic Party’s new support for nuclear energy is welcome and overdue. The hard work will be in turning that support into new reactors.

SOURCE

Biden's Low-Energy Jobs Plan

Listening to Joe Biden talk about his energy plans is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s ill-conceived 2008 “green jobs” promise, which proved to be nothing more than a costly boondoggle. The only difference is that Biden is making even greater pie-in-the-sky claims. He says his climate agenda will make the country a “100% clean energy economy” by 2050.

Like Obama, Biden wants to eliminate coal, but he’s also expanding that to all fossil fuels. Biden would ban all drilling and fracking on public land, while also creating an “enforcement mechanism” to limit carbon production on private land. That would likely happen via a carbon tax meant to make the extraction of fossil fuels prohibitively expensive.

But don’t worry, Biden assures those currently employed in the American energy structure. He claims his plan would create “10 million good-paying, middle-class, union jobs.” American taxpayers would contribute $1.7 trillion to help “train all of America’s workforce to tap into the growing clean-energy economy.” And what would these newly trained clean-energy workers be trained to do? Why, they’d be installing “millions of new solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines,” of course.

However, like Obama’s boondoggle, Biden’s clean-energy jobs would not come close to providing the type of good-paying consistent employment that the current oil and natural gas industry does today. Even the unions know this reality, as they have come out against Biden’s plan.

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the oil and gas industry provides an average annual salary of $108,000, nearly twice the private economy average,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board notes. “A Journal analysis last year found even higher average wages at large companies like Exxon Mobil, where median worker pay is about $170,000 a year. Renewable medians are harder to measure, but NABTU president Sean McGarvey estimates that many union members would ‘take a 50% or 75% pay cut.’” That’s a steep price to pay for Biden’s Green New Deal fairy tale.

SOURCE

The Racism of Climate Change Alarmists

Climate alarmists now proclaim that climate change is racist. What hypocrisy. By this theory, the sun, our galaxy, and their creator are racist, since they have driven climate change throughout history.

Racism has certainly been a factor in many decisions about land use, zoning, education and many other aspects of our lives. But this began long before Europeans “discovered” America. Tribalism, the most fundamental form of racism historically, has been around at least since the dawn of the Iron Age.

The new racism is a prime domain of environmental alarmists, and a direct outgrowth of centuries of patronizing colonialism. Many still believe today’s poor and indigenous people must be “guided” into a “green” tomorrow and not allowed to use the tools that Western and other countries employed to grow, create wealth, improve living standards, and remain free.

Many even seem OK that their “solutions” to “climate change” yield highly negative results for billions of people worldwide whose lifestyles are far removed from the privileges of eco-elites – who don’t even enjoy the blessings of electricity, 24/7/365 or even at all.

Instead of recognizing their own role in sustaining energy poverty (and its resultant misery, disease, and death), the alarmists berate the West for escaping generational poverty through technology. Penn State meteorologist Gregory Jenkins (who works for Dr. Michael Mann, co-creator of dangerous Mann-made climate change) has linked racism to climate change “because it dictates who benefits from activities that produce planet-warming gases and who suffers most from the consequences.”

But their “solutions” always deny African and other poor families access to fossil fuel “activities” – and blessings – while burdening their own societies with heavy taxes and mandates that would curtail affordable energy and living standards for billions.

Fifteen years ago, Cameroonian journalist Jean-Claude Shanda Tomme said environmentalists “still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don’t realize ourselves what the source of our problems is.” Incredibly, this remains a prevailing attitude.

Nearly two decades ago, in his seminal book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, Paul Driessen exposed the eco-colonialism (and racism) of European and American nongovernmental organizations, banking institutions, and governments.

In its introduction, Congress Of Racial Equality national spokesman Niger Innis said the green elites’ policies “prevent needy nations from using the very technologies that developed countries employed to become rich, comfortable and free of disease. And they send millions of infants, children, men and women to early graves every year.”

They insist that Africans not be allowed to combat malaria with DDT, which eradicated malaria throughout the developed world. Nor may Africans rely on their abundant oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydroelectric resources, the same technologies and resources that built Western and Eastern societies.

Multiple voices have demanded that the West stop smothering Africans with money that fuels massive corruption. A decade ago, in reviewing Dambisa Moyo’s brilliant 2009 book, Dead Aid, I recalled her litany of “sins of aid with strings.” It fuels corruption, encourages inflation, increases debt loads, kills exports, causes civil unrest, frustrates entrepreneurship, and disenfranchises citizens. In effect, foreign aid is also racist.

My colleagues and I pointed out that $500 billion in foreign aid had done little to improve the lives of ordinary Africans, who still had few highways, no real electric grid, little sanitation or clean water, few hospitals, and millions dying annually from diseases almost entirely wiped out elsewhere in the world.

At that time, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo pleaded with Western leaders that “energy is fundamental for economic development and social progress. While the use of all forms of energy is welcome, it is clear that fossil fuels will continue to satisfy the lion’s share of the world’s growing energy needs for decades to come.” But Africans are still routinely denied financing to develop those resources for their own citizens. This is racism at its worst.

I also reviewed a World Bank Development Research Group proposal for building a 100,000-kilometer African highway system to connect all major African capitals and large cities. It would cost just $30 billion, plus $2 billion a year in maintenance, but could generate $750 billion a year in overland trade among African nations. But it quickly hit the environmentalist/development bank dustbin. Pure racism.

The racism even extended to higher education, as European and American universities recruited Africa’s brightest and best African students and faculty, leaving their own fledgling institutions of higher learning in shambles. Lydia Polgreen said this academic flight “depriv[ed] dozens of nations of the homegrown expertise that could lift millions out of poverty.” More racism.

And so it continues. African Energy Chamber Executive Chairman N.J. Ayuk recently criticized the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA) for describing low oil prices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as “golden opportunity” for governments to phase out fossil fuels support– and thus better living standards.

He put it bluntly: “The OECD and IEA don’t necessarily know what’s best for the people who live on this planet. Pressuring governments to stop supporting fossil fuels certainly would not be good for the African oil and gas companies or entrepreneurs striving to build a better future. And it could be downright harmful to communities looking at gas-to-power initiatives to bring them reliable electricity.”

“Too often,” Ayuk added, “the discussion about climate change – and the call to leave fossil fuels in the ground – is largely a Western narrative. It does not factor in the needs of low-income Africans who could reap the many benefits of a strategic approach to oil and gas operations in Africa: Reduced energy poverty, job creation, and entrepreneurship opportunities, to name a few.”

On the global stage, he concluded, the OECD and the IEA are “dismissing the voices of many Africans who want and need the continent’s oil and gas industry to thrive.” African energy entrepreneurs and Africans who care about energy poverty are struggling. But their voices are ignored by these power brokers, and the world.

Journalist Geoff Hill highlighted how many Africans still rely on increasingly scarce firewood to cook and heat their homes on cold nights, despite the environmental damage caused by stripping forest habitats to oblivion. Of the world’s 50 countries with the least access to electricity, 41 are in Africa – despite abundant rivers, sunlight, and oil, gas, coal, and uranium reserves.

The chief reason, Hill explained, is corruption – traced back to the foreign aid Dambisa Moyo criticized. Climate alarmists naturally say it’s someone else’s fault. Thankfully, finally, says Hill, some Africans are admitting their own role in allowing corrupt cultures to rule them.

Nigerian neurosurgeon Dr. Sylvanus Ayeni’s 2017 book Rescue Thyself details the failure of African governments to serve their people. He is saddened that, despite over a trillion dollars in aid to Africa from the U.S. alone, so much has been blown on palaces, private jets, and outright theft.

But who empowered these greedy leaders, who sought to do what donors wanted? Will the West finally recognize that it was their paternalistic racism that empowered this corruption? Will it change its ways? Or will it just continue the eugenic practices that dehumanized Africans as “unfit” to reproduce?

SOURCE

Australian state to make landowners clear fire hazards

Since landowners have been prosecuted in the past for doing that, this is a great leap forward

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's most populous state said on Tuesday it will compel owners to clear their land of flammable material as it endorsed 76 recommendations from an enquiry into deadly bushfires.

Fires razed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) of bushland across Australia's southeast early this year, killing at least 33 people and billions of native animals, a disaster that Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Australia's "black summer".

Amid public anger, the federal and state governments commissioned independent enquiries.

New South Wales (NSW), which recorded the highest death toll from the fires at 25, on Tuesday became the first to release findings. Its Minister for Police and Emergency Services David Elliott said the state government had accepted all recommendations.

Among recommendations, the state will require landowners to clear or burn flammable material - usually dried brush and dead leaves - for firefighters to be trained in treating wild animals and the creation of a fund to develop technology to detect fires.

"These 76 recommendations are wide-ranging but what they also show is that there is no silver bullet. The last summer was caused by a crippling drought," Elliott told reporters in Canberra.

The issue of hazard reduction, however, is the most contentious as questions arise about the cause of the fires.

Morrison, a supporter of the fossil fuel industry, this year said removing flammable material was as "important as emissions reduction and I think many would argue even more so", a stance rejected by several former firefighting chiefs.

Environmental groups said Australia - one of the world's biggest carbon emitters on a per capital basis - must reduce its greenhouse emissions, amid forecasts for more frequent and severe droughts as the climate changes.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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27 August, 2020

Doubts grow Alaska's Pebble Mine can satisfy new regulatory hurdles, shares tumble

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd shares fell more than 25% on Tuesday on rising doubts the company can clear regulatory hurdles for its Pebble Mine project in Alaska, and prominent politicians said it would harm the state's salmon fishing industry.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday gave Northern Dynasty 90 days to explain how it would offset "unavoidable adverse impacts" to more than 3,200 acres (1,295 hectares) of wetlands were the mine to be developed.

Late on Monday, Alaska's U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both Republicans, came out against the mine, saying it could cause significant damage to the state's Bristol Bay region popular for fishing and hunting.

Murkowski is the powerful chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and her opposition is likely to carry weight across U.S. federal agencies.

Other prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump and a keynote speaker on Monday at the Republican National Convention, have opposed the project, saying it would destroy areas where they enjoy fishing and hunting.

Northern Dynasty, in response to the Army Corps, said it plans to "preserve enough land so that multiples of the number of impacted wetland acres are preserved," but its shares still fell more than 40% on Monday.

The potential cost of such a mitigation plan is unknown and thus concerning, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak said in research note. "It will be exceptionally challenging to reach a compensation plan ... that will satisfy all parties," he said.

Cantor Fitzgerald put its price target and stock rating for the company under review, effectively saying it is not immediately clear how much the company is worth.

The Army Corps deadline likely means any final permit decision would come after the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election. A victory by Democrat Joe Biden would likely to scuttle the entire project, TD Securities analyst Craig Hutchinson said.

Northern Dynasty did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Doubts about the project have steadily risen in recent months. Morgan Stanley , once one of the largest Northern Dynasty shareholders, sold most of its holdings two months ago, according to regulatory disclosures.

SOURCE

Not All Environmental Activism Is the Same

The definition of environmentalism seems straightforward: encourage the long-term health and availability of our natural resources.

In America, the concept is more complex. Much like the word “science,” environmentalism links to politicized agendas that don’t necessarily seek the stated goal. Progressive Era environmentalism was partly inspired by eugenics and population control; today’s version has words like “green” and “sustainable” that could just as soon be code for modern left-wing economic and social agendas.

This has weakened the movement, making it a point of suspicion for conservative America. But it should not weaken environmentalism as a concept. The key is to separate the good, bad, and ugly aspects of the movement, as I aim to below:

The Good

The best environmentalism is that which preserves natural ecosystems long-term. Otherwise these systems can be cannibalized, even by the people who benefit from them.

The Depression-era Dust Bowl, for example, was caused in part by the over-cultivation of land by inexperienced Great Plains farmers. When the region suffered drought, the winds kicked up dust, making the land uninhabitable for everyone.

Many extreme environmental problems have this “tragedy of the commons” quality. Millions of individuals acting in self-interest spoil a larger environmental commons. It is the defining factor behind air pollution, water contamination, overfishing, and much more.

Since the 1960s, the federal government has enforced powerful environmental laws—such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act—meant to stop private industry from externalizing its costs. There have been debates about how effective such legislation is. A movement around “free market environmentalism” argues that these laws produce unintended consequences, and that the environment is better preserved through economic concepts like pricing uses and externalities.

But whether enforcement is government- or market-driven, the point remains: some environmental problems are serious, and addressing them is needed for human flourishing.

The Bad

A less noble version takes this collectivist mindset to non-essential environmental issues. There’s a habit in the movement of chasing goals that sound nice in theory, but don’t pass the cost-benefit smell test.

The logging industry is an example. Activism against it often comes from people who want mature growth forests and uninhibited fauna. But the timber industry is important: it generates $144 billion in annual revenue, employs 433,000 people, and makes products we all use. To complain that it disrupts the natural state of America’s forest land is purist, and somewhat “cheap,” in that its demands would inflict costs on landowners and workers, but not on the people complaining.

Another example is the California water wars. For years, farmers have been denied adequate water to run their farms, because that would disrupt a small fish called the delta smelt that is nearing extinction. Saving the fish is a mild benefit compared to undermining a statewide industry that produces 13% of the nation’s agricultural value and on which millions depend for nourishment.

The answer to these issues may boil down to the free-market environmentalism cited above, specifically Coase Theorem. The theory calls for negotiations between two affected parties in a dispute, with side A paying for the damages it wishes to inflict on side B.

Regarding the California water wars, if activists had to pay farmers for the lost output caused by denying them water, it would give a better sense of how much they even care about saving the fish. The price mechanism would allow them to put their money where their mouths are, or decide that delta smelt restoration is not a prime environmental goal after all.

The Ugly

The worst environmentalism is that which has nothing to do with the environment. Instead it’s a “lifestyle environmentalism” that becomes a smokescreen for larger complaints against economic growth and capitalism.

One notable local-level example has been environmentalist groups that block development, such as the many California ones I profiled here, like San Francisco’s Sierra Club and Green Party. There’s nothing green about blocking dense infill development, since it means people must locate into environmentally-harmful sprawl. But you get the sense these are NIMBY front groups and don’t care about the environment anyway; they pepper their commentary with left-populist slogans like “luxury condos” and “wall of gold” development.

Perhaps the ultimate example is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. The measures don’t seem geared towards environmental outcomes—at least not in any practical, cost-effective way—and her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, later admitted this.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, in a conversation recounted by the Washington Post, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all...we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

This “ugly” environmentalism—where the term gets politicized and distorted for ulterior goals—is bad for the movement. Sincere environmentalists should call it out. That way the movement will be taken seriously, and there will be broader support for measures that are actually needed.

SOURCE

It’s Time for the Wind Industry to Grow Up

There comes a point in every person’s life when they have to face the realities of the adult world. In 21st century America the age at which that point comes seems to be extending further past the age of legal adulthood each year, leaving a generation in a state of perpetual adolescence—with their parents footing the bill.

Something similar has taken place concurrently in American energy policy. Birthed in 1992, the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind that was intended only to get a young industry up on its feet has now been extended a dozen times.

The production tax credit provides wind energy facilities with a tax break for the first 10 years of operation. In 2013, the production tax credit for wind generation was 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years of production, with adjustments for inflation. Under the phase-out of the credit approved by Congress, the tax credit decreased by 20 percent per year from 2017 through 2019. The Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019 extended the production tax credit for facilities beginning construction during 2020 at a rate of 60 percent—higher than the 40 percent rate for 2019. Currently, wind energy facilities that begin construction after the end of 2020 cannot claim the credit, although they will still be required to be built by state mandates referred to as “renewable portfolio standards.”

No Expansion, No Extension

The U.S. Treasury estimates that the Production Tax Credit will cost taxpayers $40.12 billion from 2018 to 2027, making it the most expensive energy subsidy under current tax law.
The tax credit fundamentally distorts markets and strains the grid in ways that are economically unsustainable.
Backup costs (i.e., the costs of maintaining backup electricity 24/7 to compensate for wind’s intermittency) are not included in estimations of the cost of wind power, leading to gross underestimation of the costs of the energy wind produces.
Countries like Germany and Great Britain have bet big on wind power and have foisted higher residential electricity prices on their citizens as a result.

If wind power makes sense, the free market will support it without the need for subsidies like the PTC and state renewable energy mandates.

The Wind Industry Can No Longer Have It Both Ways

The PTC gives wind power producers a path to profitability, even when a fair market would not. It effectively pays wind power producers for energy regardless of that energy’s value to the grid and to energy users. Now nearly 30 years since it was introduced, the PTC continues to coddle an industry that has promised time and again that’s it’s almost ready to move out of the house. Much like America’s perpetual adolescents who pound their chests to assert manhood while awaiting mom-and-dad’s direct deposit, the wind industry assures us it is out-competing other forms of electricity while still lobbying for another round of handouts.

As described by Kenny Stein for the Institute for Energy Research:

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the economics of wind energy. In a recent earnings call, James Robo, CEO of NextEra Energy, predicted that within a decade the cost of wind generation would be more competitive “without incentives” than conventional sources like coal and natural gas. NextEra is one of the largest generators of wind and solar electricity.

Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the $18 million lobbying arm of the wind industry, stated in 2016 that “wind is now the cheapest source of new electric generating capacity” in many parts of the United States. Kiernan is also fond of saying that the wind industry is getting out of the federal subsidy business altogether because of a provision in the PATH Act of 2015 that gradually phases down the industry’s main federal subsidy, known as the Production Tax Credit (PTC). In an interview defending the PTC from being modified in the recent tax reform law, Kiernan implied that the industry will no longer be receiving the federal subsidy because “we made a deal to drop our tax credit to zero over five years.” Tom is right, the subsidy phases down, but a closer look at the mechanics of the PTC shows that the wind industry will still be receiving billions in federal subsidies well beyond 2020.

It’s time to close the book on the PTC and nudge the wind industry out into the real world.

SOURCE

Coal-fired pollution killing 800 Australians a year -- says Greenpeace

This study just took as proven the conclusions of several American studies of pollution effects. But I have repeatedly shown that the studies concerned were badly flawed -- either because of their failure to apply demograpic controls and/or   the minute effects found. So this study is a castle built on sand. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

They also rely on a recent MJA study of the Hazelwood fire but that study attempts to examine before-and-after effects without having any data on "before". A good try but no cigar.

Air pollution from Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations kills around 800 people each year and spreads hundreds of kilometres from regional plants into major cities, new research finds.

This national death toll is twice as high as the number of smoke inhalation deaths in the recent catastrophic bushfire season, and eight times greater than the average annual casualties from all natural disasters, according to a new report from Greenpeace Australia.

This is the first time the national health impacts of burning coal for electricity have been scientifically assessed, its authors say.

Air pollution from coal-burning power stations also causes an average of 850 babies each year to be born with low birth weight, which puts them at greater risk of serious health conditions as adults, like cardiovascular disease, it finds. This represents 450 babies each year for Sydney, and 260 for Melbourne.

"Australians all over the country are paying for electricity with their lives and health, even if they don’t use power from burning coal or live near a power station," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific campaigner, Jonathan Moylan.

There are 14,000 asthma attacks and symptoms among Australian children and young people aged between 5 and 19 that can be attributed to emissions from coal-burning power stations each year, the report finds.

Some of these symptoms come from cross-state pollution, with about 20 percent of cases occurring in states and territories that are not home to the power station that is the source of the emissions.

But a spokesperson for the Australian Energy Council, which represents major generators, rejected the report as "alarmist, misleading and lacking in rigour".

They pointed out it had not been peer-reviewed, saying it used outdated data from overseas and extrapolated it to Australia.

"This report appears to be part of a broader campaign that seeks to demonise fossil fuel plants regardless of their health, safety or environmental performance," they said. "All power plants have to meet health and environmental limits set and monitored by independent bodies."

The Greenpeace study modelled how much pollution from coal power stations could be expected in certain areas, based on observed meteorological conditions, reported pollutant emissions and electricity generation.

Existing health studies were then used to calculate how many additional deaths occur with this increased pollution. For mortality, this included deaths due to heart disease, cardiopulmonary disease, lung cancer, lower respiratory infections and stroke.

Report co-author Professor Hilary Bambrick, an environmental epidemiologist, said power plant air pollution had caused Australians to die and suffer from preventable diseases for decades: "Governments must come up with a plan to replace our ageing and unreliable coal burning power stations with clean energy solutions as quickly as possible."

New research recently published in the Medical Journal of Australia found unborn babies whose mothers were exposed to smoke from the Hazelwood coal mine fire are at greater risk of respiratory infections in early childhood, despite not directly inhaling the pollution.

Australia still operates 22 coal-burning power stations, some of which are among the oldest and most polluting in the world. Power stations in Australia are licensed to emit pollutant concentrations that dramatically exceed limits set by comparable countries, says Max Smith, a campaigner at Environmental Justice Australia.

He urged federal and state governments to address flaws in the regulatory system and fit Australia’s coal-fired power stations with basic pollution controls that could cut toxic pollutants by more than 85 percent.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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26 August, 2020

Children raised in greener neighbourhoods have higher IQs and lower levels of difficult behaviour, study finds

Only a small groan about this study. Income is of course the big potential confounder. Rich people tend to be the ones living in leafy areas and they tend to be smarter.

And the researchers knew that and tried to control for it. And they didn't do a bad job. But both the index of income and the index of greenery encountered were geographical rather than personal so the correlations were ecological and such correlations are often high. The results are not given in correlational form but appear to be undramatic so are lower than expected in the circumstances. Testing the theory using individual measures could well have confirmed the nul hypothesis.

That the finding is not a strong one is also suggested by the fact that it was found in urban areas only, not in suburban or rural areas

Growing up in an area with more green space is beneficial to a child's intelligence, according to a new study that found those in greener urban areas had a higher IQ.

A team from Hasselt University, Belgium, analysed IQs of over 600 children and then used satellite images to examine the green coverage of their neighbourhoods.

The children in the study were all aged between 10 and 15, according to the team, who say a 3 per cent increase in greenery led to an IQ increase of about 2.6 points.

Researchers also found that children in the study had lower levels of behavioural problems if they lived in an area that more green coverage.

IQ point increases as a result of living in a green environment had the biggest impact on those at the lower end of the spectrum as small changes made a big difference.

This is the first time IQ has been considered as a potential benefit of being exposed to green spaces in childhood - other studies have looked at wider cognitive benefits.

The researchers aren't sure exactly why IQ increases with exposure to a green environment, but suspect it could be to do with lower levels of stress.

The data on IQ and location came from the East Flanders Prospective Twin Survey (EFPTS), a registry of multiple births in the province of East Flanders, Belgium.

The average IQ of those involved was 105 but the team found 4 per cent of the children with a score below 80 had grown up in areas with low greenery levels.

It wasn't just intelligence that was impacted by living in an area that was more green - the team found it also helped improve the behaviour of some of the children.

They found that behavioural problems reduced for every 3 per cent rise in greenery.

The team said that a well planned city could offer unique opportunities to create an 'optimal environment' for children to develop to their full potential.

'Whereas in 1950, only 30 per cent of the world’s population lived in urban areas; nowadays, this is already more than half of the global population, and it is expected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050,' the team explained.

'There is more and more evidence that green surroundings are associated with our cognitive function,' study author Tim Nawrot told The Guardian.

'I think city builders should prioritise investment in green spaces because it is really of value to create an optimal environment for children to develop their full potential.'

According to the study authors the benefits of greenery recorded in urban areas weren't replicated in more rural communities - likely because those areas had enough green space for everyone to benefit so the effects weren't as localised.

The authors believe that a combination of lower noise levels and lower stress levels found in green space areas contribute to the improvements in IQ and behaviour.

Part of this is also due to the fact there are more opportunities for physical and social activities in areas with more greenery - which can improve IQ scores on their own.

'Our results indicate that residential green space may be beneficial for intellectual and behavioural development of children living in an urban environment.

'We showed a shift in the IQ distribution of urban children in association with residential green space exposure,' the authors wrote.

The findings have been published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

SOURCE

California Could Put Out the Fires and Create Real Jobs… or Continue Listening to AOC

The news that Palantir, the prominent tech company co-founded by Peter Thiel, is leaving California for Colorado sends a strong signal that the gold is leaving the Golden State.

To be sure, there’s still plenty of precious value in California. Apple, headquartered in the Silicon Valley city of Cupertino, just became the first company in the U.S. to be worth $2 trillion, and the state’s economy would rate as the fifth-largest “country” in the world.

And yet as has been noted here at Breitbart News, the city of Manaus, Brazil, serves as a cautionary tale for those who think that being rich now means being always rich. Vastly engorged by the rubber trade in the 19th century, Manaus grew complacent and soon toppled from its lofty place in the global economy, never to recover. Indeed, these days, when so much of life is virtual, one’s physical place matters less—and so the moving, and the unraveling, of a jurisdiction can come quickly.

That’s indeed what has happened on the other coast, in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio’s massive mismanagement is depleting the wealth. For weeks now, the New York Times, hardly an enemy of leftism, has been publishing ominous articles with headlines such as, “One-Third of New York’s Small Businesses May Be Gone Forever.” And just on August 13, business author James Altucher, a lifelong New Yorker, published an essay that went further: “NYC is Dead Forever—Here’s Why.” As Altucher explained, the big variable is Internet bandwidth; if you have enough of it, you can live anywhere. And if that’s true for New York, it’s true for California–and everywhere.

Okay, so if we return to California, we see plenty of reasons to flee. One concern is electricity, obviously a basic of civilization. Will California have enough? On August 19, the Wall Street Journal editorial detailed power shortages as another reason to skedaddle. Under the headline, “California’s Green Blackouts,” the Journal added, “Welcome to California’s green new normal, a harbinger of a fossil-free world.” The editorial concluded:

Democrats in Sacramento are so committed to ending fossil fuels that the hoi polloi are simply going to have to make some sacrifices—such as living with blackouts as if the state were a Third World country. So shut up and broil, and wait for the Green New Deal to do this for the rest of America.

We can observe that humans can’t flourish without power. And so those who want a foretaste of what a Green New Deal might be like for America can see it now in the Golden State. Indeed, it’s interesting that in the midst of this fire season, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proudly tweeted that her video touting the Green New Deal was nominated for an Emmy award. So to the extent that Californians are influenced by showbiz, we can assume that Hollywood’s bow to AOC will further inspire west coasters to continue supporting Green New Dealish policies.

Such dogmatic “greenery” raises an intriguing paradox, because the crown-jewel companies of California are, in fact, energy hogs. As energy expert Mark P. Mills wrote back in 2013, the Silicon Valley corporations may claim to be green, and yet they’re really not. “The enterprise-class data centers—Google, Apple, Facebook etc.—sit in buildings that each dwarf a Wal-Mart,” Mills explained, “and each consumes quantities of electricity that rival a steel mill.” To put that another way, every time we post something on Facebook, or look up something on Google, we’re all contributing to very un-green levels of power usage.

Thus we see the vise squeezing Big Tech: It needs more power, and California is producing less power.

And now, the latest insult to California’s quality of life and thus to its business climate: Wildfires.

As the Associated Press reported on August 22, some of the largest wildfires in state history have forced thousands to flee, destroyed hundreds of homes, and killed five people. To be sure, the response has been impressive, as more than 12,000 firefighters, aided by helicopters and air tankers, are battling the fires throughout California.

Yet still, according to the California Office of Emergency Management, as of August 22, some two-dozen fires were burning, and by August 23, more than one million acres had been burned. We can observe that the firefighters are brave and tenacious, and yet even so, using chemicals, hand-held hoses—even mere shovels—to put out fires is not the best we can do. California, being the citadel of high tech, should be using more brain, and less brawn.

Of course, the greens have their pat answer: Stop climate change. And yet even if their science is correct, the fact that China is still building hundreds of coal plants is a reminder that carbon emissions aren’t going anywhere. Which is to say, whatever California and the U.S. do will be overwhelmed by Chinese CO2 emissions, as well as the emissions of other non-green countries.

So we can see: While Californians are waiting for the yearned-for Green Day to arrive—and that might be a very long time—they’ll still have to figure out how to put out fires.

And if so, why not think big? Specifically, why not use ocean-water desalination? You see, there’s a large body of salt water just west of California, and the tiniest fraction of its water, desalinated, could be used to put out fires.

Back in January 2018, this author wrote an imaginary scenario in which California uses its brains to quench the fires:

After a dry summer, wildfires erupted in many places across California. Fortunately, the governor was ready; the chief executive ordered the state’s 30 seawater desalination plants, from San Diego in the south to Crescent City in the north, to double their normal output. Billions of gallons of clean, fresh, water from the coastal desalination plants were piped as close as possible to the locations of the fires. From those points, the water was mostly trucked to the actual firefront, where firefighters quickly put out most of the fires; they simply inundated the flames in a watery avalanche—there was so much water, it was almost easy.

In addition, other harder-to-reach fires were doused from the air, as airplanes “bombed” the flames with endless barrages of desalinated water. Moreover, helicopters and blimps used a new technique: They skyhooked flexible plastic water pipelines from where they lay on the ground and then pointed them back down at the fires, like a child aiming a garden hose. The result was that all the fires, statewide, were put out within hours. Damage was minimal.

None of that has ever happened, of course. And yet as this author also wrote in 2018, this annual firefest, in a state controlled by Democrats, could pose an opportunity for Republicans. That is, the GOP could take the lead in advocating visionary desalination infrastructure. After all, interest rates are at record lows, so why not borrow big and invest big?

Indeed, if California ever could get out from under these fires, one could see a rural renaissance, as people could live safely out in the boonies, where land is cheap and spacious, using the same desalinated water for agricultural, industrial, and recreational purposes.

Of course, this transformation would not come without a fight. Last year, Breitbart News’ Joel Pollak published a three–part series on water in California, detailing how environmentalists and NIMBYs have teamed up to throttle the state’s water supplies, turning much of the Golden State into the Parched State. In fact, we shouldn’t kid ourselves about the resolve of those who like the status quo to keep it that way. For hardcore greens, the idea of expanding opportunity for ordinary people to live out in the country is exactly what they do not want to see.

Yet once again, this green-NIMBY axis would give Republicans a worthy target. That is, Republicans could invoke Abraham Lincoln’s Homestead Act and propose a New Homestead Act, expanding property ownership and thus the conservative middle class. Surely many Californians, wearying of greens, billionaires, and San Francisco Democrats running everything, would rally to such a proposal.

Yes, one of these days, Californians could desalinate sea water, put out fires, and spur a rural renaissance. Or, instead, they could keep doing what AOC and the greens want and continue with this perennial burning and suffering.

If California chooses the latter, then the state’s job creators, weary of blackouts and wary of burnouts, will go looking elsewhere. Colorado beckons.

SOURCE

The flourishing world of climate finance

A thousand flowers are blooming in the world of climate finance. Having largely ignored global warming for decades, banks, borrowers and investors are trying to come up with innovative ways to link financial instruments to environmental metrics.

Much of the excitement centres around variations on green bonds, the proceeds of which are spent on environmentally friendly projects. In 2018 the Seychelles issued the world’s first sovereign “blue” bond, which raised money for marine protection. Last year a handful of “transition” bonds were launched. In this variety the cash is put towards curbing greenhouse-gas emissions of dirty firms. Marfrig, a Brazilian beef-seller , for instance, raised $500m last August to encourage deforestation-free cattle farming. The next month Enel, an Italian utility, issued a sustainability-linked bond, the interest rate on which is connected to the firm’s renewable-energy capacity.

Other innovators are changing not the colour of green bonds, but their inner workings. In December the Danish government said it was working on a new model for green bonds. That would involve splitting a bond into one interest-paying part and one that promises spending on green projects. The two chunks could then be traded separately. This month BNP Paribas, a French bank, issued a green bond in which the returns are linked to a climate index.

The motivation behind such innovation is two-fold. One is to channel capital into worthy projects. A lot more of that money is needed. The UN puts the annual gap in the trillions. The other is good public relations. Investors, banks and corporations are keen to be seen promoting green-tinged financial wizardry. Demand is booming: green-bond issues are many times oversubscribed.

Yet some of these new environmental instruments are struggling to take root. No more sustainability-linked bonds have been launched, despite climate financiers’ claims that they are the next big thing. A new sustainability index is reportedly failing to gain traction with investors. Blue-bond flows are but a trickle. Some investors are questioning the value of transition bonds too.

Part of the reason is to do with the nature of innovation. Not every invention hits the spot. Some need time to blossom. The markets are being shaped by lots of competing interests, including those of corporates, investors, regulators and environmental campaigners. That slows down progress. And new financial products must strike the right balance between innovation and familiarity to institutional investors. Without the latter, they will never attract meaningful amounts of money.

Another, more cynical explanation is that the PR shine fades fast. The first issuance of a flashy new green product makes headlines. The tenth goes unnoticed. For financiers and corporates the incentive can be to come up with something new, rather than to use something old.

When new green instruments do take off, a process of standard-setting has to take place. Rules must be agreed on to reassure both investors and environmentalists. That is what helped the first wave of green bonds. The first one was issued in 2008. Six years later, a set of green-bond principles were agreed upon. That helped the market grow to $271bn in new issuance last year. That is still only around 5% of total global bond issuance, but it is a success story in sustainable finance nonetheless. If any of the newfangled bonds do take root, they too will require several years and common standards to reach a similar scale.

Newsletter from The Economist

Australia: Global warming diehards object to natural gas

Gas can actually replace coal so that is no good

A group of leading Australian scientists has taken the unusual step of writing to the Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, saying his support for gas as an energy source "is not consistent with a safe climate".

"We are making a definite and profound statement that the advice the Chief Scientist is giving is in opposition to the evidence the Australian scientific community has gathered about the climatic system and the way it is changing," Professor Will Steffen, the founding director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, said of the decision to write the letter.

The letter's signatories include many world-leading Australian experts and lead authors with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They include professors John Church, Matthew England and Steven Sherwood from the University of NSW's Climate Change Research Centre, Professor Mark Howden of the Australian National University and Professor Graeme Pearman of the University of Melbourne.

"We are writing to you as Chief Scientist with our concerns about your strategy for dealing with climate change, and to offer any scientific advice that you might find useful on climate change issues," begins the letter, which is signed by 25 scientists.

Professor Steffen said the scientists' decision to take the unusual step of speaking out about the Chief Scientist was prompted in part by elements of Dr Finkel's address to the National Press Club in February, as well as other public comments he has made about gas.

Professor Steffen said more would have signed the letter but could not as they were employed by government agencies such as the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

In the speech Dr Finkel outlined how Australia needed to electrify its energy system to meet Paris climate goals.

He said that as renewable energy generation, storage and transmission technologies are scaled up to decarbonise the economy, gas would play a "critical role", and that the transition could take decades.

The speech, made shortly before the government embraced a gas-led economic recovery from the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, caused concern among elements of the scientific community who see gas as an increasingly destructive global warming agent.

"He seems to be speaking in ignorance of or [to be] ignoring the overwhelming amount of evidence gathered by his own scientific community about the impact of the gas industry on the climate," said Professor Steffen.

Professor Steffen said that Australia's Paris climate targets were weak, set politically and had no scientific basis; that even if they were to be met Australia would still not be doing its fair share to mitigate global warming under the agreement, and that the use of gas as a transition energy source was quickly making the situation worse.

In the letter the scientists applaud Dr Finkel's support for a transition to renewable energy, but take issue with his support for the government's advocacy for an ongoing role for gas.

"Our concern ... relates to the scale and speed of the decarbonisation challenge required to meet the Paris Agreement, and, in particular, your support for the use of gas as a transition fuel over ‘many decades'," they write.

"Unfortunately, that approach is not consistent with a safe climate nor, more specifically, with the Paris Agreement. There is no role for an expansion of the gas industry."

"The combustion of natural gas is now the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the most important greenhouse gas driving climate change.

"On a decadal time frame, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

"In Australia, the rapid rise in methane emissions is due to the expansion of the natural gas industry. The rate of methane leakage from the full gas economy, from exploration through to end use, has far exceeded earlier estimates."

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor as well as the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission support gas as an energy source that is less carbon intensive than coal and that can quickly be ramped up or down to support renewable energy sources in the grid.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Scientist said Dr Finkel was considering his response and would comment in due course.

A spokesman for Mr Taylor said that the International Energy Agency has estimated that coal-to-gas switching has avoided more than half a billion tonnes of emissions between 2010 and 2018.

"A separate CSIRO assessment of Queensland LNG production found that gas alone can reduce emissions from electricity production by up to 50 per cent. When gas backs up solar and wind, the emissions savings are even greater.

"Australia's gas exports are reducing emissions in importing countries overseas where they displace more emissions-intensive alternatives or backup renewables.

Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project and a chief research scientist at the CSIRO said greenhouse gas emissions from the gas industry in Australia were "skyrocketing".

"They are not taking Australia in the direction it needs to go."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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25 August, 2020

New World Temperature Record Set - Is Climate Change To Blame?

The question mark above is well warranted. By "Climate change" they presumably mean anthropogenic global warming. And the anthropogenic global warming theory is that CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. And CO2 levels have been rising steadily.

According to Cape Grim CO2 levels rose from 401ppm at the end of 2016 against the latest reading of 410ppm. So obviously it will be hotter now than in 2016. Problem: It's not. As the article below states, reality is the other way around: 2016 was our hottest year.

So we once again see that the global warming theory fails a test against reality. As a scientific theory it must be rejected. As a political theory, of course, it will sail on for many years yet

It’s possible that this week, we set a new record for the hottest recorded temperature on Earth. The Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley recorded a temperature of 54.4C (129.9F) this Sunday, August 16, 2020. The temperature was high enough to cause the unofficial temperature display to start behaving strangely. If you haven’t been concerned about climate change before, perhaps it’s time to sit up and take note - this is just the latest in records that are being set since the year 2000.

The previous high temperature was 53.3C in Kuwait in 2011. In 1913, there was a potential high temperature in Furnace Creek of 56.7C, but this reading is of questionable accuracy.

Currently, scientists are verifying the new temperature claim.

This is the latest in a disturbing trend. The record hottest year on Earth was 2016, followed by 2019, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2013 and 2005 (tied), and 1998. Almost all of those years have been within the last two decades. And scientists predict that we will continue to set records.

And 2020 is not looking good either. Seven percent of the Earth set new records for June temperatures this year, such as Asia, Scandinavia, Western Europe, Mexico, and large swaths of the ocean. The Arctic had its first 100F day when a town in Siberia named Verkhoyansk reached 38C (100.4F). Droughts and dryness have also been affecting the production of soybeans, sorghum, and cotton in the middle United States.

Normally, hot years are linked to El Niño events or active solar cycles, but 2020 has had neither. In fact, it’s been the weakest 11-year solar cycle in the last 100 years.

The Earth Has Warmed In The Past, What’s Different About Now?

By using tree rings, glaciers, sediments in the oceans, rocks, and even coral reefs, we can gain an understanding of how hot the Earth was in the past, and how the temperature changed. For example, as we moved out of the last Ice Age, the temperature rose 4 to 7 degrees C.

But - now here’s the important part - this warming occurred over 5,000 years. We’ve seen the temperature of the Earth rise 0.7 degrees C in the past century. That’s 10 times faster than the average rate.

SOURCE

New paper: Fossil fuel dependent technologies help feed the world and save global biodiversity

Indur Goklany

I have a paper, Reduction in global habitat loss from fossil?fuel?dependent increases in cropland productivity, that has been accepted for publication in Conservation Biology, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

It focuses on habitat lost to agricultural uses, which is generally considered to be the major cause for global biodiversity loss. Currently, 37% of global land area is in agricultural uses.

It shows that:

At least 62.5% of global food production is due to increased agricultural productivity from fossil-fuel-dependent technologies.

Absent fossil fuels, at least another 20% of global land area would have to be converted to cropland to maintain global food production, further threatening global biodiversity.

This exceeds the total amount of land currently set aside globally for conservation in one form or another (15%), which some have called the world's greatest conservation success story (or words to that effect).

Global food supplies would also drop, at least temporarily, to levels about a quarter below those experienced by the Chinese people during their last Great Famine of 1959-61. Food prices would skyrocket to balance supply and demand.

It also implies that estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon that do not, among other things, the consequences of CO2 related emissions on global hunger and habitat loss, are not fit for purpose.

Email from Indur Goklany: igoklany@outlook.com

WHO warns coronavirus vaccine alone won't end pandemic: Future must be greener

The morphing of the public health bureaucracy and the climate establishment is at hand

World leaders and the public must learn to manage the virus and make permanent adjustments to their daily lives to bring the virus down to low levels, the WHO said.

Throughout history, outbreaks and pandemics have changed economies and societies, the agency said.

The World Health Organization said Friday that a vaccine will be a "vital tool" in the global fight against the coronavirus, but it won't end the Covid-19 pandemic on its own and there's no guarantee scientists will find one.

World leaders and the public must learn to manage the virus and make permanent adjustments to their daily lives to bring the virus down to low levels, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference from the agency's Geneva headquarters. "At the same time, we will not, we cannot go back to the way things were."

Throughout history, outbreaks and pandemics have changed economies and societies, he said.

"In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change," he said. "The Covid-19 pandemic has given us a glimpse of our world as it could be: cleaner skies and rivers."

The virus has infected more than 22.7 million people worldwide and killed at least 794,100 in more than seven months, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. There are at least 30 potential vaccines currently in clinical trials, according to the WHO, but there is no guarantee they will be safe and effective, he said.

SOURCE

UK infrastructure investor suffers big losses from two Australia solar farms

That "free" electricity from the sun turns out to be not so free after all

UK infrastructure investor John Laing has revealed yet more big losses from its Australia renewable energy portfolio, this time focused on the two big Australian solar farm investments hit by connection delays, equipment problems and grid congestion issues.

The two solar projects affected are the wholly-owned 175MW Finley solar farm, located in south west NSW in a newly congested part of the grid, and its 90 per cent owned 200MW Sunraysia solar project, which is in the same region but which has also run into technical difficulties and has so far failed to obtain registration from the Australian Energy Market Operator nearly a year after mechanical construction was complete.

In its interim results released late last week, John Laing reported losses of £43 million ($A79 million) from the two solar assets. This follows its write downs of £66 million a year earlier due to changes in marginal loss factors in Australia – a result that led to a decision to cease new investment in wind and solar assets and to try and sell the Australian portfolio.

It adds to the growing number of write-downs and losses on new solar projects from a range of affected parties – contractors, developers and asset owners – due to issues ranging from cost-overruns, delays, commissioning problems, grid congestion and system strength issues. More are now being affected by falling wholesale prices, such as New Energy Solar’s Manildra solar farm, among others.

In the latest period, some £11 million came from transmission issues, presumably Finley, which is among a number of solar assets warned about “material constraints” in the network west of Wagga Wagga due to congestion issues. That suggests that many of the solar assets in the area may also face write downs by their owners.

“This primarily relates to a loss on one of our solar projects as a result of transmission-related issues,” the company says. “Due to the instability of the power system in south-western New South Wales, AEMO imposed a constraint on this network. This limits the flow of power on the main transmission line.”

The losses from Sunraysia make up the rest of the £43 million cited from the two solar farms. “Sunraysia, which is still in construction, experienced technical issues,” it says, adding later that the technical issues are related to “transformers”.

“There have also been ongoing delays with the Australian Energy Market Operator registration process which is holding up the project’s connection to the grid,” it adds.

John Laing says a “remediation plan” for Sunraysia is in place. But the solar farm has also become the centre of a legal dispute between John Laing and co-investor Maoneng, and the main contractor Decmil.

In a presentation to analysts, recently appointed CEO Ben Loome said some of the issues that have affected the business are the result of “not fully assessing risk return dynamics. A lot of this activity came at a time when investment in renewable energy was becoming more competitive and commoditised.”

John Laing earlier this year put its Australian renewable energy portfolio up for sale after taking the decision not to invest in any new assets. It pulled the two solar assets from the sales process, citing the uncertainty over connections and grid congestion.

Loome said the company will not be hurried to make a sale. “We have got to make sure each of projects is properly prepared for sale – so we can maximise value,” he said in the presentation. “We will be pursing realisations over the next 1 or 2 years. We are not under pressure to sell any assets ”

But John Laing says the sale process is being affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and changes to Australia Foreign Investment Review Board rules, and the 49.8 per cent owned Granville wind farm being built in Tasmania is being delayed by Covid-19 issues and “weather conditions.” Completion of construction is targeted for the beginning of 2021.

Its other assets in Australia include the Cherry Tree wind farm in Victoria, the Kiata wind farm in Victoria (72.3 per cent), and minority stakes in each of the three big Hornsdale wind farm assets in South Australia.

The John Laing accounts also reveal another £50 million in losses from its renewable energy portfolio because of lower prices, although it does not specify the extent of these losses across the individual regions of its US, European or Australian portfolio.

John Laing has contracts in numerous civil works projects across a number of countries, including a hospital in Adelaide and light rail in Sydney, but the problems with its renewables portfolio drove its result to a £95 million loss in the first half.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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24 August, 2020

The First Undeniable Climate Change Deaths

Undeniable? Then how come I am denying it?

People in temperate climates regularly die in "heatwaves" -- temperatures that would be unremarkable in the tropics.

So the only thing of interest here is whether the temperatures concerned were unusual. And it does appear that they were. But where do you go from there?

"Attribution science" was enlisted to show a link to global warming. I won't dwell on the impossible task that is attribution science. It defies logic. But even if we accept its conclusions as correct, what was the cause of the global warming? Was it the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere?

CO2 levels and temperature are poorly correlated so we need to use Occams razor here. And in applying Occams razor we note that the earth has been slowly warming since the Little Ice Age -- long before the modern human activities that Warmists decry. So the simple explanation for increased global temperatures is that they are a continuation of a natural process and have nothing to do with human emissions of CO2

So even if we accept that the deaths were caused by global warming, how do we know what caused global warming? We cannot know that. All we can do is guess. And the influence of CO2 is an implausible guess

In 2018 in Japan, more than 1,000 people died during an unprecedented heat wave. In 2019, scientists proved it would have been impossible without global warming.

July 23, 2018, was a day unlike any seen before in Japan. It was the peak of a weekslong heat wave that smashed previous temperature records across the historically temperate nation. The heat started on July 9, on farms and in cities that only days earlier were fighting deadly rains, mudslides, and floods. As the waters receded, temperatures climbed. By July 15, 200 of the 927 weather stations in Japan recorded temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius, about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or higher. Food and electricity prices hit multiyear highs as the power grid and water resources were pushed to their limits. Tens of thousands of people were hospitalized due to heat exhaustion and heatstroke. On Monday, July 23, the heat wave reached its zenith. The large Tokyo suburb of Kumagaya was the epicenter, and around 3 p.m., the Kumagaya Meteorological Observatory measured a temperature of 41.1 degrees Celsius, or 106 F. It was the hottest temperature ever recorded in Japan, but the record was more than a statistic. It was a tragedy: Over the course of those few weeks, more than a thousand people died from heat-related illnesses.

On July 24, the day after the peak of the heat wave, the Japan Meteorological Agency declared it a natural disaster. A disaster it was. But a natural one? Not so much.

In early 2019, researchers at the Japan Meteorological Agency started looking into the circumstances that had caused the unprecedented, deadly heat wave. They wanted to consider it through a relatively new lens—through the young branch of meteorology called attribution science, which allows researchers to directly measure the impact of climate change on individual extreme weather events. Attribution science, at its most basic, calculates how likely an extreme weather event is in today’s climate-changed world and compares that with how likely a similar event would be in a world without anthropogenic warming. Any difference between those two probabilities can be attributed to climate change.

Attribution science was first conceived in the early 2000s, and since then, researchers have used it as a lens to understand the influence of climate change on everything from droughts to rainfall to coral bleaching. As scientists have long predicted, the vast majority of extreme weather events studied to date have been made more likely because of climate change. But the 2018 Japan heat wave is different. As people who lived in Japan knew at the time, the oppressive temperatures were more than unusual. They were unprecedented. In fact, without climate change, they would have been impossible.

These people are the first provable deaths of climate change.“We would never have experienced such an event without global warming,” says Yukiko Imada of the Japan Meteorological Agency.
On June 7, 2019, Imada, Masahiro Watanabe, and others published an attribution study of the 2018 Japan heat wave in the journal Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere. They found that the deadly event of the previous summer “could not have happened without human-induced global warming.”

This heat wave is not the first extreme event found to be only possible because of climate change. But it is the first short-lived event, and the first to have direct impacts on human health. Given that tens of thousands were hospitalized and more than a thousand died due to the heat wave, in a sense, these people are the first provable deaths of climate change.

For Watanabe, the result wasn’t unexpected. It was more of a grim inevitability. “It was not that surprising,” he says of his unprecedented result. An event like this was “naturally expected as global mean temperature continued to rise.” But for both Watanabe and Imada, it holds real historical significance. “It is very sensational for me because human activity has created a new phenomenon. Human activity has created a new phase of the climate,” says Imada.

You couldn’t live through this heat wave without realizing that something was unusual. Ayako Nomizu lives in Tokyo. “When I was growing up in the ’80s, if we had 31 or 32 degrees centigrade, that was hot,” she says. “We would say ‘Oh, my God, it’s gonna be really 32 degrees?’” Summers recently, and especially 2018’s, concern her. “Now we are seeing 37, 38 [degrees]. It’s crazy. We didn’t really have this kind of heat before.” Nomizu works for Climate Action 100+, a group that helps investors and companies transition to clean energy, so for her, the connection between climate change and the extreme heat in summers is obvious.

Kazuo Ogawa, a 65-year-old landlord who lives in Tokyo, says he has never experienced anything like the heat wave of 2018. His memories of the experience are visceral. “I was so uncomfortable. I took a shower three times a day, I changed my T-shirt three times a day,” he says.

This kind of heat, as the hospitalization numbers and death toll show, is dangerous. Especially so in Japan, where most people didn’t grow up with air conditioning because it was never needed, and where heat exhaustion was basically unknown until recently. To Ogawa and many Japanese, this is a new problem. “Heat exhaustion is called netsuchusho in Japanese. I never heard of this phrase, this illness, 30 years ago,” Ogawa said.

Heat exhaustion and its more deadly version, heatstroke, are simply the physiological changes that occur when someone has an extremely elevated body temperature. There are a lot of mechanisms humans have evolved to prevent dangerous overheating—sweating and other internal changes like increased heart rate and the transfer of blood from organs to the skin can usually keep the body at a safe temperature—but there is a limit to what the body can handle. If the outside temperature gets too intense or high humidity prevents sweat from evaporating and pulling warmth out of the skin, internal body temperature will start to rise. When this happens, blood vessels dilate in an attempt to get rid of more heat, causing a drop in blood pressure that leads to the first symptoms of heat stress—lightheadedness and nausea. As the body continues to heat up, organs swell, and cell-signaling processes, especially in the brain, are disrupted. At this point people begin to fall unconscious, and if their temperature is not lowered quickly, the damage can be fatal.

SOURCE

Recent global warming trends are inconsistent with very high climate sensitivity

The Warmists are dialing back their predictions of danger. They think that more CO2 will produce less warming than they once did

Research published this week in Earth System Dynamics reports that the most sensitive climate models overestimate global warming during the last 50 years.

Three scientists from the University of Exeter studied the output of complex climate models and compared them to temperature observations since the 1970s.

Recent developments in cloud modeling have produced models that portray very large sensitivity to rising greenhouse gas concentrations.

A subset of models even showed that a doubling of CO2 could lead to over 5°C of warming, questioning whether the goals of the Paris agreement are achievable even if nations do everything they can.

The lead author of the study, Ph.D. candidate Femke Nijsse from the University of Exeter, said: "In evaluating the climate models we were able to exploit the fact that thanks to clean air regulation, air pollution in the form of climate-cooling aerosols have stopped increasing worldwide, allowing the greenhouse gas signal to dominate recent warming."

The amount of warming that occurs after CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are doubled is called the equilibrium climate sensitivity.

The study found that based on the latest generation of climate models the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely between 1.9 and 3.4 °C.

Co-author Mark Williamson, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, added: "Global warming since 1970 also provides even better guidance on the rate of climate change in the future.

"We find a likely range for the 'Transient Climate Response' of 1.3-2.1 °C, whether we use the latest models or the previous generation of models."

The new study is only one piece of the puzzle.

A recent review paper found that low estimates of climate sensitivity can be excluded because they are, in general, not consistent with climate changes in Earth's past.

Co-author Professor Peter Cox explains the significance of these findings: "It is good to see that studies are now converging on a range of equilibrium climate sensitivity, and that both high and low values can be excluded.

SOURCE

The naff symbolism of modern eco-protest

Earlier this month, activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) poured red paint on the steps of Trafalgar Square and threw luminous green ink into its fountains. The colours, representing ‘ecocide’ (green) and genocide (red), were intended to raise awareness about the impact of Covid-19 on indigenous Brazilian people.

Or perhaps the aim was merely to draw attention to XR themselves. After all, it’s not clear how pigment poured over the UK capital’s iconic landmarks is going to make a difference to indigenous people. What will Londoners do with their new-found ‘awareness’? And what kind of solidarity is created by acts that most people will see as nothing more than petty vandalism?

Moreover, XR’s latest stunt might have been better directed towards fellow environmental campaigners at the WWF. As has been exposed by indigenous-rights organisation Survival International, the massive green NGO stands accused of an endless list of human-rights abuses against indigenous people living – or trying to live – in the path of WWF’s conservation agenda. Such ‘solidarity’ ought to raise questions about the green movement. Instead, WWF continues to be given tens of millions from the UK taxpayer.

XR and WWF are not the only green NGOs to have developed a strange interest in indigenous peoples. In 2013, Greenpeace’s recruitment of Canada’s First Nations voices to their Save the Arctic campaign was frustrated by the Inuit Circumpolar Council’s rejection of the ‘questionable use of the Indigenous voice’.

It turns out that some indigenous people, living in very cold places, might find fossil fuels quite useful, and some might even aspire to work in the oil and gas industries. But greens take for granted the idea that indigenous peoples want to live ‘traditional’ lifestyles. This presupposition speaks to the green fetish for lifestyles which are closely dependent on nature. When they are not murdering and evicting indigenous people or using them as political puppets, greens celebrate indigenous people as symbols of pre-industrial authenticity. But not as people. When voiceless indigenous people come into opposition with Western NGOs, greens turn out to be as indifferent to them as any logging, mining or agricultural corporation.

The image of helpless, voiceless victims helps green NGOs to cast simple moral categories over the messy business of societies and their development. But Greenpeace and WWF let the cat out of the bag. This is how they want all humans to be: both literally and figuratively powerless, living pre-industrial lifestyles. As soon as indigenous people become politically independent – that is, able to assert themselves politically – or participate in the economy as producers and consumers, or simply stand in the way of green ambitions, their symbolic power fades.

Many have observed the recent trend of political protest’s convergence with performance art. Green NGOs and campaigners, unable to produce mass support for their political views, have had to turn protest into a different kind of spectacle than the one produced by demonstrations of the popular will through the weight of numbers. Every eco-protest today is sparsely populated, but rich with deeply naff symbolism, combined with seemingly transgressive performance – colours and vandalism – to attract attention.

This formula for protest probably reflects the full extent of the protesters’ understanding of the issues facing indigenous people (or people in the developing world more broadly). Indigenous people are just useful symbols to green campaigns: objects of both pity and aspiration. But eco-warriors’ grasp of the ‘environment’ is also entirely symbolic. Trees become lungs, nature becomes Gaia, and industry becomes sin. Greens claim that their perspective is grounded in science, but the logic of the symbolic order haunting green claims is much more often based on mystical mumbo-jumbo and allegories of fire and brimstone than on any attempt to understand society’s interactions with the natural world.

The problem for the ecological zealots that think nothing of inflicting themselves on the rest of society is that very few people speak their language, much less share their views. Most people don’t want to be the eco-serfs in the green lunatics’ designs for an eco-political order that will please Gaia. Most people don’t think their interests are going to be served, let alone understood, by people in fancy dress committing acts of vandalism against a nation’s monuments.

If you think environmentalists are champions of indigenous people’s – or any people’s – rights, you probably think Avatar was a documentary.

SOURCE

Revealed: how the Great Barrier Reef is really doing

Even the academics are finding it hard to moan about it

Is it dying or thriving? The state of the Great Barrier Reef has become a hot button topic, but a report out today gives the most complete picture of the state of our most valuable national icon.

Reports of the death of the Great Barrier Reef may have been exaggerated, with new research showing “encouraging” signs of coral growth in two-thirds of 86 monitored reefs.

The annual report of the health of the reef by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, published today, has been welcomed by tourism operators who say they are battling widespread perceptions the reef is already dead.

Today’s report shows modest increases in coral coverage in the reef’s central and southern zones, and a stabilisation in the north, after several years of hits from bleaching, cyclones and outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish.

Head researcher Dr Mike Emslie said the survey, which is now in its 35th year, showed “the reef is resilient, but this resilience has limits”.

Dr Emslie’s team conducted their assessment between September 2019 and June 2020 at reefs scattered from below Rockhampton to the very tip of Cape York. The work is done by means of a “manta tow”, in which a marine scientist is pulled along a section of the reef underwater for two minutes, and afterwards calculates the percentage of sea floor covered by coral.

“Out of the 86 reefs we surveyed this year, two thirds were low or moderate, with less than 30 per cent coral cover,” he said. “There were 23 reefs that had high coral cover, which is 30 to 50 per cent, and only five had very high coral cover, over 50 per cent.”

Comparing this year’s results to previous years of coral coverage gives a different perspective on the health of the reef.

In the northern reef, coral coverage in 2020 was just half of what it was at its recorded peak, and in the southern reef it was at 60 per cent of its best-ever result. The peaks in both areas were recorded in 1988.

Coral coverage in the central part of the reef reached its highest level ever recorded in 2016, Dr Emslie said, but this year the coverage had fallen back to 61 per cent of that peak.

“The reef is taking repeated hits from coral bleaching, cyclones and crown-of-thorns outbreaks. While we have seen the Great Barrier Reef’s ability to begin recovery from these pressures, the frequency and intensity of disturbances means less time for full recovery to take place,” Dr Emslie said.

The full effect of last summer’s mass bleaching event – the third in five years – would not be known for several months, he added.

“The 35-year data set we’ve got shows that the long term trajectory of hard coral cover is actually ratcheting down,” Dr Emslie said.

“There are lot of good reefs still out there, but there’s also lots of impacted reefs. People can still go out and see the Great Barrier Reef in all its glory but we really need to be aware of what the long term data is telling is.”

Gareth Phillips, CEO of the Association of Marine Park Tour Operators and himself a reef scientist, said people who worked on the reef were seeing its recovery day to day, but negative publicity about the condition of the reef had been affecting visitor numbers prior to the coronavirus outbreak.

“The overwhelming message is ‘Go now to see what’s left, and what you will probably see is this stark white reef that’s just on it’s last legs’. It’s just completely false,” he said.

“Marine operators do not deny that the reef has gone through some substantial pressures but as this report has shown, the reef has ability to recover,” Mr Phillips said. “It’s exactly in line with what the operators have been trying to say – that the reef is not dead and it is a beautiful place.”

Tourism operations on the reef were currently running at about 10-15 per cent of their pre-COVID capacity, Mr Phillips said, but he rejected popular suggestions this lack of activity could help the reef “heal”.

“Tourism actually has a positive impact on the reef,” he said. “With recent bleaching events, the tourism locations had very little impact because (operators) showed good stewardship. They monitor the reef. They’re a critical part of its management.”

The lack of commercial enterprise on the reef during the lockdown was also leading to an increase in illegal fishing in the area because the tourism boats provide surveillance, Mr Phillips said.

Cairns Tourism Industry Assocition president Kevin Byrne said operators were “continuously fighting against this over-egging of the decline of the Great Barrier Reef”.

The perception that the reef was dying was “fuelled by the contest of academics to try and paint the most gloomy picture,” he said. “The reef needs to be managed, it doesn’t at the moment need to be saved.”

According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, there were 2.1 million “visitor days” to the reef in 2019.

SOURCE

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23 August, 2020

Hotter Tropical Soils Emit More Carbon Dioxide: Sixty-five billion metric tons of the plant-warming gas could enter the atmosphere by 2100

This article is one of the more contemptible to come out of the NYT. Does CO2 really WARM plants? First I have heard of it.   It is usually said to warm the whole globe. Its effect on plants is to promote their growth. And does soil "spew" anything? It certainly doesn't emit carbon. Carbon is a solid element. CO2 is a gas.

And what does it matter anyway? Atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature are very weakly correlated so claiming a causal relationship between the two is tendentious

Humble dirt could pack an unexpected climate punch according to a new study published in the journal Nature. An experiment that heated soil underneath a tropical rainforest to mimic temperatures expected in coming decades found that hotter soils released 55 percent more planet-warming carbon dioxide than did nearby unwarmed areas.

If the results apply throughout the tropics, much of the carbon stored underground could be released as the planet heats up. “The loss rate is huge,” said Andrew Nottingham, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study. “It’s a badnews story.” The thin skin of soil that covers much of our planet’s land stores vast amounts of carbon — more, in total, than in all plants and the atmosphere combined. That carbon feeds hordes of bacteria and fungi, which build some of it into more microbes while respiring the rest into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Many of these microbes grow more active at warmer temperatures, increasing digestion and respiration rates.

The finding “is another example of why we need to worry more” about how fast the globe is warming, said Eric Davidson, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland College of Environmental Science in Frostburg who was not involved in the research.

Ecologists began in the early 1990s building apparatuses to artificially heat soils. Such experiments in temperate and boreal forests have shown that carbon-rich soils almost always belch carbon dioxide when warmed. In 2016, a group of researchers estimated that by 2050, soils could release so much of the gas that it would be like adding the carbon emissions of a new country the size of the United States.

But that study left out the perpetually warm, mega-biodiverse tropics, where a third of all soil carbon resides. Figuring out the fate of this carbon would require grappling with the many pitfalls of doing research in the tropics: humidity, storms and hungry animals that can take a toll on research equipment — chewing through electrical wires or protective coverings, for example — and on researchers themselves.

In 2014, Dr. Nottingham, then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, traveled to Barro Colorado Island, a humancreated island in the Panama Canal area that’s home to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He buried electrical wires in five circular plots to a depth of nearly four feet. For protection from the elements and ravenous insects, he shielded the wires inside metal structures shaped like freakishly large spiders. Measurements were logged inside weatherproof boxes.

“Our experiment was basically me as a postdoc making things out of a D.I.Y. shop,” Dr. Nottingham said. The team encountered a number of hiccups, including electrical connections that blew up and cost the researchers nearly a year and much of their budget to repair.

Starting in November 2016, the wires’ electrical resistance began warming the soil by almost 6 degrees Fahrenheit, within the range of how much the tropics are projected to warm by century’s end according to current climate models. Other equipment measured the carbon dioxide coming out of both experimental plots and nearby plots that weren’t artificially warmed as well as microbial activity in the plots.

An experiment warming soil in El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico had turned on two months earlier but was pummeled by back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes in September 2017; the study team didn’t turn the power back on for a year.

The results from Dr. Nottingham’s team are sobering: Over two years, warmed soils spewed out 55 percent more carbon than control plots. “This is a very large response,” said Dr. Margaret Torn, an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California, who runs a similar warming experiment in a California forest that reported a roughly 35 percent increase in carbon emissions after two years. “It’s one of the largest I’ve heard of.” If the entire tropics were to behave similarly, the researchers estimate that 65 billion metric tons of carbon would enter the atmosphere by 2100 — more than six times the annual emissions from all human-related sources.

Scaling the results to account for the entire tropics is complicated, however. The soils on Barro Colorado Island are richer in nutrients than many others, such as those of much of the vast Amazon rainforest, Dr. Davidson noted. That could make it easier for the Panamanian microbes to ramp up their activity. Microbial communities in African and Asian soils are very different from those in the Americas, Dr. Torn added.

And while there is agreement that climate models need to treat soil more realistically, how best to do that is unclear. The new study strikes a blow against simple theories predicting that tropical soils will respond weakly to warming, said Kathe Todd- Brown, a soil scientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not part of the research team. But to really get a handle on the problem, she said, modelers will need information about how microbes respond to variations in soil moisture and nutrients in addition to temperature.

SOURCE

Maine Supreme Court Declares Power Line Initiative Unconstitutional

In an unusual move, Maine’s state Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional a ballot initiative that would, if passed by the voters, have blocked a power line project running through Maine to Massachusetts. The state Supreme Court sent the case back to the Superior Court, directing it to rule that the initiative is unconstitutional and barring any legal challenge by Secretary of State Matt Dunlap (D) to keep it on the ballot.

Who Decides Power Line’s Fate?

In 2019, Maine’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved Central Maine Power’s (CMP) proposed project to construct a 145-mile transmission line cutting through western Maine to Massachusetts, per a deal between the two states, to bring power from hydroelectric plants in Quebec to the region. CMP said the power line is necessary to ensure reliable power, as the region’s coal power plants are being shuttered and new natural-gas power plants and the pipelines to deliver the fuel are being blocked by lawsuits across the northeast region. PUC agreed.

Opponents of the initiative gathered enough signatures to put a ballot initiative before the voters in the November 2020 elections that would reverse PUC’s decision and block the power line.

Supporters of the power line project, including CMP and a subsidiary, New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC), challenged the constitutionality of the ballot initiative in court. The plaintiffs argued Maine’s law was clear, that more than 100 years ago the state legislature had delegated to PUC the sole authority over most utility-related decisions. CMP and NECEC also argued it was appropriate for the courts to decide the constitutionality of the ballot initiative.

Supreme Court Reverses Precedent, Lower Court

The decision by the Supreme Court to prevent the initiative from being put before the voters was unprecedented. Courts in Maine have never before blocked an initiative which had garnered the appropriate number of valid signatures. Instead, the courts had always interpreted Maine’s constitution as allowing voters decide an issue at the ballot box. This was the precedent the Superior Court followed when it dismissed opponents’ challenges to the ballot initiative in June, ruling courts did not need to decide the constitutionality of the referendum before the election.

The plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing court system did have the power under Maine’s Constitution both to hear the case and to block this particular initiative. During oral arguments, Dunlap testified the Secretary of State’s assistant district attorney general agreed it would be proper for the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of this particular ballot question, and asked it to do so.

“[The referendum] exceeds the scope of the people’s legislative powers conferred by … the Maine Constitution,” the Supreme Court ruled in its August 13 decision, directing the Superior Court to bar the initiative as unconstitutional.

Calls Decision Legal, Beneficial

The Supreme Court’s ruling was correct as a matter of law and will benefit Maine’s economy and its environment, Thorn Dickinson, president of the NECEC, told WBUR.

“They determined that the initiative failed to meet the constitutional requirement,” said Dickenson. “It was clear to me, anyway, that this would be the likely outcome.

“The ruling by the Maine Supreme Court is a victory for the state of Maine and our future, both environmentally and economically,” Dickinson said in a separate press release.

SOURCE

The Green New Deal Means Monumental Disruption

Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Senate resolution to support the Green New Deal. Now Joe Biden has endorsed the plan. Naturally, people want to know what the GND will cost – usually meaning in state and federal government spending. But that is the wrong question.

The real question is, how much do Green New Dealers expect to get out of it, at whattotalcost? Mr. Biden says he wants the feds to spend nearly $7 trillion over the next decade on healthcare, energy and housing transformation, climate change and other GND agenda items. But that is only part of the picture.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in some socialist version of economics) and the folks who helped her write Biden's so-called Climate Plan have a clear idea of how much money they want, and pretty much know where they expect the money to come from. Here it is in its clearest form, as stated by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s then chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti:

“The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHG [greenhouse gases] and pollution. It says it does this through huge investments in renewables, at WW2 scales (which was 40-60% of America’s GDP).”

World War II was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as part of a dramatic and historic mobilization to win a horrific global war. However, that hard reality doesn’t matter to these folks. They say we are now waging a war to stop catastrophic climate change. So money, sacrifice and disruption are irrelevant.

Our nation’s GDP is around $20 trillion a year, or $200 trillion in ten years. 40-60% of that is $80-120 trillion. For simplicity, let’s call it an even $100 trillion to finance the Green New Deal utopian dream.

$100 trillion! The ways and means of raising this stupendous sum are also clear in their minds. It will be done the same way WW2 was financed, however that was. To them, it’s obvious that we can simply do this, because we did it before. The specifics don’t matter. Government elites will figure them out.

But even this arrogant, cavalier attitude is only part of the picture.

If you read what Green New Dealers say, confusion arises because people think the GND is an ordinary policy proposal:“Here’s what we want done, and this what it should cost.” It is nothing like that. The Green New Deal is more along the lines of,“Here’s the level of effort we require to transform our entire economy, and this is what we should be able to do with that much money.”

People tend to interpret Green New Dealer talk of a WW2-like mobilization as a simple metaphor. But these folks mean it as an actual measure of what they are determined to do. So far they have glossed over and ignored the extreme hardships of mobilization. Here’s just one example – not from front lines mayhem, but from the United States home front during World War II.

“Gasoline, meat and clothing were tightly rationed. Most families were allocated 3 US gallons of gasoline a week, which sharply curtailed driving for any purpose. Production of most durable goods, like cars, new housing, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled.”

No doubt the Green New Deal mobilization would impose different hardships. But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without inflicting severe disruption on people’s lives.

The argument is sound in its way, provided there is a need for all-out war – which there is not. The minor to modest temperature, climate and extreme weather changes we’ve been seeing (in the real world outside computer models) explain why most Americans see no need for a painful war. So does the fact that China, India and other emerging economies are not about to give up fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, polls show that roughly half of Americans do not even believe in the idea of human caused global warming, much less that it is an“existential threat,” as Senator Harris claims it is. The latest Gallup poll found that only 1% of US adults consider “climate change/environment/pollution” to be “the most important problem facing this country today.” That’s down from a meager 2% in the May 28-June 4 poll.

Even more revealing, a 2019 AP-NORC poll found that 68% of adult Americans were unwilling to pay even an extra $10 on their monthly electricity bill to combat global warming. Indeed, 57% of them would not be willing to pay more than $1.00 in added electricity charges to fight climate change!

Just wait until they see what the Biden-Harris-AOC-Democrat Green New Deal would cost them.

And it’s not just that their costs would likely skyrocket from an average US 13.2¢ per kilowatt hour (11.4¢ or less in ten states) to well beyond the nearly 20¢ per kWh that families are already paying in California and New York, or the 30¢ that families are now paying in ultra-green Germany. Or that factories, businesses, hospitals, schools and everyone else would also see their costs escalate – with blue collar families, the sick and elderly, poor and minority communities hammered hardest.

It’s that the Green New Deal would force every American to replace their gasoline and diesel cars and trucks with expensive short-haul electric vehicles; their gas furnaces with electric systems; their home, local and state electrical and transmission systems with expensive upgrades that can handle a totally electric economy. They’ll see their landscapes, coastlines and wildlife habitats blanketed with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines and warehouses filled with thousands of half-ton batteries. Virtually every component of this GND nation would be manufactured in China and other faraway places.

The cost of this massive, total transformation of our energy and economic system would easily reach $10 trillion: $30,000 per person or $120,000 per family – on top of those skyrocketing electricity prices. And that’s just the energy component of this all-encompassing Green New Deal.

These are stupendous, outrageous costs and personal sacrifices. Every American, at every campaign event and town meeting, should ask Green New Deal supporters if they think America needs to – or can afford to – cough up $10 trillion or $100 trillion over the next ten years. And not let them get away with glib, evasive answers, or attempts to laugh these questions off as meritless or irrelevant.

The American people are not about to be mobilized into an all-out war against dubious climate change, with price tags like these coupled with repeated blackouts, huger personal sacrifices, and massive joblessness in every sector of the economy – except among government ruling classes.

They’ve already seen news stories about the latest rolling blackouts in California (here, here, here and here) – resulting from one-third of that state’s electricity coming from “renewable” sources, and with a good portion of that being hydroelectric, much of it imported from other states. They must be wondering what their lives, livelihoods and living standards would look like under100%wind and solar power.

And yet, once again, even all this insanity is only a small part of the picture.

Remember, the Green New Deal is also about government run healthcare – and an economy and nation where “progressive” and “woke” legislators, regulators, judges and activists tell companies what they can manufacture and sell ... and tell us what we can buy, eat and drink; how and how much we can heat and cool our homes; and what we can read, hear, think and say, as they “transform” our culture and traditions.

The GND is being promoted by politicians, news and social media, “educators” and others who also want to eliminate free enterprise capitalism; have totally open borders, even for criminals and people who might have Covid and other diseases; and want to defund the police, put rapists, looters and arsonists back on our streets, and take away our right and ability to defend ourselves, our homes and our families.

The time to think long and hard about all of this is NOW. Not sometime after the November 3 elections.

SOURCE

Australia: Ban on uranium mining in New South Wales is set to be lifted after 30 years in an effort to create new jobs - but environmentalists are furious

Uranium mining is set be allowed in New South Wales - creating a wave of new jobs - after the government struck a deal with One Nation to lift a ban on the industry.

A bill to be voted on in the upper house of parliament next week calls for the repeal of legislation banning nuclear facilities and uranium mining in the state.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Deputy Premier John Barilaro are understood to have thrown their support behind bill by directly working out a deal with One Nation.

The deal has left some Coalition members in the Liberals and many of Mr Barilaro's Nationals colleagues fuming.

In an effort to appease their party a deal had been struck which would allow uranium mining but keep the existing ban on nuclear facilities, according to 7 News.

Nuclear energy generation is currently banned by the federal government so this part of the deal would only signal intent not to push for any of the power plants.

If the federal government were to lift the ban then the deal would also allow New South Wales to follow suit, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The ban on the industry has been in place since the late 1980s and would likely see significant backlash from nuclear energy opponents in repealed.

Australia has been estimated to hold 30 per cent of the world's uranium reserves - the largest of any single country.

As such, the industry could generate a significant amount of jobs and revenue for the state according to The Minerals Council of Australia chief executive, Tania Constable.

'Australia is endowed with the world's largest uranium resource but is only the third largest producer,' she said.

Ms Constable said if the bans are repealed, it would help strengthen Australia's position as a global uranium producer.

South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory are currently the only states and territories that allow the mining of uranium.

The arguments against mining of the radioactive metal include the environmental aspects, the dangers of nuclear power, and indigenous land issues.

The draft legislation has also attracted criticism form conservationists. The Australian Conservation Foundation has argued the country doesn't need to explore 'dangerous' nuclear options.

'The state ban on uranium mining has served NSW well and should remain,' Australian Capital Territory nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney said in a statement. 'Uranium mining in New South Wales would risk the health of the environment and regional communities for scant promise of return.'

Cabinet will need to give their final approval of Ms Berejiklian's and Mr Barilaro's deal with One Nation on Monday.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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21 August, 2020

Trump administration finalizes oil drilling plan in Alaska wildlife refuge

The Trump administration on Monday finalized its plan to open up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development, a move that overturns six decades of protections for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States.

The decision sets the stage for what is expected to be a fierce legal battle over the fate of the refuge’s vast, remote coastal plain, which is believed to sit atop billions of barrels of oil but is also home to polar bears and migrating herds of caribou.

The Interior Department said on Monday that it had completed its required reviews and would begin preparations to auction off drilling leases. “I do believe there could be a lease sale by the end of the year,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said.

Environmentalists, who have battled for decades to keep energy companies out of the refuge, say the Interior Department failed to adequately consider the effects that oil and gas development could have on climate change and wildlife. They and other opponents, including some Alaska Native groups, are expected to file lawsuits to try to block lease sales.

“We will continue to fight this at every turn,” said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, in a statement. “Any oil company that would seek to drill in the Arctic Refuge will face enormous reputational, legal and financial risks.”

Though any oil production within the refuge would still be at least a decade in the future, companies that bought leases could begin the process of seeking permits and exploring for oil and gas.

President Trump has long cast an increase in Arctic drilling as integral to his push to expand domestic fossil fuel production on federal lands and secure America’s “energy dominance.” Republicans have prized the refuge as a lucrative source of oil and gas ever since the Reagan administration first recommended drilling in 1987, but efforts to open it up had long been stymied by Democratic lawmakers until 2017, when the G.O.P. used its control of both houses of Congress to pass a bill authorizing lease sales.

“ANWR is a big deal that Ronald Reagan couldn’t get done and nobody could get done,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday.

It remains unclear how much interest there will be from energy companies at a time when many countries are trying to wean themselves from fossil fuels and oil prices are crashing amid the coronavirus pandemic. Exploring and drilling in harsh Arctic conditions remains difficult and costly.

Nevertheless, by proceeding with the lease sales, the Trump administration has made the Arctic refuge a potential issue in the presidential campaign, and the region’s fate may ultimately hinge on the election’s outcome. The Democratic nominee for president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has called for permanent protection of the refuge.

However, even if he were to win the White House, it could prove difficult for his administration to overturn existing lease rights once they have been auctioned to energy companies.

SOURCE

Kamala’s anti-fracking position

Everyone is talking about Joe Biden’s new VP candidate, Kamala Harris. The media has painted her as a bold moderate - but did you know that Kamala actually supports a ban on fracking?

Not only would this hurt hundreds of thousands of hard working Americans, it’s also not backed by science. We explain Kamala’s anti-fracking position and how some in the media are trying to paint those who mispronounce Kamala (Comma-lah) as racist!

Email from Ann and Phelim info@unreportedstorysociety.com

Some conservatives believe in global warming

Most of what Curbelo claims about climate change is demonstrably false and is simply talking points regurgitated from the climate alarm establishment. Contrary to what he claims, the rate of sea level rise has not increased, ocean “acidification” is not taking place, extreme weather is not increasing, etc.

It is possible that Curbelo does not care what the truth is. If this is the case, there is no point in trying to talk to him. But it is also possible that he is reasonably sincere and has been misinformed.

Florida Republicans are at the forefront of conservative efforts to address climate change. Far before Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s January climate bill, conservative policymakers from the Sunshine State were enacting local policies aimed at fighting climate change, and advocating for such policies on the federal level.

Prominent among these policymakers was Carlos Curbelo, who represented Florida’s 26th district, which is especially vulnerable to rising sea levels, from 2015 to 2019. The centerpiece of Curbelo’s work on the issue was the MARKET CHOICE Act, a bill that called for a tax on carbon emissions whose cost would be offset by eliminating the federal gas tax. “To be frank, I didn’t have high expectations it would become law,” Curbelo says in an interview. “My goal was to provoke a discussion and draw interest to the issue and it certainly did that.” He might not have known it at the time, but the bill marked a pivotal moment for the GOP: Climate-change policy had made its way onto the Party’s agenda.

It is no accident that this development came out of Florida, a state whose economy and identity are inextricably tied up in its environment, which is in turn threatened by climate change. “I didn’t run for Congress with the idea to become an environmentalist” Curbelo says in an interview. “What really motivated me was a meeting with NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]. . . . They showed me the data, the risk that my district faced.”

Curbelo notes that Florida’s barrier reef — the third largest in the world — is “being hurt by ocean acidification, which is a direct result of greater CO2 in the atmosphere.” The fishing and tourism industries that from such a big part of the state’s economy are directly dependent on the health of the ocean and sea levels. All in all, Floridians “really depend on the health of the environment more than some [other] places in the country,” Curbelo says. So concern about climate change is “not ideological; it’s pragmatic.”

Curbelo and other conservatives who care about climate change have reason to hope that such pragmatism is starting to filter through the rest of the GOP. Curbelo notes that there’s been a “drastic change in rhetoric” on the Right in recent months. For years, the party ignored the issue and, in essence, ceded it to Democrats by declining to expend any energy or political capital on it. But this year, several conservatives have come out in support of a “clean energy innovation” approach, hoping to offer an alternative to what they see as unworkable progressive proposals.

What catalyzed this change? Curbelo chalks it up to two things: science and politics.

“A lot of Republicans for years have been watching the science carefully, and the science is so compelling now that it’s motivated Republicans to speak out,” Curbelo says. While rising sea levels have long threatened trillions of dollars of coastal property in Florida, the interior of the country is starting to feel the effects of a warming climate now, too. “Changing weather patterns have really complicated life for farmers,” he says. “Extreme weather events have caused a lot of destruction. . . . We’re seeing larger and stronger storms with a greater frequency, because these storms get their energy from the oceans and the oceans are getting warmer.”

The scientific reality has in turn driven home the political dangers that climate-change poses to Republicans. For many on the right, “the case for taking care of the environment has always been there but I think the political reality of it has really hit in the past year,” says Quill Robinson of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a group of young conservatives focused on environmental issues. ACC polling has found that climate change is an important issue for 82 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 35, including 77 percent of those who describe themselves “right-leaning.” 60 percent of respondents indicated that climate change “will impact who they vote for in 2020.” Robinson argues that Republicans can’t afford to write off these voters. “If you’re a member of Congress saying climate change is a hoax, you’re hurting yourself politically,” he says.

That’s because there exists a real demand for a pragmatic approach that does not seek to reinvent the American economy as we know it. 53 percent of left-leaning respondents, 58 percent of moderate respondents, and 67 percent of right-leaning respondents in the ACC poll said they wanted “an alternative environmental movement that promotes free-market, limited government solutions.” Many voters are wary of the revolutionary climate-change plans proposed by the environmental Left, and that has paved the way for conservatives’ entrance into the debate.

Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute says that by presenting the issue as something that “threatens the sort of end of society or the extinction of the human race,” progressives have narrowed the range of possible solutions and created gridlock. Domestically, proposals that aim to cutting emissions to an exact degree by an exact date can make for a good soundbite, but they are almost always economically and/or politically infeasible. Globally, agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord have had little success at spurring collective action to curb emissions. As a result, Trembath says, Republicans have recently been emboldened and “entered the fray.”

The dirty secret of the climate-change debate is that there is no “silver bullet,” no foolproof way of definitively solving the problem. We don’t have the resources or infrastructure to cut emissions as drastically as some would like, and the green technologies advocated by progressives simply can’t make a big enough dent in emissions. “We’ve known for a long time that wind and solar weren’t going to decarbonize the American economy” on their own, Trembath says. What’s needed is a “much wider portfolio of technologies.”

McCarthy’s climate-change plan seems to take that message to heart. It focuses on innovation and natural solutions over large-scale economic reforms, and while it’s not a huge step forward, it’s a start. McCarthy contends that Republicans “can bring you a healthier, cleaner, and safer environment through innovation” while “[what] Democrats want is greater control and command.” His plan calls for planting 1 trillion new trees, managing soil health, and promoting conservation and recycling. It would also invest heavily in R&D in hopes of developing new emissions-cutting technologies, and give tax breaks to companies that use carbon-capture to reduce emissions.

All of this policy ferment on the right is critical, given the lack of feasible, large-scale emissions-cutting solutions. Trembath shares a hypothetical: Say we agree to enact a mandate on the steel industry that calls for a 50 percent reduction of emissions by 2030. “There’s just no way to do it. . . . We don’t know how to make fertilizer at scale without natural gas,” he says. It’s virtually impossible to make a significant dent in the emissions generated by America’s big industries without doing away with those industries altogether, which is a political and economic non-starter. So Republicans are hoping to unleash innovation that yields “a wide and more scalable set of technologies.”

Trembath believes that going forward, Republicans must demonstrate a “commitment to [climate change] beyond ‘basic science,’ backing carbon capture, nuclear energy, renewables, and other clean-energy technologies,” and focus on “technology-specific clean-energy innovation” to cut emissions. After years in which the only congressional climate-change proposals to even receive any press have been massive, government-driven overhauls of the economy with the potential to stifle growth, he sees an opening for conservatives to offer a more practical approach — and he might just be right.

SOURCE

The petty tyrants in your shower

When President Trump objected to federal regulations of shower heads and when the Department of Energy this week proposed to undo President Barack Obama’s shower rules, Trump’s critics decried the actions as petty and the subject matter as too picayune.

But Trump's critics are the ones with a question to answer: If the flow of a person’s shower head is too petty to be deregulated, then how was it momentous enough to be regulated in the first place?

The story of how Washington got into our showers started in 1992, but the real action took place in 2010.

A Democratic Congress passed and Republican President George H.W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which dictated the maximum flow rates on “showerheads, faucets, water closets, and urinals.”

The law banned any shower head that allowed water to flow out at a greater rate than 2.5 gallons per minute (which comes out to 5.3 ounces per second) “when measured at a flowing water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch.”

This was an overreach. People pay for their own water. If a family wants a lower water bill, it can always buy a low-flow shower head. Why Congress thinks it has the authority to make showers weak is a question each "aye" vote back in 1992 should have to answer for.

But even this intrusion into the most personal moments of a person's day was not enough for Obama. He wanted to make sure that no showers, including those with more than one shower head, ever spat out more than that congressionally mandated 5.3 ounces per second. Obama could have accomplished this crackdown on multihead showers by pushing legislation to that effect through Congress, where his party controlled both chambers.

But outlawing people’s showers isn’t terribly popular, so Obama opted to use regulatory means. He rewrote the language to redefine “shower head.”

You may think you know what a shower head is. It’s a fitting on the end of a pipe that disperses water into a spray in your shower. But Obama’s Energy Department decided that the term no longer meant that. What you call a shower head, Obama declared, is now a “nozzle.” A multihead shower was now a multinozzle shower head. And thus, if each “nozzle” is pumping out the legal maximum of 2.5 gallons per minute, then under Obama's redefinition, you are taking an illegal shower.

Trump's Energy Department did not propose to change the 1992 law, as reporters are now wrongly claiming, but to revert to the 1992 law. And when reporters tell you that Trump “wants to change the definition of a shower head,” they are telling you half the truth. He wants to change it back to what everyone thinks it always was.

You may think the federal government shouldn't be tinkering with the definition or the flow of a shower head. We couldn't agree more, and that's why Trump's action here is the right one.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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20 August, 2020

Environmentalists should not oppose natural gas

Opposition to infrastructure investment for the production and transport of conventional energy is de rigueur on the environmentalist left, a stance widely justified as an important bulwark for the protection of environmental quality. This is part of the “keep-it-in-the-ground” dimension of the ideological opposition to fossil fuels, itself a deeply anti-human drive intended explicitly to hinder economic growth and increased flourishing among the world’s poorest.

The “environmental-protection” rationale for that opposition to investment is silly, a reality demonstrated by only one observation: New energy-infrastructure investment by definition replaces older facilities and provides alternatives that are cleaner, environmentally safer, and less dangerous for workers and communities. The shutdown of older infrastructure without replacement incontrovertibly leads to a reduction in the stock of productive capital, a reduction in the supply of energy and the economic value of the natural-resource base, and less aggregate wealth. How a poorer society can protect environmental quality more effectively than a wealthier one has never been explained, except for the incoherent argument that the substitution of utterly inefficient, unreliable, and expensive “clean” (actually, very dirty) wind and solar electricity in place of fossil-fired power will effect that end.

In light of these realities, continued investment in infrastructure for the production and transport of conventional energy is an absolute necessity both economically and environmentally. That is why the ideological opposition to new pipeline investment is perverse, a central component of the larger political opposition to fossil fuels. Recent examples of this resistance include opposition to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, as well as the Atlantic Coast and Northeast Supply Enhancement gas pipelines. An environmental-safety comparison of alternative-transport systems — pipelines, railroads, and trucks — is complex, but there is substantial evidence that pipeline transport is safer under a broad range of conditions.

And it is not as if there is no regulatory oversight of pipeline-construction projects. Consider the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP), a 430-mile project currently under construction, which will transport gas produced in west Texas to the Gulf Coast. Apart from the eternal resistance of the environmental lobby, the project also faces opposition from the residents of Texas Hill Country, who are politically active and would prefer that the pipeline be routed elsewhere. (They have been joined in that opposition by those famous musicians and noted experts on energy policy, Willie Nelson and Paul Simon.) Political pressures and litigation threats lead regulators to exercise oversight over minute details: Since March, the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) has conducted more than 75 inspections of welding, coating, trench integrity, safety issues, and recordkeeping. At a more general level, the RRC has the right political incentives precisely because of the underlying politics (it prefers to avoid future embarrassment), and can anyone doubt that the pipeline operator (Kinder Morgan) would prefer to take appropriate cautions now so as to avoid major problems after operations begin?

Such an extensive inspection and review process is appropriate as a means of providing confidence that future environmental issues will prove minor as they emerge. It is a vast improvement over the legalisms of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), reform of which has been proposed by the Trump administration. NEPA for decades has been a source of massive delay and cost increases for federal projects. Like much environmental legislation, it has yielded actual environmental harm because of its inherent bias toward the status quo over new investment promising improved environmental outcomes. NEPA is a useful tool for opposition to new infrastructure projects even as the underlying arguments presented in support of such opposition are largely spurious.

A sharp reduction in investment in energy infrastructure would make the economy poorer, and in the long run poorer is dirtier. Such an investment decline would leave older, more environmentally harmful, and more dangerous infrastructure in place. Pipelines largely are safer and more benign environmentally than other infrastructure. A rigorous and continuing inspection regime is vastly more consistent with environmental protection than opposition through litigation. And both regulators and private-sector operators have powerful incentives to pursue safety and benign environmental outcomes.

SOURCE

Hawaii beach property linked to Obama, a climate alarmist, bypasses coastal protection laws

A beachfront compound in Hawaii where former President Barack Obama reportedly plans to retire has used a planning loophole to retain a seawall that is likely causing beach erosion, according to ProPublica.

State officials and community members told the outlet that Obama plans to reside in the $8.7 million compound on Oahu's Waimanalo Beach, which was purchased by his close friend Marty Nesbitt in 2015.

The Obamas made a big home buy of their own last year: an $11.75 million waterfront mansion on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., in December 2019.

Permits obtained by ProPublica reportedly show that Hawaii developers are building three homes, two pools and a security perimeter on the property after tearing down the site's mansion, which was famous for being the house from "Magnum, P.I."

However, a century-old seawall is set to remain thanks to a loophole that allowed the sellers to obtain an easement on the seawall for a one-time payment of $61,400, despite environmental experts who warn it could cause coastal damage and beach erosion, according to ProPublica.

The easement, reportedly acquired through Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, allows developers to essentially lease the public land that sits under the seawall for the next 55 years.

An investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica found that state officials have awarded seawall easements to more than 120 property owners over the past two decades. They include business and real state executives from Hawaii, the mainland U.S. and Japan, a former Honolulu City Council chairman, and a former managing director of a large hedge fund. Some have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to bypass rules designed to protect the public shoreline.

In addition, building permits show that developers are pursuing an expansion of the seawall. Local residents have noted that the existing beach along the property has nearly disappeared, according to the ProPublica report.

The Revised Ordinances of Honolulu states that, for the purpose of shoreline setbacks, it is "a primary policy of the city to protect and preserve the natural shoreline, especially sandy beaches; to protect and preserve public pedestrian access laterally along the shoreline and to the sea; and to protect and preserve open space along the shoreline."

According to research from Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth, Science and Technology, however, multi-agency seawall building on eroding shores approved by the state has resulted in the loss of one quarter of beaches around the island of Oahu.

"Had city, state, and federal staff operated in an integrated fashion, focused on a single over-riding policy to ?to protect and preserve the natural shoreline, this unconscionable level of environmental destruction probably would not have happened," researchers wrote.

Nesbitt, now chair of the Obama Foundation board and co-CEO of a Chicago-based private-equity firm, told ProPublica in a written response to questions that the steps he’s taken to redevelop the property and expand the seawall are “consistent with and informed by the analysis of our consultants, and the laws, regulations and perspectives of the State of Hawaii” and that any damage the structure caused to Waimnalao Beach occurred decades ago and "is no longer relevant."

Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, Nesbitt, and Obama's personal office did not immediately return FOX News' requests for comment.

SOURCE

DNC Panelist Admits: The Green New Deal is About Destroying Capitalism

Surrogates for former Vice President Joe Biden are falling all over themselves in an attempt to frame the candidate and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, as a "moderate" ticket worthy of running the White House.

But delegates and DNC participants are telling a different story. During a panel discussion on the opening day of the convention, one woman admitted that the Green New Deal is about destroying capitalism.

More on the Marxist foundation of the Green New Deal:

In Europe, you will often hear politically savvy people refer to Green Party politicians as "watermelons." The reason is that although they might be environmentalist "green" on the outside, these leftists are secretly communist red if you look beneath the surface.

They typically resort to such subterfuge because environmentalism is more popular than Marxism. A former East German communist is bound to be unpopular, but perhaps not so much if he rehabilitates himself as a renewable energy enthusiast.

The case of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, is different in that she openly advertised herself as a socialist in a country with a well-grounded historical aversion to such alien ideologies. But her grand policy initiative, the $93 trillion Green New Deal, was still billed as if it were a legitimate environmentalist idea. We were supposedly trying to save the world from imminent destruction. As Ocasio-Cortez herself put it, "We're, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change."

Democrat vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is an official sponsor of the legislation, spearheaded by far left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

“We need a Green New Deal based in climate and environmental justice, which means building a clean economy that protects communities that have been neglected by policymakers for far too long. I’m proud to work with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez on this comprehensive proposal, and I’m hopeful that it brings a Green New Deal closer to reality," Harris said in July 2019 when she officially announced her partnership with AOC.

During a campaign stop during the Democrat primary, Harris said she unequivocally supports the goals of the Green New Deal and argued the United States needs to "figure out a way" to get there.

The facade of the "moderate" Democrat ticket continues to crumble.

SOURCE

Canada: departure of finance minister suggests Trudeau will pursue ‘green’ recovery plan

With a projected C$343bn (US$260bn) Covid-shaped deficit, a collapsing oil and gas sector, and a province on the verge of bankruptcy over a botched energy project, Canada is at a crossroads.

Does it pursue an ambitious “green” post-pandemic economic recovery plan that goes against the wishes of a number of influential and powerful industries – not to mention several provincial leaders – or does the tenuous Justin Trudeau-led minority government freeze in the headlights?

The apparently acrimonious departure of the finance minister, Bill Morneau, late on Monday, suggests Trudeau has made his choice.

Over his five-year tenure, Morneau was seen by many Canadians as taking a conservative approach to spending on environment – and more recently, on Covid relief. Trudeau, in contrast, made environmental promises a centerpiece of last year’s re-election campaign. It was inevitable that the two would eventually arrive at an impasse.

Now, Trudeau’s right-hand woman Chrystia Freeland will take over the finance portfolio in addition to her role as deputy prime minister. As one of the key architects of the new Nafta agreement, Freeland has experience marrying economic objectives to broader social and environmental goals, making her better-positioned to carry out Trudeau’s environmental promises.

But the road ahead still won’t be easy., said Bruce Laurie, the president of the environmental thinktank the Ivey Foundation as well as a member of a taskforce advocating for a green post-Covid recovery.

“When you have politicians in three or four provinces that are just emerging from climate denialism, and a system of federation where the provinces at the end of the day have almost full responsibility for environmental, resource and energy decisions, it creates a virtually unmanageable country,” he said. “That’s a bigger challenge than Morneau and finance.”

Canada’s post-pandemic recovery is creating a moment of reckoning, one in which Trudeau has to decide whether to pursue his ambitious green aspirations even if they come at a political cost.

For years, he has been accused of talking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to energy, investing in solar, wind and hydro but also building new pipelines.

Under the Paris agreement, Canada vowed to reduce greenhouse gases by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 – a goal that will probably be impossible to meet with so much of the economy presently relying on Alberta’s oil sands. It will be even tougher if the Trans Mountain, Coastal GasLink and Keystone XL pipelines go ahead.

Related: What if Canada had spent $200bn on wind energy instead of oil?

Kyla Tienhaara, the Canada Research Chair in economy and environment and an assistant professor in environmental studies at Queen’s University, told the Guardian that a majority of Canadians still support federal investment in green sectors such as wind and solar energy despite the country’s deficit.

Further, Tienhaara said Alberta’s recent economic hardship is not purely a consequence of Covid: companies such as Shell have been leaving the region for years.

“That’s because the oil there is very costly to extract, both environmentally and economically. It’s the first type of oil that is going to go in the transition, and the transition is inevitable. Renewable energy is just becoming so much more economically sensible,” she said.

Laurie, meanwhile, has briefed key Liberal caucus ministers on his taskforce’s “five bold moves” to make sure Canada’s post-Covid recovery is as sustainable and resilient as possible. The reception was positive, he said, and Trudeau is “100% committed” to acting on climate change.

The challenge is rounding up the cavalry – and making a decision about Morneau is essential to a strong showing, especially in Trudeau’s minority government.

This is the time, said Lourie, for the Liberals to show leadership by pitching an economic model that delivers on the country’s environmental responsibilities.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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19 August, 2020

Get Serious: More C02 Isn’t Making Earth ‘Uninhabitable’

Once again I feel I have to bring up the generally forgotten point that only a small part of the world is average in temperature -- and the tropics are ALREADY much warmer than the global average. Yet people live in the tropics perfectly well.

I myself was born into a place -- Far North Queensland -- with an average temperature that was wildly above the global average. 100 degree F temperatures were common and temperatures in the 90s were experienced for at least half the year

We tended to drink a lot of beer but otherwise life went on pretty much as it did elsewhere. And life would go on untroubled by the two degree rise that Warmists panic about

But what about the melting glaciers? Someone will ask. Over 90% of the glacial ice is in Antarctica and the average temperature there is many degrees below zero so very little there is going to be melted by a puny 2 degree rise

Former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and Princeton University economist Alan Blinder recently wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal: “cumulative CO2 emissions heat up the atmosphere, causing climate changes of all sorts—most of them bad. Because this huge negative externality has been allowed to run rampant, we are gradually making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

Increasing CO2 emissions have been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans?” Really?

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show that over the last one hundred years, CO2 emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere indeed have both sharply increased.

And NASA data show that since 1920, our planet’s temperature has risen by 1.25 degrees Celsius.

But the data also show that the increase in CO2 emissions and the rising temperature have not been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

The University of Oxford’s Our World in Data has reported that since 1920, the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to over seven and half billion.

It also has reported that the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 74 percent in 1910 to less than 10 percent by 2015.

And EM-DAT (The International Disaster Database) data show that since 1920, the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined from almost 55,000 per year to less than 10,000 per year.

Sustaining a population that has grown by about six billion people, lifting most of those people out of extreme poverty, and reducing the number of natural disaster deaths by over 80 percent show that whatever impacts increasing CO2 emission and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures have, they are not making the planet “an inhospitable place for humans.”

The data instead suggest that increasing CO2 emissions and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures are making the planet more, not less, hospitable for human life.

The Heartland Institute has extensively documented “increased plant and forest growth, bigger crop yields and longer growing seasons as benefits derived from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.”

Better yet, an extensive 2015 study found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat.

Twenty-two scientists from around the world analyzed over 74 million deaths in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1985-2012.

The cold caused 7.29 percent of these deaths, while heat caused only 0.42 percent. And “moderately hot and cold temperatures” caused 88.85 percent of the temperature-related deaths, while “extreme” temperatures caused only 11.15 percent.

But what about the economic catastrophe that global warming supposedly will cause in the coming decades? If future global warming has any negative impact on the nation’s economy, it is likely to be minimal.

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimated in 2019 that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.01 degrees Celsius per year through 2100, the total U.S. GDP in 2100 will be 1.88 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be.

Yet based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a 1.4 percent annual real long-term potential labor force productivity growth rate, the nation’s per person GDP will be about 204 percent higher by 2100.

With the reduction that NBER estimates based on global warming, GDP per person would be an almost indistinguishable 200 percent higher.

NBER’s extreme case projection that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.04 degrees Celsius per year through 2100 (five times the actual rate of increase since 1880), total U.S. GDP will be 10.52 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be, similarly would leave GDP per person about 172 percent higher.

In other words, after taking account of the supposedly harmful impact of global warming, U.S. income per person in 2100 will be about triple today’s level.

Professor Blinder undoubtedly teaches his students that sound science depends on data. When it comes to the impact of increasing CO2 emissions, he needs a refresher course.

SOURCE

California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Time to ‘Sober Up’ About Green Energy’s Flaws

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.

Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

There is currently high demand for electricity across the state, as the entire West Coast has been hit by a heat wave and record-breaking temperatures.

One reason the state lacked power, officials admitted, was its over-reliance on “renewables” — i.e. wind and solar power.

There was not enough wind to keep turbines going, Newsom said, and cloud cover and nightfall restricted solar power.

“While we’ve had some peak gust winds,” he explained, “wind gust events across the state have been relatively mild.”

That was good for fighting fires, he said, but bad for the “renewable portfolio” in the state’s energy infrastructure. In addition, high demand for electricity in the evening hours, coupled with less input from solar plants, created strain.

On Friday, Newsom said, the state had fallen about 1,000 megawatts short; on Saturday, it fell 450 megawatts short. Sunday saw only “modest or minor” interruptions. But on Monday, he said, the state would be 4,400 megawatts short of “where we believe we need to be.”

“This next few days, we are anticipating being challenged,” Newsom said, as the heat wave was predicted to last through Wednesday.

“We failed to predict and plan these shortages,” Newsom admitted boldly, “and that’s simply unacceptable.” He said he took responsibility for the crisis, and for addressing it immediately, so that “we never come back into this position again.”

Newsom said the state would try to address shortfalls through conservation, and through procuring new sources of energy.

Though the state would continue its “transition” to 100% renewable energy, Newsom said, “we cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition.”

He promised “forecasting that is more sober” regarding solar energy, and a stronger focus on energy storage.

California’s shift toward “green” energy has led the way for Democrats nationwide, who hope to impose even more ambitious targets for renewable energy nationwide.

As Breitbart News noted Monday:

California has been rushing to replace fossil fuel energy sources with “renewables,” primarily wind and solar power, in pursuit of its own version of the “Green New Deal.”

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a law requiring the state to obtain 100% of its energy needs from renewables by 2045, though no one could explain how the state would do that.

In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Green New Deal, which aimed to achieve the same goal by 2030.

And in 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, adopted a version of the Green New Deal that commits the U.S. to reach 100% renewables in electricity generation by 2035.

Newsom asked the public to help manage the current crisis by conserving energy. Air conditioning, he said, should be set to 78º from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., for example, and children should be reminded to turn lights off in rooms as they left.

In 2019, Newsom canceled the state’s high-speed rail project — long seen as a key “green” project — because he said it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

SOURCE

New book brings clarity to a world without fossil fuels

Electricity from wind and solar are the rage these days, as governments around the world are advancing their energy policies believing that intermittent electricity can replace the fossil fuels industry. The purpose of the recently released book “Just GREEN Electricity – helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” is to help citizens understand a world without fossil fuels.

The book is an “aha moment” that every green advocate should experience. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900’s led us into the Industrial Revolution and victories in World Wars I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that did not exist before 1900.

Today, we have a medical industry, electronics, communications, plastics, transportation, militaries, and a space program that did not exist prior to 1900.

Possibly to the dismay of those promoting current energy policies, intermittent electricity from wind or solar cannot produce the thousands of products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that help the world economies “make products and move things” around the globe.

Many in the world believe we are facing climate change caused primarily by fossil fuels that will cause irreversible damage to the planet and humankind unless we act now and, therefore, we must curtail or quit all fossil fuel use, this book will enlighten you on understanding a world without fossil fuels.

The book reviews why China and India — two of the world’s most populous countries — are rejecting the use of intermittent electricity from wind and solar for scalable, reliable, affordable, abundant and flexible electricity from coal; and discusses the worldwide environmental degradations and humanity abuses for the materials mined for solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries.

With billions living in abject poverty in underdeveloped lands, the authors believe this book will make you look at electricity, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy in a new and fresh way while obtaining a better understanding of the lifestyle demands of societies within developed countries, and how it is different from most of the world’s population now living in developing countries.

Meanwhile, leaders around the globe are suggesting intermittent electricity from solar panels and wind turbines can save us. The reality, however, is much more complicated.

Ronald Stein and Todd Royal, two seasoned veterans of the energy industry, explore the implications of a world reliant on intermittent green electricity without fossil fuels in the book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” that will enhance your energy literacy. They are also the authors of the five-star rated “Energy Made Easy – Helping Citizens Become Energy Literate” in 2019.

Energy is multifaceted, and the just published book allows the reader to grasp enough knowledge quickly so they can participate in discussions with family, friends, co-workers, or while watching news reports. The main purpose of the both books is to help citizens become energy-literate.

It is dangerous and delusional to believe anything can be explained in sound bites, much less energy. This book will make you look at energy and ELECTRICITY in a new, fresh way, and perspective. We believe this is desperately needed with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, and global events taking place in China, Russia, Iran, Africa, India, and South America.

Energy is more than electricity. Electricity by itself cannot support the military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures. Nor can electricity alone, and especially that generated solely from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar, provide the thousands of products from petroleum that are essential to our medical industry, transportation infrastructure, our electricity generation, our cooling, heating, manufacturing, and agriculture—indeed, virtually every aspect of our daily lives and lifestyles.

Electricity needs fossil fuel derivatives for its parts to function, and in the context of Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the instability in the Middle East, and the U.S. – China trade war/tensions, are circumstances electricity faces. The book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” explains them all in a clear, concise, well-researched and documented way, while showing the deep ramifications of a world without fossil fuels, nuclear power, and the products from petroleum derivatives that support lifestyles and economies around the world.

SOURCE

How Coal Can Help The Billions Without Electricity

The movie “Juice” brilliantly illustrates through a visual representation of how billions are without electricity; and without electricity and the energy from mainly fossil fuels, life returns to the Dark Ages.

Whereas liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore exposes the fallacy, human misery, and environmental degradation that occurs when towns, cities, counties, states, nations, or continents rely on renewable energy to electricity from wind turbines (enormous emitters of greenhouse gases) and solar panels, or destructive biomass is used for electrical generation.

Literally, life has no purpose, happiness, and meaning without electricity and sources of energy that are abundant, scalable, reliable, affordable, and flexible.

That describes coal – but isn’t coal outdated, outlawed, and the worst form of energy possible?

In fact, coal has always been and now at the forefront of what could save billions without hope, a future, and the key to environmental stewardship the West desperately craves.

At this time, approximately 1,600 coal-fired power plants are being planned, permitted, or currently under construction.

Hard to believe since this reliable source of electricity is under attack in western nations such as the U.S. and the entire European Union.

Elsewhere, coal is used more than ever. China, Japan, and India are using and building newer “high-efficiency low-emission (HELE), ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants.”

HELE electricity-generating plants operate at higher than normal temperatures and increased efficiency. A HELE-plant additionally operates at emission and pollutant levels “45% lower than from existing coal-fired power plants.”

Official Indian energy policy is for coal to be its main energy source of electrical generation. Japan is working towards building 22 HELE plants to replace nuclear power after the Fukushima accident. China wants to build 300 HELE plants domestically and internationally.

Any Green New Deals, Paris Climate Agreements, or excoriating of coal by the EPA are offset by Japan, India, China, and the EU, which is building twenty-seven coal-fired plants to counter the energy to electricity dysfunction from overreliance on the wind and sun.

The West, led by the U.S. and EU, is committing energy suicide when they refuse to embrace and regulate out of existence lower-emitting by up to forty-five percent, rich in energy density, and always firing 24/7/365, HELE coal-fired power plants.

Countries rich in coal but unable to afford sophisticated and lower-emitting but expensive natural gas-fired power plants and billion(s) dollar(s) liquid natural gas terminals (LNG) could use coal to leave lives without fulfillment, and sophistication.

The book The End of Doom describes in rich detail that poorer peoples, nations, and continents generally destroy their environments searching for basic necessities the U.S. and Europe take for granted.

MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel says:

“If you want to minimize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2070 you might want to accelerate the burning of coal in India today (as an example). It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon.

“But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they (India) make themselves wealthier, (similar to America in the early 1900s), and by making themselves wealthier (any poor region of the world), they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070. We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.”

Billions without energy or electricity who are mainly using wood and cow dung, which are the worst emitting forms of energy, could be generating sustainable energy and electricity utilizing coal to save their local environments, and lives.

HELE plants generate overwhelmingly more energy to electricity than renewables under current technological constraints.

The main factor why is “HELE plants have a capacity factor of 86%, while wind has a capacity factor of 35%, and PV solar has a capacity factor of, at best, 22%.”

Counterintuitive for today’s energy wisdom, and climate-change nihilism, coal can lead to cleaner air and healthier children and families.

Climates changing are about more than the Earth warming or not over mankind’s activities. We are living in the “Asian century,” and they need more energy, power, and electricity than at any point in mankind’s history that coal provides.

Aggressive climate change action that the U.S. Democratic Party and European Green parties advocate for are “egregiously misleading” when coal is demonized in favor of lowering human flourishing.

The mantra of “coal is death” is unbelievably exaggerated when economic reality meets an environmental movement termed a “climate-industrial-complex.”

Nowhere is the poor kept in the rotting pits of life more than when coal-fired power plants are not allowed to be built to the detriment of billions of Chinese, Africans, and Indians. Soul-crushing poverty the West can’t even imagine becomes the norm.

Multilateral development is then crushed when organizations such as the World Bank don’t allow the Asian century to flourish, or the second half of this century where Africa is likely to become the largest region in the world.

Asserting renewables and climate-change-mitigation programs bring “co-benefits” is a bald-faced lie, and justifies the worse kind of environmental racism.

These bold souls in India, China, Africa, and elsewhere deserve the abundant, affordable, scalable, reliable, flexible, and energy-dense life-giving qualities that coal brings globally.

Coal can lay the foundation for prosperity that historically leads to clean landscapes, fresher air, and all-around better earth for all.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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18 August, 2020

Study Of Prior Global Temperature Estimates Suggests ‘No Change’ In 100 Years

In the early 1900s, the globally-averaged distribution of calculated surface temperature estimates ranged between 14°C (57.2F) and 15°C (59F).

For 1991-2018, HadCRUT, Berkeley, and NASA GISS also estimate today’s global temperature is about 14.5°C (58.1°F).

Scientists estimating Earth’s surface temperature has been an ongoing pursuit since the early 19th century.

A new study (Kramm et al., 2020) suggests the generally agreed-upon global temperature from 1877 to 1913 from dozens of calculated results was about 14.4°C (57.9°F).

Problematically, HadCRUT, Berkley, and NASA GISS also indicate 1991-2018 had a global surface temperature of about 14.5°C (58.1°F).

This would suggest there has been “no change in the globally averaged near-surface temperature over the past 100 years.”

SOURCE

The Free Market Approach to Environmental Conservation

When Terry Anderson and Donald Leal published the first edition of their book Free Market Environmentalism in 1991, the idea was met with mixed reviews. “Free market environmentalism is an oxymoron,” wrote one reviewer, “and the authors are the moron part.”

The dominant belief at the time was that markets are the cause of environmental degradation, not the solution. And the idea that property rights could be harnessed to improve environmental quality was counter to the popular notion that conserving natural landscapes required regulation and management by government agencies.

But not anymore. Today, the ideas of free market environmentalism are being applied in a variety of creative ways. Conservationists are increasingly using markets, contracts, and property rights to turn environmental resources into assets instead of liabilities. And policymakers are recognizing that markets are not the enemy of the environment but instead can provide strong incentives for resource stewardship.

So how are these ideas being applied today to change the way people approach conservation? Here are a few examples.

Markets and Property Rights Are Solving the Tragedy of the Commons in Marine Fisheries...

Ocean fisheries are a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Since no one owns the ocean, no one has a clear incentive to conserve its resources, making the oceans prone to overfishing.

For decades, governments have imposed command-and-control regulations to combat overfishing, but such restrictions have rarely worked. Shortened seasons and early closures created a dangerous, zero-sum “race to fish.” The outcome was a wasteful—and often deadly—derby that was bad for both fish and fishermen, who tried to catch as much as possible before the closures set in. Despite these regulations, overfishing persisted, and many fish stocks were at risk of collapsing.

That changed with the development of a rights-based alternative known as individual transferable quotas, sometimes called “catch shares.” The quotas give fishermen the right to catch a share of a total catch limit, set at a sustainable level each season by fishery managers. Fishermen can buy, sell, or lease quotas to each other, and they no longer have to race to fish. There is also more accountability for harvests and an incentive for stewardship.

The results have been impressive. Rights-based fishing reforms have reduced overfishing, helped stem the global trend toward fisheries collapse, and led to higher incomes for fishers. According to one study that examined data on more than 11,000 fisheries around the world, catch shares have helped halt and even reverse the collapse of fisheries. They have also slowed the “race to fish,” improving fishing safety and allowing consumers to buy fresh seafood throughout the year. Today, there are nearly 200 catch-share programs worldwide, including more than a dozen in the United States.

Catch shares are also being used to reduce “bycatch,” which are species that fishermen unintentionally catch in their trawlers. After previous efforts to regulate bycatch failed, managers of a fishery off the West Coast of the United States demonstrated how markets and property rights can help tackle the problem.

In 2011, the West Coast groundfish fishery instituted a program that gave each fisherman a portfolio of rights to catch various species, including those caught as bycatch. If a fisherman exceeded his allotment for a given type of fish, he had to purchase more quota—and when it came to overfished species, the price was steep. This gave each vessel in the fleet ample incentive to avoid overfished species that previously ended up as bycatch, a crucial aspect of the program that former regulations on fishing seasons lacked.

After catch shares were introduced, the proportion of overfished species caught by trawlers fell by about half. “Before catch shares, large proportions of the catch of many non-target species were discarded as bycatch,” reads a 2015 government report. “Now, whether in a fishing net or in the ocean, they are treated as the valuable resource they are.” As a result, populations of overfished species have begun to rebound thanks to clearly defined property rights and markets that overcome the tragedy of the commons.

More HERE

Media Claim California Crop Crisis, as Farmers Complain About TOO HIGH Crop Yields

Google News and the alarmist media are warning about climate change harming California crop production and bringing “hard times” to California farmers – even as California crop production sets records. In fact, California crop production is so strong that farmers are complaining that high yields are depressing crop prices.

Among the top results today for a Google News search of “climate change” is an article in the Bakersfield Californian titled, “Climate change report forecasts hard times for Kern ag.” The article addresses a newly published report produced by a climate change activist group in conjunction with California state officials. The report claims climate change is setting up harmful conditions for California agricultural production.

The Californian article begins, “A new report warns Kern County agriculture will face tough challenges in the decades ahead as climate change makes irrigation water scarcer and weather conditions more variable and intense. The study concludes these hurdles ‘ultimately challenge the ability to maximize production while ensuring profitability.’”

The truth, however, is that a century of modest warming has brought increasingly beneficial temperatures and climate. Crop production is setting records virtually every year in Southern California, California as a whole, the United States, and globally.

In Kern County, total crop value rose 3 percent in 2019, setting a new record. Other California counties are also thriving under present climate. Fresno County’s total crop value rose 12 percent in 2018 to briefly overtake Kern County as the nation’s top-grossing county for agricultural production. Kern County’s 2019 growth reclaimed the title.

Crop production in 2020 is shaping up even better, with more new records forecast. The Sacramento Bee, for example, published an August 5 article titled, “This is what harvest of a 2020 record 2020 almond crop looks like.”

In fact, crop yields are so strong that some farmers are making news hoping for adverse weather to occur. The Californian itself reported this just last month, in an article titled, “Almond growers fret over expectations for another record harvest.” The article noted that record almond production is causing lower almond prices, making it harder for farmers to profit from their crop. The article noted that February’s almond tree blooms were “close to perfect” under ideal temperatures and climate conditions Curiously, the Californian failed to mention climate change’s role in the close-to-perfect climate conditions and record almond production.

The national crop outlook is just as strong. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts record crop yields this year for the important corn and soybean crops, as well as other crops. This builds upon consistent growth in U.S. crop production and records being set on a near-annual basis.

Globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts the 2020/2021 crop season will set yet another record for crop production. FAO reports global crop production has increased more than 10 percent during the past decade.

In summary, Google News and the corrupt media are once again reporting fake news and fake science. Global warming has brought about perfect California climate conditions and record crop production. Even as this happens, the media are deceiving people by reporting climate change is ushering in a California crop crisis.

SOURCE

Australia’s Lockdowns And Green-Energy Shakedowns

Politicians have given Australia an impossible task – fight a COVID lockup while also enduring a green-energy shakedown.

A COVID depression is already locked in. Recovery dictates that we must reverse the lockdown and also rid our weakened economy of the Green parasites forever sucking our energy.

Australia seems to specialize in political stupidity.

Victoria’s scorched-earth policy has wrecked its economy. Despite this damage, they dream of replacing their nation-building brown-coal electricity with unreliable wind and solar toys.

Their once-free people cower in their homes while police and troops detain peaceful folk and demand papers. COVID will only decline when populations develop immunity. Lockups ensure that community immunity develops slowly.

South Australia has destroyed its manufacturing industry with uncompetitive employment rules and intermittent green energy. They dream of more Big Batteries to keep the lights on.

WA is protected from many Eastern fads and viruses by the mighty Nullarbor Plain. It quietly thanked the hard-working mining industry for funding both state and federal governments.

NT has made anti-fracking for hydro-carbons into an election issue while endorsing bizarre plans to waste billions erecting about 150 square km of solar panels to supply green electricity to Singapore.

This needs 720 km of land transmission feeding a 3,700 km undersea extension cord from Darwin, crossing the deep and unstable Java Trench, to Singapore Island. And for the times that NT is not sunny, it needs humungous battery storage.

Queensland has shut its borders to millions of customers and workers from interstate and overseas while discouraging new mines and reliable power supplies.

NSW is determined to kill coal and gas power with locked gates and bureaucratic obstructions.

Canberra plans to throw billions that it does not have at the Snowy 2 white elephant (a net consumer of both water and electricity) while endorsing industry-killing emissions targets.

The federal government is also undermining the federation with a centralizing “National Cabinet” and has taught a generation of youngsters that they can eat and party without working by getting onto the federal jobs replacement gravy train. Meanwhile, orchardists, farmers, and abattoirs cannot find workers.

Trusting people are mesmerized and traumatized by the COVID scare. Ballooning government debts and looming depression will haunt our children and destroy our savings.

Naturally, alcoholism, gambling, family violence, and mental problems are increasing.

Meanwhile, a smug cohort of people on government salaries, handouts, and safe pensions feels no pain. This includes politicians, the bureaucracy, academia, and the scare-a-day BC.

We need a new Eureka Rebellion dedicated to slashing taxes and government expenditure, opening interstate borders, repealing red and green tape, abolishing all emissions targets, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Dreamworld, and restoring our freedoms and our federation.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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17 August, 2020

The last decade was the HOTTEST on record with greenhouse gasses reaching ultimate highs in 2019 and sea levels now 3.4 inches above what they were in the 1990s

This is an amusing article. They pull out all stops to show that we are warming up. The data are "massaged" however. They actually have very few readings from places like Siberia and the Arctic so they just make up the temperatures that they record from there. Averaging based on nearby temperature stations is fair enough but often there is nothing nearby so they do "estimates" out of thin air

The other phenomena they refer to are equally dubious. Sea level is intrinsically difficult to measure and sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner is noted for his rejection of there being anything significant going on. See also here for great doubt that there has been ANY recent accelerated rise.

One of the more amusing features of sea level measurements is the way Warmists turn actual sea level falls into rises. Where sea levels have been falling -- e.g. Stockholm -- they turn that fall into a rise by invoking the doctrine of "isostatic rebound". That any part of the earth's crust is still "rebounding" from an ice age of long ago seems highly implausible. When will it stop?

It is however true that atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising steadily -- which makes it all the more amusing that there is no good evidence of it affecting anything

The past decade was the hottest ever, according to a new report on climate change, with 2019 the second warmest year since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s.

Last year's average global temperature was only surpassed by a freakishly warm year in 2016, when an enormous El Nino event caused the thermometer to spike.

There was also a record number of 'extreme warm days' in 2019, when high temperatures exceeded the 98th percentile for the past 60 years.

The warming trend caused alpine glaciers to lose mass, scientists said, continuing a trend dating back over 30 years.

Loss of ice in the polar regions has raised global sea levels 3.4 inches above what was recorded in the 1990s. And ocean temperatures are also at near record highs, second only to 2016.

Published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the study found that concentrations of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide were at record levels in 2019.

That's compared to both modern instrumental recordings and ice core samples dating back 800,000 years.

The study, based on data from researchers in over 60 countries, confirms similar findings from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And the heatwave shows no signs of ending: From Arizona to Siberia, regions around the globe have been charting record high temperatures in 2020.

In February, the thermometer in Antarctica topped 68F (20.7C) for the first time.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the rise in temperatures is 'persistent,' and not the result of fluke weather phenomena.

'We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,' Schmidt said.

'We know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'

Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London, has called global warming one of humanity's greatest follies.

'This is not so much a record as a broken record,' Rapley said. 'The message repeats with grim regularity, yet the pace and scale of action to address climate change remain muted and far from the need.'

More than 190 nations signed the Paris climate accords in 2015, promising to combat global warming and stem the rise in global average temperatures.

Two years later, President Donald Trump announced the US would be withdrawing from the agreement

SOURCE

California orders rolling blackouts for up to two MILLION people as record-breaking heat wave grips the state

"Green" power at work

Hundreds of thousands of Californians were plunged into darkness on Friday evening as companies cut power to homes after the state's Independent System Operator declared a Stage 3 energy emergency.

With temperatures soaring above 100 degrees in many parts of the state, and millions of residents stuck at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, experts feared the high demand for power would overwhelm the grid.

'A Stage 3 Emergency is declared when demand outpaces available supply. Rotating power interruptions have been initiated to maintain stability of the electric grid,' the Independent System Operator announced shortly before 6pm.

After that announcement, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. confirmed it would be cutting power to as many as 250,000 customers, while Southern California Edison also said they would be conducting rolling blackouts.

Residents were unable to be notified due to the emergency announcement, leaving thousands of vulnerable people suddenly without air-conditioning in the midst of a severe heatwave.

Grid managers last implemented such a power cut in 2001, when the state was suffering from an electric crisis.

It comes amid a horror week for the state, which is still struggling to contain COVID-19 infections. On Friday, the state surpassed 600,000 confirmed cases of the contagious virus - more than New York state.

There are also currently 13 wildfires raging across the state, with the hot weather causing catastrophic conditions for firefighters.

California's nightmare looks likely to continue, and more enforced power shutoffs could be coming over the weekend as the state continues to sizzle.

The National Weather Service says that sweltering conditions are set to stay, with the heatwave set to rival the deadly seven-day heat event in 2006, during which L.A. saw its highest-ever temperature of 119 degrees.

Solar generators for the state will also be impacted as cloud cover from tropical storm Elida is expected to crimp output.

After the Stage 3 Emergency was declared tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Northern California had their power supply shut off by PG&E.

Rolling blackouts occurred in Alameda, San Mateo, Marin and Sonoma counties.

The blackout was a blow for some restaurants already struggling financially amid the coronavirus crisis.

Restaurant owner Bill Higgins was affected, by the forced outages, telling KPIX: 'We just did the best we could.'

'We cooked whatever we could for as long as we could without the electricity. It started to get dark and we had to shut it down … Restaurants are already under the gun and this was hurtful, to say the least.'

The outages also crippled Southern California.

According to various reports, around 13,000 homes in Bakersfield, north of L.A., had their power cut off after 6pm.

Meanwhile, Southern California Edison also announced they had cut power to homes in Anaheim, close to Los Angeles, but promised the outages would be no longer than 15 minutes.

In the San Diego and southern Orange counties areas, Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric utility said one-hour rotating shutoffs will be 'widespread' across its territory.

By 9pm, the Stage 3 emergency was lifted, and power began to be restored to most homes.

Cutting off power to vulnerable residents in the midst of sizzling temperatures can be incredibly dangerous.

SOURCE

Wind Turbines Keep Spinning Out Tales of Future Viability

Consumers pick the best alternatives in terms of price, quality, and convenience. The winners earn the appellation economic, the losers noneconomic.

But special political favor can reverse the verdict: the otherwise unprofitable can be made profitable and vice-versa. In the case of industrial wind turbines, government intervention—from tax credits to mandated purchases—has reversed free-market verdicts. Dilute, intermittent technology is propped up at the expense of concentrated, reliable alternatives.

Background

Why political favor for industrial wind turbines, a fringe, experimental loser in the pre-subsidized era? It’s a Bootleggers-and-Baptists story, with different interests, even strange bedfellows, aligning for a shared outcome.

The Baptists cry Global Warming as if countless wind turbines will save the world. (Fantasy, says the father of the climate alarm, James Hansen.) The Bootleggers, meanwhile, capitalize on the outside rationale and get special political favors. Bad profit replaces good profit across the energy industry.

Concentrated benefits for the rent-seekers, diffused costs for consumers and taxpayers. Politicians happily broker the deal. The result in our example is the 64-staff, 20-member board, $22 million budget American Wind Energy Association.

AWEA promotes and lobbies for wind power, and has received extension after extension of the 1992 federal Production Tax Credit (PTC): 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019. Add to this dirty dozen a favorable IRS ruling this year on PTC eligibility for number thirteen.

Promises, Promises

If wind turbines were competitive against gas-fired power generation, AWEA could let the PTC expire and no longer support mandated purchases and transmission subsidies. But then wind’s many corporate buyers would receive a much higher invoice—and presumably back-off. Instead of embracing free markets and interfuel neutrality, AWEA and the broader wind lobby fill the air about their technology’s impending competitiveness.

It’s a tired refrain that is now in its fourth decade.

A review of these promises from the 1980s until today is humbling.

In 1983, s study by Booz, Allen & Hamilton for AWEA and other renewable groups concluded: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”

In 1986, a representative of AWEA testified: “The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted wind power will be that State’s lowest-cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro. We are not quite there. We have hopes.”

In 1986, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale back of tax breaks for renewable energy, stating that the competitive viability of wind and solar was “one to three years away.”

In 1986, Worldwatch Institute concluded: “Utility-sponsored studies show that the better wind farms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.

In 1990, the Worldwatch Institute predicted that “within a few decades” renewables could have 90 percent of the power market with wind at 20 percent. The actuals today are 20 percent and 7 percent.

In 2011, just to use one other example, Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress stated: “It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”

The beat goes on. AWEA in 2017: “Wind power is competitive on reliability and resilience.” Bloomberg in 2019: “Now all signs show renewable energy has come of age and can go head-to-head with fossil fuels.” And this summer from the International Renewable Energy Agency: “Newly installed renewable power capacity increasingly costs less than the cheapest power generation options based on fossil fuels.”

The disappearing need for wind’s lucrative tax credit has also long been predicted. In 1984, Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute stated: “Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” And Flavin again in 1985: “Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.”

And on the political side. “I’d say we’re going to have to [extend the wind PTC] for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years,” said Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in 2003. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy).”

We are still waiting ….

Conclusion

The quandary of wind power reflects the embedded inferiority of dilute, intermittent energies versus mineral energies. The problem is certainly not a lack of political will; the growth of AWEA reflects the economic and environmental problems of inferior technology that only the brute force of government can neutralize for business opportunity.

“The infant industry argument is a smokescreen,” noted Milton and Rose Friedman many decades ago. “The so-called infants never grow up.” And so it is with wind power, not to mention its political sister, on-grid solar power.

SOURCE

Media Falsely Claim Ethiopian Climate Crisis as Crop Yields Set Records

Among the top Google News search results today for “climate change,” an article at Insider.com claims “food insecurity from climate change” is “pushing millions of people into cities.” In reality, Ethiopian crop yields are enjoying consistent, impressive gains, and are setting new records virtually every year. Also, Ethiopia’s rural population is growing, not shrinking, as higher crop yields support more farmers and more food production. The Insider.com article being promoted by Google is a perfect example of the dishonest claims made by proponents of the Climate Delusion.

The Insider.com article, titled “Climate change is pushing millions of people into cities like Addis Ababa. Here’s what rapid urbanization looks like in the Ethiopian capital,” asserts that World Health Organization predictions of a growing Ethiopian urban population prove that climate change is devastating crop production and driving people into cities. But that is faulty logic that defies objective reality. In reality, Ethiopia is benefiting from increasing food production and rapid economic growth in its cities. This economic growth is not forcing people away from the farms, but rather enticing many Ethiopians into cities with better paying jobs and the cultural and social attractions of urban life.

Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), charted below, show remarkable growth in Ethiopian crop yields as the Earth continues its modest warming. Crop yields per acre are currently 80 percent higher than just a decade ago, and double what they were in the year 2000.

Moreover, the FAO reports that fully half the Ethiopian population was undernourished in the year 2000, while less than 20 percent of the population is undernourished today.

It is amazing that a “news” article at Insider.com can paint this spectacular crop growth and beneficial improvement in nutrition as “food insecurity from climate change.”

About the only thing that is true in the Insider.com article is that Ethiopia is experiencing dramatic urban population growth. However, it is a lie that the urban growth is being caused by climate change destabilizing food production and forcing people into cities. According to the FAO, Ethiopia’s urban areas have added 13 million people since the year 2000. However, Ethiopia’s rural areas have added 28 million people since the year 2000. Ethiopia’s urban and rural areas are gaining population – with rural areas experiencing the largest growth – as increasing crop yields sustain more population and bring more wealth to the nation’s people.

World Bank economic data illustrate this. Per the World Bank:

“Ethiopia’s economy experienced strong, broad-based growth averaging 9.9 percent a year from 2007/08 to 2017/18, compared to a regional average of 5.4%. … Industry, mainly construction, and services accounted for most of the growth. … Higher economic growth brought with it positive trends in poverty reduction in both urban and rural areas. The share of the population living below the national poverty line decreased from 30% in 2011 to 24% in 2016.”

In summary, Ethiopia is enjoying spectacular gains in crop yields that are supporting a rapidly growing population and dramatic growth in both urban and rural populations. The growth in Ethiopia’s urban population is clearly and inarguably a result of spectacular increases in food production and a wealthier population rather than mythical food insecurity. But the easily discernible and reassuring truth doesn’t promote climate alarmism. Therefore, the media lie and invent a false narrative.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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16 August, 2020

'Canary in the coal mine': Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return, study finds

Ho hum! Another study that ignores polar vulcanism. The earth's crust is thinnest around the poles so volcanic activity is strongest there. And subsurface vulcanism in Greenland is well attested.

Even the galoots below admit that warming is much greater in the Arctic than elsewhere. What is their explanation for that? They don't give one. CO2 concentrations are not greater there -- quite to the contrary. And solar radiation has less effect there too because of obliquity. It's what makes the poles cold!

There is also volcanic melting around the South pole, particularly along the Antarctic peninsula

So there may be some overall melting of Greenland ice but to attribute it to global warming is ignoring the obvious. It is in fact a breach of Occam's razor

Greenland's ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.

Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.

That melting is already causing global seas to rise about a millimeter on average per year. If all of Greenland's ice goes, the water released would push sea levels up by an average of 6 meters -- enough to swamp many coastal cities around the world. This process, however, would take decades.

"Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point," said glaciologist Ian Howat at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues published the study Thursday in the Nature Communications Earth & Environment journal.

The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years.

The Arctic thaw has brought more water to the region, opening up routes for shipping traffic, as well as increased interest in extracting fossil fuels and other natural resources.

Greenland is strategically important for the U.S. military and its ballistic missile early warning system, as the shortest route from Europe to North America goes via the Arctic island.

Last year, President Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. But Denmark, a U.S. ally, rebuffed the offer. Then last month, the U.S. reopened a consulate in the territory's capital of Nuuk, and Denmark reportedly said last week it was appointing an intermediary between Nuuk and Copenhagen some 3,500 kilometers away.

Scientists, however, have long worried about Greenland's fate, given the amount of water locked into the ice.

The new study suggests the territory's ice sheet will now gain mass only once every 100 years -- a grim indicator of how difficult it is to re-grow glaciers once they hemorrhage ice.

In studying satellite images of the glaciers, the researchers noted that the glaciers had a 50% chance of regaining mass before 2000, with the odds declining since.

"We are still draining more ice now than what was gained through snow accumulation in 'good' years," said lead author Michalea King, a glaciologist at Ohio State University.

The sobering findings should spur governments to prepare for sea-level rise, King said.

"Things that happen in the polar regions don't stay in the polar region," she said.

Still, the world can still bring down emissions to slow climate change, scientists said. Even if Greenland can't regain the icy bulk that covered its 2 million square kilometers, containing the global temperature rise can slow the rate of ice loss.

"When we think about climate action, we're not talking about building back the Greenland ice sheet," said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center who was not involved in the study. "We're talking about how quickly rapid sea-level rise comes to our communities, our infrastructure, our homes, our military bases."

SOURCE

States That Switched To Green Energy Have Higher Costs, Little Growth

Climate alarmists increasingly claim wind and solar power are cost-effective and will benefit the economy. The truth is exactly the opposite. Here’s an example and the real story:

The August 8 issue of Electrek’s Climate Crisis Weekly newsletter leads with a story titled “Which US states are leading and lagging in slashing CO2 emissions?”

The article touts a paper published by the environmental activist World Resources Institute (WRI) claiming states that switch to wind and solar power are experiencing economic growth in the process.

It glowingly publicizes states that have seen their economies grow, even as they have made the greatest carbon dioxide emission reductions.

What the WRI and Electrek fail to report is that the states experiencing the greatest drop in emissions also suffer from the highest energy costs in the nation and are experiencing slower-than-average economic growth.

According to Electrek, “The leader of the pack [in cutting carbon dioxide emissions]? Maryland (38% reduction), with New Hampshire (37%), Washington, DC (33%), and Maine (33%) trailing closely behind.

So why is the Northeast leading? One reason is that they’ve dropped coal. It’s also got the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an interstate agreement that caps emissions from power plants.”

By contrast, WRI lists Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota among the states lagging behind or increasing their greenhouse gas emissions.

During the Trump-era economic recovery, every state in the nation experienced substantial economic growth. So, even states with rapidly rising electricity costs can claim some economic growth.

However, states that retain conventional electricity enjoy much lower electricity prices and have much more vibrant economies as a result.

As of March 2020, before the coronavirus-related economic downturn struck, all but one of the states praised by WRI for large cuts in emissions ranked among the top 10 states in electricity prices.

In fact, RGGI states held seven of the top 10 spots for high electric prices. By comparison, states like Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota – states criticized by WRI for not reducing emissions as much – enjoy among the lowest electricity rates in the country.

Importantly, state economic growth closely corresponds with affordable electricity. For example, Washington DC’s GDP growth in the first quarter of 2019 was a paltry 1.4 percent, with Maryland’s growth being only slightly better at 1.8 percent.

By comparison, states that retained conventional energy sources had among the most affordable electricity rates and the strongest economic growth in the nation.

Texas, which saw its carbon dioxide emissions climb by more than 3 percent since 2005, experienced 5.1 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2019.

Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota experienced 3.9 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.9 percent, and 3.6 percent GDP growth respectively.

WRI’s own accounting acknowledges regions making the steepest greenhouse gas emission cuts between 2005 through 2017 had the lowest economic growth.

WRI also admits that regions making the least emission reductions had the highest economic growth.

The lesson is clear: the more a state switches to wind and solar power to cut emissions, the slower that state’s economy is going to grow. Don’t let alarmists pull the wool over your eyes and claim differently.

SOURCE

Insect apocalypse? Not so fast, at least in North America

In recent years, the notion of an insect apocalypse has become a hot topic in the conservation science community and has captured the public's attention. Scientists who warn that this catastrophe is unfolding assert that arthropods — a large category of invertebrates that includes insects — are rapidly declining, perhaps signaling a general collapse of ecosystems across the world.

Starting around the year 2000, and more frequently since 2017, researchers have documented large population declines among moths, beetles, bees, butterflies and many other insect types. If verified, this trend would be of serious concern, especially considering that insects are important animals in almost all terrestrial environments.

But in a newly published study that I co-authored with 11 colleagues, we reviewed over 5,000 sets of data on arthropods across North America, covering thousands of species and dozens of habitats over decades of time. We found, in essence, no change in population sizes.

These results don't mean that insects are fine. Indeed, I believe there is good evidence that some species of insects are in decline and in danger of extinction. But our findings indicate that overall, the idea of large-scale insect declines remains an open question.

For most scientists, the idea of disappearing insects is a foreboding prospect that would have harmful repercussions for all aspects of life on Earth, including human well-being.

But some scholars were skeptical of the reported insect apocalypse. A number of studies that showed broad declines were limited geographically, focusing mainly on Europe. Typically these studies analyzed only a few species or groups of species.

Some particularly long-running assessments showed that declines in the past 30 years occurred after periods when the relevant insect populations increased. Many insect populations are known to naturally fluctuate, sometimes dramatically.

Many scientists concluded that while the prospect of mass insect losses was concerning, the jury was still out on what was actually happening.

Ecologist Bill Snyder and I thought that the studies suggesting widespread insect die-offs produced an intriguing pattern with important ramifications, but that the evidence wasn't strong enough yet to draw conclusions. We wanted to examine what was happening in North America, which has an immensely diverse landscape and, surprisingly to us, had not been broadly analyzed for insect declines.

For our study, we decided to use data from sites in the Long Term Ecological Research network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. The network includes 28 sites across the U.S. that have been studied in depth since the 1980s, and covers deserts, mountains, prairies and forests. With almost 40 years of data collected, we hoped trends at these sites would be a good complement to European insect studies.

We put together a 12-person team that included six undergraduate students, post-doctoral scholars Michael Scott Crossley and Amanda Meier, and colleagues from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When we finished compiling our data sets, at least some of us expected to see broad insect declines.

Instead, the results left us perplexed. Some species we considered declined, while others increased. But by far the most common result for a species at a particular site was no significant change. The vast majority of our species had stable numbers.

At first we thought we were missing something. We tried comparing different taxonomic groups, such as beetles and butterflies, and different types of feeding, such as herbivores and carnivores. We tried comparing urban, agricultural and relatively undisturbed areas. We tried comparing different habitats and different periods of time.

But the answer remained the same: no change. We had to conclude that at the sites we examined, there were no signs of an insect apocalypse and, in reality, no broad declines at all.

Publication bias is not about dishonesty or false results. It refers to the idea that more dramatic results are more publishable.

Explaining continental differences

We are confident in our analysis and our conclusion, but a more important question is why our results are so different from those of other recent studies. I see two potential explanations: location and publication bias.

As I have noted, most insect decline papers have come from European data. Indeed, Europe has better and more extensive long-term data than other parts of the world. It is also one of the most densely populated parts of the world — three times higher than North America.

Moreover, almost all of Europe's land has been modified for human use. Agriculture is widespread and intense, and cities and suburban areas cover large swaths of the landscape. So perhaps it is unsurprising that Europe has also lost a larger proportion of its wild creatures compared to North America.

Publication bias is not about dishonesty or false results. It refers to the idea that more dramatic results are more publishable. Reviewers and journals are more likely to be interested in species that are disappearing than in species that show no change over time.

The result is that over time, declining species can become overrepresented in the literature. Then, when scholars go looking for papers on animal populations, declines are predominantly what they find.

We selected Long-Term Ecological Research sites for our analysis in part because they had "raw" data available that had not been peer reviewed for publication and were not collected in anticipation of finding declines. Rather, scientists amassed these data to monitor ecosystems and observe trends over time. In other words, it was unbiased data. And because the data sets were so varied, they covered a broad range of species and habitats.

SOURCE

Australia: AGL unveils plans for at least 1000MW of batteries

Talk of MW ismeaningless. HOW LONG can the battery sustain that output? Judging by the South Australian case, only for minutes. What we need to know is its capacity in kwh

Energy giant AGL has lodged a proposal to build as much as 500 megawatts of batteries at its Liddell power plant and has plans of doubling that total across the nation.

AGL on Friday said it had lodged a so-called scoping report with NSW's Planning department to install the storage system at the Hunter Valley site by June 2024.

Markus Brokhof, AGL's chief operating officer, told the Herald and The Age the company would take a staggered approach, beginning with a 150MW-sized battery at Liddell that could be operating within 18 to 24 months.

Mr Brokhof said it was "the right moment" to expand storage plans with battery prices falling and a rush of new large-scale renewable energy plants vying to enter the market. "The new build of renewables is exactly what the driver is," he said.

AGL has planning approvals for a 500MW battery at Liddell, the ageing 1660MW power station that is slated to close by April 2023.

The Liddell battery is part of an 850MW multi-site storage plan to be installed by June 2024 that the company announced on Thursday along with its earnings.

AGL reported a 22 per cent fall in underlying full-year profit and disappointed investors by providing a gloomier-than-expected outlook for the current financial year.

That 850MW plan, though, excludes some 330MW in batteries already announced by the company, meaning the full storage total could top 1.2 gigawatts, Mr Brokhof said.

The other announced plans include a 100MW battery at Wandoan in Queensland and four 50MW units with solar farm developer Maoneng in the NSW Riverina.

Mr Brokhof said the company was also preparing planning applications for a battery connected to its Torrens Island Power Station site in Adelaide.

AGL was looking at other sites, including in Victoria, with storage at its Loy Yang coal-fired power station one possible location.

"Battery prices are coming down so they are starting to compete with gas peakers," he said, referring to the gas-fired power plants that can respond rapidly to changes in electricity demand.

"We want to be part of this energy transition" away from fossil fuels, Mr Brokhof said.

He declined to provide an estimate of the cost for the first phase of the Liddell battery, saying that would depend on the offers made by manufacturers.

The company will also see how the system performs before deciding whether the full build-out of 500MW will be completed the schedule closure of Liddell's coal-fired units in 2023.

Mr Brokhof said AGL's battery plan takes into account the federal government's plan to develop its Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, which would add 2000MW of so-called dispatchable power to the grid.

John Grimes, head of the Smart Energy Council, said the scale of AGL's battery ambitions was "extraordinary".

Battery prices were following the path of solar panels, where each doubling of manufacturing capacity brought a 20 per cent drop in costs. For storage, the impetus is partly coming from a huge jump in demand for batteries as carmakers ramp up production of electric vehicles.

"This is a pretty sharp downward cost curve," Mr Grimes said.

AGL's decision also showed proposals to use taxpayer funds to bankroll an expansion of the gas industry to help revive the post-COVID economy was likely to leave many stranded assets, he said.

"The race has already been run and won," Mr Grimes said. "The market is showing what the market solutions are."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

14 August, 2020

AOC’s Green New Deal Documentary Gets Emmy Nomination

Most Americans are well aware that Hollywood leans to the left end of the political spectrum. However, for those who still question Hollywood’s penchant for liberal politics, the latest Emmy nominations should erase any such doubt.

On August 6, The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) announced its nominees for the 41st Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards. In a press release, NATAS said, “As we continue to innovate and honor the best in our industry, we are for the first time honoring our news and documentary communities with distinct ceremonies … We will honor those professionals that consistently deliver crucial, clear and factual reporting so critical during these unprecedented times.”

Pardon my French, but that is a bunch of bulls***. After perusing the list of Emmy nominees for news and documentaries, one thing is crystal clear: Hollywood only nominates news networks and documentaries with a decidedly leftist agenda.

Just look no further than the fact that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was nominated for an Emmy for her short film, “Art of the Green New Deal.” Upon hearing the news, AOC immediately tweeted, “So... while 2020 is highly unpredictable, I *definitely* did not expect to be nominated for an Emmy Award for our Green New Deal project with @theintercept, @mollycrabapple, @NaomiAKlein & others. Rather shocked & very grateful.”

AOC, trust me, you are not the only one who did not expect that you would be nominated for an Emmy. I am just as shocked as you are, if not more.

Yet, should I be all that shocked that a socialist congresswoman would be celebrated by Hollywood for making a seven-minute film about climate change? Of course not. That is par for the course these days in Tinseltown.

Just in case you were wondering, AOC’s film will face some stiff competition. AOC’s pet project is up against “Tiller and Beyond: Abortion Wars in Kansas” from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, “Equal Play” from The New York Times, “Detained by a Dictator” from Real America with Jorge Ramos, and last but not least, “‘Infested,’ He Says” from CNN’s New Day Weekend.

Yeah, Hollywood really went out on a limb in making sure its nominations covered the full spectrum of political philosophy. Not!

Actually, Hollywood went well out of its way to guarantee that its nominees only spouted the all-too-typical Leftist ideology. If you think this is hyperbolic, consider the breakdown of media entities that garnered nominations—and those that did not.

PBS was the leader of the pack with 48 nominations. This was followed by CNN with 30. Rounding out the top 10 were HBO with 27, Univision with 18, CBS with 17, Netflix with 15, The New York Times with 14, NBC with 12, ABC and FX Networks with nine each, and Al Jazeera International USA with six.

Shockingly, FOX News did not garner a single nomination. In fact, the only media entity to receive a nomination that could be portrayed as right-of-center was The Wall Street Journal, which got two. For comparison, MSNBC received five nominations. Even CNN en Espanol (three) and VOX (two) received nominations!

For decades, Hollywood has trended in a liberal direction. However, it sure seems like those in La-La-Land have abandoned any notion of objectivity in deciding who gets Emmy nominations for news and documentaries these days. Unlike FOX News’ slogan, Hollywood is far from “fair and balanced.”

SOURCE

Green activists get litigious

It has been a busy few weeks for climate litigators. On July 31st the Supreme Court in Dublin compelled the Irish government to devise a more detailed plan for the country’s transition to a low-carbon economy by 2050. This is one of the few times a court has forced a government to up its climate game. In another case in December, the Dutch Supreme Court found the government’s emission-reduction goal insufficient and ordered further cuts.

Meanwhile Katta O’Donnell, a student, filed a class-action lawsuit against the Australian government last month, alleging that it failed to disclose the risk that climate change poses to sovereign-bond holders like herself. That echoes another Australian case in which a young man is suing his pension fund for not revealing climate-related risks to his investment. Indeed, climate litigation is something of a burning issue down under. A recent study found that Australia saw the second highest number of climate-related lawsuits between 1986 and 2020, trailing only America.

Non-profit organisations and green activists, frustrated by the lack of state action, are increasingly turning to the courts, leading to a spike in climate-related lawsuits in recent years. Often these suits invent clever new ways to promote climate action. The two Australian cases, for instance, are thought to be the first of their kind. If successful, they could inspire cases in other countries.

It is not just governments in the dock. Businesses are increasingly common targets. There are at least 40 ongoing cases against fossil-fuel producers, mostly in America. They range from claims by shareholder that oil firms misrepresented climate risks to cases in which cities and citizens are seeking damages for natural disasters made worse by global warming. Because causation is so hard to prove, the latter are particularly difficult to win.

But climate activists expect that winning such cases will be easier in the future. The science of linking disasters to climate change will improve, and they hope that next generation of judges will be better acquainted with climate-change issues and may take a tougher stance. Political pressure may help, too. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential contender, recently unveiled a climate plan that promises to support legal action against polluters. The courts may become an important weapon in the fight against climate change.

SOURCE

Offshore wind power vast boondoggle that New York can no longer afford

Advocates claim offshore wind will contribute to a low-carbon future, spur an economic renaissance and create thousands of jobs. Don’t buy it. The mandates are yet another boondoggle that will benefit a well-connected few, saddling everyone else with even higher power costs.

Consider Rhode Island’s 30-megawatt, six-turbine offshore wind project located off Block Island and operated by Deepwater Wind. A decade ago, Rhode Island’s public utility commission rejected the project, concluding that the sky-high prices it would charge the local electric utility would adversely affect consumers. Yet the Rhode Island legislature ignored consumer interests and forced the commission to approve a 20-year contract.

At the start, in 2016, the local utility paid $245 per megawatt-hour for the project’s electricity, with a guaranteed increase of 3.5 percent each year. In 2035, the last year of the contract, the price will be an eye-popping $470 per MWh. By contrast, the average price of wholesale electricity in New England last year was about $31/MWh. In New York, average prices ranged between $22 per MWh upstate to $51 per MWh in Gotham.

Elsewhere, the dozen offshore projects now under development have lower-priced contracts, but they are still far higher than market prices. In New York, the first-year prices for the 816 MW Empire Wind and 880 MW Sunrise Wind projects will be $99/MWh and $110/MWh, respectively. And that’s cheap compared to electricity from some other wind projects in the Atlantic, which range from $77.76/MWh to $202/MWh.

Yet these prices, which are already high, are understated — because offshore wind projects have two dirty secrets. First, a detailed analysis of similar European projects has shown that their output decreases by an average of 4.5 percent a year (almost half after 10 years), with newer, larger turbines tending to suffer the most failures. Operation and maintenance costs also have proved to be much higher than anticipated.

These operational realities lead to a second, even more pernicious impact: The higher-than-expected operating costs mean that the projects are likely to be abandoned prematurely, creating a cascade of costs that consumers and taxpayers will absorb.

Although the offshore projects will be developed by large, international firms headquartered in Europe, they are structured as single-purpose, limited-liability companies whose only assets are the turbines themselves. So when the projects are no longer profitable to operate, the owners of these LLCs can walk away, with virtually no financial consequences.

Offshore wind projects must be decommissioned at the end of their lives. But unlike nuclear power plants, which have strict requirements to fund their eventual decommissioning, there are no such requirements for offshore wind facilities.

And those decommissioning costs will add up. A 2017 decommissioning study in Britain pegged the cost at around $240,000 per MW. With New York aiming to build 9,500 MW of offshore wind projects, that translates into over $2 billion in eventual decommissioning costs.

All this is against a backdrop of staggering economic losses thanks to the lockdowns. According to New York’s Division of the Budget, the budget shortfall for fiscal year 2021 alone is expected to be north of $13 billion, and $61 billion through fiscal 2024. The state now wants to raise New Yorkers’ electricity costs — already 50 percent above the national average — to pursue a virtue-signaling policy that will have no measurable impact on world climate. That will encourage even more businesses and jobs to flee.

The situation is akin to states that promise lavish pensions, while failing to fund them. When the bill’s due, there are only two options: renege on the promises or collect the money from someone else.

In the case of offshore wind, expect the result of higher-than-anticipated operating costs and premature abandonment to either be “renegotiations” with state regulators to raise contract prices — or a green middle finger to taxpayers. Either way, the public will lose.

SOURCE

Australian state grants Whitehaven's controversial coal mine expansion

A New South Wales state regulator on Wednesday gave the green light for Australian miner Whitehaven Coal Ltd to proceed with the expansion of a controversial coal mine, in a blow to local farming communities.

Whitehaven applied in 2018 to expand the Vickery project, asking for approval to increase coal extraction by nearly 25%, increase the peak annual extraction rate more than three-fold and also expand the so-called disturbance area.

The state's Independent Planning Commission (IPC) said it had received 1,928 unique submissions regarding the application – with 40% in support, 57% against and 2% neutral – as well as 935 campaign emails objecting to the application.

However, the IPC said it found that the impacts associated with the expansion were "acceptable" and "in the public interest", when weighed against an increased disturbance footprint and additional environmental impacts.

Whitehaven welcomed the decision, saying the A$700 million ($498 million) expansion would generate jobs for 500 people during construction and 450 ongoing roles thereafter.

The Lock the Gate Alliance community action group described the outcome as bitterly disappointing and an indictment of the New South Wales state government's failure to protect farmland, communities, and water resources.

"Following this approval, if the company decides to proceed with the new 10 million tonnes per annum coal mine, it will irreparably alter the social fabric of the Boggabri farming community and hurt agriculture in the district," it said in a statement.

The IPC's decision comes ahead of its ruling due in September on a coal seam gas project at nearby Narrabri proposed by Santos Ltd.

The project has also drawn strong opposition from farmers and environmental groups due to concerns about potential damage to water supply and a state forest.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

13 August, 2020

The staggering human costs of “renewable” energy

By Paul Driessen

Marathon Petroleum recently announced it will “indefinitely idle” its Martinez Refinery. The decision will remove hundreds of jobs, billions of dollars, and nearly 7 million gallons of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum liquids per day from the energy-hungry California economy. It will also send fuel prices even higher for minority and other poor families that already pay by far the highest gasoline prices in the continental United States: $1.32 more per gallon of regular than in Louisiana and Texas.

California’s green and political interests don’t want drilling or fracking, pipelines, or nuclear, coal or hydroelectric power plants – or mining for the materials needed to manufacture electric cars. They prefer to have that work done somewhere else, and just import the energy, cars and consumer goods.

They’ve long wanted a totally electric vehicle (EV) fleet, which they claim would be clean, ethical, climate-friendly and sustainable. Of course, those labels hold up only so long as they look solely at activities and emissions within California state boundaries – and not where the mining, manufacturing and electricity generation take place. That kind of “life cycle” analysis would totally disrupt their claims.

Consider copper. A typical internal combustion engine uses about 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of this vital everyday metal, the International Copper Association says. A hybrid car requires almost 90 lb (40 kg); a plug-in EV needs 132 lb (60 kg); and a big electric bus can use up to 812 lb (369 kg) of copper. If all 15,000,000 California cars were EVs, they would need almost 1,000,000 tons of copper.

But copper ores average just 0.5% metal by weight, notes energy analyst Mark Mills. That means 200,000,000 tons of ore would have to be dug up, crushed, processed and refined to get that much copper. Almost every step in that process would require fossil fuels – and emit carbon dioxide and pollutants.

That’s just California. According to Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Technology Michael Kelly, replacing all the United Kingdom’s vehicles with next-generation EVs would require more than half the world’s annual production of copper; twice its annual cobalt; three quarters of its yearly lithium carbonate output; and nearly its entire annual production of neodymium.

Just one electric car or backup-power battery weighs 1,000 pounds and requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of various ores, Mills says. The true costs of “green” energy are staggering.

Imagine replacing all of the USA’s nearly 300,000,000 cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, buses, trucks and other vehicles with electric versions under the Green New Deal – and then charging them daily. The millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of backup-power batteries, thousands of miles of new transmission lines, grid upgrades and million or so fast charging stations all across America would also require copper, concrete, all these other metals and many more materials, in incomprehensible quantities.

Alaska’s Pebble Mine deposit has an estimated 35 million tons of high-grade copper ore and 3 million tons of molybdenum and other critical GND ores. The copper alone is nearly two times the world’s 2019 output of that essential element. Permits were blocked for years for questionable reasons. But the US Army Corps of Engineers recently found that mining would not have a “measurable effect” on sockeye salmon numbers in the Bristol Bay watershed and should be allowed to proceed, under tough US pollution control, reclamation, wildlife protection, workplace safety, fair wage and child labor laws.

Environmentalists intend to delay the Pebble Mine as long as possible – and block other US exploration and mining projects. That’s why most mining and processing is done overseas, much of it in China and Mongolia or by Chinese companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where none of these laws apply.

Most of the world’s rare earth ores are extracted near Baotou, Inner Mongolia by pumping acid into the ground, then processed using more acids and chemicals. Producing one ton of rare earth metals releases up to 420,000 cubic feet of toxic gases, 2,600 cubic feet of acidic wastewater, and a ton of radioactive waste. The resulting black sludge is piped into a foul, lifeless lake. Numerous local people suffer from severe skin and respiratory diseases, children are born with soft bones, and cancer rates have soared.

Lithium comes largely from Tibet and arid highlands of the Argentina-Bolivia-Chile “lithium triangle.” Dead, toxic fish join carcasses of cows and yaks floating down Tibet’s Liqi River, which has been poisoned by the Ganzizhou Rongda mine. Native people in the ABC triangle say lithium operations contaminate streams needed for humans, livestock and irrigation, and leave mountains of discarded salt.

The world’s top producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some 40,000 children as young as four toil with their parents for less than $2 a day up to 12 hours a day. Many die in cave-ins, or more slowly from constant exposure to toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air that puts dangerous levels of cobalt, lead, uranium and other heavy metals into their bodies. The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing by the Chinese-owned Congo Dongfang International Mining Company.

That’s just to meet current raw material requirements. Try to picture the raw material demands, Third World mining and child labor conditions, and ecological destruction, under the Green New Deal.

Liberals often say they support sustainable, ethical coffee, sneakers, handbags and diamonds. No child labor, sweat shops or unsafe conditions tolerated. But it’s a different story with green energy and EVs. In 2019, California Assembly Bill 735 proposed that the state certify that “zero emission” electric vehicles sold there are free of any materials or components that involve child labor. Democrats voted it down. The matter is complicated, they “explained.” It would be too hard to enforce, cost too much and imperil state climate goals. And besides, lots of other industries also use child labor. (So shut up about it.)

Last month, the US House of Representatives had an opportunity to legislate a national certification that federally funded electric buses and charging stations would not include minerals mined with child labor. The Transportation Committee approved the amendment 43-19 (all 19 nay votes were Democrats). But Pete DeFazio(D-OR) quietly replaced the enforceable certification language with a meaningless statement that “it is the policy of the United States” that funds “should not be used” for items involving child labor.

DeFazio claimed certification is unnecessary because US trade agreements prohibit child labor. But there is no agreement with Congo, and China has shown no interest in ending child labor in its supply chains. (Plus, the matter is complicated, hard to enforce and perilous for climate and Green New Deal goals.)

It’s easy for Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues to wear Kente cloth stoles in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. And for Sierra Club staff to criticize the organization’s “history and culture of white supremacy” – what I call callous, deadly and arguably racist eco-imperialism and carbon colonialism. We need real reform, and an end to the cancel culture that silences discussion about the horrors of what’s going on in too many non-white areas of the United States and world.

The human and ecological realities of GND policies cry out for debate. So do the violence and death that preceded and followed George Floyd’s inexcusable death. Not just the 25 police killings of unarmed blacks all across America in 2019 that have become the narrow focus of Black Lives Matter, politicians and rioters. But also the murders of David Dorn, Patrick Underwood and other police officers; Mekhi James, LeGend Taliferro, Secoriea Turner and other black children gunned down by their fellow blacks; and as many as 7,000 American black men, women and children murdered by blacks every year.

In Chicago, over the July 4 weekend, police reported 87 shootings and 17 deaths, and nearly a dozen of those shot were children caught in the crossfire, the New York Post despaired. In fact, the black-on-black Windy City murder toll over almost any two recent successive weekends exceeds those 25 police killings.

“Every single person who has been shot in New York City [so far] this July, nearly 100 in total, has been a member of the minority community,” NBC News reporter Tom Winter tweeted, “and 97% of shooting victims in June were members of the city’s minority community.” The solution is defunding the police?

ALL these African, Asian, Latin American and minority American lives matter. It’s time to talk about it honestly, figure out what’s really driving the inhumanity, and create a world we can be proud to live in.

SOURCE

Harris Poll: Americans No Longer Care About Climate Change

We asked a panel of U.S. adults a series of questions about today’s most crucial issues, environmental policy options, and their own behavior.

In all three categories, I was personally surprised and discouraged to discover that our devotion to the world around us is flagging.

In a survey we at the Harris Poll conducted last December, American adults said climate change was the number one issue facing society.

Today, it comes in second to last on a list of a dozen options, ahead of only overpopulation. Among Gen X men, in fact, more than third dismiss climate change as unimportant.

COVID-19 and the recession have, of course, reordered priorities around the world. Still, the coronavirus didn’t elbow aside other issues as muscularly as it did climate change. (Incidentally, global warming is a bigger concern to retirement-age women than any other age group except millennial men.)

Additionally, we asked about policies the government could adopt to fight global warming or help the environment generally.

There was majority support for only one of nine initiatives, with 51% endorsing tax credits or rebates for greater energy efficiency in buildings.

Moreover, 13% of all respondents say the government should do nothing to improve the environment, a stance that rises to nearly one in five of all survey takers in the South.

More telling is what we are doing—or should I say, what we no longer are doing.

We know from this survey, conducted on July 24, that American adults are burning less fuel than they did before the pandemic hit.

In pre-COVID-19 America, 77% of adults said they used to drive. Today, with more people working from home, or not working at all, just 61% say they are using their cars to get around.

Similarly, only 14% of adults say they are still flying, down from 21% last winter. That’s an environmental plus since it means we’re pumping less greenhouse gas into the air.

But we are also reverting back to a society that throws too much away. Younger men, in particular, are ordering more takeout food, packed in single-use plastic bags and disposable boxes, often with those plastic straws scorned for littering the landscape and polluting waterways.

We are toting reusable bags less often on errands. Probably because more of us are home, we also are consuming more energy to keep our homes cooler in the summer and warmer in chilly months than we used to.

And when the pandemic ends—or at least is suitably controlled—American adults say they’ll behave in ways that would increase their carbon footprint.

According to our survey, we’ll drive as much as we did before, take public transportation less, bicycle or walk less, buy more clothes, and have more stuff packaged up and shipped to our homes.

And most of us plan to jack up the home AC and heat even more than we already have.

SOURCE

Cascading fallacies in climate risk assessment

As a logician, I am always on the lookout for fallacies and there is no lack of them in climate change alarmist policies. New Zealand’s newly released climate risk assessment not only has multiple fallacies, they build on one another in a cascade.

This is not about New Zealand. The authors of the assessment make clear that theirs is a new approach which they hope will be used globally. So this is about the world, including America.

The massive report is titled “First national climate change risk assessment for New Zealand.” Under New Zealand’s climate law, these assessments are supposed to be done every five years and this is the first.

The scope is breathtaking. The idea is to identify all of the significant risks due to human caused climate change that will be present in 2050 and 2100. Moreover, these supposed risks are prioritized.

Unfortunately this elaborate procedure is just a cascade of fallacies. Some of the major ones are listed below.

First, they use computer models to say precisely what the average weather will be in 2050 and 2100. This includes short and long term temperatures, precipitation patterns, and other climate features.

The fallacy is that there is no computer model today that can accurately make such forecasts. Different major models disagree strongly in predicting all of these features. For example the model sensitivity to doubling CO2 ranges from 1 to 6 degrees C, which is a huge range.

Second, they use the average of what is called the CMIP5 climate model runs. These are runs on a large number of climate models that are made to feed into the IPCC process. (Here there are several problems. In particular the models are all constrained so that all the significant forces are human, but that is a different issue.)

The fallacy is that there is no reason to believe that the average of a bunch of bad models is good. In fact the CMIP5 average has been shown to run very hot compared to observed warming. (CMIP6 is even worse.)

Third, they then choose to use the modeling of a wildly worst case emissions scenario called “RCP 8.5”. This scenario for future emissions is so high that it has been criticized as impossible. Using RCP 8.5 is certainly a fallacy.

Fourth, they do what is called “down scaling” of these questionable modeling results. Down scaling means taking the crude modeling results for a large area and somehow generating results for specific places. There is no scientific way to derive fine scale forecasts from the model’s large scale ones. The data simply is not there. However it is done is arbitrary.

New Zealand is geographically pretty small with a land area of just over 100,000 square miles, roughly the size of Colorado. The risk assessment divides New Zealand into 8 tiny zones, with a unique climate forecast for each. This is a glaring fallacy.

Fifth, these impossible fine scale forecasts were then discussed by a large number of people, in a variety of ways, to define all the significant risks. This is an exercise in imagination, not science. It is well known in decision theory that the results of group gropes like this depend heavily on who is there, what they are given and how they are guided.

The fallacy here is to pretend that this is a systematic inventory of risks, suitable for policy making.

Sixth, the supposed risks were ranked based on polling the participants. In addition to the group grope problem there is the pesky fact that risk is a two dimensional concept so risks cannot simply be ranked in one dimension. Each risk has both a severity and a probability.

Generally speaking, high severity but low probability risks are not worth addressing. Meteor strikes are a standard example (the impact really is an impact). The same is true for high probability but low severity risks. What one looks for are risks that combine relatively high severity and probability.

This 2-value ranking was not done, giving the fallacy of the single ranking of risks.

The seventh fallacy is yet to come. This wrongly ranked list of imagined risks based on arbitrary down scaling of an average of questionable computer model results running an impossible scenario is supposed to lead to a National Adaptation Plan in two years. That would be a mega-fallacy.

On the amusing side, I think they got the highest ranked risk right. This is the risk that the government will do the wrong thing. I agree completely, especially if they use this risk assessment.

Also very funny is the “Give us a lot more money” risk. It goes like this:

“Risk of delayed adaptation and maladaptation due to knowledge gaps resulting from under-investment in climate change adaptation research and capacity building.

Risk summary:
Under-investment in research and capacity building to inform understanding of climate change risks and impacts is undermining New Zealand’s ability to develop evidence-based adaptation policy. Critical research gaps relate to:

–atmospheric processes
–hydrological cycle impacts
–ecosystem responses
–biodiversity and biosecurity
–New Zealand’s rural and urban communities
–the economic costs of climate change
–impacts on the primary sector
–impacts on heritage
–effects on health and health services
–use of m?tauranga M?ori to inform adaptation
–cascading impacts
–how to govern climate change adaptation at a number of scales.

These research gaps are a critical barrier to informed decision-making. While these gaps remain, maladaptive actions are a key risk.” (Page 188)

Given all these significant gaps one would think that an accurate assessment would conclude that no risk assessment is possible at this time. That is my assessment.

Conclusion:

The New Zealand climate risk assessment is a cascade of fallacies, unfit for policy making.

SOURCE

Sydney dams start to spill after a saturated six months

The Greenies were telling us that the drought was due to global warming. So does this show global cooling?

The fact of the matter is that rainfall in Australia is erratic but can be made adequate by use of dams

Sydney's dams have started to spill after the latest big rain event over eastern NSW filled most reservoirs to the brim, with more rain forecast.

By Tuesday, the storages had gained more than 10 per cent in a week, or a net 253 billion litres, to climb to 95 per cent capacity, WaterNSW data shows.

The giant Warragamba Dam, which accounts for about 80 per cent of Greater Sydney's reservoir capacity, had risen to almost 96 per cent full, or about double the storage of a year ago.

The smaller Nepean Dam on the Upper Nepean River has started to spill after gaining almost a quarter of its capacity in the past week.

Tallowa Dam is also spilling, into the Shoalhaven River, with flows contributing to the highest flood levels downstream at Nowra in 29 years.

At its peak spill rate on Monday, Tallowa was releasing water at the rate of 375 billion litres a day, WaterNSW said.

The near-full capacity comes just six months after the storages dropped towards 40 per cent before a huge three-day rain event in February doubled water levels. The jump in inflows allowed the Berejiklian government to ease water restrictions and delay plans to double the size of Sydney's desalination plant.

A spokesman for WaterNSW said Warragamba was not expected to spill as a result of current inflows generated by the rain event.

"However WaterNSW will be making small operational releases from the dam’s spillway gates in order to bring the storage back to target level in anticipation of further rainfall," he said.

The forecast rainfall for the coming weekend had been scaled back, including 5 to 15 millimetres for Friday, but those predictions could change, the spokesman said.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Olenka Duma said "we're not expecting a huge amount of rain" from the strong cold front that will move eastwards towards the end of the week. Still, there remains the prospect of thunderstorms over much of NSW as the front draws in tropical moisture from the north.

In addition, the bureau is putting the odds of a wetter-than-normal September-to-November period for the eastern half of mainland Australia at greater than 65 per cent.

Stuart Khan, a professor in the University of NSW's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said the rapid shift from water restrictions to full storage "is something we haven't seen since 1998".

Professor Khan said it was "pretty likely" Warragamba would start to spill soon. The Wingecarribee Reservoir, for instance, was 99.6 per cent full, and any spill from there would largely end up in Warragamba via the Wollondilly River.

The rapid rise inflows has meant NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey had been vindicated in her decision to stop work on preparations to double Sydney's desalination plant, he said. The high flows, though, should not put a halt to consideration of water-saving measures such as water recycling.

"It's exactly the time we should be talking about long-term water supply strategies," Professor Khan said.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

*****************************************

12 August, 2020

Federal Program Leaves Taxpayers on the Hook for Another Green Energy Company Failure

Solar thermal sounds great but I have yet to hear of one that pays off. The thing they are best at is chewing up subsidies from deluded governments

The best known example was the huge Ivanpah project in the Mojave desert. It eats up 3,500 acres in the California desert where rare desert vegetation used to grow. And it kills birds in their thousands.

You don't hear much about it now as it never functioned anywhere near its capacity and produced very expensive electricity. And there has NEVER been any return on the couple of billion spent constructing it.

The most amusing thing about it is that it used vast amounts of natural gas to get itself going in the morning and when it was cloudy. There was at one stage a proposal to reclassify it as a gas-powered power station because on many occasions more of its output came from burning gas than from its solar furnaces

Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, which built and operated a huge solar-thermal power plant in Nevada, has filed for a bankruptcy that is likely to cost U.S. taxpayers more than $225 million.

Novel Technology Fails

The Spanish infrastructure company ACS and Banco Santander SA, which jointly own Tonopah through companies they specifically created to develop the power plant, advertised Tonopah as the first concentrated solar power facility to be able to store solar energy for use at night or during cloudy days, thus removing the need for other power sources as a back-up.

Tonopah’s more than 10,000 mirrors were to focus the sun’s heat on a tower to produce steam and heat a tank containing molten salt that would generate power at night. However, the technology proved unreliable and expensive to build and operate.

Since it began operating in 2015, repeated leaks from its molten salt tank resulted in the power plant going off-line repeatedly. Unable to solve that and other problems at the facility, the power plant ceased all operations in April 2019.

During its best year of operation, Tonopah never produced more than 40 percent of its 400 Gigawatt per hour annual rated capacity, and in most years due to technology failures it produced considerably less power than that. Additionally, the cost of the power it was generating was two to four times the wholesale cost of power from existing conventional electric power sources such as coal and natural gas and even competing renewable power sources such as wind and solar photovoltaic power.

Failed, Costly Loan Program

Tonopah’s 1,670-acre solar facility received expedited approval from the Obama Administration for its construction on public land and $737 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

DOE’s loan to Tonopah came from a loan guarantee program created in 2005 under the Bush administration. The government designed the program to support development of new energy-related technologies that traditional banks and venture capitalists shied away from as being too risky.

And risky they have proven to be—for taxpayers, at least.

No loan guarantees were issued through the program for renewable energy projects until 2009, when the Obama administration issued a number loan guarantees for renewable energy projects as part of the federal economic stimulus program.

A 2012 analysis of the approximately $10 billion in federal loan guarantees and tax credits offered by the Obama administration to companies in the renewable energy field, found more than $3.2 billion of that support had been given to companies that subsequently declared bankruptcy. For instance, solar panel manufacturer Solyndra defaulted on more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees before it went bust in 2011. Other companies that received DOE loan guarantees and subsequently declared bankruptcy include lithium-ion battery manufacturer A123, which received $300 million in federal grants and $135 million in additional grants from the state of Michigan before declaring bankruptcy in October of 2012, and Fisker Automotive, which declared bankruptcy in October 2013, despite having received federal loan guarantees of nearly $529 million.

Tonopah can now be added to the list of DOE loan recipients to declare bankruptcy. If the court approves the company’s agreement with the federal government, Tonopah will have to repay $200 million of the remaining $425 million it currently owes the government, leaving U.S. taxpayers holding the bag for the remaining $225 million.

‘Pet Energy Projects’

Reuters reports DOE spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes issued a statement saying the settlement decision “was made after years of exhausting options within our authority to get the project back on track.”

A senior Trump administration official said the settlement “secures taxpayer money that was squandered by the previous administrations’ failed energy pet projects,” according to Reuters.

Tonopah was supposed to be sited in an ideal location to generate cheap solar power, yet even with generous government support, it failed, providing further evidence solar power can’t compete with conventional electric power sources, says James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

“Here is yet another real-world answer to propaganda that solar power is now less expensive than conventional energy,” Taylor said. “Everywhere solar power is added to the grid, it raises energy costs.

“There is no clearer example than this heavily subsidized solar project located in a place supposed to be ideal for solar power generation,” Taylor said. “Despite massive taxpayer subsidies, including a federal subsidy paying for 30 percent of all its equipment, solar power cannot generate cost-competitive power even in the middle of a desert, yet, we are supposed to believe solar power will generate cost-competitive power in places like Michigan or New Jersey?”

SOURCE

Southern Ocean Site Has Just Cooled To Ice Age-Era Temperatures

A new temperature reconstruction indicates today’s sea surface temperatures are colder than all but a few millennia out of the last 156,000 years.

A Southern Ocean site analyzed in a new study (Ghadi et al., 2020) has averaged 1-2°C during glacials and 4°C during interglacials. Today, with a 410 ppm CO2 concentration, this location has again plummeted to glacial/ice age levels (2°C).

The site was 2°C warmer than now when CO2 concentrations were 180 ppm about 20,000 years ago, or during the peak of the last ice age.

During the Early Holocene (10,000 to 8,000 years ago), summer sea surface temperatures were also 2°C warmer than today.

There is no indication that CO2 concentration changes are in any way correlated with temperature changes throughout this entire 156,000-year epoch.

SOURCE

Greta Thunberg’s Message Of Doom Is Religion, Not Reality

IAIN MARTIN

In January, the great and not so good of the corporate elite gathered at Davos for another telling off from Greta Thunberg.

“One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire,” the climate activist reminded delegates. “I said I wanted you to panic.” In the intervening year they had not panicked enough, she said.

Although the meeting of the World Economic Forum was dedicated to creating a “Cohesive and Sustainable World”, and corporate culture has gone obsessively green, the naughty capitalists and greedy governments refused to end the use of fossil fuels instantly.

The rotters refused to extinguish commercial lifestyles to save the planet from imminent immolation.

Ironically, even as the high priestess of the Extinction Rebellion religion preached her sermon, Covid-19 was sweeping in from China and weeks later would shut down the world economy.

Since then we have all been treated to a live experiment in what happens when economic activity is cut by 25 percent.

While there are undoubted upsides and lessons to be learned about cleaner air in cities, the downside is looming mass unemployment, the ruin of the global aviation industry, and worsening health and educational inequalities.

This is not enough for Extinction Rebellion campaigners who want to go even further in shutting down activity.

Earlier this month, Thunberg set out in an open letter a list of demands that, if implemented, would make the economic effects of Covid-19 seem mild. Her co-signatories included assorted celebrities, activists, and, inevitably, Coldplay.

Climate catastrophists are clearly keen to get the alarmist show back on the road, perhaps because they have been eclipsed by the pandemic.

I am not someone who denies that protecting the environment is important. Cleaner air is required. When it comes to more efficient energy, less wasteful consumption, and rewilding our countryside, I’m all for it.

But the hysteria of the XR crew, amplified by the media, is counterproductive because it frightens people and could lead to panicked policy-making.

The risk is that overreaction by governments will turn voters against any kind of environmental policy. It need not be this way. With the intelligent use of technology and mitigation measures, mankind is more than capable of adapting to warmer conditions.

This is one of the points made in Bjorn Lomborg’s important new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.

Mr. Lomborg is a long-standing environmentalist regarded as a heretic by hardliners in the movement because he is an optimist who says that humanity is not doomed.

Global warming is happening, he says, but populations have been “scared witless” into thinking that it means the end of life on Earth.

“The rhetoric on climate change has become ever more extreme and less moored to the actual science,” he says. “The science shows us that fears of a climate apocalypse are unfounded. Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world. It is a manageable problem.”

Lomborg advocates a “well-designed” carbon tax and reduced emissions but also more adaptation of the kind that, unheralded, is already happening. For 150 years sea levels have been rising and we have adapted by improving coastal protection.

We’re learning more about rivers and flood protection too. On heatwaves, economic growth will help to pay for better and more fuel-efficient air conditioning.

Cities can be adapted with more green spaces. Even something as simple as ensuring that roofs and roads are lighter in color — not black, which absorbs heat and warms urban areas — can make a difference.

For the sin of deviation from the apocalyptic consensus, The New York Times — woke bible and host of the Greta event at Davos in January — unleashed the eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz to lambast Mr. Lomborg, who has since responded with an amusing line-by-line demolition of Mr. Stiglitz’s claims.

But what may make the biggest difference to the debate is population decline.

A study published this month by the Department of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle suggested that a declining global fertility rate would cause population levels to plummet from 2064.

Twenty-three countries including Japan, Thailand, and Spain will have their populations more than halved.

This threatens to undermine one of the foundations of climate alarmism: the assumption that there are too many ghastly people and, by breeding and consuming resources, we will all soon destroy Mother Earth.

The prospect of population decline could be bad news for the fundraising efforts of the Greta crew if it becomes clear that climate change is even more manageable than thought.

I doubt that hardline climate campaigners will for one second allow this to dilute the purity of their doom-laden message, though. They have founded a religion and anything that distracts from it is heresy.

In that respect, they have much in common with woke calls for a social justice revolution. The best parallel for both of these is perhaps with the 16th and 17th centuries and the spread of Puritanism, a campaign to purify worship and signal virtue.

As the more extreme Puritans knew, declaring the apocalypse — a simple message — is strangely seductive and exciting.

Once again, on climate, the less intoxicating and more cheeringly mundane reality is that human beings are ingeniously adaptive. We’ll find a way through if we all keep our heads.

SOURCE

Federal Court Denies Oakland’s Efforts to Block Coal Shipments to Port Terminal

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has lost the latest bid by public officials in the state to block shipments of coal through the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).

Becerra gambled and lost, betting if the state of California joined Oakland in opposing the shipment of coal through the terminal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would overturn a district court’s ruling as well as its own, which decided Oakland could not bar shipments of coal through the city to the terminal for export.

Terminal Contract Upheld

The city of Oakland approved Phil Tagami’s development of the $250 million OBOT, located on Oakland’s outer harbor, in 2013. Tagami subsequently signed a contract with Utah coal producers in which they would transport their product by rail to OBOT to be shipped overseas. In July 2016, in an attempt to block coal shipments to and from the terminal, Oakland’s city council voted unanimously to prohibit the storing and handling of coal within city limits.

Tagami filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2016, arguing Oakland’s ordinance violated his agreement with the city to develop the land.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria heard the case and ruled in Tagami’s favor, finding Oakland’s action amounted to an illegal breach of contract.

The city’s justification for the ban was “riddled with inaccuracies, major evidentiary gaps, erroneous assumptions, and faulty analyses, to the point that no reliable conclusion about health or safety dangers could be drawn from it,” Chhabria wrote.

Oakland appealed Chhabria’s decision to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in 2018, only to have the majority of a three judge panel of the Appeals Court hearing the case affirm the ruling.

“In affirming, we do not opine on the ultimate issue of any alleged health or safety impact of OBOT’s proposed plan,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, in his majority opinion. “Nor do we judge the economic or environmental merits of the agreement to develop a commercial terminal that may house and transport coal.

“Rather, we affirm … the district court’s bench trial ruling that Oakland breached the agreement,” Lee ruled.

The District and Appeals Courts rulings were well-founded in the law, Tagami said in a statement issued after the Appeals Court’s decision in May.

“The district court issued a thorough, thoughtful and comprehensive ruling invalidating the city’s action,” Tagami stated. “We remained confident that the Ninth Circuit would uphold that ruling, which they now have.”

California Jumps In, Denied

The latest action in the case came when Becerra appealed to the Ninth Circuit to reopen OBOT vs. The City of Oakland, allowing the state to intervene on Oakland’s behalf, either in a rehearing before the three original judge panel or before an en banc hearing of the full court.

On August 3, a majority of the three-judge panel denied Becerra’s appeal for a rehearing by the panel with additional arguments to be made by the AG’s office, and recommended against an en banc hearing by the full court.

The federal appeals court denied Becerra’s request for a hearing before the full court, writing in its August 3 docket, “The full court has been advised of the suggestion for rehearing en banc, and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. … The petition for panel rehearing and the petition for rehearing en banc are therefore DENIED.”

Oakland’s recourse at this point if they wish to prevent coal shipments from the OBOT terminal is to appeal their case the U.S. Supreme Court and win there, or to negotiate a settlement with Tagami that satisfies the developer and the Utah coal producers.

Attorneys for OBOT have filed a lawsuit against Oakland, seeking to be awarded court costs and damages for the delays created by the lawsuit.

“Now, after all this time and continued rejection by the federal courts, I would hope there is a responsible city official with whom OBOT can sit down and resolve its differences,” said Robert Feldman, of law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the lead attorney for OBOT, in a statement.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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11 August, 2020

Greta Thunberg – Master of Self-marketing

Once again Greta Thunberg has demonstrated her PR genius. She just met a researcher from neighboring Norway for a conversation on the border between their two countries. And Greta didn’t waste any time posting the pictures of their meeting on Twitter and Instagram. In one of the photos, the two are seen greeting each other by touching their right feet together over the Morokulien border crossing – without physically entering the other’s country.

According to Thunberg, she was interviewing the climate and environmental scientist Per Espen Stoknes for an upcoming BBC documentary series. However, because she was not allowed to enter Norway, she and Stoknes decided to stay on their own sides of the Swedish-Norwegian border.

Greta Thunberg is without a doubt one of those very rare individuals with an almost unique talent for self-marketing, although much controversy surrounds the role she played in developing her distinctive PR strategy and how much of her rise to global fame she owes to her mother and professional PR consultants.

Distinctive brand identity and positioning

Like other masters of self-marketing before her, Greta Thunberg has turned her hair into an unmistakable visual trademark. Donald Trump has his outrageous, shiny golden combover; fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld had his powdered braid; and Albert Einstein’s hair underscored his image as the quintessential nutty professor. And Greta? She has her pigtails.

Hardly any young women still choose to wear their hair in pigtails at the age of 17. Greta’s pigtails are designed to emphasize her childlike nature, as is her slight figure and the fact that she refuses to wear make-up. Her famous outburst of anger when she addressed the United Nations was also a key element of her self-stylization – she spoke more like a fuming child than an adult: “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” Her childlike aspect is important because she wants to speak for the children of this world who have had their lives and their futures stolen from them by adults.

She stylizes herself to an unbending idealist, that is her positioning. Her motto could well be the words traditionally attributed to Martin Luther: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Even her harshest critics credit her idealism, as if idealism were something to be admired. After all, history is full of idealists who did more harm than good.

Perfectly staged PR

Greta Thunberg’s PR image is so perfect that her critics seek to portray her as nothing more than a puppet controlled by professional PR consultants. No one could deny that she is supported by a team of PR professionals, but it still remains to be seen whether she was “made” by them or has her own natural talent for self-marketing. In reality, it is probably a mixture of both.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Greta always manages to produce perfect pictures for her public relations campaign, just like when she set off for the United Nations climate summit in New York on September 23, 2019, to warn the world of its impending doom. As the world’s leading eco-evangelist, she did not fly, she set sail on the ocean-going yacht Malizia II. It was a powerful media spectacle of global proportions: the fragile child plunging into the life-threatening Atlantic currents to prevent the apocalypse at the very last minute. There was no question her voyage would dominate the front pages and grab the headlines around the world.

Turning weaknesses into strengths

In any case, an adept PR strategy involves skilfully recasting obvious weaknesses as strengths. Just like the self-marketing genius Stephen Hawking, who embraced his disability (ALS) as a core component of his marketing strategy (the cover of his bestseller depicted him in a wheelchair), Greta incorporates her own disability as a central feature of her self-promotion. It is widely known that she suffers from Asperger’s syndrome and she is completely open about her condition: “I have Asperger’s syndrome, and to me, almost everything is black or white.” But what Greta and her supporters have done is transform a weakness into a strength. When a reporter asked her whether living with Asperger’s syndrome made her life more difficult she responded by saying that her autism “means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And – given the right circumstances – being different is a superpower.” On her Twitter bio, she originally described herself as a “15 year old climate activist with Asperger’s.”

All of this became part of the Greta Thunberg story and was enthusiastically communicated by her sympathetic supporters in the media. As one paediatric psychiatrist explained in an interview: “Without Asperger’s, she would never have made it this far. Let’s not forget, teenagers do not normally focus so narrowly on a single topic; they are usually highly animated and easily distracted by a host of different influences. But Greta has a kind of tunnel vision, she focuses entirely on this one topic. People are aware of climate change, but don’t really do anything about it. At the same time, Asperger’s sufferers can’t stand contradictions, so Greta cannot understand why people are not doing more. And that’s also why she is so unflinching and stubborn.”

Surrounding yourself with celebrities

Like others who want to become famous, Greta likes to surround herself with celebrities. She meets Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Arnold Schwarzenegger, statesmen like Barack Obama and other leading figures from the worlds of business, politics and show business. By doing so, she is again exploiting a proven PR strategy that has been knowingly used again and again by other masters of self-marketing – from Andy Warhol and Oprah Winfrey to Kim Kardashian – to strengthen their own brands. And even when she doesn’t actually meet someone – Donald Trump, for example – she turns not wanting to meet them into a huge PR story. And hardly anyone bothers to mention the fact that Trump would never have agreed to meet her anyway. Despite their differences, as masters of the art of self-publicity, Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg have more in common than one might think.

A desire to provoke, a focus on publicity stunts that produce a constant stream of stories and images, an ability to redefine weaknesses as strengths and integrate this into a coherent PR story, and finally an appreciation of the value of visual trademarks (e.g. the pigtails) as a key component of a successful positioning strategy – these are all characteristics of highly professional self-marketing.

Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. His book Die Kunst, berühmt zu werden – Genies der Selbstvermarktung von Albert Einstein bis Kim Kardashian (English: The Art of Becoming Famous – Geniuses of Self-Marketing from Albert Einstein to Kim Kardashian) has just been published in Germany. Zitelmann was the owner and managing director of one of Germany’s leading PR agencies for 15 years.

SOURCE

FDA Approves Salmon as First GMO Animal Fit for Food Supply

The Food and Drug Administration gave the green light on Nov. 19 for genetically engineered salmon to be sold to consumers. AquaBounty’s application to sell its quick-growing salmon was finally approved 20 years after initially being filed.

Whereas plant-based genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are already common in the U.S. food supply chain, the FDA had yet to approve a genetically modified animal—until now.

“The FDA has thoroughly analyzed and evaluated the data and information submitted … regarding AquAdvantage Salmon and determined that they have met the regulatory requirements for approval, including that food from the fish is safe to eat,” Bernadette Dunham, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement.

The FDA stated that AquaBounty’s salmon was found to be as nutritious as regular, nongenetically modified Atlantic salmon, and that the agency found no “biologically relevant differences” between the two.

AquaBounty combines growth hormone genes from Pacific salmon with DNA from the anti-freeze genes of an eel-like ocean pout to create a fish that produces growth hormones year round and thus grows faster than natural varieties. The AquAdvantage Salmon still reaches the same size when mature.

Lack of Labeling

In a 2013 New York Times poll, three-quarters of Americans said they wouldn’t eat genetically modified fish.

Despite obvious discomfort with the idea, it’s likely many consumers who are against the practice may end up buying it anyway.

Currently, labeling of GMO products is voluntary, and the CEO of AquaBounty told the Washington Post that the company will most likely label the genetically modified fish as regular “Atlantic salmon” because selling the only GMO fish on the market would be a “dangerous” marketing decision.

The same poll found that 93 percent of Americans support labeling of GMO products, but efforts to legislate mandatory labeling have stalled. Ballot measures to make GMO labeling obligatory have successively failed in California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado.

Meanwhile, Congress is working on legislation that will pre-emptively stop individual states from requiring food suppliers to label GMO products, with the stated purpose of preventing the creation of a patchwork of state regulations that could disrupt the food supply and raise prices.

The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act was passed in the House with bipartisan support in July, and expects to enjoy a similar level of support in the Senate.

The bill has been dubbed the DARK Act, or Deny Americans the Right to Know, by its critics.

President Obama has been reticent about the issue, although on the campaign trail in 2007 he said that every American should have to right to know if their food is genetically modified.

FDA Approval Denounced

The FDA’s approval of genetically modified salmon was roundly denounced by anti-GMO activists.

The main concern is that GMO salmon could escape into the wild and threaten existing salmon populations.

AquaBounty maintains that no such risk exists because all its fish are female and sterile, and physically stored in facilities on land. But Friends of the Earth, an environmental organization that’s been campaigning against what it calls “Frankenfish,” said that once the salmon is approved, it becomes much easier to change farming practices down the road.

Friends of the Earth said that more than 60 grocery chains in the country have promised not to carry GMO salmon, including Safeway, Target, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. In August, Costco made headlines when it refused to sign the pledge.

“Despite FDA’s flawed and irresponsible approval of the first genetically engineered animal for human consumption, it’s clear that there is no place in the U.S. market for genetically engineered salmon.” Lisa Archer, Food and Technology program director at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement.

The organization warns that FDA approval of the salmon will set a precedent for the 35 other species of genetically modified fish in development, as well as similarly modified chickens, pigs, and cows.

SOURCE

Bishops Tout ‘European Green Deal’ as Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

The Catholic bishops of the European Union (COMECE) have endorsed the European Green Deal as an “underpinning strategy” for a continent-wide plan of recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Ecological justice” must be at the core of Europe’s response to the pandemic, the bishops stated in a position paper Wednesday, because the coronavirus outbreak “has revealed both our dependence as well as our disastrous impact on a heavily fragile eco-system.”

“A virus that causes a lung disease made us realise that we cannot live healthy on a sick and polluted planet,” the bishops said.

“We should acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic is linked to the larger socio-ecological crisis that has become increasingly visible to us through climate change, biodiversity loss and its devastating consequences on the most vulnerable,” they said, while urging the EU to “seize this moment as an opportunity to work for radical change.”

“We therefore welcome the Commission’s proposal to integrate the European Green Deal as an underpinning strategy into the recovery plan and call upon EU member states to translate their pledges towards climate neutrality and the care for the environment into tangible actions that will spur ecological conversion in Europe,” they said.

“This pandemic should be proof for us that urgent action is needed,” the bishops added.

In rolling out the European Union’s proposed €750 billion pandemic recovery fund Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the recovery plan “turns the immense challenge we face into an opportunity, not only by supporting the recovery but also by investing in our future: the European Green Deal and digitalization.”

The European Commission has said that 25 percent of the EU’s updated seven-year €1 trillion budget proposal and €750 billion recovery plan will be set aside for climate action.

Last December Ms. von der Leyen called the Green Deal Europe’s “man on the Moon moment,” aimed at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

According to the European Commission, “climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world” and therefore Europe needs to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and decouple economic growth from resource use.

“The European Green Deal is our roadmap for making the EU’s economy sustainable,” the EC declares. “This will happen by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities across all policy areas and making the transition just and inclusive for all.”

The progressive leader of the European bishops’ conferences, Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, has stated his belief that climate change is the most urgent problem facing humanity.

Backing up Pope Francis’ call for “ecological conversion,” the cardinal says that he buys fair-trade coffee instead of Nespresso, no longer uses plastic bottles, and has changed his diesel car for a hybrid one.

“We bishops have to change our lifestyle, and if we older people succeed in doing it, then the younger ones can do it too,” he said. “But if I cannot change my own lifestyle, how can I say to young people to do so?”

In late 2018, Hollerich signed an appeal calling on government leaders to take immediate action to overcome the “devastating effects of the climate crisis.”

The appeal called for keeping global warming below 1.5º C as well as a shift toward sustainable lifestyles, respect for indigenous communities, and the implementation of a “financial paradigm shift” in line with global climate accords.

This entails “putting an end to the fossil fuel era and transitioning to renewable energy” as well as rethinking the agriculture sector to ensure it provides healthy and accessible food for everyone, with a special emphasis on promoting agroecology, the appeal said.

Following last year’s European elections, Hollerich said he was delighted with the successes of green parties while lamenting the rise of populist-nationalist groups.

“It is positive that in several places numerous young people voted for ecological parties, which means that the themes of environment and creation can become important in the future,” Hollerich said, noting that “as a Church” the victory of the green parties “makes us happy.”

SOURCE

The Australian Press Council Is A Hive Of Climate Zealots

By Prof. Ian Plimer, geologist

As a result of an activist campaign, the Australian Press Council took exception to my article in The Australian on November 22, 2019.

They claimed that my statement that there “are no carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims” was false.

Journalists in the Press Council should know basic English and the difference between an element (carbon) and a compound (carbon dioxide).

This is elementary schoolkid’s science. For the Press Council to claim that this is factually incorrect shows breathtaking ignorance.

There are eight forms (allotropes) of carbon, one of them (diamond) is not black which is why the word ‘most’ was used. I was showing that to call the odorless, colorless, tasteless gas that is the food of life as ‘carbon emissions’ is Orwellian.

The Press Council objected to the use of ‘fraudulent’ in my statement about ‘fraudulent changing of weather records’.

It is clear that the council is not aware of the widely publicized fraudulent expunging of the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age by Michael Mann and failed court cases initiated by Mann. They are clearly not aware of the admission of fraud in the Climategate emails.

The Press Council wrote, “The Council considers that the statement concerning the Bureau of Meteorology fraudulently changing weather records is one of fact and implies an element of dishonesty or deception on its part.”

I made absolutely no reference whatsoever to the Bureau of Meteorology. I have been verballed. When can I expect an apology?

It was claimed that my statement, “unsubstantiated claims polar ice is melting,” was wrong. Polar ice concurrently melts, grows and moves and polar ice includes terrestrial ice and sea ice.

Changes in polar ice are due to a diversity of reasons and my point was that we only hear from activists who claim that polar ice is melting due to human-induced global warming.

We don’t hear that glaciers move due to recrystallization, that many glaciers are growing, or that there are more than 150 volcanoes and areas of hot rocks beneath the Antarctic ice.

The Press Council claimed that my statement “the ignoring of data that shows Pacific islands and the Maldives are growing rather than being inundated” was false.

There is a huge amount of scientific literature based on aerial photographs and satellite images showing that atolls are increasing in the area.

A ten-second Google search would have shown peer-reviewed publications supporting this statement. Why was this not done? Or maybe the Press Council has become yet another activist institution?

As soon as the words carbon footprint, emissions, pollution, and decarbonization, climate emergency, extreme weather, unprecedented and extinction are used, I know I am being conned by ignorant activists, populist scaremongering, politicians, and rent-seekers.

Pollution by plastics, sulfur and nitrogen gases, particulates, and chemicals occurs in developing countries. That’s real pollution. The major pollution in the West is the polluting of minds about the role of CO2.

There are no carbon emissions. If there were, we would not be able to see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims.

But then again, we should be used to this after the hysteria about the Great Barrier Reef. We’ve had reefs on Earth for 3,500 million years.

They came and went many times, thriving when water was warmer and there was an elevated CO2 content of the atmosphere. Reefs need CO2; it’s their basic food.

It has never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Climate models have been around 30 years. They have all failed.

Balloon and satellite measurements show a disconnect from climate model predictions. We emit a trace atmospheric gas called carbon dioxide at a time in the planetary history of low atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Earth’s climate dances to rhythms every day, every season and on far larger lunar, oceanic, solar, orbital, galactic, and tectonic cycles.

Climate change is normal and continual. When cycles overlap, climate change can be rapid and large. Sporadic events such as supernovas and volcanic eruptions can also change the climate.

The main greenhouse gas is water vapor. It is the only gas in air that can evaporate, humidify, and condense into clouds that precipitate rain, hail, and snow. Earth is unevenly heated. Oceans hold most of the planet’s surface heat, not the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is plant food. It is neither a pollutant nor a toxin. Without carbon dioxide, all life on Earth would die.

Plants convert carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight during photosynthesis into sugars, cellulose, fruit, vegetables, and grains, which animal life uses as food. Marine organisms also take up and use carbon dioxide.

Plants need almost three times today’s carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere to thrive. For decades horticulturalists have pumped carbon dioxide into glasshouses to increase yields.

The fossil record shows that a thriving and diversification of plant and animal life occurred every time the atmosphere had a very high carbon dioxide content.

In the past, warming has never been a threat to life on Earth. Why should it be now? When there is a low atmospheric carbon dioxide content, especially during very cold times, life struggles.

For the last 500 million years, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content has been decreasing, and if we halved today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide content, all life would die.

This carbon dioxide has been removed into the oceans and is sequestered into coral, shells, limey sediments, and muds and on the land into coals, muds, soils, and vegetation.

In our lifetime, there has been no correlation between CO2 emissions and temperature. Geology shows us again there is no correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature.

Each of the six major past ice ages began when the atmospheric CO2 content was far higher than at present. The idea that a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to unstoppable global warming is demonstrably wrong.

In the past decade, China has increased its CO2 emissions by 53 percent, 12 times Australia’s total output of 1.3 percent of the global total. The grasslands, forests, farms, and continental shelves of Australia absorb far more carbon dioxide than we emit.

The attack on emissions of the gas of life is an irrational attack on industry, our modern way of life, freedoms, and prosperity. It has nothing to do with the environment.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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10 August, 2020

New Climate Summary: Meat, Livestock Have Little Climate Impact

American ranchers and U.S. meat consumption have virtually no impact on greenhouse gas emissions or climate, reports a compelling new climate summary. The new climate summary, “Climate at a Glance: Livestock and Methane,” documents that cattle and beef account for just 2% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. All livestock combined account for less than 4% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate activists, many of whom are vegans for other reasons, often claim that ranchers, livestock, and meat production are a leading cause of rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Yet, EPA data show crop production accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than total livestock production.

The Climate at a Glance portal provides more than two dozen concise, compelling summaries of topics related to climate change. Bullet-points at the top of each summary provide an easily understandable summary of the topic. A Short Summary section under the bullet-points provides a concise, supporting explanation with links to scientific evidence. Most summaries also include a compelling visual graphic.

SOURCE

Banning The Sale Of Combustion Cars Would Be ‘A Colossal Error’

A new paper published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals another major flaw in plans to electrify the economy.

According to the author, Professor Gautam Kalghatgi, because most vehicles will still run on fossil fuels in ten years’ time, banning the sale of new ones would prevent any improvement in the efficiency of most of the vehicle fleet.

As Professor Kalghatgi explains:

“Even with an improbable hundred-fold increase to 10 million in battery electric vehicle numbers in 2030, 75% of cars will still run on petrol and diesel”, says Professor Kalghatgi.

“But no manufacturer is going to invest in more advanced cars if they are banned from selling them”.

And Professor Kalghatgi says those advances could bring about significant improvements in efficiency:

“If a battery car delivers a 25% saving in greenhouse gas emissions on a life cycle basis, the overall reduction for the UK would be less than 4% by 2030. A larger reduction emissions could be delivered with a 5% improvement in fuel consumption of petrol and diesel vehicles.”

“Banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars simply means abandoning the possibility of future emissions reductions in this sector by freezing the technology of a vast majority of vehicles running U.K. transport for decades to come “.

SOURCE

Mendacious Media enables climate alarmism

I have been a news junkie since high school. Media bias favoring left-of-center public policies and politicians is nothing new, yet this 40-year-plus reality never gets shopworn. The flagrancy of skewed news coverage to favor one political agenda and oppose another is worse than ever and still surprises.

There is no shortage of examples of media slant and mendacity, including coronavirus reporting, downplaying the riots in American cities, and peddling the bogus Russia collusion narrative. The climate change issue is another glaring example that goes beyond mere bias. Most media coverage portrays the subject as a singular truth, that is, human exhaling and industry are causing the planet to warm to an imminent doomsday. Typically, no other evidence or viewpoints are acknowledged, much less given credence.

The prevailing media treatment of climate change and other issues exhibits a combination of myopia, laziness, dishonesty and censorship, which CFACT itself has been recipient. It has gotten so bad, two major media outlets recently were exposed by very public resignations and several newsrooms displayed infantile wokeness.

Chief among this journalistic dereliction is NBC’s Chuck Todd, a wind-up doll for climate credulity and former congressional aide. Todd announced he would give no airtime to skeptics of the prevailing mantra of man-made global warming. No counterpoint allowed is standard for “mainstream” climate reporting.

Time magazine, another substantial media outlet, has long obsessed about the “Endangered Earth,” as far back as the late 1980’s. By then, global warming had replaced the coming-ice-age mantra from the 1970’s. Time’s annual “Person of the Year” was replaced for 1988 as “Planet of the Year.” Time has been beating the same drum in the 30-plus years since, even as Earth’s environment improved, global poverty declined, and U.S. carbon emissions more recently dropped. No matter, its 2019 “Person of the Year” was the indefatigable and exploited Greta Thunberg.

Media myopia toward climate change issues is so widespread, some younger reporters themselves may not realize it having grown up in the “Captain Planet” generation when Ted Turner’s cartoon began the brainwashing process.

Journalists have long practiced as stenographers for celebrities and politicians who make absurd catastrophic climate assertions. Reporters surely know how pervasive is lying in politics, yet so many accept climate sound-bites without scrutiny. Has any reporter ever questioned the many preposterous claims by Sen. Bernie Sanders or Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Has either been asked how cooling the planet by one degree in 30 years would stop icebergs from melting in summer, or how wind and solar can “replace” fossil fuels when they rely on them so extensively? The list goes on.

Now and then there are modest exceptions, as when Foxnews host Chris Wallace interviewed Al Gore in 2017, and pushed back some. Yet, even in that instance, Wallace let pass several ludicrous claims by Gore, including supposed rising sea level from global warming that allegedly resulted in ocean fish on Miami streets.

Part of the problem is that while climate change ideology is now unchallenged dogma among Democratic politicians, few Republicans are willing to go on the record with reporters to counter them beyond complaining about the multi-trillion dollar price tag of the Green New Deal. For such Republicans, the calculation is to avoid controversy, rather than offer perspective on–much less rebut–the underlying assumptions of the climate agenda.

Commonplace in climate reporting is when a new global warming “study” is released with some outlandish prediction in 12 to 80 years that is accepted at face value by reporters. Regardless of political leanings or personal bias, every journalist should be a skeptic and report both sides since there are numerous scientists on either side of the climate change issue.

Last spring, for example, the journal Nature Climate Change published a whimsical study that claimed half the world’s beaches would disappear by the year 2100 due to climate change. Every media outlet I found which reported on the study parroted its findings, with nary a perfunctory critic to round out the story.

More impactful media negligence has been its reporting on findings of the International Panel on Climate Change. Michael Shellenberger, in his new book, Apocalypse Never, documents how this sensationalist reporting is regularly at variance with the actual IPCC research.

The cumulative effect of years of robotic reporting of man-made global warming trope has contributed to the growth and political power of the climate change industry. If not countered, it will further lead to a misinformed public, and gullible politicians imposing more destructive and wasteful climate policies on the populace in America and worldwide.

SOURCE

What Global Warming? Snow Line In Alps Increases

It’s been a rather cool summer in much of Europe so far. And just before some hot weather is about to sweep across Central Europe starting tomorrow, winter made a brief comeback – at the peak of summer – in the Alps!

“At high altitudes of the Alps, the precipitation turned into snow overnight,” reported Wetteronline.de here. “In some areas, the snowfall line dropped to an altitude of around 2,300 meters.”

Wetteronline.de also noted that on Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze, “about 30 centimeters of fresh snow fell in the morning at minus 2 degrees.”

“Employees of the Zugspitzbahn were in continuous operation to clear paths and the visitor platforms from the summer snow masses.”

DWD national weather service labels a cooler than normal July “quite warm”

Meanwhile, Germany’s DWD national weather service recently issued what I’d call a press release that is designed especially for stupid and lazy journalists who won’t bother fact-checking.

In its preliminary report on July weather in Germany, the DWD announced that the mid-summer month this year was “rather warm.”

According to the DWD, the average temperature in July for Germany was 17.7°C (64°F), which was “0.8°C (1.44°F) above the value for the internationally valid reference period 1961 to 1990.”

But what the DWD fails to tell us is that the 1961-1990 period was a cold one. And not only that, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) no longer uses the 1961-1990 reference period. Instead, it uses the 1981-2010 period to calculate the means.

The DWD does mention that July 2020 was 0.3°C (0.54°F) too cold compared with the valid reference period 1981 to 2010. So at the DWD, 0.3°C below the valid mean is in their eyes “rather warm.”

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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9 August, 2020

Shocking 'before and after' pictures of glaciers in Patagonia reveal the dramatic impact of global warming over the last century

Worldwide some glaciers are always growing and some are shrinking. The primary influence on them is precipitation, not small variations in temperature

A 'before and after' photography project in the Patagonian mountains using images taken in 1913 and modern day equivalents exposes the dramatic impact global warming is having on the world.

Explorers Cristian Donoso has dedicated the last 24 years of his life to exposing the dramatic effect of climate change on nature.

As part of a 2018 project called 'Ice Postcards' he, along with co-author Alfredo Pourailly, tracked down locations first captured by explorer Alberto de Agostini in the early 20th century to show how the landscape has changed.

Two pictures were taken at the same location and at the same time of year, but one was in 1913 and one was in 2018. They demonstrate the alarming physical impact of global warming on ice caps around the world

Chilean explorer Cristian Donoso has dedicated the last 24 years of his life to exposing the impact of climate change in a stunning photography project. These pictures in Patagonia reveal the loss of ice since 1913

Ice Postcards saw Donoso and Alfredo Pourailly De La Plaza travel to the Cordillera Darwin (a mountain range named after British biologist Charles Darwin) in Tierra del Fuego.

They tracked down locations of images taken by Alberto de Agostini, who regularly frequented the glaciers and took more than 11,000 photos.

Jagged ice flows dominated the early images, but many of these have either vanished or dwindled by 2018.

Patagonia is a harsh environment and is home to the largest body of ice in the southern hemisphere, outside of Antarctica.

Side-by-side comparisons of modern images with their historical equivalents lay bare the horrific impact climate change has had on this region.

'It was much more dramatic than what we believed would be the case,' Donoso told CNN.

'Places that we have yet to really understand, that we haven't explored, that we haven't photographed or that we have yet to chart have been profoundly impacted by humans. The world is a much smaller place than we think.'

The explorers hope that their images will inspire people to tackle climate change and preserve the only planet we have left.

Ice Postcards is a long-term project and a second set of comparative photos on different glaciers in Tierra del Fuego will be produced in an upcoming expedition by the two photographers, courtesy of a Rolex Explorer Grant.

Pictured, the jutting the Negri glacier terminus, captured by de Agostini in 1913 (left) and how the same patch of land looks at the same time of year today

The 2018 image from Donoso and Pourailly (right) of the Marinelli glacier shows the ice has receded more than six miles (10 kilometers) since 1914, when it was captured on film by de Agostini

SOURCE

Media Blame Hurricane Isaias on Climate Change – As Hurricane Numbers Decline

Hurricane Isaias hadn’t even made landfall in the United States before the media began proclaiming Isaias was the result of human-caused climate change. Not only is there no evidence for such a claim, but hurricane numbers have been declining as global temperatures modestly warm. Also, even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) disputes any connection between global warming and hurricanes.

A New York Times article, titled “Hurricane, Fire, Covid-19: Disasters Expose the Hard Reality of Climate Change,” provided typical media coverage of Isaias. The article asserted, “Twin emergencies on two coasts this week — Hurricane Isaias and the Apple Fire — offer a preview of life in a warming world and the steady danger of overlapping disasters.” There is nothing unusual, however, about hurricanes forming and wildfires burning simultaneously, since the hurricane and wildfire seasons overlap.

TV weatherman Dan Satterfield added to the misinformation, publishing a blog post titled “Hurricane Isaias Will Be Wetter and Stronger Because of Climate Change.” Satterfield cited no evidence for this claim – because there is none.

To the contrary, and as detailed in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, hurricane impacts are at an all-time low. “The United States recently went more than a decade (2005 through 2017) without a major hurricane measuring Category 3 or higher, which is the longest such period in recorded history,” notes the Climate at a Glance summary. “The United States also recently experienced the fewest number of hurricane strikes in any eight-year period (2009 through 2017) in recorded history. Additionally, America’s most vulnerable state, Florida, recently concluded an 11-year period (2005 through 2016) without a landfalling hurricane of any size—the longest such period in recorded history.”

Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2018 “Interim Report” observes there is “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.”

Applied to Isaias, strong upper-level wind shear battered Isaias in the Caribbean Sea. That wind shear prevented Isaias from becoming very organized, and was the primary reason the storm struggled to barely reach Category 1 strength. As documented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, “Wind shear inhibits strong storms from forming and rips apart storms that have already formed. Scientists have learned that global warming is likely to cause more wind shear in places where hurricanes form and intensify.” And indeed, the much-ballyhooed warmer ocean waters due to global warming were no match for the global warming-fueled wind shear that stunted Isaias’ growth.

In summary, real-world hurricane data, the United Nations IPCC, and the particular history of Isaias show global warming did not cause Isaias or make the storm any worse. Any assertion to the contrary is fake science, even in the eyes of the United Nations. Therefore, we can thankfully expect Facebook and Twitter to soon issue a warning label, or block anyone from linking to or reposting, the media’s false claims that global warming spawned or worsened Isaias.

SOURCE

Two New Papers on Energy Economics

The CO2 Coalition this week published two new Science & Policy Briefs by energy economist and Coalition Director Bruce Everett, Ph.D. Both Briefs review claims made by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and repeated elsewhere, about the cost of "renewable" energy and the calculation of the Social Cost of Carbon.

In the first, Wind and Solar are Competitive with Fossil Fuels only in Subsidized Price, Not in True Cost, Dr. Everett tackles a vital question in determining America's energy future: are "renewable" forms of energy truly competitive with traditional fossil fuels?

Says Everett: "The June 25 Wall Street Journal has a news piece by Rochelle Toplensky entitled 'Green Energy is Finally Going Mainstream.' Ms. Toplensky claims that 'the cost of renewable energy can now be competitive with fossil fuels.' Unfortunately, her argument is based on one of the oldest and most common economic fallacies: confusing cost and price."

In the second Brief The President, not the New York Times, Is Right on the Social Cost of Carbon, Dr. Everett points out that the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) is an estimate of the present value of the future impact of climate change and is supposed to serve as the basis for climate regulations. Like everything else in the climate debate, the SCC is a political exercise.

He continues: "In a July 14, 2020 New York Times article, Lisa Friedman claims 'G.A.O.: Trump Boosts Deregulation by Undervaluing Cost of Climate Change.' In fact, the GAO (Government Accountability Office) says no such thing. Responding to Congressional requests, the GAO considered (1) why the Trump administration's SCC is lower than the Obama administration's, (2) why the recommendations of a 2017 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have not been implemented and (3) how do states and other countries estimate SCC. Neither the GAO nor Ms. Friedman bothers to ask the only important question: do estimates of the SCC make any sense?"

Both Science & Policy Briefs are available on the CO2 Coalition website at www.co2coalition.org

Via The CO2 Coalition: info@co2coalition.org

Australian PM prepares a natural gas plan to boost economy out of the pandemic

Not enough, say Greenies

Gas projects will gain federal support to drive down energy costs for industry and households in what Prime Minister Scott Morrison calls a broader plan to lift the economy through the pandemic.

Mr Morrison backed the use of gas to help Australian industry solve its energy challenges, signalling he would act "in the months ahead" to tackle the problems caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Three cabinet ministers are working on ways to cut gas prices, raising the prospect of measures in the October budget to address years of industry calls to boost domestic gas supplies.

The next test is a NSW regulatory decision due on September 4 on whether Santos can develop the Pilliga gas field in the state’s north on the condition all the gas goes to the domestic market.

Mr Morrison said the "energy challenges" were a factor in his goal of running the national economy in a "COVID-safe" way when there was no certainty about when a vaccine might arrive and the pandemic might end.

"I have talked a lot of times about what we need do in the gas sector and I’ll have a lot more to say about that in the months ahead," he said.

"What we’re doing in our manufacturing sector, what we’re doing to get infrastructure, getting almost $10 billion brought forward – that’s the plan.

"That can give the confidence and the assurance, because that plan goes in place, vaccine or no vaccine. Operating in a COVID-safe economy is then the challenge."

Greens leader Adam Bandt has attacked the government for backing new gas projects, following a series of leaks from the National COVID Commission chaired by Nev Power, former chief executive of Fortescue Metals.

The commission's manufacturing taskforce set out plans to put taxpayer support behind a significant expansion of the domestic gas industry.

"Gas is not only a toxic fossil fuel, it's becoming too expensive to compete with clean energy," Mr Bandt said.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor addressed the media on Wednesday about wanting Australia to capitalise on depressed global oil and gas markets to deliver cheap energy for industry and boost the strategic oil reserve during the coronavirus crisis.

"More and more, industrial users are keen to make the switch to renewable energy, but are being hamstrung by a government desperate to prop up dirty coal, oil and gas."

Industry Minister Karen Andrews, Resources Minister Keith Pitt and Energy Minister Angus Taylor are all working on the gas and energy agenda with a team from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.

Federal government sources named problems with red tape, environmental regulation and state moratoriums on gas projects as key obstacles to driving down the price and clearing the way for new power stations fuelled by gas.

While one option is an import terminal on the east coast, the other is federal approval for the Santos project under the Environment and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Santos is waiting on a decision from the NSW Independent Planning Commission by September 4 on whether the company can extract coal seam gas from the region around Narrabri, but the project must also gain federal clearance under the EPBC Act.

Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher said the company needed certainty about the Narrabri project after starting the process six years ago.

"Narrabri means more jobs and more investment in NSW and the local region, and lower gas and electricity prices for customers in the state," he said.

The Prime Minister's comments signal the agenda for the October budget after Mr Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg committed another $15.6 billion to fund JobKeeper payments for millions of workers through to March.

While the total cost of the JobKeeper scheme has now reached $101.3 billion to pay a wage subsidy to four million workers – albeit not all of them at the same time – the government is facing calls for a bigger stimulus.

Mr Morrison discussed new measures in skills policy with state and territory leaders in national cabinet on Friday, as well as agreeing a new freight code to keep food and other supplies moving despite Victoria’s business shutdowns.

The Prime Minister said the pandemic would force Australia to adjust the way it does business and named the digital economy as a potential opportunity.

"There is a broader plan when it comes to the economy and that continues to be rolled out, vaccine or no vaccine."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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7 August, 2020

“Going Green” good for the economy?

Massive increases in government spending, subsidies and further economic control with a blizzard of added regulations are the recipe for economic downturn. History shows this time and again. History also shows the opposite is true; restraining government spending growth and reducing regulations and taxes on the private sector spurs economic growth and job creation.

The “Green” agenda invariably comprises major new government mandates, subsidies and regulations that will harm the country’s economy and citizenry, whether one believes fully in human-caused climate change or not. The Green cure is worse than the purported illness, regardless of how many studies authored by climate alarmists claim otherwise.

There are plenty of studies (using that term loosely) that claim Green policies for energy transformation will “stimulate” the economy. But they always come back to massive new government spending, debt and private sector mandates to subsidize the efforts and label it economic stimulus.

Whichever multi-trillion dollar version of the Green New Deal is examined, including the recent unveiling by presidential candidate Joe Biden, the essence is the same: vast new government regulation and mandates over energy, construction, transportation and pretty much every other industry.

Energy is the lifeblood of our national and global economy. Affecting its supply and price impacts far and wide. Abundant energy supplies enable the economy to grow. Restricting energy—namely, fossil fuels and nuclear—in the hopes of forcing its replacement with “renewables” will lead to economic contraction.

Proponents of a Green New Deal would reorder of energy policy to phase our use of coal, natural gas and oil and nuclear to replace them with electricity and so-called “renewable” energy sources, wind and solar. While I am a strong believer in technological progress, no one can plausibly explain how renewable energy can replace fossil fuels in the coming decades, if ever.

Many states and cities already have passed energy plans that mandate greater use of renewable energy and less fossil fuel. If this piecemeal effort becomes widespread, America as a whole, like California, will soon suffer higher energy costs, power outages, deforestation, landscape blight, harm to wildlife, and more. These outcomes are not the ingredients for economic growth.

Green New Deal advocates are defending the new costs and control in two primary ways. First, they believe the planet itself is at greater risk by doing nothing; and the jobs lost in the energy industry are promised to be replaced with “Green” jobs.

First, the planet is not “at risk” if the global average temperature increases by 1.5 degrees by 2050; though no one can claim with certainty that it will. Nor will reducing carbon emissions in the United States necessarily affect global average temperature since many additional factors influence climate. Other industrialized nations like China and Russia will avoid such masochistic economic policy while they happily watch their U.S. adversary relinquish its fossil fuel production and harm its economic and military capacity in the process.

Second, the promise of “Green Jobs” is as vacuous as any from politicians attempting to reassure the public. Nonetheless, they are itching to undertake a borrowing a spending binge to “create” jobs to produce solar panels, batteries and other components to foist them on the public, regardless of lack of demand and gross inefficiency. That is why every Green New Deal is priced at trillions of taxpayer dollars and constitutes a wasteful “spoon-ready” approach to creating jobs, as the late economist Milton Friedman would sardonically describe.

The Obama administration’s boondoggle taxpayer guarantees for the Solyndra company to produce solar panels, which cost at least $500 million, is emblematic of the problem. So also is the example of California’s mandate for solar panels on all new homes. More such Green economic policy would exponentially produce the same folly.

A further problem comes from the current federal spending spree on the coronavirus, with $2.5 trillion added to the national debt and another trillion dollars on deck. America is that much closer to economic risk, including runaway inflation from printing money electronically to finance this unprecedented spending. From a financial standpoint, the Covid pandemic makes the unaffordable Green New Deal much more so.

Government has a role in spearheading research and development in many areas of the economy, including in energy. When practical and feasible, the private sector on its own will make the investment, assume the risk, and profit accordingly from Green energy. Done foolishly, as proposed by the climate alarmists pushing Green New Deals, trillions of dollars will be printed and wasted, and jobs and livelihoods will be squandered.

SOURCE

Last Ice Age, Fires Raged As Summer Temps Were 3-4C Warmer

A new study finds that 26 to 19 thousand years ago, with CO2 concentrations as low as 180 ppm, fire activity was [10 times more common] than today near the southern tip of Africa – mostly because summer temperatures were 3-4°C warmer. We usually assume the last glacial maximum – the peak of the last ice age – was significantly colder than it is today.

But evidence has been uncovered that wild horses fed on exposed grass year-round in the Arctic, Alaska’s North Slope, about 20,000 to 17,000 years ago, when CO2 concentrations were at their lowest and yet “summer temperatures were higher here than they are today” (Kuzmina et al., 2019).

Horses had a “substantial dietary volume” of dried grasses year-round, even in winter at this time, but the Arctic is currently “no place for horses” because there is too little for them to eat, and the food there is “deeply buried by snow” (Guthrie and Stoker, 1990).

In a new study (Kraaij et al., 2020) find evidence that “the number of days per annum with high or higher fire danger scores was almost an order of magnitude larger during the LGM [last glacial maximum, 19-26 ka BP] than under contemporary conditions” near Africa’s southernmost tip, and that “daily maximum temperatures were 3-4°C higher than present in summer (and 2-4°C lower than present in winter), which would have contributed to the high severity of fire weather during LGM summers.”

Neither conclusion – that surface temperatures would be warmer or that fires would be more common – would seem to be consistent with the position that CO2 variations drive climate or heavily contribute to fire patterns.

SOURCE

Record Crop Yields Punk The Denver Channel’s Climate Alarmism

Among the top Google News results today for “climate change,” The Denver Channel published an article asserting climate change is devastating crop production. The Denver Channel is either inexcusably unaware of on-point United Nations crop data, or The Denver Channel is deliberately telling falsehoods. Objective data show consistent, steady growth in global crop yields, with new records set virtually every year. Tally The Denver Channel as yet another purveyor of fake climate news.

The Denver Channel article is titled, “Farmers across the world worried about climate change impacting their crops.” The theme of the article is summarized by a quote the article provides from a Syngenta spokesperson: “Climate change is impacting agriculture and farmers abilities. … It’s coming down to, especially in the United States, is the unpredictable weather patterns that are beginning to emerge.”

The article especially emphasizes drought as ruining American crop yields. “It’s drier than it used to be,” says a struggling farmer in the article.

Those are bold assertions about climate change, drought, and negative crop impacts. Let’s take a look at the objective data.

Global crop yields during the period of modest global average warming have boomed. As my colleague James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute, recently noted in a Climate Realism article, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports global cereal production (the vitally important corn, wheat, and rice crops) set an all-time record in 2019. Moreover, FAO expects 2020 crop production to surpass the 2019 record.

The same game-changing growth in global production is occurring in the United States. Yields per acre in the United States are 50 percent higher than was the case just 20 years ago, and double what they were in 1980. New records are set virtually every year.

The good news about crop yields tell us that the Denver Channel’s claim about worsening drought is likely false. Here are some additional facts to support that:

As reported in, Climate at a Glance: Drought, the United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history without at least 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. Peaks in drought intensity occurred around 1978, 1954, 1930, and 1900 – between 40 and 120 years of global warming ago. By contrast, in 2017 the United States set a record for its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history. Then, the United States broke that record again in 2019.

To be fair, many farmers around the world likely do fear the effects of climate change on their livelihoods. If they do, however, their fear is driven by media alarmism like the Denver Channel article rather than by nonexistent declines in real-world crop production.

SOURCE

Comrade de Blasio Declares Isaias A ‘Result Of Global Warming’

This is a perfect illustration of what a moron sounds like when they are a.) feckless and b.) use fact-free talking points. Data shows we are not having more hurricanes, they are not more intense and have been around long before we settled North America. In fact, Isaias is only the fourth tropical storm to hit NYC since 1821 (when recordkeeping began). -CCD Editor

Do communists actually hear what comes out of their mouths? They can make a claim in one sentence and then contradict said claim a minute later.

Their level of confident ignorance can only be described as impressive because a lazy person wouldn’t put this much work into sounding so ridiculous on such a consistent basis.

New York City Mayor Comrade Bill de Blasio held a press conference on Tuesday to talk about and warn New Yorkers of the progression and arrival of Tropical Storm Isaias.

De Blasio took a decent portion of his time to point out specifically that storms like Isaias are the “result of global warming.”

“Let’s talk about the bigger reality,” de Blasio said in propagandistic fashion. “What we’re seeing here, and what we’ve been seeing now for years, is the result of global warming. We’ve been seeing more and more pressure on coastal areas all around the world.”

The mayor spoke about how big storms are more frequent in the age of increased global warming, but de Blasio kind of contradicted himself with the very first statement in this address that he made to the people of New York.

“I just want to emphasize, when we talk about a tornado warning, it’s such a rarity here in New York City. It may sound to some people like that’s not something to worry about.”

Of course, a tornado of any size is something for people to worry about. But, how can tornadoes be rare while global warming is making storms like what Isaias is bringing to the area more frequently?

I thought storms were supposed to be stronger and happen more often. That’s what they all want us to think, right? So which is it?

That first line contradicted most of what de Blasio said after it.

Oh, and just as a quick note, I thought it was “climate change?” It was originally “global cooling.” Then, it was “global warming.” What gives?

De Blasio also made the claim that after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, “there were no more climate change deniers in New York City.” That’s a bold claim.

Since 1821, New York City has seen the effects of 11 hurricanes and four tropical storms, including Isaias.

For those playing the home game, that makes for an average of one major storm about every 13 years. To be fair, weather technology has exponentially increased in the last 50 years.

The main gripe here is that de Blasio took time from legitimately informing people about the particulars of the storm to push a political talking point — which global warming is at this point.

No one gives a crap about that. That “information” helps no one at a time when people should be preparing for whatever storm might bring their way.

Just another instance of de Blasio on his soapbox.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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6 August, 2020

Greta Thunberg fury: Arch-rival launches devastating vow to crush teen activist's argument

GRETA THUNBERG's arch-rival Naomi Seibt has brutally challenged the teen activist to "debate me" after mocking her stance on climate change and urging her to stop "spreading panic, but offer hope".

Ms Seibt, known throughout the world as the anti-Greta Thunberg of climate change, made the demand after she was snubbed by the EU despite Ms Thunberg being allowed to push her point across to MEPs about the myths of global warming. The 19-year-old German has pleaded with institutions to listen to the other side of the debate, which focuses on how the gloomy outlook on carbon emissions is addressed throughout the media. Ms Seibt, who has previously claimed rival Ms Thunberg has spread "panic around climate change when she should be offering hope", agrees carbon dioxide - a by-product from the use of fossil fuels - does affect climate change.

However, she argues that the real damage it causes is considerably lower than the likes of Ms Thunberg allege.

And after seeing Ms Thunberg invited to talk to EU leaders earlier this year - despite coronavirus lockdown conditions being imposed - Ms Seibt wanted a chance to discuss the bill and other arrangements that could be made.

When asked by Express.co.uk whether she expected to ever be asked to speak to the EU, she said: “I don’t think so because they are so immersed in their beliefs that they don’t want anyone from the outside to come in and talk to them.

"Even if I tried to reach out to them I don’t think they would allow me to speak and that’s why I accept every opportunity for an interview or to speak because I would love to talk to someone on the other side.

"And if anybody is willing to debate me, even if Greta is willing to debate me, I’m willing to come any time and debate them on the issue.”

Her comments came amid the announcement that Brussels intended to create new legislation in order to eliminate carbon emissions to become the world's first "carbon neutral continent".

The Green Deal - the name of the EU’s proposal - was created in a bid to curb panic and is the basis of a new growth strategy for those in the bloc.

The law was unveiled by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and makes it essential that the EU balances emissions and the removal of greenhouse gases.

At the time, Ms Thunberg also took aim at the plan, saying by having such a long term goal, the EU had “surrendered” to climate change.

In a letter to leaders, Greta and 33 other activists added: “It means giving up. “We don’t just need goals for 2030 or 2050. “We, above all, need them for 2020 and every following month and year to come.”

And for once it appeared Greta and Ms Seibt agreed - the deal was nothing to get excited about.

Ms Seibt added: “I think that is just ridiculous because the effect the C02 emissions can have is absolutely insignificant and the consequences of controlling society in that way and only relying on alternative energy sources is not reliable.

“Like solar power and wind power that is not reliable or sustainable it’s just ridiculous.

“We don’t even have nuclear power to switch to, so right now in the lockdown of the coronavirus, I’m a bit worried because what happens if we experience a blackout and don’t have any electricity.

“So the economic consequences are ludicrous.

“Something that I do find hypocritical is that usually in my experience, it’s the people on the side of climate change that says we need to help the poor, need to fight for climate justice and social justice.”

SOURCE

Made with Wind Power

As the completely unhinged push for increasing amounts of renewable energy continues, more and more companies are proudly printing that they are "Made with Wind Power" on their packaging.

These companies, no company, has any way of knowing that the electricity they are using comes directly from wind energy. Do you know how they feel they have the right to put these meaningless little pictures on their packages? Well, we asked...

Two things:

   1. They pay a PREMIUM price for electricity.
   2. They still need COAL.

They pay for this "wind powered" designation. The wind does not blow 100% of the time and they also produce energy at a fraction of what Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear do.

To better understand why they cannot possibly know where their energy is actually coming from, we refer to Ohm's Law.

This is directly from MISO (the gird). The same grid that General Converting, Inc. gets their electricity from.

Again, two things:

   1. Electricity passes through all possible paths but there is more flow through paths with less resistance.

   2. Once a fuel source has added their energy to the grid, it becomes part of the fuel mix. MISO does not keep the fuel sources separate. They cannot and do not say, "Wind power to this building, Nuclear to this home, Coal to this factory." That is a magical world and it is not reality.

SOURCE

How climate change alarmists are actually endangering the planet

“You’ll die of old age, I’ll die of climate change,” reads a typical poster held by teenagers in climate rallies across the world. The media, activists and even politicians are unabashedly indulging in climate alarmism, stoking the fears of millions.

Books on the impending implosion of civilization due to climate change line shelves in bookstores across the world. Media outlets have changed the name of climate change, calling it the “climate emergency” or even “climate breakdown.” The cover of Time magazine tells us: “Be worried. Be very worried.”

Unsurprisingly, this causes most of us to brood about a future that we’re being told will be calamitous. Children are growing up terrified, with six in ten American teenagers now afraid of climate change. The scaremongering has reached such a crescendo that now half the world’s population really believes climate change will likely end the human race.

This alarmism is not only false but morally unjust. It leads us to make poor decisions based on fear, when the world not only has gotten better, but will be even better over the century.

Remember that the world today is much better in almost every measurable way. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 32. Today, it has more than doubled to 72. The disparity in health between the rich and poor has reduced, the world is much more literate, child labor has been dropping and we are living in one of the most peaceful times in history. Indoor air pollution, previously the biggest environmental killer, has halved since 1990. Four out of five people were extremely poor in 1900 and today — despite the intense impact of the coronavirus — less than one in five is.

Alarmist is not only fake, it's unjust. Rising sea levels is a trumped up charge.

The UN Climate Panel’s middle-of-the-road estimate for the end of the century is that we will be even better off. There will be virtually no one left in extreme poverty, everyone will be much better educated, and the average income per person in the world will be 450 percent of what it is today. Yet, because climate is a real challenge, it will leave us less well off. Based on three decades of studies, the UN and the world’s only Nobel climate economist estimate global warming will reduce the 21st century welfare increase from 450 percent to “only” 434 percent of today’s income.

Clearly, this is a problem. But a 3.6 percent reduction by the end of the century is not an existential threat. Resorting to panic and hysteria is unlikely to help. Indeed, one of the UN Climate Panel authors warned against this: “We risk turning off the public with extremist talk that is not carefully supported by the science.”

How is it possible that the media’s portrayal of the impacts of climate change are so vastly removed from reality? Because simple, moderating factors are left out. Last year, a paper generated lots of headlines and clicks claiming that future sea-level rise would flood 187 million people.

But it was spectacularly misleading. It had to assume no one would adapt over the next 80 years. Actually, the research showed that as people obviously adapt, just 0.3 million people will have to move. The scary number is 600 times too large.

This trumped-up rhetoric leads us to make unrealistic promises. We have mostly failed our climate promises for the last thirty years, and we are poised to fail our Paris climate promises by 2030 as well. It also leads nations to make exorbitantly expensive promises of carbon neutrality by 2050, something that will be more costly than permanent coronavirus shutdowns. Only New Zealand has asked for an independent assessment of the cost of its climate policy. It will cost 16 percent of its GDP each and every year by 2050, making it more costly than the entire New Zealand public expenditures for education, health, environment, police, defense, social protection, etc.

Rhetoric from the left inflates non-threatening issues. Here, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a committee on the environment.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has helped fuel the belief among young people that they will die of climate change.EPA
Spending 16 percent of a nation’s income to solve a smaller part of a 3.6?percent problem is bad policy. Moreover, it is unlikely to happen. We need smarter solutions.

Climate economic studies convincingly show that one of the best investments to fix climate in the medium run is to invest heavily in green R&D. Because research is cheap, we can explore many avenues, from better renewables and battery storage, to carbon capture and fusion, fission, carbon-neutral oil-producing algae, and more. If we can innovate on the price of green energy down below that of fossil fuels, everyone will switch — not just well-meaning rich people, but also most Chinese, Indians and Africans. The models show that each dollar invested in green energy R&D will avoid eleven dollars of climate damage.

It’s imperative that we shift our focus to such smart efforts — efforts that have been shown throughout history to work. We should tackle climate smartly, and also make sure that a monomaniacal focus on climate change doesn’t crowd out urgent investments in the many other, crucially important issues of health, education, jobs and nutrition.

SOURCE

Cancel Culture Dominates Climate Research, Canceling the Scientific Method

Contrary to popular perception, “cancel culture,” in which people or their opinions are shamed and shut out of the discussion when they don’t conform to whatever those shouting the loudest or rioting in the streets believe, isn’t a new phenomenon.

For more than two decades, politically connected climate scientists have been leading the cancel culture movement.

These researchers abandoned the pursuit of knowledge and human progress for the pursuit of political power to impose their vision of how society should be shaped. Rather than seeking an understanding of the world through the use of the scientific method and its reliance upon data and empirical falsification, they’ve promoted the political notion of consensus as to how knowledge is obtained, and comity, rather than experimentation, as to how progress is made.

They “cancel” through making personal attacks, denial of funding, removing “opponents” from positions, and suppressing the research of any researcher or analyst who dares to disagree with the so-called consensus position that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.

Honest scientists who cling to the quaint notion that climate change theory should be tested against data are deemed retrograde or climate deniers, whose views aren’t worthy of being considered in these days of post-modern climate science. Indeed, many cancelers advocate for imprisoning climate skeptics.

Let’s look at just a couple of examples of in which academic conferences and media headlines have given consensus, cancel culture science pride of place over the facts when it comes to alarming climate claims.

Based solely on the unsupported assertions of consensus climate researchers, the media has been flooded with stories claiming human-caused climate change is causing famine and starvation.

In late June 2020, Cornell Alliance for Science claimed farmers in sub-Saharan Africa were desperate for new farm technologies and crops to fight a climate change-induced decline in crop production that the Alliance claimed was “driving millions [of Africans] into hunger.” Yet data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization shows cereal (staple) food crop production across southern Africa has grown substantially, and fairly steadily, since at least the 1960s. Moreover, the past 10 years have provided the 10 highest crop yields in sub-Saharan African history.

Dozens of similarly false claims linking supposed anthropogenic climate change to an agricultural apocalypse were covered by outlets such as Google News, GQ, the New Republic, and Roll Call over the past couple of months. Yet, had the journalists writing the stories showed a little bit of investigative initiative, they could have easily discovered hundreds of field experiments and studies collected on CO2 Science, much of which was distilled or summarized in the exhaustive report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, titled “Climate Change Reconsidered II.”

These reports show crop yields have been booming and hunger and malnutrition declining as, and in large part because, carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising.

Following the Democratic playbook, per Rahm Emanuel, of “never letting a crisis go to waste,” radical climate alarmists have also manipulated science to assert climate change is making pandemics more frequent and deadlier. Dozens of media outlets, including Jurist Legal, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, and Time magazine published articles during the midst of the CCP virus pandemic claiming human-caused climate change, if not already making the incidences of pandemics more likely, would make them more frequent and more deadly in the future.

For instance, an article in Pro Publica blatantly lied when it stated, “Vector-borne diseases—those carried by insects like mosquitoes and ticks and transferred in the blood of infected people—are also on the rise as warming weather and erratic precipitation vastly expand the geographic regions vulnerable to contagion.”

The body of scientific literature, as detailed in Chapter Four of the second volume of “Climate Change Reconsidered II,” shows there is no factual basis for this claim.

Studies from Africa to England and Wales, to North and South America, to Thailand and beyond, find that any link between human climate change and the spread of malaria, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and other vector-borne diseases is either grossly overstated or outright false.

Indeed, historically, colder periods are linked to famine, as crops fail, and to the rapid spread of pandemics, such as the bubonic plague, which ran rampant during the little ice age. By contrast, pandemics typically wane, though they don’t disappear, and hunger and malnutrition decline sharply during relatively warm periods.

In one study published in The Lancet in 2015, researchers examining health data from 384 locations in 13 countries, accounting for more than 74 million deaths—a huge sample size from which to draw sound conclusions—found that cold weather, directly or indirectly, killed 1,700 percent more people than hot weather.

Commenting on the study in a 2017 New York Times article, columnist Jane Brody wrote, “Over time, as global temperatures rise, milder winter temperatures are likely to result in fewer cold-related deaths, a benefit that could outweigh a smaller rise in heat-caused mortality.”

Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Sadly, climate researchers would cancel Einstein if he said that today.

There is an old adage in legal circles, “When the law is on your side, pound the law; when the facts are on your side, pound the facts; when neither are on your side, pound the table.” For three decades, climate alarmists have been pounding the table. They hold rallies carrying placards and wearing T-shirts that say “Believe Science,” even as their actions betray science.

Too many climate scientists have become sideshow hucksters hoping to sell the general public the dangerous notion that giving government experts greater control over our lives will allow us to control the weather, and make the world a utopia. Ask the people in Cuba, Hong Kong, North Korea, or Venezuela how that’s working out for them.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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5 August, 2020

The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all

He leaves out a category: The scientifically literate. And he offers no evidence that any of his types exist outside of his own imagination.

If he was less full of himself he might have done a survey, extracted the principal components from the results and did a varimax analysis of them. That's old hat if you want to know the actual subtypes in the responses

But he is probably not scientifically literate enough to do any kind of factor analysis. I am no great fan of factor analysis myself but it sure beats mere opinion

The shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool: each distorts the urgent global debate in their own way

Anew book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.

How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.

Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as “cherry-picking”, “misleading” and containing “outright falsehoods”.

The article was widely republished, even after being removed from its first home, Forbes, for violating the title’s editorial guidelines on self-promotion, adding further heat to the storm. And this is why all those who deny the reality or danger of the climate emergency should be ignored. Obviously, I have broken my own rule here, but only to make this vital point once and for all.

The science is clear, the severity understood at the highest levels everywhere, and serious debates about what to do are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this.

However infuriating they are, arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them. It also helps to generate a fake air of controversy over climate action that provides cover for the vested interests seeking to delay the end of the fossil fuel age.

But the deniers are not all the same. They tend to fit into one of four different categories: the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool.

The shill is the easiest to understand. He, and it almost always is he, is paid by vested interests to emit clouds of confusion about the science or economics of climate action. This uncertainty creates a smokescreen behind which polluters can lobby against measures that cut their profits.

A sadder case is that of the grifters. They have found themselves earning a living by grinding out contrarian articles for rightwing media outlets. Do they actually believe the guff they write? It doesn’t matter: they just warm their hands on the outrage, count the clicks and wait for the pay cheque.

The egomaniacs are also tragic figures. They are disappointed, frustrated people whose careers have stalled and who can’t understand why the world refuses to give full reverence to their brilliance. They are desperate for recognition, and, when it stubbornly refuses to arrive, they are drawn to make increasingly extreme pronouncements, in the hope of finally being proved a dogma-busting, 21st-century Galileo.

The ideological fool is the fourth type of climate denier, and they can be intelligent. But they are utterly blinded by their inane, no-limits version of the free-market creed. The climate emergency requires coordinated global action, they observe, and that looks horribly like communism in disguise.

They could explore the many credible climate action plans being pursued, including by those on the political right. But their cognitive dissonance forces them to the conclusion that because state intervention is wrong, acting to avert climate danger cannot be right. Intellectual gymnastics to “expose” climate alarmism then follow naturally.

But why do I say ignore them all? The climate crisis is urgent, and we need debate to drive action. However, vigorous debates over action are already taking place in good faith all over the world, from the tops of governments to the smallest local action groups.

SOURCE

Biden wants to kill an economic gold mine

Just last week, Joe Biden once again reaffirmed his commitment to killing the fossil fuel industry. Ironically enough, it was fossil fuel development, namely natural gas and the fracking boom, that accounted for the vast majority of growth and job creation during the economic “recovery” of his President Barack Obama. The wannabe 46th president wants to end fossil fuel production by 2035, beginning at a time when the nation will be rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic. Should Biden have his cake and eat it too?

Let’s take a quick review of the Obama economy that Biden is happy to take credit for and seeks to emulate. The economy under Obama averaged just 2% GDP growth, the “new normal,” as New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman named it. To be fair, assuming office in the middle of a recession is no blessing, but Obama’s attachment to Keynesian economics slowed down the nation’s recovery.

In fact, the Obama administration actively worked to restrict the very industry that led the economy as a percentage of GDP growth. Oil and gas development accounted for nearly half of GDP growth and the hydraulic fracking boom alone accounted for 9.3 million jobs, nearly half of the jobs created during his entire presidency. States such as Texas contributed nearly 70% of all jobs created during the Obama administration. Wage growth for workers in the natural gas industry also skyrocketed, with workers in states such as North Dakota seeing their weekly wages increase up to 40% post-shale boom. Without oil and gas development, there would have been almost no economic or job growth during the Obama administration.

Energy production laid the foundation for energy independence. Offshore drilling and the shale boom resulted in a decline in imports of foreign oil. By the end of the Obama years, the United States saw a 74% increase in oil production. By 2016, imports of foreign oil had declined by 4 million barrels since before Obama assumed office. Yet, it wasn’t until President Trump implemented a laissez faire approach to energy that America was finally able to achieve energy independence.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, at the behest of far-left environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, did everything it could to impede the fossil fuel industry through executive orders and overregulation. Now, Biden wants to end U.S. fossil fuel production altogether by 2035. Regardless of Obama’s wavering support for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, the industry and the economy saw tremendous growth thanks to its implementation.

By 2014, 98.5% of fracking occurred on nonfederal lands. Permits for federal onshore extraction during the Obama administration declined. For all the talk of Russian meddling in American affairs, there’s clear evidence the Kremlin funded the anti-fracking movement.

Obama’s push for renewable energy, which focused on wind and solar energy, failed to achieve market dominance. Crony schemes such as Solyndra wound up costing taxpayers. By the end of the Obama administration, renewables only contributed 10% of energy production. Biden wants to “revive” this failed experiment in energy independence.

A recent report from the International Energy Administration indicated that U.S. carbon emissions may have peaked — that’s without the Paris Agreement, the Clean Power Plan, and abundant federal tax breaks and schemes to prop up renewable energy artificially. It goes without saying that U.S. carbon emissions have peaked without the destruction of a major sector of the U.S. economy.

Is Biden listening? Has he considered how voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania might react to his proclamation of doom for the natural gas industry?

Just as Obama couldn’t take credit for the economic boom we are seeing under the Trump administration, Biden can’t claim he will oversee a resurgent economy if he plans to eliminate fossil fuel production. The oil and gas boom powered the economic recovery from the Great Recession. Now, with the U.S. looking to emerge from the COVID-19 downturn, Biden wants to do everything in his power to end U.S. energy dominance.

SOURCE

The Sierra Club's 'Racist' Founder

In an era when it is all the rage for businesses and organizations to make bold declarations about recognizing their racial problems, it was hardly surprising when the Sierra Club came forward with its own mea culpa. Among the flood of companies posting their black squares on social media for Blackout Tuesday, the only ones who have managed to stand out are those not bending a knee to the mob. But the fact that the Sierra Club’s introspective outreach was lost in the deluge of other virtue-signaling outlets is illustrative of its superfluousness.

The environmental outfit recently came forward to announce it was addressing the problematic history of one of its founders, John Muir. Beyond helping to create the organization, Muir is credited with preserving Yosemite Valley, worked with presidents to protect natural sites, and aided in the creation of the National Park Service. In environmental circles, Muir holds an esteemed history on par with our Founding Fathers. Given that many of our Founders are coming under fire for social inequities, however, it is not shocking that Muir would also be scorned.

While its desire to be recognized for enlightened thinking is obvious, the Sierra Club — and any entity seeking to cleanse its soul, for that matter — needs to accept that things from the past are, in fact, the past. To acknowledge and demean its founder over views he held in his era does nothing to improve the lot of the organization today.

By today’s standards of “wokeness,” yes, Muir’s views are out of alignment. But Muir created the Sierra Club in the late 1800s, and as the club’s announcement notes, his stances were in line with those of many of the time. He had associations with members of white supremacist groups, but he also did great work on behalf of the environment. Why is that legacy now invalidated? The conflict is on display in this passage:

"In these early years, the Sierra Club was basically a mountaineering club for middle- and upper-class white people who worked to preserve the wilderness they hiked through — wilderness that had begun to need protection only a few decades earlier, when white settlers violently displaced the Indigenous peoples who had lived on and taken care of the land for thousands of years."

In noting Muir’s racist views, the Sierra Club article also notes that “his views evolved later in his life.’’ A piece on Muir addressing his issues in the LA Times lists numerous faults but adds that those are emblematic of a turn-of-the-century mindset. “He was a man of his times,’’ says the paper, lending a qualifier, ‘’who actively worked to displace California Indians by taking their lands.” Even this crime is somewhat couched.

In citing a previous op-ed, the paper mentions Muir’s hostility toward Native Americans. “Muir was depressingly conventional on matters of race, afflicted with a garden-variety Victorian white supremacism,” it stated in his profile. In discussing his work at the preservation of Yosemite National Park, it mentions the Native Americans beset by disease and displaced by force, but then mentions that tragedy took place ‘’17 years before he arrived in 1868.’’ In similar fashion, the Sierra Club article mentions his association with Henry Fairfield Osborn, who ran the New York Zoological Society and the American Museum of Natural History. The problem is, Osborn also helped to found the American Eugenics Society. The article notes he did so, ‘’in the years after Muir’s death.’’

While some of John Muir’s guilt is direct, just as much of it is tangential, and most seems to be rooted in the time in which he lived. While noting his social infractions appears needed today, so too should there be recognition that we are applying contemporary social standards to a man whose conservation efforts began 150 years ago. The question needs to be, do the positions held a century and a half ago — which have little influence today — somehow eclipse the work he did, which has lasted and even grown?

This is not to suggest that his views, toxic by today’s measures, should be ignored. But in the same thought, neither should his work be erased. Otherwise, logic would dictate that if he is regarded as so poisonous as to be stricken from the record, then the outfit this detestable man created should be completely disbanded. Someone so vile could only create a contemptible organization — so close up shop and cease activity.

This, we know, will not take place. The work being done and the goals already in place are too important, they’ll say. This should explain exactly why it is foolhardy of the organization to be swept up in today’s emotional flurry of self-flagellation. The Sierra Club itself references a completely different image of their founder, in fact. In a linked item from a few years ago, a lengthy study of the man shows deep admiration for Native Americans and how they operate as a people and treat the land and expresses contempt for how our military and government treated them.

Why this facet of John Muir can now be overlooked explains the shallowness of the entire movement we are currently experiencing. People are imperfect to begin with, so to ferret out those imperfections from the past to judge and impugn today is not only damaging, but wrong. Lost in the demands for perfection from history is that today’s judgments are being made by equally imperfect people.

SOURCE

Australian irrigators pushed for 'primacy' over the environment in water allocations

NSW's main irrigator lobby group pressed the Berejiklian government to place the state's water plans above the federal law and sought to tap water earmarked for the environment.

The demands are detailed in a letter obtained by the Herald and The Age the NSW Irrigators Council (NSWIC) sent to the state's senior water bureaucrat in April.

At the time, the government was putting final touches to new water sharing plans it has since submitted to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority for accreditation.

The irrigators sought the insertion of words that would "confirm primacy" of the plans over the 2007 Commonwealth Water Act, a move environmental lawyers say would trigger legal challenges.

The council also backed a narrowing of the definition of what constitutes so-called planned environmental water, a call it noted Water Minister Melinda Pavey had taken up.

The irrigators thanked the Planning Department for the removal of some environmental water rules, citing the Murrumbidgee River as one example.

The push to identify and allocate "underused" water for farming use may also open the way for legal challenges if such changes run counter to the $13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Claire Miller, interim chief executive of the NSWIC, said her organisation stood by the letter's contents.

Emma Carmody, special counsel for the Environmental Defenders Office, said while it was normal for a lobby group to advocate its members' interest it was surprising to see them seek water sharing plan provisions at odds with the basin plan and Water Act.

"Water sharing plans are subordinate legal instruments," Dr Carmody said. "Like all subordinate legal instruments, they sit under, and must comply with, overarching statutes, not the inverse."

Independent NSW MP Justin Field noted the council had recently complained in a letter that their concerns were not being addressed. This leaked document, though, was "proof that they are being heard at the highest levels of government and are getting their way".

"This letter spells out that the Irrigators Council have successfully lobbied to remove significant amounts of water designated for the environment and these changes have made it into the final water sharing plans without other stakeholders having the opportunity to comment," Mr Field said. "That is an outrageous process."

The call for primacy of the state plans over the federal laws was "a gobsmacking request that shows them as bad-faith actors in the implementation of the entire basin plan", he said.

A spokeswoman for Ms Pavey said the government had "consulted widely on all changes to the state water sharing plans" over the past three years.

Other groups consulted included the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, key Aboriginal groups such as the Murray Lower Darling Indigenous Nations and Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations organisations, environmental interests and local councils.

"It shouldn’t be a surprise that the NSW government is committed to creating water policy that benefits water users, including the environment," the spokeswoman said.

It comes as the recently released Living Planet index found the numbers of such fish had plunged 76 per cent globally since 1970, including 59 per cent in Oceania.

Lee Baumgartner, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University and a lead researcher for the project, said fish numbers for many species in NSW were less than 10 per cent of their pre-European colonial times.

"We're dealing with severe water deficiencies," he said, some of which were caused by dams and other interventions.

"By fixing rivers for fish, you are by default fixing them for irrigators," Professor Baumgartner said.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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4 August, 2020

Biden’s false climate promises

Biden’s multi-trillion dollar climate action plan is full of promises that the law says he cannot keep. Promising to do what you cannot do is a false promise. Here are some big ticket examples.

Biden says “If I am elected I will do the following:

Create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure from roads and bridges to green spaces and water systems to electricity grids and universal broadband…

Create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations…

Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities…”

What is wrong with these grand promises? Simple. The President of the United States has no authority, or the money, to do any of these things. That authority (and money) belongs solely to the U.S. Congress. So here is what these promises really amount to.

Biden really says “If elected I promise to do the following:

Beg Congress to do something about America’s crumbling infrastructure. I will propose a big plan but what they do is up to them.

Implore Congress to somehow create a lot of jobs in the American auto industry. How they do it is up to them.

Repeatedly ask Congress to build a lot of zero-emissions public transit stuff. I will bug the hell out of them. (What they do is up to them.)”

Not quite so grand sounding, are they? In fact they are pretty humble, because Congress, not the President, runs the U.S. Government. That who is President is all important is just a myth, albeit a seemingly universal myth.

Nor is the Congress likely to do much of this hugely expensive stuff, even if the Democrats win both houses, which is also unlikely. Unlikely + unlikely = very unlikely. This is especially true because Biden’s undocumented cost estimate of two trillion dollars is way low. It is more like twenty trillion.

It would require trillions of dollars in new taxes, which is political suicide, especially in the House where every seat is voted on every two years. The symbolic House Climate Crisis Committee put out an even grander plan than Biden’s, but like the toothless Committee that plan is just symbolic.

Note by the way that there is no mention of all these jobs being union in the real promises. Even Congress cannot make that happen. There are “Buy American” clauses in Federal contracts, but no “Only Unions Shops Can Bid On This” clauses. That would be truly unconstitutional.

It has been suggested that all this pro-union rhetoric is to make up for Biden’s unacceptably truthful admission that killing the fossil fuel industry would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs. Or it may be because AOC, who is hot on unions, is his top climate plan planner. In any case it is yet another false promise.

People running for President should only promise to do what Presidents can actually do. They cannot speak for Congress so should not pretend to. Biden’s climate promises are so false they are absurd. You can’t get there from here.

SOURCE

Lord Monckton Delivers His Most Important Intelliqence Report Yet: CO2 is Saving Earth

This is from a year ago but is a very thorough coverage of the whole scientific picture. The fact that the video is on Infowars simply reflects the difficulty skeptics have in getting published on mainstream platforms

Climate misanthropes

Most of the doomsaying elites are candid about their contempt for the value of human life and about their political endgame. They are defined by the term misanthropes, “people who dislike humankind”.

Liberal ideologues preach that an all powerful central government on a Global scale is necessary to save the planet. It is also necessary to equitably distribute the worlds financial and physical resources.

Christina Figueres, former chief of The international Panel on Climate Change, called communism the optimal system for avoiding dangerous global warming in an article in the Daily Caller on January 15, 2014. A year later on February 3, 2015 at a European conference she acknowledged that the UN’s climate program has provided the political and organizational wherewithal to replace the economic system that made modern economic growth possible. She said : “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

That is a “frighteningly arrogant statement” said Steve Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White in their brilliant 2016 book FUELING FREEDOM. This requires central planning with uncompromising faith in the power of government and an even stronger belief that personal freedom need not be present in society. It actually describes all the groups battling against our current government. Could they all be misanthropes?

The economic development model that the UN climate czar consigns to the dustbin of history allowed a middle class to flourish. The hallmarks of that model, private property rights, a competitive market and personal freedom are today intertwined with the availability and and creative conversions of fossil fuels.

In the 1970s when the politics of environmentalism emerged, The Club of Rome published a dystopian manifesto titled Limits To Growth predicting the end of growth and the need for a centrally controlled economy. Mr. Biden is building on that plan in his platform for the nation.

In the Club of Rome’s 1991 publication The First Global Revolution, the organization unashamedly revealed their misanthropic world view. It said, “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famines and the like would fit the bill.” Yes you read that correctly.

Not to be outdone in misanthropy Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote in a report to The Federation of American Scientists in 1978 “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

The Marxist founder of the United Nations Environment Program, the late Maurice Strong, contended that “the only hope for the planet” is the collapse of industrialized civilizations. The planetary management advocated by these alarmists is to be carried out by those sanctioned by the elites rather than by the consent of the people.

Few Americans on either side of the political spectrum appear to be aware of this dark side of the global warming issue, and few public officials seem willing to risk the wrath that the mainstream media reserves for climate heretics. Yet opinion polls consistently show that a strong majority of the U.S. citizens abhor the idea of global governance. Europeans may be accustomed to their governments social engineering. We doubt that a critical mass of Americans are willing to surrender to green mandates that will limit the number of miles they drive until they purchase an electric car. If our democratic form of government is to endure, energy policies must be made to satisfy the desires of the public. This could well end Nov 3.

Given the weakening evidence for any concern about climate change and the counterproductive consequences of climate policies, surely economic growth offers the best bet for adaptation to what ever change the Earth might experience. America’s future may not offer a climate any different from today’s, but the future that the alarmists propose is a regression toward the pre-industrial era devoid of the freedoms and prosperity afforded by plentiful energy.

Today it would be hard to argue that no one other than George Soros is the worlds most powerful and effective misanthrope. It would take a team of psychiatrists to figure out why a man with a billion dollars who has made his home in America would so despise this country as to devote decades and his few remaining years at 89 to destroying his adopted homeland.

Perhaps an undiagnosed brain tumor or premature dementia brought on this psychosis. Why else would he finance people intent on undermining all this country has stood for. Why else would he help elect the politicians who allow thugs to run wild burning , looting and vandalizing to their heart’s content.

We are told that Soros is a socialist, but what is a Socialist’s idea of a perfect socialist state: a dictatorship modeled on the old Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela? Or perhaps Nazi Germany, where though he was a Hungarian Jew , he cast his lot with the barbarians. He identifies with them still.

SOURCE

Australia: More funding needed in government push to cut 'green tape': industry

Resource and agricultural industries are welcoming plans to cut "green tape" and speed up project development by handing control of some elements of national environment laws to state governments, but they say changes cannot come at the expense of wildlife protection.

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced in July plans for a "one-touch" regime that transfers to states the Commonwealth's legal responsibilities for protecting threatened species and ecosystems in assessments of major projects that come under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Ms Ley has ruled out financial support to help the states conduct extra work under a new system. But she has said states would have to show they could meet the standards required under the act, which include assessing complicated, long-term impacts of activities such as land clearing, coal mining or sinking wells for gas production, and impacts on flora, fauna and the water table.

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable welcomed the opportunity to speed project approvals and said the mining industry relied on a "strong social licence" and for environmental assessments "to be done properly".

"The single-touch system is a huge opportunity because it gets rid of duplication and complexity in different systems that exist between state and federal governments," Ms Constable said. "But the department or body that has carriage of compliance must have the right amount of resources."

Federal administration of the act has fallen short since it was created in 1999. The list of threatened species and ecosystems has grown by a third – from 1483 to 1974. More than 8 million hectares of threatened species' habitats have been cleared in that time, mostly for project development, but 93 per cent of these were not assessed under the legislation.

A report last month from the Commonwealth Auditor-General found the Environment Department failed to protect endangered wildlife or manage conflicts of interest in development approvals, and 79 per cent of approvals were non-compliant or contained errors.

National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said green tape was a "huge concern" for the farm sector, with uncertainty about different state and federal processing discouraging investment in activities that should be simply and quickly assessed, such as clearing regrowth of invasive species from a property.

"It is limiting innovation and expansion of farms. Put simply, people don't know what they can and can't do," Mr Mahar said.

He also called for more funding to bolster the system.

"Of course there needs to be more funding, for better engagement with industry about the act, and to make sure the regulations are working they way they were intended," Mr Mahar said.

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said the proposed changes could "improve certainty and flexibility for business, environmental groups and communities" and "provide greater flexibility when circumstances change while ensuring environmental protection is maintained".

The government's plans were announced in response a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act by former competition regulator Graeme Samuel, who found the national laws were “not fit to address current or future environmental challenges” and that for industry they are "ineffective and inefficient".

Last week Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his initial meeting with state leaders had been "really positive" and he was confident that negotiations with state governments would lead to agreement for a new regulatory regime.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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3 August, 2020

Greenie son resigns from News Corp board

Good riddance to James. Lachlan is more balanced, like his father, so the publications will not change noticeably

James Murdoch has resigned from the board of News Corp over a disagreement with its editorial coverage of politics and environmental issues in a move that severs his ties to his family's global media empire.

Mr Murdoch, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, said he would step down as a director of the owner of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Australian and the right-wing Fox News cable television network immediately.

His decision is not completely unexpected - Mr Murdoch has previously expressed unease with News Corp’s editorial direction - but it does confirm a professional rift in the multibillion-dollar business.

"My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," Mr Murdoch said in a letter to the board on July 31. News Corp confirmed the resignation to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and said that the board would reduce to 10 directors. Mr Murdoch had been on the board of directors since 2013.

A joint statement from Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch wished Mr Murdoch “the very best”. “We’re grateful to James for his many years of service to the company. We wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” the pair, who are co-chairman and chief executive officers, said.

Mr Murdoch and his wife Kathryn Hufschmid, who has worked for the Clinton Climate Initiative, have previously spoken publicly about their concerns with News Corp’s editorial direction. In September last year Mr Murdoch told The New Yorker he strongly disagreed with many of Fox News’ views and admitted that there were times where he and his father did not talk. Fox News backed US President Donald Trump’s campaign and regularly espouses conservative views.

In October last year Mr Murdoch told Vanity Fair that there was an urgent need for solutions on climate change, adequate health care and income inequality. When News Corp’s local news arm, which also publishes The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun, was criticised globally for its coverage of the Australian bushfire crisis in January, Mr Murdoch broke ranks and accused the global media empire of promoting climate denialism.

News Corp’s local newspapers have previously been accused by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd and former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull of running partisan campaigns against them. Lachlan Murdoch is close to former conservative Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, according to people who know him.

A spokesperson for Mr Murdoch and his wife told The Daily Beast in January that the couple were “particularly disappointed” in the bushfire coverage by News Corp’s Australian news outlets.

Columns by Melbourne writer Andrew Bolt and Sky commentator (and The Australian Financial Review columnist) Rowan Dean in the tabloids and former ASX chairman Maurice Newman in The Australian have described climate change as a "cult" and "a socialist plot".

In a broadcast on News Corp-owned Sky News, Bolt criticised the "constant stream of propaganda" on the ABC about the climate crisis.

"Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known," the spokesperson said in January.

Three former executives of News Corp, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age at the time that Mr Murdoch’s statement was unsurprising given his views on climate change and his difficult relationship with his brother, Lachlan, are well known.

"James and Lachlan are ideologically apart and will continue to be," one of the former executives said, while another said Mr Murdoch was looking to intentionally distance himself from the scrutiny his family was receiving. But the timing of Mr Murdoch’s abrupt exit on Friday is interesting given the fast-approaching US election.

Several weeks ago Mr Murdoch and his wife each contributed more than US$615,000 to a fundraising committee for former Vice President Joseph Biden, who is hoping to fight for the presidency against US President Donald Trump at the upcoming election. His resignation also follows the release of the BBC documentary The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty.

Ironically several people familiar with the family’s thinking believe Mr Murdoch has left at a time when the company is subtly watering down its support of Mr Trump. Some of its key mastheads including The Australian are also adopting a more centrist political approach, according to people familiar with the matter.

Whatever the motive, James' decision puts an end to his tumultuous professional relationship with his father and brother Lachlan, who has long been considered Rupert’s favourite.

James has fallen in and out of favour with his father over the years but until 2011, was considered the heir apparent to the family’s media empire. According to people familiar with the Murdoch family, James is also considered to be most like his father.

"James is like his father, News Corp people believe," Michael Wolff wrote in 2008. "He's aggressive, implacable, focused, remote, fit, precise. His father is obviously proud, even perhaps slightly afraid of him."

But the disastrous News of The World scandal in 2011, which occurred while James was running News Corp’s holdings in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, rattled his position in the family empire and challenged his relationship with his father. While he was later appointed chief executive of 21st Century Fox, his older brother’s position as family heir was made apparent in 2018 following the announcement of the family’s $US52.4 billion sale of 21st Century Fox to Walt Disney, when he was named chief executive of what would be known as Fox Corporation.

A 20,000 word piece in The New York Times last year said the two brothers were barely on speaking terms.

James Murdoch will not leave the board without a large sum of money. While he will no longer receive board fees, he still made more than $US1 billion from the Walt Disney acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which was completed early last year.

James Murdoch flagged he would make climate change-focused investments with his earnings from the Disney merger and step away from the family business. He continues to hold shares in News Corp.

SOURCE

Watching CO2 feed the world

By David Wojick

Watching a child grow is seeing carbon dioxide in action. Plants turn CO2 into the food we eat to live and grow on. “You can't live on air” is a common saying but that is just what we do; we live on air and water.

Few people appreciate this amazing fact, that CO2 in the air is the global food supply. Our meat, fruit and veggies, also our candy and ice cream, milk and wine, are built almost entirely from carbon dioxide and water. Everything we eat and drink.

There is also a bit of nitrogen, to make protein, plus a bunch of trace minerals and vitamins, but you and I are basically composed of processed H2O and CO2.

We should be very thankful that this CO2 food supply is increasing every year, along with our hungry mouths. Instead the climate alarmists want to reduce it, supposedly to make the weather better. This is truly stupid. Carbon dioxide is feeding the world, more every year. The last thing we want to do is reduce the global food supply.

The chemistry is complex but the facts are simple (and miraculous). Plants use the energy of sunlight to transform CO2 and water into their food. They both live and grow on this food, just as we do. Animals eat the plants and each other, then we eat both. Thus we all live on processed carbon dioxide.

It is no accident that we exhale water and carbon dioxide. We are simply completing what is called the carbon cycle when we do this. Our bodies use some of the CO2 based food for the energy they need to live and this returns the carbon dioxide and water to their original form. All living things exist this way.

Carbon cycle: CO2 (+ water) in > Life> CO2 (+ water) out.
Life is a CO2 based miracle.

It is a tragedy of ignorance that almost no one knows about this miracle. I have seen school lessons that actually teach the carbon cycle without mentioning carbon dioxide. They talk as though plants get their food from the ground, not the air.

Even worse, CO2 is demonized as air pollution. The world’s food supply cannot be pollution. How stupid is that!

To correct this ignorance it might be useful to label our foods with the amount of carbon dioxide they embody. We already label them for calories, fat, vitamins and such. People should learn how much CO2 they eat every day and be thankful for it.

Water is plentiful in most places, but carbon dioxide is scarce everywhere. For every million molecules of air only about 400 are CO2. That plants can actually find and consume these scarce molecules is amazing in itself. That all life ultimately feeds on these molecules is even more amazing.

A hundred years ago there were less than 300 molecules per million but happily that number has increased steadily. Plant productivity has increased accordingly, helping to feed our growing population. This is called the greening of planet Earth.

The climate alarmists have people calculating their so-called “carbon footprint” which is how much CO2 they cause to be generated. Everyone should be proud of their carbon footprint; it is helping feed the world. Make it bigger, not smaller.

For more on the miracle of carbon dioxide, check out the CO2 Coalition. For a lot of the science see the CO2 Science website.

SOURCE

An electric Hummer!

Just a folly

Side profile images of the upcoming reborn Hummer have been revealed by General Motors in the US overnight. And before anyone is wondering why GM is reviving a brand that symbolised gas guzzlers and excess, it's worth noting these will be fully electric vehicles.

In a video posted to the GMC website, the silhouettes of a twin cab pick-up and an SUV wagon can be seen.

A clay sculpting of the car, and a body shell, are also shown at various points during the video.

The clip includes purported vehicle performance figures which, if true, will be quite phenomenal.

GMC claims the new Hummer will have “up to” 1000 horsepower (745kW) and 11,500 foot-pounds of torque (15,591Nm) – although a final motor torque figure is still to be announced, we should expect it to be in the neighbourhood of 1000 to 1500Nm.

A 0-60mph (96.5kmh) acceleration time of 3 seconds is claimed, which would make it one of the fastest cars on the road, let alone being a quick time for a pick-up truck.

For context, a new Porsche 911 does the 0 to 100kmh dash in about 4 seconds and a V8 Holden Commodore took about 5 seconds to complete the same feat.

The vehicle’s initial launch was postponed earlier this year, however according to GM the car will now be available for pre-order sometime from September to December this year.

General Motors says production will begin at a US factory in 2021, but did not provide more specific timing.

The new Hummer is just one of several high profile upcoming electric trucks coming from General Motors and other rivals.

The Rivian R1T is expected to go into production in early 2021, while the Tesla Cybertruck will likely follow later in the year.

The Ford Electric F-150 is scheduled for a mid-2022 launch, and will be followed by the Nikola Badger.

The production schedules of all five vehicles have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

However, it is clear US customers will soon be spoiled for choice of full size electric pick-ups within the next few years.

SOURCE

The Democrats' Jihad Against Hydroxychloroquine and for a green new deal

The COVID-19 global pandemic knocked America's robust economy back on its heels. As states cautiously re-open, President Trump has been laser-focused on supporting small businesses and getting our nation to work. However, in Washington, D.C., with 51 million people out of work, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats, and their connected cronies have abused SBA loans. They have snuck numerous provisions into emergency bills under the cover of COVID-19.

The most terrifying sign of Democrats' plans is their embracing the previously dismissed "Green New Deal," which was a radical environmental proposal from self-described socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the third-ranking House Democrat, was too honest by admitting his party wants to use billions in COVD-19 rescue funds to "restructure things to fit our vision."

Democrats are showing their cards of enacting this left-wing dream legislation in pieces through the tax code. It is time to sound the alarm, and conservatives must carefully watch the latest developments.

Democrats are focused on tax-bills because they only take a simple 51-majority vote in the Senate, utilizing "budget reconciliation" rules. First, this was tried with the so-called "Moving Forward Act" a $1.5 trillion spending bill full of radical environmentalist plans. Also, there were additional disturbing provisions in the highway reauthorization pork-barrel bill, including green-tax credits, which extends and expands credits for wealthy homeowners with solar panels, storage devices, energy-efficient windows, and geothermal converters until 2025.

Once presented as "temporary" tax incentives, it is clear Democrats never want these green handouts to affluent taxpayers and highly-profitable renewable energy companies to end.

The truth is, America does not need new environmental regulation. We, along with other industrialized nations, can lower carbon emissions and still generate massive growth. Dozens of the world's largest companies have reduced carbon emissions by 12 percent, and major oil companies report their methane emissions have declined by 40 percent while oil production is steadily increasing. America needs free-market innovation, not manipulative tax code changes, and job-killing policies, especially during a pandemic!

As Ryan Ellis of the Center for a Free Economy correctly observes, as COVID-19-related legislation continues to be rushed through Congress this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump must stop all sneaky "Green New Deal" tax provisions.

We are not out of this pandemic, but the American people can overcome any obstacle. Using disaster and death to enact an extreme agenda must stop. Let's re-elect President Trump, make real progress on ending the pandemic, and get Americans back to work.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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2 August, 2020

Green Prince Of Darkness….Exposed

Today we have a new Green Prince poised to plunge the western world into a self imposed darkness. This Prince first creates the fiction that Carbon causes climate change, then adds the fable that green energy exists which can dispel this nonexistent problem. The entire range of ‘green solutions’ are all nonsensical. We’ll limit this discussion to just solar cells and batteries, saving bio-fuels and windmills for another time.

    The Sun Gives Us Nothing for Free

As alluring as the premise may be, the promise of solar energy is not free. The first solar cell was created in 1883 by Charles Fritts using a sheet of Selenium with thin Gold facings. The Sun radiates approximately 1000 watts per square meter at maximum. The Fritts cell produced 10 watts per square meter or 1% efficiency. The Russell Ohl patent of 1946 is considered the first modern solar cell. Today’s solar panels are high purity Silicon with a light doping of Phosphorus and Boron to provide breaks in the Silicone for electron movement.

The Universe is a radiation chamber with EMR and particle emissions from all concentrated mass, and decay particles from individual atoms. Solar radiation strips protons from Nitrogen atoms, creating Carbon-14. Stripping exposed electrons is even easier. Silicon has four rather stable outer shell electrons in an orbit that can hold eight electrons. Boron has five outer-shell electrons, and Phosphorus has only three. Silicon forms a cubic crystal grid, and slightly impure Silicone matrix sheets can then be embedded with Boron and Phosphorus atoms.

When exposed to sunlight, the Boron atom losses it’s easily excited fifth electron, which travels the Silicon matrix using the Phosphorus “hole” to the conducting collection grids on both sides of the photovoltaic cell and permanently exits the cell.

Only segments of the solar spectrum activate this flow and it must be captured on both sides of the panel to create a circuit. The required capture grid blocks some of the incoming energy and the net result is 10% efficiency, or approximately 100 watts per square meter, and only within limited ambient temperature ranges which prohibit lenses or mirrors for simple amplification.

Efficiencies as high as 40% are available with exotic materials, but then one must address the ‘high cost of free’, which applies to every ‘green’ technology. Silicon, Phosphorus and Boron are common elements, but to mine, refine and bring on line has a cost. That cost is reflected in ‘cost payback’ of 5 to 7 years depending on the system and level of government forced subsidy. But these costs are based on low cost carbon based energy systems providing these materials.   Regardless, this is a ONE-TIME, ONE-WAY EROSION PROCESS with a total system life of less than 20 years.

Solar cells produce only Direct Current, which is electric power by the migration of electrons, and in typical PV cells is only 1.5 volts. Alternating Current creates a voltage, but transfers power as a wave, rapidly cycled between positive and negative, with little actual electron migration. The first municipal Edison power systems were DC, but transmission loss and multiple voltage issues prevented success, and the Tesla-Westinghouse developed three-phase AC system became the driving force for modernization.

Converting DC to AC involves a conversion loss in an inverter, boosting to higher voltage and converting to more efficient three phase causes additional losses due to the Carnot Cycle. If you connect a hydro-turbine to a pump, you can only pump a portion of the water flowing from a dam into water pumped back to the dam. If you use the hydro-turbine to generate electricity, then use an electric pump to pump water back ablve the dam, then the losses are even greater. The combined losses converting 1.5 volt DC to usable 50 kV, three phase transmissible AC power is forever technically impossible.

Ignoring just these physical limitations, supposed science leading publications like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Discover, regularly show fanciful space based systems where vast arrays of solar panels, positioned around the planet, beam “sustainable” microwave energy back to Earth based antennas to provide 24 hour service. Never mind all the limitations above, now add the Carnot loss converting to microwaves on both ends of this system. Limitations to the field density of this transmission would require massive antennas, or large, “no fly zones” for humans, and instant on the fly cook zones for any stray birds.

To overcome solar wind and lunar gravity changes, these microwave transmitters would require constant realignment, or the transmissions would wander off the receiving antenna. The fact that this science fiction is presented as anything other than TOTAL FICTION, is proof that these publications are all “pop” and no science.

Much like paying your Visa bill with your Master Card, this parasitic ‘clean’ energy cannot provide the ‘spare’ energy to avoid ‘dirty’ energy. There is a constant loss of electrons in this system and power production erodes over time until, at twenty years, they are useless. The Silicon sheets are protected with glass covers which require periodic cleaning and are subject to damage from hail and wind debris.

Solar cells efficiency is also a function of azimuth angle and reduces with higher latitudes, and seasonal tilt angle. Systems with tracking ability have higher efficiency, but not recoverable installation costs. You get progressively less energy at the poles, precisely at the time when you need the MOST energy. To have usable power over extended periods requires a storage system. The most common of these is the battery, which is the heart of that ‘other’ planet saver.

   Dream Green Machine

Soon Electric Vehicles, aka EVs, will replace the nasty internal combustion engine and humanity will be in harmony with the Universe. The transition technology in this race is the hybrid auto and the front runner is the Toyota Prius. This undeniable marvel has a 120 pound Nichol-Metal Hydride battery that costs $3500 to replace or approximately $20 per pound. There again, a cost based on carbon energy providing the material production.

The ‘Metal Hydride’ portion of these batteries includes the rare Earth elements of Lanthanum, Cerium and Neodymium. These required green components do not willingly join the green cult movement. To have your treasured EV, this planet must be mined and those elements must be extracted and refined.

Due to chemical erosion thru use, these batteries have an eight year or 100,000 mile warranty period. You can save $450 per year on gasoline if you spend $450 per year on a battery. You can walk forever up the down escalator and still get nowhere. There is no way to improve or even ‘sustain’ our carbon-based life forms without expending some geologically stored carbon energy.

To the blue-green Hollywood Eco-Smurfs and Na’vi wannabe’s, we are NOT living on a green Pandora that needs rescue from the evil RDA mining company. Humanity will not be saved by mythical noble savages or a forced return to a primitive life style. It took most of the nineteenth century to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics. It took most of the twentieth century to apply those laws to the benefit of society. There will be no solutions to problems in the twenty first century that do not comply with these laws.

Curiously missing from the Climatology degree plan is any mention of Thermodynamics. Avoidance of these Laws must give license to break these Laws. Thus clouds can have a negative factor during the day, with their pesky ‘albedo’ effect reflecting sunlight back into space and then just hours later have a positive effect by blanketing the warmth at night….a reflector or greenhouse at the whim of a Climatologist.

Climatologist can ignore the specific heat and thermal mass of the entire planet and provide a computer model PROVING that the trace human portion, of a trace gas, in the trace portion of the Earth mass that is the atmosphere, is the single greatest climate forcing factor. They can then empower this three atom molecule the unique ability to radiate in a reverse flow in opposition to all proven Thermodynamic Laws. This is lawless behavior, which is by definition, criminal behavior.

SOURCE

Trump Administration Proposes Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rule for U.S. Manufactured Aircraft

The administration of President Donald Trump has announced it is imposing standards for aviation greenhouse gas emissions on domestic airplane manufacturers, a move intended to comply with the standards set by the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), of which the United States is a member.

The global standard was adopted by the ICAO governing council in 2016, and endorsed by all ICAO member states as an international standard in 2017.

The announcement to set domestic limits on aviation emissions was a bit unexpected from the Trump administration, which has generally avoided international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions.

The standard announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires all airplanes designed by domestic airplane manufacturers on or after January 1, 2020 to produce 4 percent less carbon dioxide emissions below levels emitted by aircraft in 2015. The standard also applies to all airplanes in production on or after January 1, 2028—giving U.S. manufacturers a five year longer period to meet the international standards than the 2023 date set by the ICAO. Airplanes currently in-use or that come into use during the intervening period are not required to meet the new standard.

The proposed rule is now undergoing the required review process and comment period, which must be completed before it is finalized and becomes official.

EPA Response

In EPA’s press release announcing the aviation emission proposal, the agency notes ICAO’s standards were developed “with significant input from EPA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and U.S. and international aviation industries.”

Three quarters of the aircraft manufactured in the United States are sold internationally, thus EPA says it proposed making the standard a domestic requirement to ensure consistent standards across the world, and to allow U.S. manufactured planes to continue to compete in the global marketplace.

“This standard is the first time the U.S. has ever proposed regulating greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Along with the Affordable Clean Energy and Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicle rule, this is the Trump Administration’s third major action to take sensible, legally defendable steps to regulate greenhouse gases, while safeguarding American jobs and the economy.”

Environmental Groups Want More

Shortly after the rule was proposed, a variety of environmental groups claimed the rule does not go nearly far enough to combat so-called climate change.

Reuters reports the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) climate legal director, Clare Lockwood, called the proposed rule a “toothless proposal does nothing to meaningfully address the serious problem of airplanes’ planet-warming pollution.” Lockwood went on to say in a CBD press release the rules “are ‘too weak’ to address the severity of the climate crisis.”

Airplane Manufactures Support Regulation

Despite the fact that airplane manufacturers were already improving fuel efficiency and reducing emissions, having improved fleet fuel economy by 40 percent between 2000 and 2019 and having cut carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the past 30 years, Airlines for American (A4A), an aviation industry trade group, said in a press release the rule was necessary to keep international markets open for U.S. manufactured airplanes, because “without the standard, the aircraft would not be able to get critical certifications necessary for international operations.”

“EPA’s proposal to adopt ICAO’s fuel efficiency and CO2 certification standard for newly manufactured aircraft is good for our industry, for our country and for the world,” Nancy Young, A4A vice president, environmental affairs, said the organization’s press release. “Although the U.S. airlines are already driven to be highly fuel- and carbon-efficient, this stringent new emissions standard will help U.S. airlines make a green industry even greener.”

This rule promotes the domestic aircraft industry while also protecting the environment, said Bryan Watt, a spokesperson for Boeing, according to the New York Times.

“[The rule] a major step forward for protecting the environment and supporting sustainable growth of commercial aviation and the United States economy,” Watt said.

Unnecessary, Slippery Slope

It is unclear why a federal regulation is necessary to certify manufacturers meet the ICAO standards, says H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., a senior fellow for The Heartland Institute.

“If American airplane manufacturers are worried they will lose access to foreign markets unless they comply with the international standards, they can just adapt their practices and comply,” said Burnett “Nothing prevents manufacturers of any products sold internationally from meeting a foreign country’s particular standards or international standards in general, indeed they adapt their products and packaging to local markets all the time, so, they don’t need a U.S. law or regulation forcing them to do so.”

Burnett says, aside from being unnecessary, by adopting federal regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions for the first time ever on the aviation industry, the Trump administration is setting itself up to be forced to impose ever greater emission regulations on a broad range of industries to fight climate change, which Trump has referred to as a “hoax.”

“It is shameful and discouraging that the Trump administration, of all presidential administrations one can imagine, is taking the lead on imposing greenhouse gas limits on aircraft manufacturers,” said Burnett. “There is little evidence humans are causing climate change and this decision plays into the hands of power-seeking climate alarmists, who can now say ‘if aviation greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous meriting restrictions, then cars, cows, factories, and power plants are even worse emitters, so the Trump administration should adopt stricter targets on those rather than rolling back emission reduction plans set under former-President Obama.’”

SOURCE

EPA Prioritizes Superfund Cleanup Sites Over Climate Change

Not long after the Trump administration made cleaning up Superfund sites a priority for the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler turned his attention to a century-old neighborhood built for steelworkers that sits atop soil with dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic.

Cleaning up the 1,700 residential properties on Pueblo’s southside was originally scheduled to take more than a decade, but Mr. Wheeler and then-Region 8 Administrator Doug Benevento cobbled together the additional $15 million per year needed to cut that timeframe by more than half.

“When I started with the agency in 2018, we knew what the problem was here, we knew what the solution was, but it was slated to take 10-15 years, and I just looked at that and said, that’s too long,” said Mr. Wheeler, who took over as EPA administrator last year. “We needed to get it done faster, and we are.”

The Colorado Smelter site now is slated to be completed in three to five years, part of the administration’s push to fast-track projects on the Superfund National Priorities List where “people live, work and play,” he said.

“This is a new approach we’re taking to Superfund,” said Mr. Wheeler, who toured the site Monday with EPA and local officials. “We’ll have it done by 2023, which means a couple of generations of children will be able to play in their backyard without fear of lead-contaminated soil.”

If the EPA under President Barack Obama had its eye on the sky, seeking to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases in the name of combating climate change, then the agency under President Trump has its hands in the dirt, digging into the unglamorous and often unheralded work of scrubbing polluted properties and spurring community revival.

“There are too many examples of sites around the country that have become stuck and lingered on the list for years, well beyond when they should have been cleaned up and delisted,” Mr. Wheeler said. “President Trump wanted to get these delayed sites unstuck.”

The Superfund National Priorities List is daunting, with 1,335 sites covering everything from old military arsenals to abandoned mines, but Mr. Wheeler said the agency was able to remove all or part of 27 projects last year from the list, the most in one year since 2001.

Even though neighborhoods of single-family homes like Bessemer hardly fit the Superfund stereotype, “they’re not as rare as you would think,” said Mr. Benevento, now associate deputy administrator, who cited the recent remediation of homes near a former vermiculite mine at the Libby Asbestos Site in Montana.

Expediting the Colorado Smelter cleanup creates a domino effect for other Superfund projects, he said.

“By doing this more quickly, we’re saving money for the taxpayer,” Mr. Benevento said.

SOURCE

Heatwaves Are LESS Frequent and Severe

Heatwaves during recent decades remain far less frequent and severe than was the case during the 1930s – nearly 100 years of global warming ago, reports a new topical summary at the website Climate at a Glance. When climate alarmists react to annual summer heatwaves by claiming they are being caused by global warming, people interested in the truth now have a concise, compelling source for rebuttal.

According to Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves, a majority of each state’s all-time high temperature records were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of global warming ago. Also, the most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

Heatwaves have always been a natural part of the American climate. Global warming will not put an end to heatwaves. However, global warming is not making heatwaves much worse, either, if at all. That is because the lion’s share of the Earth’s modest warming occurs during winter, at night, and closer to the poles.

The graph below illustrates how heatwaves were much more frequent and severe during the 1930s. Also, data show recent heatwaves are well within historically typical ranges.

Like all other aspects of the well-funded Climate Delusion, claims that global warming is causing more frequent and severe heatwaves wilt under the heat of scientific scrutiny.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here. Email me (John Ray) here.

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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BACKGROUND

Home (Index page)

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here. It shows that we actually live in an era of remarkable temperature stability.

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

Fossil fuels are 100% organic, are made with solar energy, and when burned produce mostly CO2 and H2O, the 2 most important foods for life.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness… “The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)

(2). “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

Consensus: As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.'

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

A Warmist backs down: "No one knows exactly how far rising carbon concentrations affect temperatures" -- Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: "The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

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