Greenie Watch by John Ray -- backup

This document is part of an archive of postings on Greenie Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written

This is a backup copy of the original blog

31 July, 2022

Trudeau’s fertiliser ‘ban’ threatens to create a food crisis

Typical Leftist destruction

Is the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, an idiot? Ordinarily I’d be more respectful of an elected leader, but this is the man who threatened Canadians over vaccine compliance, froze the bank accounts of peaceful protesters, and winked at China’s model of absolute power.

Having watched Sri Lanka’s government overthrown by starving citizens and the Netherlands grind to a halt behind furious tractors and peasants waving pitchforks – Trudeau has decided to push ahead with his fertiliser tariff and emissions reduction plan.

Provincial leaders complained bitterly about the decision at a meeting last week.

‘Western Canadian farmers already produce the most sustainable agri-food products in the world, and they’re continually being asked to do more with less. We cannot feed the growing world population with a reduction in fertiliser. Western Canadian producers base fertiliser inputs on realistic targets based on moisture availability. Producers are conservative in the use of fertiliser inputs and don’t add more than what is needed. They alone simply cannot shoulder the impact of this shortsighted policy.’

Canadians are furious with the Trudeau government, insisting that the proposed measures will cost the agricultural community billions, and that is if farmers are able to survive the drop in revenue when they are already struggling from rising fuel costs.

Soon, it will be too expensive for anyone except the largest corporations to grow food.

A report commissioned by the Western Canadian Wheat Growers put a price tag on Trudeau’s virtue, with the 30 per cent reduction on fertiliser costing Saskatchewan $4.61B, Alberta $2.95B, and Manitoba $1.58B – not in total – just for the spring crops of canola and wheat.

There are two problems facing farmers in Canada. One is Trudeau’s 30 per cent emissions target as part of the government’s climate goals, and the other is a tariff on imported fertiliser.

The latter has been dressed up as punishment for Russia’s invasion against Ukraine, where Canada’s Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, and their International Trade Minister, Mary Ng, introduced a 35 per cent tariff on all Russian goods.

This tariff includes nitrogen, which is a key component in fertiliser.

Instead of punishing Russia, the tariff has severely hurt Canadian farmers trying to grow food – and it has been done without the government making any serious attempt to replace the Russian market of nitrogen. Why not punish Russia by finding another supplier? Why are Canadian farmers being forced to wear the moral chains for Trudeau’s stand against Putin?

‘Why is it that Canada is the one that’s forcing our farmers to pay for the cost of the war in Ukraine?’ asked Ryan Koeslag, from Ontario Bean Growers.

Russia has established itself as a major exporter of fertiliser, providing over 80 per cent of the market in Eastern Canada, or US$365 million worth in 2021.

Knowing that conflict was a possibility – as former President Trump had warned for years – why was nothing done by the Canadian government to untangle its dependence from Russia in the vital agricultural region? Why leave food production tied to Putin’s whim? Even without the tariff, Russia could turn around and slap Canada with an export ban to which Trudeau has no Plan B.

Canadian farmers are understandably furious that they are being left with Trudeau’s bill while also being weighed down by Net Zero climate targets.

Brendan Byrne of Grain Farmers of Ontario insists that there should be some kind of government compensation for farmers forced to pay the tariff on fertiliser – which could only ever serve as a band-aid solution. It is one of many options to assist farmers. Rebates, an increase in domestic production, importing from a different country… As Koeslag says, Canada has sufficient resources in natural gas to make their own fertiliser.

G7 countries have been cautious to stay away from the topic of fertilisers when dealing with Russia. It was decided early on that tariffs, like the one introduced by Trudeau, have the habit of doing more harm to the country trying to extend the punishment. It is self-defeating – starving yourself to prove a moral point. India gave a similar defence when it refused to stop importing Russian oil and gas, asking why it should impoverish over a billion Indians while doing little to Russia in return.

‘The United States is not applying a tariff. The UK and France are not applying a tariff. Why is it that Canada is the one that’s forcing our farmers to pay for the cost of the war in Ukraine?’ asked Koeslag, who did not disagree with the need to punish Russia – just the way in which Trudeau is going about it.

Maybe the war in Russia is simply an excuse for Trudeau to wind back fertiliser?

The government’s decision to target fertiliser makes more sense if it is viewed in alignment with Canada’s fierce climate goals that follow a similar logic to those of Sri Lanka and the Netherlands where fertiliser is being attacked directly without the justification of war.

This motivation becomes more clear from a recent meeting involving provincial and federal ministers where the government explained that it is ‘looking to impose a requirement to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilisers saying it is a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change’.

Trudeau’s government have admitted that their 30 per cent reduction in emissions for agriculture (which was meant to be voluntary) cannot be achieved without putting restrictions on fertiliser use. This way, Trudeau is able to pretend that the cut is a moral one, in the name of supporting Ukraine, instead of a deeply unpopular political one to meet United Nations and World Economic Forum climate goals.

According to Nate Horner, Alberta’s Agricultural Minister, the last crop was the most expensive to produce in Canada’s history.

The government were unresponsive to pleas by food growers to assess nitrogen emissions via food density, rather than absolute cuts. This is a similar problem for Australia, a nation that feeds and powers the world but keeps ending up the piñata of UN scorn where bureaucrats beat us until tax dollars fall out. Blind cuts are what caused Sri Lanka’s food growing capacity to collapse in a matter of months.

‘The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages. The federal government needs to display that they understand this. We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,’ said David Marit, the Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture.

‘The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/trudeaus-fertiliser-ban-threatens-to-create-a-food-crisis

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Well, it looks like solar panels aren’t going to be saving the planet any time soon

In fact, some aren’t even able to work efficiently when the sun is too hot, which defeats the purpose of solar energy.

We know this because reports indicate the record heatwave tormenting the United Kingdom has effectively rendered solar panels there useless.

In an article Tuesday headlined “Weather ‘too hot’ for solar panels,” The Telegraph of London reported Tuesday that temperatures of over 104 degrees Fahrenheit — “for the first time ever in Britain” — severely negatively impacted local solar panels’ ability to store energy.

As temperatures rise above 77 F, solar panels become 0.35 percentage points less efficient with each increasing degree Celsius, the report said.

“The efficiency of solar panels is impacted by temperature, with high temperatures above 25 degrees [Celsius] negatively impacting on performance,” Tim Dixon, an analyst at Cornwall Insight, told the outlet. “It is likely that the extreme temperatures have impacted total output levels.”

Luis Villazon of Science Focus offered an explanation in answering a question about whether solar panels work better on hot days.

“Surprisingly, they perform worse as the temperature rises!” he wrote. “Solar panels work by using incoming photons to excite electrons in a semiconductor to a higher energy level. But the hotter the panel is, the greater the number of electrons that are already in the excited state. This reduces the voltage that the panel can generate and lowers its efficiency.

“Higher temperatures also increase the electrical resistance of the circuits that convert the photovoltaic charge into AC electricity.”

Now, it should be noted the past few weeks have been far from a failure on the solar energy front.

According to Fortune, Germany hit record levels of solar energy output over the weekend, although “if temperatures remain elevated for long” that output will certainly regress.

Despite this, the question remains: If climate change is truly the existential threat leftists claim it to be, won’t “extreme temperatures” be the new normal?

At that point, won’t their precious solar energy sources become more and more useless?

When it comes to solar panels, wind turbines and other “green” sources of energy, some experts believe there are already many better alternatives we could be using today.

Author and journalist Michael Shellenberger used to be a climate change alarmist and green energy enthusiast, but then he looked at the numbers.

“People think solar panels protect the environment but they require 300+ times as much land as conventional energy sources and now the Los Angeles Times has discovered that they could ‘contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium,'” Shellenberger tweeted on Sunday.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/solar-panels-failure-hot-weather ?

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Green Energy Threatens Reliability of Texas, US Electric Grids

Texans might be forgiven for thinking they have it better than the Brits when it comes to keeping the lights on. After all, they live in the energy capital of the world. However, the destructive nature of renewable energy like that used in Great Britain knows no borders, especially when American politicians push subsidies and mandates to force us off fossil fuels, threatening not just Texas but the entire U.S. electric grid.

Just a few days after the British were warned they might have to lower their thermostats and delay their dinners this winter to avoid blackouts, Texans were advised last Monday and Wednesday to conserve energy as summer temperatures peaked.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid manager for most of Texas, issued a conservation appeal to Texans and Texas businesses as last week’s temperatures were expected to top 105 degrees.

Yet the high temperatures were not all that unusual for Texas this summer. So even though demand was pushing to near-record levels, the primary reason for the call for conservation was “wind generation [that] is currently generating significantly less than what it historically generated in this time period.” On Wednesday, some forced traditional outages and lower solar output (due to West Texas cloud cover) also contributed.

Renewables—wind and solar—have come to dominate Texas’s electricity market. For years, coal and natural gas had been the leading sources of electric generation. Over the last two years, though, renewables have topped both, with wind leading the way.

But not last week.

Since the push for renewables in Texas began in 1999, electric generators have spent about $66 billion building wind and solar farms that have a generation capacity today of 46,949 megawatts, with wind accounting for 35,162 of those megawatts.

Yet as temperatures and Texans’ need for electricity were soaring, wind turbines across the state were still; and last Monday, they were producing about only 8% of their installed capacity. Operating reserves—the backup generation needed to keep air conditioners blowing and factories working—were shrinking.

Something very similar happened last year during the unprecedented 2021 blackouts when 10 million Texans went without power and 12 million without water, many for several days, during freezing temperatures. Energy analyst Robert Bryce noted at the time, “Roughly 17% of [wind’s installed] capacity was available when the grid operator was shedding load to prevent the state’s grid from going dark.”

It should also be pointed out that solar’s contribution to the grid during those pre-dawn hours was zero.

Thankfully, last Monday and Wednesday, the Texas grid did not fail. The wind began to pick up in the afternoons, allowing the state to avoid any blackouts. Yet the lesson learned is clear: During periods of extreme cold and heat, Texans have become deeply dependent on the wind and the sun to keep the lights on.

Why did energy-savvy Texas build an electric grid dependent on such unreliable energy sources? The answer is simple: Since 2005, renewable energy subsidies and benefits from federal, state, and local governments have totaled about $23 billion in Texas. As a result, investors have thrown $66 billion at renewables, chasing $1 of guaranteed return for every $3 invested, regardless of the price they get for their electricity.

Additionally, the Biden administration is doing everything it can to make investments in fossil fuels unprofitable. From bans on pipelines and drilling to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule on environmental, social, and governance investing that would force businesses to disclose uncertain risks due to climate change, it is becoming more difficult and expensive to run afoul of the green agenda.

Despite these costs, renewables are still far more expensive and less efficient in practice than fossil fuels and nuclear energy. For instance, with wind operating at only 8% of installed capacity last Monday, about $51 billion of the $56 billion invested in Texas wind turbines produced nothing just when Texans needed power most. While investors profited, Texas consumers and taxpayers were paying billions for a grid on the verge of blackouts.

On the other hand, imagine if the $56 billion spent on wind had been invested in reliable generation from coal, natural gas, or nuclear fuel. With those sources operating at 90% or more of capacity, no calls for conservation would have been issued last week, electricity prices would be lower in general, and Texans would be working and resting comfortably without a regular fear of grid failure.

Of course, Texans are not the only people experiencing these problems. The reliability of the entire U.S. electric grid is under pressure as it is being forced by irresponsible politicians and bureaucrats to shift away from fossil fuels to renewables. Energy trader Brynne Kelly recently said, “Problems with power grids across the U.S. and other countries are a potential catalyst for chaos in energy markets that are underappreciated.”

Bryce explains that the push for renewables is doomed to failure for the simple reason that they are ancient technologies that have long been eclipsed by more reliable alternatives:

By using hydrocarbons (at first coal, then later oil and natural gas) humans were able to harness ever increasing quantities of power and do so in ever-denser packages. In place of animal power, sun power, and wind power, factories began using advanced waterwheels and coal-fired steam engines.

The only reason wind and solar have made a comeback in the United States is because of government mandates and the more than $140 billion in government subsidies renewables have received in recent years.

There is still hope, however, that Americans won’t have to experience the energy poverty and forced lifestyle changes of our British neighbors. The solution for avoiding this is straightforward: End the subsidies and mandates, and renewables will go the way of the horse and buggy.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/18/green-energy-threatens-reliability-of-texas-us-electric-grids

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Trapped in a climate fantasy: We actually need coal and gas

Comment from Australia

Here are four fundamental, unacknowledged realities underlying our energy, climate change and economic situation.

One. Coal is not a stranded asset. It is booming worldwide. The amount of traded coal is increasing. The share of global electricity coal generates has barely moved in 30 years, despite intense Western efforts to end financing for coal.

Two. This is true of fossil fuels generally. The percentage of global electricity generated by gas is rising.

Three. Australia’s economy is totally dependent on exports of gas, coal, iron ore and other minerals. Nothing can replace this. Without it, our social spending, defence, aid would all be unaffordable.

Four. The push for renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is overwhelming in developed countries and strong in developing countries. However, if the world, or Australia, is to get anywhere near net zero, this will come at enormous financial cost and reduced living standards. This may be a sacrifice worth making to save the planet, but enormous costs are inevitable.

It is perhaps surprising that the political leader making the strongest effort to integrate these disparate realities into some kind of coherent policy is actually the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It’s important if Australian policy is to have any coherence that Albanese holds sway within his own party. It’s a perplexing feature of the new government that Albanese seems to be alone in making the case that new coal and gas projects should be approved because Australian coal is cleaner – that is, generates fewer emissions per unit of energy – than any coal that might replace it. And gas is cleaner than coal. That Albanese seems alone in advocating this proposition, which is Labor policy, is dangerous for the ALP.

It may be that his long involvement with the infrastructure portfolio has endowed Albanese with a deeper familiarity and appreciation than most left-wing politicians have of wealth creation rather than just redistribution.

A great deal of our climate debate is based on falsehoods, ignores fundamental facts and avoids realistic international comparisons. It’s commonly claimed Australia has lost a decade due to the climate wars and most other nations are thus far ahead of us. This is complete baloney based on a failure to take note of the most elementary facts of international life. In most developed nations, including Australia, greenhouse gas emissions have been either steady or declining for more than a decade.

The great big growth in emissions is in developing and middle income nations like China, India and Indonesia. In case those who claim we are uniquely disadvantaged haven’t noticed, most of Western Europe, which has gone much further in de-industrialising and embracing renewables than we have, is suffering a crippling energy crisis.

Western Europe depends on Russian gas. Germany used Russian gas to enable it to close coal-fired power stations and, very foolishly, nuclear power stations. The most stable nation in energy is France, because it relies so heavily on nuclear energy. Germany, like other Europeans, has restarted coal-fired power stations.

Germany wants to sanction Russia, but then objects to Russia not selling it more gas. Germany demonises fossil fuels but is completely dependent on gas. There is a parallel in Australia. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews wants more Queensland gas. But Victoria would be producing its own gas if his government had not placed so many prohibitions, restrictions and moratoriums on gas.

Russia is making as much money as ever from its energy exports. It sells energy to non-Western nations which are not boycotting it, such as China and India. And the gas it still sells to Europe it sells at sky high prices. Far from the West crippling Russia through energy sanctions, Moscow has intentionally turned down the volume of gas it will send to Europe, both to put Europe under pressure and to prevent Europe from filling up its gas reserves heading into winter.

As a result, the European Union has made a deal among its members to voluntarily reduce gas consumption by 15 per cent. But if it’s a cold winter in Europe, watch out for big domestic political trouble. In Britain, Tory leadership front runner Liz Truss is promising to cut green energy levies because of soaring energy prices, and inflation generally.

And in the United States, far from the climate wars being over, Joe Biden cannot get his climate plans legislated. The Democrats won the White House and both the Senate and the House of Representatives and yet the US political system will not pass Biden’s climate measures. Republicans are overwhelmingly likely to win the House in November and more narrowly favoured to win the Senate. That puts Biden’s climate agenda into complete reverse.

Canada has less political division over the issue but its big adjustments are ahead.

More here:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/trapped-in-a-climate-fantasy-we-actually-need-coal-and-gas/news-story/fcb3e14da53f8a232e1c56ce75b6256a

Friday, July 29, 2022

Climate change is killing more elephants than poaching, Kenyan officials say

What nonsense! Africa has always been prone to punishing droughts. Why does this one have to be caused by climate change? Sadly, I have been seeing images of starving African children as far back as I can remember

Illegal ivory poaching once posed a significant threat to Kenya’s elephants. But now the giants of the animal kingdom are facing an even bigger risk: climate change.

As Kenya battles its worst drought in four decades, the crisis is killing 20 times more elephants than poaching, according to officials. They cite desiccated carcasses found in Tsavo National Park, where much wildlife has fled in recent years in search of water.

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To survive, elephants require vast landscapes for foraging. Adults can consume 300 pounds of food and more than 50 gallons of water a day. But rivers, soil and grassland are drying up, resulting in a barren and deadly environment.

In the last year, at least 179 elephants have died of thirst, whereas poaching has claimed the lives of fewer than 10, Kenyan Tourism and Wildlife Secretary Najib Balala told the BBC. “It is a red alarm,” he said of the crisis.

Balala suggested that so much time and effort has been spent tackling the issue of poaching that environmental issues have been neglected.

“We have forgotten to invest into biodiversity management and ecosystems,” he said. “We have invested only in illegal wildlife trade and poaching.”

In recent years, Kenyan officials have clamped down on poaching, which has targeted giraffes for their meat, bones and hair and elephants for their ivory tusks.

Heftier penalties for poachers, traders and financiers were introduced under an updated wildlife and conservation management act that took effect in 2014. It was hailed for deterring criminals as wildlife populations rebounded.

49 million people face famine as Ukraine war, climate disasters intensify

In September, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the drought sweeping parts of the country a national disaster, with millions facing food instability and malnutrition.

Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said it would provide almost $255 million in aid to Kenya, including emergency food and support for farmers. They say they have lost up to the 70 percent of their crops, along with their livestock.

The agency said it would assist communities in Kenya’s arid and semiarid counties, which are experiencing the worst effects of the drought.

More than 4 million people in Kenya are facing acute food shortages. In recent months, child malnutrition cases have surged by half, to 942,000, Reuters reported.

And it’s not just elephants that are dying as a result of human-caused climate change.

Seven million livestock in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have died since last fall, according to a recent report by USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

The carcasses of giraffes, goats, camels and droves of cattle have also been found in villages after starving to death in northern Kenya. Such losses can be ruinous for families, which face food insecurity as a result, The Washington Post reported last year.

Rangers and hunters have tried to help the animals by supplying water and planting drought-resistant trees, but the dry spell has been relentless. Exacerbating the food crisis has been Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven up the prices of wheat and maize.

And while Kenya continues to face a punishing drought, the United States and Britain are also battling rising temperatures and scorched landscapes amid record heat.

In the United States, several states including California, which is enduring its third consecutive year of drought, have introduced water restrictions. In Britain, officials have warned of a drought and more wildfires in August following the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the country this month.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/28/kenya-elephants-drought-climate-change/

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China orders 300 million more tonnes of coal to be mined a year

China is stepping up construction of coal-fired power stations and has ordered an extra 300 million tonnes of the fossil fuel to be mined every year as it apparently contradicts its own climate change commitments.

Beijing approved the construction of 8.63 gigawatts (GW) of coal power in the first quarter of this year, nearly half the amount seen in all last year, according to a report from Greenpeace East Asia.

President Xi last year committed to phase down coal use from 2026 to tackle China’s position as the world’s biggest emitter by volume of greenhouse gases. However, climate experts are concerned those targets are undermined with a government focused on economic challenges.

The approval for coal-fired power gathered momentum in the fourth quarter of last year after China began suffering nationwide power shortages, Greenpeace said. As a result, 11GW of capacity was approved in the last quarter, from a total of 18.55GW last year. That momentum has continued into this year, the group said.

China relies on coal for about 60 per cent of its electricity and has asked domestic miners to increase capacity by 300 million tonnes this year. Electricity consumption has surged this summer as China suffers an intense heatwave, with air conditioning cranked up at homes and businesses.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, announced 10 billion yuan (£1.2 billion) of investment in coal power generation in May, as coal producers were pressed to ramp up output.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-orders-300-million-more-tons-of-coal-to-be-mined-a-year-qqj8h2r0t?mc_cid=aa4c7b8ac5&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Electric bus failure

Just one day after officials promoted the passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act, CTtransit, the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s bus service, has pulled its entire fleet of electric buses due to one bursting into flames. The electric vehicles have been replaced with traditional diesel-powered buses.

The New Haven Register reports that one day after officials promoted the passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act, one of the state-run electric buses burst into a massive inferno. The CTtransit bus caught on fire in a Hamden parking lot on Saturday morning and resulted in two workers and a firefighter being sent to the hospital.

Hamden fire officials said: “Lithium ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites.” Two transit workers were hospitalized as a precaution after being exposed to the smoke and a firefighter was taken to the hospital for heat exhaustion.

The bus was delivered in December and began service in January according to CTtransit spokesperson Josh Rickman. “The bus, last operated on July 20, on routes 243 and 265, and was not in service at the time of the incident,” Rickman said. “Bus fires are rare, but can occur similar to cars. This is CTtransit’s first fire incident with a battery electric bus. Bus operators, maintenance staff and others undergo extensive training and safety protocols are in place.”

Due to the fire, the entire electric bus fleet has been pulled from service as a precaution. “The importance of rider safety is demonstrated by taking these buses out of service and ensuring a thorough investigation is completed prior to any redeployment of the fleet,” Rickman said. “We have deployed diesel buses to make sure people get to where they need to be.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/07/26/connecticut-transit-replaces-electric-bus-fleet-with-diesels-following-massive-battery-fire/

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Greenie lunacy in Australia

Power grids transitioning to renewable energy generates great debate, but no one is discussing the Australian government’s transition into madness, marked by bouts of delusion and dissociation from reality on any issue involving climate.

An obvious area of denial is the chaos in power grids, with wholesale electricity prices spiking and major users being paid to stay off the grid to balance supply. Yet in the midst of it all, as if nothing was happening, a minster or official will declare that the switch to renewables must be accelerated.

Another is the declaration by defence minister Richard Marles that climate change – specifically rising sea levels – is a greater threat to the Pacific than Chinese military aggression. Made during a visit to the US in mid-July the minister’s comments may have had more to do with maintaining harmony at the Pacific Island Forum then being held in Fiji and attended by Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, or cosying up to Beijing, but it was a strange statement for a defence minister to make.

As part of the forum the federal government followed the fad of declaring climate emergencies signing a joint forum declaration including the phrase. Now all they have to do is to produce an emergency, although they will probably settle for another State of the Climate report declaring that eco-systems are on the point of collapse, as they have for more than 30 years.

For island nations the declaration makes complete sense. Tuvalu, for example, sits on the peak of a submerged mountain top with poor soils, half way between Australia and Hawaii, where it is regularly visited by cyclones. So climate has always been a problem. But if the developed countries can be persuaded that the nation’s troubles are somehow their fault, they may contribute billions to a climate fund long promised during the endless series of international summits. Some of that climate money would be funnelled to the Pacific nations.

From the point of view of the minister of defence however, his declaration is madness. Satellites have tracked sea level increases world-wide for decades with the results publicly available on a site run by Columbia university. Since the early 1990s, when satellite monitoring began, sea levels have been increasing at an average rate of 3.3 millimetres a year. Such an increase, if extended over a whole century, adds up to an undramatic one third of a metre.

In addition, in a paper in the journal Nature Communications in February 2018 three New Zealand academics point out that there is growing evidence that islands are geologically dynamic, with features that adjust to changing sea level and climatic conditions. As a result, Tuvalu’s overall area has been increasing, not decreasing, although the island’s government strongly disputes that any of the additional surface area is usable land. Storms are another, obvious problem in the Pacific, but a paper in the journal Nature Climate Change in June, authored by 12 mostly Australian academics, states that the frequency of tropical cyclones has been declining due to climate change. The paper was reported straight-faced by the mainstream media without acknowledging that it contradicted decades of green propaganda.

Then there is the ongoing power crisis which has affected most Western countries. In Australia, the lack of a power capacity market, which pays generators simply to be ready to produce power, combined with relentless green propaganda against coal-fired power plants means no new plants have been built for years, there are fewer coal-fired generators capable of delivering on-demand power, and those still operating are increasingly unreliable due to age and lack of maintenance.

Those problems, combined with massive increase in energy prices, have resulted in spikes in wholesale power prices, particularly in Queensland, with advisor Energy Edge noting that wholesale power prices in the state more than doubled to an unheard-of average of $323 a megawatt-hour in the June quarter. When coal-fired power stations ruled the old state grids 20 years ago, wholesale power cost about $40 a megawatt hour. A few years ago, it was $80 a megawatt hour.

The chaos, and revelations that the government may pay some $1.7 billion to major power users who agree to stay off the grid during the crisis, has not affected the worldview of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. In a recent conference in Sydney, as the crisis was unfolding, he talked of the shift to net zero and ‘the transformative role of clean energy technologies’.

Activists claim a big part of the problem is the increase in prices for gas and coal, but they bear the blame, having repeatedly attacked new coal mines and gas projects, and their financiers, using propaganda, protests and legal actions designed to deter or delay projects.

Thanks to their efforts, no one should be surprised that developed countries are dependent for energy supplies on the likes of Russia, where green activists trying to shut fossil fuel projects get into serious trouble. In 2013, for example, the Russian government charged Greenpeace activists who tried to interfere with an oil platform above the Arctic circle with piracy. The charges were dropped after two months but activists have stayed away from Russian oil platforms.

Threatening to throw activists in jail for up to 12 years is unlikely to happen in the West but any government serious about energy security must recognise that the grid will require base-load fossil fuel power for many years to come, and do more to stand up to climate trouble-makers. Along the way they could try to regain their sanity.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/transition-to-lunacy

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Temperature extremes: it’s cold South of the Equator

The widespread proclamations that recent short episodes of very high temperatures in some parts of the Northern hemisphere are proof positive of global warming are so brain-dead that I have forborne to put up anything about them, but perhaps I should say something.

That you can't judge climate from isolated episodes of weather seems to be too profound for many. And actual global warming as told to us by climatologists is measured in tenths of a degree. How can a change of tenths of a degree give rise to hugely hot episodes? There is clearly some other influence or influences at work.

But the big factor being overlooked by those who should know better is the unusually COLD weather in the Southern hemisphere at roughly the same time. People around me have all been complaining about it and the Australian media have been vocal too. So the GLOBAL temperature has on average been unremarkable. And remember it is global warming we are supposed to be talking about.

Some more germane comments below

But aside from those commonsense observations what those who shouldknowbwetter reignoring isthat theunusualy hotepiodes in the Northern hemihere have been acconpanied
While sizzling temperatures in Europe have captured the attention of the mainstream media, recent prolonged bouts of cold in the Southern Hemisphere have gone almost unnoticed. Can these simultaneous weather extremes be ascribed to climate change, or is natural variability playing a major role?

It’s difficult to answer the question because a single year is a short time in the climate record. Formally, climate is the average of weather, or short-term changes in atmospheric conditions, over a 30-year period. But it is possible to compare the current heat and cold in different parts of the globe with their historical trends.

The recent heat wave in western and southern Europe is only one of several that have afflicted the continent recently. The July scorcher this year, labeled unprecedented by the media, was in fact less severe than back-to-back European heat waves in the summer of 2019.

In the second 2019 wave, which also occurred in July, the mercury in Paris reached a new record high of 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.7 degrees Fahrenheit), besting the previous record of 40.4 degrees Celsius (104.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set back in July 1947. A month earlier, during the first heat wave, temperatures in southern France hit a blistering 46.0 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Both readings exceed the highest temperatures reported in France during the July 2022 heat wave.

Yet back in 1930, the temperature purportedly soared to a staggering 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Loire valley during an earlier French heat wave, according to Australian and New Zealand newspapers. The same newspapers reported that in 1870, the thermometer had reached an even higher, unspecified level in that region. Europe’s official all-time high-temperature record is 48.0 degrees Celsius (118.4 degrees Fahrenheit) set in 1977.

Although the UK, Portugal and Spain have also suffered from searing heat this year, Europe experienced an unseasonably chilly spring. On April 4, France experienced its coldest April night since records began in 1947, with no less than 80 new low-temperature records being established across the nation. Fruit growers all across western Europe resorted to drastic measures to save their crops, including the use of pellet stoves for heating and spraying the fruit with water to create an insulating layer of ice.

South of the Equator, Australia and South America have seen some of their coldest weather in a century. Australia’s misery began with frigid Antarctic air enveloping the continent in May, bringing with it the heaviest early-season mountain snow in more than 50 years. In June, Brisbane in normally temperate Queensland had its coldest start to winter since 1904. And Alice Springs, which usually enjoys a balmy winter in the center of the country, has just endured 12 consecutive mornings of sub-freezing temperatures, surpassing the previous longest streak set in 1976.

South America too is experiencing icy conditions this year, after an historically cold winter in 2021 which decimated crops. The same Antarctic cold front that froze Australia in May brought bone-numbing cold to northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil; Brazil’s capital Brasilia logged its lowest temperature in recorded history. Later in the month the cold expanded north into Bolivia and Peru.

Based on history alone then, there’s nothing particularly unusual about the 2022 heat wave in Europe or the shivery winter down under, which included the coldest temperatures on record at the South Pole. Although both events have been attributed to climate change by activists and some climate scientists, natural explanations have also been put forward.

A recent study links the recent uptick in European heat waves to changes in the northern polar and subtropical jet streams. The study authors state that an increasingly persistent double jet stream pattern and its associated heat dome can explain “almost all of the accelerated trend” in heat waves across western Europe. Existence of a stable double-jet pattern is related to the blocking phenomenon, an example of which is shown in the figure below.

Blocking refers to a jet stream buckling that produces alternating, stationary highs and lows in pressure. Normally, highs and lows move on quickly, but the locking in place of a jet stream for several days or weeks can produce a heat dome. The authors say double jets and blocking are closely connected, but further research is needed to ascertain whether the observed increase in European double jets is part of internal natural variability of the climate system, or a response to climate change.

Likewise, it has been suggested that the frigid Southern Hemisphere winter may have a purely natural explanation, namely cooling caused by the January eruption of an undersea volcano in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga. Although I previously showed how the massive submarine blast could not have contributed to global warming, it’s well known that such eruptions pour vast quantities of ash into the upper atmosphere, where it lingers and causes subsequent cooling by reflecting sunlight.

https://clintel.org/temperature-extremes-its-cold-south-of-the-equator/

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The End of the Gas Range and Fireplace? Local Governments Ban Natural Gas

Are you hoping for a shiny gas range in your new home? How about a fireplace as the main attraction of your new living room?

If so, don’t move to Los Angeles, because the city is phasing out natural gas hookups in all new residential and commercial buildings effective Jan. 1, 2023. But LA isn’t alone. It’s California’s 57th locality to introduce commitments to phase out natural gas, and many cities across the country are following suit.

In a misguided effort to reduce emissions, localities that pass ordinances like these totally ignore just how vital natural gas is not only for our broader energy landscape, but also for families and businesses.

Nationwide, natural gas accounts for roughly 38% of electricity generation, and around 177 million Americans use natural gas to heat their homes and cook their meals.

Beyond its prevalence, natural gas is also an affordable source of energy. Residential natural gas is estimated to cost almost one-quarter the price of electricity, which, according to the American Gas Association, adds up to an average annual savings of over $1,000 in household utilities.

And natural gas is a relatively clean source of energy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that “burning natural gas for energy results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2) than burning coal or petroleum products to produce an equal amount of energy.”

Yet, even with all of these benefits considered, environmental activists would rather push out-of-touch policies that drive up prices for families and businesses and wreak havoc on consumer choice.

For LA restaurant owners, the new ordinance inhibits their ability to expand their businesses, create more jobs, and offer competitive prices for restaurant patrons. Chefs around the city already rely heavily on gas stoves for food preparation. The city’s natural gas ban will discourage businesses from expanding—if new buildings won’t feature gas lines, it is unlikely some businesses will open new locations.

And for restaurant patrons, these restrictions could also mean higher costs, as energy hugely affects food prices. Forcing business owners to shift away from natural gas in favor of all electric appliances—especially in a city where electricity prices already surpass the national average—will only impact food and energy costs more. With prices rising at rates not seen in over 40 years, natural gas bans will only add fuel to the proverbial fire.

Unfortunately, 77 other municipalities across the country have introduced or adopted some form of a ban on natural gas hookups under the banner of climate change. Some cities are even going so far as to require electrification retrofits in existing buildings and new remodels.

Washington became the first state to introduce a statewide mandate that requires all newly constructed buildings to feature electric heating and hot water systems.

And on the East Coast, Maryland’s ambitious Climate Solutions Now Act included a provision that requires the development of all-electric building code recommendations in an effort to achieve the state’s lofty goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Every jurisdiction is different, but these ordinances all share one thing in common: In eliminating the option for natural gas appliances, they ultimately force consumers to rely on more expensive, less reliable forms of energy.

With oppressive policies like these being considered across the country coupled with the Biden administration’s anti-fossil fuels agenda, it’s no wonder why energy prices have risen over 30% in the last year.

And still, activists would rather strip away a vital resource without regard to the severe economic implications of these policies that acutely impact Americans’ well-being and opportunities and affect our poorest and most vulnerable the most.

The last thing Americans need is fewer choices. Policymakers should be pursuing policies that unleash our energy potential, allow Americans to access affordable energy, help our economy grow, and respect consumer choice.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/12/local-governments-ban-natural-gas-goodbye-to-the-gas-range-and-cheaper-heat

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Green energy shift gives China ‘leverage’ over Britain, Lords warn

Britain risks becoming in thrall to Beijing due to its growing reliance on renewable energy, a new Lords report has warned.

A House of Lords committee warned that Britain is becoming too dependent on China for the supply of rare earth elements used to manufacture wind turbines and components for solar panels.

China’s control over the global industry creates “new risks” as it leaves Britain at the mercy of Beijing for supplies.

The Lords committee warned that Xi Jinping could use rare earth mineral supplies as “leverage” in negotiations over other issues. Jason Bordoff, of the Columbia Climate School, told the committee China's dominance in the critical minerals market was a "national security concern" and said the Government should work to reduce the nation's reliance on Chinese exports.

The Economic Affairs Committee issued the warning in a report on how the Government can secure the nation's energy supply while delivering on promises to combat climate change.

The committee recommended more investment in the North Sea to deliver domestic supplies of oil and gas and encouraged policy measures to boost private investment in renewables.

But it warned that the country faces "new dependencies" with the shift to renewables as Western nations push ahead with plans to end imports of Russian gas.

China provides around 98pc of the EU's requirement for rare earth metals used to build batteries, smartphones and offshore wind turbines. The minerals are mined in many countries but Beijing has invested in the infrastructure required to process and export them globally.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/21/green-energy-shift-gives-china-leverage-britain-lords-warn/?mc_cid=aa4c7b8ac5&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Volcanoes, oceans, and weather

Viv Forbes

Despite Green/ABC propaganda, recent Australian floods were not caused by coal, cattle, or cars. Weather is driven by winds; solar energy powers the winds and draws moisture for them from the oceans. These eternal natural rain-making processes have been aided recently by two extra factors.

Firstly, a big La Niña weather event in the Pacific Ocean has left warmer water closer to Australia.

Secondly, there is increased underwater volcanism in this region as evidenced by the volcanic eruptions near Vanuatu.

Earth’s climate history is written in the rocks. Anyone who cares to read that record will see that recurring Ice Ages, not global warming, pose the greatest threat to life on Earth. Even in today’s warm Holocene Era, the Little Ice Age was a time of war, famine, and distress whereas the Medieval Warm Period heralded a time of peace and plenty.

Earth’s weather is driven by winds powered by convection currents which get most of their energy from the Sun.

Eastern Australia is currently under the influence a large La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean. These periodic ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) weather cycles are Earth’s most significant short-term weather events and have been identified in Earth’s climate as far back as 1525, well before the Model T Ford and the Watt steam engine.

The great El Niño of 1877-78 heralded China’s Great Famine, brought droughts to Brazil, and caused failures of the Nile floods and the Indian monsoon. Even the Titanic was an El Niño casualty when it met an iceberg blown far south by El Niño winds.

Australia’s famous weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, was well aware of the natural cycles in climate as far back as 1923 – long before coal, cattle, and cars could be blamed for ‘Global Warming’.

ENSO oscillations are not driven by atmospheric conditions or human activities – they react to the beat of a geological drum. ENSO timing and strength is largely determined by volcanic activity and the movement of tectonic plates, particularly along the Pacific Ring of Fire and the mid-ocean ridges splitting both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

But largely hidden from view is another huge weather-maker – sub-sea volcanoes.

Right now, volcanic activity (mostly sub-oceanic) is melting parts of polar ice sheets as well as releasing volcanic dust and other natural gases into the oceans and atmosphere. The warmed sea water expands, raising sea levels and increasing the evaporation which produces clouds and rain. Right now, the Tonga volcanic eruption is evaporating sea water that is probably adding to the record La Niña rains of Eastern Australia.

Volcanic hot spots can also melt ice-bound methane from the sea floor thus releasing large unmeasured quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere.

Man’s coal, cars, and cattle are puny compared to what nature can do.

Hysterical children and political agitators keep bleating about ‘man-made global warming’. But climate history shows that the real danger to life on Earth is ‘global cooling’ – a return of the great continental ice sheets creating a frigid zone north of a line from London to Chicago. Russians and Alaskans know about frozen mammoth bodies in the ice, and understand this threat, but the western world continues to worship Saint Greta.

A bleak northern winter approaches. As blackouts beckon and the lights start to flicker, coal is suddenly okay again. But Europeans and Australians still plan a Net Zero ritual sacrifice of their farmers on the alarmist altar. None of these sacrifices will deter La Niña, or stop the volcanoes, or feed the people.

Someone should ask the new Green Government of Australia:

‘If emissions of CO2 are the problem, why have we banned emissions-free nuclear power?’

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/volcanoes-oceans-and-weather/

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

U.S. to plant more trees "as climate change kills off forests"

A rare display of good sense. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason

The Biden administration on Monday announced plans to replant trees on millions of acres of burned and dead woodlands as officials struggle to counter the increasing toll on the nation's forests from wildfires, insects and other manifestations of climate change.

Destructive fires in recent years that burned too hot for forests to quickly regrow have far outpaced the government's capacity to replant trees. That's created a backlog of 4.1 million acres (1.7 million hectares) in need of replanting, officials said.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said it will have to quadruple the number of tree seedlings produced by nurseries to get through the backlog and meet future needs. That comes after Congress last year passed bipartisan legislation directing the Forest Service to plant 1.2 billion trees over the next decade and after President Joe Biden in April ordered the agency to make the nation's forests more resilient as the globe gets hotter.

Much of the administration's broader agenda to tackle climate change remains stalled amid disagreement in Congress, where Democrats hold a razor-thin majority. That's left officials to pursue a more piecemeal approach with incremental measures such as Monday's announcement, while the administration considers whether to declare a climate emergency that could open the door to more aggressive executive branch actions.

To erase the backlog of decimated forest acreage, the Forest Service plans over the next couple years to scale up work from about 60,000 acres (24,000 hectares) replanted last year to about 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) annually, officials said. Most of the work will be in western states where wildfires now occur year round.

“Our forests, rural communities, agriculture and economy are connected across a shared landscape and their existence is at stake,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement announcing the reforestation plan. “Only through bold, climate-smart actions ... can we ensure their future."

Almost 5.6 million acres have burned so far in the U.S. this year, putting 2022 on pace to match or exceed the record-setting 2015 fire season, when 10.1 million acres (4.1 million hectares) burned. Many forests regenerate naturally after fires, but if the blazes get too intense they can leave behind barren landscapes that linger for decades before the trees come back.

The Forest Service this year is spending more than $100 million on reforestation work. Spending is expected to further increase in coming years, to as much as $260 million annually, under the sweeping federal infrastructure bill approved last year, agency officials said.

Some timber industry supporters were critical of last year’s reforesting legislation as insufficient to turn the tide on the scale of the wildfire problem. They want more aggressive logging to thin stands that have become overgrown from years of suppressing fires.

To prevent replanted areas from becoming similarly overgrown, practices are changing so reforested stands are less dense with trees and therefore less fire prone, said Joe Fargione, science director for North America at the Nature Conservancy.

But challenges to the Forest Service's goal remain, from finding enough seeds to hiring enough workers to plant them, Fargione said.

https://www.aol.com/us-plant-more-trees-climate-183635081-205308589.html

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How London paid a record price to dodge a blackout

Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel.

The crisis, which quietly played out within the control room of the British electricity system, shows the growing vulnerability of energy transportation networks — power grids and gas and oil pipelines — across much of the industrialized world after years of low investment and not-in-my-backyard opposition.

On most days, the bottlenecks mean distorted costs. Sometimes, it results in sky-high prices where energy is in short supply when it is needed. At other occasions, prices can tumble to zero, or go negative, when producers cannot sell their power into a congested transmission system. Increasingly, it puts the whole system at risk. Talk to most industry executives and you quickly get the sense that we are sleepwalking into more blackouts. Discuss the problems with the engineers who manage the system day-in, day-out, and that danger appears even closer.

The £9,724.54 price, settled between noon and 1:00 p.m. on July 20 via the so-called NEMO interconnector that links the UK with Belgium, was the highest Britain has ever paid to import electricity, nearly five times higher than the previous record. The absurdity of that level is apparent when comparing it with the year-to-date average for UK spot electricity: £178 per megawatt hour.

“It was an absolute shock,” says Phil Hewitt, who has been monitoring electricity prices for over two decades and is now executive director of EnAppSys Ltd, a consultancy. “It was the price to keep the lights on. The security of supply was a stake.”

The actual amount of electricity bought at the record price was tiny: enough to supply just eight houses for a year. More power was bought at slightly lower prices. The payments, nonetheless, highlight desperation: buying across the channel was, for 60 minutes or so, the only option to balance the system. If Belgium had not helped, the grid would had been forced to “undertake demand control and disconnect homes from electricity,” says a grid spokesperson.

In a normal situation, without the traffic jams on the grid, the UK should have been able to send power to the southeast of England from elsewhere in the country — even from all the way in Scotland, where offshore wind farms are producing more than ever. The problem is that the UK, and the rest of industrialized nations, aren’t investing enough in their grids, leaving the system exposed.

The world is investing about $300 billion per year in power grids, an amount that has barely changed since 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. It isn’t enough, as the global economy electrifies and deals with a shifting generation map, with intermittent renewable energy like solar and wind replacing polluting — but dependable — coal- and gas-fired stations.

Now, grid bottlenecks create perverse situations. In Spain, for example, there are times when solar electricity producers in the south have to switch off their plants while, in the north, gas-fired power stations are turning on to meet demand. In some corners of the US, electricity prices often drop below zero, with power plants forced to sell their energy due to grid constraints. Meanwhile, in other corners of the US, consumers are facing calls to reduce power demand on peak days and face record prices.

Aging infrastructure, often 30 or 40 years old, needs to be replaced. But refurbishment and expansion come up against local opposition to more pylons and overhead cables. In the UK, authorities are bypassing popular resistance by moving some parts of the grid offshore, using undersea cables. “Fish don’t vote,” goes the industry’s joke. It is, however, an expensive undertaking.

High metal prices are making building new grids even more costly. Cables are made of copper or aluminum which, at today’s prices, account for nearly a third of what will be spent on a new grid, up 10 percentage points from investments made between 2010 and 2020.

Across the US and Europe, utilities and grid managers need to invest billions of dollars into digitalization of the network to allow demand-side load management that would reduce consumption at peak times, often via hourly prices. Managing peak demand is going to be even more important when millions of households shift to electric vehicles, creating a new source of electricity consumption.

Last year, the UK paid just under £1,600 per megawatt hour on one day to import electricity and avert a short squeeze. On July 18, it paid just over £2,000, which became the record. Two days later, the price went to nearly £10,000. The pattern is clear. At some point, even sky-high prices won’t be enough. Then, a blackout would belatedly lay bare the consequences of our under-investing ways.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-25/london-s-record-9-724-54-per-megawatt-hour-to-avoid-a-blackout?mc_cid=edb4ec0a81&mc_eid=cc88839e92#xj4y7vzkg

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ESG Funds Covertly Buying Oil Stocks as Green Agenda Creates Energy Shortage

ESG-aimed investment funds – which gauge companies based on their environmental, social and governance performances – are quietly investing in oil company stocks.

Why am I not surprised?

There’s a lot of neo-feudal claptrap floating around about saving the planet by leaving oil in the ground, switching to electrified mass transit, getting rid of air conditioning and killing all the cows.

In other words, let the peasants freeze/boil in the dark, squeeze together in mass-transit-driven cities and eat bugs, saving the planet’s resources for the elites to jet among their several homes.

And despite the impending demise of the planet (2030 or 2050, depending on the latest environmental prophecy), the green of the green movement is the color of money.

As ESG investment funds virtue-signal about the evils of fossil fuels like oil, in Europe they’re pouring money into energy companies like Shell, Repsol, Aker BP ASA and Neste Oyj, according to zerohedge.com.

They say oil stocks are hot and they’re buying them because oil companies are investing in transitioning to cleaner energy.

Yeah, right.

That’s a virtuous position, probably a cover story, and I’ll bet they’re investing in oil stocks because there’s a lot of money to be made in them right now with or without solar, wind or harnessing the power of fireflies. Or something.

As of Friday, there was a 28.4 percent increase in the S&P 500 Energy Index this year, and that’s a lot of incentive for pious ESG investors to lose their virtue.

And some of that more than 28 percent increase comes from oil shortages created by none other than the E in ESG itself.

Decrees of the priests of Gaia have long pointed out the evils of oil, the lifeblood of contemporary civilization.

So investment fell, but along came other factors making petroleum more valuable: Russia invading Ukraine and the inabilities of wind and solar to provide energy for Europe and elsewhere, according to oilprice.com

Try as they might, the greenies and their acolytes peddling ESG cannot suspend the iron laws of supply and demand.

So in the midst of post-pandemic economic problems and green-driven poor national policies in the U.S. and Europe, it turns out the lone S&P 500 economic sector showing gains year-to-date as of July 22 is energy.

Driving the 28.4 percent energy gain for 2022 is integrated oil and gas, up 37.1 percent.

That’s a big temptation for ESG funds.

And they’re buying it.

So, despite today’s hardships at the gas pump (and when the electric bill comes), our energy needs are ultimately wedded to the stuff that comes out of the ground.

Because like the elites and their private jets, the wobbly pronouncements of ESG fund managers are showing the hypocrisy of current climate alarmism.

Perhaps it’s overly optimistic to think we can wait them out and hope they return to their senses regarding the realities of energy.

Because when they figure out their green dreams are just that — dreams — they’ll no doubt find something else to oppress the masses.

As I have repeatedly been saying: Save the planet, starve the people.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/profits-trump-going-green-esg-funds-covertly-buying-oil-stocks-green-agenda-creates-energy-shortage

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Volcanoes, oceans, and weather

Viv Forbes

Despite Green/ABC propaganda, recent Australian floods were not caused by coal, cattle, or cars. Weather is driven by winds; solar energy powers the winds and draws moisture for them from the oceans. These eternal natural rain-making processes have been aided recently by two extra factors.

Firstly, a big La Niña weather event in the Pacific Ocean has left warmer water closer to Australia.

Secondly, there is increased underwater volcanism in this region as evidenced by the volcanic eruptions near Vanuatu.

Earth’s climate history is written in the rocks. Anyone who cares to read that record will see that recurring Ice Ages, not global warming, pose the greatest threat to life on Earth. Even in today’s warm Holocene Era, the Little Ice Age was a time of war, famine, and distress whereas the Medieval Warm Period heralded a time of peace and plenty.

Earth’s weather is driven by winds powered by convection currents which get most of their energy from the Sun.

Eastern Australia is currently under the influence a large La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean. These periodic ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) weather cycles are Earth’s most significant short-term weather events and have been identified in Earth’s climate as far back as 1525, well before the Model T Ford and the Watt steam engine.

The great El Niño of 1877-78 heralded China’s Great Famine, brought droughts to Brazil, and caused failures of the Nile floods and the Indian monsoon. Even the Titanic was an El Niño casualty when it met an iceberg blown far south by El Niño winds.

Australia’s famous weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, was well aware of the natural cycles in climate as far back as 1923 – long before coal, cattle, and cars could be blamed for ‘Global Warming’.

ENSO oscillations are not driven by atmospheric conditions or human activities – they react to the beat of a geological drum. ENSO timing and strength is largely determined by volcanic activity and the movement of tectonic plates, particularly along the Pacific Ring of Fire and the mid-ocean ridges splitting both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

But largely hidden from view is another huge weather-maker – sub-sea volcanoes.

Right now, volcanic activity (mostly sub-oceanic) is melting parts of polar ice sheets as well as releasing volcanic dust and other natural gases into the oceans and atmosphere. The warmed sea water expands, raising sea levels and increasing the evaporation which produces clouds and rain. Right now, the Tonga volcanic eruption is evaporating sea water that is probably adding to the record La Niña rains of Eastern Australia.

Volcanic hot spots can also melt ice-bound methane from the sea floor thus releasing large unmeasured quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere.

Man’s coal, cars, and cattle are puny compared to what nature can do.

Hysterical children and political agitators keep bleating about ‘man-made global warming’. But climate history shows that the real danger to life on Earth is ‘global cooling’ – a return of the great continental ice sheets creating a frigid zone north of a line from London to Chicago. Russians and Alaskans know about frozen mammoth bodies in the ice, and understand this threat, but the western world continues to worship Saint Greta.

A bleak northern winter approaches. As blackouts beckon and the lights start to flicker, coal is suddenly okay again. But Europeans and Australians still plan a Net Zero ritual sacrifice of their farmers on the alarmist altar. None of these sacrifices will deter La Niña, or stop the volcanoes, or feed the people.

Someone should ask the new Green Government of Australia:

‘If emissions of CO2 are the problem, why have we banned emissions-free nuclear power?’

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/volcanoes-oceans-and-weather/

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

From Sri Lanka to Holland, the road to hell is paved with emissions reductions

Matt Canavan

In Evelyn Waugh’s classic satire Black Mischief, the fictional African country of Azania welcomes an English delegation from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, at a gala dinner. In the after-dinner speech, given by the Azanian Minister for the Interior, it becomes clear that there is a slight misunderstanding about the Society’s objectives:

‘It is my privilege and delight this evening to welcome with open arms of brotherly love to our city Dame Mildred Porch and Miss Tin, two ladies renowned throughout the famous country of Europe for their great cruelty to animals. We Azanians are a proud and ancient nation, but we have much to learn from the white people of the West and North. We too, in our small way, are cruel to our animals…’At this point, Waugh explains that the Minister ‘digressed at some length to recount with hideous detail what he had himself once done with a woodman’s axe to a wild boar’.

I sometimes think that the mess that countries like Sri Lanka get themselves in is perhaps due to a similar ‘lost in translation’ phenomenon. Presumably, when our modern-day, do-gooding, busy-bodying westerners turn up in countries like Sri Lanka, with promises of infinitely cheap renewable energy, there is the mistaken belief that these envoys, from the rich industrial nations of the west, must know what they are talking about. Like when George Soros and Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz were the guests of honour at the 2016 Sri Lanka Economic Forum at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo. As Professor Stiglitz told the assembled government officials and business leaders, ‘your major source of energy is the sun and not oil’. In a written article following his visit, Stiglitz explained that a carbon tax was the answer:

‘Sri Lanka has abundant sunshine and wind; a carbon tax would raise considerable revenue, increase aggregate demand, move the country toward a green economy, and improve the balance of payments… Sri Lanka may be able to move directly into more technologically advanced sectors, high-productivity organic farming, and higher-end tourism.’ Unfortunately, and tragically, Sri Lanka took his advice, stopped building a coal-fired power station, promised a 70 per cent renewable energy target, mandated organic farming and achieved an ‘ESG score’ of 98 out of 100. As a result, the production of Sri Lanka’s major cash crops fell by 20 per cent, they have a major balance of payments crisis (despite abundant sunshine they can’t afford to import oil) and their government has been ousted in a people’s revolt.

The one difference from Waugh’s time is that there is now a two-way trade in ignorant, wishful thinking between the developed and the developing worlds. At last year’s Glasgow climate change conference, Sri Lanka launched the #Nitrogen4NetZero initiative. As the then president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, explained to his gullible mother country audience, ‘nitrogen generated by human activity and released into ecosystems worsens climate change’. Sri Lanka was the driver behind the Colombo Declaration, signed in 2019 with the goal of halving nitrogen waste by 2030.

European countries have backed the Sri Lankan push and guess why Dutch farmers are angry right now? They are protesting because a new law would force many of them off the land so that more houses and roads can be built while the Netherlands, as a whole, stays within strict nitrogen limits set by European laws. This started because a small environmental group, Mobilisation for the Environment, successfully sued the Dutch government in the European Court of Justice in 2017 for insufficient limits on nitrogen. Since then, the Dutch government has developed plans to reduce nitrogen use, which is a by-product of everything from transport to construction to agriculture. When asked whether the plans would require compulsory farm buyouts, the responsible minister said, ‘I really can’t rule it out’.

Nitrogen is the most important nutrient for plant growth because it helps plants form protein and that ultimately keeps humans fed. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere but until the German scientists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, developed their eponymously named process, there was no way of directly using atmospheric nitrogen to stimulate plant growth. Before nitrogen-based fertilisers, famines were a common disaster. After Haber-Bosch, famines are only caused by political dysfunction not agricultural failure. The process was originally developed at the world’s largest chemicals hub, the BASF facility at Ludwigshafen, Germany. This month BASF executives reported that they are considering shutting down the entire facility if Russia restricts gas supplies further.

Food security and energy security are two sides of the same coin. As we enter the worst energy crisis in our nation’s history, the Dutch and European experience shatters the myth that something like Sri Lanka cannot happen here. On the Australian Greens website, they say that they want ‘to support farmers to reduce emissions, including through reducing usage of fossil fuels and nitrogen fertilisers’. Even more foreboding is a tweet from our new Prime Minister, after just two months in the job, ‘Thanks to @JosephEStiglitz for the discussion about the global economy this morning’. The obligatory selfie of inane grins provides no confidence that organic farming, or the power of sunshine, were not discussed.

The Labor party has been elected on a platform of grand promises to transform our food and energy production processes. They want more than 80 per cent of our electricity to come from renewable energy and they want to pay farmers to shut down food production so we can ‘offset’ other carbon-emitting activities. As the world suffers from food shortages does it seem a little strange to pay farmers to grow less food?

At least in Waugh’s Azania the leaders were trying, however unsuccessfully, to make their nation more advanced and prosperous. Our leaders now seem to be in a race to join the third world as quickly as possible. It would make for a funny satire if we were not all characters in the story.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/green-mischief/

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What You Need to Know About Biden’s Climate ‘Emergency’

In a speech Wednesday in Massachusetts, President Joe Biden announced that he would use yet more executive action in a bid to push his radical climate agenda, despite recent checks on unilateral presidential action by Congress and the Supreme Court.

The administration is aiming to overhaul the energy sector and the American economy to achieve the costly and unrealistic objectives of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reaching economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.

Biden stopped short of invoking national emergency powers to achieve his climate agenda as rumored, while promising more regulatory and executive actions to come. Instead, the president announced $385 million for weatherization projects and air-conditioning units and diverting $2.3 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for infrastructure.

He also announced more heat-exposure regulations by the Department of Labor, in addition to touting programs in the infrastructure bill that passed last fall.

Whether to appease activists who want more or to lay the groundwork for future action, Biden also used the occasion to make the case why he’s entitled to act unilaterally without Congress.

Taking a look at some of those claims briefly. Biden said:

* “The U.N.’s leading international climate scientists called the latest climate report nothing less than, quote, ‘code red for humanity.’”

Headlines for “code red” situations came from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ press release about an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draft report last August. But for all its faults, this isn’t what the IPCC found. Rather, it reported that the most extreme projections for warming—the so-called code red—was downgraded to “low likelihood.”

That’s as much good news for humans as it is for improving scientific integrity.

As an aside, Biden continued: “It’s not a group of … elected officials [saying that]. These are the scientists.” Where else have Americans heard that before? Americans found out all too well with the total mishandling of discussions about COVID-19 as politicians, the media, and scientists made similar appeals to authority to deflect responsibility.

* “We lose it all” if we don’t suppress temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Not only is this irresponsible catastrophism that is not supported by the science Biden was quick to cite for authority, it also ignores some of the benefits of warming and displays a lack of faith in the ability of people to innovate and adapt.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates warming already of 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1850. During that time, extreme poverty plummeted 80%, global crop yields of grains increased more than 200%, and humanity has become more resilient to natural disasters, to name a few trends in the remarkable progress for human well-being and adaptation that give reason for optimism.

* Last year, “extreme weather events [cost] $145 billion” in property damage because of climate change. Damages from weather disasters have been decreasing since at least 1990 as a percent of gross domestic product, which is the proper way to account for losses.

More importantly, the death toll from climate-related disasters decreased 96% over the past century. To put this in perspective, Our World in Data (a project of Oxford University) recorded that 15,071 people died in natural disasters in 2020. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 93,331 deaths in the U.S. from drug overdoses that same year.

* Hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, flooding, and wildfires are becoming more destructive because of climate change. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported no discernible global trends for hurricanes, winter storms, floods, tornadoes, or thunderstorms, while it did report trends in heat waves, heavy precipitation, and some kinds of drought.

Policymakers should be very leery of using global warming as a scapegoat, only to misdiagnose problems and consequently ignore real solutions. The failure of the Oroville Dam in California and mismanaged federal forests fueling catastrophic fires are just two examples.

Finally, while not explicitly stated, Biden clearly intimated that the air we breath is choked with pollution. In fact, Americans have a lot to be proud of. Air pollution has decreased 73% since 1980.

The Real Emergency

But here’s the real problem. No matter what one thinks about the nature and pace of global warming, the president’s self-proclaimed reason for unilateral action should be appalling to all Americans: “Congress isn’t acting as it should.”

Americans’ elected representatives set policy, not a king in the White House (regardless of party) or bureaucrats keen on legislating via regulation.

With the latest failure in Congress of Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, a massive spending bill that included tax favors and spending on climate-related federal programs, the possibility of more radical climate policies passing Congress appear even more remote.

Congress has rejected these and other climate policies on numerous occasions over the past two decades because of the far-reaching costs and dubious environmental impact of those proposals.

Yet Congress’ role in establishing policy was reinforced by the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in West Virginia v. EPA, severely limiting the ability of regulatory agencies to develop major policies, such as economy-wide climate regulations without clear direction from Congress.

Many on the left are pillorying Congress; Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; the Supreme Court; or high energy prices for derailing Biden’s climate agenda, claiming that the urgency of global warming means the rules no longer apply.

However, the left’s anger at those developments exposes a disturbing impatience with representative government and a preference for control to be concentrated in the hands of an unelected, select few.

That Americans’ constitutional system of government and elected representatives are disdainfully, shrilly considered as obstacles to this (or any) president’s agenda is something that should concern every American, regardless of political party. Ends justified by means, regardless of the rule of law, is not a sustainable way to run a country.

In reality, Biden’s problem is that he and his administration have never bothered to make the case for, and earn the consensus of Americans or their elected representatives for, the extreme, unrealistic, and deeply flawed climate commitments the president unilaterally made to the U.N.’s Paris Agreement.

So, who was the president really speaking to on Wednesday?

According to The New York Times: “Just 1 percent of voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll named climate change as the most important issue facing the country, far behind worries about inflation and the economy. Even among voters under 30, the group thought to be most energized by the issue, that figure was 3 percent.”

Other than climate activists and a small handful of radical congressmen, it’s not at all clear.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/21/what-you-need-to-know-about-bidens-climate-emergency

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UK: Net Zero policy already costing at least £2000 per household

A new analysis by Net Zero Watch reveals that Net Zero policies are already costing every household over £2000 per year.

Spending programmes and the Emissions Trading Scheme together cost around £300, while green levies – mostly subsidies to renewables – are adding another £350.

Renewable energy also imposes a range of indirect costs as businesses pass on their costs to consumers, which may add up to another £600. Finally, there is a significant cost due to the constraints put on fossil fuel extraction in the UK.

Together, these figures add up to more than £2000 per household, a figure that will rise sharply as Net Zero plans moves to more problematic sectors of the economy.

Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch’s deputy director, warns:

"The government seems to have no grasp of the devastating energy crisis that is about to break. The personal finance expert Martin Lewis has warned of a cataclysmic energy emergency this autumn, but ministers are still pretending that the answer is to just go faster down the same road that has brought us to the brink of disaster. This is insane."

Net Zero Watch director Dr Benny Peiser said:

"Boris Johnson green dogmatism has shackled the government in a trap of their own making. This winter, the new Prime Minister will be faced with the worst energy cost crisis since WWII. Unless the new PM makes swift and radical policy changes ministers will be presiding over the biggest social and economic disaster in living memory – and will rightly be blamed for it."

https://mailchi.mp/5efeeb12dcca/net-zero-policy-already-costing-at-least-2000-per-household-190203?e=cc88839e92

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China's cheap energy dominance will endure for decades

For those dismayed at the searing heat afflicting much of the planet, some sobering news from the world’s biggest coal industry: the dirtiest fossil fuel will remain China’s mainstay source of energy for a decade or more.

“Coal’s dominant role is unlikely to change in the next 10 to 15 years,” Zhang Hong, deputy general secretary of the China National Coal Association, told a briefing on Wednesday.

China, which produces more than half the world’s coal, has said consumption won’t peak until 2025. By that time, annual demand will have risen 4% to 4.3 billion tons, according to Zhang. In 2030, the nation will still be burning some 4 billion tons of the fuel, scarcely less than is being used now. And as the government opens up even more mines, capacity is likely to be kept well above projected demand at 5 billion tons, he said.

For all of China’s massive build-up of clean energy, climate action remains hostage to energy security, particularly after last year’s crippling power shortages and the spike in prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the same briefing, Wang Zhixuan, an official with the China Electricity Council, called the inherent intermittency of renewables a “gray rhino,” or an obvious but neglected risk, that could topple the grid if coal isn’t there as a backstop. “Safely switching energy is the basis to phasing out coal,” he said, and the country’s climate goals can’t be achieved by “one-time fixes.”

In the meantime, the fuel’s importance only grows. Capital spending on thermal power generation rose 72% in the first six months of the year, according to the CEC, dwarfing other energy sources. And more projects are on the way as the authorities speed up new approvals. The nation’s biggest coal producer said last week that net income could increase by as much as 60% in the first half.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-21/coal-s-dominance-in-china-will-endure-for-a-decade-or-more

Monday, July 25, 2022

The real-world consequences of green extremism

Glorious pictures from the edge of the universe have arrived on Earth just when events here force us to consider the possibility that governments are run by aliens. They are so out of touch with common sense that they must come from other planets.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a wonder of human ingenuity, resourcefulness, imagination, and creative curiosity, is revealing the birth of galaxies to a world in which, by contrast, overreaching oligarchs and bossy bureaucrats constrict the actions of ordinary people trying to make their own lives and the lives of others better.

Much of the world groans under immiserating rules handed down by a “theory class,” even though they obviously don’t work. The accolade for the most disastrous policy outcome is hotly contested, and Wednesday’s grim revelation of 9.1% inflation shows that President Joe Biden’s spending agenda is a strong contender. But even that might not take the cake.

Worse, perhaps, are the results of hyper-alarmism on climate change. Excessive environmental policies are proving disastrous worldwide. Suddenly, all the green chickens are coming home to roost.

Intolerant “liberals” keen to “save the planet” are ruining it — officiously preventing the poor from lifting themselves out of poverty, forcing wealthy nations to retreat from comfort and efficiency into backwardness, even killing people by the hundreds of thousands.

Humankind long ago acquired the technological ability to thrive in all climes, but citizens of the most advanced nations must now check the weather forecast to know if their fridges and household lights will work or be shut down in an electricity blackout.

In Britain, overdependence on wind turbines built to cut carbon emissions leaves inhabitants at the mercy of the weather . When the wind doesn’t blow, the economy doesn’t work.

Likewise, in Germany, the world’s fourth-biggest economy, calm summer air means turbines stand idle, incapable of producing electricity and jacking up energy prices irrespective of the nation’s equally asinine overdependence on gas supplies from a recalcitrant Russia.

Excessively tight emissions rules, which amount to “anti-farming policies,” have triggered protests across Europe. They started in the Netherlands, where 30% of farms might be put out of business. And they have spread to Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland, where farmers fear being subjected to the same privations.

If, as expected, bureaucratic meddling slashes Dutch output — the Netherlands is one of the biggest and most efficient farming nations in the world — production will shift to less efficient, more polluting producers elsewhere.

This is similar to the attack that green zealots in the Democratic Party launched against American energy production at the start of the Biden administration. By shutting down energy leases and discouraging investment in the United States because of exaggerated and parochial climate concerns, the green oligarchy transfers production and wealth to dirtier producers overseas, such as Russia.

As a result, gas prices across the country are higher than they’ve ever been and getting higher still. Basic energy costs, such as heat and air conditioning, are also more expensive. And yet California Democrats’ response to this crisis has been to pass local ordinances forcing citizens to phase out natural gas , one of the most affordable sources of energy, altogether over the next several years.

The results of shortsighted, self-defeating enviro-extremism are bad enough in rich nations. But they are even worse in the undeveloped world. In Sri Lanka, which banned chemical fertilizers in a fit of adherence to global green pressure, crops collapsed and food inflation spiked to 80% in June. The result has been a public revolt, including the overthrow of the president and an occupation of his palace by disgruntled citizens.

The specter of starvation is now being reported from Africa, and the latest analysis from the U.N. World Food Program suggests that 670 million people, 8% of the world’s population, will face hunger by the end of the decade.

The World Health Organization calculates that 439,000 Africans die every year from indoor air pollution because they are forced — for cooking, lighting, and heating — to burn charcoal and cattle dung, which one researcher compared to smoking 400 cigarettes per hour in the home. The reason Africans still use these primitive methods to generate energy is that green ideologues in rich nations won’t allow them to get financing to build coal-fired power stations.

Extreme environmentalism is an ideology that cares little for human life, even regards it as a blight on the Earth that should be reduced. Its instinctive sympathies are against our species. It wants less economic growth, less entrepreneurial spirit, less development, less energy, less safety, less food, less comfort.

Who suffers? Those in poor nations, of course, and we in the rich nations that impose our obsessions on ourselves and on others wherever we can.

But we can’t impose them everywhere. So, who doesn’t suffer? Our enemies, China in particular, that watch our self-harming foolishness with delight and perhaps a little astonishment. Beijing, which in recent years built more coal-fired power stations than the rest of the world combined, sits back and watches as the self-doubting, self-hating West cedes its prosperity and global leadership.

We’re now able, with our dazzling technology, to look billions of light years from the surface of our planet all the way to the rim of outer space and to peer back as far as the beginning of the universe. But here on Earth, we blind ourselves with ideology and cannot see what’s staring us in the face.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/the-real-world-consequences-of-green-extremism

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Colossal Failure: EV Charging Stations Face Mechanical Problems - Over Half Inoperable in 1 Area

If there is one consistent fact about electric vehicles, it’s that they are unreliable. Now their charging stations have come into question as well.

In Aspen and Glenwood Springs, Colorado, many companies have implemented charging stations in their parking lots. Not all of them are fully functional, however.

Chris Lane, a Basalt resident who owns two electric cars, highlighted a couple of issues with the local charging stations: Cables are ripped out, attachments are damaged and screens are cracked.

If there is a mechanical problem with any one of these stations, it automatically shuts down, Aspen Daily News reported.

“I charge in Glenwood, I see problems. I charge in Aspen, I see problems,” Lane said. He mentioned one exception: Tesla’s stations. “I will say this, the Tesla stations are way better, flawless,” he said.

Companies and stores that have EV stations in their parking lots are expected to take care of them, but this has not always been the case.

The Willits Town Center in Basalt, Colorado, is a prime example. With 11 total stations, five were out of order and two were inaccessible, leaving only four functioning chargers available. “I see mechanical failures up and down the valley,” Lane said.

Despite Tesla’s more consistent reliability, most charging stations in the area have been inoperable. This fact should be concerning for EV owners, especially if they are traveling long distances.

Furthermore, a gas-powered sedan was seen in one of the two parking spaces in front of an EV station on July 10. The second spot, as Aspen Daily News wrote, was a handicapped space, “creating confusion as to whether it could be used for charging for a driver who wasn’t handicapped.”

So even when the EV stations work, someone might park their gas car in front of it, preventing EV owners from charging. This is another indication that buying an electric car is inefficient and inconvenient in the long run.

Philip Jeffreys, SkiCo director of housing development, described the local charging station conditions as a sort of “Wild West.” SkiCo owns 12 charging stations, which roughly make up 26 percent of all spaces in the company’s private parking lot.

In addition to slow recharge times and long lines, this incident demonstrates yet another EV technology failure … and it’s not just in Colorado.

In San Francisco alone, 23 percent of EV stations were not functional of the 657 plugs studied. The study excluded Tesla’s charging stations.

It sure seems like electric vehicles will not become the future of driving, based on this ongoing trend.

Despite the left’s political efforts in advocating for widespread EV use, the future is not going green anytime soon.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/colossal-failure-ev-charging-stations-face-mechanical-problems-half-inoperable-1-area

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A diesel alternative to electric cars?

The new-generation diesel engine, the multijet, has very low cO2 and therefore is an excellent compromise

It does not pollute because diesel unlike gasoline, contains much less carbon. When it is burned it produces less CO2.

Also, diesel engines are more efficient than petrol ones because:

- they consume less fuel (5l/100km versus 8l/100km)

- CO2 emissions are lower (109g/km versus 134g/km).

Finally, the new diesel engines have a particulate filtering system that reduces fine dust emissions.

This means that new diesel engines are less polluting than petrol ones and, in some cases, even less polluting than electric cars.

https://medium.com/nico-s-ideas/it-is-stupid-to-only-bet-on-electric-cars-9ce32e5836cf

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State Department official is drawing criticism after tweeting that he prefers high gas prices because it means less driving and less carbon emissions.

"I prefer high gas prices = less driving, less CO2," Senior State Department Foreign Service Officer Alan Eyre tweeted on Friday in response to a tweet from President Biden claiming American families are paying less per month on average than they were during "peak prices."

Eyre describes himself as a "gov’t bureaucrat" in his Twitter bio along with the phrase "kindness, always kindness."

Eyre’s tweet was widely criticized on social media including from former Republican California state senate candidate Ron Bassilian who called Eyre a "ghoul" and pointed out that gas demand is "inelastic."

"Perhaps, but I don’t think it is inelastic and I remember in the 1970s the oil embargo led to a massive increase in renewables," Eyre responded along with the hashtag #BeKind.

Basilian responded with criticism that was echoed by several other Twitter users pointing out that gas prices have caused significant struggles for Americans across the country.

"Be kind?" Basslian said. "Perhaps be kind to the billions of people left high and dry in this situation you praise. Saying a famine is a good way to start a diet is not kind."

Following the publication of this article, Eyre's Twitter account appears to have been deactivated or deleted.

Eyre’s comment comes shortly after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faced criticism for suggesting that higher prices at the pump were actually beneficial for transitioning to electric vehicles.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state-department-bureaucrat-prefer-high-gas-prices-because-less-emissions

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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July 24, 2022

Liz Truss vows to end UK fracking ban

The leading candidates for the Prime Ministership of Great Britain are Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. One is an Australian, the other is an Indian

Liz Truss pledged yesterday to scrap “Whitehall-inspired Stalinist housing targets” and lift the government’s moratorium on fracking as she pitched herself as the candidate of the Tory right to take on Rishi Sunak.

The foreign secretary said she would abandon plans to build 300,000 houses a year that have infuriated Tory MPs, arguing that it is the “wrong way to generate economic growth”.

She also suggested she would end the government’s ban on fracking, introduced by Boris Johnson, saying that it should be allowed in parts of the country where it had local consent.

Truss is trying to win over right-wing supporters of Suella Braverman, the attorney-general, before the third round of the Tory leadership contest today. She is currently in third place behind Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt and needs to secure most of Braverman’s 27 votes to remain a credible candidate to reach the final two.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph Truss said she would amend the Levelling Up Bill to replace centralised targets with tax cuts and reduced red tape in “opportunity zones” to make it easier and quicker for developers to build on brownfield land in those areas. “I want to abolish the top-down, Whitehall-inspired Stalinist housing targets,” she said. “I think that’s the wrong way to generate economic growth.”

On fracking Truss said that while she supported net zero, the current ban should be lifted. “I support the net zero objective but we need to reach net zero in a way that doesn’t harm businesses or consumers . . . I am very supportive of using gas as a transition fuel.”

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary and a Truss supporter, is looking at the science around fracking as part of a government review. A decision on that is likely to be one of the first things on the new prime minister’s desk.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-vows-to-end-fracking-ban-and-scrap-housing-targets-tfxjhb8wn

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Across the world, environmentalists leave only misery in their wake

Without a doubt, the climate-obsessed green movement is the most stupidly self-destructive force in the world today, leaving a trail of irrationality, folly and misery wherever it goes.

Consider its recent record of destroying Sri Lanka, making Western Europe needlessly vulnerable to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s energy blackmail and stoking higher energy prices in the United States that have contributed to the fastest decline in real wages in 40 years.

The greens are rapidly making up ground on the socialists as the modern world’s foremost economic and social saboteurs (and, of course, the two now work hand in hand).

If a hostile actor were to consider the best way to harm a society from within, it would unquestionably be to increase the sway of climate alarmists and other environmentalists who believe it is their righteous duty to make it harder and more expensive to power a modern economy, as well as to build and grow things.

They seek to throw the gears into reverse on the millennia-long human quest for cheaper, more abundant and more reliable sources of energy while putting new obstacles in the way of other human endeavor.

Since they are fired by a quasi-religious vision of an existential climate crisis on the verge of ending Planet Earth, they reject cost-benefit analysis, not to mention basic realism. The resulting wreckage is all around us.

Sri Lanka achieved one of the highest ESG, or environmental, social and governance, scores in the world and destroyed its economy in the process. The country banned chemical fertilizers in April 2021 as it became the world’s first all-organic country. It proved one small step ahead for environmental pieties and a giant leap backward for Sri Lankan farmers. A large proportion of land went dormant, and production of rice, tea and other crops dropped precipitously. The resulting economic calamity has led to the government’s collapse.

This is basically the Green New Deal in miniature.

Sri Lanka is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean; Germany is a powerhouse in the middle of continental Europe. But the green disease doesn’t discriminate on the basis of size or wealth.

For years, Germany pursued a policy of making itself dependent on Russian oil and (especially) gas while congratulating itself on its great environmental virtue as it closed down nuclear-power plants and ramped up renewable sources.

Berlin can’t say it wasn’t warned of the risks of this approach. Such is the faddish grip of climate orthodoxy that it blew past all the blinking red lights. Sure enough, Russia may well cut off the supply of gas this winter, at the same time renewables have proved not ready for prime time (they are too intermittent, among other technical problems that won’t be solved any time soon).

In its wisdom, Germany decided to shut down the source of energy that is clean, reliable and doesn’t require dependence on an authoritarian state hostile to the West — namely, nuclear power. It fell prey to the environmental left’s superstitious hostility to nuclear. Even now, Germany is going ahead with shuttering its last three plants. It is turning again to coal to try to fill the gap this winter, underlining its disastrous mistake in prematurely eschewing such proven sources of energy in the first place.

Here in the United States, of course, Biden pledged to “end fossil fuel” back in 2019, a promise — given our prodigious reserves of oil, gas and coal — that makes almost as much sense as Russia or Saudi Arabia pledging to do the same. Even as inflation, with energy prices leading the way, destroys Biden’s presidency, he and his supporters are determined to pursue a climate agenda that will drive up costs and create inefficiencies at home while doing next to nothing to affect global temperatures.

It makes no sense, but for the greens that’s never been a particularly important criterion.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/19/across-the-world-environmentalists-leave-only-misery-in-their-wake/

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Biden announces modest steps to fight climate's ‘clear and present danger’

President Joe Biden sought to keep his faltering climate change agenda alive Wednesday after bruising defeats in Congress and at the Supreme Court, and he vowed to take matters into his own hands as heatwave records topple in the U.S. and Europe and his climate goals drift further out of reach.

For now, those steps will be modest: Biden’s administration will clear the way for new offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, he announced during a visit at a former coal-burning power plant in Somerset, Mass. And the government will spend $2.3 billion to bolster communities' defenses against climate change and make it easier for low-income households to purchase efficient air conditioners to combat searing heat.

Those are far smaller steps than the ones he promised when he ran for the White House two years ago, when he vowed to put the U.S. at the forefront of the international effort to limit warming.

Biden framed the fight against the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet as one of his highest priorities, alongside combating the pandemic.

But those ambitions suffered a major blow last week when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) rejected plans to spend $300 billion to expand clean energy incentives. And last month, the Supreme Court erected legal obstacles to the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants, the second largest source of the greenhouse gas.

"As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that's what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger," Biden said.

His comments come as more than 100 million Americans swelter under 100-degree temperatures and European nations face record heat. The Western U.S. is suffering from the worst megadrought in 1,200 years, drying up reservoirs and slowing the flow of the Colorado River that supplies water to tens of millions of people.

Biden was visibly sweating as he delivered his speech on a sweltering 90-plus degree afternoon in southeastern Massachusetts, the second day of a heat wave that's forced communities across the state to open cooling centers for residents and declare heat emergencies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) donned black baseball caps to shield themselves from the beating sun.

As he has since the campaign, Biden sought to frame his climate agenda in terms of spurring job growth in new competitive arenas of the economy. The backdrop for Wednesday’s appearance helped sent that message: Biden spoke facing the site of the shuttered Brayton Point coal power plant that's being retooled into Massachusetts' first offshore wind manufacturing facility, a dusty and rocky expanse on the shores of the Taunton River replete with towering power lines and vast warehouses in the process of being repurposed for producing wind energy.

"It's the perfect location for President Biden to talk about, to focus on climate change, because it’s the former site of a dirty coal-fired power plant that threatened not only the climate but the health of the surrounding community," Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, which spearheaded the effort to shut down the old plant, said in an interview.

Biden on Wednesday proposed the first-ever offshore wind energy area across 700,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico, which the White House said would enable enough new electricity to power 3 million homes. That’s not an entirely new idea: The Interior Department already was assessing portions of the Gulf of Mexico for wind power. Biden also directed Interior to promote offshore wind in the southern- and mid-Atlantic Ocean and Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coastline.

While those steps would help bring renewable power into the grid, Biden is far from reaching his goals of achieving net-zero electricity by 2035. Fossil fuels now supply 60.8 percent of U.S. power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Hitting Biden’s zero-carbon goal becomes even harder without the subsidies included in earlier drafts of Democrats’ reconciliation package. Those provisions were the single-greatest factor needed to hit Biden’s broader climate target, an analysis by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said.

While Manchin was the one who upended Democrats’ legislative agenda, they have also faced steadfast opposition from Republicans who contend that Biden’s plans will damage the U.S. economy — particularly the oil and gas industry that has boomed since the early years of this century. The GOP has also seized on this year’s historic rise in gasoline prices, even though that increase has been tied to a global oil market — and broader inflation trend that is hardly a U.S.-only problem.

Meanwhile, raging wildfires and record heat worsened by climate change is costing lives, denting productivity and destroying property. The White House noted 20 extreme weather and climate-related events inflicted $1 billion of damage or more last year, totaling $145 billion. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration since April has under a new program conducted 564 heat-related inspections to prevent workplace illnesses and deaths.

Yet executive action alone is unlikely to get Biden to his climate goals, which include slashing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions to half their 2005 levels by the end of this decade. That failure in turn threatens to dampen enthusiasm from the younger and progressive voters that Democrats need in this year’s midterm elections.

Climate activists and some Democratic lawmakers have urged Biden to go far bolder in taking unilateral action — for instance by declaring a climate emergency that would give him broad powers to halt fossil fuel exports, marshal clean energy production and reprogram spending to bolster climate defenses.

“The president has an ability to protect our country when our national security is threatened,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told reporters this week. “And clearly, the climate crisis is a threat to national security.”

He joined eight other senators in a Wednesday letter urging Biden to take such a step.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that a climate emergency remains on the table, though no decision is expected on that this week. A senior administration official told reporters in a call Wednesday call that Biden “is going to be very clear that since Congress is not going to act on this emergency, he will,” adding that future steps will come in the coming days and weeks.

"This is an emergency and I will I will look at it that way,” Biden said. “As president, I'll use my executive powers to combat climate crisis in the absence of congressional action."

Biden’s allies said they were willing to give the administration space to chart its next course for executive action as it emerges from the rubble of reconciliation, where Manchin’s opposition last week killed efforts to pass clean energy and electric vehicle tax credits through Congress.

“We had all been on Plan A,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. “It takes a minute to recalibrate.”

Despite the gridlock in Congress, and four years of regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration, the U.S. is actually on track to meet former President Barack Obama’s goal for cutting greenhouse gas pollution — which called for reducing those emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. However, those reductions aren’t anywhere steep enough to meet what climate scientists say the world needs to avoid the worst effects of climate change from taking root.

“If I were the president I would be asking my staff for a list of all of my authorities, and I would be evaluating all of them for what pieces of this challenge they could solve,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told POLITICO.

The White House has notched some prior legislative victories and taken unilateral steps to get closer to those goals. It’s already distributing billions of dollars for clean energy demonstration and electric transportation from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, paused tariffs that raised costs on imported solar equipment and set a government-wide requirement to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 for all electricity it purchases, contracts and other services.

Biden announced two other steps Wednesday that the White House said reflected an increased willingness to go it alone on climate: It issued new guidance for a program that would allow low-income residents to more easily purchase efficient air conditioners and announced $2.3 billion for a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that helps communities bolster defenses against the effects of climate change.

But climate hawks have been dismayed by Biden’s reluctance to use executive powers to date. Biden came into office having to repair federal agencies that fractured under former President Donald Trump, who actively antagonized climate activists. Restocking the bureaucracy at key agencies like EPA have led to slower than desired progress on crafting regulations, government officials said, but the administration now has several rules in the queue for the coming year.

“There's a lot, lot, lot left to be done,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told reporters Monday.

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-announces-modest-steps-fight-191633085.html

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The argument for nuclear power generation in Australia

Eleven years after the Fukushima disaster, nuclear energy is making a comeback in Japan. To mitigate possible electricity shortages in Japan’s winter, which runs from December to March, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to have nine nuclear reactors up and running by the end of the year. It’s an ambitious target and may not be reached. But it is not as ambitious as that of Japan’s closest neighbour. China is planning on building 150 nuclear reactors over the next 15 years. That’s 10 new reactors a year, on average, at a projected cost of $636bn.

Changing geopolitical realities have forced nations to make tough decisions about their energy security. Energy security has always been paramount to national security, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this relationship has become more stark.

During the past four decades, countries have taken a range of approaches to energy security. Some countries’ decisions, made decades ago, are paying off in prosperity and security dividends, while other countries are suffering losses from their bad investments. The German strategy of going all-in on renewables, shutting down coal and nuclear plants, then relying on Russian gas for backup has been shown to be a catastrophic failure.

Not only has Germany’s policy sent electricity prices sky high – contributing to inflation and declining standards of living – it has made the country vulnerable to Russia’s manipulation. Its policy of relying on Russian gas has funded Russia’s war machine, which is targeting women and children in Ukraine. Yet the ultimate salt in the wound is the fact, despite Germany’s dogmatic focus on scaling up renewables, its greenhouse gas emissions still remain more than double that of their closest neighbour, France.

In 1974, following the 1973 oil crisis, French prime minister Pierre Messmer decided all France’s electricity should come from nuclear. This was a stroke of genius. Since the 1980s, France has flattened its greenhouse gas emissions while becoming the largest net exporter of power due to its low cost of generation. While other nations are telling their citizens to ration energy in winter, France exports electricity to the tune of $4.4bn a year.

One of the most perplexing aspects of Australia’s climate policy debate is the dismissive attitude towards nuclear energy of those who are most alarmed about climate change. Nuclear energy has the potential to slash emissions, but also power an advanced economy that is strategically secure.

There are, of course, legitimate risk management concerns that need to be dealt with carefully and intelligently. Nobody who advocates for nuclear energy denies this. And nuclear reactors are not cheap. They come at a significant cost and require public investment. Nevertheless, the reflexive dismissal of nuclear energy in a country that is home to 33 per cent of the world’s uranium (the world’s largest repository) reflects an ignorant parochialism that will need to be rectified if we are going to thrive in the 21st century.

Opposition to nuclear energy in Australia is based on three key arguments. The first is that nuclear plants are too expensive and take too long to build; second, that nuclear waste is radioactive and therefore bad for the environment and citizens’ health; and third, that nuclear energy is not truly renewable. Each of these claims rests on flimsy reasoning.

While it is true building nuclear plants can be extremely expensive, a 2015 study by two French economists that examined past nuclear construction in France and the US found costs can be controlled by building the same design with the same team repeatedly. This method of scaling up using the same designs and the same teams is what the US and France have done in the past, and is what China and Japan plan on doing in the future. The argument that Australia cannot do what our neighbours are doing becomes an implicit argument for our technical and managerial inferiority.

The second reason – that nuclear plants pose a risk to health and the environment – also does not stand up to scrutiny. Since the 1950s, the US has received about 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear. The entire volume of waste this has produced could fit in a single football field to a depth of less than 10m, according to a US government website. Only a tiny percentage of that spent fuel is actually toxic, and it is stored in steel-lined concrete pools of water or in steel and concrete containers. Of course accidents can happen, and contingency plans must be made for worst-case scenarios.

Yet keep in mind that France has not yet had a serious accident that has caused significant environmental or health damage. The burning of fossil fuels is estimated to kill a million people a year from air pollution, whereas the combined loss of life from Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island is 32 people. This has led environmental researchers to conclude nuclear power is the safest way to make reliable electricity. (More people have died as a result of construction accidents installing solar panels than have ever died from nuclear accidents.)

The third argument, that nuclear power is not renewable, is simply false. France has been recycling spent nuclear fuel for decades. Seventeen per cent of France’s electricity comes from recycled nuclear fuel.

Tanya Plibersek this week told the National Press Club in relation to climate change: “If we continue on the trajectory we are on, the precious places, landscapes, animals and plants that we think of when we think of home, may not be here for our kids and grandkids.” In light of this, a smart country would invest in the safest and most reliable clean energy known to man. The models already exist. We just have to look to our allies of France, Japan, and the US for guidance. While some will argue that it is too late, we should keep in mind the wisdom of an ancient Chinese proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/safest-cleanest-option-for-energy-security-is-nuclear/news-story/087fe4f743a85b85dc315b017d04e7ee

Friday, July 22, 2022

Extinction threat may be greater than previously thought, new global study finds

This is an utter crock. How can they know how many extinctions there have been since 1500? It's pure guesswork. They would need periodic species counts since that year if they were to substantiate their claims and there are no such species counts. There is not even a final count of how many species there are at the moment

The global extinction crisis underway may be more intense than previously thought as humans continue to tear up land, overuse certain resources and heat up the planet, new research led by the University of Minnesota indicates.

Nearly one in three species of all kinds — 30% — face global extinction or have been driven to extinction since the year 1500, according to the new survey published in the journal "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment."

That's significantly higher than prevailing global estimates and the findings surprised lead author Forest Isbell, associate professor in the university's Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior. He said one of the reasons is that it takes more insects and other lesser-studied species groups into account.

"I honestly figured it was much lower," Isbell said. "I would have estimated it was 20%."

Prevailing global estimates have ranged from 12.5% across all species groups to 25% of the well-studied ones, such as animals and plants, he said.

Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, called the numbers "quite alarming."

"It took many years for climate change to become a prominent household concern," Greenwald said. "The extinction crisis is really part and parcel of a similar scope and severity to climate change."

Healy Hamilton, chief scientist at the nonprofit research group NatureServe, said the numbers do not surprise her. She said her organization has demonstrated for years that about one-third of plants and animals in the United States are vulnerable to extinction or have already become extinct. The new survey's real power is the broad geographic and taxonomic coverage, she said.

"The majority of species on the planet are plants and insects and other invertebrate animals that we know so little about we cannot even determine the extent to which they are threatened," she said. "And yet those are the very species which help purify our air, filter our water, maintain the health of our soils, pollinate plants we need for food, fuel and fiber, and provide medicines to hundreds of millions of people."

The new findings are the result of a survey that elicited 3,331 responses from biodiversity experts around the world studying in nearly 200 countries. The 30% figure is the median of the middle-tier estimates respondents provided, which ranged from 16 to 50%.

Further, the study found that if trends continue, by the end of the century the imperiled share will grow to 37%, a share that could be significantly reduced if conservation efforts were immediately escalated. Overall, the respondents agreed that the loss of biological diversity is decreasing the functioning of ecosystems "and nature's contributions to people."

Scientists are working to understand biodiversity loss and its impacts and do not know exactly how many species exist on the planet. The study did not put a specific number behind the percent of species threatened or gone.

"There's huge uncertainty with these numbers," Isbell said. "The value is actually asking people for their input from everywhere."

Interestingly, female biodiversity experts from the global south provided much higher loss estimates. Forest said he thinks part of the explanation is that the women work in regions where biodiversity loss is more intense, and because men disproportionately study the less-threatened species.

He said he's not sure what the results say about the threat to species in Minnesota. But he said the state is part of a wealthy country and there is a trend in those responses, he said.

"People from wealthy countries systematically provided lower estimates for biodiversity loss in the past and more pessimistic estimates for the future," he said. Isbell said he does not know why.

https://www.theday.com/nation/20220719/extinction-threat-may-be-greater-than-previously-thought-new-global-study-finds/

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New study finds that each year almost 80 times more Britons die from cold than from heat

So global warming should SAVE lives, not cost them

Each year in England and Wales, there were on average nearly 800 excess deaths associated with heat and over 60,500 associated with cold between 2000 and 2019, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The study, which is the most comprehensive assessment of mortality risks related to outdoor temperature across the two countries, found that exposure to both heat and cold is associated with substantial excess mortality, but with important differences across geographical areas and population sub-groups.

The study was led by researchers from the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), in collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency and researchers from several European universities.

The team found that London had the highest heat-related mortality rate, with 3.21 excess deaths per 100,000 people, which translates to 170 heat-related excess deaths each year. Heat-related risks were also much greater in urban areas across the two countries.

In contrast, the risk of death associated with the cold was highest in the North East of England and Wales, with an excess mortality rate of 140.45 deaths and 136.95 deaths per 100,000 people, respectively. London had the lowest risk associated with cold temperatures, with 113.97 deaths per 100,000 people (almost 5800 cold-related excess deaths each year).

Consistent with existing scientific evidence, the research findings showed that the impacts of cold, and to a lesser extent heat, were more prevalent in deprived areas. In addition, older people were the most vulnerable to both heat and cold, with mortality risk of over 85 year olds twice as high as that of people aged 0 to 64.

With the number of temperature-related deaths set to rise under the projected climate trends, the researchers call for targeted policies and better adaptation strategies to prevent more severe health consequences from both heat and cold.

Dr Antonio Gasparrini, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at LSHTM and lead author of the study, said: “This study offers a thorough evaluation of the health impacts of heat and cold across England and Wales, and provides several epidemiological indicators for more than 37,000 areas across the two countries. These include estimates of the optimal temperature range, as well as impact measures such as excess mortality for heat and cold.

“The detailed mapping of health burdens can help identify high-risk areas and population sub-groups. In particular, the results showed that the impacts of both heat and cold were stronger in more deprived areas. Understanding these patterns is a critical step to designing effective public health policies at local and national levels and protecting vulnerable groups, especially during the current cost of living crisis.”

The researchers analysed 10.7 million deaths that occurred in England and Wales between 2000 and 2019 across over 37,473 small areas that include around 1,600 residents, also known as lower super output areas (LSOAs). They then linked these data with high-resolution gridded temperature maps and potential drivers of vulnerability to heat and cold, including demographic and socio-economic factors, health and disability, housing and neighbourhood, landscape, and climatological characteristics. This allowed the researchers to characterise differences across small areas and map variation in temperature-related mortality risks across the two countries.

Dr Pierre Masselot, Research Fellow in in Environmental Epidemiology and Statistics at LSHTM and co-author of the study, said: “The results come at a critical time as countries and communities face increasing health impacts due to climate change and need to find effective ways to adapt to changing temperatures. The analytical framework also provides a flexible tool that can be adapted for future studies which aim to model temperature-related risks and impacts at small-area level under different climate change scenarios.”

The authors emphasised that, while the research showed that excess mortality attributed to cold was significantly higher than that attributed to heat, these results should be interpreted with caution as more cold than hot days were recorded throughout the year. Despite this, they highlighted that cold-related mortality is evidently a considerable health burden, particularly in deprived areas, and should be addressed with targeted public health interventions.

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2022/both-heat-and-cold-increase-risk-death-england-and-wales-rates-vary-across?mc_cid=d70dda03b7&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Heatwaves and floods reduce nuclear power generation somewhat too

Making the need for reserve dispatchable energy even more urgent

The UK Met Office weather agency registered a reading of 40.3 degrees at Coningsby in Lincolnshire which established a new record that had been set elsewhere hours earlier. Prior to Tuesday, the highest temperature in Britain was 38.7 set in 2019. By later in the afternoon, 29 locations in the UK had broken the 2019 record.

New York City is predicted to hit the Fahrenheit ton (38 degrees Celsius) on Sunday. It happens. In fact, it has happened 31 times since 1870. The Big Apple hasn’t clocked a ton since 2012 but it did so in three consecutive years from 2010. 90 percent of dwellings in New York City are air-conditioned but of the 167,000 public housing dwellings putting a roof over 335,000 heads across the five burrows, less than fifty per cent are air-conditioned. Most of these homes are in medium rise buildings where, when the mercury tips 30 degrees celsius outside, it’s 35 degrees inside.

We’re not unused to these temperatures in Australia, of course. Three quarters of Australian homes either have air-conditioning or evaporative coolers. In the UK, the figures aren’t easy to find but Britain’s Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy put the number of air-conditioned homes in Great Britain at less than five per cent of all dwellings. Ouch.

Meanwhile in France, five of the country’s 18 nuclear reactors were forced to drop their output, placing pressure on supply when demand is at peak levels. France is expected to be protected from the looming energy crisis in much of the rest of western Europe driven by an addiction to cheap Russian energy to power industry, cool and warm homes.

70 percent of all electricity generated in France comes from nuclear energy. But French nuclear reactors for the most part are located on river systems and regulatory guidelines oblige them to reduce their outputs by half when down river water temperatures rise by 0.3 celsius or more. If river temperatures exceed 30 degrees, the plants cannot cool and must shut down. With regulated reductions in place, the 70 percent figure of nuclear energy’s contribution to the French national grid has been reduced to 50 percent over the last ten days.

The pressure on the electricity grid has meant the French state-owned energy company, EDF, has sought and received exemptions or derogations from ASN (the French Nuclear Safety Authority) in three of the five power plants. But in the Blayais plant, located on the banks of an estuary where the Dordogne River meets the Atlantic near Bordeaux, the regulations do not permit derogation and the production target announced by EDF is incompatible with the operating limits of the plant.

Across the Channel, Great Britain’s eight nuclear power plants remain online and pumping. A spokesman for EDF (yes, the French national company owns those, too) told media, “All of EDF’s UK nuclear power plants benefit from the cooling effects of a coastal location and are therefore less likely to experience the highest temperatures forecasted or recorded in the UK. Scenarios like heatwaves are factored into safety cases and plant design to ensure continued safe operation.

“We will keep the conditions under review and if temperatures continue to rise there are a range of actions we can take to mitigate this including monitoring of plant condition and increasing ventilation.”

On 19 July the French Finance Ministry announced that they intend to pay $14.8 billion or $16 a share to buy the 16 percent of the debt riddled EDF it does not already own. The nationalisation is an attempt to soothe nervous creditors over the company’s net published debt at $63.6 billion in 2021 with an estimated $6 billion to be added in red ink to EDF’s profit and loss this year.

Thus, in a cruel twist of irony for Brexiteers, much of the company’s revenues from its nuclear power plants in Great Britain will go straight back over the Channel.

EDF is currently building the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, the first nuclear power plant to be constructed in the UK in a generation. The project is being financed by EDF Energy and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN).

There have been delays and cost overruns but there is now hope Hinkley Point C will come online some time in 2027 where it is planned to provide 13 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs. Construction began in 2017. It received a nuclear site licence from the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation in 2012.

The long lead time for nuclear power plants to go online and just who owns and finances them notwithstanding (it’s either the French or the Chinese these days), little has been said about the problems associated with nuclear energy generation during heatwaves. I’ve certainly not come across it in the debate about nuclear energy in Australia which, as we know, is prone to suffer heatwaves that would have the English running around in their underpants and, with climate change, we’re bound to get a lot more of them.

Just in case you’re wondering, nuclear power plants don’t go well during floods much. In 1999, a combination of high winds and incoming tides breached the sea wall around the Blayais nuclear plant leading to what was described as a “level two incident” in the one-to-seven International Nuclear Event Scale.

For those who cheer as the renewables bandwagon passes, the bad news is that photovoltaic cells -- solar panels don’t prosper in extreme heat either. In this Northern Hemisphere heat wave, Germany broke its national record for solar power generation earlier this week. Solar panels are designed to operate optimally at 25 degrees. They continue to operate at peak efficiency up to 35 degrees. Beyond that, efficiency drops markedly.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/how-about-this-heat-on-nuclear-power-plants/news-story/27822ddded47fe88cebd134bda51e2b3

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Australia's Greenie Luddites

Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio certainly has chutzpah. This week she demanded the Australian Energy Market Operator be given stronger powers to make sure that there’s enough gas in Victoria to keep the lights on. Queensland LNG exporters are being forced to bail out Victoria, but the state’s pain is all self-inflicted.

Nobody bears more responsibility than Ms D’Ambrosio for the farcical reality that Victoria is sitting on top of massive onshore reserves of natural gas in the Gippsland and Otway basins, while power prices skyrocket, industries shut down, and the poor shiver in unheated homes.

But there’s plenty of blame to share around. For more than a decade Victorians have voted in governments of the right and left that have banned the fracking of unconventional gas and then enshrined the ban in the constitution to make it harder to undo. They even put a moratorium on conventional gas exploration and when it ran out, government incentives all subsidised the development of renewable energy.

Australia has built four to five times more solar and wind energy than Europe, the US, Japan or China but now hapless Victorians are discovering that to get through a ‘renewable drought’ which analysts forecast could cause a one-terawatt shortage between now and September, the state would need about 7500 batteries like the one Elon Musk built for the South Australian government, after it cheerfully blew up a coal-fired power plant. The cost? A cool $700 billion.

The energy shortfalls come because our giant energy producers across the National Electricity Market – stretching from South Australia and Tasmania through Victoria and NSW to Queensland – are accelerating the closure of coal-fired power plants.

Liddle in NSW shut a 400MW unit in April. It will shut another 1200MW next April and in 2025, Eraring, the largest plant in Australia will close, seven years earlier than expected, taking out 2922MW, around 20 per cent of NSW’s power. By 2030, two-thirds of our coal-fired power will have been blown up by our latter-day Luddites.

You can hardly blame the providers. Ever since the introduction of the federal renewable energy target by the Howard government in 2001, followed by state targets, governments have ensured power companies receive hefty subsidies for unreliable renewables and crushing penalties for reliable fossil fuels. Why wouldn’t they shut down coal and not build gas when there was an 85 per cent increase in power prices after the accelerated closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood power station?

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews sneered when former federal energy minister Angus Taylor tried to get the states and territories to see sense and sign up to an energy security mechanism that would prevent power companies closing coal-fired power plants until they were replaced with dispatchable energy. One of its biggest critics was none other than Ms D’Ambrosio who sniffed that the Andrews government wouldn’t support a scheme which delayed the clean energy transition or locked in ‘outdated’ technology. Mr Andrews dubbed the scheme ‘Coalkeeper’ because for green zealots coal is a four-letter word. Victoria was hardly alone. Others, including NSW Liberal Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean, were equally dismissive.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided a brutal wake-up call to Europe, the UK, and the US. Faced with soaring energy prices enriching Mr Putin and funding his war, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Austria opted to fire up their coal-fuelled power generators. Indeed, 345 new coal-fired power stations are being built around the world and China and India are expanding their coal mining operations by 700 million tonnes a year, almost twice Australia’s annual production.

Yet Australian politicians seem oblivious to this reality, still in the grips of carbon dioxide-driven delusions, with Prime Minister Albanese fighting to legislate his economy-killing emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030 while the Greens push for a target of 75 per cent.

‘Democracy’, said H.L. Mencken, ‘is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.’ Today, Australians are getting good and hard the policies for which they voted. Let’s hope next time Australians vote for a party that will keep the lights on.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/latter-day-luddites

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Another EV Recall: Dangerous Defect Could Put Drivers at Risk

The author below mocks the Ford Pinto. There were 3 million of them sold over a 10 year period so I expect that his words are little more than elitist sneer. I drove a Pinto on two of my trips to America and rather liked it. It had safety issues but no more than other cars of a similar size

When Americans first began feeling the pinch at the pump, they turned to smaller cars. Ford’s answer to this was the Pinto.

Half a century later, that dumpster fire (quite literally, if you could manage to toss a Pinto into a dumpster after you rear-ended it) still remains one of the great automotive product failures of all time, an enduring symbol of the U.S. car industry’s general indifference to design, engineering and quality in the 1970s.

As we feel the pinch at the pump again, President Joe Biden’s administration wants us to turn to electric vehicles.

Ford, to its credit, has given us not one Pinto, but several. Whoever said American ingenuity was at a low ebb?

On Monday, Green Car Reports said the automaker is recalling 100,689 vehicles with a hybrid drivetrain over a fire risk.

According to Green Car Reports, the list of vehicles affected is rather extensive.

“The recall affects 2020-2022 Ford Escape, 2021-2022 Lincoln Corsair, and 2022 Ford Maverick models that have the 2.5-liter inline-4 engine as part of a hybrid or plug-in hybrid system. That includes the Ford Escape Hybrid, Escape Plug-In Hybrid, and Maverick Hybrid, as well as the Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring plug-in hybrid,” the publication said.

While the recall in this case only affects vehicles with partially electrified drivetrains, the issue is somewhat different in that internal combustion plays a significant role: If the engine fails, a fire might ensue.

“In the event of an engine failure, engine oil and fuel vapor may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources such as hot engine or exhaust components, possibly resulting in an engine compartment fire,” Ford said in a recall notice sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on July 13.

The recall was initiated after Ford said it received 23 reports of a fire or smoke under the hood “after a suspected block or oil pan breach.”

It’s unclear whether the batteries or electrical system — which can be hot or potentially exacerbate a fire — were part of the issue.

However, the recall only affects vehicles that are powered, in part, by an electric motor. The cars remain under a delivery hold until the problem is fixed.

“The recall remedy involves the installation of modified under-engine shield and active grille shutter components,” Green Car Reports said.

“The new under engine shield contains ‘additional drain holes,’ while the active grille shutter reduces underhood temperatures during forward motion, according to Ford. If the shutters are open more often, it might potentially decrease owners’ gas mileage.”

Ford also advised vehicle owners that if “they hear unexpected engine noises, notice a reduction in vehicle power, or see smoke,” they should pull over and shut off the engine ASAP.

The company is being cagey about what, precisely, is causing the engine failures or the fires and why they’re occurring solely on the hybrid versions of these cars. That’s a problem inasmuch as Ford’s recent history with EVs hasn’t been stellar.

Last month, the company recalled 48,924 Mustang Mach-E’s, roughly half of the nearly 100,000 vehicles they had sold thus far.

According to CNBC, the issue with the company’s flagship EV was the vehicle’s main battery contactors — a switch for the car’s power circuit.

The contactors could overheat and either stop the vehicle from starting or cause it to lose power when it was in motion.

The car had previously faced other recalls. According to Ford Authority, some all-wheel-drive Mach-E’s were recalled last year after “an issue with unintended acceleration, deceleration and/or a loss of power.”

Earlier in the year, more Mach-E’s were recalled because a software glitch could cause the car to be “bricked,” requiring it to be towed to an authorized repair shop.

Of course, if a car suddenly loses power in the middle of the interstate, that’s a crash waiting to happen.

The same thing with unintended acceleration; readers of my generation will remember that Audi saw its market share virtually wiped out in the United States in the 1980s due to reports the cars would accelerate on their own accord.

What’s worse is that, in Audi’s case, this was actually a manufactured scare; the drivers involved in the accidents were unfamiliar with European cars, which generally place the brake and gas pedals closer together, and had their foot on the gas pedal when they shifted out of park.

As Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute noted, “When an idiot-proof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted.”

But a Ford EV was apparently accelerating on its own accord for real, and the news media were pretty low-key and chill about it this time.

Thus, given the company’s not-insubstantial problems with the Mach-E, there’s certainly a bit of metaphorical smoke here regarding another major Ford EV recall, even if the problem has something to do with the internal combustion part of the powertrain.

Whatever the case, 50-odd years on from the Pinto, the folks in Dearborn still don’t seem to have mastered the art of trouble-free energy-saving.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/ford-maverick-escape-corsair-recall

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The British government is neglecting climate adaptation

A new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation urges a complete rethink of the UK’s approach to climate change, and a new focus on adaptation.

The GWPF calls upon policy makers to learn the key lesson from the recent heat wave and adopt policies that prioritise effective and relative low cost adaptation measures over massively expensive and ineffective renewable energy targets.

Despite previous heat waves in recent decades, the UK’s priority in dealing with climate change has been to spend nearly hundred billions on wind and solar projects, failing almost completely to prepare communities for extreme weather events that are inevitable regardless of climate change.

In the last 20 years consumers have had to hand over some £50 billion to renewable energy investors. The OBR estimates that in the next four years alone (2022 to 2025) renewables investors will receive another £50 billion.

However, none of these costly Net Zero policies will reduce the public’s vulnerability to extreme weather.

According to the report’s author, GWPF deputy director Andrew Montford:

“It’s now clear that the UK’s unilateral and vain attempt to change the weather by building more wind turbines has been an unmitigated disaster. We now seem to be facing a real possibility of rolling blackouts.

"Politicians have focused relentlessly on trying to decarbonise the economy, and have neglected simple and comparatively cheap adaptation measures that could make climate impacts in the UK irrelevant in practical terms.

"Adaptation is the Government’s road to energy and economic security, but it remains to be seen if ministers can shake off the groupthink that infests the Westminster village.”

Montford says that as well as offering a return to energy security, adaptation is much cheaper than current mitigation policies:

“Adapting to even the largest impacts of predicted climate change is orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to change the weather in 2050. You can build as many sea walls as you need for a few billion pounds. We’re spending that every year on subsidising windfarms, and we are having no discernable effect on the climate.”

The paper also points out that as well as being much cheaper, adaptation measures only need to be put in place if and when required, in contrast to mitigation measures, which require politicians to accept scientists’ predictions of the future climate.

Contact Andrew Montford e: awmontford@gmail.com

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The Left Is About to Pay for Its Energy Insanity

Most politicians and activists have strong views on every political issue. Those views grow from their fundamental political philosophies and beliefs.

The best politicians know how to balance their political ideals with a keen watch on how they affect the lives of everyday Americans—those who voted them into office. Go too far with your ideological preferences in the face of evidence that it’s hurting the American people, and you will not go far in politics.

The Democratic Party seems poised to take a beating for forgetting this fundamental maxim when it comes to energy and climate change. They feel so strongly about the issue that many have lost touch with reality. They have entered a sort of make-believe world.

The coming election is going to bring them back to reality.

Republicans are not immune to ideological overstepping. Republicans in general believe in the private sector. They think that free markets offer more benefits for society than government spending and mandates.

The theory has proven correct far more often than it hasn’t, but not always. When a so-called private sector line of business becomes so corrupt, so dominated by Washington political favoritism, and so mismanaged that it’s offering worse products and worse prices than government options, then even limited-government free market activists need to take notice.

Those who don’t will pay a political price. The private student loan industry is a prime example. Created and supported by Republicans, it became so corrupt and so mismanaged that eventually it was impossible to defend. The few who tried paid a political price.

On climate change, the Democrats face a similar dilemma, except with politically apocalyptic consequences. Student loans are important; they affect a lot of people. Energy is different; it affects everyone.

Skyrocketing energy prices cause widespread economic disruption. In the extreme, they lead to starvation, heat stroke, freezing, and death. It’s not a policy area you can get wrong. Yet American and global policymakers have deliberately done just that. The left’s energy policies make zero sense.

Clean energy is a worthy goal overshadowed by lofty expectations that outpace the pragmatism of working people. For large segments of the left, the climate change issue has become more like a religion than a policy debate. Pesky facts like technological limitations and costs are thrown aside in favor of magic. “Ban fossil fuels and utopia will follow” is essentially the mindset.

In the real world, you have to take into account technological limitations, costs, and other trade-offs. Transitioning energy production too fast can cause real present-day harm. The rich can afford to ignore high prices, slower economic growth, and a reduction in national security.

President Joe Biden campaigned on “getting rid of” fossil fuels. If there were economically efficient alternatives that would allow this to happen without slamming American families and harming America’s national security, that would be a less radical thing to say. Those things do not exist at scale today.

America became energy-independent during the Trump years. This energy independence brought huge advantages. First, America’s fracking boom and the massive expansion of natural gas production that came with it lowered carbon emissions more than any regulation.

Second, American energy independence changed the national security dynamic with respect to huge energy-export countries in the Middle East and Russia. Finally, the lower energy prices that followed led to massive economic and manufacturing growth. Many dormant small towns in America literally came alive as a result.

Throwing all this away without an adequate and, importantly, cheaper alternative in place is almost unimaginable from a policy perspective, but that’s exactly what happened. By promoting so-called environmental, social, and governance investment standards to choke off fossil fuel investments, by canceling pipelines, and by limiting federal oil and gas leasing, the left has reduced American energy production and left America vulnerable to the rest of the world.

All this has come with very little emissions benefit to boot. It has just enabled Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others to displace American fossil fuel production with their own foreign fossil fuel production.

The result? From Biden’s inauguration to the onset of the war in Ukraine—before the much-discussed “Putin price spike,” in other words—American gas prices went up nearly 50%. Those prices are up another 15% on top of that since the war began.

There have been huge technological strides in solar, wind, and other renewable power sources, but primarily due to their intermittent nature and a still-huge gap in energy storage (battery) technology, those forms of energy are not yet ready to make up for lost fossil fuel production without massive extra cost.

Giving away a huge economic and national security advantage is political malpractice. Slowing American energy production while begging the Saudis to increase their own fossil fuel production, as Biden did last week, is a botch so foreseeable it should be disqualifying for future leadership.

Energy policy under the Biden administration has been insane. With prices booming, everyone now knows it. Those who got us in this mess should prepare to pay a massive political price.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/18/the-left-is-about-to-pay-for-its-energy-insanity

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Net-zero folly in Australia

Visiting the NSW Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain, Prime Minister Albanese recently declared that his government had altered Australia’s position on climate change ‘from day one’. Relying on that non-existent entity which politicians employ like some pagan goddess, he claimed ‘the science‘ tells us that unless we take action globally ‘on climate change, then these events, extreme weather events, would be more often and more intense’.

Meanwhile, it is clear that China, Russia and India have absolutely no intention of closing down the development of their economies to achieve net-zero emissions. In addition, it is likely that after the next presidential election, the US will again abandon the Paris diktat. Nor, to avoid the retribution of their voters, will the leading European powers actually observe its terms.

The fact is no other nation is going to commit suicide on the basis of a discredited theory and the folly of net zero. This will increase the pressure on Australia’s elites to abandon their betrayal of the people, especially of the young.

But if they eventually do abandon this folly, they will still have done enormous damage. If they don’t, it will surely be time for Australians to take back their country, by all legal and democratic means possible.

In the meantime, let us return to the Prime Minister’s comments.

Since crucial parts of climate science are clearly unsettled, citing ‘the science’ as his authority for what may be termed ‘the Albanese theory of extreme climate events’ is hardly justified.

Even the UN’s IPCC does not dare do this. This is because scientific observations, over a century, show that most types of extreme weather events across the world either do not show any significantly worsening or are less common or less severe.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology warns that we may be about to experience a La Niña event three years in a row, something rare but not unprecedented.

Indeed, flooding on the Hawkesbury-Nepean plain has been known from the early days of British settlement and apparently before by the indigenous people.

There are records of floods, several larger than the most recent, in the years 1801, 1806, 1809, 1852, 1893, 1916, 1927, 1934, 1955 and 1974. And this is not an exhaustive list.

Much of this occurred, incidentally, well before a world in which motor cars and electricity were even available, much less the norm.

The reason so many people have been so badly affected by recent flooding is not global warming. It is first, the decision by the Hawke government, curiously followed by both sides since, to block what is absolutely necessary for the future of Australia, serious dam-building programmes such as prescribed in the Bradfield, Beale and Bridge Plans. Second, it is in allowing developers to build and sell urban housing on floodplains. Consistent with calls for integrity, politicians should be accountable in appropriate cases, personally and not merely under the civil law, just as businesses are for parallel offences.

And as Senator Canavan says, what journalists should be asking Mr Albanese is when will his policy, for which we are already paying and will pay so much more for far less reliable electricity, result in no floods and no droughts? This sort of interrogation should be addressed to those members of the elites who are so curiously dedicated to what Alan Jones and Terry McCrann long ago described as ‘signing a national suicide note’.

In the meantime, was anyone delighted to hear that the Treasury is again pouring more money down the drain on modelling the effect of climate change on the economy, restarting ‘work’ sensibly abandoned for almost a decade? As the great Anglo-American mathematician, Professor George Box, once famously warned, ‘All models are wrong but some are useful.’

Dr. Steven E Koonin, a pioneer in computer modelling, is a leader in science policy in the US, serving as undersecretary for science in the Obama administration. In his magisterial exposé of warmist extremism, Unsettled (2021), he points out that while computer modelling is central to climate science, uncertainties in modelling make it impossible today to provide reliable quantitative statements about the relative risks and consequences and benefits of rising greenhouse gases to the Earth system as a whole, let alone to specific regions of the planet.

The problem is that the climate is so chaotic it is impossible to simulate it in a model. One ‘stunning’ problem, he says, is that later generations of models are actually more uncertain than the earlier ones. The proof of their inadequacy, he says, is in their failure to reproduce retrospectively the warming observed from 1910 to 1940.

Dr Koonin reveals something appalling, indeed deceitful, in IPCC Reports. Although the models can disagree wildly with each other, what we are presented with is an averaging of those models. This completely undermines the predictions the politicians and media present as accurate to a fraction of a degree. The conclusion must be that the projections of future climate and weather events, which are thrown at us daily, are demonstrably unfit for purpose.

So, thank you, Treasurer Chalmers, for wasting even more of our money.

And thank you too, Warringah MP Zali Steggall, for explaining your most curious objection to nuclear power. This is that it cannot be turned on quickly when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow. Now that uranium expert Tony Gray has demonstrated from UK experience that nuclear power is in fact significantly cheaper than ‘renewables’, and anyway emits no CO2, why would anyone rational fill in with ‘renewables’?

When will our elites in politics, big business and the mainstream media admit that there is no advantage and every disadvantage in Australia adhering to the net-zero folly?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/net-zero-folly/

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Germany's gas crisis generates nuclear dilemma for ruling Greens

German conservative politicians have revived debate on extending the life of the country's three remaining nuclear power plants, and polls show a rise in public support for the energy source in the face of a possible cut-off of Russian gas.

But an extension is highly sensitive for Germany's ruling Greens party, which grew out of the 1970s anti-nuclear movement.

Germany's three remaining nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year after former chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to halt the use of nuclear electricity after the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.

The plants accounted for 6% of Germany's electricity production in the first quarter of 2022.

Debate over keeping the plants running began after Russia's invasion of Ukraine started on Feb. 24 and prompted Germany to decide to end its heavy reliance on Russian fossil fuel.

Experts from Germany's environment and economy ministries said in March they did not recommend extending the plants' lifetime, citing legal, licensing and insurance challenges, the need for extensive and possibly costly safety checks and a lack of fuel rods to keep the plants running.

An extension would not help the country's electricity output in the coming winter, they found, and the necessary investment and effort would only be justified if the plants' operations were extended for at least five more years until 2028.

But falling Russian gas supplies to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which prompted the government to reconnect on-reserve coal power plants to the grid, and the possibility of an extended outage of the pipeline following routine maintenance that is meant to be completed by July 21 have emboldened pro-nuclear voices in Germany and Europe.

The European Union will next week publish recommendations on how countries can cut gas demand to prepare for winter.

A draft of the recommendations, seen by Reuters, said one option would be to postpone the shutdown of nuclear power plants or switch from gas generation to nuclear where possible.

Last month, a poll by RTL/ntv broadcasters showed some 68% of Germans were in favour of reconsidering the country's nuclear exit. Before the start of the war in Ukraine, a ZDF poll had found only 40% of Germans supported extending the lifetime of nuclear power plants.

But Germany's environment and economy ministries, both run by the Greens, this week said their assessment from March was still valid and that they had not reconsidered their position in light of concerns over gas supply security.

Politicians of the conservative CDU/CSU opposition blame the Greens for the government's resistance to changing its position on the issue, saying it was purely ideological, citing the Greens' roots in the 1970s anti-nuclear movement.

"The Greens prefer to rely on climate-damaging coal-fired power plants ... Inside, they are an anti-nuclear-power party," CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja said.

Czaja said the government could obtain fuel rods from Australia and Canada to keep the plants running, adding he expected Economy Minister Robert Habeck to "move away from ideology".

Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view.

"The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-generates-nuclear-dilemma-ruling-greens-2022-07-15/

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Ignore the greenies: Offshore drilling produces not just oil but fish — and lots of them

“President Biden continues to limit American energy production” while “begging foreign countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia to produce oil for us,” fumes House Republican Whip Steve Scalise. He’s right: More than 70% of oil production on federally governed sites comes from offshore sources, yet 94% of offshore acreage remains off limits to development, the American Petroleum Institute notes.

Environmental superstitions are behind most of this exploration ban. Yet far from an environmental disaster, offshore drilling is an environmental bonanza, as study after study has shown. The science, you might say, is settled.

According to the Energy Information Administration, offshore production in the federally governed portions of the Gulf of Mexico accounts for 17% of US crude oil production. Louisiana alone has more than 3,000 of the 4,000-plus oil-production platforms in the Gulf off its coast, yet it nonetheless is able to supply almost a third of North America’s fisheries.

Surprisingly, Hollywood once hailed the environmental benefits of offshore drilling. The first platforms went up in 1947. By 1953 Hollywood was hailing the pioneering wildcatters who moved mountains to tap this region. In the 1953 movie “Thunder Bay,” Jimmy Stewart plays Steve Martin, the hard-bitten ex-Navy oil engineer who built the first platform off Louisiana. “The brawling, mauling story of the biggest bonanza of them all!” says the Universal ad for the studio’s first widescreen movie.

Stewart’s project at first seemed to clash with the local Cajuns who fished and shrimped in the area. Their livelihood, it seemed obvious at the time, would soon vanish amid irreversible pollution. Yet the flick ends on a happy note, as the fishermen reap a bonanza: The oil structures had served as artificial reefs and led to a bigger haul than ever.

Fast forward half a century and a study by Louisiana’s sea-grant college showed that 70 percent of Louisiana’s offshore fishing trips target these structures.

“Oil platforms as artificial reefs support fish densities 10 to 1,000 times that of adjacent sand and mud bottom, and almost always exceed fish densities found at both adjacent artificial reefs of other types and natural hard bottom,” a University of South Alabama study showed. “Massive areas of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were essentially empty of red snapper stocks for the first hundred years of the fishery. Subsequently, areas in the western Gulf have become the major source of red snapper, concurrent with the appearance of thousands of petroleum platforms.”

Fact is, “villainous” Big Oil produces more fish than Mother Nature. “The fish biomass around an offshore oil platform is 10 times greater per unit area than for natural coral reefs,” says LSU’s Charles Wilson. Between 10,000 and 30,000 fish live around an oil platform in an area “half the size of a football field.”

“Oh, sure!” comes the Greenie-Weenie retort. “But you’re very conveniently forgetting the infamous BP oil spill!”

Not really: The FDA’s Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Seafood Inspection Laboratory and numerous other agencies have repeatedly tested Gulf seafood for cancer-causing “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”

“Not a single sample has come anywhere close to levels of concern,” reported Olivia Watkins, executive media advisor for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

That this proliferation of seafood in the Gulf came because — rather than in spite — of the oil production rattled environmental cages and provoked scoffers, including some Travel Channel producers who’d read these claims in my book “The Helldiver’s Rodeo.” The book describes an undersea panorama that, if true, could make an interesting show, the producers concluded. Yet they scoffed as we dined on raw oysters, grilled redfish and seafood gumbo that night.

Ha! After exploring the waters, they went ahead and produced a program that showcased a panorama, putting the lie to the environmental superstitions. They saw school after school of fish — from 6-inch blennies to 12-foot sharks. Fish by the thousands. Fish by the ton.

The cameramen couldn’t decide what to focus on first: The shoals of barracuda? That cloud of jacks? The immense schools of snapper? We had close-ups, too, of coral and sponges, the very things disappearing off Florida’s pampered reefs, even though it bans offshore drilling.

So it’s not just badly needed oil these rigs produce. Turns out they’re great for the food supply and great for the environment as well. The naysayers are out of excuses.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/15/offshore-drilling-produces-not-just-oil-but-fish-and-lots-of-them/

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Pennsylvania’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Relies on Faulty Data – Why RGGI is a “solution in search of a problem”

The Governor and other officials have relied heavily on the state’s Climate Action Plans and specifically on the 2018 Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan3 in order to support their claims of current and future devastating impacts of continued CO2-driven warming. Assertions in the Climate Action Plan are refuted by the analysis of Gregory Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition and an expert reviewer for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th Assessment Report (IPCC – AR6).

Because of DEP’s flawed climatic analysis, the agency’s predictions of drought, flooding and other extreme weather events have no scientific basis.

Flooding

DEP’s projection of increased flooding is contradicted by data from the Ohio, Allegheny and Susquehanna rivers that show a decline in the size of flood crests in the last 100 years even though the average precipitation has increased by three inches. Although Governor Wolf makes much of Susquehanna River flooding in 2018, that event ranks 31st in the list of greatest floods at Harrisburg and only slightly more than half of the magnitude of the 1972 flood from Tropical Storm Agnes. The IPCC says it “can discern no connection between a modest increase in temperature and any change in flooding worldwide.”

Heat Waves

A DEP projection of more heat waves is contrary to data showing a peak in the country’s hot weather occurring in the 1920s and 1930s before CO2 levels began increasing following World War II.

Health Risks from Pollution

DEP’s projection of health risks from air and water pollution are inconsistent with data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showing double-digit percentage decreases in pollution. Air and water today are cleaner than in more than 100 years and getting cleaner every year. According to the EPA, nationally, concentrations of air pollutants have dropped significantly since 1990.

Flooding in Southeastern Pennsylvania from Rising Sea Level

According to DEP’s Climate Assessment, Delaware River Basin communities (including Philadelphia) can expect more frequent flooding and associated disruptions due to sea-level rise that presumably is caused by anthropogenic warming. Fortunately, historical data suggest that is unlikely.

Global sea levels have been rising for over 200 years, long before humans began adding prodigious amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere in the mid-20th century, and oceans are likely to continue to rise whether RGGI is adopted or rejected. Having successfully already adapted to possibly as much as two feet of sea-level rise over the last two centuries, Philadelphia — with modern technology and capabilities — can expect to easily adapt to the projected six to eight inches of rise between now and 2100.

Agricultural Damage

DEP predicts damage to Pennsylvania agriculture, but actual data shows improvements in farm production. Pennsylvania is no different than most of the rest of the globe, which is benefiting from a moderate rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and natural warming. Over the last 50 years there have been increases in the length of growing seasons and crop production and an overall greening of Earth.

RGGI’s Flawed Use of Climate and CO2-Emission Models

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow for the CO2 Coalition and Competitive Enterprise Institute and Past President of the American Association of State Climatologists, found that all but one of 102 computer models used in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP’s) Climate Action Plan “failed dramatically” in representing how the climate behaved in the past. He suggested that it would have been preferable for the state to have used the one model that more accurately reflected past climatic conditions than to have averaged the results of all 102 irrespective of their accuracy.

In addition, the Pennsylvania analysis uses a CO2-emission model that assumes an unrealistic increase in the use of coal that exceeds some estimates of the quantity of recoverable coal reserves. Correcting for the state’s reliance on flawed analyses reduces the predicted warming by 2050 to less than two degrees Fahrenheit from the state’s projection of 5.4 degrees.

Even if Pennsylvania were to reduce its emissions from electricity to zero, Dr. Michaels says any reduction in temperature or in sea-level rise would be too small to measure.

The Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan report, which serves as the basis for Governor Wolf’s RGGI proposal, needs to be dramatically revised, and should no longer be used as the basis for any policy proposals in its present form, concludes Dr. Michaels.

RGGI’s Flawed Economics

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to enter RGGI will be economically damaging and provide no environmental benefits, according to a June 2021 analysis by David T. Stevenson, Director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute. The findings are consistent with what Mr. Stevenson found in a 2018 peer-reviewed report published by the Cato Institute.

Mr. Stevenson’s recent analysis says the Wolf administration’s 2020 “Pennsylvania RGGI Modeling Report” predicts economic and environmental benefits on the basis of flawed assumptions. For example, emission reductions are likely overstated in the modeling report because Pennsylvania reductions in fossil fuel use will most likely be replaced by fossil fuel power plants in other states as electric generation and demand from energy-intensive manufacturing shift away from Pennsylvania.

“The assumptions used in the report are flawed as are the forecasted outcomes,” said Mr. Stevenson, author of more than 100 analytic reports. “Using information learned from the decade-old RGGI program it is clear emissions will not be reduced globally, electric rates will rise, and there will be billions of dollars of economic damage if Pennsylvania joins RGGI.”

Mr. Stevenson projects tax losses of $282 million from the economic damage to exceed the $261 million in estimated receipts from the sale of emission allowances. The losses break down as follows: $92 million in corporate income taxes, $102 million in personal income taxes and $88 million in utility gross receipts taxes.

According to the 2018 Stevenson report, RGGI had no effect on carbon dioxide reductions — nor any supposed health benefits when other factors are considered: the effects of regulatory and market forces and the quantity of emissions exported to other states by the importation of power into RGGI states.

The conclusions of the Stevenson report include the following:

RGGI does not lower global emissions. Any cuts in Pennsylvania will likely show up in other nearby states as electric demand is expected to remain constant across the region.

Pennsylvania — now a large exporter of electricity — could lose as much as $2 billion a year in electricity sales to other states at a cost of 1,400 jobs in electric generation.
Lost coal and natural gas production could total $1.1 billion a year at a cost of 3,500 jobs a year.

Based on the experience of RGGI states, higher electricity prices from Gov. Wolf’s carbon tax could result in a loss of approximately 17,000 jobs in the energy intensive manufacturing sector.

Total loss to the Pennsylvania economy from the state’s participation in RGGI could be as high as $7.7 billion a year and more than 22,000 jobs, with the economic loss between 2022 and 2030 over $50 billion.

There would be a net loss in tax revenue as the estimated $261 million generated by the sale of RGGI emission allowances would be more than offset by $282 million lost in lower collections of the corporate income tax, personal income tax and utility gross receipts tax.

Email from info@co2coalition.org

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Climate Change, the art of sophistry

Sophistry is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.

Climate alarmists who know the world is not coming to an imminent end (and that they aren’t going to save the planet from apocalyptic destruction), are creating clever – but false – arguments.

There are plenty of them around in the ranks of the World Economic Forum, United Nations, and the world’s political parties. They are, to their eternal shame, exponents of the subtle art of sophistry.

These people continually end sentences with words like ‘climate action’, ‘tackle Climate Change’, and ‘climate is an existential threat’. This juxtaposition of words should not be used together in any sentence in the English language. They make no sense yet have become modern catchphrases.

The best way to combat the vagueness of climate alarmism is to present facts and specificity. Start with declaring what Climate Change is in clear English. Put simply, it is a change in government energy policy.

What is the estimated cost of changing energy policy from fossil fuel, oil and gas to wind and solar?

In 2018, a Yale University study in America estimated their cost of conversion to a new energy policy would be $4.5 trillion. Therefore, the ridiculous dismissal of cost by the Australian Labor-Green-Teal alliance is questionable.

In the recent Federal election, changing energy policy was taken out of the debate. The then Liberal government committed to the nebulous 2050 emission reduction target and a 35 per cent emission reduction by 2030 thus making changing energy policy a by-partisan approach. The current Labor government and all state governments are committing to even more ambitious changes to energy policies.

The costing of the changing energy policy was not debated because it was not an election issue. Nor was the potential harm to standards of living for almost all Australians.

The Labor government does not wave a magic wand and gift us a different energy infrastructure. There is a costly and onerous transition period that will have significant economic ramifications.

The good news is that there are in place principles of economics. These principles can assist in an educated and advanced society to calculate and plan efficiently such transitions over a period of time. Once we eliminate the alarmist rhetoric, we can establish that time is on our side and one of our greatest allies in changes to the energy policy.

Every major government policy change involves a cost-benefit analysis, yet the detail is lacking in the new Labor government regarding energy policy changes. The Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has a template of the major steps in a cost-benefit analysis which requires you to follow a logical sequence of nine steps. Step 5 of that logical sequence is referred to as ‘Monetise (place dollar values on) impacts’. Step 6 is ‘Discount future costs and benefits to obtain present values’. In other words, how will the cost of the change in energy policy impact on our current interest rates and current inflation?

If such a cost-benefit analysis has been conducted, why is it not made available for debate and scrutiny? If it has not been conducted, then all sides of a responsible Parliament should be demanding such an analysis.

If there is to be a policy shift from fossil fuel, petroleum, and natural gas to wind and solar energy what will be the impact of the products currently made from fossil fuels?

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) at least 144 products used commonly in the community come from fossil fuel. Each of those products produce other products and this multiplier effect penetrates almost every aspect of society until the effect of fossil fuels reaches thousands of products. This list was done in 2013 and has been growing ever since as new inventions are created.

The list contains such items as clothing, motor vehicle bodies, and parts, car tyres (and not just fuel-injected cars but electric motor vehicles as well), parts for white goods, water pipes, cortisone, aspirin, antiseptics (what will happen if there is another Covid breakout), fertilisers, house paint, eyeglasses, artificial limbs, dentures, heart valves, and the list go on and on.

Fossil fuel and petroleum products have a significant impact on our food supplies and every doctor’s surgery, hospital, and operating theatre has equipment that owes its existence to fossil fuels in some way.

Consider for example a factory manufacturing site. Almost every item of machinery owes its existence in some way to fossil fuel. The more the federal Labor government and state governments phase out fossil fuel the scarcer the items of production become. The scarcer, the more expensive and the greater cost of production. The greater the cost of production the greater the end price to the consumer. Multiply this by almost every consumable item in the Australian market and the result is economic disaster.

The Labor government must have a costed plan for this potential outcome. If they have, they should make it public. If they have not, it would be an extraordinary act of irresponsibility.

Governments in Australia seem to have confined principles of economics to the desk drawer never to see the light of day. They are also not interested in science. One of our best scientists, Professor Ian Plimer has written extensively opposing the climate apocalypse theory and in an article in May 2022 he scientifically showed that Australia is already at Net Zero emissions.

Prime Minister Albanese was asked, ‘What do you want your legacy as Prime Minister to be?’

His one-word response was, ‘Climate.’

He may be poor at the art of sophistry, but it is sophistry, nevertheless.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/climate-change-the-art-of-sophistry/

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

The Global Warming Golden Goose

Climate science was an obscure and unimportant corner of academia until the professors lucked out with global warming. The global warming idea apparently struck a spark with the government and media establishments and caught fire. Money and influence flooded from Washington to academia.

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the scientific-technological elite being dependent upon government grants. Eisenhower feared that the elite would use their influence and expertise to warp public policy for their own benefit. That is exactly what is happening. Global warming is only one of many current scientific frauds that enhance the welfare of the scientists and bureaucrats promoting the frauds.

Since World War II, the increasing flow of big money from Washington has contributed to a gradual change in the character of research universities. Money became more important than science. Administrators who were focused on money and power grew in number and became dominant. This change in character was documented in an important essay by the MIT scientist Richard Lindzen.

Global warming provided the professors and academic administrators with a junk science golden goose. They were determined to stop anyone from killing the goose.

A narrative was developed to crush “deniers” who dared to question the global warming narrative. The deniers were depicted as agents of the international oil companies. This is somewhat comical since the oil companies were constantly searching for someone to accept their surrender. The oil companies not only had no chance of winning a propaganda war with academia and the media, they didn’t want to try. They were ready to swear allegiance to the global warming narrative. They knew perfectly well that global warming nonsense was no threat to their business. But the mob needs a villain so they weren’t allowed to surrender.

Many fighters against global warming fraud dislike the label “denier.” They consider it an attempt by the global warming crowd to lump their opponents in with Holocaust deniers. My feeling is that we might as well wear the label proudly and thus destroy its effectiveness.

We deniers come from a small contingent of people with argumentative personalities, scientific background, and a job or income that gives some immunity to retaliation. Deniers are adult versions of the child who said that the emperor has no clothes.

It’s easy for the establishment to depict deniers as crackpots. Who are they to challenge the scientific consensus? That a few deniers actually are crackpots doesn’t help. But there are far more crackpots promoting phony climate scares, many of them in the most privileged ranks of human society.

Climate science groups have been spending billions of dollars developing computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere in an attempt to support the global warming narrative. The computer models are obedient to their authors. The scientists can manipulate the models to show whatever result that supports the desired conclusion — global warming or global cooling. Kevin Trenberth, no denier and one time head of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), may have clarified the situation when he said: “None of the models… correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”

The beauty of a black box computer program with hundreds of thousands of lines of code is that it is difficult to know if it is an amazing work or a futile exercise. Academic scientists dare not criticize anything that brings money into their organization. When they do, they quickly learn that tenure is a joke compared to the importance of the money flow from Washington.
The average scientist promoting global warming really believes in global warming. It’s easy to believe in doctrines that bring in money. Academics outside of climate science who could challenge the global warming fraud prefer to keep quiet. Criticizing someone else’s junk science is dangerous for those who live in glass houses.

Professional climate scientists who are openly critical of the global warming narrative are either retired or so scientifically distinguished as to be impossible to fire. To my knowledge there is no such thing as a critical early career climate scientist. Such an aspiring scientist would not last long.
There are organizations fighting against the global warming fraud, but they don’t have the advantage of billions of government dollars to spread their message. They are always under attack by those supported in grand style by big government science. The Heartland Institute and the CO2 Coalition are two of many denier organizations.

There are numerous websites run by deniers or denier groups. One of the best, realclimatescience.com, is run by the electrical engineer Tony Heller. He hilariously exposes the lies of the global warming crowd as well as the sensationalism of the media. His specialty is exposing the tampering with climate data to make it agree with global warming theory. If a theory fails to agree with real world data, tampering with the data is one method of promoting the fraud.

People are fooled by prophets or gurus who pretend to have understanding beyond that of ordinary people. Such people may be called witch doctors by anthropologists studying African tribes. One has to ask who are the witch doctors fooling the anthropologists? The American Anthropological Association released a statement on climate change giving all-out support to the global warming fraud.

I don’t see an end to junk science because there’s too much money in it and the credible institutions that could puncture it lack objectivity and expertise. The ideological bias of the mainstream media attracts them to any crackpot theory that calls for more government money and power mobilized to solve the “problem.” For them the global warming narrative is wonderful because it provides an excuse for the government to regulate nearly everything.

A possible reform is sending the money and control of scientific research to the states. That at least would provide fifty different approaches, even if some may turn out to be disasters. It would also promote competition and diversity of opinion. The top Washington bureaucrats could be offered early retirements. The younger bureaucrats could look for jobs with the states.

https://co2coalition.org/2022/07/12/the-global-warming-golden-goose/

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Children Die When 'Eco-Lies' Disrupt the War Against Mosquitoes

I am glad to be alive after a bout with dengue fever. But many across the world are not so fortunate. More than 4000 die each year due to dengue, a severe mosquito-borne disease.

It all began 10 days ago with intense fever. My body consistently clocked above 102 degrees Fahrenheit for 48 hours. Then followed severe pain in every part of the body. Once the fever and aching subsided, the second phase of the struggle began, with the blood platelet count falling dramatically.

Often, as in my case, the blood platelet count recovers on its own slowly. But in case of mismanagement, as the World Health Organization (WHO) reports, some people develop “complications associated with severe bleeding, organ impairment and/or plasma leakage.” In the worst cases, it results in death.

Contrary to expectation, the prevalence and incidence of cengue has increased in recent decades.

WHO says, “the number of dengue cases reported to WHO increased over 8 fold over the last two decades, from 505,430 cases in 2000, to over 2.4 million in 2010, and 5.2 million in 2019. Reported deaths between the year 2000 and 2015 increased from 960 to 4032, affecting mostly younger age group.”

“Before 1970,” the report went on, “only 9 countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in the WHO regions of Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific.”

Why is there a dramatic increase when we have effective disease control mechanisms at our disposal? Because the application of those solutions has been hindered by environmental movements.

The increase in dengue can partially be attributed to radical environmentalists’ opposition to the most effective killer of mosquitoes, DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the primary vector (carrier) of dengue. As per WHO, the mosquito is now “well adapted to urban habitats and breeds mostly in man-made containers/spaces.” DDT remains one of the most effective deterrents of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Thanks to Rachel Carson’s unscientific claims about DDT in her 1962 book Silent Spring, the environmental movement against DDT began with blind stupidity. In 1972, the U.S. EPA banned DDT. Then in 2004, several countries decided to ban DDT at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Today, most arguments (and movements) against DDT can be traced back to the inspiration from this fallacious fear-mongering unscientific book and its claims on DDT.

Not only were Carson’s claims untrue, but they have also managed to cause the deaths of thousands across the globe during the last three decades by acting as an active ideological hurdle to employing DDT to kill the deadly mosquitoes.

Some cities in India for example are influenced by the lies from her book and fail to proactively fumigate public places with DDT. Instead of using DDT as a preventive method, DDT fumigation is limited to a responsive measure, fumigating only when dengue cases occur.

And so far, we have addressed only dengue. The benefits of DDT fumigation appear far more critical if we are to consider their role in prevention of Malaria. Malaria affects 300 million people every year. The situation is far worse in the African continent, where malaria kills two children every minute. DDT can prevent the transmission of malaria by as much as 90% if employed efficiently.

I am thankful that I have recovered, and I am thankful that our government in India has not banned DDT. In fact, India is supplying DDT to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia for malaria control.

DDT is a life saver, and any country with mosquito-borne diseases should allow its use. Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods,” including mosquitoes. Let not the lies of Rachel Carson rob millions of African children of their very lives.

https://townhall.com/columnists/vijayjayaraj/2022/07/12/children-die-when-ecolies-disrupt-the-war-against-mosquitoes-n2610079

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British heatwave green hysteria is out of control

If you find yourself wondering over the next few days why it is so swelteringly hot, I have an answer for you. It’s because of rich people. It’s because of those wealthy elites with all their gas-guzzling vehicles and reckless holidaymaking. It’s their fault you’re sweating on the Tube.

This infantile claim really is being made, and by supposedly serious politicians. Labour’s Richard Burgon, over on his Instagram account, is wringing his no doubt sweaty hands over the filthy rich folk who apparently landed us in this weather apocalypse.

‘As we face 40C temperatures and the first ever Red Extreme Heat Warning, remember this climate crisis is driven by the wealthy’, he cries. His stern words are accompanied, naturally, by that Met Office map showing half of Britain coloured dark red – the hellish hue that has been chosen to illustrate how dire our predicament has allegedly become.

Is anyone else tiring of all this green hysteria over the heatwave? There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?

The unhinged eco-dread over the heatwave exposes how millenarian environmentalism has become. Climate-change activism is less and less about coming up with practical solutions to the problem of pollution and more about demonising mankind as a plague on a planet, a pox on Mother Earth. These people really do view hot weather as an indictment of humanity, and a forewarning of the imminent heat death of our world that we’ve brought about with all our evil pollution and consumption.

They’re all at it. Caroline Lucas says, ‘The climate emergency is right here, right now’. One observer describes Europe as a ‘continent on fire’ – which just isn’t true, is it? – and says the hot weather is proof of ‘the ravages of climate change’. The words ‘heatwave hell’ are appearing everywhere, and many in the opinion-forming set know exactly who’s responsible for this hell: me and you and everyone else who has dared to live modern, technological lives.

This isn’t the first time a weather event has been depicted as a hell of man’s own making. When the latest IPCC report was published last year, hell talk was widespread. ‘If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth’, said an Oxford prof. And of course we brought all this fiery punishment upon ourselves just as surely as Sodom and Gomorrah invited God’s divine retribution by being so perverted. We are ‘guilty as hell’, the Guardian’s environment editor cried, sounding for all the world like one of those crackpot millenarian preachers you’d see on street corners in the old days.

To my mind, there could be no better proof that climate-change activism has become an End of Days cult than the fact that its chief ideologues are now even incapable of enjoying hot weather. They feel the sun’s rays on their faces and all they can think about is the Armageddon that the modern masses have created with their cheap flights and their 4X4s and their addiction to disposable fashion. When you see everything as a sign, as further proof of your own apocalyptic belief system, you have a problem.

Let’s have some perspective. Propagandistic terms like ‘extreme weather’ and ‘Weather of Mass Destruction’ are meant to whip up fear in the populace every time there’s sunshine or floods. And yet, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the number of people dying in climate-related disasters has plummeted spectacularly over the past hundred years.

In the 1920s, close to 500,000 people died every year in storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves. In 2020, just 14,000 people died as a result of such natural calamities. That means global annual deaths from climate disasters have fallen by 96 per cent. The modernity that eco-warriors so disdain has actually helped to protect humanity from the violent whims of Mother Nature. Lomborg also points out that in most parts of the world, cold deaths ‘vastly outweigh’ heat deaths. So while the warming of the planet might increase heatwaves, it will reduce coldwaves. Which will be very good for human life. Are we allowed to look on the bright side anymore?

This isn’t the first time extreme weather events have been blamed on wicked human beings, whether it’s Richard Burgon’s wealthy elites or just people in general driving their diesel cars and taking two easyJet flights a year. No, in the Middle Ages, too, scapegoats were often sought whenever there was a scary climatic event.

As the German historian Wolfgang Behringer has documented, in the 14th and 15th centuries ‘unnatural climatic phenomena’ were often blamed on ‘a great conspiracy of witches’. During the Little Ice Age in particular, when crops failed in many parts of Europe, there was a frenzy of witch-hunting. Some in society ‘held the witches directly responsible for the high frequency of climatic anomalies’.

Sound familiar? I definitely hear echoes of that old, regressive belief that sinister people are responsible for weird weather in today’s attempt to pin heatwaves on the rich or on coal-mining or on motorists. Environmentalism has rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific form the age-old instinct to find the witch or the sinner who is to blame for society’s misfortunes.

Everyone needs to calm down. We’re safer from weather than we have ever been. It’s sunny. Go outside. Sit in the shade. Have an ice-cream.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/the-heatwave-green-hysteria-is-out-of-control/

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Cost of living crisis is caused by 'fool' politicians who are pursuing 'green dreams' and printing money, says Australian MP turned TV host

Sky News TV host Cory Bernardi says the world's global cost of living crisis has been 'caused entirely by politicians' pursuing 'green dreams'.

Inflation, war and supply chain issues have triggered skyrocketing prices of groceries, mortgage repayments, electricity bills and fuel - with the conservative commentator pointing to the 'fools' in power around the world.

'The cost of living crisis is a global phenomenon that's caused entirely by politicians. Do not believe when they try and shift the blame to Russia or China or someone else,' the former politician said on Sky News.

'The fools that run this country and other western nations have chased green dreams that have jacked up the price of power.

'They've printed money fuelling inflation, they've campaigned against domestic manufacturing capacity which has led to supply shortages,' the Sky News host added. 'And we could go on and on and on,' he said.

Prices are soaring as the nation stares down a perfect storm of Covid and spiralling fuel and power bills while flood-ravaged farmland sees food prices skyrocket.

The battle against inflation is being fought globally - and although Australia's hurting, the 5.1 per cent inflation rate here is still among the best in the world.

China has so far emerged almost unscathed while most other countries suffer the hangover of Covid stimulus packages which have overheated the global economy.

In New Zealand, inflation is currently running at 6.9 per cent and has brought some families to the brink of starvation as they struggle to cope with the soaring prices.

Despite being the original source of Covid, China has kept inflation down to a near world-best 2.5 per cent, just behind Saudi Arabia's G20 nations-topping 2.3 per cent.

But although they've kept inflation under control, Beijing now faces an embarrassing and damaging recession and the end of their much-lauded 'economic miracle'.

The Communist superpower has seen a dramatic slump in its GDP after massive Covid shutdowns in Shanghai devastated production lines and exports.

On Friday, China admitted its GDP shrunk 2.6 per cent in the last quarter and was up only 0.4 per cent year on year, compared to previous annual growth of 5-6 per cent.

Unless production bounces back in the next quarter, it will send the country into a technical recession, ending decades of soaraway growth since 1976.

In Australia, the current 20-year high inflation rate of 5.1 per cent is widely expected to worsen when the latest figure is released on July 27, possibly hitting 6.3 per cent.

In a double whammy, the runaway inflation is causing interest rates to rise, adding hundreds of dollars to mortgage payments for families across the country, while wages lag behind and the cost of living soars.

But among G20 countries, Australia's inflation rate still ranks sixth-best, far ahead of struggling allies like the US and UK, both on 9.1 per cent, with even economic superpower Germany on 7.6 per cent.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11022929/Cost-living-crisis-caused-politicians-according-former-Liberal-MP.html

Tesla Owners Share Alarming Message Received on Screen About Charging Car Amid Heat Wave

As the summer heat envelopes Texas, putting stress on the Lone Star State’s electric grid, we’ve learned that Tesla has sent messages to owners asking them to avoid charging their cars during peak hours to help ease the load.

It’s just another example of how electric vehicles are not quite as convenient as those selling them want us to imagine.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said twice this week that the state’s power grid would be sorely tested during a heatwave. Because of that, ERCOT asked Texans and Texas businesses to voluntarily conserve electricity on Monday and Wednesday from 2 to 8 p.m.

“The heat wave that has settled on Texas and much of the central United States is driving increased electric use,” it said in its news releases. “Other grid operators are operating under similar conservative operations programs as ERCOT due to the heatwave.”

Temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees in much of the state this week, with Somerville seeing a high of 113 on Sunday, according to The Washington Post.

In addition to high demand, the Texas power grid has faced a lack of wind to power up its turbines. “Current projections show wind generation coming in less than 10 percent of its capacity,” ERCOT said.

All this adds up to a deficiency.

Starting with Texas’ first heatwave of the year in May, Tesla sent updates to vehicle screens asking owners not to charge their cars during peak periods, The Drive reported.

Tesla owners have shared images of the alerts they were sent — with the title “Help Relieve Heat Wave Stress on the Grid” — in posts on Reddit and Twitter.

“A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days,” the message said. “The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3pm and 8pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage demand.”

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/tesla-owners-share-alarming-message-received-screen-charging-car-amid-heat-wave?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=newsletter-FP&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=2022-07-16&ats_es=6bed8ec6c23532f964400caf5c21036b

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California Environmentalists Shut Down Desalination Plant as American West Faces Historic Water Crisis

The State of California rejected plans for a major desalination plant in May, spiking a source of water for hundreds of thousands of people as the American West faces a historic drought.

Desalination refers to the treatment and purification of ocean water for drinking and agricultural use.

The state shot down Poseidon Water’s plan for a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, thirty miles south of Los Angeles.

The plant was designed to produce 50 million gallons of drinkable water from Pacific Ocean saltwater every single day, according to Reuters.

Environmental concerns played a key role in convincing the California Coastal Commission to spike the Poseidon water plant.

State regulators ultimately voted unanimously against giving the plant to go-ahead. Commissioners cited a proposed risk to marine life that the plant posed.

Environmental activists present at the commission’s hearing on the plant celebrated as they tanked the project.

Poseidon questioned how the state could shut down the plant in a statement after the hearing. “California continues to face a punishing drought, with no end in sight,” said the company. “We firmly believe that this desalination project would have created a sustainable, drought-tolerant source of water.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom openly supported the idea, according to the Orange County Register.

California is one of seven signatories to the 1922 Colorado River Compact, an interstate agreement that divides the use of the river’s water.

The state is allocated 4.4 million acre-feet of water yearly under the compact. It’s the only state in the agreement that borders the ocean, thus making it an ideal candidate for investment in desalination.

California also has the highest-priority rights to Colorado River water under the agreement.

Lake Mead, the biggest water reservoir in the western United States, has declined significantly in volume amid excessive Colorado River water usage.

The water shortage has spurred states to look creatively at water preservation and new potential water sources. But this hasn’t extended to desalination in California, with its abundant Pacific Ocean coastline.

It’s one thing to slash tires, blame other people and order the public to eat bugs as a response to climate change.

It’s another to actually implement lasting, serious solutions to the problems.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/california-environmentalists-shut-desalination-plant-american-west-faces-historic-water-crisis

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In The UK, Some Political Movement On The Climate Scare

It has long been my view that the whole climate scare thing will fade away and disappear once the costs and risks of the insane zero carbon agenda become clear to the voting public. As much as I’ve been deeply involved in efforts to expose the fake “science” behind the scare, the science arguments so far have had very little success in convincing anyone, particularly anyone (and this is most people) who is subject to appeals to fear. But now, over in the UK, the costs and risks of pursuing an aggressive “climate” agenda are starting to hit home. And with the selection of a new Prime Minister now getting started, we can see the first glimmerings of political impact.

You might think that, since I am on the board of an organization that is an affiliate of a group based in the UK, I might have some special insights on where the PM race is going. In fact, what my UK contacts tell me is that the PM race is wide open, and anything could happen. But there is one remarkable thing, which is that suddenly it is no longer disqualifying to express skepticism about green orthodoxy. As of this writing, an actual overt skeptic — at least, a skeptic as to fossil fuel suppression — might even win; and whoever wins is likely at the minimum to start a quiet retreat from the existing Net Zero program.

Here in the U.S., we have had climate skepticism in the Republican Party for a good while, although only in the last several years — really, since the election of Trump in 2016 — has opposition to fossil fuel suppression become near universal among Republicans. (Recall that the Republican presidential candidates in both 2008, McCain, and 2012, Romney, were on board with fossil fuel suppression to “save the planet.”).

But in Europe, including the UK, it has been different. Even today, there is no major political party anywhere in Europe taking an avowedly skeptical position on anything relating to the climate alarm movement. This is true not just as to questioning the underlying “science,” such as it is, but also as to questioning the demanded mitigation measures of suppressing fossil fuels and building wind turbines and solar panels everywhere. There has been something as close to political unanimity on the issue as one ever sees.

In the UK, the push for Net Zero has been backed by all political parties. The first targets for greenhouse gas reductions were set by the Climate Change Act of 2008, when a Labor government was in power; but significantly more ambitious targets, including a legally-binding net zero commitment by 2050, were then adopted by amendments to that Act in June 2019, during a Conservative government led by Theresa May. According to the BBC here, the amendments passed in Parliament on June 24, 2019 “without a single objection”:

It was a rare display of parliamentary unity that the government said would set a benchmark for the world to follow.

Boris Johnson then became Prime Minister the next month, July 2019, and, along with his cabinet, he has enthusiastically and aggressively pushed forward with the Net Zero agenda ever since, without significant opposition.

The ground really only began to shift in the latter part of 2021, as prices for fossil fuels including oil and natural gas began an increase that has continued since. The UN COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow in October was the catalyst for the first steps to form a Parliamentary group to question the aggressive Net Zero program. Then on January 1, 2022 five members of Parliament came into the open with a letter to the Telegraph newspaper (behind paywall) calling for action in light of impending massive increases in household energy bills. In a piece on March 3, 2022, the BBC interviewed Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay on the subject of how the group came to be formed:

Mr Mackinlay and the net zero rebels were alarmed by "some of the more outlandish and unachievable proposals" being put forward. "There were so many daft policies being proposed that would make Britain colder and poorer," he said. "We thought it was time to have a proper debate about these things."

As of March, the BBC said that there were approximately 19 MPs in the group, which had taken the name Net Zero Scrutiny Group. At that time, the war in Ukraine had just begun, accompanied by an additional large spike in energy prices, to which the UK had been left completely vulnerable by, among other things, a total ban drilling for oil or natural gas by means of fracking. Energy prices to consumers, which had been suppressed by price controls for several months, then were allowed to approximately double in April, and further large increases are expected later in the year, which will take energy prices to consumers to triple or more where they were at the start of 2022. There are currently approximately 50 or more members of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group in Parliament.

And now on to the race for Prime Minister. Since the Conservatives hold a majority of seats in the Parliament, the race is held within the Conservative party on rules that it sets internally. The rules call for multiple preliminary rounds, where the voters are the Conservative MPs. In each round, a higher number of votes is required to make it to the next round, until finally the number of candidates is reduced to two. The final two will then go to a vote of the full “membership” of the Conservative party, something of which we do not have an analog here in the U.S. I understand that there are around 180,000 “members” of the Party.

As of today, after two rounds of voting have been completed, and several candidates eliminated, here are the remaining contenders:

Rishi Sunak, until a week ago Chancellor of the Exchequer. (He resigned just before Johnson resigned.)

Liz Truss, current Foreign Secretary.

Penny Mordaunt, former Defense Secretary under Theresa May who has since held lower-level cabinet positions.

Kemi Badenoch, former “Equalities Minister” (yes, they have such a thing).

Tom Tugendhat, a back-bench member considered a “moderate.”

Of the five, Badenoch has given strong signals that she is not on board with the Net Zero program, primarily because of its cost. Launching her campaign, she gave an interview with the Telegraph, quoted here in Business Green,:

Badenoch insisted she was "not someone who doesn't believe in climate change", but she argued it was "wrong of us to set a target without having a clear plan of the cost and knowing what it would entail. . . . "Setting an arbitrary target like that is the wrong way to go… There is a better way of going about these things," she added.

Badenoch is also running as the “anti-woke” candidate. She was born in London of Nigerian parents, and grew up mostly in Nigeria. She was initially considered an outsider and total long-shot, but has survived two rounds of balloting so far. Here is a picture:

Meanwhile, the other candidates have been much quieter on their positions as to Net Zero. But Mordaunt and Truss have been talking up tax cut proposals, which one might say are inconsistent with massive government spending to promote Net Zero. And according to the BBC March 3 piece, Sunak has “pushed for six new North Sea oil and gas fields to be given licences this year.”

Reality takes hold ever so slowly. I would suggest to my Conservative friends in the UK that the abandonment of Net Zero is inevitable, and they need a leader who can take them through that process without being embarrassed about it, and who can proudly stand up and accuse the other side of seeking to impoverish the middle class.

Meanwhile, Badenoch is my candidate.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-7-14-in-the-uk-some-political-movement-on-the-climate-scare?mc_cid=59654f129a&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Academics discrediting Australia’s carbon credit system are ‘serious people’, says former chief scientist

The former Australian chief scientist charged with investigating the country’s divisive carbon credit system says academics who have described it as a fraud and a sham are “serious people”.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Prof Ian Chubb said there were also credible voices defending the scheme and he would need to carefully weigh the evidence.

Chubb, a neuroscientist who was an inaugural board member of the Climate Change Authority and vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, has been given six months to unpick a growing controversy over the integrity of the scheme, which is central to government and business plans to cut emissions and reach net zero by 2050.

The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, will announce on Monday three panellists who will work with Chubb on the review. They are Ariadne Gorring, the co-chief executive of the climate investment and advisory firm Pollination Foundation, retired federal court judge Dr Annabelle Bennett and economist Dr Steve Hatfield-Dodds.

Carbon credits are bought by governments and businesses as an alternative to making emissions cuts. Each carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide that has either been stopped from going in the atmosphere, or sucked out of it.

Concern about the validity of the scheme has been heightened since March, when Australian National University’s Prof Andrew Macintosh – who, as chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, used to be responsible for the integrity of the scheme – released several academic papers with colleagues arguing that most credits do not actually represent real or new emissions cuts.

Macintosh, an environmental law and policy scholar, said the system run by the government and Clean Energy Regulator was “largely a sham” and a fraud on taxpayers and the environment.

The Clean Energy Regulator and Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee have rejected this, saying they had asked independent experts to test Macintosh’s assertions and found no evidence to support them. They have been supported by industry body the Carbon Market Institute and some companies that run carbon credit projects.

On Friday, Macintosh and colleagues released two new papers that argue the “vast majority” of carbon credits awarded for what are known as “human-induced regeneration” projects – which involve regenerating native forests by preventing grazing by livestock and feral animals (and not be tree-planting) – had not drawn more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than would have happened anyway.

Human-induced regeneration is the most popular method to create carbon credits. The academics said the method had “numerous flaws”, including that landholders were issued carbon credits for growing trees in arid and semi-arid rangeland country though the vegetation was already there before the work started.

More here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/18/academics-discrediting-australias-carbon-credit-system-serious-people-says-former-chief-scientist

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Climate activists slash dozens of SUV tires in NYC, say 'major cities' across US to be hit next

A group of climate activists has started a campaign to randomly slash tires of parked SUVs across the U.S. in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Tyre Extinguishers — a group that originated in the U.K. and has expanded to various European nations — conducted its first "action" in New York City this week. The group vowed to conduct similar operations in cities nationwide.

"We are rapidly expanding across the United States and are in touch with people in major cities across the USA," a spokesperson for the Tyre Extinguishers told Fox News Digital. "We expect this to expand massively."

The spokesperson referred Fox News Digital back to the group's website in response to a series of other questions. They didn't comment on the legality of vandalizing SUVs.

On Tuesday, the Tyre extinguishers celebrated "disarming" 40 SUVs in New York City's Upper East Side neighborhood. Participants of the action left flyers on each of the vehicles asking its owner not to "take it personally."

"We did this because driving around urban areas in your massive vehicle has huge consequences for others," the pamphlet said.

"The world is facing a climate emergency," it added. "We're taking actions into our own hands because our governments and politicians will not."

The group noted that it would slash tires of electric and hybrid vehicles as well since they also have a carbon footprint.

"On June 28, 2022 at 12:20am in front of 146 East 65 Street there is a report on file in the 19th Precinct for criminal tampering," a New York Police Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital in an email. "A 49-year-old male victim states upon returning to his vehicles he discovered one tire to each of his vehicles had been deflated."

The spokesperson added that no arrests have been made and that the investigation remains ongoing.

"The Tyre Extinguishers want to see bans on SUVs in urban areas, pollution levies to tax SUVs out of existence, and massive investment in free, comprehensive public transport," the group said in a statement Tuesday.

"But until politicians make this a reality, Tyre Extinguishers action will continue," the statement continued.

The group has conducted operations in the U.K., Austria, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden and New Zealand.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/climate-activists-slash-dozens-suv-tires-nyc-say-major-cities-us-hit-next

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California went big on rooftop solar. Now that’s a problem for landfills

California has been a pioneer in pushing for rooftop solar power, building up the largest solar market in the U.S. More than 20 years and 1.3 million rooftops later, the bill is coming due.

Beginning in 2006, the state, focused on how to incentivize people to take up solar power, showered subsidies on homeowners who installed photovoltaic panels but had no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their typical 25-to-30-year life cycle.

Many are already winding up in landfills, where in some cases, they could potentially contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium.

Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled, according to estimates drawn from International Renewable Energy Agency data on decommissioned panels and from industry leaders.

The looming challenge over how to handle truckloads of waste, some of it contaminated, illustrates how cutting-edge environmental policy can create unforeseen problems down the road.

“The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”

California came early to solar power. Small governmental rebates did little to bring down the price of solar panels or to encourage their adoption until 2006, when the California Public Utilities Commission formed the California Solar Initiative. That granted $3.3 billion in subsidies for installing solar panels on rooftops.

The measure exceeded its goals, bringing down the price of solar panels and boosting the share of the state’s electricity produced by the sun. Because of that and other measures, such as requirements that utilities buy a portion of their electricity from renewable sources, solar power now accounts for 15% of the state’s power.

But as California barreled ahead on its renewable-energy program, focusing on rebates and — more recently — a proposed solar tax, questions about how to handle the waste that would accrue years later were never fully addressed. Now, both regulators and panel manufacturers are realizing that they don’t have the capacity to handle what comes next.

“This trash is probably going to arrive sooner than we expected and it is going to be a huge amount of waste,” said Serasu Duran, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business in Canada. “But while all the focus has been on building this renewable capacity, not much consideration has been put on the end of life of these technologies.”

Duran co-wrote a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that noted the industry’s “capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come.”

It’s not just a problem in California but also nationwide. A new solar project was installed every 60 seconds in 2021, according to a fact sheet published by the Solar Energy Industries Assn., and the solar industry is expected to quadruple in size between 2020 and 2030.

Although 80% of a typical photovoltaic panel is made of recyclable materials, disassembling them and recovering the glass, silver and silicon is extremely difficult.

“There’s no doubt that there will be an increase in the solar panels entering the waste stream in the next decade or so,” said AJ Orben, vice president of We Recycle Solar, a Phoenix-based company that breaks down panels and extracts the valuable metals while disposing of toxic elements. “That’s never been a question.”

The vast majority of We Recycle Solar’s business comes from California, but the company has no facilities in the state. Instead, the panels are trucked to a site in Yuma, Ariz. That’s because California’s rigorous permitting system for toxic materials makes it exceedingly difficult to set up shop, Orben said.

Recycling solar panels isn’t a simple process. Highly specialized equipment and workers are needed to separate the aluminum frame and junction box from the panel without shattering it into glass shards. Specialized furnaces are used to heat panels to recover silicon. In most states, panels are classified as hazardous materials, which require expensive restrictions on packaging, transport and storage. (The vast majority of residential solar arrays in the U.S. are crystalline silicon panels, which can contain lead, although it’s less prevalent in newer panels. Thin-film solar panels, which contain cadmium and selenium, are primarily used in utility-grade applications.)

Orben said the economics of the process don’t make a compelling case for recycling.

Only about $2 to $4 worth of materials are recovered from each panel. The majority of processing costs are tied to labor, and Orben said even recycling panels at scale would not be more economical.

Most research on photovoltaic panels is focused on recovering solar-grade silicon to make recycling economically viable.

That skews the economic incentives against recycling. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that it costs roughly $20 to $30 to recycle a panel versus $1 to $2 to send it to a landfill.

Most experts assume that is where the majority of panels are ending up right now. But it’s anyone’s guess. Natalie Click, a doctoral candidate in materials science at the University of Arizona, said there is no uniform system “for tracking where all of these decommissioned panels are going.”

The California Department of Toxic Substances collected its first data on panels recycled by universal waste handlers in 2021. For handlers that accepted more than 200 pounds or generated more than 10,000 pounds of panels, the DTSC counted 335 panels accepted for recycling, said Sanford Nax, a spokesman for the agency.

The department expects the number of installed solar panels in the next decade to exceed hundreds of millions in California alone, and that recycling will become even more crucial as cheaper panels with shorter life spans become more popular.

A lack of consumer awareness about the toxicity of materials in some panels and how to dispose of them is part of the problem, experts said.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california-rooftop-solar-pv-panels-recycling-danger

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New Study Shows Electric Cars Have Much Lower Quality Than Gas-Powered Vehicles

In a damning rebuke of the Biden administration’s rabid promotion of electric vehicles, a new study has concluded that EVs are inferior in quality to gas-powered cars.

Owners of battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrid vehicles report more problems than do owners of gas-powered cars, according to a study published June 28 by the consumer research company J.D. Power.

Researchers found that gasoline cars average 175 problems per 100 vehicles.

By comparison, generic battery-powered cars — excluding Tesla models — average 240 problems per 100 vehicles, while hybrids average 239 problems, according to J.D. Power.

Tesla EV models average 226 problems per 100 vehicles, the report said. The vehicles from Elon Musk’s company were listed separately “because the predominance of Tesla vehicles could obscure the performance of the legacy automakers that have recently introduced BEVs,” J.D. Power said.

Since electric cars, on average, cost $10,000 more than gas-powered vehicles, this suggests that EVs do not live up to their hype of being a good value for the money.

This has been a constant refrain from climate alarmists and EV superfans, including President Joe Biden.

As it is, there are countless consumer horror stories about the numerous problems users have experienced with their electric cars, especially recharging difficulties.

Keep in mind that the EV market is powered by billions of dollars in “green subsidies” bankrolled by you, the taxpayer.

Ironically, these lucrative federal subsidies ultimately enrich communist China, which is the world’s No. 1 polluter.

Most EVs are powered by lithium-ion batteries — a market dominated by the communist giant.

“Due to heavy government subsidies, China dominates the global production of lithium-ion batteries and their precursor materials, especially graphite,” The Federalist reported. “China’s graphite production has notoriously contributed to significant pollution in the country.”

So by aggressively pushing the mass use of EVs in the United States, Biden has spawned a counterproductive situation where U.S. government EV subsidies end up bankrolling China’s high-pollution production — all in the name of environmentalism.

As a reminder, Biden signed an executive order in August 2021 to make electric cars comprise half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030.

He claimed this was necessary to combat “climate change.” In reality, the move was a strategy to make gas-powered cars a relic of the past.

This new study shows the result of Biden’s destructive energy policies is Americans spending more money on inferior-quality vehicles.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/electric-cars-lower-quality-gas-powered-vehicles

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Dutch Nitrogen Scientist Questions the Basis of Government Climate Mandates

Jaap Hanekamp is skeptical of the received wisdom in science. He won’t stop asking a simple question: “But, is this true?”

When it comes to the Dutch government’s calculations of ammonia and nitrogen oxide deposition—the basis of climate mandates that would slash livestock numbers and put many farmers out of work—Hanekamp is especially critical of “the science.”

He thinks it relies on vague definitions, excessive deference to expert judgment, and a narrow focus on costs rather than both costs and benefits.

“We now treat farmers as polluters, end of story, which is a very strange perspective,” he said.

Hanekamp, an associate professor of chemistry at University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands, made the comments in an interview with Roman Balmakov, host of EpochTV’s “Facts Matter.”

A 2019 Dutch court decision that hindered the construction of livestock facilities triggered an earlier round of protests by farmers.

A Science article on the protests described some of the harms attributed to nitrogen emissions: “In 118 of 162 Dutch nature reserves, nitrogen deposits now exceed ecological risk thresholds by an average of 50 percent.

“In dunes, bogs, and heathlands, home to species adapted to a lack of nitrogen, plant diversity has decreased as nitrogen-loving grasses, shrubs, and trees move in.”

“Nitrogen chemicals are nutrients—you need them for growing plants,” Hanekamp said.

Hanekamp believes the government has focused on nitrogen almost to the exclusion of other factors that affect nature, such as the location of groundwater relative to the surface.

He also questions whether the ecosystem shifts prompted by greater nitrogen deposition can be properly defined as “damage.”

“Is a change in biodiversity bad in itself, or is it just change?” he asked.

He pointed out that the Netherlands is far from pristine wilderness. Much of the land is artificial, reclaimed from the sea over recent centuries thanks to the ingenuity of man.

Hanekamp has scrutinized a term used in government ecological research: “nitrogen critical load.”

Below its “critical load,” a substance is not thought to pose a significant environmental threat.

In a recent paper, Hanekamp and coauthor William Briggs described some problems with the evidence used to define nitrogen critical loads in the Netherlands.

For one thing, they do not believe the definitions of nitrogen critical loads are sufficiently precise. In addition, they think there have not been enough large-scale, long-term studies on nitrogen deposition.

Hanekamp stressed that models can be useful—taking 100,000 measurements across the country wouldn’t exactly be easy or cheap.

Yet modeling uncertainty makes it challenging to translate activity on a particular farm to exact patterns of nitrogen flow.

That hasn’t stopped the Dutch nitrogen minister from unveiling detailed, area-specific nitrogen reduction targets in June of this year.

The release was the impetus for the latest round of protests by farmers.

One dairy farmer interviewed by The Epoch Times would have to cut his livestock numbers by 95 percent—so much that he expects he will need to shut down.

“We have created the illusion of certainty with respect to emission and deposition. That’s definitely a mirage of policymaking,” said Hanekamp.

“The problem is that the Dutch government decided that these critical loads are definitive with respect to the quality of the habitats we have. And that’s a very strange approach to this issue.”

Hanekamp worries that a comprehensive, societal risk-benefit analysis has not occurred. He thinks the ultimate outcome of the government’s climate proposals remains deeply uncertain.

“If we would implement these and we would kick out, say, one third of the farmers, we still don’t know what the result would be related to these critical loads, which doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“Yeah, we [would] know that one third of the farmers [are] gone, and that basically, we’re reducing production and income as a country, but the return of investment in the focused nature? We have no idea.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dutch-nitrogen-scientist-questions-the-basis-of-government-climate-mandates_4601170.html

Friday, July 15, 2022

Journalist Spends 30 Minutes Trying to Get Electric Car Charger to Work, Forced to Completely Give Up

Climate alarmists, including President Joe Biden, have been rabidly pushing electric vehicles as the solution for combating climate change and soaring gas prices, but they downplay the numerous ways EVs are inferior to gas-powered cars.

In addition to being expensive, electric cars can take a long time to recharge. Moreover, the charging process can be frustrating and arduous.

In a June 28 video posted by TFLEV, an EV-centric YouTube channel, a journalist spotlighted the difficulties he encountered while trying to recharge his 2023 Cadillac Lyriq.

The Lyriq, an all-electric SUV, is the cornerstone of Cadillac’s foray into the electric vehicle market.

“The Lyriq is the first EV to enter Cadillac’s lineup, which General Motors vows will be entirely electric by the end of the decade,” the Detroit Free Press said. “As a company, GM has said all its brands will be all-electric by 2035.”

However, in the painful 12-minute video, the journalist testing the Lyriq spent an hour searching for a fast-charging station in Park City, Utah.

Because there was none in Park City, he had to settle for a slower charger called EVgo.

However, that charger would not work. It also did not accept his payment method, and when he tried to download the app and do it that way, it didn’t work either.

While wasting 30 minutes trying to recharge his Lyriq, the tester received numerous error messages and was forced to re-enter his personal information several times.

“Get your act together, really. It shouldn’t be this hard,” the journalist lamented.

He’s right: It shouldn’t be that hard to charge an electric vehicle. After all, it usually only takes a few minutes to fill up your car at a gas station.

As a reminder, those who are able to find EV charging stations often encounter long lines.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/painful-journalist-spends-30-minutes-trying-get-electric-car-charger-work-forced-completely-give

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SCOTUS, Statutory Delegation and the EPA

Somewhat lost in the excitement surrounding Dobbs (no fundamental right to abortion), Bruen (right to carry a firearm outside the home), and Kennedy (coach’s midfield prayer was not an establishment of religion) was the decision in West Virginia v. EPA. The MSM went into apoplexy over the Court’s latest ruling on the power of the Administrative State. CNN’s headline squawked that “Supreme Court curbs EPA’s ability to fight climate change.” Such alarmism is uncalled for.

The Clean Air Act permits the EPA to regulate power plants by setting a “standard of performance” that must reflect the “best system of emission reduction” that the EPA has determined to be “adequately demonstrated” for a particular category. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act, the EPA has set performance standards to reduce pollution by requiring plants to operate more cleanly. The nation’s coal plants were operating at near optimum efficiency. So in 2015, the EPA sought to require coal plants to reduce energy production or to subsidize an increase in wind, solar, or natural gas production.

The EPA sought by 2030 to have coal provide 27 percent of national electricity, down from 38 percent in 2014. The EPA estimated that the new requirement on coal plants would entail billions of dollars in compliance costs, the shut down of many of the plants, and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

The question in West Virginia v. EPA was whether Congress had delegated to the agency the sweeping authority to decide how much energy production coal should contribute to the national economy. To determine this, the Court invoked the major question doctrine, which requires a clear showing that Congress intended to confer broad authority in an area of substantial economic and political significance. The presumption is that Congress intends to make major policy decisions itself and not leave such matters to administrative agencies.

The Court noted that on several occasions, Congress had refused to pass legislation to amend the Clean Air Act to provide the agency with sweeping authority to pass such regulations. The Court noted that capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level to force a transition from the use of coal to other energy sources might be a wise policy, but the statute before it could not be interpreted to allow such a broad scheme. The Court observed that it was “highly unlikely that Congress would leave to agency discretion the decision of how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades.” (Slip Op. at 25).

Suppose Congress wants the EPA to have such power. In that case, all it has to do is pass a statute clearly charging the agency with the power to shut down coal plants and to target a specific amount of coal-generated electricity. This is appropriate since Congress is elected and accountable to the people. In a Republic, elected officials should make these decisions—not a managerial class of “experts” who are unelected and have no accountability to the people. This case demonstrates the dangers of the Administrative State and why James Burnham—as far back as the 1940s–noticed that sovereignty was slipping away from legislatures and was being claimed by various administrative agencies.

https://blog.independent.org/2022/07/12/scotus-requires-clear-statutory-delegation-epa-coal-plants/?omhide=true

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Germany’s Nuclear-Power Implosion

Europe’s climate obsessions have led to an energy crisis, and who would have thought the Germans would choose to make it worse. That’s what happened last Thursday when the Bundestag voted to shut down the country’s remaining nuclear power plants by the end of the year.

Lawmakers, mainly from the Social Democratic and Green parties in the ruling coalition, nixed an effort to extend the lives of three nuclear reactors. Those are the last three standing after former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2011 to phase out nuclear power. Killing them has become an article of faith for Germany’s eco-left even as Ms. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Party (CDU) has thought better of the policy after her retirement. The CDU sponsored the pro-nuclear resolution that was defeated 249-393.

This is the same Germany that’s in the grip of an energy crisis threatening to cripple Europe’s largest economy this winter. The paramount challenge is replacing energy imports from Russia, which supplied more than half of the natural gas Germany consumed before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Berlin is belatedly discovering that dependence on its own unreliable renewable energy and Russia for fossil fuels is a strategic vulnerability. As if to emphasize the point, Nord Stream 1, Russia’s direct gas pipeline to Germany, shut down for “maintenance” on Monday, or so owner Gazprom says.

Nuclear power, which still accounts for 6% of German electricity, sure would help. The country needs alternative fuels for electricity generation to divert reduced gas supplies to industry. Germany will depend on natural gas for the foreseeable future for industrial uses.

Economy-and-Climate Minister Robert Habeck and his Green colleagues hope an accelerated build-out of renewables will do the trick, but those only work when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. The country also is far behind in building the transmission lines to carry this power from the places with the right weather to the spots with the factories and homes that need power.

Since gas is less available, renewables are less reliable, and nuclear remains undesirable, that leaves coal. The same environmentalist lawmakers who eschewed nuclear last week gave their blessing to a ramp-up in coal-fired power production.

The hope may be that renewables (and the battery technology to make them suitable for an industrial economy) will develop quickly enough to make this a moot point soon. But that’s only a hope. It’s more likely that coal will be needed for years as Berlin abandons the nuclear investment and know-how that could have served Germany for years to come.

The big lesson from this year’s energy crisis is that Europe’s vulnerabilities were a choice, not an inevitability. Rather than learning from that mistake, German politicians have chosen to repeat it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-nuclear-implosion-bundestag-robert-habeck-energy-europe-russia-11657572926

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Federalism Is The Key To Demonstrating The Disaster Of Green Central Planning

Central planning always fails, but the utopian visionaries implementing the plans cannot admit that they are at fault. A scapegoat must be found. As a leading example, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture led to mass starvation, the official blame was placed on “saboteurs” and “wreckers.”

Our current-day analog is the centrally-planned replacement of our very large, inexpensive and highly functional energy system, mostly based on fossil fuels, with the alternatives of intermittent wind and sun-based generation, as favored by incompetent government regulators who don’t understand how these things work or how much they will cost. Prices of energy to the consumer — from electricity to gasoline — are soaring; and reliability of supply is widely threatened.

All of which brings our President forth to blame the current price and supply issues in the energy markets on anything but his own administration’s intentional efforts to suppress the functional fossil fuel energy. One day the scapegoat is Vladimir Putin; another it is “companies running gas stations,” who stand accused of price gouging.

Unfortunately, a wide swath of the electorate is only too ready to believe that the failure of central planning is correctly blamed on the saboteurs or the wreckers or the price gougers or the Rooskies or whoever, rather than on the incompetent central planners. And the central planners can generally maintain their narrative, as long as they can impose their control widely enough to keep their subjects from becoming aware of successful alternatives.

And thus the maintenance of federalism in energy policy is crucial to avoiding the disaster of green energy central planning. And it is why the recent Supreme Court decision of West Virginia v. EPA is so important in the ongoing energy battles. West Virginia v. EPA struck down a centralized federal effort to dictate the structure of the electricity generation system nationwide, on the ground that the Congress had not explicitly authorized such a sweeping exercise of authority by an executive agency.

With federalism in energy policy, we can have New York forging ahead with its “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” and California doing the same with its SB 100 — both of them seeking to eliminate fossil fuels from the generation of electricity, and then to force all energy consumers to use only electricity for their supply. Will that work? If New York and California are successful, they will be a model for the rest of the country to follow. Congratulations will be in order. If they fail relative to other states — that is, if they see energy prices soar, or frequent blackouts or shortages of needed energy — then it will be obvious to all that it was the green energy that failed, and not that there were “saboteurs” or “wreckers” or “price gougers,” who after all could have attacked the other states as well.

The federal bureaucracies will do everything they can to force all the states into a federal energy straightjacket, so that the (inevitable) failures of green energy cannot be blamed on the perpetrators. In Friday’s post I took note of two new federal initiatives, post-West Virginia, to seek national suppression of fossil fuels, one by imposing “ozone” emission limitations in Texas, and the other by declining to conduct offshore leasing auctions.

Yet another such initiative was announced on Thursday July 7: a so-called “Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Framework” from the Federal Highway Administration. This one takes administrative audacity to a whole new level. Under the proposed rule, states must set declining greenhouse gas emissions targets for highway traffic that must align with the Net-Zero target as directed by the President in two Executive Orders and agreed at the international “Leaders Summit on Climate.” The federal Net Zero targets have not been enacted or authorized by Congress in any way, and exist only by virtue of a press release issued by President Biden on April 22, 2021. In other words, the administration and the FHA are thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court’s West Virginia decision.

Fortunately, the red states are not just going along with this kind of thing any more. This will be a critical battleground over the next five to ten years. I’m betting on victory for the red states, and the cratering of green energy.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-7-11-federalism-is-the-way-to-demonstrate-the-disaster-of-green-central-planning

Thursday, July 14, 2022

Coal Use, Especially In China, Is Poised To Wipe Out 17 Years Worth Of US Emissions Progress

Rising emissions from growing global coal use amidst the current energy crisis are eliminating emissions reductions achieved in the U.S. since the mid-2000s.

China and India are driving the increase in coal emissions, according to RealClear Energy. European countries, including Germany and The Netherlands, have also moved to produce more coal as other energy sources become scarce. (RELATED: GOP Senators Call Out Biden Nominee 's Rant About Bankrupting Fossil Fuel Industries)

China announced that it will increase coal output by 300 million tons this year in April. Last month, India also said it was looking to grow its domestic coal production by more than 400 million tons by the end of 2023, according to Phys.org.

China 's and India 's combined 700 million tons of coal output will result in an additional 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, as burning one ton of coal releases roughly two tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The same volume of emission reductions that were achieved in the U.S. between 2005 and 2020 was nearly equal to this figure, according to statistics from BP.

Coal-based emissions are only likely to exponentially increase, as a sudden climb in coal use has swept across Europe following the significantly reduced supply of natural gas via the Russian Nord Stream Pipeline. As a response, Germany has brought back coal to sate its demand for fuel, the country 's Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced last week.

Italy, The Netherlands and Austria are also stepping up coal production to lower energy costs before the start of winter and lessen their reliance on Russian natural gas.

The added European coal emissions combined with the massive increases in China and India will exacerbate global emission totals and likely nullify any improvements made by the U.S. over the past 17 years.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/06/27/coal-use-china-poised-wipe-out-17-years-worth-us-emissions-progress/

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The Silliness of Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Beltway nostrums are a dime a dozen, and the climate problem threat emergency crisis existential threat is tailor-made to elicit hundreds of them. An old one now receiving increasing attention is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology designed to capture greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as they are produced as byproducts of such industrial processes as power generation, and then to sequester them underground in caverns or fossil-fuel reservoirs instead of releasing them into the atmosphere.

The basic argument usually promoted in favor of CCS subsidies begins with the observation that fossil fuels are here to stay regardless of the propaganda trumpeted by the environmental left about the “clean energy transition.” Unconventional energy is “clean” only if we ignore the attendant heavy metal pollution, wildlife destruction, noise, flicker effects, massive and unsightly land use, landfill problems, and on and on. And the argument that unconventional energy has become cost-competitive with fossil fuels is preposterous, which is why the former cannot survive in the market without massive subsidies, guaranteed market shares, and many other types of policy favoritism.

So far, so good: Fossil fuels indeed will supply the vast bulk of global energy needs over the long term precisely because the energy content of fossil fuels is concentrated, unlike the case for wind flows and sunlight, which is why wind and solar power require massive amounts of land. And they are unreliable — they have low “capacity factors” — and so require expensive backup capacity, longer transmission systems, and other costly investments. Accordingly, fossil fuels by far are the most efficient sources of needed energy notwithstanding the efforts of governments, international bureaucracies, and the environmental left to increase their costs artificially.

Step two in the CCS argument: Because fossil fuels are here to stay, we need to do something about GHG emissions because there is a climate crisis. The effects of increasing atmospheric concentrations of GHG are detectable in the data, but there is no actual evidence of a climate “crisis” in the data on sea levels, cyclones, droughts, flooding, and the other changing dimensions of climate phenomena, driven by both natural and anthropogenic influences with relative weights that are the subject of intense scientific debate. But put that aside. Whatever the evidence on climate phenomena, the proponents of CCS subsidies — and other climate policies — never quite tell us what temperature/climate impact, say, in 2100, would result from a large expansion of CCS technological implementation.

Let us make the wild assumption that a large CCS subsidy program would cut U.S. GHG emissions by half. If we apply the Environmental Protection Agency climate model and make assumptions that exaggerate the future effects of reductions in GHG emissions, that 50 percent cut would reduce global temperatures in 2100 by 0.087 degrees C. That would not be detectable: The standard deviation of the surface temperature record is 0.11 degrees C. Assume instead, again wildly, that an international CCS effort would reduce global GHG emissions by 25 percent. Temperatures in 2100: 0.343 degrees C lower than otherwise would be the case. How much are such outcomes worth?

The International Energy Agency estimates (Table 2.1) that achievement of the global GHG emissions requirements for the “Sustainable Development Scenario” (SDC) would require capture of 840 million metric tons of CO2 in 2030, 5.6 billion metric tons in 2050, and 10.4 billion metric tons in 2070. A generous estimate of the amount of GHG captured by a given facility annually is 1 million metric tons. Accordingly, the number of facilities needed for the IEA SDC rises from 840 to 10,400 over those four decades. At a capital cost of $500 million each, that is a total of $420 billion to $5.2 trillion over forty years, or about $10 billion to $130 billion per year. Precisely who is going to pony up that kind of cash?

The IEA total cost estimates for GHG capture using CCS technologies are around $50-120 per ton. Global GHG emissions are about 53 billion tons per year. Capture of merely 10 percent — less than the approximate advertised but not credible 15 percent Paris goal, and far less than the IEA SDC — at, say, the low-end figure of $50 per ton would cost about $265 billion per year. Is this supposed to be serious?

In short, there is no plausible benefit/cost test that would justify a large CCS effort. In the major climate-economy integrated assessment models (DICE and FUND in particular) a change in only one assumption — the choice of a discount rate that reflects the actual opportunity cost of capital — reduces the per-ton social cost of carbon to something close to zero, or even a negative number in some cases. In the DICE model and in the IPCC 1.5 Degree Report, global GDP in 2100 is lower by 3 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, in the absence of policies to reduce GHG emissions. Those numbers almost certainly are not statistically significant, and would be swamped in any event by the increase in global per capita GDP — the IPCC projection is 400 percent — certain to occur between now and then.

The arguments in support of CCS subsidies assume that GHG emissions create a negative externality. That may be true, but it is very far from obvious, as there are important benefits from increasing GHG emissions, among them planetary greening, increased agricultural productivity, increased water use efficiency by plants, reduced mortality from cold, etc. Moreover, temperatures and other climate phenomena are driven by both natural and anthropogenic influences, the relative weights of which, again, are the subject of intense scientific debate. Because CCS and other climate policies cannot affect natural phenomena, it is very easy to make highly unrealistic assumptions about their efficacy.

Let us recognize that the current campaign to promote CCS subsidies is being driven in substantial part by old-fashioned rent-seeking rather than some sort of environmental/climate imperative, whatever the usefulness of the latter in terms of making excuses for the former. There also is the timeless but futile effort of corporate executives desperate to ingratiate themselves with the environmental left in the hope that the green alligators will eat them last. The executives’ basic assumption is that the environmental left is sincere in its pursuit of “solutions” to the climate “crisis,” and that therefore they will support some CCS projects politically. After all, they claim to support CCS if the GHG are simply pumped into underground storage facilities, even as they oppose CCS used to enhance oil recovery (by injecting carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs so as to increase reservoir pressures).

Well, no. The environmental left will never support the pipelines and other massive infrastructure investments needed to make CCS a reality precisely because the only reason to support CCS is as an adjunct to the production of fossil fuels, cement, modern agriculture outputs, and the like so as to reduce GHG emissions. The environmental left opposes all of that as a matter of ideological imperative — it simply opposes modern industrial society — and so it will never support CCS in practice because the central purpose of CCS is to allow modern industrial processes to continue.

That is a central intellectual problem with the argument in favor of CCS subsidies. The environmental left will not and cannot support any given CCS program as actually proposed because their opposition to modern industrial society is a matter of principle. They oppose fossil fuels because they allow billions of people to escape poverty, thus increasing resource consumption and environmental degradation. (The environmental left has never quite explained why wealthier societies are also cleaner.) They oppose technological advance — human ingenuity — as the long term answer to such problems because it is inconsistent with their stance that resource consumption is not “sustainable.” That term has no definition and is wrong in any event as markets are perfectly capable of allocating a finite (“depletable”) resource over time.

In the ideological view of the left, humans are not moral agents with the ingenuity and inventiveness to solve problems; instead they are little more than environmentally destructive mouths to feed. Accordingly, the ideological stance of the left is fundamentally anti-human in that investments in human capital — education, training, health care, etc. — have the effect of increasing the demand for fossil fuels, an outcome that is anathema.

It is not only businesses that engage in rent-seeking. Recall that for years the official “safe” limit for planetary warming was 2 degrees C by 2100. The 1979-2019 satellite record for the mid-troposphere is a warming of 0.17 degrees C per decade, or 1.7 degrees C over a century. So by the time the 2015 UNFCCC 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) was held in Paris, the climate industry realized that it had a real problem on its hands: Not that the planet was burning up, but instead that the 2 degree C “safe” limit was going to be achieved without any climate policies at all. This meant that it was not the planet threatened with conflagration but instead their sinecures, their taxpayer- and foundation-funded sojourns on private jets to conferences in five-star resorts, and their broad political interests generally. So at COP-21 they moved the goalpost: The new “safe” limit now is 1.5 degrees C. Science? What’s that?

Back to CCS: There is no argument in favor of subsidizing it that can withstand scrutiny. Will that actually affect Beltway policymaking? Let us pray.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/27/the_silliness_of_carbon_capture_and_sequestration_838968.html

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Biggest Reason Why People Aren’t Buying Electric Cars Revealed in New Survey

A survey discovered that charging logistics is the primary reason why Americans aren’t buying electric vehicles.

Consumer Reports, which said it surveyed around 8,000 Americans, found that 61 percent said they wouldn’t seek to own an electric vehicle because of charging logistics while 55 percent cited the number of miles a vehicle can go per charge. Another 52 percent said that the costs of buying and maintaining an electric vehicle are cost-prohibitive.

Another 46 percent of the respondents stated they have not heard of any financial incentives available for owners of electric vehicles.

“We found that 14 percent of American drivers say they would ‘definitely’ buy or lease an electric-only vehicle if they were to buy a vehicle today,” said Consumer Reports. “That’s up markedly from the 4 percent who said the same in a 2020 nationally representative survey from CR of 3,392 licensed U.S. drivers.”

According to recent figures from Kelly Blue Book, the average price of a new electric vehicle hovered at roughly $56,000. In contrast, the average price of a new compact was about $25,000 at about the same time. The average price of a new, non-electric SUV was $34,000, while the electric version was nearly $45,000.

Meanwhile, a recent report from data analysis and advisory firm J.D. Power, however, found that electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids may have more problems than internal combustion engines.

While internal combustion engine vehicles averaged 175 problems per 100 vehicles, this jumped to 239 among plug-in hybrids and 240 among electric vehicles, a June 28 press release of the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Initial Quality Study stated. Lower scores represented higher-quality vehicles.

Tesla models, which were included in the industry calculation for the first time, averaged 226 problems per 100 vehicles, according to the report.

“Automakers continue to launch vehicles that are more and more technologically complex in an era in which there have been many shortages of critical components to support them,” David Amodeo, director of global automotive at J.D. Power, according to the press release.

Amid elevated gas prices, White House officials have continued to suggest that Americans buy an electric car as Republicans have faulted the Biden administration’s policies for the spike in prices.

In mid-June, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that Americans can deal with $5 per gallon of gasoline by ditching an internal combustion engine in favor of an electric one.

“If you filled up your EV [electric vehicle] and you filled up your gas tank with gasoline, you would save $60 per fill-up by going electric rather than using gasoline, but it’s a very compelling case,” she said in a clip circulated by Republicans on social media on June 14. “But again, we want to bring down the price at the point of purchase.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biggest-reason-why-people-arent-buying-electric-cars-revealed-in-new-survey_4590701.html

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Fires in EVs Require 10x More Water to Put Out, Up to 10,000 Gallons

As electric vehicles continue to be pushed on the nation by the Biden administration, certain facts are coming to light about them, and this time we are hearing warnings from the nation’s firefighters.

As the number of electric car owners grows, so too are the problems peculiar to EV ownership. From lack of charging stations, to unexpected expenses for repairs and now to water waste.

You read that right. Water waste.

According to News Nation firemen are warning that electric car fires are far more problematic than fires that engulf gas-powered vehicles.

Lt. Tanner Morgan with the Grand Prairie Fire Department near Dallas told News Nation that fire departments are not exactly ready to deal with EVs.

“We’re at that critical point where the consumer-driven world we live in is pushing these vehicles out and the fire department is playing catch up,” he said.

Lt. Morgan went on to say that a gas-powered car typically takes less than 1,000 gallons of water to douse it when it catches on fire. But EVs are a bigger problem, he said. When an electric vehicle catches on fire, firemen are faced with a “thermal runaway.”

Morgan added that the lithium-ion batteries in an EV fuel a fire to a much higher degree than gasoline. And firefighters are having to learn that they need different tactics to fight an EV fire.

Fremont Fire Department Battalion Chief Gary Ashley said, “The protocol is to start using copious amounts of water, up to 3,000 gallons, so that’s what we started doing.”

Unfortunately, 3,000 gallons wasn’t enough for a recent EV fire in Sacramento. News Nation reported that firefighters on that case didn’t start getting the fire under control until 4,500 gallons were sprayed onto the flames. Authorities said that even when firefighters sprayed water directly on the battery compartment, the fire kept reigniting.

Even Tesla warned about the huge amount of water needed to douse an EV fire.

“Tesla’s own emergency response guide for the Model S warns that battery fires can require between 3,000 to 8,000 gallons of water to fully extinguish the flames,” News Nations wrote. So, obviously, 10,000 gallons is not out of the question.

Officials are also warning rural fire departments — in areas where fire hydrants are not available — could face very dangerous conditions with EV fires, especially when many fire trucks cannot hold that much water.

“In rural areas, especially on interstates where there are no hydrants, this is going to create a logistical issue for emergency response agencies as they’re going to have to shuttle the water up that they need,” the National Volunteer Fire Council’s Tom Miller said.

Still, some advocates say EV fires are far less common than fires in other types of vehicles.

News Nation added that AutoInsuranceEZ finds that there were only 25 EV fires for every 100,000 electric vehicles sold. But there are more than 1,500 fires per 100,000 gas-powered vehicles sold.

Fires, of course, are only one heightened issue that electric vehicle owners are faced with. There are many new issues that car owners did not expect when becoming an EV owner.

President Joe Biden and his administration sell EVs as the miracle cure to the woes of rising gas prices. But what the administration doesn’t note is that EVs have issues of their own.

There are much higher vehicle registration fees — sometimes two and three times higher. And speaking of taxes, many states are considering per-mile taxes for EVs. And then there are the plans to place surcharges on homes with EV charging stations.

Then there is the problem with finding parts and service. Car dealers may be selling more EVs, but their service departments are not staffed with the needed number of trained mechanics and service personnel, nor do they have the needed stockpile of parts in stock to fix what has broken.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/firefighters-issue-warning-ev-fires-require-10x-water-put-10000-gallons-water

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Plastic survey shows 'recycling doesn't work'

What counts as "working"? Why should we be reducing how much plastic ends up as waste? If plastic is properly disposed of either through recycling or going into properly managed landfills, what is the problem? We are not told. It is apparently just an article of Greenie faith that plastic is a problem

It is unattractive when it ends up in the ocean but very little of that plastic comes from advanced nations. Places like the UK, the USA and Australia collect their rubbish rather than letting it flow out to sea. It is places like Africa, China and South America where the people just toss their refuse into nearby rivers -- where it flows out to sea. Ocean pollution is a Third world problem, not our problem

The organisers of Britain's biggest ever survey of household plastic waste have called for immediate action to tackle what they say are "jaw-dropping" findings.

The Big Plastic Count was run across a week in May and its results show that the average participating household threw away 66 pieces of plastic in a week.

Using those figures the organisers, Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic, estimate that the UK throws out nearly 100 billion pieces of plastic a year.

The survey involved nearly 100,000 households meticulously documenting the type and amount of plastic they dispose of for seven days.

Its organisers say the results prove that recycling alone is not a solution for reducing how much plastic ends up as waste.

"This is a jaw-dropping amount of plastic waste," Greenpeace UK's plastics campaigner Chris Thorne said.

"Pretending we can sort this with recycling is just industry green-wash. We're creating a hundred billion bits of waste plastic a year, and recycling is hardly making a dent."

Those taking part in the survey were asked not just to count the number of pieces but also to record which type of plastic they used. Of the plastic, 83% was from food and drink packaging waste, with the most common items being fruit and vegetable packaging.

In response to the survey, Nadiya Catel-Arutyunova, sustainability policy advisor at the British Retail Consortium said: "The UK retail industry is leading the way in protecting the environment by reducing single-use packaging, regardless of the material type."

"The ability to remove branded single-use plastic (SUP) packaging is challenging but can be unlocked with partnerships and collaboration with producers and does not alter retailers' underlining drive to make quick and effective changes in reducing single-use plastics."

The UK government publishes data about the amount of plastic waste being collected from households and the latest statistics (2021) show that more than 2.5 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste was created, of which 44.2% is recycled. Half of that recycling (55%) takes places in the UK with the rest exported. Turkey is the most common destination.

"We are going further to tackle single use plastics through our landmark Environment Act," a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs said. They highlighted measures that had already been taken to restrict the supply of plastic straws and cotton buds and said proposals were being finalising for a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles.

Not all plastic is equally easy to sort and recycle. Data from Recoup, a plastics charity, suggests that 61% of plastic bottles are recycled, 36% of plastic tubs and just 8% of plastic films.

The Big Plastic Count report authors discovered that more than half the plastics we throw out are the harder to recycle soft plastics. The report cross-referenced their findings with Recoup's data and calculated that just 12% of our plastic waste ends up being recycled in the UK.

"Recycling doesn't work, we all know it," Everyday Plastic founder Daniel Webb told BBC News, "If we think things are being recycled we can carry on the way we are. We need to address things further up the chain. By reducing the amount we produce it will reduce the amount that is thrown away."

It's a very similar message to that of Prime Minister Boris Johnson back in October 2021 when he told a group of school children that recycling "doesn't work" and "is not the answer".

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/plastic-survey-shows-recycling-doesn-t-work/ar-AAZsFzS?cvid=3f0b330e92dc4d23f88d054c2e65c3ec&ocid=winp2sv1plus

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Dutch farmer protests against emissions cuts spread across EU

Dutch farmer protests over government policies and rising “agflation” destroying their businesses have spread to more European countries.

The farmers are protesting about rising costs and government restrictions put on livestock numbers and fertiliser use in a bid to cut carbon emissions.

Last month, the Dutch cabinet announced plans for a £22bn programme to cut nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030, to comply with EU regulations on nitrate pollution. In some areas, emissions cuts of 70% or more may be required.

Under the proposals, farmers would have to drastically reduce – by 40% – the amount of nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions their livestock produce, which would force many farms to downsize and some to close (see panel below).

Thousands of angry Dutch farmers have used their tractors to blockade ports, airports and roads. Straw bales have been torched in streets and manure has been dumped at government buildings.

Meanwhile, videos have emerged of Dutch supermarkets running out of food.

Now, in a show of solidarity, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish farmers have launched protests, in what is fast becoming an EU-wide campaign against “anti-farming” policies.

The farmers fear they could be next and that their governments will seek to impose similar climate policies to comply with EU rules, which they say would threaten their livelihoods and disrupt global food supplies.

On Wednesday 6 July, German farmers joined their fellow Dutch farmers to block roads into the city of Heerenburg, on the Dutch-German border.

In Italy, farmers have held tractor protests on roads in rural areas and have threatened to take their protests to the streets of Rome.

A video posted on social media shows dozens of tractors gathering on a rural road, narrated by one farmer shouting: “We are not slaves, we are farmers! We cannot make ends meet!”

In Poland, thousands of farmers held a protest in Warsaw, carrying anti-government banners and placards. They shouted: “Enough is enough! We won’t let ourselves be robbed!” and “We workers cannot pay for the crisis created by politicians!”

Polish farmers say the rising costs of production, especially fertiliser, are threatening their livelihoods. At the same time, they say their government is allowing cheap food imports.

On 1 July, Spanish farmers blocked the A4 highway in Jaén, Andalusia, to protest against the rising cost of fuel and essential products.

On Twitter a French account called “Le convoy de la liberté” (Freedom convoy) tweeted: “German farmers are also rising up. Dutch, Italian, Polish and German, it becomes a worldwide movement.”

https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/environment/dutch-farmer-protests-against-emissions-cuts-spread-across-eu?mc_cid=5757bf9f03&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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The Hummer EV emits 21 grams of carbon dioxide per mile more than a gasoline powered Chevy Malibu

When it comes to exciting EVs, it’s hard to beat the new GMC Hummer. The brand-new GMC Hummer is General Motors' showcase of just how far it can push EV technology. This technological marvel may produce impressive results and capability, but the GMC Hummer falls short of the electric vehicle’s promise of reduced emissions.

A new massive Hummer seems to pop up every time the economy reaches a peak and goes on sale just in time for the impending recession. It’s no secret that the Hummer name is associated with off-road decadence rather than efficiency, however, this time, with its EV powertrain the new GMC Hummer was set to be the first environmentally friendly Hummer even built.

According to a study by ACEEE, a non-profit research organization focused on reducing energy waste and negating the impacts of climate change, the new GMC Hummer EV isn’t as green as it seems. Their research shows that the small Bolt EV emits 92 grams of carbon dioxide per mile while the new Hummer EV is responsible for 341 grams of carbon dioxide per mile.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/new-hummer-ev-produces-more-emissions-than-a-gas-powered-sedan/ar-AAZoMCc?li=AAgfYrC

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Wind droughts

With the energy crisis prompting governments everywhere to turn coal plants back on, wiping out many years of hard won emission reductions in advanced economies, the major limitations of renewable energy have now, at last, been acknowledged by all.

Well, almost all, with Victorian government energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio in late June ruling out paying coal and gas companies to keep them operating as part of a proposed national capacity market, saying that the state’s new offshore wind projects will ‘blow any shortfall out of the water’.

Never mind that the bulk of the advanced economies, many with far higher dependence on renewables than Victoria, have such capacity markets – ideological demands must trump operational experience.

Chief among the lessons about those limitations is the phenomena now known as ‘wind droughts’. Late in 2021 as delegates in the annual climate summit, held in Glasgow that year were noisily demanding more renewable energy, the UK had to turn on mothballed coal-power plants because of a shortage of gas and a wind drought.

In an article on the Australian edition of the academic site the Conversation published in October 2021 a researcher in climate risk analytics at the University of Bristol in the UK, Hannah Bloomfield, says that the period of still weather around the time of the Glasgow conference resulted in the power company SSE reporting that its renewable assets produced 32 per cent less power than expected.

In the article Dr Bloomfield says these ‘wind droughts’ can be classified as an extreme weather event, like floods and hurricanes. Researchers in the UK have shown that that periods of stagnant high atmospheric pressure over central Europe, lead to prolonged low wind conditions over a wide area and those conditions may be ‘difficult’ for power systems in future. Further, Dr Bloomfield notes, it is important to understand just how such events occur, as that means they can be forecast and the grids prepared for them. There is no discussion about just how the grids might be prepared for such droughts and, in any case, scientists have enough problems forecasting the frequency and severity of cyclones during cyclones seasons, and are continually taken by surprise by floods, despite studying those extreme events for decades.

But it is known that just like rain droughts, wind droughts can persist for a long time.

During a wind drought in the UK in 2018, wind made no contribution to the UK grid at all for nine days and only slight contributions for another two weeks. In the wind drought of late 2021 noted earlier, there were days when wind made no contribution at all.

Then there are the much shorter periods, perhaps ranging from an hour or so up to a day that can also be found by anyone who examines wind’s contribution to total energy supply to the UK grid over time. However, the short and long-term wind drought phenomena has received some academic attention in the UK, it is difficult to point to any systematic study of the problem in Australia.

A few concerned citizens have looked at the easily accessible figures for wind production on the National Energy Market, the grid for Australia’s east coast, to find a number of periods where the whole of the NEM was in wind drought for periods ranging from a few hours up to 33 hours. But that study was for just one year, 2020. More extensive research could well find wind droughts of much longer periods.

Activists may sneeringly dismiss all of this as having not been done by properly qualified scientists. Very well, where is the independent analysis done by academics with qualifications of any kind? While they are on the job those same academics can work out just how much storage capacity would be required to tide the national market over for a day and a half. The NEM has north of 50,000 MWs (50 GW) of generating capacity. If for the sake of argument, we assume that an average of half that is used (more during demand peaks and less during troughs) in any given period, then the market may need around 900,000 megawatt hours to get through a 36-hour drought without fossil fuel plants.

The giant water battery known as Snowy Mountain 2.0 should store about 350,000 MWh, when it is finished and assuming that it can find enough fresh water, which means the NEM might need three or four Snowy 2.0s at a bare minimum, although only one is being built.

Batteries don’t count. The Hornsdale Power Reserve Battery built in South Australia in 2017 with considerable fanfare, for example, cost $90 million but stores just 125 MWh. The photovoltaic panels now on suburban roofs all over Australia are not subject to wind droughts, but they are at their peak around the middle of day, do not work well on cloudy days or at all at night, and the excess energy still has to be stored.

To make matters worse, grids have to be designed to cope with worse case scenarios such as a very hot day, which also happens to be a calm, cloudy day. Perhaps enough power might be stored to see the grid through one such event, but then when the Snowy projects have expended one load of fresh water through turbines to generate power, it may take days to completely recharge, so to speak, by having the water pumped back into it. What happens if another extreme event occurs soon after the first?

Activists insist that all these problems can be overcome simply be building more wind turbines, particularly offshore turbines as planned by Minister D’Ambrosio. In the days of sail, ships might be becalmed for days, but the trade winds which blow down Bass Strait are thought to be different. Well, are they? King Island, well out in Bass Strait, has the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project, part of which is a wind farm, plus solar power as a supplement to the island’s long-standing diesel generators. Material produced by the owner Tasmanian Hydro estimates that renewable energy now accounts for 65 per cent of the island’s power demand.

That’s fine but what about the other 35 per cent supplied by diesel? Why couldn’t the wind farm supply all of the island’s needs, and was the outcome worth the $18 million spent on the project, all to service the island’s 1,600 residents? The Victorian government could at least produce some material apart from activist assurances that its projected reliance on offshore wind farms will be anything but a disaster.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/transition-loses-traction/

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Biden’s Dizzying Energy Policy Is Even Making Climate Warriors Scratch Their Heads

You’d think after achieving $5 a gallon nationwide gas prices and gutting domestic oil and gas producers, America’s environmental extremists would be elated and emboldened. But President Joe Biden’s energy policy is so incoherent, even Green New Deal socialists are frustrated, according to reporting by Politico’s Zack Colman.

“The climate advocates who cheered President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House last year are preparing to give up on Washington,” Colman writes. “Instead, environmentalists and many of their Democratic allies are starting to shift their focus to state capitals as the places to press for action on climate change — going back to a strategy that they employed with some success during the Trump era.”

Green activists are apparently shocked and angry at their failure to get massive subsidies and payouts from the doomed Build Back Better bill. The firewall against that plan was coal state Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia

Why should these activists be surprised that a moderate Dem would balk at decimating his own constituents? That’s entitled arrogance in the extreme.

The Biden administration’s destructive energy goals aren’t even subtle. Mark Mazur, who left the Treasury Department in September, said the quiet part out loud, as Bloomberg reported: “We don’t want lower prices for fossil-fuel buyers. We prefer higher prices,” he said about possible gas-tax holidays and how this “undercuts the administration’s climate change goals.”

Team Biden is pursuing means to harm U.S. oil and gas producers while simultaneously begging foreign despots in countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for more carbon-based oil and gas. Biden’s doublespeak is frustrating to both sides of the energy debate domestically.

And during his recent European NATO trip, Biden trotted out his favorite scapegoat for his own failed domestic policies: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia, Russia Russia,” Biden said at a press conference at the NATO Summit, where he called again for a gas tax holiday and Russian oil price caps. It’s no wonder that domestic anti-oil rabble rousers are frustrated if Biden describes himself as a hobbled actor whose fate is dictated by an overseas despot.

Biden completely ignores the more than a year of botched policymaking by his team prior to the Ukrainian invasion, from lifting sanctions against the NordStream 2 pipeline to canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and denying oil and gas drilling permits. NASDAQ reported how gas prices were already rising prior to the invasion.

The Washington Post admitted “Americans aren’t really buying into the ‘Putin price hike.’” It’s no wonder Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting.

Meanwhile on Biden’s America Last campaign, Reuters reported that rather than selling these barrels to American consumers, “more than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month.”

Eco activists are also upset by a recent Supreme Court ruling reining in the separation of powers violations by the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gas regulation. Even the Greenies know Biden’s team needs to work on its competence.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/10/opinion-bidens-dizzying-energy-policy-is-even-making-climate-warriors-scratch-their-heads-sheffield/

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Texas and California Agree: Depend on Wind Energy and Prepare for Blackouts

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to the latest power outages in Texas:

“It might shock people to discover that the state of Texas has fallen into the same green energy dependency cycle which has captured California. At least that is what the agency overseeing utilities in Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), is reporting.

“ERCOT is urging Texans and Texas businesses to conserve energy this week due to a projected capacity shortage. How could Texas, the king of oil and natural gas, be facing an electricity shortage, you might ask? A combination of record high demand, failure to add new coal, natural gas and nuclear thermal capacity and the failure of the wind to blow is the answer.

Remember this is the same Texas ERCOT which has encouraged the growth of wind and solar without increasing the capacity of coal, natural gas and nuclear over the past decade putting all of the future electricity needs of the oil state at the whim of the wind and sun gods. Just two winters ago, it was Texas which suffered from massive power outages due to wind and solar shortages and a cavalcade of other operational mistakes, and now they find themselves in the same exact vice.

“California is well-known for being whacko-stupid in their pursuit of unreliable energy displacing coal, natural gas and nuclear, but the fact that the nation’s second most populous state has allowed its own internal electricity generation system to fall into the green abyss is beyond absurd.

The difference is that Texas legislators are supposed to be smart enough to allow markets to work. Unfortunately, they decided on a state run electricity generation plan years ago which is now bearing the sour fruit of shortages, like all socialist systems do.

It is time for Texas to revisit their state electricity generation strategy before they become the laughing stock of the country. A state which has mocked California for a generation suffering because they didn’t understand that to have a reliable grid, you need reliable energy sources. As an oil and natural gas producing state, you would think the politicians in Austin might have read their own brochures.”

https://getliberty.org/2022/07/texas-and-california-agree-depend-on-wind-energy-and-prepare-for-blackouts

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EPA now stuck between a rock and a hard place on CO2

EPA is stuck. What they will now do is anybody’s guess. Enjoy their dilemma!

There are lots of happy reports on the Supreme Court’s ruling throwing out EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan. Some go so far as to suggest that EPA is barred from regulating power plant CO2 emissions.

It is not quite that simple and the result is rather amusing. EPA is still required to regulate CO2 under the terms of the Clean Air Act, but that Act provides no way to do that regulation. The Clean Power Plan attempted to expand an obscure minor clause in the Act to do the job but SCOTUS correctly ruled that the clause does not confer that kind of massive authority.

EPA is between a rock and a hard place. It should tell Congress that it cannot do the job and needs a new law, along the lines of the SO2 law added to the Act in 1990, curbing emissions. But such a law has zero chance of passing in the foreseeable future.

EPA is stuck. What they will now do is anybody’s guess. Enjoy their dilemma!

Here is a bit more detail on the situation.

On one hand EPA’s legal mandate to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act is clear. First the (prior) Supreme Court ruled that CO2 was a “pollutant” under the Act. This is because buried in the 1990 Amendments was a clause adding causing climate change to the definition of “pollutant”. The Court accepted the government’s claim that the CO2 increase could cause climate change. The new Court could change this but is unlikely to do so.

Given CO2 as a pollutant under the Act, EPA was required to decide if it was dangerous to human well being or not. It then produced an “endangerment finding” saying that CO2 was indeed a threat.

Given these two steps the Act then requires EPA to regulate CO2. It has been trying to figure out how to do so ever since.

The deep problem is that the Clean Air Act specifies very specific regulatory actions, none of which work for CO2. This is because CO2 is nothing like the true pollutants that the Act was developed to regulate.

The Act’s mainline mechanism is the NAAQS (pronounced “nacks”) which stands for National Ambient Air Quality Standards. These standards specify the ambient concentration levels allowed for various pollutants. Carbon dioxide’s cousin carbon monoxide is one of these pollutants. Locations that exceed the NAAQS receive stiff penalties.

Clearly this mechanism assumes that local levels are due to local emissions, which can be controlled to achieve and maintain compliance.

But CO2 is nothing like that. There is no way America can control the ambient CO2 level. Even if humans are causing that level (which is itself controversial), it is then based on global emissions. CO2 is not a local pollutant.

For a CO2 NAAQS EPA could either set the standard below the global level or above it. If below then all of America would be out of compliance and subject to the Act’s penalties, with no way to comply. It is very unlikely that the Court’s would allow these universal endless penalties.

If the CO2 NAAQS were above the present level then there would be no legal basis for EPA taking any action, since compliance was complete.

So the NAAQS mechanism simply does not work.

Another major mechanism is to control the emissions of what are called “hazardous air pollutants” or HAPS. EPA explains it this way:

“Hazardous air pollutants are those known to cause cancer and other serious health impacts. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate toxic air pollutants, also known as air toxics, from categories of industrial facilities.”

But CO2 is nontoxic, so not a HAP. In fact our exhaled breath contains over one hundred times the ambient level of CO2, that is over 40,000 ppm. Clearly if ambient 400 ppm CO2 were toxic we would all be dead. It would be absurd for EPA to try to classify CO2 as a HAP. No Court would stand for it.

The only other piece of Clean Air Act that EPA might try to use is called “New Source Performance Standards” but as the name says they only apply to new construction (or major modifications). The myriad existing fossil fueled power plants that supply our daily juice would not be covered. Even worse if EPA drove up the cost of new gas fired plants we would likely restart the host of retired coal fueled plants. What a hoot that would be!

So there you have it. EPA bought itself CO2 as a Clean Air Act pollutant, but there is no way under the Act to regulate it. To mix metaphors, EPA is all dressed up with no place to go. The Supreme Court decision returned EPA to its regulatory dead end.

I find this ridiculous situation to be truly laughable. What were they thinking? Does the EPA Administrator understand this? Has he told the President? How about Congress?

EPA’s problem with CO2 is much deeper than the latest Supreme Court Decision. The Clean Air Act simply does not work for CO2. What will EPA do?

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/epa-now-stuck-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-on-co2

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UN journal touts ‘The Benefits of World Hunger’ – ‘Hunger has great positive value…Hungry people are the most productive people’

Green/Left elitism out in the open

The UN Chronicle, which bills itself as "The magazine of the United Nations, Since 1946" originally published this essay in 2008 by Professor George Kent of the University of Hawaii: "Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world's economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour. ... How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?"

"More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger?" ...

"For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset."

Update: After outcry, the UN pulls the essay from its website on July 6, 2022, claiming it was satire!

Climate Depot's Morano comments: "This is a UN article and was published in 2008 in the UN Chronicle. It is now just getting media attention and the author of the article, Professor George Kent, told Climate Depot on July 6, 2022, that the UN article is most definitely not a 'satire' but intended to be 'provocative.' The UN is now trying to erase history by deleting the essay and falsey pretending that it was merely a "satire."

Given how the world has been transformed under the 'new normal' of COVID lockdowns, it seems this old UN Chronicle article presciently reveals how the World Economic Forum and the UN & the WHO, seek to rule humanity with an iron bureaucratic fist and wish to keep the 'masses' poor, tired, and hungry."

https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/07/06/un-journal-article-explains-the-benefits-of-world-hunger-ending-hunger-globally-would-be-a-disaster-who-would-clean-our-toilets/

Monday, July 11, 2022

An uprising fuelled by green madness... let the West beware

The anarchic scenes in Sri Lanka are enough to make the blood of any world leader run cold. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence overrun by furious protesters. Crowds cavorting on his four-poster bed and in his swimming pool and gym. Sections of the Prime Minister’s home in flames.

This burning building not only serves as a symbolic funeral pyre for Rajapaksa’s government. It is a smouldering lesson for all governments in pursuing an economically illiterate green agenda at the expense of common sense.

Make no mistake: The roots of this chaos can be traced to Rajapaksa’s wrong-headed thinking on farming. In his 2019 manifesto, he pledged to transform Sri Lanka into an ‘organic’ nation within a decade – reducing and eventually banning chemical fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides.

It’s a pledge that would probably win votes here, too. Who wouldn’t, in principle, want a greener future, free of nasty chemicals? But the trade-off, as Sri Lanka learnt the hard way, is food production tumbling over a cliff. For them, going green meant going hungry.

In 2020, Covid struck, hollowing out Sri Lanka’s finances and causing its vital tourism industry to grind to a halt.

Any rational government would have abandoned the pledge to hobble agriculture with eco-strictures. But Rajapaksa doubled down, announcing in April last year a total and immediate ban on fertiliser, to the outrage of Sri Lanka’s two million farmers. He was lauded by the world’s pampered eco-dignitaries at Glasgow’s Cop26 conference that November, feted as a green torch-bearer for developing nations, receiving warm praise and Covid-friendly elbow bumps in every corridor.

But what was spun as Rajapaksa’s green revolution was, in fact, cynical cost-cutting. With fewer tourists, Sri Lanka’s foreign cash reserves dried up. The government wasn’t prepared to use what little it had importing fertiliser. So it must have looked to Rajapaksa as a win-win: eco-credentials burnished and the treasury saving money.

There was only one problem: farmers couldn’t produce the yields they needed.

Sri Lanka feeds itself with rice. In the six months following the fertiliser ban, domestic production collapsed by 20 per cent, while prices rose 50 per cent. The tea crop was also devastated: the country’s most important export, and from which the lost revenue outweighed any savings made by not importing fertilisers.

What started as a dream that Prince Charles, with his organic Duchy estate, would surely approve of turned into a sorry mess of over-tilled soils, empty supermarket shelves and the hungry bellies of Sri Lanka’s poorest.

Selling your country as ‘organic’ appeals to visitors jetting in from Islington and Hollywood to enjoy lush scenery in five-star retreats – and assuage their guilt about flying thousands of miles. But today, the misery it inflicted on Sri Lanka’s people can be read in the smoke signals billowing from the presidential palace.

And let me be clear: this is not some abstract crisis taking place far away. Similar chaos looms in the West. In many countries, the rock of the ‘green agenda’ is meeting the hard place of economic reality. Farmers in Italy, Germany and Poland have been objecting with increasing anger to the destructive green pressure inflicted by their governments.

The biggest tinderbox is the Netherlands, one of the biggest meat exporters in the EU. This should be a point of pride for PM Mark Rutte at a time of world food shortage and rocketing prices. Instead, because meat production typically uses fertiliser, Rutte sees Holland’s success in this field as a stain on his green ambition.

Amsterdam has pledged to halve the use of nitrogen compounds in animal manure and ammonia fertilisers by 2030, requiring a 30 per cent reduction in livestock. Dutch farmers are understandably apoplectic and have sprayed manure over government buildings in protest. A confrontation last week in Friesland saw police firing warning shots and several arrested.

You still think green-inspired anarchy is confined to the developing world? If you push the people to the point of hunger, they revolt. Politicians the world over, captivated by the dream of a glorious green future, will do well to heed these dire warnings.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11000461/The-anarchic-scenes-Sri-Lanka-lesson-governments-says-MARK-ALMOND.html

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Auto Expert Uncovers Huge Lie About Electric Vehicle Range Claims

President Joe Biden’s administration wants the United States to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 — and a big part of that plan involves a switchover to electric vehicles.

EVs, we’re told, are the way of the future. Gone are worries about “range anxiety,” we’re told. These vehicles can put in some serious miles on a single charge — and the government’s building more charging infrastructure along the highways every day.

Neil Winton, however, says that’s a load of hooey. Winton is an auto industry analyst and senior contributor to Forbes. He says that while EVs may look ideal if you’re just going by the manufacturer’s spec sheet, the real-world performance of these cars is very different than what’s promised when it comes to range.

“A brand-new electric car is gleaming on your driveway and your first reaction is going to be excitement, followed perhaps by a smidgen of smugness,” Winton wrote in a Forbes piece last month.

“Make sure you enjoy that moment because the next one will be fury after you plug it into your house and the range attained after a full charge has no relation to the number suggested by the dealer, or the one written down in the car’s specification details.”

The problem, Winton says, is that range numbers are derived from driving conditions divorced from real-world driving. Instead, they’re based on the computerized Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure, or WLTP — a laboratory test that aims to measure and standardize EV range numbers.

This means that the range you get could be, in real-world scenarios, up to 32 percent less than what’s promised. That’s the biggest deviation Winton found when he looked at 20 different EV models in a test published Tuesday. (The big loser was the Mini Electric, which had a WLTP range claim of 145 miles but could only muster 98.5 given real-world battery capacity.)

However, when you get on the highway, things get worse. In one case — the Polestar 2, manufactured by Volvo’s performance brand — Winton’s test results found drivers would only get about 40 percent of the advertised range.

Why? Well, if “you drive at normal cruising speeds with the air conditioning on, the media system doing its stuff and the heater making you snug,” it’s a drain on the battery that the manufacturer didn’t figure in when it calculated the vehicle’s range numbers.

EVs do worse than advertised on the highway for a number of reasons. For starters, electric motors are far more efficient in stop-and-go driving conditions than during highway driving, partially because of regenerative braking; EVs use the friction caused when you slow your car down to recharge the battery. Braking doesn’t happen much during highway driving, however, which is why the advertised range drops precipitously.

Then there’s the matter of cruising speed on the highway — and the fact it’s almost always higher than the legal limit, no matter where in the world you are.

“‘Normal’ cruising speed in Britain is about 75 mph. The actual legal limit is 70 mph, but the accepted speed which most drivers seem to think will avoid prosecution is about 80 mph,” Winton wrote.

“In mainland Europe, the actual speed limit on highways is 82 mph, so 90 mph should be possible. At these higher speeds the impact on range is even more devastating. In Germany, there are still some unlimited speed sections of motorway.”

The biggest problem here, Winton says, is that both the automotive media and car buyers are starting to look seriously at EVs. It’s not just early adopters anymore; one British survey found over 50 percent “are more inclined” to buy an electric vehicle, and a study by Boston Consulting found that by 2028, all-electric cars will be the “most popular” vehicles globally.

“The trouble with all these warm feelings is they have no connection to the real world. The undeniably powerful start to electric car sales has been driven by well-heeled early adopters who aren’t too concerned that their EV doesn’t really do what it says on the tin,” Winton wrote. “To own it is to revere it.”

“The value-seeking electric car buyer will demand that if the manufacturer says the battery, fully charged, will offer say 300 miles, it will offer 300 miles,” he continued. “No finagling and bamboozling with concepts like WLTP will be acceptable.”

Some automotive journalists are slowly discovering this dark secret, as well.

Last month, a Wall Street Journal writer described a hellish road trip she took in a brand-new Kia EV, which ended with her spending more time charging the car than sleeping; not only did the vehicle’s battery deplete more quickly than advertised, charging times were much slower than expected.

This, Winton said, is part of why automakers need to come clean about what EVs can and can’t do before they become the default option for the average car-buyer.

“Only real-world data should be used. The manufacturers must come clean about extended motorway fast-lane cruising,” he wrote.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/auto-expert-uncovers-huge-lie-electric-vehicle-range-claims-owners-seething

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Billionaire climate elites have their own rules

Progressives have long wanted to tax unrealized gains from billionaires’ stocks, bonds, land holdings, homes, artwork, cars, yachts and other property. As appealing as this sounds, the scheme would be vastly complicated and unworkable. In the absence of sales, who would evaluate current values – and how?

But the frustrations we “commoners” have with the ultra-rich are understandable – especially when they lecture us about eating less “climate-altering” beef, avoiding $5.00 gasoline by buying $60,000 electric vehicles, and bankrolling “experts” who say we should live in 650-square-foot apartments.

So it’s entertaining when some of those billionaires start arguing about who is more saintly (and sanctimonious) when it comes to preventing the alleged Climate Crisis.

Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been quibbling about which of them cares more about climate change. Musk recently refused a “philanthropic opportunity” with Gates because the Microsoft co-founder still has a half-billion-dollar “short position against Tesla,” which Musk says is “the company doing the most to solve climate change.” Gates says he gives more to climate causes than anyone else, including Musk.

However, as happens too often with elites who promote climate activist agendas, when it comes to ensuring human and planetary health, they both ignore evidence, the big picture – and their own lifestyles, including private jets and multiple mansions. They’re not alone.

After spending eight years attacking fossil fuels, former-President Obama installed a 2,500-gallon propane system at his 6,900-square-foot Martha’s Vineyard home, which is apparently safe from rising seas that endanger other coastal properties (resulting from propane, oil and natural gas emissions).

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos led an entourage of 400 luminaries, dignitaries and “green” CEOs flying private jets to the 2021 COP-26 climate confab in Glasgow. Two years earlier, currency manipulator George Soros and 1,500 other “global leaders” hopped their private jets to the World Economic Forum in Davos, once again to focus attention on “sustainability” and “dangerous global warming.” As climate czar John Kerry explained, private jets are “the only choice” for someone as important as he is.

Not to be outdone, Leonardo DiCaprio flew a private jet to New York City in 2016 to accept an environmental award, then flew it back to France a day later. “Climate change is real!” he intoned.

Of course it’s real. It’s been “real” throughout Earth’s history, and there is no Real World evidence to support assertions that manmade greenhouse gases have replaced the powerful natural forces that drove past climate fluctuations, or that fossil fuel emissions are now causing dangerous warming and weather.

Computer models are not evidence, and their predictions generally conflict with actual world events. Why should we disrupt our energy, economy and living standards because models claim there’s a crisis? Yet models are always the last refuge for the false prophets of climate Armageddon.

In reality, far more people die in cold weather than in hot spells, and a slightly warmer planet would be quite beneficial for both humanity and the plant and animal kingdoms.

There is simply no credible evidence that today’s climate fluctuations and weather events are due to fossil fuels, instead of the same natural forces that have operated throughout Earth history. Tornado records show fewer violent twisters 1950-1985 than during the 36 years since. Not a single Category 3-5 hurricane made U.S. landfall for a record 12 years (2005-2012).

Three especially “brutal” droughts during a 200-year dry spell caused the Mayan civilization to collapse by 930 AD. Multiple droughts struck the Chaco Canyon (Four Corners) region 1130-1450, helping to end the Anasazi civilization. Extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar, causing political unrest and war, and fostering the spread of Islam. The Pleistocene glacial epochs and Little Ice Age brought “frozen droughts” to Europe, Asia and North America.

Even worse than the fake science and endless fear-mongering, their proposed remedies to the Climate Crisis would be far more harmful to people and planet than the warming and weather they worry about.

Replacing fossil-fuel (and nuclear) electricity generation would mean blanketing the planet with millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of backup battery modules, thousands of mines to produce the raw materials for these technologies (mostly Chinese-operated), and hundreds of landfills for worn-out, 300-foot-long wind turbine blades and other dilapidated “green energy” equipment. (Thankfully the United States has a huge, thus far unused landfill: Arizona’s Grand Canyon.)

The ease with which billionaire climate club members do business with China also conflicts with generally accepted standards of environmental and human rights ethics.

Musk is quite cozy with the Chinese Communist regime. From taking billions in regime-funded loans, to speaking at their embassy, to building a factory in Xinjiang amid the Uyghur genocide, he is surprisingly comfortable working with a state founded on ideologies of totalitarian hatred and abuse.

Gates stretched the limits of U.S. security laws to help China build nuclear reactors suitable for powering naval vessels, even as China continues making strategic long-term moves to control ever-larger swaths of the Pacific and surpass U.S. naval power in this critical region.

Incredibly, but understandably, these billionaires almost never) criticize Xi Jinping’s regime. In fact, Musk has met with communist officials on multiple occasions and frequently says China “rocks” – even though it is by far the world’s biggest emitter of plant fertilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) and toxic pollutants.

In fact, in 2019 China’s greenhouse gas emissions were nearly 2.5 times those of the United States – and more than all the world’s developed nations combined. In CO2 equivalent, China emitted 14.1 billion metric tons that year – more than a quarter of the entire world’s emissions.

Musk even stopped serving on President Trump’s advisory panels, to protest Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the meaningless Paris climate agreement that’s actually a treaty.

So why are Musk and Gates so quick to criticize America – but never reprimand the People’s Republic? They clearly don’t live by the environmental principles they preach and won’t even criticize the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitter, toxic chemicals polluter, and child and slave labor practitioner.

Still worse, the policies they promote would harm global public health. As Congressman John Curtis (R-Utah), founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, recently noted, “killing American fossil fuels just causes them to be replaced by dirtier foreign sources, in particular Chinese and Russian.” Perhaps, Mr. Curtis suggested, we should instead start “attacking carbon emissions, not energy sources, through carbon capture, American innovation, natural solutions, and other paths that boost the American economy while reducing global emissions.”

Over the last decade, the U.S. has reduced CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world. Yet, Musk, Gates and fellow jet-setters continue to support policies like the Paris accord, which would impose major restrictions on the U.S. while allowing China to continue increasing emissions through 2030.

Perhaps, instead, we should just stop trying to reduce CO2 emissions, since that monumental and costly global effort is driven by demands that we prevent a “manmade climate crisis” that doesn’t actually exist.

If these climate activists wish to make a difference in human and environmental health around the world, they need to change their perspective and their relationship with Communist China. They need to begin looking at Real World climate and weather evidence, and practicing what they preach.

Unfortunately, they’re unwilling to do so. They’d rather make noise (and more billions) than safeguard us commoners’ economy and living standards, or support true productive change in America and abroad.

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/billionaire-climate-elites-have-their-own-rules

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Survey: The surging cost of living is the most important issue for a majority of Australians. Climate a low priority

Climate action and the transition to renewables was rated the 14th-most important national priority in June out of a list of 36 issues, coming in behind healthcare, the economy, reducing domestic violence, affordable rental housing, aged care, increased welfare payments and lifting wages.

The SEC Newgate “Mood of the Nation” report for June 2022, which surveyed 1201 Australians across the country, showed the number of people nominating the cost of living as a “top three issue” was running at 40 per cent while 68 per cent rated it as “extremely important”.

This was a 10-percentage-point increase on the number of people rating it as “extremely important” in March (58 per cent) when the former Coalition government handed down its $8.6bn cost-of-living budget package.

The survey noted there was a “sizeable gap” in June between the priority accorded by respondents to the cost of living and the second-most significant priority area, affordable healthcare. “Cost-of-living issues continue to surge,” it said. “Unprompted mention of cost-of-living has risen for the fourth consecutive month with 60 per cent nominating it as an issue that is most important to them right now (up from 50 per cent last month).”

“Grocery prices and petrol prices remain the main specific cost-of-living issues, with energy prices also concerning as new retail price hikes are announced.”

Asked specifically about support for the industrial umpire’s recent 5.2 per cent minimum wage increase, 61 per cent said it was appropriate, 29 per cent felt it was too low and only 10 per cent believed it was too high.

“Similarly, around half (47 per cent) feel the RBA’s recent 0.5 per cent interest rate rise was appropriate, with 31 per cent considering it too high and 9 per cent … too low,” the survey said.

The survey also showed very few Australians rated increasing migration to fill workplace shortages as a national priority despite the business community pushing for immediate action to help address the labour shortfall.

Increasing migration was deemed the least important priority area, coming in last at position 36 – just behind improving the treatment of asylum-seekers.

However, nearly half of those surveyed (45 per cent) supported the call from business groups to increase the migration intake to fill labour shortages, compared to just 29 per cent opposed.

One of the main findings from the survey showed that since Labor took office in May and Jim Chalmers promised there would be no “mincing words” on the economic outlook, Australians have been far more pessimistic about the future.

The survey results indicated that in June 57 per cent of Australians felt the economy would get worse in the next three months – up from just 36 per cent in May. When asked about the outlook for the next 12 months, 45 per cent of respondents said the economy would deteriorate compared to 38 per cent the previous month.

“This month has seen a sharp increase in pessimism about the economy,” it said, “(but) overall, 52 per cent still feel Australia is heading in the right direction.”

Reflecting on the state-by-state outlook, the survey suggested sentiment in Victoria was turning negative and could prove an issue for Daniel Andrews’s Labor government at the November election.

“The mood in Victoria has dipped, with 52 per cent feeling it is heading in the right direction. This is down from 65 per cent last month and, in an election year, may reflect growing concern around post-Covid health services and ambulance availability.”

Despite the growing concern, Labor was still rated federally by respondents as the party best able to manage the cost-of-living crisis, with 42 per cent nominating it as their preferred choice compared to just 23 per cent who nominated the Coalition.

Support for Labor as a cost-of-living manager was greatest among younger Australians 18-34 at 52 per cent and dropped to 37 per cent for those aged over 50.

More broadly, the survey found that nearly four out of every 10 Australians thought the government was doing a “good to excellent” job so far, with another 31 per cent rating its performance as “fair” and 26 per cent feeling it was doing poorly.

Other national issues ranked in the survey of 36 priority areas included strengthening borders against illegal immigration (15th place); keeping interest rates low (17th place); preserving freedom of speech and rejecting excessive political correctness (18th place); reducing personal taxes (26th place); investment in affordable childcare (28th place); reducing government debt (29th place), and; promoting diversity, inclusion and respect for minorities (30th place).

Addressing Aboriginal disadvantage and promoting reconciliation was rated by respondents as the 32nd-most important priority for the country to address.

SEC Newgate research partner David Stolper said the national mood had “soured this month with surging concern about rising costs and growing pessimism about the future of the economy”.

“By and large, the public continues to back the federal government’s handling of cost-of-living and energy issues, although any missteps will likely by harshly judged by an increasingly anxious electorate,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/costofliving-crisis-the-top-concern-in-sec-newgate-mood-of-the-nation-report/news-story/1728176dc959a93e269e063c36bdff50

Sunday, July 10, 2022

The unravelling of Germany’s green agenda

Germany is going backwards. Last month, Robert Habeck – German vice-chancellor and co-leader of the Green Party – announced that Germany will significantly increase its use of coal power, in order to wean itself off Russian gas. The energy situation is critical, says Habeck – not least as Russia has cut the amount of gas it supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline by 60 per cent.

So much for Germany’s much-vaunted Energiewende, or clean-energy transition. For years, the transition to renewable energy has been sold as an expression of modernity – of a new technologically advanced and environmentally sustainable Germany. It is one of the few policies that politicians have shown any enthusiasm for in recent years. Now that the Energiewende is going into reverse – with a Green Party minister leading the charge back to one of the most polluting forms of energy – its shortcomings are impossible to ignore.

Of course, the plan to fire up the coal-fired power plants has been presented as an ‘emergency’ measure, in response to the war in Ukraine. As recently as December, the German government was promising to accelerate the phase-out of coal power. Instead of eliminating coal by 2038, as Angela Merkel had planned, the new government aims to end the use of coal by 2030. On the world stage, the German government has lobbied heavily for a global phasing-out of coal to fight climate change. Back in November, the government signed a new climate declaration – the ‘Global Coal to Clean Power’ Transition Statement’.

But in the wake of the Ukraine emergency, Germany’s chronic dependence on Russian gas has made its energy supplies vulnerable. Until just a few weeks ago, Russian gas imports accounted for more than 50 per cent of German gas use.

Though the need to wean Germany off Russian gas is understandable, the government’s energy strategy is still baffling. While the government is willing to reopen coal power plants, it is doggedly sticking to its plan to phase out carbon-free nuclear power by the end of the year. It has also tried to swat aside any debate about keeping these plants open. Chancellor Olaf Scholz claims (without justification) that expert opinion is unanimously behind the government’s phase-out of nuclear, as the fuel rods powering Germany’s remaining three nuclear reactors will not last beyond the year.

It is now common practice to stifle debates by deferring to ‘the experts’, but it is hard to see the government getting away with it this time. Opposition politician Markus Söder has branded Scholz’s claim ‘technical nonsense’. And Germany’s Nuclear Power Association has also disagreed publicly with Scholz, arguing that the nuclear plants can be saved, but that the longer Scholz waits to extend their lifespan, the more difficult it will be.

Public opinion is also against Scholz and the scrapping of nuclear. Most Germans recognise that nuclear power is safe, carbon-neutral and efficient. Seven out of 10 Germans are in favour of keeping the existing nuclear plants running. Only among Green voters is there a majority (56 per cent) in favour of shutting down Germany’s nuclear plants. Yet these are the voters the government feels the need to pander to.

The war in Ukraine has brought the contradictions and inconsistencies of the German Greens and their policies to the fore. On top of reopening coal plants, Habeck was forced to visit Qatar earlier this year, in order to secure new supplies of liquefied natural gas. Photos of Habeck bowing to the Qatari energy minister were met with widespread derision on social media. This was widely seen as a betrayal not only of Habeck’s green principles, but also of the ‘moral foreign policy’ that the Green Party had promised. Only a year ago, before they entered government, the Greens were monstering Qatar for its human-rights violations (Green co-leader Annalena Baerbock, now foreign minister, even called for this winter’s football World Cup to be cancelled).

The Energiewende is also unravelling. Many Germans are starting to recognise that it is ultimately what has led to Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. The end of nuclear power, alongside the switch to expensive and intermittent renewables (which depend on the sun shining and the wind blowing), created a gap that was then filled by Russian gas. As a result, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany had some of the highest electricity prices in Europe – and now its energy supplies are under even greater threat.

The green ideology that brought us here has long dominated German politics, even though the Green Party has never been especially popular. In the last federal election, though the media were excited about the prospect of a Green chancellor, the party won just 14.8 per cent of the vote.

While enthusiasm for the green agenda has always been largely confined to the middle classes, as long as the economy was running reasonably well, most Germans were happy to put up with it. But this is surely not tenable for much longer. The price of electricity has already reached a record high and gas prices are set to triple in the coming months.

Faced with this disaster, as well as announcing the revival of coal power, Habeck has appealed to German citizens to save as much energy as possible. He has even threatened to introduce energy rationing by law. Under discussion are plans to scrap or reduce the obligations on landlords for homes to be heated to a minimum room temperature (or ‘legally mandated freezing’, as one minister put it). While this is presented as yet another emergency measure, such rationing is the logical conclusion of the green ideology, which views saving energy as an end in itself.

Yet however much hardship and resentment the green transition creates, and however irrational it is exposed to be, there is unlikely to be a major rethink. Policies that might actually bring down the price of energy – and provide enough energy for citizens’ needs – are incompatible with the green ideology.

Germany’s irrational green politics should be a warning to the world

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/07/04/the-unravelling-of-germanys-green-agenda/

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Shareholders back away from climate petitions as US Republicans wage war against 'woke capitalism'

The reluctance of some investors to back prescriptive climate resolutions comes as Republican politicians are waging war against what they call “woke capitalism”.

A record-breaking US proxy season for shareholder proposals brought disappointment to environmental activists, as some investors shied away from backing climate proposals they saw as too prescriptive.

Buoyed by a victory last year at ExxonMobil and rules that made it easier to put public policy-related questions on proxy ballots, activists filed 389 environmental and social proposals with member companies of the Russell 3000 index, according to an analysis by The Conference Board of data supplied by Esgauge.

Yet the share of support for environmental proposals dropped from 37 per cent in 2021 to 33 per cent this year.

Some of this was due to the fact that 30 of the least controversial proposals were withdrawn after companies agreed to activists’ requests. Those that went to a vote tended to be further reaching or were at companies where management has strongly resisted environmentalist demands, the research shows.

The results reflected growing squeamishness among asset managers about tying managers’ hands on climate-related issues. This has been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which forced investors and companies to think more about energy security.

BlackRock set the tone earlier this year when the world’s largest money manager warned that it would be voting against shareholder resolutions on climate that it considered to be too extreme or prescriptive. The Conference Board analysis shows that other large investors are making similar distinctions in the name of long-term returns.

“It’s the board’s role to oversee and direct corporate strategy,” said Ben Colton, who heads stewardship at State Street Global Advisors. “As long- term shareholders, we need to be as pragmatic and consistent as possible.”

Proposals asking management to report on several environment-related options drew significantly higher backing than those that sought to restrict management behaviour. Seven resolutions asking for reports on plastic pollution garnered an average of 45 per cent support. However, 10 demands that banks and insurers stop financing new fossil fuel development received average support of just 10 per cent.

“Overall numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole story for this proxy season,” said Merel Spierings, The Conference Board researcher who analysed the numbers. She said that when the most prescriptive proposals are excluded, support for climate-related resolutions was largely unchanged from 2021.

The voting patterns at ExxonMobil make clear how these concerns are playing out this year. Last year, investors unexpectedly supported board candidates proposed by an activist hedge fund that wanted the oil major to do more on climate change. This year, several new climate-related proposals of different types were on the proxy ballot.

BlackRock voted against a proposal that would have required the US oil major to set specific targets to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It voted in favour of asking the company to do scenario planning for a range of energy transition pathways. State Street abstained on both.

The emissions limit proposal received just 27 per cent support, but the scenario planning item that BlackRock favoured ended up passing with 51 per cent of the vote. BlackRock owns about 9 per cent of ExxonMobil shares.

The reluctance of some investors to back prescriptive climate resolutions comes as Republican politicians are waging war against what they call “woke capitalism”. State governments in Texas and West Virginia are moving to boycott financial services groups that “discriminate” against fossil fuels.

But backers of the more specific climate proposals argued that they were necessary to move companies beyond vague promises to keep global warming to a minimum. All of the fossil fuel financing proposals met the 5 per cent threshold that allows investors to put them forward again next year.

“The resolutions were a critical step forward and helped move the conversation between investors and banks from long-term targets and disclosure to ‘What is your plan?’” said Ben Cushing, who runs the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign. “It is really disappointing that these proposals were [considered] so prescriptive . . . they will be coming back.”

https://www.ft.com/content/367967dd-0701-43cc-b3c5-350faa4cff96?mc_cid=7f10630a50&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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EPA Targets Permian Basin, Widening Biden’s War On Oil And Gas

During an interview with Brazil’s Agencia Estadio news service this week, I told the reporter that one of the reasons why I characterized the Biden energy policies as “confused” in a recent story is because we so often see the President saying one thing in public as his appointees in the federal bureaucracy are doing the opposite. We have seen this phenomenon take place repeatedly this year, as Mr. Biden has frequently called for the domestic industry to produce more oil and gas, refine more gasoline and ramp up exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe, while his agencies continue to hold up permitting, issue restrictive new regulations, and issue rulings that directly inhibit companies’ ability to get their business done.

It happened again this week, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it may soon issue a ruling declaring that vast parts of the Permian Basin are in “non-attainment” status under the agency’s ozone regulations. If such a declaration is made, it will constitute a direct governmental assault on what is by far America’s most active and productive oil-producing region and its second most-productive natural gas area. The Permian currently accounts for fully 43% of total U.S. daily oil production and is home to almost 40% of the nation’s active drilling rigs according to the Enverus daily rig count.

Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in the West Virginia v. EPA case is not expected to impact the agency’s ability to set standards on ozone levels and enforce them. If anything, it seems likely the agency, at least under a Biden presidency, will seek to become more aggressive in this realm as a backdoor means of continuing to force coal-fired power plants out of business and, as in this case, hamper the domestic oil and gas industry.

Placing the Permian Basin in non-attainment status would force a significant reduction in the region’s rig count, severely limiting the domestic industry’s efforts to increase U.S. oil production at a time when the global oil market is already severely under-supplied. Thus, while the President claims to want to “work like the devil” to lower gasoline prices and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claims Mr. Biden is “using every tool” at his disposal to do so, the EPA is working to create the exact opposite impact.

The EPA’s announcement comes just a week after Secretary Granholm summoned a group of refining company CEOs to Washington, D.C. where she urged them to somehow increase their refining efforts, despite the fact that her own Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that the industry is already running at a historically high 95% capacity. It also comes after both Granholm and the President himself have repeatedly called for the domestic industry to increase production levels of oil and gas to try to mitigate high prices for gasoline and diesel at the pump.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2022/07/01/epa-targets-permian-basin-widening-bidens-war-on-oil-and-gas/?sh=49c67a521b89&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=00ac39c4-c37a-4ce1-a5d7-6481ebebd5bf

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Limitations of "Green" energy becoming incresingly obvious

It's the prophecies of skeptics that are coming true

With the energy crisis prompting governments everywhere to turn coal plants back on, wiping out many years of hard won emission reductions in advanced economies, the major limitations of renewable energy have now, at last, been acknowledged by all.

Well, almost all, with Victorian government energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio in late June ruling out paying coal and gas companies to keep them operating as part of a proposed national capacity market, saying that the state’s new offshore wind projects will ‘blow any shortfall out of the water’.

Never mind that the bulk of the advanced economies, many with far higher dependence on renewables than Victoria, have such capacity markets – ideological demands must trump operational experience.

Chief among the lessons about those limitations is the phenomena now known as ‘wind droughts’. Late in 2021 as delegates in the annual climate summit, held in Glasgow that year were noisily demanding more renewable energy, the UK had to turn on mothballed coal-power plants because of a shortage of gas and a wind drought.

In an article on the Australian edition of the academic site the Conversation published in October 2021 a researcher in climate risk analytics at the University of Bristol in the UK, Hannah Bloomfield, says that the period of still weather around the time of the Glasgow conference resulted in the power company SSE reporting that its renewable assets produced 32 per cent less power than expected.

In the article Dr Bloomfield says these ‘wind droughts’ can be classified as an extreme weather event, like floods and hurricanes. Researchers in the UK have shown that that periods of stagnant high atmospheric pressure over central Europe, lead to prolonged low wind conditions over a wide area and those conditions may be ‘difficult’ for power systems in future. Further, Dr Bloomfield notes, it is important to understand just how such events occur, as that means they can be forecast and the grids prepared for them. There is no discussion about just how the grids might be prepared for such droughts and, in any case, scientists have enough problems forecasting the frequency and severity of cyclones during cyclones seasons, and are continually taken by surprise by floods, despite studying those extreme events for decades.

But it is known that just like rain droughts, wind droughts can persist for a long time.

During a wind drought in the UK in 2018, wind made no contribution to the UK grid at all for nine days and only slight contributions for another two weeks. In the wind drought of late 2021 noted earlier, there were days when wind made no contribution at all.

Then there are the much shorter periods, perhaps ranging from an hour or so up to a day that can also be found by anyone who examines wind’s contribution to total energy supply to the UK grid over time. However, the short and long-term wind drought phenomena has received some academic attention in the UK, it is difficult to point to any systematic study of the problem in Australia.

A few concerned citizens have looked at the easily accessible figures for wind production on the National Energy Market, the grid for Australia’s east coast, to find a number of periods where the whole of the NEM was in wind drought for periods ranging from a few hours up to 33 hours. But that study was for just one year, 2020. More extensive research could well find wind droughts of much longer periods.

Activists may sneeringly dismiss all of this as having not been done by properly qualified scientists. Very well, where is the independent analysis done by academics with qualifications of any kind? While they are on the job those same academics can work out just how much storage capacity would be required to tide the national market over for a day and a half. The NEM has north of 50,000 MWs (50 GW) of generating capacity. If for the sake of argument, we assume that an average of half that is used (more during demand peaks and less during troughs) in any given period, then the market may need around 900,000 megawatt hours to get through a 36-hour drought without fossil fuel plants.

The giant water battery known as Snowy Mountain 2.0 should store about 350,000 MWh, when it is finished and assuming that it can find enough fresh water, which means the NEM might need three or four Snowy 2.0s at a bare minimum, although only one is being built.

Batteries don’t count. The Hornsdale Power Reserve Battery built in South Australia in 2017 with considerable fanfare, for example, cost $90 million but stores just 125 MWh. The photovoltaic panels now on suburban roofs all over Australia are not subject to wind droughts, but they are at their peak around the middle of day, do not work well on cloudy days or at all at night, and the excess energy still has to be stored.

To make matters worse, grids have to be designed to cope with worse case scenarios such as a very hot day, which also happens to be a calm, cloudy day. Perhaps enough power might be stored to see the grid through one such event, but then when the Snowy projects have expended one load of fresh water through turbines to generate power, it may take days to completely recharge, so to speak, by having the water pumped back into it. What happens if another extreme event occurs soon after the first?Activists insist that all these problems can be overcome simply be building more wind turbines, particularly offshore turbines as planned by Minister D’Ambrosio. In the days of sail, ships might be becalmed for days, but the trade winds which blow down Bass Strait are thought to be different. Well, are they? King Island, well out in Bass Strait, has the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project, part of which is a wind farm, plus solar power as a supplement to the island’s long-standing diesel generators. Material produced by the owner Tasmanian Hydro estimates that renewable energy now accounts for 65 per cent of the island’s power demand.

That’s fine but what about the other 35 per cent supplied by diesel? Why couldn’t the wind farm supply all of the island’s needs, and was the outcome worth the $18 million spent on the project, all to service the island’s 1,600 residents? The Victorian government could at least produce some material apart from activist assurances that its projected reliance on offshore wind farms will be anything but a disaster.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/transition-loses-traction/

Friday, July 08, 2022

Gas and Nuclear Power Can Be ‘Green’ Under New EU Plan

Laughable face-saving

A vote in the European Parliament on Wednesday cleared the way for nuclear power and natural gas to be included in the EU’s so-called green taxonomy.

Lawmakers in the European Union voted to include nuclear power and natural gas in the bloc’s list of investments deemed sustainable, a move it hopes will trigger more funding of those sectors but that critics said would slow down the EU’s shift to greener energy sources.

Opponents of the plan failed to gather enough support for a veto during a vote in the European Parliament on Wednesday, clearing the way for the two energy sources to be included in the EU’s so-called green taxonomy if they meet a series of conditions such as limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

The taxonomy, which will affect a range of industries beyond energy, is meant to help funnel more money into projects that the bloc considers to be sustainable and is part of a larger push to slash greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn’t bar investments in projects that aren’t on the list or prevent European countries from making decisions about their own energy mix.

The debate over whether nuclear energy and natural gas should be included in the taxonomy took on a new dimension in recent months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. About 40% of the gas the EU used last year came from Russia.

Officials from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, have said natural gas and nuclear energy should be included in the taxonomy under certain conditions because they can help countries transition away from coal. Burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide that is generated by coal, and nuclear-power plants don’t produce carbon dioxide when they are operating.

But environmentalists, lawmakers and some investors have argued the plan risks diluting investments in other projects such as renewable energy. Lawmakers also said their case against including natural gas in the taxonomy became stronger after Russia invaded Ukraine because of the EU’s heavy reliance on Russian gas.

Europe is racing to reduce its dependence on Moscow and is seeking liquefied natural gas from other countries, including the U.S., to replace Russian natural gas. Officials are also preparing for the possibility of a complete cutoff of gas supplies from Russia, which they have said could result in rationing.

Wednesday’s vote in the European Parliament marks a last significant hurdle for the plan to include nuclear power and natural gas in the taxonomy, and means it will likely come into force at the beginning of next year.

Mairead McGuinness, the EU commissioner for financial services, said earlier this week that the plan wouldn’t deepen Europe’s reliance on Russia and is a time-limited measure that is meant to help with the bloc’s transition to cleaner energy sources.

“Some member states moving from dirty fossil fuel may need gas in transition,” Ms. McGuinness said. She said nuclear power is also part of that transition.

The commission has said the conditions for determining which nuclear and natural-gas investments can be included in the taxonomy set a high bar and should help ensure that those activities are contributing to the overall goal of climate-change mitigation. Environmental groups and some lawmakers disagree, saying the standards are too lax.

Under the commission’s plan, new nuclear plants that show they can safely handle toxic nuclear waste could be counted as green investments until 2045. Natural-gas plants could be considered sustainable until at least 2030 if they meet certain criteria, including keeping emissions under a set threshold.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gas-and-nuclear-power-can-be-green-under-new-eu-plan-11657108882

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British government's adviser admits heat pumps won't reduce energy bills

Installing a heat pump will push energy bills higher, the Government's adviser has admitted, despite ministers pressing the technology on households.

The Climate Change Committee, the Government's independent adviser on tackling climate change, has found the running cost of heat pumps is 10pc higher than that of a gas boiler – equal to £100 more a year.

This excludes the upfront capital costs of around £10,000 per household that is needed to replace a gas boiler with a heat pump, according to the Energy and Utilities Alliance, a trade body.

The CCC’s report said: “Even under current record high gas prices, our estimates suggest that the average heating bill for a heat pump is around 10pc higher than for a gas boiler.”

Heat pumps run on electricity, which is around four times more expensive than gas because of the way carbon taxes are applied. These taxes add £93 to an average electricity bill but only £3 to gas bills, according to supplier Octopus, although this is currently being reviewed.

The report added: “Removing energy levies from electricity will directly lower running costs for heat pumps, making them more financially viable.

“In the medium term, heat pump efficiency improvements should also help bring their running costs closer in line with gas boilers.”

Mike Foster, of the EUA, said the data had been “hidden away from the main headlines” and confirmed fears installing heat pumps would worsen the effects of the cost of living crisis.

He said those who suggest heat pumps are the answer to soaring energy bills – particularly as the energy price cap is set to increase later this year – “risk heaping more misery onto ordinary, hard-working families.”

Mr Foster added: “The Government should be looking at ways of reducing our heating bills, not ramping them up. They have a target of 600,000 heat pumps a year to be fitted into homes by 2030. This will force up heating bills, not just according to our analysis, but also to the Government’s own advisors. It’s time for a reset.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bills-and-utilities/gas-electric/boris-johnsons-adviser-admits-heat-pumps-wont-reduce-energy/

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UK: New coalmine in Cumbria backed by environment secretary

The environment secretary has given his backing to a new coalmine in Cumbria on the eve of a government decision about whether to approve the contentious project.

George Eustice said the alternative was “outsourcing pollution” to countries where standards would be lower.

The proposal for a mine at Whitehaven has the support of local Conservative MPs but is unpopular with environmental campaigners. Developers want to drill underneath the Irish Sea to extract coking coal used for steelmaking. Around 36 per cent of the coal is imported from Russia at present. Michael Gove, the levelling-up, communities and housing secretary, has been asked to announce whether the mine will go ahead by tomorrow.

The mine was initially approved by Cumbria council but is subject to a public inquiry. Boris Johnson appeared to hint he was in favour of the project when he said last month that “it makes no sense to be importing coal . . . when we have our own domestic resources.”

Speaking to The Times, Eustice defended the colliery, saying that coking coal was still needed. “It is with gas as with coal,” he said. “If we still need to use it for certain industries, and there’s still a role for gas in the transition to net zero, not least to create blue hydrogen — if we do need this coal in order to have a viable steel industry, then we might as well use our own coal and use our own gas rather than be reliant on other countries.”

In April the government announced a review of the moratorium on fracking.

Eustice said the argument for allowing fracking in the UK was “weaker” than drilling for coal because the quality of gas extracted from fracking was “much lower” than natural gas. However, he said that in context of high fuel prices the government would keep everything “under review”.

Last week Lord Deben, the chairman of the climate change committee, described the mine as “absolutely indefensible”. The committee published a highly critical report stating that there was “scant evidence” the government could deliver on its target of net zero by 2050.

Eustice dismissed the conclusions as “wrong”, saying that they had failed to take into account the likelihood of technological breakthroughs. He gave the example of feed additives being developed for cattle that could minimise emissions and a Cornish farm that is creating a biofuel made from slurry. “If you could perfect those sorts of technologies at scale, that’s when you make quite rapid inroads into global warming and greenhouse gases,” he said.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-coalmine-in-cumbria-backed-by-environment-secretary-f0g62qqcn?mc_cid=5700dfeca3&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Greenie-inspired disaster in the Netherlands: Lessons folr Australia?

Only a few months ago it was the Canadian government that attacked its own citizens in the most grotesque and terrifyingly authoritarian manner during the so-called Truckers Convoy revolt, when the Trudeau government actually froze the bank accounts and in essence attempted to starve out any individuals involved in what were legitimate peaceful democratic protests against onerous and job-threatening Covid mandates. That ended badly for Trudeau, particularly after the shameful incident in which Canadian mounted police trampled over a peaceful woman protestor. His popularity deservedly took a hammering.

Here in Australia, we also saw unacceptable authoritarianism and police brutality being employed against ordinary, everyday Aussies who were peacefully protesting against mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns and other Covid restrictions. Under Dan Andrews’ Victorian Labor government, a pregnant woman was harassed and arrested in her pyjamas, a gran was hurled to the ground and pepper-sprayed, a man was smashed to the ground, another was rammed by a police car, another had his head repeatedly hit with a rifle butt. And so on. All in the name of keeping us safe.

Now it’s the turn of the Dutch to go ‘full totalitarian’, albeit not over Covid restrictions. This time it’s Covid’s equally ugly authoritarian twin, namely climate change. Currently the government of Mark Rutte’s laughably and ironically named ‘People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy’ is embarked upon insane efforts to slash greenhouse gases and reduce the amount of nitrogen ammonia in the soil by up to 70 per cent by 2030, or even by up to 95 per cent in some places, to meet green EU climate change targets they have signed up to. This literally means turfing people off their land. Indeed, the Netherlands House of Representatives has released a statement saying: ‘The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.’

Whether coincidentally or otherwise, it was only last year that Mark Rutte appeared at the World Economic Forum boasting about Holland’s involvement with the WEF’s global food innovation hubs program, which has the stated goals of ‘transforming food systems and land use’. Well, forcibly turfing farmers off their land is certainly one way to ‘transform land use and food systems’.

Everyday hard-working Dutch family farmers have other ideas, and we are now seeing massive and growing protests, tractor blockades, manure being dumped onto government property and so on, with accusations the Dutch secret police are infiltrating the protesters, which is much the same playbook alleged to have been used by Trudeau during the Truckers Convoy.

Is this what happens when governments get infiltrated by globalist activist politicians who have supped at the feet of Klaus Schwab in Davos? If that sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, you’d be right. But alas, that is the claim of Mr Schwab himself back in 2017 when he boasted in an interview of how many world leaders today are graduates of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, and went on to claim how proud he was to have successfully ‘penetrated the cabinets’ of governments around the world, including claiming that ‘more than half’ of the Canadian cabinet were WEF acolytes.

This should of course concern anyone who is even remotely beholden to the democratic ideal of a parliament and indeed a government being composed of the representativeness of local constituencies whose first loyalty is to those same constituents and not to the power point agenda of some shady globalist cabal of billionaires, powerful trade union organisations and the CEOs of multinational corporations.

Which brings us back to the National Press Club speech last week by Labor’s hapless Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who proudly proclaimed that ‘the Prime Minister and I have notified the UN of Australia’s new 43 per cent emissions reduction target’ before boasting that this was a deal ‘between big energy corporations, trade unions and climate (activists)’. This, he claimed, means ‘we are all in this together’.

In doing so, Mr Bowen and Mr Albanese have almost certainly put us onto the Dutch path of authoritarian and draconian restrictions being required at some point further down the track in order to meet these otherwise almost certainly unachievable targets and climate change obligations.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/all-in-it-together/

Thursday, July 07, 2022

Another Step Toward Climate Apocalypse (?)

Paul Krugman below is determined to bash the GOP but does so on the flimsiest of grounds. The idea that the drought which has drained lake Mead is an effect of global warming is childishly ignorant. Warming would cause more evaporation off the ocean which would come down as more rain. The lake would more likely be full if global warming were real.

And his claim that temperatures in Norway are unprecedently high is completely a-historical. Norway has been even warmer in the not too distant past. Climate historian Tony Heller draws our attention to an article from 1927:

"Through Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Lapland, and Finland, the motor party journeyed to 270 miles north of the Arctic Circle, prepared for freezing weather. To their continued astonishment the temperature was never' less than 90 degrees in the shade."

Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51442108/3208568

But I guess we have long ago given up on Leftists telling the truth

We’re having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave. Also a temperate heat wave and an Arctic heat wave, with temperatures reaching the high 80s in northern Norway. The megadrought in the Western United States has reduced Lake Mead to a small fraction of its former size, and it now threatens to become a “dead pool” that can no longer supply water to major cities. Climate change is already doing immense damage, and it’s probably only a matter of time before we experience huge catastrophes that take thousands of lives.

And the Republican majority on the Supreme Court just voted to limit the Biden administration’s ability to do anything about it.

It says something about the state of U.S. politics that a number of environmental experts I follow were actually relieved by the ruling, which was less sweeping than they feared and still left the administration with some possible paths for climate action. I guess, given where we are, objectively bad decisions must be graded on a curve.

And for what it’s worth, I have a suspicion that at least some of the Republican justices understood the enormity of what they were doing and tried to do as little as possible while maintaining their party fealty.

For party fealty is, of course, what this is all about. Anyone who believes that the recent series of blockbuster court rulings reflects any consistent legal theory is being willfully naïve: Clearly, the way this court interprets the law is almost entirely determined by what serves Republican interests. If states want to ban abortion, well, that’s their prerogative. If New York has a law restricting the concealed carrying of firearms, well, that’s unconstitutional.

And partisanship is the central problem of climate policy. Yes, Joe Manchin stands in the way of advancing the Biden climate agenda. But if there were even a handful of Republican senators willing to support climate action, Manchin wouldn’t matter, and neither would the Supreme Court: Simple legislation could establish regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions and provide subsidies and maybe even impose taxes to encourage the transition to a green economy. So ultimately our paralysis in the face of what looks more and more like a looming apocalypse comes down to the G.O.P.’s adamant opposition to any kind of action.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/04/opinion/another-step-toward-climate-apocalypse.html

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President Biden's 'Whole of Government' Climate Spending Extravaganza

Just two years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts made only one grant to an art project that promised to address the issue of climate change, awarding $25,000 to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art to commission work informed by "research on the Earth's dissolving permafrost layer."

During the last two years, the federal agency has provided $1,369,000 to fund some 40 climate-focused projects. The 29 such grants approved for fiscal year 2022 include support for multidisciplinary artist Hajra Waheed's collaboration "with researchers and organizers on issues such as land sovereignty and food and climate justice"; development of a Baltimore Center Stage production titled, "A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction"; and a grant to the Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland, to use "movement and storytelling to explore the ways different landscapes and communities are navigating climate change."

Never mind the prospect of reins on executive climate action in light of the Supreme Court's stinging regulatory rebuke last week: These art projects are one small piece of an explosion of climate spending since President Biden called during his first days in office for a "whole-of-government approach to combating the climate crisis." In response, every department, bureau, and agency has climate-related budget lines, responding to Biden's mandate by claiming a slice of the climate pie.

Where the Trump administration's 150-page budget overview for the fiscal year 2020 mentioned the word climate just once (and that was a reference to "school climate" – that is, educational environment), the current White House 2023 budget overview mentions the word "climate" 187 times and the phrase "climate crisis" 33 times in its 158 pages.

The administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 calls for "a total of $44.9 billion to tackle the climate crisis," $16.7 billion more than climate spending in 2021, according to the president's budget.

"Climate change is not only a real and growing threat," Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan said, "but it also presents an economic opportunity." These include:

The Department of Health and Human Services plans to boost spending on the CDC's Climate and Health Program from $10 million to $110 million, to "identify potential health effects associated with climate change and implement health adaptation plans."

The National Institutes of Health are ramping up research on "climate change impact on health," with grants for projects "that address the impact of climate change on health" and technologies for measuring "the effects of climate change and extreme weather events on human health."

Even as it struggles with the growing crisis on the southern border, the Department of Homeland Security in its 2023 fiscal year budget asks for $55 million to battle climate change. Of that, $2 million will be spent "to stand up a Climate Change Program Management Office," and $4 million will go to the bureaucratic activities of "tracking, monitoring, and auditing … environmental planning compliance actions." DHS is also committed to electrifying half its fleet of motor vehicles by the end of the decade.

The State Department is seeking $2.3 billion for a broad range of climate-related expenditures including $2 million on "support for post-led climate diplomacy"; $7 million for "global climate diplomacy"; $2.6 million for the "Climate Change Public Diplomacy Fund"; $7.9 million for the "Center of Climate and Sustainability"; $17 million for "Overseas Climate Resilience, Building Energy, and Sustainability Projects"; and over $16 million to support the "Special Presidential Envoy for Climate" -- aka John Kerry currently. State is also seeking $5 million to buy or lease electric vehicles for the department.

Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who studies the federal budget, says that the Biden administration is "trying to send a message that in everything we do, we should be attentive to the issue." Part of "the problem of dealing with an issue so big," Bilmes added, "is that responsibility is so fragmented."

Increased funding to protect coastlines, inspect wind turbines and solar farms, and promote the use of carbon-free energy sources directly align with Biden's call to address what he calls the "existential threat" of climate change. But there are other organizing principles – reflecting progressive concerns – that inform the budget requests. Chief among these is Biden's belief that climate should be addressed across the government as an issue of "environmental justice." The NIH supports that agenda, stating that "Research has shown the impact of climate change differs across populations depending on socioeconomic advantages."

The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to spend over $1 billion in "climate resilience and energy efficiency improvements." For example, HUD promises to advance "climate resilience and environmental justice by redeveloping and replacing distressed public and multifamily housing and neighborhood amenities with resilient and energy-efficient structures." It might be pointed out, however, that one of HUD's main responsibilities is to redevelop distressed public housing. Is HUD's commitment to confronting the threat of climate change a new imperative, or just a new way to justify the department and its activities?

The Environmental Protection Agency is also pursuing environmental justice. Under EPA's new strategic plan, the top goal is to "Tackle the Climate Crisis." Following a close second is Goal 2, which commits the EPA to "Take Decisive Action to Advance Environmental Justice and Civil Rights." In practice that means embedding environmental justice into all of the agency's "Programs Policies and Activities."

It isn't clear, however, whether the EPA will be able to re-invent itself as a ministry of environmental justice, given the Supreme Court's consequential decision Thursday limiting what powers the agency can exercise without explicit authorization by Congress.

Treasury promises that in its audits and investigations TIGTA will support the department's strategic goals. Among them, "Combat Climate Change." But how? TIGTA points to its fleet of 200 vehicles and promises to replace them with electric vehicles.

But that may be easier said than done. Plans to replace government cars and trucks with electrics, whether at TIGTA, Homeland Security, or the State Department, "are not to be taken seriously," says Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Eliminate every vehicle used by the federal government and the effect on the climate – even under the worst-case scenario calculations – would be vanishingly small. Even if one were to eliminate the auto emissions of the entire federal government, the change in expected global temperatures would be "essentially zero."

More here:

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/07/06/president_bidens_whole_of_government_climate_spending_extravaganza_840460.html

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White House ‘Disinformation’ Campaign Against Climate Policy Critics Sparks Litigation

Climate activists are working in coordination with the Biden White House and Democrat-dominated congressional committees to silence political opponents under the guise of “disinformation,” legal and energy policy analysts say.

Under President Joe Biden, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has kept a tight lid on how the administration advances its climate agenda, Chris Horner, an attorney representing a government transparency group, told The Daily Signal.

Horner said the White House science office refuses to respond forthrightly to related open records requests from his client, a nonprofit called Energy Policy Advocates. Such answers, he said, would enlighten Americans on the White House’s recruitment of outside activists and academics to discredit dissenters on climate change.

“It’s sort of like paying someone else to take your LSAT test,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow with the Washington-based nonprofit Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Signal.

Horner’s Energy Policy Advocates has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the White House science office after it declined to release records detailing some of the correspondence of two of its staffers.

The lawsuit, filed in May, cites a “virtual roundtable” on climate change that the science office hosted Feb. 25 for the stated purpose of confronting “climate delayism.” A White House press release describing the roundtable identifies 17 outside participants, including communication strategists, professors, and researchers associated with universities across the country.

“We have filed numerous open records suits pertaining to ‘climate,’ seeking records from local, state, or federal bodies known to be working with what we view as a climate industry, or otherwise pursuing the agenda,” Horner said in an email to The Daily Signal.

He said Energy Policy Advocates, which is based in Washington state, went to court after the White House science office “failed to move” on one request under the Freedom of Information Act, or to determine that it would comply with that request. The office also “attempted to deny another request on what appear to be specious grounds that the material was ‘deliberative’ in nature,” Horner said.

Horner is one of two lawyers representing Energy Policy Advocates in the litigation.

In an email, The Daily Signal sought comment from the Office of Science and Technology Policy on the lawsuit and the purpose of the “climate disinformation” campaign. The office had not responded by publication time.

Seeking Emails With Outsiders
In February, Energy Policy Advocates asked for correspondence about a climate event involving Eric Lander, a science adviser to Biden who resigned that month, and Jane Lubchenco, the science office’s deputy director for climate and the environment.

The request asked for email records spanning an eight-week period that was “used at any time for work-related correspondence that was sent to one or more … named outside parties,” the suit says.

Lander resigned from the White House science office in response to allegations that he “bullied and demeaned” fellow staffers, according to media reports.

Lubchenco previously served as undersecretary of commerce and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Obama administration. During that time, Energy Policy Advocates’ suit claims, Lubchenco used a previous employer’s email account for “official federal work-related correspondence.”

The nonprofit also filed numerous lawsuits at the state and federal levels to obtain records pertaining to other such efforts. At the state level, for instance, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg paid for unofficial consultants to work with progressive state attorneys general to pursue Bloomberg’s climate agenda, according to the litigation.

The overarching purpose of the FOIA requests is to “inform the public of high-profile ethics revelations” at the White House science office “and media coverage thereof, and also the genesis of a tendentious event and campaign” out of the office, according to the suit.

Horner said he views the White House “roundtable” event as part of a larger effort aimed at “freezing out opposing political speech.”

He points to Biden’s aborted attempt to create a Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security as an example of how the administration is working to cut off meaningful debate about climate change.

“It’s certainly a reasonable conclusion that this administration and its allies, including on Capitol Hill, seek to use the weight of the federal government to silence political speech in opposition to its ‘whole-of-government’ climate agenda,” Horner said.

“Whether that means attempts at criminalization or not, we shall see,” he added, in anticipation that the House Oversight and Reform Committee would make referrals to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. A related transparency lawsuit suggests that such a referral is one objective of the House committee.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/05/lawsuit-alleges-white-house-collusion-with-green-activists-to-silence-critics-of-climate-agenda

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When It Comes to Energy, Ottawa Is Committing Suicide

We may soon need to lay Ottawa to rest, following its decision to deny itself the necessities of life.

The fateful die was cast last month after the Enbridge energy company made what it believed to be an urgent and uncontroversial application to the Ontario Energy Board to replace a corroded 65-year-old natural gas pipeline'which is at high risk of failing'in the city of Ottawa with a modern pipeline able to reliably meet the city 's needs into the future.

To Enbridge 's surprise, the natural gas pipeline emergency it warned about was trumped at the Energy Board by a different emergency'the "climate emergency " that city planners, in league with environmentalists and others, declared in 2019 "for the purposes of naming, framing, and deepening our commitment to protecting our economy, our eco systems, and our community from climate change. "

After hearing financial arguments from a multitude of climate-change-fearing intervenors, the Energy Board denied Enbridge 's application to replace the St. Laurent Pipeline, despite Enbridge 's view that it has but three years to secure the integrity of the pipeline and prevent a later "catastrophic failure [that] could have severe consequences for its customers by virtue of their location in a densely populated urban area. "

The City of Ottawa and other intervenors argued that Enbridge 's proposed pipeline, which would be paid for over a period of 40 years, amounted to a foolish and unnecessary expense because of Ottawa 's official Energy Evolution plan. Under Energy Evolution, Ottawa would evolve away from its dependence on non-renewable natural gas, which currently meets 50 percent of its community 's needs, and evolve into a Net Zero, 100-percent greenhouse-gas-free community by 2050. To lead by example, the city 's own emissions in its buildings and vehicles would be eliminated 10 years earlier, in 2040. In that light, Enbridge 's proposal to replace the existing natural gas pipeline with another natural gas pipeline costing $124 million would be imprudent.

Instead, the City of Ottawa would be adopting a prudent Energy Evolution plan costing "an estimated $52.6 billion on top of planned investments over the next 30 years. " This plan would adopt renewable technologies, including the equivalent of 700 million square feet of solar arrays, mostly on rooftops, and 710 industrial wind turbines, each at least as tall as the Peace Tower at the centre of the Parliament Buildings.

The added $50-billion-plus cost of meeting the city 's plan should deter no one, the city planners explained, since within a decade the city would begin to recoup its shortfall and ultimately achieve "a projected net return of $87.7 billion for investments made by 2050. " In the interim, Ottawa would simply balance its budget by increasing property taxes, land transfer taxes, parking rates, electricity prices and by imposing tolls and congestion charges on roads. This Energy Evolution plan was so obviously a winner that Ottawa City Council unanimously approved it.

At the Energy Board, the merits of the plan were likewise embraced. When Energy Probe, an intervenor, attempted to file material showing that a 100 percent reliance on renewables would disable public transit, lead to blackouts, soaring energy costs, poverty, bankruptcies, and fuel shortages in one of the coldest cities in one of the coldest countries on earth, other intervenors objected to allowing the material to be filed as evidence. As a result, the evidence the board weighed exuded confidence that Ottawa would easily reach Net Zero, in the process creating jobs, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. (Full disclosure: Patricia Adams is Energy Probe 's president and Lawrence Solomon is its executive director.)

To its credit, the Ontario Energy Board in its final report did not endorse the view that Ottawa 's Energy Evolution plan was feasible. It merely accepted the preponderance of evidence before it, that a replacement natural gas pipeline would be ill-advised. It offered no comment on the collapse of the Ottawa economy that could occur should Energy Evolution prove pie-in-the sky.

If Ottawa remains true to its Net Zero goal and pulls the plug on its fossil-fuelled life-support system, it would be the world 's first capital city to die a woke death.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/when-it-comes-to-energy-ottawa-is-committing-suicide_4556039.html

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Climate Change: a religion built on blind faith

David Archibald

Australia is my ‘burned-over’ country.

Not burnt out in the sense of droughts and bushfires; the term ‘burned-over district’ was used to describe parts of western New York State in the early 19th century where religious revivals would flare up, burn fiercely, and then die out.

Church attendance is continuing its long-term decline in Australia, but it seems that we are as religious as we ever have been with a high proportion of voters in some electorates choosing the religion of Climate Change. Climate Change as a result of carbon dioxide is a matter of faith; there is no consistent physical evidence for it and a lot of reputable scientists say that it has a minuscule effect at best.

As soon as the election was over, Climate Change (the religion) was ramping up its destruction of the Australian economy with looming power blackouts and skyrocketing energy prices. Beyond the fall in our standard of living, the threat from Climate Change is existential in that we are denying ourselves the fuel security we should have from converting our low-grade coal to diesel and petrol.

Sri Lanka is a warning to us. Their ruling politicians decided to take the country green and it has now ground to a halt. If you think Australia is better than that – that we could do something very foolish and escape the consequences, well no we aren’t. We won’t be spared, our luck will run out at some stage.

We are taunting the Gods of the Copybook Headings with our stupidity; for years we have been the only country delinquent with respect to our obligations to stockpile fuel under an international treaty. For the last 30 years Australian governments, Labor and Liberal, would rather spend money on anything but the few things that really matter, like fuel security. The things that you do first so that we can all sleep soundly at night.

Our current religious revival had its beginnings with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Suddenly socialism was discredited as a belief system and a new faith was needed in a hurry. Thus the Rio summit of 1992 was born. This little monster suckled on the public teat for funding when it should have been forgotten in its crib.

John Howard, as Prime Minister, was especially keen on the idea. Legend has it that he was a closet fanboy of nuclear power. Decades ago, a legislated carbon tax had the potential to raise the cost of coal-fired power generation – possibly far enough to make nuclear power competitive. But Howard’s successors, both Labor and Liberal, instead twisted the market towards unreliable energy with its ultimate waste mountain of turbine blades and clapped-out photovoltaic panels. We missed out on nuclear power and instead got the worst possible outcome.

Communism is said to have failed because it was never tried hard enough. Similarly, our new Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, says that our power system could be fixed by increasing the unreliable component. In interviews, he looks particularly animated and agitated, with his hands going in all directions. Despite whatever words come out of his mouth, how sunlight and rain are really the same, Bowen looks as though he knows he is selling a pile of nonsense. That is his problem, it need not be ours.

Where to from here? We should get that sorted as soon as possible. Labor has only a slim majority and doesn’t control the Senate. And with policies that are only going to make things worse, the situation is unstable. The first thing to do is have a Royal Commission into the science of Climate Change. The people who voted Teal will have to find something else to believe in such as microplastics in the ocean.

Secondly, we should figure out where we will end up and then work back from there to determine what is the most cost-effective path to that inevitable future. One day we will run out of oil and coal and everything else we can dig up and burn. There will be a day without fossil fuels no matter what anyone thinks of them now and we should prepare ourselves.

The future will be either nuclear or darkness with a medieval standard of living. Power from photovoltaics and wind power isn’t cheap enough to make more solar panels and wind turbines – no further correspondence need be entered into. The ones we have at the moment are only an artefact of cheap Chinese coal power.

The best possible nuclear technology, something like the integral fast reactor, hasn’t been commercialised yet. The current dominant nuclear reactor technology, light water reactors burning U235, is inherently wasteful and unstable. For the sake of the generations of Australians who will succeed us, we need to get the best possible nuclear technology sorted out and settled down as soon as possible. Until we do that, we are at risk.

Hydrogen will have a role in the nuclear utopia to come. Nuclear power will be used to run the electrolysis machines to produce hydrogen for converting biomass into diesel and petrol. In the interim, we should convert low-grade coal, not good enough for export, into diesel and petrol. We have hundreds of billions of tonnes of the stuff, enough to make hundreds of billions of barrels of fuel. And the price of oil has risen high enough to make doing so commercial today.

Botswana, the landlocked country north of South Africa, has announced that it will build a 12,000 barrel per day coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant for US$2.5 billion. We blew $300 billion in a couple of years on Covid to no good effect. That sum would pay for 88 such plants producing a total of one million barrels per day which also happens to be Australia’s rate of fuel consumption. And think of the jobs all over the country. And the effect on our balance of payments of not having to find $150 million each and every day for imported fuel. We can pay for it, it is economic now and we should do it.

An average Australian car doing 20,000 km per annum at 10 km per litre of fuel will consume 2,000 litres per annum. The capital intensity of the planned CTL in Botswana is $4.91 per annual litre of fuel product. So the ability to make 2,000 litres per annum will have a capital cost around $10,000. Most Australians would make that investment to ensure their mobility if they had the opportunity to do so.

Labor is capable of the necessary ideological flip-flop to get the country back on track. In the 1960s the Labor Party reversed its opposition to state aid for private schools to make themselves electable. In the 1980s Labor brought in economic reforms that the previous Liberal government had been too scared or too stupid to bring in when it should have.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/climate-change-a-religion-built-on-blind-faith/

How the ‘green’ EU starves the world

There’s a food crisis brewing, but you wouldn’t know it with the way the European bureaucracy is behaving.

Dutch farmers – who sit as the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world and largest meat exporter in Europe – have brought the Netherlands to a standstill, protesting against Climate Change regulations.

The newly elected government has set up a 55-60 per cent emissions goal by 2030, 70 per cent by 2035, and 80 per cent at 2040. To meet these arbitrary climate targets, they have created a self-inflicted disaster that will see the government drag its agricultural sector up the temple stairs, tear it to bits, and let whatever bloody stumps are left to tumble down the steps for the pleasure of the United Nations climate gods.

Farms which have been feeding the world for hundreds of years are going to be unceremoniously shut and their owners ruined because a couple of bureaucrats decided they didn’t like the nitrogen and ammonia emissions produced by growing food. Their assumption is based on the idea that every country has to present equal emissions to prove they are ‘saving the planet’. It only takes a few moments to realise that the underlying premise is false. A net food producer must have higher nitrogen and ammonia outputs than a nation that doesn’t grow anything. While the Netherlands makes more nitrogen, it’ll create significantly less of something else.

Nations are not equal, and neither are their emissions. The Netherlands and Australia are both criticised by the United Nations for ‘higher than average emissions per capita’ when the calculation (if you are going to do it) should be based on how many people are being fed. Attempting to homogenise environmental targets will achieve only one thing: global starvation.

Despite what politicians have been telling us for years, cutting emissions by 55-60 per cent means closing private farms and drastically cutting food supplies. In the Netherlands, the decision is tied to both the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (which Australia supports) and the EU’s Natura 2000 conservation plan which effectively targets and destroys private property rights for farms that live near freshly designated ‘protected’ areas – areas that never seem to be anywhere near the cities or towns inhabited by EU bureaucrats. Curiously, although they are desperately worried about native birds, the government is calling for a rapid expansion in bird-mincing wind turbines.

Also on the chopping board is one-third of all livestock, which the Dutch government has earmarked for slaughter. To compensate for the shortfall of protein, the government has ridiculously and unrealistically floated the thought bubble that the missing third of the meat market could be replaced with synthetic meat. And no, despite the government suggesting that farms that have been raising cattle could suddenly transition themselves into a chemical lab, this meat production will be gifted to the billion-dollar chemical companies who can’t wait to cash in on the dismantling of the fresh food market.

As written in Fairr:

‘The private sector in the Netherlands has been at the forefront of alternative proteins. The first-ever cultivated meat burger was created by Dutch Professor, Mark Post, in 2013. The country has since gone on to create several leading alternative protein companies, including cultivated meat company Mosa Meat (founded by Mark Post and in receipt of investments from Bell Food Group and Merck) and plant-based meat company Vivera (acquired by JBS in 2021 for €341 million).’

It will surprise no one to discover that JBS is a World Economic Forum partner with revenues of over $50 billion.

You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

What chance do inter-generational farmers stand against corporate giants? All they can do is burn hay bales in the street and empty supermarket shelves, making their point that without them – no one eats. Instead of complaining about the inconvenience, tens of thousands of citizens are standing with their neighbours in support. Unions have joined the protest, with freight truckers and dock workers helping to paralyse every corner of the Netherlands in a well-deserved wake-up call.

The press have attempted to demonise farmers for defying the EU’s virtuous green push – but the Dutch people aren’t listening, with support for farmers still over 75 per cent.

‘[This] will have an enormous impact on farmers. This sector will change, but unfortunately there’s no choice, we have to bring down nitrogen emissions,’ said Prime Minister Mark Rutte, forgetting that as Prime Minister he absolutely does have a choice.

Seeing the nation clogged with 40,000 farmers wielding tractors and heavy equipment, the Prime Minister added:

‘Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are a vital part of our democratic society, and I will always defend them. But … it is not acceptable to create dangerous situations, it is not acceptable to intimidate officials, we will never accept that.’

It’s the old Canadian line from last year. ‘We respect your right to protest – unless we don’t like what you’re protesting about…’

‘The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.’

There’s a name for the State deciding to pick and choose winners in the private market – Climate Fascism.

The European Union is playing the same game with Australia at a time when we no longer have a leader with enough intelligence or backbone to say ‘no’ to their outrageous list of demands.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU trade commissioner, is hopeful that Australia is going to finally submit to a trade deal – one that will involve exposing Australia to sanctions tied to Net Zero emissions targets.

In what world is ‘we’ll only trade with you if you let us meddle in your nation’ acceptable? Would Germany, France, or any other EU nation allow Australia to boss them around on energy? Or course not, and Australia should get up off its knees and tell them to take a hike.

Dombrovskis acts as if the EU is terrified of superior Australian produce entering the market, describing it as a ‘sensitive question’.

Who would have thought that with empty shelves and food shortages that EU representatives would be so reluctant to allow high-quality meat and produce into Europe from a nation that stood shoulder to shoulder with them in the mud during two world wars.

‘One needs to approach this question with a sense of realism,’ Dombrovskis added, without the slightest clue what ‘realism’ looks like from deep within his nest of EU regulation. His attempt to tie the submarine debacle into a food negotiation is equally childish. It’s the sort of trade negotiation where the EU seeks to fold Australia under absolute, totalitarian control like it treats its member states.

Instead of walking away and offering our produce to larger, more profitable, and less restrictive markets like a sensible country, Prime Minister Albanese – in his desperate bid to ‘fit in’ with European leaders – will bow right down low, fumble with their robes, and gladly offer up Australian sovereignty just so that he can say that he ‘made a trade deal with the EU’.

The press will never question him on whether it is a good idea.

Tying emissions targets to food production and the export market is exactly what commentators have been trying to warn Australians about for years. Telling a food producer that their produce won’t be accepted unless they dismantle their energy sector and enforce expensive green tape on farmers is anti-competitive behaviour. Plain and simple.

The EU doesn’t care about Australia’s emissions, they want to make sure our cheap and superior produce becomes too expensive for us to make – forcing us out of the European market forever. Then those same EU leaders can insist that they took measures to ‘protect the domestic market from foreign imports’ with their paws clean.

Is Albanese smart enough to see that he is being manipulated for a foreign market? Does he care? Signing a trade deal with the EU under these conditions doesn’t help Australia, it destroys agriculture for the entire Australian export market, making our product more expensive for all customers.

On top of an energy crisis, if Albanese submits to the EU’s trade demands, he’ll cause a food crisis too – one he’ll probably blame on ‘Climate Change’.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/how-the-green-eu-starves-the-world/

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Lawsuit Alleges White House Collusion With Green Activists to Silence Critics of Climate Agenda

Climate activists are working in coordination with the Biden White House and Democrat-dominated congressional committees to silence political opponents under the guise of “disinformation,” legal and energy policy analysts say.

Under President Joe Biden, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has kept a tight lid on how the administration advances its climate agenda, Chris Horner, an attorney representing a government transparency group, told The Daily Signal.

Horner said the White House science office refuses to respond forthrightly to related open records requests from his nonprofit group, Energy Policy Advocates. Such answers, he said, would enlighten Americans on the White House’s recruitment of outside activists and academics to discredit dissenters on climate change.

“It’s sort of like paying someone else to take your LSAT test,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow with the Washington-based nonprofit Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Signal.

Horner’s Energy Policy Advocates has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the White House science office after it declined to release records detailing some of the correspondence of two of its staffers.

The lawsuit, filed in May, cites a “virtual roundtable” on climate change that the science office hosted Feb. 25 for the stated purpose of confronting “climate delayism.” A White House press release describing the roundtable identifies 17 outside participants, including communication strategists, professors, and researchers associated with universities across the country.

“We have filed numerous open records suits pertaining to ‘climate,’ seeking records from local, state, or federal bodies known to be working with what we view as a climate industry, or otherwise pursuing the agenda,” Horner said in an email to The Daily Signal.

He said Energy Policy Advocates, which is based in Washington state, went to court after the White House science office “failed to move” on one request under the Freedom of Information Act, or to determine that it would comply with that request. The office also “attempted to deny another request on what appear to be specious grounds that the material was ‘deliberative’ in nature,” Horner said.

Horner is one of two lawyers representing Energy Policy Advocates in the litigation.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/05/lawsuit-alleges-white-house-collusion-with-green-activists-to-silence-critics-of-climate-agenda/

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Biden’s Solar Power Scam: How Phony Emergency Declaration Will Help China

When it comes to energy policy, President Joe Biden has become a master of doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. His policies on solar panel production and imports are prime examples.

Everyone agrees that we ought to be good stewards of the planet. That’s why it’s critical that we get energy and environmental policies right. Unfortunately, Biden hasn’t.

Instead, Biden is pushing for a rapid, government-mandated transition to a society powered by wind and solar energy that he promises will deliver zero greenhouse gas emissions. That is neither responsible nor reasonable.

Rather, it is a political fantasy agenda that will reduce access to reliable, affordable energy, damage our economy, harm the environment, and undermine our security program.

Striving to satisfy green activists, the White House recently proposed two new initiatives to jump-start solar power adoption.

The first involved a novel application of the Defense Production Act, a law that allows the president to require businesses to accept and prioritize contracts for materials deemed necessary for national defense or to respond to natural or man-made disasters.

Former President Donald Trump invoked the act to provide critical medical supplies and spur domestic manufacturing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, a real emergency. Now, Biden has invoked the act to force businesses to increase production of solar panel components to avoid “severely impair[ing] national defense capability.” Last we checked, American battle tanks, aircraft, and warships don’t run on solar panels.

Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies have sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing and caused the U.S. to lose its strategic advantage of being a dominant global energy exporter. Those are real national security issues that impair our defense capability. But forced solar panel production will do nothing to meaningfully address those problems. It will also have no noticeable effect on global temperatures, another false pretext for invoking emergency powers.

What we have, instead, is a phony emergency declaration designed to prop up solar energy use that U.S. consumers reject as inferior. That’s not just wasteful and inappropriate; that initiation is harmful to the paychecks and livelihoods of everyday Americans. Biden’s move will add yet more policy distortions to an energy market already twisted beyond recognition by government mandates, protectionism, and cronyism.

In using the Defense Production Act to bail out domestic solar manufacturers, the president clearly abused his limited special authority to pursue a political crusade. But it gets worse.

At the same time Biden invoked that act, he also ordered a two-year pause on new tariffs on solar panels that could be coming from China—ostensibly because U.S. companies won’t be able to keep up with the wholly artificial demand for panels created by his decree.

Tariffs were implemented 10 years ago to protect Americans from China’s malicious efforts to undercut the U.S. solar power industry by flooding the market with cheap products. The Commerce Department is currently investigating complaints that Chinese solar panel producers have evaded the tariffs by shipping effectively completed versions of their panels to third countries, where they are trivially assembled and shipped to America tariff-free—a ruse known as “transshipping.”

But with Biden’s tariff moratorium, even if violations of U.S. trade laws are proved, China won’t have to pay any of the unpaid tariffs.

While being able to shop for goods from companies around the globe can lead to increased consumer options, economic efficiency cannot be the only consideration. There’s no question, for example, that Chinese goods made with slave labor should have no avenue into American markets.

There is also a fairness issue. If the Chinese are dumping goods on the U.S. market in violation of law and wiping out swaths of U.S. industry in the process, they should be held to account, not given the equivalent of a presidential pardon.

Moreover, if solar panel supply is as big a national security risk as Biden says it is, the last country we should be seeking to partner with for our energy needs is our chief global rival and adversary, China.

The administration is trying to frame these initiatives as a way to address high energy prices and the rising risk of blackouts, but it will do nothing to alleviate those problems. Rather, it will unnecessarily restrict access to reliable energy sources, increase the costs of energy, strain the U.S. electrical grid, and potentially leave our nation more vulnerable to China.

Biden may think his moves make for good liberal politics, but the reality is, he is squeezing American families, fueling price increases, impoverishing the middle class, and, most ironically, risking our national security.

By refusing to change course on energy policy, he seems intent on burning the village to save it.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/29/bidens-solar-power-scam-how-phony-emergency-declaration-will-help-china

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Confirmed Again: The Green Agenda Is Taking Us Backward

All the cool kids say humanity has to abandon fossil fuels and rely on wind and solar for our electricity and battery-operated cars (which remind us of the toys we played with as kids) to get around. It’s the future, they say. So why does it seem more like the past?

Let’s begin with a fascinating “fer instance”:

“Classic Cars,” says a Motorious headline from late last month, “Are Greener Than Electric Vehicles.” The story below the headline refers to a study from British insurance company Footman James, which is “refreshing,” says the article’s author, “because it doesn’t talk emotional rage, sticking instead to the inconvenient facts.”

And what are those facts?

“A classic car notching up the national average of 1,200 miles emits 563kg of CO2 a year. By comparison, a new Volkswagen Golf has a carbon footprint of 6.8 tonnes of CO2 the day it leaves the factory, a figure it would take our average classic 12 years to match.”

“For an electric vehicle, the footprint is even greater. A battery-powered Polestar 2 creates 26 tonnes of CO2 during its production, emissions that would take a typical classic more than 46 years to achieve. By which time, the EV’s cutting-edge lithium-ion battery would have long since lost its ability to hold a charge and been consigned to the nearest recycling facility.”

“Footman James rightly points out that within that 46-year period, the Polestar 2’s battery will need to be replaced, maybe even swapped for a new one twice or more,” writes Steven Symes for Motorious. “And what happens to the battery? Can it really be recycled? The answer for now is no. Meanwhile, the classic car keeps running without contributing significantly to a landfill. But you should feel bad for driving such an awful pollution machine, or so we’re told.”

The narrative says EVs are greener but that’s because the true-believers “just look at tailpipe emissions, behaving as if that’s everything in the equation. They don’t consider pollution generated by the manufacturing process,” says Symes.

That’s not something Symes has made up. It’s the reality. EVs are dirty … and racist.

So what else have the Green Shirts given us?

Blackouts. “Rush toward green energy has left U.S. ‘incredibly’ vulnerable to summer blackouts, expert warns,” says a Fox News headline from Monday. “I think the entire country is incredibly vulnerable, because the entire country is facing a huge energy shortage and I don’t think there is any place that is truly safe,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director at Power the Future, told the network.

Power rationing. Things are so bleak in Great Britain due to high energy costs (always a hallmark of renewables) and the war in Ukraine, that the government might have no choice but to ration electricity “in a manner similar to Edward Heath’s three-day week in the 1970s,” reports the Daily Mail. The scenario could have been avoided, says Watts Up With That, “if Britain maintained coal capacity and developed shale gas reserves.”

Famine. A presidential ban on chemical fertilizers last year wrecked Sri Lanka’s harvest. Even though the ban was lifted “after widespread protests,” says Reuters, “only a trickle of chemical fertilizers made it to farms, which will likely lead to an annual drop of at least 30% in paddy yields nationwide.” Other media reports indicate that a “spiraling food crisis looms,” in the country. Similar environmental nincompoopery is threatening food production in the agriculturally rich Netherlands, where the government has proposed cutting nitrogen oxide and ammonia emissions by half by 2030.

While the political-activist-media industrial complex continually promises a grand future of green energy powering a clean planet, our world is becoming more primitive. This is a rotten tradeoff, but it’s how things are and will be until more of us realize the “cool kids” aren’t so cool after all.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/05/confirmed-again-the-green-agenda-is-taking-us-backward/

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

European Commission Backs Norway's Offshore Oil and Gas Industry

In a remarkable shift in tone, the European Commission is expressing strong support for offshore oil and gas E&P off Norway, reflecting the rapid change in EU energy policy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The EU is a major consumer of oil and gas, but it is not [known for encouraging more production as a matter of public policy. Historically, the European Commission has emphasized the bloc's intent to reach net-zero emissions in the long term rather than its plans to secure a supply of natural gas in the short term. Denmark, the EU member state with the largest offshore oil and gas sector, has even pledged to phase out E&P altogether by 2050.

But Europe's rapid disconnection from Russian energy is prompting a reorientation of priorities, particularly for pipeline natural gas, which is logistically difficult to replace. This is an urgent question ahead of the 2023-24 winter heating season: Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom has partially or fully cut gas supplies to customers in 12 EU countries, including a sharp 60 percent reduction in flow on the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany. The constriction of supply is driving up prices, and the benchmark Dutch TTF natural gas futures contract is up 300 percent year-on-year.

In this context, politically reliable Norwegian natural gas is most welcome in the EU. Norway has been producing gas at a high volume since the start of the year, and could supply about 100 TWh of extra gas (about six percent of annual EU imports from Russia) over the span of 2022.

The European Commission and the Norwegian government have announced plans to strengthen energy ties and promote offshore development for the long term. "The EU supports Norway's continued exploration and investments to bring oil and gas to the European market," said the EC and Norway in a joint statement. "Norway has significant remaining oil and gas resources and can, through continued exploration, new discoveries and field developments, continue to be a large supplier to Europe also in the longer term beyond 2030."

The statement noted that Norway's offshore sector has very low emissions from production activity, less than half of the global average. This makes Norwegian oil and gas more compatible with Europe's climate objectives than comparable supplies from elsewhere - notably the supplies from Russia, the world's leading emitter of methane.

The parties "agreed to step up cooperation in order to ensure additional short-term and long-term gas supplies from Norway," and to work together on renewables in the long term.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/european-commission-backs-norway-s-offshore-oil-and-gas-industry

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Biden 's green strategy is in complete collapse, at home and globally

The G-7 meeting in Germany has made at least one key point absolutely clear: President Biden 's so-called energy transition to renewable fuels is a complete failure. Not just in the U.S.: Globally. An utter failure.

In Europe, countries are talking renewables, but they are also reopening coal plants. That 's because they can 't get enough Russian oil and gas supplies or what they can get is too expensive, or both.

Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands ' all are reopening coal plants. Their so-called green strategies? Shoved aside.

They made a transition alright: Back to the worst carbon polluters. The president of Nigeria, which is a big oil and gas producer, is berating the Europeans for thinking renewables will pave the way to industrial prosperity.

European Brent oil is running around $115; West Texas crude is about the same. Gasoline just under $5 is causing widespread political backlash and threatens economic recession. Mr. Biden 's green strategy is in complete collapse.

Most regrettably, the guy with a smile on his face is Vladimir Putin. The sanctions strategy has backfired on the U.S. and NATO. Mr. Putin 's making money hand over fist.

His ruble currency is at a pre-war high; it 's the pound and the euro that have been sinking out of sight. Mr. Putin has found new customers: China and India.

India 's Russian imports have moved to a million barrels a day in June from 30,000 barrels a day in February. When the Indian finance minister was asked why he 's doing this, and whether he 's undermining the western defense of Ukraine, he responded simply: "Everyone else is buying Russian oil, why shouldn't we? "

Hate to say it, but he 's right. I hate to say this, but Mr. Putin has outsmarted the West.

If Mr. Biden had been willing to face reality and pull back on his war against fossil fuels by waving all his regulations and restrictions and sanctions on fracking, pipelining, refining, and so forth ' if he had shown some flexibility in the face of skyrocketing energy prices and a political revolt at home ' then it 's quite possible that energy supplies would be much greater today for all components and distillates. Prices also would be lower, or at the very least futures prices would be significantly lower.

All of which would 've added relief to the West 's energy crisis. Lower prices would 've hurt Vladimir Putin 's war machine financing. But Mr. Biden was stubborn, self-centered, and politically narcissistic. He has utterly failed to help the NATO coalition or to help ordinary working people.

All of this could have been mitigated, if not avoided, but for his stubbornness. Clinging to this idea of a 100 percent transition to renewables was craziness.

Now comes the craziest part of all. After gimmicks like a gas tax holiday, running down our strategic petroleum reserves (which are there for national security, not political price-fixing), and even debit card subsidies for gasoline, here 's the latest: Price controls. Yup, price controls. I 'm surprised it took the socialists so long to get there.

Secretary Yellen is leading the way. The distinguished former Fed chairwoman who is married to a Nobel Prize winner is touting price controls on Russian oil. Really?

Wait: It gets better.

President Macron wants to go really big. He wants price controls on all oil producers. Russia, the Saudis, OPEC, probably Venezuela, maybe Iran. Who knows? Probably, his world oil price controls would mean ' you guessed it ' price controls on American oil, too. Right?

That's only fair. Global oil price controls. Not on solar or wind, but on fossil fuels.

As I shut my eyes and lean back, I see Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter. "Whip inflation now " ' on a grand scale. It 's a global race to socialism. Never mind the obvious shortages, energy wars, or just plain stupidity of repeating an age old socialist mistake.

Then again, when you look around that G-7 table ' Messrs. Biden, Trudeau, Scholz, Macron, Draghi, and Johnson ' I don 't see much of a commitment to free-market capitalism. I don 't see any Reagans. I don 't see any Thatchers. I don't see Milton Friedman. I don 't see Adam Smith. I don't see the signers of the American Declaration of Independence.

Oh, wait a minute, that 's tomorrow's special. This is just a tease. Tomorrow 's theme is, "Restoring Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. "

Works for me. Because Americans don 't see much life, liberty, or happiness right now. But I know a way out. And, yes, the cavalry 's coming. Woke, big-government socialism is dead.

https://www.nysun.com/article/bidens-green-strategy-is-in-complete-collapse-at-home-and-globally?mc_cid=4446470fed&mc_eid=ed1b46a184

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Beware existential angst of the climate alarmists

The term existential was popularised in the 20th century by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed that because there was no god, existence was absurd, life had no meaning and the individual therefore faced an existential crisis. In psychology, existential crises are inner conflicts characterised by the impression that life lacks meaning.

But in the climate wars a word that once had settled harmlessly in the realm of philosophy has become weaponised, wheeled out by climate catastrophists to herald imminent doom. Presumably it is a humanist alternative to a moral issue. In Australia the term increasingly is used "in terrorem ", as the lawyers say, to frighten the pants off the naive and the innocent. But what do the scaremongers mean by existential?

Are we talking now (clearly not), soon (whatever that means) or maybe someday, one day (when most of us will be long gone)? Does it mean the end of days, with the whole world wiped out, On the Beach style, or only in some more vulnerable areas?

The favourite scary example is rising tides among Pacific Islands, most of whose leaders seem to prefer immediate handouts for general budgetary purposes rather than practical assistance in mitigation. We are meant to assume the oceans will rise quickly and no one will respond "“ the old extrapolation trick.

Holland was once a major colonial power and The Netherlands is still a prosperous country. In the 14th century, the combined effects of soil subsidence and rising sea levels meant that without intervention it would soon be under water so it built a system of dykes that has survived to this day.

Technology is infinitely more sophisticated these days, so instead of wallowing in existential despair we should look for similar ways to solve the problem.

The alarmists, happy to label as climate deniers anyone who questions their theology, never explain the source of their dire apprehensions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative body on the subject, nowhere mentions an apocalyptic scenario. Real experts do not blame climate change for increases in frequency or intensity of extreme weather events.

More than 20 years ago Prince Charles and Al Gore told us it was five minutes to midnight "“ that sounds like existential to me. Yet we are all still here. Tim Flannery finds plenty of time to publish books on the subject but never has time to argue the case publicly. He and his ilk can never find time to explain that whatever Australia does will make no difference to what they claim to be a global issue. Some alarmists can 't even use words to argue their case.

Blockade Australia seems to think criminal activity such as closing the Sydney Harbour Tunnel is persuasive. They want Australia to lead the way, to its economic detriment "“ the ultimate example of a self-inflicted wound from virtue signalling. Rhetorical overkill has proved remarkably successful in public debate. It is often said that in diplomacy words are bullets "“ the same could be said of politics, where extreme language can be influential. Words have power "“ they shape our beliefs, drive our behaviour and provoke emotional responses from others.

Most people don 't have time to research issues, let alone complex and confusing ones such as climate change. They therefore become vulnerable to doomsday proclamations. Ordinary citizens knew what was meant by global warming but when it seemed the planet had stopped warming for a period the topic became climate change, about which everyone could be concerned.

In September 2019 a survey of 30,000 people around the world found 48 per cent believed climate change would make humanity extinct. It seems people have an inherent need to worry about the future without necessarily relying on any serious factual information.

American Michael Shellenberger is a self-described environmental activist for 30 years and a compelling author. But he is fed up with "the exaggeration, alarmism and extremism which are the enemy of a positive, humanistic and rational environmentalism ".

He rebuts attempts in Australia to blame climate change for bushfires, which he largely attributes to human activities. In his view, "Climate alarmism, animus among environmental journalists and smoke that was unusually visible to densely populated areas appear to be the reasons for exaggerated media coverage ". He is concerned that the people who are the most apocalyptic about environmental problems tend to oppose the best and most obvious solution of dissolving them.

Remember that in 2009 the Greens opposed Kevin Rudd 's attempt to legislate a price on carbon, presumably because they wanted to continue to "enjoy the problem " and milk it for all it was worth. To date the Greens and teals have shown no concern for rising fuel and energy prices for consumers. If they are to become serious players they could start by urging Daniel Andrews to allow fracking, but this is unlikely because they need an energy crisis to rail against and remain relevant. They will much prefer to rely on inflammatory language so we should all be on our guard.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/beware-existential-angst-of-the-climate-alarmists/news-story/3fc08692493e1962af4e294dfac65f46

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EVs may soon threaten the security of the power grid

If Australians start buying electric vehicles in big numbers, the power grid will come under enormous stress, with EVs potentially increasing demand by between 30 and 100 per cent, according to recent trials conducted by Origin Energy.

If thousands of EVs are being plugged in during peak evening periods, the effects could be disastrous, unless Australian households start using smart-charging devices, the research found.

The trials, conducted by Origin Energy and independent Federal Government Agency the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), studied the charging patterns of 150 EV drivers with smart chargers installed in their homes to better understand how behaviours may impact the grid.

Smart chargers, which currently cost between $2,000 and $3,000, allow EV owners to automatically charge their vehicles when electricity prices are lower, or when solar power is being generated, reducing household costs and taking pressure off the grid during peak periods.

Chau Le, general manager of e-mobility at Origin, believes smart chargers will be an essential tool in reducing the risk of blackouts once EVs enter a phase of mass adoption.

“At the moment, our electricity grid is not coping at all. If we were to add another 30 per cent of peak load to the grid during those periods of high prices and constraints on the network, this would require significant investment to increase capacity,” Ms Le said.

The research found that 30 per cent of EV charging was done in the peak period between 3pm and 9pm.

In one trial, participants were given a 10-cent-per-kilowatt-hour credit on their electricity bill for charging off-peak, which reduced charging during the peak times by 10 per cent.

A second trial was run where charging was limited to mostly off-peak periods, which saw evening peak usage for charging those EVs reduced to just six per cent.

A third trial is now underway. It will see Origin work with several power distributors to investigate whether or not upgrades to the grid are required based on the findings of the first two trials.

Darren Miller, chief executive of ARENA, says the agency funded $840,000 of the $2.9 million trial, due to concerns about what may happen to Australia’s power grid once EVs become the dominant mode of transport.

“If we all end up having EVs and charging them at exactly the same time, say 6pm to 9pm on weeknights, then no doubt the distribution system won‘t be able to cope with that,” said Mr Miller.

“Extra investment will have to be made, and that will cost all of us on our electricity bill, too, ultimately.

“We can make sure we don‘t have to invest an extraordinary amount in the distribution system, the poles and wires outside our homes and businesses, to accommodate that extra load.”

While current EV sales are hovering around 2 per cent of the Australian car market overall, the Labor Government has previously stated that its climate and energy policy aims to have nine out of 10 new cars sales being EVs by 2030.

Recent research from the Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (RACE 2030) claims that even if that number reaches eight in 10 by 2030, it will still double the current demand on the grid.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has also weighed into the debate via a new report that states that “all actionable projects should progress as urgently as possible”, including $12 billion of investment in new transmission lines, if the grid is to remain secure over the next decade and reach net zero emissions by 2050.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/motoring/evs-may-soon-threaten-the-security-of-the-power-grid/news-story/f7e7539ed00f1cb70cb17420e59defb8

Monday, July 04, 2022

End of the German Idyll

Germany looked normal over the weekend as a genial Chancellor Olaf Scholz welcomed the Group of Seven leaders and their guests to the luxurious Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps. But those appearances are deceiving. Germany is facing its gravest challenges since the foundation of the Federal Republic following World War II.

This is very sudden. As recently as 2020, almost the entire world agreed with the smug German self-assessment that Germany had the world 's most successful economic model, was embarking on the most ambitious'and largely successful'climate initiative in the world, and had perfected a values-based foreign policy that ensured German security and international popularity at extremely low cost.

None of this was true. The German economic model was based on unrealistic assumptions about world politics and is unlikely to survive the current turmoil. German energy policy is a chaotic mess, a shining example to the rest of the world of what not to do. Germany 's reputation for a values-based foreign policy has been severely dented by Berlin 's waffling over aid to Ukraine. And German security experts are coming to terms with a deeply unwelcome truth: Confronted with an aggressive Russia, Germany, like Europe generally, is utterly reliant on the U.S. for its security. At a time when American foreign policy increasingly prioritizes Asia and isolationist sentiment among both Republicans and Democrats appears to be rising, if Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025, German security will depend on his goodwill.

Mr. Scholz and his coalition government have responded to Vladimir Putin 's invasion of Russia with a series of, by German standards, revolutionary changes. Germany is beginning to rearm. It is, with some false starts, sending weapons to Ukraine. It has taken the first steps toward energy independence from Russia, even at the cost of its ambitious climate agenda. Coal plants will lumber back to life, new gas-processing plants will be built, and Germany is asking Europe to delay decarbonization mandates that no longer seem realistic.

But the real work remains to be done. Modern Germany was above all an economic project. The collapse of the Third Reich left Germany morally devastated, physically wrecked and economically bankrupt. From the moment of its foundation in 1949, the country 's central goal was economic growth. That growth could repair the destruction of the war, promote Germany 's peaceful integration into Western Europe, blunt the appeal of communism, and build a national identity independent of the malignant fantasies of the Hitler era and the bombast of Wilhelm II. The hard work of the German people, the pragmatic policies of the political class, the skills and determination of German management, and the favorable international climate resulting from the development of the American-led world order took Germany to economic heights.

In recent years, the German economic miracle depended on a combination of industrial prowess, cheap energy from Russia, and access to global markets, particularly in China. Today every one of those pillars is under threat. German mastery of automobile technology through a century of engineering is challenged by the shift to electric vehicles. The chemicals industry, in which German technology has led the world since the 19th century, is coming under environmental challenges as global competition intensifies.

Those challenges are exacerbated by the loss of cheap and secure Russian natural gas. Green energy, despite massive German investment, will be unable to supply German industry with reliable and cheap power for a long time. In the meantime, the alternatives to Russian pipeline gas are expensive and controversial. Nuclear power gives Greens the willies; coal is unbearable; liquefied natural gas requires long-term commitments and massive capital expenditures.

Beyond that, Germany 's economic relationship with China is changing for the worse. China was long the ideal customer for German products. Its newly affluent middle class fell in love with German luxury cars. Its rapidly growing manufacturing sector voraciously consumed German machine tools and other capital goods. But China 's growth is decelerating. Its maturing industrial economy seeks to compete with high-end German producers, often based on tools reverse-engineered from German imports.

Those in the Biden administration who dream that Germany will wholeheartedly join a new global American crusade for values should keep their enthusiasm in check. Mr. Scholz may agree in the abstract with President Biden about the importance of liberal values and the danger of climate change, but his calculations must reflect the economic facts of German life. This naturally leads to thoughts about how to patch things up with Russia and China.

Mr. Biden 's job is not to sing hymns about Western values with Mr. Scholz; it is to make Berlin understand that U.S. security guarantees come at a price. Given the realities of American politics, Germany cannot count on continued American support unless it does more to back the U.S. at a time of grave and growing danger world-wide.

https://www.hudson.org/research/17921-end-of-the-german-idyll

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Now The Wheels Won't Stay On: Electric Car Dangerously Fails, Results in Massive Recall

Toyota has recalled its newest electric vehicles because the wheels can literally fall off in what one commentator says is a symptom of what’s wrong with the electric vehicle market.

The company announced that 2,700 of its new electric bZ4X SUVs are a danger to their drivers, with only 260 to date having been delivered in the United States.

“After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” Toyota said in a June 23 statement on its website.

“If a wheel detaches from the vehicle while driving, it could result in a loss of vehicle control, increasing the risk of a crash,” the company said.

“The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation. No one should drive these vehicles until the remedy is performed,” Toyota said.

Owners of the vehicle, whose price starts at $43,215, might not be getting it back any time soon. “No remedy is available at this time,” Toyota said in its release.

“Until the remedy is available, any authorized Toyota dealer will pick up the vehicle and provide a loaner vehicle FREE OF CHARGE to the owner,” it said.

In a Wednesday column for Bloomberg, Anjani Trivedi, who covers industrial companies in Asia, wrote, “If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase their scrutiny.”

Trivedi noted that Subaru, which developed its Solterra electric vehicle jointly with Toyota, has also pulled that vehicle, which has not yet made it to the American market.

She said she expected that “as more are made, more problems are bound to crop up. In the past two years alone, there have been thousands of recalls, costing billions of dollars.”

Fires in electric vehicles have plagued Tesla and General Motors, which recalled all 142,000 of its electric Bolt vehicles because of that hazard.

Trivedi said EV buyers should be alarmed at what is taking place. “The issue is, these aren’t just any recalls: These are serious and, most worryingly, basic problems — an engine combusting, a tire rolling off. Manufacturers say they are remedying the issue, but then what?” she wrote.

“Even though there aren’t many of these vehicles being produced right now, and there have, so far, been limited injuries, the fact that these cars could actually be on the road — and trusted because they are made by a large, well-established company — should raise alarm,” Trivedi said.

The bZ4X debuted in Japan last month, according to CNBC.

Last December, the company’s president, Akio Toyoda, said Toyota planned “to roll out 30 BEV models by 2030.”

“Toyota has been under pressure to up its game in EVs, so will be very disappointed that a recall has been necessary on its first mass-market electric cars,” David Leggett, automotive editor at GlobalData, told CNBC.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/now-wheels-wont-stay-toyotas-newest-electric-car-dangerously-fails-results-massive-recall

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Biden Apparently Thinks $5 Gas Isn't Painful Enough - His EPA Is Attacking America's Largest Oilfield

In case you were wondering whether the Biden administration could do anything more to cripple the U.S. fossil fuel industry, the answer is yes.

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering an “ozone violation designation” for portions of the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, according to Bloomberg News. The Permian Basin is located in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

In a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that this action “could lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump by reducing production, increase the cost of that production, or do both.”

The Permian Basin, he informed the president, accounts for 25 percent of our nation’s gas supply — 95 million gallons per day — and 40 percent of all oil produced domestically.

Abbott emphasized that this decision was entirely discretionary and that Biden had the power to stop it.

“If you do not, this action alone might serve as a catalyst for economic harm leading to an even deeper reliance on imported foreign energy and a faster economic decline into the pending recession by forcing even more pain for American consumers to pay at the pump,” the Republican governor wrote.

He concluded by saying, “Because time is of the essence in these EPA proceedings, I must hear back from you by July 29, 2022. If the EPA’s proposed redesignation is not suspended by that date, Texas will take the action needed to protect the production of oil — and the gasoline that comes from it.”

A fact sheet on this proposal prepared by the U.S. General Services Administration says: “In 2017, EPA designated certain counties in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas located in the area known as the Permian Basin attainment/unclassifiable for the 2015 ozone NAAQS.

“EPA is now considering a discretionary redesignation for (portions of) these counties in New Mexico and Texas for the 2015 ozone NAAQS under Clean Air Act section 107(d)(3) based on current monitoring data and other air quality factors. If the area is redesignated to nonattainment, the state(s) will be required to submit a State Implementation Plan to bring the area into attainment with the 2015 ozone NAAQS.”

This action was instigated by the conservation group WildEarth Guardians, according to Bloomberg. It said monitors had found that “average ground-level ozone levels” had exceeded “the 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion several years running.”

The group petitioned the EPA in March 2021 and later threatened legal action if nothing was done.

Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth’s climate and energy program director, told Bloomberg this designation “basically says you’ve got to clean up this mess or the consequences are going to get even more severe as far as restricting your ability to permit more pollution and more development.”

If parts of this region are found to be in violation of the ozone limits, state regulators would have three years to bring those areas back into compliance.

Bloomberg spoke to Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, about the effects an EPA attack on the Permian Basin might have on future energy development.

“Creating uncertainty on permitting and inserting unnecessary regulatory barriers will only negatively impact the production necessary to meet the needs of consumers,” he said.

Why would this administration even consider moving forward now with a plan that would further discourage oil companies from starting new projects? A rhetorical question.

At a time when some Americans are forced to choose between putting food on their table or filling their gas tank, this idea should have been dismissed out of hand.

While Biden claims to care about the rising cost of gas, his administration’s actions say otherwise.

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/biden-apparently-thinks-5-gas-isnt-painful-enough-epa-attacking-americas-largest-oilfield

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Time’s up: The Australian Labor Party in Queensland can no longer have it both ways on coal

The Queensland Government is trapped between contempt for coalmining and the massive royalties it brings, writes Peter Gleeson.

One of the great ironies of the Queensland Labor Government is its disdain and contempt for the coal industry, the one fiscal sector that is propping up the Budget.

Because cabinet and caucus is dominated by the dopey Left faction, they are wedded to phasing out coalmining.

Unfortunately for Queensland, they haven’t quite worked out how they will fill the fiscal gap in unemployment and coal royalties, but hey, they’re not worried about the $100 billion debt, so who cares about jobs and revenue?

This financial year, coal royalties will account for about $8 billion, up $1.4 billion off the back of a new tax imposed by Treasurer Cameron Dick.

This is the same bloke who said 26 times before the last election there’d be no new taxes.

That’s a lot of hospitals and schools. The new coal royalties tax is the highest in the world, and it represents a danger to regional communities as coal companies cut their cloth.

It is also a risk to foreign investors, many of whom now see Queensland as a risky place to do business, as governments change the goalposts without warning.

Coal companies now pay 7 per cent of revenue for prices up to $100 per tonne and 15 per cent for prices above $150 per tonne.

Three new progressive royalty tiers will now come into effect on top of the existing royalty. The new tiers are 20 per cent for prices above $175 per tonne, 30 per cent for prices above $225 per tonne and 40 per cent for prices above $300 per tonne.

Coal companies argue that this large hike in royalties will negatively affect investment appetite for future mining projects in Queensland.

Executive chairman of the Bowen Coking Coal company, known as Ballymore Resources, Nick Jorss said: “We are extremely disappointed in the way this massive royalty hike has been implemented without any consultation upon an industry that already pays billions of dollars annually in taxes and royalties to fund schools, hospitals and services for all Queenslanders.

“Bowen is a local Queensland business built from scratch, not an international mining house.

“We are creating over 500 Central Queensland jobs as we open three metallurgical coal mines this year to supply the global steel industry.

“This proposed tax grab would permanently bake in Queensland as the regime with the highest royalties in the world, ostensibly to solve a near term Government funding issue.

“This raises substantial risks to further investment in Queensland mining and regional Queensland jobs.’’

This massive tax sting is par for the course for a Government addicted to royalties but keen to shut down the industry.

Let’s not forget the black-throated finch would have stopped the Adani coalmine in 2019 had Bill Shortenwon the federal election.

Now the State Government is using another weapon to derail a project that will create hundreds of jobs on the Darling Downs. It’s called silence.

Despite saying it will abide by the court process, there is little sign that the Government intends to approve the third stage of the New Acland mine.

Last week we saw the granting of the environmental approval for the third stage of the project, yet another court hurdle overcome.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has always maintained that once the court and environmental regulations are satisfied the mine would proceed.

Ms Palaszczuk must now honour her word and grant the necessary approvals, including the mining lease and the associated water licence, so hundreds of workers who were stood down in December can get back to work.

They have simply run out of excuses. The jobs and livelihoods of hundreds of workers are at stake.

The mine’s closure six months ago due to the State Government’s years of inaction was a devastating blow for the workers, their families and the communities of the Darling Downs.

Ms Palaszczuk and he Mines Minister Scott Stewart have blamed their inaction on the court process. But the time is now up.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peter-gleeson/opinion-qld-labor-needs-to-approve-new-acland-mine-expansion/news-story/9a3570f511c9544cd2b788760f0b9026

Sunday, July 03, 2022

Back to black: Czech Republic to extend coal mining amid high demand

The Czech Republic has decided to reverse plans to halt mining in a key black coal region to help the country safeguard its power supply amid high demand and the energy crunch prompted by the Russia's war in Ukraine.

Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura said Thursday that the state-owned OKD company will extend its mining activities in north-eastern Czech Republic until at least the end of next year, with an analysis to be made on a possible further extension until 2025.

The original plans called for mining to be halted there this year, but “demand for black coal is enormous,” Stanjura said.

Some other European Union countries are turning back to coal as a replacement for reduced deliveries of Russian natural gas, threatening climate goals in Europe. Russia has trimmed gas flows to EU countries like Germany, Italy and Austria on top of its gas cutoffs to France, Poland, Bulgaria and others.

OKD’s chief executive, Roman Sikora, said the Czech company was planning to mine 1.3 million metric tons of black coal in 2023.

It will be mostly used for generating power and household heating. Coal-fired power plants generate almost 50% of total Czech electricity output.

The decision came after the European Union agreed to ban Russian coal starting in August over the war in Ukraine and as it works to reduce the bloc's energy ties to Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/czech-republic-to-extend-coal-mining-amid-high-demand/2022/06/30/260348fe-f867-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html?mc_cid=5e53626c53&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Europe's manufacturing sector is crumbling under the weight of high energy prices

The European manufacturing sector is crumbling under the weight of sustained high electricity and natural gas prices. With little prospect of relief, another wave of curtailments and closures looms.

And that’s before any rationing of natural gas, potentially later this year, in Germany in the event Russia reduces supply even further. In that scenario, many companies will have no choice but to shut down.

Gas rationing may still be a distant prospect, but the crisis is already here. The price impact on industrial activity is arriving well before the gas supply is interrupted. Governments need to decide right now which companies will get financial support, and which ones won’t.

European leaders should sit down at an emergency summit devoted to the energy crisis. Next month will not be too early. Europe needs a continent-wide campaign to save energy and reduce demand. Start now; don’t wait for winter.

We’re reaching the point of ‘no idea is too crazy’: keeping nuclear power plants running, wholesale energy price caps, suspension of markets, removal of CO2 costs and limits, burning more coal, re-starting domestic gas production even if that triggers local earthquakes in the Netherlands. Everything has to be backed up with multi-billion-euro loans from governments to key sectors.

The problem isn’t just the current eye-watering prices for power and gas. The forward contracts for 2023, 2024 and even 2025, which are used to lock in energy costs, are getting more expensive by the day. “This may be a sustained price rise, rather than something that disappears quickly,” Jonathan Brearley, the head of the UK energy regulator Ofgem, said earlier this month.

The months-long crisis that many industrialists penciled into their plans has morphed into a years-long problem. The prospect of bleeding cash for a few months, perhaps half a year, or even a year, was one thing; losing money indefinitely is another thing entirely.

For example, an aluminum smelter would lose about $200 million annually at current forward prices for electricity and carbon dioxide for the next year. And that’s despite elevated prices for the metal in the markets. Aluminum may be an extreme example, but it’s evidence of the pressures faced by industrialists.

In private, European executives say they’ll use the forthcoming quarterly reporting season in mid-July to announce more plant closures. The affected industries will be those with the most intensive energy use: fertilizer, base metals and steel, chemical, ceramic, glass and paper. But increasingly food production will be, too. Heated greenhouses and chicken farms face astronomical energy bills.

A few companies have already announced their intentions. Earlier this month, CF Industries Holdings Inc., the US fertilizer producer, said it will close one of its UK plants permanently as it struggles with high energy costs. Others are on the chopping block. The future of Slovalco, an aluminum smelter in Slovakia in which Norsk Hydro ASA has a majority stake, looks very grim, with the plant likely shutting down in 2023.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-27/factory-closures-from-aluminum-to-chicken-farming-are-going-to-become-common

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British Fracking ban could be axed in days in potential boost to gas supplies, source says

The ban on fracking could be lifted within days if a scientific review finds the risk of earth tremors can be minimised.

The British Geological Survey is due to report to ministers on whether new techniques could limit the potential effects of fracking for natural gas.

The ban was imposed in 2019 over concerns about earth tremors and the impact on the Government's net zero emissions target.

A Government source said safety concerns remained paramount, but added: 'The war in Ukraine has shifted the dial on this.

'Russia's actions have made security of supply a bigger issue. And... gas produced here will have a lower carbon footprint than gas we are importing.'

Britain has vast reserves of shale gas underground. Some experts say 10 per cent of the resources would make the UK self-sufficient in energy for 50 years.

The new report has been completed but is now being peer-reviewed in the United States, where fracking is a major industry, before being handed to ministers.

More than 30 Tory MPs signed a letter this year calling on the Government to lift the 'un-Conservative' ban on fracking.

Tory MP Lee Anderson said ministers could reduce opposition by offering steep discounts on people's bills.

Mr Anderson, a former coal miner, said: 'I'm very pro-fracking - we should be making the most of our natural resources if it can be done safely.

'If the United States hadn't gone for fracking a few years ago then the whole world would be in trouble now. We could be enjoying the same low prices as them.

'Of course it has to be safe but we also have to be offering massive financial incentives to local communities - I think if you did that you would see a lot of opposition melt away.'

Fracking is widely exploited in the US where it has helped revolutionise the oil and gas industry. Critics argue that the UK's denser population, coupled with different geology, make it impractical.

They appeared to have won the argument in 2019 when the government imposed a moratorium on further exploration.

The former fracking tsar Natascha Engel quit her post that year, saying 'ridiculous' government rules amounted to a 'de facto ban' on an industry that was on the cusp of an 'energy revolution the like of which we have not seen since the discovery of North Sea oil and gas'.

The industry looked set to be wound up in the UK earlier this year, with fracking firm Cuadrilla ordered to fill in its last two remaining wells in Lancashire.

But the firm was given a last minute reprieve in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The moratorium followed an earth tremor at Cuadrilla's site near Blackpool in August 2019, which measured 2.9 on the Richter Scale - far above the 0.5 limit set by ministers.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971535/Fracking-ban-axed-days-potential-boost-gas-supplies-source-says.html?mc_cid=5e53626c53&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Replacing coal: A very tongue in cheek Australian report below

The feasibility is absent and the cost would be astronomical

Coal generators are likely to shut sooner and Queensland will need big-scale pumped hydro equivalent to 30 times what is available at Wivenhoe power station before they do, the energy regulator is warning.

It is revealed in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 30-year road map to be released today, which predicted the last coal generators could shut as early as 2040.

Currently the last coal-fired power station, Queensland’s Millmeran, is scheduled to wind up in 2051.

Just one Queensland coal-fired power station is currently scheduled to close before 2030 – Callide B in 2028 – while Gladstone and Tarong are forecast to shut down in 2035-36 and Stanwell, Kogan Creek and Yabulu are not due to close until the 2040s.

Under the most likely scenario to reach net zero by 2050 modelled by AEMO “all coal capacity could close as early as 2040”.

“If closures can be co-ordinated with adequate notice, then technical and market challenges may be managed. If they are not, the risk of price and reliability impacts on consumers quickly rises,” the road map warned.

“Deep storage”, like pumped-hydro projects the size of Snowy 2.0, will be needed to keep the lights on reliably once the state’s coal generators are shut down.

“It may be prudent for early investment in deep storage across the (national energy market), to enable improved resilience to earlier coal closures or project commissioning delays,” the AEMO report stated.

It stated that when all Queensland coal capacity retired, another 6GW of deep storage would be needed to complement 10GW of smaller battery storage, the “equivalent to 30 times the existing Wivenhoe power station”.

AEMO chief executive officer Daniel Westerman said the road map was developed to help manage the “complex, rapid and irreversible energy transformation”.

“To maintain a secure, reliable and affordable electricity supply for consumers through this transition to 2050, investment is required for a nine-fold increase in grid-scale wind and solar capacity, triple the firming capacity (dispatchable storage, hydro and gas-fired generation) and a near five-fold increase in distributed solar,” he said.

There will also need to be almost $4.8 billion in investment in power network, supply and transmission upgrades needed from far north to southern Queensland as part of the transition to a renewable electricity market.

This includes $408 million for Gladstone Grid Reinforcement, $1.2 billion for network upgrades between Cairns and Townsville to increase capacity of the Far North Queensland renewable energy zone and $1.16 billion for a network capacity expansion across the Darling Downs renewable energy zone.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/reality-check-as-qld-coalfired-power-assets-to-close-sooner/news-story/3aafaeafdf99bd0db842a695ad89ab3c

Friday, July 01, 2022

Austrian Chancellor talks of 'extraordinary times' as country prepares to reopen coal power station after Russia's gas threat

At the Mellach coal power plant in southern Austria, spider webs have taken over the conveyor belts, and plants and flowers have sprung up around the vast lot that once stored coal.

The plant, Austria's last coal-fuelled power station, was closed in the spring of 2020, but now the government ' nervous that Russia may cut its crucial gas deliveries further ' has decided to get the site ready again in case it is needed.

"I never would have imagined that we would restart the factory," Peter Probst, a 55-year-old welder, told AFP during a visit to the plant. "It's really sad to be so dependent on gas."

Europe had been trying to move away from coal in the fight against climate change.

However, as Russia has cut gas deliveries following sanctions, the West has imposed on it for the war in Ukraine, European countries are turning back to coal.

Today, the Mellach plant's white and red chimney stands out amid fields of corn and pumpkins, the city of Graz in the distance.

Inside, the walls are black, and coal dust clings to the doors and railings.

Some 450,000 tonnes of coal were stored at the plant before its closure as Austria's conservative-Greens coalition aimed to have all electricity come from renewable resources by 2030.

Site manager Christof Kurzmann-Friedl says the plant operated by supplier Verbund can be ready again in "about four months" ' just in time to help tackle any gas shortages in winter.

On Monday, Chancellor Karl Nehammer insisted that the plant would only go online if necessary, while Austria holds on to its goal to reduce emissions.

"It's really an emergency measure," the conservative told foreign correspondents at a briefing. "It's really something that shows how extraordinary our times are -- We must prepare for any eventuality."

The 230-megawatt power plant would take over from the nearby gas-fired plant, also operated by Verbund, which currently supplies heating to Graz's 300,000 inhabitants, according to Mr Kurzmann-Friedl.

IEA warns Russia may cut gas to Europe

Russia may cut off gas to Europe entirely as it seeks to bolster its political leverage amid the Ukraine crisis.

He warned, however, that the site must still be readied, hooking up all the equipment again, in addition to hiring qualified personnel and, above all, finding enough coal.

Before, the coal mainly came from mines in Poland's Silesia region, which the Polish government is aiming to shut.

Because coal prices have risen by as much as three times since 2020, the power produced by the plant will also be more expensive, Mr Kurzmann-Friedl said.

Criticism has already flared, with the opposition Social Democrats slamming the decision to reactivate the coal plant as "an act of desperation by the Greens".

"Will the next step be the reactivation of Zwentendorf?" the opposition asked, referring to the country's only nuclear power plant.

The Alpine nation of nine million people has been fiercely anti-nuclear with an unprecedented vote in 1978 against nuclear energy that prevented the plant from ever opening.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/austria-prepares-to-reopen-coal-power-station/101191662

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EU to end combustion engine sales

The EU has approved ending the sale of vehicles with combustion engines by 2035 in Europe, the 27-member bloc announced on Wednesday, in a bid to reduce CO2emissions to net zero.

The proposal was raised last July, and this decision will mean a de facto halt to sales of petrol and diesel vehicles and a complete shift to electric engines in the EU from 2035.

The measure is intended to help achieve the continent 's climate objectives, in particular carbon neutrality by 2050.

At the request of countries including Germany and Italy, the EU-27 also agreed to consider a future green light for the use of alternative technologies such as synthetic fuels or plug-in hybrids if they can achieve the complete elimination of greenhouse gas emissions.

Environment ministers meeting in Luxembourg also approved a five-year extension of the exemption from CO2 obligations granted to "niche " manufacturers, or those producing fewer than 10,000 vehicles per year, until the end of 2035. The clause, referred to as the "Ferrari amendment ", will benefit luxury brands.

"This is a big challenge for us" said French Minister of Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher. But she said it was a "necessity " in the face of competition from China and the US.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/eu-to-end-combustion-engine-sales/news-story/f189ec11b2b2676a69f5b17eccf60a9e

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Biden and Oil: Destroy America in Order to Save It

During the Democratic primaries, Biden ran on the promise that he would end all fossil fuels during his tenure. In 2019-2020 that bluster seemed easy demagoguery at a time of near-record low gas and diesel prices. The American people shrugged at such utopianism since they often were filling up their cars for less than $50.

Biden 's video clips from the primary campaign now seem surreal, as he tried to out-green Bernie Sanders in boasting about what has now become his own self-created energy disaster.

Biden monotonously promised at rallies, such as they were, that he would cancel pipelines, stop new federal leasing to oil and gas companies, persuade lenders to restrict loans to them, put the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve off limits, and embrace the green new deal. Those were certainly campaign boasts that he has followed up on.

His environmental czar John Kerry has just insulted Americans by lecturing them that there is no need to pump more gas and oil to reduce gas prices that are well over $6 a gallon in many of the Western states. The billionaire Kerry exudes Antoinette disdain for the muscular classes, a hubris that now characterizes the elite rich leadership of the Left in general.

Kerry and his progressive ilk make no effort to disguise that they feel the credentialed such as themselves, the wealthy, and the progressive enjoy the birthright to fly private, to be limousined, and to bounce between multiple energy-hungry mansions. Those compensations are all necessary, to allow them to focus on the divine task of directing and herding the unthinking and blinkered chumps, dregs, crazies and clingers to do what is for their own good'now most recently defined as paying more than $6 a gallon for gas.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also reassures the country that there is no reason to pump more oil and gas. Instead, she says, we just need to refine more. At her press conferences, she reads all her answers from prepared notes. But apparently Jean-Pierre's twenty-something press preppers were oblivious that the United States, thanks to hard-left green opposition, has not built a major refinery since 1976, back when there were 110 million fewer Americans.

Jean-Pierre has no idea why she cannot now and will never in the future answer a question about fossil fuels honestly. She knows that Left for now got what it wanted. Since January 2021 it has all but destroyed the idea of American energy self-sufficiency.

Think of the mindset: the Left for decades deliberately restricts refinery capacity; then when the public demands it increase oil production that it has curtailed, it complains that increased pumping would do no good because'there is not enough refinery capacity. Yet Biden remains shocked that his long-sought victory to make fossil fuels unaffordable is despised by the American people, whose votes he now needs to stay in power.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg talks of abortion, racist freeway overpasses, mass transit'almost anything other than strapped commuters on clogged roads watching their livelihoods melt away by staggering fuel and energy costs.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm calls "hilarious " any suggestion she might think out of the box to find ways to encourage more energy production. Granholm is right only in that she could not say or do a thing that any CEO or foreign head of state would take seriously.

So, her administration is panicking that its prior arrogance has insulted, enraged, and alienated 60-70 percent of the country. But political reality to such ideologues does not mean that they will pump or refine more oil. We all know they prefer high gas prices and only object to politically damaging steep climbs before midterm or general elections'rather than, say, continuous dollar-a-gallon increases every six months to a year.

So how does Biden square his circle of continuing or accelerating policies that ensure high gas prices while trying desperately to lower fuel prices before elections?

The Biden people have three strategies.

One is denial and a resort to the blame game. Vladimir Putin supposedly caused the American gas crisis. Take away the Ukraine war, and gas would be what it was during the Trump Administration. But that is not even half-true given the fact that gas and diesel prices had already reached $4.60 a gallon in California, for example, before the Russo-Ukrainian war had begun.

No matter. The Biden finger-pointing strategy is a shotgun approach with many targets other than the president 's own deliberate efforts to raise fuel prices. Besides the "Putin price hike, " Biden blasts "greedy " oil companies that are price-gouging Americans.

Perhaps. But if so, why were they not doing that before Biden entered office? Did corporate CEOs love Donald Trump and hate Joe Biden?

Why do some other corporations, for example the Left 's beloved Apple, earn higher profit margins on their sales than do the large oil companies?

OK'if Putin and rapacious CEOs are not to blame for the Biden fuel disaster, then how about "refiners "?

These villains supposedly have all the oil they need, but they strangely refuse to speed up turning crude into gasoline. Again, the Left wants something now that, for political purposes, it had sought to destroy in the past for political purposes.

To learn why there are now supposedly too few refineries, just review clips from the 2020 Democratic primary debates in which a dozen candidates attacked one another for supposedly appeasing the oil companies that were producing too much fossil fuels.

The second Biden strategy is to talk green, but to find ways other than pumping more oil to reduce gas prices before the midterms. Biden has announced that Vladimir Putin is a thug, a killer, and should be removed. But his hostility never stopped him earlier from beseeching Putin to pump more oil that he is now currently selling for nearly two-thirds below market prices to China and India.

Biden has in the recent past blasted the Saudi royal family for its illiberality. Yet now he is begging another former favorite target Mohammed bin Salman to help his administration by driving down the price of American gasoline down before the midterms.

Biden perhaps feels more comfortable similarly supplicating the nightmarish and failed nations of Venezuela and Iran. He is perfectly willing through such appeasement to lose any deterrent leverage over such odious regimes for the short-term gain of avoiding a November electoral disaster.

Yet do Biden and his EPA experts believe that Iran or Russia are better stewards of Mother Earth than are U.S. oil companies subject to the Environmental Protection Agency? In our shared global village do they really believe that a fungible barrel of oil is pumped and refined under greener protocols in Iran or Russia than in Texas or North Dakota?

But this second strategy of having others produce oil that we will not is also doomed for failure. Follow the Biden logic, incoherent as it is:

I, Joe Biden, hate Russia and Saudi Arabia. Some in my government tell me I am supposed to despise Iran and Venezuela. But I want all four nations as a favor to me personally to increase their dirty fossil fuel production that I certainly don 't wish to stoop to do here in my own country'all in order to keep my presidency temporarily viable, by appeasing the gas-guzzling mindless middle class while bowing to my hallowed green base.

That smug incoherence is welcome schadenfreude to all our enemies.

The third Biden strategy has now turned to the strategic petroleum reserve.

When oil was cheap, Trump'to much criticism'tried to top the reserve off with cheap petroleum. And for the most part, he did.

Now Biden is draining the reserve in order to lower prices for a crisis that he created in large part by reducing U.S. production and eliminating any chances to expand it over his tenure.

Again, consider the twisted logic: the administration does not wish to increase the supply of hated petroleum, but needs more of it. So apparently if nearly 700 million barrels of oil have already been pumped out of the earth and back into four vast underground caverns near the Gulf, then repumping the black goo back out is not the same sin as pumping fresh goo from underground.

The idea of the strategic petroleum reserve grew out of the Arab boycotts of the United States in the early '70s and the anti-Western power of the OPEC cartel. The reserve was an effort to ensure that foreign entities during crises could not blackmail or leverage the United States for political concessions. It was also designed to offer a temporary buffer in times of natural or manmade crises such as war or devastating earthquakes, fires, or storms.

But Biden 's policies have ensured that bad foreign actors will and can hold the United States over the proverbial oil barrel and receive concessions in the bargain. And our current oil shortage did not arise from a foreign war or tsunami, but from a deliberate policy to curtail oil production to force a more rapid transition to battery-powered transportation and mass transit.

So, Biden is tapping a public reserve to aid his own private political survival, not as a result of a collective assault on U.S. energy independence. In other words, he is putting America at risk to drain a reserve intended for purposes other than his own reelection efforts.

All these unhinged and desperate measures will fail.

So, what will end the Biden-created oil crisis? Only one consideration, and it is a medicine worse than the disease: the Biden-created recession or depression.

That is, Biden 's hyperinflation and ensuing stagflation are already beginning to result in reduced spending, as his printed money runs out and spiraling prices are beginning to exceed even the 2021-22 infusion of new trillions of dollars. No wonder we are currently in an era of negative economic growth.

But given Biden 's discouragement of productive industries, subsidies for labor nonparticipation, quantitative easing, historic low-interest rates, and a growing global recession we are likely to see continued negative economic growth, higher unemployment, and closed businesses.

In other words, 1970s-style stagflation will radically curb consumer demand as the targeted middle class has less to spend, and, of course, drives less. Eventually stagflation will lead to severe recession and ultimately to crashes in current prices.

The Left 's reaction to that national tragedy will be interesting since it seemed to love the COVID lockdown, and not just because the devastating quarantine sparked radical changes in voting laws and an aggrandizement of government power, as well as the end of Donald Trump.

The shelter-in-place mandates bridled the middle class and slowed the economy'and thus gave us desirable reduced carbon emissions.

For the left-wing green ideologue, a recession in the age of oil is as welcome as $7 a gallon gas. Or perhaps economic stagnation of the middle class is more fortuitous, a "never let a crisis go to waste, " since it will mean a general reduction in fossil-fuel energy use well beyond transportation as millions of Americans become inert.

In sum, under the Biden energy logic, we must destroy the American economy in order to save it.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14221

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How Green policies make the South China sea a flashpoint

It would be a mistake to view the South China Sea dispute between China and Japan as a simple territorial gripe over lines on a water-logged map.

The two nations have long been hostile, and China 's threats last year to "˜nuke it ' if Japan allies itself with Taiwan during a Chinese "˜totally peaceful unification ' attack hasn 't exactly settled the region 's nerves. Neither country can escape their shared geography involving expanses of open water which they rely upon for trade. This has seen many international incidents arise from ships bumping into each other after "˜accidentally ' violating shared spaces.

Today, the problem runs all the way to the seabed.

There is a "˜green-rush ' on rare earths pushed by the so-called "˜climate friendly ' technologies of solar, wind, and battery power that require a menagerie of minerals to harvest "˜free ' energy.

The world 's main motivation for tearing apart the sea floor is the pursuit of electric vehicles. Far from "˜loving the oceans ', the production of ecars is fuelling the exploration and mining of previously protected waters. The damage is estimated to be huge, permanent, and result in the extinction of species.

Rare earths are not "˜rare ' as the name suggests, they are "˜diffuse ' meaning that small quantities require enormous amounts of mining and are often difficult to separate from their parent rocks. Ore extraction is a messy business that involves toxic chemicals, scary-looking waste piles, and "“ uh "“ smelting with "˜evil ' coal.

Global mining companies have been eager to abide by United Nations regulations against fossil fuel mining because it creates a market crunch, elevating their previously worthless mineral holdings into priceless assets. Some are selling for 600 per cent of their previous value.

Yes, everyone is "˜going green '. Green "“ as in money.

There is nothing virtuous about a mining company that promotes renewables technology. They have simply decided to increase the value of cheap minerals through market manipulation. By embracing short-lived renewables first, mining companies can flog their entire mineral catalogue. When the world exhausts those and returns to fossil fuels or uranium deposits, they get to sell them too. If mining companies skipped straight to building nuclear plants, the rest of their mineral holdings would be worthless.

China has played an even smarter game. Not only do they profit off their global domination in rare earths resources cornering 95 per cent of the industry, they manufacture and distribute renewables to the West giving Beijing dominance over foreign energy infrastructure. Australia 's energy grid will have a comforting "˜made in China ' sticker on the side. China also put the time, money, and ruthless effort into shifting rare earths mining assets from developing nations into Beijing 's portfolio via its Belt and Road Initiative.

If there were any Roman generals left, they 'd be side-eyeing the whole thing muttering, "˜I think it might be a trap. '

How many wars in history were fought over resources? Now imagine there 's an Eden-like frontier of precious metals laying beneath the waves in hotly contested or shared regions --

These minerals tend to be distributed along active volcanic fissures, laying on the sea-bed as polymetallic nodules. The richest of these can be found at the Pacific Ring of Fire tectonic plate boundaries where the movement of the Pacific Plate creates the famous volcanism stretching from New Zealand in the south, up through Indonesia, cutting across Japan, arching along the coast of Russia and Canada before following the West Coast of the Americas all the way down to the bottom of South America. There are similar hot beds beneath India and around the base of Africa.

This has turned the world 's oceans and seas into open-cut mines worth trillions. International waters are thought to contain more value than the combined mineral wealth of Earth 's continents.

Deep sea rare earths mining isn 't much better than the pirate era that accompanied the rush for South American gold. There are rules, but they are loose due to the difficulty of monitoring operations thousands of metres below the surface. If a mining company destroys an ancient relic or sacred site, people scream immediately at the pile of rubble "“ but who sees the fragile ecosystems and underwater paradises being ripped apart? No one. This makes it an attractive business for mining companies.

Most of the regulation is performed through the "˜autonomous ' United Nations body ISA (International Seabed Authority) based out of Jamaica created under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. They are not a protection organisation and do not work to prevent deep sea mining. Instead, they attempt to "˜mitigate its damage ' by surveying locations and handing out licences to mining corporations. They are also meant to protect deep sea biodiversity, particularly for ecosystems that we know very little about.

The current Secretary General, Michael W. Lodge, was previously questioned in the press about a potential conflict of interest with mining operations, which he denies. He also has a biography at the World Economic Forum and is listed as a member who last penned an article in 2014 demonstrating the value of operations, writing:

"˜Japanese geologists estimate that a single 2.3 km2 patch of seafloor might contain enough rare earth materials to sustain global demand for a year. '

ISA appears to have no problem handing out plenty of mining licences to China despite the communist nation being recognised as the biggest environmental vandal in the world "“ especially when it comes to waterways. Most of the contracts are specifically for copper, cobalt, and other minerals found in electric batteries. ISA have stated their support for deep sea mining if it props up the renewables industry which fits with their position as part of the UN 's 2030 Sustainable Agenda.

Not everyone is happy, with marine geologist Sandor Mulsow who was, between 2013-19, head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at ISA, quoted in the La Times saying:

"˜The ISA is not fit to regulate any activity in international waters. It is like asking the "¯wolf to take care of the sheep. '

China has made itself a world leader in deep sea rare earths mining, with projects and ships all over the Pacific region.

For those wondering why Beijing was so keen to form a close alliance with the Solomon Islands, it may have something to do with their unexplored zinc, gold, phosphate, lead, and nickel deposits "“ or maybe it is the oil, gas, and deep sea mining in the parameters laid out in the draft maritime cooperation agreement and the Blue Economy Memorandum of Understanding. The Shortland Basin, Guadalcanal, and Iron Bottom Sound all promise fossil fuels in a startling contradiction to the Solomon 's Islands claims that they chose "˜China ' to help them with Climate Change fears.

The "˜blue economy ' is a polite way of saying, "˜yep, we 're going to rip apart the environmentally fragile ocean floor for profit '. Not only is the sea floor destroyed and its creatures sucked up, but the surrounding area is drowned in a thick layer of silt.

China 's progress in this field was discussed by Liu Feng, secretary general of COMRA (China Ocean Mineral Resource R&D Association), who was interviewed by NewsChina:

"˜Since the late 1980s, China started working on exploration contract applications, and it was registered as one of the seven pioneer investors in 1991, which indicated that COMRA was required to offer half of its surveyed area of 300,000km2 [ -- ] of valuable seabed mining resource area to the ISA as a reserved area [for ISA enterprises or other developing countries].

"˜By 2001, we were able to process one ton of nodules per day and successfully attain metallic elements, including copper cobalt, nickel and manganese.

"˜China gained another four additional contracts from the ISA for all three seabed mining resources across the Pacific and Indian oceans [polymetallic nodules found on abyssal plains, polymetallic sulphides at hydrothermal vents, and ferromanganese crusts on seamounts and ridges]. '

Returning to the contested waters between Japan and China.

Japan has always been at a serious geopolitical disadvantage. As a densely populated volcanic island chain, it is short on mineral and energy resources. It is a net importer of coal, gas, wood, iron, and copper along with a shrinking allocation of farmland. To compensate, it became a manufacturer of high-end electronics, cars, steel, and military parts.

However, despite the barren surface, the seabed surrounding Japan is ridiculously rich in minerals. The mud alone is guessed to contain 16 million tons of rare-earth oxides or between 500 and 780 years of supply. Although Japan is a small nation by land, they have the 8th largest Exclusive Economic Zone -- or 4,470,000km2 of potential mining exploration. There could be an astonishing 40 trillion cubic feet of methane clathrate and 400 billion cubic metres of natural gas. Japanese law is currently being revised to properly regulate what will no doubt be the country 's first mining boom in centuries.

The good news for Japan is that most of their wealth lies in the deep shelf to the east, away from China. The bad news is that the Sea of Japan contains petroleum, natural gas, and magnetite. The worse news is that the extremely rich mining area off Okinawa is well and truly within China's greedy field of vision.

Does this destroy the fragile ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean? Absolutely. As David Santillo, a Greenpeace research fellow, said:

"˜In all cases, seabed mining will, by its very nature, destroy species and habitats within the mining zones. There is no justification for a "˜gold rush ' to mine the seabed; instead we should be focusing on making smarter and more efficient use of the materials we already have. '

Despite everyone 's pledges to "˜climate change ', the pursuit of Net Zero policies and "˜ethical cars ' has sparked a mining rush that threatens the Earth 's most important but least understood ecosystem. Nations desperate to secure their share of rare earths might even spark a catastrophic global conflict.

The hunt for rare earths is all set to finally tip geopolitics off the deep end.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/renewables-the-deep-end-of-the-south-china-sea/