Green Haste Will Trash The Promise Of Hydrogen

Desperate policy makers trying to reach Net Zero targets that are unaffordable and infeasible are rushing into the premature adoption of hydrogen as a last ditch attempt to save the current agenda.

Faced with the task of eliminating carbon dioxide emissions while sustaining economic growth, the UK government, like others around the world, is promoting hydrogen as an energy carrier for sectors of the economy such as heavy transport and peak winter heating that are extremely difficult to decarbonize.

The wisdom of this policy, with a special focus on the United Kingdom, is addressed in a new historical and technical study published today by the GWPF.

The study concludes that current enthusiasm is a desperate measure that will jeopardise the long-term promise of hydrogen for the sake of short-term political optics.

Because of the accelerated timetable required by arbitrary targets, it is necessary to manufacture hydrogen via two expensive and energetically inefficient commodity production processes, the electrolysis of water, and the reforming of natural gas.

Electrolysis is extremely expensive, and the reforming of methane emits carbon dioxide and so requires Carbon Capture and Sequestration, which is not only costly but unproven at the required scale. Both these commodity processes imply high levels of fresh water consumption.

The prudent approach, obvious since the 1970s and still the official long-range policy of the government of Japan, is to aim for hydrogen production by the thermal decomposition of sea water employing advanced nuclear reactors, which alone might conceivably make hydrogen cheap. This is, however, very difficult chemical and nuclear engineering, and its realisation lies well into the future.

The paper also notes that hasty introduction will not give enough time for safe societal adjustment to the inherent dangers of a fugitive and readily ignited gas that has a strong tendency to technical detonation (combustion with a supersonic combustion frontier). The learning experience could be needlessly painful and deadly.

Dr John Constable, author of the study, said:

“Hydrogen has genuine long term potential as a universal energy carrier to supplement electricity, but current methods of production are hugely expensive and will stress fresh water supplies. Target-driven haste is already resulting in accidents. Counterproductive and naive policies are compromising the hydrogen future.

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CO2 no threat to oceans

For the past three decades the public has been taught by the news media and the folks who make a living composing mathematical equations they claim to simulate how our planets climate operates, that our oceans are in jeopardy.

They have all told you one of the biggest falsehoods in human history. They say that carbon dioxide, the only reason man can inhabit Earth, is actually causing the planet to heat up to a dangerous level and the oceans will become unlivable for marine life. There is no proof of these lies whatever. Civilization has generally been most prosperous under warmer than colder conditions. We do know that as many as nine times more folks perish from excessive cold than excessive heat. The oceans are in fact prospering with more CO2 overhead. Be that as it may much of the public has bought the scare.

Regardless of what scientists on the right side of the issue come up with to thwart the misinformation, they are drowned out by the media and the well financed climate modelers on whom governments around the world have showered countless billions of dollars.

Little of the true reality supported by science has succeeded in winning over the world’s governments to scientific reality. Now comes along biologist Jim Steele of the CO2 Coalition and former Research Director of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada’s Field Campus to drop a blockbuster of truly new knowledge. He has proven how our Oceans, all of them, are benefitting enormously by the increase in carbon dioxide which man’s industrialization has produced. The global warming scaremongers have falsely preached that additional carbon dioxide could lower the pH of the oceans to where they become acidic, killing off ocean life. This is in fact physically and chemically   impossible, and now we can better understand the enormous benefits CO2 is bringing to the oceans

The Ocean “acidification” from carbon dioxide emissions preached by the scaremongers would require an impossible ten-fold decrease in the alkalinity of surface waters. Even if atmospheric CO2 concentrations triple from today’s four percent of one percent, which would take about 600 years, today’s surface pH of 8.2 would plateau at 7.8, still well above neutral 7.

Ocean health has improved as a result of greater CO2, as it feeds phytoplankton that stimulates the oceans food chain. CO2 allows phytoplankton such as algae, bacteria, and seaweed to feed the rest of the open ocean food chain. As carbon dioxide moves through this food web, much of it sinks or is transported away from the surface. A high surface pH allows the ocean to store 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere. Digestion of carbon at lower depths allows for storage there for centuries. Periodic upwelling recycles carbon and nutrients from deep ocean waters to sunlit surface waters. Upwelling injects far more ancient CO2 into the surface than diffuses there from atmospheric CO2. Upwelling at first lowers surface pH, but then stimulates photosynthesis, which raises surface pH. It is a necessary process to generate bursts of life that sustain many ocean life forms.

When CO2 enters ocean water, it creates a bicarbonate ion plus a hydrogen ion, resulting in a slight decrease in pH. However, photosynthesis requires CO2. So marine organisms convert bicarbonate and hydrogen ions into usable CO2, and pH rises again. Contrary to popular claims that rising CO2 leads to shell disintegration, slightly lower pH does not stop marine organisms from using carbonate ions in building their shells.

The concentration of atmospheric CO2 is governed by the balance between stored carbon and CO2 released back to the atmosphere. On land, carbon is continuously stored as organic material in living and dead organisms, with some carbon eventually buried in sediments. During the last major glaciation, expanding glaciers destroyed much of the northern hemisphere’s forests and reduced the earth’s ability to store terrestrial carbon. Just as deforestation does today, that loss of forests should have increased atmospheric CO2. Instead, atmospheric CO2 decreased! It appears that the missing CO2 was stored in the ocean.

Across the earth’s upwelling regions, ocean surface pH is primarily affected by the upwelling of ancient stored carbon, rather than human activities . The ocean surface is seldom in equilibrium with the atmosphere. Recent upwelling of subsurface carbon typically raises surface concentrations of CO2 to 1000 ppm and temporarily lowers surface pH. Upwelling of old carbon and other nutrients then stimulates photosynthesis in phytoplankton and sea grasses, which then reduces pH.

It is now esmated that 90 percent of the difference in pH between surface waters and deeper waters results from downward movement of ocean life. When transformed into organic matter, CO2 can be rapidly exported downwards. For example, anchovy and sardine fecal pellets sink 780 meters in a day. Tiny diatoms, which account for half of the ocean’s photosynthesis, are believed to sink at rates over 500 meters per day because of their dense silica shells.

Upwelling is a vital dynamic that brings carbon and nutrients, otherwise sequestered in the ocean’s depths, back to the surface. Although there may be negative consequences of low-pH and low-oxygen upwelled waters, without upwelling of low-pH waters, global marine productivity would be greatly reduced.

In the political arena of climate change, crucial factors are misleadingly ignored by those claiming that rising CO2 leads to shell disintegration. First, shells of living organisms are protected by organic tissues that insulate the shells from changes in ocean chemistry. Mollusk shells are typically covered by a periostracum. This allows mollusks to thrive near low pH volcanic vents, or in acidic freshwater, or when buried in low pH sediments. Coral skeletons are protected by their layer of living coral polyps. When shell-forming organisms die they lose that layer of protective tissue and their shells or skeletons may indeed dissolve. However, dissolution also releases carbonate ions, which buffers the surrounding waters and inhibits any further change in pH.

Slightly lower pH does not stop ocean organisms from converting bicarbonate ions into shell- building carbonate ions. Some climate modelers incorrectly suggest that a small drop in pH will inhibit shell-building in marine organisms.

The ability to make shells despite experiencing atmospheric CO2 much higher than today has been preserved in massive deposits of calcium carbonate shells.

So what is the bottom line, the take home to share with friends. The oceans will not become acidic — CO2 enriches all life in the ocean. There is no evidence to suggest that the oceans are becoming less of a great habitat for marine life due to rising atmospheric CO2.

CO2 is quickly consumed by photosynthesizing bacteria, plankton and algae. Greater productivity allows more organic carbon to be exported to depths where it can be sequestered for hundreds to thousands of years. It is highly likely that the recent increased productivity and increased sequestration of carbon has offset any pH effects from added atmospheric CO2.

So now you have one more of the fraudulent global warming scares put to rest.

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Bernie’s Green New Deal to go 100 percent renewable in 10 years would destroy America

Are the American people about to vote to destroy the way of life?

If socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) is elected, his utopian promise to implement a 10-year Soviet-style Gosplan to end oil and gas consumption —the Green New Deal—will radically transform the U.S. economy, and possibly leave America in the dark and cold.

The plan, according to Sanders’ website, calls for “[r]eaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization of the economy by 2050 at latest – consistent with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals – by expanding the existing federal Power Marketing Administrations to build new solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources.”

All sources of non-renewable energy accounting for 62 percent of the electricity grid would need to be replaced. No more coal, natural gas or petroleum based electricity generation. Those aren’t renewable.

In addition, 19 percent of the grid via nuclear power would come to an end, too, even though it doesn’t emit carbon. New nuclear plant construction would cease under the Sanders plan.

Every building including 129 million households would all have to be upgraded to no longer emit any carbon.

Home heating and hot water heaters via natural gas and oil would all have to be replaced. So would all of your stoves if they run on fire. Are you ready for winter yet?

Every car and truck—more than 250 million—that runs on gasoline and diesel would have to be replaced.

Convenient air travel would have to be banned.

The oil, coal and gas industries will be eliminated.

To get across the country, you’d probably have to take a train. Overseas? Hope you got your sea legs.

This is a dagger pointed at the heart of Middle America. Do you commute to work in a car? Do you live in a single family home? Can you afford tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars of upgrades for your home? How about a new electric car? Does that fit in your budget?

Work in the energy industry? Drive trucks for a living? Not any more. It’s job retraining camp for you.

The Green New Deal would change everything, compelling millions of Americans to probably move to warmer areas to survive as the federal government unilaterally ends the industrial revolution — the reason we’re such a prosperous species — with a radical revolution of its own.

The U.S. emits about 5.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year as of 2017, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency: 45 percent from petroleum, 29 percent from natural gas and 26 percent from coal.

Of the portion of emissions devoted to natural gas, 1.47 billion metric tons a year, only 506 million is from electricity generation. The rest is from heating homes in the winter, making hot water, cooking food and the like

And then there’s the rest of the world — another 30 billion metric tons a year or so — which of course the plan fails to specify how much of that the U.S. will have to subsidize, too, in order to reach the goal of cutting emissions in half globally by 2030 outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations.

That’s right. To get it done, we have to work out a cooperative plan with China, Russia, Europe and the rest of the world to halve carbon-based production that they need to keep their billions of peoples fed and warm in the winter.

How do we intend to persuade the world to commit economic suicide? Even if some sort of agreement could somehow be made, it would surely be a tyrannical scheme to arrest economic development, sacrificing an entire generation of opportunity and innovation on the altar of radical environmentalism.

This would set back economic progress for decades or longer and crash the global economy and dislodge hundreds of millions of careers.

There are also opportunity costs to be considered. What technological innovations, say in the fields of carbon capture, might have been achieved if the economy had kept growing the way it was before we willingly turned the lights out? What improvements to our lives will be foregone in the pursuit of a utopia?

In 2020, Americans will have a choice to make about which future they want to raise their children in. One where the government dictates allowances and rations resources, forces you to rebuild your homes and every other building in the country under Bernie Sanders, or one where Americans keep their liberty and the freedom to harness the gifts God gave humans to keep the economy growing.

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Seattle’s NHL Stadium Renamed Climate Pledge Arena, To Immediate Mockery

Perhaps fearing attack by a leftist mob, or being violently targeted for a new CHOP, CHAZ, or CHwhatever zone, Amazon announced yesterday it is changing the name of Seattle’s KeyArena to Climate Pledge Arena. Yes, really. The arena hosts the WNBA’s Seattle Storm women’s basketball team and will host Seattle’s incoming NHL hockey team.

“I’m excited to announce that Amazon has bought the naming rights to the historic Seattle arena previously known as KeyArena,” said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on Instagram. “Instead of calling it Amazon Arena, we’re naming it Climate Pledge Arena as a regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action. It will be the first net zero carbon certified arena in the world, generate zero waste from operations and events, and use reclaimed rainwater in the ice system to create the greenest ice in the NHL.”

The arena is in downtown Seattle, just a few blocks from the sea. If climate change is such an existential crisis, won’t the rising seas wash the arena away soon, anyway? So why bother paying for naming rights?

The decision to rename the arena Climate Pledge Arena drew immediate laughter and mockery. Proposed nicknames for arena include:

Phony Pledge Arena
Virtue Signal Arena
Pixie Dust Arena
Gore Court
Greenwash Arena
The Unicorn Center
Poseur Arena
Chicken Little Arena
Bedwetter Arena
Climate Hypocrisy Arena

Feel free to note your favorite in the Comments s

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