Beasts Saved by Conservationist Common Sense, not Climate Lunacy
By Vijay Jayaraj
Two beasts, which are thousands of miles apart, are making a comeback after centuries of overhunting. The iconic American bison and the greater one-horned Indian rhinoceros find themselves among the stories of conservation success in the 21st century.
As is the case of many other mammalian species, overhunting – and not climate change – had been the primary cause in the decline of bison and rhino populations. Though not rocket science, the obvious effects of overhunting on animal numbers are often lost in the noise of climate-change activism.
Climate doomsayers falsely attribute decline in populations to global warming and portray climate change as the major threat to species. However, just as was true for mammals like polar bears and tigers, the fates of bison and rhinos are dependent more on the prevention of poaching and overhunting than on controlling the uncontrollable – namely global temperature.
Bisons Make it Big
Even for a small kid from a third world country like this Indian native, the importance of American bison was unmistakable. An avid reader of Nat Geo magazines, I never missed articles on these impressive beasts that once dominated the plains of North America.
Once hunted nearly to extinction, the North American bison is now thriving. Numbering as many as 60 million centuries ago, the U.S. bison population reached its lowest point in 1884 with only around 325 in the wild, including just 24 in Yellowstone. An average of 5,000 bison were killed every day between 1872-74, according to some estimates. By 1910, conservation efforts had brought the number of bison up to 1,000.
Today, there are at least 400,000 bison in the U.S., along with a bison meat industry that capitalizes on the animal’s relatively lean flesh.
In 2015, CNBC reported that the “sales of bison meat continue to grow, and so does the national herd. Consumers with more disposable income are attracted to grass-fed bison’s low-fat content, buying it everywhere from local farmer’s markets to Whole Foods.” Between 2016 and 2021, live bison exports from Canada to U.S. increased by 50 percent.
Rhino Population Powers Through
Another species recovering from overharvesting is the Indian rhinoceros. Rhinoceroses derive their name from Greek, rhino meaning nose and keras meaning horn – an animal with a horn on its nose. While the two African rhino species have two horns, their three Asian cousins have just one.
The greater one-horned rhino – found in India and Nepal – was hunted to near extinction. But thanks to conservation efforts, their numbers are rising. Since the 1980s, there has been a 167% increase in the population of one-horned rhinos. Today, there are more than 4,000 one-horned rhinos in India and Nepal. India’s famous Kaziranga National Park in the state of Assam alone has 2,613 of these animals.
A reason for the population boost is a decrease in poaching. Indian Rhino Vision 2020 was established in 2005 for the purpose of increasing the rhino population in Assam, where it successfully set up seven protected areas.
Reports show that poaching of rhinos was highest in 2013 and 2014, with 27 rhinos killed each of the years. In comparison, there were only six incidences in 2017, seven in 2018, three in 2019, two in 2020 and one in 2021. The park’s director says, “Kaziranga has a healthy population of rhinos despite casualties due to natural deaths, floods and infighting.” Credit for the recovery is given to increased policing and the construction of mud platforms that serve as refuge from floods.
Such successes frustrate climate alarmists who are obsessively focused on dampening human development in the name of saving other species. Their apocalyptic propaganda and wasteful expenditures on so-called green technology and other nonsense serve neither wild beasts nor humans.
True environmental care lies in conservation efforts that aim to protect endangered species in a scientific way that does not ignore the importance of economic activity.
https://co2coalition.org/2023/01/16/beasts-saved-by-conservationist-common-sense-not-climate-lunacy/
************************************************************California fire crews use SIX THOUSAND gallons of water to extinguish burning Tesla Model S whose battery spontaneously combusted while driving down busy freeway
Firefighters used 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Model S that spontaneously burst into flames on a busy highway outside of Sacramento on Saturday.
The driver, who was not injured, was on Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova at around 3pm when smoke started to come out from the front of the car.
Photos of the luxury car showed the vehicle completely totaled with the front end of completely burnt.
Officials responded to the scene with two fire engines and a water tender. The Metro Fire of Sacramento crew said that nothing was previously wrong with car.
It is unclear what caused the blaze, but the federal government is also probing multiple Tesla self-driving crashes with some resulting in deaths.
The horrific blaze wasn't the first Tesla S fire that Metro Fire of Sacramento officials had to extinguish.
A white Tesla model burst into flames in a Rancho Cordova wrecking yard in June after the car had spent weeks sitting there after a collision.
Firefighters arrived at the wrecking yard to find the Tesla fully engulfed in flames. Each time the firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, the Tesla's battery would reignite the fire.
The fire department posted an Instagram video of the ordeal, saying that even when firefighters moved the Tesla onto its side to spray the battery directly, the car would burst into flames again 'due to the residual heat.'
Eventually, the firefighters dug a pit near the Tesla and moved the burning car into it and then filled the pit with water, 'effectively submerging the battery compartment.'
The technique worked, and the fire department was able to put out the fire with no injuries and 4,500 gallons of water used - about the same amount of water used for a building fire.
Fires generated from electric vehicles can be especially hazardous, as they generate over 100 organic chemicals including some potentially fatal toxic gasses like carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
Tesla batteries may be at a higher risk of combusting due to the lithium-ion technology they use, which is a relatively new introduction to the auto industry. Lithium-ion batteries charge faster but can rise to extraordinary temperatures if damaged.
An increase in electric vehicle use over recent years has brought to light some of the risks associated with them.
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EU Threatens Green Arms Race Over Biden’s So-Called Inflation Reduction Act
The leaders of Germany and France are retaliating against President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and plan to meet next month to consider lodging a formal protest with the World Trade Organization, pushing America and the European Union closer to a trade war that would benefit Communist China.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, sat down at Paris last week to strategize on how the EU could counter the IRA, taking aim at the half-a-trillion dollars in spending, grants, loans, and tax breaks for American companies as well as those in Canada and Mexico.
Politico described the law’s passage as having “thrown the transatlantic economic relationship into turmoil.” Mr. Scholz “expressed frustration that the American law would directly harm Germany’s vital car market,” the outlet wrote, because “the incentives would prove damaging to Germany and Europe and eventually spark a trade war.”
Germany and France, Bloomberg reported in the wake of the summit, “warned that European businesses will need to unleash investments on a nearly unparalleled scale to keep from falling behind U.S. and Chinese firms as countries revamp their economies to make them more climate friendly.”
According to the Financial Times today, an EU draft plan will “hit back” at the IRA “by easing restrictions to allow a wave of tax credits for green investment” and removing obstacles for state money -- some of it from the bloc’s Covid-19 funds — to flow to green segments of the economy.
The Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joseph Manchin III, who provided the deciding vote in passing the IRA, recalled in an interview with Politico that Mr. Macron told him, “You’re hurting my country,” in particular with made-in-America requirements.
The EU’s goal is to ensure they’re “not treated worse than immediate neighbors,” Mr. Scholz said at a news conference with Mr. Macron, who promised that the two European nations planned “a real convergence on the responses we’re bringing.”
On December 4, the chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, Bernd Lange, urged the European Parliament to go forward with legal action against the IRA. “The EU,” he said, “must swiftly file a complaint against the U.S. with the WTO in the coming months.”
There is hope for cooler heads to prevail. In October, the European Commission established a task force with America’s deputy national security adviser, Michael Pyle, aimed at finding solutions and at gaining for European companies a share of the IRA pie.
“The task force will address specific concerns,” they wrote in a statement, “Both sides agreed on the importance of close coordination to support sustainable and resilient supply chains across the Atlantic, including to build the clean energy economy.”
In remarks last week, the European commissioner for trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the European Parliament that features of the IRA “are becoming major irritants,” but warned that Europe “should also be mindful of the risk” of responding “IRA-like policies” like those the Financial Times outlined in the EU’s leaked battle plan.
Mr. Dombrovskis said that the EU was “likely to lose out” in “a more protectionist world,” and that while “subsidies can incentivize the development of green and climate-friendly technologies ... subsidies must not come at the cost of well-functioning markets and fair competition.”
America’s trade representative, Katherine Tai, met with Mr. Dombrovskis in Brussels earlier this month to discuss what he and other EU officials have called “problematic aspects” of the IRA but suggested they be “realistic” about the prospect of changes.
“I don’t think that much will change in substance,” Mr. Lange said according to Funke Mediengruppe, “because the law has already been passed,” but Reuters reported that he sees “complaining to the WTO would make send a message that the bill was incompatible with the organization’s rules.”
At a time when North America and Europe are dealing with the pandemic’s aftermath, record-high inflation, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the last thing countries need is a trade war that hurts businesses in Denver and Dusseldorf far more than dandies at Davos. Leaders may want an energy revolution, but the pain of a green arms race is something their citizens can do without.
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Australian folly: Carbon taxes are useless without a technological breakthrough
Raising the cost of using a particular fuel will shift consumption to another fuel, but only if all other things are equal. Unfortunately for climate change hysterics, when it comes to CO2 emissions, all other things aren’t equal.
This is a relevant issue now Australia effectively has a CO2 tax.
Under Australia’s ‘Safeguard Mechanism’, an invention of the previous Coalition government now being ‘refined’ by Labor, Australia’s 215 largest CO2 emitting facilities will face a virtual carbon tax.
They’ve been told they need to reduce their emissions on average by 4.9 per cent a year, and if they can’t manage this, they may buy carbon credits, but only if the credits cost less than an inflation-adjusted $75 a tonne.
This is effectively a tax that cuts in at the average mandated level of emissions per type of facility, and which is determined by the number of facilities that can’t meet those benchmarks and the amount of emissions they emit.
The more emissions, the higher the price, until $75 a tonne. And if the demand exceeds the supply? Well, perhaps some of those polluters will wish their industry organisations hadn’t lobbied for a price cap. They may already even be thinking that, looking at the mess a cap is making of the gas market. Those that can stay in business at those tax levels, that is.
To make this hang together in some way that keeps the Greens happy, the government needed to prove the carbon offsets market was effective. Carbon markets are susceptible to fraud, with double-dipping, poor governance, and imprecise science.
The answer to these problems, raised in an ANU critique about the Australian carbon credit market, was to appoint former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb to do a review. Chubb gave the scheme the all-clear, subject to 16 recommendations.
Inquiries are only as good as their terms of reference and their personnel. At no stage was Chubb asked what the total carbon credit capacity of Australia is, which would determine the depth of the market and the price that should be charged. If he had, he may have discovered that Australia absorbs more than twice as much CO2 as it emits.
So, on a national basis, the cost of carbon credits ought to be zero – we are already NetZero, with surplus credits to sell to the world.
But this wouldn’t suit the narrative which is to see emissions management as a result purely of fuel-type, rather than also a function of volume. The size of the continent, which contributes to Australia’s high per capita emissions, is also the solution to them, as long as we don’t grow the population too much.
There is also another side to the use of carbon credits which points to the absurdity of carbon taxes. The fact that they need to be available at all, means the government tacitly acknowledges there are no substitutes for fossil fuels for particular uses.
Which is the whole weakness in the idea of carbon taxes. While superficially ‘efficient’ they cannot meet their aim of fuel substitution because the suitable fuels do not exist, or if they do, are banned from consideration by this government.
There are a number of results from this. One is that rather than substituting one fuel type for another they end up substituting one highly-taxed location for a lower-taxed one.
Much of Australia’s emissions under the various regimes in place under previous and current governments have merely been exported to China, South-East Asia more generally, and more recently South Asia, rather than reduced. Ditto for most of the rest of the hyperventilating carbonphobic world, like the EU and the balance of the Anglosphere.
Because only the 215 largest installations will have to adapt, this also represents a boost for smaller businesses. The 216th largest installation will be laughing all the way to the bank, at least in comparison to the 215th (which raises another issue, what happens if one of the 215 goes out of business?).
That’s why since 1990, when the IPCC at the Second World Conference called for a treaty on climate change, global emissions have risen over 53 per cent despite the expenditure of trillions trying to stop them rising.
There are no substitutes and carbon taxes are therefore, in effect, a subsidy to manufacturing in China and the developing world, not a mitigation strategy at all.
Carbon taxes do cause some substitution, such as from coal to gas. This has happened in a perverse way in Australia. As renewables continue to penetrate the power generation mix, there is an increased need for on-demand rapid deployment sources of power, like Open Cycle Gas Generators. In a state like South Australia they make up around 30 per cent of electricity supply.
Unfortunately for Australia the carbonphobics hate natural gas too and have made it difficult to prospect for new fields and bring them online, making gas more expensive than coal, unlike the US where it is generally cheaper. This results in a further ‘tax’ on consumers as gas, being the marginal producer, sets the price for the whole of the electricity network.
Yet even this substitution is to be banned as the governments of Australia declare that gas cannot be part of any ‘capacity mechanism’ (even though gas makes up a substantial part of AEMO’s Infrastructure Plan in 2050, the year we plan to be Net Zero).
Which is where the lack of substitutes will really cut in. Metal refineries need to operate 24/7 – you can’t ever let the metal cool in the pots. And some of them consume vast quantities of electricity. For example, Rio’s three smelters in Queensland consume about 17 per cent of state power generation, the Tomago smelter in NSW around 12 per cent.
The technologies don’t currently exist at all, or where they might exist, in the quantities required, to make these large installations viable using renewables (despite what management says). The tax squeeze is going to send them to the wall, but the world will still need their output, so it will come from somewhere else.
Bear in mind that the businesses we are talking about include power generators, steel and cement manufacturers, fertiliser and plastics manufacturers, oil refineries, and rail operators. The bulk of emissions from some of these has little to do with fuel supply, but is a by-product of their manufacturing process. For example, the coking coal used in steel manufacture cannot be replaced at the moment.
It turns out that carbon taxes are very efficient taxes, but only when it comes to putting industries out of business.
The tax wouldn’t be so dire if all existing technologies were on the table, but alongside gas, nuclear power has been ruled out by this government. Nuclear is the only viable 24/7 non-emitting source of electricity. If it were available the smelters might be safe even if the plastics, fertiliser, steel, and cement manufacturers still faced existential problems.
Bjorn Lomborg has long argued that we need to invest in researching and developing alternative technologies, rather than taxing existing technologies. To date, Australia has more or less avoided this trap, but under enthusiastic Labor, no longer. Their virtual carbon tax guarantees Australia will have an impoverishing collision with the physical limits of reality. And all for no return in global emissions.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/carbon-taxes-are-useless-without-a-technological-breakthrough
***************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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