Hurricane Season, Not Climate Change, Is to Blame for Hurricane Idalia
With Hurricane Idalia bearing down on Florida, climate activists and some media outlets are already blaming climate change for the storm. In reality, hurricane activity—and especially hurricane activity affecting Florida—is not getting any worse as the planet modestly warms. Hurricanes and other extreme weather events occur in spite of climate change, not because of it.
Global hurricane data show there has been a significant and consistent decline in the number of hurricanes during the past 40 years. Moreover, there has been no increase in the cumulative energy from all hurricanes and tropical cyclones. While climate pundits fill the airwaves with theories about warmer ocean temperatures fueling more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, the verifiable storm data show no increase at all. Indeed, scientists have long suspected that warming global temperatures facilitate wind shear, which pulls hurricanes and tropical storms apart.
Not only is there no global increase in hurricanes, but Florida in particular is enjoying a golden age of hurricane avoidance. Florida recently underwent an 11-year period without a single hurricane strike, which was the longest such period in recorded history. Yet when a hurricane finally put an end to Florida's record hurricane drought, climate activists and many media outlets predictably blamed climate change.
No matter what good news there is on the subject, climate activists and their champions in the media are committed to their apocalyptic narrative. It's why you probably don't know that the United States as a whole has enjoyed a remarkable lack of major hurricanes in recent years; from 2009 through 2017, the U.S. experienced fewer hurricane strikes than during any other time period in recorded history. Just as importantly, the United States recently underwent a record 11 years without a major hurricane strike of Category 3 or higher.
Yet when Hurricane Harvey finally struck and ended the record time frame without major hurricanes, climate activists and the mainstream media predictably blamed climate change for the storm.
They simply refuse to acknowledge the truth, which is this: The facts show climate change is not causing a worsening of hurricanes.
But to those invested in the truth, this should come as no surprise. Objective scientific data show a similar lack of climate change impacts on other extreme weather events.
More here:
https://www.newsweek.com/hurricane-season-not-climate-change-blame-hurricane-idalia-opinion-1823148
************************************************British Prime Minister defies Net Zero ban on new airports
Rishi Sunak will face down the Government’s climate advisers over demands for ministers to halt the expansion of airports, The Telegraph can disclose.
In one of the most significant moves yet of the Prime Minister’s shift to approaching net zero in a “proportionate and pragmatic” way, the Government will reject the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) formal advice that all airport expansions must be halted.
The move comes days after Mr Sunak appointed Claire Coutinho, one of his closest political allies, as Net Zero Secretary, amid a growing backlash among Tory MPs over the Government’s climate policies and the cost they are adding to consumer bills.
Ministers believe airport growth will have a “key role” in boosting the UK’s global links and helping to grow the economy.
Bristol and Southampton airports are among those preparing to significantly expand their capacity after legal challenges against their expansions failed, while London’s Gatwick, City and Heathrow airports are also hoping to embark on major expansion projects.
Elsewhere in the world, new international airports are being built in cities such as Mumbai, while major expansions are under consideration in Dubai and Sydney.
The CCC was set up by the 2008 Climate Change Act to hold the Government to account over its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, with its most recent five-year “carbon budget” put into law by Boris Johnson in 2021.
Rejecting its recommendations would set the Government up for a major legal clash with environmental groups. Last year, a High Court judgment said that “considerable weight” should be given to the CCC’s advice. Groups such as Greenpeace are planning to cite the committee’s latest recommendation in legal challenges against further airport expansions.
But a Department for Transport spokesman told The Telegraph: “Airport growth, and the aviation sector as a whole, has a key role to play in boosting our global connectivity and helping grow the economy. We remain supportive of airport expansion where it can be delivered in a sustainable way.”
Ministers are putting their hope in the rapid development of green aviation fuels to decarbonise the sector. This week, Ms Coutinho will unveil a proposed legal duty on the Government to draw up plans to subsidise so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).
The Government’s approach will heap pressure on Labour to take a position on the issue.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told The Telegraph last week that she would do “whatever it takes” to attract investment to Britain.
Heathrow is in the process of revising plans for a third runway, which Labour previously said failed its “four tests” for expansion of the airport.
But a Heathrow spokesman said: “We have always been clear that expansion will be delivered within strict environmental targets, including on carbon, minimising noise and local environmental impact, thereby meeting Labour’s four tests.
“We are confident Heathrow’s plans and the aviation industry roadmap provide a credible path to net zero flight by 2050.
“Adding capacity to the UK’s only hub airport would bring benefits to all of the UK, creating jobs, boosting Britain’s exports and delivering for the country’s global ambitions.”
The CCC’s decision to issue formal advice against further expansions was taken in one of the final meetings chaired by Lord Deben – formerly John Gummer – before he stepped down from the body this summer.
The committee was frustrated that plans to expand airports across the country were continuing despite its warnings that the net growth of airports was incompatible with the country’s net zero target.
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Like Communism, the Climate Change Agenda Will Kill Millions
As the Biden Administration and tyrannical central planners across the globe continue with their push to control people’s lives through an overbearing "climate change" agenda, implementing socialism under the guise of saving the planet, the human cost of their lunacy is becoming increasingly glaring.
When a brush fire ripped through the Maui town of Lahaina in August, traveling a mile a minute, water to keep it from advancing was unavailable. “Access to water should be predicated on ‘conversations about equity,’ according to the Hawaii official under fire for delaying access to water during the Maui wildfires,” the New York Post reports. "M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui.”
The local government still claims the death toll is just north of 100 souls, but at least 1000 people are still “missing,” many of them children.
On the global stage, former Secretary of State and Biden Climate Czar John Kerry is playing with fire by targeting the agriculture industry.
“Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday,” Reuters reported in May, “Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole - including packaging, transportation, and waste management - generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.”
“‘We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,’ Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington,” the report continues.
The essential component to human life, food, requires emissions. It's a basic cost of humanity. Wind and solar energy aren’t getting food out of the ground and to the market. Oil and gas do this successfully, preventing famine.
We’ve already seen this dangerous, nightmare experiment play out in Sri Lanka.
In April 2021, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned all chemical fertilizers, citing the need to cut down on emissions for the sake of fighting “climate change.” It was, and still is, a complete disaster.
Forced conversion to organic farming caused an economic collapse and a crop shortage.
“Farmers say their livelihoods are under threat and for the first time in its modern history, Sri Lanka, which usually grows rice and vegetables in abundance, could run out of food as harvests drop and the government can no longer afford the food imports the country has become overdependent on in recent years. The rice yield dropped to 2.92m tonnes in 2021-22, down from the previous year’s 3.39m, and the speaker in parliament last week warned of imminent starvation among the island’s 22 million people,” The Guardian reports.
But starvation isn’t the only human suffering the climate fanatics are willing to inflict on the population. They justify slave labor currently used to build solar panels in China and to mine rare earth minerals in Africa. In the United States, President Joe Biden and his bureaucrats are working to take away gas stoves, air conditioning, and cheap natural gas. All of these things make the human condition better and life affordable for the average person, which is why the left is working overtime to banish them — not for themselves, of course, but for those they rule over.
Kerry and his ilk have made it clear human suffering and death is just part of the agenda and a necessary cost to meet their “climate change” goals. If they aren’t stopped, much like communism, this central planner push for control will cause suffering and death for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of human beings around the world.
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Australia: More waste in chasing the Green dream
A new deal has been struck to keep the Victoria/Tasmania Marinus Link undersea power cable project – central to the "battery of the nation" dream – afloat.
In a joint announcement on Sunday, the federal and Tasmanian governments said they were "acting with a new deal to keep the critical Marinus Link project plugged in – driving economic growth and putting downwards pressure on prices across Tasmania and the national east coast grid".
The project, which was to deliver a connection via more than 300 kilometres of undersea and underground high voltage cable between Tasmania and Victoria's Latrobe Valley, was originally estimated to cost between $3.1 billion and $3.8 billion.
However, the financial burden of the project saw the Tasmanian government announce last month it wanted to renegotiate the terms of the deal.
Today, in a joint statement the federal and Tasmanian governments said they had "worked closely to ensure the project continues" – with amendments made to the deal including:
The original vision of two cables downgraded to one, with "negotiations to continue on a second cable"
Tasmania's contribution towards construction drops by almost half, with the Commonwealth's share to increase and Victoria's to stay as originally negotiated
Tasmania to "have the option to sell its stake to the Commonwealth upon commissioning of the project"
Marinus Link is part of Tasmania's "battery of the nation" strategy and is also listed among the Australian Energy Market Operator's top five priority projects.
Tasmania has enough green hydro energy capacity to power the entire state and also has five wind farms, with several other wind projects under consideration.
However, some analysts have argued that as Victoria invested more in its own wind farms and battery storage, it made less business sense to fund an expensive multi-billion-dollar cable between the mainland and Tasmania.
Tasmania has long argued the largest benefits of the project go to the mainland and Tasmanians should not pay a disproportionate amount.
Today, both governments conceded Marinus Link was "competing in a global market with tight supply chains and is facing similar inflationary pressures to other major energy and infrastructure projects around the world".
Stage one of the project, the proponents say, would "deliver economic stimulus over $2 billion and over 2,400 jobs, with around 1,400 in Tasmania".
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said it was "a game-changing project for both Tasmania and the mainland and this updated agreement will not only deliver the benefits of Marinus Link, it will be cheaper to Tasmanians".
Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff said it would mean "jobs, economic growth, energy security and lower power prices with Tasmania investing its fair share and no more".
The governments said they were "working towards a delivery time frame as close as possible to 2028, or earlier if possible".
In a statement, Marinus Link's chief executive Caroline Wykamp said today's announcement was "a signal of confidence for the project, which stood to deliver significant environmental, economic and social benefits".
"Marinus Link is more than an interconnector; it's an enabler," she said.
"This project will deliver more renewable generation development in Tasmania and the mainland, more energy security to both Tasmania and the mainland and more movement and access to lower-cost renewable energy sources, helping deliver lower energy costs in the long term."
Ex-Liberals question deal, condemn Father's Day timing
In a joint statement, Lara Alexander and John Tucker — former Liberals who quit the party in part over the Marinus deal — said the renegotiated deal "raises more questions than answers", saying the Tasmanians premier's "numbers simply do not stack up".
"The figures are not believable, the claim that Tasmania's maximum exposure would be $117 million dollars does not stack up with the federal minister's confirmation of that the cut down project will cost $3.3 billion dollars and the claim that Tasmania will be up for 17 per cent," the statement said.
"Today's announcement from the premier reveals nothing of the cost blowouts which the government has admitted would have sent the state broke if it pursued the deal it signed last October. It conveniently leaves out how much we have already spent on this project.
"It also does NOT address the impact of these massive energy projects on Tasmania's power bills with the exception of an unsubstantiated claim by the premier that it will deliver savings.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/marinus-link-undersea-cable-costs-renegotiated/102808504
***************************************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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