Tuesday, January 09, 2024
As Temps Drop, The Climate-Obsessed Media Ignore Coal’s Life-Saving Role
On a recent cold winter day, residents of Munich were surprised to see people skiing in the street. Yes, that is how much snow fell in the German city and other parts of Europe during the early winter of 2023-2024.
Despite disruption to both ground and air travel, the Germans survived the freezing weather with access to heating and basic utilities.
But not everyone in our world is as fortunate as those living off reliable energy sources in Western economies. Billions of people all over the world do not have access to secure sources of heat and electricity. For these, winter can be a death blow.
A political war against fossil fuels is making matters worse for those unprotected from frigid temperatures.
The gravity of winter’s hazard has been overshadowed by the prevailing discourse on purported man-made climate change. We have been inundated with warnings about the perils of warming.
But historically, it is the cold that has been disastrous. It has altered the course of history across the world and left people scrambling for food as plant life dwindled.
Winter’s icy chill claims far more lives than scorching summer heat, according to global analyses of fatalities caused by various natural hazards.
A 2023 health study conducted across 854 European cities reveals that an estimated annual excess of 203,620 deaths were due to cold while just 20,173 were attributed to heat.
In comparative terms, only 1 in 10 excess deaths from extreme temperatures were attributable to heat while a majority were due to cold.
The fearmongering around warming aside, winter’s cold bite is going nowhere and will continue to test humankind’s survival mechanisms.
Since August 2023, snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has remained at or above the 57-year mean.
With climate science co-opted by a worldwide political crusade against allegedly human-induced global warming, communities may find themselves ill-equipped to face upcoming winter weather.
In regions with particularly harsh winters and limited access to reliable heating sources, the threat of death and illness due to anti-fossil fuel policies is grave.
In places like Mongolia, where economic hardship and energy converge, staying warm is a continual wintertime focus. This year, the country’s imports of electricity from Russia were disrupted, resulting in load shedding to millions of people in the middle of winter.
At minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, the people of Mongolia were left to fend for themselves.
To brave this harsh climate, they rely on just two crucial energy sources: internal electricity generation from their plentiful coal reserves and the direct use of coal for heating homes.
When faced with below-freezing snow-blanketed winter days, neither wind nor solar power can guarantee a steady energy supply.
In other countries of the region, the scenario is similar. Destitute communities in Afghanistan rely on coal to endure the winter.
In Kyrgyzstan, the unreliability of hydropower results in a continuous need for coal.
Likewise, people in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan depend on coal for warmth, although the latter is also increasing its reliance on gas.
It is easy for hypocritical politicians who fly in private CO2-emitting planes across the Western world to champion the elimination of fossil fuels. But their activism blatantly ignores the bone-chilling grip of winter on faraway communities.
It is long past time for the Western media to boldly report the critical role of fossil fuels in supporting human life during harsh winter conditions.
Such fact-based reporting would put to rest the false narrative of a world doomed by warming.
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UK: The surge in Net Zero scepticism, silly climate activists and how to beat the Blob
Net Zero scepticism, if not climate scepticism, has exploded, and is now a fixture of the mainstream, albeit a minor part. Former ministers and broadsheet news media began to find their voices in ’23. This is largely confined to the centre-Right, but that may be merely a consequence of the realities of power – a Labour government is going to inherit the same problems of their own making, and it will be difficult to sustain the consensus. The GMB’s interventions shows that the broad Left’s support of the Miliband set’s preferences cannot be taken for granted. However, independent media and analysts are far ahead of the mainstream, which has yet to form robust critiques of green ideology, except in extreme (e.g. XR/JSO) cases, and is still inclined to apologise for climate alarmism, and/or tinker with policy. The cross-party Westminster consensus on climate holds for now.
Cancellation on steroids
Power is doubling down on its predominant ideologies, and consolidating with unprecedented attacks against the conventions of one-time liberal democracy (RIP). Governments throughout the West have given themselves the power to impose increasingly draconian interventions to police speech, under the pretext of protecting the public from ‘online harms’. In 2023, the concepts of ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ fully escaped the dank confines of the Blob’s nucleus, and are now a cancer: A mutation of the principle that might-is-right. The doublespeak extends from passing off official lies as unimpeachable truth to claiming that this ‘protects’ democracy. Financial institutions have weighed in, appointing themselves as regulators of the public space, though debanking scandals have embarrassed the blobs. ESG is toppling globally, especially in the U.S., but seeking surer foundations in Europe and the U.K. Mainstream discussion has yet to properly connect ESG to authoritarianism and rising costs of living. In the U.S., new precedents are being set for using criminal and civil courts as political weapons against critics of all sizes. Blobs are keen to extend this combination of regulation and lawfare into Europe and the U.K. These are, of course, reflections of the facts of political establishments’ loss of moral authority, and the growing gulf between them and publics, forcing them to take increasingly reckless measures against their own failures.
The UNFCC/COP process and climate alarmism is a busted flush
Attempts to consolidate the climate agenda, at all levels of government, using increasingly high-pitched rhetoric are increasingly falling flat on their face. Epitomised by António Guterres’s sloganeering, such as ‘Code Red for Humanity’ and ‘Global Boiling’, the global political agenda is simply embarrassing. Geopolitics is repolarising, with the west committed to harming itself, apparently in the interests of its sworn enemy in the form of the dominant partners of BRICS nations. One time ‘developing’ nations have found their feet, and they are not going to follow the West, leaders of which have no longer any leverage over any but officials of the poorest governments. The world now has (always did) far more serious problems to contend with than can be solved through happy-clappy green idealism, advanced only by billionaire-backed green NGOs and ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations, many of which are merely ESG lobbying outfits in ‘third sector’ drag. Western politicians succeed only in signalling to the rest of the world the failures of the green agenda, and their hypocrisy and lack of competence and good faith in all matters, including the green agenda, financial regulation, rule of law, democracy and security: They will put their self interest and ideological ambitions before the basic needs and interests of their own populations. The putative achievements of COP26 are already collapsing, with global financial institutions falling out of the Bloomberg-centric ‘alliance’ (GFANZ). The most recent COP was an inconclusive mess, which drew most hostility from the green blob itself, and only served therefore to demonstrate the hopeless fracturing of the world into irreconcilable parts.
The world is not decarbonising
Global CO2 emissions reached 37.15 billion tonnes in 2022 – a slight increase over the pre-covid 2019 record of 37.04 billion tonnes. The world consumed 44,854 TWh of coal in 2022 – pretty much where it was a decade ago in 2014, though agencies such as the IEA are reporting this as a “return to record levels”. Reduced consumption in the West has been matched by growth in Asia, where consumption has tripled since 2000. Oil and gas consumption have also been flat since Covid, reflecting recent extremely high prices – which we might expect to have reduced demand more significantly – though 2022 gas consumption is down on 2021. Coal, oil and gas accounted for 26.7%, 31.6% and 23.5% of global energy demand respectively – a total of 81.8%. 14% of primary energy came from renewable sources – up from 9% in 2010, and barely more than a doubling from its historic 6% through most of the second half of the 20th Century. And those figures for renewables depend on the dodgy ‘substitution method’, which multiplies the contribution of renewables by around 2.4, in order to ‘account for’ the inefficiency of fossil fuels, but which are thus an attempt to inflate the apparent viability of green energy.
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Jeremy Clarkson rips apart BBC's climate agenda as he celebrates environmental victory with brilliant swipe
Jeremy Clarkson has celebrated the discovery of over 800 new species of animal heading into 2024 amid the modern world's ongoing climate complaints.
Writing in his last column of 2023, the Clarkson's Farm host lauded the fact that more and more new species of animals are being found despite being told the population is "destroying pretty much all biodiversity on Earth".
Clarkson was reflecting on how he'd like to have more time in the day before he touched upon a report that said last year 815 new species of animal were recorded.
Celebrating how the feat is a major victory in the light of persistent eco moans, Clarkson didn't hold back.
He wrote of the discovery: "This flies in the face of Instagram-level, X-fed thinking.
"We are told by The Guardian and the BBC, on an almost daily basis, that modern living and oil have destroyed pretty much all biodiversity on Earth.
"They say humans in general, and Tories in particular, have wiped out 83 per cent of all mammals and that today just four per cent of the world’s remaining mammals are wild.
"The rest are cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and us. And yet here we are, with the entomologist John Noyes saying, 'I find new species in my back garden without really trying'," he added in The Times.
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Cargo vessel's lithium-batteries fire highlights concerns over EV risks
In a concerning turn of events, a cargo vessel, Genius Star XI, transporting electric vehicle (EV) lithium-ion batteries from Vietnam to San Diego, was engulfed in flames. This unsettling incident underscores pressing questions about the safety and feasibility of accelerated EV adoption in the United States, particularly concerning the transportation and handling of EV components.
The Incident and its Implications
The fire aboard Genius Star XI, a ship carrying nearly 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries, was fortunately extinguished and the vessel stabilized. However, the event raises grave concerns about the threat posed by EV battery fires, both on land and at sea. Recent incidents of factory fires in Detroit linked to EVs and an electric vehicle catching fire in Autauga County, requiring an alarming 36,000 gallons of water to douse, have further intensified these concerns.
The Government’s Stance and Public Concerns
The Biden administration is ardently subsidizing EVs to promote their use, despite trepidation from auto workers and dealerships. These subsidies come in the wake of reports of EV fires occurring spontaneously, during accidents, and even while parked. These fires not only present unique challenges to firefighters but also release toxic gases, adding to the overall environmental impact of EV production.
Addressing the Risks
There is a growing need for effective safety measures and stringent regulations for transporting lithium-ion-based cargo. Emphasis is put on maintaining the batteries at a low state of charge to prevent thermal runaway. A study by the FAA revealed that batteries with a state of charge of 30 or less were significantly less prone to thermal runaway issues than those charged at 70 and higher. However, the incident aboard Genius Star XI proves that there is still a long way to go in ensuring the safe transportation and handling of EV components.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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