Climate change is 'off the charts': Damning report reveals how records were smashed for greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures and sea level rise in 2023
Here we go again. The temperature changes they are talking about are tiny and their link to human activities is just a wobbly theory. There is no proof that human activities had any impact at all.
And note the chart. It is calibrated in TENTHS of one degree and has to go back to 1850 to show anything like a smooth rise. A more detailed chart would show long periods of stasis and falls, unlike CO emissions, which have been rising fairly steadily as industrial civilization has progressed. It is all just asssertion and even they admit that recent rises could be due to El Nino rather than CO2 emissions
And note that they show NO details of the CO2 changes which they allege to be at fault
Climate change is 'off the charts' and presents a 'defining challenge' to humanity, a damning new report warns today.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says several climate records were broken and in some cases 'smashed' last year.
Greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rises, and Antarctic ice loss all escalating in 2023 due to fossil fuel emissions.
'Sirens are blaring across all major indicators,' said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. 'Some records aren't just chart-topping, they're chart-busting – and changes are speeding-up.'
The WMO's State of the Global Climate report, published today, confirms that the year 2023 broke 'every single climate indicator'.
WMO confirmd that 2023 was the warmest year on record, as already announced by the UN's Copernicus climate change programme in January.
The global average near-surface air temperature for the year was at 2.61°F (1.45°C) above the pre-industrial average (1850 to 1900).
Before 2023, the two previous warmest years were 2016 (2.32°F/1.29°C above the 1850–1900 average) and 2020 (2.28°F/1.27°F above the 1850–1900 average).
What's more, the past nine years – between 2015 and 2023 – were the nine warmest years on record.
But the experts admit that the shift to 'El Niño' conditions in the middle of 2023 contributed to a rapid rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023.
El Niño is natural climate phenomenon where there's warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator.
Why are temperatures compared to 'pre-industrial' levels?
Pre-industrial levels act as a benchmark for how much the Earth's climate has changed.
The pre-industrial period is typically defined as the time before human activities - such as burning coal for heat - began to have a significant impact on the Earth's climate.
By comparing current temperatures to pre-industrial temperatures, experts can isolate the effects of human activity from natural climate variability.
Temperatures are largely fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, and these continued to climb in 2023.
WMO says data for concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases in the air (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) are not yet available for the whole of 2023, but in 2022 they reached 'new highs'.
Globally averaged concentrations were 417.9 parts per million (ppm) for carbon dioxide (CO2), 1,923 parts per billion (ppb) for methane (CH4), and 335.8 ppb for nitrous oxide (N2O).
Respectively, this marks an alarming rise of 150 per cent, 264 per cent and 124 per cent compared with greenhouse gas concentrations levels in the year 1750.
'For more than 250 years, the burning of oil, gas and coal has filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses,' said Dr Friederike Otto, climate lecturer at Imperial College London, who wasn't involved in the report.
'The result is the dire situation we are in today – a rapidly heating climate with dangerous weather, suffering ecosystems and rising sea-levels, as outlined by the WMO report.
'To stop things from getting worse, humans need to stop burning fossil fuels. It really is that simple.
'If we do not stop burning fossil fuels, the climate will continue to warm, making life more dangerous, more unpredictable, and more expensive for billions of people on earth.'
***********************************************
The DOE Transformer Steel Rule and its Consequences
Last January, the Department of Energy (DOE) proposed a rule that would change the efficiency standards for the steel used in the cores of distribution transformers. The rule is now a final rule pending review at the Office of Management and Budget, with lawmakers looking to push back on the standards it would impose.
The new efficiency standards would effectively require the switch from grain oriented electrical steel (GOES) to amorphous steel in the cores of transformers on the electrical grid. The change would be required to be implemented within three years from the publication of the rule.
This is concerning because the new standards could jeopardize the transformer supply chain, with terrible consequences for the electrical grid and the provision of power to Americans.
Transformers are one of the many parts of the electrical grid that most people think of seldomly. They hum away in the background, and their importance is something that most of us rarely consider.
But, transformers serve an absolutely essential function on the grid. Transformers are necessary to change the voltage of electricity as it goes from long distance transmission, to local transmission, and then to residential and industrial consumption. Without these voltage changes, it’s impossible to move power between these stages.
Currently, GOES is the steel used in the cores of 95 percent of the transformers in the country. It’s produced by one firm in the US, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. at two facilities in Butler, Pennsylvania and Zanesville, Ohio.
Amorphous steel for transformer applications is only manufactured by one firm, Metglas Inc, at just one facility, in Conway, South Carolina. This type of steel is used in the cores of the remaining five percent of transformers.
A major overhaul in the type of steel used in transformer cores will have significant implications for the supply chain of transformers.
Under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), the statute that DOE points to as authorizing these transformer steel standards “any new or amended energy conservation standard must be designed to achieve the maximum improvement in energy efficiency that DOE determines is technologically feasible and economically justified.”
DOE’s argument for putting forth these new standards hinges on the cost savings associated with the efficiency gains that the new rule would elicit, but it ignores the costs imposed on manufacturers throughout the supply chain, especially the steel producers and transformer manufacturers. It also ignores the burden that a major disruption to transformer manufacturing would create for the electrical grid, and the very real risks to reliability that such a disruption would pose.
Let’s take a look at it from the perspective of the amorphous metal supply.
During the comment period for the rule, Michael Howard, CEO of Howard Industries, one of the country’s largest transformer manufacturers which currently relies on GOES for their cores, discussed at a hearing the difficulty of meeting current transformer demand for core materials using amorphous steel:
There is not enough amorphous capacity in the world to handle the market today. I estimate the market in the distribution transformer business to be 450-million pounds. The total market for amorphous in the world, from my understanding, is around 400-million pounds, and that’s if you get 100-percent of all the steel supplying just the United States transformer market.
Just getting to the level of necessary amorphous steel production would be an incredibly heavy lift due to the limitations of the current manufacturing capacity.
Howard goes on to explain what this would mean for the companies that manufacture the transformers:
And then you’re talking about us — the transformer manufacturers — if we had to convert to amorphous or if we do some kind of hybrid of multiple, multiple lines and one-to-two-hundred-million-dollars, just for Howard Industries, I would estimate 500 to 800 million for the industry.
Multiple new production lines don’t come cheaply or quickly, and with three years to comply with the new standards, it would be incredibly difficult for transformer manufacturers to make the necessary changes to comply with the rule.
Legislators have also expressed major concerns over the DOE rule.
There is currently a bill, the Distribution Transformer Efficiency and Supply Chain Reliability Act of 2024, that would prevent the rule from going into effect and would prohibit any standards from being set that would remove GOES from the market.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/03/19/transformer-steel-rule/
************************************************The cheap renewable thrill of climate protests
On March 13, 2024, Greta Thunberg was dragged away from blocking the Swedish Parliament entrance for a second day. She was among 40 or so people protesting the ‘political inaction’ over climate change. (If only that were true, I sigh…) She’s been at it since even before her embarrassingly hammy How dare you! speech at the United Nations in 2019. Climate change is the magic pudding of protests.
In 2005, the Global Day of Action (aka Kyoto Climate March) established the magic pudding recipe for annual protests, intended to force all governments to take action to ‘combat climate change’. Yep, almost 20 years ago.
According to Treehugger.com:
‘One of the first globally recognised protests took place in Copenhagen in 2009. Halfway through the UN’s environmental summit on December 12, tens of thousands of climate activists lined the streets to demand effective environmental policy. This was part of the Campaign for Climate Action’s annual Global Day of Action, and it ended up being the largest of the events to take place – estimates range from 25,000 to 100,000 people. What captured significant media attention was the violence incited by a few at the protest, and the arrests that followed.’
So much pushy passion, so little intelligence…
Much of the signage at these protests reflects faux moral posturing. In the 2014 People’s Climate March (more about ‘People’ later), one large blue sign carried the panic prophesy, all in caps:
WHEN THE LAST TREE IS CUT DOWN THE LAST [fish image] EATEN AND THE LAST STREAM POISONED YOU WILL REALISE YOU CANNOT EAT MONEY
This sort of presumptive argument by assertion is par for the alarmist cause. You can also run images of bushfires and storms with the assertion that they are caused by climate change and nobody challenges you. That is why it is done over and over again. As for ‘People’s Climate March’, it’s worth noting that ‘people’ in this context is usually a political sleight of hand, as in The People’s Democratic Republic of (North) Korea, etc.
The ever-recurring protests against climate change (a nonsensical statement but you know what I mean) enjoy the benefits of the never-ending, ‘renewable’ source of angst for the alarmist cohort. Like climate change ministers, the protesters will not be around long enough to be embarrassed by their alarmism in 50 years. But perhaps this ever-renewable protest will still manifest. Greta will be over 70 – and no doubt still thundering, still protesting, still accusing the world of stealing her childhood dreams. (Of what?)
Global concern for climate change began in 1972 when multiple scientists at the UN Conference on Human Development in Stockholm presented on the development of the climate over the century. By 1979, climate conferences were held and led to the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the United Nations in 1988. The IPCC is now one of the leading organisations that provide countries with scientific data to create informed policies.
This was reported by Sharmon Lebby for her June 2021 article in treehugger.com. Sharmon is, as the website states, a ‘writer and sustainable fashion expert. She has written and spoken on panels about the ties between environmentalism, social justice, inclusivity, and fashion. She is the founder of Blessed Designs, an ethical fashion brand, and the President of the Ethical Network of San Antonio’. She cites her expertise as ‘Sustainable Fashion, Clean Beauty’. Good for her.
I am quoting from her treehugger.com article to stifle any knee-jerk criticism that I have selectively plucked material from a ‘denier’ source…
In September of 2014, around 400,000 demonstrators would gather in New York City for an event that would dramatically overtake Copenhagen’s protest numbers. This event was significant because even though the environmental movement gained real ground with the inception of Earth Day, polls would show that the United States ranked second to last in public knowledge about climate change. The Climate March would be known for its diverse attendees, all of whom gathered under the slogan “To Change Everything, It Takes Everyone”.
In other words, groupthink climate gullibility.
There have been many more climate change protests or climate strikes… The latter is a fun outing for school students prodded into action by the thought of saving the planet. All you needed to do was wag school.
In conclusion, Lebby wrote:
The number of climate change organisations appears to be growing. From government organisations to nonprofits, more and more leaders are beginning to see the urgency in working to heal the planet at its source. Many organisations such as Extinction Rebellion, Campaign Against Climate Action, and Fridays For Future were created for the sole purpose of using civil disobedience and peaceful marches to push for climate action. How effective these will be remains to be seen, but it does seem that these methods increase public support.
I’m not convinced about that, but my point is that the topic of climate change is a reliable source of renewable protesting, never running short of panic, angst and finger pointing at governments who ‘must do something’.
The terrible addiction of this topic is that no matter how much governments do something to satisfy their own alarmist craze (including our very own climate tsar Chris Bowen), there is nothing positive to show for it. Some people seem to expect instant and localised results but what would that look like? Even if you were to accept that fossil fuels cause warming, those economy-weakening policies would not have any effect for a long time. You can protest every day for 50 years! The signs and the paraphernalia are reusable – and universal.
Many governments have ‘done something’ (too much) already, eg Net Zero, chasing the elusive dream of renewable energy replacing coal and gas all while luxuriating in the financial contributions to the nation’s well-being by the same coal and gas. Sure, you can’t eat money, but you sure can’t eat without money, either.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/the-cheap-renewable-thrill-of-climate-protests/
****************************************************Getting to net zero without nuclear power condemns us to poverty
Our energy debate, here and globally, is one of the most consequential discussions in human history. That it is distorted by politicking, virtue signalling and delusion can be explained only by widespread ignorance about what is at stake.
It is pointless to contest the proposition that we need to transition away from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. They are a finite resource and if our civilisation is to continue in anything approximating its current form this transition is unavoidable sometime.
The point of contestability is the urgency – probably overstated by many players. Still, let us put that argument aside and look at the overwhelming scale of the task. If we understand how energy has underpinned the development of our economies and societies, and how we rely on it, we could never be blase about transitioning from fossil fuels. We are talking about the reversal of the whole trajectory and achievement of our development across just a few decades.
We are being urged to up-end the relentless intensification of energy in favour of energy devolution or diffusion. This flips all we know about the core driver of our civilisation and, if it must be done, it needs to be done carefully with all possible technologies on the table.
Our journey from forager to influencer is all about the availability of increasingly intense sources of energy. The hunter-gather relied only on the energy of the human form, fuelled by the vegetable and animal matter of other organisms.
By controlling fire, domesticating animals and harnessing wind and water, we greatly leveraged our energy options. But none of this was enough to sustain cities or deliver widespread wealth.
Fossil fuels changed everything, driving transport and generating electricity. For thousands of years the global population grew very slowly and lived mostly in poverty. Across the past 250 years the population has increased tenfold, we have developed unfathomable wealth and technology, all the while more than doubling life expectancy and reducing poverty.
Energy was the driving force, and the consequences extend way beyond the economic.
In a new short film for Net Zero Watch, John Constable explains the impact: “That exponential increase in wealth from high-quality fuels led to a society that could withstand external shocks that would have been catastrophic for earlier populations. It was the beginnings of modernity.”
Constable is seen as a controversial figure in the climate debate, the sort derided as a denier by alarmists and renewables zealots. But his historical perspective is uncontrovertible.
Apart from transport, heating and cooling, industrialisation, appliances, entertainment and communications devices, consider what energy has done for humanity. In How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil details how even in the early part of the 20th century most of the world faced poverty and food shortages. Rising food production – fuelled largely by fossil fuels and techniques dependent on them – led to a decline in global malnutrition from two in three people in 1950 to less than one in 10 now. And because this occurred while the global population more than tripled from 2.5 billion in 1950 to eight billion in the 2020s, it means we are feeding eight times as many people as we did 70 years ago.
We mess with this formula at our own peril. What has been fuelled by dense forms of energy can continue only if replacement energy is available, otherwise much more will have to change, and likely for the worse.
Constable talks about other knock-on effects, describing how Britain’s population became larger and richer and therefore more secure and innovative: “Wealth creates freedom, which creates more wealth, which creates yet more freedom and more wealth.”
He fails to offer a long-term solution, preferring to warn of potentially dire and chaotic consequences if we shun reliable and affordable energy: “Everything that humans value is in jeopardy.”
Labor, the Greens and their barrackers in public debate have their hands over their eyes, ears and mouths. For them, the world’s only reliable, baseload, zero-emissions fuel source is an evil whose role they refuse to see, hear or consider.
This is confounding when green-left politicians in Europe have long embraced nuclear and 22 leading economies at the COP28 conference in Dubai last December pledged to triple their nuclear energy output.
The green left in Australia shuns modernity for sham reasons; it cites only cost but this cannot be genuine given its lack of interest in the costs of renewables and clear evidence that many nations are reaping price benefits from nuclear. The costs of not developing a domestic nuclear industry need to be confronted. We would consign ourselves to a more sparse and vulnerable electricity grid that damages environments and landscapes. It also would face permanently high transmission and energy storage costs.
We would turn our backs on a hi-tech industry that plays a role in all modern economies and we would do this while attempting to run (and build) nuclear-propelled submarines. Madness. We also would surrender energy security, undermining economic fundamentals. Australia’s strategic rivals would encourage us to eschew nuclear and persist with our renewables plus storage experiment (especially if they buy our coal, gas and iron ore while selling us wind turbines and solar panels).
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull posted on X about the nuclear debate, asserting that nuclear could not “firm” renewable energy such as wind and solar. “To firm them we need flexible, dispatchable sources of zero emission energy such as pumped hydro, batteries or green hydrogen,” Turnbull said. “Nuclear reactors cannot turn on and off, ramp up and down like hydro or batteries can. Nuclear reactors generate continuously.”
And he said that like it is a bad thing. Nuclear would stabilise our grid with constant power and at times of low demand there might be little need for renewables. Perhaps that is why renewable investors, including in green hydrogen, are so antagonistic to nuclear. Excess power from a nuclear plant at times of low demand might be used to generate hydrogen or desalinate seawater. Next Turnbull will criticise drip irrigation because it invariably leads to moist soil.
Another film from Britain caught my attention this week. It was an old newsreel-style update on the 1956 commissioning of Britain’s (and the world’s) first commercial nuclear reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria. Over wonderful black-and-white footage of workers toiling away on gargantuan cement and steel installations, there is a voice-over in well-modulated King’s English that has a hint of derring-do in the delivery.
“Far below, work started on the intricate task of creating the heart of the reactor furnace, to draw heat from the new fuel of the atomic age,” we are told. Yep, they were proud. Here was a damaged and straitened post-war nation justifiably taking pride in its industry and innovation – it built the reactor in less than three years. Compare that to our negativity and self-doubt.
The green left here argues all this technology is beyond us and that we should build wind farms and power lines across the country while we leave the rest of the world to modernise, and just hope for the best. It is a scientific cringe.
In an extraordinary interview on Tuesday Sarah Ferguson on the ABC’s 730 harangued opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien for daring to suggest this nation could deliver a nuclear plant inside 12 years and do it in a costly manner. Apparently, this can happen only overseas.
Yet the same host spoke with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen last November and when he claimed to be turning Australia into a “renewable energy superpower” they both managed to keep straight faces.
Facts and science have lost relevance in favour of ideology and sanctimony.
Science tells us, as the International Energy Agency concludes, that current technologies cannot deliver net zero by 2050. Neither can net zero be delivered without nuclear energy. Yet the government’s pretence continues, and the Greens and the media cheer. Just this week Anthony Albanese hailed a company investing $44m in electric trucks – but taxpayers tipped in almost half ($20m) and no one mentioned none of this would be possible without coal-generated power.
Turnbull and Bowen complain about timelines and costs for nuclear while somewhere underneath the Snowy Mountains lies a bedevilled tunnelling machine called Florence that Turnbull set to work on what was supposed to be a $2bn, five-year project but that will cost $20bn across at least 10 years and will provide only some energy storage if we are lucky.
Around the country communities are objecting to renewable projects and the transmission lines to connect them – legal and political battles are enjoined. Little wonder renewable energy investment, despite being favoured by laws, subsidies and market rules, is starting to drop off.
Bowen is set to trump a long list of failed energy ministers. One of the key considerations on election timing will be energy – can Labor risk an election early next year if there is a threat of blackouts from December through to March?
We know what a zero-emissions environment looks like – South Australia lived it for a day during the 2016 statewide blackout that occurred only because of how vulnerable the renewables push had made them. We saw what a low-emissions world looks like too, during the pandemic – people staying home, empty shopping centres, empty CBDs, empty airports, empty streets and empty skies.
The challenge for the world is keeping businesses open and skies busy while getting emissions to zero. It is unclear whether this is even possible. But it is certainly not possible without nuclear energy.
***************************************
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
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment