Some Scientists Admit Clouds Are Main Controller Of Climate

Modeling the main factors driving climate is riddled with and precluded by observational error. Some scientists now acknowledge this

Clouds are a main factor – even the most important factor – controlling changes in the Earth’s radiation budget, or climate (Sfîcă et al., 2021, Lenaerts et al., 2020), published by the International Journal of Climatology as shown below:

But as scientists acknowledge in a new study (Ademakinwa et al., 2024), substantial errors in calculating cloud effects on climate are inevitable because three-dimensional (3D, vertical and horizontal) cloud affects are reality, and current calculations only consider one-dimensional cloud properties (1D, vertical).

“Failed retrievals” in radiative property simulations of cloud effects occur over 40 percent of the time. This leads to biases, errors amounting to ±36 W/m².

Considering this error margin of 72 W/m² is 360 times larger than the (alleged – Ed) total forcing from CO2 over the span of 10 years (0.2 W/m²) for an imaginary clear-sky-only (cloudless) Earth (Feldman et al., 2015), it is not possible to detect the real-world effect of CO2 forcing in any radiative transfer calculation.

Summary:

“Since clouds in reality have three-dimensional (3D) structures, the simulation of radiative transfer (RT) in clouds should ideally consider the transport of radiation in both vertical and horizontal directions (referred to as ‘3D RT’).”

However, “operational bispectral cloud retrievals are almost exclusively based on the one-dimensional (1D) RT theory that considers only the vertical and ignores the net horizontal transport of radiation.”

Consequently, “the radiative properties of clouds under 3D RT are substantially different from those under 1D RT.”

https://principia-scientific.com/some-scientists-admit-clouds-are-main-controller-of-climate/

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Environmental Groups Seek to Shut Down Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Environmental activists have filed a legal petition with the federal government in hopes of shutting down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which at its peak transported 25 percent of the oil produced in America.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline “is approaching the end of its useful life due to mounting climate change-driven damages to both the aging pipeline infrastructure and the entire Arctic ecosystem, as well as the imperative for the United States to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel-based energy,” the petition states.

The coalition filing the petition includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The petition was filed with Debra Haaland, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Stretching for 800 miles with a diameter of 48 inches, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is among the world’s largest pipelines, delivering oil extracted in Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez, the northernmost ice-free port in North America. It was proposed after massive deposits of oil were discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, and was completed in 1977 at a cost of $8 billion.

Today, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is owned by a consortium of companies including BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Unocal Pipeline Company, and Koch Alaska Pipeline Company.

Because of its size, the pipeline needed approval from the federal government granting it “right of way” through federal lands, which it received under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973.

The coalition of environmental groups now say the environmental analysis under which the pipeline was originally approved neither takes climate change issues into account nor does it “properly examine pipeline operations’ harm to caribou, polar bears, and other vulnerable wildlife and subsistence resources in Alaska,” Pacific Environment stated in a press release.

The group requested “the immediate initiation and completion of a new supplemental environmental impact statement” for the pipeline, adding that “because the only rational conclusion of that analysis will be a managed phasedown of the pipeline, drafting an updated Dismantlement, Removal, and Restoration plan should also promptly commence.”

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy responded by calling the groups “anarchists” in a post on X, while saying their argument contains “glaring logical fallacies.”

Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research and former chief of staff for the House of Representatives Resources Committee, said he expects the petition will be rejected by the Bureau of Land Management, the relevant authority within the Interior Department.

“There is a huge amount at stake, because if the pipeline gets closed, all of the energy on the North Slope of Alaska, and there’s enormous quantities of oil, gas, and coal, basically get cut off,” Mr. Kish told The Epoch Times.

But, he predicts the environmental coalition will take further action.

“When [the Bureau of Land Management] does reject it, they immediately go to court, and then they just go venue shopping for a federal judge. And there are plenty of them who would gladly shut this down,” he said.

‘Sue and Settle’

The efforts to shut down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline may proceed to a phase known as “sue and settle,” he said, in which plaintiffs bring suit against the federal government and the government reaches a settlement with plaintiffs, giving in to their demands.

“It’s one of the biggest loopholes around the Constitution that’s out there, where the government can have some friends sue them and then settle and give them what they wanted,” Mr. Kish said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Interior for a response to the petition, but the department declined to comment.

According to Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources, “Northern Alaska is a world-class petroleum province that includes some of the most prospective onshore regions remaining in North America. Despite this potential, the North Slope remains underexplored.”

While the pipeline at its peak moved more than 2 million barrels of oil per day in 1988, throughput fell to fewer than 500,000 barrels per day as of April 2024.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge likely holds 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil. In January 2021, however, the Biden administration issued an executive order to place a temporary moratorium on federal oil and natural gas leasing in the wildlife refuge.

According to Trans-Alaska Pipeline System owners, the pipeline spends $60 million annually and has dedicated 300 professionals to prevent oil spills through the the Ship Escort Response Vessel System, which escorts oil tankers through the Prince William Sound to the Gulf of Alaska. This includes response vessels if a tanker becomes distressed and pre-stationed oil spill-response equipment for rapid response, as well as personnel and equipment stationed along the pipeline to respond to issues.

In addition to the oil pipeline, there are also efforts to build a natural gas pipeline to transport trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope, and these efforts may also cease if the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System were to be shut down.

The Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a public corporation of the State of Alaska that seeks to develop Alaska’s infrastructure for natural gas distribution, estimates that the North Slope contains about 35 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, but could contain more than 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/environmental-groups-seek-to-shut-down-trans-alaska-pipeline-5675721?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=us-news-center-us-news-center-medium-1

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UK: Green candidate advocates ‘Climate Nuremberg’

The Greens like to portray themselves as the party of hope and change. But what exactly does that entail? An enlightening answer perhaps comes from Joe Taylor, the Green candidate for Battersea. In his zeal to save the planet, he advocates using legal action against those whom he holds responsible for climate change. But not just any ordinary legal action – Taylor has previously argued that ‘Conservative politicians’ have ‘already cast their die and booked their places at the climate Nuremberg.’ Quite the incendiary claim, given that the Nuremberg trials obviously concerned the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime before and during the Second World War…

Having previously tweeted about a ‘climate Nuremberg’, Taylor then allegedly made a similar claim at a hustings on Sunday night. When Mr S got in touch with Taylor to confirm that this was correct, he responded on Twitter/X with a 17-long tweet thread on the subject. He argued that ‘there are several groups who are using international criminal law to seek the prosecution of those who cause mass death, mass suffering and annihilation of low-lying states through climate destruction’ and that ‘It must surely be only a matter of time before some of them are successful.’ ‘What I said at the hustings,’ he added ‘is that we could also be talking about newspapers and magazines who have consistently lied about climate science.’

Cheery stuff – and, er, crucially not a denial of the claim that he specifically referenced Nuremberg at the aforementioned hustings. The Green party press office declined to tell Steerpike whether they supported Taylor’s comments but confirmed that they were investigating the matter. Is this the ‘real hope, real change’ that the party is promising on 4 July?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/green-candidate-advocates-climate-nuremberg/

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Gas plant building boom to fuel renewable revolution, says energy grid chief

Craziness: Greenies don't like coal because it is a fossil fuel. But natural gas is a fossil fuel too! It's a theology that's beyond me. I don't agree that either are "fossil" fuels but that's what Greenies call hydrocarbons

The east coast of Australia will need 13 gigawatts of new gas fired electricity generation - the equivalent of building 26 new gas plants - within the next 25 years to back up the rollout of renewables.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) finding that an extra 13 gigawatts would be needed was contained in its latest energy grid road map, released last week. It also warns that eastern Australia’s gas supply is running so low that emergency diesel fuel supplies would need to be built next to each new gas plant.

AEMO’s warning is a high stakes challenge to the Albanese government and Peter Dutton’s opposition given just one gas plant was completed in the past 10 years, with one more in development at Kurri Kurri in NSW.

With 10 months before the election, neither major party has detailed their plans to build crucial energy infrastructure or boost gas supplies.

AEMO said new gas powered capacity must be constructed between now and 2050 so the fuel source can continue to produce 5 per cent of the total energy mix in the grid. These plants will be needed in addition to a huge boost in batteries and pumped hydro.

The figure of 26 gas plants is extrapolated from AEMO’s report. Assuming that each plant can generate about 0.5 gigawatts, a total of 26 plants is needed to deliver 13 gigawatts of capacity – a tenfold increase on the current rate of construction given only gas plant to be built in the past decade.

The number of gas plants is a conservative figure, given the only plant built in the past 10 years, EnergyAustralia’s Tallawarra B gas plant, was 0.3 gigawatts.

AEMO’s Integrated System Plan found the “optimal development pathway” for the lowest-cost energy grid would be powered almost completely by renewables and backed with gas, batteries and pumped hydro.

The road map said gas would continue to play a small but crucial role. It will back up the vast bulk of renewable electricity under the Albanese government’s ambitious target to more than double the proportion of renewable electricity in the grid to 82 per cent by 2030.

Gas peaking plants can respond almost instantly when needed during periods of extreme demand or periods of low renewable generation, especially in winter when low wind and sunshine coincide with cold weather, and households switch their heaters on all at once.

However, AEMO is warning supplies of the fuel are running out – driven by dwindling reserves from Bass Strait fields, which have been the mainstay of the east coast gas market for decades.

AEMO said in March that the entire east coast gas market would be in annual deficit by 2028 unless new supplies are tapped, forecasting the supply gap to increase over time.

That is why AEMO said new gas plants should be built with onsite storage for extra diesel or hydrogen fuel to keep the turbines running if gas runs out – although it noted that hydrogen was likely to be too expensive in the coming decades.

“A typical gas generator may generate just 5 per cent of its annual potential, but will be critical when it runs. Most of that will be needed to support some winter days of low renewable energy output,” AEMO said.

A spokesperson for the Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government was aiming to boost gas supply under its future gas strategy and that gas power would play a small but significant role in an energy grid dominated by renewables.

“AEMO estimates just 1.4 per cent of our 2050 demand will be met through flexible gas or hydrogen generation to support the transformation to reliable renewables that’s underway,” they said.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison’s “gas-fired recovery” policy vowed to open up new gas fields, including the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory, but no new gas field was developed during that term of government.

Dutton must convince industry and voters he can reverse the record of the Morrison government, when four gigawatts of generation capacity left the grid and only one gigawatt was added.

Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien has promised to release a gas policy before the election. He was contacted for comment.

Not everyone agrees that more gas is needed. Renewable and climate advocates argue that pumped hydro dams coupled with batteries can provide the storage needed to back up renewables, coupled with policies to reduce energy demand with increased energy efficiency.

“A national support program for home batteries will ease the power bill shocks in people’s homes, further stabilise the grid, and cut pollution,” the Smart Energy Council said last week.

‘No shortage’: Producers reject minister’s gas supply claim
Grattan Institute energy and climate policy expert Tony Wood said the government’s policy to encourage more renewables, known as the Capacity Investment Scheme, risked leaving the grid in a mess because gas was excluded.

Wood warned the opposition’s nuclear policy, a plan announced earlier this month to use public funds to build reactors on seven sites across the country, could leave the taxpayer on the hook for inefficient technology that private investors wouldn’t back.

“What we should be saying is we want to design a market with a reliable, low emissions mix and leave it to the market to solve the problem,” he said.

“But we seem to have got ourselves in a situation where the Labor government is arguing more for the private sector and the Coalition is arguing for the public sector investment. How weird is that?

“If the government’s going to decide what the mixture of technology is then we’re in a really bad place.”

The Albanese government approved last week Senex Energy’s long-delayed $1 billion Atlas project in Queensland’s Surat Basin gained federal environmental approval and is set to supply 60 petajoules a year from the end of 2025.

Renewables are driving coal plants out of business at a rapid rate with 90 per cent of the grid’s coal plants expected to be gone by 2035 and all of them shut by 2040. These plants currently supply 60 per cent of electricity.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gas-plant-building-boom-to-fuel-renewable-revolution-says-energy-grid-chief-20240627-p5jpb0.html

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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The ‘greenlash’ is coming – just look at Europe

A “greenlash” is coming, as ­voters throughout the developed world realise how duped they’ve been by years of unscientific, uneconomic nonsense spouted by much of the media and the so-called “experts”.

The marketing genius of referring to wind and solar power as “renewable”, when the associated infrastructure needs to be replaced more often than for nuclear or fossil fuel power stations, is wearing off.

The recent European parliament elections should be a wake-up call for radical climate change evangelists. In France, support for local Green parties more than halved to 5.5 per cent. In Germany, it collapsed almost 50 per cent to 12 per cent.

Among voters under 25, the German Greens did worse than the so-called “hard right” Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, as veteran US political analyst Ruy Teixeira pointed out last week.

“There’s no doubt concerns about immigration were key to the right populist surge in these elections, but the role of backlash against green policies should not be underestimated,” he said.

In 2019, just five years ago, the Greens did seven times better than the AfD. That’s a political earthquake if there ever was one.

“Voters really don’t want to be forced, directly or indirectly, to get an electric vehicle when they’re perfectly happy with their internal combustion car,” Teixeira added. “Rather than fighting climate change, voter’s strong preference is for cheap, reliable, abundant ­energy.”

In the US, support for nuclear energy for domestic power surged from 43 per cent in 2020 to 57 per cent in 2023 after flatlining for years, according to Pew Research, published in August last year.

The prospect of even higher energy prices at a time when prices in general have risen at least 20 per cent and house prices even more – all directly as a result of rampant money printing and stimulus during the Covid-19 pandemic – is proving politically toxic.

The number of nuclear reactors in the US, which provide around 20 per cent of the country’s electricity, declined from a peak of 111 in the late 1980s to 93. But as the anti-nuclear hysteria wears off, more reactors are being proposed. Now the Biden administration has embraced nuclear power as the only realistic way to provide reliable zero-carbon dioxide energy.

France, which has safely produced the bulk of its electricity via nuclear fission for years, has announced it is building at least six and up to 14 new nuclear power stations in coming years. India is building at least 18 by the early 2030s, and China is planning at least 100 new reactors by 2035.

Yes, new nuclear power stations will be expensive until the tempo of production increased and local industry climbed the learning curve. In any case, the cost argument is laughable given state and federal governments just sprayed around $400bn of borrowed money against the wall during Covid-19 for a cumulative excess deaths outcome that was scarcely different from Sweden’s, a country that spent barely anything by comparison.

As for safety, far more people tragically died at a South Korean electric battery manufacturing plant last week, at least 22, than have died from nuclear power related accidents since the poorly run and designed Chernobyl plant broke down in the 1980s.

As eminent Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil pointed out in a recent essay, it hasn’t even started – despite all the trillions spent. “Since the world began to focus on the need to end the combustion of ­fossil fuels we have not made the slightest progress in the goal of ­absolute global decarbonisation,” he points out.

Since 1997, fossil fuel consumption in absolute terms has increased 55 per cent. Its share of the total has declined from 86 per cent to 82 per cent. “All we have managed to do halfway through the ­intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline,” Smil writes.

For affluent nations to achieve the net-zero carbon goals outlined in the international treaties they have signed, they would have to commit to annual expenditure of at least 20 per cent of GDP, for decades. To put it in perspective this is even more than the Soviet Union spent for a few years in its existential struggle to defeat Germany in World War II.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/europes-electoral-earthquake-sounds-warning-for-greens/news-story/42814927c4157b5898e0243b9ec03bc4

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No, Canada’s Not On Fire!

Environment Canada has pumped out a Xeet with the summer temperature forecast map of Canada covered in flaming orange red almost from coast to coast to coast, with a thin band of blue/grey down the West Coast.

They also promise that within a week of an extreme hot temperature event, Environment Canada will be able to provide attribution to human-causation.

As Dr. Madhav Khandekar has shown in public presentations, extreme weather events are integral to climate; they are not evidence per se of climate change.

Climate change is measured in periods of 30, 50, 100 and millennial time-scales. Thus, when we look historically at the Holocene Epoch (the last 10,000 years) there is a clear change in climate during the Medieval Optimum, a warm period of stable weather and abundant crop growth, from 900-1300 AD.

By the early 1300’s, weather patterns changed dramatically. Year-long periods of heavy rain hit Britain and northern Europe.

Temperatures cooled, crops failed, and chaotic weather conditions set in. Things got much worse from 1560-1630, a period said to be marked by volcanic activity, only restabilizing about 1860 until today.

Weather extremes were so frequent and bizarre, that thousands of (mostly) women were burned at the stake for the alleged crime of ‘Weather Cooking’ with the help of satan, as reported by historians Wolfgang Behringer and Jacek Wijaczka.

As astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas said in her presentation on the subject, the witch-burning was “…an example of fear and ignorance of extreme weather events in the Little Ice Age.”

Witch burning is an example of attribution of climate change to human-causation, and today’s Environment Canada initiative is on the scale of such superstition.

Only now the witch-burning will occur in corporations, largely due to them being required to make formal climate-risk disclosures to investors and securities authorities.

What do I mean?

Canada is about to implement the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) requirements on Climate-related Risk Disclosure (aka “The Mother of All Sustainability Reporting Standards”).

This will require corporations to count every carbon dioxide/equivalent greenhouse gas molecule related to their operational use, emissions on site, and emissions downstream at the user level. By doing so, they will be providing the extreme weather event ‘attribution’ hunters with perfect grist for the lawfare mill.

As CBC’s “What on Earth?” reported on June 13, 2024, “This scientist helps link climate change to disasters. That’s helping victims sue.”

By reporting a corporation’s GHG emissions in such detail as required by the CSSB, the weather-attribution hunters will be handed their so-called ‘evidence’ on a platter; in fact, a corporation’s own good faith.

Soon-to-be mandatory public reporting will be used to draw and quarter any company every time some individual or community is victimized by a flood, wildfire, heavy snowfall, tornado, severe thunderstorm, damaging hail, killing frost, or blazing heat dome.

Long-time climate policy analyst Roger Pielke, Jr. and colleagues have done yeoman’s work exposing the misuse of implausible climate scenarios as if ‘business-as-usual.’ He doesn’t stand for nonsensical attributions of wildfires or extreme weather events as human-caused.

Roger Pielke, Jr. explained in a recent post, “…for those who believe that climate policy can be used to detectably affect the weather that you or I experience.

That is simply a fantasy borne from today’s overheated claims of attribution and the fanciful idea that emissions are a disaster control knob.

In the lifetimes of everyone reading this and our children’s lifetimes, the attribution of changes in extreme weather to climate policy at high levels of confidence is not expected to be possible. Don’t take it from me, that’s straight from the IPCC.”

“But…but… muh killer heat dome!” climate activists will cry.

Caused by a Mobile Polar Anticyclone. Aka Mother Nature.

“But…but… high winds and May wildfires in 2023!” cry the climate activists.

An Omega block – also due to a Mobile Polar Anticyclone. Aka Mother Nature.

“But…but… Calgary’s 2013 catastrophic flood,” cry the climate activists.

A rare but known meteorological event, my friends.

“But…but… Guterres said it’s global boiling!” cry the climate activists.

Not human-caused, but Hunga Tonga. Expect at least 5 more years of warming or strange weather due to Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption pumping 146 metric megatons of water into the stratosphere like a geyser, based on a new study published in Nature Climate Change.

Canadians have been paying huge carbon taxes on the promise by the federal government that this will somehow stop extreme weather events. Now we know it was all just expensive witchcraft.

https://principia-scientific.com/stirling-no-canadas-not-on-fire/

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School Bus Mechanic Warns of ‘Economic Disaster’ in Deploying Electric Buses Nationwide

In the rush to replace diesel school buses with electric ones, the U.S. educational system is financially endangering future generations, says a school bus mechanic in Colorado.

“Electric is just going to be an economic disaster for the entire country,” said Nick de Haan, who has inspected, repaired and maintained school buses since 2005. He requested the school district he works for to remain unnamed.

“I’m not against doing my part for the environment, but I think we’re being pushed into this before it’s financially feasible.”

De Haan called for a closer look at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) clean school bus program, which recently awarded $900 million to 530 school districts in an effort to replace 3,400 diesel buses with electric ones.

“Politicians are pushing to upgrade, but they don’t really think about the back end that needs to be done,” he told The Lion.

‘Double-edged sword’

De Haan joins a growing list of journalists and school officials raising maintenance and safety concerns over these buses. Perhaps the most important issue involves the electric batteries, which require substantial monitoring.

As de Haan lives in a high-elevation area at 8,000 feet above sea level, he says such conditions have repercussions for any type of battery.

“The colder it gets, the less amperage you have available,” de Haan said. “And so, the batteries actually have to be heated, or climate-controlled.”

As a result, all electric buses come with a diesel heater provided by Webasto, an automotive supplier de Haan says often equips school buses.

“These Webasto diesel-fired heaters literally heat the cooling system with the sole purpose of heating up the batteries and maintaining them at a specific temperature, whatever the engineers have designated,” he said, adding a typical temperature is around 50 degrees.

“If they’re stored outside and you’re in single digits overnight, that heater’s running all night to keep those batteries at the optimal temperature.”

Regions with warmer temperatures such as Arizona face the opposite problem – electric batteries need to be cooled before they are usable, de Haan explains. “They have a higher chance of failure rate. It’s a double-edged sword unless you have indoor parking for these buses, which is financially irresponsible.”

Strains on the electrical grid

In addition to parking challenges, other important utility upgrades involve boosting the current electrical grid.

Utility companies in de Haan’s school district have agreed to upgrade their facilities to handle additional requirements for e-buses. However, they added a stipulation to pull electricity from the buses during high-demand times for power.

Such demand times during the day could leave bus drivers stranded if they haven’t finished charging batteries for their afternoon drive.

“If the utility companies pull power during the day and those batteries are not at 100% when they get ready to leave in the afternoon, they’re kind of up the creek essentially,” de Haan told The Lion.

As 67% of the EPA’s funding will go to school districts in low-income, tribal and rural communities, these districts often have the least-developed infrastructure to handle e-buses.

“In order for the bus to be viable, it would need a fast charger,” de Haan argues. “And from what I understand, the charging requirements require a lot of amperage. For keeping five buses or more, you’re talking about a major upgrade to the infrastructure at your location. The utility company is not going to do that for free. And so, the districts would be responsible for that.”

De Haan cited one school district in the Denver metro area that ordered about 12 e-buses, which sat in the school’s parking lot for two years until enough infrastructure developed to support them.

A similar incident occurred in Philadelphia, where 25 e-buses that debuted during the 2019 Democratic National Convention remain unused “due to breakdowns and lack of parts,” according to GovTech.com.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/06/school-bus-mechanic-warns-economic-disaster-electric-buses/

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Windless nights make net zero impossible

It is very simple. The cost of storing electricity is so huge it makes getting through a single windless night under a net zero wind, solar, and storage plan economically impossible.

This is especially true of cold nights where blackouts can be deadly. I recently made a legislative proposal to Pennsylvania along these lines so let’s use them as our example, keeping in mind that this is true everywhere.

Pennsylvania peaks at around 30,000 MW so let’s consider a windless night with a constant need of just 20,000 MW. There should be lots of these, especially in winter. Cold snaps are typically due to windless high pressure systems of arctic air with lots of overnight radiative cooling.

In the world of solar, “nights” are 16 hours or more long since solar systems just generate a lot of energy for 8 hours a day. It is likely less in a Pennsylvania winter where it is dark at 4 pm.

So, to get through the night we need to have stored at least 20,000 MW times 16 hours or 320,000 MWh of juice. For simplicity, we ignore all sorts of technical details that would make this number larger, like input-output losses.

The present capital cost of grid scale batteries is around $600,000 per MWh. Again this ignores all sorts of technical factors that make that number larger, like buildings, transmission, etc.

Simple arithmetic says this works out to an incredible $192 billion dollars just for the batteries. Clearly this is economically impossible. In round numbers two hundred billion dollars just to get through the night! Wind and solar plus batteries simply does not work. Even if the cost magically dropped 90% it would still be an impossible $20 billion just to buy the batteries.

This is so simple one wonders why none of the utilities, public utility commissions, independent system operators, and reliability agencies ever thought of it. Or maybe they did and decided not to mention it.

Moreover, on really cold nights the need for electricity can easily get to peak demand, which would require more like $300 billion in batteries. Then, too, there might be a cloudy or even snowy day pushing the need to 16 + 8 + 16 = 40 hours. Or several cloudy windless days at which point we are talking about a trillion dollars or more.

Clearly these simple numbers make net zero power based on wind, solar and batteries impossibly expensive. Other forms of storage are likely no cheaper. The reality is we are talking about storing an enormous amount of energy which simply cannot be done. The obvious solution is to have lots of reliable generation.

Which brings me to my legislative proposal which is also very simple. It merely requires the utilities to figure out how to meet the need for electricity on brutally cold windless nights that are likely to occur.

You can read it here. The title is “Avoiding deadly blackouts” because in severe cold, a blackout can kill people. In the horrible Texas blackout estimates run to over 700 deaths. Cold kills.

In fact, this is a requirement for today, not just some distant net zero fantasy. We are already to the point where a lot of States could not keep the heat on if they got a severe cold snap like they have already had in the past.

In “Avoiding deadly blackouts” I point out that Pennsylvania and the rest of PJM narrowly avoided blacking out in winter storm Elliot. On paper, they had a 30% margin of safety which was wiped out by the cold. But Elliot was actually mild compared to several earlier severe cold spells. We must prepare for these extreme events.

We use a tremendous amount of electricity which net zero cannot possibly provide on windless nights. But we are already under severe threat. The States must act now to prevent deadly blackouts. Storage is not the answer. We need reliable generation, much of which will be fossil fueled.

https://www.cfact.org/2024/06/10/windless-nights-make-net-zero-impossible/

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Overlooked Impact Of Geothermal Heat On Thwaites Glacier

I have been pointing to geothermal issues in Western Antarctica for at least 10 years now so it is good to see someone else taking it up -- JR



Written by Dr. Matthew Wielicki

Heat flow in the geologic sense refers to the movement of thermal energy from the interior of the Earth to its surface

This heat originates from two primary sources: the residual heat from the planet’s formation and the heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes within the Earth’s mantle and crust.

When Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, it was a hot, molten sphere.

Over time, the planet began to cool and solidify, but a significant amount of this primordial heat is still retained within the Earth’s interior.

This residual heat continues to flow outward from the core towards the surface, contributing to the overall geothermal gradient.

Within the Earth’s mantle and crust, certain isotopes undergo radioactive decay, a process that releases thermal energy. Key isotopes contributing to this process include uranium-238, thorium-232, and potassium-40.

As these isotopes decay, they release heat, which is a significant source of the Earth’s internal thermal energy. This radioactive decay is ongoing, providing a continuous supply of heat that helps drive various geological processes such as mantle convection, plate tectonics, and volcanic activity.

On average, the heat flow from the Earth’s interior is around 70 milliwatts per square meter (mW/m²) across the continents and about 105 mW/m² across the ocean basins. However, these average values mask significant variations influenced by geological features and tectonic activity.

In areas with high tectonic activity, such as mid-ocean ridges and volcanic regions, heat flow can be considerably higher. For example, mid-ocean ridges, where tectonic plates are diverging, allow hot mantle material to rise closer to the Earth’s surface, resulting in heat flow values that can exceed 200 mW/m².

Similarly, volcanic regions exhibit elevated heat flow due to the presence of magma near the surface.

Conversely, older and more stable regions, such as continental cratons, tend to have lower heat flow values. Cratons are ancient and stable parts of the continental lithosphere that have cooled significantly over geological time.

In these regions, heat flow values can be as low as 30-40 mW/m² due to the thick, insulating lithospheric mantle that limits the upward movement of heat.

Geological structures such as sedimentary basins, mountain ranges, and fault zones also contribute to the variability in heat flow. Sedimentary basins, which often contain thick sequences of insulating sediments, can have lower heat flow compared to surrounding areas.

In contrast, mountain ranges, formed by tectonic compression and uplift, can have higher heat flow due to the presence of radioactive minerals and the relatively thin lithosphere.

This variability in heat flow is crucial for understanding the thermal structure of the Earth’s crust and mantle, as well as for applications such as geothermal energy exploration, tectonic studies, and the assessment of thermal regimes in different geological settings.

With the recent discovery of many more volcanoes under Western Antarctica surely studies examining the melting of the so-called ‘Doomsday’ Glacier would consider heat flow.

One recent study published in Nature Communications presents findings that challenge the common narrative that ‘GHG’s are responsible for melting in Western Antarctica, particularly under the Thwaites Glacier.

The study reports heat flux values exceeding 110 mW/m² beneath the glacier, which is significantly higher than the global averages for continents. This high heat flux is likely contributing to the melting of the Thwaites Glacier, an aspect often overlooked in discussions focusing solely on atmospheric warming.

The figure below from the Nature Communications study illustrates the spatial variability in geothermal heat flux under the Thwaites Glacier, showing values well over 110 mW/m² in some regions.

This high geothermal heat flux is a critical factor in the observed melting patterns and dynamics of the glacier. However, this aspect is often ignored or downplayed in broader climate narratives.

However, another article published in Nature focuses on subglacial waters beneath Thwaites and their contributions to ice melt, yet it does not mention the impact of geothermal heat flux.

Instead, it attributes the melting primarily to oceanic and atmospheric conditions. This discrepancy highlights the importance of considering all relevant factors in glacial melt dynamics, including geothermal heat flux, to understand and predict the behavior of ice sheets accurately.

The mainstream climate narrative, often driven by the “climate industrial complex,” tends to focus almost exclusively on ‘GHG’ emissions as the primary driver of global warming. This perspective is frequently echoed in alarmist headlines that sensationalize the impact of ‘GHG’s while ignoring other significant factors like geothermal heat.

The findings from the Nature Communications study on the Thwaites Glacier provide a compelling case for the importance of considering geothermal heat flux in discussions about glacial melt.

Ignoring such significant contributions can lead to incomplete or misleading conclusions about the causes and future trends of glacial melting.

Will the heat flux beneath Thwaites Glacier be affected by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels?

It is crucial to maintain a balanced perspective that includes all relevant factors, including much more relevant ones like geothermal heat. By doing so, we can make better-informed policy decisions.

The tendency of the climate industrial complex to focus narrowly on ‘GHG’s at the expense of other factors undermines the complexity of climate science.

It is leading to public skepticism and mistrust in climate research. For a more comprehensive understanding of the climate system, it is essential to integrate data on geothermal heat flux and other natural processes alongside ‘human-induced changes’.

https://principia-scientific.com/overlooked-impact-of-geothermal-heat-on-thwaites-glacier/

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Urgent recall for luxury Mercedes-Benz EQE and EQS electric vehicle models over worrying loss of power issue

Mercedes-Benz is recalling over 1,400 of its luxury electric vehicles after discovering a serious battery fault that can cause a sudden loss of power while driving.

The recall issued on Tuesday affects 1,465 Mercedes-Benz EQE and EQS electric vehicle models sold in Australia, which can cost more than $200,000.

A similar battery fault was discovered in the same vehicles in China and the United States and it can cause an abrupt halt of propulsion.

'A software issue in the battery management system may cause deactivation of the high-voltage battery,' the recall notice said.

'A loss of propulsion whilst driving could increase the risk of an accident causing injury or death to vehicle occupants.'

The recall comes only three months after a recall of 1,983 Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Australia, including EQE and EQS models, over a manufacturing fault in their fuse boxes.

Affected vehicle owners are encouraged to contact their nearest Mercedes-Benz dealership who will rectify the fault without charge.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13566223/recall-luxury-mercedes-benz-eqe-eqs-electric-vehicle-models.html

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Greenwashing Kamala Harris: How the Veep Casts Herself as an Environmental Justice Crusader

Vice President Kamala Harris has long cast herself as a fearless pioneer of efforts to fight for social and environmental justice.

“When I was elected DA of San Francisco,” Harris told a gathering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta last year, “I started the first environmental justice unit of any DA’s office in the country.”

In her telling, the San Francisco District Attorney formed the special environmental justice unit in the early 2000s especially to protect the long-neglected community of Bayview Hunters Point, a predominantly African American and impoverished part of the city, which had become “a dumping ground for people from other places.”

In dozens of speeches and interviews in recent years, Harris has bragged that she went “after polluters” and protected minority communities in San Francisco in novel ways as a local prosecutor.

The narrative has become a bedrock of Harris’ political identity. She featured her DA environmental justice crimes unit in her first statewide television advertisement and she rarely missed an opportunity to tout the history during her presidential bid, during which she promised similar initiatives if elected.

But records from the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and interviews with local environmental advocates point to a different, far less ambitious record.

“We’re unaware of any major or semi-major environmental justice work done by Harris in Bayview Hunters Point, including on the Hunters Point Shipyard Superfund site,” said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, a progressive watchdog group that seeks to “to promote environmental, social, economic and climate justice.”

Steve Castleman, an attorney with UC Berkeley’s Environmental Law Clinic, who has worked on urban pollution issues in the Bay Area, also noted that he did not know of any significant Harris environmental justice action as DA.

Far from targeting powerful corporate interests, Harris’ environmental justice unit appears to have filed only a few lawsuits, all against small-time defendants. The targets included a young man who conducted illegal smog checks at a small auto body shop in the city and a left-leaning community newspaper accused of illegally dumping leftover ink in an abandoned lot. Another defendant charged by the unit was a small construction company accused of using adulterated concrete. The major industrial polluters of San Francisco were left untouched under Harris’ watch during her two terms that ended in 2010.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/25/greenwashing_kamala_harris_how_the_veep_misleadlingly_casts_herself_as_an_environmental_justice_crusader_1039776.html

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Australia: Feds approve gas expansion plans

Senex Energy, owned by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart and South Korean steel maker Posco International, has been given the go-ahead for its $1 billion plan to expand its gas fields near Wandoan, about 400 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.

The company had put the project on hold in December 2022 in response to the federal government's intervention in the gas market.

However, it said the development would proceed after receiving all the major approvals needed.

"We now have the necessary investment confidence and regulatory approvals to proceed with our expansion and deliver sorely needed natural gas supply to the east coast market," said Senex Energy CEO Ian Davies.

"This announcement is especially timely given the current pressures that the east coast energy system is experiencing, particularly in southern states."

The expansion is set to produce enough electricity to power more than 2.7 million homes each year, equivalent to more than 10 per cent of the east coast's annual domestic gas requirements.

It comes after a warning from the Australian Energy Market Operator about a gas shortage across southern states.

The federal government said the decision to approve the project was lawful.

"This project will primarily contribute domestic gas supply to households and Australian manufacturing – including for glass, bricks, cement and food packaging," a spokesperson for Ms Plibersek said.

"Under Labor, we've already seen a 25 per cent increase in renewable energy in our grid. We are ticking off renewable energy projects at record rates, outstripping coal and gas projects seven to one."

Mr Davies said the expansion would begin delivering 60 petajoules of gas to the market by the end of 2025 and would create more than 900 jobs over the project's lifetime.

"The expansion will drive a significant boost in natural gas supply for Australia, demonstrating Queensland is continuing to do the heavy lifting for the east coast," he said.

The project was approved with 75 conditions, including a prohibition on the discharge of coal seam gas-produced water to surface water and a ban on clearing any koala foraging and breeding habitat.

The company has also been ordered to implement a water monitoring and management plan to watch for issues such as subsidence where land sinks.

Environmental lobby group Lock the Gate said it was concerned the project could lead to further subsidence across the region.

"The more the gas fields spread, the more problems of subsidence and groundwater loss and depletion we're going to see," said member Georgina Woods.

Ms Woods said the project's approval showed Australia continued to put off the hard decisions on transitioning the economy away from fossil fuels.

"If fossil fuels continue to expand, Australia has lost its way in its climate change action," she said.

"The job (of transitioning the economy) is very difficult, but it has to done because the consequences for Queensland from global warning will be catastrophic."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-26/senex-gas-plans-approved/104022936

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Net Zero Will Prevent Almost Zero Warming, Say Three Top Atmospheric Scientists

Recent calculations by the distinguished atmospheric scientists Richard Lindzen, William Happer and William van Wijngaarden suggest that if the entire world eliminated net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 it would avert warming of an almost unmeasurable 0.07°C.

Even assuming the climate modelled feedbacks and temperature opinions of the politicised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the rise would be only 0.28°C.

Year Zero would have been achieved along with the destruction of economic and social life for eight billion people on Planet Earth.

“It would be hard to find a better example of a policy of all pain and no gain,” note the scientists.

In the U.K., the current General Election is almost certain to be won by a party that is committed to outright warfare on hydrocarbons.

The Labour party will attempt to ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid by the end of the decade without any realistic instant backup for unreliable wind and solar except oil and gas. Britain is sitting on huge reserves of hydrocarbons but new exploration is to be banned.

It is hard to think of a more ruinous energy policy, but the Conservative governing party is little better. Led by the hapless May, a woman over-promoted since her time running the education committee on Merton Council, through to Buffo Boris and Washed-Out Rishi.

Its leaders have drunk the eco Kool-Aid fed to them by the likes of Roger Hallam, Extinction Rebellion and the Swedish Doom Goblin. Adding to the mix in the new Parliament will be a likely 200 new ‘Labour’ recruits with university degrees in buggerallology and CVs full of parasitical non-jobs in the public sector.

Hardly any science knowledge between them, they even believe that they can spend billions of other people’s money to capture CO2 – perfectly good plant fertiliser – and bury it in the ground.

As a privileged, largely middle class group, they have net zero understanding of how a modern industrial society works, feeds itself and creates the wealth that pays their unnecessary wages.

All will be vying to save the planet and stop a temperature rise that is barely a rounding error on any long-term view.

They plan to cull the farting cows, sow wild flowers where food once grew, take away efficient gas boilers and internal combustion cars and stop granny visiting her grandchildren in the United States.

On a wider front, banning hydrocarbons will remove almost everything from a modern society including many medicines, building materials, fertilisers, plastics and cleaning products. It might be shorter and easier to list essential items where hydrocarbons are absent than produce one where they are present.

Anyone who dissents from their absurd views is said to be in league with fossil fuel interests, a risible suggestion given that they themselves are dependent on hydrocarbon producers to sustain their enviable lifestyles.

Unlike politicians the world over who rant about fire and brimstone, Messrs Lindzen, Happer and van Wijngaarden pay close attention to actual climate observations and analyses of the data.

Since it is impossible to determine how much of the gentle warming of the last two centuries is natural or caused by higher levels of CO2, they assume a ‘climate sensitivity’ – rise in temperature when CO2 doubles in the atmosphere – of 0.8°C.

This is about four times less than IPCC estimates, which lacks any proof. Understandably the IPCC does not make a big issue of this lack of crucial proof at the heart of the so-called 97% anthropogenic ‘consensus’.

The 0.8°C estimate is based on the idea that greenhouse gases like CO2 ‘saturate’ at certain levels and their warming effect falls off a logarithmic cliff. This idea has the advantage of explaining climate records that stretch back 600 million years since CO2 levels have been up to 10-15 times higher in the past compared with the extremely low levels observed today.

There is little if any long term causal link between temperature and CO2 over time. In the immediate past record there is evidence that CO2 rises after natural increases in temperature as the gas is released from warmer oceans.

Any argument that the Earth has a ‘boiling’ problem caused by the small CO2 contribution that humans make by using hydrocarbons is ‘settled’ by an invented political crisis, but is backed by no reliable observational data.

Most of the fear-mongering is little more than a circular exercise using computer models with improbable opinions fed in, and improbable opinions fed out.

The three scientists use a simple formula using base-two logarithms to assess the CO2 influence on the atmosphere based on decades of laboratory experiments and atmospheric data collection.

They demonstrate how trivial the effect on global temperature will be if humanity stops using hydrocarbons. After years wasted listening to Greta Thunberg, the message is starting to penetrate the political arena.

In the United States, the Net Zero project is dead in the water if Trump wins the Presidential election. In Europe, the ruling political elites, both national and supranational, are retreating on their Net Zero commitments.

Reality is starting to dawn and alternative political groupings emerge to challenge the comfortable insanity of Net Zero virtue signalling. In New Zealand, the nightmare of the Ardern years is being expunged with a roll back of Net Zero policies ahead of possible electricity black outs.

Only in Britain it seems are citizens prepared to elect a Government obsessed with self-inflicted poverty and deindustrialisation.

The only major political grouping committed to scrapping Net Zero is the Nigel Farage-led Reform party and although it could beat the ruling Conservatives into second place in the popular vote.

It is unlikely to secure many Parliamentary seats under the U.K.’s first-past-the-post electoral system. Only a few years ago the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who thinks some women have penises, and his imbecilic Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, were bending the knee to an organisation that wanted to cut funding for the police and fling open the borders.

The new British Parliament will have plenty of people who still support Net Zero and assorted woke woo woo, and the great tragedy is that they will still be found across most of the represented political parties.

https://principia-scientific.com/net-zero-will-prevent-almost-zero-warming-say-three-top-atmospheric-scientists/

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UK: Net Zero Watch welcomes British Leftist Net Zero retreat

Net Zero Watch has welcomed Labour’s decision to abandon the Conservative 2035 deadline for banning installation of gas boilers in new build homes. But the campaign group warned that Ed Miliband’s pledge to focus on incentives instead of targets still means higher heating bills.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

Ed Miliband’s incentives could be getting gas boiler owners to subsidise heat pump purchases for other people, or getting them to pay for the billions of pounds of windfarm subsidies. It probably means both. This is unavoidable under Net Zero. Any party pledged to decarbonise is going to give you higher heating bills.

Mr Miliband’s decision is Labour’s second u-turn on Net Zero. In February, it abandoned a pledge to spend £28 billion per year on Net Zero measures:

Mr Montford said:

Net Zero is becoming a poisonous concept in the minds of the public. Expect the u-turns to come thick and fast in future.

https://www.netzerowatch.com/campaigns/view-email/cHs6rNmBDFhrRWxn4vKSRmproR3WpBpTIU0wz_9glpe2qnqU0fJ85kk6ysBEs5AxYxD9N9UtH2unXQGiv0uqK_txZrVvMq0x7V1gPbaKCbHC_87fz8V253bjuXZqInNgtPfQGTv_K5dwl4oRa2-FAhka-laRiYjCcFyWng== ?

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EU drafts plan to exempt long-haul flights from new emissions rules

The European Commission has drafted plans to exempt long-haul flights from rules on monitoring their non-CO2 emissions, after international carriers lobbied for an opt-out, documents seen by Reuters showed.

The EU is developing plans to require airlines to track and report their contribution to climate change from January 2025 – not only from carbon dioxide, but also soot, nitrogen oxides and water vapour.

Airlines’ non-CO2 emissions have at least as important an impact on global warming as their CO2 output, according to the EU’s aviation safety authority.

A draft Commission proposal for the new rules, seen by Reuters, would exclude international flights – defined by the EU as those departing or landing in Europe from non-European destinations – from the emissions disclosure rules for two years, limiting them until 2027 to only flights within Europe.

“Such reporting shall only be required in respect of routes involving two aerodromes located in the European Economic Area,” it said, adding that flights from the EEA to Switzerland or Britain would also be covered.

It did not give a rationale for the exclusion. The exemption mirrors current EU rules that require airlines to disclose and pay fees for their CO2 emissions produced on flights only inside Europe, although those rules are due to be reassessed in 2026.

The proposed new rules have split the industry, with lobby group the International Air Transport Association seeking an exemption for long-haul flights, while low-cost European carriers Ryanair and Easyjet say all flights – including long-haul international trips – should be included.

IATA has said it is not currently possible to accurately monitor a flight’s non-CO2 emissions, and that the EU’s emissions monitoring requirements should be voluntary and exempt international flights.

“Any intention of expanding the scope to extra-EU international flights would raise legal concerns,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said in a letter to the European Commission in April, seen by Reuters.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/aviation/news/eu-drafts-plan-to-exempt-long-haul-flights-from-new-emissions-rules/

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The ‘Climate Crisis’ Fades Out

The 2015 Paris Agreement aspired to “reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the latter half of this century. The centerpiece of the strategy was a global transition to low-emission energy systems.

After nearly a decade, it’s timely to ask how that energy transition is progressing and how it might fare in the future. A useful framework for that assessment is the “issue attention cycle” described in 1972 by Brookings Institution economist Anthony Downs. The five phases of that cycle mark the rise, peak, and decline in public salience of major environmental (and other) problems. It’s spooky to see how closely the energy transition has so far followed Downs’s description.

During Phase I, the issue of “global warming” bubbled among climate scientists through the 1980s with little public attention. Phase II began about 35 years ago when the issue—eventually rebranded “climate change”—burst into public consciousness, with global media coverage growing tenfold over the past two decades. Those years were marked by a fervor for doing something to “solve” the problem.

But the significant global emissions reductions envisioned in Paris are now a fantasy. Emissions grew to an all-time high in 2023, with consumption of coal, oil and natural gas each near record levels, driven in large part by the energy needs of the developing world. Despite global renewable-energy investment of almost $12 trillion in the nine years ending in 2023, fossil fuels continue to provide about 80% of the world’s energy. The latest United Nations emissions report projects that emissions in 2030 will be almost twice as high as a level compatible with the Paris aspiration.

The challenges in reducing emissions have long been evident to the few who cared to understand demographics, economics and energy technologies. As more people have come to appreciate those factors, there are signs that the “climate crisis” has entered Downs’s Phase III, when ambitious goals collide with techno-economic realities.

In Europe, consumers are rebelling against measures to reduce emissions (fiascoes of home heating requirements had electoral consequences in the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands), and industry is decamping in search of cheaper energy. Despite generous subsidies, U.S. deployment of low-emission technologies can’t meet near-term goals, let alone the projected surge in electricity demand owing to data centers, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. “Green” investments aren’t yielding competitive financial returns, and the annual cost of a 30-year decarbonization effort, estimated to be upward of 5% of the global economy, weighs on national budgets. Simultaneously, the scientific rationale for the transition is weakening as expectations of future warming are moderating.

What could revive this flagging transition? Perhaps connections between human influences on climate and the disastrous effects of more frequent severe weather. But despite claims to the contrary, the U.N. finds such connections haven’t emerged for most types of weather extremes. The complexity of climate science makes it unlikely that will happen anytime soon. The transition could also be reinvigorated by the development and deployment of reliable, cost-competitive low-emission energy systems. But there are fundamental reasons why energy systems change slowly.

The energy transition’s purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial. The world has many more urgent needs, including the provision of reliable and affordable energy to all. It’s therefore likely that Downs’s Phase IV will begin as “climate fatigue” sets in, “climate action” fades into the background, and public attention shifts to a different perceived threat (such as artificial intelligence). This would be followed by the long twilight of Phase V, when the issue of decarbonization flares sporadically, but the associated regulations and institutions endure, such as carbon pricing, border adjustments, and clean power standards.

U.S. and European governments are trying to induce an energy transition by building or expanding organizations and programs favoring particular “clean” technologies, including wind and solar generation, carbon capture, hydrogen production and vehicle electrification. Promoting technological innovation is a worthy endeavor, but such efforts face serious challenges as costs and disruptions grow without tangible progress in reducing local, let alone global, emissions. Retreats from aggressive goals are already under way in Europe, with clear signs of mandate fatigue. The climbdown will be slower in the U.S., where subsidies create constituencies that make it more difficult to reverse course.

We should welcome, not bemoan, the energy transition’s passage through the issue-attention cycle. It means that today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies will be abandoned, making room for a more thoughtful and informed approach to responsibly providing for the world’s energy needs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-crisis-fades-out-5944bd44

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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CNN Goes ‘Mann Overboard’ on Eastern U.S. Heatwave

From Chris Martz

CNN’s Brianna Keilar interviewed their number one climate czar, Dr. Michael Mann from UPenn, yesterday, to discuss how this week’s “brutal” and “unprecedented” heatwave is being fueled by global warming and is a taste of our future.

“𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗴𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗽𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. 𝗪𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿-𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘁.”

Mann then goes off on an activist sales pitch, demonizing affordable and reliable energy consumption, which he himself benefits from:

“𝗔𝗻𝗱, 𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗳 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁; 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝗳𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗹 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹𝘀.”

Someone should tell these people that this is what a glimpse of SUMMER looks like. There is nothing unprecedented or all that unusual about this heatwave. Not by summer standards nor by June standards.

Let’s look at the NWS forecast through Sunday for the same cities CNN plotted on their WSI graphic (seen above) at the 12-second mark in the video:

Atlanta, Georgia:
• Tue 6/18: 89° / record: 101° (1944)
• Wed 6/19: 89° / record: 99° (1933)
• Thu 6/20: 90° / record: 98° (1933)
• Fri 6/21: 93° / 98° (1933)
• Sat 6/22: 97° / 98° (1964 and 2022)
• Sun 6/23: 97° / 99° (1930 and 1944)
• Mon: 6/25: 95° / 99° (1930 and 1988)

Chicago, Illinois:
• Tue 6/18: 93° / record: 98° (1954)
• Wed 6/19: 95° / record: 102° (1953)
• Thu 6/20: 89° / record: 104° (1988)
• Fri 6/21: 92° / record: 101° (1988)
• Sat 6/22: 96° / record: 97° (1988)
• Sun 6/23: 86° / record: 97° (1930)
• Mon 6/24: 85° / record: 97° (1937 and 1953)

New York City, NY:
• Tue 6/18: 89° / record: 95° (1929)
• Wed 6/19: 91° / record: 98° (1994)
• Thu 6/20: 94° / record: 98° (1923)
• Fri 6/21: 94° / record: 97° (1953 and 1988)
• Sat 6/22: 88° / record: 98° (1988)
• Sun 6/23: 89° / record: 96° (1888)
• Mon 6/24: 87° / record: 96° (1888)

Oklahoma City, OK:
• Tue 6/18: 87° / record: 104° (2011)
• Wed 6/19: 89° / record: 101° (1918, 1953 and 2011)
• Thu 6/20: 86° / record: 104° (1918 and 1953)
• Fri 6/21: 91° / record: 104° (1936 and 1988) • Sat 6/22: 95° / record: 107° (1936) • Sun 6/23: 97° / record: 101° (1925, 1933 and 1934)
• Mon 6/24: 98° / record: 104° (1911)

St. Louis, MO:
• Tue 6/18: 91° / 101° (2021)
• Wed 6/19: 95° / 105° (1936)
• Thu 6/20: 96° / 103° (1953)
• Fri 6/21: 98° / 99° (1988) • Sat 6/22: 99° / 102° (1930)
• Sun 6/23: 94° / 101° (1930)
• Mon 6/24: 95° / 102° (1988)

Washington, D.C.:
• Tue 6/18: 92° / 97° (1944)
• Wed 6/19: 89° / 99° (1994)
• Thu 6/20: 92° / 99° (1931)
• Fri 6/21: 96° / 99° (2012)
• Sat 6/22: 97° / 101° (1988)
• Sun 6/23: 97° / 98° (1988)
• Mon 6/24: 93° / 100° (2010)

No daily records are in [the] forecast for any of those locations. This week’s heatwave does not compare to those of June 1936, 1944, 1953 or 1988.

Completely and totally ignorant of our weather history. Clowns.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/06/cnn-goes-mann-overboard-on-eastern-u-s-heatwave/

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New York Lawmakers Threaten To Ban Insurance for Fossil Fuel Projects

A new proposal in the New York Legislature would prohibit insurance companies from doing business in the state if they insure businesses that make over 10 percent of their money from fossil fuels. The bill, however, could backfire, encouraging insurers to vacate New York entirely rather than leave the lucrative industry.

"Within five years of the effective date of this article," the bill mandates, the "superintendent shall require any insurer doing business in the state to certify that they have divested" from "any company that derives ten percent or more of revenue from exploration, extraction, processing, exporting, transporting, and any other significant action with respect to oil, natural gas, coal, or any byproduct thereof."

Additionally, the law would force insurers to divest from any projects that are "intended to facilitate or expand" any "significant action with respect to oil, natural gas, coal, or any byproduct thereof."

New York is not the only state currently attempting to implement backdoor restrictions against fossil fuels by warding off insurers. Since last year, the Connecticut Legislature has debated a proposal to enact a fee against insurance companies for covering fossil fuel projects.

These pieces of legislation aim to kneecap fossil fuel companies by undercutting their funding. The New York bill threatens would-be insurers of fossil fuel projects—for instance, pipeline construction and natural gas power plant production—with economic exclusion from the state.

"There's no real magic bullet to stopping the oil and gas beast," Pete Sikora, a climate director at New York Communities for Change, told New York Focus, "but to the extent that there is, it could be insurance….No insurance, no projects."

"Insurance is a very powerful cudgel," added state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D–Manhattan), one of the proposal's legislative sponsors.

New York's 2024 legislative session concluded on June 6, meaning the bill cannot be passed before the next legislative session begins in January 2025. But New Yorkers and beyond should hope that it never sees the light of day.

If the bill succeeds, it would increase insurance costs for energy production and potentially cause projects to proceed without insurance.

"Making insurance scarce or impossible to obtain for fossil fuel-related projects will not stop these projects from moving forward; it will only stop them from proceeding with the crucial protections provided by insurance," says Dave Snyder, the Vice President of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA), in a comment to Reason.

Given the prevalence and profitability of fossil fuels, New York's "Insuring Our Future Act" could also backfire completely. It presents insurance companies with a choice: Leave the fossil fuel industry or leave the state. And many companies would likely pick the latter.

While New York lawmakers may think of fossil fuels as a thing of the past—perhaps belonging to some less happy time when gas stoves were still legal—they are here to stay, at least for the time being. Fossil fuels account for over 80 percent of total energy in the United States and 60 percent of our electricity. According to some estimates, oil and natural gas will comprise 60 percent of total energy consumption in the U.S. through 2040.

That makes fossil fuels a lucrative business for insurance companies. Northwestern Mutual, New York Life Insurance, State Farm, and six other companies each invested over $10 billion in fossil fuels in 2019, according to data compiled by the California Department of Insurance. Combined, insurance companies invest over $500 billion per year in the industry, and they raked in, according to one estimate, over $21 billion in revenue from the industry in 2022.

Many companies might decide that staying in the fossil fuel business is more important than staying in the Empire State, and if they do, then it will be New York businesses—not fossil fuel companies—that feel the brunt of the law's impact.

But all of this assumes that the proposal's sponsors actually intend to get the bill through the Legislature and are not simply trying to signal their willingness to go the extra mile on climate change by making a political statement.

"I cannot imagine this passing even in the fairly 'woke' atmosphere in the Assembly in Albany," John C. Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School, tells Reason about the bill. "If it did, it still might face a veto from the Governor."

Hoylman-Sigal and state Rep. Phara Souffrant Forrest (D–Brooklyn), the bill's two legislative sponsors, did not immediately respond to Reason's request for comment.

https://reason.com/2024/06/20/new-york-lawmakers-threaten-to-ban-insurance-for-fossil-fuel-projects/

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UK More green elitism

Brendan O'Neill below rightly calls them narcissists

So now we know: nowhere is safe from the entitled fury of the Just Stop Oil mob. Not even Stonehenge. That prehistoric wonder, one of the oldest monuments of humankind, has been showered with orange powder paint by JSO’s loons. They say they want to ‘raise awareness’ of the climate crisis. All they’ve really raised awareness of is what conceited, heartless narcissists they are.

These people really do believe they are saving the planet, don’t they?

This was cultural desecration. It was savagery masquerading as protest. To attack a 5,000-year-old monument, this stone echo of the earliest stirrings of human civilisation, is to show horrific disregard for the history and people of this nation. I don’t want to hear a word about how they used powder paint and it will wash off in the rain, yada yada. The fact is they reduced a millennia-old structure to a soapbox for showy moral preening, and that is unforgivable.

Their smugness was almost as offensive as their vandalism. They strode towards the slabs with all the cockiness and zealotry of every apocalyptic cult in history and sprayed the paint all over them. Then they sat down, for photos, naturally, looking heartily satisfied with themselves. These people really do believe they are saving the planet, don’t they? They really think they are the final line of defence against the manmade heat death of Earth. It would be funny if it wasn’t so deranged.

It is precisely this delusion, this religious conviction that they are the enlightened few who might yet save mankind from the fires of climate change, that underpins their anti-social, anti-democratic behaviour.

When you think of yourself as the saviour of the dumb hordes from a world-ending smog of their own making, anything can be justified. Blocking highways, gluing yourself to art, laying siege to Stonehenge – nothing is off-limits to the upper-middle-class brat with a Messiah complex.

There is always a hectoring tone to JSO stunts. These double-barrelled donuts, many of whom hail from the well-to-do, love nothing more than to terrify the plebs with tales of our coming doom. Hence they target the snooker, and football matches, and daytime traffic that consists mostly of working people trying to get to their jobs. It’s an aristocratic finger-wag dolled up as progressive activism, a sermon from the old landed classes to us Aldi-shopping, Skoda-driving, Ryanair-flying commoners. ‘Can’t you see how disgusting you are?!’, is the subtext of every single stunt carried out by these silver-spoon cultists.

And it’s the subtext of their assault on Stonehenge yesterday. Their vile defilement of this ancient wonder is yet another elitist attempt to stupefy the stupid, to rouse the ignorant from their consumerist haze in order that they might finally change their behaviour. It feels like the country is being held hostage by the neuroses of the bored bourgeoisie. There is no telling where they will turn up next with their orange paint and End is Nigh lunacy and that turbo-smug look on their faces.

Action needs to be taken against these hysterics and irritants. If you see them in the road, drag them off it. If you see them in an art gallery about to pounce on a Van Gogh, stop them. As to the callous vandals at Stonehenge – a long prison sentence, please. We often hear about the usefulness of prison as a deterrent to the petty crimes of the poor – how about prison as a deterrent to the self-regarding crimes of the rich?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/just-stop-oils-stonehenge-attack-is-unforgivable/

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Australia: Conservative activists launch pre-election attack on the Greens

The conservative activist group that torpedoed Anthony Albanese’s voice referendum will pump millions of dollars into a sole election campaign vehicle designed to drag down the Greens’ vote and expose the party’s radical policies.

The Australian can reveal that Advance, backed by 306,000 supporters and 32,000 donors, will spend $5m on phase one of a national election campaign titled “Greens Truth”, aiming to inflict “significant damage” to the left-wing party’s brand.

Armed with a post-voice war chest and new research showing voters remain disillusioned by the major political parties, Advance is launching its pre-election campaign to disrupt and halt the expanding electoral success of the Greens.

Amid rising speculation of an early election, and Peter Dutton’s Coalition making ground on the Albanese government, there is growing probability the Prime Minister could be forced into striking a deal with Adam Bandt to form minority government in a hung parliament.

With Greens preferences helping Mr Albanese claim victory after Labor secured a paltry 32.6 per cent primary vote at the 2022 election, Advance is warning voters of “catastrophic” outcomes for families if the left-wing party’s agenda is implemented.

The Greens, who have come under fire over accusations they are fanning anti-Semitism, push a range of extreme economic, defence, health, education and social policies that the major parties warn would wreck Australia’s economy and undermine national security.

Advance, initially established as a rival to left-wing activist group GetUp, has raised just over $900,000 from more than 5000 donations since soft-launching the Greens Truth campaign with supporters in May.

New donations data obtained by The Australian shows Advance continues to attract grassroots backing following its influential role in the Indigenous voice referendum campaign.

In the past 12 months, 18,492 out of 22,485 donations up to $499, were received, 3652 of $500-$4999, 329 of $5000-$24,999, 71 of $25,000-$99,999, and 31 of $100,000-$999,000.

A key driver of the anti-Greens campaign, which has been in the works since January, is the dramatic shift away from major parties and rise in protest voting.

Almost 32 per cent of Australians voted for a minor party or did not vote at the 2022 election, representing the biggest drift from the major parties in a century. Highlighting the protest vote trend, almost 258,000 people voted for the Greens in 2022 but preferenced the Liberal Party higher than Labor.

Research by Advance reveals 52 per cent of voters still believe the Greens look after the environment, water and wildlife, 26 per cent think they take action on climate, 20 per cent feel they stand for nothing, 8 per cent believe they look after the disadvantaged and 6 per cent categorise them as left-leaning, progressive and socialist.

Advance executive director Matthew Sheahan said the Greens Truth campaign would be an “all-out assault on the party that is a toxic and extreme influence on Australian politics”.

The campaign is targeted at erasing House of Representatives and Senate electoral gains made by the Greens over eight years and shining a light on extreme policies and culture, with Advance warning voters the party founded by Bob Brown is “not who they used to be”.

“Australian voters need to know that every election sees the Greens with more influence and closer to implementing their full agenda, which would be catastrophic for mums and dads, and their kids,” Mr Sheahan told The Australian.

“The Greens are not who they used to be, and there is no greater threat to Australia’s freedom, security or prosperity. This election day no reasonable Australian mum or dad should be voting Green.”

The campaign will publicise darker sides of the party, including “the lie that the Greens are a party of transparency and integrity (and the) litany of cover-ups of toxic and sexist behaviour”.

Mr Sheahan said this includes “the cover-up of assaults, accusations of bullying, claims of rape, and even MPs resigning over sex scandals”.

“The Greens have a track record of being a disgraceful and dysfunctional party that has failed its female supporters, volunteers and candidates time after time,” he said.

Advance said the Greens, who have won major concessions from the Albanese government in return for their votes, have been left unchecked for more than 40 years.

With the Greens eyeing off government seats Macnamara and Richmond at the next election, after winning Griffith off Labor and Brisbane and Ryan from the Liberals in 2022, Mr Sheahan said the left-wing party’s free ride “ends today”.

A campaign priority is exposing the Greens’ “fraudulent brand positioning as a party that is only concerned with the environment”. Advance research shows when voters think of the Greens, “they think of who they used to be – an environmental movement who fought against the Franklin Dam in the 1980s, who stood in front of old-growth forests”.

“Forty years later, this is obviously untrue and, when tested, voters start looking for an exit.”

Mr Sheahan said Advance research shows “Australians are not across some of the Greens’ more extreme policies including defunding non-government schools, implementing an inheritance tax and decriminalising hard drugs including ice and heroin”.

“Australian families have every reason to fear this agenda and its impact on not only cost of living, but the future and safety of their children.”

He said another major line of attack focused on debunking the Greens’ “outsider reputation”.

“The Greens like to perpetuate the idea that they are a protest party with no influence. The reality is much different. The Greens are already deciding what legislation passes or at least having a major say in parliaments across the country.

“Their policies are already being implemented as they hold Labor governments to ransom with their preferences all over the electoral map.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/antivoice-activists-launch-preelection-attack-on-the-greens/news-story/3538b043c620aa608a22776a962ba476

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Biden’s Hypocrisy on Climate Change Is Painfully Obvious

President Joe Biden has repeatedly called climate change an “existential threat,” worse than nuclear weapons.

Yet, Biden’s green energy mandates result in a greater U.S. demand for wind turbines, solar panels and electric batteries from China, made by coal-fired power plants, increasing the emissions Biden criticizes at home.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that in the absence of reductions in carbon emissions, temperatures will rise by about 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The idea that such a temperature change is worse than deaths from nuclear weapons is ludicrous. Over 200,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after America dropped atomic bombs.

Temperatures have varied for centuries. Climate models are not reliable and accurate enough to attribute global warming to human activities. The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.

Thirty-six computer models overpredicted surface air temperatures during the summer growing season. The models all showed warming well above what happened in reality, with the most extreme model producing seven times too much warming.

Increases in hurricane frequency are erroneously cited as an effect of warming. Although carbon dioxide emissions and temperature—both in America and globally—have increased over the latter parts of the 20th Century, no meaningful increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes has been observed.

Hurricane damage has increased over time, but this outcome is largely due to increased incomes and wealth, and therefore infrastructure creation, rather than more violent hurricanes. For example, homes in Florida have risen by a factor of 12 since 1975, according to the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank. The same hurricane that in 1975 destroyed a house worth $100,000 would now destroy a house worth $1.2 million.

Although some say that increased CO2 levels are detrimental to human health and welfare, deaths are more likely to result from medical events triggered by the cold than by the heat.

A 2020 study by Dr. Whanhee Lee and others in Lancet showed that cold-related morbidity and mortality—strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, and other problems—result directly from the influence of cold temperatures on the body, where the body is unable to maintain sufficient core temperature to guarantee survival.

In addition, Environmental Protection Agency data shows that death rates are about 10 percent higher in winter, and January is the deadliest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

If Biden truly thought that climate change was an existential threat, he would try to lower global emissions through greater U.S. exports of natural gas. This would enable other countries to reduce emissions by substituting natural gas for coal, just as America has reduced carbon emissions by 1,000 million metric tons over the past 16 years.

In addition, Biden would try to expand emissions-free nuclear power if he thought climate change was a threat. He would make uranium mining easier, because uranium is a critical ingredient for nuclear power. Yet he has taken swaths of land off the table for uranium development and made no attempt to solve the problem of nuclear waste.

Instead, Biden blocks a new liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, which results in greater worldwide use of coal, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions. Europe has already been turning to coal to deal with energy shortages in the aftermath of Russia’s cutoff of natural gas.

New regulations at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Controller of the Currency discourage companies from investing in natural gas, and banks from lending money to fund natural gas. Regulations from the Department of Energy raise the cost of natural gas stoves, water heaters, and boilers.

Over the past 20 years, U.S. emissions of CO2 have declined by a billion metric tons as natural gas has been increasingly substituted for coal use in the generation of electricity. Over the same period, CO2 emissions in China have risen by 8.7 billion metric tons.

Biden’s repetition that climate change is an existential threat gives him an excuse to impose more regulations and sign into law subsidies for favored donors.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Amb. Rahm Emanuel when he was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Biden is inventing the crisis and the waste is following.

https://www.heritage.org/climate/commentary/bidens-hypocrisy-climate-change-painfully-obvious

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John Kerry's Climate Office Coordinated With Left-Wing Nonprofits Working To Shut Down Coal

The State Department's lead climate office discussed shutting down coal power worldwide with environmental groups, namely the California-based Sierra Club among others, ahead of its decision to join an international anti-coal coalition, according to emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The internal agency emails—obtained this month via information request by watchdog group Protect the Public's Trust (PPT)—are the latest evidence that the State Department's Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), led by John Kerry until he departed early this year, discussed key policy issues, including actions related to coal power, with nonprofit interest groups.

And the emails come amid a sweeping congressional probe into the SPEC office's coordination with eco groups. That probe is being spearheaded by House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.), who told the Free Beacon that his panel continues to review separate documents showing the Biden administration "caved to pressure by leftist climate groups" seeking to end construction of new coal plants and phase out all coal worldwide by 2040.

"Evidence continues to mount showing a sophisticated, targeted approach by radical environmental groups to influence the Biden Administration's domestic and foreign policy," said Comer.

"The Oversight Committee will continue to press the Biden Administration for information related to Envoy Kerry’s position and his office’s ability to bind the United States to agreements at the detriment of American consumers and businesses," he continued.

According to the emails obtained by PPT and shared with the Free Beacon, on April 15, 2021, Steve Herz, a senior attorney and international climate policy adviser at the Sierra Club, contacted then-SPEC adviser Jesse Young, inviting Kerry and other administration officials to attend the June 2021 "grassroots leadership climate summit" hosted by the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.

Herz said the summit would focus on issues "the U.S. government needs to address internationally" including "shutting down coal."

Sierra Club senior attorney emails SPEC adviser Jesse Young an invitation for John Kerry to attend a private discussion with environmental groups.Sierra Club senior attorney Steve Herz emails SPEC adviser Jesse Young an invitation for John Kerry to attend a private discussion with environmental groups.
Young, who is now the SPEC office's chief of staff, responded to Herz, saying that he "would love" if Kerry could attend the summit. Then, in a May 2021 email, Young asked other State Department officials to confirm whether Kerry could attend the event, noting the invite was brought up during a recent "NGO call" and adding that it "seems like a good idea to me."

Kerry and then-senior SPEC adviser Lauren Sanchez, who has since been hired as a climate adviser for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), ultimately attended the Sierra Club-Friends of the Earth summit, joining a session on June 3, 2021. While much of the event was broadcast online, that session was private.

"This private session of the Global Grassroots Leaders Climate Summit will provide an opportunity for participating grassroots leaders to have a dialogue with Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry and his team," a description of the session online states. "They will discuss ways the Biden administration can be constructive partners in global climate efforts and specific ways the administration can benefit their campaigns."

That description failed to detail the session's covered topics that were listed in Herz's original email to Young two months earlier.

In a separate email exchange from July 2021, Herz requested a meeting with SPEC officials to discuss "opportunities of limiting international coal finance." The top Sierra Club official sent the request to a group of SPEC officials whose names were redacted in the documents produced via FOIA request.

"limiting international coal finance."

Sue Biniaz, who serves as the principal deputy special envoy for climate, said in an email to other officials that it "couldn’t hurt to hear their thoughts." An unnamed official then responded, suggesting that they loop the White House National Security Council into the conversation.

The SPEC office, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth did not respond to requests for comment.

"Government of, by, and for the people demands transparency and accountability," PPT director Michael Chamberlain told the Free Beacon. "The actions of John Kerry’s secretive climate office are anathema to those qualities."

"And every new revelation seems to add to the body of evidence that Kerry’s office has been outsourcing its policymaking—policies that have a significant impact on our ability keep the lights on and the machines running in our homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses—to powerful but unaccountable special interest organizations," added Chamberlain.

In January, the House Oversight Committee released emails that, like the batch obtained this month by PPT, highlight the extensive coordination between the SPEC office and environmental nonprofit organizations.

Those emails showed that, on March 2, 2021, the State Department solicited and received guidance from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on the so-called Powering Past Coal Alliance, an international effort to reduce coal reliance. And they also revealed that, on April 7, 2021, the NRDC, along with the Sierra Club and three other eco groups, sent SPEC officials a memo outlining a "global coal phase-out agenda for the Biden administration."

NRDC's memo, obtained by the Free Beacon, made a series of recommendations to the SPEC office, including joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, prioritizing coal phase-out policies in diplomatic engagements with China, Japan, and South Korea, and increasing financial incentives for other countries to transition away from coal by "greening" COVID-19 recovery plans.

"The Biden administration should make a global coal phase-out a top-tier foreign policy priority, and a critical issue in bilateral relations with all key countries funding and using coal," the memo stated.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/john-kerrys-climate-office-coordinated-with-left-wing-nonprofits-working-to-shut-down-coal-internal-docs-show

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The week the UK took another step on the road to being ruled by unelected judges

I'm beginning to wonder if it really matters who we vote for on July 4 when we are now a country in which power has been steadily seeping from elected politicians to ­unelected judges.

Take energy policy, a pivotal issue at a time of high fuel prices and fears about security of supply.

The Tories want to grant lots more licences to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea, to increase supply (to steady prices) and make us less dependent on unreliable foreign imports.

Labour would cease any further development in the North Sea after existing licences expire, preferring to give greater priority to reducing our carbon emissions and getting to net zero sooner rather than later.

So a clear choice for us to make. Exactly how a democracy should work. Except that judges have already taken the decision for us.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Surrey County Council had been wrong to allow the expansion of a tiny oilfield known as the Gatwick Gusher (for its proximity to the airport) because it had only taken into account the emissions generated by developing the field, not those emitted when the oil was eventually burnt.

Thus, with one ruling, has the highest court in the land brought the further development of our oil and gas reserves to a grinding halt.

It has done more for Just Stop Oil's ­campaign than any amount of Stonehenge-style performative attacks could ever hope to achieve.

The Surrey field is small in the grand scheme of things but the Supreme Court ruling will now be applied to far ­bigger ventures just getting off the ground, such as the massive ­­Rosebank oil field 80 miles west of the Shetlands and the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria.

The massed ranks of climate activists are already being mustered. Armed with their high-powered (and highly paid) lawyers and the Supreme Court ruling, they will challenge every nascent fossil fuel development in the land.

And there is every chance they will bring them to a grinding halt, just as they have the Gatwick Gusher.

It is yet another significant step on the road from democracy to kritocracy (rule by judges).

We are moving from rule by elected politicians —who consult experts in and out of government before rolling out the policies on which they were voted in — to rule by unelected judges who know nothing of the matters on which they opine but are still able to impose their own narrow but highly consequential interpretation of the law.

None of the three Supreme Court judges who took Thursday's decision would seem to have any expertise in energy policy or climate change.

One of them, Lord Leggat, is big on diversity and inclusion, as those — like him —educated at Eton, Cambridge and Harvard often think they should be seen to be. But not energy policy.

Another, Lady Rose, a product of Oxford and Cambridge, doesn't seem to have any private sector experience, never mind energy sector expertise, since she's spent most of her working life as a career legal officer in government.

The third, Lord Kitchin, also Cambridge, is a specialist in intellectual property. Not oil and gas.

The activists determined to stop the Surrey development had already lost in the High Court and the Court of Appeal. But thanks to these three judges from the same university, they won a narrow victory (three to two) in the highest court.

The local council and the oil company have run out of legal road. That sound you hear is the noise of oil and gas firms running for the door. Why hang around in a country that doesn't want you?

A country in which an incoming Labour government was going to freeze further licences anyway; in which the governing SNP in Scotland is no friend either; and in which supposedly temporary windfall taxes, taking the corporate tax rate to a penal 75 per cent, look like becoming permanent.

A country in which every planning application takes for ever (even the minor development in Surrey spent five years in the courts); in which you face the relentless hostility of activists and polite society treats you as a pariah (while, of course, avidly ­consuming your products).

And in which you never know when you, your family or your offices will be sprayed in orange paint by eco-zealots and loons.

There are far friendlier climes that want your investment — and they're probably more profitable, too. So don't for a second think the departure of the oil and gas industry from our shores is any kind of victory for net zero.

They will just move to exploit fossil fuels in other territories, often with less ­rigorous environmental standards than our own, while our world-class oil and gas sector, which generates £30 billion in revenues, £9 billion in tax and 220,000 direct and indirect well-paid jobs, enters terminal decline.

Not for much longer will Aberdeen be the oil capital of Europe. It risks the same fate as Glasgow, whose once proud boast to be the shipbuilding capital of the world is now but a distant memory.

Lord Leggat opined that oil from the Surrey field would 'inevitably' be 'burned' and the planning application had failed to account for that in terms of the carbon emissions generated.

Exactly how you would ­calculate that he did not say. After all, not all oil is burned. It's used for petrochemicals (the clue is in the name, your lordship) and in a variety of products from plastics to tyres to bitumin to pharmaceuticals. So the figure he wants is well nigh impossible to calculate.

But the most ludicrous aspect of the judgment — described by one energy expert as 'utter lunacy' — is the implication that banning new licences in the UK will reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

If that were the case, there would be some logic to the ruling. But it's not. We are destined, on all reputable forecasts, to need oil, gas and even some coal for the foreseeable future.

But now we'll import even more of it, at even greater cost in terms of price and emissions. The UK Supreme Court will be the toast of Qatar and Saudi Arabia this weekend. No doubt the Kremlin is smiling too, as it also looks at ways of sneaking its oil to us, perhaps via India.

Our loss is the dictators' gain. And not just the ­dictators. A friend from Texas thanked me yesterday for the Supreme Court ruling, saying his state looked forward to sending us even more natural gas.

The Tories have only themselves to blame. They have long pandered to the net zero cause, hoping to scoop up some of the 'green' vote (naturally, they've failed).

This culminated, during the last, miserable days of Theresa May's premiership, in the House of Commons nodding through, without proper debate or scrutiny, a legally binding target for Britain to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

May regarded this as her lasting legacy. It's turned out to be more of a time-bomb because it's the legally binding aspect of the target which has given the Supreme Court such a grip on energy policy.

The net zero target only covers emissions generated within our borders. So the fact we will have to import more oil and gas as a result of its ruling, even though that means higher ­emissions, doesn't concern the Court. It has no legal remit over imported energy.

Nor can it have anything to say about energy security since the Government hasn't set a legally binding target for that.

Thus, almost by accident, has net zero become the be-all and end-all of judge-determined energy policy, whose impact will be to make us all poorer.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13556013/ANDREW-NEIL-week-UK-took-step-road-ruled-unelected-judges-Labour-cock-hoop-wont-laughing-long.html

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Congratulations to Australian conservative leader on climate change retreat

Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, deserves an elephant stamp for calling out the impossibility of Australia reaching its 2030 emissions target set by the Labor government. The Coalition has now effectively disowned the target.

Recall here that the Coalition had been shooting for an emissions-reduction cut of between 26 and 28 per cent by 2030 from a base of 2005. The then prime minister, Scott Morrison, declared that this would be achieved in a canter. He wasn’t wrong on that score, because by the end of 2023, a cut of 29 per cent had been achieved.

But as they say, the last mile is always the hardest and so the 43 per cent emissions reduction set by the Albanese government is looking like a tough climb to the top of Everest in unfavourable weather conditions.

But this fact never deterred Albo and the hapless B1, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, from racing the new higher target into legislation and formally advising the UN climate bureaucrats in charge of the Paris Agreement racket of this more ambitious goal.

Mind you, the fact that the target is legislated doesn’t really make much difference nor does our refreshed statement of intent made to the UN – let’s not forget here that the Paris climate agreement is not legally binding.

Most signatories to Paris haven’t bothered to legislate their targets and have no intention of doing so. The UK, much to its shame, is different in that regard. Theresa May, a true climate believer if there ever was, insisted on this as well as committing the Tories to net zero.

She even conferred ridiculous powers on the Climate Change Committee, appointing extremist chairs who bully the Poms to change their evil climate ways – don’t eat meat, install expensive and ineffective heat pumps, use ‘active transport’ (walk, cycle or scooter) rather than drive the car, don’t even think about getting on a plane, etc, etc. Is it really any surprise that the Tories are about to get a drubbing, Boris and Rishi having never walked away from this rubbish?

But I digress. Let me get back to Australia. Dutts’ decision to decline the 43 per cent target is a mixture of informed realism and courageous politics. Needless to say, the progressive press is aghast, claiming that the announcement puts paid to the Liberals’ chances of winning back the Teal seats, although we shall see.

The rent-seeking business community with interests in green things is complaining bitterly. Evidently, they need certainty which is simply code for more subsidies. A lower target or no target at all will undermine their case for even more moolah from taxpayers and long-suffering consumers.

One of the advantages that Dutts has over Albo is that Dutts can count. Albo’s strong suit is wishful thinking and dreaming up rhyming cliches. The fact is that a 43 per cent target requires losing around 100 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in six years in the context of a rapidly rising population. It boils down to the maths: where will those tonnes come from?

Sadly – OK, not that sadly – for B1, the renewable energy experiment has not been going entirely to plan, like Japan’s second world war effort. Of course, if you throw subsidies at something, you will get more of it. But there have been some significant impediments to renewable energy (RE)investment in recent times – escalating costs, worker shortages, local resistance to RE developments (God bless our country cousins) and inadequate transmission.

As a consequence, the amount of RE added to the grid has been a fraction of what is required to meet another B1 target – 82 per cent RE in the grid by 2030. It’s only around 40 per cent now. There is a long way to go.

Going by the polls, voter opinion is on the side of the Coalition on this issue. A rising majority think that affordable and reliable electricity is the most important consideration with a small and declining proportion taking the view that hitting the emissions target should prevail. Even those on board with the green energy idea either don’t want to pay anything extra or $100 more per year at most. It looks as though peak climate has been reached and we are now on the sunlit downhill.

Albo and B1 could easily be tempted to look beyond the electricity grid to achieve the unachievable target. Laughably, there was a view at some stage that 90 per cent of all car sales by 2030 would be EVs. Given recent developments in the EV market here and overseas, it would seem extremely optimistic to predict that half of all car sales in Australia will be EVs by the end of the decade.

Let’s face it, the wheels are really falling off the EV market in the US – pardon the pun. General Motors, which was given great licks of taxpayer money to convert to EV production and ditch its highly profitable and popular lines of internal combustion vehicles, is walking back at an incredible pace. The company built an EV truck expecting to sell 150,000 in the first year; it sold 27,000.

There are so many hairs on EVs as convenient family or work vehicles, including the incredibly high cost of insurance and the absence of a second-hand market. Add in the difficulty of accessing fast charging and range anxiety, and the real surprise is that so many EVs have been sold.

But note here that most EVs are sold to companies attracted by the substantial tax concessions, not to private buyers. The only ones surprised by these developments are the true-believing green activists – and B1.

The Albanese government might have a crack at pushing for the closure of some of the big emitters – aluminium smelters, alumina refineries, steel works – but the politics of this are not great. Attacking the farming community also has its downsides – just take a look at what has been happening in Europe with farmers revolting.

The bottom line is that Australia’s current emissions target already looks like a bust and most people who follow these things know this.

As Speccie readers appreciate, a political leader who stands for nothing is never well-placed to roll an incumbent government. Claims of superior managerial competence simply do not cut it if the proposed platforms are essentially the same as the government’s. (Take note, David Crisafulli, hapless opposition leader of the LNP in Queensland. It was a Bill Shorten moment – ‘I don’t know what’s in Labor’s budget but we will support it.’)

I say hats off to Dutts: he has taken a stand on the 2030 target. Next stop: ditch the folly of net zero by 2050.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/hats-off-to-dutton/

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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