Why Climate Misinformation Persists

In 2001, I participated in a roundtable discussion hosted at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with a group of U.S. Senators, the Secretary of Treasury, and about a half-dozen other researchers. The event was organized by Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) following the release of a short NAS report on climate to help the then-new administration of George W. Bush get up to speed on climate change.

At the time I was a 32 year-old fresh-faced researcher about to leave the National Center for Atmospheric Research for a faculty position across town at the University of Colorado. I had never testified before Congress or really had any high-level policy engagement.

When the roundtable was announced, I experienced something completely new in my professional career — several of my much more senior colleagues contacted me to lobby me to downplay or even to misrepresent my research on the roles of climate and society in the economic impacts of extreme weather. I had become fairly well known in the atmospheric sciences research community back then for our work showing that increasing U.S. hurricane damage could be explained entirely by more people and more wealth.

One colleague explained to me that my research, even though scientifically accurate, might distract from efforts to advocate for emissions reductions:

"I think we have a professional (or moral?) obligation to be very careful what we say and how we say it when the stakes are so high."

At the time, I wrote that the message I heard was that the “ ends justify means or, in other words, doing the "right thing" for the wrong reasons is OK” — even if that meant downplaying or even misrepresenting my own research.

I have thought about that experience over the past few weeks as I have received many comments on the first four installments of the THB series Climate Fueled Extreme Weather (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). One of the most common questions I’ve received asks why it is that the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are so different than what is reported in the media, proclaimed in policy, and promoted by the most public-facing climate experts. And, why can’t that gap be closed?

Over the past 23 years, I have wondered a lot myself about this question — not just how misinformation arises in policy discourse (we know a lot about that), but why it is that the expert climate community has been unable or unwilling to correct rampant misinformation about extreme weather, with some even promoting that misinformation.

Obviously, I don’t have good answers, but I will propose three inter-related explanations that help me to make sense of these dynamics — the noble lie, conventional wisdom, and luxury beliefs.

The Noble Lie

The most important explanation is that many in the climate community — like my senior colleague back in 2001 — appear to believe that achieving emissions reductions is so very important that its attainment trumps scientific integrity. The ends justify the means. They also believe that by hyping extreme weather, they will make emissions reductions more likely (I disagree, but that is a subject for another post).

I explained this as a “fear factor” in The Climate Fix:

Typically, the battle over climate-change science focused on convincing (or, rather, defeating) those skeptical has meant advocacy focused on increasing alarm. As one Australian academic put it at a conference at Oxford University in the fall of 2009: “The situation is so serious that, although people are afraid, they are not fearful enough given the science. Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.”

Similarly, when asked how to motivate action on climate change, economist Thomas Schelling replied, “It’s a tough sell. And probably you have to find ways to exaggerate the threat. . . [P]art of me sympathizes with the case for disingenuousness. . . I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening—you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth—that would get people very concerned about climate change. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

From the opening ceremony of the Copenhagen climate negotiations to Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to public comments from leading climate scientists, to the echo-chambers of the blogosphere, fear and alarm have been central to advocacy for action on climate change.

It’s just a short path from climate fueled extreme weather to the noble lie at the heart of fear-based campaigns.

Bari Weiss observes the dynamics of the noble lie in how many people refused to acknowledge that President Joe Biden was showing the signs of being an 81-year-old man:

Better to put the thumb on the scale—just the lightest of touches—and make sure we get the right outcome. A few white lies for the sake of the Republic seems a small price to pay.

In The Honest Broker, I devoted a chapter to the dynamics of the noble lie in the context of the fateful decision to go to war in Iraq — WMDs! Noble lies have no partisan or ideological boundaries.

For climate and extreme weather, one important difference from the Iraq War or President Biden is that there is no ending point — a war or an election — that allows for an evaluation or resetting of the lie more in the direction of truth.

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-climate-misinformation-persists

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Doctors Being Instructed To Lie To You About The Climate

In theory, people being more political sounds great. Less dreary conversations about the weather and the ‘footie’, and more watercoolers surrounded by colleagues fizzing with enthusiasm about democracy and its pleasures

But the actual practice of this presupposes that we will all be open-minded and curious and – unless we are extremely learned about something – that the opinion of all citizens shall be equal.

This came to mind on reading that the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has this week issued new guidance instructing doctors, as ‘trusted members of the community’, to lecture their poor patients about the ‘dangers’ of ‘climate change’.

This is troubling enough given the average duration of a face-to-face appointment with a GP in England – when you finally get one – is just 10 minutes.

Furthermore, this 11-page document also suggests that doctors should cause even more anxiety to patients by ‘working from home’ and cutting back on tests and prescriptions – in the name of ‘saving the planet’, of course.

So basically doctors are being advised by the RCP to do less of the things doctors have historically been required to do while amping up the scolding about an area they have no training in.

It also urges doctors, after scaring their patients with talk of burning rivers and the like, to keep an eye out for the poor creatures showing signs of ‘eco-distress’ – that is, anxiety and depression allegedly caused by ‘climate change’.

I would venture that if this condition exists in any great numbers, it’s caused not by ‘climate change’ itself but by people banging on about it, alongside the other anxieties that stem from not being able to get a GP appointment, a medical test, or a prescription.

We’re not quite at the stage of those crazy Canucks.

In 2021, a doctor in British Columbia diagnosed a woman with ‘climate change’ – thought to be a world first – after she reported having breathing problems following a hot summer featuring a slew of forest fires.

How many years at medical school did it take to come to this razor-sharp conclusion?

Dr Kyle Merritt opined:

‘She has diabetes. She has some heart failure… She lives in a trailer, no air conditioning.

All of her health problems have all been worsened. And she’s really struggling to stay hydrated.’

I’m sure we’ll get to where Canada is eventually, though. When a society is as single-minded about scaring itself as the Kool-Aid-quaffing Canadians have been for some time, there’s no telling what rabbit holes we’ll race each other to the bottom of.

It’s telling that the RCP document showcases such condescending gems from the World Health Organization as ‘don’t debate the science’ and ‘talk about the health benefits of climate action’.

I wonder what health benefits the people inside the ambulances blocked by Just Stop Oil over the past few years have gained from climate change action?

The NHS isn’t just keen to lecture patients about ‘climate change’, it’s also chasing the ‘Net Zero’ dream.

A rather chilling report published earlier this year in the Telegraph revealed that the NHS plans to introduce electric ambulances to reach green targets.

Paramedics have already expressed concern about the dangerous effect this will have on patients, as ambulances spend hours recharging instead of attending emergencies.

Former chancellor Nigel Lawson once famously said that the NHS is the closest thing that the English have to a religion, which makes doctors the priests.

When the NHS itself follows the new false gods of everything from climate to ‘trans rights’, the stage is set for the mayhem of unbridled magical thinking.

Like the old priests, doctors are often no better than the rest of us; often, they’re worse.

The majority of them may well be driven by the desire to improve the human condition – but the idea that they are somehow holy receptacles of wisdom is absurd.

I’d listen to a doctor’s advice on what to do with, say, a broken leg, because I’m aware that they studied the subjects of sickness and health into their mid-twenties, while I was chasing off to interview gormless pop stars.

But take lessons from them on politics or lifestyle? No thanks.

https://principia-scientific.com/doctors-being-instructed-to-lie-to-you-about-the-climate/

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Dominion’s Proposed Peaker Plant Is a Good Sign for Reliability

In the last decade, many states have made energy policy decisions that prioritize building new renewable energy sources, namely wind and solar, over more reliable forms of power. Often, this comes in the form of renewable portfolio standards that mandate a certain portion of the energy mix comes from wind and solar.

One such state is Virginia. The Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) is a renewable portfolio standard that requires that the state’s largest utilities, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power, both use 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. Despite this mandate, the state’s utilities are doing what they must to maintain a reliable grid.

Earlier this year, Dominion Energy announced plans to build a new peaking natural gas plant to help meet the state’s growing demand for power. Peaking power plants, otherwise known as peaker plants, are power plants that are able to ramp up and down to compensate for the intermittency of other sources of electricity. Dominion may need to construct up to 8 more similar plants over the next decade and a half.

The state’s unique position in the technology sector may contribute to demand growth. Northern Virginia is currently the number one state for data centers in the US. This gives the state immense importance as artificial intelligence and other data intensive applications develop further and are used more widely. With this economic boon comes an obligation for the state’s utilities to rise to the occasion. That means maintaining reliability.

Dominion Energy is Virginia’s largest utility company. The fact that it’s choosing to invest in new natural gas peaker plant capacity right now is a promising sign for those concerned with reliable electricity.

Jeremy Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion, acknowledged the importance of maintaining reliability. “On the hottest and coldest days of the year, when people are running their air conditioning, they’re running their heater, and that demand goes up and up and up,” and went on to say, “And if we can’t meet that demand that means there will be blackouts.”

Even though the state’s growing need for reliable power is difficult to dispute, the move has faced significant opposition from environmentalists and some lawmakers. In March, a coalition of nine lawmakers, including seven Delegates and two Senators, signed a letter opposing the peaker plant because it, “runs counter to the measures the Commonwealth has taken recently to lower carbon emissions and to diversify energy production and storage”. What these lawmakers fail to understand is that the measures that the Commonwealth has taken run counter to reliably keeping the lights on.

In my recent paper, “How to Keep the Lights On”, I outline 9 principles for a reliable electric grid. The fourth principle is “Government should not dictate the electricity mix.” This is because renewable portfolio standards like the VCEA are prescriptive rather than realistic policies. They assume that a power mix can be made to work because the government decided that it would. This is far from the truth.

A reliable electrical grid doesn’t just come about on its own. It’s the result of good decision making and a prudent understanding of tradeoffs (in addition to the physical infrastructure that makes it up). The problem is that for years now the rhetoric and decision making of lawmakers has been out of line with reality and reliability.

It’s great to see Dominion make a decision that focuses on reliability, even in the face of opposition.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/07/30/peaker-plant-reliability/

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‘Picking Winners’ has been a costly failure, new study warns

As Europe’s EV industry is on the brink of economic crisis, a new study published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation documents the poor track record of governments who cherry-pick technologies in the hope of achieving a policy goal. It warns that the UK is in the process of repeating costly mistakes in the race to achieve Net Zero.

The study reveals that ‘picking winners’ has rarely been successful and almost always resulted in very costly flops.

Written by Martin Livermore, the paper reviews a range of projects from the last few decades in the UK and summarises the factors contributing to their success or failure.

Unfortunately, politicians have not learnt the lessons of these failures and are in the process of repeating mistakes in the race to achieve Net Zero.

The study reviews current Net Zero projects, in particular:

* electricity generation and storage
* carbon capture and storage
* heat pumps for domestic heating
* electric vehicles as replacements for the internal combustion engine.

Martin Livermore warns:

“In each case, top-down targets have been set and a predetermined route set out, with taxpayers’ money used to drive consumer acceptance of technologies that are otherwise uneconomic. A far better use of resources for both the UK population and, in the longer term, for citizens across the world, is to set broad top-level goals and enable competition between technologies and companies so that better, more economic solutions can be developed.”

https://mailchi.mp/835e9663492c/picking-winners-has-been-a-costly-failure-new-study-warns-201723?e=cc88839e92

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Biden Admin Suggests Spending $78 Trillion to Achieve Net-Zero Global Carbon Emissions

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a speech in Belem, Brazil, on Saturday that the price tag for a global transition to a low-carbon economy amounts to $78 trillion in financing through 2050.

Yellen said that in order to achieve the goal of net-zero global carbon emissions, there would need to be $3 trillion globally in annual financing for the cause, which she said is a top priority for the Biden administration, according to the speech. In order to contribute to this, Yellen vowed to finance green initiatives in developing countries through multilateral development banks and develop “clean energy technologies.”

“The transition will require no less than $3 trillion in new capital from many sources each year between now and 2050,” Yellen said during the speech. “This can be leveraged to support pathways to sustainable and inclusive growth, including for countries that have historically received less investment.”

“Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy,” Yellen said during the speech. “It is bad economic policy.”

Yellen boasted in her speech about the commitments the Biden administration has put forth toward forwarding these green initiatives to achieve their “climate goals.”

“At home, we are implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in our nation’s history,” Yellen said during the speech. “It is driving hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in the clean energy technologies and industries that will propel us toward our climate goals and fuel our economic growth.”

The Inflation Reduction Act allocated $370 billion to subsidize climate initiatives like electric vehicles and other technologies that are essential to President Joe Biden’s green agenda.

“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world,” Biden said during a speech addressing climate change in July of 2022. “As president, I’ll use my executive powers to combat climate—the climate crisis in the absence of congressional actions, notwithstanding their incredible action.”

During her speech, Yellen advocated for these climate initiatives to be implemented “beyond our borders.”

“Our ambitions at home are matched by our ambitions abroad,” Yellen said during the speech. “We know that we can only achieve our climate and economic goals—from reducing global emissions to adapting and building resilience, from strengthening markets to bolstering supply chains—if we also lead efforts far beyond our borders.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/29/treasury-secretary-calls-for-78-trillion-to-tackle-climate-change/

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Debt-Funded GB Energy to Bet on the Costliest Electricity Generation Technologies

Labour has taken to the airwaves to promote the launch of the Great British Energy Bill in Parliament.

The official press release makes a number of bold statements that do not have a very close relationship to the truth.

First, they make several claims about “cheap” renewables such as the claim that the Energy Secretary has “unblocked the production of cheap solar energy”. The Prime Minister claimed the new bill would “bring down energy bills for good” and the investment will be “lowering bills for families and businesses.”

Perhaps as a portent for what is to come, Labour appears to have dropped the pre-election pledge to cut energy bills by £300

The pledge has been reduced to a conditional “should make bills lower in the long term”. This is not surprising because as discussed here, the promised reduction has already been delivered by reduced gas prices.

This is not a surprise because they are committed to investing in some of the whackiest, most expensive energy technologies. As well as offshore wind they are also going to invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen, wave and tidal energy. As Figure 3 shows, these are all extremely expensive technologies.

For this financial year, the average market reference price for wind and solar, largely set by gas, has been around £65/MWh. In the latest AR6 renewables auction round they are offering fixed offshore wind £102/MWh, floating offshore £246/MWh, tidal stream £364/MWh and wave power £359/MWh.

All the renewable technologies are more expensive than gas (even when loaded with a carbon tax), with some costing many multiples of gas-fired power. Our bills can only go one way, and that is up.

The press release, the Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary all also claim that spending more money on renewables will lead to more energy security.

They fail to explain what will keep the lights on cold, calm winter evenings when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Of course, the flexible, dispatchable electricity required will be generated by gas-fired power stations and even more gas will be required if these are fitted with CCS.

The press release makes no mention of their commitment to ban further offshore exploration and development of gas resources in the North Sea. Even the Climate Change Committee and the National Grid ESO recognise we will need gas well beyond 2050, so building more intermittent renewables and cutting gas production both actively reduce domestic energy security.

GB Energy will form a partnership with the Crown Estate to try and accelerate offshore wind developments. GB Energy will be funded by £8.3 billion of (borrowed) money from the Government and the Crown Estate will be granted new borrowing powers.

The Crown Estate estimates this mountain of debt will lead to up to 20-30GW of offshore wind capacity being leased by 2030.. They plan to conduct early development work to de-risk projects for the private sector.

They claim this new endeavour will bring “profits back to the British people”. What they really mean is that bill payers will be stung by the cost of the eye-watering subsidies for these new projects.

And the profits that arise in GB Energy and the Crown Estate will flow through into Treasury coffers. Ordinary people will only pay the costs and receive none of the profits.

It is only a matter of time before we are exhorted to Stay Cold, Protect the Grid and Save Gas, perhaps accompanied by Patrick Vallance giving daily tallies of deaths from hypothermia.

https://principia-scientific.com/debt-funded-gb-energy-to-bet-on-the-costliest-electricity-generation-technologies/

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Air NZ scraps 2030 carbon emissions target as ‘unachievable’

Air New Zealand has become the first major airline to concede ambitious carbon emissions reduction targets are unachievable by 2030, and has made the decision to dump them.

The kiwi carrier had been aiming to slash its carbon intensity by 28.9 per cent compared to 2019 levels, through the use of sustainable aviation fuel, lower emissions aircraft and other changes.

However in a statement to the ASX, Air New Zealand said many of the levers needed to meet the target were outside of its control and remained “challenging”.

Chief executive Greg Foran said it had also become apparent in recent months and weeks, that potential delays to fleet renewal plans posed an additional risk to the target’s achievability.

“It is possible the airline may need to retain its existing fleet for longer than planned due to global manufacturing and supply chain issues that could potentially slow the introduction of newer, more fuel efficient aircraft in to the fleet,” Mr Foran said.

“As such and given so many levers needed to meet the target are outside of our control, the decision has been made to retract the 2030 target and withdraw from the science based targets initiative network immediately.”

He indicated that work had began to consider a new, near-term carbon emissions reduction target that could better reflect the challenges relating to aircraft and alternative jet fuel availability within the industry.

Last year, 600 million litres of sustainable aviation fuel was produced worldwide, which was more than double that of 2022, but still a mere 0.2 per cent of the airline industry’s needs.

In 2024, production was expected to triple to 1.875 billion litres or about 0.5 per cent of the total aviation fuel supply.

Air New Zealand chair Dame Therese Walsh said the airline remained committed to its 2050 net zero carbon emissions target, which had been adopted by the broader aviation industry.

“Our work to transition away from fossil fuels continues, as does our advocacy for the global and domestic regulatory and policy settings that will help facilitate Air New Zealand and the wider aviation system in New Zealand to do its part to mitigate climate change risks,” said Dame Therese.

Air New Zealand has previously been one of the most outspoken on sustainability issues, and was one of the first to announce plans to develop carbon neutral aircraft for regional routes in partnership with Airbus.

At last year’s CAPA aviation summit in Brisbane, chief sustainability officer Kiri Hannifin even challenged other airlines to consider if they were “worth the carbon”.

In a passionate speech, Ms Hannifin said it was a simple matter of fact that airlines “were connecting people but polluting at the same time” and they all needed to do better.

“For us in aviation, we have to ask ourselves ‘are we worth the carbon?’” Ms Hannifin said.

“That should be a driver of how we conduct ourselves as a business and as a society. It’s also a great moral compass — are we worth the carbon?”

Australian airlines remained wedded to their 2030 targets, including a 22 per cent reduction in carbon intensity for Virgin Australia, and 25 per cent emissions reduction for Qantas.

Both were banking on increased production of sustainable aviation fuel and lower emissions aircraft to achieve the interim targets.

As yet Australia is yet to produce any sustainable aviation fuel, despite being rich in the sort of material — agricultural waste and feedstock — used to make the alternative fuel.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/air-nz-scraps-2030-carbon-emissions-target-as-unachievable/news-story/1d80903f71518d75394ddcbadadde613

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Hydrogen nonsense

Mining magnate Andrew ‘‘Twiggy’’ Forrest surprised many in the media on July 17 when he announced he was scaling back his green hydrogen commitments.

Yet, journalists following the global energy debate should have known this holy grail of power storage and pollution-free fuel was running into trouble around the world — even as Forrest continued to make multibillion-dollar announcements with state and federal leaders here and with governments overseas.

This is why politicians should not try to pick winners: the rush of capital looking for taxpayer-guaranteed returns is no measure of a technology’s viability. Nor does history show Australian politicians are any good at making decisions properly left to investment market professionals.

This column has long been sceptical of various firming technologies for variable wind and solar power. Back on October 17, 2022, I wrote: “Perhaps the most important question (in this area) that journalists should be asking relates to the feasibility of green hydrogen, being spruiked around the world … by Forrest.”

It quoted climate campaigner and engineer Saul Griffith estimating Forrest’s hydrogen would be between five and six times more expensive than using wind and solar only for power. Griffith said power would need to be priced at 2c per kilowatt hour to produce hydrogen for the then-new Albanese government’s $2 per kilogram target price.

Most states at the time were charging between 25c and 40c per kilowatt hour.

The week before the latest federal budget this column had a crack at Jim Chalmers for pinning so much of his government’s “Future Made in Australia” ambition on green hydrogen. The piece pointed out industry was expecting more taxpayer funds for green hydrogen in the budget the following week, but even the green evangelist Grattan Institute warned in December optimism about hydrogen was overblown.

Grattan energy specialist Tony Wood said government and industry would be wise to limit hydrogen expectations to green ammonia for fertiliser, green steel and green alumina.

Wood said even confining hydrogen ambitions to these sectors would “require more than 30 gigawatts of electricity, 60 per cent more than we have in the National Electricity Market today”.

Yet, on budget night, May 14, the Treasurer announced a further $19.7bn over 10 years under the “renewable energy super power banner”. Green hydrogen support was extended to $6.7bn over a decade.

Forrest, Chalmers and Anthony Albanese all claimed last week they remained committed to green hydrogen despite Forrest’s lay-off of 700 workers and his scaling back of several projects. He did remain committed to five hydrogen projects here and overseas.

Yet, had Chalmers and the Prime Minister read Saul Griffith’s testimony before the federal parliament last year, they might have been more cautious.

The Renew Economy website on April 6 last year quoted Griffith, also co-founder of Rewiring Australia, telling a parliamentary inquiry committing taxpayer funds to hydrogen would be a costly economic mistake.

“The idea that hydrogen will play a large role in the energy future does not make economic or thermodynamic sense,” Griffith’s written submission to the joint standing committee on the energy transition says. Griffith, like Wood, believes hydrogen will play a role in certain hard-to-abate sectors.

Griffith said people with a strong vested interest had “a heavy hand on the tiller of the hydrogen conversation”.

Forrest’s climb-down from the hydrogen pulpit came as the EU sounded a warning about hydrogen.

The Brussels-based European Court of Auditors said on July 17 — the same day as Forrest’s announcement — the EU’s hydrogen goals were unrealistic, despite the billions of euros already invested.

The EU had committed €18.8bn ($31bn) to make 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and to import a further 10 million tonnes by 2030. Forrest alone claimed he could make 15 million tonnes by 2030.

The following night on ABC’s 7.30, host Sarah Ferguson gave Forrest a rare, almost interruption-free, 11 minutes to obfuscate on the central question: has hydrogen been over-hyped?

It was an interview in stark contrast with her latest nuclear power exchange with opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien. Ferguson talked over the top of him throughout and interrupted during most of the points O’Brien tried to make.

Yet, nuclear power is tried, tested and reliable while green hydrogen is in early development stages and may not be viable at scale.

A paper by the conservative Manhattan Institute released on February 1 this year, Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle, gets to the heart of the hydrogen problem. Hydrogen creates less energy than is used to make it.

The study examines various hydrogen technologies and homes in on EROI: energy return on investment.

The EROI of green hydrogen via electrolysis is 0.5. It releases half as much energy as is invested in making it.

The EROIs of traditional power sources are 28 for natural gas, 30 for coal and 75 for nuclear power. This is the science; it’s not about climate denial but the reality of physics and chemistry.

The point of the hydrogen story for a column on journalism? Scepticism is a key quality needed for good and accurate reporting. Journalists need to be especially sceptical in testing claims in-line with their own personal biases.

In the energy transition, conservative-leaning journalists who favour nuclear power have been unable to accept the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear reactors will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions until 2040.

Therefore, unless a Coalition government were to scrap its emissions reduction targets, it would not markedly slow the rollout of wind and solar technology which, for all its problems, will reduce emissions.

Remember, too, the Coalition plan calls for nuclear as a dispatchable backup rather than a whole-of-system power source. As O’Brien has said, it would eventually operate in tandem with wind and solar.

Similarly, left-leaning journalists like those who dominate the ABC need to test their inherent biases in favour of anything claimed to reduce emissions.

Ferguson has been a prime example in recent weeks. Why the soft approach to Forrest while applying attack tactics in her nuclear interview with O’Brien in March?

Similarly, ABC Media Watch has for decades been on the hunt for any stories it thinks might hide secret climate denial.

Last Monday, July 22, it was again on its favourite hobby horse: bollocking Sky News Australia. This time it targeted the network’s coverage of EVs.

It did acknowledge what has been clear for over a year: while Australian buyers were late to the EV party, buyers in Europe and North America have been walking away from the technology.

Why? The problems reporters at this paper have been describing for almost a decade: range anxiety, price, increasing insurance premiums, fears about battery fires, the cost of battery repair and the high cost of smash repair. The latest EV hot-button issue has been deep price discounting by Tesla which has left recent former buyers out of pocket compared with new buyers.

Media Watch ignored most of these issues and failed to make the central point. Most EVs in Australia, unless powered by a home battery connected to rooftop solar, receive electricity from a power grid still largely fired by burning coal.

Now, that should make any thinking journalist a bit sceptical.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/scepticism-a-crucial-element-in-energy-mix/news-story/0cd1ee4d06038b39a0883fbd09bd0358

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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I Wrote An Article For Forbes Defending J.D. Vance From Accusations Of ‘Climate Denialism’. Forty Eight Hours Later, Forbes Un-Published The Article And Sacked Me As A Contributor

Written by Tilak Doshi

An article I wrote for Forbes about J.D. Vance published on July 18th began as follows:

Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out.

Little did I know that within a day of publishing that article, the knives would come out for me.

The editors of Forbes deleted my article, stating that “we had to take down your latest Forbes article about J.D. Vance because it did not meet our editorial guidelines which we take seriously”.

This was followed by a short note stating that I was sacked as a contributor. Similar complaints of not abiding by the magazine’s guidelines were made by an editor on a couple of previous published articles.

What editorial guidelines? “Avoid advocacy, opinion, polemic and rumour-mongering.”

I have yet to read any Forbes piece that avoided opinion, given that Forbes contributors are opinion columnists and not journalists who are hired to merely report the news. The contributor’s role, one would have thought, is to offer opinions and advocate certain lines of argument about current affairs or topics of interest based on a reasonable reading of verifiable data. Otherwise, what is the contributor’s purpose?

But here is the catch. It depends on whether you are “on message”. Are you with or against the accepted narratives? If against, you are cancelled. That is how the establishment operates – within Forbes and in the mainstream media – as I found out.

“Avoid Advocacy”

Here is the lead paragraph of a recent article in Forbes entitled “GOP Platform: Back To The Carbon Age” in the weekly column “Current Climate” by two “Forbes Senior Editors”:

Ahead of the Republican Party’s National Convention that kicks off today in Milwaukee, the GOP released its official platform of key priorities for a second potential Trump Administration. As with any such political document, it’s long on platitudes and slogans, but very short on detail.

But there’s at least one clear takeaway in the document: it prioritises increasing energy from fossil fuels while ignoring the carbon-fuelled climate crisis that’s triggered record-setting heatwaves and earlier and more intense hurricanes.

The authors assert that the GOP official platform “prioritises increasing energy from fossil fuels while ignoring the carbon-fuelled climate crisis”.

They further claim that the “carbon-fuelled climate crisis” has “triggered record-setting heatwaves and earlier and more intense hurricanes”. By these leading statements, the reader is led to believe that both constitute “settled science”.

Here is another example of writing from another recently published Forbes article that allegedly does not constitute advocacy or opinion:

Imagine not being able to get the warning about the approaching hurricane or tornado. How would you know when to evacuate to stay safe or board up your home or business? Or make sure your staff is protected? It’s not a bad dream, it could be the reality if Donald Trump takes office again.

My suggestion that the policy positions of J.D. Vance in support of fossil fuels and sceptical of climate alarmist claims are consistent with the verities of physics and economics got me cancelled. But arguing that if Donald Trump takes over, it would be “a bad dream” is perfectly fine in a Forbes world allegedly devoid of advocacy or opinion.

https://principia-scientific.com/i-wrote-an-article-for-forbes-defending-j-d-vance-from-accusations-of-climate-denialism-forty-eight-hours-later-forbes-un-published-the-article-and-sacked-me-as-a-contributor-2/

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UK: ‘Climate Crisis’ Used To Justify Govt’s Record Spending On ‘Renewables’

The Government appears ready to claim that the ‘imminent’ threat of ‘climate change’ justifies what will be the largest taxpayer-funded investment in wind and solar farms in British history

The Telegraph has the details.

Sir Keir Starmer is to unveil the first investment by the £8.3 billion taxpayer-funded Great British Energy, which will back renewable energy projects to help meet the Government’s Net Zero goals.

The Prime Minister will say the Government is “rolling up our sleeves to deliver for Britain” as he announces a partnership with the Crown Estate to help develop the seabed for offshore wind power.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, said the £8.3 billion investment in GB Energy was vital to meet the “huge challenges” the country faced, including the climate crisis, which was “not a future threat but a present reality”.

“In an unstable world, the only way to guarantee our energy security and protect billpayers permanently is to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and towards home-grown clean energy,” he said.

“That is why making Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030 is one of the Prime Minister’s five missions, with the biggest investment in home-grown clean energy in British history.”

A Great British Energy Bill will be introduced in Parliament on Thursday to formally establish the company, which will have its headquarters in Scotland.

The company is expected to take a stake in renewables energy projects alongside the private sector. …

In its first major project, GB Energy will provide spatial planning, surveying and grid design assistance to the Crown Estate to help speed up the development of offshore wind projects. …

It is not yet clear how much of the £8.3 billion will be divided between projects such as the Crown Estate deal and other types of investment. …

Josh Buckland, a former civil servant in the energy department and senior fellow at Policy Exchange, said there was a lack of clarity about how GB Energy will operate.

“This includes how any public ownership will be designed in such a way not to distort the market for private investment,” he said.

“Until that is understood, it’s hard to assess how much value GB Energy will deliver in practice to the taxpayer or billpayer.”

https://principia-scientific.com/climate-change-used-to-justify-governments-record-investment-in-renewables-cui-bono-not-the-taxpayer/

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UK may need new gas-fired power stations to decarbonise grid

Labour is likely to have to approve new gas-fired power stations in its attempt to decarbonise the UK’s electricity systems by 2030, in what would be a tricky decision for the new government.

Keeping the lights on for the rest of the decade, and beyond, will require some additional baseload power, and new nuclear power stations will not be built in time, according to a report from the National Engineering Policy Centre.

All the UK’s existing gas-fired power stations are expected to be kept going as long as possible but it is probable that more will be needed. Wind and solar generation are set for large increases but the UK’s nuclear reactors are ageing and coal has almost been phased out.

Nilay Shah, a professor of process systems engineering at Imperial College London and a co-author of the report, said: “There is a reasonable chance that we will need new gas-fired power stations.”

However he called for them to be “genuinely” ready for the attachment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which could be achieved by locating them near potential underground carbon storage sites. He said the number needed would depend on factors such as building new interconnectors between the UK and overseas electricity grids.

Simon Harrison, the head of strategy at the engineering company Mott MacDonald who co-chaired the committee that wrote the report, added that having a small number of gas-fired power stations available would add to the UK’s resilience, even if they did produce some carbon emissions. “We have to not be purist about unabated gas,” he said.

This would be a tough decision for Ed Miliband, the energy and net zero secretary, as he attempts to meet the “stretching” target of decarbonising electricity generation by 2030. Rishi Sunak drew criticism from green campaigners when he announced plans for new gas-fired power plants in March, which campaigners said was the result of the Tory government’s failure to encourage enough new renewable energy generation.

However, Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, said: “Keeping a supply of unabated gas plants in 2030 – some new as older ones are planned to go offline before then – in reality would probably mean they are only on for short, infrequent periods of time, rather than being on much of the time like they are today. These plants will probably be expensive to run, and gas prices are predicted to remain volatile, so it is in consumer interests to keep their usage low as well as in the interests of our energy security and, of course, climate change.”

Labour acknowledged in its manifesto the likely need to keep some “unabated gas” – that is, without CCS – for security of supply, and the Committee on Climate Change has also said some gas-fired electricity could be needed even as the UK pushes to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Miliband will also face serious problems in updating the UK’s creaking electricity grid and erecting the new pylons required for the transmission of power from a new generation of onshore and offshore wind and solar farms, according to the report published on Tuesday.

The report found that major work was needed on transmission infrastructure, including new pylons, and that although there could be local objections, the upgrade would produce benefits for people all over the country, from new jobs and the rejuvenation of regional economies, to cleaner air and better health, and helping to reduce the impacts of the climate crisis.

Protests against new pylons have been coordinated by local groups and have been supported by the co-leader of the Green party, Adrian Ramsay, and other Green and Liberal Democrat politicians. The Tory party manifesto contained a commitment to bury pylons, but this would be more expensive than using overhead cables.

“We need to show people the benefits,” said Harrison. “There should be a proper opportunity for public debate about this plan.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/23/uk-may-need-new-gas-fired-power-stations-to-decarbonise-grid

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Court rules in favour of Roundup over cancer query

A great relief. The Greenie jihad against glyphosate has been relentless

Australian farmers are relieved by a Federal Court ruling that the commonly used herbicide Roundup does not cause cancer.

Regarded as a key tool for controlling weeds in agricultural crops, Roundup’s manufacturer Monsanto has been hit by a barrage of legal action across the world in recent years.

A landmark class action in the Federal Court against Monsanto’s Australian offshoot, Huntsman Chemical Company, was filed by 800 on-Hodgkin lymphoma patients in 2020, but judge ­ Michael Lee late on Thursday found the evidence did not prove the glyphosate based herbicide was carcinogenic.

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals company Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, is facing multiple lawsuits in the US and has in some cases been found liable by juries for causing cancer.

National agencies, including the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, which last considered glyphosate in 2016, European Food Agency and European Chemicals Agency and the US Environmental Protection Agency have all approved use of glyphosate as a weed killer, subject to conditions, after strict safety assessments.

Justice Lee found there was not enough evidence to prove Roundup caused the non-Hodgkin lymphoma of 41-year-old Kelvin McNickle, who was diagnosed with the cancer six years ago after two decades of using the chemical on his family’s property.

The National Farmers Federation said Justice Lee’s decision was reassuring, given the widespread use of the product in the agriculture sector.

“As a farmers and stewards of the land, it’s important we use products that are safe for ­humans and the environment,” the NFF said after the verdict.

“Glyphosate is one of the most common products farmers and home gardeners use all over the world to combat invasive weeds. It allows us to be more productive and sustainable, often being associated with no or minimal till farming, which preserves soil structure.

“The decision from the Federal Court today reinforces that our regulator is doing its job to ensure the health and safety of our farmers, communities and environment.”

Describing glyphosate as “a critical component of modern and sustainable agricultural production”, NSW Farmers Ag Science Committee chair Alan Brown said Australian farmers were “well aware of how to use this chemical correctly to protect the health of their families and communities”.

“Without access to the chemical, farmers would have to resort to cultivation to manage weeds – degrading our landscape and making it harder than ever to maintain productivity” Mr Brown said.

Bayer said the decision was consistent with worldwide regulatory and scientific assessments and “remains committed to supporting Australian farmers by ensuring safe-for-use and effective products such as Roundup continue to be available”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/court-rules-in-favour-of-roundup-over-cancer-query/news-story/4786be27bbf3dbf6fc2b0e12a24d0c12

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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The post I put up on this date has been deleted by Google but it is still available on my backup sites

http://jonjayray.com/ and http://johnjayray.com/

Nine July Days Clearly Demonstrate Industrial Wind Turbines Intermittent Uselessness

The chart below uses IESO data for nine (9) July days and clearly demonstrates the vagaries of those IWT which on their highest generation day operated at 39.7% of their capacity and on their lowest at 2.3%! As the chart also notes, our natural gas plants were available to ramp up or down to ensure we had a stable supply of energy but rest assured IESO would have been busy either selling or buying power from our neighbours to ensure the system didn’t crash.

The only good news coming out of the review was that IESO did not curtail any wind generation as demand was atypical of Ontario’s summer days with much higher demand then those winter ones.

Days Gone By:

Back and shortly after the McGuinty led Ontario Liberal Party had directed IESO to contract IWT as a generation source; their “Annual Planning Outlook” would suggest/guess those IWT would generate an average of 15% of their capacity during our warmer months (summer) and 45% of their capacity during our colder months (winter). For the full year they would be projecting an average generation of 30% of their capacity and presumably that assumption was based on average annual Ontario winds!

The contracts for those IWT offered the owners $135/MWh so over the nine days contained in the chart below those 125,275 MWh generated revenue for the owners of $16,912,125 even though they only generated an average of 11.8% of their capacity. They are paid despite missing the suggested target IESO used because they rank ahead of most of Ontario’s other generation capacity with the exception of nuclear power due to the “first-to-the-grid” rights contained in their contracts at the expense of us ratepayers/taxpayers!

Should one bother to do the math as to the annual costs based on the 15% summer and 45% winter IESO previously used it would mean annual generation from those IWT in the summer would be about 3.9 TWh and 11.7 TWh in the winter with an annual cost of just over $2.1 billion for serving up frequently unneeded generation which is either sold off at a loss or curtailed!

Replacing Natural Gas Plants with BESS:

Anyone who has followed the perceived solution of ridding the electricity grid of fossil fuels such as natural gas will recognize ENGO have convinced politicians that battery energy storage systems are the solution! Well is it, and how much would Ontario have needed over those nine charted July days? One good example is July 9th and 10th and combining the energy generated by natural gas from the chart over those two days is the place to start. To replace that generation of 221,989 MW with BESS units the math is simple as those BESS units are reputed to store four (4) times their rated capacity. Dividing the MWh generated by Ontario’s natural gas generators by four over those two days therefore would mean we would need approximately 55,500 MW of BESS to replace what those natural gas plants generated. That 55,500 MW of BESS storage is over 27 times what IESO have already contracted for and add huge costs to electricity generation in the province driving up the costs for all ratepaying classes. The BESS 2034 MW IESO already contracted are estimated to cost ratepayers $341 million annually meaning 55,500 MW of BESS to the grid would add over $9 billion annually to our costs to hopefully avoid blackouts!

The other interesting question is how would those 55,500 MW be able to recharge to be ready for future high demand days perhaps driven by EV recharging or those heating and cooling pumps operating? The wind would have to be blowing strong and the sun would need to be shining but, as we know, both are frequently missing so bring us blackouts seems to be the theme proposed by those ENGO and our out of touch politicians and bureaucrats!

Just one simple example as to where we seem to be headed based on the insane push to reach that “net-zero” emissions target!

Extreme Examples of Missing IWT generation:

What the chart doesn’t contain, or highlight is how those 4,900 MW of IWT capacity are undoubtedly consuming more power than they are generating on many occasions and the IESO data for those nine days contained some clear examples but less than a dozen are highlighted here!

To wit:

July 5th at Hour 11 they managed to deliver only 47 MWh! July 7th at Hours 8, 9, and 10 they respectively generated 17 MWh, 3 MWh and 18 MWh! July 9th at Hour 9 they delivered 52 MWh! July 12th at Hours 8, 9, 10 and 11 they respectively generated 33 MWh, 13 MWh, 13 MWh and 35 MWh. July 13th at Hours 9 and 10 they managed to generate 19 MWh and 39 MWh respectively!

Conclusion:

Why politicians and bureaucrats around the world have been gobsmacked by those peddling the reputed concept of IWT generating cheap, reliable electricity is mind-blowing as the Chart coupled with the facts, clearly shows for just nine days and only looking at Ontario!

Much like the first electric car invented in 1839, by a Scottish inventor named Robert Davidson, the first electricity generated by a wind turbine came from another Scottish inventor, Sir James Blyth who in 1887 did exactly that. Neither of those old “inventions” garnered much global acceptance until those ENGO like Michael Mann and Greta arrived on the scene pontificating about “global warming” being caused by mankind’s use of fossil fuels!

As recent events have demonstrated both EV and IWT are not the panacea to save the world from either “global warming” or “climate change” even though both have “risen from the dead” due to the “net-zero” push by ENGO.

The time has come for our politicians to wake up and recognize they are supporting more then century old technology focused to try and rid the world of CO 2 emissions. They fail to see without CO 2 mankind will be setback to a time when we had trouble surviving!

https://parkergallantenergyperspectivesblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/15/nine-july-days-clearly-demonstrate-industrial-wind-turbines-intermittent-uselessness/

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Heat Deaths In Summer? Shirley Not!

After several weeks of heat because it is summer, we get a headline about seven people dying, and the cause of death might be heat-related

This from a report shared via Yahoo News:

Record-breaking heat suspected in at least 7 deaths as temperatures soar across U.S.

The sweltering heat wave gripping parts of the U.S. has shattered heat records and sparked an air quality health advisory, and it is suspected of having contributed to at least seven deaths.

At least seven deaths in the Western U.S. are suspected of having been caused by the extreme heat, officials said. Five people have died in Oregon since Friday, and those deaths are being investigated as possibly being heat-related, the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

In Death Valley, California, a motorcyclist died of suspected heat exposure and another was hospitalized for severe heat illness Saturday. Another man, Kevin Gerhardt, of Sacramento, died Sunday because of the heat, NBC affiliate KCRA of Sacramento reported.

Of the seven, five deaths occurred in Oregon—not the desert-like landscape of eastern Oregon though, but Multnomah County, with its lakes and rivers and relatively close proximity to the Pacific Ocean (I find this odd, and wonder if there’s more to the story).

One was a motorcyclist who died in Death Valley…and should be attributed to stupidity. Death Valley has been extremely hot much longer than we have been using natural resources to greatly improve our quality and length of life.

Putting the deaths into perspective:

Over three million people die in the U.S. each year, which equates to around 8,000 per day, and in a few weeks of heat this summer, we get a big story on seven deaths as “possibly being heat-related,” as it serves as fuel to the fire to continue the push to destroy those things that greatly improve our quality and length of life.

(Of course, we don’t ever learn if the people had underlying conditions.)

The best estimate of how many people die of heat-related causes each year is around 1,000, roughly three per day—again, this is out of over 8,000 deaths total per day.

How many people died in Chicago and other cities last week because pro-crime DAs, enabled by Democrats, let career criminals roam the street?

How many people die or are harmed because of Democrat policies at the border? Think of the harm and deaths that drugs, human trafficking, and drug trafficking bring.

And somehow, the Democrats are focused on a couple degrees of temperature rise over hundreds of years after the Little Ice Age ended.

Also, a whopping 492 people died in storms last year in the U.S. (That is less than two per day.)

Now, what happens if we continue to destroy the quality of life for everyone by eliminating affordable energy, and making them purchase flammable electric cars and appliances?

I would expect that number to go up!

What would happen when power is knocked out, and no one is allowed a generator? What would happen if hurricanes come, and everyone is stranded because their EVs short-circuit and explode?

In the United States and Canada, it is estimated that there are more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death, but we rarely, if ever, see headlines seeking to scare the public about cold deaths…because it doesn’t fit the Democrat agenda.

From the New York Post:

More people die of cold: Media’s heat-death climate obsession leads to lousy fixes

Heat deaths are beguilingly click-worthy, and studies show that heat kills about 2,500 people every year in the United States and Canada. However, rising temperatures also reduce cold waves and cold deaths.

Cold restricts blood flow to keep our core warm, increasing blood pressure and killing through strokes, heart attacks and respiratory diseases.

Those deaths are rarely reported, because they don’t fit the current climate narrative. Of course, if they were just a curiosity, the indifference might be justified, but they are anything but.

Each year, more than 100,000 people die from cold in the United States, and 13,000 in Canada — more than 40 cold deaths for every heat death.

Why would anyone make such an effort to cool the world when a warmer world has been a healthier world?

Does anyone really think that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or anyone else pushing the ‘green’ agenda can point to evidence that our consumption of oil controls temperatures and storm activity?

How many more people will die needlessly from heat or cold if wind and solar can’t keep up with our power needs?

https://principia-scientific.com/heat-deaths-in-summer-shirley-not/

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Energy Policies of Biden and Newsom Are the Real Existential Threat to Billions

As a refresher for Biden’s and Newsom’s passion for pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil.

Wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity but manufacture absolutely NO PRODUCTS for society.
Sadly, others are following the pursuit of ONLY weather-dependent generated electricity, like nongovernmental organizations (NGO), the National Wildlife Federation, the Conservation Law Foundation, and even the Heinz Endowments, the “legacy” of former Senator and Heinz ketchup baron John Heinz.

Even Bangladesh, where the South Asian country’s dominance in the manufacture of clothing, is being threatened with policies toward net zero emissions that Threatens our Future Garment Purchases.

Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity, but when manufactured into petrochemicals, it is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800s. These products are used in infrastructures such as transportation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, telecommunications, communications systems, space programs, heating and ventilation, and militaries.

Both Biden and Newsom do not comprehend that Teslas are 100% made from crude oil!

EV tires, electronic components, upholstery, etc., are 100% made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Further, all the parts and components of EVERY electricity generation system (coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar) are also made from the oil derivatives manufactured from oil!

Before the 1800s and before the discovery of oil, we had NO crude oil and obviously NO products, NO electricity, and NO Teslas!
Mandating EVs and electricity generation from wind turbines and solar panels is mandating MORE USAGE of crude oil.

Simplistically, to rid the world of oil usage, STOP using products made from oil.

There is no need for the crusade to over-regulate the “suppliers of oil and gas” when there is no known replacement to meet the “demands” of our materialistic world, but Democrats, armed with their LACK of Energy Literacy, continue their pursuit to eliminate the only known sources of the products that are supporting modern lifestyles and economies:

The American Energy Alliance (AEA) tabulated “225 Ways President and the Democrats Have Made it Harder to Produce Oil & Gas”.
Biden and Newsom are oblivious that without crude oil, there would be nothing that needs electricity! Everything, like iPhones, computers, data centers, and X-ray machines, that need electricity to function, and all the parts of EVs, toilets, spacecraft, and more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft,and more than 50,000 military aircraft are also made from the products based on oil and use the fuels manufactured from crude oil.

Without a replacement, the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the world that now sustains 8 billion people — ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution and thankfully has experienced record crop production. This rapid increase in agricultural output is partially attributable to an increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1940. This rise in CO2 levels alone is linked to major yield increases for corn, soybeans, and wheat.

Biden and Newsom’s delusions are that the end of crude oil would be the end of civilization as “unreliable electricity” from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.

The world has also experienced significant economic growth and prosperity, benefiting from the more than 6,000 productsthat are derived from fossil fuels. These products support infrastructures that were not around a few centuries ago because they all need components and parts made from fossil fuels that were NOT available in the pre-1800s.

https://heartland.org/opinion/energy-policies-of-biden-and-newsom-are-the-real-existential-threat-to-billions/

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Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate Will Leave Western States’ Drivers Stranded

Temperatures are over 100 degrees this month in Twin Falls, Idaho, sapping the distance electric vehicles can travel.

EVs in the Gem State remain relegated to the back seat when it comes to consumers’ choice in vehicles, despite a new Environmental Protection Agency mandate requiring that 70% of new cars sold be all electric by 2032. Idaho had 8,000 registered EVs in 2023, compared to 60,000 and 140,000 in neighboring Oregon and Washington, respectively.

At the Twin Falls Toyota dealership, sales manager Scott Mason said that he could count on one hand the number of fully electric vehicles Toyota has sold in the area. In fact, no fully electric vehicles were available on the lot.

Kent Atkin, project manager at J-U-B Engineers, described how battery-powered EVs “just don’t fit” with life in southern Idaho. His biggest focus as an engineer is the health and safety concerns caused by the unreliability of EVs under extreme temperatures. He said, “We’re expecting people to get stuck in extreme heat and cold. At 105-degree heat in the desert, if you’re stuck out there, you’re done. We’re used to reliability for safety in Idaho.”

EVs cannot match the performance of gas-powered vehicles in extreme weather. Southern Idaho’s wind chill pulls the temperature down to single digits every winter, and summers routinely reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This weather means that battery-powered electric vehicles fail to achieve their promised range and can leave drivers stranded.

Under extreme cold, batteries use stored-up charge to heat themselves rather than saving the charge for driving. In below-freezing conditions, batteries experience up to 40% range loss.

Under extreme heat, battery ions move faster. As that happens, pressures inside batteries build, creating micro-cracks that permanently decrease battery life and range. With freeway speed limits of 80 mph, batteries pull power faster to keep up with the demands of the roads and, when combined with unpredictable weather, can lose power before reaching the driver’s destination.

Gas-powered cars can handle temperature extremes and guarantee ranges long enough to transport people from one gas station to another, while an EV cannot do this considering how remote charging stations are in rural areas.

Extreme temperatures also affect charging speeds. When drivers plug EVs into chargers, cold weather prompts internal battery heaters to run. This pulls a quarter of charging power away from the battery itself and directs it to attached heaters. If the battery’s sensors detect that the battery temperature is anything less than minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit and the EV is charging, all power will go to the heater, and the EV will not charge until temperatures rise. This is a substantial disadvantage compared to gas vehicles that can refill in five to 10 minutes.

Charging stations in the Gem State are few and far between, with long stretches of remote roads or busy freeways between them. Twin Falls offers 25 public EV charging stations and is about 120 miles from the nearest cities with charging stations. As Atkin remarked later in our call, “If everyone had to drive an EV, they couldn’t” with the current infrastructure.

Upgrading city infrastructure to allow for needed charging stations and transmission lines would cost around $10 million to $20 million for Twin Falls, per Kent’s estimates, and most of it would come in the form of increased taxes for residents. The result of an EV mandate is not only a loss of choice in types of vehicles to drive and more expensive vehicles to buy, but increased taxes for all residents and a less reliable form of transportation.

Another reason Idahoans are not sold on electric vehicles is functionality. On paper, battery-powered trucks claim comparable towing capacity to gas-powered trucks; however, the heavier the load, the greater the loss of range of the vehicle. In head-to-head testing, a Ford F-150 carrying a 1,400-pound load in its bed lost 14% of its projected range. In comparison, a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning (Ford’s EV model of the same truck) lost almost 25% of its projected range.

When towing a 6,800-pound boat and trailer over flat ground, the F-150 Lightning dropped from a 300-mile range to a 90-mile range. In contrast, the F-150 gasoline-powered truck towing the same load boasted a 231-mile radius, leaving the owner with plenty of leeway to tow up mountains and travel to more remote locations.

The Gem State’s economy is primarily driven by agriculture, manufacturing, food processing, and mining. All of these sectors rely on the ability to reliably transport large loads between distant areas of the state and beyond its borders. Fully electric vehicles cannot meet the demands of rural communities, and the EV mandate from the Biden administration is disastrous for workers there.

The decision on what type of car to purchase should be left to the people of Idaho. And the statistics show that EVs are not yet their vehicle of choice.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/23/bidens-electric-vehicle-mandate-will-leave-western-states-drivers-stranded/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Robert Bryce torpedoes Nantucket offshore gigantism

On Saturday, the Nantucket Select Board announced it was considering legal action against Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, the foreign corporations that own the $4 billion Vineyard Wind project now under construction in Massachusetts waters.
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The news of the possible litigation, which the Nantucket Current published on Saturday, comes less than a week after tons of debris from the broken wind turbine blade that was part of the massive offshore project began washing ashore on the island. The pollution forced the town to temporarily close many of its beaches during the peak summer tourist season while the debris was removed. The beaches have since reopened.

As I noted here a week ago, the development of offshore wind energy on the Eastern Seaboard has been promoted by some of America’s biggest climate NGOs, including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Conservation Law Foundation, as well as numerous Democratic politicians at state and federal levels. But the disaster at Vineyard Wind — and it is a monumental disaster for the offshore wind industry — is spotlighting the environmental risks posed by installing dozens or even hundreds of massive wind turbines and offshore platforms in our oceans. This disaster happened in calm weather. It doesn’t take much effort to imagine what will happen when a hurricane hits the East Coast.

The NGOs have been shameless in their collusion with foreign corporations, including oil companies like Equinor and Total, that are eagerly queueing up to collect billions in federal tax credits. But the turbine blade failure at Vineyard Wind is only part of a broader crisis facing Big Wind, both onshore and offshore. Before I talk about that crisis, and hurricanes, a bit of background is needed.

The Vineyard Wind project aims to have 800 megawatts of capacity. It will require installing 62 offshore platforms on the Eastern Seaboard in the midst of known North Atlantic Right Whale Habitat. Each turbine will have a capacity of about 13 megawatts. A handful of turbines have been installed and the project began producing power in January.

On Saturday, I talked to Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK 4 Whales, the Nantucket group fighting offshore wind. “People are pissed,” she said. “They are really upset for a lot of reasons.” (ACK 4 Whales has sued to stop the project, arguing that the federal government ignored the Endangered Species Act when it issued the permit. A federal judge rejected their case in April, but the group is appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.)

One of the reasons for the anger is obvious: the turbine blade began disintegrating on Saturday evening and sent some 17 cubic yards of debris into the ocean. But the owners of Vineyard Wind didn’t notify officials in Nantucket until Monday at about 5 pm. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is part of the Interior Department, issued a stop work order at Vineyard Wind, “until further notice.”

On Thursday, as the beach cleanup was ongoing, the remaining portion of the massive turbine blade, a chunk about 300 feet long, fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard warned mariners in the area of the wind project, which is located 15 miles south of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, to “use extreme caution” when passing through the region.

On Sunday afternoon, I talked to Bob DeCosta, a fisherman on Nantucket who started fishing with his father when he was nine. “I’ve been on the water for 56 years,” he told me from his boat. “I don’t have a Ph.D. But like the other fishermen here, I know the tides, and the waters better than anybody. They never talked to us. These wind turbines are getting steamrolled over us. Big Wind is not green. The only thing green about it is the money going to the offshore wind companies.”

DeCosta, who served on the Nantucket Select Board for six years, operates a 35-foot charter boat, The Albacore, with his son, Ray. DeCosta said he steered his vessel through the area near Vineyard Wind early last Sunday morning through thick fog but didn’t know that debris from the shattered turbine blade was in the water. DeCosta said he could have unwittingly hit the debris which would have done significant damage to his boat. “For 48 hours, that stuff was floating around, and we knew nothing about it. It’s unacceptable.”

In addition to the public relations disaster at Vineyard Wind, Big Wind is facing a crisis caused by simple physics. The turbines now being deployed onshore and offshore are failing far sooner than expected. Why? They have gotten too big. Yes, bigger wind turbines are more efficient than their smaller cousins. But the larger the turbine, the more its components get hit by the stresses that come with their size and weight. The GE Vernova Haliade-X wind turbine used at Vineyard Wind stands 260 meters high and sweeps an area of 38,000 square meters. That means the turbine captures wind energy over an area five times larger than a soccer pitch.

But here’s the critical part: its blades are 107 meters (351 feet) long and weigh 70 tons. In addition, the rotor of the massive machine spans 220 meters. For comparison, the wingspan of a Boeing 737 is 34 meters. In other words, the turbines at Vineyard Wind are nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and each of their blades weighs more than a fully loaded 737.

https://stophumansacrifice.substack.com/p/slam-the-scam-robert-bryce-torpedoes

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Generator Sales Are Rising… And There’s Good Reason

I bought a house earlier this year, and to my absolute delight, it came with a built in 16 kilowatt (kW)kW generator, plenty of power for a medium sized house.

Given increasing electrical grid unreliability, many Americans are on the market for a new generator. Whether they’re upgrading from a portable generator to a built-in standby generator, or buying a portable one for the first time, many are rethinking their longstanding trust in the reliability of the grid.

When I first bought my house, right as I was moving in, I was there alone late one night scrubbing the walls in the kitchen, getting them ready for a new coat of paint the next day. It was a dark and stormy night (really), and at one point as I was scrubbing away and listening to what was probably an Agatha Christie audiobook, the thunder crashed, lightening flashed and the lights flickered once, twice, and then went out.

At that point I would usually be turning on my phone flashlight and beginning the search for errant candles or the stray flashlight. Instead, I waited with anticipation to see if my generator would work as advertised. Thirty seconds later I heard it thrum on outside, and inside of two minutes my lights were back on as if nothing ever happened.

Now this was just a small thunderstorm, and the outage it caused only lasted a little while. Twenty minutes later I heard the generator shut itself off as power returned. But there will almost certainly be longer storm outages in the future and given the state of most of the country’s power grid, chances are good that there could be blackouts caused by an inability to meet demand rather than from a downed line in a storm.

I’m happy to have found a way to insulate myself slightly from the state of the power grid (I live in Pennsylvania and my power comes from the PJM interconnection). Many other Americans with some combination of the means and foresight to do so are taking the same precaution.

Fortune Business Insights found that the generator sales market in the U.S. was valued at $6.1 billion in 2023, and projected that it will grow to 6.43 billion by the end of this year, and to $10.26 billion by 2032.

I appreciate a clever short-term solution to a problem, and I’m a fan of being prepared to meet any eventuality. I think it’s largely a very good thing that more people are taking the initiative to ensure that they have an alternative power source in a blackout.

What concerns me is both the reasons behind this growing impulse, and those that will be left behind in a crisis.

The grid should be reliable enough that a standby generator feels like a needless extravagance rather than a reasonable precaution. Lawmakers should be working to ensure that power supply problems don’t lead to blackouts.

In my new paper at the Competitive Enterprise Institute “How to Keep the Lights On”, I outline 9 principles that lawmakers should focus on to ensure that power remains reliable, and generators like mine remain a superfluous display of preparedness rather than a constantly relied upon crutch for poor policymaking.

If the principles had already been followed, Americans would be less interested in buying generators because they could rightfully expect that their lights will stay on. Unfortunately, since the importance of reliability has been minimized by some policymakers, many Americans are realizing they could soon find themselves in the dark.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/07/17/generator-sales-reason/

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Britain will never be an energy superpower

Keir Starmer’s victory became assured in the autumn of 2022. This was the moment when the tension between the Bank of England’s attempts to reduce energy-driven inflation and the inability of financial markets to absorb higher interest rates humiliated Kwasi Kwarteng, a rookie chancellor determined to go on a borrowing splurge.

A political party that offered three prime ministers – Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – in 50 days could not be taken seriously as a governing force. But it was the nature of the economic crisis that trapped the Conservatives in the sumps of unpopularity. The very financial conditions that put Sunak in office in October that year forced his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to withdraw most of the energy-support package that Truss had introduced and eschew pre-election tax cuts.

The Labour leadership has internalised the financial markets’ disciplining power. Writing in the Financial Times in September 2023, the then shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declared that Labour’s commitment to the electorate “starts today with a very simple promise: never again”. Whatever else happens, “with a Labour government, never will a prime minister or chancellor be allowed to repeat the mistakes of the ‘mini’ Budget”. The result is that despite the party’s landslide win, Labour’s approach to public expenditure is unlikely to differ that much from that of the previous government.

But there is little evidence that the Labour cabinet has grasped the acute interaction between this macroeconomic environment and Britain’s energy troubles. If Labour were to achieve its aim of decarbonising electricity by 2030 and reduce bills by doing so, this would still leave around 80 per cent of British energy consumption exposed to another inflationary shock. This would only change if the government also made rapid progress in electrifying the country’s heating and transportation systems. That would be dependent on spending large sums of borrowed money to subsidise consumers buying electric vehicles and heat pumps. Even then, the more electricity that is substituted for fossil fuels in these sectors, the harder it will be to achieve 100 per cent low-carbon electricity.

Prices for fossil-fuel consumption are determined by international markets over which the UK government has scarcely any influence. The gas-price shock of 2021-22 began with a spike in China’s demand for imports and was intensified by Germany’s entry into liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even Joe Biden’s administration – aided by a large domestic oil base and a much larger Strategic Petroleum Reserve – has been unable to drive US oil prices down much below the level it found politically intolerable before the 2022 midterm elections.

Geopolitical tensions, as well as the sense of political uncertainty in Washington, only intensify Britain’s impotence. British naval vessels have been in action since last December in a US-led military operation to reopen the Red Sea to Western shipping, but there were more Houthi attacks in June than in any month so far this year. If he is elected president again, Donald Trump could prove unwilling to continue with Operation Prosperity Guardian, since the US has a limited economic interest in the Suez Canal compared to the Persian Gulf. But since Britain now imports more than a quarter of its gas from the US rather than Qatar, another Democratic administration that insisted on the primacy of its domestic consumers, and which hardened Biden’s move against new LNG export approvals, could be just as much of an energy security risk over the course of this parliament.

Whatever the follies of Kwarteng and Truss, their fall exposed a structural vulnerability in the British economy to crisis dating from 2004, when Britain became a net importer of energy. Britain does not export enough goods to service its rising energy imports, required because of declining North Sea production.

At times of financial market turbulence, the ensuing trade deficit risks a fall in sterling, making dollar-priced energy imports more expensive. In the last year of Britain being a net energy exporter, the current-account deficit was 1.8 per cent of GDP and sterling started 2004 at around $1.80. When the Truss shock hit, the current-account deficit had widened to 4 per cent and sterling had fallen to $1.07. While sterling has recovered from that nadir, it still has only briefly touched $1.30 again.

The Labour leadership will argue that the answer is growth and using the energy transition to boost exports. During the election campaign, Ed Miliband, now the Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero, proclaimed, “The offshore wind industry is the beating heart of our mission to make Britain a clean-energy superpower.” But there will be no electricity-exporting superpowers in the way that Saudi Arabia, Russia and the US are fossil-fuel superpowers, because electricity cannot be distributed across oceans.

Far from being behind the curve on wind, Britain is already a pace-setter. It has the largest offshore-wind capacity in the world, and opened the first ever floating wind farm, off the Aberdeenshire coast in 2017. At the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, renewable electricity, mostly from wind, hit record levels – more than half of the total UK electricity generation.

Yet this success has not translated into any kind of industrial or macroeconomic reward: there is not one UK company in the top-20 wind turbine manufacturers in the world, and in the first quarter of 2024 net electricity imports were higher than ever. Rather than being the basis of an exporting renaissance, a large wind sector locks Britain into a set of hourly trade interdependencies with other European countries to provide electricity when the wind does not blow. Allowing for onshore wind, as Labour now has, cannot change that fact.

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/07/britain-will-never-be-an-energy-superpower?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1721118879

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Supporters of arrested Sea Shepherd founder say parallels with Julian Assange are ‘disturbing’

The arrest of the anti-whaling activist Paul Watson in Greenland – where he could face extradition to Japan – has been condemned as “politically motivated” by supporters, who compared the case to the detention of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

“The parallels are disturbing,” said Omar Todd, chief executive and co-founder of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF).

“We have our own extradition drama going on,” Todd said. “Governments don’t like people to tell the truth or do the right thing.

“Assange’s case was political and Paul’s case is the same. If Julian had been extradited to the US, he knew he was going there to die. If it comes to it and Paul gets extradited to Japan, he could get 15 years in prison … it’s like a life sentence.”

Brigitte Bardot, the former actor and French animal rights activist, has criticised Japan for its “manhunt” of Watson and demanded his release. More than 300,000 people have signed a petition in support of Watson.

Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian-American who lives in France, was an early member of Greenpeace and later founded Sea Shepherd, the marine conservation group known for its direct action tactics.

Watson, who appeared in the Whale Wars TV programme, was arrested and detained in handcuffs on Sunday after arriving in Nuuk, the autonomous Danish territory’s capital, on the Captain Paul Watson Foundation ship, apparently on an international warrant issued by Japan. Greenland’s justice ministry is responsible for deciding if there are grounds for extradition, according to police there.

“He doesn’t have time to play that game,” said Todd. “He has a wife and three kids, including a seven-and-a-half-year-old and a three-year-old, living in Marseille. His wife is very upset.”

Watson’s arrest took place during a stop-off on a mission tracking Japan’s new whaling ship, the Kangei Maru, in the northern Pacific Ocean.

CPWF said it believed his arrest was related to an Interpol “red notice” issued over “Watson’s previous anti-whaling operations in the Antarctic region”, and that the international arrest alert had been issued in March. Interpol could not confirm the date of the notice.

“This development comes as a surprise since the foundation’s lawyers had reported that the red notice had been withdrawn,” the CPWF said in a statement.

Greenland police said Watson had been arrested on Sunday in response to an international arrest warrant. On Monday, a judge ruled that he must be detained until 15 August while the case was being investigated. An appeal against his detention on Tuesday was denied.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/23/supporters-of-arrested-sea-shepherd-founder-say-parallels-with-julian-assange-are-disturbing

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Why Are Massive Amounts of the World’s Most Potent Greenhouse Gas Being Ferried Out into the Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard?

If there’s anything Big Wind doesn’t like to talk about it’s sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).

It is universally agreed that SF6 is the most potent and devastating greenhouse gas yet known. This manmade fluorinated compound does not exist in nature. Used as an insulator in high- and medium-voltage switchgear in the electrical industry, once released, this long-lasting compound lives on in the atmosphere for a very long time -- having a half-life of 3,200 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

As pointed out by ecos, an environmental organization based in Brussels, in its report, “Worst in class,” SF6 will remain 25,200 times more effective at trapping infrared radiation than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide for over a century. However, “its growth and use continue virtually unabated.”

Enter offshore wind.

Used in the switchgear (a collection of voltage-regulating tools) of both wind turbines and offshore and onshore substations, SF6 will be utilized in all the wind-energy projects in various stages of development that will effectively fence in the East Coast from Maine to North Carolina.

Even the EPA doesn’t have a handle on what’s going on with Big Wind and SF6. In 2023 the agency contracted with a company to provide an “assessment” to help the agency in “seeking a better understanding…” of SF6 use in offshore wind.

As for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the lead federal agency for all the proposed turbine lease areas, it, too, would rather not have to answer to the public over the use of SF6. So much so that in the draft Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS (which was open to public comment) for the Atlantic Shores South project, the agency stated that “BOEM would require Atlantic Shores to use switchgear that does not contain SF6 but uses alternative insulating materials and technologies to eliminate leakage of SF6 as a source of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.”

But that wasn’t exactly true.

The final EIS, issued by BOEM in May of 2024 included a comment* from Atlantic Shores, stating that the BOEM-proposed measure of SF6-free switchgear “…is not technically or economically feasible,” and “Atlantic Shores requests that BOEM revise these proposed mitigation measures to remove the requirement for SF6-free switchgear…”

And BOEM complied, even offering an apology of sorts in its response that the measure was “erroneously included,” and has been “removed.” To cover its tracks, BOEM revised its language now saying Atlantic Shores won’t use SF6 “to the extent practicable based on technical, economic, and supply chain considerations.” (It should be noted that the final EIS is not open to public comment.)

Don’t Look Up

So just how much of this radiation-trapping gas will be used in these different projects?

Consulting the assessment prepared for the EPA that reviewed the permit applications for just six offshore lease areas reveals worrying numbers.

For example, Vineyard Wind 1, with 62 planned turbines 13 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, expects to use 11,949 pounds of SF6 in its offshore equipment.

Revolution Wind, 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island will use a total of 40,925 pounds of SF6 among its onshore and offshore substations, and in each of the 65 planned turbines.

And within prime viewing distance of Long Beach Island -- 8.7 miles offshore at the closest point -- are the Atlantic Shores lease areas. According to BOEM, both Atlantic Shores projects (north and south), which will consist of up to 200 mammoth wind turbines rising to over 1,000 feet, will utilize more than 47,000 pounds of SF6 in offshore substations.

Despite measures to keep this GHG from escaping, “leak rates” are fully expected during normal operations and maintenance of 0.5 to 1% per year. That, of course, is assuming that there are no accidental releases such as what happened at the Seagreen offshore wind area in the North Sea. Twenty-four pounds of SF6 leaked during routine work in 2022, resulting in the evacuation of 80 workers. While 24 pounds doesn’t sound like much, the EPA warns that a “relatively small amount can “have a significant impact on global climate change.” And even if SF6 use goes uneventfully, BOEM expects emission rates over the lifetime of the two Atlantic Shores projects to be 5.9 U.S. tons. (PDF page 45 at link.)

But the EPA has rules about using this gas, right?

In 2023 an air permit “fact sheet” was issued by EPA Region 1 for Sunrise Wind (30 miles east of Montauk, N.Y.). The agency stated that despite SF6-free switchgear now being manufactured by Siemens and General Electric, most are only suitable for the European Union and Asian markets, and one made by Siemens that does operate on U.S. electrical standards is too big and heavy for offshore wind use.

The EPA did, however, request that repairs of leaky SF6 switchgear be fixed within five “days of discovery.” But even that was shot down by Sunrise Wind, saying that “a precise timeline for repair of SF6 leaks” is not possible. We’ve got potential “adverse weather” and “mobilization logistics” to contend with, it noted. This is an “offshore location” after all.

Regardless of how many federal agencies write memos and fact sheets about this compound, which is rated as having the highest global warming potential of all greenhouse gasses, it’s unlikely that the public will ever learn about leaks or accidents releasing SF6 from these wind energy projects.

And no matter how “green” they try to paint offshore wind, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s an environmental disaster that will only succeed in making certain companies (mostly foreign) a whole lot of green paper.

https://lindabonvie.substack.com/p/why-will-thousands-of-pounds-of-the

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Waging War on Modern Agriculture and Global Nutrition

The World Economic Forum says the world faces a new crisis, “One-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from food production.” With the world’s population expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050, it is therefore “urgent” that we launch a “radical” and “comprehensive” transformation of the global food system – from “reinventing” farming to “reimagining” how food is produced, processed, distributed, consumed and disposed of.

Reinforcing this message, Stop Ecocide Now founder Jojo Mehta expanded on Greta Thunberg’s incendiary 2020 rant that “our house is on fire and you’re fueling the flames.” Farming is a “serious crime,” equal to “genocide,” Ms. Mehta told elites at the 2024 WEF meeting in Davos.

Their grasp of agriculture is epitomized by Michael Bloomberg’s suggestion that anybody can be a farmer: “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, up comes the corn.”

Modern farming and its supposedly dangerous greenhouse gas emissions are a tad more complicated.

Modern mechanized farming employs oil derivatives as fuel for equipment and feed stocks for herbicides and pesticides, natural gas to dry grain and make fertilizers, and livestock to provide protein.

Tractors, trucks, farmers and livestock emit carbon dioxide, adding to the 0.04% of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere (equivalent to $40 of $100,000). Cattle emissions add methane to the existing 0.0002% CH4 in the atmosphere (20¢ of $100,000). Nitrogen fertilizers add to the “dramatic” 200-year rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), bringing it to a still minuscule 0.00003% (that’s 3¢ of $100,000).

These emissions allegedly drive “cataclysmic” climate change and extreme weather, endangering all life on Earth. But then what caused five Ice Ages (including the Pleistocene Era and its mile-high glaciers, which ended 12,000 years ago), the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, and the Little Ice Age (1350-1850) to come and go?

Of course, natural forces can’t drive climate hysteria and WEF-Gore-Biden anti-fossil-fuel agendas. Fear-mongering political, activist, media and academic elites therefore ignore them.

In the Real World, the wondrous reality is that, after centuries of excruciatingly slow progress, agricultural advances over the past 75 years have been nothing short of astonishing. Dr. Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution employed plant breeding techniques that multiplied yields of vital grain crops, saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts – while using used less land, water and fuel … and fewer fertilizers and pesticides per ton of produce. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition even further.

Meanwhile, despite supposed impacts from manmade climate change, farmers in Brazil, India and many other countries have also enjoyed record harvests.

Multiple miracle technologies contributed. Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different related plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against voracious insects and destructive viruses, while reducing water and pesticide demand. Virus-resistant biotech cultivars have even replaced endangered papayas in Hawaii, cassava and bananas in Africa, and other crops.

Nitrogen (ammonia) fertilizers, synthesized from natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen, have joined phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide spurs plant growth and reduces water demand even further.

Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops – and enable farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms.

Technologies developed in Israel make it possible to grow an amazing array of crops in the Negev and Arava Deserts, which receive a fraction of the annual rainfall that Arizona gets. Desalination plants turn seawater into 80% of Israel’s drinking water, dramatically reducing pressure on the Sea of Galilee, manmade reservoirs and groundwater supplies.

Israelis then recycle 90% of their home, business, school and hospital water – for use in agriculture, where drip irrigation delivers precise amounts of water precisely where crops and other plants need it, minimizing evaporation.

Huge high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers and herbicides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.

Not all these technologies are available across the globe. However, farmer can access information about both the technologies and the modern practices through online libraries and programs on cell phones.

Instead, this progress is under assault – by ill-advised or ill-intended, but well-funded organizations that want to turn the Green Revolution into Green Tyranny, Eco-Imperialism and global malnutrition.

Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented. But many also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of “natural” alternatives – which are often toxic to bees, fish, other animals and people and have not been tested for long-term harm to humans.

These agricultural anarchists also demand “natural” fertilizers, which typically provide a fraction of the nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do. At the very least, they want global organic farming, which would mean much lower crop yields per acre than conventional farming, and plowing many millions of additional acres of wildlife habitat and scenic land, to get the same amounts of food.

They say people in Africa, Asia and Latin America should practice subsistence farming – which they prefer to call “traditional” farming, Agro-Ecology, “food sovereignty,” or the “right to choose” “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” based on “indigenous agricultural knowledge and practices.”

In plain English, Agro-Ecology is rabidly opposed to biotechnology, monoculture farming, non-organic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and even mechanized equipment and hybrid seeds.

You can imagine how Agro-Ecologists would react if African farmers wanted to assert their food sovereignty, self-determination and right to choose by planting biotech Bt corn, to get higher yields, reduce pesticide use, enjoy better living standards and send their kids to school. The agro-anarchists would vilify them as vile supporters of violence against women, land-grabbing corporations, expropriation of indigenous rights, genocide and other “crimes against humanity.”

They also promote “alternative protein.” They say Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods – such as “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Popular Science magazine and many other outfits extol the virtues of “entomophagy” – the clever progressive term for eating bug burgers, instead of hamburgers.

They even offer recipes and techniques for processing “edible insects” into tasty, nutritious products that can improve diets and livelihoods, create thriving local businesses, and even promote inclusion of women. In fact, they say, bugs can have twice as much protein per pound as beef; grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, beetles, ants and cicadas make great snacks, desserts, guacamole and even entire meals; and mealworms have “an earthy flavor, similar to mushrooms,” making them excellent additions to brownies. Sautéed with a little salt, mealworms also make “protein-boosted potato chips.” Yummy!

Who are these guys – these agriculture and nutrition anarchists and revolutionaries? Stay tuned.

https://heartland.org/opinion/waging-war-on-modern-agriculture-and-global-nutrition/

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Italy approves decree banning installation of solar panels on agricultural land

The Italian government approved a decree that will ban the installation of solar panels on agricultural ground, local media reported on Monday, citing officials.

Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida said the ban on solar panels would only apply to productive agricultural land, as quarries would still be allowed to be used for energy production. However, EU-funded projects will be exempt from the ban.

With the decree, 'we put an end to the wild installation of photovoltaic panels on the ground,” Italy's ANSA news agency reported Lollobrigida as saying.

The decree is part of a bigger package of measures to protect farming and fisheries, according to ANSA.

The move comes after energy and climate ministers of the G7 countries, including Italy, agreed last week to end the use of “unabated” coal by 2035 and committed to the implementation of the global goal of tripling installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 to at least 11 terawatts.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/energy/regulation/italy-approves-decree-banning-installation-of-solar-panels-on-agricultural-land/41574

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World’s Most Populous Nation Has Put Solar Out To Pasture. Other Countries Should Follow Suit

During his debate with former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden claimed: “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change.” What if I told you that it is not climate change but climate policies that are the real existential threat to billions across our planet?

The allure of a green utopia masks the harsh realities of providing affordable and reliable electricity. Americans could soon wake up to a dystopian future if the proposed Net Zero and Build Back Better initiatives — both aimed at an illogical proliferation of unreliable renewables and a clamp down on dependable fossil fuels — are implemented.

Nowhere is this better reflected than in remote regions of India where solar panels — believed to provide clean and green energy — ultimately resulted in being used to construct cattle sheds.

The transformation of Dharnai in the state of Bihar into a “solar village” was marked by great enthusiasm and high expectations. Villagers were told the solar micro-grid would provide reliable electricity for agriculture, social activities and daily living. The promise engendered a naïve trust in a technology that has failed repeatedly around the world.

The news of this Greenpeace initiative quickly spread as international news media showcased it as a success story for “renewable” energy in a third world country. CNN International’s “Connect the World” said Dharnai’s micro-grid provided a continuous supply of electricity. For an unaware viewer sitting in, say, rural Kentucky, solar energy would have appeared to be making great strides as a dependable energy source.

But the Dharnai system would end up on the long list of grand solar failures.

“As soon as we got solar power connections, there were also warnings to not use high power electrical appliances like television, refrigerator, motor and others,” said a villager. “These conditions are not there if you use thermal power. Then what is the use of such a power? The solar energy tariff was also higher compared to thermal power.”

A village shopkeeper said: “But after three years, the batteries were exhausted and it was never repaired. … No one uses solar power anymore here.” Hopefully, the solar panels will last longer as shelter for cows.

Eventually, the village was connected to the main grid, which provided fully reliable coal-powered electricity at a third of the price of the solar power.

Dharnai is not an isolated case. Several other large-scale solar projects in rural India have had a similar fate. Writing for the publication Mongabay, Mainsh Kumar said: “Once (grid) electricity reaches unelectrified villages, the infrastructure and funds used in installation of such off-grid plants could prove futile.”

While green nonprofits and the liberal mainstream media have the embarrassment of a ballyhooed solar project being converted to cattle sheds, conventional energy sources like coal continue to power India’s more than 1.3 billion people and the industries their economies depend on.

India saw a record jump in electricity demand this year, partly due to increased use of air conditioning units and other electrical appliances as more of the population achieved the financial wherewithal to afford them. During power shortages, coal often has come to the rescue. India allows its coal plants to increase coal stockpiles and import additional fuel without restrictions.

India will add more than 15 gigawatts in the year ending March 2025 (the most in nine years) and aims to add a total of 90 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity by 2032.

Energy reality is inescapable in a growing economy like India’s, and only sources such as coal, oil and natural gas can meet the demand. Fossil fuels can be counted on to supply the energy necessary for modern life, and “green” sources cannot.

India’s stance is to put economic growth ahead of any climate-based agenda to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This was reaffirmed when the country refused to set an earlier target for its net zero commitment, delaying it until 2070.

The story of Dharnai serves as a cautionary tale for the implementation of renewable energy projects in rural India, where pragmatism is the official choice over pie in the sky.

https://co2coalition.org/2024/07/12/worlds-most-populous-nation-has-put-solar-out-to-pasture-other-countries-should-follow-suit/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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