Trump administration finalizes oil drilling plan in Alaska wildlife refuge

The Trump administration on Monday finalized its plan to open up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development, a move that overturns six decades of protections for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States.

The decision sets the stage for what is expected to be a fierce legal battle over the fate of the refuge’s vast, remote coastal plain, which is believed to sit atop billions of barrels of oil but is also home to polar bears and migrating herds of caribou.

The Interior Department said on Monday that it had completed its required reviews and would begin preparations to auction off drilling leases. “I do believe there could be a lease sale by the end of the year,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said.

Environmentalists, who have battled for decades to keep energy companies out of the refuge, say the Interior Department failed to adequately consider the effects that oil and gas development could have on climate change and wildlife. They and other opponents, including some Alaska Native groups, are expected to file lawsuits to try to block lease sales.

“We will continue to fight this at every turn,” said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, in a statement. “Any oil company that would seek to drill in the Arctic Refuge will face enormous reputational, legal and financial risks.”

Though any oil production within the refuge would still be at least a decade in the future, companies that bought leases could begin the process of seeking permits and exploring for oil and gas.

President Trump has long cast an increase in Arctic drilling as integral to his push to expand domestic fossil fuel production on federal lands and secure America’s “energy dominance.” Republicans have prized the refuge as a lucrative source of oil and gas ever since the Reagan administration first recommended drilling in 1987, but efforts to open it up had long been stymied by Democratic lawmakers until 2017, when the G.O.P. used its control of both houses of Congress to pass a bill authorizing lease sales.

“ANWR is a big deal that Ronald Reagan couldn’t get done and nobody could get done,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday.

It remains unclear how much interest there will be from energy companies at a time when many countries are trying to wean themselves from fossil fuels and oil prices are crashing amid the coronavirus pandemic. Exploring and drilling in harsh Arctic conditions remains difficult and costly.

Nevertheless, by proceeding with the lease sales, the Trump administration has made the Arctic refuge a potential issue in the presidential campaign, and the region’s fate may ultimately hinge on the election’s outcome. The Democratic nominee for president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has called for permanent protection of the refuge.

However, even if he were to win the White House, it could prove difficult for his administration to overturn existing lease rights once they have been auctioned to energy companies.

SOURCE





Kamala’s anti-fracking position

Everyone is talking about Joe Biden’s new VP candidate, Kamala Harris.  The media has painted her as a bold moderate - but did you know that Kamala actually supports a ban on fracking?

Not only would this hurt hundreds of thousands of hard working Americans, it’s also not backed by science.  We explain Kamala’s anti-fracking position and how some in the media are trying to paint those who mispronounce Kamala (Comma-lah) as racist!



Email from Ann and Phelim info@unreportedstorysociety.com




Some conservatives believe in global warming

Most of what Curbelo claims about climate change is demonstrably false and is simply talking points regurgitated from the climate alarm establishment. Contrary to what he claims, the rate of sea level rise has not increased, ocean “acidification” is not taking place, extreme weather is not increasing, etc.

It is possible that Curbelo does not care what the truth is. If this is the case, there is no point in trying to talk to him. But it is also possible that he is reasonably sincere and has been misinformed.


Florida Republicans are at the forefront of conservative efforts to address climate change. Far before Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s January climate bill, conservative policymakers from the Sunshine State were enacting local policies aimed at fighting climate change, and advocating for such policies on the federal level.

Prominent among these policymakers was Carlos Curbelo, who represented Florida’s 26th district, which is especially vulnerable to rising sea levels, from 2015 to 2019. The centerpiece of Curbelo’s work on the issue was the MARKET CHOICE Act, a bill that called for a tax on carbon emissions whose cost would be offset by eliminating the federal gas tax. “To be frank, I didn’t have high expectations it would become law,” Curbelo says in an interview. “My goal was to provoke a discussion and draw interest to the issue and it certainly did that.” He might not have known it at the time, but the bill marked a pivotal moment for the GOP: Climate-change policy had made its way onto the Party’s agenda.

It is no accident that this development came out of Florida, a state whose economy and identity are inextricably tied up in its environment, which is in turn threatened by climate change. “I didn’t run for Congress with the idea to become an environmentalist” Curbelo says in an interview. “What really motivated me was a meeting with NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]. . . . They showed me the data, the risk that my district faced.”

Curbelo notes that Florida’s barrier reef — the third largest in the world — is “being hurt by ocean acidification, which is a direct result of greater CO2 in the atmosphere.” The fishing and tourism industries that from such a big part of the state’s economy are directly dependent on the health of the ocean and sea levels. All in all, Floridians “really depend on the health of the environment more than some [other] places in the country,” Curbelo says. So concern about climate change is “not ideological; it’s pragmatic.”

Curbelo and other conservatives who care about climate change have reason to hope that such pragmatism is starting to filter through the rest of the GOP. Curbelo notes that there’s been a “drastic change in rhetoric” on the Right in recent months. For years, the party ignored the issue and, in essence, ceded it to Democrats by declining to expend any energy or political capital on it. But this year, several conservatives have come out in support of a “clean energy innovation” approach, hoping to offer an alternative to what they see as unworkable progressive proposals.

What catalyzed this change? Curbelo chalks it up to two things: science and politics.

“A lot of Republicans for years have been watching the science carefully, and the science is so compelling now that it’s motivated Republicans to speak out,” Curbelo says. While rising sea levels have long threatened trillions of dollars of coastal property in Florida, the interior of the country is starting to feel the effects of a warming climate now, too. “Changing weather patterns have really complicated life for farmers,” he says. “Extreme weather events have caused a lot of destruction. . . . We’re seeing larger and stronger storms with a greater frequency, because these storms get their energy from the oceans and the oceans are getting warmer.”

The scientific reality has in turn driven home the political dangers that climate-change poses to Republicans. For many on the right, “the case for taking care of the environment has always been there but I think the political reality of it has really hit in the past year,” says Quill Robinson of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a group of young conservatives focused on environmental issues. ACC polling has found that climate change is an important issue for 82 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 35, including 77 percent of those who describe themselves “right-leaning.” 60 percent of respondents indicated that climate change “will impact who they vote for in 2020.” Robinson argues that Republicans can’t afford to write off these voters. “If you’re a member of Congress saying climate change is a hoax, you’re hurting yourself politically,” he says.

That’s because there exists a real demand for a pragmatic approach that does not seek to reinvent the American economy as we know it. 53 percent of left-leaning respondents, 58 percent of moderate respondents, and 67 percent of right-leaning respondents in the ACC poll said they wanted “an alternative environmental movement that promotes free-market, limited government solutions.” Many voters are wary of the revolutionary climate-change plans proposed by the environmental Left, and that has paved the way for conservatives’ entrance into the debate.

Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute says that by presenting the issue as something that “threatens the sort of end of society or the extinction of the human race,” progressives have narrowed the range of possible solutions and created gridlock. Domestically, proposals that aim to cutting emissions to an exact degree by an exact date can make for a good soundbite, but they are almost always economically and/or politically infeasible. Globally, agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord have had little success at spurring collective action to curb emissions. As a result, Trembath says, Republicans have recently been emboldened and “entered the fray.”

The dirty secret of the climate-change debate is that there is no “silver bullet,” no foolproof way of definitively solving the problem. We don’t have the resources or infrastructure to cut emissions as drastically as some would like, and the green technologies advocated by progressives simply can’t make a big enough dent in emissions. “We’ve known for a long time that wind and solar weren’t going to decarbonize the American economy” on their own, Trembath says. What’s needed is a “much wider portfolio of technologies.”

McCarthy’s climate-change plan seems to take that message to heart. It focuses on innovation and natural solutions over large-scale economic reforms, and while it’s not a huge step forward, it’s a start. McCarthy contends that Republicans “can bring you a healthier, cleaner, and safer environment through innovation” while “[what] Democrats want is greater control and command.” His plan calls for planting 1 trillion new trees, managing soil health, and promoting conservation and recycling. It would also invest heavily in R&D in hopes of developing new emissions-cutting technologies, and give tax breaks to companies that use carbon-capture to reduce emissions.

All of this policy ferment on the right is critical, given the lack of feasible, large-scale emissions-cutting solutions. Trembath shares a hypothetical: Say we agree to enact a mandate on the steel industry that calls for a 50 percent reduction of emissions by 2030. “There’s just no way to do it. . . . We don’t know how to make fertilizer at scale without natural gas,” he says. It’s virtually impossible to make a significant dent in the emissions generated by America’s big industries without doing away with those industries altogether, which is a political and economic non-starter. So Republicans are hoping to unleash innovation that yields “a wide and more scalable set of technologies.”

Trembath believes that going forward, Republicans must demonstrate a “commitment to [climate change] beyond ‘basic science,’ backing carbon capture, nuclear energy, renewables, and other clean-energy technologies,” and focus on “technology-specific clean-energy innovation” to cut emissions. After years in which the only congressional climate-change proposals to even receive any press have been massive, government-driven overhauls of the economy with the potential to stifle growth, he sees an opening for conservatives to offer a more practical approach — and he might just be right.

SOURCE





The petty tyrants in your shower

When President Trump objected to federal regulations of shower heads and when the Department of Energy this week proposed to undo President Barack Obama’s shower rules, Trump’s critics decried the actions as petty and the subject matter as too picayune.

But Trump's critics are the ones with a question to answer: If the flow of a person’s shower head is too petty to be deregulated, then how was it momentous enough to be regulated in the first place?

The story of how Washington got into our showers started in 1992, but the real action took place in 2010.

A Democratic Congress passed and Republican President George H.W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which dictated the maximum flow rates on “showerheads, faucets, water closets, and urinals.”

The law banned any shower head that allowed water to flow out at a greater rate than 2.5 gallons per minute (which comes out to 5.3 ounces per second) “when measured at a flowing water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch.”

This was an overreach. People pay for their own water. If a family wants a lower water bill, it can always buy a low-flow shower head. Why Congress thinks it has the authority to make showers weak is a question each "aye" vote back in 1992 should have to answer for.

But even this intrusion into the most personal moments of a person's day was not enough for Obama. He wanted to make sure that no showers, including those with more than one shower head, ever spat out more than that congressionally mandated 5.3 ounces per second. Obama could have accomplished this crackdown on multihead showers by pushing legislation to that effect through Congress, where his party controlled both chambers.

But outlawing people’s showers isn’t terribly popular, so Obama opted to use regulatory means. He rewrote the language to redefine “shower head.”

You may think you know what a shower head is. It’s a fitting on the end of a pipe that disperses water into a spray in your shower. But Obama’s Energy Department decided that the term no longer meant that. What you call a shower head, Obama declared, is now a “nozzle.” A multihead shower was now a multinozzle shower head. And thus, if each “nozzle” is pumping out the legal maximum of 2.5 gallons per minute, then under Obama's redefinition, you are taking an illegal shower.

Trump's Energy Department did not propose to change the 1992 law, as reporters are now wrongly claiming, but to revert to the 1992 law. And when reporters tell you that Trump “wants to change the definition of a shower head,” they are telling you half the truth. He wants to change it back to what everyone thinks it always was.

You may think the federal government shouldn't be tinkering with the definition or the flow of a shower head. We couldn't agree more, and that's why Trump's action here is the right one.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Environmentalists should not oppose natural gas

Opposition to infrastructure investment for the production and transport of conventional energy is de rigueur on the environmentalist left, a stance widely justified as an important bulwark for the protection of environmental quality. This is part of the “keep-it-in-the-ground” dimension of the ideological opposition to fossil fuels, itself a deeply anti-human drive intended explicitly to hinder economic growth and increased flourishing among the world’s poorest.

The “environmental-protection” rationale for that opposition to investment is silly, a reality demonstrated by only one observation: New energy-infrastructure investment by definition replaces older facilities and provides alternatives that are cleaner, environmentally safer, and less dangerous for workers and communities. The shutdown of older infrastructure without replacement incontrovertibly leads to a reduction in the stock of productive capital, a reduction in the supply of energy and the economic value of the natural-resource base, and less aggregate wealth. How a poorer society can protect environmental quality more effectively than a wealthier one has never been explained, except for the incoherent argument that the substitution of utterly inefficient, unreliable, and expensive “clean” (actually, very dirty) wind and solar electricity in place of fossil-fired power will effect that end.

In light of these realities, continued investment in infrastructure for the production and transport of conventional energy is an absolute necessity both economically and environmentally. That is why the ideological opposition to new pipeline investment is perverse, a central component of the larger political opposition to fossil fuels. Recent examples of this resistance include opposition to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, as well as the Atlantic Coast and Northeast Supply Enhancement gas pipelines. An environmental-safety comparison of alternative-transport systems — pipelines, railroads, and trucks — is complex, but there is substantial evidence that pipeline transport is safer under a broad range of conditions.

And it is not as if there is no regulatory oversight of pipeline-construction projects. Consider the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP), a 430-mile project currently under construction, which will transport gas produced in west Texas to the Gulf Coast. Apart from the eternal resistance of the environmental lobby, the project also faces opposition from the residents of Texas Hill Country, who are politically active and would prefer that the pipeline be routed elsewhere. (They have been joined in that opposition by those famous musicians and noted experts on energy policy, Willie Nelson and Paul Simon.) Political pressures and litigation threats lead regulators to exercise oversight over minute details: Since March, the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) has conducted more than 75 inspections of welding, coating, trench integrity, safety issues, and recordkeeping. At a more general level, the RRC has the right political incentives precisely because of the underlying politics (it prefers to avoid future embarrassment), and can anyone doubt that the pipeline operator (Kinder Morgan) would prefer to take appropriate cautions now so as to avoid major problems after operations begin?

Such an extensive inspection and review process is appropriate as a means of providing confidence that future environmental issues will prove minor as they emerge. It is a vast improvement over the legalisms of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), reform of which has been proposed by the Trump administration. NEPA for decades has been a source of massive delay and cost increases for federal projects. Like much environmental legislation, it has yielded actual environmental harm because of its inherent bias toward the status quo over new investment promising improved environmental outcomes. NEPA is a useful tool for opposition to new infrastructure projects even as the underlying arguments presented in support of such opposition are largely spurious.

A sharp reduction in investment in energy infrastructure would make the economy poorer, and in the long run poorer is dirtier. Such an investment decline would leave older, more environmentally harmful, and more dangerous infrastructure in place. Pipelines largely are safer and more benign environmentally than other infrastructure. A rigorous and continuing inspection regime is vastly more consistent with environmental protection than opposition through litigation. And both regulators and private-sector operators have powerful incentives to pursue safety and benign environmental outcomes.

SOURCE 





Hawaii beach property linked to Obama, a climate alarmist, bypasses coastal protection laws

A beachfront compound in Hawaii where former President Barack Obama reportedly plans to retire has used a planning loophole to retain a seawall that is likely causing beach erosion, according to ProPublica.

State officials and community members told the outlet that Obama plans to reside in the $8.7 million compound on Oahu's Waimanalo Beach, which was purchased by his close friend Marty Nesbitt in 2015.

The Obamas made a big home buy of their own last year: an $11.75 million waterfront mansion on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., in December 2019.

Permits obtained by ProPublica reportedly show that Hawaii developers are building three homes, two pools and a security perimeter on the property after tearing down the site's mansion, which was famous for being the house from "Magnum, P.I."

However, a century-old seawall is set to remain thanks to a loophole that allowed the sellers to obtain an easement on the seawall for a one-time payment of $61,400, despite environmental experts who warn it could cause coastal damage and beach erosion, according to ProPublica.

The easement, reportedly acquired through Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, allows developers to essentially lease the public land that sits under the seawall for the next 55 years.

An investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica found that state officials have awarded seawall easements to more than 120 property owners over the past two decades. They include business and real state executives from Hawaii, the mainland U.S. and Japan, a former Honolulu City Council chairman, and a former managing director of a large hedge fund. Some have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to bypass rules designed to protect the public shoreline.

In addition, building permits show that developers are pursuing an expansion of the seawall. Local residents have noted that the existing beach along the property has nearly disappeared, according to the ProPublica report.

The Revised Ordinances of Honolulu states that, for the purpose of shoreline setbacks, it is "a primary policy of the city to protect and preserve the natural shoreline, especially sandy beaches; to protect and preserve public pedestrian access laterally along the shoreline and to the sea; and to protect and preserve open space along the shoreline."

According to research from Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth, Science and Technology, however, multi-agency seawall building on eroding shores approved by the state has resulted in the loss of one quarter of beaches around the island of Oahu.

"Had city, state, and federal staff operated in an integrated fashion, focused on a single over-riding policy to ―to protect and preserve the natural shoreline, this unconscionable level of environmental destruction probably would not have happened," researchers wrote.

Nesbitt, now chair of the Obama Foundation board and co-CEO of a Chicago-based private-equity firm, told ProPublica in a written response to questions that the steps he’s taken to redevelop the property and expand the seawall are “consistent with and informed by the analysis of our consultants, and the laws, regulations and perspectives of the State of Hawaii” and that any damage the structure caused to Waimnalao Beach occurred decades ago and "is no longer relevant."

Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, Nesbitt, and Obama's personal office did not immediately return FOX News' requests for comment.

SOURCE 






DNC Panelist Admits: The Green New Deal is About Destroying Capitalism

Surrogates for former Vice President Joe Biden are falling all over themselves in an attempt to frame the candidate and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, as a "moderate" ticket worthy of running the White House.

But delegates and DNC participants are telling a different story. During a panel discussion on the opening day of the convention, one woman admitted that the Green New Deal is about destroying capitalism.

More on the Marxist foundation of the Green New Deal:

In Europe, you will often hear politically savvy people refer to Green Party politicians as "watermelons." The reason is that although they might be environmentalist "green" on the outside, these leftists are secretly communist red if you look beneath the surface.

They typically resort to such subterfuge because environmentalism is more popular than Marxism. A former East German communist is bound to be unpopular, but perhaps not so much if he rehabilitates himself as a renewable energy enthusiast.

The case of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, is different in that she openly advertised herself as a socialist in a country with a well-grounded historical aversion to such alien ideologies. But her grand policy initiative, the $93 trillion Green New Deal, was still billed as if it were a legitimate environmentalist idea. We were supposedly trying to save the world from imminent destruction. As Ocasio-Cortez herself put it, "We're, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change."

Democrat vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris is an official sponsor of the legislation, spearheaded by far left Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

“We need a Green New Deal based in climate and environmental justice, which means building a clean economy that protects communities that have been neglected by policymakers for far too long. I’m proud to work with Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez on this comprehensive proposal, and I’m hopeful that it brings a Green New Deal closer to reality," Harris said in July 2019 when she officially announced her partnership with AOC.

During a campaign stop during the Democrat primary, Harris said she unequivocally supports the goals of the Green New Deal and argued the United States needs to "figure out a way" to get there.

The facade of the "moderate" Democrat ticket continues to crumble.

SOURCE 





Canada: departure of finance minister suggests Trudeau will pursue ‘green’ recovery plan

With a projected C$343bn (US$260bn) Covid-shaped deficit, a collapsing oil and gas sector, and a province on the verge of bankruptcy over a botched energy project, Canada is at a crossroads.

Does it pursue an ambitious “green” post-pandemic economic recovery plan that goes against the wishes of a number of influential and powerful industries – not to mention several provincial leaders – or does the tenuous Justin Trudeau-led minority government freeze in the headlights?

The apparently acrimonious departure of the finance minister, Bill Morneau, late on Monday, suggests Trudeau has made his choice.

Over his five-year tenure, Morneau was seen by many Canadians as taking a conservative approach to spending on environment – and more recently, on Covid relief. Trudeau, in contrast, made environmental promises a centerpiece of last year’s re-election campaign. It was inevitable that the two would eventually arrive at an impasse.

Now, Trudeau’s right-hand woman Chrystia Freeland will take over the finance portfolio in addition to her role as deputy prime minister. As one of the key architects of the new Nafta agreement, Freeland has experience marrying economic objectives to broader social and environmental goals, making her better-positioned to carry out Trudeau’s environmental promises.

But the road ahead still won’t be easy., said Bruce Laurie, the president of the environmental thinktank the Ivey Foundation as well as a member of a taskforce advocating for a green post-Covid recovery.

“When you have politicians in three or four provinces that are just emerging from climate denialism, and a system of federation where the provinces at the end of the day have almost full responsibility for environmental, resource and energy decisions, it creates a virtually unmanageable country,” he said. “That’s a bigger challenge than Morneau and finance.”

Canada’s post-pandemic recovery is creating a moment of reckoning, one in which Trudeau has to decide whether to pursue his ambitious green aspirations even if they come at a political cost.

For years, he has been accused of talking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to energy, investing in solar, wind and hydro but also building new pipelines.

Under the Paris agreement, Canada vowed to reduce greenhouse gases by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 – a goal that will probably be impossible to meet with so much of the economy presently relying on Alberta’s oil sands. It will be even tougher if the Trans Mountain, Coastal GasLink and Keystone XL pipelines go ahead.

Related: What if Canada had spent $200bn on wind energy instead of oil?

Kyla Tienhaara, the Canada Research Chair in economy and environment and an assistant professor in environmental studies at Queen’s University, told the Guardian that a majority of Canadians still support federal investment in green sectors such as wind and solar energy despite the country’s deficit.

Further, Tienhaara said Alberta’s recent economic hardship is not purely a consequence of Covid: companies such as Shell have been leaving the region for years.

“That’s because the oil there is very costly to extract, both environmentally and economically. It’s the first type of oil that is going to go in the transition, and the transition is inevitable. Renewable energy is just becoming so much more economically sensible,” she said.

Laurie, meanwhile, has briefed key Liberal caucus ministers on his taskforce’s “five bold moves” to make sure Canada’s post-Covid recovery is as sustainable and resilient as possible. The reception was positive, he said, and Trudeau is “100% committed” to acting on climate change.

The challenge is rounding up the cavalry – and making a decision about Morneau is essential to a strong showing, especially in Trudeau’s minority government.

This is the time, said Lourie, for the Liberals to show leadership by pitching an economic model that delivers on the country’s environmental responsibilities.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Get Serious: More C02 Isn’t Making Earth ‘Uninhabitable’

Once again I feel I have to bring up the generally forgotten point that only a small part of the world is average in temperature -- and the tropics are ALREADY much warmer than the global average.  Yet people live in the tropics perfectly well.

I myself was born into a place -- Far North Queensland -- with an average temperature that was wildly above the global average.  100 degree F temperatures were common and  temperatures in the 90s were  experienced for at least half the year

We tended to drink a lot of beer but otherwise life went on pretty much as it did elsewhere.  And life would go on untroubled by the two degree rise that Warmists panic about

But what about the melting glaciers?  Someone will ask.  Over 90% of the glacial ice is in Antarctica and the average temperature there is many degrees below zero so very little there is going to be  melted by a puny 2 degree rise


Former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and Princeton University economist Alan Blinder recently wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal: “cumulative CO2 emissions heat up the atmosphere, causing climate changes of all sorts—most of them bad. Because this huge negative externality has been allowed to run rampant, we are gradually making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

Increasing CO2 emissions have been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans?” Really?

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show that over the last one hundred years, CO2 emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere indeed have both sharply increased.

And NASA data show that since 1920, our planet’s temperature has risen by 1.25 degrees Celsius.

But the data also show that the increase in CO2 emissions and the rising temperature have not been “making the Earth an inhospitable place for humans.”

The University of Oxford’s Our World in Data has reported that since 1920, the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to over seven and half billion.

It also has reported that the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from 74 percent in 1910 to less than 10 percent by 2015.

And EM-DAT (The International Disaster Database) data show that since 1920, the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined from almost 55,000 per year to less than 10,000 per year.

Sustaining a population that has grown by about six billion people, lifting most of those people out of extreme poverty, and reducing the number of natural disaster deaths by over 80 percent show that whatever impacts increasing CO2 emission and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures have, they are not making the planet “an inhospitable place for humans.”

The data instead suggest that increasing CO2 emissions and atmospheric levels and rising temperatures are making the planet more, not less, hospitable for human life.

The Heartland Institute has extensively documented “increased plant and forest growth, bigger crop yields and longer growing seasons as benefits derived from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.”

Better yet, an extensive 2015 study found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat.

Twenty-two scientists from around the world analyzed over 74 million deaths in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1985-2012.

The cold caused 7.29 percent of these deaths, while heat caused only 0.42 percent. And “moderately hot and cold temperatures” caused 88.85 percent of the temperature-related deaths, while “extreme” temperatures caused only 11.15 percent.

But what about the economic catastrophe that global warming supposedly will cause in the coming decades? If future global warming has any negative impact on the nation’s economy, it is likely to be minimal.

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimated in 2019 that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.01 degrees Celsius per year through 2100, the total U.S. GDP in 2100 will be 1.88 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be.

Yet based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a 1.4 percent annual real long-term potential labor force productivity growth rate, the nation’s per person GDP will be about 204 percent higher by 2100.

With the reduction that NBER estimates based on global warming, GDP per person would be an almost indistinguishable 200 percent higher.

NBER’s extreme case projection that if the planet’s temperature rises by 0.04 degrees Celsius per year through 2100 (five times the actual rate of increase since 1880), total U.S. GDP will be 10.52 percent lower in 2100 than it would otherwise be, similarly would leave GDP per person about 172 percent higher.

In other words, after taking account of the supposedly harmful impact of global warming, U.S. income per person in 2100 will be about triple today’s level.

Professor Blinder undoubtedly teaches his students that sound science depends on data. When it comes to the impact of increasing CO2 emissions, he needs a refresher course.

SOURCE





California Gov. Gavin Newsom: Time to ‘Sober Up’ About Green Energy’s Flaws

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state had to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources had failed to provide enough power for the state at peak demand, and needed “backup” and “insurance” from other sources.

Newsom addressed journalists and the public in the midst of ongoing electricity blackouts that began on Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers in northern and central California lost power.

There is currently high demand for electricity across the state, as the entire West Coast has been hit by a heat wave and record-breaking temperatures.

One reason the state lacked power, officials admitted, was its over-reliance on “renewables” — i.e. wind and solar power.

There was not enough wind to keep turbines going, Newsom said, and cloud cover and nightfall restricted solar power.

“While we’ve had some peak gust winds,” he explained, “wind gust events across the state have been relatively mild.”

That was good for fighting fires, he said, but bad for the “renewable portfolio” in the state’s energy infrastructure. In addition, high demand for electricity in the evening hours, coupled with less input from solar plants, created strain.

On Friday, Newsom said, the state had fallen about 1,000 megawatts short; on Saturday, it fell 450 megawatts short. Sunday saw only “modest or minor” interruptions. But on Monday, he said, the state would be 4,400 megawatts short of “where we believe we need to be.”

“This next few days, we are anticipating being challenged,” Newsom said, as the heat wave was predicted to last through Wednesday.

“We failed to predict and plan these shortages,” Newsom admitted boldly, “and that’s simply unacceptable.” He said he took responsibility for the crisis, and for addressing it immediately, so that “we never come back into this position again.”

Newsom said the state would try to address shortfalls through conservation, and through procuring new sources of energy.

Though the state would continue its “transition” to 100% renewable energy, Newsom said, “we cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition.”

He promised “forecasting that is more sober” regarding solar energy, and a stronger focus on energy storage.

California’s shift toward “green” energy has led the way for Democrats nationwide, who hope to impose even more ambitious targets for renewable energy nationwide.

As Breitbart News noted Monday:

California has been rushing to replace fossil fuel energy sources with “renewables,” primarily wind and solar power, in pursuit of its own version of the “Green New Deal.”

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a law requiring the state to obtain 100% of its energy needs from renewables by 2045, though no one could explain how the state would do that.

In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Green New Deal, which aimed to achieve the same goal by 2030.

And in 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, adopted a version of the Green New Deal that commits the U.S. to reach 100% renewables in electricity generation by 2035.

Newsom asked the public to help manage the current crisis by conserving energy. Air conditioning, he said, should be set to 78º from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., for example, and children should be reminded to turn lights off in rooms as they left.

In 2019, Newsom canceled the state’s high-speed rail project — long seen as a key “green” project — because he said it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

SOURCE





New book brings clarity to a world without fossil fuels

Electricity from wind and solar are the rage these days, as governments around the world are advancing their energy policies believing that intermittent electricity can replace the fossil fuels industry. The purpose of the recently released book “Just GREEN Electricity – helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” is to help citizens understand a world without fossil fuels.

The book is an “aha moment” that every green advocate should experience. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900’s led us into the Industrial Revolution and victories in World Wars I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that did not exist before 1900.

Today, we have a medical industry, electronics, communications, plastics, transportation, militaries, and a space program that did not exist prior to 1900.

Possibly to the dismay of those promoting current energy policies, intermittent electricity from wind or solar cannot produce the thousands of products manufactured from petroleum derivatives that help the world economies “make products and move things” around the globe.

Many in the world believe we are facing climate change caused primarily by fossil fuels that will cause irreversible damage to the planet and humankind unless we act now and, therefore, we must curtail or quit all fossil fuel use, this book will enlighten you on understanding a world without fossil fuels.

The book reviews why China and India — two of the world’s most populous countries — are rejecting the use of intermittent electricity from wind and solar for scalable, reliable, affordable, abundant and flexible electricity from coal; and discusses the worldwide environmental degradations and humanity abuses for the materials mined for solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries.

With billions living in abject poverty in underdeveloped lands, the authors believe this book will make you look at electricity, fossil fuels, and nuclear energy in a new and fresh way while obtaining a better understanding of the lifestyle demands of societies within developed countries, and how it is different from most of the world’s population now living in developing countries.

Meanwhile, leaders around the globe are suggesting intermittent electricity from solar panels and wind turbines can save us. The reality, however, is much more complicated.

Ronald Stein and Todd Royal, two seasoned veterans of the energy industry, explore the implications of a world reliant on intermittent green electricity without fossil fuels in the book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” that will enhance your energy literacy. They are also the authors of the five-star rated “Energy Made Easy – Helping Citizens Become Energy Literate” in 2019.

Energy is multifaceted, and the just published book allows the reader to grasp enough knowledge quickly so they can participate in discussions with family, friends, co-workers, or while watching news reports. The main purpose of the both books is to help citizens become energy-literate.

It is dangerous and delusional to believe anything can be explained in sound bites, much less energy. This book will make you look at energy and ELECTRICITY in a new, fresh way, and perspective. We believe this is desperately needed with the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, and global events taking place in China, Russia, Iran, Africa, India, and South America.

Energy is more than electricity. Electricity by itself cannot support the military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures. Nor can electricity alone, and especially that generated solely from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar, provide the thousands of products from petroleum that are essential to our medical industry, transportation infrastructure, our electricity generation, our cooling, heating, manufacturing, and agriculture—indeed, virtually every aspect of our daily lives and lifestyles.

Electricity needs fossil fuel derivatives for its parts to function, and in the context of Brexit, the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the instability in the Middle East, and the U.S. – China trade war/tensions, are circumstances electricity faces. The book “Just GREEN Electricity – Helping Citizens Understand a World without Fossil Fuels” explains them all in a clear, concise, well-researched and documented way, while showing the deep ramifications of a world without fossil fuels, nuclear power, and the products from petroleum derivatives that support lifestyles and economies around the world.

SOURCE





How Coal Can Help The Billions Without Electricity

The movie “Juice” brilliantly illustrates through a visual representation of how billions are without electricity; and without electricity and the energy from mainly fossil fuels, life returns to the Dark Ages.

Whereas liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore exposes the fallacy, human misery, and environmental degradation that occurs when towns, cities, counties, states, nations, or continents rely on renewable energy to electricity from wind turbines (enormous emitters of greenhouse gases) and solar panels, or destructive biomass is used for electrical generation.

Literally, life has no purpose, happiness, and meaning without electricity and sources of energy that are abundant, scalable, reliable, affordable, and flexible.

That describes coal – but isn’t coal outdated, outlawed, and the worst form of energy possible?

In fact, coal has always been and now at the forefront of what could save billions without hope, a future, and the key to environmental stewardship the West desperately craves.

At this time, approximately 1,600 coal-fired power plants are being planned, permitted, or currently under construction.

Hard to believe since this reliable source of electricity is under attack in western nations such as the U.S. and the entire European Union.

Elsewhere, coal is used more than ever. China, Japan, and India are using and building newer “high-efficiency low-emission (HELE), ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants.”

HELE electricity-generating plants operate at higher than normal temperatures and increased efficiency. A HELE-plant additionally operates at emission and pollutant levels “45% lower than from existing coal-fired power plants.”

Official Indian energy policy is for coal to be its main energy source of electrical generation. Japan is working towards building 22 HELE plants to replace nuclear power after the Fukushima accident. China wants to build 300 HELE plants domestically and internationally.

Any Green New Deals, Paris Climate Agreements, or excoriating of coal by the EPA are offset by Japan, India, China, and the EU, which is building twenty-seven coal-fired plants to counter the energy to electricity dysfunction from overreliance on the wind and sun.

The West, led by the U.S. and EU, is committing energy suicide when they refuse to embrace and regulate out of existence lower-emitting by up to forty-five percent, rich in energy density, and always firing 24/7/365, HELE coal-fired power plants.

Countries rich in coal but unable to afford sophisticated and lower-emitting but expensive natural gas-fired power plants and billion(s) dollar(s) liquid natural gas terminals (LNG) could use coal to leave lives without fulfillment, and sophistication.

The book The End of Doom describes in rich detail that poorer peoples, nations, and continents generally destroy their environments searching for basic necessities the U.S. and Europe take for granted.

MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel says:

“If you want to minimize carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2070 you might want to accelerate the burning of coal in India today (as an example). It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon.

“But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they (India) make themselves wealthier, (similar to America in the early 1900s), and by making themselves wealthier (any poor region of the world), they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070. We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.”

Billions without energy or electricity who are mainly using wood and cow dung, which are the worst emitting forms of energy, could be generating sustainable energy and electricity utilizing coal to save their local environments, and lives.

HELE plants generate overwhelmingly more energy to electricity than renewables under current technological constraints.

The main factor why is “HELE plants have a capacity factor of 86%, while wind has a capacity factor of 35%, and PV solar has a capacity factor of, at best, 22%.”

Counterintuitive for today’s energy wisdom, and climate-change nihilism, coal can lead to cleaner air and healthier children and families.

Climates changing are about more than the Earth warming or not over mankind’s activities. We are living in the “Asian century,” and they need more energy, power, and electricity than at any point in mankind’s history that coal provides.

Aggressive climate change action that the U.S. Democratic Party and European Green parties advocate for are “egregiously misleading” when coal is demonized in favor of lowering human flourishing.

The mantra of “coal is death” is unbelievably exaggerated when economic reality meets an environmental movement termed a “climate-industrial-complex.”

Nowhere is the poor kept in the rotting pits of life more than when coal-fired power plants are not allowed to be built to the detriment of billions of Chinese, Africans, and Indians. Soul-crushing poverty the West can’t even imagine becomes the norm.

Multilateral development is then crushed when organizations such as the World Bank don’t allow the Asian century to flourish, or the second half of this century where Africa is likely to become the largest region in the world.

Asserting renewables and climate-change-mitigation programs bring “co-benefits” is a bald-faced lie, and justifies the worse kind of environmental racism.

These bold souls in India, China, Africa, and elsewhere deserve the abundant, affordable, scalable, reliable, flexible, and energy-dense life-giving qualities that coal brings globally.

Coal can lay the foundation for prosperity that historically leads to clean landscapes, fresher air, and all-around better earth for all.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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Study Of Prior Global Temperature Estimates Suggests ‘No Change’ In 100 Years

In the early 1900s, the globally-averaged distribution of calculated surface temperature estimates ranged between 14°C (57.2F) and 15°C (59F).

For 1991-2018, HadCRUT, Berkeley, and NASA GISS also estimate today’s global temperature is about 14.5°C (58.1°F).

Scientists estimating Earth’s surface temperature has been an ongoing pursuit since the early 19th century.

A new study (Kramm et al., 2020) suggests the generally agreed-upon global temperature from 1877 to 1913 from dozens of calculated results was about 14.4°C (57.9°F).

Problematically, HadCRUT, Berkley, and NASA GISS also indicate 1991-2018 had a global surface temperature of about 14.5°C (58.1°F).

This would suggest there has been “no change in the globally averaged near-surface temperature over the past 100 years.”

SOURCE 





The Free Market Approach to Environmental Conservation

When Terry Anderson and Donald Leal published the first edition of their book Free Market Environmentalism in 1991, the idea was met with mixed reviews. “Free market environmentalism is an oxymoron,” wrote one reviewer, “and the authors are the moron part.”

The dominant belief at the time was that markets are the cause of environmental degradation, not the solution. And the idea that property rights could be harnessed to improve environmental quality was counter to the popular notion that conserving natural landscapes required regulation and management by government agencies.

But not anymore. Today, the ideas of free market environmentalism are being applied in a variety of creative ways. Conservationists are increasingly using markets, contracts, and property rights to turn environmental resources into assets instead of liabilities. And policymakers are recognizing that markets are not the enemy of the environment but instead can provide strong incentives for resource stewardship.

So how are these ideas being applied today to change the way people approach conservation? Here are a few examples.

Markets and Property Rights Are Solving the Tragedy of the Commons in Marine Fisheries...

Ocean fisheries are a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Since no one owns the ocean, no one has a clear incentive to conserve its resources, making the oceans prone to overfishing.

For decades, governments have imposed command-and-control regulations to combat overfishing, but such restrictions have rarely worked. Shortened seasons and early closures created a dangerous, zero-sum “race to fish.” The outcome was a wasteful—and often deadly—derby that was bad for both fish and fishermen, who tried to catch as much as possible before the closures set in. Despite these regulations, overfishing persisted, and many fish stocks were at risk of collapsing.

That changed with the development of a rights-based alternative known as individual transferable quotas, sometimes called “catch shares.” The quotas give fishermen the right to catch a share of a total catch limit, set at a sustainable level each season by fishery managers. Fishermen can buy, sell, or lease quotas to each other, and they no longer have to race to fish. There is also more accountability for harvests and an incentive for stewardship.

The results have been impressive. Rights-based fishing reforms have reduced overfishing, helped stem the global trend toward fisheries collapse, and led to higher incomes for fishers. According to one study that examined data on more than 11,000 fisheries around the world, catch shares have helped halt and even reverse the collapse of fisheries. They have also slowed the “race to fish,” improving fishing safety and allowing consumers to buy fresh seafood throughout the year. Today, there are nearly 200 catch-share programs worldwide, including more than a dozen in the United States.

Catch shares are also being used to reduce “bycatch,” which are species that fishermen unintentionally catch in their trawlers. After previous efforts to regulate bycatch failed, managers of a fishery off the West Coast of the United States demonstrated how markets and property rights can help tackle the problem.

In 2011, the West Coast groundfish fishery instituted a program that gave each fisherman a portfolio of rights to catch various species, including those caught as bycatch. If a fisherman exceeded his allotment for a given type of fish, he had to purchase more quota—and when it came to overfished species, the price was steep. This gave each vessel in the fleet ample incentive to avoid overfished species that previously ended up as bycatch, a crucial aspect of the program that former regulations on fishing seasons lacked.

After catch shares were introduced, the proportion of overfished species caught by trawlers fell by about half. “Before catch shares, large proportions of the catch of many non-target species were discarded as bycatch,” reads a 2015 government report. “Now, whether in a fishing net or in the ocean, they are treated as the valuable resource they are.” As a result, populations of overfished species have begun to rebound thanks to clearly defined property rights and markets that overcome the tragedy of the commons.

More HERE 




Media Claim California Crop Crisis, as Farmers Complain About TOO HIGH Crop Yields

Google News and the alarmist media are warning about climate change harming California crop production and bringing “hard times” to California farmers – even as California crop production sets records. In fact, California crop production is so strong that farmers are complaining that high yields are depressing crop prices.

Among the top results today for a Google News search of “climate change” is an article in the Bakersfield Californian titled, “Climate change report forecasts hard times for Kern ag.” The article addresses a newly published report produced by a climate change activist group in conjunction with California state officials. The report claims climate change is setting up harmful conditions for California agricultural production.

The Californian article begins, “A new report warns Kern County agriculture will face tough challenges in the decades ahead as climate change makes irrigation water scarcer and weather conditions more variable and intense. The study concludes these hurdles ‘ultimately challenge the ability to maximize production while ensuring profitability.’”

The truth, however, is that a century of modest warming has brought increasingly beneficial temperatures and climate. Crop production is setting records virtually every year in Southern California, California as a whole, the United States, and globally.

In Kern County, total crop value rose 3 percent in 2019, setting a new record. Other California counties are also thriving under present climate. Fresno County’s total crop value rose 12 percent in 2018 to briefly overtake Kern County as the nation’s top-grossing county for agricultural production. Kern County’s 2019 growth reclaimed the title.

Crop production in 2020 is shaping up even better, with more new records forecast. The Sacramento Bee, for example, published an August 5 article titled, “This is what harvest of a 2020 record 2020 almond crop looks like.”

In fact, crop yields are so strong that some farmers are making news hoping for adverse weather to occur. The Californian itself reported this just last month, in an article titled, “Almond growers fret over expectations for another record harvest.” The article noted that record almond production is causing lower almond prices, making it harder for farmers to profit from their crop. The article noted that February’s almond tree blooms were “close to perfect” under ideal temperatures and climate conditions Curiously, the Californian failed to mention climate change’s role in the close-to-perfect climate conditions and record almond production.

The national crop outlook is just as strong. The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts record crop yields this year for the important corn and soybean crops, as well as other crops. This builds upon consistent growth in U.S. crop production and records being set on a near-annual basis.

Globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecasts the 2020/2021 crop season will set yet another record for crop production. FAO reports global crop production has increased more than 10 percent during the past decade.

In summary, Google News and the corrupt media are once again reporting fake news and fake science. Global warming has brought about perfect California climate conditions and record crop production. Even as this happens, the media are deceiving people by reporting climate change is ushering in a California crop crisis.

SOURCE 





Australia’s Lockdowns And Green-Energy Shakedowns

Politicians have given Australia an impossible task – fight a COVID lockup while also enduring a green-energy shakedown.

A COVID depression is already locked in. Recovery dictates that we must reverse the lockdown and also rid our weakened economy of the Green parasites forever sucking our energy.

Australia seems to specialize in political stupidity.

Victoria’s scorched-earth policy has wrecked its economy. Despite this damage, they dream of replacing their nation-building brown-coal electricity with unreliable wind and solar toys.

Their once-free people cower in their homes while police and troops detain peaceful folk and demand papers. COVID will only decline when populations develop immunity. Lockups ensure that community immunity develops slowly.

South Australia has destroyed its manufacturing industry with uncompetitive employment rules and intermittent green energy. They dream of more Big Batteries to keep the lights on.

WA is protected from many Eastern fads and viruses by the mighty Nullarbor Plain. It quietly thanked the hard-working mining industry for funding both state and federal governments.

NT has made anti-fracking for hydro-carbons into an election issue while endorsing bizarre plans to waste billions erecting about 150 square km of solar panels to supply green electricity to Singapore.

This needs 720 km of land transmission feeding a 3,700 km undersea extension cord from Darwin, crossing the deep and unstable Java Trench, to Singapore Island. And for the times that NT is not sunny, it needs humungous battery storage.

Queensland has shut its borders to millions of customers and workers from interstate and overseas while discouraging new mines and reliable power supplies.

NSW is determined to kill coal and gas power with locked gates and bureaucratic obstructions.

Canberra plans to throw billions that it does not have at the Snowy 2 white elephant (a net consumer of both water and electricity) while endorsing industry-killing emissions targets.

The federal government is also undermining the federation with a centralizing “National Cabinet” and has taught a generation of youngsters that they can eat and party without working by getting onto the federal jobs replacement gravy train. Meanwhile, orchardists, farmers, and abattoirs cannot find workers.

Trusting people are mesmerized and traumatized by the COVID scare. Ballooning government debts and looming depression will haunt our children and destroy our savings.

Naturally, alcoholism, gambling, family violence, and mental problems are increasing.

Meanwhile, a smug cohort of people on government salaries, handouts, and safe pensions feels no pain. This includes politicians, the bureaucracy, academia, and the scare-a-day BC.

We need a new Eureka Rebellion dedicated to slashing taxes and government expenditure, opening interstate borders, repealing red and green tape, abolishing all emissions targets, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Dreamworld, and restoring our freedoms and our federation.

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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The last decade was the HOTTEST on record with greenhouse gasses reaching ultimate highs in 2019 and sea levels now 3.4 inches above what they were in the 1990s

This is an amusing article.  They pull out all stops to show that we are warming up. The data are "massaged" however. They actually have very few readings from places like Siberia and the Arctic so they just make up the temperatures that they record from there.  Averaging based on nearby temperature stations is fair enough but often there is nothing nearby so they do "estimates" out of thin air

The other phenomena they refer to are equally dubious.  Sea level is intrinsically difficult to measure and sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner is noted for his rejection of there being anything significant going on. See also here for great doubt that there has been ANY recent accelerated rise.

One of the more amusing features of sea level measurements is the way Warmists turn actual sea level falls into rises.  Where sea levels have been falling -- e.g. Stockholm -- they turn that fall into a rise by invoking the doctrine of "isostatic rebound".  That any part of the earth's crust is still "rebounding" from an ice age of long ago seems highly implausible.  When will it stop?

It is however true that atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising steadily -- which makes it all the more amusing that there is no good evidence of it affecting anything


The past decade was the hottest ever, according to a new report on climate change, with 2019 the second warmest year since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s.

Last year's average global temperature was only surpassed by a freakishly warm year in 2016, when an enormous El Nino event caused the thermometer to spike.

There was also a record number of 'extreme warm days' in 2019, when high temperatures exceeded the 98th percentile for the past 60 years.

The warming trend caused alpine glaciers to lose mass, scientists said, continuing a trend dating back over 30 years.

Loss of ice in the polar regions has raised global sea levels 3.4 inches above what was recorded in the 1990s. And ocean temperatures are also at near record highs, second only to 2016.

Published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the study found that concentrations of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide were at record levels in 2019.

That's compared to both modern instrumental recordings and ice core samples dating back 800,000 years.

The study, based on data from researchers in over 60 countries, confirms similar findings from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And the heatwave shows no signs of ending: From Arizona to Siberia, regions around the globe have been charting record high temperatures in 2020.

In February, the thermometer in Antarctica topped 68F (20.7C) for the first time. 

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the rise in temperatures is 'persistent,' and not the result of fluke weather phenomena.

'We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,' Schmidt said.

'We know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'

Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London, has called global warming one of humanity's greatest follies.

'This is not so much a record as a broken record,' Rapley said. 'The message repeats with grim regularity, yet the pace and scale of action to address climate change remain muted and far from the need.'

More than 190 nations signed the Paris climate accords in 2015, promising to combat global warming and stem the rise in global average temperatures.

Two years later, President Donald Trump announced the US would be withdrawing from the agreement

SOURCE





California orders rolling blackouts for up to two MILLION people as record-breaking heat wave grips the state

"Green" power at work

Hundreds of thousands of Californians were plunged into darkness on Friday evening as companies cut power to homes after the state's Independent System Operator declared a Stage 3 energy emergency.

With temperatures soaring above 100 degrees in many parts of the state, and millions of residents stuck at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, experts feared the high demand for power would overwhelm the grid.

'A Stage 3 Emergency is declared when demand outpaces available supply. Rotating power interruptions have been initiated to maintain stability of the electric grid,' the Independent System Operator announced shortly before 6pm.

After that announcement, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. confirmed it would be cutting power to as many as 250,000 customers, while Southern California Edison also said they would be conducting rolling blackouts.

Residents were unable to be notified due to the emergency announcement, leaving thousands of vulnerable people suddenly without air-conditioning in the midst of a severe heatwave.

Grid managers last implemented such a power cut in 2001, when the state was suffering from an electric crisis.

It comes amid a horror week for the state, which is still struggling to contain COVID-19 infections. On Friday, the state surpassed 600,000 confirmed cases of the contagious virus - more than New York state.

There are also currently 13 wildfires raging across the state, with the hot weather causing catastrophic conditions for firefighters.

California's nightmare looks likely to continue, and more enforced power shutoffs could be coming over the weekend as the state continues to sizzle.

The National Weather Service says that sweltering conditions are set to stay, with the heatwave set to rival the deadly seven-day heat event in 2006, during which L.A. saw its highest-ever temperature of 119 degrees.

Solar generators for the state will also be impacted as cloud cover from tropical storm Elida is expected to crimp output.

After the Stage 3 Emergency was declared tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Northern California had their power supply shut off by PG&E.

Rolling blackouts occurred in Alameda, San Mateo, Marin and Sonoma counties.

The blackout was a blow for some restaurants already struggling financially amid the coronavirus crisis.

Restaurant owner Bill Higgins was affected, by the forced outages, telling KPIX: 'We just did the best we could.'

 'We cooked whatever we could for as long as we could without the electricity. It started to get dark and we had to shut it down … Restaurants are already under the gun and this was hurtful, to say the least.'

The outages also crippled Southern California.

According to various reports, around 13,000 homes in Bakersfield, north of L.A., had their power cut off after 6pm. 

Meanwhile, Southern California Edison also announced they had cut power to homes in Anaheim, close to Los Angeles, but promised the outages would be no longer than 15 minutes.

In the San Diego and southern Orange counties areas, Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric utility said one-hour rotating shutoffs will be 'widespread' across its territory.

By 9pm, the Stage 3 emergency was lifted, and power began to be restored to most homes.

Cutting off power to vulnerable residents in the midst of sizzling temperatures can be incredibly dangerous.

SOURCE





Wind Turbines Keep Spinning Out Tales of Future Viability/b>

Consumers pick the best alternatives in terms of price, quality, and convenience. The winners earn the appellation economic, the losers noneconomic.

But special political favor can reverse the verdict: the otherwise unprofitable can be made profitable and vice-versa. In the case of industrial wind turbines, government intervention—from tax credits to mandated purchases—has reversed free-market verdicts. Dilute, intermittent technology is propped up at the expense of concentrated, reliable alternatives.

Background

Why political favor for industrial wind turbines, a fringe, experimental loser in the pre-subsidized era? It’s a Bootleggers-and-Baptists story, with different interests, even strange bedfellows, aligning for a shared outcome.

The Baptists cry Global Warming as if countless wind turbines will save the world. (Fantasy, says the father of the climate alarm, James Hansen.) The Bootleggers, meanwhile, capitalize on the outside rationale and get special political favors. Bad profit replaces good profit across the energy industry.

Concentrated benefits for the rent-seekers, diffused costs for consumers and taxpayers. Politicians happily broker the deal. The result in our example is the 64-staff, 20-member board, $22 million budget American Wind Energy Association.

AWEA promotes and lobbies for wind power, and has received extension after extension of the 1992 federal Production Tax Credit (PTC): 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019. Add to this dirty dozen a favorable IRS ruling this year on PTC eligibility for number thirteen.

Promises, Promises

If wind turbines were competitive against gas-fired power generation, AWEA could let the PTC expire and no longer support mandated purchases and transmission subsidies. But then wind’s many corporate buyers would receive a much higher invoice—and presumably back-off. Instead of embracing free markets and interfuel neutrality, AWEA and the broader wind lobby fill the air about their technology’s impending competitiveness.

It’s a tired refrain that is now in its fourth decade.

A review of these promises from the 1980s until today is humbling.

In 1983, s study by Booz, Allen & Hamilton for AWEA and other renewable groups concluded: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”

In 1986, a representative of AWEA testified: “The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted wind power will be that State’s lowest-cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro. We are not quite there. We have hopes.”

In 1986, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale back of tax breaks for renewable energy, stating that the competitive viability of wind and solar was “one to three years away.”

In 1986, Worldwatch Institute concluded: “Utility-sponsored studies show that the better wind farms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.

In 1990, the Worldwatch Institute predicted that “within a few decades” renewables could have 90 percent of the power market with wind at 20 percent. The actuals today are 20 percent and 7 percent.

In 2011, just to use one other example, Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress stated: “It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”

The beat goes on. AWEA in 2017: “Wind power is competitive on reliability and resilience.” Bloomberg in 2019: “Now all signs show renewable energy has come of age and can go head-to-head with fossil fuels.” And this summer from the International Renewable Energy Agency: “Newly installed renewable power capacity increasingly costs less than the cheapest power generation options based on fossil fuels.”

The disappearing need for wind’s lucrative tax credit has also long been predicted. In 1984, Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute stated: “Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” And Flavin again in 1985: “Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.”

And on the political side. “I’d say we’re going to have to [extend the wind PTC] for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years,” said Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in 2003. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy).”

We are still waiting ….

Conclusion

The quandary of wind power reflects the embedded inferiority of dilute, intermittent energies versus mineral energies. The problem is certainly not a lack of political will; the growth of AWEA reflects the economic and environmental problems of inferior technology that only the brute force of government can neutralize for business opportunity.

“The infant industry argument is a smokescreen,” noted Milton and Rose Friedman many decades ago. “The so-called infants never grow up.” And so it is with wind power, not to mention its political sister, on-grid solar power.

SOURCE





Media Falsely Claim Ethiopian Climate Crisis as Crop Yields Set Records

Among the top Google News search results today for “climate change,” an article at Insider.com claims “food insecurity from climate change” is “pushing millions of people into cities.” In reality, Ethiopian crop yields are enjoying consistent, impressive gains, and are setting new records virtually every year. Also, Ethiopia’s rural population is growing, not shrinking, as higher crop yields support more farmers and more food production. The Insider.com article being promoted by Google is a perfect example of the dishonest claims made by proponents of the Climate Delusion.

The Insider.com article, titled “Climate change is pushing millions of people into cities like Addis Ababa. Here’s what rapid urbanization looks like in the Ethiopian capital,” asserts that World Health Organization predictions of a growing Ethiopian urban population prove that climate change is devastating crop production and driving people into cities. But that is faulty logic that defies objective reality. In reality, Ethiopia is benefiting from increasing food production and rapid economic growth in its cities. This economic growth is not forcing people away from the farms, but rather enticing many Ethiopians into cities with better paying jobs and the cultural and social attractions of urban life.

Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), charted below, show remarkable growth in Ethiopian crop yields as the Earth continues its modest warming. Crop yields per acre are currently 80 percent higher than just a decade ago, and double what they were in the year 2000.

Moreover, the FAO reports that fully half the Ethiopian population was undernourished in the year 2000, while less than 20 percent of the population is undernourished today.

It is amazing that a “news” article at Insider.com can paint this spectacular crop growth and beneficial improvement in nutrition as “food insecurity from climate change.”

About the only thing that is true in the Insider.com article is that Ethiopia is experiencing dramatic urban population growth. However, it is a lie that the urban growth is being caused by climate change destabilizing food production and forcing people into cities. According to the FAO, Ethiopia’s urban areas have added 13 million people since the year 2000. However, Ethiopia’s rural areas have added 28 million people since the year 2000. Ethiopia’s urban and rural areas are gaining population – with rural areas experiencing the largest growth – as increasing crop yields sustain more population and bring more wealth to the nation’s people.

World Bank economic data illustrate this. Per the World Bank:

“Ethiopia’s economy experienced strong, broad-based growth averaging 9.9 percent a year from 2007/08 to 2017/18, compared to a regional average of 5.4%. … Industry, mainly construction, and services accounted for most of the growth. … Higher economic growth brought with it positive trends in poverty reduction in both urban and rural areas. The share of the population living below the national poverty line decreased from 30% in 2011 to 24% in 2016.”

In summary, Ethiopia is enjoying spectacular gains in crop yields that are supporting a rapidly growing population and dramatic growth in both urban and rural populations. The growth in Ethiopia’s urban population is clearly and inarguably a result of spectacular increases in food production and a wealthier population rather than mythical food insecurity. But the easily discernible and reassuring truth doesn’t promote climate alarmism. Therefore, the media lie and invent a false narrative.

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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'Canary in the coal mine': Greenland ice has shrunk beyond return, study finds

Ho hum!  Another study that ignores polar vulcanism.  The earth's crust is thinnest around the poles so volcanic activity is strongest there.  And subsurface vulcanism in Greenland is well attested.  

Even the galoots below admit that warming is much greater in the Arctic than elsewhere.  What is their explanation for that?  They don't give one.  CO2 concentrations are not greater there -- quite to the contrary.  And solar radiation has less effect there too because of obliquity.  It's what makes the poles cold!

There is also volcanic melting around the South pole, particularly along the Antarctic peninsula

So there may be some overall melting of Greenland ice but to attribute it to global warming is ignoring the obvious.  It is in fact a breach of Occam's razor


Greenland's ice sheet may have shrunk past the point of return, with the ice likely to melt away no matter how quickly the world reduces climate-warming emissions, new research suggests.

Scientists studied data on 234 glaciers across the Arctic territory spanning 34 years through 2018 and found that annual snowfall was no longer enough to replenish glaciers of the snow and ice being lost to summertime melting.

That melting is already causing global seas to rise about a millimeter on average per year. If all of Greenland's ice goes, the water released would push sea levels up by an average of 6 meters -- enough to swamp many coastal cities around the world. This process, however, would take decades.

"Greenland is going to be the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is already pretty much dead at this point," said glaciologist Ian Howat at Ohio State University. He and his colleagues published the study Thursday in the Nature Communications Earth & Environment journal.

The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for the last 30 years, an observation referred to as Arctic amplification. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years.

The Arctic thaw has brought more water to the region, opening up routes for shipping traffic, as well as increased interest in extracting fossil fuels and other natural resources.

Greenland is strategically important for the U.S. military and its ballistic missile early warning system, as the shortest route from Europe to North America goes via the Arctic island.

Last year, President Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. But Denmark, a U.S. ally, rebuffed the offer. Then last month, the U.S. reopened a consulate in the territory's capital of Nuuk, and Denmark reportedly said last week it was appointing an intermediary between Nuuk and Copenhagen some 3,500 kilometers away.

Scientists, however, have long worried about Greenland's fate, given the amount of water locked into the ice.

The new study suggests the territory's ice sheet will now gain mass only once every 100 years -- a grim indicator of how difficult it is to re-grow glaciers once they hemorrhage ice.

In studying satellite images of the glaciers, the researchers noted that the glaciers had a 50% chance of regaining mass before 2000, with the odds declining since.

"We are still draining more ice now than what was gained through snow accumulation in 'good' years," said lead author Michalea King, a glaciologist at Ohio State University.

The sobering findings should spur governments to prepare for sea-level rise, King said.

"Things that happen in the polar regions don't stay in the polar region," she said.

Still, the world can still bring down emissions to slow climate change, scientists said. Even if Greenland can't regain the icy bulk that covered its 2 million square kilometers, containing the global temperature rise can slow the rate of ice loss.

"When we think about climate action, we're not talking about building back the Greenland ice sheet," said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center who was not involved in the study. "We're talking about how quickly rapid sea-level rise comes to our communities, our infrastructure, our homes, our military bases."

SOURCE





States That Switched To Green Energy Have Higher Costs, Little Growth

Climate alarmists increasingly claim wind and solar power are cost-effective and will benefit the economy. The truth is exactly the opposite. Here’s an example and the real story:

The August 8 issue of Electrek’s Climate Crisis Weekly newsletter leads with a story titled “Which US states are leading and lagging in slashing CO2 emissions?”

The article touts a paper published by the environmental activist World Resources Institute (WRI) claiming states that switch to wind and solar power are experiencing economic growth in the process.

It glowingly publicizes states that have seen their economies grow, even as they have made the greatest carbon dioxide emission reductions.

What the WRI and Electrek fail to report is that the states experiencing the greatest drop in emissions also suffer from the highest energy costs in the nation and are experiencing slower-than-average economic growth.

According to Electrek, “The leader of the pack [in cutting carbon dioxide emissions]? Maryland (38% reduction), with New Hampshire (37%), Washington, DC (33%), and Maine (33%) trailing closely behind.

So why is the Northeast leading? One reason is that they’ve dropped coal. It’s also got the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an interstate agreement that caps emissions from power plants.”

By contrast, WRI lists Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota among the states lagging behind or increasing their greenhouse gas emissions.

During the Trump-era economic recovery, every state in the nation experienced substantial economic growth. So, even states with rapidly rising electricity costs can claim some economic growth.

However, states that retain conventional electricity enjoy much lower electricity prices and have much more vibrant economies as a result.

As of March 2020, before the coronavirus-related economic downturn struck, all but one of the states praised by WRI for large cuts in emissions ranked among the top 10 states in electricity prices.

In fact, RGGI states held seven of the top 10 spots for high electric prices. By comparison, states like Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota – states criticized by WRI for not reducing emissions as much – enjoy among the lowest electricity rates in the country.

Importantly, state economic growth closely corresponds with affordable electricity. For example, Washington DC’s GDP growth in the first quarter of 2019 was a paltry 1.4 percent, with Maryland’s growth being only slightly better at 1.8 percent.

By comparison, states that retained conventional energy sources had among the most affordable electricity rates and the strongest economic growth in the nation.

Texas, which saw its carbon dioxide emissions climb by more than 3 percent since 2005, experienced 5.1 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2019.

Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and South Dakota experienced 3.9 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.9 percent, and 3.6 percent GDP growth respectively.

WRI’s own accounting acknowledges regions making the steepest greenhouse gas emission cuts between 2005 through 2017 had the lowest economic growth.

WRI also admits that regions making the least emission reductions had the highest economic growth.

The lesson is clear: the more a state switches to wind and solar power to cut emissions, the slower that state’s economy is going to grow. Don’t let alarmists pull the wool over your eyes and claim differently.

SOURCE




Insect apocalypse? Not so fast, at least in North America

In recent years, the notion of an insect apocalypse has become a hot topic in the conservation science community and has captured the public's attention. Scientists who warn that this catastrophe is unfolding assert that arthropods — a large category of invertebrates that includes insects — are rapidly declining, perhaps signaling a general collapse of ecosystems across the world.

Starting around the year 2000, and more frequently since 2017, researchers have documented large population declines among moths, beetles, bees, butterflies and many other insect types. If verified, this trend would be of serious concern, especially considering that insects are important animals in almost all terrestrial environments.

But in a newly published study that I co-authored with 11 colleagues, we reviewed over 5,000 sets of data on arthropods across North America, covering thousands of species and dozens of habitats over decades of time. We found, in essence, no change in population sizes.

These results don't mean that insects are fine. Indeed, I believe there is good evidence that some species of insects are in decline and in danger of extinction. But our findings indicate that overall, the idea of large-scale insect declines remains an open question.

For most scientists, the idea of disappearing insects is a foreboding prospect that would have harmful repercussions for all aspects of life on Earth, including human well-being.

But some scholars were skeptical of the reported insect apocalypse. A number of studies that showed broad declines were limited geographically, focusing mainly on Europe. Typically these studies analyzed only a few species or groups of species.

Some particularly long-running assessments showed that declines in the past 30 years occurred after periods when the relevant insect populations increased. Many insect populations are known to naturally fluctuate, sometimes dramatically.

Many scientists concluded that while the prospect of mass insect losses was concerning, the jury was still out on what was actually happening.

Ecologist Bill Snyder and I thought that the studies suggesting widespread insect die-offs produced an intriguing pattern with important ramifications, but that the evidence wasn't strong enough yet to draw conclusions. We wanted to examine what was happening in North America, which has an immensely diverse landscape and, surprisingly to us, had not been broadly analyzed for insect declines.

For our study, we decided to use data from sites in the Long Term Ecological Research network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. The network includes 28 sites across the U.S. that have been studied in depth since the 1980s, and covers deserts, mountains, prairies and forests. With almost 40 years of data collected, we hoped trends at these sites would be a good complement to European insect studies.

We put together a 12-person team that included six undergraduate students, post-doctoral scholars Michael Scott Crossley and Amanda Meier, and colleagues from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When we finished compiling our data sets, at least some of us expected to see broad insect declines.

Instead, the results left us perplexed. Some species we considered declined, while others increased. But by far the most common result for a species at a particular site was no significant change. The vast majority of our species had stable numbers.

At first we thought we were missing something. We tried comparing different taxonomic groups, such as beetles and butterflies, and different types of feeding, such as herbivores and carnivores. We tried comparing urban, agricultural and relatively undisturbed areas. We tried comparing different habitats and different periods of time.

But the answer remained the same: no change. We had to conclude that at the sites we examined, there were no signs of an insect apocalypse and, in reality, no broad declines at all.

Publication bias is not about dishonesty or false results. It refers to the idea that more dramatic results are more publishable.

Explaining continental differences

We are confident in our analysis and our conclusion, but a more important question is why our results are so different from those of other recent studies. I see two potential explanations: location and publication bias.

As I have noted, most insect decline papers have come from European data. Indeed, Europe has better and more extensive long-term data than other parts of the world. It is also one of the most densely populated parts of the world — three times higher than North America.

Moreover, almost all of Europe's land has been modified for human use. Agriculture is widespread and intense, and cities and suburban areas cover large swaths of the landscape. So perhaps it is unsurprising that Europe has also lost a larger proportion of its wild creatures compared to North America.

Publication bias is not about dishonesty or false results. It refers to the idea that more dramatic results are more publishable. Reviewers and journals are more likely to be interested in species that are disappearing than in species that show no change over time.

The result is that over time, declining species can become overrepresented in the literature. Then, when scholars go looking for papers on animal populations, declines are predominantly what they find.

We selected Long-Term Ecological Research sites for our analysis in part because they had "raw" data available that had not been peer reviewed for publication and were not collected in anticipation of finding declines. Rather, scientists amassed these data to monitor ecosystems and observe trends over time. In other words, it was unbiased data. And because the data sets were so varied, they covered a broad range of species and habitats.

SOURCE





Australia: AGL unveils plans for at least 1000MW of batteries

Talk of MW ismeaningless. HOW LONG can the battery sustain that output?  Judging by the South Australian case, only for minutes.  What we need to know is its capacity in kwh

Energy giant AGL has lodged a proposal to build as much as 500 megawatts of batteries at its Liddell power plant and has plans of doubling that total across the nation.

AGL on Friday said it had lodged a so-called scoping report with NSW's Planning department to install the storage system at the Hunter Valley site by June 2024.

Markus Brokhof, AGL's chief operating officer, told the Herald and The Age the company would take a staggered approach, beginning with a 150MW-sized battery at Liddell that could be operating within 18 to 24 months.

Mr Brokhof said it was "the right moment" to expand storage plans with battery prices falling and a rush of new large-scale renewable energy plants vying to enter the market. "The new build of renewables is exactly what the driver is," he said.

AGL has planning approvals for a 500MW battery at Liddell, the ageing 1660MW power station that is slated to close by April 2023.

The Liddell battery is part of an 850MW multi-site storage plan to be installed by June 2024 that the company announced on Thursday along with its earnings.

AGL reported a 22 per cent fall in underlying full-year profit and disappointed investors by providing a gloomier-than-expected outlook for the current financial year.

That 850MW plan, though, excludes some 330MW in batteries already announced by the company, meaning the full storage total could top 1.2 gigawatts, Mr Brokhof said.

The other announced plans include a 100MW battery at Wandoan in Queensland and four 50MW units with solar farm developer Maoneng in the NSW Riverina.

Mr Brokhof said the company was also preparing planning applications for a battery connected to its Torrens Island Power Station site in Adelaide.

AGL was looking at other sites, including in Victoria, with storage at its Loy Yang coal-fired power station one possible location.

"Battery prices are coming down so they are starting to compete with gas peakers," he said, referring to the gas-fired power plants that can respond rapidly to changes in electricity demand.

"We want to be part of this energy transition" away from fossil fuels, Mr Brokhof said.

He declined to provide an estimate of the cost for the first phase of the Liddell battery, saying that would depend on the offers made by manufacturers.

The company will also see how the system performs before deciding whether the full build-out of 500MW will be completed the schedule closure of Liddell's coal-fired units in 2023.

Mr Brokhof said AGL's battery plan takes into account the federal government's plan to develop its Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, which would add 2000MW of so-called dispatchable power to the grid.

John Grimes, head of the Smart Energy Council, said the scale of AGL's battery ambitions was "extraordinary".

Battery prices were following the path of solar panels, where each doubling of manufacturing capacity brought a 20 per cent drop in costs. For storage, the impetus is partly coming from a huge jump in demand for batteries as carmakers ramp up production of electric vehicles.

"This is a pretty sharp downward cost curve," Mr Grimes said.

AGL's decision also showed proposals to use taxpayer funds to bankroll an expansion of the gas industry to help revive the post-COVID economy was likely to leave many stranded assets, he said.

"The race has already been run and won," Mr Grimes said. "The market is showing what the market solutions are."

SOURCE 

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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