Current climate policies will leave more than a FIFTH of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, study warns

The prophecies never stop but nothing much ever happens

But the article is an amusing one. Very old-fashioned in its way. It examines -- wait for it -- "numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche." -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6

Fortunately, as a retired academic I can understand academic gobbledegook. More simply put: Heat is bad for you

It can even be regarded as racist to claim that climate has any effect on human beings but they are gaily doing just that. They imply that the tropics are lightly populated because heat is distressing and global warming will put more people into distressingly hot situations.

As someone who grew up in the tropics, I completely reject that. I loved my home in Far North Queensland and dream of going back there. Warmth is comforting and relaxing. You drink a lot of cold beer there but that is pretty good. It is cold that is threatening.

So why are the tropics lightly populated? I know why but dare not say it. Let me simply point out that most of the lightly populated tropical areas are in Africa


Current climate policies will leave more than a fifth of humanity exposed to dangerously hot temperatures by 2100, a study has warned.

Led by scientists at the University of Exeter, the study found that the legally binding measures currently in place will result in global warming of 4.9F (2.7C) by the end of the century.

This means two billion people - around 22 per cent of the projected end-of-century population - will be exposed to dangerous heat, with average temperatures of 84.2F (29C) or more.

At these high temperatures, water resources could become strained, mortality could increase, economic productivity could decrease, animals and crops could no longer flourish, and large numbers of people may migrate.

Globally, there are 60million people already exposed to this heat.

However, the researchers suggest there is 'huge potential' for decisive climate policy to limit the human costs of climate change.

They say the forecasts show that limiting global warming to 2.7F (1.5C), in line with the Paris Agreement, would mean five times fewer people are exposed to extreme heat.

The study, which was in association with scientists from the Earth Commission and Nanjing University in China, also found that the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average global citizens today would expose one future person to the dangerous conditions.

And in the US, this was even more concerning, as it was found just 1.2 US citizens' emissions would have the same result. This means that for almost every average person in America, their individual contribution to climate change over their lifetime could result in another person living in dangerous heat in the future.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12111069/More-FIFTH-humanity-exposed-dangerously-hot-temperatures-2100-study-warns.html

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"Degrowth"?

In 1972 a collective of grandees known as the Club of Rome set out to establish the limits to economic growth. Worried about the state of the planet, they fed a computer all they knew about farming yields, natural resources, population trends and so on. The rudimentary machine crunched the data and spouted a grim answer: given ecological constraints, the highest standard of living possible was one stagnating at half the American level of the time. Anything beyond that risked imminent disaster, a “sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity”.

Half a century later, the global population has doubled and GDP more than quadrupled: the limits to growth turned out to be as surmountable in the 20th century as they had been when first posited in the 18th. But anyone thinking that another 50 years of evidence might have settled the debate has not met the European left. At a three­day “Beyond Growth” conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels this week (and organised by 20 mainly leftleaning MEPs), an audience of youngsters whooped and cheered as speakers proclaimed that, this time, the limits of growth really have been reached. Driven by ecological concerns and riled by social injustice, to them the question is no longer how to mitigate the effects of human activity, for example by investing in green technologies. Rather, some form of “de­growth” —décroissance, in the original French—is necessary today to avoid societal collapse.

Human beings are born small and stop growing as adults, says Philippe Lamberts, co­head of the Green group in the parliament and the conference’s leading light. Similarly, “when your economy is mature, well, it doesn’t need to grow any longer.” The metaphor falls short of what most economists would think of as convincing evidence. But it has clearly struck a chord. A similar growth­as­the­root­of­all­problems jamboree five years ago was sparsely attended and confined to the parliament’s committee rooms. This time, thousands packed into the EU’s vast hemicycle and beyond. The big beasts of Brussels came to pay homage, led by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.

One participant gushed at being there at the “Woodstock for system­changers”. That may be to overstate the impact that can be wrought by a cast of minor academics, trade unionists, green lobbyists and fellow­travellers on stage. Still, many a progressive idea has germinated in Europe, and Brussels is where some of them get turned into policy. So when those roaming its halls, even if only for a few days, discuss moving “from the welfare state to the so­cial­ecological state”, it is worth paying attention.

It turns out that the animus against economic growth comes in 50 shades of red. Some merely decry the use of GDP as the primary gauge of a society’s success, pointing to how it fails to measure ills ranging from environmental degradation to slumping mental health. Fair enough. A bit further from the mainstream are the “post­growth” advocates, who think people can be just as happy with economies going up or down. If policymakers stop caring about ever­higher output, they can throttle bits of societal activity campaigners don’t like, for example big cars, private jets and so on. Instead of trying to grow the pie, the idea is to take what there now is and share it more equally. One panel decried the “addiction of labour to growth” by advocating a four­day week. In the very seats where MEPs crafted rules for minimum wages, campaigners were discussing maximum allowable wages.

There is an even more exalted tier—the actual de­growers. By far the majority at the conference, their aim is to shrink the pie deliberately. Growth damages the planet, and only benefits the rich anyway, they maintain. The idea that emissions can be cut enough while economies keep growing is “a fairy tale” designed to prolong the neo­liberal world order. It is better—necessary, even—to force a diet now, and get rid of any aspirations for growth later. How, exactly? “We need to determine democratically what kind of production we need to be doing,” and nix the rest, one participant advocated. Panels of citizens can advise what is wasteful and what is socially desirable. Any resemblance to some of the more stringent policies of the early Soviet era are presumably not intended.

A spectre is haunting economics

Sometimes utopians fail to notice that they have already reached the promised land. For what is Europe, if not a post­growth continent already? Parts of it, like Italy, are scarcely bigger than they were 20 years ago. Yet, somehow, that has not prompted the contemplative contentment that the de­growers expect. It turns out voters do not much like stagnation; the newish premier, Giorgia Meloni, rails against “Greta Thunberg’s ideology” killing jobs.

Where the growth­sceptics are right is that the environment has suffered as GDP has soared. But they too readily dismiss the obvious solution, which is to green the economy, not throttle it. As Mrs von der Leyen explained to the sceptical crowd, her political breed already accept that the old economic model centred on fossil fuels is “simply obsolete”. Europe wants to cut the carbon it spews into the atmosphere by over half by 2030 compared with 1990—it is busily enacting law after law to reach the target—and to reach net­zero carbon emissions by 2050. Already, its emissions are coming down even as the economy is growing. That is a remarkable pivot for a continent whose prosperity was built through burning coal, oil and gas. To dismiss such efforts as “greenwashing”, as de­growers do, is an over­statement.

Beyond the confines of the conference, Europe is grappling with near­intractable problems. How much can it spend to assist Ukraine as it fends off Russian aggression? How will Europe’s welfare state be financed as society ages? How can the best ideas to continue decarbonising the economy be turned into reality? Finding suitable solutions will require hard graft and much human ingenuity. That is the very stuff that economic growth is made of.

The more of it, the better.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/05/18/meet-the-lefty-europeans-who-want-to-deliberately-shrink-the-economy

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Global cooling? It looks like it in India

On May 4, India’s capital of New Delhi recorded the third coldest May morning since 1901. At 16 degree Celsius (60 Fahrenheit), the region’s 32 million residents woke up to a relatively cold morning in what is usually the hottest month of the year.

So why is there a record low temperature when the dominant mainstream narrative tells us that climate change has made our environs warmer than before? Is this just an aberration?

While Western media obsessed with the warm weather in Spain, India’s capital recorded a very cold summer morning. In fact, most of the cold-weather records in Delhi have gone unreported in Western media, which are mainly interested in showcasing the city’s extreme summer temperatures.

Neatly concealed from the public’s eye are the record low winter temperatures that Delhi has been witnessing since 2017. In December 2018, Delhi recorded an average minimum temperature of 7°C (44°F), the third lowest in the last 50 years. On December 30, 2019, the maximum temperature settled at 9°C (49°F), making it the coldest December day in 122 years.

As is the case globally, winter cold in Delhi is a bigger killer than summer heat. According to studies, short-term exposure to extreme temperature accounts for 6.5 percent of all deaths in India, with 88 percent of that amount caused by cold weather and only 12 percent by hot weather.

This is an example of media bias towards advancing a narrative of apocalyptic warming when reporting weather events. Also, part of this slanted reporting is the media’s failure to acknowledge the real reason behind the recording of all-time high summer temperatures: the urban heat island (UHI).

Urban Heat Island, Not Climate, Sets Records

During my stint as a climate consultant in New Delhi, I lived close to the Safdarjung temperature-measurement station. As per the Indian Meteorological Department, the highest maximum temperature ever recorded at Safdarjung was 47°C (117°F) on May 29, 1944.

This high temperature recorded nearly 80 years ago for this station has yet to be toppled by the 21st century warming that supposedly threatens us with doom, and the reason is probably the station’s location.

Unlike the other temperature monitoring stations in Delhi, the Safdarjung station is in a relatively greener section of the city. Thus, it is less susceptible to the Urban Heat Island effect, and, therefore, has not been registering the insanely high temperatures of 49°C (120°F) witnessed in and around Delhi.

Mahesh Palawat, vice-president of Skymet Weather Services, says, “Safdarjung weather station is located in a fairly green area, as compared to the rest of Delhi, which has a lot of heavily concretised spaces without much green cover. Temperatures in these parts of the city will therefore, understandably, be higher.”

So, the reason thermometers record new all-time highs in Delhi is because of urbanization’s concrete structures and pavements and other landscape changes. Weather officials also note that some of the newer automatic weather instruments used in highly urbanized areas may be prone to error.

“Most observatories in Delhi have automatic systems, which have a scope for error because they use bimetals, which can contract and expand during different weather conditions,” says an official of the India Meteorological Department in the Hindustan Times. He added that abnormal temperature spikes of the error-prone stations should be compared to the readings of older stations like Safdarjung to obtain “a more precise idea of the temperature.”

It takes just a bit of common sense to understand the artificial urban heat island impact on thermometers in cities and airports. However, preconceived notions of catastrophic warming pose serious hurdles to grasping this reality.

Delhi’s case illustrates that warming is not a continuous and unprecedented phenomenon as some claim it to be. Instead, we see at play a chaotic climate system at work with unpredictable weather patterns. Additionally, we must be mindful of the urban heat island impact when reading news bulletins about record-high summer temperatures.

https://co2coalition.org/2023/05/15/media-ignore-delhis-coldest-may-since-1901/

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Australia: Santos boss Kevin Gallagher says gas is the key to moving to net zero, not renewables

Gas, not renewable energy, is the “main game” in the transition to net zero, Santos managing director Kevin Gallagher says, while warning the industry’s opponents are focused on “killing oil and gas”.

Speaking at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Adelaide on Thursday, Mr Gallagher also championed carbon capture and storage (CCS) as integral to the transition, saying Santos’s Moomba project would equate to the carbon impact of taking 200,000-300,000 cars off the road.

Mr Gallagher said Santos was not looking for a government handout for its CCS ambitions, which include three hubs starting with the $US165m Moomba CCS project which aims to start injecting CO2 next year. But the industry did need “a supportive regulatory framework’’ to be able to move forward with confidence, he said.

Mr Gallagher said “abated oil and gas” was crucial to the move to net zero, with CCS a vital part of the equation.

He also said gas was at the core of the long-term shift to net zero, while downplaying the role of renewables.

“Renewables are part of the solution, but they are not the holy grail,’’ he said.

“The main game is gas because it makes renewables possible, it provides feedstock for fertilisers and chemicals, and it fires the high temperature furnaces required for bricks and cement.

“However, while getting to net zero should be all about emissions reductions, our opponents are only about killing oil and gas. Which is why they now seek to discredit carbon capture and storage as well.’’

The conference being held in Adelaide this week – the industry’s major annual get-together – has focused heavily on the role of CCS in the national and global transition to net zero.

APPEA itself has called for the creation of “net zero industrial zones”, where heavy-emitting industries would cluster together and have their emissions collected and sequestered.

However the federal government appears split on the issue, with Resources Minister Madeleine King this week expressing strong support for CCS while Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said he had not been shown evidence that it was viable at a large scale.

Mr Gallagher said Santos had been injecting gas into depleted reservoirs in the Cooper Basin for “decades”, which made him “very confident” that Moomba CCS would be a success.

On a global scale, Mr Gallagher said there were 30 projects in operation, storing 44 million tonnes of CO2 annually, and it was clear that “abated oil and gas” – gas with the CO2 stripped out and stored – had a role to play for decades to come.

“To achieve the government’s targets under the Safeguard Mechanism, industries like steel, cement, aluminium and ammonia need us to succeed in delivering large-scale, low-cost abatement and affordable abated gas,’’ Mr Gallagher said.

“Otherwise, Australia will lose those industries and those jobs as well.

“We want to work with ministers like the Minister for Industry and the Minister for Energy to build support and confidence with these customers so that we can keep a viable manufacturing sector in Australia.’’

Mr Gallagher said there was also an equity issue involved in ensuring the supply of affordable gas, with “energy poverty” a growing issue even in developed countries such as Australia, while globally, gas was needed to feed the world.

Mr Gallagher said the industry’s ideological opponents had given “no thought to the human cost of a world without oil and gas’’.

“The world could not feed itself today, or anytime soon, without fertilisers made from gas,’’ he said.

“Without ammonia-based fertilisers made from natural gas, we could feed about four billion people, roughly half of today’s global population.

“And we do not yet have replacements for the materials that are fundamental to our modern civilisation – steel, cement and plastics.’’

Mr Gallagher, when asked about the public perception of the oil and gas sector and the political fight over issues such as the gas market intervention and recent proposed changes to the petroleum resources rent tax, said the industry needed to make its case forcefully.

“As an industry, we’ve sought to keep our head down and try to stay out of the firing line, but we’re in the firing line and so we do have to fight back but I don’t think that’s going to war with everybody.

“But I do think standing up for ourselves means that we have to be there telling our story and making sure that people understand the benefits of gas and that the need for gas will be here for a long time.’’

On the political front, Mr Gallagher said regulatory stability was the key issue.

“When I speak to my Japanese and Korean, Malaysian, French partners, they are all very concerned with the rate of change and the rate of market interventions,’’ he said.

“So whatever happens now I think we need stability going forward and I’ll be working with both sides of politics to try and encourage them.’’

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, in a video address delivered before Mr Gallagher’s speech, cast the political situation in a much stronger light, juxtaposing the “renewable zealotry” of the Labor Government against the free market ideology of the federal opposition.

Mr Dutton vowed to wind back the government’s intervention measures if elected, and urged the industry to “fight for yourselves’’ against “financially crippling” measures which threatened to de-industrialise the nation.

Mr Gallagher also said Santos’s direct air capture (DAC) trials were also progressing well, and the ambition was to bring the cost down to $US75 per tonne of carbon captured by 2030.

“Just last week, I visited Welshpool in Perth to witness commissioning of a DAC technology that we will soon be trailing in the Cooper Basin,’’ he said.

“It’s been running intermittently for several days now and it is working as planned, with lower energy inputs than other direct air capture technologies that we know of.

“The trial unit is able to capture a quarter of a tonne of CO2 per day and will soon be transported to Moomba where we will optimise its performance.

“Later this year, we will scale the technology up to build a one tonne per day unit for delivery to Moomba and further trials next year.’’

Mr Gallagher said he believed the company could hit the $US75 target, “an order of magnitude lower than average global costs of DAC technology today’’.

“This puts us in reach of the possibility of eliminating Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from natural gas production and use,’’ he said.

The pilot plant’s costs are currently about $US200 per tonne of carbon, however that was inflated by the small size of the project, Mr Gallagher said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/santos-boss-kevin-gallagher-says-gas-is-the-key-to-moving-to-net-zero-not-renewables/news-story/b269c743a00aa0a8d0ad7a29c67732fb

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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

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Thorough analysis by Clintel shows serious errors in latest IPCC report

The IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature showing that normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920. The IPCC, by cherry picking from the literature, drew the opposite conclusions, claiming increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change.

These are two important conclusions of the report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, published by the Clintel Foundation.

The 180-page report is – as far as we know – the first serious international ‘assessment’ of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. In 13 chapters the Clintel report shows the IPCC rewrote climate history, emphasizes an implausible worst-case scenario, has a huge bias in favour of ‘bad news’ and against ‘good news’, and keeps the good news out of the Summary for Policy Makers.

The errors and biases that Clintel documents in the report are far worse than those that led to the investigation of the IPCC by the Interacademy Council (IAC Review) in 2010. Clintel believes that the IPCC should reform or be dismantled.

With the recently published Synthesis Report, the IPCC finished its sixth assessment cycle, consisting of seven reports in total. An international team of scientists from the Clintel network has analysed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports. This has now led to the report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC.

In every chapter the Clintel report documents biases and errors in the IPCC assessment. The errors are worse in the WG2 report than in the WG1 report. Given the political relevance of what is known as “Loss and Damage” (at the yearly COP meetings, countries currently negotiate donations to a Loss and Damage fund) one would expect a thorough review of the relevant literature. However, Clintel shows that the IPCC has totally failed in this respect.

For example, a review article on the subject, published in 2020, showed that 52 out of 53 peer reviewed papers dealing with “normalised disaster losses” saw no increase in harms that could be attributed to climate change. The IPCC highlighted the single paper that claimed an increase in losses. That paper is – unsurprisingly – flawed, but its cherry picking by the IPCC suggests they found its conclusions irresistible.

Climate-related deaths

“We are on a highway to climate hell”, said UN-boss Guterres recently. But an in-depth look at the mortality data shows that climate-related deaths are at an all-time low. Well-known economist Bjorn Lomborg published that important information in a 2020 peer-reviewed paper, but the IPCC, again, chose to ignore it.

The strategy of the IPCC seems to be to hide any good news about climate change and hype anything bad.

Erasing climate history

The Working Group 1 report is not free from bias and misleading conclusions either. The report documents problems in every chapter. The IPCC has tried to rewrite climate history by erasing the existence of the so-called Holocene Thermal Maximum (or Holocene Climate Optimum), a warm period between 10,000 and 6000 years ago. It has introduced a new hockey stick graph, which is the result of cherry-picked proxies. And it has ignored temperature reconstructions that show more variability in the past, such as the well-documented Little Ice Age.

The IPCC claims there is an acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise in recent decades. Clintel has shown this claim is flawed, because the IPCC ignores decadal variability in sea level. We also show that its sea-level tool – made available for the first time – shows a mysterious and improbable jump upward in 2020.

Climate sensitivity

Canadian economist Ross McKitrick has pointed out that all global climate models used by the IPCC show too much warming in the troposphere, both globally and in the tropics (where models predict a ‘hotspot’). This probably indicates some fundamental problems in the way that these models simulate the climate system.

A ’spectacular’ result of the IPCC AR6 report was the rise of the lower bound for the climate sensitivity likely range from 1.5°C to 2.5°C, therefore claiming that low values for climate sensitivity are now unlikely. The Clintel report shows this rise is not justified. The Clintel report suggests that observed warming and other evidence indicates that the true figure is more likely to be below 2°C than above 2.5°C. This also means that the best estimate for climate sensitivity, which the IPCC says is 3°C, is not justified.

On top of that, the IPCC is ‘addicted’ to its highest emissions scenario, so-called RCP8.5 (or now SSP5-8.5). In recent years, several papers have demonstrated that this scenario is implausible and should not be used for policy purposes. Deep inside the WG1 report, the IPCC acknowledges that this scenario has a ‘low likelihood’ but this very important remark was not highlighted in the Summary for Policymakers, so these important audiences are unaware of the issue. RCP8.5 is the scenario most often referred to in the IPCC report.

IAC Review

Back in 2010, errors in the WG2 report of the Fourth Assessment led to the investigation of the IPCC by the Interacademy Council (IAC). This review recommended, amongst other things, that “[h]aving author teams with diverse viewpoints is the first step toward ensuring that a full range of thoughtful views are considered.” This important recommendation is still being ignored by the IPCC. Worse, we document that Roger Pielke Jr, a scientist with considerable expertise in these areas, is regarded as a kind of ‘Voldemort’ by the IPCC, and they deliberately avoid mentioning his work or even his name. This leads to biased conclusions.

Reform

We are sorry to conclude that the IPCC has done a poor job of assessing the scientific literature. All countries rely on the IPCC reports to support their climate policies and most of the media blindly trust its claims. The Clintel report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC shows that this trust is not justified.

In our view the IPCC should be reformed, and should include a broader range of views. Inviting scientists with different views, such as Roger Pielke Jr and Ross McKitrick, to participate more actively in the process is a necessary first step. If, for some reason, such inclusion of different views is unacceptable, the IPCC should be dismantled.

Our own conclusions about climate – based on the same underlying literature – are far less bleak. Due to increasing wealth and advancing technology, humanity is largely immune to climate change and can easily cope with it. Global warming is far less dangerous to humanity than the IPCC tells us.

https://clintel.org/thorough-analysis-by-clintel-shows-serious-errors-in-latest-ipcc-report/

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Is Macron finally taking on the cult of Net Zero?

Hell hath no fury like an environmentalist scorned and Emmanuel Macron has felt a wave of green wrath since his declaration last week that France has gone far enough in pursuit of Net Zero. ‘We are ahead, in regulatory terms, of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world,’ said Macron in a speech at the Élysée. ‘We must not make any new changes to the rules, because we will lose all the players,’ he continued.

Calling for a ‘pause’ of more EU environmental red tape, Macron said member states required stability if they were to attract future investment.

One could argue that 21st century western workers are being exploited by the powerful and aggressive environmental lobby

A day later, the president doubled down on his remarks while on a visit to Europe’s leading steel producer in Dunkirk. ‘I prefer factories that respect our European standards, which are the best, rather than those who want to add more and more standards, but without having any more factories,’ declared Macron.

There was a reason Macron chose Dunkirk. It is Marine Le Pen territory, a region where unemployment is at 9 per cent, 2 per cent more than the national average. ‘The Dunkirk basin has lost 6,000 industrial jobs in 20 years,’ acknowledged the president. ‘We will recreate 16,000 by 2030.’

The steel workers approved of what they heard, and so do many on the centre-right. An online poll by Le Figaro received 160,000 respondents in the first 24 hours, 70 per cent of whom agreed with their president that there is too much bureaucratic green tape.

But from the left there has been only rage. ‘Absolutely irresponsible’ cried the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau, who said it wasn’t fewer environmental regulations that were needed: ‘On the contrary, we have to increase them.’

Her party colleague Sandra Regol levelled that most damning of accusations at Macron, that of ‘climate denial’, adding that he was ‘taking France back to the 1980s’.

The far-left France Insoumise were also outraged. ‘It’s not as if there’s a [climate] emergency’, tweeted a sardonic Damien Maudet. One of the party’s MEPs, Manon Aubry, thundered that Macron ‘is now using the same rhetoric, word for word, as the European right and far right, who want to kill the implementation of the rest of the European climate package’.

Curiously, the hard left trade union, CGT, which has been at the forefront of this year’s pension reform protests, joined the chorus of disapproval at the president’s declaration. ‘We are not going to sacrifice the environmental issue to the economic issue,’ said Sophie Binet, the CGT secretary general. ‘It’s extremely serious to do that.’

That statement is curious because the CGT was established at the end of the 19th century to, in the words of its charter, defend workers’ rights in the ‘class struggle’ against exploitative bosses. One could argue that 21st century western workers are being exploited by the powerful and aggressive environmental lobby, which imposes regulation after regulation to the detriment of industry and prosperity.

But the CGT is no longer an organisation that battles on behalf of blue-collar workers; like most trade unions and left-wing political parties in Britain and France, it has been captured by the progressive managerial class. A generation ago the leader of the CGT was a man who was an apprentice railwayman at 15; now it’s led by someone who read philosophy at university.

The CGT seems more interested in social justice – marching in the cause of ‘Islamophobia’, the environment and LGBTQ rights – rather than striving to support those suffering the effects of deindustrialisation. This dereliction of duty might explain why the membership of the CGT has declined so dramatically in the last 20 years.

At the same time that the CGT and the French Socialists have been shedding supporters, Marine Le Pen has been attracting followers, many of them blue-collar workers who once voted left. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front in 1972, growing it from a fringe party to one that reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election by latching onto the two preoccupations of the working-class: immigration and deindustrialisation.

In a 2005 speech Le Pen urged his supporters to vote ‘No’ in the impending referendum on the EU Constitution. He blamed Europe, as much as the French elite, for the fact that in 30 years the number of people employed in the industrial sector had fallen from six to three million. ‘Unemployment has taken hold in a structural manner, born of deindustrialisation and the drastic reduction in the number of people working in agriculture, trade and crafts,’ said Le Pen.

This same sense of grievance accounted for the success in April of the newly-formed Farmer Citizen Movement in the Dutch regional elections. As Eva Vlaardingerbroek wrote in the Spectator, the Movement had tapped into the ‘larger conflict between the authoritarian green agenda being pushed by our government and the silent majority paying for it all’.

If the French establishment wants to avoid their nightmare scenario of a Marine Le Pen presidency in 2027 they will do so only by addressing mass immigration and deindustrialisation. Ignoring these issues, while foisting on the public an authoritarian green agenda, will ensure Le Pen becomes the first female leader of the Fifth Republic.

Macron appears to be getting the message, though one can never be sure with Monsieur ‘En Meme Temps’ [At the Same Time]. There is a reason why he’s acquired that nickname among his opponents: he has a habit of saying or doing one thing and the next week the exact opposite.

Last year Macron relaunched France’s nuclear industry – just as Germany closed the last of its reactors – and in the next decade or so six new reactors will be built and 100,000 jobs created. Apprentice schemes are coming back into fashion, providing opportunities for young men and women of different classes and ethnicities.

When the nuclear energy bill was presented to parliament in March this year it passed without problem; the centre-right Republicans supported it, so too Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and the Communists. The Greens, the Socialists and La France Insoumise all voted against.

The truth is that Net Zero has become a bourgeois cult, and their self-absorbed domineering has been tolerated for too long.

As the Yellow Vests told the environmental lobby as they took to the streets in 2018 to protest against a green fuel tax: ‘You talk about the end of the world while we are talking about the end of the month.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/is-macron-finally-taking-on-the-cult-of-net-zero/ ?

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Embrace of LNG by G7 a setback for climate goals, experts warn

The Group of Seven's move to promote deliveries of liquefied natural gas as a temporary response to the energy crisis prompted warnings from environmental groups over the continued embrace of fossil fuels, with one expert pinning blame on the hosts.

At their summit in Hiroshima, G7 leaders also stressed the importance of making a green transformation and pledged to ramp up clean energy investments. Specifically, they mentioned a collective increase in offshore wind capacity of 150 gigawatts by 2030 to meet a joint commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% and fully or predominantly decarbonize the power sector by 2035.

But it was the G7's approval of new gas investments to survive the ongoing energy shortages stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war that caught the attention of environmental organizations.

While Germany, which has been hit particularly hard by the cut off of Russian gas supplies, has been boosting investment to diversify its LNG sources, NGOs said it contradicted what experts said was needed to achieve decarbonization goals.

“If Germany continues to focus its negotiation power on new gas investments rather than leading the way for a future free of fossil fuels, this won’t be possible. Worse, the G7 is ignoring the International Energy Agency’s call to refrain from any new investments into fossil fuels, not just coal, to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees,” said Friederike Roder, vice president for Global Advocacy, Global Citizen.

Others noted that the decision on LNG means more delays on transitioning out of fossil fuel.

“By further investing in fossil fuels, the G7 leaders are missing out on the rapidly accelerating competitive edge of clean energy, and the wide range of associated benefits for people, businesses and economies,” said Gillian Nelson, policy director of the We Mean Business Coalition.

The G7 also backed Japan's efforts to promote the abatement of carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants through introducing controversial new carbon capture utilization and storage technologies.

However, only conditional support was given to Japan’s push for ammonia co-fired coal plants and hydrogen energy in the power sector.

Such technologies should be developed only if they can be aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement's goal of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, the joint communique said.

The G7’s reaffirmation of its commitment to jointly mobilize $100 billion annually until 2025 to help mitigate climate change and supporting climate-vulnerable groups was praised, although concern was raised about how the G7 countries would achieve this.

“While it is encouraging to see a commitment to finally meet the $100 billion international climate finance promise in 2023, no new pledges have been made to give this promise some credibility,” Roder said.

Kimiko Hirata, executive director of Climate Integrate, put the blame for the G7’s continued push for fossil fuel investments on Japan, and what she said was a lack of a sense of urgency about the climate crisis on the part of the Japanese government.

“Japan didn’t prioritize the climate agenda throughout the negotiations, but rather blocked key issues that needed to be progressed, such as setting a timeline for a coal phase out. Japan also pushed new fossil-based technologies for the thermal power sector (such as carbon capture utilization and storage technologies), driven by its domestic interests,“ she said.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/05/21/national/g7-climate-plan-concern/ ?

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Solar power uses more energy than it produces

In Australia, great reliance is being placed on electricity generation from solar panels, both roof-mounted and solar farms. The aim is to replace generation from coal and gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers recognise that, for this to succeed, the electricity generated and used must be greater than the electricity expended in making and installing the panels (embodied energy). The number of years it takes for this energy recovery is called Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT). It is clear that pay-back times should be short because, until the embodied energy is replaced, there cannot be any positive output.

Numerous studies have determined that the pay-back time is between one and five years for rooftop solar and longer for solar farms. This is all very well, but solar panels alone are not a practical, generating system. Nothing is generated from late afternoon through the night to the next morning. No electricity every night… Clearly, a battery has to be added for continuous supply and the embodied energy from the manufacture of the battery has to be included in the analysis. Electricity consumed overnight is replaced when the battery is recharged by the solar panel during the next day.

What happens if the next day is cloudy? Clearly, a bigger battery and a bigger solar panel would be needed. The embodied energy of the bigger battery and panel must be included in assessing pay-back time and the viability of the system. What if the day after that is also cloudy? An even bigger battery and panel than needed. How many cloudy days need to be accounted for?

Any electricity generation system that cannot recover the energy embodied in its manufacture, in a short time or not at all in its lifetime, cannot be considered viable for electricity supply or for emissions reduction.

Yooko Tsuchiya et al reported on two cases of PV electricity generation systems in sub-Saharan rural Tanzania, concluding that EPBT analyses showed unsatisfactory performance. They reported that: ‘At one site, the EPBT even exceeded the lifespan of the PV panel, indicating that energy recovery was impossible.’

The question arises as to whether PV electricity generation can replace coal/gas generation in Australia. This study examines the energy recovery potential of rooftop solar for three cities in Australia representing the extremes of climate, viz. Melbourne, (worst case state capital for sunny days, excepting Hobart), Perth, (best case state capital for sunny days), and Alice Springs (central Australia).

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has records of solar radiation day-by-day for years 1990 to 2022. These data sets show that, of these 33 years, 16 have radiation below average and that May, June, and July are the months most likely to risk electricity shortages, ie. blackouts.

Using these data, a new study has calculated the sizes of solar panel and battery which give the least, combined, embodied energy, then calculated the Energy Pay-Back time for Melbourne, (least sunny days capital excepting Hobart), Perth (most sunny days capital), and Alice Springs (central Australia). Full details of the study are available on request.

The results show that:

The Energy Pay-Back time for roof-top solar generation of electricity is 22 to 24 years for Melbourne, 14 to 15 years for Perth, and 14 years for Alice Springs.

For Melbourne, Perth, and Alice Springs, EPBT’s exceed the lifetime of the battery, therefore, batteries have to be replaced twice in the 30-year lifetime of the solar panel.

Accounting for this, the energy embodied in the manufacture and installation of the system is not recovered in the lifetime of the system.

Storage of excess summer generation for practical use requires very large batteries, resulting in unfavourable EPBT.
The following conclusions can be drawn:

Since prior research indicates that solar farms are worse than rooftop solar, solar farms are not a feasible replacement for traditional coal/gas-based electricity generation.

Given equal dollar value eg dollars per kWh, assigned to both input and output electricity, the cost results will echo the energy results, that is to say that the cost incurred in manufacture etc. will not be recovered in the lifetime of the system. Given that, within that lifetime, the batteries would be replaced at additional cost, it follows that electricity generated by the solar system will always be more expensive than the input coal/gas electricity which established the system. Statements by politicians such as, ‘the reason electricity is more expensive now is because we do not have enough renewable energy’ is the reverse of the facts. The more solar generation we have, the more expensive electricity will become.

Subsidies to adjust input and/or output dollar charges do not change the costs. They transfer costs to another element of production, for zero added value. Such subsidies are therefore inherently inflationary.

Continued purchase of solar panels and batteries from low-cost, coal/gas-based producers while, at the same time, inhibiting and closing domestic coal/gas-based electricity, presents national security issues, for no economic or environmental benefit.

Persistence with the widespread installation of PV panels and batteries and closure of coal or gas-fired power stations, will result in greater not lesser emissions of carbon dioxide, higher electricity charges, and higher inflation.

Put simply, Australia mines coal and exports it to China where coal-fired power stations generate electricity, which is used to manufacture PV panels and batteries, which Australia buys and uses to generate electricity from the rays of the sun. In their lifetimes, the solar panels never generate enough usable electricity to replace the coal/gas electricity they originated from.

Reliance on solar combined with closing down coal and gas generation is definitely premature and will lead to power shortages, inflated energy costs, compromised national security, and increased carbon dioxide emissions. Australia would be better off for supply reliability, emissions, costs, and sovereign security, to use coal and gas domestically for electricity generation.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/solar-a-risky-waste-of-time-and-money/

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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

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Net Zero’s artificial food crisis paves the way for ‘future foods’

The Left can push us only so far into a dystopia so I doubt that the following scenario is fully realistic

Net Zero rules employed by the United Nations, European Union, and domestic political parties across the world are expected to cause the imminent shutdown of high-production farmland, or at least, significantly reduce its capacity.

Yes, after centuries of perfecting food growing techniques, a bunch of bureaucratic regulators have decided to deliberately massacre the industry. Farmers in the Netherlands are first on the chopping block, with their historic estates being forcibly purchased by the State in what amounts to a complete erasure of private property rights.

As these policies are primarily targeting the world’s food bowls – the Netherlands, Canada, Sri Lanka, the United States, and Australia – the global agricultural supply chain can expect a prolonged artificial shortage of critical food items in the near future.

Food shortages, where demand remains the same or rises with population growth, results in the rapid increase of cost. Add to this problem huge changes to fertilisers, transport, red tape, pesticides, biosecurity, packaging, and labour.

We are already seeing the early stages of these policies play out in supermarkets across the Western world where gaps are appearing on the shelves, the diversity of products is in swift decline, and of the food that remains – its price is becoming a financial burden, even to the lower-middle class who have not struggled to afford food for three generations.

How convenient that some corporate and ideological partners of the international bureaucracies pushing these Net Zero policies are waiting in the wings with ‘planet saving’ food products!

In a world where fresh food is plentiful and cheap, no one would dream of sniffing around a lab for their next meal, but poverty is a powerful motivator to accept barely palatable crap sweetened with false virtue. Instead of counting calories, the next generation will be calculating their carbon footprint at the dinner table.

Keep in mind that this is a menu for the poor. Fresh food, real meat, and French wine will continue to fill the kitchens of the ruling classes. It’s the family of five squished into a city apartment, unable to turn the air-conditioner on for more than an hour a day, that will be faced with a range of cheap, depressing items at the supermarket.

The two emerging food groups for the latter half of this century are bugs and printed food – both of which are frequently grown in a lab.

Astonishingly, it is the ‘bug’ portion of this food pyramid that is rapidly making its way into the European shopping trolley, with crushed bug bits being approved as a filler or replacement for wheat. Whoever made that decision should be sat down in front of a plate of crickets and told to mash them up by hand before eating a loaf of bread made from the bits. Let’s see if they really think bug-meat is an appropriate substitute…

Within a few years, it will be extremely difficult for the average European to ensure that their meals are bug-free. Just as our food is currently tainted with chemicals and additives we’d be unlikely to pick if we knew what they were – the future of bread, flour, pasta, and sauces is sealed.

Nothing says ‘civilisational success’ quite like eating the critters that crawl over our mounting piles of garbage.

And yes, these bugs are grown in the lab, but in some ways this is worse. They are fed on a diet of chemicals, locked in tiny boxes, killed en masse, crushed up, and fed to us. At what point do you say that we had it ‘better’ thousands of years ago, salivating over a freshly roasted mammoth steak?

Vegans and vegetarians will want to avoid the eating of sentient insects. (Or maybe not? Who knows… Might be worth laying some money down on that.)

If these two groups of picky eaters remain true to their moral core, they will find their shopping experience rather patchy. The world’s farms are shrinking and the costs of transporting produce around the world is becoming fatally high. At some point Gen Z will realise that their local fruit market was put there by jumbo jets, ships, and vans. What sort of selfish vegan would insist a nation waste their carbon footprint flying fruit and vegetables in from another country? That would be literally destroying the world.

The supply problems of fresh produce may even be accidental, caused by incompetent governments failing to realise that the forced closure of oil and gas will create transport price hikes that no farmer can sustain and no customer can carry.

Regardless of how events play out, vegans and vegetarians will be offered lab-printed food as their ‘cheap’ and ‘convenient’ alternative. You can still have those cashews you love… We printed them out of chemicals for you this morning. They look a bit like a downloaded TV show from the early 2000s, but we promise they taste practically the same!

To compensate, there is a new ‘fad’ mulling around in its infancy. 3D-printed food is somewhat of a mixed bag. It covers everything from what a Mars expedition might expect – up to 5-star dining – and everything in-between. There are genres of 3D-printing, which vary wildly in quality and appeal.

At the high-quality end we have ‘fun food’, where 3D-printed food functions as a gimmick for restaurants. One Italian pasta company has been printing elaborate pasta shapes that serve as the centre pieces of dishes that are impossible to create with real pasta.

This variety of 3D-printing is a quite palatable, as the base pasta mix is still handmade and then fed through printing machines. There is no doubt a future in this type of elevated cuisine in the same way that the Industrial Age led to factory-cut food shapes and the mass production of pasta.

On the more futuristic end of the scale, we have Tokyo’s Sushi Singularity. It describes its mission as:

‘Beyond the future of sushi. A world that sees sushi going digital and linked with the net will come about. Two revolutions are envisioned: 1) Sushi will connect people around the world, and will be produced, edited, and shared online in the form of “new sushi”. 2) Sushi combined with biometrics will enable hyper-personalisation based on biometric and genomic data. Sushi will break away from conventional concepts of food and be continually revised and updated at exponential speed! Humans know nothing about Sushi!’

These guys have a full futuristic enterprise going on where the dream is to digitise food, build a food database, transmit food digitally, and then reprint it.

According to American Scientist:

‘Their 3D-printed food experiments include cell-cultured tuna in a filigreed cube, and octopus sculpted in a honeycomb lattice with negative stiffness. Most of their printing appears to be extrusion-based, using components that undergo computer-controlled mixing to generate the right flavours and textures. They also use a powder-based printing technique that incorporates high-powered lasers to fuse powders together.’

Forgive me if I prefer a quick trip to Croatia for a bit of freshly poached octopus or lightly fried calamari on the Ligurian coast. Some people like future-foods, I prefer old-style simplicity.

Other 3D-printing restaurants focus on meat-replacements which, more often than not, are actually printed from lab-grown fat and sinew. While the first form of 3D-printed restaurant food is about putting on a flashy, futuristic show, meat-replacements are more ‘on vibe’ with saving the planet. It’s about ‘responsible eating’ and finding ways to make the otherwise unpalatable tolerable. If we are honest, it also provides a way for vegetarians and vegans to cheat on the whole no meat pledge.

There is likely to be a backlash to all the bugs and sci-fi food if it goes from being a market option to a government-mandated initiative, as we have seen with electric vehicles. People may start trying to grow their own food – or at the very least, barter outside the government’s field of view with those who have the means to grow food. In some regional communities, this is already happening. Fresh produce is being shared amongst farms away from the greed of supermarket oligarchies and excessive agricultural regulators. If you ask most people whether they’d rather eat something grown in a lab or trust their mate farmer Jeff and his watermelon crop well… I know what I’m eating.

As we watch the wilful and reckless destruction of the world’s agricultural heartlands, we should ask ourselves, ‘Is this progress? Do we want politically-aligned laboratories controlling food production?’

A recent article on the topic writes:

‘Some believe that 3D-printed food could be the answer to global issues such as world hunger. It’s projected that the globe’s population will reach about 8 billion by 2025, which will put a heavy strain not only on food producers but also on food sources themselves. 3D printers can make use of abundant sources of nutrients, such as algae, and transform them into appetising foods that can be mass-produced fairly easily.’

Hmm… Maybe we should all join the farmers’ protests in the Netherlands instead before we reach the point of 3D-printed algae.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/net-zeros-artificial-food-crisis-paves-the-way-for-future-foods

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EVs and the Fermi gap

Enrico Fermi was one of the fathers of Quantum Physics. It was he who identified what has come to be known as the Fermi Gap. You see, embedded deep in the electronic structure of any conductor or semiconductor, is a fundamental inefficiency that no amount of technology can overcome.

This should come as no surprise to us. The lead–acid battery has been starting cars since 1859 (or at least from when cars were invented). There have been many advances made in their design since then, but one thing that hasn’t changed is their charging time. Even today a $400 Glass-Gel battery will charge no faster than a $100 cheapie. In the normal course of events, the battery is charged by our car’s alternator, after delivering several hundred amps in a couple of seconds to start the car. But if we leave our lights on, and the battery becomes depleted, there is no quick way to get charge back into the battery, and it generally requires an overnight charge. The only differences between the cheap batteries and the premium ones are the amount of current they deliver, the amount of maintenance they require, and their life. But there is no difference in charging rates.

Here’s why.

In just the same way that a car can run out of fuel, we can think of a flat battery as running out of electrons. Charging the battery is essentially putting back the electrons that were lost when the battery discharged. And so when we connect our battery to the charging circuit, electrons flow from the connecting electrodes into the battery cells. Unfortunately, however, the electrons do not flow quite as easily as the fuel from a bowser.

Although, in principle, an electron will flow from a position of higher energy to lower energy, a substantial energy (voltage) gap must be created for the process to start, and this differential is known as the Fermi Gap. It’s an inefficiency that can only be managed, but never eliminated.

So how does it work? Imagine you have an early model 80 Series Landcruiser (notorious for their poor handbrakes) sitting on a ramp, in neutral, with the handbrake on. Suppose we now raise the ramp. At first nothing happens, but when the ramp is steep enough the gravitational pull will overcome the handbrake’s resistance, and it will start to roll down the ramp.

Suppose we now wish to increase the rate at which it rolls down the ramp. Well, all we do is increase the slope of the ramp. Now it rolls faster. But when it gets to the bottom and we examine it, we find that the brakes are hotter than when it rolled slowly.

So it is with batteries. We can increase the charging voltage (the slope of the ramp) to push electrons through faster, but the result of this is increased heat in the battery (caused by internal resistance). And as anyone that knows anything about batteries knows, nothing kills a battery (any battery) faster than heat. This is the reason many European cars place the battery under one of the seats or in the boot – a hot engine bay is not an ideal spot for a battery.

But there’s another problem. As the battery charges, the efficiency decreases – more heat is generated at lower currents as the battery fills with charge. For this reason, smart chargers will begin charging at a higher current, then trail off as the battery approaches maximum charge.

So where does all this leave us with EVs? Firstly, degradation of the batteries is inevitable, even if they aren’t overheated. Eventually, the crystal structures morph into more stable structures that are less reactive (in chemical terms, that’s what ‘stable’ means), and so that portion of the battery’s recharging capacity is lost.

Secondly, we are stuck with slow charging and have to manage it. There are essentially two options here. The first one is to simply put bigger batteries into the cars. Suppose I were to charge a battery from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. I now double the size of the battery and charge it from 20 per cent to 50 per cent. The amount of charge in each case is identical, but the charging of the larger battery would be more efficient, and could therefore be carried out more quickly than in the first case with the smaller battery. This approach, however, has two obvious disadvantages – the cars become both more expensive and heavier.

A lot of people seem unaware of this latter issue. The entry-level Tesla 3 weighs in at 1,800kg, a substantial increase over an equivalent-sized Hyundai at 1,300kg. As the battery comprises generally about 25 per cent of the weight of an EV, doubling the battery would increase the weight to 2,250kg, as much as a Landcruiser… This option, therefore, quickly loses its viability.

The second approach to the battery recharging issue is having removeable batteries, like in a torch. Believe it or not, such a car exists – the ‘Silence SO4’ – a tiny car resembling a Smart Car. How this approach could be implemented in larger cars such as Teslas remains to be seen.

There are other logistical issues with EVs, such as the availability of lithium and the problem (and it’s a big one) of waste batteries. These are beyond the scope of this article.

No doubt more charging stations will pop up here and there, but the problem of slow charging is embedded in the electronic structure of the batteries, and there simply is no way around it.

At this point I normally finish an article with some pithy comment, but on this occasion, I can’t think of one. I simply make this unavoidable observation – the widespread use of EVs is simply not viable. When that become clear to our leaders, and what the fallout from that is, is anybody’s guess.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/evs-and-a-tale-of-two-italians/

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Will Rishi Sunak admit the truth about Net Zero?

Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, popped up on television at the weekend to explain that the cost of installing a heat pump is only about £3,000, the same as a gas boiler. Hmm. Good luck with that.

That number is only true once a £5,000 grant from the government (of which only 90,000 are available) has been considered. It ignores all the costs of insulation and pipework. A friend of mine with a heat pump says about £15,000 is a more accurate number.

A lower carbon economy is a good thing, but the Net Zero policy as legally implemented in the UK has been a disaster

Inflation, largely a consequence of energy costs, remains the biggest issue not just in Britain but the world right now. We feel it particularly acutely here because UK inflation remains stubbornly high, partly due to our daft energy policy and the delusional state of discussion of this critical subject in the City, Westminster, universities, and the media.

A close watching of Prime Minister’s Questions last week was a reminder of this. There was a total of six questions about energy. The latest public opinion and social attitudes survey from the Office for National Statistics found that a resounding 93 per cent believe that the cost of living is the most important issue facing the country, while 51 per cent are worried about the cost of food and 48 per cent about the cost of energy. Those are big numbers.

Rishi Sunak’s answers at PMQs made more sense than the cries of his detractors and offered a hint of something more rational than we have now. It raises the seductive possibility that if he adopts the same practical and pragmatic approach he has to other subjects, he might recover from the impossible hole he finds himself in.

Sir Keir Starmer’s signature policy is to raise £13 billion by increasing the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas companies. He also wants to remove their investment allowances in order to fund an ambitious and expensive Green Prosperity plan. He accuses the Prime Minister of ‘giving handouts to oil and gas giants’ and ‘protecting oil and gas profits’ rather than using the money to freeze council tax bills.

But as oil and gas prices fall, the additional windfall tax will collect nothing like the £13 billion Labour hopes. Despite its theoretical attractions, the Green Prosperity plan is a fantasy, impractical policy. Nor is it true that the government has given handouts to the oil and gas industry.

The green lobby are busy condemning the approval of the Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea for development by Equinor of Norway, which, they claim (wrongly), would receive nearly £4 billion of subsidies. These are simply the usual corporate investment allowances, not subsidies.

But it is to defend a deeply unfashionable industry, just as Bernard Looney, the CEO of BP did last week, when he proclaimed that fossil fuels ‘have done an enormous amount of good’ for humanity.

Intriguingly, Labour supports, in principle, a huge investment by Equinor and BP in Teesside. This project is includes a carbon capture and storage project. But obviously, it is contingent on there being carbon to capture from North Sea production in the first place, which Labour is apparently against. So the party’s position is contradictory. Reports of allegedly sharp practice among local property developers may provide political way out of that jam, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, British electricity is the most expensive in Europe and probably in the advanced world, at 40p per kilowatt hour, according to the HEPI index. That is nearly twice the European average and three times the American average. This is despite the fact that renewables generators are boasting that their costs are falling and that British solar and wind power produced more electricity (32.4 per cent) than natural gas (31.7 per cent) in the first quarter.

That is good news from a carbon emissions perspective, but absolutely terrible news from a cost of living and price perspective. Contrary to myth, and it is important to understand this, wind and solar are not always cheaper on a system-wide basis. This is because they depend not only on subsidies, but on having a large fleet of gas power stations on standby for cold days, for when the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining. The two systems are therefore run side by side. Currently, that means higher costs.

This is one of the reasons lower oil and gas prices globally are not being passed on to British consumers in cheaper electricity prices. Our energy system, reflecting 20 years of wonky policies, is all bent out of shape.

A lower carbon economy is a good thing for multiple reasons, but the Net Zero policy as legally implemented in the UK has been a disaster. We are one of only a handful of countries to have put the target of Net Zero emissions by 2050 into law. But this policy has the potential to be a bigger fiasco than Brexit or Covid. It has already resulted in higher costs, with huge impact on society and the economy. It has led to higher emissions (because coal power stations have been kept on), encouraged Vladimir Putin, and increased our dependence on China.

Judging by the polls, a good proportion of people understand this. They can see their energy bills for themselves, and they can spot the flaws in the claim that heat pumps cost only £3,000 after a few minutes on the internet. We aren’t stupid. As for the policy that new gas boilers are going to be banned from newbuilds from 2025, i.e. in 18 months, we know that is not going to happen. It is absurd.

It is not hard to see where this might head if Rishi Sunak has the courage to take the pragmatic stance he has taken towards other controversial issues. He can say ‘I am practical and sort things out. I am committed to a low carbon economy, but I also recognise the reality of needing fossil fuels for the moment. Vote Labour if you want to, but it will result in you being forced to install a £15,000 heat pump, even higher energy bills and much higher taxes. You will have to buy an expensive electric car. These crazy policies could tip thousands more into poverty. It will also mean higher inflation and higher interest rates. By contrast, I will keep your bills down.’

In order to do this, Rishi Sunak will himself require a realistic energy policy that makes more practical sense. He will have to match Labour’s ambition and be honest about simple but important things, like boilers and cars and roads. He will also have to admit that hard Net Zero is an ideology. Whether he has the courage and authority to do so is a different matter.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/will-rishi-sunak-admit-the-truth-about-net-zero-2

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Carbon capture and storage works, but its high cost has slowed its uptake

Carbon capture and storage is “complicated and costly’’ to do on a large scale, and its lack of affordability in part explains why the mature technology is not widely used, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference has heard.

The key role CCS will play in reaching net-zero carbon goals has been a key theme of the conference, being held in Adelaide this week, along with calls for more government support for the technology which aims to permanently store carbon emissions underground in depleted oil and gas reservoirs.

And while Resources Minister Madeleine King told the conference this week that CCS was “perhaps the single biggest opportunity for emissions reduction in the energy resources sector’’, her colleague, Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic yesterday said he wasn’t yet convinced.

“If the technology stacks up, great,’’ Mr Husic said in a radio interview. “I haven’t taken the view that it’s all bad and I haven’t taken the view that it’s all great. I haven’t seen it yet to be honest … it really hasn’t shown that it’s able to work at scale.’’

Mr Husic said “it would be great if we can do it’’, but that remained to be shown.

While Ms King’s comments to the conference were strongly supportive of the role CCS could play in reaching net zero, there were no commitments made in terms of supporting the technology through incentives or subsidies.

Her comments follow the government stripping $250m in previously committed funding from CCS projects in last October’s federal budget.

APPEA says a carbon capture and storage strategy is essential at a national level and is pushing for the creation of “net zero industrial zones” where heavy carbon-emitting industries can be co-located, and their emissions captured and stored.

The conference also heard from many speakers that Australia risks falling behind the US and Europe, which are pouring billions into net zero programs including support for CCS projects, with the US allowing them to use a key tax credit.

To date there is only one commercially-operated CCS project active in Australia, at Chevron’s Gorgon project offshore Western Australia, while Santos’s Moomba CCS project is 60 per cent complete, with first injection expected next year.

The Chevron project is underperforming, with Chevron Australia general manager energy transition David Fallon telling the conference on Wednesday that pressure management issues were still hindering the $2.5bn project.

Mr Fallon said the $2.5bn Gorgon CCS project was working and was “the world’s largest stand-alone storage facility’’, but admitted it was only operating at about one third capacity.

It had to date stored about eight million tonnes of CO2, Mr Fallon said.

The Gorgon CCS operation is designed to store CO2 stripped from the natural gas stream in depleted in reservoirs more than 2km beneath Barrow Island, offshore Western Australia.

The company aims to inject about 100m tonnes of CO2 back underground over the life of the LNG project with the system to eventually capture four million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.

Mr Fallon said there had been some “misleading reporting’’ saying the project did not work, but the high level message was that “the CO2 storage, it is working’’.

“It’s safely storing CO2. Even with the challenges we’ve had it remains, as I understand it, the world’s largest stand-alone CO2 storage facility solely focused on storage, so we’re working through the challenges and we’ve got lots of engineers and plans to remediate the system,’’ he said.

“There’s often some misleading reporting saying ‘it’s a failure, it doesn’t work. I can say it does work.’’

When challenged on why the technology, which has been in use at a modest scale for decades overseas, has not been more widely adopted, Mr Fallon said “it’s not cheap”, while reiterating that it needed to be part of the net zero toolkit.

“The times are changing, it’s not cheap, but as the world’s evolved and lower carbon is a higher priority there’s certainly more interest in CCS and it becomes a more attractive investment from a cost point of view.

Ms Gao said there were several hurdles the industry had to surmount to make it more viable, which differed by jurisdiction. In the US for example, the permitting time frame for a CCS project currently sat at about six years, while countries such as South Korea and Japan lacked the geological structures to store CO2 underground.

Ms Gao said the growing focus on building CCS hubs provided some “promising hope’’ for the technology.

She said while the cost of capturing CO2 was “actually quit high”, carbon prices were also high and would make projects viable.

“I think the bigger problem with CCS is … the scale and the scale comes more around … the transportation and storage side of it,’’ she said.

Ms Gao said transporting CO2 for storage could double the cost of the endeavour, meaning hubs were a better option.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/carbon-capture-and-storage-works-but-its-high-cost-has-slowed-its-uptake-appea-conference-hears/news-story/5c002ddbbf8aa1cbb7b1a9eff57dca05

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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More than a third of the area charred by wildfires in Western North America can be traced back to fossil fuels, scientists find

More modelling madness. If you look at the underlying journal article, you find that the so-called "findings" below were in fact just model output. And when the models are made by the far-Left Union of Concerned Scientists, you can be sure that the models had Greenie results built in. What a con!

Millions of acres scorched by wildfires in the Western US and Canada — an area roughly the size of South Carolina — can be traced back to carbon pollution from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement companies, scientists reported Tuesday.

The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 37% of the area burned by wildfires in the West since 1986 — nearly 19.8 million acres out of 53 million — can be blamed on the planet-cooking pollution from 88 of the world’s major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, the latter of which have been shown to produce around 7% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

The amalgam of megadrought and record-breaking heat that’s drying out vegetation due to climate change has stoked the West’s wildfires. And researchers found that since 1901, the fossil fuel activities of these companies, including ExxonMobil and BP, among others, warmed the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius — nearly half of the global increase during that period.

Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author on the study, said the findings add to a significant library of research that directly links climate change or the impacts of the crisis to burning fossil fuel.

The sun sets over the University District in Seattle, Saturday, May 13, 2023. Saturday's temperatures reached record-breaking highs for several cities across western Washington.

“We know that many of these companies have known for decades about the consequences of climate change,” Phillips told CNN, referring to several studies and award-winning reports that have shown fossil fuel executives knew of but downplayed the growing threat. “But instead of sharing that information with the public, they engaged in this deliberate misinformation campaign to deceive the general public and cast doubt on climate science.”

Fossil fuel companies have denied the conclusions of those reports.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/us/western-wildfires-fossil-fuels-study-climate/index.html

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Not so easy to turn Texas Green

Bobby Tudor made a fortune in fracking. The clean-cut financier opened shop in 2007 and spent the next 10 years backing large-scale projects in West Texas, supercharging one of history’s greatest oil and gas expansions. But over lunch in February, even as he predicted that oil and gas would be around for the foreseeable future, Tudor offered a dimmer view of the industry’s role in the region. “Oil and gas is just not going to be the same engine for growth,” he told me. “It will flatten, and then it will decline.”

Which is why Tudor, a consummate Texas fossil-fuel money man, is betting big on green energy.

It’s not hard to see why. The state is already the largest producer of renewable energy in the U.S. Clean-technology startups are flocking to the Houston region, and big energy companies are pursuing hydrogen projects across the state. The city of Houston alone could receive as much as $250 billion in annual investment in the emerging energy sectors by 2040, according to data from Mckinsey, thanks in part to its existing infrastructure and skilled labor force. Tudor has started a new firm focused on cutting emissions, and is chairing a powerful business coalition dedicated to the transition and composed of some of the biggest names in energy, including Exxonmobil, Chevron, and Shell. “In Houston, when we see $1 laying on the ground,” he said, “we bend over and pick it up.” There’s just one problem: politics. While many cities, states, and even countries are fighting for the trillions of dollars in public and private green investments that are transforming the energy industry, many Texas leaders, including a powerful segment of the state’s political leadership, are opposing the new opportunities. Some fear that clean energy will hurt the state’s incumbent fossil-fuel business. But many oppose the energy transition as a proxy for opposing Democrats, another way to prove to the conservative base that they are the reddest around. The result is a raft of measures that could hamper green-energy projects and incentivize carbon-heavy ones.

These divisions are setting up a surprising, high-stakes fight. Tudor’s coalition, the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), is organized by the city’s most prominent business group, and its members are putting serious cash behind new energy efforts. But some politicians are pushing back, launching efforts to slow renewable energy and publicly vilifying environment initiatives. “[Major oil and gas firms] may have supported us in the past, but they certainly don’t align with us now,” says Jason Isaac of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “They’re going to go and chase money—and it’s unfortunate.”

The fight in Texas can tell us a lot about the bigger push to address climate change. A wellexecuted transition would help cut global emissions, create wealth and opportunity for millions of Texans, and set an example for the world. But the unfolding debate also shows why it’s not so simple. Politics and culture are powerful forces everywhere, and despite mounds of evidence about the value of transition, it’s unclear whether long-term economic considerations will win out. We all have an interest in the outcome. “We need to do it for commercial reasons,” says Tudor, but “we have a responsibility to do it too. The challenges of climate change, and the energy transition broadly, are so enormous that they’re not going to be solved without us.”

On the news and in popular culture, Texas can seem like a MAGA fever dream as politicians race to pass antiabortion laws and grandstand about critical race theory. But the business community driving the state’s economy gives a different impression. Chatting at a sleek Italian restaurant in Houston’s eclectic Montrose neighborhood, Tudor sounds more patrician than partisan. We talk about oil prices, yes, but also about Houston’s diversity and civic life, and the divergence between energy-industry financial returns and the region’s economic development. It’s an old-school vision of companies as pillars of the community that Tudor and many of his fellow executives share, one where business and government are partners in the greater good.

It’s a reading rooted in history. Before the 20th century, Texas was a largely rural, agrarian state; the discovery of vast oil reserves in 1901 changed that almost overnight. Within a matter of years, the oil industry expanded rapidly and so did the state’s urban centers. Whether by necessity or ideology, the government has largely stayed out of the way of the private companies that drove rapid growth and economic prosperity.

That has left Texas well positioned to capitalize on the energy transition. Building big infrastructure projects in Texas is easy thanks to a light regulatory environment. Much of the existing infrastructure—think pipelines—can be converted to carry carbon dioxide or hydrogen. The state has the highest concentration of chemical engineers in the country, jobs well suited not just for oil and gas but also for new energy technologies. And the local higher-education system, funded in large part by industry, has top programs to continue churning out energy workers.

But it’s hard for a transition to catch on when there’s so much money to be made in petroleum. At times over the course of the past 50 years, oil and gas has constituted 15% of the state’s economic output, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and the state’s broader economy in turn oriented toward fossil fuels as well. The industry’s prospects have whipsawed lately. The sector already had been underperforming the rest of the stock market in the years before COVID-19 hit. As energy demand tanked worldwide amid the lockdown, the price of oil briefly went negative, sending shock waves throughout the industry.

This unprecedented upheaval coincided with the beginning of Tudor’s campaign to get the industry to embrace the transition. An energy price spike driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 reopenings has led to dramatic profits for the industry and softened the shortterm financial urgency of embracing the transition.

But the immense volume of capital flowing into clean energy, especially as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), has sparked newfound resolve in the local business community to go green. “The IRA was a turning point,” says Greg Matlock, who leads EY’s Americas Energy Transition practice. “We were on the phone with clients, and within a week you could see tangible movement on transactions. It was quick and it was palpable.”

In Houston, it’s easy to see this on the ground. The downtown skyscrapers are full of incumbent oil companies, but a couple of miles away, in what city officials are calling the Innovation District, a new energy ecosystem is taking shape. I visited the office of Ara Partners, a private-equity shop with a self-proclaimed “industrial decarbonization strategy” that sees profits in helping companies cut their carbon footprint.

“Houston was the right place because the world of made things is made here,” says Troy Thacker, the firm’s CEO. Across the street, I visited Greentown Labs, an incubator where dozens of startups are working on everything from installing wind turbines more efficiently to turning cow manure into an alternative fuel source. Houston startups alone received $1.95 billion in venturecapital money in 2022, with energy-related startups raising almost as much as the next three sectors combined, according to data from the Greater Houston Partnership.

Across the state, investments from new and incumbent players aim to make Texas a world leader in green hydrogen, a clean way to store renewable energy. In Matagorda County, south of Houston, a company known as Highly Innovative Fuels, funded in part by old-school energy players like Baker Hughes, is building a massive facility that will use renewable electricity, green hydrogen, and technology that captures carbon dioxide. A venture-capital-backed energy company named Humble Midstream is building a hydrogen-export facility. Mckinsey estimates the hydrogen economy alone could be worth $100 billion to the state’s economy.

in Austin, i watched Jane Stricker, the executive director of HETI, present a vision of Texas as a capital of the energy transition to a gathering of lobbyists, regulators, and legislators. Her pitch: policymakers should join with business leaders to speed the shift. “We can solidify our position if we really lean into our role,” said Stricker, a former BP executive. “We have the opportunity to create massive economic growth.”

But for all of Texas’ business-friendly swagger, not everyone views a public-private green collaboration as a good thing. Responding to Stricker at the energy gathering, a Texas energyindustry insider questioned whether the state’s businesses were actually on board, then challenged the entire premise. “Can you articulate: transition from what to what?” he asked. In the discussions that followed, academics, elected officials, and business leaders laid out a range of positions. A renewable-energy lobbyist decried

GOP attempts to stomp out his industry. A state regulator laughed offa question about using funds from President Biden’s infrastructure law.

Business leaders try to play down the political opposition they face, arguing that ultimately lawmakers won’t turn down easy money. But while there are mixed opinions in Texas’ GOP, today opposition to clean energy and climate policy is defying the state’s business-friendly reputation and threatening to slow the transition in Texas.

Nowhere is that opposition clearer than in state government offices in Austin. The state legislature is crafting policies to stymie renewable energy. One bill would create new permitting requirements just for renewable-energy projects, requiring plant developers to evaluate the impacts on wildlife. Fossilfuel power plants would be exempt. Other measures would provide those plants new state subsidies. “There definitely is a contingent that’s looking to push up natural gas by pulling renewables down,” says Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.

And then there’s the anti-ESG rhetoric, a new front in the culture wars. Texas has banned a group of financial firms from doing business with state and local governments for using environmental, social, and governance metrics. These moves send a signal that green businesses aren’t welcome. “It could go faster if the state political forces were less antagonistic,” says Kay Mccall, president of the Renewable Energy Alliance Houston. “When you look at it, it’s almost silly.”

As a fly on the wall in startup conference rooms in Houston and Austin, I got a sense of the mood: outraged, but optimistic that economics will prevail over politics. Texas will realize some of its potential because of the direction of the market and the allure of tax incentives. The state’s pro-business roots, skilled workforce, and abundant natural resources have set it up to do big things in the energy transition.

But the outcome is not preordained. State politicians seem determined to limit green opportunities that big energy companies are eager to pursue. Even if they can overcome the political hurdles, activists worry that a business-led approach to the energy transition may not be the best for the world, as companies don’t want to give up profits to be made in oil and gas. Which means Texas may end up less green, and less prosperous, than it could be. □

https://blendle.com/i/time/texas-could-be-the-worlds-clean-energy-capital-does-it-want-to-be/bnl-time-20230512-40299bbec98

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The Green Movement Is a Jobs Killer. Are Unions Finally Figuring This Out?

Could it be that union bosses are finally waking up to the cold reality that the greatest threat to steel workers, the United Auto Workers, miners, machinists and the Teamsters is the radical climate change agenda of the environmentalists?

The green movement has taken the Democratic Party hostage -- and President Joe Biden's all-in embrace of far-left green policies is wreaking havoc on rank-and-file union jobs.

The United Auto Workers recently announced it would withhold its endorsement of Biden as he runs for a second term. "The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers," UAW President Shawn Fain recently declared. "The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom" for America's workers.

My only question: Why did it take five years to figure this out?

What a shock that a union that makes automobiles would have second thoughts about endorsing the reelection of a president who, just a few weeks ago, announced new regulations that are intended to end production of all gas cars within a decade. That's a death sentence for UAW workers.

Meanwhile, California Democrats have proposed new rules to end the production of nearly 2 million diesel trucks. Has anyone alerted the Teamsters?

These rules would crush unions like Godzilla stomping on a twig. Perhaps the UAW is finally realizing that Biden's goal is to get all traditional cars and trucks off the road. That's not going to leave many card-carrying UAW members left to pay dues. Meanwhile, the electric cars and the parts will be made in China and developing countries controlled by Beijing.

To his credit, Biden is only doing what he promised back in 2020. He declared war on energy and the combustible engine -- and yet the union bosses endorsed him. Most amazing was the United Mine Workers and some of the Pipefitters unions endorsing Biden. Apparently, they weren't paying attention to his stated goal of shutting down every coal mine in America and most oil and gas pipelines.

Talk about selling the rope to your hangman.

Rank-and-file hard-hat union members are on to this gambit -- which is why most private-sector union voters went for former President Donald Trump in the last two election cycles, even as the union bosses endorsed and gave tens of millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton and then Biden.

Even now, as Biden cozies up to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and places a metaphorical blade at the neck of the blue-collar union workers, the union bosses are reluctant to call for a divorce with "lunch bucket Joe."

After acknowledging the threat that Biden posed to the livelihoods of tens of thousands of union members, the UAW's Fain warned that "another Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster."

How? Union workers saw huge job and wage gains when Trump was president. Fain even muttered some disingenuous mumbo-jumbo about getting behind a "pro-worker, pro-climate" agenda for the working class. That's an oxymoron.

This isn't complicated. The leftists' religious pursuit of "zero emissions" leads to a green holy land with no smokestacks, no power plants, no cars, no trucks, no steel mills, copper mines, pipelines, gas stoves, air conditioners, airplanes, nuclear plants, washers and dryers, pesticides, plastics, or cows and other livestock.

Oh -- and as we sprint to a new post-industrial-age America, with no need for blue-collar unionized workers. The green "degrowth" movement isn't about creating prosperity for union workers but about putting them on unemployment lines.

It's good news that the Big Labor bosses are finally expressing some doubts about what the climate change agenda means for hard-hat workers. But if they keep working to elect climate change crazies, the demise of our union workforce will be swift and brutal.

https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2023/05/16/the-green-movement-is-a-jobs-killer-are-unions-finally-figuring-this-out-n2623271

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Australia: Unattainable energy targets

"It is bullshit". Former Snowy Hydro boss Paul Broad is far from alone in his expert, if refreshingly colloquial, view that Australia’s farcical state, federal and corporate greenhouse gas emissions targets are simply unattainable – and never were. And now, the head of the world’s second-biggest miner, Rio Tinto, says his company’s scope 1 and 2 emissions targets were a mistake – and he won’t join rivals BHP, Vale, Glencore and Fortescue (with its ambitious net zero by 2040) in pretending he can set achievable targets for the scope 3 emissions of Rio’s overseas customers, over which Rio has no control. He likens such scope 3 targets to greenwashing.

Even some stock-market tipster sheets are confidently promoting a surge in demand for fossil fuels, ie. coal, oil and gas, as the growing recognition that politically correct emissions targets cannot be achieved, will provide soaring share prices as the current green virtue-signalling by banks and investment managers of superannuation funds, is replaced by the pragmatism of market forces – and the national need for reliable energy.

In regretting having set his company’s emissions reduction targets of 15 per cent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2030, Rio’s CEO, Jacob Stausholm, warned that it would take ‘hard choices’ to meet them as it is now clear that ‘decarbonising at scale is a lengthy process’. This follows his Davos warning earlier this year that governments and corporate executives were ‘fooling ourselves’ on how long the process of de-carbonising would take. He followed up last week in Perth with the view that, ‘People still do not understand how much work was required to meet these goals…. You have to be realistic on what it takes.’ And added that for solar power, ‘I don’t think people have realised the amount of land that is necessary.’

Paul Broad, former-CEO of Snowy Hydro 2.0, the chaotic, massively delayed (planned for 2021 and may be ready by 2029) and hugely over-run costs (from an estimated $2 billion to the current $20 billion including transmission and still rising; economically it will never pay for itself), says Labor’s ‘unrealistic’ renewable energy plans would ‘risk the lights going out…. The notion that you’re going to have 80 per cent renewables in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, bullshit. This transition, if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. There are massive changes that need to occur’.

On top of all this, the former Snowy Hydro boss warned that more than $10 billion in electricity transmission projects were unlikely to be built on time, threatening the transition from coal generation to renewables. ‘Not enough would be in place by 2030 to allow Australia to reach its target of tripling the current level of renewables by the end of the decade.’ So coal will be needed: ‘You can’t close Eraring and Vales Point; closing Liddell was bad enough…. And we need more gas.’

But will we be able to get enough coal and enough gas?

Labor governments, state and federal, face a dilemma at a time when their priority is gaining popular support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament. Do they approve contested gas and coal developments on economic grounds or oppose them in support of Aboriginal objectors who in many cases appear to have been manipulated by climate activists into drawn-out costly lawfare that is aimed more at meeting activists’ zero emissions agendas than bringing the benefits of income, jobs and prospects to remote areas?

After years of toing and froing, two multi-billion gas developments with governmental approval still face uncertainty. This month’s announcement by the Northern Territory government that it would approve fracking in the massive Beetaloo basin, has generated strong opposition that will inevitably lead to further delays on top of the five years between the Territory accepting fracking in principle and doing so in practice. The federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo ‘has the potential to rival the world’s biggest and best gas resources’ and provide gas for the next 20 to 40 years.

But in an open letter to the Territory government, almost 100 scientists have urged it to abandon its fracking plans for Beetaloo, warning of ‘the damage it will inflict on our climate’, with one claiming the rise in emissions will intensify bushfire seasons and floods and accelerate the death of coral reefs.

Significantly, in the context of prospective lawfare, the scientists assert that fracking poses risks to Aboriginal people and their culture ‘at an unacceptable level’.

The other major gas project on hold is the Santos’ $US 3.6 billion Barossa offshore development 130 kilometres north of the Tiwi Islands, some of whose traditional owners demonstrated successfully in the Federal Court that they had not been satisfactorily consulted as required by law when Santos dealt directly with the Tiwi Land Council.

Now that Santos is taking action to meet this requirement (even with nationwide newspaper advertisements) there is still no certainty that drilling, which was suspended by last September’s legal action, will resume so that Santos can meet its commitment to deliver gas by the first half of 2025 to its Japanese and Korean partners, both of which are increasingly concerned about energy security. With the personal assurance from Prime Minister Albanese to the Japanese Prime Minister late last year that Australia would remain ‘a steady and reliable supplier’ of energy to Japan, the Albanese undertaking will be tested against his support for indigenous rights if further traditional owner legal action causes more delays.

One traditional owner has made clear his continuing opposition: ‘We have fought to protect our sea country from the beginning to the end and we will never stop fighting. Our sea is like our mother – we are part of the sea and the sea is part of us.’

And other traditional owners, who had lodged human rights claims against the group of banks, including ANZ, Westpac and NAB, involved in a $1.5 billion loan to the project, have followed it up by targeting superannuation funds for ‘failing to meet international human rights standards [by] investing in the companies’ as the project breaches ‘the economic, social and cultural rights of the Impacted Tiwi communities’, with a spokesman adding, ‘We do not want Santos to build a pipeline or to drill off the coast here… and we want the super funds to hear us and act.’

This combination of the pursuit of unachievable emissions targets and the unrestrained use of lawfare against major fossil fuel projects (even before the Voice provides an added weapon) means that Australia’s much-needed $20.5 billion coal and gas-led improvement over the past six months in the budget bottom line is unlikely to be repeated.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/business-robbery-etc-113/

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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

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