No more natural disasters?
Lionel Shriver
I was in New York while the smoke from Canadian wildfires filtered over the city for three days last week, and I took a guilty pleasure in the aesthetic thrill. Midday, the light assumed the roseate hue of sunset. A cloudless sky appeared overcast, and the ghostly sun was so occluded one could look straight at it. Honestly, the atmosphere of anomaly was electrifying. New Yorkers advertised their sense of snow-day exceptionalism by driving even more atrociously than usual. Despite hysterical health warnings to batten ourselves in our homes with closed windows, I played three daily hours of tennis throughout the respiratory emergency – though it was nice to have a ready excuse when I botched another cross-court forehand.
Justin Trudeau must have felt similarly grateful for a ready excuse for those raging wildfires, although we couldn’t call his get-out-of-responsibility-free card creative: climate change, the same all-purpose culprit New York Times columnist Gail Collins lazily blamed for our doomy skies. Anyone care about the truth? The fires and Gotham’s eerie haze were due to wind-fanned lightning strikes in Quebec and a rare high/low pressure system across North America called an ‘omega block’ (don’t ask).
Ironically, the real problem may be that Canada hasn’t been lighting enough fires. Government regulations regarding controlled burns have gnarled into a thicket. By the time the paperwork is completed, the narrow window of cool, windless weather ideal for safely incinerating highly flammable dead branches and dry brush has often passed. Fewer controlled burns mean more uncontrolled burns. Add to that: the country has no national firefighting service; provincial wildfire prevention budgets have been cut, and tend to be spent on protecting villages and towns; over the past 25 years, Canadian Forest Service staffing levels have plunged from 2,200 to 700.
But never mind those pesky details. Call it ‘climate change’, and all is forgiven. For politicians, climate has become the catch-all homework-eating dog. If President Erdogan neglected to blame this spring’s earthquake fatalities in Turkey on fossil fuel emissions – rather than the shoddy construction and corruption his administration has fostered – he was missing a trick.
Given the ceaselessness of this mantra, perhaps we’ve finally discovered that scientific holy grail, a ‘theory of everything’ – a single formula that explains why anything happens anywhere (‘Because climate change!’). Yet for my entire life I have heard tell of hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hailstorms, droughts and, yes, wildfires ruining other people’s lives somewhere. We used to call these humbling outbreaks of arbitrary havoc ‘natural disasters’, but the expression is out of fashion now that every fit the planet throws is all our fault.
So long as the wrath of God has not rained down on me personally or on anyone I care about and the cataclysm has occurred safely far away, I confess that as a news consumer I’ve always been a tiny bit bored by these stories. Oh, sometimes the pics are riveting (especially of the mud slides). I’m abstractly sympathetic, and if given a button to press to make these calamities unhappen, I would press it. Still, there used to be no implicit moral or political content to these impersonal meteorological or geological convulsions, which were simply a terrible shame. After weeks of coverage, I might sheepishly fast-forward through the suffering of strangers, because it didn’t mean anything other than that life was unfair, and I knew that already.
Well, now we’ve loaded the erstwhile ‘natural disaster’ with moral and political content galore. Without fail, news presenters explain every unfortunate weather occurrence as due to anthropogenic ‘climate change’. A while back, the media were obliged to dredge up some well-funded activist ‘expert’ to justify this claim, but not any more. The attribution of every rained-off picnic to human-induced ‘climate change’ is mindlessly appended to mainstream broadcasts as if the whole industry has the hiccoughs. Newscasters are safe in their surety that no one will ever demand evidence of a causal link between a drought in the western US and petrol-fuelled Land Rovers in Sussex. They’re safe in their surety that no one will ever object that, sorry, Bangladesh has suffered huge floods throughout its history, from which fewer people are dying than ever before. As we do not have an Earth control group – a second identical planet on which all humanity still gets around in donkey carts – they’re safe in their surety that blaming every cataclysm under the sun on fossil-fuel-driven ‘climate change’ is unfalsifiable.
A proposal: let’s bring back the distinction between climate and weather. Climate regards patterns across hundreds if not thousands of years. Check out the graph of global mean temperatures for the last 500,000 years, which resembles an ECG. With a periodicity of approximately 100,000 years, the planet’s mean temperature has steadily dropped to about 5˚C, then swooped up to between 10˚C and 12˚C, rising on virtually identical gradients each time (without the help of a single coal-fired power plant). We’re now atop another 20,000-year upward swoop – thankfully, since my forehand would be really crap if I had to chase the ball on a glacier. Industrialised modernity since 1880 takes up so little space on this graph that it’s indiscernible. That is ‘climate’. Accordingly, I even dismiss climate sceptics’ observation that, according to satellite readings, warming has nearly flatlined for the past 20 years, because in climate terms 20 years is meaningless.
The media’s knee-jerk ‘Because climate change!’ is numbing in its repetition and suspicious in its constancy. As it smacks of propaganda, on a popular level the incantation backfires. I’d have more faith in the reliability of these incessant attributions if newscasters occasionally tacked on to, say, a report on a deluge, ‘This event had no connection with climate change. It happened to rain a shedload in one place, but that’s occurred for ever. While locals might take councils to task for allowing rampant house-building on a flood plain, otherwise this story has no moral or political content and mostly amounts to bad luck.’ But I’m not holding my breath.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/bring-back-weather/
************************************************Farmers Band Together Against CO2 Pipeline Project in South Dakota
On their way to attend their niece’s wedding in July 2021, fourth-generation farmer Ed Fischbach of Mellette, South Dakota, and his wife made a quick stop to check the mailbox.
His wife reached inside, pulling out a handful of letters. Within the small pile was an envelope from a company she had never heard of—Summit Carbon Solutions.
She opened the letter and began reading it.
“Dear landowner,” the letter began innocently enough. But as she continued reading, her jaw nearly dropped.
“Listen to this,” she told her husband.
The Iowa-based company described plans to build a massive carbon capture pipeline across five midwestern states in the letter.
The 1,400-mile pipeline would transport carbon dioxide under high pressure, produced by ethanol and biofuel refineries, for burial in North Dakota. The goal would be to reduce the region’s carbon footprint to protect the environment.
The Fischbachs then learned that the pipeline would travel through some of the most productive areas of the 1,400-acre property that has been in their family for decades.
“The proposed pipeline route for the project is depicted on the enclosed map,” the letter continued, “and public records indicate that you are the record taxpayer of all or certain portions of the property.”
The notice further advised that Summit Carbon, through its consultant, TRC Companies, would perform preliminary surveys in the weeks ahead.
But first, the company needed permission to go on the property. Ed Fischbach said he never filled out or returned the enclosed approval form.
Instead, he made phone calls and soon realized other landowners in Spink County had received the same letter, including his nephew Brad, who raises beef cattle for a living.
“Who is this outfit? Nobody heard about it,” Fischbach said. “I decided I’m not going to stand for this. Somebody had to do something about it. I took the lead.”
In August 2021, Fischbach called a meeting at the local community center, expecting a dozen people to attend.
Without advertising, 74 landowners turned out. None of them supported the project in South Dakota, he said.
“I said to myself. I’m onto something here. This is real. We have to pursue this,” Fischbach told The Epoch Times.
Opposition Builds
Fischbach said that soon afterward, Summit Carbon held a catered public meeting to unveil the project.
About 300 people showed up for the event, Fischbach recalled. Summit officials spoke and held a slide show on the project’s economic and environmental benefits.
There were questions asked and answered, as well as comments from the public. Fischbach said he was the first to take the microphone.
“My first question to them was, ‘Would you commit today not to use eminent domain on those of us that don’t want your project?'”
After repeated attempts, Summit Carbon officials would not answer “yes” or “no”, Fischbach said. Finally, a company official said, “No, I cannot do that,” he said.
“It just set off a chain reaction. Nobody wanted this thing. They ended the meeting,” said Fischbach, leader of the South Dakota Easement Team opposed to the company’s attempts to acquire right-of-way easements by eminent domain to build the pipeline.
Since the July 2021 letter, Summit Carbon has filed more than 81 eminent domain lawsuits in 10 South Dakota counties against farmers who refuse to voluntarily sign easement agreements with the company.
“They’re trying to intimidate people,” Fischbach said. “They’re doing this with no permit. That’s what’s upsetting.”
“We have a trespass law in this state. It doesn’t mean anything because they’re out surveying people. The company has armed security guards on your property to keep you away from the surveyors. We’ve got pictures of them. They’re bringing this in without authorization.”
Summit Carbon is suing one McPherson County couple to take, acquire, or appropriate property to allow a temporary or permanent easement, “which has been authorized by statute for public use,” according to the petition.
The couple had 30 days to respond to the petition or face a jury to “ascertain the just compensation for the property proposed to be taken or damaged.”
In a statement to Forum News Service, Jesse Harris, the director of public affairs for Summit Carbon, said the lawsuits are the next step when “negotiating in good faith” fails to produce results.
“We look forward to continuing to work with regulators, policymakers, landowners, and more to advance this critical investment in our economy,” Harris told the news service.
South Dakota Rep. Karla Lems, a Republican, said the pipeline project takes advantage of legal loopholes in the state’s eminent domain law (SDL 49-7-11) which states, “Any pipeline companies owning a pipeline which is a common carrier as defined by 49-7-11 may exercise the right of eminent domain in acquiring right-of-way as prescribed by statute.”
Summit Carbon filed a project permit with South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission, which will decide in September whether to allow the pipeline to move forward or not. Four other states considering the pipeline include Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
Summit Carbon Responds
Summit Carbon spokeswoman Courtney Ryan countered claims of widespread opposition to the pipeline, citing an “overwhelming majority” of landowners along the proposed route that have signed easement agreements to support and advance the project.
“To date, 2,800 landowners have signed 4,520 easement agreements accounting for 1,410 miles of our proposed pipeline route and 135,000 acres of our proposed sequestration site,” Ryan told The Epoch Times.
“For an easy comparison, the Dakota Access pipeline [the most recent major pipeline project in the Midwest] is 1,172 total miles. In other words, the number of easement agreements we’ve already secured exceeds the mileage of that project.”
Ryan said the “short answer” is that CO2 has been utilized for years as a commodity and Summit Carbon Solutions is a common carrier.
Approximately 230 million metric tons of CO2 are used every year with fertilizer serving as the largest consumer, she said.
“Other uses include other commercial and industrial applications, which include food and beverage production, metal fabrication, cooling, fire suppression, and stimulating plant growth in greenhouses. Emerging uses include construction materials, industrial gas and fluids, fuel, polymers, chemicals, and more.
“In every South Dakota county where our project is located, the company will invest $45 million on average to help generate economic growth. In those same counties, Summit will pay an average of $650,000 in new property taxes,” Ryan said.
Ryan added there are 3.3 million miles of pipeline in operation in the United States, including 12,000 in South Dakota alone.
The Summit Carbon system includes carbon capture, transportation, and storage, utilizing long-standing technology that is “safe, reliable, and proven to be safe for landowners and community,” Ryan said.
In addition, the company will maintain an operations center round the clock in Ames, South Dakota, that will monitor for leaks and any changes in the system.
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Time and tithe: the Climate Cult’s expensive virtue
The oldest fragments of human civilisation contain tributes left for the gods in a futile attempt to court their good graces. We believed that through material sacrifice – be it in riches or blood – the forces of nature could be coerced in our favour.
Tlazolteotl, an ancient Aztec goddess, was honoured by murdering a person in a field with arrows so that their blood might fertilise the dirt. Half a millennia ago, the people of Chimú in northern Peru killed hundreds of children between 5-14 years old and buried them beneath the bodies of llamas in history’s largest known sacrificial event. There is evidence they were brutalised first, including the removal of their hearts. The Inca weren’t much better, killing children atop volcanoes in Pichu Pichu and Ampato where it is believed they were tied to stone slabs and left to be struck by lightning.
Our ancestors killed their children to change the weather.
The sacrificial mindset is a desire created by existential fear and the unwanted knowledge that our world tortures life indiscriminately. To regain control, humans reason that a virtuous society is surely entitled to salvation, whether earned or purchased. In this moment we transfer human emotion onto a chunk of rock and attempt to make a bargain.
For thousands of years, ‘the gods’ have remained indifferent to human virtue – rewarding the undeserving while throwing flood and fire at peaceful societies. The Greeks and Romans made sense of this through their Pantheon of tempestuous and irresponsible gods, the Vikings embraced existentialism, while other religions around the world indulged natural violence and worshipped the horror. Though most of these civilisations have long since collapsed, the human belief in the bargain of virtue endures in modern religious movements.
Progressive environmentalists usually recoil at the accusation of faith, protesting that they are ‘atheists’. They are not. At their least religious they are spiritualists that embrace mysticism and superstition. Others are devout in a variety of nature cults that have not yet coalesced into a coherent faith – but they will. This new religion has borrowed heavily from the Abrahamic faiths, no doubt because it is the only point of spiritual worship Western practitioners have to reference.
In 1095, Pope Urban II appealed to the sinful masses of Europe with a promise of heavenly forgiveness if they joined the First Crusade. These were sinful times and there were plenty of takers. This evolved into a system of indulgences within the medieval Church and the ‘treasury of heavenly merit’. Before long, there was a thriving trade of virtue that carried the same level of credibility as a rainbow background on a corporate logo.
Monetary absolution is a theme favoured by the cult of Climate Change. Radicalised teachers, media personalities, ‘scientists’, and politicians fill the national soul with apocalyptic guilt – laying the blame on hot and heavy until the demoralised public drag their wallets to the ATO and empty them in prayer.
Tax the poor. Save the planet.
Children, in particular, are traumatised into believing they are sinful by birth – that their existence is a carbon burden on the planet and a selfish act by their parents. To atone for being born, they are brainwashed into upholding the faith of global apocalypse and supporting political leaders – as a moral duty – who legislate profitable Net Zero ventures.
It is a political scam wrapped up in religious guilt and terror that we have allowed to permeate a civilisation that used to credit itself with the Enlightenment. How fitting that the West’s fall will involve a very real blackout as our energy grids flicker into death.
Until then, entire generations believe that they can escape the hellfire of a climate apocalypse (or is that a Biblical flood?) if they pay a carbon surcharge on their coffee or incorporate powdered cockroaches into their ‘bread and circuses’. Logic and reality are irrelevant concepts when in discussion about the emotional panic of sin and fear of punishment. Just as the priests of old draped themselves in silk and jewels while peasants tossed coins at the fire, today’s citizens see no hypocrisy in the spiritual leaders of the Climate Cult boarding private jets and super yachts or living in palaces by the sea.
Climate cultists don’t want to see the proof of their sacrifice, all they want is an expert to pat them on the back and say, ‘You are saved…’
For a political movement that claims to hate religion as a backward fiction designed to control the population, the practitioners of Climate Change certainly copy-pasted a few ideas. Not only do they adhere to the Eden-esque view of the world pre-humanity, they’re quite fond of the concept of original sin.
The Catholic Church talks about the treasury of the Church as a creation of ‘infinite value’ with the power to set the whole of mankind ‘free from sin’ if only a believer takes part in prayers, good works, and monetary tributes. In the same way, the constant repetition of Climate Change slogans, attendance at rallies, and the Net Zero taxation scam are all designed to enforce adherence to the ‘Faith’ even among the non-believers who are donating to a Church whose Pope resides in a Swiss Alps ski resort.
God’s treasury is described as limitless, but the Climate Change vaults are truly astonishing with trillions of dollars sliding through the backrooms of power. It’s the kind of money that makes the riches of the Vatican look like a dodgy yard sale.
When the naive ask, ‘Why would anyone lie about The Science?’ The answer is, for the same complex reasons people followed false Covid laws.
It’s obvious why the big end of town converted to the Climate Change Cult, but why do ordinary people wish to buy their way out of a sin they never committed to avoid a punishment that isn’t real?
Has a green religious delusion swept over the population and filled the void left behind by recently slain gods?
Perhaps. When trying to determine why people adhere to a scam, the explanation is usually a mixture of laziness and an irrational emotional attachment. In this case, they are in love with the idea of virtue and many have a saviour complex that, if it were to be dismantled, would rob them of purpose. Who are Millennials, Gen Z, and the Teals if not planet-saving climate warriors? Heartless idiots that advocated for taxing the poor to appease mining companies? Morons gluing themselves to the road in peak hour so a CEO can add an extra zero to their profit margin? It’s a bit of a reality shock.
When dealing with the Climate Change Cult, political commentators would be wise to stop treating this as a political discussion and instead view it as a deconversion from a toxic faith. You cannot simply tell people that their god is a lie – those at the top of power have to be exposed and ridiculed. The Faith will collapse on its own after that.
The Climate Cult has extended its greed for public cash well beyond donations for indulgences, and is now in a tithe-like situation where a percentage of personal and corporate earnings are siphoned off by government decree. Everyone is funding the Climate Change Cult. Everyone is contributing to the apocalyptic scam that has attached its jaws to the neck of Western Civilisation and drinks like a parasite, gorging itself while politicians stroke it like a pet.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/time-and-tithe-the-climate-cults-expensive-virtue
***********************************************************The gas stove mania hits Australia
State and territory governments face a new energy battleground this decade, following a new demand to rip out gas appliances and ban new connections to homes and small businesses so Australia can achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The plan from the Grattan Institute think-tank would trigger a deadline for the sale of gas appliances, a ban on new residential and small commercial gas connections and the need for instant asset write-offs for landlords installing electrical appliances as part of moves to get gas out of Australian homes.
Removing gas from the nation’s energy supplies may also cause a fresh political headache for governments, which are already under pressure to deliver an ambitious green transformation, shifting the electricity network from fossil fuels to renewables.
The Albanese government wants to wean about five million homes off gas, investing $1.6bn to help low-income households and businesses adopt energy-efficiency measures such as solar panels and electric appliances as part of a sweeping electrification package in the budget.
An ACT plan to ban gas for new homes and businesses has been criticised, with plumbers saying the move will trigger job losses, energy price spikes and the premature shutdown of billions of dollars worth of gas assets.
The bill for phasing out gas has been forecast as exceeding $6bn. While the Grattan Institute says those costs are now lower, the costs of upgrading electricity networks are likely to be dwarfed by the cost to households – exacerbated by supply chain constraints, skilled labour shortages and the sheer scale of the work required.
“In Victoria you would need to convert 200 households every day for the next 25 years. In some ways, it’s more of a logistical problem than a cost problem,” Grattan energy director Tony Wood said. The electrification of Australia’s energy system is already slated to lift demand for electricians across the country, with 2021 estimates from the federal government forecasting the need for another 14,000 trained workers by 2026, to about 157,000.
Another 12,500 skilled workers will be needed for large-scale renewable energy projects, according to AEMO projections.
And the electrification of households will add even more pressure to that skilled labour shortage, the Grattan report says.
“There are 11 million gas appliances in homes across Australia. At a minimum, there are 11 million hours of labour involved in replacing these with electric appliances. Spread over the 27 years to 2050, this amounts to 1400 hours of labour per day – 175 electricians working full time. This is significant added demand for an already stretched workforce,” the report says.
This will come as Australia competes for labour and equipment with other countries, including Britain, the US and Europe, which run similar programs.
The use of gas in homes and commercial buildings accounts for less than 5 per cent of Australia’s annual carbon emissions, but the new report, “Getting off gas: why, how, and who should pay?” highlights the extraordinary logistical challenges facing even that small portion of Australia’s total emissions.
The report argues that, although electric heaters and cookers are ultimately more efficient and cheaper to run, the effort required to replace the estimated five million gas stoves installed in Australian homes – alongside 4.5 million gas water heaters and 2.7 million heating systems that use gas from the mains – means governments need to tighten policy settings immediately to force gas out of Australian homes.
The electrification of Australia’s energy system is already slated to lift demand for electricians across the country.
The electrification of Australia’s energy system is already slated to lift demand for electricians across the country.
“In all sectors, emissions patterns change very slowly. Assets that use gas tend to be replaced only when they reach the end of their useful life. A gas water heater installed today will still be burning gas in 2035. An industrial furnace installed today could still be burning gas in 2063,” the report says.
“To reach net zero, governments need to start changing asset-replacement patterns now.”
Mr Wood told The Australian that the problem, particularly for Victorian households, was not even necessarily dependent on carbon reduction targets – the looming gas shortfall caused by the end of the Bass Strait fields owned by Woodside and ExxonMobil would require the same transition.
Mr Wood said the work to transition Australian households and small businesses away from gas would take decades – but governments needed to set a deadline in order to run the long public advocacy campaigns needed to get the public on board.
The report likens the effort required to that of switching Australia’s broadcast TV stations from analog to digital.
“The decision to move Australian television networks from analog to digital was made in 1998. The switchover itself began in 2010, and was rolled out over three years. Online information for households was available from 2001, and a widespread communications campaign began in 2008,” the report says.
But the cost of conversion remains a major barrier, the report says.
Induction cookers cost, on average, about $400 more than gas equivalents. Heat pumps cost about $1500 more than instantaneous gas hot water systems and – while split system reverse cycle airconditioning units are now broadly equivalent in price to gas heaters paired with an air conditioner for summer use – ducted units suitable for larger buildings cost about $1800 more than gas heating.
Some state governments are already offering rebates and incentives for replacing gas appliances with electric equivalents. The ACT government offers up to $5000 for a range of electric appliances, and the Victorian government offers $1000 towards the cost of installing heat pumps for hot water systems and reverse cycle airconditioning units.
But that will not be enough to help low-income households transition, and additional incentives will also be needed to convince landlords to convert rental properties.
“Rebates can be very costly to the government. Subsidising $5000 per household with gas would cost $25bn. Subsidies also often require households to have money upfront. A rebate that requires the recipient to spend the money installing an electric appliance to replace a gas one, and then wait for their rebate claim to be assessed and paid, is of no use to someone who doesn’t have the money in the first place,” the report says.
Instead other governments should look to the examples set by the ACT government’s sustainable household scheme, which offers up to $15,000 in zero-interest loans, and to add to the recently announced Albanese government scheme that will offer up to $1bn in low-interest loans for energy-efficient household upgrades.
Additional measures will be needed to f to encourage landlords to upgrade the homes of the 31 per cent of Australian households that live in rental properties.
“When landlords are asked why they do not carry out energy retrofits, the most common factor cited is financial constraints. These can include lack of access to capital, but also the landlords’ expectations of net profits from their rental properties, and their perceptions of retrofit costs,” the report says.
“The simplest way to provide private landlords with a financial incentive to move to all-electric appliances is to provide an instant asset write-off for new electric appliances that replace gas ones.”
Mr Wood told The Australian the sheer amount of work involved needs the same kind of careful planning required to electrify the national grid, despite the relatively small amount of carbon emissions generated by household gas use.
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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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Jim Hansen and his twin
