Friday, April 07, 2023
Concentrated solar power?
This idea has always been attractive and exciting but it has been around now for long enough for us to assess its practicality. And the one certain thing about it is that is trouble-prone and often fails. You can imagine how dicey anything is going to be that relies on moving molten salt round at at 550 degrees C. The one thing it is good at is eating up goverment subsidies
The best-known such project is the Ivanpah installation in California. See below for some history of it:
http://jonjayray.com/short/ivanpah.html
Concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to focus heat from the Sun to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity.
While CSP was once the great hope for replacing coal and gas-fired generation, it's now generally considered to have been eclipsed by cheaper forms of renewable generation, like solar panels and wind turbines.
Recently, however, it's been making a quiet comeback.
The reason for this boils down to three words that describe one of the major challenges of decarbonising the grid: overnight energy storage.
The CSIRO's Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap, released last week, predicts that by 2050, CSP will be the cheapest way to store energy for 8–24 hours.
Developing this "medium-duration" storage is a necessary step to switching off coal- and gas-fired generators that produce most of the power we use at night.
For this reason, CSP projects are starting to gather momentum.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently approved $65 million in funding for a Sydney-based company, Vast Solar, to build the country's first commercial-scale CSP plant in Port Augusta, South Australia.
So how does CSP work?
And what role will CSP play in a net-zero Australia?
A technology that once rivalled solar panels
The idea of CSP is so simple that the technology hasn't changed much in decades.
Italy built the first CSP plant in 1968, and California installed the first commercial-scale array in 1981.
At the time, solar panels were expensive and mostly used in consumer electronics, whereas CSP relied on familiar technologies, such as steam turbines.
CSP plants also looked impressive: The popular "power tower" design featured a circular field of thousands of mirrors, focusing their light on the crown of a central tower, which in some cases soared taller than 200 metres.
But then, more efficient panels and larger factories drove down the price of photovoltaics (PV), while CSP plants ran into problems with leaking fluids and dirty mirrors.
In 2019, South Australia scrapped a $650 million project to build Australia's first commercial-scale CSP after the company behind the project revealed it could not raise funding.
"It's been a bit of a tale of woe in Australia," said Keith Lovegrove, director of the Australian Solar Thermal Energy Association. "We've actually managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a couple of times."
As of 2021, the global installed capacity of CSP was 6.8 gigawatts, which was many hundreds of times less than the figure for photovoltaics.
But CSP is not dead. Spain, Morocco, South Africa, Israel and other countries are using CSP in their grids, while China has dozens of projects underway.
"China is the most active place at this, at this very moment," Dr Lovegrove said.
CSP cannot generate daytime electricity as cheaply as solar PV, but it has one advantage: built-in storage.
The heat from the Sun is stored in a medium such as molten salt. When the Sun goes down, this stored heat can be tapped to drive the turbine and generate electricity.
This combination of generation and storage makes CSP "dispatchable", meaning the power can be sent to the grid when it's needed. "The whole point about CSP is that it's dispatchable renewable generation," Dr Lovegrove said.
"It's generation you can have when you need it at night, or peak periods. It comes at a higher price because it's got this added value and complexity."
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Germans Overwhelmingly Fed Up With Move To Green Energies As Massive Costs Loom
Most Germans used to be enthusiastic supporters of the country’s Energiewende (transition to renewable energies), especially in the early days when they were brazenly misled about the endeavor’s humungous costs and technical limitations.
Those days are gone.
As the government gears up to try to pass legislation that would force most homeowners to carry out extensive renovation to their homes and upgrades to their heating systems, the Energiewende is suddenly no longer looking like a bargain and is no longer welcome by the vast majority of Germans, according to a Forsa survey. The sun and wind don’t deliver energy for free after all.
The current Forsa survey on the subject of the transition to green energies gives the German government a catastrophic report card. Almost 90 percent of Germans no longer believe in the so-called energy transition – a historically low figure. In a similar survey in 2011, almost 40 percent still hoped for its success. Among the few who are convinced is Chancellor Scholz. ‘We can and will succeed in the energy transition,’ he recently announced in Berlin.
German industry, on the other hand, is less confident, warning of a total exodus of the manufacturing sector due to the expected electricity shortage and enormous energy prices.”
AUF 1 reports here at its website that “only ten percent still believe that Germany’s energy needs can indeed be covered by sun and wind energy”.
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Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief
The chief executive of JP Morgan has suggested that governments should seize private land to build wind and solar farms in order to meet net zero targets.
Jamie Dimon, the longstanding boss of the Wall Street titan who donates to the Democratic Party, said green energy projects must be fast-tracked as the window for averting the most costly impacts of global climate change is closing.
In his annual shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way.
“We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”
Eminent domain is when a government or state agency carries out a compulsory purchase of private property for public use and compensates the asset holder.
The proposal is unusual, especially coming from the longest-serving chief executive of a Wall Street bank, and could stir controversy as states in the US seek to crackdown on seizure orders.
In Iowa, state legislators on Monday passed a bill that aims to protect private property owners from eminent domain use by carbon pipeline companies.
Mr Dimon said the war in Ukraine was redefining the way countries and companies plan for energy security.
He added: “The need to provide energy affordably and reliably for today, as well as make the necessary investments to decarbonise for tomorrow, underscores the inextricable links between economic growth, energy security and climate change. We need to do more, and we need to do so immediately.
“To expedite progress, governments, businesses and non-governmental organisations need to align across a series of practical policy changes that comprehensively address fundamental issues that are holding us back.
“Massive global investment in clean energy technologies must be done and must continue to grow year-over-year.”
In the UK, reforms to Solvency 2 rules are expected to unleash a wave of investment in renewable energy projects after insurers and pension funds complained that EU-era regulations obstructed their ability to invest in infrastructure.
Mr Dimon’s comments also come as tensions between investors grow about how to tackle climate change.
In December, Vanguard, the world’s second largest asset manager, pulled out of Mark Carney’s global climate change alliance, saying the group’s full-blooded commitment to tackling climate change resulted “in confusion about the views of individual investment firms”.
Mr Dimon said: “Polarisation, paralysis and basic lack of analysis cannot keep us from addressing one of the most complex challenges of our time. Diverse stakeholders need to come together, seeking the best answers through engagement around our common interest.
“Bolstering growth must go hand in hand with both securing an energy future and meeting science-based climate targets for future generations.”
The banking chief also hit out against regulators in the wake of the banking crisis last month triggered by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
He said the collapse of SVB and the government-engineered takeover of Credit Suisse by its biggest rival risked undermining confidence in the sector.
He added: “Ironically, banks were incented to own very safe government securities because they were considered highly liquid by regulators and carried very low capital requirements.”
Mr Dimon also warned regulators against tightening rules for lenders following the recent market turmoil.
He said: “It is extremely important that we avoid knee-jerk, whack-a-mole or politically motivated responses that often result in achieving the opposite of what people intended.
“Now is the time to deeply think through and coordinate complex regulations to accomplish the goals we want, eliminating costly inefficiencies and contradictory policies.
“Very often, rules are put in place in one part of the framework without appreciating their consequences in combination with other regulations.”
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British Consumers face huge price rises for green power
Renewable energy operators have just been awarded huge prices rises, putting further pressure on hard-pressed consumers.
Generators in the Contracts for Difference subsidy scheme get an annual increase in the guaranteed ‘strike prices’ they receive for their output.
This year, many have received price rises of more than 10%. For example, the huge Hornsea 1 offshore windfarm saw an 11% price increase, which will boost its revenue by nearly £100 million per year.(1) Hornsea 2, due to come on stream in 2024, had a price rise of 14%.
With market prices for electricity now below £100 per megawatt hour, several windfarms have strike prices worth £209. There are several tidal power stations in planning which have been promised higher prices still. The Drax biomass power station has seen a 12% increase to £142.
Commenting on the news, Net Zero Watch’s deputy director Andrew Montford said:
"For years, ministers and civil servants have been telling the public that renewables are cheap. Make no mistake, they have been engaged in a cynical deception of the British public.”
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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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Thursday, April 06, 2023
States and companies compete for billions to make hydrogen
This is all theory. The need to keep hydrogen in a pressure vessel is just one factor that will make it unaffordably expensive
The Biden administration is turning to hydrogen as an energy source for vehicles, manufacturing and generating electricity.
It's offering $8 billion to entice the nation’s industries, engineers and planners to figure out how to produce and deliver clean hydrogen. States and businesses are making final pitches Friday as they compete for a new program that will create regional networks, or “hubs,” of hydrogen producers, consumers and infrastructure. The aim is to accelerate the availability and use of the colorless, odorless gas that already powers some vehicles and trains.
How can enough hydrogen be produced to meet demand — in ways that don’t worsen global warming? And how can it be moved efficiently to where users can get it? Such questions will be tackled by the hubs.
Nearly every state has joined at least one proposed hub and many are working together, hoping to reap the economic development and jobs they would bring. The governors of Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma came up with the “HALO Hydrogen Hub” to compete for funding, for example.
Big fossil fuel companies like Chevron and EQT Corporation, renewable energy developers such as Obsidian, and researchers in university and government labs are involved, too.
But only a select few will receive billions in federal funding.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/states-companies-compete-billions-make-hydrogen-98386065
***************************************************China is winning the climate policy game
Search “strategy games” on the internet and you will find a seemingly endless list of computer games in which participants seek to win military or geopolitical competitions through careful planning, organization of forces, implementation of tactics to attain long-term advantage and, often, confusion of adversaries. The Rand Corporation and other U.S. think tanks have sometimes used similar gaming models to assess China’s efforts to supplant the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and military power.
What is seldom featured in such analysis, however, is China’s management of its global image as a “climate leader.” In 2020, President Xi Jinping promised China’s emissions would peak before 2030 and the country would reach carbon neutrality by 2060. China does lead the world in power generation from wind turbines and solar panels and it is the fastest-growing market for all-electric cars. Net-zero activists often praise the “China model” while condemning countries like Canada.
But activists’ assessments of China seldom focus on its additions to its coal-fired electricity generation capacity. Coal is the most carbon-intensive energy source, and China is by far the largest coal-consuming country, accounting for fully 53 per cent of global demand. China’s coal consumption increased from five billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) in 2000 to 14 billion in 2021, almost tripling in two decades.
In 2022, according to Bloomberg Business Review local governments in China permitted 106 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity, about four times more than in 2021 and the equivalent of two large coal-fired plants per week. For comparison, 106 gigawatts is over 70 per cent of Canada’s annual electricity generation from all sources. That may be worth repeating: in 2022 China’s permitted increase in its generation capacity from coal was equal to 70 per cent of Canada’s electricity consumption from all sources.
All the approved capacity is needed to meet large increases in demand. Last summer a severe heat wave led to record levels of demand in a country in which rising average incomes have brought greatly increased use of air conditioning. China also needs affordable and reliable energy to power its industrial facilities, as it is still the worlds’ largest manufacturer. Renewables will play a role, but Chinese officials have indicated that coal-fired generation offers critical baseline capacity to ensure the stability of the power grid and minimize blackout risks.
The facilities China is constructing are state-of-the-art, high-efficiency plants designed to avoid most of the air-contaminant emissions historically associated with burning coal. With proper maintenance, they should have operating lives of 40 to 60 years or more. It is highly unlikely that China would choose to spend many billions of dollars building such plants with the intention of shutting them down by 2050, just 27 years from now. Whatever they may commit to at international conferences, China’s leaders are clearly placing both energy security and prosperity ahead of emissions-reduction goals.
That is not the case in Canada and several other OECD countries. This county is steadily phasing out coal-fired power generation. The centrepiece of federal government climate policy is a carbon tax of $50 per tonne in provinces subject to the federal regime. That rate is scheduled to rise to $170 per tonne by 2030, which is placing Canadian firms at a competitive disadvantage compared to firms in countries that have either no or very low carbon taxes. The few regions of China that impose a carbon tax use an emissions trading system. According to the World Bank, the most recent permit price was just $US9.20 per tonne. No wonder industries are fleeing Canada for lower-cost jurisdictions, taking their investments, jobs and emissions with them.
At COP 27, the UN climate conference held last year in Egypt, the central subject of debate was how much the wealthier countries should commit to pay to subsidize the efforts of developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as to cover the “loss and damages” they have incurred due to weather events allegedly caused by industrialized countries’ historic emissions. The Group of 77 developing countries demanded at least $1.3 trillion per year from 2025 to 2030, and more thereafter. Canada has committed to $5.3 billion over five years. China, despite its high emissions and immense economy, is not included in the list of countries that are expected to pay. In fact, it may even qualify as a recipient.
In many parts of the world, global climate policy is not yet perceived as a competitive game in pursuit of long-term strategic advantage — which is one reason that so far China is winning it.
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The EU's Net Zero plan is in tatters - and not a moment too soon
If anyone had any lingering doubts that the EU is run by German car-makers (in association with French farmers), they will surely have been dispelled by the news that the bloc is to backtrack on its plan to ban combustion engines from new vehicles by 2035. While petrol and diesel cars will still be banned, carbon neutral synthetic "e-fuels" will be permitted. While bringing the EU's green juggernaut to a skidding halt may have required some very powerful lobbying, it is also the right decision.
Proposed bans on petrol and diesel cars in the EU and in Britain were put in place without any proper consideration as to whether electric cars were capable of replacing them. It was simply assumed that improvements in technology would solve the issues of range, ease of recharging, the cost of buying electric cars and their over-reliance on rare metals such as cobalt – which are extracted in troubled parts of the world. Yet prices of electric cars – not to mention the electricity to run them – have remained stubbornly high. Moreover, their manufacture can involve rather more emissions than a petrol or diesel equivalent.
Some are already trying to play down the significance of the EU’s decision, arguing that "e-fuels" will be so expensive that internal combustion engines will become a high-end, niche product. Yet two decades ago, long before we had a net zero target, drivers in Wales found to their pleasure (and to the annoyance of the then HM Customs and Excise) that an ordinary diesel engine could run quite happily on waste oil from chip shops. Since then, the government has made petrol with a 10 per cent renewable ethanol component the British standard, so most of us are already running our cars partly on non-fossil fuels.
As for synthetic fuels made from carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water, the German Aerospace Centre estimates such fuels could be made for aviation purposes using existing technology for around 2.26 Euros (£2 per litre). That is expensive – it currently costs around 50 pence to produce a litre of unleaded, the rest being tax and distribution costs – but it is not much higher than recent at-pump prices. The EU’s change of heart means that the car industry can now work developing what could be the ideal compromise: plug-in vehicles which could run 50 miles or so in pure electric mode, but which have a small engine – powered by synthetic fuel – to keep the battery charged on longer trips.
But what will Britain do? The government is showing no signs that its own ban on petrol and diesel cars will not go ahead as planned – which would mean no new pure petrol and diesels sold after 2030, and no hybrids from 2035. This is foolish, and the government will be forced to reconsider. No manufacturer is going to make cars exclusively with the UK market in mind, so if the internal combustion engine does remain a standard product in Europe and elsewhere in the world, UK motorists are going to find themselves restricted to a handful of pure – and expensive – electric models. What remains of our car industry will be put under even greater pressure.
If the electric car makers do improve and bring down the cost of their product, then that's great – most of us will want to drive them. But in keeping options open for internal combustion engines the EU, for once, has done something sensible that Britain should emulate.
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Energy security is trumping climate concerns
On TikTok, a campaign to deny ConocoPhillips permission to launch an oil project in Alaska recently went viral. Look up the hashtag #StopWillow and the search results are full of protests warning of the potential damage the project could wreak. One video, which has been liked 3.4mn times, declares that approval would be “game over” for the planet.
As impassioned as the campaign was, it did not work: Joe Biden approved the drilling on March 13. The president had given ConocoPhillips almost everything it wanted, said Elise Joshi in one TikTok clip. “Biden just slapped young people in the face.”
Willow isn’t huge: Conoco says the $8bn project will produce 180,000 barrels a day of oil, or about 1.5 per cent of current US supply. Since Biden entered office, New Mexico’s shale wells alone have added more than 700,000 b/d. Still, approval came just days before the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned, again, of the catastrophe facing the world from existing fossil fuel infrastructure, let alone new projects that will pump for decades.
And the shift from Biden is telling. Fossil fuel interests are on the rise again. Biden entered office promising to ban new fracking and last year signed sweeping clean energy legislation into law. Now his administration promotes liquefied natural gas exports and boasts that US oil output will soon reach record highs.
European countries such as Germany that once pledged to stop funding fossil fuel projects in the poor world last year fired up their own coal plants and now seek to water down EU climate rules.
It marks a reversal from three years ago, when the pandemic shattered global fossil fuel demand, devastated Big Oil balance sheets and prompted claims that the decarbonisation era had begun. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is one reason for the turn. It has been a gift for the oil industry, pushing up prices and delivering record profits for producers.
For ExxonMobil and Chevron, the cash windfall has vindicated their dogged allegiance to a model of ever-rising fossil fuel output. For supermajor BP, the cash gusher has justified another decision to slow its retreat from oil and gas. Russia’s invasion has also changed the narrative. The stages at Davos still ring with “net zero” platitudes, but after last year’s energy crisis politicians’ concern is “energy security” — code for cheap fuel and stable supplies.
That’s why European governments ramped up subsidies for energy consumers last year and the White House released oil from strategic stockpiles while badgering shale companies to frack more wells. “We’re in the middle of a war,” US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm told the Financial Times in March. “We want to continue to see that increase in production even as we accelerate towards clean [energy] . . . We don’t want the prices to go up at the pump.”
Europe’s energy anxieties have been an especially big win for American fossil fuel exporters. “The key to energy security is American energy — and specifically US LNG,” Toby Rice, head of EQT, the US’s biggest gas producer, told Houston’s recent CERAWeek energy conference. Now, with Biden’s backing, another wave of LNG export capacity is under construction on the US Gulf Coast.
But the other reason that fossil fuel producers are gaining momentum again is that the energy transition is proving more fraught than some strategists expected.
The environmental, social, and governance movement was supposed to accelerate the transition by making capital cheap for clean energy projects, while deterring investment in more fossil fuel production.
Oil and gas capital spending has indeed fallen and many fund managers have left the sector for good. Wood Mackenzie reckons annual global upstream spending was $491bn last year, less than half the rate of investment from a decade ago. This level of upstream spending would be adequate if the world’s fossil fuel consumption was falling at the pace some models say is necessary to meet climate goals.
The problem is that consumers are not ditching hydrocarbons as quickly as those models would like. Fossil fuel consumption is soaring. Oil demand will break records again this year.
Renewable alternatives are rising fast but still supply less than 10 per cent of global energy. Annual spending on them is running at barely a quarter the $5tn needed to displace hydrocarbons, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
This dearth of capital amounts to “a self-inflicted train crash in slow motion”, according to Equinor’s chief economist Eirik Wærness. It implies higher demand and higher prices for oil and gas for longer. It’s also why Biden didn’t #StopWillow. If consumers are to keep burning so much oil, is it better coming from Alaska or Saudi Arabia?
https://www.ft.com/content/65d7d4d5-9aa5-466c-b686-796b2a6cf586
***************************************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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Wednesday, April 05, 2023
The National Audubon Society considers canceling itself
How thoroughly has diversity, equity and inclusion penetrated the sciences? “To the core!” at least if the recent travails of the National Audubon Society are any indication. For over two years, a woke storm has roiled the Society over whether it should purge its namesake, John James Audubon, from its title. After a year-long review, the Society’s Board of Directors recently announced its decision: Audubon’s name will stay.
The Society’s CEO, Elizabeth Gray, defended the decision on the sensible grounds that, for whatever his faults, Audubon remains a pivotal figure in the history of science in our once young republic. His legacy includes establishing ornithology as the burgeoning field that it is today, which draws both on professional experts and passionate amateurs. The board concluded that the Society’s mission, and ornithology in general, would best be served by keeping his name and the tradition it represents, while honestly acknowledging the man and who he was. This was accompanied by a promise to devote $25 million to the Society’s efforts to expand DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, to use the Society’s rendering). This has not mollified the cancel campaigners, of course. Threats to rename state affiliate chapters, to withhold results from the Society’s famed Christmas Bird Count, and other retaliatory measures remain hot topics on Twitter.
One might ask: isn’t this just a small quibble among prickly and persnickety birdwatchers, much ado about nothing? Perhaps. But sometimes small controversies can provide great insights because they allow more detailed scrutiny than would be possible with a larger problem.
The brief against Audubon includes the usual tropes. He owned slaves. He had doubts about the emancipation of slaves. He was a plagiarist and a fabulist. He harbored other impure thoughts. The counter-argument is also familiar: he was a man of his times (1785-1851). This idea, that one cannot judge people by future moral standards (was Audubon a transphobe?), and that we are all capable of making our own judgments on gleaning the good men do from the chaff they leave, carries no water for the cancel campaigners. To say it’s all or nothing is to miss the point: nothing can stand in the face of such absolutism.
So if Audubon is to be condemned as a fabulist, what is one to make of the writings of one of his most vocal critics?
J. Drew Lanham is a wildlife biologist at Clemson University, a passionate birder, and an ardent lover of nature. In short, he is precisely the kind of person that the Audubon legacy has helped to foster. There is much about him to admire.
Yet Lanham is a prolific fabulist himself. He has the rare ability to peer into the souls of white people and perceive the cold cruelty that lurks within their hearts, just by looking at them. This remarkable ability transcends time itself, allowing him to expose the malevolence of Audubon. He goes into the field for a bird survey, expecting to be “hanged that day.” He helpfully notes the special rules that black ornithologists must follow to avoid being lynched (question: how many black ornithologists have been murdered in Lanham’s day, or ever?). Lanham laments that he rarely encounters other black birdwatchers in the field. I think I know why: he’s scaring the daylights out of them.
Turning to another critique: was Audubon a plagiarist? So says Matthew Halley. In an impressive bit of historiography, Halley argues that Audubon’s painting of the “Bird of Washington” (likely an immature bald eagle) was copied from another contemporary painter of birds. Yet Halley’s critique lacks important historical context that would allow us to make sense of it. For example, Halley asserts that Audubon “was not formally trained in science.” Here’s some context: the word “scientist” did not even come into usage until 1834, when Audubon would have been nearly fifty, and seven years after the first edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America was published.
And here’s more context: “science” in Audubon’s day was not a practice of set norms and procedures, as it has come to be today; it was more entrepreneurial. Where modern science draws on the public fisc to pay its bills, Audubon (who was not a wealthy man) had to sell himself to wealthy patrons. What he had to sell was his extraordinary paintings of birds.
Still more context: the concept of intellectual property only began to take shape in the early eighteenth century, and it has been in flux ever since, driven (as it always has been) by evolving technology. From the invention of the printing press to the era of digital cut-and-paste, the line dividing plagiarism from fair use has never been clear-cut, and it remains fuzzy to this day. In the era of ChatGPT, we may find very soon that the solid ground Halley and others think they are standing on will liquefy under their feet.
So when Audubon painted his Bird of Washington, was he plundering someone else’s intellectual property (plagiarism) or was it fair use (not plagiarism)? Or was Audubon simply an entrepreneurial hustler who beat out his rivals to emerge as the era’s preeminent cataloguer of the North American avifauna? In answering that question, context is vital. In the end, the charge that Audubon was a plagiarist is anchored to a pretty thin reed.
However, it is not evidence of perfidy that has been driving the “cancel Audubon” campaign, but a narrative: the ongoing danger facing the black ornithologist — “birding while black,” in Drew Lanham’s phrase. What of that narrrative: is “birding while black” real or just another fable?
The infamous “Central Park birdwatching incident” of May 2020 is revealing. To recap, it was an early morning encounter between Christian Cooper, a black man birdwatching in the Ramble section of the park, and Amy Cooper, a white woman walking her dog. Their encounter, part of which Christian Cooper caught on his phone, blew up into a sensational example of the post-George Floyd narrative of systemic racism, of a privileged white woman attacking a defenseless black man just minding his business.
The evidence for this is as flimsy as Drew Lanham’s imagined impending lynching. A closer look at the narrative reveals that Christian Cooper was the likely instigator of the incident, that he had a history of inciting such encounters, and that Amy Cooper was likely the convenient target of a simmering conflict, not between black and white, but between birders and dog-walkers using the park. Yet systemic white racism was the narrative everyone wanted, and so that was the narrative everyone got.
So we see the real problem with the “cancel Audubon” campaign: it does not rely on a cool evaluation of evidence, a sober weighing of the good versus the bad. Rather, it is driven by a ginned-up narrative of racism, a slow-motion mob action with its aim being discord, not amity; division, not unity; aggravation of white guilt and white masochism rather than looking to move on from a troubled past; a sordid mud-wrestle rather than the transcendent and beautiful — like a love of nature and the role that birds play in its cultivation.
This is the future that is already playing out for the Audubon Society. It is the future that looms before us all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/the-national-audubon-society-considers-canceling-itself
***********************************************************The Case Against Electric Vehicles
Compared to an electric car, a combustion car is a primitive and complicated device. But the combustion car has a energy usage system that electric cars are unlikely ever to match
Electric vehicles are expensive. The average price of an electric vehicle is about $18,000 more than the average price of a gas vehicle, and profits have been elusive even at that price point.
If electric vehicles made significant environmental progress, that would be one thing. But they don’t. Electric vehicles are not “zero” emissions—they create more emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles when they are produced, and they also cause emissions when they are charged, usually by burning fossil fuels.
Mining for many of the materials needed for an electric vehicle battery is done nearly exclusively overseas and is dominated by China. America’s lone lithium mine is responsible for about 2% of the world’s annual supply. Traditional cars have never been cleaner: Even President Barack Obama’s EPA head noted they are 99% cleaner than they were just a few decades ago.
Not only will electric vehicle mandates cost us more at the dealership, but they will also destroy American jobs. By limiting choice and increasing costs, fewer people will buy cars, hurting auto manufacturers and dealers alike.
Auto mechanics, masters at prolonging the life of the internal combustion engine, will also be impacted. America’s farmers would be devastated since more than a third of the corn crop ultimately goes to biofuels.
And America’s oil and refining workers would face a heavy blow. That is a huge issue in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, since all three have major oil refineries and form the epicenter of the refining industry on the East Coast.
Before COVID-19, America was leading the world in oil and fuel production, and we had finally achieved what every president since Richard Nixon dreamed about: energy security. Manufacturing jobs like those found at auto plants and refineries support dozens of other jobs and are the foundation on which an economy can be built. The oil and natural gas industry supports over 700,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Why destroy those jobs? Jobs are often impacted by technology, and if electric vehicles end up being a consumer’s choice, that is understandable and the price of progress. But if people want to continue buying internal combustion engine vehicles, these workers could continue to serve their neighbors and provide for their families for decades to come.
Thankfully, members of Congress—led by Pennsylvania Rep. John Joyce—recently proposed the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act, which is intended to counter and restrict the potent effects of the California plan by protecting the rights and freedoms of individual consumers.
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey should not join California. Last month, the political polling and survey company Ragnar Research conducted a survey showing that a resounding 73% of Delaware voters opposed a statewide ban on gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
Supermajorities in Delaware understand that buying a car is highly personal and the second most important financial decision we make. Bureaucrats in distant capitals do not know your situation, and they should not dictate your choices.
Internal combustion engine vehicles offer superior range, convenience, and durability at an affordable price. The median internal combustion engine vehicle has a range of 403 miles compared with the median electric vehicle at 234 miles. Cold weather and using the heater can reduce that range by some 40%. That means more frequent stops for electric vehicles to charge, and they take much longer than filling up at the pump.
Delaware’s and New Jersey’s internal combustion engine vehicles ban will hurt consumers, farmers, workers, and our national security. It’s time to say no to California’s car ban—in Harrisburg, Dover, Trenton, Washington, D.C., and across the country.
https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/the-case-against-electric-vehicles
**************************************************************Polish PM vows to fight 'pseudo-green' EU plan to ban petrol cars
Poland’s Prime Minister has vowed to do “anything” to win the fight against a “pseudo-green” European Union ban on petrol and diesel engines.
Brussels plans to outlaw the sale of new petrol and diesel engines from 2035 through a ban on tailpipe emissions as part of its net zero plans.
“The ban on the sale of combustion cars after 2035 is unacceptable for the government,” Mateusz Morawiecki said. “We will do anything to protect Polish families against another pseudo-green idea by rich countries and bureaucrats from Brussels.”
Mr Morawiecki said that his Law and Justice party supported climate action in Poland.
But he added: “Not if its targets are set during backstage negotiations against the will and interests of millions of Europeans, including Poles.”
His government argues the ban would be expensive for families and hurt Polish firms producing car components for well-known global brands.
Germany won a carve-out from the ban for internal combustion engines running on greener e-fuels this week and now backs the amended law.
That has left Poland as the only EU country openly opposing the green law. Warsaw voted against the ban, while Bulgaria, Romania and Italy abstained.
But now that Berlin backs the EU ban, and the regulation has been amended, it will be almost impossible for Warsaw to prevent it becoming law.
The watering down of the ban raised questions over a similar British ban, which takes effect in 2030 but allows hybrid vehicles until 2035, and a potential loophole in Northern Ireland, which will have to follow the EU ban, unless it is blocked by Stormont.
Mr Morawiecki’s pledge to oppose the EU ban came as Law and Justice launched its campaign for parliamentary elections in autumn.
Poland has often found itself at odds with the EU over climate change legislation, as it looked to protect its coal industry over the years.
Miners have totemic status in a country where they were pivotal in the Solidarity protests against Poland’s then-communist government.
Mr Morawiecki has locked horns with the European Commission over accusations of sliding democratic standards, a crackdown on gay rights, and a Constitutional Court ruling questioning the supremacy of EU law in Poland.
Brussels is withholding billions in coronavirus recovery funds, amid the disputes, which have been played down for fear of exposing EU divisions after the invasion of Ukraine.
In a speech on the future of Europe earlier this month, Mr Morawiecki called for a repatriation of national powers from Brussels to make the EU “more democratic”.
“We share common values, but each nation has its own identity,” he said in the flagship speech in Germany.
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As the British Government unveils plans to make Britons poorer and colder... Welcome to basket case Britain
In their Gadarene rush to beat the rest of the world to a carbon-free future, ministers appear determined to turn Britain into an economic basket case.
Today was Green Day, when the preposterously titled Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, unveiled the Government's latest madcap plans for making us colder and poorer.
Presumably, Shapps had no idea that Green Day is also the name of a popular American punk rock group, whose breakthrough hit was called Basket Case.
Come to think of it, though, what could be more appropriate. In their Gadarene rush to beat the rest of the world to a carbon-free future, ministers appear determined to turn Britain into an economic basket case.
While even the EU hits the pause button on plans to phase out fossil fuels, at least for motor vehicles, our Government has set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Shapps flatly refused even to consider that there might be an alternative to banning the sale of all internal combustion powered cars after 2030.
This is despite Europe having second thoughts following the development of so-called 'e-fuels,' which are a clean alternative to petrol and diesel. So while German manufacturers get an exemption for e-fuelled cars and vans, the British motor industry gets a kick in the teeth.
Britain's ban on the sale of conventionally powered vehicles starts in 2030, five years before the rest of Europe. We're even phasing out hybrids from 2035.
Shapps said: 'We are not in Europe. We don't have to do what Europe does on this stuff. We have always been more forward leaning on this stuff than the EU.'
No, we don't have to copy Europe. But that doesn't mean cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Forward leaning? More like falling head-first from a great height.
Already, BMW is moving some of its UK operations abroad. Others will follow suit if they are prevented from at least exploring whether e-fuels have a viable future.
Today, however, the Government doubled down on its deranged carbon-neutral agenda, with Rishi Sunak announcing that car makers will be forced to ensure that 22 per cent of all vehicles sold in Britain are all-electric by 2024, rising to 100 per cent in 2035 — even though the chances of there being enough reliable electricity generating capacity to charge them all are less than zero.
Sunak and Shapps seem hell-bent on doing more damage to our domestic motor industry than useless managements and union militants like British Leyland's Red Robbo inflicted in the 1970s.
That should go down well in Red Wall seats in Derbyshire and Sunderland, where Toyota and Nissan employ tens of thousands. For now, anyway.
Of course, when it comes to leading the anti-car charge, XR poster boy Shapps has plenty of previous. During Covid, he bunged councils £250 million for 'temporary' measures to encourage cycling and walking.
At the time, some of us warned that these allegedly temporary measures would inevitably become permanent, even when the pandemic was over. And so it has come to pass.
In the name of saving the polar bears, local authorities across Britain have declared all-out war on motorists. Net Zero has become a convenient excuse for closing roads and imposing punitive fines and congestion charges. [...]
Forgive me for repeating former deputy Labour leader Nye Bevan's quote about ministerial incompetence in 1945: 'This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organisational genius could produce a shortage of both coal and fish at the same time.'
Today, our island is sitting on half a century's reserves of shale gas and billions of barrels of untapped oil and natural gas in the North Sea. Yet our modern organisational geniuses have managed to produce a home-grown shortage of both gas and oil, purely out of short-sighted political vanity.
As a result, we are forced increasingly to rely on forests of hideous, bird-shredding, onshore, War-Of-The-Worlds windmills and the promise of as-yet-untested mini nuclear reactors — which if the Government's less- than-impressive record on public infrastructure projects (HS2 anyone?) is anything to go by, won't be operational until way beyond 2050, if ever.
From what I can gather, the only new initiative announced today by Grant 'Green Day' Shapps was the launch of two new 'carbon capture clusters', whatever they are.
Still, I can certainly think of a word to describe the Government's Net Zero energy policy. And it definitely begins with 'cluster . . .'
Welcome to Basket Case Britain.
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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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Tuesday, April 04, 2023
Net zero is dying a slow death
Governments are coming to regret net-zero carbon-emissions pledges, as their cost and impracticality come into view, but politicians still hate to admit it. The latest quiet escape plan arrived Thursday in the United Kingdom, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak published a raft of net-zero measures aimed at rebooting Britain’s green agenda.
The optimistic take is that the plans mark another admission that net-zero is unlikely to happen in Britain. The policy emphasis is on carbon-capture technology, to which Mr. Sunak’s administration previously announced it will devote £20 billion. Mr. Sunak is pushing hard on carbon capture because he appears not to want to do anything else.
The plan includes little new money beyond what his administration has previously announced. There are few new plans beyond previous duds such as a promise to convert households to heat pumps from gas-fired central heating. Tellingly, Thursday’s plan elicited few objections from net-zero skeptics in Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party.
The government is also stepping back from the phaseout of internal-combustion cars. Their sale is due to be banned by 2035. But the U.K. now will introduce a system of credits to let some auto makers buy the right to make more internal-combustion cars than they would have been allowed during the phaseout. Britain could hardly do otherwise after the European Union recently scaled back its EV mandate.
This fiasco is happening as green aspirations and economic realities collide at high speed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war, which disrupted Europe’s imports of Russian natural gas and caused global prices to spike, exposed the costs and inadequacy of wind and solar power as replacements for fossil fuels.
As a mandatory shift to electric vehicles approaches, it’s becoming clear that battery technologies don’t exist to make EVs a replacement for internal-combustion engines. The public is also noticing the shortcomings of proposed alternative fuels such as hydrogen. Nor are voters likely to be enthusiastic about having to pay higher taxes on domestic natural gas intended to steer them toward electricity.
Mr. Sunak is abandoning net zero in deed if not in word. Yet there’s a cost for what is becoming a global effort to escape net zero through the back door rather than admitting the plans won’t work. Witness the U.K.’s Rube Goldberg mechanism for keeping on the market the internal-combustion cars consumers want, or the subsidies for ineffective carbon capture. Both are set to become new corporate welfare on top of other green handouts.
Net zero is dying a slow death as voters and politicians realize its folly. Maybe someone will eventually admit it out loud.
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IRS Says Major Changes Are Coming to Electric Vehicle Tax Credits Next Month
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced Friday that it would propose rules that would make it more difficult for a number of new electric vehicles (EVs) to qualify for tax breaks, according to a news release.
Starting April 18, the IRS will enforce a domestic sourcing requirement for minerals and components used in EV batteries, the agency said. Analysts say that a number of new EVs won’t qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit of $7,500 that was implemented under the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed last year.
The act “allows a maximum credit of $7,500 per vehicle, consisting of $3,750 in the case of a vehicle that meets certain requirements relating to critical minerals and $3,750 in the case of a vehicle that meets certain requirements relating to battery components,” the IRS said. “The critical mineral and battery component requirements will apply to vehicles placed in service on or after April 18, 2023, the day after the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is issued in the Federal Register.”
A list of vehicles that will or will not be impacted by the rule change was not given by the IRS on Friday. The IRS issued another release detailing some of the requirements.
To qualify under the new rules, the IRS said that an EV must have a battery capacity of at least 7 kilowatt hours, have a gross vehicle weight of fewer than 14,000 pounds, be “made by a qualified manufacturer,” and those vehicles have to go through a final assembly in North America. The vehicle also has to be new and the seller has to report “your name and taxpayer identification number to the IRS for you to be eligible to claim the credit,” the release said.
It also said there are price and income caps, including $55,000 for sedans as well as $80,000 for trucks, vans, and SUVs. A list of EV manufacturers was placed on the IRS website.
Under the old rules, it “temporarily qualified some vehicles, like the Chevy Bolt, and some Tesla models, for the full $7,500 credit,” said electric vehicle website Electrek. “Both GM and Tesla have previously stated that they expect to lose access to some of the credit when the new battery rules go into effect (though with Tesla, this only applies to their cheapest model).”
Reactions
Some auto groups expressed their displeasure with the latest rule change.
“The proposed guidance continues to highlight the challenges ahead for U.S. automakers’ electrification efforts and consumers’ adoption of clean vehicles,” Jennifer Safavian, CEO and president of Autos Drive America, told Ars Technica. “The number of vehicles eligible for even a partial tax credit has been significantly reduced, slowing adoption of electric vehicles, under the new rules. Autos Drive America members are committed to an electrified future for our customers and look forward to continuing to collaborate with Treasury as the guidance is finalized.”
John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, told the outlet that he believes only few of the 90 or so electric vehicles that are on sale in the United States will be eligible for the tax credit starting next month.
“Some EVs will certainly qualify for a partial credit. Given the constraints of the legislation, Treasury’s done as well as it could to produce rules that meet the statute and reflect the current market,” he warned to Reuters.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced legislation this month seeking to block EV tax credits for batteries produced using Chinese technology, saying it would “significantly restrict the eligibility of IRA tax credits and prevent Chinese companies from benefiting.”
More Details
The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and part of President Joe Biden’s effort to make 50 percent of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or plug-in hybrids. The U.S. Department of the Treasury is not immediately issuing guidance on “Foreign Entities of Concern,” a provision due to start in 2024 barring credits if any components or minerals used in EV batteries are made in countries like China.
The $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden in August eliminated manufacturers’ EV sales caps, but imposed new conditions on EV credits. They included a North American assembly requirement from August, price and buyer income eligibility caps from Jan. 1, and now the battery and critical minerals sourcing rules, effective April 18.
The public will have until mid-June to comment on the proposed guidance.
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Green propagandists continue to inflict lethal damage to our electricity industry – it has become unreliable and expensive
Their intrusive green energy infrastructure is also nibbling away at our grasslands and farms, thus reducing their capacity to produce food.
These foolish green energy policies are also threatening electric power for refrigeration. City food supplies cannot survive without reliable refrigeration at every level, from farms to retail stores.
Less often recognised is the damage green propagandists are doing to our health and our food supply by attacking animal foods and promoting grains, vegetables, seeds, and fake foods for humans.
As far back as we have recorded history, humans have been hunter-gatherers. They hunted, cooked, ate and sometimes farmed cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, ducks, turkeys, swans, antelope, buffalo, caribou, mammoths, deer, bears, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, seals, herrings, prawns, oysters, crabs, clams, cod, whales, sharks, salmon, kangaroos, possums, rabbits, hares, rats, mice, dogs, cougars, eels, snakes, and even other humans.
When the hunters were successful, the tribe rejoiced and feasted mightily before the meats spoiled. But when the hunters failed, they relied on the gatherers for ripening fruits, honey, tubers, wild onions, nuts, and laboriously harvested grains. They learned that some plant foods were toxic unless treated in special ways by grinding, roasting, fermenting, and cooking. Meat was the staple food but some tribes also consumed raw milk, butter, cheese, and blood from their animals. Fruits were seasonal foods and tubers, onions, and grains were survival foods. Party foods like sugar and alcohol were more recent inventions.
Human teeth reflect the foods they are designed to use – canines for gripping and ripping meat off bones, incisors for cutting bite-sized bits, and molars for chewing and grinding. And humans have the forward-focused eyes of predators, not the all-round eyesight of their wary prey.
Men have always battled over hunting, fishing, and farming territory, but now green ideology is trying to destroy grazing and fishing territory with national parks, world heritage declarations, and bans and quotas on farming and fishing. They subsidise the sterilisation of farms and grasslands with wind and solar ‘farms’, access roads, and spider webs of power lines. They also promote the conversion of farmland to bush and encourage offshore bird choppers whose sonic noise upsets neighbours and seems to addle the navigating abilities of some sea creatures.
Now greens are attacking our carnivore diet and promoting a granivore-vegetarian diet for humans. Politicians should be free to choose their diet, but they should not force meat lovers to pretend they are granivores with crops and gizzards, or plant-eating ruminants with extra stomachs and who spend ages re-chewing their vegetarian cuds.
The world’s teeming cities are becoming increasingly reliant on grains, sugars, oil seeds, fruits, and vegetables grown by intense farming and heavily dependent on irrigation, herbicides, and chemical fertilisers. Grain-dependent feedlots produce much of our beef, pork, mutton, salmon, prawns, chickens, and eggs, and factories produce our baked, frozen and canned foods. Now greens are promoting denatured fake ‘meat’, and ‘milks’ containing no meat or milk.
Whilst intense farming has fostered a dramatic increase in human population, the human food chain is swamped with grains, greens, and seed oils with their unhealthy lectins, glutens, oxalates, phytic acid, harmful oils, artificial sweeteners, chemical additives, and sprays. This process parallels a dramatic deterioration in human health. Like green energy, green food for humans is proving a disastrous choice.
Pretending humans are herbivores and granivores has accompanied an epidemic of ill health. Obesity, arthritis, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, leaky gut, fatty liver, dental caries, heart failure, cancers, brain fog, knee replacement, stomach stitching, birth defects, and gender confusion seem to be hallmarks of our age. The surgery waiting lists keep expanding.
But instead of trying to fix our dietary problems, we have created a massive new ‘health’ industry. While human diets race off in the wrong direction, health research seeks magic bullets and focuses on profitable vaccines, patentable medicines, expensive surgery, and genetic wizardry.
Even grazing animals that once lived mainly on grasses and herbs (with a little ripening grass seeds just before the hard times of winter) are now confined in food factories, with little exercise, and encouraged to gorge on farmed grains. Omnivorous pigs and chickens and vegetarian cattle and sheep now stand in pens and feedlots eating grain-rich feeds.
The bun, chips, and salad have swamped the meat in the ‘beef’ burger and there is often more batter and potato than seafood in ‘fish and chips’. Breakfast cereals have replaced bacon and eggs, and fake ‘meat’ and fake ‘milks’ are lauded as healthy choices.
We can see the obese results of this green food revolution waddling down the aisles of supermarkets and ordering green smoothies and muffins in the food courts.
Green energy will prove a disaster for our economy, and green foods will be a deadly choice for many humans.
Footpaths will be crowded with mobility scooters and hospitals and care homes will be overwhelmed by unhealthy ageing vegans.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/the-green-foods-time-bomb/
***********************************************Capitalising on climate anxiety: what you need to know about 'climate-washing'
People are increasingly making choices about which products to buy and which service providers to use on climate change grounds. With concerns about climate change now affecting most Australians, businesses that promote climate-aligned practices and make emissions-reduction promises have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.
But sometimes these claims fail to live up to reality. Climate-related greenwashing, or “climate-washing”, communicates a message that exaggerates or misrepresents climate credentials through advertising, branding, labelling or reporting.
Examples include where corporate marketing and government campaigns promising “net-zero emissions by 2050” are not backed by a credible plan. Or products are promoted as “carbon neutral” or “climate friendly” when they’re not. It also includes where banks and other investors claim to fund a “cleaner future” when this is not completely true, potentially masking climate-related financial risk.
Climate-washing is a problem because the offending businesses capitalise on climate anxiety. It also allows businesses lacking robust credentials to gain customers and market advantage on false pretences. Ultimately, it also hinders rather than helps progress towards emissions reduction goals.
In March, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced a crack-down on climate-washing and greenwashing. This followed an ACCC report revealing claims made by more than half the 247 Australian businesses reviewed in an internet sweep raised concern. The ACCC has said it will now undertake enforcement, compliance and education activities.
On Wednesday the Senate agreed to establish an inquiry into greenwashing by corporations in Australia. The inquiry will investigate the impacts of greenwashing on consumers and the environment and will identify the legal and regulatory actions needed to stop it.
The credibility gap
The imperative to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century has been consistently reinforced by climate science. This includes, most recently, this month’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One of the upshots has been a deluge of net-zero strategic marketing. Particularly in the case of large climate change contributors – such as fossil fuel companies, airlines and the meat industry – adopting a net-zero narrative switches public perception that the company is part of the solution, rather than the problem.
Climate-washing essentially describes a gap between what’s promised and what’s likely to be achieved. This “credibility gap” can be due to factors such as over-reliance on speculative technology, offsetting, and modelling that’s outdated or hasn’t been properly verified. Although there’s a big global push toward transparency, many entities don’t adequately disclose the data and assumptions behind their promises.
Complaints and court cases
Last week, a group called Flight Free and their lawyers approached the ACCC over Etihad Airways advertising that said, “flying shouldn’t cost the earth” and “net zero emissions by 2050”. The ads were shown prominently at a soccer match in Melbourne last year. Flight Free says the advertising is misleading.
The Etihad complaint follows the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility’s Federal Court proceedings against gas company Santos. Currently afoot, this complaint challenges Santos’ “clean fuel” and “net-zero by 2040” claims.
Earlier this year, corporate watchdog ASIC (the Australian Securities and Investment Commission) initiated proceedings against super fund Mercer for allegedly misleading investors into thinking their investments in a “sustainable” investment option excluded fossil fuels.
Around the world, there’s been a recent rise in climate-washing litigation. Multiple complaints allege that the football association FIFA falsely advertised the Qatar World Cup as “fully carbon neutral.”
In aviation, there’s a pending court case against KLM targeting its “fly responsibly” campaign, and there’s also been a successful challenge to RyanAir’s low-carbon campaign.
Product complaints have ranged from allegedly climate-neutral bin liners, to “climate-controlled pork” in Denmark, and “climate-neutral croquettes” in Germany.
How is climate-washing regulated?
Climate-washing is a form of misleading and deceptive conduct, which is regulated in Australia under federal competition and consumer law.
Climate-washing that relates to financial products and services is regulated under securities and investments law.
Both the ACCC and ASIC monitor climate-washing.
Globally, concerns over climate-washing have led to action by the United Nations. A High-Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities was formed last year to target climate-washing. The group has a “zero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing” mantra, and delivered a report at November’s Climate Change COP in Egypt, which contains a “how-to” guide for credible, accountable net-zero pledges.
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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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Monday, April 03, 2023
British PM now sees a future for fossil fuels in Britain
The location of Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps’s net zero relaunch today shows there has been a change of emphasis since the PM set up the Department for Energy Security and Climate Change last autumn.
One suspects a bit of ideology creeping in: fossil fuels have become a great bogeyman, and nothing will make them acceptable
Whereas Boris Johnson might have sought to make such an announcement at a wind farm or solar farm, today’s relaunch took place at Culham in Oxfordshire, the site of Britain’s nuclear fusion research facility. Fusion is the holy grail of carbon-free energy which even enthusiasts admit is decades away from being commercialised, if it can be at all. But it is a hint that the government is no longer going to try to power Britain with wind and solar energy alone. A competition to pick out the most promising modular nuclear reactor designs – for further funding and development – is one of the strands of today’s announcements.
The most eye-catching initiative is carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS). In his recent budget Jeremy Hunt announced a remarkable £20 billion of investment in CCUS projects. Now we learn that eight ‘clusters’ of projects are planned (although they won’t include Drax, the woodchip-burning power station in South Yorkshire whose shares have dived this morning in response to the news it has lost out on government backing).
Compared with the £240 million the government has made available to develop its ‘hydrogen economy’, this is a vast sum. Today’s document, ‘Powering Up Britain’, doesn’t quite spell it out, but the quest for CCUS signals that the government has changed its mind and now sees a future for fossil fuels. The whole point of CCUS, after all, is to suck out from the air carbon dioxide which has been produced by burning fossil fuels. As things stand, the government remains committed to removing all fossil fuels from electricity production by 2035, banning petrol and diesel cars, as well as new gas boilers, by the same date and pushing for existing gas boilers to be replaced by electric heat pumps at the rate of 600,000 a year. But what if we had a CCUS industry that was removing carbon from the atmosphere at the same rate it was being pumped in? The objections to burning fossil fuels would theoretically disappear. We could, say, continue to use gas power plants to back up intermittent wind and solar – and eliminate the need to find some way of storing vast amounts of energy.
That is not, however, how many green campaigners see it. Anticipating today’s announcement, 700 scientists and campaigners have written to Sunak demanding that no new oil and gas licences be granted. They complain that CCUS is no solution because it has ‘yet to be proved at scale’. They are right on that point – although the same is true of numerous other technologies which have been floated as possible ways of getting to net zero, and which are regularly advocated by some of the signatories. One suspects a bit of ideology creeping in: fossil fuels have become a great bogeyman, and nothing will make them acceptable.
The truth is, if the world is going to get anywhere close to net zero, CCUS will have to be used – because the process emissions from steel-making, cement-making, fertilizer-manufacturing and agriculture are going to be extremely difficult to address. Yet the government is taking an enormous gamble with its £20 billion. A decade ago, David Cameron launched a similar initiative, involving the investment of a more modest £1 billion in a CCUS demonstration plant. But in 2015 the scheme was abandoned, shortly before the expected announcement of who had won the bid. The government on that occasion came to the conclusion that CCUS was too much of a unicorn to take a risk with. Question is: what has changed now?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/rishi-sunak-now-sees-a-future-for-fossil-fuels-in-britain
*************************************************Manchin Steps Up Clash With Biden Over Electric-Car Tax Credits
Senator Joe Manchin stepped up his fight with the Biden administration over its implementation of the president’s signature climate bill in a way Manchin says over-emphasizes clean energy technology, turns away from fossil-fuel production and spends too much.
“They just want to throw caution to the wind and put more money out and throw more money from the Treasury and credits that basically are not going to accelerate how quickly that we can be totally self-reliant,” Manchin, a Democrat of West Virginia, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
In separate comments on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Manchin wouldn’t rule out taking legal action to stop the administration’s interpretation of the legislation.
“I’m looking at every option I possibly have to make sure that that bill is fulfilled and basically implemented the way it was intended to,” he said.
The law in question is the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, passed last year with support from Manchin after he, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Biden hammered out a deal behind closed doors that circumvented the usual legislative process.
The law makes billions of dollar available — through subsidies and tax credits — to promote the production and purchase of electric vehicles.
Manchin says the administration is veering from lawmakers’ intent by not putting enough into domestic production of fossil fuels. It also, he says, has been too permissive in allowing foreign automakers to access some vehicle credits.
Other lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Washington, have voiced concern over how the Treasury is deciding which countries can supply battery materials for cars that eligible for credits.
“I’m going to fight and fight back hard,” Manchin said on Fox. “And I would hope that my Democrat and Republican friends in the legislature will feel the same way and will work with us to hold the administration’s feet to the fire.”
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Old refineries incapable of manufacturing enough light hydrocarbons to electrify the world
The zero-emission movement in the wealthy countries are experiencing a “dangerous delusion” of a global transition to “just electricity” that eliminates the use of the three fossil fuels of crude oil, natural gas, and coal, that made society achieve so much in a few centuries. As old refineries accelerate their closure rates in the coming years, new Asia refineries are coming to the rescue! Does Asia’s rescue represent the good news or the bad news?
The future does not bode well as 20 percent of the 700 worldwide aging refineries are projected to close in the next 5 years that will result in less manufacturing with the loss of 140 sites to meet the ever growing demands of ships, jets, and the derivatives needed for all the products demanded by society. With less manufacturing in wealthy countries in the days ahead, further shortages and inflation of both fuels and products in perpetuity are guaranteed.
As old refinery closures accelerate, it’s becoming obvious that wind turbines, solar panels, and EV’s may face challenging growth as they are 100 percent made with those limited light end hydrocarbons that will diminish with refinery closures. But wait, Asia is coming to the rescue!
Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries. As of 2021, there were 88 new facilities in planning or under construction in Asia. The amount of oil fed through refineries in Asia has significantly increased in the past three decades as demand for petroleum products surged in developing countries such as China and India, both with significant less stringent environmental regulations than those in America. China is on track to succeed the United States as the country with the greatest oil refinery throughput.
These new Asian refineries, just like the mining in China, Africa, and Brazil for the exotic minerals and metals required for wealthy countries to achieve their net-zero emission goals, will be constructed and maintained on some of the LEAST environmentally controlled landscapes on this planet.
A subject for another time: Is the rescue by Asia’s new refining manufacturing capabilities exposing national security issues for America?
Today, oil refineries around the world are designed for specific crude oil feed-stocks available to those sites, and then manufacture a 42-gallon barrel of oil into light and heavy hydrocarbon products available from that feed-stock to support the world’s 8 billion on this planet are dependent on the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military’s of each country, and space programs that are based on the heavy hydrocarbons for the various fuels manufactured from crude oil. In addition, those light hydrocarbons are primarily used for making the more than 6,000 products now in society.
With enough money and technology, new refinery facilities could be designed to extract light hydrocarbons like ethylene from natural gas, and transportation fuels can be manufactured from coal, but both processes come with new equipment and produce excessive emissions.
No new refinery has been built in America since 1977, 46 years ago, so the need for new American refinery facilities to treat natural gas and/or coal may be a pipe dream to obtain environmental and construction permits for a new fossil fuel manufacturing site, when America is motivated to rid itself of both natural gas and coal, along with crude oil.
Today, about 90 percent of that 42-gallon barrel of crude oil is manufactured into the heavy hydrocarbon products like automotive gasoline’s, jet fuels, distillate fuel oils, diesel fuels, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and those “other products” which comprise the other 10 percent of a barrel of crude oil that contains light hydrocarbons, usually referred to as “oil derivatives” that are manufactured from crude oil.
Today, the big push is to reduce emissions, and the target is a future with net zero emissions. Here’s a very short scope of net zero (partial listing):
Electrify all cars, trucks, and train use.
Electrify most heat uses, especially gas heat.
Rebuild the grid so wind and solar generated electricity with battery storage are the primary electricity power source.
To achieve a world of only those light ends to make all the products now in society that supports lifestyles and all the infrastructures, there are thoughts among the green community that we can convert the existing old refineries to produce nothing but derivatives, and/or replace the existing refineries with derivative refineries, or just manufacturing those light ends. That may be another pipe dream as each refinery is designed for specific crude oil feed-stocks available to those sites, and conversions may be technically too expensive and not even permitted.
From the proverb: You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip:
A corn cob weighs in at about around 1 to 1.5 pounds per mature ear of corn. Fresh cut cobs yield around 6-7 ounces of corn. We can’t squeeze more kernels from a cob.
A 42-gallon barrel of oil contains about 90 percent of heavy hydrocarbons for various fuels, and about 10 percent of light hydrocarbons that are the basis of thousands of products made from those oil derivatives by -products. We can’t squeeze more light end hydrocarbons from a barrel of oil.
Such a switch of those old refineries to derivative refineries is a pipe-dream or an environmental and emissions disaster as 90 percent of that 42-gallon barrel of crude oil would need to be disposed of if not marketable as manufactured products like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), automotive gasoline’s, jet fuels, distillate fuel oils, diesel fuels.
From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:
you can’t rid America of only the “fuels” manufactured from fossil fuels and
continue to enjoy just the by-products of those light ends hydrocarbons that are manufactured from the same crude oil.
We may get to zero emissions, like we had in the pre-fossil fuel days in the 1800’s, but once we rid America of those fuels that generate emissions, manufactured at old refineries, we also rid America of the light ends that are the basis of the 6,000 products that did not exist before the 1900’s.
Just a few hundred years ago when the world’s population was around just one billion, before oil, the world was unspoiled, decarbonized, and dominated by mother nature and the wild animal kingdom. In the 1800’s there was no coal fired power plants, nor natural gas power plants, and the Beverly Hillbillies had not yet discovered oil. There were fewer humans competing with the animals due to humanity’s limited ability to survive what mother nature provided. Before oil, life was hard and dirty, with many weather and disease related deaths.
The ruling class, powerful elite, and the media lack some energy literacy which may be the reasons they avoid conversations about the ugly side of “green” mandates and subsidies. Before anyone in Washington decides to procure wind turbines, solar panels, or an EV, they should read the Pulitzer Prize nominated book that I co-authored, “Clean Energy Exploitations”, and decide for themselves if they wish to financially support the humanity atrocities and environmental degradation among folks in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skin, so that the wealthy countries can go green.
Thus, without planned replacements in America for what is now manufactured from fossil fuels, we may get to the net-zero emissions society but with heavy reliance on Asia to achieve those lofty goals.
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Australia: Climate wars rekindled
So, apparently the climate wars aren’t over quite yet. Thank goodness for that! That’s not us rekindling the battle, by the way, it’s the Greens’ ‘Treasury spokesman’ federal Senator Nick McKim who has discovered a new term of abuse: ‘ecocidal’ to describe opponents of net zero. Definitely a word for Kel Richards to strip bare, but obviously a contrived new term designed to imply somebody is guilty of genocide if they don’t subscribe to the climate cult’s nihilistic net-zero agenda.
This is good news. As far as we are concerned, the climate wars are desperately needed: an ongoing battle for common sense, reason, proportionality and above all science – real science, as opposed to ‘The Science’ aka left-wing political propaganda of the sort which caused so much unnecessary suffering (and death) during Covid.
Put simply, it has never been shown that human beings have any ability whatsoever to influence let alone to ameliorate or reverse global climate trends and patterns. The precautionary principle suggests that if the theory of anthropogenic global warming is valid, then heavily industrialised nations should do what they can to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, but – and this is critical – to do so in a way that does not cause equal or more harm in other areas. This is where ongoing proper cost-benefit analyses are required to influence genuine political debate and corporate decision-making, but they are entirely absent.
For example, what is the cost to the working poor if energy prices rise versus what is the actual benefit to the planet for that sacrifice? What is the cost to Third World countries when they don’t have access to cheap electricity versus what is the benefit to them of a potential and purely academic ‘modelled’ reduction in global temperatures? Or on an even more immediate topic: what is the genuine cost in terms of carbon emissions output involved in the manufacturing of an entire global fleet of electric vehicles, batteries and the infrastructure needed to power them versus the cost of simply carrying on with business as usual? What is the cost to entire societies of reducing the nitrogen in their soil versus the measurable benefit to the planet? What is the military and security cost of achieving net zero versus the hypothetical environmental benefit?
That’s if the AGW theory is valid. This week, in Kiwi Life, Amy Brooke analyses the claims of the climate catastrophists and concludes: just follow the money. David van Gend, meanwhile applies not only his clinical but his satirical skills to offer a diagnosis of Mother Earth herself.
Despite the relentless propagandising across virtually all media and from the major political parties here in Australia the simple fact remains: none of the doomsday predictions going back some three or four decades has come true. Not one. Indeed, weather patterns have often done the complete opposite of what was so stubbornly predicted. Much like the now-exposed fraudulent modelling on Covid, climate modelling is self-evidently deeply flawed as a ‘science’. A gypsy queen with a crystal ball in a Louisiana fairground probably has a better track record at peering into the future than Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Greta Thunberg, King Charles, Klaus Schwab and all the rest of them put together.
With wall-to-wall Labor governments across mainland Australia, we are now entering an extremely dangerous period in our history. The ideologues and the dreamers are now in charge. Sadly, due to the cowardice of the Liberal party under former prime minister Scott Morrison, the opposition has twice the task in front of it than it had during the Rudd-Gillard years when Tony Abbott was able to use climate madness as a cudgel against the Left.
Peter Dutton now faces a formidable task. He has to wage war first against the bedwetters within the Liberal party, the likes of Simon Birmingham, Andrew Bragg and Matt Kean – he who wreaked such destruction on the Liberal brand at the weekend. Then he has to convince his colleagues to either abandon net zero or abandon the nuclear moratorium. And then he will need to launch a comprehensive political campaign to explain to the average Aussie just what this prosperity-destroying concept really entails and what a world of energy poverty means for our children and grandchildren. And he has to do it all within the next eighteen months
Can he? Make sure you read James Allan and Judith Sloan this week..
The Labor victory in NSW at the weekend probably helps. Now, Labor has no excuses. They can implement all their lunatic policies and reap the whirlwind. Sadly, we will all be collateral damage but public sentiment will shift very rapidly once the net-zero agenda starts to bite and the Liberals need to be fully prepared to take advantage of that shift. As Mark Higgie points out, many Europeans are already turning against the craziness of electric vehicles. As winter approaches, how many Aussies will struggle to pay their energy bills? One study in Britain revealed a staggering number of households forced to sit in the dark without heating during the long winter months. This is what awaits Australians as our zealous Labor governments hurtle down the same path.
It is now up to the Liberals and Peter Dutton to re-engage in the climate wars. It’s a fight that can and must be won. We’re certainly up for it!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/climate-wars-rekindled/
***************************************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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Sunday, April 02, 2023
15 minute cities: burning to the ground
Are this century’s ideological peasants finally revolting? It certainly seems that way after residents set fire to road block ‘planters’ which had been erected to prevent them from driving freely around their community.
UK neighbourhoods are being used as test cases for the 15 minute city plan that is, after a fashion and a few intermediary thought bubbles, the child of United Nations Sustainability Goals and World Economic Forum collaborations.
Others might describe them as open air prisons where ‘global citizens’ are being confined to small areas to ‘save the planet’ under threat of being fined.
Not everyone is impressed by the experiment, with residents in Rochdale destroying the barriers which some are trying to pass off as ‘traffic control systems’ rather than sinister infringements on basic freedom of movement. Others have found themselves prevented from travelling to work by unofficial and legally powerless self-appointed enforcers who refuse to allow the movement of traffic. Surely that is an offence? It is like being ruled by a mob.
The unavoidable truth is that people are already free to leave their cars at home if they want to embrace the de-industrialised lifestyle, but they choose not to. Why? Their free choice is to drive and thus, as with all socialist policies, government has decided it must use force to guarantee what it sees as good social behaviour. Get used to it. We are going to be seeing a lot more of this behavioural intervention.
You can find plenty of 15 minute city defenders on social media insisting that this is just a ‘suggestion’ or some sort of voluntary adjustment to the way people move through their cities. Far from it. In Oxford, which is another ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhood’, similar blockades were being manned by bright-haired randoms. Everywhere 15 minute cities are put in place, the working class freak out.
For a long time, residents in these areas either didn’t realise what was going on or thought these mutterings and endless surveys put out by their local council were some kind of joke. After all, Net Zero policies read as fanatical madness. Now that Woke councils are trying to put physical barriers up to enforce ‘planet saving’ ideology, residents are reacting loudly and, in some cases, destructively.
Needless to say, the 15 minute city is being delayed for ‘further consultation’.
No doubt community feedback will involve something along the lines of ‘bugger off’.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/15-minute-cities-burning-to-the-ground/
*************************************************American Forests Are Being Razed So Europe Can Cling to ‘Green’ Energy
To bolster its climate-friendly credentials, Europe is increasingly reliant on an energy source as old as fire itself — dead trees.
While European Union officials refer to it as the more environmentally friendly “biomass” and call it a “renewable resource,” little of it is coming from the continent itself. Much of the forests being razed to heat and cool the continent are in the southeastern United States.
A German green energy entrepreneur, Simon Göss, recently published a report on the future of biomass and biogas as a method of transitioning toward a carbon-free Europe by 2050. Mr. Göss found that as of today, woody biomass makes up a majority of Europe’s “green” energy sector — nearly 60 percent across the continent.
“Most of the time, wind and solar or energy carriers and technologies such as hydrogen or batteries make it to the headlines,” he wrote in his report. “The larger part of the EU’s renewable energy mix is, however, made up of biomass … in different forms (liquid, gaseous, solid) and origins (wood, grasses, agricultural residues by-products, etc).”
In the continent’s largest countries, biomass plants are cropping up in the thousands. In Germany, there are 14,922 plants that burn some form of biomass — a 17.5 percent increase in the last 10 years. The United Kingdom is home to 226 biomass plants nationwide, which is enough to supply the energy needs of more than eight million homes.
The main use of these biomass sources is for heating and cooling — something vital to the lives of everyday Europeans as gas prices reached historic highs this past winter. Nearly 75 percent of the biomass used in Europe is for heating homes in the winter or cooling them in the summer.
The sustainability of woody biomass — most notably trees — has been questioned by climate activists and scientists in recent years as deforestation has increased. Between 2001 and 2021, the world lost 11 percent of its total tree coverage.
Despite these concerns, the European Union and its legislative body, the European parliament, have fully embraced the practice. In September 2022, when gas prices were three times their current rate on the continent, the European parliament voted to adopt the Renewable Energy Directive, which called for more investment in and use of biomass as an energy source. The parliament voted at the same time to strengthen protections for its own forests and implemented new “sustainability guidelines” to maintain tree cover levels.
Instead of razing its own forests to flout its green credentials, Europe is using America’s. Tree farms in the southeast provide tens of millions of tons of biomass to Europe every year, and some residents of the Deep South are starting to balk about it.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Europe consumed 23 million metric tons of wood pellets in 2021 and was on pace to burn 24 million metric tons in 2022. At the time, most of it came from Russia and the United States. The war in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions against Russia cut off that source, and now the United States provides as much as 99 percent of the wood pellets needed to power Europe annually.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is one group seeking to slow down the expansion of the industry in America. “Along with CO2, manufacturing and burning wood pellets produces harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, hazardous air pollutants, and microscopic dust particles that contribute to serious health risks,” the group’s website states.
Millions of tons of trees are extracted from the southeastern United States to feed this green energy sector, and many are issuing warnings about deforestation and the risks associated with it.
“Biomass energy has received growing attention in the United States,” the law group wrote. “We are committed to ensuring American lawmakers don’t make the same mistakes made in other countries, and that policy makers know the threats the biomass industry poses to the climate, local communities, and the South’s air, water, and millions of acres of forest land.”
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The Navy’s Climate Change Agenda
The United States Navy has long ruled the seas. That reputation was earned over many years, and while the Navy remains a formidable force on the world’s oceans, that strength may be waning more quickly than any of us realize.
China’s military has been on the rise in recent years, but instead of keeping pace with China’s emergence as a global sea power and making sure America stays on the cutting edge of technology, our Navy has another priority: climate change.
“The Department of the Navy is stepping forward with Climate Action 2030, a broad, multi-pronged approach,” explains the U.S. Department of Defense website. “The Navy is working to improve efficiency of ships, electrifying vehicles and greatly reducing emissions.” Furthermore, “The Navy is also funding efforts to help restore coral reefs and is eager to pursue further efforts on coral reef research, regrowth and even creation.”
Coral reef research? Electric vehicles? This is the Navy’s answer to China’s explosive growth as a naval power?
Unfortunately, the current Navy leadership thinks so.
“China, which is rapidly becoming the dominant marine force, doesn’t give a damn about adapting to climate change,” says journalist Daniel Greenfield, “except when it comes to peddling its junk solar panels assembled by slave labor to woke companies that will resell them at a massive markup while gobbling up tax credits because when we go ‘green,’ it only weakens us and strengthens our enemies.”
Indeed, while the West goes green, China continues building coal plants. “China became the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2006 and is now responsible for more than a quarter of the world’s overall greenhouse gas emissions,” reports the BBC.
Greenfield adds: “While our military brass obsessed over diversity, equity and inclusion, the PRC turned the South China Sea into its own private backyard, enabling it to potentially cut off traffic to the United States. China has built up chains of islands studded with its naval outposts so that its fighter jets and ant-ship and anti-aircraft missiles now encompass not only the coasts of Taiwan and China, but much of the coastlines of everything from Thailand to Malaysia to the Philippines.”
While current Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro publicly recognizes the threat from China’s navy, he and the Biden administration have planned to reduce the number of U.S. warships.
“The Biden administration released its proposed budget for 2024, which calls for shrinking the Navy fleet even though most military experts and senior Navy officers have called for more ships to deter China’s larger fleet,” Fox News reports. “For several years now, the Navy has set a goal of having 355 manned ships. But, for the last three years, the Biden administration has proposed shrinking the fleet below the roughly 298 ships it has available now, instead of increasing it toward a 355-ship goal.”
Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army is expected to have 400 ships by 2025.
But not to worry — President Joe Biden has mandated that each military service have a sustainability officer. Meredith Berger, assistant secretary of the Navy, talks about LED lighting and new salt-resistant paint for naval vessels.
That sure won’t deter China in a naval battle. But hey, if we can’t win, at least the paint on our ships won’t peel.
Even The Atlantic, not exactly a pro-military publication, warns: “It is time for the United States to think and act, once again, like a seapower state. As the naval historian Andrew Lambert has explained, a seapower state understands that its wealth and its might principally derive from seaborne trade, and it uses instruments of sea power to promote and protect its interests. To the degree possible, a seapower state seeks to avoid direct participation in land wars, large or small.”
That’s a clear, sensible assessment of the current state of the U.S. Navy compared to the gobbledygook in the Climate Action 2030 plan.
Assuming the Navy transitions to an electric vehicle fleet, reduces building emissions by 50%, implements nature-based erosion solutions, and diverts solid waste from landfills (all prominent objectives in its Climate Action plan), how will any of this prevent China from dominating the seas in the 21st century?
Of course, it will do nothing to combat China’s rise as the world’s new sea power.
A century from now, historians will scratch their heads and wonder how America could have been so naïve to give it all away. By then, maybe our leaders will have learned their lesson about the climate change religion.
Then again, maybe it will be too late to do anything about it
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96137 ?
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Australia's unsafe Safeguard Mechanism
And so, the Greens have joined the ALP in imposing additional carbon taxes on the top 215 greenhouse gas emitting firms. In passing the so-called Safeguard Mechanism, the voluntary program that the Coalition originally introduced is converted into a requirement on the nation’s top mining and industrial firms to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. Those emissions are said to be 137 million tonnes a year. Their curtailment builds up to constitute 40 million tonnes a year. This is in addition to abatement measures already in place, which confer a subsidy on wind and solar, that has enabled those energy sources to displace a quarter of the supply formerly provided by coal.
One way to meet the new reductions is by internal measures (for some firms, like AGL, this simply means closing down generation facilities). Alternatively, the targeted firms can supply or buy emission reduction certificates under one of the schemes managed by the Clean Energy Regulator and state governments.
The Commonwealth schemes create large-scale generation certificates (LGCs) and small-scale generation certificates (STCs) by requiring electricity retailers to include increasing shares of wind/solar energy in their supply mix. The certificates only have a value because governments have placed (hidden) regulatory obligations on consumers to buy them. Unlike goods offered in normal markets, the certificates have no intrinsic worth but confer a value of $40-90 per MWh on the renewable supplies. That is more than the total average market price of electricity that prevailed before the subsidies themselves undermined the economics of supply from coal generation.
Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, drawing off faulty CSIRO analysis and the pressures of the renewables lobby, maintain that renewables are already the cheapest form of energy. That belief is largely behind their concoction of a $275 per annum reduction in household energy prices that they claimed their ambitious renewable replacement policy would bring.
The irony of all this – and one the ALP and their media supporters missed – is that if renewables really were cheaper the subsidy these schemes confer on them and the penalties they impose on coal and gas would be an unnecessary cost.
The previous government introduced a further scheme, which was funded from the budget, that created Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) that confer a value on selected activities. The ACCUs, like generation certificates, subsidise high-cost measures thereby increasing the cost of living. Eligible activities include carbon capture and storage, converting farmland to bush, and capture of waste gas. The ACCUs have provided a cheaper means of meeting obligations but Greens in Australia and elsewhere have (correctly) come to view them as con jobs that are easily manipulated and provide no real emission reduction. Hence, as part of the deal to pass the Safeguard Mechanism, their use is to be sharply curtailed. Naturally, farmers and carbon capture subsidy seekers are spitting chips at their loss of taxpayer largesse.
The creation of new LGCs is the most likely alternative to shutting down facilities and moving production offshore (which, of course, brings no consequent reduction in emissions!). These will come at a likely price of around $80 per tonne (roughly $80 per MWh). The cost of the 40 million additional tonnes the 215 targeted facilities are to abate annually by 2030 would therefore be some $320 million a year. As this would largely be imposed on the internationally tradable sector it will, of itself, severely dent the nation’s competitiveness and income levels.
But the Greens boast that, through the concessions they have won in acceding to the government’s measures, they will create additional damage. Some of this is due to the restriction on the use of the cheaper ACCU means of firms buying out their new liabilities under the Safeguard Mechanism. In addition, they claim that the government will be obliged to restrain all new or expanded coal and gas proposals.
The measures certainly introduce new machinery that intensifies the government’s oversight and approval of new proposals. That is a real bonus for a government seeking to ensure support from major producers and to constrain their criticism. It also promises considerable new outlets for lobbyists in their roles of not-so-hidden persuaders and in confecting plans that get promising new proposals over the regulatory hurdles.
These outcomes constitute an Antipodean form of fascism. As a vehicle for greater economic control, the present government finds this irresistible but it will bog down the economy in the tentacles of political corruption and new layers of costs.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/the-unsafe-safeguard-mechanism
***************************************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
