Biden EPA’s New Vehicle Emissions Standards Spark Backlash From Auto Industry, Republicans

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed emissions standards for automobiles and trucks are raising eyebrows in the auto industry and Washington alike.

“EPA’s proposed emissions plan is aggressive by any measure. By that I mean it sets automotive electrification goals in the next few years that are … very high,” John Bozzella, president and CEO of the automaker trade organization Alliance for Automotive Innovation, wrote in an April 12 blog post.

The federal standards would tightly restrict emissions from new vehicles. That will effectively force automakers to boost their sales of electric vehicles (EVs).

The agency’s proposal anticipates that under the new standards, two-thirds of new light-duty vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by the model year 2032.

It similarly predicts that 46 percent of new medium-duty vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by that model year.

EVs made up less than 6 percent of total new vehicle sales in 2022. That’s an increased percentage relative to past years even as total new vehicle sales were down to 13.8 million units from 17.3 million in 2018.

The EPA claims its standards would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 10 billion tons.

Agency administrator Michael Regan described the standards as the “strongest ever” during an April 12 press conference.

“The proposal exceeds the administration’s own 50 percent electrification target,” Bozzella wrote, adding that his industry is “fully committed to an electric and low-carbon transportation future.”

Not Enough Chargers

Less than two weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department issued complex guidance on EV tax credits that could make it harder for consumers to benefit from those financial incentives.

Bozzella, who began his career working for Democrat New York Mayor David Dinkins, said the guidance would reduce the number of vehicles qualifying for tax credits. That would seem to disincentivize EV adoption even as the administration steps up other measures intended to facilitate more EV purchases.

Bozzella added the 100,000 public, non-proprietary EV chargers in the United States are “not enough.”

An April 6 memo from the automotive alliance argued that electrification would take a “massive, 100-year change to the U.S. industrial base and the way Americans drive.”

Beyond the auto industry, other groups also voiced concerns.

Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, a consumer protection organization, said that the standards are “the same thing BlackRock and ESG extremists like Larry Fink are doing with U.S. pensions and retirement dollars.”

“The American people won’t stand for it,” he added.

Republicans Object

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill responded critically to the announcement, which comes days after new EPA coal plant standards and Biden vetoes aimed at furthering the president’s environmental agenda.

“The Environmental Protection Agency will make cars unaffordable by following California’s lead towards a complete ban on gas-powered vehicles,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“His [Biden’s] misguided policies are hurting American families while helping China,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

“The ‘electrification of everything’ is not a solution. It’s a road to higher prices and fewer choices.”

Sen Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, highlighted some potentially significant issues for the United States as the domestic EV fleet expands.

“These misguided emissions standards were made without considering the supply chain challenges American automakers are still facing, the lack of sufficiently operational electric vehicle charging infrastructure, or the fact that it takes nearly a decade to permit a mine to extract the minerals needed to make electric vehicles, forcing businesses to look to China for these raw materials,” Capito said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-epas-new-vehicle-emissions-standards-sparks-backlash-from-auto-industry-republicans_5190484.html

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California’s Last Nuclear Power Plant Diablo Faces Closure Against Lawsuit

An environmental group on Tuesday sued to block Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from seeking to extend the federal operating licenses for California’s last active nuclear power plant.

A complaint filed in the San Francisco Superior Court by advocacy group “Friends of the Earth” asks the court to prohibit the utility from sidestepping its 2016 agreement with environmentalists and plant workers to close the twin-domed Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by 2025.

In a Twitter post, the environmental group said, “We’re taking PG&E to court to make sure California’s last remaining nuclear plant is retired We won’t stop until the aging, destructive Canyon is closed for good!”

Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, called out PG&E for allegedly backing out of their agreement.

“Contracts simply don’t vanish into thin air,” Templeton said in a statement. “Yet ever since California passed legislation supporting Diablo Canyon’s extension, PG&E has been acting as if our contract has disappeared. Setting aside the agreement to retire Diablo, there are myriad legal prerequisites for extending operations of a nuclear power plant, including federal decisions that states cannot dictate.

“We hope our litigation can push PG&E to reconsider its potential breach and uphold its obligations, including preparing for the agreed-upon retirement.”

The Diablo power plant runs along the Pacific Coast and has been operating since 1985.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement that, for decades, has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels but leaves behind waste that can remain radioactive for centuries, requiring special waste treatment.

Nuclear Reactor Needed to Maintain Reliable Power
The California legislature passed SB846 last year, which was signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson, in an effort to extend the power plant’s operations for another five years, according to the bill.

In March, Newson toured the Diablo Canyon Power Plant after it was announced that the plant may continue operating after its expiration date.

“As we experienced during the record heat wave last September, climate change-driven extreme events are causing unprecedented stress on our power grid—the Diablo Canyon Power Plant is important to support energy reliability as we accelerate progress towards achieving our clean energy and climate goals. I look forward to our continued work with the Biden-Harris Administration and the Legislature to build a reliable and resilient clean electric system,” Newson said in a statement.

The California Energy Commission ruled earlier this year that continuing Diablo’s operations past 2025 is needed to maintain reliable electricity supply throughout the state.

Siva Gunda, the Energy Commission’s vice chair, said that Diablo is an important part of California’s energy options.

“As California confronts a rapidly changing climate, extraordinary heat events and record energy demand are becoming increasingly ordinary. The state needs to keep all options on the table to protect public health and safety,” Gunda said in a statement to LA Times. “This includes maintaining Diablo Canyon’s operations.”

In 2016, then Gov. Jerry Brown agreed to a proposal that would shut Diablo down by its original deadline, along with California utility regulators and state Legislatures, according to the document. This could pose a potential issue during the current lawsuit against PG&E.

According to the PG&E website, “Diablo Canyon has continued to safely produce clean and reliable energy without greenhouse gases (GHG), avoiding 6 to 7 million tons per year of GHGs that would be emitted by conventional generation resources,” the site states.

PG&E said in a statement it had not yet seen the lawsuit but that, as a regulated utility, will follow state policy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/californias-last-nuclear-power-plant-diablo-faces-closure-against-lawsuit_5191031.html

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Dutch minister warns EU leaders of waning public support for climate policies

A senior Dutch minister has warned fellow politicians in Europe of waning public support for the region’s climate policies as showcased by a continuing stand-off between farmers and the government over greenhouse gas limits in the Netherlands.

Deputy prime minister Sigrid Kaag, who also serves as minister of finance, told the Financial Times of the increasingly difficult task her government faces rallying some parts of the electorate behind policies with intergenerational ramifications, including the need to reduce nitrogen-based emissions, which has led to significant disruption, clashes with police and a political upset in elections for the Dutch senate.

https://www.ft.com/content/9777e52a-e290-4d87-ab7f-b5a073921222

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Australia’s ‘green energy’ chimera

The government has asked the Joint Committee on Trade and Investment Growth to inquire into ‘Australia’s transition to a green energy superpower’. It wants ideas on how to accelerate growth in sectors covering renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, and so on.

The inquiry attracted 125 submissions. A few submissions, like that of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), pointed out that the proposal rests on the case for reducing human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide but that there is no scientific proof that this would have any significant effect on our climate. And, the non-Western world is not going down that same path, with the consequence that the de-carbonising economic suicide into which the West is sleepwalking, can have no global effect.

But most submissions, including those from industry, advise the government on how to fund projects that cannot and will never stand up on their own merits.

For example, the Electric Vehicle Council calls on, ‘Governments [to] further support domestic industry development by providing guaranteed demand through bulk EV orders across government vehicle fleets and introducing programs that incentivise the use of local content.’ It also predictably seeks, ‘…further debt and equity financing to innovative projects to accelerate the clean energy transition.’

The Clean Energy Investor Group calls for the continuation of the subsidies to windmills beyond their cut-off date of 2030. By that time subsidy-seekers had previously assured us that this infant industry would have become the cheapest supply source. CSIRO claims this is already a reality even though wind/solar still needs the support of regulatory subsidies – subsidies that in 2020 amounted to $7 billion a year and which have been increased by the recently enacted Safeguard Mechanism.

The Advanced Materials and Battery Council claims Australia is already making huge gains in new technologies but warns, ‘Governments need to move fast to avoid losing these companies and opportunities to those more determined to develop national battery supply chains elsewhere.’

The Australian Aluminium Council seeks to get on the National Critical Minerals Strategy gravy train and makes the vacuous statement, ‘Providing electricity is supplied consistently, with firm power, and at internationally competitive prices, aluminium smelting can be run on renewable electricity.’ DUH!

The Australian Hydrogen Council claims members are going great guns in this pie-in-the-sky technology but just want the government to mandate targets ‘to develop markets for hydrogen across a range of sectors’. In addition, the council wants ‘investment attraction mechanisms in the vein of the US Inflation Reduction Act including fiscal or other incentives to draw foreign capital to Australia’.

The Green Energy Superpower proposal is that we continue to tax fossil fuels and subsidise their replacement with wind, solar, batteries, and eventually hydrogen (even though nuclear technology is the only one that might equal fossil fuels in cheapness activists avoid the energy ‘N-word’).

Regrettable outcomes have followed from the continued pursuit of a green energy superpower goal with its landscape-defiling windmills, solar farms, and a trebling of transmission lines to carry this intermittent energy. These facilities are planned to quadruple. Wind turbines are lethal for bird life when it gets too close and their land-hunger knocks out native animals. Concerns about threatened species in part led Apple to abandon its purchase of power generated by Windlab, Andrew Forrest’s proposed Queensland project. Added to the renewables conversation is the underlying environmental problem of the disposal of toxic wind turbines and solar panels at the end of their relatively short lives.

The failure of wind/solar installations to supply low-cost and reliable energy was illustrated by the collapse of the $22 billion Forrest/Cannon-Brookes Sun Cable project in the Northern Territory, which fortunately had only minor taxpayer support.

Green hydrogen is ear-marked as a future area of promise and its carpet baggers have attracted considerable government subsidies. At present, even its aspirational costs leave it 4-5 times more expensive than coal-based power, while considerable transport problems remain. And if at some future time green hydrogen were to become economical, that would be achieved by competition and profit-seeking creating the technological breakthroughs.

Australia has an ignominious history of terrifyingly expensive failures in seeking to have the governments play an entrepreneurial role. These include monstrous fiascos like the $70 billion broadband rollout.

We have also traversed the government-planned green innovation path trodden many times already. This wasted up to $20 billion on converting Snowy Hydro into a pump storage facility. Previous governmental plans to improve on private sector enterprise brought a blade factory in Victoria, which was to be the centre of a vast global supply chain taking advantage of government-stimulated growth of windmills; it collapsed within six months. Then there was the failed Ross Garnaut/Kevin Rudd geothermal venture in South Australia and, as the Spectator Australia catalogues, numerous programs to harness wave power.

Australia’s pursuit of the chimera of a ‘green energy superpower’ is part of a process under which, for the first time in human history, the Western world is using subsidies to replace the cheapest available and reliable sources of the energy by a more expensive and less reliable sources. The pursuit is accompanied by much collateral damage to the environment.

We have arrogated politics to a commercial role it can never play. Parliamentary inquiries will not only fail to discover the elixir that kickstarts new industries but, in holding out prospects for free government money, they distract entrepreneurs from seeking market-based solutions to profitable future breakthroughs.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/australias-green-energy-chimera

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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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Two former U.S. ambassadors are sounding the alarm on the increasing number of green energy projects nationwide being developed with the involvement of Chinese companies

Former U.S. Ambassadors Peter Hoekstra and Joseph Cella said Chinese companies, which are subject to strict Chinese laws, have made a concerted effort to take advantage of U.S. green energy goals. The companies, they said, are exploiting American tax incentives to build facilities and projects in the U.S., bolstering Chinese industry and ensuring continued U.S. reliance on technology from China.

"It'd be very ironic if we moved towards electric vehicles to the numbers that the Biden administration is talking about and the key component comes from China," Hoekstra, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands from 2018 until 2021, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "That is a terrible, terrible place to be."

"Right now electric vehicle sales are about 3 to 5% of new automobile sales," he continued. "Now is the time for the U.S. to establish its own capabilities rather than increasing reliance on an unreliable and a threatening adversary."

Hoekstra added that China's dominance throughout the green energy supply chain, from developing critical mineral mines in Africa to building battery components, exhibits intentionality that is "very perilous not only for our national security, but our economic security and prosperity as well."

Earlier this year, Hoekstra, who also previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, established the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group, a watchdog group devoted to reviewing Chinese economic investments across the country with a particular focus on Michigan. Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer boasted last month that her administration has recently attracted $16.6 billion worth of electric vehicle (EV) and battery projects to the state.

Cella — who served as the U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu, and Tonga from 2019 until 2021 — joined Hoekstra's group as a director.

Together, Hoekstra and Cella have specifically called attention to two EV battery plant projects proposed for Michigan. The first, slated for Big Rapids, Michigan, involves the Hefei, China-based Gotion High-Tech while the second, proposed for Marshall, Michigan, involves the Ningde, China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).

"Subnational incursions are afoot," Cella told Fox News Digital in an interview. "China is on the hunt. The Chinese Communist Party is on the hunt. They are looking for these open doors to kick in, in states. And they have carried great sway. You just need to look at Gotion or CATL — textbook examples of this influence operation."

The former ambassadors said, altogether, the Whitmer administration has promised about $4 billion in tax incentives and infrastructure improvements to facilitate the construction of the Gotion factory and the second facility, a Ford Motor factory which CATL has promised to provide key technology for.

"The details of the business relationship between CATL and Gotion are different," Hoekstra said. "But the bottom line is we are enriching the Chinese battery industry at the expense of providing the opportunity for American or companies in our allied countries to expand and grow their business."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-tech-companies-exploiting-us-green-energy-goals-former-state-department-officials-warn

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From Global Warming to Global Cooling to Global Warming

Here is an interesting quote:

“Snows are less frequent and less deep. They often do not lie below the mountains more than one, two, or three days and very rarely a week. They are remembered to be formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me that the earth used to be covered with snow about three months every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do now. [This] change…in the spring of the year is very fatal to fruits…I remember that when I was a small boy, say 60 years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter.”

That was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1799, before fossil fuels dominated the energy industry, and when the earth’s population was far smaller than it is today. From all indications, there was indeed notable warming in the 18th century from the previous “Little Ice Age” period.

But let’s move ahead to the 20th century. The weather changes, of course, and Paul Ehrlich, who was always wrong about everything he ever said, told us in 1969, “We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.” Twenty years passed, no blue steam, people were still on the earth. I guess we were lucky. And Ehrlich was rich.

Global cooling was the craze then. Here are a few representative quotes from the 1970s:

Boston Globe (1970): “Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century”

LA Times (Oct. 24, 1971): “New Ice Age Coming—It’s Already Getting Colder”

Brown Science Dept. to the White House (1972): “Deep concern with the future of the world...falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age.”

The Guardian (1974): “Spy Satellites Show New Ice Age is Coming Fast”

Time Magazine (April 8, 1977) front cover: “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age”

That is just a sampling and could be multiplied exponentially. But then, the 1980s arrived. The Marxist Soviet Union began teetering, and by the end of the decade, was in full-scale collapse. Marxism was proven wrong, their globalist ideology in ashes, and all orthodox Marxists gave up their religion. Right?

Not so much. Actually, all they did was change colors—from red to green.

In the 1980s, the shift to man-made global warming began. Evidence was accruing that the planet, as a whole, was warming. That had happened many times throughout history and shouldn’t have been big news or alarming. Earth has been gradually warming since the Ice Age 10-15,000 years ago (land bridge between Russia and Alaska?).

The key, however, in the 1980s, was the addition of “man-made” to “global warming.” This time, (unlike in Jefferson’s day), it was humanity’s fault. We were making the climate warm up and it was up to us (world governments) to stop it. And we only had a few years to do it. Evidence:

AP (1989): “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Salon (quoting NASA’s Jim Hanson, 1989): “The West Side Highway [along the Hudson River] will be under water [within 20 to 30 years].”

The Independent (2000): “Snow is starting to disappear from our lives...Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Like Thomas Jefferson hardly ever saw it anymore, either.

The Guardian (2004): “Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.” I’m a little confused about this one. I thought Siberia was cold.

The Great Genius Al Gore (2007): “The North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by 2013 because of man-made global warming.” Has anyone swam by the North Pole lately?

NBC News (2006): “Leading U.S. climate researcher says the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe.” I guess it’s too late now.

AP (2008): “In five to ten years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.” Still waiting 15 years later.

These rather inaccurate predictions could also be multiplied. But we can see that the earth has gone from global warming (1700s) to global cooling (mid-20th century) and back to global warming (since the 1980s)—this time caused by humans. And, of course, the only solution is the one world government that Marxists have dreamed of all along.

Having spent many years working in American academia, I learned that the “publish or perish” mentality (especially among “major” universities) is real. Government grant money is lusted for and is in no way insignificant. The problem is, politically correct articles are essential. There exists no chance of publication if orthodoxy is challenged; tenure might be denied and jobs might be lost. The pressure to conform is enormous.

Hence, the “consensus” is established, is always right, and no one (in America) challenges it. For example, Darwinism (though any anti-Christian screed is acceptable). Or the Covid-19 vaccine and mask “science." And, of course, climate change. I suspect most climatologists know that, at best, the evidence for “man-made climate change” is tenuous. But scientists are human, too, and they love their cushy jobs and rising influence. And the universities want the money. So don’t challenge canon doctrine.

It also doesn’t hurt that industry is now pouring billions into the climate change hoax. It matters not if climate change is actually happening. Money is money is money, and if money can be made, any lie, swindle, or fraud will do. Covid proved that. Climate change is here to stay for awhile, folks.

The Left totally controls the global propaganda machine now. Turning that around will be a monumental task.

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2023/04/10/from-global-warming-to-global-cooling-to-global-warming-n2621739

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Germans Are Getting Mugged by Reality of Green Energy

When one of us (Mackenzie Fries) visited Germany last month, she saw firsthand the cost of the nation’s environmental policies, and it was staggering. Germans continue to complain about the ever-increasing energy costs that result from those policies, a major source of discontent.

The nation has been phasing out conventional fuels and phasing in less reliable, less abundant renewable energy sources, resulting in higher prices, shortages, and a greater reliance on adversarial nations like Russia and China. The country’s trials should prove to be a vital lesson for those of us in the United States.

Sebastian Lehnerer, a Berlin native, related, “The impact [of the energy crisis] is easy to say, I just have a lot less money. I now pay a quarter more in electricity since the Ukraine war started. The annual Warmmiete [warm rent] that I pay, which covers rent, heating, and hot water, is now 20% higher, not including the additional costs I have to pay at the end of the year. There are some people using only natural gas as a heating source who are paying 55% more.”

Energy prices have increased by 28% compared to February 2022. In the last year, natural gas prices have risen 39% and electricity prices have risen 27%.

Food prices increased by 23%, and the price of pork rose by 59%. The most shocking change was the almost doubling of sugar prices.

In terms of inflation, Lehnerer stated that prices are much higher than reported: “Flour is 100% more expensive. Many bakeries are going out of business because of the high electricity prices and expensive flour.”

Lehnerer also discussed restrictions for using carbon-based fuels in Germany, saying “The [former German Chancellor Angela] Merkel regime placed an additional carbon tax on car gasoline a few years ago. Every year, the gas tax increases.” In addition, he mentioned that individuals pay higher yearly car taxes depending on the amount of carbon their car produces.

The problem is not only that Germany was hit by the disruption in Russia’s natural gas supplies because of the Russia-Ukraine war. The greater issue lies in Germany’s efforts to phase out its own domestic resources of nuclear and coal-fired power. The majority of Germany’s nuclear plants have been closed in the last decade.

These energy problems ultimately caused Merkel to resign as chancellor after significant public backlash. The coalition government Merkel headed shut down nearly all of Germany’s nuclear plants following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant catastrophe.

Merkel’s closure of power plants made the country even more reliant on foreign natural gas supplies from Russia. The war in Ukraine simply brought the consequences of Germany’s green energy policies to the surface.

The resulting reductions in emissions in Germany comprise only a tiny fraction of global emissions. Germany’s emissions of 675 million tons of carbon dioxide account for less than 2% of the total 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year. Germans are ultimately being taxed for little global gain.

Germany’s nuclear exit signaled its growing weakness as it shifted away from cultivating greater energy independence. The nation has transitioned from relying on Russia for its natural gas to relying on China for solar panels and wind turbines. Ninety-five percent of the solar cells in Germany are manufactured in China. In addition, more than 50% of the raw materials used to construct wind turbines are sourced from China.

This past July, the German Bundestag passed the Onshore Wind Energy Act to ramp up the construction of wind turbines across the country. Germany’s green technology policies are only driving the country into the hands of China—and its reliance on wind is raising the price of electricity and slowing the economy.

A Daily Signal report on energy states that “renewable energy (i.e., wind, solar, biofuels, and hydropower) only accounted for 14% of the EU’s electricity mix, nuclear accounted for 10%, and conventional fuels (i.e., natural gas, oil, and coal) accounted for 76%.” American officials have long warned European countries to diversify their energy supplies and that renewable energy was not a reliable replacement for conventional fuels.

Germany should not rely on either China or Russia for something as critical as its energy supply. Countries need to be able to care for themselves and maintain their energy independence. The current German government is shooting itself in the foot by continuing to impose laws to destroy all coal power plants and nuclear power plants in the wake of its ongoing energy crisis—precisely when it needs them most.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/06/germanys-green-energy-debacle-should-be-warning-to-us/ ?

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Climate Science Shock: Methane’s Unexpected Cooling Impact Unveiled

UC Riverside researchers found that methane not only traps heat in the atmosphere but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat. Methane’s absorption of shortwave energy counterintuitively causes a cooling effect and suppresses the increase in precipitation by 60%. This finding emphasizes the need to incorporate all known effects of greenhouse gases into climate models.

Most climate models do not yet account for a new University of California, Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat.

Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.

“A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because the blanket inhibits your body’s ability to send its heat into the air. This is the same concept,” explained Robert Allen, UCR assistant professor of Earth sciences.

In addition to absorbing longwave energy, it turns out methane also absorbs incoming energy from the sun, known as shortwave energy. “This should warm the planet,” said Allen, who led the research project. “But counterintuitively, the shortwave absorption encourages changes in clouds that have a slight cooling effect.”

Methane Long and Shortwave Effects

This effect is detailed in the journal Nature Geoscience, alongside a second finding that the research team did not fully expect. Though methane generally increases the amount of precipitation, accounting for the absorption of shortwave energy suppresses that increase by 60%.

Both types of energy — longwave (from Earth) and shortwave (from sun) — escape from the atmosphere more than they are absorbed into it. The atmosphere needs compensation for the escaped energy, which it gets from heat created as water vapor condenses into rain, snow, sleet, or hail.

“Essentially, precipitation acts as a heat source, making sure the atmosphere maintains a balance of energy,” said study co-author Ryan Kramer, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Methane changes this equation. By holding on to energy from the sun, methane is introducing heat the atmosphere no longer needs to get from precipitation.

Additionally, methane shortwave absorption decreases the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface. This in turn reduces the amount of water that evaporates. Generally, precipitation and evaporation are equal, so a decrease in evaporation leads to a decrease in precipitation.

“This has implications for understanding in more detail how methane and perhaps other greenhouses gases can impact the climate system,” Allen said. “Shortwave absorption softens the overall warming and rain-increasing effects but does not eradicate them at all.”

The research team discovered these findings by creating detailed computer models simulating both longwave and shortwave methane effects. Going forward, they would like to conduct additional experiments to learn how different concentrations of methane would impact the climate.

Scientific interest in methane has increased in recent years as levels of emissions have increased. Much comes from industrial sources, as well as from agricultural activities and landfill. Methane emissions are also likely to increase as frozen ground underlying the Arctic begins to thaw.

“It’s become a major concern,” said Xueying Zhao, UCR Earth and planetary sciences Ph.D. student and study co-author. “We need to better understand the effects all this methane will bring us by incorporating all known effects into our climate models.”

Kramer echoes the need for further study. “We’re good at measuring the concentration of greenhouse gases like methane in the atmosphere. Now the goal is to say with as much confidence as possible what those numbers mean to us. Work like this gets us toward that goal,” he said.

https://scitechdaily.com/climate-science-shock-methanes-unexpected-cooling-impact-unveiled/

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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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Attribution of big wind events is just assertion

Data on tropical cyclones are among the most studied and reliable data you can find in climate science. These data are the result of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people doing the heroic work of science over more than a century.

The resulting dataset is called the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) — a monumental scientific achievement (and also one the IPCC tried to throw shade on for not providing the “right” trends, but I digress).

Thanks to IBTrACS, data on tropical cyclone incidence worldwide is readily at our fingertips.

For instance, at Colorado State University, Phil Klotzbach uses IBTrACS to keep a real-time dataset of global tropical cyclone activity that is easy for anyone to use — and I use it often. The IBTrACS data is the basis for the analyses below.

You don’t need a math degree to see that there is no upwards trend in either. In fact, we can clearly see a gradual reduction in the number of hurricanes since the mid 1990s, the exact opposite of what the IPCC and other alarmists claim.

What we are looking at today, however, is the ratio of the bottom line to the top line — the proportion of all tropical cyclones of hurricane strength that are major hurricanes.

Well there we have it, there has been an increase in the proportion of major hurricanes since 1980. That must be ‘climate change’, right? Case closed?

Not at all.

You’ll note that the time series above starts in 1980. That is when the IBTrACS dataset has global coverage. It is also right in the middle of a decade-plus period where hurricane activity was extremely low, perhaps even the lowest in centuries.

Starting any trend analysis in 1980 for tropical cyclones is thus very likely to result in upward trends, but that doesn’t mean that they are the result of human-caused ‘climate change’.

Here it is important to revisit how the IPCC defines the detection of a change in climate:

Detection of change is defined as the process of demonstrating that climate or a system affected by climate has changed in some defined statistical sense, without providing a reason for that change.

An identified change is detected in observations if its likelihood of occurrence by chance due to internal variability alone is determined to be small, for example, <10 percent.

To conclude that a variable has changed requires demonstrating that a trend in observed statistics goes beyond that which might be observed within the variability of those data.

Otherwise, we risk misidentifying noise or internal variability as a change in the system. Climate data can be highly variable over many different time scales — this of course is why cherry-picking data can be problematic, but also appealing to the mischievous.

Fortunately, on tropical cyclones much data predates 1980, allowing us to explore in-depth internal variability in tropical cyclone occurrence and how apparent trends compare to that variability.

Specifically, there are longer-term data on tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic and Western North Pacific — NA and WNP, which represent about 50 percent of all global activity — dating back to 1950.

Let’s take a look at what those data show.

As we would expect, these time series are highly correlated, since the latter comprises 50 percent of the former.

We can conclude with some confidence that trends in the proportion of major hurricanes in the NA & WNP combined make for a good proxy for trends in the proportion of major hurricanes at the overall global level.

From 1950 to 2022, there is no upward trend in the proportion of major hurricanes. In fact, if you look closely at the red line, there is a slight decrease.

But if you start an analysis in the 1970s or 1980s, you will get an upward trend.

So where does all this leave us? Well, here is a cherry-picker’s guide to the proportion of major hurricanes:

Want to show an increase? Start your analysis in 1980.
Want to show no trends? Start your analysis in 1950.
Want to show a decrease? Start your analysis in 2002.

More seriously, what does the scientific community conclude when a climate time series does not indicate trends outside the bounds of observed variability?

Detection has not been achieved.

That means there is no trend to attribute. Neither detection nor attribution has been achieved.

The IPCC AR6 failed spectacularly on tropical cyclones in concluding that both detection and attribution have not only been achieved related to an increasing proportion of major hurricanes but that such conclusions have strengthened since 2014.

This is all fiction, misinformation even. Yes, I know these are strong words. The IPCC is far too important to allow errors of this magnitude.

This is what the IPCC and other organisations do. They pick low points to start their graphs, which will always show an upward trend.

This can only be seen as either total incompetence, or a deliberate deception.

https://principia-scientific.com/climate-expert-misinformation-in-the-ipcc-part-2/

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Biden’s newest nominee vows to use loophole to push climate agenda

The Biden administration is pushing an aggressive climate agenda and has no problem spending taxpayer money to do it.

The latest example of this comes from the little-known Department of Transportation safety subagency, where Biden’s nominee to lead the agency privately boasted that she would use her position to push climate policies.

Ann Carlson, an environmental law expert, was recruited by the Biden-Harris transition team in early January 2021 to serve as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) chief counsel, according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO).

In her position, Carlson has overseen key agency initiatives like the modification of fuel economy standards and has served as acting administrator since September.

She boasted to colleagues at UCLA Law in January 2021 that “the agency is in charge of climate standards for cars and trucks, which is why they have recruited me for the position.”

Days later, she wrote to board members of UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, similarly boasting of the climate policymaking potential at NHTSA, saying “I view my appointment (and a number of others) as evidence that the Biden Administration is truly committed to a ‘whole of government’ approach to addressing climate change.”

In August 2021, Biden signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department to issue regulations on fuel efficiency and emissions standards, and the NHTSA unveiled ambitious new standards that it acknowledged would cost automakers about $236.5 billion and eventually make cars $1,000 more expensive.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., the current chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the regulations “will only add to the cost of new cars, depriving people of safe, affordable vehicles.”

But that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from pushing their climate agenda. Carlson also reportedly helped coordinate high-profile climate nuisance lawsuits filed by a dark money-fueled law firm against fossil fuel companies in 2017 and 2018.

This whole situation is outrageous. The Biden administration is spending taxpayer money to ram through a climate agenda that was never voted on and goes against the will of the taxpayers. It’s also a huge waste of money and resources that could be used to help the American people in other ways.

What’s worse is that this administration is also pushing for stricter gun control laws, which goes against the 2nd Amendment. It’s clear that this administration is out of touch with the American people and their priorities.

If Biden and his team really wanted to do something about climate change, they should focus on policies that would actually make a difference, like investing in clean energy technology and incentivizing businesses to reduce their emissions. Spending taxpayer money on costly regulations is not only ineffective, it’s also fiscally irresponsible.

https://libertyonenews.com/bidens-newest-nominee-vows-to-use-loophole-to-push-climate-agenda/

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Ageing multi-storey car parks 'could collapse' under the weight of heavier electric vehicles

Multi-storey car parks across the UK could be at risk of collapsing due to the weight of electric vehicles, experts warn.

Electric cars, which are roughly twice as heavy as standard models, could cause serious damage to car park floors with especially older, unloved structures most at risk of buckling.

New guidance is now being developed recommending higher load bearing weights to accommodate the heavier vehicles.

Chris Whapples, a structural engineer and car park consultant, is at the forefront of these new measures which are due to be published in the coming weeks.

'I don’t want to be too alarmist, but there definitely is the potential for some of the early car parks in poor condition to collapse,' he told The Telegraph.

The weight of electric vehicles could cause the collapse of multi-storey car parks across the UK +3
The weight of electric vehicles could cause the collapse of multi-storey car parks across the UK

'Operators need to be aware of electric vehicle weights, and get their car parks assessed from a strength point of view, and decide if they need to limit weight.'

Most of the nation’s 6,000 multi-storey and underground facilities were built according to guidance based on the weight of popular cars of 1976, including the Mk 3 Ford Cortina.

But the electric cars currently on the UK market are far bulkier. For instance, the best-selling Tesla Model 3 weighs 2.2 tons fully loaded, making it more than 50 per cent heavier than a 1.4-tonne Cortina.

Electric vehicles are heavier predominantly because of the batteries used to power them, and the reinforced framework and suspension needed to accommodate them.

Hugo Griffiths, an investigative journalist, warned last year: 'Cars have been getting heavier for some time now. Back in the 1970s, a family car like the Ford Cortina weighed less than 1,000kg, while the original Range Rover was a tonne or so lighter than its modern-day counterpart.

'Consumer demand and technological advancements have seen a rise in the number of creature comforts fitted to cars, with features including electric windows and climate control piling on the pounds.

'Safety improvements have also led to increasing weights. Side-impact bars, airbags, laminated glass and traction-control systems help prevent collisions or reduce their severity, but features that make cars safer also tend to increase their mass.

'Added to this is the push towards electrification: a petrol engine might weigh 150kg or so, while an EV battery pack can easily come in at 500kg.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11956197/Ageing-multi-storey-car-parks-collapse-weight-heavier-electric-vehicles.html

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A green hydrogen fantasy in Australia

Green hydrogen is to renewable energy enthusiasts what gold was to ancient alchemists: the universal panacea that frees the human soul from disease and corruptibility and transports it to a perfect and everlasting state. They believe it holds the key to turning dilute, fickle sources of energy, such as solar and wind, into something vaguely useful.

That is the view of Andrew Forrest, a miner turned born-again renewable energy entrepreneur. Forrest’s company, Squadron Energy, is Australia’s biggest player in weather-dependent renewable energy. He is on record as predicting that renewables could squeeze coal out of the market by the end of the decade. But the real breakthrough will come with the development of green hydrogen, which, he claims, is Australia’s greatest resource.

“To make it, all you need to do is run electricity through water,” he told a Clean Energy Council summit in 2021. Water is the easy part. Generating the eye-watering quantity of electricity needed is a more formidable challenge.

Let’s assume global demand for hydrogen reaches 300Mt by 2050 and that the green energy superpower Australia is going to become produces one-15th of that total, as an influential Deloitte report suggests is possible. That would require about 900TW of electricity, which is roughly 3½ times Australia’s current annual output. The absurdity of the numbers sends green hydrogen into dreamy land even before we confront Forrest’s insistence that we do it with two hands tied behind our back.

For Forrest, the only genuinely green electricity is generated by weather-dependent renewable energy. The Minerals Council canvasses carbon capture and storage as an option but Forrest reckons that would be cheating.

Yet no amount of Forrest’s spin can overcome the iron law of energy density. Coal requires 25 square metres to generate a megawatt of electricity. A modern small modular nuclear reactor requires less than one square metre. A wind turbine plant typically requires more than 2000 square metres per megawatt, which means that even in a country as vast as Australia, the supply of available land is quickly exhausted.

In Queensland, where Squadron Energy is investing billions of dollars, wind and solar developments are being pushed beyond the boundaries of farmland into native scrub. In a rational world, Apple’s announcement last week that it was pulling out of a deal to purchase energy from Squadron’s proposed wind plant in the Upper Burdekin would be the beginning of the end for unreliable renewables.

An environmental assessment, released in December, found that 769 hectares of koala habit would be destroyed if the development goes ahead. It would involve the clearance of 662ha of Sharman’s rock wallaby habitat, 709ha of greater glider habitat and 754ha of habit that provides sanctuary for the red goshawk.

That a wind turbine development should even be considered on such a sensitive site shows how desperate the sector has become. Pushing renewables in such far-flung territory adds considerably to the cost. It requires wide roads to be cut through hillsides and the bulldozing of native tree, plus extra transmission lines.

The sheer weight of minerals needed for the construction of wind and solar plants brings other challenges, as Siemens Energy chief executive Christian Bruch acknowledged. “Never forget, renewables like wind roughly need 10 times the material (compared to) what conventional technologies need,” he said. “If you have problems on the supply chain, it hits wind extremely hard.”

Squadron’s Upper Burdekin development was already looking less profitable after it was forced to reduce the number of turbines from 139 to 80. Add to that the opprobrium foisted upon it by Apple’s withdrawal and the project looks to be in trouble. The kind of hydrogen Forrest is proposing is only green in the sense that it is technologically unripe.

Current international demand is so low as to be effectively non-existent compared to our exports of natural gas and coal. If international demand starts to accelerate, what’s to stop others cornering the market? The competitive advantage will belong to the jurisdiction with the cheapest electricity, and that’s not going to be Australia.

It’s little wonder that many with an eye on the capital markets are wondering if green hydrogen will ever get off the ground. In February, a meeting of federal, state and territory industry ministers called for the 2019 green hydrogen strategy to be “revised and refreshed” in the light of international developments.

President Joe Biden’s absurdly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act offers $US580bn of incentives for green innovation. Guy Debelle, a former Reserve Bank deputy governor, warned that Australia is at risk of being left behind by countries with generous subsidies, lower renewable energy costs and closer access to major industrial markets. He said the government would have to devote at least $15bn in public funds to counter a global hydrogen “subsidy arms race”.

A head somewhat cooler than the one sitting on the shoulders of the federal Energy Minister might conclude that this isn’t a fight Australia needs to be in. It would be better to focus our attention on the green economy games we can win; lithium, for example, where we are the world’s largest exporter; rare earths, where we’re the world’s second-largest producer; or cobalt, where we rank third.

Arriving at that conclusion, however, requires clear strategic thinking, indifferent to headlines and uncontaminated by hype. Policy formation in the 24-hour media cycle rarely happens that way

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/shoddy-strategy-behind-nations-green-hydrogen-fantasy/news-story/8ba3c892e92dc9dd6d5544190429ec7f

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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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Climate maniacs missing the forest for the trees

All the resources going into chasing “net zero” policies across the West are wasted in more ways than one.

The obvious one is that it all involves lots of pain for very little real gain when it comes to slowing climate change, since China, India and the developing world aren’t on board.

Worse, the passion distracts from the need to face actually looming environmental threats now confronting humanity.

Like overfishing.

That’s a genuine, short-term problem, one that could bring with it imminent catastrophe by disrupting marine food chains.

It has nothing — literally zero — to do with carbon emissions.

It can be solved by implementing policies that encourage fish farming and punish excessive drag fishing.

Not by forcing us all to use LED bulbs and eat mealworms.

Then there’s food waste.

By some analyses, as much as one-third of all food intended for humans now goes to waste.

That’s another massive environmental crisis, one that has nothing to do with carbon.

Its solutions lie with smart local network efforts and business innovation.

Or consider the insect collapse.

Global insect populations are dropping by as much as 2.5% a year.

No serious green thinker blames that on warming, and the risks it poses — mass plant death and subsequent planetary starvation — are far greater.

Green maniacs are actually causing terrible environmental problems, too. Like with solar, one of the chief renewables pushed by climate fanatics.

Turns out that the waste generated by the production of solar panels — which is 300 times as toxic as nuclear waste, and which is usually shipped from the rich countries that buy the panels to desperately poor ones — poses major health risks, all while solar does almost nothing to combat emissions.

And that’s to say nothing of green efforts to close down nuclear plants, forcing coal plants to come back online (at least 20 are being resurrected in Germany alone).

Look: Climate change is a risk, but it’s a long-term, moderate one.

Per the United Nations, as Bjorn Lomborg has noted, the cost of climate change by the 2070s will be equivalent to a per capita .2% to 2% loss of income. In other words, a moderate recession (albeit taking place in a much richer world).

That’s a legitimate, concerning risk.

But combating it doesn’t justify the wholesale reorganization of society, or keeping poor nations poor by denying them cheap energy.

Pushing to move from coal to LNG in developing nations and to build out nuclear capacity in developed ones would be a good start for those actually concerned.

But for greens, that’s a huge no-no.

So their focus on carbon emissions is not only causing the policies they advocate to miss real and immediate threats.

It’s making us all much worse off.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/08/climate-maniacs-missing-the-forest-for-the-trees/

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The Death of a Wind Farm

What can one wind facility in Southwestern Minnesota tell us about the state of the American electric grid? Quite a lot, actually.

In 2007, Minnesota began its quest to power the state with wind turbines and solar panels when the Next Generation Energy Act (NGEA) was signed into law, which mandated that 25 percent of the state’s electricity come from "renewable" energy sources by 2025.

These mandates, along with generous federal tax subsidies and monopoly utilities seeking to maximize their government-approved profits by building new infrastructure, led to a building boom in wind turbines and solar panels. From 2007 through 2021, Minnesota built thousands of wind turbines totaling 3,555 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, and 1,093.5 MW of solar capacity en route to meeting the mandates in 2020, five years ahead of schedule.

However, many of the turbines built to comply with the 25 percent mandate are already being refurbished or “repowered,” long before the end of their supposed 25-year useful lives. In fact, one of these wind facilities, the Nobles wind farm, has already been repowered after just 12 years in service.

But why was Nobles refurbished more than a decade before the end of its useful life at a cost of $240 million? The official reason provided by Xcel Energy for repowering Nobles was to spur economic activity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and extend the retirement date of the facility from the year 2035 to 2045.

This story makes for good newspaper headlines, but the data tell a very different story. Digging deeper into the reasons surrounding Xcel’s decision to repower the Nobles facility illustrates how our state and federal energy policies are causing America’s energy decisions to grow increasingly irrational.

What is repowering and why does it occur?

To fully understand the depth and gravity of this situation and why it has a profound impact on energy policy moving forward, it’s helpful to take a closer look at what repowering is and why it is done.

Repowering is the process of retrofitting or replacing wind turbines in full (full repowering), or in part (partial repowering). Full repowering is the act of completely decommissioning smaller existing wind turbines at a facility and replacing them with larger, but typically fewer, wind turbines.

Partial repowering is the most common form of repowering, and it consists of replacing portions of old turbines, such as the gearbox, hub, main shaft, bearing assembly, rotor, and blades, while maintaining the original steel toners and concrete foundations.

New gearboxes can be needed because the bearings responsible for converting the relatively slow rotations of a turbine’s blades into the high speeds needed to generate electricity can develop cracks, reducing the wind turbine’s efficiency. Larger rotors and longer blades are frequently placed on the original steel towers to increase the wingspan of the wind tower, thus allowing it to access more wind energy and convert it to electricity.

All of these actions help increase the productivity of wind turbines, but the biggest reason that companies seek to repower wind turbines has nothing to do with how they perform, and everything to do with money. Repowering wind projects allows them to requalify for the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), a lucrative federal subsidy that expires after the first 10 years of a project’s life.

It should come as no surprise, then, that data from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the wind facilities repowered in 2021 ranged in age from 9 to 16 years old with the median age being 10 years. In essence, the lucrative federal subsidies paid to wind turbine operators are creating a perverse incentive to prematurely refurbish or replace wind projects long before the end of their useful lifetimes, including the Nobles wind project in Minnesota.

https://www.gridbrief.com/p/guest-feature-death-wind-farm

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A Belated Reckoning as Climate Act Costs Become Apparent

Four years after passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, NY state officials have finally begun to take a close look at the law’s consumer costs, and they don’t like what they see.

According to DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos, these costs could be “extraordinary,” such as a 62-cent increase per gallon of gasoline and an 80 percent increase in the price of natural gas, a devastating blow to the 60 percent of New York households that heat with gas.

Governor Hochul and state Senator Kevin Parker are scrambling to reduce those costs by changing how methane is accounted for under the Climate Act. The Act requires the use of a 20-year timeframe, while Hochul and Parker want to switch to the 100-year standard used by the federal government and 48 other states.

Under the 20-year time frame, each ton of methane emitted is calculated as equivalent to around 80 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), while on a 100-year basis, each ton of methane is equivalent to only about 25 tons of CO2. Understood this way, it’s easy to see that eliminating the equivalent of 80 tons of CO2 is more costly than eliminating only 20 tons worth.

And barring some other creative policymaking, these costs are likely to be passed onto consumers.

This belated recognition of the Climate Act’s consumer costs reflects the state’s failure from the beginning to seriously address how the law might affect New Yorkers’ wallets.

The Act was enacted in such a rush that neither the legislature nor then-Governor Andrew Cuomo bothered to produce any estimate of its fiscal and economic impacts, as the Empire Center pointed out during that process.

But they seem to have suspected the impacts would be substantial, because while the original draft of the bill required a scoping plan to be released by July 2022—just ahead of the legislative and gubernatorial elections—the final draft moved that deadline to the politically safer date of January 1, 2023.

A cost study may have been completed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) under a promise by Cuomo to identify “the most rapid, cost-effective, and responsible pathway to reach 100 percent renewable energy statewide.” But when the Empire Center filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for this study, the agencies declined to provide it.

And when the Empire Center won an initial court order requiring the agencies to share the study, the agencies won on appeal by claiming that the study was not complete.

It’s uncertain whether this study ever was completed. And in March of this year NYSERDA again refused an Empire Center FOIL request for any internal cost-benefit analyses, despite an implicit admission that such a document exists.

An overall cost-benefit analysis was prepared by an outside consultant for the Climate Action Council as it worked on the Act’s Scoping Plan, but that study has many problems. Not least of those problems is that it was based on assumptions that were neither required by the Climate Act nor adopted by the Climate Action Council. That is to say, the policies assumed for that study are not necessarily those New York is actually implementing.

And when some members of the Council asked for a consumer cost analysis of the Act, co-chairs Seggos and Doreen Harris, President and CEO of NYSERDA, refused their request.

Now, at last, Seggos admits, “There hasn’t been a deep dive into costs . . . That’s what we are beginning to look at now.” But rather than acknowledge that they failed to do due diligence up front, the proposed change in accounting methods is argued as simply bringing the state into compliance with “internationally accepted best practices.”

However, Climate Action Council member and Cornell University climate expert Robert Howarth scoffs at the claim that a 100-year time frame is best practice. He argues that it is a scientifically archaic approach adopted when we had less understanding of methane’s heat-trapping potential. “The science since then,” he says, “has demonstrated that it severely under accounts for the climatic risk from methane emissions,” which have a much greater global warming potential than CO2.

Howarth has the better argument on which time frame is state of the art, but while countering climate change is one important value, the costs—both economic and political—of doing so are another. Even if the economic benefits ultimately outweigh the costs—a big if—people will feel the costs first and most immediately, which could create substantial political costs for the Hochul administration.

The administration, then, is finally coming to grips with the reality that while most New Yorkers support the Climate Act in the abstract, they also express a very limited willingness to pay for it. They have run headlong into the Iron Law of Climate Policy, which says that “when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time.”

Or as an op-ed penned by Seggos and Harris succinctly puts it, “Fighting climate change won’t work if people and businesses can’t afford it.”

But if the state had done its homework ahead of time—if it had analyzed the potential consumer costs before passing the law, or if the Climate Action Council had acted on its members’ request to do so—we could have had a more serious discussion about how to affordably reduce greenhouse gas emissions much earlier in this multi-year process.

https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/a-belated-reckoning-as-climate-act-costs-become-apparent/

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Australian scientists discover special crab to fix Great Barrier Reef coral destruction

Queensland scientists have made a landmark discovery that could save the Great Barrier Reef from its most dangerous coral predators – the crown-of-thorns starfish.

The deadly starfish can devour up to 90 per cent of living coral tissue, and has contributed to an estimated 40 per cent of coral loss on the reef.

Scientists from the University of Queensland have now found a special species of crab which can eat the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) before it reaches adulthood and begins feasting on the endangered coral habitat.

A team of biological scientists from the University of Queensland including researcher Amelia Desbiens, tested more than 100 species of crab, shrimp, worm, snail and small fish to see which creatures were potential COTS predators.

To their surprise, they discovered the red decorator crab had an impressive appetite for COTS. “You can’t imagine our excitement, we were beyond stoked,” Ms Desbiens said.

“We cast a wide net and to find such a voracious predator – each red decorator crab devoured more than five COTS per day while most other species barely ate a single one.

“It’s one of the best predators of COTS we’ve seen and could be a natural buffer against future outbreaks on the reef.”

Prior to the red decorator crab revelation, scientists held little knowledge of which COTS predators were most effective, with few animals able to eat adult COTS due to their ability to defend themselves with their toxic spines.

The new discovery is expected to help scientists rebalance the Great Barrier Reef’s natural predator ecosystem, with the crab able to effectively limit COTS mass-reproduction and population outbreaks.

“There’s already an extensive COTS culling program along the barrier reef and I can see this research fitting into the program ... which is really exciting,” Ms Desbiens said.

“The reef has already faced a lot of stress for climate induced issues, hopefully culling can provide a bit of relief from those other stresses.

“The next step is to look for the predators across other (reef) locations further than Heron Island and start searching for these crabs in places where the COTS outbreaks have been a real problem. Redirect our attention to more vulnerable areas.”

UQ senior research author Dr Kenny Wolfe agreed, saying scientists were now “on the right path” to addressing the COTS outbreaks along the severely damaged coral reef.

“We’d like to conduct broader surveys on the Great Barrier Reef across areas with and without outbreaks to evaluate whether the presence of this crab can help predict the chance of COTS gaining a foothold,” Dr Wolfe said.

“This preliminary study sets us on the right path to resolving the role naturally existing predators could play in controlling COTS outbreaks.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/uq-scientists-discover-special-crab-to-fix-great-barrier-reef-coral-destruction/news-story/5c927e05e7f05a344a7602b2468e0bba

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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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ESG Scores: The Problematic Grift

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement is being proactively challenged in the private sector, state legislatures, and in Congress.

What explains this? First, it won’t save the planet. Secondly, it’s political and hostile to conservative or independent views. And most troubling of all, its framework is antithetical to free market economics since it forces behaviors on the public.

ESG, unsurprisingly, has morphed into a pernicious ideology. Its reporting regime—specifically the scoring system— is similarly worthy of scrutiny since corporations reportedly pay upwards of $500,000 to attain good ESG scores.

The sustainability consultancy firm ERM issued a revealing report entitled Rate the Raters 2023: ESG Ratings at a Crossroads, exposing the industry’s controversial reporting practices.

As I noted on Independent Women’s Forum’s blog, publicly traded companies “spend an average of $220,000 and $480,000 annually to boost their ESG ratings compared to private companies (which pay between $220,000 and $480,000 annually). In contrast, investors spend an average of $175,00 to $360,000 annually to improve their standing.”

An August 2022 Stanford University study entitled “ESG Ratings: A Compass without Direction” found they are prone to vast shortcomings. The study concluded, “We find that while ESG rating providers may convey important insights into the nonfinancial impact of companies, significant shortcomings exist in their objectives, methodologies, and incentives which detract from the informativeness of their assessments.” The Wall Street Journal also stressed that ESG ratings, at best, are subjective opinions.

Are high ESG scores reflective of real-life behavior and practices? The evidence suggests the opposite is true. Before their respective collapses, both FTX and Silicon Valley Bank –coincidentally enough– boasted about high marks on sustainability and equity. The former even garnered a higher rating on factors like leadership and governance compared to oil giant Exxon Mobil. And three nations - Ghana, Sri Lanka, and the Netherlands - boasting near-perfect ESG scores collapsed or were on the verge of going under after adopting green bonds and banning fertilizer—policies aligned with the “E” prong.

Recently, ESG reporting has manifested in other ways, like monitoring biodiversity impact and even rating chocolate companies.

During the 15th annual United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada, last December, signatories agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to advance a global, whole government policy to conserve 30% of “waters” and 30% of “lands” by 2030. (Biden’s “America the Beautiful” initiative mirrors the U.N.’s plan with its own 30-by-30 initiative.) Contained in the agreement is a call to action for corporations to start tracking biodiversity impact as they do carbon emissions.

Naturally, these guidelines were devised by the International Sustainability Standards Board and are aimed at supplementing existing climate disclosure frameworks already commonplace in ESG reporting.

Expanding disclosures to account for “ risks, dependencies and impacts” for biodiversity is arguably harder to track and extremely infeasible. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

ESG reporting is also coming for your favorite chocolate brands. An organization called Be Slavery Free is behind the hottest list out there, The Chocolate Scorecard, that rates “good eggs” and “rotten eggs” in the chocolate industry on sustainability. Their website says their team consists of “universities, consultants, and civil society groups engaging in transforming the chocolate industry.”

They score a company based on whether or not they align their business goals with the scorecard’s methodology. Metrics include “traceability and transparency,” “living income,” “deforestation and climate,” and “child and slave labor,” among those listed.

They deemed Walmart and General Mills their “cracked eggs” of 2023.

“We believe that all companies selling chocolate products should be able to provide the information requested in the survey,” the methodology paper said. “Consumers and investors have a right to be informed about the conditions under which chocolate is produced.”

Like other ESG scoring metrics, the report’s methodology is flawed and may ignore bad company behavior if they check the right boxes.

What’s the takeaway from ESG and its accompanying scores? These funds have a demonstrably low return on investment, while ESG reporting firms similarly suffer credibility problems. As the aforementioned Stanford study explains, “Unfortunately, it is rare for rating providers to offer concrete, systematic evidence to back up claims about their ratings.”

That isn’t stopping the Biden administration, however, from adopting its own policy on climate risk assessment by executive order.

Although the term has gotten so toxic, its proponents are urging people to use nice-sounding alternatives like “freedom to invest” and “responsible investing.” But as the Economist observed, it’s a deeply broken system steeped in sanctimoniousness.

ESG’s brand and scoring system is rightly being scrutinized by business people and a growing number of bipartisan lawmakers. Let’s hope more come out against it.

https://townhall.com/columnists/gabriellahoffman/2023/04/07/esg-scores-the-problematic-grift-n2621678

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Energy chinks in America's armor

In a rapidly changing world stage, America’s obsession with climate change, Net Zero emissions, and eradicating fossil fuel products, while transitioning to just electricity from renewables that manufacture nothing for humanity, are exposing chinks in our national security armor.

Voters, policy makers, and legislators need to focus on what that is doing to our military, and for our military preparedness, our national security, and our ability to prevent nuclear war.

From the shores of California’s 4th largest economy in the world these are a few chinks in its armor that expose obvious national security concerns for America:

China dominates the rare earths market used in advanced commercial and military technology, and net-zero emissions goals in wealthy developed countries.

The mining in China, Africa, and Brazil for the exotic minerals and metals required for wealthy countries to achieve their net-zero emission goals controls the earths most precious exotic minerals and metals. Those materials support wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.

With in-state refinery closures, two of which occurring under Newsom’s watch, California can look toward Asia’s 88 new refineries for manufactured oil derivatives that are the basis of most every product being used by mankind, as well as the manufactured fuels used by every transportation infrastructure, and the military.

California is the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil demands for the state, from foreign countries. That dependence, via maritime transportation from foreign nations for the state’s crude oil energy demands, has increased imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption.

Total California imports from foreign countries were more than double that of exports from California ports, with China being the number one “trading partner”.

How is it possible that the Californian economy, and America, has allowed itself to become so dependent on authoritarian countries like China, Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia over the 30 years since the end of the Cold War? The weaponization of energy by China and Russia have been extensively discussed in the three books co-authored by Ronald Stein and Todd Royal, including the 2022 Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations - Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy.

Today, the lion’s share of raw materials for wind turbines, solar panels, continue to come from China, and China-invested or China-run African, Asian and Latin American mines that are notorious for child labor, horrendous working conditions, and virtually no concern for the environment or human lives.

Even though America has bounteous oil, gas, and coal at home we have made most American mineralized and mining areas off limits – and the administration has rejected almost every proposed mining project it’s seen. America lacks the critical materials that go into wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and weapons only because the lack of environmental regulations and labor laws in foreign countries make these materials very cost effective to just import, rather than produce them at home.

Our government leaders believe that zero emissions at any cost is more important than the environmental and humanity abuses that support “clean” energy. Despite the Biden administration’s declaration that EV battery materials from China may be tainted by child labor, made with materials known to be produced with child or forced labor, America remains supportive of exploiting those in developing countries that support the “green” movement of wealthy countries.

President Joe Biden and California’s Governor Newsom continue to support subsidies to procure EV’s and build more wind and solar, when those subsidies are providing financial incentives to the developing countries mining for those “green” materials, that promotes further exploitations of poor people in developing countries.

I personally thought that Biden and Newsom had higher moral and ethical standards that would stop them from financially encouraging the exploitation of the poor in developing countries

Biden has done an excellent job of relinquishing “CONTROL” for the “green” materials to China and is actively relinquishing “CONTROL” of the crude oil supply to OPEC and Russia! Unbeknownst to President Joe Biden, is that China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are great War historians of WWI and WWII, and both know that the countries that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world!

California and Federal subsidy incentives and mandates to dismantle our proven energy and transportation infrastructures are unrealistic, and reckless as they bet our entire economic and national security on net-zero energy and transportation technologies that have no track record of working at the scale of a city, state or nation,.

Reliance on our adversaries, while the push for renewables for “just electricity”, that only generate electricity but cannot manufacture any products for the 8 billion on this planet, may be popular in politics, it is problematic in practice. That reliance on foreign sources is highly detrimental to our national security, economy and very existence.

American policies and practices that undermine hydrocarbons as a fuel source also destroy the production, availability and affordability of more than 6,000 fossil fuel derivative products essential to health, life and livelihood such as medicines, medical equipment, fertilizers, asphalt, wax, ink, clothing, recreation equipment, water pipes, antifreeze, dyes, paint, enamel, beauty products, contact lenses, telephones, sporting equipment, tires, rubbing alcohol, and nearly everything “synthetic”.

An absurd American government belief is that last year’s Inflation Reduction Act gave America’s renewable-energy industry a long, green signal.

Low carbon energy, i.e., renewables and fusion, only generate electricity, but wind, solar, and nuclear manufacture nothing for humanity.

Fossil fuels, on the other hand, manufacture everything for the 8 billion on this planet, i.e., products, and transportation fuels.

In fact, all the parts and components for wind, solar, and nuclear are made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil! Thus, ridding the world of oil will eliminate wind, solar, and nuclear!

The oil, gas, and raw material suppliers from Russia and China could well become the globally dominant force in the world over a fossil fuel-disarming America and West. God help America!

https://www.cfact.org/2023/04/06/energy-chinks-in-americas-armor/

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National Science Teaching Assn rejects climate debate

As we reported in our last message to you, the CO2 Coalition was removed from our purchased booth at the NSTA's National Conference on Science Education. If you did not see our last newsletter and you are just learning of this, we were thrown out for publicizing their anti-science position on the teaching of climate change.

CO2 Coalition Director, and Education Committee Chair, Gordon Fulks, Ph.D., succinctly penned this letter to the National Science Teaching Association Leadership: Dr. Erika Shugart, Executive Director; Dr. Eric Pyle, Retiring President; Dr. Elizabeth Mulkerrin, President; and Dr. Julie Luft, President-elect National Science Teaching Association, Arlington, VA, USA

Dear Drs. Shugart, Pyle, Mulkerrin and Luft:

I am the author of most of the CO2 Coalition's publications that your Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Ryan Foley, demanded we cease distributing at your conference in Atlanta last month. My question is simple: WHY? We paid for the exhibitor space that we utilized and were welcomed by many of your members.

What was so egregious about "Once Upon a Time," "Simon: The Solar-Powered Cat," and "The Magic Mirror" to justify such an intolerant response?

These stories were written by a Ph.D. astrophysicist, namely someone with the credentials to tackle such tasks. They are beautifully illustrated by a world-class Brazilian artist who lives near the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, Sao Paulo.

The stories were produced by a remarkable team of real scientists, most with Ph.D.s. Mr. Foley met some of our team, including Dr. Rafaella Nascimento, a Brazilian with a Ph.D. in Chemistry who runs her own business in Houston. And Mr. Foley talked with Dr. Sharon Camp, a Ph.D. Chemist who taught advanced chemistry in Atlanta high schools for many years. Both are volunteers.

Mr. Foley ordered the Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, Gregory Wrightstone, a man with a Master of Science in geology, to leave the building. When Mr. Wrightstone tried to explain that we were merely supporting the Scientific Method by emphasizing evidence over doctrine, Mr. Foley was adamant that our people had to leave.

Perhaps Mr. Foley was unhappy that we were also distributing a detailed scientific explanation of why we disagree with the National Science Teaching Association's policy supporting climate hysteria. Science is never about policy statements from organizations. It is about dialogue between properly credentialed scientists who can critique the available evidence. Amateurs can play a role, but only if they are sufficiently knowledgeable.

I was surprised to learn that Mr. Ryan Foley has no academic background in the sciences or in education, meaning that he should not be involved in passing judgments on real scientists with strong credentials.

Does he have ANY understanding that the Scientific Method dates from the 1660s, when the newly formed British Royal Society took as its motto “Nullius in verba,” meaning “Take nobody's word for it?” That expressed the determination of the Fellows to avoid the domination of authority and to make decisions based on facts derived from experiments.

This is the very foundation of science that all school children should understand and appreciate.

I am the Chairman of our Education Committee that edits and approves all the materials that we publish for children. All of our committee members have backgrounds in science, except for one who is an emeritus professor of economics. Most have Ph.D.s, two are members of the US National Academy of Sciences, several are Fellows of multiple scientific societies. One has been nominated for a Nobel Prize. Most are volunteers, and some are even donors.

This is not to say that we are necessarily correct about everything. But it does say that we have far better qualifications to address scientific topics than someone without a scientific background.

If Mr. Foley had any legitimate reason to question the publications we were distributing, he should have called in real scientists with real expertise to engage us in a constructive dialogue that would have set a good example for the teachers at your conference. They were overwhelmingly supportive of our efforts to return the discussion of climate to something scientific.

Science thrives on constructive debate but dies when non-scientists try to impose their political beliefs.

At the very least, you owe us a public apology for the bad behavior of one of your executives. You should redirect your efforts toward teaching children how to think like a scientist, NOT what to think.

Children (and their teachers) need to learn how science really works. It is evidence-based, NOT politically or religiously based. It has everything to do with consensus, in the sense that every scientific advance has come from a real scientist challenging “the consensus.” Galileo challenged the religious notion that there were only seven wanderers in the sky from which we get the seven days of the week. He observed some of the moons of Jupiter through his telescope.

We need to teach children to challenge paradigms that simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Thank you for giving this matter your attention.

Sincerely yours,

Gordon J. Fulks, (Ph.D. Physics, University of Chicago)

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Children-should-be-taught-how-to-think--NOT-what-to-think.html

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The world’s flattest batteries

The sheer stupidity of thinking that batteries can replace electricity generators

Kites are thought to have originated in China over two thousand years ago. Since the original incarnations, kites have evolved into a low-cost fun activity enjoyed by kids and adults alike. The link between ancient kites and modern batteries is tenuous but tangible – kites and renewables are equally useless on calm nights, but batteries are meant to change that for renewables.

In order to dissect the ideological policies forcing renewables and their batteries into the grid, it is necessary to test whether batteries are adequate for the task of ‘firming’. With a relatively small network occasionally isolated from the rest of the grid and plenty of hype around large batteries, South Australia is a good place to start.

Could batteries meet the electricity demands of South Australia’s slumbering 1.5 million population overnight?

Despite the lamentations of the renewable lobby and its enablers, we must consider specific periods for a simple reason – electricity is not consumed or generated in averages.

We could take the demand over a twelve-month period, find the average per day, and crow about the small amount of storage required to keep the lights on, but that would be dishonest. No design – be it bridges, boats, pipes or electricity – ever considers averages except in the most cursory terms. The extremes are the only parameters that matter. Will it fall down, will it sink, will it rupture, will it meet demand?

OpenNEM’s excellent visualisation provides near real-time visibility of supply and demand on the grid. One can select the entire NEM, or a preferred state, and analyse the types of generators that are meeting electricity demand.

Accordingly, it can be shown that South Australia’s peak summer electrical demand is around 3,000 MW, while in the comfortable shoulder months, peak demand barely nudges above 1,500 MW.

Sun and wind were absent from South Australia during the 8 hours of midnight to 8am on Tuesday March 28, 2023. Electricity demand was entirely supplied by local gas-fired generators and imports from neighbouring Victoria – itself mostly powered by three large lignite burning power stations.

In this particular 8-hour period, the state consumed 11,000 MWh of electricity with a peak of 1,553 MW. Imports from Victoria totalled 4,600 MWh, with local gas power contributing 6,300 MWh, meaning 99 per cent of electricity demand could not be met by renewables.

Could batteries have replaced 10,900 MWh of gas and imports in this period?

Batteries require a minimum of two numbers to enable basic comparisons. The first is peak instantaneous output (MW), a measure of how fast the battery can discharge. The second is the energy stored (MWh), a measure of how long it can discharge. The world’s largest battery can be found in Moss Landing, California at 400 MW / 1,600 MWh.

To calculate how many batteries are required to meet the instantaneous grid demand, we divide 1,553 MW by the peak output of the world’s biggest 400 MW battery.

1,553 / 400 = 3.88 of the world’s biggest batteries

You can’t have a portion of a big battery. Well you sort of can, but this is a quick model so we will round up to an even four batteries with 1,600 MW combined output – about 50 MW above our peak demand.

Ok, now let’s check the other number, the storage capacity in MWh.

Multiply the number of batteries by their individual MWh number to get the total MWh available from all four batteries.

4 x 1,600 MWh = 6,400 MWh

That’s significantly less than the 10,900 MWh needed.

We need to add more batteries to exceed the storage threshold, or the batteries will run out of juice before the 8 hours are up. This takes us up to six batteries. Six batteries will only supply 9,600 MWh at their combined peak output of 2,400 MW. However, a battery lasts longer if its output is below maximum, so six batteries will do the trick here.

We have established that six of the world’s biggest batteries can get sleeping South Australians through 8-hours of no wind and no sun.

Now let’s extend our thinking to the periods just outside the 8 hours. Calculations show that for those batteries to last the full 8 hours, they needed to be at least 70 per cent charged beforehand.

In the hours from 8am to 10am six of the world’s flattest batteries aren’t looking so great to morning commuters. Commuters who may take for granted that the biggest and most complex machine in the state will provide electricity for their barista-made coffees, elevators up to open plan offices, computers and lights, servers and zip boilers, printers and air-conditioning, coffee makers and fire detection systems.

It took local gas and imported coal to meet almost 90 per cent of electricity demand from 8am to 10am. There was no spare power to charge the flat batteries. In fact, across the entire day the ‘spare’ power available to charge batteries (identified as exports to Victoria) totalled just 2,000 MWh.

There is one last sting in the battery tail. One might be tempted to assume all the 2,000 MWh applied to the battery gets stored in the battery, but that’s not how these things work. Energy losses means a battery only stores about 90 per cent of the energy applied, which brings us down to 1,800 MWh. Less than 20 per cent of a full charge, lasting about 1 hour at the original conditions.

Better hope for some wind the next night, or the world’s flattest batteries won’t be much help.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/the-worlds-flattest-batteries/

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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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