The Cost of EPA's Senseless CO₂ Capture Rules

In April 24, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency passed a new rule that would require coal power plants that plan to continue operating after January 1, 2039, and new natural gas power plants that plan to begin operation on or after 2035 to capture at least 90% of their CO₂ emissions.

How much would this cost? And is it worth it?

Well, as they say, we ran the numbers. Thankfully, researchers from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have provided the cost and performance estimates for retrofitting an existing coal power plant with Shell’s CANSOLV CO₂ capture system.

For the performance and cost estimates, I will use the NETL estimates for 90% carbon capture. (Here, I am using the term “carbon capture,” rather than “CO₂ capture,” because NETL uses the mass of carbon, rather than the mass of CO₂, in its calculations.)

Before the retrofit, NETL’s baseline coal power plant had a net output of 650 megawatts (MW). But after retrofitting it with the CO₂ capture system, the power output was reduced by 24% to 495 MW. In terms of money, the retrofit cost is about $988 million, or about $2 million/MW of net power output.

What do these numbers mean for the United States?

Based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of March 2024, the United States has 148 coal power plants in operation in the electric utility sector, with an average capacity of about 139,000 MW. Of these, 36 plants plan to retire completely on or before December 2040 and 8 plants plan to retire at least one steam turbine on or before December 2034, but not entirely. Taking the difference of 148 and 36, there are 112 coal power plants in the United States without any planned retirement year, having a total average capacity of about 96,000 MW.

Using the NETL estimates, if we were to retrofit these 112 coal power plants to enable 90% carbon capture, the 24% net power output reduction would bring electricity production down to about 73,000 MW. Applying the retrofit cost of about $2 million/MW of net power output to the plants’ reduced power output, we arrive at a projected cost of about $146 billion.

Keep in mind, these estimates are only for coal power plants. We haven’t even gotten to retrofitting natural gas power plants, nor have we addressed the cost of replacing the tens of thousands of megawatts lost in the 24% production decrease of converted plants.

And what about constructing brand new natural gas power plants? How much would that cost?

Again, we turn to NETL for the estimates.

Using NETL’s baseline natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plant, the numbers provided by NETL include a cost of about $1.05 billion to construct a new 992 MW plant without CO₂ capture and a cost of about $1.87 billion to construct a new 883 MW plant with 90% carbon capture. In other words, the 78% plant cost increase comes with an 11% net power output reduction.

So, we clearly are talking about a lot of money to remove most of the carbon dioxide from our American power plants fueled by fossil fuels. But is spending the extra money to capture CO₂ worth it?

Based on the analysis performed using the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC), theoretically, if the United States ceased all CO₂ emissions in 2010, the amount of warming averted would be only about 0.07 °F by 2050 and 0.19 °F by 2100. Such a temperature difference is negligible and can hardly be felt or measured.

Furthermore, in the United States in 2022, the CO₂ emissions from coal and natural gas amounted to about 0.93 and 1.74 billion metric tons, respectively, for a total of 2.67 billion metric tons. However, the total CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes amounted to 5.06 billion metric tons. This means that the CO₂ emissions from coal and natural gas contributed to only about 53% of the total emissions. Therefore, the temperature rise averted by stopping all CO₂ emissions from burning coal and natural gas becomes even smaller compared to the above estimates from MAGICC.

Finally, besides being expensive and futile, keep in mind: Plants need CO₂, along with sunlight, water, and nutrients from the soil to produce oxygen and food, both of which are essential for all living beings.

In fact, higher concentrations of CO₂ have enabled an increase in the growth, food production, water-use efficiency and drought resistance of plants, as well as the greening of Earth, as confirmed by NASA. According to NASA, 70% of this greening is attributed to “fertilization” by CO₂.

Given the critical role CO₂ plays in driving plant and crop growth, is spending over a hundred billion dollars to remove it from the air sensible? We think not.

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/carbon-capture-coal/2024/05/06/id/1163654/

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Windless Nights Make Net Zero Impossible

It is very simple. The cost of storing electricity is so huge it makes getting through a single windless night under a net zero wind, solar, and storage plan economically impossible.

This is especially true of cold nights where blackouts can be deadly. I recently made a legislative proposal to Pennsylvania along these lines so let’s use them as our example, keeping in mind that this is true everywhere.

Pennsylvania peaks at around 30,000 MW so let’s consider a windless night with a constant need of just 20,000 MW. There should be lots of these, especially in winter. Cold snaps are typically due to windless high pressure systems of arctic air with lots of overnight radiative cooling.

In the world of solar, “nights” are 16 hours or more long since solar systems just generate a lot of energy for 8 hours a day. It is likely less in a Pennsylvania winter where it is dark at 4 pm.

So, to get through the night we need to have stored at least 20,000 MW times 16 hours or 320,000 MWh of juice. For simplicity, we ignore all sorts of technical details that would make this number larger, like input-output losses.

The present capital cost of grid scale batteries is around $600,000 per MWh. Again this ignores all sorts of technical factors that make that number larger, like buildings, transmission, etc.

Simple arithmetic says this works out to an incredible $192 billion dollars just for the batteries. Clearly this is economically impossible. In round numbers two hundred billion dollars just to get through the night! Wind and solar plus batteries simply does not work. Even if the cost magically dropped 90% it would still be an impossible $20 billion just to buy the batteries.

This is so simple one wonders why none of the utilities, public utility commissions, independent system operators, and reliability agencies ever thought of it. Or maybe they did and decided not to mention it.

Moreover, on really cold nights the need for electricity can easily get to peak demand, which would require more like $300 billion in batteries. Then, too, there might be a cloudy or even snowy day pushing the need to 16 + 8 + 16 = 40 hours. Or several cloudy windless days at which point we are talking about a trillion dollars or more.

Clearly these simple numbers make net zero power based on wind, solar and batteries impossibly expensive. Other forms of storage are likely no cheaper. The reality is we are talking about storing an enormous amount of energy which simply cannot be done. The obvious solution is to have lots of reliable generation.

Which brings me to my legislative proposal which is also very simple. It merely requires the utilities to figure out how to meet the need for electricity on brutally cold windless nights that are likely to occur.

You can read it here. The title is “Avoiding deadly blackouts” because in severe cold, a blackout can kill people. In the horrible Texas blackout estimates run to over 700 deaths. Cold kills.

In fact, this is a requirement for today, not just some distant net zero fantasy. We are already to the point where a lot of States could not keep the heat on if they got a severe cold snap like they have already had in the past.

In “Avoiding deadly blackouts” I point out that Pennsylvania and the rest of PJM narrowly avoided blacking out in winter storm Elliot. On paper, they had a 30% margin of safety which was wiped out by the cold. But Elliot was actually mild compared to several earlier severe cold spells. We must prepare for these extreme events.

We use a tremendous amount of electricity which net zero cannot possibly provide on windless nights. But we are already under severe threat. The States must act now to prevent deadly blackouts. Storage is not the answer. We need reliable generation, much of which will be fossil fueled.

https://principia-scientific.com/windless-nights-make-net-zero-impossible/

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Climate Alarmism, Not Climate Change, Is an Existential Threat to Humanity

While in France observing the 80th anniversary of D-Day and honoring the thousands of brave soldiers who gave their lives fighting the existential threat that was Nazi Germany, President Joe Biden could not help himself from descending into crass political talking points by comparing the most destructive and deadly war in human history to climate change.

“The only existential threat to humanity, including nuclear weapons, is if we do nothing on climate change,” Biden declared. Due to the “existential threat of climate change, which is just growing greater, we’re working together to accelerate the global transition to net-zero. It is the existential threat to humanity,” Biden reiterated.

In reality, climate change is nowhere near an existential threat. In fact, in many ways, the slight warming that has occurred over the past half century or so has made life better for humanity. For instance, NASA satellite data show a significant rise in global plant growth in recent decades— what some call global greening. A slightly warmer planet is also beneficial because it produces greater crop yields.

However, one can make a compelling argument that climate alarmism, and the policies that climate alarmists support, actually comprise an existential threat to humanity.

First and foremost, climate alarmists are hellbent on ending the use of affordable and reliable energy in the form of fossil fuels. This alone is a horrendous stance that puts millions of lives at risk.

Like it or not, the advent of fossil fuels, namely oil, coal, and natural gas, has been the biggest boon for humanity in all of history. The harnessing of these resources to supply virtually unlimited energy in cost-effective terms has raised billions of people from abject poverty.

Without ample access to fossil fuels, our modern way of life would literally cease to exist. Not only do fossil fuels provide abundant and affordable energy. As the U.S. Department of Energy notes, “Petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas make the manufacturing of over 6,000 everyday products and high-tech devices possible.”

Second, climate alarmists demand that the world immediately transitions to so-called renewable energy and achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. The problem is that renewable energy from solar panels and wind farms is too expensive, unreliable, and not nearly scalable. If the world were to shun fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar, the amount of energy available to use would plummet. This would result in devastation across many fronts.

Third, climate alarmists constantly call for degrowth, both in terms of the economy and in terms of population. Somehow, the climate alarmists have convinced themselves that the solution to the non-existent problem of a slightly warming planet is for humanity to cull its population growth. This is extremely short-sighted and fails to consider that many developed countries are currently experiencing a stark population decline. If this is not reversed, and soon, many of these once-thriving nations will experience severe demographic problems.

Likewise, calls for economic degrowth, which has been a cause célèbre among climate alarmists for many years now, would wreak havoc and would instantly result in decreased living standards for billions of people. This is especially true for several developing countries, which are banking on economic growth and increased prosperity to lift billions from poverty.

Fourth and finally, climate alarmists, whether they realize it or not, are akin to modern-day Luddites because they excoriate innovations and technological breakthroughs. In many ways, climate alarmists are the opposite of progressives because they seek to regress humanity back to a time when creature comforts and access to the latest and greatest technologies were limited to a select few rather than accessible to the masses. Even worse, by hindering the development of new technologies that could solve some of the world’s most vexing problems simply because it does not align with their world view, climate alarmists are essentially preventing the betterment of the human experience.

Fortunately, it seems like the climate alarmists are losing ground. Polls show that more and more people are skeptical of the constant fearmongering and are becoming aware of the failed doomsday predictions. This is great news; however, it is just the start. Unless and until there is a general consensus that climate alarmism is the problem and that the misguided policies supported by climate alarmists are outright rejected by an overwhelming majority, climate alarmism will remain a grave threat to the future humanity.

https://heartland.org/opinion/climate-alarmism-not-climate-change-is-an-existential-threat-to-humanity/

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Peter Dutton puts carbon emissions target on ruling Leftists' back

Peter Dutton will go to the next election opposing Labor’s 43 per cent carbon emissions reduction target by 2030 but keeping to zero emissions by 2050, opting for a radically different energy policy to Anthony Albanese that prioritises more gas in the short term and nuclear in the long term.

The Opposition Leader declared there was “no sense in ­signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving” and promised the Coalition in government would not “destroy” agriculture, manufacturing and investment nor create sovereign risk with trading partners by agreeing to unachievable climate change ­targets.

Mr Dutton said he would take a different gas policy from Labor to the next election to ensure a successful shorter-term transition to renewable power and clarified that nuclear power, which would not be delivered until the 2040s, would be aimed at achieving the net-zero target by mid-century.

In an interview with The Weekend Australian to mark his second year as leader of the Liberal Party, Mr Dutton said: “They (Labor) just have no hope of achieving the targets and there’s no sense signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving.

“We’re not going to destroy agriculture. We’re not going to ­stifle investment. We’re already seeing investment being withdrawn. We’re not going to create sovereign risk with our export partners, as Labor is doing with Japan and Korea.”

Mr Dutton said there had “never been any doubt in my mind that gas is ­absolutely essential”.

“And without it, there’ll be catastrophic failure in the energy market over the next decade,” he said. “You can’t have the Prime Minister saying we aren’t going to have coal, we aren’t going to have gas and were not going to have ­nuclear power and we are going to keep the lights on – that’s just ­fantasy. We now have a debate about energy which I think we can win.”

Mr Dutton said the next election, due by May next year, would come down to basic issues of economic management, national security and law and order.

He said the Prime Minister had failed to lead by example and come out more strongly against those promoting hate and anti-Semitism in society.

If a firmer stand had been taken “we would have seen arrests and we would have seen the ability for people to protest peacefully, but not with the incitement and the rage that we’ve seen in the university campus demonstrations”, he said.

“Nobody’s been arrested for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage to the offices of members of parliament,” Mr Dutton said.

“I think the (police) commissioners take their lead from the premiers and from the police ­ministers and from the Prime Minister.

“I think there has been an ­approach of just keeping the peace, not taking sides because this is just another Middle East thing. Whereas I think the ­approach should have been to ­enforce the rule of law without fear or favour.”

On taxation, Mr Dutton ­indicated that the Coalition’s policy, which would not alter Labor’s tax cuts schedule that comes in on July 1, would be limited by funds available in the budget.

But he elevated economic ­reform across the federation as a longer-term aspiration that he would champion as prime minister, saying it was critical to reduce red tape and drive down costs for businesses.

“I think there’s a very compelling argument for the federation debate to be re-enlivened,” Mr Dutton said.

“I think we should be talking more about how we can eliminate efficiencies and waste within a three layers of government model.

“That is a debate that we would willingly join if the Prime Minister were to have any appetite.

“And in government it’s a debate that I want to start. Because we are over-governed (and) over-regulated.”

Mr Dutton said he believed the Coalition’s “superior ability to manage the economy, given that cost of living is so relevant and important to Australians” would appeal to all voters, including those living in more affluent seats held by the seven teal independents – once blue-ribbon Liberal electorates – as well as outer-suburban areas.

He said his two years as Opposition Leader, including his part in the defeat of the Indigenous voice referendum last October, had given people the chance to “reconsider” him as a leader and not accept the way Labor had painted him as an angry and negative person.

“My judgment is that people want a leader with strength and with a positive outlook and vision for our country, which we’re in the process of outlining,” Mr Dutton said.

The Prime Minister will ramp up his attack on the Coalition's nuclear energy plan, calling it a wasteful "rabbit… hole". Albanese will be using his speech at the Sky News- Australian Economic Outlook lunch on Friday to continue to prosecute the case against the Coalition’s nuclear energy push. He will More
“People have allowed themselves to reconsider who they thought me to be or who Labor had framed me as.

“I think what Labor says is at odds with who people see me to after being able to watch me in a different role for the last two years and dealing with the breadth of issues starting with the voice and other economic and security issues.”

On immigration, Mr Dutton reaffirmed his commitment to cutting the record intake and encouraging skilled workers.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/peter-dutton-puts-carbon-emissions-target-onlabors-back/news-story/9f92fdee1dc0a65105bae4ae21875f60

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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

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

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The High Costs And Deadly Downsides Of Ending ‘Fossil Fuels’

Written by Bjorn Lomborg

We constantly hear that because ‘climate change’ is real we should ‘follow the science’ and end ‘fossil fuel’ use

We hear it both from politicians who favor swift carbon cuts and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists “The science is clear — fossil fuels must go.”

The assertion is convenient for politicians because it allows them to avoid responsibility for the many costs and downsides of climate policy, painting these as inevitable results of diligently following the scientific evidence.

But it is false. It confounds climate science with climate policy.

Careful climate science is clearly needed to shape thoughtful climate policy. It tells us what the physical impact will be of emitting more or less CO2.

But climate policy, like any policy, should be the democratic outcome of a weighing of benefits and costs. Climate science tells us about some of the benefits of cutting emissions but it tells us nothing of the costs, which instead come from the much less hyped field of climate economics.

The story told by activist politicians and climate campaigners suggests there is nothing but benefit to ending ‘fossil fuels’ — and a hellscape if nothing is done.

But the reality is that life has improved dramatically in recent centuries largely because of the immense increase in available energy that has come mostly from ‘fossil fuels’.

Lifespans have more than doubled, hunger has dramatically declined and incomes have increased ten-fold.

We constantly hear about extreme weather such as droughts, storms, floods, and fires —although even the UN IPCC finds that, for most of these things, evidence of their worsening cannot yet be documented.

But much more importantly, a richer world is much more resilient and hence much less affected by extreme weather.

The data shows that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined by more than 97 percent over the last century — from nearly 500,000 a year 100 years ago to fewer than 15,000 in the 2020s.

At the same time, the costs of the climate campaigners’ calls to “just stop” oil, gas, and coal are massively downplayed.

The world currently gets almost four-fifths of all its energy from ‘fossil fuels’.

If we quickly ended our use of them, billions of people would die.

Four billion people — half the world’s population — depend on food grown with synthetic fertilizer produced almost entirely by natural gas. If we ended ‘fossil fuels’ quickly, we would have no way to feed these people.

Add the billions who depend on ‘fossil fuels’ for wintertime heating and steel, cement, plastics, and transport, it is little wonder that one recent estimate shows that abruptly ending ‘fossil fuels’ would lead to six billion people dying in less than a year.

These vast downsides are not considered within climate science, which understandably focuses on carbon emissions and climate models. But they need to be an integral part of the debate about climate policy.

Most politicians advocate a slightly less rushed end to ‘fossil fuels’, phasing them out by 2050. The short-term death toll would be much lower but the downsides are still immense.

The latest peer-reviewed climate-economic research shows that efficiently reaching ‘net-zero’ emissions by 2050 will cost a staggering US$27 trillion per year on average over this century.

That is one-quarter of the world’s current GDP — per year.

The same research shows that the benefits will be just a small fraction of that cost: the policy is prohibitively expensive and brings little benefit.

A good analogy is to consider the more than one million global traffic deaths annually. Like ‘climate change’, traffic is a man-made problem. Like ‘climate change’, it is something we could entirely solve.

If scientists were to look only at how to avoid the million traffic deaths, one solution would be to reduce speed limits everywhere to three miles per hour and enforce that strictly.

This would almost eliminate traffic deaths. Of course, it would also almost eliminate our economies and our productive lives.

We would laugh if politicians said we should “follow the science” and stop traffic deaths by reducing road speeds to three mph. We should take the same sensible approach to climate policy that we take to traffic policy.

We should focus on short-term adaptation to build resilience and long-term investment in R&D to develop ‘green’ energy. Innovation must drive the price of reliable ‘green’ energy down below that of ‘fossil fuels’, eventually making sure everyone can switch to low-‘carbon’ alternatives.

When politicians tell us they are “following the science,” they use the claim to shut down open discussion of the enormous costs of their policies.

“The science” informs us about the problem but is not the arbiter of solutions. Democracies are.

Sudden, dramatic cuts in ‘fossil fuel’ consumption will have huge downsides their backers would rather ignore.

https://principia-scientific.com/the-high-costs-and-deadly-downsides-of-ending-fossil-fuels/

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CEI Leads Coalition Letter Supporting CRA Resolution of Disapproval on EPA Power Plant Rule

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently finalized powerplant rule will kill America’s existing supply of baseload generation from coal. At the same time, the rule will deter investment in new baseload generation from natural gas. That means the rule will drive up consumer energy costs, impair grid reliability, and chill economic growth. The rule is also an unlawful power grab that defies the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Rep. Troy Balderson (R-OH) are expected to introduce Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval to overturn the EPA’s rule. We, the undersigned organizations, urge you to support those resolutions.

The EPA’s rule sets various requirements that will quickly drive coal generation out of the nation’s electricity fuel mix. If a coal powerplant intends to produce power after 2039, it must, by January 1, 2032, install equipment capable of capturing 90-percent of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Carbon capture is an energy- and water-intensive system that adds significantly to power generation costs. Moreover, carbon capture powerplants do not reduce emissions unless connected to networks of CO2 pipelines and storage facilities that may never be built.

Unsurprisingly, despite decades of R&D and billions of dollars in ratepayer and taxpayer subsidies, only two carbon capture powerplants currently operate in North America—Petra Nova in Texas, and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan. Both were built with hefty subsidies and plagued with technical difficulties. Note, too, that central to the business model of each project is a partnership whereby the powerplant sells its captured CO2 to companies engaged in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Thirty-eight states (more than three-quarters) do not have EOR operations.

PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that coordinates wholesale electricity and manages grid reliability in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, observes in its statement on the rule: “There is very little evidence, other than some limited CCS [carbon capture and storage] projects, that this technology and associated transportation infrastructure would be widely available throughout the country in time to meet the compliance deadlines under the Rule.”

The bottom line is that, for coal powerplants, 90-percent carbon capture is not an “adequately demonstrated” “best system of emission reduction” (BSER), taking “cost” and “energy requirements” into account, and thus is not a lawful basis for setting emission standards under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act (CAA).

The EPA’s rule provides two alternative compliance options. A coal powerplant can avoid the expense of installing a carbon capture system if it (a) commits to shut down by January 1, 2032, or (b) commits to shut down by December 31, 2039, and repowers with 40 percent natural gas by January 1, 2030. PJM Interconnection cautions:

The present gas pipeline system is largely fully subscribed. Moreover, given local opposition, it has proven extremely difficult to site new pipelines just to meet today’s needs, let alone a significantly increased need for natural gas in the future. The Final Rule, which is premised, in part, on the availability of natural gas for co-firing or full conversion, does not sufficiently take into account these limitations on the development of new pipeline infrastructure.

It could not be clearer that the rule aims to drive coal generation out of U.S. electricity markets. Indeed, the EPA itself estimates that, by 2045, coal generation will decline by 94 percent compared to the prior policy baseline (Regulatory Impact Analysis, Table D-10).

As in the Clean Power Plan, the EPA is promulgating “emission performance standards” that are, in fact, non-performance mandates. ‘Perform less or not at all’ is not a valid performance standard under CAA Section 111.

The EPA’s new rule also establishes a 90-percent carbon capture requirement for new baseload natural gas powerplants. Far from being “adequately demonstrated,” no utility scale natural gas CCS plant exists today. Only one small-scale facility was ever built—Florida Power & Light’s 40 MW CCS gas plant in Bellingham, Massachusetts. It closed in 2005. That is nowhere near an adequate technological basis on which to predicate an industry-wide 90 percent carbon capture requirement.

The EPA could not have picked a worse time to attack affordable, reliable, coal- and gas-fired generation. Electricity demand is projected to grow substantially due to the proliferation of data centers, expansion of Artificial Intelligence, onshoring of chip production, and the EPA’s and California’s policies to forcibly electrify U.S. motor vehicle fleets.

PJM Interconnection warns: “The future demand for electricity cannot be met simply through renewables given their intermittent nature. Yet in the very years when we are projecting significant increases in the demand for electricity, the Final Rule may work to drive premature retirement of coal units that provide essential reliability services and dissuade new gas resources from coming online.”

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court made it clear that CAA Section 111 does not authorize the EPA to act as the nation’s grid manager or resolve the national debate on climate policy with respect to a fundamental industrial sector. If Congress wanted the agency to possess such authority, it would have said so in clear terms. Congress has not done so, yet the EPA is still trying to assert an expansive transformation of its regulatory power. As in the CPP, the EPA ignores the separation of powers that is vital to the nation’s republican form of government.

For those reasons, our organizations urge legislators to overturn this rule.

https://cei.org/coalition_letters/cei-leads-coalition-letter-supporting-cra-resolution-of-disapproval-on-epa-power-plant-rule/

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New Zealand scraps ‘burp tax’ on livestock after backlash from farmers

New Zealand has scrapped plans for a so-called “burp tax” aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions from sheep and cattle.

The country’s centre-right coalition government said on Tuesday it would exclude agriculture from the country’s emissions trading scheme in favour of exploring other ways to reduce methane.

The move, which fulfils a pre-election pledge by former businessman Christopher Luxon’s National Party, comes after the plans to tax agricultural emissions from 2025 led to nationwide protests by farmers worried about the effect on their livelihoods.

“It doesn’t make sense to send jobs and production overseas, while less carbon-efficient countries produce the food the world needs,” Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said in a statement.

“That is why we are focused on finding practical tools and technology for our farmers to reduce their emissions in a way that won’t reduce production or exports.”

The coalition, which also includes the pro-business ACT New Zealand and populist New Zealand First, said it would invest 400 million New Zealand dollars ($245m) in the commercialisation of emissions-reduction technology and increase funding for the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre by 50.5 million New Zealand dollars ($31m).

The previous Labour Party government announced the “world first” levy in 2022 as part of Wellington’s efforts to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the country’s estimated 10 million cows and 26 million sheep.

Then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern argued that the tax was necessary to slow global warming and farmers would be able to recoup the costs by charging more for climate-friendly meat.

The Greens, the third largest party in parliament, said on Tuesday that the government had once again “kicked the climate action can down the road”.

“From pouring oil, coal and gas on the climate crisis fire, the Government has now put half of our emissions which come from agriculture into the industry-led too-hard basket,” Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said in a statement

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/11/new-zealand-scraps-burp-tax-on-livestock-after-backlash-from-farmers

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Australia: NSW coal jobs hit new record high, export volumes also up

The Hunter's coal industry employed 14,750 people in March.
Coal mining jobs in NSW reached record numbers in March 2024, breaking the 25,000 barrier for only the second time since coal job numbers were first recorded.

The new record number of 25,505 to March is the highest number of coal jobs ever recorded by Coal Services Pty Ltd since it began tracking the number of people working in coal mining in NSW in 1998.

The figure is more than double the number first recorded in the last quarter of 1998, when there was a workforce of 10,898 coal mining workers across the state.

The latest data shows that in the Hunter - NSW's largest coal mining region - there were 14,750 coal mining jobs in March 2024.

In the Gunnedah region, the data shows that coal mining jobs remained at near-record levels, with 3116 coal mining jobs in March 2024, only a slight drop from the all-time record number of jobs set in April 2023 of 3253.

In the Western region of NSW, coal mining jobs reached an all time high with 3585 workers in coal mining compared to just over 1400 when job numbers were first recorded.

In the Southern region of NSW the number of coal mining jobs improved over the last 12 months with 3344 local coal mining workers, over a hundred more than the same time last year.

NSW Minerals Council chief executive Stephen Galilee said the increase in coal mining jobs in NSW was a sign of the ongoing importance and resilience of the coal sector.

"The record number of people working in the NSW coal mining sector shows that over the last 25 years, coal mining has become increasingly critical to regional communities and the state economy. These job numbers also highlight the need to support mining communities," he said.

"A mark of the importance of the coal mining sector to NSW is the strong ongoing demand for our high quality coal."

Coal Services figures show that coal exports to the state's major trade partners are up almost 16 per cent with thermal coal exports used in energy production up over 19 per cent.

"NSW coal mining is playing a critical role in the budget repair task being undertaken by the state government. In particular, the decision to increase coal mining royalty rates from 1 July 2024 was the single biggest revenue decision taken by the NSW government," Mr Galilee said.

"Metals mining jobs are also at near record levels with nearly 8,000 people working in the NSW metals mining sector based on the latest annual NSW Mining Industry Expenditure Survey."

https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/8657696/nsw-coal-mining-jobs-hit-record-high-with-25505-workers/

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Refusal to index is also a form of censorship

As far as I can tell, none of my blogs is indexed by Google. If you do a Google search for something that I have written on one of my blogs, you will not find it. Bing.com indexes some of my blogs but even they will not touch "Greenie Watch"

The surprising thing is that the files for all Blogspot blogs are held on Google's servers. They have my writings in their files but refuse to mention them in response to a search. I am "search blocked"

In the circumstances, it is a bit of a surprise that on some occasions they go to the trouble to wipe some of my posts off their servers completely. Even if you come to one of my blogs as a regular reader rather than via a search you will still not see what I have written. They are clearly very motivated to suppress conservative ideas. It's ironical that a very succesful private enterprise is so protective of government

Fortunately a search on duckduckgo.com or yahoo.com does find my writings

Addtionally, I gather that anybody trying to link to "Greenie Warch" gets a warning that it is "unsafe"

I would not be surprised if all my Blogspot blogs vanished into thin air one day. I long ago took precautions against that by keeping two backups of everything I write. You can access that via jonjayray.com or johnjayray.com

You can't keep a good skeptic down!

-- JR

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Eastern Antarctica’s Ice Growth: The Story You Haven’t Heard

This is another example of the mainstream media (MSM) skewing scientific reporting to serve the interests of the climate-industrial complex.

This bias often manifests in selective coverage, where sensationalist narratives about climate change are given prominence, while contradictory or nuanced findings are ignored… If it bleeds, it leads. Check out my 7-part series examining the most newsworthy climate papers in the last decade and if any of the predictions have come true… Spoiler alert, not many.

A prime example is the recent study highlighting significant ice growth in Eastern Antarctica, which has received little to no media attention compared to the constant alarmist coverage of the Thwaites Glacier and Western Antarctica.

A recent study published in Nature Communications reveals substantial ice growth in Eastern Antarctica.

The researchers found that contrary to popular belief and media portrayal, parts of Eastern Antarctica have been gaining ice mass. This finding challenges the dominant narrative that Antarctic ice is melting due to global warming from rising anthropogenic GHG concentrations.

The study utilized satellite altimetry data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 mission and laser altimetry data from NASA’s ICESat-2 mission to measure changes in ice thickness.

The study uses robust historical data combined with modern satellite measurements, providing a detailed and accurate picture of glacier dynamics in Eastern Antarctica.

These findings are crucial for a balanced understanding of Antarctic ice behavior, emphasizing the need to consider regional variations rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all narrative driven by the climate-industrial complex.

The study states…

“Our results demonstrate that the stability and growth in ice elevations observed in terrestrial basins over the past few decades are part of a trend spanning at least a century, and highlight the importance of understanding long-term changes when interpreting current dynamics.”

However, this study has been largely ignored by mainstream media outlets, which prefer to focus on more sensationalist stories of melting ice and rising sea levels.

In stark contrast, the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica has been the subject of extensive media coverage. Dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier,” it is often portrayed as a ticking time bomb that could lead to catastrophic sea level rise.

While the potential instability of the Thwaites Glacier is indeed concerning, recent research challenges the sensationalized portrayal of Thwaites Glacier in media outlets.

A recent search in Google for news articles, over the last month, reveals a stark contrast in media coverage between the ice growth in Eastern Antarctica and the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica. The study published in Nature Communications highlighting significant ice growth in Eastern Antarctica has received virtually no media attention.

In contrast, a simple search for “Thwaites Glacier” yields many alarmist articles, emphasizing its potential to cause catastrophic sea level rise. Titles such as “New research on Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier could reshape sea-level rise predictions” and “Warm ocean water is rushing beneath Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ making its collapse more likely” dominate the headlines, perpetuating a narrative of imminent disaster.

https://principia-scientific.com/eastern-antarcticas-ice-growth-the-story-you-havent-heard/

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The Western world seems destined to founder in its mad rush to offset climate change ‘driven by CO2 emissions’

The fact that climate always changes, and it’s mainly driven by natural cyclical forces beyond our control, is overlooked by political leaders pushing the green dream of ‘renewable energy’ focused on the unreliable intermittent sources of solar and wind power.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris ‘Blackout’ Bowen and Prime Minister Anthony ‘Each Way’ Albanese would like to see an EV, electric scooter, or bike in every Australian garage which would certainly keep our firefighters busy, but it won’t change the weather.

As former chief scientist Alan Finkel admitted to a Senate hearing several years ago, if Australia cut all its CO2 emissions immediately, its impact on world climate would be negligible.

But in the unlikely event that EV sales do surge way beyond the current rate of just 8 per cent of total vehicle sales, it would place increasing demands on a power system already at risk of major blackouts. In its latest 10-year forecast, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) warned that millions of Australians faced the risk of electricity blackouts without the ‘urgent’ delivery of greater energy and transmission infrastructure.

Well, that alone might not tip us into the dystopian Mad Max future, but combined with a seemingly insatiable power demand created by a villain masked as mankind’s new hero, it just might. I’m referring to Artificial Intelligence or AI – the charmless i-bot that answers almost all government and major business phone calls, the source behind our internet searches and algorithms, the brain behind the helpful tools that do a student’s assignments or write a novel (badly) or create nude images of anybody from a normal photograph … get the picture?

And now massive data centres are pouring AI chips into the mix as fast as manufacturing plants can build them. As one researcher notes, adding AI to Google ‘search’ boosts the energy use per search tenfold. And that’s only the first, perhaps the least, significant of the many possible applications for AI.

An article in City Journal claims that the huge energy demand will make the type of energy transition our hapless leaders are trying to foist on us impossible.

It claims that Nvidia, a leading AI chip manufacturer, has shipped about 5 million high-power chips over the past three years and each chip uses roughly as much electricity each year as three electric vehicles. And while the market appetite for electric vehicles is sagging and ultimately limited, the appetite for AI chips is ‘explosive and essentially unlimited’.

‘To see what the future holds, we must take a deep dive into the arcana of today’s ‘cloud,’ the loosely defined term denoting the constellation of data centres, hardware, and communications systems.

‘Each data centre – and tens of thousands of them exist – has an energy appetite often greater than skyscrapers the size of the Empire State Building. And the nearly 1,000 so-called hyperscale data centres each consume more energy than a steel mill (and this is before counting the impacts of piling on AI chips)…’

I find that both scary and mind-boggling, to the extent that new mathematical measurement terminology has been developed to try to keep pace with the burgeoning energy demand all this is creating. Forget billions, trillions, or zillions, that’s old hat and doesn’t go anywhere near the AI power horizon:

‘…one way to guess the future magnitude of data traffic – and derivatively the energy implications – is in the names of the numbers we’ve had to create to describe quantities of data. We count food and mineral production in millions of tons; people and their devices in billions of units; airway and highway usage in trillions of air- or road miles; electricity and natural gas in trillions of kilowatt-hours or cubic feet; and our economies in trillions of dollars. But, at a rate of a trillion per year of anything, it takes a billion years to total one ‘zetta’ – i.e., the name of the number that describes the scale of today’s digital traffic.

‘The numerical prefixes created to describe huge quantities track the progress of society’s technologies and needs. The ‘kilo’ prefix dates back to 1795. The ‘mega’ prefix was coined in 1873, to name 1,000 kilos. The ‘giga’ prefix for 1 billion (1,000 million) and ‘tera’ (a trillion, or 1,000 billion) were both adopted in 1960. In 1975, we saw the official creation of the prefixes ‘peta’ (1,000 giga) and ‘exa’ (1,000 peta), and then the ‘zetta’ (1,000 exa) in 1991. Today’s cloud traffic is estimated to be roughly 50 zettabytes a year.

‘It’s impossible to visualise such a number without context. A zetta-stack of dollar bills would reach from the earth to the sun (93 million miles away) and back – 700,000 times…’

What the…? Are you grasping any of this, Albo and Bowen? Do you really think covering an area bigger than Tasmania including productive farmland and natural forests with limited-life solar and wind farms and 28,000 km of new transmission lines, all backed by billions in subsidies, will solve our energy needs into the future?

You will need to do a lot more to prevent the dystopian future referred to in the Mad Max movies unless AI becomes intelligent enough to realise it is rapidly progressing towards its own demise. It needs to convince closed minds like yours that the only way to try to keep pace is to embrace clean, long-lasting, safe, modern nuclear energy as promoted by enterprising young Brisbane teenager Will Shackel, the founder of Nuclear for Australia, and Opposition leader Peter Dutton.

It’s a no-brainer, and many overseas states and nations are already on-board. Civilisation could depend on it.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/beyond-mad-max-with-dystopian-ai/

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The renewable green energy disaster off the northeastern US is getting worse Less than one per cent of the way to the Biden 2030 target

A slow-motion collapse in the offshore wind industry continues to grow as sticky inflation and supply chain challenges force developers to delay or cancel major projects. In particular, progress towards the Biden administration’s goal of building large amounts of floating wind off the northeastern US coast is just about stalled.

Shell, which invested in a series of offshore wind projects in recent years, including offshore the northeastern United States, announced last week it would lay off much of its offshore wind business staff as the oil giant advances its program of refocusing on its core oil and gas business.

“We are concentrating on select markets and segments to deliver the most value for our investors and customers,” a Shell spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Shell is looking at how it can continue to compete for offshore wind projects in priority markets while maintaining our focus on performance, discipline and simplification.”

Wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa announced even bigger layoffs, saying it would cut 15 per cent of its global staff to adjust to a slowing market. The announcement comes after the company reported a €4.6 billion loss for 2023, a losing trend that has continued over the first half of 2024.

“Our current situation demands adjustments that go beyond organizational changes. We have to adapt to lower business volumes, reduced activity in non-core markets, and a streamlined portfolio,” said outgoing CEO Jochen Eickholt in a letter to staff.

On May 29 came survey results compiled by London-based energy consultancy Westwood indicating the global floating offshore wind industry is likely to deliver less than 3 gigawatts (GW) of new floating generation capacity by 2030, and a total of roughly 10 GW by 2040. Westwood cites lack of standardization of floating technology (55 per cent), manufacturing capability and capacity (51 per cent) and port infrastructure (50 per cent) as the primary impediments.

In light of the industry’s gloomy outlook, Westwood notes that “calls are ringing out for governments to provide more specific policy and regulatory support for technology development in addition to cost reduction and investment in port infrastructure to accelerate adoption.”

This is completely predictable, since the voracious rent-seeking wind business invariably calls for more government largesse in response to any challenge that arises. Unfortunately, the call is too often answered by policymakers who have made big political bets on being able to show off arrays of mammoth windmills floating atop various oceans and seas, intermittently producing some electricity – generally 25-30 per cent of nominal plant capacity over time.

This latest bad news for offshore wind could become especially troublesome for US President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, since he has invested so much of his personal political capital in pushing a major buildout of floating offshore wind in the Atlantic northeast. A 2023 Department of Energy fact sheet sets the administration’s goal of installing 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 for the US alone, exceeding Westwood’s just estimated potential for global new capacity by that year by a factor of 10 times over.

To date, regulators under Biden have approved permits for 6 major offshore projects, several of which have already been delayed or cancelled by developers in response to tougher economic factors. In late 2023, major Danish wind developer Orsted cancelled two projects off the Atlantic coast, and Shell divested its 50 per cent stake in another in March of this year. Equinor and BP announced in January they were cancelling plans for their Empire Wind 2 project, citing similar economic concerns.

One US offshore project, Vineyard Wind 1, was able to begin delivering its intermittent 25-30 per cent of 68 megawatts (MW) to Massachusetts residents in January with the activation of 5 offshore turbines. The South Fork Wind Project was also able to commence first deliveries into New York in March, with 12 turbines capable of generating some proportion of 130 MW.

But this is less than one per cent of the Biden goal of 30 GW, with just five and a half years remaining until 2030. Given the wind industry’s insatiable appetite for ever-increasing subsidies and constantly rising utility charges, it’s an open question how many more billions of dollars the federal government will be allowed to print to keep projects alive before the voters start to rebel at the cost.

It’s a rebellion that could commence as soon as this coming November.

https://stephenheins.substack.com/p/the-renewable-green-energy-disaster

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Travellers reluctant to pay for greener flights despite desire for sustainability

Travellers are proving reluctant passengers of the airline industry’s sustainability drive with those opting to offset flights actually falling in recent years.

After exceeding 10 per cent pre Covid, Qantas was now seeing around 6 or 7 per cent of guests choosing to offset, while Webjet had noticed that customers “talk the talk” but don’t necessarily “walk the walk”.

“When we originally looked at a program around sustainability for our travellers we surveyed our quite significant database of 2 million people and circa 30 to 40 per cent said they would regularly use the offset,” said Webjet managing director John Guscic.

“But in practical application, it’s less than 10 per cent ticking the box.”

Inflationary pressures were considered a factor in the drop off recorded by Qantas according to chief sustainability officer Andrew Parker who said there was still much passion for the decarbonisation journey.

“In terms of consumers there is still a lot to do,” Mr Parker told the Australian on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association in Dubai.

“We can’t just be asking for customers to pay for sustainable aviation fuel, pay for offsets, we want to look at a model where you have a range of options.”

Despite the cool response from customers to date, airlines remained convinced that sustainability was extremely important to travellers.

International Air Transport Association director general Willie Walsh said the idea people want to fly in an “unsustainable fashion” was simply not correct.

“All the research that we do says that people want the airline industry to address its environmental footprint and we have to,” Mr Walsh said.

“And anybody who thinks you can transition to net zero in any industry without cost is misguided or misleading people. There’s going to be a cost and there’s going to be a consumer cost.”

It has been estimated that cost could push up airfares significantly, particularly in the early stages due to low levels of sustainable aviation fuel production.

Considered the only realistic path for airlines towards net zero at this stage, SAF (Sustainable aviation fuel) production in 2024 will amount to a mere 0.53 per cent of the industry’s fuel needs, or 1.9 billion litres.

To help drive production in Australia — which was rich in feedstock but yet to make any SAF — Qantas was investing in a north Queensland-based refinery using alcohol-to-jet technology.

Mr Parker said it was unusual for airlines to become investors in the production of fuel but they felt they had to.

“We need big fuel companies producing (SAF) albeit at a price that is digestible but we want small to medium-sized producers as well so we’ve got a competitive industry,” he said.

“We think Australia can produce SAF and a lot of it, which is one of the reasons Qantas has set a target of 10 per cent SAF usage by 2030.”

At the same time, Qantas was firmly in favour of the federal government imposing a mandate of 5 per cent SAF for airlines operating within and into Australia.

Virgin Australia recognised the potential role a SAF mandate could play but warned of economic consequences, particularly for “value carriers” like themselves.

“Increases in fuel prices would likely result in airlines having to raise airfares, with value carriers being less effective at doing so due to the price sensitivity of their customer base,” said Virgin Australia’s submission to the aviation green paper.

“This has the potential to reduce or limit competition.”

In the meantime it was indisputable that the cost of air travel would climb as more countries imposed SAF mandates on airlines as high as 10 per cent by 2030.

“Some consumers felt this could be done at no cost but there is a cost associated in the same way as when oil prices go up, ticket prices go up,” said Mr Walsh.

“The idea the airlines can absorb that additional cost given the net margins of 3 per cent in the industry, it’s just not going to be possible.”

Mr Parker said it was the only way forward for an industry that was so critical to Australia.

“We don’t have a train to Singapore, so you have to maximise the opportunity to protect aviation and give it a strong future,” he said.

“You don’t want the European flight shaming to impact aviation in our part of the world so that means SAF is the majority of the answer.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/travellers-reluctant-to-pay-for-greener-flights-despite-desire-for-sustainability/news-story/a8d1b04004e1a3c9f83466efdde05fdd

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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

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Thanks To Wind And Solar, Texas’ Power Grid Risks Blackouts Again This Summer

No spare capacity

A power grid system serving nearly 30 million Americans could again approach failure this summer, a local utility executive told the San Antonio Express-News. [emphasis, links added]

Rudy Garza, CEO of the San Antonio-owned utility company CPS Energy, anticipates that Texans will elevate power demand on the state’s grid system above and beyond last year’s record numbers, according to the Express-News.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s power system manager, had to issue several energy rationing alerts last summer as the state’s grid nearly faltered, and those conservation appeals are likely to be made again throughout this summer.

“I have learned in this business that it’s hard to make guarantees on anything,” Garza told the outlet. “If we lose a big nuclear unit, for instance, in the middle of a peak season, that could be enough to throw the grid off into some level of emergency. All we can do is prepare and keep our plants going.”

Garza predicts that Texans will exceed 100,000 megawatts of demand this summer, a level of power use that would be more than 15,000 megawatts greater than last summer’s record-setting demand, according to the Express-News.

Major factors driving demand in Texas include a growing population, a hot economy, cryptocurrency mining operations, and new power-hungry data centers.

“We’re building houses in every direction,” Garza told the Express-News. “We’ve seen an influx of some really large users coming into Texas, but they’re not driving the entirety of it. The state just continues to grow.”

Texas produces the most energy from wind and solar of any state in the country, according to Texas Monthly.

This leaves the ERCOT grid vulnerable to supply shortfalls in specific circumstances, especially the late afternoon and early evening hours of hot summer days with little or no wind blowing, according to the Express-News.

In those circumstances, power generation tails off right when Texans are driving up demand by cranking up their air conditioners and other appliances to stay cool in their homes, according to the Express-News.

To compensate for lost wind capacity in those situations, operators turn to older coal- and natural-gas-fired generation facilities to avoid blackouts.

A similar situation played out in the summer of 2023 when a prolonged heat wave pushed the grid to the brink and prompted ERCOT — which oversees the flow of power to approximately 27 million customers — to briefly issue an emergency notice on Sept. 6, according to the Express-News.

ERCOT put out a record [total] of 11 conservation appeals last summer, and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation (NERC) — an organization that monitors grid conditions in the U.S. — flagged ERCOT in a recently published outlook report for facing “elevated” blackout risks this summer if weather conditions are stronger than normal.

https://principia-scientific.com/thanks-to-wind-and-solar-texas-power-grid-risks-blackouts-again-this-summer/

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Virginia Gov. Youngkin Announces California EV Mandate to End in the Commonwealth

On June 5, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) revealed that the state would cease to adhere to vehicle emission standards set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and will revert to less strict federal standards beginning in 2025.

Legislation previously signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) in 2021, required Virginia to adopt CARB’s then-existing standards, Advanced Clean Cars (ACC) I, which had been adopted by 13 other states and the District of Columbia. Subsequently, CARB released new standards, ACC II, requiring all new cars sold in California to be electric by model year 2035.

Youngkin requested an opinion from state Attorney General Jason Miyares as to whether Virginia was bound to comply with ACCII. Miyares issued an official opinion on June 4 confirming that state law does not require Virginia to follow the updated standards.

‘Virginia Is Declaring Independence’

With the AG’s opinion in hand, Youngkin announced that Virginians will once again have the freedom to choose their own vehicles based on their families’ and businesses’ needs, in a press release.

“Once again, Virginia is declaring independence—this time from a misguided electric vehicle mandate imposed by unelected leaders nearly 3,000 miles away from the Commonwealth,” said Youngkin. “The idea that government should tell people what kind of car they can or can’t purchase is fundamentally wrong.”

The federal Clean Air Act includes a waiver for emissions standards adopted by CARB, which other states can choose to follow in lieu of the national standards.

‘EV Mandates Are … Unworkable’

The Virginia Air Pollution Control Board (Board) implemented Virginia’s law adopting the CARB standards with regulations permitting the governor to order them, but it did not require the state to adopt any updated standards, Miyares’ opinion states.

“Although the Board chose to adopt ACC I’s model year standards, which are now set to expire at the end of 2024, it has not chosen to adopt ACC II’s,” Miyares wrote.

The ACC II standards require 35 percent of cars sold beginning in model year 2026, less than two years away, to be electric. Youngkin’s press release pointed out that in 2023 only 9 percent of vehicles sold in Virginia were electric. That means the state would have to more than triple current EV sales in two years to remain in compliance with CARB’s new rules.

These kinds of mandates are wishful thinking and are about control more than they are reasonable, said Miyares in the press release.

“EV mandates like California’s are unworkable and out of touch with reality, and thankfully the law does not bind us to their regulations,” Miyares said. “California does not control which cars Virginians buy and any thoughts that automobile manufacturers should face millions of dollars in civil penalties rather than allowing our citizens to choose their own vehicles is completely absurd.”

Were ACC II followed in Virginia, auto manufacturers that sold a noncompliant vehicle past the 2035 deadline could be forced to pay fines of more than $20,000 per vehicle, which could be devastating for car dealers and consumers.

Legal Challenges and the Road Ahead

Miyares’ opinion states that the Board could choose to adopt ACC II’s standards, in which case compliance would be mandatory; however, the board is not required to do so.

The first set of standards should never have been mandated in the first place, says H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

“Let’s hope this decision sticks and holds up in court and in the face of legislative challenges I expect to come,” Burnett said. “The previous democratic administration never should have forced California’s emission standards/EV mandates down the throats of VA residents and drivers.”

Other states that adopted California’s standards include most of New England, with the exception of Vermont, in addition to Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. Now that Virginia is exiting the plan, one hopes others will follow, says Burnett.

“It’s good that the VA government is getting out of the business of dictating people’s vehicle choices; consumers alone should choose what they want to drive based on the characteristics they care about,” Burnett said. “Let’s hope other states follow suit and that sometime in the future California’s waiver will be withdrawn so it can no longer dictate to the nation its car fleet.”

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/06/virginia-gov-youngkin-announces-california-ev-mandate-to-end-in-the-commonwealth/

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On Extreme Weather, the More We Learn, the More We Know How Little We Knew Before (and Still Don’t Know)

In contrast to many climate scientists and writers with the mainstream media covering climate change, who in their hubris claim the science is settled, Albert Einstein expressed modesty with regard to his knowledge, reportedly saying, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

Eistein, a genius by any measure, was not the first to express such wisdom. Socrates, nearly 2,400 years ago, reputedly stated, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing,” and Aristotle expressed a similar sentiment, saying, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Would that contemporary climate researchers displayed such a cautious, honest assessment of the state of knowledge in their field about the causes and consequences of contemporary climate change—but they rarely do.

Still, research comes out daily suggesting that far more remains unknown about climate change and the extent to which it drives extreme weather than is known by climate scientists and their journalist sycophants, and is assumed, and built into, climate models. Two recent studies provide examples showing this.

One recent study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, examines the correlations of tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane basins to multi-decadal variations in sea-surface temperatures tied to shifts in Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV). In analyzing two sets of climate model simulations, adding and subtracting AMV anomalies, researchers found the Atlantic and Pacific respond differently to warm AMV phases, which produce warmer temperatures:

Relative to cold or negative AMV anomalies, a warm AMV:

produces much more frequent TCs (including those making landfalls) over the North Atlantic. This is because AMV+ offers favorable conditions for TC development, including warmer SSTs, higher relative humidity, increased relative vorticity, and weaker vertical wind shear.

By contrast, AMV+ causes less frequent TCs across the western North Pacific and South Pacific due to unfavorable conditions for TC occurrence (stronger vertical wind shear and less moist air). The contrasts in TC environment are due to increased zonal flow between the Atlantic and Pacific basins with AMV+.

What they didn’t find to be a factor in hurricane strength or formation was long-term global climate change. Rather, climate models suggest shifts in the Atlantic Ocean current oscillations are the forcing factor for tropical cyclones, or their absence. This study lends credence to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent AR6 physical science report, which confirms that there is no detection or attribution of any trend for either the number or strength of tropical cyclones tied to climate change.

The IPCC’s assessment suggested that even under the most extreme emission scenarios, it could find no evidence climate change had or would affect tropical cyclones through 2100.

Despite the IPCC’s clear statements and the findings in this new research, I’d bet money that this year when tropical storms and hurricanes form, especially when one or the other makes landfall and causes damage, mainstream media outlets will publish stories claiming climate change is to blame, citing “studies” from bogus climate science outfits like World Weather Attribution as evidence supporting their claim.

And, of course, hurricanes are only one type of extreme weather event we are only beginning to understand, and, as a result, show how little we know about their formation and cause. Tornados are another such type of event.

Every year, some scientists and reporters in the mainstream media try to tie climate change to the frequency or strength of tornados. Climate Realism has debunked such claims on dozens of occasions, citing research demonstrating there is no trend in increasing numbers or strength of hurricanes. Now the UPI is reporting the same fact.

One recent article published by UPI noted that no EF5 tornado, “one of the most catastrophic weather events on Earth … [which can] grow to be more than a mile wide and pack winds over 200 mph—stronger than any Category 5 hurricane on record across the Atlantic basin,” has struck the United States in more than 11 years—the longest such EF5 drought since consistent records have been maintained. And this is despite billions of additional tons of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere over that 13-year period. Commenting on this blessed severe tornado drought, UPI writes:

On May 20, 2013, an extremely powerful tornado destroyed a huge part of Moore, Okla. Eleven years later, it remains the most recent tornado to be rated EF5, the strongest possible rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The 11-year gap is the longest since official U.S. records began in 1950.

Before the Moore tornado, the blockbuster tornado season in 2011 led to the confirmation of five EF5 twisters, including the Joplin, Missouri, EF5 that killed 161 people. A total of 50 tornadoes have been rated F5/EF5 since records began in the United States in 1950.

Meteorologist Bob Henson said in 2023 that the current EF5 “drought” is hard to explain since damage estimates can be subjective. Damage to a “well-constructed building” is the most common factor that helps the National Weather Service (NWS) confirm an EF5, yet many homes in the U.S. do not meet that criteria.

During this busy tornado season, think back to how many stories you’ve already seen that mentioned climate change as a factor—modifying their timing, number, behavior, and power. Then, remember mainstream media column inches and broadcast air-time to the contrary, there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change has, will, or can, even in climate models, impact tornados.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/06/climate-change-weekly-508-on-extreme-weather-the-more-we-learn-the-more-we-know-how-little-we-knew-before-and-still-dont-know/

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The anti-windfarm 'odd couple' joining forces to fight the renewable energy projects Australia's already failing to build

Deep in coal country, a lifelong environmentalist and one-time Greens candidate is feeling the applause.

It's Thursday night at a Gladstone pub and Steven Nowakowski has won over sceptical locals.

His message is a simple one; he believes a wave of new windfarm developments threatens to smash hilltops and turn koala habitat into "industrial zones".

The green movement, he says, are in "la-la land" over windfarms, a comment that draws nods and knowing smiles from the audience.

Nowakowski won over much of the crowd at the Central Queensland community meeting.(Four Corners: Nick Wiggins)
But its only when one local suggests building a new coal-fired power station does the crowd erupt in spontaneous applause.

This is the front line of Australia's latest climate war.

Nowakowski, a nature lover who says he's been arrested fighting for forests, shares the stage with ultra-conservative federal MP Colin Boyce, a man who claims burning fossil fuels creates "plant food".

"We're an odd couple," Nowakowski admits. "I shake my head in disbelief. I cannot believe that I'm in this situation."

It's an alliance at the more extreme end of the political spectrum. But it's being replicated right across the country as vocal groups mobilise to frustrate Australia's already slow rollout of renewables.

It's estimated Australia needs to build one new wind turbine every day for the next six years to reach its 2030 emissions target. But it's a target that's proving difficult, and the next leg towards net zero by 2050 is even more challenging.

"Wind's a really important source of new electricity generation," says Simon Corbell, who's just stepped down as CEO of the Clean Energy Investor Group.

Wind, he says, is not only one of the cheapest forms of new electricity generation, but it complements solar as the wind often picks up as the sun goes down.

It's a fact that appears to hold little sway with the growing number of community groups opposed to windfarms.

At Gladstone's Grand Hotel, Nowakowski enlists a few more opponents.

He argues Queensland's streamlined approvals process will further erode koala habitat, bird sanctuaries and the states' last remaining wild places.

"We're going down the wrong path," he says. "We can't destroy biodiversity to save the planet."

But as his presentation wraps up and the acclamation grows, Nowakowski shuffles awkwardly and looks towards the carpet.

There's a hint that his anti-windfarm pitch may be providing cover for those wishing to halt action on climate change.

An audience member urges Steven to look into whether there really is a link between carbon dioxide and changes in the climate.

"I'm just saying we could be on this whole train to nowhere for no reason at all," the man says.

Nowakowski allows the comment to remain unchallenged, saying he's "not going to talk about climate change", but does later concede it is a concern.

"I've got to grapple with this every day," he says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-10/renewable-energy-projects-wind-farm-face-opposition-four-corners/103951940

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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

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California’s energy policies are using its population as sacrificial lambs

California is obsessed with the concept that JUST electricity from wind turbines and solar panels can replace fossil fuels. All the policymakers of the State are oblivious to the reality that wind and solar can ONLY generate “electricity”, as they CANNOT make any products for society.

Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society. Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. All the parts for wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity from favorable weather conditions but manufacture NOTHING for society.

California remains intent on following Germany’s “green” Energiewende” plan that has German consumers paying the highest electricity prices in the world. The California population of 39 million represents only about 0.5% of the world’s population of 8 billion. The other 99.5% are mostly in poorer developing countries with miniscule environmental policies to limit their emissions.

Germans have been forced to come to grips with the sober electricity of its Green Revolution that has made their electricity prices among the world’s highest, so it’s no wonder that the country’s economy is hemorrhaging economically, and companies are shutting down and moving out.

Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are based on the products that did not exist before the 1800’s, that are now made from fossil fuels, Governor Newsom will not discuss his plan to support a supply chain of the products and fuels demanded by today’s materialistic society and economy, as America reduces its dependency on crude oil.

Governor Newsom will never discuss how to maintain the supply chain of cost-effective PRODUCTS that are essential to the materialistic demands for human flourishing.

California policymakers pursuing net-zero emissions are oblivious to the reality that wind turbines and solar panels do different things than crude oil, thus Mandatory Emissions To Achieve Net-Zero Is A Fool’s Game.

Latinos make up about half of Californians living in poverty, despite being less than 40% of the population. By comparison, about 10% of white Californians live in poverty.

For the growing poverty of the State of California, a State that only represents 0.5% of the world’s population, California continues to demand that its residence continue to “pay” for green policies to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California.

Affordable and reliable electricity is of major importance to the poor, because they spend the largest percentage of their income on electricity and fuels and are harmed the most by high energy prices.

Green policies are the primary cause for the escalating California electricity and fuel prices.

The San Onfre Nuclear Generating Station closed I 2013, that was also providing continuous uninterruptible electricity.

Today, California imports more electricity than any other US state, more than twice the amount of Virginia, the second largest importer of electricity. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.

Electricity prices have increased more than 98% over the last 15 years.

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the state’s last nuclear plant, that also provides continuous uninterruptible electricity has been scheduled for closure.

Newsom, by continually decreasing in-state oil production, continues to force California, the 4th largest economy in the world, to be the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil feedstock to refineries 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.

NATURAL GAS:

Prices are high because the state has long discouraged local production (like the States’ success at discouraging oil production), importing more than 90% of its natural gas from other states. There is also a shortage of natural gas storage facilities.

With the average debt in this country greater than $100,000 per person (across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans and student loans), and with more than half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, society is facing an unsustainable problem where those “financially challenged” will never pay off their continuously increasing debt.

Many have no retirement savings, as a graying America is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet. Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement. Thus, with the loss of just one paycheck, there are many millions of people on the verge of joining the growing homeless population.

California is already home to more than 180,000 homeless people. With the average person in heavy debt and unable to save for retirement, California leaders refuse to forecast how fast the States’ homeless population is expected to GROW and its impact on businesses and the economy.

When we look outside California and the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21st century. We should not take energy for granted. The financially stable folks within the wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”

California, desperately need dependable, affordable electricity AND THE PRODUCTS AND FUELS MANUFACTURED FROM FOSSIL FUELS to create jobs, lift families out of poverty, modernize homes, schools, and hospitals, provide clean water, and replace wood and animal dung for cooking and heating.

Even today, millions of parents and children in poorer developing countries die from respiratory and intestinal diseases that are unheard of in wealthy countries, because they don’t have electricity nor any of the 6,000 products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Like Germany, the “Greener” California gets, the bloodier its economy becomes as the “green” polices are the primary cause for the escalating cost of electricity and the escalating cost for the products and fuels from crude oil. Costly California looms as an example of poor energy policy with the states’ population being used like sacrificial lambs to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California

https://www.americaoutloud.news/californias-energy-policies-are-using-its-population-as-sacrificial-lambs/

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New study confirms GWPF reports on declining climate disasters

A new scientific study has confirmed what GWPF reports and statements have emphasised for some time: Natural and climate-related disasters have been declining rather than increasing during the 21st century.

For years, international agencies such as the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Red Cross (IFRC) have been issuing reports claiming that climate-related disasters are currently escalating (Weather, climate disasters surge fivefold in 50 years, says UN report).

For years, the GWPF has been pointing out that such claims are wrong and contradicted by empirical data. The UN agencies’ misleading claims arise from a failure to account for the major increase in disaster reporting engendered by the arrival of new technologies since the 1970s.

Not only has the annual number of climate-related disasters trended downwards over the last 20+ years.

The number of people killed by natural and climate-related disasters has also been falling steadily over the past 120 years.

Source: Alimonti & Mariani (2024)

In a new study, analysing temporal trends in the number of natural disasters reported since 1900, two Italian scientists confirm that the 21st century has seen “a decreasing trend to 2022” which is “characterized by a significant decline in number of [disaster] events…"

Source: Alimonti & Mariani (2024)

"The statement that we are facing an increasing trend of natural disasters, as claimed in the three official reports by UNDRR and FAO on the basis of the same EM-DAT dataset […] are not supported by data” (Gianluca Alimonti & Luigi Mariani (2024) Environmental Hazards, 23:2, 186-202).

The authors emphasise that the empirical data “sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO and UNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim.”

In their conclusion, the scientists emphasise that they “are concerned about the misrepresentation of the natural disaster trend because such claims have been uncritically broadcast by many different media and by FAO itself, thereby deforming the perception of the public on the risk of natural disasters…

Misinterpreting the trend of natural disasters is a very serious matter because exposes the world population to the risk of inconsistent policies at both a national and an international level, thereby wasting resources or diverting them from the resolution of much more concrete problems.”

Dr Ralph Alexander who has authored a series of critiques of erroneous climate disaster claims said:

“The new study by Alimonti and Mariani vindicates what we said in a GWPF report three years ago – climate-related disasters are not on the rise, despite global warming. Claims to the contrary have been made for years by several international agencies. Yet, these agencies failed to recognise that the apparent increase in natural disasters since the 1970s simply reflects a major increase in disaster reporting due to new technology.”

GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said:

“There is a famous saying that sums up the GWPF’s efforts to set the record straight on disaster trends and climate disasters: ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they join you

https://mailchi.mp/f8726c137529/new-study-confirms-gwpf-reports-on-declining-climate-disasters-201671?e=cc88839e92

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The big renewable energy lie

Always be suspicious of an expert report that appears to serve a crude ideological purpose. Always be on the lookout for the big lie dressed up in the language of science.

On May 22, the CSIRO’s latest GenCost report was released. It claimed that large-scale wind and solar are the lowest-cost electricity generation technologies, significantly under-cutting nuclear power alternatives. Chris Bowen was quick to seize on this: ‘Our reliable renewables plan is backed by experts to deliver the lowest cost energy,’ he said, on the day of its release.

Debate on the GenCost report has focused on its treatment of nuclear power. But commentators have missed a fatal flaw in the report’s methodology. Its reliance on a cost metric (the so-called Levelised Cost of Electricity or LCOE) that, by its authors’ own admission, is no ‘substitute’ for ‘more realistic’ ways to analyse electricity generation costs, including cash flow analysis.

Buried on page 64 of the report, this gives the game away. LCOE is an accounting metric, not an economic one. It measures the total unit costs a generator must recover to meet all expenses – plant, equipment, land, raw materials, and labour – including a return on investment. It says nothing about the revenue side of the commercial equation: What prices can the generator earn on the wholesale market and, given their costs, what profits can be earned?

For economists, nothing sensible can be said about a service’s economic value, and therefore economic cost, without this additional information.

Think about it. An unreliable car that costs far less to make than a reliable one could not be said to be ‘cheaper’ than the latter if it has no value for consumers. If, as is almost certain, it could not be sold at a profit, society would be in fact worse (not better) off for devoting capital, land and labour to its production. It is value-subtracting from an economic point of view, not value-adding (unless any external benefits it brings outweigh them).

By the same logic, an inherently unreliable source of power, like solar or wind, cannot be said to be cheaper in an economic sense than a reliable source of power, regardless of how much it costs to supply when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, which as we know is only 20 to 40 per cent of the time.

To make the same point in a different way. For the 60 to 80 per cent of the time when intermittent power cannot be supplied at any price, its economic cost can be said to be infinite.

As the eminent MIT economist Paul Joskow has pointed out, the LCOE metric ignores the decisive commercial advantage dispatchable power, in whatever form, enjoys over wind and solar generation.

An operator of a coal, gas, and indeed nuclear power facility can gear their operation to meet expected consumer demand as reflected in wholesale market prices. In contrast, for intermittent wind and solar, consumer demand can only ever be satisfied – and profits earned, leaving subsidies to one side – by accident. Literally as a quirk of prevailing weather conditions.

In this respect, wind and solar are more akin to agriculture than manufacturing, liable to suffer from gluts (when it is sunny and all solar capacity is operating), droughts (on cloudy or windless days), and mismatches (when it is windy at times when power demand is minimal). Intermittent revenues, absent guaranteed returns, are inherently unreliable.

When combined with the very high fixed capital costs of renewable projects, this fact explains why wind and solar developers need huge subsidies despite their very low marginal costs. Why, in the absence of this taxpayer support, large-scale wind and solar operators would go out of business.

The GenCost LCOE measure blinds us to this inconvenient truth. It asserts that wind and solar are cheap, but cannot explain the subsidies they need. On this ground alone, it should be rejected. From the public’s perspective – from the point of view of consumers – it obscures and indeed misleads rather than enlightens. A private business using this marketing trick would never get away with it, yet government ministers go uncriticised.

When the Australian economy was collapsing under the economic weight of protectionism in the late 20th Century, the Productivity Commission’s predecessor agencies courageously publicised the economic costs of this policy. At first these reports were ignored, as both the Coalition and Labor politicians proudly boasted of being protectionist (the term didn’t become a pejorative one until the 1970s), but eventually they were taken notice of and influenced policy.

Today, the same critical spotlight should be applied to the costs of wind and solar power, which include: 1. the direct cost of subsidies for them; 2. the system-wide costs – including transmission, storage and back-up dispatchable power – they impose (this would include the cost of subsidies to keep coal-fired power stations operating); 3. the uncompensated economic, social and environmental losses wind, solar, and new transmission lines are inflicting farmers and others living in regional communities (an unprecedented expropriation of property rights); and 4. the welfare costs of a more volatile and less reliable grid (given that additional storage, with current technologies, cannot smooth things over if the renewable share continues to rise).

This renewable energy audit should be embraced by all in the community, regardless of their views on climate change, Net Zero and the merits of nuclear energy. It should be demanded by not only the opposition, but all Labor people who worry about the mounting economic pain being caused by the government’s renewable-only crusade.

Of course, the renewable industrial complex – which reaches deep into the bureaucracy, corporate world, the media and our academic institutions – can be relied on to bitterly oppose such an exercise.

For them at least, this form of sunlight would not be the best form of disinfectant. Rather, it would lay bare the billions of dollars of rents a select few are extracting from the rest of the community, possibly the biggest deliberate transfer of wealth from low to high-income Australians we have ever seen.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/the-big-renewable-energy-lie/

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Australian "Greens" becoming hard Left antisemites

Hard antisemitism always comes from the Left. Marx despised Jews even though he was one and Hitler was an extreme socialist

Over the past decade, Daniel Coleman tried to address what he and other members of the Greens had identified as a growing problem: antisemitism within the party. He helped found the Jewish Greens Working Group in Victoria and along with the late David Zyngier, a local government councillor and respected party figure, worked to develop policies and educate party members about the ancient hatred.

In the days and weeks after Hamas’ atrocities in southern Israel, the muted response from the party’s elected officials convinced him the project had failed. The Greens had not adopted a policy on antisemitism proposed by the working group and, more distressingly, he says the party appeared to give little thought to the Jews murdered, raped and taken hostage by terrorists.

“It was brought home to me after October 7 that Jewish lives were just not a concern to the Australian Greens party,” Coleman says from his Melbourne home. “It really became untenable for me to continue as a member.

“I believe that had it been any community other than a Jewish community subject to that sort of attack, the Greens would have spoken out.”

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton rose this week in federal parliament, one after the other, to condemn the Greens for seeking to exploit for political ends social divisions created by the war in Gaza, there were party politics in play. But what Albanese and Dutton said went beyond electoral calculus. The raw anger in the PM’s voice sliced through the usual cant and theatrics of question time.

Greens leader Adam Bandt described the politicians’ attacks as outrageous, saying his party had drawn a clear line between peaceful protests and any actions which escalate into violence or destruction of property. He reiterated what has become his party’s three-point mantra. “The Greens condemn antisemitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. And the Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza.”

Coleman believes it is an empty slogan.

The Greens’ abhorrence of the catastrophic loss of life in Gaza, eight months into a conflict that continues to frustrate the diplomatic efforts of neighbouring Arab states and the Biden administration to broker a ceasefire, is genuine and heartfelt. So far, more than 36,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of using starvation as a war tactic.

Less than a month after October 7, Coleman was dismayed when Bandt posted promotional material for a “stand with Gaza” rally in Melbourne. In the accompanying image, Israel is wiped from the map and replaced by a “Free Palestine” taking in all of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank.

Coleman says this is contrary to Greens’ policy, which supports a two-state solution.

“They have done nothing to combat antisemitism or to acknowledge it within the party or to call out and oppose the terrorism of Hamas,” Coleman says.

“It is really all about winning elections. They are looking for votes and they want to shore up the far left as their base. If you like Hamas, your party of choice is going to be the Greens.”

The influence of this shift in the Greens is evidenced by the party’s embrace of a pro-Palestinian protest movement that, in the eight months since October 7, has progressively adopted slogans, chants, dress and symbols favoured by Hamas and other militant Palestinian organisations.

A graphic example was left outside the electoral office of Labor MP and former ACTU president Ged Kearney last Friday by keffiyeh-wrapped members of Darebin4Palestine, a protest group centred in Melbourne’s deep-Green local government area.

Amid Palestinian flags, an invitation for Kearney to “resign, genocide” and “F--- the ALP” graffiti on the walls of her office, a placard made a play on the well-known Palestinian liberation chant: “From the River to the Sea, Death to the ALP.” The placard also carried an upside down red triangle; iconography used by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas which carried out the 7 October attacks.

The vandalism outside Kearney’s office was part of a “Day of Action Against the ALP” co-ordinated between pro-Palestinian groups and promoted by one of the Greens Victorian State MPs, Gabrielle de Vietri, to her Instagram followers.

Khalil says every citizen has the right to protest government policy but the Greens, in their determination to harvest votes from a tragic conflict and loss of innocent life in Gaza, were putting something else at risk.

“I am really concerned and this goes beyond politics. As elected representatives, we have a responsibility to unite Australians and protect our democracy and ensure community safety and cohesion. You have got a political party that has representatives in parliament who are fanning the flames of hatred and division and grievance and tearing asunder the social fabric for short-term political gain. It is not the party of Bob Brown any more. That’s for sure.”

RedBridge pollster Kos Samaras said the Greens strategy was working among young voters, with his latest survey showing that 28 per cent of voters between the age of 18 and 34 say they will vote Green at the next federal election. The flipside, he says, is that the party is losing support among older voters.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/wreaking-some-destruction-the-schism-in-the-greens-driving-out-jewish-members-20240607-p5jk02.html

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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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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

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