Peeling White Paint on Weather Stations – Major ‘Cause’ of Global Warming

According to a new study, weather station data has been shown to non-climatically and erroneously record warmer-than-actual temperatures due to the steady and perpetual aging process almost universally observed in temperature gauges.

When a weather station temperature gauge’s white paint or white plastic ages and darkens, this allows more solar radiation to be absorbed by the gauge than when the gauge is bright white and new.

Within a span of just 2 to 5 years, a gauge has been observed to record maximum temperatures 0.46°C to 0.49°C warmer than in gauges that have not undergone an aging process.

This artificial warming is not corrected in modern data sets, and it builds up over time – even when the gauges are cleaned or resurfaced every few years.

If these systematic artificial warming errors were to be corrected rather than ignored, the 140-year (1880-’90 to 2010-’20) GISTEMP global warming trend plummets from the current estimate of +1.43°C down to +0.83°C, a 42% differential.

The temperature reduction can be even more pronounced – from +1.43°C down to +0.41°C – if a set of conservative assumptions (described in detail in the paper) are removed.

Interestingly, when the systematically erroneous temperature data are removed, or homogenized, at different intervals of time (2 years vs. 12 to 30 years, etc.)

The global temperature trend – indeed, the long-term global warming trend – can be shown to effectively disappear, depending on the time interval. This can be observed below, in Figure 7.

As this chart illustrates, temperature data can homogenized, or adjusted, to exhibit just about any trend or non-trend the creator of the chart intends to. Data can be bent and manipulated to show strong warming, weak warming, or even no warming over the last 140 years.

Perhaps the modern version of global warming is not nearly as unprecedented or even unusual as it is purported to be.

https://principia-scientific.com/peeling-white-paint-on-weather-stations-true-cause-of-global-warming/

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Why EV Ownership Is a Ticking Time Bomb

It is now, or should be, common knowledge that electric vehicles—cars, trucks, buses, bikes, scooters—under conditions of even low humidity or water damage, are prone to catching fire, owing to the unstable nature of the lithium-ion battery

As Chris Morrison writes at The Daily Skeptic, EVs are known to explode “with the force of a bomb blasting super-heated jets of flame, melting and decomposing nearby structural materials including metal and concrete, and sending vast amounts of toxic fumes into any enclosed atmosphere.”

Jammed into underground parking garages or packed in ferries, EVs are harbingers of almost unimaginable disaster—ecological and safety menaces to which the ‘Net Zero’ fanatics among our political leadership are comatosely indifferent.

We have witnessed lethal battery explosions in South Korea and elsewhere with significant loss of life. QBE Europe reports that such fires are increasing at a worrisome rate and explains:

“Lithium-ion fires are the result of thermal runaway, where batteries start to irreversibly overheat, usually due to impact damage, over-charging or over-heating…

The resulting explosive fire incidents are significantly more energetic [than ordinary fires], causing extensive damage, and potentially injury or even death.”

They cannot be readily put out and will often re-ignite.

We read of an electric truck loaded with lithium batteries catching fire, closing down the Port of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

We learn that Audi’s signature e-tron GT has been recalled multiple times over fire concerns. A massive fire at a Rivian Plant crisped over 50 vehicles. In 2022, Hurricane Ian caused 20 electric cars to catch fire “after they flooded with salt water, creating hazards for first responders.”

We have seen the damage that Hurricane Helene caused in Florida and other states, involving the volatile nature of EVs as well. According to Florida Politics, “Gov. Ron DeSantis urged owners of electric vehicles in Florida on Wednesday to drive them to higher ground to avoid them being exposed to seawater.”

A Toronto apartment complex has just banned all electric vehicles, including electric bikes, motorbikes, unicycles, hoverboards, mopeds, Segways, skateboards, and scooters, citing fire risk. These are only a few of the instances that are on record.

It is to be expected that EV advocates—government officials, industry executives, interested buyers, and committed owners—will claim that internal combustion fires far outnumber their electric competitors, which does make statistical sense.

Editor’s note: there are statistically more ICE fires than EV fires because EV’s represent only a small fraction of the total number of vehicles. If numbers were equal, EV fires would be many times more than ICE fires.

There is significantly more of one than of the other. According to various reports (e.g., International Energy Agency, Regie de l’énergie du Canada, etc.), EVs make up anywhere from only five percent to 18 percent of the market, depending on the country.

In any case, it is a sales number that is now markedly declining as consumers and major companies are turning off EVs.

As I have previously pointed out, Ford Motors is backing away from EVs and reconditioning an EV plant to build high-demand Super Duty trucks. Nissan’s EV earnings dropped 99% in the first quarter of the year.

General Motors delayed (perhaps indefinitely) the new Buick EV and a new electric truck factory. Hertz Global Holdings is selling off 20,000 EVs from its fleet. The Financial Post reports that Volkswagen has cut EV output in Germany as demand craters.

Indeed, The Telegraph reports that Germany suffered a “spectacular 70pc drop in electric car sales.” EV automobile manufacturer Stellantis has laid off thousands of Michigan workers. Italy has called for a review of the European Union’s coming internal combustion car ban, claiming that the “absurd” policy was ideologically driven and ignored the realities of the market.

But even if this were not so, EVs would continue to pose a much greater danger than ICE vehicles. I have only seldom heard of a gas-powered vehicle aflame, yet EV fires seem to be a regular event, giving off clouds of toxic emissions and burning almost uncontrollably.

They are a source of ecological havoc whose effects will grow increasingly evident despite government mandates and media silence.

Although I have written about the EV hazard on several occasions for this site and others, the issue’s implications recently came home to me with renewed force. Embarking on one of the myriad ferries that ply between Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, and the Gulf Islands, I noticed a late-model EV among the hundreds of cars, trucks, and tankers making the crossing.

There were certainly more, but one was enough to get me thinking. A single “thermal event” would cause a near-unquenchable fire, release volumes of toxic emissions, and set off explosions in the confined hold of the ship that would likely result in its foundering and the death of many passengers from fire, poisonous fumes, and drowning.

This was a nightmare vision that I sensed would one day translate into the real world. I also knew that very few of the officials in charge of the ferry service would accept the very real possibility of such a cataclysm.

If such an event should occur, denial and subterfuge would be the response. The cause would have to be located elsewhere. The combination of inertia and vested interest, bureaucratic sluggishness, and profiteering avarice would constitute nothing less than criminal indifference.

I was encouraged to read that the Norwegian shipping firm Havila Kystruten, which operates car ferries around the coast of Norway, has banned the transportation of electric, hybrid, and hydrogen vehicles. And with good reason.

Neil Dalus of the freight insurer TT Club points out:

“During a lithium battery thermal runaway event… significant amounts of vapour can be produced in many common supply chain scenarios, including ships’ holds and warehouses.”

The potential toxic effects, as noted, can be and have been fatal. “Drivers, stevedores, ships’ crews and first responders attempting to control the blazes encounter what might appear to be smoke but is in fact a mix of toxic gases, generated quickly and in large volumes.”

The freight insurer warns that the failure of these batteries can occur “with such speed that there is typically no time to react.”

Such disasters may not be as improbable as we may have thought. They are just waiting to happen. Mike Gallagher, CEO of Ports Australia, warns of the ferocity of such fires:

“You can’t put them out. So you can imagine it on the street if you can’t put them out, imagine them on a vessel out at sea or in a port.”

In 2022, the Felicity Ace, a large cargo vessel carrying 4,000 cars, including EVs, not-so mysteriously caught fire and sunk. In July 2023, the Dutch vessel Freemantle Highway, with a cargo of 3,783 vehicles, including 498 EVs, burst into flames, the fire starting “in the battery of an electric car,” according to a crewman.

The National Transportation Safety Board has also advised of the inherent risks. EVs are ticking time bombs.

Of course, engineers and technicians are working to improve the safety co-efficient of the lithium battery, but success is years in the future—if at all. Moreover, the electrical grid cannot sustain the drain on its capacity, which in itself is enough to put paid to so ill-advised a project.

Whatever way we look at it, the EV revolution is premature and appears destined to failure.

One should keep in mind that many professional firms and the media will almost always gloss over the danger and the lethal radius of these fires in the same way that “fact-checkers” almost always manipulate rather than check the facts.

Believe them at your peril. The risk factor is not susceptible to standard data analysis.

Indeed, the purring statistical distributions we find all over the Net with respect to the comparative dangers of driving an EV and an ICE vehicle, assuring us we have no need to worry about EVs, depend on a selective approach to weak or imperfect data arrays.

The statistical apparatus that is usually brought to bear upon the events in question is not only starved of appropriate data but is meant to distort our perception of the situation. It cannot accommodate the scalene and empirical properties of certain sorts of phenomena—in this instance, what we might refer to as “crisis events.”

One EV fire can sink a ship; the damage is incalculably greater than any number of regular vehicles can give rise to. How do we compute so disproportionate a probability?

We are dealing with a category error. One apple, so to speak, may be far more septic than innumerable oranges. As the old saw goes, “Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.”

“Companies flourish in a free market economy not by serving bureaucrats but consumers, the true ‘bosses,” writes Jonathan Miltimore at The Epoch Times, condemning the “hamfisted” misallocation of government resources.

“Fortunately, the centrally planned EV Revolution now appears dead in the water, or at least in full retreat.” One hopes he is right.

Although governments everywhere continue to push for increased “adoption,” the time has plainly arrived to end EV mandates, wasteful government subsidies and incentives, and the political, corporate and media propaganda campaigns leading to the inevitable economic, ecological and life-threatening debacles everyone will come to regret.

The time is now, before the treasury collapses and the fatalities begin to mount up.

https://principia-scientific.com/why-ev-ownership-is-a-ticking-time-bomb/

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Expert Calls Out VP Debate Moderators’ Climate Lies

Climate alarmists, despite what CBS debate moderators asserted, “can't demonstrate that emissions are really having any effects on anything other than maybe they're helping the planet get greener, which means there's more life,” Junk Science’s Steve Milloy told PJ Media.

The CBS vice presidential debate moderators, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, tried to tie Hurricane Helene to “climate change” and pressured both Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz to endorse government climate action. But “the notion that this is a man-made or -enhanced or -caused weather event is just without a foundation,” Milloy explained.

Milloy, a Senior E&E Institute Legal Fellow and former Trump EPA Transition Team Member, insisted that there’s “been no increase in strong hurricanes. There's been no increase in the frequency of hurricanes. The sort of storm that hit the Big Bend of Florida has happened before.” Indeed, as of Jan. 2023, data indicated major hurricanes were becoming less frequent.

In terms of “observational data,” Milloy continued, the theory that “emissions have somehow warmed the ocean water is completely faulty, because it's physically impossible for the atmosphere to warm the ocean. So it's impossible for emissions to warm the ocean.” While Helene “may be a record weather event … that's not really going to be unexpected, because we've been through a pretty extraordinary past year, which is not explainable by emissions. It was an El Nino year. There are other factors.” Helene wasn’t caused or intensified by human actions.

Alarmists assert storms are “made more likely by climate change. I have no idea what they're talking about,” Milloy told me. “Storms have always happened. They always will happen. The ocean water … has warmed recently. But once again, the atmosphere cannot warm the ocean.” Rather, “the primary warmer of the ocean is the sun, and the other is [that] water can be warmed from beneath. That's probably how El Nino has developed. So both of these things are natural, have nothing to do with humans.”

Milloy cited an “ironic” article he found from last year saying people were moving to Asheville, NC, which has since been devastated by Helene, “because they thought it would be … safe climate wise. And of course, you know, climate is a ridiculous reason to do anything. They should have been thinking about the weather.” After all, “those mountains get storms,” Milloy pointed out, “it's a flood-prone area. And this time they got a really big one, and no one was ready for it, because I guess they're imagining that emissions are a problem.”

When you make decisions based on what climate alarmists say, disaster is sure to follow; not a single climate doom prophecy has come true in many decades.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2024/10/02/exclusive-expert-calls-out-vp-debate-moderators-climate-lies-n49330210

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Organizations that manage, coordinate and monitor electricity service for 156 million Americans across 30 states are warning that the Biden-Harris administration’s power plant rule will be catastrophic for the nation’s grid

Four regional trade organizations (RTO), as they’re called, recently filed an amicus brief, also known as a friend of the court brief, in support of a multi-state lawsuit against the EPA over the rule.

The EPA released the rules in April. They require coal-fired power plants that will be operating past 2039 to begin implementing carbon-capture technologies in just eight years. New gas-fired power plants will also need to add the technologies, with those operating 40% of their annual capacity or more to add carbon capture starting in 2032.

Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, co-founder and researchers with Always On Energy Research, performed an analysis on behalf of the North Dakota Transmission Authority on the impacts the rules would have on the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), an RTO that covers a swath of the center of the U.S.

The researchers say they found a number of problems. The EPA grossly overestimated the ability of intermittent wind and solar to deliver reliable electricity during peak demand periods, according to the analysis, and it also found the agency didn’t perform any reliability analysis on the rules. The result would be blackouts lasting days in some cases.

The RTOs’ amicus brief points out these same problems. It argues that the EPA’s timeline is too short. The requirements for compliance assume feasibility of carbon capture technology that has not been “adequately demonstrated,” the RTOs explain, and the rules would result in vast retirements of coal-fired power plants while preventing investments in baseload generators, such as natural gas-fired power plants, to replace the lost capacity. The RTOs also noted that the EPA performed no reliability operational assessments. Baseload generation refers to the minimum level of constant power supply that a utility or power grid must produce to meet the continuous and consistent demand for electricity.

“It would be absolutely devastating for the grid,” Rolling told Just the News.

Rolling and Orr reached out to several regulatory attorneys, and none of them were aware of another situation in which RTOs filed an amicus brief asking the court to remand regulations back to the agency. The fact the RTOs intervened in the case suggests that they are especially concerned about the rules.

Supporters of the rules, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), argue the rules are necessary to achieve net-zero by 2050. The target is a key goal for anti-fossil fuel advocates, because they say it would limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The criticisms the EPA’s rules have received suggest the goal isn’t achievable without serious threats to the reliability of the nation’s grid. Net zero means cutting carbon emissions to a small amount of residual emissions that can be absorbed and durably stored by nature and other carbon dioxide removal measures, leaving zero in the atmosphere.

Rolling said that many grid engineers and planners know that eliminating thermal units — coal- and gas-fired power plants — on the time scale that achieving net zero by 2050 would result in frequent and lasting blackouts. He said, however, there’s a reluctance to be too vocal about it. The industries that contribute to the U.S. electricity supply are interconnected, and there’s pressure to maintain harmony and cooperation, to not rock the boat so to speak, which is a feature of many industries and organizations.

“So they don't say things out in the open, that maybe they should,” Rolling said.

The 2019 blackouts in California, the deadly Texas blackouts in the 2021 Winter Storm Uri, and the Christmas 2022 blackouts in the Southeast, Rolling said, should have been a wakeup call for the country that there are growing risks to our electricity grid. So far, they haven’t deterred the net-zero by 2050 advocates from their agenda.

Rolling said that RTOs and utilities have traditionally been policy takers, as opposed to policy makers. This is leaving a lot of the policymaking up to people who are not as knowledgeable or concerned about the impacts policies can have on the nation’s electricity supply.

“At a certain point, you can't be policy takers. You have to get in the mix of policy. These are the people that know this best. They know their regions the best. They know what their system needs to maintain reliability, and the EPA should listen to them,” Rolling said.

So far, the EPA doesn’t appear to be willing to do that. In its response to the arguments of the plaintiffs, the EPA defended its rule and its authority to enact it. The agency defended carbon capture, pointing to projects the agency claims were successful, and insisted the technology is financially viable. Rolling said he’s talked to engineers that tell him the technology is still in its infancy, but the EPA is trying to force it into primetime.

“We're jumping off a cliff and we're hoping to create the parachute while we're in the air,” Rolling said.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/grid-operators-warn-us-supreme-court-epas-rules-will-cause-widespread

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

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

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http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Google will help build seven nuclear reactors to power its AI systems

Google is adding nuclear plants to its seemingly ever-growing portfolio. The company has partnered with Kairos Power to back the construction of seven small nuclear reactors in the U.S. It’s the first agreement of its kind.

The first plant is expected to come online by 2030, the company announced in a blog post. Other reactors will be deployed by 2035. All totaled, the deal will funnel 500 megawatts of power to the company’s AI technologies—enough to power a midsize city.

“Nuclear solutions offer a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands with carbon-free energy every hour of every day,” Google wrote in the blog post. “Advancing these power sources in close partnership with supportive local communities will rapidly drive the decarbonization of electricity grids around the world.”

The smaller reactors created by Kairos, a nuclear-energy startup, are different from the towers most people think of when they conjure up an image of a nuclear reactor. The company uses a molten salt cooling system (much like the one that will be used for the on-site reactor being built on the campus of Abilene Christian University), which operates at a lower pressure. The company broke ground on a demonstration reactor, which will be unpowered, earlier this year in Tennessee.

Google did not unveil the cost of the partnership. The project site (or sites) have not yet been determined.

Google’s announcement comes weeks after Microsoft announced a partnership with Constellation Energy that will see the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, resume operations to power Microsoft’s AI data centers.

Experts have warned data centers could become a big strain on the U.S. power grid, with the nine-year projected growth forecast for North America essentially doubling from where it stood a year ago. Last year, the five-year forecast from Grid Strategies projected growth of 2.6%. That number has since nearly doubled to 4.7%—and planners expect peak demand to grow by 38 gigawatts. In real-world terms, that’s sufficient to power 12.7 million homes.

https://fortune.com/2024/10/15/google-nuclear-reactors/

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Global warming is NOT surging, scientists say - despite record-breaking temperatures

From the UK's hottest day to the hottest year on record globally, there's no doubt some worrying temperature records have been broken in recent years.

Many people think the rate of global warming has dramatically accelerated or 'surged' over the past 15 years – and is a cause of more extreme weather.

But a new study says there is not any statistical evidence for this so-called 'surge' or 'leap'.

Researchers looked at long-term global surface temperatures since records began back in 1850 and found no evidence of a surge since the 1970s.

While the academics agree that human-caused global warming is happening, they say it is not statistically 'surging' as some claim.

The team’s findings demonstrate a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge. In this graph, the circled part section is the part that some scientists have highlighted as a period of increased warming (the 'surge'), but the team say this model is 'not plausible' (inset)
The team’s findings demonstrate a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge. In this graph, the circled part section is the part that some scientists have highlighted as a period of increased warming (the 'surge'), but the team say this model is 'not plausible' (inset)

Recent years have seen record-breaking temperatures and heat waves globally, including the hottest UK record set in July 2022.

Last year was officially the hottest year since global records began in 1850, while that the 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past decade (2014-2023).

However, the new study found a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge.

'Our concern with the current discussion around the presence of a "surge" is that there was no rigorous statistical treatment or evidence,' said co-author Professor Rebecca Killick, a statistician at Lancaster University.

'We decided to address this head on, using all commonly used statistical approaches and comparing their results.'

To learn more, Professor Killick and partners at UC Santa Cruz in the US studied 'global mean surface temperature' (GMST),

GMST is simply the average temperature of Earth's surface – and a metric that is widely studied to monitor climate change.

It's usually recorded by weather balloons, radars, ships and buoys, and satellites, over both oceans and land.

The experts looked at GMST from four main agencies that track the average temperature of Earth’s surface – NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Berkeley and the UK's HadCRUT – since 1850.

Although GMST is rising long-term, in the short-term it tends to fluctuate due to natural phenomena – like major volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

Therefore, the team deemed a warming 'surge' as statistically detectable if it exceeded and sustained a level above those temporary fluctuations over a long period of time.

'Imagine temperature records plotted on a graph – a small change in the slope would require more time to detect it as significant, whereas a large change would be evident quicker,' said Professor Killick.

After accounting for short-term fluctuations in the GMST, a warming surge could 'not be reliably detected' anytime after 1970, the team found.

'No change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s is detected despite the breaking record temperatures observed in 2023,' they write in their paper, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

The team stress that a surge in global warming may be happening – just that it's not detectable yet.

'Of course, it is still possible that an acceleration in global warming is occurring,' said lead author Claudie Beaulieu, a professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

'But we found that the magnitude of the acceleration is either statistically too small, or there isn’t enough data yet to robustly detect it.'

Professor Beaulieu agreed that Earth is the warmest it has ever been since records began because of human activities.

She said: 'To be clear, our analysis demonstrates the ongoing warming; however, if there's an acceleration in global warming, we can't statistically detect it yet.'

In response to the findings, Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, suggested that only one line of evidence was considered for the study.

'In fact, when all lines of evidence are scrutinized it is apparent that climate change is accelerating rather continuing steadily,' said Professor Allan, who was not part of the research team.

'Halting global warming by stabilizing Earth’s climate and limiting further damage from worsening extreme weather and rising sea levels is only possible through rapid and massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.'

Dr Kevin Collins, a senior lecturer in environment and systems at Open University, said there is a 'very real danger' that the findings are misinterpreted.

'With many people and places experiencing year on year record temperatures around the globe in the last decade, it is very human to assume global warming is accelerating or "surging",' said Dr Collins, also not involved with the study.

'However, through an authoritative statistical analysis of temperature increases since 1970, this research concludes that there is no detectable surge – yet.

'Instead, the results suggest global warming is occurring at a steady state.

'However, as the authors acknowledge, this may be because the size of any acceleration is either statistically too small, or there is simply not enough data to detect a surge in the last decade.'

'In other words, it is still too early to tell if the last decade – the warmest on record – represents a "leap" in the warming trend.

'By 2035 or 2040 we may look back and be able to see from 2015 onwards there has been a fundamental shift in the warming trend.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13961409/Global-warming-not-surging-scientists-climate.html

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Another Captive Agency Weaponized Against White House Critics

Note from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On September 4, I received a letter from Mr. Todd J. Smith, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service, United States Department of Commerce. In the letter, the agency states that they are investigating the alleged claim that I collected a specimen from a rotting carcass found on a Massachusetts beach in 1994. It claims that I may have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The agency sent its letter just 12 days after I endorsed President Trump on August 23, raising the concern that this investigation is yet another instance of the systematic weaponization of federal enforcement agencies against White House critics.

Here’s my response to his letter, which I sent to Mr. Smith on Oct. 8:

October 8, 2024

RE: Alleged Violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act

Mr. Smith:

This is my response to your inquiry about the unsubstantiated allegation that my collection, in 1994 on a Massachusetts beach, of a specimen from a rotting carcass may have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act. I never collected a whale specimen in Massachusetts or transported marine mammal specimens across state lines, nor do I have such a specimen in my collection.

While I am impressed with the alacrity with which the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) launched its investigation of the fate of a 30-year-old specimen, the rapid reaction contrasts sharply with your stubborn intransigeance in addressing the apparent massacre of marine mammals by the offshore wind industry. Recently approved offshore wind farms appear to be putting several protected dolphin and whale species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, in dire crisis.

Your agency has idly watched the approval of 30 offshore wind leases from Maine to North Carolina effectively privatizing 2.3 million acres of ocean bottom, mostly on extremely productive fishing grounds and critical habitat for migratory whales and other marine mammals, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Many Americans suspect that your agency’s anemic response to this serious emergency may be rooted in its reluctance to obstruct the profit ambitions of a politically powerful cabal of energy titans including Dominion, Shell, and General Electric, and U.S. financial houses Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, and Blackstone. These firms either directly own or are funding projects by foreign energy behemoths including Equinor (Norwegian government), Ørsted (Danish state majority-owned), Iberdrola (Spain), and TotalEnergies (France). The backing by those U.S.-based financial houses allows foreign governments and foreign-owned wind developers to collect tens of billions of dollars in U.S. subsidies and tax credits. These subsidies are provided for by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature “environmental” legislation. In the U.S., offshore wind is an environmentally destructive boondoggle. No financial institution will fund these projects in the absence of obscene government subsidies. Offshore wind farms produce energy 300% more expensive than cheap and abundant onshore wind, which I strongly support.

These companies, based on present offshore wind construction plans that have been approved or are in the process of being approved, will pile-drive 2,200 offshore wind turbines into the ocean floor at intervals of one mile or less across 5,816 square miles. Each turbine with blades will be approximately 1,000 feet tall, on par with the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The advent of the first wind project on Block Island and the arrival of seismic survey boats in 2016 and 2017 were coterminous with an alarming uptick in unexplained whale deaths so unusual that the NOAA Office of Protected Resources declared three Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs): one for humpbacks, one for minke, and one for North Atlantic right whales. The North Atlantic right whale has a total population of fewer than 360 individuals, so every stranding poses a threat to its total extinction.

Prior to the inception of increased seismic survey and construction activity for the wind industry, ship strikes killed 1.4 humpbacks annually from Maine to Virginia. In 2016, as the offshore wind gold rush gathered steam, 26 humpbacks stranded from Maine to North Carolina. Fifteen more stranded from January to April of 2017. Of the 20 humpback whales that were necropsied from that time period, 10 of them were ship strikes. There was no increase in shipping during this period. The only thing that changed was a flurry of offshore wind survey boats, from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

Mass deaths have increased in lockstep with expanding exploration and construction activities. In the 13 months beginning in December of 2022, there were 85 large whale strandings on the East Coast with zero entanglements. A total of 109 large whale deaths occurred from December 1, 2022, through June 6, 2024, mostly within range of offshore wind survey and construction vessels. This amounts to an average of 5.7 dead whales a month for 19 months — a record number of dead whales the likes of which have not occurred in a lifetime. Hundreds of dolphins and porpoises have also died. Only last month, a dead humpback washed ashore on Block Island in the vicinity of the Revolution Wind wind farm, and a dead fin whale landed on Cupsogue Beach on Long Island after being seen the day before floating 12 miles south of Shinnecock, while a young minke whale was found alive struggling in the surf in Montauk, only to die and then to float out to sea.

In September of 2020, 17 environmental groups conveyed to NMFS their “profound concerns” about NMFS’s systematic coddling of the offshore wind farm industry. In that letter, they discussed the 12 previous comment letters they submitted to NMFS since 2018 identifying your agency’s multiple failures in enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). They repeatedly urged your agency to “require even stronger protections … for marine site characterization surveys required for offshore wind development” in compliance with the MMPA. Despite their urgings, NMFS has taken no meaningful steps to mitigate the massacre.

Instead of calling an immediate moratorium on offshore wind development, government regulators continued to permit lethally deficient Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) that allow the wind farm industry to “take” Atlantic whales by the drove. Your reckless dereliction of your statutory obligations to protect these magnificent creatures has resulted in up to 108 vessels conducting geophysical survey activities over more than 10,000 survey days from 2017 to 2022. Independent analysis of your own data suggests that these activities have already resulted in more than 113,000 instances of “taking” of marine mammals, including 402 North Atlantic right whales, 647 endangered fin whales, 53 endangered sei whales, 93 endangered sperm whales, 494 humpback whales, 329 minke whales, and 12,493 harbor porpoises. These are all noise-vulnerable marine mammal species.

Newer analysis conducted in 2023 predicted that when NOAA’s currently authorized offshore wind activities were combined with then-proposed and yet-to-be-authorized offshore wind activities, the impacted number of marine mammals would rise astronomically to over 630,000 animals. Industry proposals included up to 996 requests for Level B harassment takes of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. That number is now almost triple the population size of the species, suggesting that the species may go extinct as a result of your hand-sitting. NOAA has approved just one project off the coast of New England that, on its own, will “take” 126 North Atlantic right whales.

On January 9, 2023, after six large whales had stranded on New Jersey and New York beaches in as many weeks, five grassroots environmental groups demanded a federal investigation into the whale deaths.

They also submitted a letter to President Biden demanding:

“an immediate investigation into the marine mammal mortalities from Cape May, NJ, to Montauk Point, NY, and/or beyond, be conducted by qualified scientists including those of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and a halt to all current lessees’ offshore wind energy development activity within the Atlantic Ocean from Cape May, NJ, to Montauk Point, NY, including assessment, characterization, and construction-related activities until an investigation has been conducted.”

Instead of vigorously investigating these mortalities and taking steps to end this massacre, your agency has bent over backwards to enable the slaughter to continue. NOAA has protected the offshore wind industry — with its strong connections to the Democratic Party — by refusing to conduct basic science that might link the slaughter to industry activities. This strategic lethargy in conducting vital and obvious studies allows your agency, and by extension, the wind industry, to conveniently claim, as Benjamin Laws did on January of 2023, “There is no information supporting that any of the equipment that’s being used in support of wind development for these site characterization surveys could directly lead to the death of a whale.”

I offer just one of many examples of this species of agency sandbagging: The fin, humpback, minke, sei, and right whales that are now dying in droves are all part of the Mysticetes family of whales that all hear in low frequency. Yet your agency has stubbornly refused to collect direct hearing data from large whales to determine whether offshore wind survey boats and seismic survey machinery are emitting sounds within this hearing profile.

Here is another example: In the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA requires immediate survey shutdowns in the event of live mammal strandings or millings within 50 km of oil and gas survey activity. In deference to powerhouse offshore wind titans, NOAA has ignored those long-standing IHA rules for offshore wind in the Atlantic, despite the fact that the Gulf of Mexico surveys use the same equipment as the Atlantic surveys and NOAA permits the same levels of marine mammal impacts for both.

Furthermore, only Atlantic offshore wind surveys are expected to impact multiple endangered whale populations, and only in the Atlantic have energy development activities coincided in time and space with unprecedented whale deaths. This suggests that federal agencies should be providing more protections for impacted marine mammals in the Atlantic, not less. Yet NOAA continues to turn a blind eye, inexplicably applying weaker Marine Mammal Protection Act standards for Atlantic wind farms than for identical High-Resolution Geophysical (HRG) surveys in the Gulf of Mexico. The Marine Mammal Protection Act does not allow for differential application to the same activity; it is designed to protect mammals, not foreign energy companies and their Wall Street financiers.

Your agency has also stonewalled the issuance of uniform necropsy protocols that might point a finger at offshore wind. It’s obvious that the standardized protocol should include early examination of ear damage in dead whales. Despite the pleadings of the environmental community, you have refused to recommend this procedure. This step is so fundamental that it suggests a deliberate dereliction. In fact, your agency actually allows what partial or full necropsies of dead whales do occur to be conducted by Marine Mammal Stranding Network partners that have been funded by offshore wind companies and even maintain offshore wind executives, lobbyists, and third-party contractors on their board, ensuring that no “investigation” taken by such NOAA partners is objective.

In addition, commercial fishermen complain that the areas around the turbines — the Atlantic cod’s critical spawning grounds — have been emptied of fish. This outcome is consistent with your agency’s early warning that the turbines may cause the collapse of the cod fishery.

You sent the investigatory letter to me on September 4, just 12 days after my August 23 endorsement of President Trump, raising the issue that this investigation is yet another salient in the systematic weaponization of federal enforcement agencies against White House critics.

You acknowledge that you launched your investigation publicly on August 26, at the urging of the Center for Biological Diversity, a formerly effective NGO that now functions as a subsidiary of the DNC.

Your enthusiasm in launching an investigation based upon an unsubstantiated anecdote of a specimen collected from a rotting corpse three decades ago compares unfavorably with your abject failure to stop, much less investigate, the ongoing slaughter of whales by politically connected energy companies and financial houses that number among the Democratic Party’s biggest patrons. Your agency’s systematic insouciance is likely to result in the permanent extinction of the very species you are charged with protecting. Please let me know the steps that you plan to take to avert this agency-sanctioned calamity to Atlantic whale populations.

https://robertfkennedyjr.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-kennedy-whale-investigation

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Green Hydrogen limps toward inevitable demise

Fortescue Metals Group, a leading Australian iron ore miner, has been actively pursuing green hydrogen as a key component of its decarbonisation strategy. Green hydrogen reportedly results in no carbon dioxide emission or production.

In May 2024, Fortescue launched its first US green hydrogen production project. It represented a $550 million investment in a facility to produce up to 11,000 tons of liquid green hydrogen annually. They renamed their green hydrogen facility in Buckeye, Arizona, to Arizona Hydrogen. However, recent developments have forced them to scale back their green hydrogen plans.

The same is true for Woodside, citing a lack of renewable electricity, and similarly for Origin Energy, when it realised that it is uneconomical. Each company withdrew from the market for the same reason – the lack of cheap electricity – which ‘renewables’ cannot provide. You need hydrocarbon (coal, petroleum, or natural gas) fired electricity generation for that.

Buying into what I call the Climate Cult dream, Fortescue had set an ambitious goal to produce 15 million tons of green hydrogen annually by 2030. The company invested in renewable energy projects and developed its own green hydrogen technology, including the PEM50 project, a 50 MW green hydrogen electrolysis production plant.

But in July 2024, Fortescue announced a significant scaling back of its green hydrogen plans, citing high electricity prices as a major factor. The company put its goal of producing 15 million tons of green hydrogen on hold until electricity prices fall. (That is like waiting for hell to freeze over.)

Additionally, Fortescue cut 700 jobs, affecting various parts of its business, including its green hydrogen operations.

You have got to love the irony there!

High electricity prices that have resulted from massive government (read ‘taxpayer’) subsidies to the green electricity sector are the reason companies cannot produce cheap enough hydrogen gas from electrolysis. As I explained in Hydrogen Gas: another Climate Cult myth busted the problem is basic physics.

And the dream of finding a pure source of hydrogen from a gas well is just that, more mythological than pink unicorns.

However, mining magnate Andrew Forrest, Fortescue’s chairman, appears to be unfazed and downplayed the cuts made to the industry, stating that they do not signal a retreat from the company’s green hydrogen ambitions. Forrest emphasised the importance of investing in renewable energy generation to drive down power prices, making green hydrogen production more commercially viable.

More dreaming! Or is it just wishful thinking?

Fortescue remains committed to green hydrogen and its potential to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors, such as iron ore operations. To extract the metallic iron from iron ore you need to use copious amounts of coal, and to make steel from that you need an enormous supply of both coal and electricity.

Solar and wind power just will not do it. It was coal and cheap electricity that got us out of the poverty of the Dark Ages. Why do they want to send us back there?

On October 2, 2024, Forrest said that it’s time to walk away from the ‘proven fantasy’ of Net Zero. That sounds like he is coming to see the light! Well, not quite it turns out. So, what did he mean by that?

Australian mining tycoon Andrew Forrest, founder and executive chairman of Fortescue, says it is time for the world to walk away from the ‘proven fantasy’ of Net Zero emissions by 2050 and to embrace ‘Real Zero’ by 2040 instead.

What? He is a true believer, despite the fundamentals of the underlying physics of the universe. Forrest continues:

‘What they are really saying is that you can’t do it. And I’m saying to each of those chief executives and those political leaders who use the words, “I can’t…” Okay, what about you get off the stage and let on a young girl [does he mean Greta?] or wiser leader who can. Someone with a bit of ticker because the technology is there.’

‘We know the world can go Real Zero 2040 and I’m reaching out to the business people and politicians across our planet to say it is time now to walk away from this proven fantasy [of] Net Zero 2050 and adopt Real Zero 2040,’ Forrest said. ‘We can, we must, let’s do it.’

His company is retreating from green hydrogen because it is not economically feasible to produce hydrogen by electrolysis. Neither is it by the two methods that do it well – steam reforming and methane pyrolysis. All these methods are energy-intensive.

Currently, 95 per cent of hydrogen fuel is ‘grey hydrogen’ made from natural gas via the steam reformation process, but that method produces more carbon dioxide than burning an equivalent amount of petrol.

And by our current understanding of physics the Climate Cult dream of mythical hydrogen gas mined straight out of the ground is just that. More mythology! It is a pain when you come up against the laws of physics and chemistry.

No amount of religious cries like, ‘We can, we must, let’s do it!’ can change the laws of physics.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/green-hydrogen-limps-toward-inevitable-demise/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Bill Nye never was a science guy

He's really ga-ga now

Bill Nye on MSNBC claims we can prevent Hurricanes like Milton if we vote the right way – ‘The main thing is vote’

Bill Nye on MSNBC: "The other side, as we often call it, has no plans to address climate change. No plans for long-term dealing with these sorts of problems. If you have young voters out there, encourage them to vote. People say, 'What can I do about climate change?' If we were talking about it, associating it with big storms like this, that would be really good. But the main thing is vote."

A few points about @BillNye the Science Lie:

1. Americans could vote in 1921 and 1841 -- but the Tampa Bay area still got hit by massive storms.

2. Emissions can't warm ocean water. https://x.com/JunkScience/status/1809073798160736620

3. Recall Bill Nye thinks climate skeptics are not dying fast enough.…

https://www.climatedepot.com/2024/10/09/watch-bill-nye-on-msnbc-claims-we-can-prevent-hurricanes-like-milton-if-we-vote-the-right-way-the-main-thing-is-vote/

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Kamala Harris Is Full On Hiding Her Climate Agenda From Voters – Pursuing ‘strategic ambiguity’ on climate — ‘otherwise known as deception’

Climate change does not poll well so Vice President Kamala Harris is downplaying the whole issue. Gone is the drumbeating that nothing is more important to the next generation than addressing climate change.

During the presidential debate with former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris turned the moderator’s question about climate change into a discussion about housing insurance costs.

She declared climate change was “very real” and then she pivoted to what NPR described as morphing climate change into a “pocketbook issue.”

“You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up; you ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go,” Harris said during the debate.

Why has the climate issue, formerly known as an “existential threat” — complete with doomsday tipping points — now turned into a question of mere insurance costs for the Democratic presidential nominee? The Washington Post reported that Democratic Party leaders “appear to have calculated that climate silence is the safest strategy.” The Post explained, “Democrats see talking about the environment as a lose-lose proposition.”

When Harris was finally asked about “climate change” during her first sit-down media interview on CNN, she addressed her recent campaign reversals on fracking, EVs and net zero issues by claiming her ‘values’ have not changed.

Harris told CNN that there is a “climate crisis” and the way to solve it was by spending “a trillion dollars” and applying “metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

Huh? So, Harris’ position on the alleged threat of man-made climate change still duplicates her 2019 brief presidential run. Her repeated claims that she will no longer seek to “ban” fracking do not address the fact that continuing Green New Deal and Inflation Reduction Act policies will result in a death by a thousand cuts on fracking and other U.S. energy production methods.

She pledged to continue the ideological net zero fairy-tale that government spending and mandates can alter the Earth’s climate system. Harris’ energy plans will continue to hammer America first.

Let’s remember that Harris’ “values” have included being an original co-sponsor of AOC’s Green New Deal, casting a tie-breaking vote in 2022 for the Inflation Reduction Act, supporting gas-powered car bans, gas stove bans, looking at climate change as one of the “root causes” of illegal immigration, and meat restrictions via the administration’s EPA regulations on agricultural methane emissions.

In addition, the Biden-Harris administration has talked openly about the possibility of declaring a national climate emergency, which — according to NBC News — “can unlock special powers for a president in a crisis without needing approval from Congress.”

Bypassing democracy to impose a Green New Deal on America appears central to Harris’ “values.” But, somehow, her “values” have rapidly gone silent on the alleged “existential” climate threat of the 21st century during this heated presidential campaign.

If you listen closely, the Harris “silence” fades away. The Harris campaign raucously boasted to Reuters that the “climate silence” is all part of her master election plan.

“She has been pursuing a policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on energy policy, [Harris] aides told Reuters last month. She is anxious not to put off undecided voters in swing states, especially gas-producing Pennsylvania, by trumpeting her climate credentials too loudly.”

“Too loudly?!” The only Harris climate “values” that seem to matter are “strategic ambiguity” — otherwise known as deception.

The reality is that Harris’ “climate silence” is a concession to scientific reality and the failed solar and wind promises that are causing a pointless drain on the U.S. economy. The public has been hearing for years of how solar and wind are “cheaper” than fossil fuels and how they are about to replace fossil fuels. But the reality is starkly the opposite of these claims and the Democrat Party knows this.

Despite trillions of dollars in subsidies, green energy mandates, UN climate summits, net zero commitments and restrictions on fossil fuels, solar & wind power made up just 13.9% of the world’s electricity in 2023. Meanwhile, the U.S. still consumed 82% of our energy from fossil fuels in 2023.

When these energy realities are screaming in your face, silence may be the only answer.

The most surprising aspect of the Harris-Walz climate shush campaign may be why the climate establishment has no qualms about muzzling climate change. The New York Times reported that “[Harris] has mentioned climate change only in passing” and noted that “[c]limate leaders say they are fine with that.”

Why are climate activists suddenly “fine” with their standard bearers hushing up on climate during a heated presidential race? Perhaps the answer can be found in the advice of Democratic Party activist Rev. Mark Thompson at the August DNC convention in Chicago, when he declared, “We got 70 days to act right, y’all. Now, after 70 days, we can go back to acting crazy, right?” he said. Thompson added, “Just wait 70 days to go back, please. Be good.”

Let’s hope Americans can glean the climate “crazy” blaring from Harris-Walz’s sham “climate silence” campaign.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/12/opinion-harris-is-full-in-on-hiding-her-climate-agenda-from-voters-marc-morano/

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Extreme Weather Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on ‘extreme weather event attribution’ – It’s ‘research performed explicitly to serve legal & political ends

By Roger Pielke Jr.

Weather Attribution Alchemy: A new THB series takes a close look at extreme weather event attribution, Part 1

Excerpt: In the aftermath of many high profile extreme weather events we see headlines like the following:

Climate change made US and Mexico heatwave 35 times more likely — BBC

Study Finds Climate Change Doubled Likelihood of Recent European Floods — NYT

Severe Amazon Drought was Made 30 Times More Likely by Climate Change — Bloomberg

For those who closely follow climate science and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such headlines can be difficult to make sense of because neither the IPCC nor the underlying scientific literature comes anywhere close to making such strong and certain claims of attribution.

How then might we understand such high profile claims?

…

Weather event attribution does not appear in the IPCC Glossary, however it does appear in the body of the AR6 report, where the IPCC explains that event attribution research seeks to “to attribute aspects of specific extreme weather and climate events to certain causes.”

The IPCC continues:

“Scientists cannot answer directly whether a particular event was caused by climate change,1 as extremes do occur naturally, and any specific weather and climate event is the result of a complex mix of human and natural factors. Instead, scientists quantify the relative importance of human and natural influences on the magnitude and/or probability of specific extreme weather events.”

With this post I want to introduce three starting points for our discussions which will unfold over a series of posts in coming weeks and months.

First, event attribution research is a form tactical science — research performed explicitly to serve legal and political ends. This is not my opinion, but has been openly stated on many occasions by the researchers who developed and perform event attribution research.2 Such research is not always subjected to peer review, and this is often by design as peer-review takes much longer than the news cycle. Instead, event attribution studies are generally promoted via press release.

For instance, researchers behind the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative explain that one of their key motives in conducting such studies is, “increasing the ‘immediacy’ of climate change, thereby increasing support for mitigation.” WWA’s chief scientist, Friederike Otto, explains, “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” Another oft-quoted scientist who performs rapid attribution analyses, Michael Wehner, summarized their importance (emphasis in original) — “The most important message from this (and previous) analyses is that “Dangerous climate change is here now!”

…

Weather event attribution methodologies have been developed not just to feed media narratives or support general climate advocacy. Otto and others have been very forthright that the main function of such studies is to create a defensible scientific basis in support of lawsuits against fossil fuel companies — She explains the strategy in detail in this interview, From Extreme Event Attribution to Climate Litigation.

As I recently argued, tactical science is not necessarily bad science, but it should elevate the degree of scrutiny that such analyses face, especially when they generally are not subjected to independent peer review. In this series I’ll apply some scrutiny and invite you to participate as we go along.

Second, extreme event attribution was developed as a response to the failure of the IPCC’s conventional approach to detection and attribution (D&A) to reach high confidence in the detection of increasing trends in the frequency or intensity of most types of impactful extreme events — notably hurricanes, floods, drought, and tornadoes.

…

The underlying theory of change here appears to be that people must be fearful of climate change and thus need come to understand that it threatens their lives, not in the future, but today and tomorrow. If they don’t have that fear, the argument goes, then they will discount the threat and fail to support the right climate policies. Hence, from this perspective, the IPCC”s failure to reach strong claims of detection and attribution represents a political problem — a problem that can be rectified via the invention of extreme event attribution

https://www.climatedepot.com/2024/10/07/extreme-weather-expert-dr-roger-pielke-jr-on-extreme-weather-event-attribution-its-research-performed-explicitly-to-serve-legal-political-ends-promoted-via-press-release/

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Biden labels people ‘brain dead’ to doubt ‘climate crisis’ fueled Hurricane Helene

President Biden called on Americans Wednesday to “put politics aside” to focus on Hurricane Helene recovery efforts — moments before stepping on his own message by saying that anyone who doubts climate change’s role in the disaster “must be brain dead.”

“In a moment like this, we put politics aside, at least we should put it all aside, and we have here,” the retiring 81-year-old president said during a recovery briefing in Raleigh, NC.

“There are no Democrats or Republicans, there are only Americans, and our job is to help as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, and as thoroughly as we can.”

The consoler-in-chief, seated next to the Tar Heel State’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, and emergency officials after an aerial tour of the Asheville area, pivoted moments later to an attack on the mostly Republican skeptics about the role of fossil fuel use in severe weather.

“Nobody can deny the impact of [the] climate crisis anymore — at least I hope they don’t. They must be brain dead if they do,” Biden jabbed.

“Scientists report that with warming oceans powering more intense rains, storms like Helene are getting stronger and stronger — they’re not going to get less, they’re going to get stronger. Today in North Carolina, I saw the impacts of that fury.”

https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/us-news/biden-says-people-must-be-brain-dead-to-doubt-climate-crisis-fueled-hurricane-helene/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

Solar farms ‘good’ for desert environments?

Solar farms are good for desert environments… That is what we are being asked to believe in a new study coming out of China.

For context, China has a stranglehold on the world’s renewable energy construction and is responsible for mining and distributing at least 90+ per cent of the rare earths and other raw materials required in the industry. Many of these are sourced from Chinese territories, but increasingly, China has set up mines in third world nations or inside contested areas of water in the South China Sea. Renewable energy is becoming a geopolitical conversation as much as it is an environmental debate.

Confusingly, if you like to live in a world of logic and consistency, China is also operating a record number of coal-fired plants (1,161) and constructing the world’s largest oil and gas pipelines from neighbouring regions. Australia has 18 coal-fired plants left. Meanwhile, Beijing drowns coral reefs and atolls in concrete to make military bases while also claiming to pioneer ‘planet saving’ energy. As we used to say, ‘pick a lane’.

Most people would reasonably assume that the best thing for fragile desert environments is to stop touching them.

Leave no footprints, remember? That was the mantra of the 90s.

Whether it is a desert, a rainforest, or a marine park – humans should not be industrialising these areas for profit.

The problem for so-called green energy is that it is not looking particularly green. Renewable projects do not leave footprints, they stomp around leaving boot-prints on the natural world.

Locals are watching hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres of habitat squandered to accommodate infrastructure. Once the construction is finished, these areas are more-or-less lost to the wildlife that once inhabited them.

Destroying the planet to save it, as sceptics are quick to point out.

These complaints are not speculative. We have years of research documenting harm. One of the best case studies is California where the deserts are slowly being consumed by solar farms described as ‘photovoltaic seas’ whose mirages are so convincing that the illusion of frozen waves has led some tourists to go in search of places to launch their boats.

There are dozens of articles containing the testimonies of residents who have suffered medical and psychological conditions caused, they believe, by the approaching green utopia which has taken over their lives.

It is interesting to read comments underneath some of these articles, left by a self-described pro-renewables audience. Some ask why the desert ecosystem cannot ‘adapt to having shade’ or insist that articles that highlight the impact of solar should ‘be taken down’ before they ‘fall into the wrong hands’.

‘Truth’ in the wrong hands? I wonder what that means to these individuals if we were to draw a discussion out of them. We can see here why support for the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill has festered within certain ideological groups. Are they worried that too much exposure to the sunlight might melt their solar panels?

Regardless of whether green voters like to hear it or not, environmental scientists and organisations continue to harbour concerns. Nature acknowledges, ‘…the global climate pattern can also be disturbed by massive deployment of solar energy. This is attributed to the resultant changes in land surface properties.’

ScienceDirect wrote:

‘The construction of a PPP significantly alters the surface disturbance of the soil, affects the balance between the photosynthetically active radiation and radiant flux, reduces the surface albedo, changes the precipitation distribution, and forms a heat island effect. These changes critically impact the driving factors of the local microclimate, such as evaporation, wind speed, temperature, soil moisture, and soil temperature, on both temporal and spatial scales, thereby increasing the land degradation risk in fragile arid ecosystems … it is usually necessary to perform liberal applications of dust suppressant and water to clean the panels and prevent large amounts of dust or sand from affecting the PPP operation. These chemicals are extremely toxic to the environment and may cause extensive negative effects on the local ecological environment in the long run.’

EcoWatch warned earlier this year that a solar farm planned for the Mojave desert in California could result in the destruction of endangered desert tortoise habitat and the removal of Joshua trees. There was also concern that the construction process would stir up the sand and with it, release ‘valley fever’ pathogens into the air.

‘The clean energy project, which is expected to power 180,000 homes – with that power estimated to be for wealthy residents along the coast, the Los Angeles Times reported – could also have lasting impacts on the desert ecosystem.’

The company website insists:

‘While individual trees will be impacted during project construction, clean energy projects like Aratina directly address the existential threat of climate change caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions that threaten vastly more trees.’

The solar farm creators were quick to insist the carbon offset would be ‘equivalent to planting 14 million trees’ but residents are wondering why governments don’t simply plant those theoretical trees if they want to save the world. ‘More trees’ is what the average voter envisions when they vote for ‘green energy’ and yet green energy is deforesting the world.

Returning to the study out of China.

The study opens with the admission that solar farms have had ‘significant impacts on the ecological environment’ and proposes the establishment of an ‘indicator system to assess the ecological and environmental effects of photovoltaic development’.

In their case, they use Driving-Pressure-Status-Impact-Response (DPSIR) as a framework to measure various types of environmental impact.

Their solar farm is a 3,182MW project which takes up 64 square kilometres and has a stated lifespan between 20-30 years.

The introduction claims, ‘Overall, the large-scale development of desert photovoltaics in Gonghe Country has had a positive impact on the ecological environment.’ In this case, the elevated area is described as ‘alpine arid desert’ and ‘semiarid grassland’.

These tests returned various scores including ‘good’ and ‘poor’ but the long detail of the study remains ambiguous.

To take one example. The study talks about soil evaporation and water content beneath the panels.

‘The construction of these power stations has led to a reduction in soil evaporation, while the cleaning of photovoltaic panels has increased the water content of the soil located under the panels. The cleaning frequency of photovoltaic panels in this study is once a month, as a result, the growth conditions for vegetation indirectly improved. This has led to an increase in both vegetation species and biomass.’

And read this alongside some of the ‘poor’ responses.

‘The analysis indicated that the ecological environment still faces tremendous pressure, with lower scores for various indicators in the status layer and lower scores for onsite indicators such as fungal abundance and daily photosynthetic radiation than outside the zone. These results may result in more significant impacts in the future.’

Aside from the obvious question, ‘How many of these are weeds?’ We know from other studies that cleaning the panels isn’t neutral to the environment. The water itself could be a problem as water is a scarce resource in deserts – so where do the solar farms source these enormous quantities of water from? Which other environment is losing out to put a garden hose on a solar farm?

If we look at solar farms across China and around the world, grass in otherwise arid areas can grow better beneath the solar panels where it gets tall enough to obstruct sunlight to the panel. It then carries a fire risk when it dries out during the winter months. Sheep have been brought in to some parks to address this problem – except if you ask the climate zealots at the UN, they think sheep, like cows, are killing the planet. Are we getting rid of farm animals and going vegan, or expanding livestock to keep the solar panels safe?

Grazing might be sustainable for the duration of the farm’s short lifespan, but it only takes one grass fire running through the solar panels to render the entire operation a net-negative for the environment.

No matter what, the original desert landscape and its biology is gone.

Farmers make landscapes ‘greener’ with intensive farming as well – but you would not see a headline from environmental movements praising them for it in this ideological climate.

It is very difficult to argue that these projects preserve fragile ecosystems, rather, they change them – for better or worse is up to the customer to decide.

The study, meanwhile, concludes, ‘Photovoltaic development in desert areas has significantly improved local ecological and environmental conditions.’

Which sounds good on paper, until you open up a picture…

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/solar-farms-good-for-desert-environments/

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Some Australian states are discovering what happens when they have too much rooftop solar

What a muddle!

When Victoria basks in mostly sunny spring weather this weekend, energy authorities will be monitoring how far electricity demand ebbs. If needed, they’ll turn off rooftop solar systems to ensure stability for the grid.

Such minimum system load events, as they are called, have emerged as a new challenge as households across Australia take advantage of plunging prices for solar panels to shield themselves from rising power bills and cut carbon emissions.

The Australian Energy Market Operator issued two such alerts for Victoria during the AFL grand final weekend a fortnight ago, and warned of two for this Saturday and Sunday.

Prior to this cluster, the state’s only previous warning was last 31 December.

The public has become inured to annual alerts to possible power shortfalls during summer heatwaves or extended cold snaps during winter.

It won’t be long before the obverse – a grid strained by too little demand – is common during mild, sunny spring and autumn days, when the need for cooling or heating abates, experts say.

“It’s all going to be uncomfortably interesting for energy system people,” said Tennant Reed, director of climate change and energy at the Ai Group, noting there are “emerging rules to keep the show on the road”.

Having a grid that is supplied entirely by renewable energy is something Aemo and state and federal governments have anticipated as they step up support for so-called consumer energy resources. Australian households have already embraced rooftop solar at a pace unmatched anywhere, with more than a third generating power at home.

Many options are available to source extra demand, such as encouraging people to use more of their generation at peak sunny periods, renewable advocates say.

Hot water heaters, now often operating at night, could be switched on during the day, while certain industrial users could be given incentives to increase production, much like they are now rewarded to power down during summer heatwaves.

Still, the looming challenges aren’t small, particularly as coal-fired power plants shut.

The grid’s system strength is “projected to decline sharply over the next decade”, Aemo said in its latest 2024 Electricity Statement of Opportunities report.

From October to December is likely to be when demand sinks to its lowest for most parts of the national electricity market. (The national electricity market or Nem serves all regions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.)

Windy, sunny spring days – much like the coming weekend in Victoria – also mean an elevated supply of renewable energy in a season of minimal heating or cooling need.

A year ago, on 29 October, Nem grid demand hit a record minimum of about 11 gigawatts for 30 minutes. Small-scale solar, most of it on residential roofs, met 52% of underlying demand.

As more homes install solar, the Nem’s minimum demand may continue to shrink at the present rate of 1.2GW each year, Aemo said.

The Nem needs at least 4.3GW of electricity moving across its transmission network. If there are “unplanned network or unit outages”, the threshold rises to about 7GW – a level that may be breached as soon as next spring, Aemo said.

“While these periods of very high distributed PV levels relative to underlying demand are currently not frequent, they will increase over time and could occur during unusual events and outage conditions,” it said.

“A credible disturbance could lead to reliance on emergency frequency control schemes which are known to be compromised in such low operational demand periods, escalating risks of system collapse and blackouts.”

However, the market has a sizeable toolkit to address those risks. South Australia, where about half the homes have solar panels, already has coped with two minimum system load events of level 3 – the most serious – on 11 October 2020 and 14 March 2021.

For the latter, SA Power Networks, a company part-owned by the Hong Kong-based conglomerate Cheung Kong Infrastructure, was ordered to turn off 71 megawatts of photovoltaic systems. It was the first such intervention by Aemo.

So-called solar curtailment is now a feature of SA’s operating system even if such an intervention is meant to be a “last resort”, the network group said.

Before such action, large-scale solar and wind farms will be turned off, as will big solar systems on shopping centres and factories. Exports of surplus solar power from homes will also be halted before the systems themselves are turned off.

According to WattClarity, a leading energy data website, SA had at least eight such rooftop solar curtailments in 2022 and 2o23.

Victoria, which introduced similar “backstop” rules on 1 October this year, says consumers can do their bit. Solar curtailment should be authorities’ last move.

“We encourage households with solar panels to make the most of their clean energy and save on bills by using their solar power during the day – whether it’s charging electric vehicles, doing laundry or running dishwashers,” a Victorian government spokesperson said.

For Victoria, the backstop mechanism won’t affect a household’s ability to consume their own solar generation. Large batteries are part of the toolkit from this spring, with storage on standby to create additional demand by charging up.

New South Wales and Queensland are expected to face similar challenges in coming years. NSW, though, is yet to start public consultation on restrictions of solar exports, with minimum load issues not forecast until late 2025 or beyond.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/12/australian-states-too-much-rooftop-solar

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Australian Greens accused of ‘extremism crisis’ after candidate James Cruz’s Hezbollah post

An ACT Greens candidate has been forced to issue a clarifying statement after a social media post in which he appeared to suggest Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah should be removed from Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

James Cruz, Greens candidate for the seat of Kurrajong, came under fire after he said on X that “more and more” people were arguing that Hezbollah should be taken off the terror list, prompting Coalition calls for the Greens to address their “growing extremism crisis”.

Mr Cruz was replying to Guardian podcaster Nour Haydar, who suggested Jewish groups had led the charge for Hezbollah to be listed as a terrorist group.

Mr Cruz replied: “Remove Hezbollah from the list of terrorist organisations? You’re hearing it more and more.”

Amid a backlash over the post, Mr Cruz issued a statement saying he had only remarked that “other people have queried the listing”.

“Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation and the Greens are not arguing to change that,” Mr Cruz said. “I back that position of the Australian Greens.”

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said it was “utterly extraordinary” that an endorsed Greens candidate believed the remarks were appropriate, calling on the left-wing party to dump Mr Cruz from its ticket.

“Hezbollah are proscribed in Australia and around the world for very good reason – they are terrorists,” he said.

“Over a four-decade reign of terror they’ve killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and even Argentina, where they blew up a Jewish community centre in 1995, killing 84 people.

“The Greens must address their growing extremism crisis and it should start with disendorsing James Cruz.”

During a recent wave of demonstrations marking one year since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Australian Federal Police targeted protesters displaying the Hezbollah flag, which is a prohibited symbol due to concerns it could ignite violence.

The furore over Mr Cruz’s post came just a week out from the October 19 ACT election, which will see Chief Minister Andrew Barr pitch for another term after 23 years of Labor government.

ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said the comments raised a “sensitive and complicated issue”, but declined to comment further.

Greens sources told The Weekend Australian Mr Cruz’s X account had recently been hacked and deleted by a third party.

Conservative group Advance accused the Greens of “standing with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests”, rather than acting as a “party of environmentalists”.

“Not only do they stand with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests, they float changes to how those barbaric organisations are treated by our national security apparatuses,” spokeswoman Sandra Bourke

“The Greens aren’t who they used to be, and more and more Australians are seeing it as the Greens show their true colours.”

The stoush followed federal Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi’s refusal to declare Hamas should be dismantled.

Mr Cruz’s comments surfaced the day after revelations came to light that ACT Greens candidate Harini Rangarajan had reportedly written a blog post comparing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to Jesus Christ.

“I’ve gone on to idolise several other martyrs – Bhagat Singh, Husayn ibn Ali, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Che Guevara, Jesus Christ, Balachandran Prabhakaran, Joan of Arc, Osama bin Laden, etc,” her post reportedly said.

In his pitch to voters Mr Cruz said he was drawn to run for the Greens because of the party’s commitment to end homelessness and its recognition of housing as a fundamental human right.

“Growing up in poverty and living in public housing showed me the urgent need for a society that addresses inequality and the growing housing crisis,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/greens-accused-of-extremism-crisis-after-candidates-hezbollah-post/news-story/108c0ecd5411bc97d85cf5ec8173b49f

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Greens Declare War on Growing Greens

Grow your own fruit and veg – and destroy the planet. Allotment produce, much prized by proud food-growing citizens the world over, has six times the ‘carbon’ footprint of conventional agriculture, according to a recent paper published by Nature. “Steps must be taken to ensure that urban agriculture supports, and does not undermine, urban decarbonisation efforts,” demand the authors. What have these people been smoking? Surely not some of the puff circulating at the recent Psychedelic Climate Week in New York. Highlights included a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on ‘Balancing Investing and Impact with Climate and Psychedelic Capital’.

The lead authors of the Nature paper are academics working out of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. They suggest using urban farms as sites for “education, leisure and community building”. Perhaps the locals could sit cross-legged and listen to early Pink Floyd music. Maybe clap the setting sun to some Atom Heart Mother. Excuse your correspondent if he cannot take this paper seriously. It is a classic example of greens picking on a human activity – almost any will do – and complaining that it causes the devil-gas carbon dioxide to be released. At the recent New York climate happening, according to the Guardian, revellers were told that using hallucinogens can spark “consciousness shifts” to inspire climate-friendly behaviour. What climate friendly behaviour, one might ask, given that almost anything humans do to improve their lot of Earth is demonised by an increasingly weird millenarian green cult.

The authors of the Nature paper seem to have a particular down on home composting. Poorly-managed composting is said to exacerbate the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs). “The carbon footprint of compost grows tenfold when methane-generated anaerobic conditions persist in compost piles,” it says. This is particularly common during small-scale composting, apparently. With a seeming complete ignorance of how small allotments farming functions, the authors suggest that “cities can offset this risk by centralising compost operations for professional management”.

Wherever these cultists look, there are gases being released that are contributing to their invented existential climate crisis. The high application rates of compost in urban agriculture can also lead to nitrous oxide, we’re told. Needless to say, “strategic management of application scheduling and fertiliser combinations may be required to minimise emissions”.

For allotment holders, few pleasures in life compare with a break from arduous work and a hot cup of tea in the shed. Surrounded by the tools of the trade, it is the labourer’s equivalent of passing around a few liveners at National Climate Week, with the added attraction that it doesn’t turn you into a self-important dope. But such pleasure will come to an end if the climate cops have their way. Infrastructure, we’re told, is the largest driver of carbon emissions at what are termed “low-tech” urban agricultural sites. As well as sheds, this includes beds (for vegetables, not a crash pad for ketamine heads) and compost facilities. A raised bed built and used for five years will have approximately four times the environmental impact as one used for 20. Other infrastructure supplies are said to include fertiliser, gasoline and weed block textile.

Plants need water, but only the right sort of water can help save the planet. In their site samples, the researchers found that most allotment-holders use potable municipal water sources or groundwater wells. Big no, no, of course, since such irrigation emits GHGs from pumping, water treatment and distribution. “Cities should support low-carbon (and drought-conscious) irrigation for urban agriculture via subsidies for rainwater catchment infrastructure, or through established guidelines for greywater use,” it is suggested. Presumably, the subsidies will come from the magic bread tree and the infrastructure will be of the special type that does not produce GHGs.

This crackpot climate paper is just the latest sign that the green movement is riven with disagreements as its climate crisis grift starts to fall apart in the face of reality. There are no realistic back-ups for intermittent wind and solar, while carbon capture is a colossal and potentially dangerous waste of money. Without hydrocarbon use, humankind is doomed. Billions will die and society will be returned to the dark ages. Hydrocarbons are ubiquitous in modern society, and so almost everything that humans do to survive and thrive on a dangerous planet can be demonised. Eventually, you end up with Sir David Attenborough making the appalling observation that it was “barmy” for the United Nations to send bags of flour to famine-stricken Ethiopia. Or to read earlier this year the tweet from the United Nations contributing author and UCL professor Bill McGuire that the only “realistic way” to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown was to cull the human population with a high fatality pandemic.

Many green extremists seem to take the view that anything humans do, including growing their own veg, is causing existential harm to the planet. What they really hate, some may conclude, are humans themselves. Treble bongs all round.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/14/greens-declare-war-on-growing-greens/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Indonesia Biomass Drive Threatens Key Forests

Indonesia's push to add wood-burning to its energy mix and exports is driving deforestation, including in key habitats for endangered species such as orangutans, a report said Thursday.

Bioenergy, which uses organic material like trees to produce power, is considered renewable by the International Energy Agency as carbon released by burning biomass can theoretically be absorbed by planting more trees.

But critics say biomass power plants emit more carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced than modern coal plants, and warn that using biomass to "co-fire" coal plants is just a way to extend the life of the polluting fossil fuel.

Producing the wood pellets and chips used for "co-fire" coal plants also risks driving deforestation, with natural forests cut down and replaced by quick-growing monocultures.

That, according to a report produced by a group of Indonesian and regional NGOs, is exactly what is happening in Indonesia, home to the world's third-largest rainforest area.

"The country's forests face unprecedented threats from the industrial scale projected for biomass demand," said the groups, which include Auriga Nusantara and Earth Insight.

Indonesia's production of wood pellets alone jumped from 20,000 to 330,000 tonnes from 2012 to 2021, the report said.

Auriga Nusantara estimates nearly 10,000 hectares of deforestation has been caused by biomass production in the last four years.

But the report warns that much more is at risk as Indonesia ramps up biomass, particularly in its coal-fired power plants.

The report looked at existing co-firing plants and pulp mills around Indonesia and the 100 kilometres (62 miles) surrounding each.

They estimate more than 10 million hectares of "undisturbed forest" lie within these areas and are at risk of deforestation, many of which "significantly overlap" with the habitat of endangered species.

Animals at risk include orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo, the report said.

Using wood to achieve just a 10 percent reduction in coal at Indonesia's largest power plants "could trigger the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta," the report warned.

Indonesia's environment and forestry ministry officials did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

Indonesia saw a 27 percent jump in primary forest loss last year after a downward trend from a peak in 2015-2016, according to the World Resources Institute.

The groups also point the finger at growing demand in South Korea and Japan, two major export destinations for Indonesia's wood pellets.

They urged Indonesia to commit to protecting its remaining natural forest and reform its energy plans to focus on solar, while banning new coal projects.

Japan and South Korea should end biomass incentives and focus on cleaner renewable options, the group urged.

"There are no math tricks that can justify burning forests for energy," the NGOs said.

"Science has clearly proven the vital role of tropical forests for climate stability, biodiversity and human survival."

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-indonesia-biomass-threatens-key-forests.html

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UK: Some rare realism from a Greenie

The government risks a huge political backlash if it keeps pushing the public to install heat pumps to replace their boilers, one of Britain’s leading green entrepreneurs has warned.

Dale Vince, a major Labour donor and renewable energy advocate, called on Keir Starmer to rethink national programmes, championed by Boris Johnson, pushing the technology. Vince argued that Whitehall should explore alternatives to the devices, which he said were expensive, caused serious disruption and could end up increasing energy bills for some people.

Vince, whose criticism of heat pumps has proved divisive among environmentalists, said mass use could bring a bigger political backlash than London’s expanded ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), which led to a surprise byelection defeat for Labour last year in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

“It’s a Johnson-era policy, and like most Johnson ideas, it wasn’t thought through,” Vince said. “It wasn’t meant for the real world, if you look at the amount of money committed. Electricity energy bills overall in our households will go up unless you assume heroic levels of performance.

“You’ve got this incredible disruption of home life for tens of millions of people – the need to change heating systems for a lot of people, not just the boiler – and substandard outcomes in a lot of cases.”

He added: “It’s politically threatening for any government to have a heat-pump programme. If you look back at the Ulez byelection and the fuss made about it in elements of the press, imagine a heat-pump programme where a household has just spent thousands of pounds on some technology that doesn’t do the job.” In June, Vince tweeted that heat pumps were like “Ulez on steroids”.

The entrepreneur’s latest comments expose divides even among environmentalists about the best way to move home heating away from the burning of fossil fuels via a regular gas boiler. Critics such as Vince state that heat pumps could increase bills because the electricity used to run them costs far more than gas. A study by the independent Energy Saving Trust put the cost at £20 a year more than using a new A-rated gas boiler. However, new specialist heat pump tariffs could make them cheaper to run.

Johnson’s government was an advocate of the technology, setting a goal of 600,000 new heat pumps a year by 2028. While installations in the UK have hit a record number this year, they have still only reached about 42,000 since January.

Air-source heat pumps cost just over £12,500 to buy and install on average, about four to five times more than a gas boiler. But the government currently offers a £7,500 grant for households installing the technology.

Vince claimed that he was speaking in the “national interest” in criticising heat pumps. He proposes an alternative – green gas, or biomethane, made from organic material, which his company Ecotricity develops.

Other environmentalists claim that the amount of land needed to produce enough green gas would be unrealistic, lead to food insecurity and damage biodiversity.

The Heat Pump Association, an industry body, insisted that the devices are a “proven, efficient, low-carbon heating solution which are readily available and scalable with the potential to reduce carbon emissions from heating by over 75% relative to fossil fuel heating systems”.

“Electricity prices are higher than gas prices in the UK,” it said. “However, heat pumps use three to five times less energy. Well-installed heat pumps that operate efficiently and make use of flexible electricity tariffs will in the vast majority of cases save the consumer money in comparison to their existing heating system.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said of Vince’s concerns: “We do not recognise these claims. The energy shocks of recent years have shown the urgent need to upgrade British homes, and heat pumps are a critical technology for decarbonising heating.

“Biomethane also has an important role in the transition to net zero as a green gas that can decarbonise gas supply, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and increase energy security.”

Vince also revealed plans to take advantage of the government’s decision to end the effective ban on onshore wind by “dusting off” a plan for 100 turbines in Gloucestershire, where his company is based, to power the county’s homes.

He said they could ultimately be transferred to the council’s ownership, handing it both an asset and long-term income. “If they were owned by the local authority, the windmills would bring £7m a year into local authority coffers,” he said.

“We will take the lead on this. We will find the sites, take them through planning and at some point in the future hope to work with local authorities to hand them over for public ownership.”

https://www.pressreader.com/

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Human CO2 Emissions Are Supercharging Corn Yields

How can carbon dioxide, which has been portrayed as a dangerous pollutant threatening the very existence of humankind, be considered even remotely beneficial? Sadly, such a question can be expected from people – children and adults – who have been fed irrational fears in place of well-established science that shows CO2 to be an irreplaceable food for plants and necessary for all life.

Even some who recognize CO2 as sustenance consider increasing atmospheric concentrations of the gas to be potentially catastrophic, a view devoid of scientific basis and inimical to the fortunes of malnourished millions.

Corn, or maize, is foundational—along with rice, wheat, soyabean—to global food security, serving as a critical source of nourishment for both humans and livestock. Over the past few decades, increases in atmospheric CO2 from industrial emissions have tracked with notable boosts in corn yields.

Between 1900 and 2024, the national corn yield in the U.S. rose to 183 bushels per acre (bu/A) from just 28 bushels. During the same period, atmospheric CO2 increased from 295 parts per million (ppm) to 419 ppm. Worldwide, corn yield rose from a mere 29 bu/A in 1961 to 86 bu/A in 2021.

This phenomenon is not merely coincidental; it is deeply rooted in the physiological characteristics of corn as a C4 category plant. C4 plants like corn – so named for the number of carbon atoms in their photosynthetic product — possess unique biochemical pathways that make their photosynthesis particularly efficient under high concentrations of CO2 and elevated temperatures. Such plants employ a mechanism that concentrates CO2 in specialized structures called bundle sheath cells.

Higher CO2 levels also improve water-use efficiency in corn, which is particularly beneficial where water supplies are limited or during droughts. This efficiency translates into enhanced growth rates and potentially greater yields. In fact, researchers say that “less water will be required for corn under a high-CO2 environment in the future than at present.”

Augmented corn yields driven by increased atmospheric CO2 have had profound effects worldwide, contributing to an agricultural boom that bolstered farm incomes and enhanced food security across diverse regions. Countries like the U.S. with significant corn production have experienced elevated export revenues, strengthening national economies and their positions in the global market.

But this remarkable impact of elevated CO2 is not just limited to C4 crops like corn. C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, potatoes, and soybeans, all rely on an enzyme called rubisco for carbon fixation. Rubisco’s efficiency improves significantly with higher CO2 concentrations because it reduces the enzyme’s tendency to bind with oxygen—a process known as photorespiration that limits productivity.

Consequently, elevated atmospheric CO2 often results in enhanced photosynthesis and biomass accumulation in C3 species, although to a lesser extent than with C4 plants. This is why rice and wheat yields can increase by up to 20-30% under elevated CO2 conditions. We have witnessed this in yield increases across most C3 food crops.

Notably, greenhouse farming—agronomy practiced inside a translucent tent to retain the sun’s warmth—often uses CO2 concentrations artificially increased to more than twice ambient levels to enhance growth.

The relationship between rising atmospheric CO2 and crop yields is clearly a positive one. So, ignore fearmongering media headlines about toxic human CO2 emissions. You, your family and the industries that support our society have greened the planet with daily emissions of carbon dioxide, making food more plentiful and affordable for those grappling with poverty and everybody else.

https://co2coalition.org/2024/09/18/human-co2-emissions-are-supercharging-corn-yields/

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‘It’s almost beyond belief’: Findings blast Australia’s biggest carbon offset scheme

Australia’s biggest carbon credit scheme is barely removing any greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, according to a new study, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into it by businesses and the government.

One of the study’s authors, Dr Megan Evans from UNSW Canberra, said the findings about the Human Induced Regeneration scheme, known as HIR, pointed to “such huge failures that it’s almost beyond belief”.

Co-author and University of NSW senior lecturer Megan Evans.
Co-author and University of NSW senior lecturer Megan Evans.

The HIR is intended to allow farmers and project proponents to reduce stock and feral animals from vast areas of rangeland Australia which, they argue, allows forest to regrow there in a way it would not otherwise.

Credits are then issued for each tonne of carbon dioxide abated by the assumed growth in trees based on a model of how the forest should regrow in those areas, plus on regular audits.

The new research from a group of ANU and UNSW scientists, led by Professor Andrew Macintosh, used historical and current satellite images to suggest there was no meaningful change between forest growth on areas that were claiming carbon credits compared with neighbouring areas.

The new paper suggests that whatever trees have grown on the 116 projects surveyed was overwhelmingly due to recent rainfall, not the human management of projects.

The study found most projects showed “minimal impact on woody vegetation cover in credited areas” even though they had already generated about $495 million in carbon credits.

Their findings were immediately rejected by another ANU scientist, natural resource management associate professor Cris Brack, who has done extensive work for the government regulator, the Clean Energy Regulator.

Brack rejected the statement that little or no abatement had taken place, saying he had “personally reviewed numerous projects across NSW, Queensland and WA”, and had access to independent assurance-audit reports that proved projects were on track.

The HIR method is the largest single contributor of carbon credits to the Australian government and private industry, with 465 projects covering 42 million hectares – an area significantly larger than Japan. Having issued 44 million carbon credits, the Australian scheme is, according to the new study, the fifth-largest nature-based scheme in the world, making these findings of global significance.

The problem, the researchers say, is that HIR schemes are being credited on rangeland that was unsuitable because it was never cleared of forest in the first place, and is already close to its natural coverage of forest (trees above two metres tall over at least 20 per cent of the landscape).

Since 2021, Macintosh and a growing team of scientists have described the method as a fraud that would cost Australia up to $5 billion by 2030.

Their concerns have prompted a number of reviews, most notably by former chief scientist Ian Chubb. In 2023, he found the method was sound and said, “we have no reason to believe that there are substantial numbers of [Australian Carbon Credit Units] ACCUs not credible at the moment”.

But the new, peer-reviewed report, published by Macintosh and his team on Friday in The Rangeland Journal, closely analysed 116 sites in NSW, Queensland and South Australia using high-resolution satellite images.

Based on the number of carbon credits generated on the project areas, the tree canopy should have covered 30 per cent of the sites. Instead, they found the average cover was just 13 per cent. They also found the project’s management had made little difference to tree coverage.

“The areas are likely to be at or near their carrying capacity for woody vegetation, meaning any changes in tree cover are most likely to be attributable to seasonal variability in rainfall,” the report said. “Projects are being credited for regenerating forests in areas that contained forest cover when the projects started.

“Given that 2023 was the third year of a rare triple-dip wet La Niña, if the projects were performing as expected, observed levels of canopy cover across the projects would be significantly higher.”

The scientists said the real problem with this was that emitters would not alter their behaviour because they could buy offsets, then if those offsets did not produce real cuts in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Australia would not genuinely reduce its emissions.

Another of the project’s authors, Professor Don Butler from the ANU, said the government body that administers the scheme, the Clean Energy Regulator, had “let us all down terribly”.

“They’ve used hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to build a house of cards that is enabling climate inaction ... The failure of this scheme will only become more obvious as time goes on.”

But Brack, who has audited the scheme for the Clean Energy Regulator, and found it was meeting its targets, said the other scientists had got their measurements wrong.

The satellite images they used were not picking up all the extra growth, he said, much of which could only be seen from photographs or “in situation measurements” on the ground.

Brack added that projects could still meet targets if there were small trees that had not yet reached full size.

In a statement, the Clean Energy Regulator said the HIR method had been reviewed and found to be sound, by Chubb, the Australian National Audit Office and most recently by Brack who had given “strong assurance that the projects are being managed properly”.

If a project was not compliant, carbon credits already paid out were clawed back, the statement said. “We only issue carbon credits where a project can demonstrate regenerating native forest,” it said.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australia-s-biggest-source-of-carbon-offsets-built-on-house-of-cards-credits-worth-495m-20241009-p5kh3m.html

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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