Germany Becomes the New Poster Child for Climate Change Hypocrisy

Climate hypocrisy is nothing new.

Celebrities cruise around the world in their private jets, eating filet mignon while telling you to pack a salad and bike to work to reduce your carbon footprint.

So, color me not at all surprised that Germany, a vocal critic of the U.S.’ decision to exit the Paris climate accord, is preparing to abandon its 2020 climate targets.

Strong economic growth is a critical reason why Germany is very likely to miss its target.

Germany has an aggressive plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Last November, a leaked document from the country’s Environmental Ministry projected the country would miss the mark by 8 percent without additional action.

In other words, even with generous subsidies for renewable power, the Germans would have to implement some form of economy-restricting policy to curtail emissions. So much for the “go green and grow the economy” mantra.

The Environmental Ministry said the failure would be “a disaster for Germany’s international reputation as a climate leader.” One would think a stronger economy would be cause for celebration, not demonization.

Germany’s abandoned 2020 targets are the latest domino to fall in what is failed international climate policy. Many proponents of action argue that even though the Paris climate accord is nonbinding, with no repercussions when a country fails to comply with its nationally determined contributions, the agreement was an important first step.

The parties that have entered into the Paris accord sure have a funny way of showing they’re committed to it.

Despite bashing the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris accord, all of the industrialized countries are not on schedule to meet their respective targets. Germany is not alone in the European Union.

An article published last summer on Nature.com argues that the EU “faces a big gap between words and actions.”

Even if the United States and the rest of the developed world meet their intended targets, it wouldn’t make any meaningful impact on global temperatures. Carbon dioxide reductions from the developing world, many of whose people are still living without dependable power, are necessary to move the climate needle.

However, developing nations set targets so lax that they likely won’t change any behaviors. Paris proponents can brag all they want about China taking the lead in solar power, but turn a blind eye to the massive amounts of new coal power generation moving forward in China, India, and the rest of the developing—and, in some cases, developed—world.

The Financial Times recently reported, “Between January 2014 and September 2017, international banks channeled $630 [billion] to the top 120 companies planning to build new coal plants around the world, according to research by campaign groups, including the Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and Friends of the Earth.”

And yet, those who want stringent climate mitigation say the Paris targets are only approximately one-third of what is needed to allegedly keep global warming in check.

Paying attention to what you perceive as positive action on climate (e.g., Paris, subsidizing renewables) while ignoring the realities of new coal build, retiring nuclear power plants, and global economic growth around the world is a curious strategy.

“Do as I say, but don’t pay attention to what I actually do” is the trademark of climate change policy. The Trump administration took a different approach and told it like it is: Paris is a costly, meaningless non-solution.

The reason countries such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea have entered into the accord is not an indication of global commitment to act on climate. It is an indication of how toothless and meaningless the agreement is.

The rest of the world can act high and mighty on climate, but when the rubber meets the road for action, it’s a different story.

SOURCE





The fake 'Trump is racist' issue

Trump’s words are far less despicable than what Green-Democrat policies do to people

Paul Driessen

By now, nearly the entire world has heard reports that President Trump referred to the origins of some immigrants as “sh**hole countries.”

Democrats and their media allies spent an entire week castigating the president, calling him racist for using the salty language of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Hillary Clinton. Their faux outrage served to distract people from the ways Mr. Trump’s energy, deregulation and tax reform policies have rocketed the stock market to record highs a record number of times, created over two million jobs, slashed black and Hispanic unemployment, and increased US wealth by some $8 trillion since his inauguration.

Pounding on this bad-word Fake News story also muddied discussions about immigration, which Dems hope will bring big electoral gains in November. As former Obama aide Jennifer Palmieri recently put it, illegal immigrants are “a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

Mr. Obama himself waded in, saying Trump supporters and other Fox News viewers live “on a different planet” than people who watch “mainstream media.” In this era of hyper-partisan news coverage and political views, he’s absolutely right. You might call that other planet the Real World, inhabited by hard-working blue collar folks … and struggling families overseas. Which brings us to the real issue.

The naughty-word firestorm also distracts people from the Democrats’ own racial history and animus. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln ended slavery and championed civil rights in the 1960s, while the Democrats were the party of slavery, the KKK, segregation, and policies that even today condemn too many minority children to failed schools, fatherless homes and crime-ridden cities. Especially under President Obama, their unending war on fossil fuels hampered economic development and job creation, and brought poor, minority, middle class and blue collar family living standards down a couple notches.

Far worse is what the modern Democratic Party and its allies in the media, radical environmentalist movement and global government agencies are doing to the world’s most impoverished, malnourished, diseased, energy-deprived, politically powerless families. They do it in the name of environmental protection, sustainable development or preventing “dangerous manmade climate change.” But the policies are callous, unjust, dehumanizing, eco-imperialistic and often lethal. Some would even call them racist.

In 2009, President Obama told Africans they should refrain from using “dirty” fossil fuels and focus instead on their “bountiful” wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel energy. In 2013, he told another African audience that global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”

“If everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house,” he continued, “the planet will boil over.” He then announced his “Power Africa” initiative for a “sustainable Africa” – which emphasized wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal power … but didn’t even mention fossil fuels.

His Overseas Private Investment Corporation refused to support construction of a gas-fired power plant in Ghana that would provide clean and affordable electricity to that power-deprived nation – using natural gas that companies were flaring (burning and wasting) in Ghanaian oil fields. His administration ignored South Africa’s request for a World Bank loan to continue building its state-of-the-art, coal-fired Medupi power plant. Europe’s former colonialist powers had the same attitudes toward their former colonies.

Thankfully, both projects eventually got the necessary funding and were completed.

Continued energy poverty condemns the world’s poor “to real poverty and the diseases, malnutrition and desperation that go with that absence of modern energy,” said Ugandan Steven Lyazi, who died recently in a tragic accident on a horrid African road that is also a product of pervasive poverty. These problems are due to dysfunctional government and incompetent, corrupt leaders, but also to “callous, imperialistic people in rich countries” who use exaggerated or imaginary environmental concerns and fake disasters “to limit how much poor countries may use fossil fuels (or nuclear power) to develop their economies.”

“The principal and unchanged interest” of poor countries continues to be “development and a better quality of life for [their] people,” says Pakistani academic Adil Najam: health, nutrition, jobs, education and life spans. Their principal fear is that the industrialized world is “using environmental issues as an excuse to pull up the development ladder behind it.”

“The greatest threat to the alleviation of the structural poverty of the Third World is the continuing campaign by Western governments, egged on by some climate scientists and green activists, to curb greenhouse emissions, primarily the CO2 from burning fossil fuels,” writes economist Deepak Lal. (He also wrote the foreword to the India edition of my book, Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.)

The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health now claims the Third World is suffering millions of deaths annually from industrial pollution. This is false, says Professor Mikko Paunio. Most of the deaths the commission attributes to industrial air pollution are actually caused by burning wood and dung. Most deaths from diarrhea are no longer caused by polluted water, as it claims, but from poor hygiene because the world’s poor still do not have enough water for proper bathing, cleaning and hygiene.

For the developing world, says Paunio, “adequate water supply has completely fallen off the agenda. Instead, environmental health for poorer countries has come to mean only provision of some clean drinking water and latrines. But the copious supplies of clean water that allow hygienic conditions – and therefore public health – are no longer seen as a priority for the world’s poorest.”

That’s largely because abundant clean water requires abundant, reliable, affordable electricity – which requires large centralized coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydroelectric generators … which Greens oppose. As to renewable energy, ultra-green Germany’s millions of solar panels received just ten hours of (weak) sunshine during the entire 31 days of December 2017! Try running a country or water system on that.

The same radical groups that battle energy also oppose DDT and insecticides to control malaria and other insect-borne diseases. They condemn and obstruct GMO food – even crops created to replace staples that are being decimated by disease, and even Golden Rice, the genetically engineered miracle grain that could end childhood Vitamin A Deficiency and the blindness and slow death that accompany it.

The undeniable result of all these campaigns is that the world’s most destitute people are kept where they are, or allowed to improve their lives only a little, at the margins, to the extent possible with inadequate renewable energy, clean water, bed nets and subsistence farming. That these impacts fall most heavily on the world’s non-white families underscores the racial injustice of so many environmentalist policies.

Like their ancient forebears, today’s superstitious Gaia worshipers sacrifice people to prevent droughts, global warming and climate change. They protect impoverished families from computer-generated climate disasters decades from now – by shortening their lives today. The lesson is simple.

Poor countries should not do what rich countries are doing now that they are rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich – using the best modern technologies available.

China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries are doing exactly that. They are tired of being told not to develop, because it “might hurt the climate” or “wouldn’t be sustainable.” They’re building hydroelectric dams and coal- and gas-fired power plants at a rapid pace – often with the aid of Chinese loans, expertise and technology, because western nations have abdicated their responsibilities.

So yes, there is another planet besides the one where Mr. Obama and his likeminded friends reside. It’s a world where people are tired of kowtowing to ruling elites who live in luxury while telling “commoners” they must roll back their living standards, or never aspire to conditions much better than they have now.

But in a few more years or decades, today’s poor countries will reach economic parity with rich nations – and even surge ahead of those that sacrifice their industries and “commoners” on the Earth goddess altar.

Via email




Europe’s Green Energy Burning Is Killing 40,000 People Per Year, Study Claims

Domestic wood burning has become more widespread in Europe in recent years. Exposure to smoke from domestic biomass use caused 40,000 deaths across the EU28 in 2014, new study claims.

The European Union’s dependence on burning solid biomass – most of it wood – to meet its renewable energy targets makes no sense environmentally. It harms the climate, and damages forests and biodiversity.

Because of this, opposition to the policy has swelled over the past year among the public and scientists.

Next week the European Parliament will vote on a proposed revision to the Renewable Energy Directive, which will determine the EU’s future use of biomass. If approved, it will inevitably mean the continued burning of vast quantities of biomass, mainly in the form of wood.

Quite apart from its disastrous environmental impact, there’s another reason any legislation which increases biomass burning for heating and power should be strenuously resisted.

And it’s one that – until now – has been largely overlooked.

New research for Fern by Dr Mike Holland, a leading independent air pollution expert, reveals the perilous cost to EU citizens’ health from burning solid biomass.

It indicates that tens of thousands of EU citizens are dying prematurely every year as a result of exposure to air pollution from burning solid biomass.

Other health impacts include cancers, cardiac and respiratory complaints, asthma attacks and working days lost to ill health.

Dr Holland’s main focus was assessing 27 biomass burning power plants in the EU where emissions data was available.

Ten of these plants were former coal power stations that have been converted to run on biomass or to be co-fired with a mixture of biomass and coal. The other 17 plants were purpose built biomass plants.

The former coal plants accounted for the bulk of the negative health impacts, due to factors including their much greater size and generally higher levels of harmful sulphur emissions, which were partly linked to continued coal burning in co-fired sites.

Dr Holland’s analysis indicates that more than 1,300 people are dying prematurely each year as a result of exposure to air pollution from the 27 facilities considered.

Measured in financial terms, health costs linked to biomass burning for power generation run into billions of euros each year, with health costs associated with emissions from former coal and co-fired plants amounting to 137,000 euros per year on average for every mega-watt of electrical capacity installed.

Investments in power generation are long term. So once a power plant is built it’s likely to stay in operation for several decades – with the health impacts spreading over that time.

Dr Holland’s report also reviews the evidence of the health impact of air pollution from the use of biomass in domestic heating in the EU.

This has become more widespread in recent years driven partly by renewable energy policies, but also because wood is often cheaper than alternative heating fuels such as coal and oil. Domestic biomass burning increased in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

A study by Sigsgaard and others estimates that exposure to smoke from domestic biomass use led to 40,000 deaths across the EU in 2014. The authors say this is a conservative figure.

Dr Holland extends Sigsgaard’s analysis to produce a fuller picture of the range of health impacts from domestic biomass burning. In a single year, he estimates that in addition to the 40,000 deaths across the EU, there were more than 130,000 cases of bronchitis, more than 20,000 respiratory and cardiac hospital admissions, a million asthma symptom days for children aged 5-19, 43 million restricted activity days and 10 million working days lost.  All because of exposure to fine particles from domestic biomass emissions.

SOURCE





A climate change skeptic travels to a den of true believers

Story by Gerald Holland. Not sure how much is for real

A few years ago a regional newspaper informed its readers about an upcoming Climate Change religion evangelistic meeting at a local hotel. I decided to go and see what the religion had to offer.

The expectant believers huddled in a small meeting room at the hotel. The not-so-moderate moderator and preachers droned on about their expectations of global demise caused by global warming. They played snippets from the first climate change billionaire, Al Gore's, screed, "An Inconvenient Truth." The sermons called for carbon taxes, windmill farms, solar panel energy, something called "sustainability" and so forth. They warned of tipping points, melting polar caps and rising sea levels.

The moderator cautioned  the rapt audience about people such as U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, who said the climate change and global warming movement is one of the biggest hoaxes in history.

From the back of the room near the door, in case I had to run for my life, I raised my hand and shouted, "I agree with Senator Inhofe." Instantly all eyes turned toward me, shooting glares like arrows from Robin Hood's bow.

I plowed ahead. "Most of the people peddling this fear have their snouts in the government-grant trough and fear being kicked away from the trough if they dissent from the required dogma."

One man in the congregation claimed that the non-believers are in the pockets of Exxon and other Big Oil. I said many independent academics and climate observers deny that catastrophic climate change is a cause for worry.

I continued. "So you think that if you get paid by the government your output is holy writ, but if you work in the private sector your science is automatically suspect."

Shortly thereafter the meeting adjourned for lunch. None of the true-believers wanted me at their tables, but I brought my food to a group of eight or nine of them and made myself comfortable anyway. To stimulate conversation, I quickly stated my opinion that it was all a bunch of fear-mongering like the Salem witch trials.

One of the table-mates, while nearly choking at my comment, retorted, "What's fear-mongering about it?"

I answered that it's like child abuse when the Global Warming believers show Al Gore's climate-change-gospel movie to scare little children so that they will go home and badger their parents that the earth is going to burn up and the parents need to change their ways to save the family from the hellish earth.

"What are your credentials?" he snapped.

"What are yours?" I snapped back.

"I'm a graduate statistician," he said, snarling.

I responded, mockingly: "So as a graduate statistician you think other people can't question this new dogma that the world is going to fry if we don't turn our lives over to gangs of climate change Nazis."

I said the climate has always changed — in pre-history and recorded history. Long before there were industry and fossil fuels there were warmings and coolings. There was an Ice Age, then the earth warmed, thank God. Later there was about 300 years of Little Ice Age when people starved and diseases and plagues killed millions. People migrated en mass to escape the cold's death and devastation. It's warmer now, we're prosperous and healthier, and we should again be thankful.

A quiet young man at the table spoke softly that he lived in Kansas and that lack of water is a big problem for farmers and ranchers in the Great Plains. In a spirit of good will I offered this helpful suggestion: Our government should invest in a massive global warming infrastructure program. Lay huge pipes to carry the polar ice melt to arid areas of North America. Glacier-melt water could be squirting from nozzles on corn, wheat, oats, barley, alfalfa and rye. Cattle and wildlife could graze and flourish on green grass every summer. Pumping units could push the surplus ice-cap water down to replenish the depleted water tables. Problems solved. The diners seemed to be stunned into silence by my unique proposal.

Pretty soon the subject was changed to a discussion of the dangers of armadillo infestation, which I consider to be a greater threat than human-caused climate change. I thanked them for their company, paid my bill and went home. Since then I have never seen a notice in the papers about climate change meetings.

SOURCE




Confidence returns for Australian coal miners

Note:  Thermal coal is the coal used in those evil coal-powered electricity generators.  Metallurgical coal is used in blast furnaces to make steel

Did the doubters declare the death of thermal coal too soon?

Certainly the major listed Australian thermal coal miners have all seen positive movement in their share price from late 2017 through into 2018, bucking the wider perception of a market in decline.

That was in turn driven by a resurgent thermal coal price after its massive bust three years ago.

From August 2015 to August 2016, prices languished below $US60 ($75) a tonne. By October of last year that had spiked to more than $US100 a tonne in October 2016 and remained in a healthy range rarely falling below $US80 a tonne.

There are combination of international and domestic market factors as well as  smarter play by Australian miners that have created market conditions where thermal coal has regained ground, shaking off the zombie company taglines that have dogged the industry over the last year.

The domestic market is also different. Australia has significantly fewer thermal coal miners today than it did five years after a spate of sell-offs, divestments, and exits from the market, and now those who survived are reaping the benefits of a strengthening market.

Whitehaven Coal has been one of the standout performers. In February of 2016 Whitehaven's share price hit 37 cents. Earlier this month it hit $4.77 only slowing down on the back of lowered production guidance figures last week.

New Hope Group has seen strong movement northwards, hitting a share price high point not seen since early 2015.

New Hope chief executive Shane Stephen told Fairfax Media pinpoints the sector's turning point as May 2016, when China announced it would institute new controls on domestic production sending buyers elsewhere.

"We're seeing strong demand for higher quality Australian thermal coal in Asia, and that is what's driving the price. Additionally, we're also not seeing a material increase in supply coming out of Australia

"Prices are around US$107 from Newcastle, to put that in perspective, any price with an eight or nine in front of it is considered good," Stephen says.

"With demand at these prices, New Hope is strongly profitable. I think most coal producers in Australia will produce strong financial numbers in their first half results."

Stephen says the company is continuing to focus on expansion and gaining approvals for its Acland Stage 3 project and the possibility of bringing new coal mines in the Surat Basin online as soon as 2023.

Yancoal is also starting to chart a recovery a massive slump in its share price after it announced its intention to acquire Rio Tinto’s Hunter Valley Operations and Mount Thorley Warkworth thermal coal mines.

Rio's rival, BHP, used its quarterly production announcement this week to spruik an expectation defying result for its energy coal division.

Production was up 8 per cent quarter on quarter, and up 4 per cent for the December 2017 half year from the previous corresponding period, with 14,029 kilotonnes produced during the December

Glencore has maintained its focus on thermal coal, telling Fairfax Media it is aiming to continue growth in the area, although it is still seeking to divest its Rolleston coal asset.

Coal mining regions are welcoming this revival of the industry and the flow-on social and economic effects it will have.

"This is most definitely a positive for the Singleton region," Singleton Mayor Sue Moore says. "The industry has been ticking upwards for the last six months, and we're seeing a turnaround, although it is slow. We expect to see this flow through to the local business sector over the next 12 months, beyond just the mining industry.

Newcastle, home of the largest coal port in the world, is looking beyond coal to future energy. ''The City of Newcastle recognises the role that coal plays in our local, state and national economy," Newcastle Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes says.

"The Newcastle and the Hunter Region has a proud history of coal mining, with the mining industry supporting thousands of local jobs for well over 100 years. We understand that coal will continue to be exported from the Port of Newcastle into the future; but Newcastle also has a proudly progressive history where our people demonstrate time and time again their ability to adapt with changing economic opportunity," she says.

Fat Prophets analyst David Lennox says the changing face of the world’s energy needs will eventually have a major impact on thermal coal, but the growth of renewables will not negate coal in the near to medium term.

“Even though we’re seeing significant interest for renewables, we’ll still see thermal coal power stations for a long time,” Mr Lennox told Fairfax Media.

This has been reinforced by the Turnbull Government’s National Energy Guarantee, an energy policy announced late last year which sees coal-fired power generation still playing a major role in Australia’s energy landscape.

Mr Lennox says Australia’s higher quality thermal coal is being sought as its lower impurities means lower emissions when burnt in power plants.

“While we don’t consume significant quantities of coal in Australia, there is high demand from China and India.”

Whitehaven's chief executive Paul Flynn said Australia's higher quality coal and location so close to Asian customers has given it an edge. "Australia as a whole has done a good job rebasing its costs quickly as supply and demand has tightened," Mr Flynn said.

"What we've observed is very strong demand out of Asia fuelled by their demand for high-quality coal to fuel their supercritical power stations."

Another major Australian coal miner agreed, stating that significant growth is forecast from South East Asia.

“Thermal coal’s story hasn’t changed, we’ve always had an optimistic view of it in the medium to long-term. China’s domestic consumption even reached an all-time record last year,” the miner’s spokesman says.

A recent Credit Suisse analysis agrees noting that while much of the developed world is turning away from coal, there is still strong demand from South East Asian nations.

"These nations expect to add 32 to 56 gigawatts of coal-fired generation from 2015 to 2025. The high end of the range may represent increased coal demand of 150 million tonnes per annum," it says.

This is the focus for Whitehaven's Flynn. He says the coal outlook has been strong and exceeded many market expectations in the lead up to north Asia's winter period.

"A number of factors are helping to maintain these higher prices - China's draw on the seaborne thermal coal market is steady, demand for high-quality coals from South East Asia and the traditional Asian markets of Japan, Korea and Taiwan remains strong, reflecting buoyant economic conditions across Asia while a number of factors including Australian industrial relations issues and poor weather in Indonesia have limited supply response," Mr Flynn says.

"The outlook for thermal coal in the short to medium term is favourable."

MineLife's Gavin Wendt believes the combination of growth in China’s manufacturing sector and “an almost surprising level of discipline and fiscal management” is aiding a thermal coal revival.

“Thermal coal is trending at its highest level since 2016,” Mr Wendt told Fairfax Media. “This is mainly driven by manufacturing activity in China having a direct impact on coal demand here.”

SOURCE

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