Thursday, May 27, 2021



A dangerous rise in global temperatures above the 1.5C limit set by the UN could happen in just five years, warn scientists

Another lachrymose prophecy. If 2016 was the hottest year so far, there is NO upward trend

There is a 40 per cent chance that annual temperature rises will go beyond the level set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, agreed to by 196 countries, it is claimed.

The report published by the World Meteorological Organisation also warns of a very high likelihood – a 90 per cent chance – of at least one year between 2021 and 2025 becoming the warmest on record, outstripping *2016's record heat*

Global average temperatures of 1.5C above 19th century levels are seen as a threshold beyond which the most dangerous impacts of climate change will be felt.

Scientists warn that temperature rises above 1.5C will lead to more heatwaves, extreme rainstorms, water shortages and drought, greater economic losses and lower crop yields, higher sea levels and destruction of coral reefs.

In 2020, the global average temperature was 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, making it among the three hottest years on record.

The predictions appear in the WMO's Global Annual to Decadal Climate update, which is led by Britain's Met Office.

WMO secretary general Professor Petteri Taalas said: 'Increasing temperatures mean more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development.

This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably and inexorably closer to the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

'It is yet another wake-up call that the world needs to fast-track commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions.'

Under the international Paris Agreement countries pledged to limit long-term temperature rises to 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to curb them to 1.5C, to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

Current action promised by countries puts the world on track for 2-3C of warming by the end of the century.

Dr Stephen Cornelius, chief climate adviser at WWF, said: 'Limiting global warming to 1.5C is of critical importance to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis on people and nature, but we know without global action we are at risk of reaching this threshold in the coming years.

'With so much at stake, governments must take urgent action to cut harmful emissions.'

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So-Called Infrastructure Plan Would Federalize California’s Climate Mandates

If Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., continue to have their way, families across the U.S. will pay more in taxes so that millionaires in California can write off a new Tesla.

Sound fair? Team Biden thinks so. Included within the White House’s $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” plan—which is dense with wasteful Green New Deal ideas—is a massively wasteful government program that would try to remove gas cars from the U.S. economy.

Within President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan is $174 billion that would both extend the electric vehicle tax credit as well as replace government cars with electric ones. To put this level of waste into perspective: $174 billion is more than practically every state budget.

The proposal would federalize the failed climate mandates in California. It’s not hard to see what’s being forced on states (like my home state, Kansas) next from the state that has become a socialist laboratory for bad policy experiments. California’s governor even recently signed an order that will phase out gas-powered cars by 2035. This is not based on reality.

Right now, electric cars comprise less than 2% of the automotive market in the U.S. Signing an order to phase out cars will only punish working-class Americans.

It’s only one example of the many radical climate mandates that have created an affordability crisis in the state, causing many to flee. Democrats haven’t seemed to notice the thousands leaving California for places like Texas. Instead of learning from their mistakes, their plan is to double down on the failed climate policies of California.

But hardworking American families, who are dealing with rising prices on most household goods, don’t want to subsidize wealthy Americans to buy a Tesla or to pay for the federal government to purchase electric cars. There’s simply no reason to—it’s pure waste.

In addition, not many Americans will choose electric vehicles because they can only be driven about halfway across a state the size of Kansas before needing to be recharged for hours.

That’s why I’ve introduced two pieces of legislation to push back against this radical socialist agenda. The Close the Double Subsidy Loophole for Electric Vehicles Act will ensure that American taxpayers do not continue footing the bill for electric vehicle tax credits that are overwhelmingly claimed by wealthy individuals and corporations in states that already heavily incentivize electric vehicles.

Under current law, the tax credit for electric cars does not take state subsidies into account when it is calculated. This means that in states like California, where electric cars are heavily subsidized, many can double dip with state and federal subsidies to buy a qualifying electric vehicle.

According to data from tax returns filed in 2019, 80% of taxpayers claiming this credit had adjusted gross income of $100,000 or more. In addition, it is estimated that roughly half of the forgone revenue for this credit from 2018 to 2022 stems from corporations claiming the credit.

My legislation would close the loophole while still allowing buyers of electric vehicles to benefit from state and federal tax breaks.

In addition, Biden’s plan to purchase 645,000 electric vehicles for the government could cost over $20 billion. That’s why I’ve also introduced the No Subsidies for Government Purchases of Electric Vehicles Act.

This would ensure the federal government does not use the tax credit to grant the seller of the vehicle a large tax credit against their federal tax rate. If this is allowed, it would introduce a poor incentive for those selling cars that could limit your buying options in addition to encouraging wasteful government spending.

Americans deserve to buy a car that will suit their lives—not a car that Washington decides they should be driving. Instead of including electric vehicles as part of your options when buying a car, Democrats are incentivizing them with the goal of removing gas cars. This means you’ll be stuck without options.

If Americans don’t want to buy electric vehicles for whatever reason, they don’t have to. Democrats in Congress should be focused on reopening the economy and getting Americans back to work—not trying to implement California’s failed climate policies.

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The IEA’s Plan to Destroy Freedom and Save the Planet

If you liked gas lines after the Colonial Pipeline was shut down by a hacking—or if the rolling blackouts last summer in California were your idea of fun—you will love what the international global warming warriors at the International Energy Agency have planned for us.

The agency is the world’s most influential international energy policy organization, made up of 30 prosperous member-states, including the United States—its biggest funder, of course—the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan. Ironically, the IEA was formed in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis to develop policies that would prevent such energy disruptions from happening again. Now, it wants to cause those very disruptions in the name of fighting global warming.

The agency doesn’t admit that. But major shortages and dislocations would be the almost certain consequence if its recommended radical policies were aggressively implemented. You see, the IEA doesn’t want to just reduce carbon emissions. It wants to eliminate them entirely by setting a goal of zero net carbon emissions (ZNE) by 2050. Otherwise, we are all doomed!

Toward this end, the IEA just issued “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector,” a 200-plus-page report urging specific actions to attain this almost surely unattainable goal. It makes for chilling reading since it’s clear from reading the report that the global warming warriors are green with envy (get it?) about how the COVID-19 fight successfully redirected individual behavior and reset societal norms—so now they want to do it to us, too.

But there is a big difference between COVID and global warming. Whereas our pandemic dislocations are (hopefully) temporary, the IEA’s would never end. Moreover, COVID restrictions will seem like minor nuisances compared to major societal dislocations the IEA plans.

Here’s a nutshell overview:

Decimate the Oil and Gas Industry: The report foresees forcing a “major contraction of oil and gas production.” It calls for forbidding all future oil and gas exploration and refusing permits for any new extraction of oil, gas, and coal.

Replace Fossil Fuels With Low-Emission Hydrogen: The report predicts replacing fossil fuels by “using hydrogen-based fuels for ships and planes, as well as hydrogen in heavy industries like steel and chemicals.” Such technology doesn’t exist yet. Not to worry. If governments put a mere $90 billion into research, the technology will be ready by 2030 “with a portfolio of demonstration projects.”

We Will Be Forced Into Electric Vehicles (EV): Achieving NZE will require us to replace vehicles with internal combustion engines with EVs, i.e., electric vehicles. The report wants to force this transformation immediately. Just nine years from now, it expects the total number of EVs to rise to 60 percent from 5 percent.

You Will Also Be Forced to Take the Bus: The IEA also wants far fewer automobiles in private hands. Thus, the report predicts on page 86 that policies will be put in place that will require urbanites to make about 50 percent of their trips using public transportation, with the remainder consigned to riding a bicycle or walking. The report expects car ownership in the world to plunge to 20 percent by 2050 from 35 percent now—with only 5 percent of households owning more than one vehicle.

Thou Shalt Rarely Fly: Page 135 calls for “comprehensive government policies that promote a shift toward high-speed rail and rein in expansion of long-haul commercial flying.” Business and pleasure travel aren’t to exceed 2019 levels. (If you want a vivid illustration of how well that will turn out, check out the California high-speed “train to nowhere” boondoggle that wasted tens of billions and still isn’t carrying passengers anywhere they want to go.)

You Will Be Hot in the Summer and Cold in the Winter: Your ability to set your own thermostats will be regulated. In the summer, you will not be able to cool your home below 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and not heat above 66 to 67 degrees in the freezing winter. Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater is ready for a comeback! Also, you will be forced to reduce the temperature of your hot water, so get ready for tepid showers!

The key to this grand future is electricity—to fuel EVs, cook our food, heat our homes, drive our industries, operate our entertainment devices, run our trains, and allow for the other accoutrements of modern life. But all that will require tremendous growth in generation—raising the obvious question of how we will create all that needed power after dramatically cutting the use of natural gas and phasing out coal.

Of course, windmills and solar power! But these aren’t reliable sources. Windmills freeze in the winter—not to mention kill many millions of birds and bats—and solar power doesn’t generate electricity at night or on cloudy days. Then there is the major battery problem to allow storing that generated electricity for later use. Indeed, California’s reliance on unreliable renewables was one of the factors leading to the rolling blackouts last summer. Oh, well, they’ll think of something.

What about nuclear power? The report supports its use but doesn’t push it as a solution to power generation, stating on page 115 that it expects nuclear power to be “below 10 percent in 2050.”

How much will all of this cost? It’s beyond imagination. I mean, we haven’t even gotten into the mandatory commercial and residential building retrofits for which the report calls, nor the transformation of planes, ships, and major industry into using hydrogen fuels.

So, how will all of that be paid for? Private investment. But also—you guessed it—lots and lots of taxes—and not just on the rich. There will be carbon taxes. There will be road fees. There will be congestion charges. And yes, there will be increased taxes on electricity after they force us to rely almost exclusively on that source of energy to live modern lives.

As you ponder these and many other proposed head-swimming “reforms” the IEA plans, remember: It’s all for our own good! The planet is cooking! There is a world to save! All they demand in return is that we surrender our lifestyles, prosperity, and personal freedom.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Sunday, May 16, 2021



Rasmussen/Heartland poll: viewers of conservative media more likely to get the facts right on climate change

From April 29 to May 3, Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank, conducted a nationwide survey of 2,000 likely voters. Included in the poll was a series of questions asking likely voters how they receive news and information, as well as several questions about climate-change-related topics. The following results from the survey illustrate likely voters’ views on these important issues, as well as how those views are correlated with news media preferences.

You can download the full survey results and all crosstabs by clicking here. (We strongly recommend that in addition to considering our summary bullet points below, you download the full results and view the crosstabs for this survey, because this is where you’ll find the crosstabs about media preferences and other important information.)

Some of The Heartland Institute’s key findings from an analysis of the survey include:

There is a strong correlation between a likely voter’s favorite television news outlet and his or her understanding of basic facts about climate change.

Compared to viewers of Fox News, “another” cable news outlet, and those who don’t watch television news, viewers of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC are substantially more likely to believe that if CO2 emissions continue to increase at recent rates, humans will “become completely or nearly extinct due to climate change” within the next 100 years.

For example, 58% of MSNBC viewers and more than half of viewers of ABC, CBS, and NBC said they think humanity could become extinct or nearly extinct within a century.

About one-quarter of CNN and MSNBC viewers believe humanity could become extinct within 50 years due to climate change.

Viewers of CNN and MSNBC are substantially more likely to overestimate the amount of global warming that has occurred since the late 1800s compared to viewers of Fox News or “another” outlet. 65% percent of CNN viewers and 67% of MSNBC viewers overestimated warming by at least 40%, and three in 10 CNN and MSNBC viewers overestimated warming by more than double the real figure.

Viewers of ABC, CBS, and NBC were also substantially more likely to overestimate global warming. Six in 10 viewers of these networks overestimated warming trends.

Respondents who don’t watch cable news and viewers of Fox News or “another” outlet (such as The Blaze TV or Newsmax) were more likely to correctly estimate the amount of warming that has occurred since the late 1800s. More than four in 10 of the respondents in these three categories answered correctly, compared to about three in 10 viewers of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC.

55% of likely voters believe climate change is primarily caused by human beings, compared to 45% who believe long-term planetary trends are the main cause.

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UK: These People Are Mad - Rare Earths And Electronics Recycling

Tim Worstall

We’re being told that we must waste resources in order to save resources. This is, of course, mad but then that’s the institutional part of the environmental movement for you. They’ve so reified recycling that they believe it’s a good thing at any cost. Oh, yes, and they’re going to change the law so as to insist that we waste resources in order to save them.

The Guardian takes up the story:

Rare elements such as indium, yttrium, neodymium, cobalt and lithium are vital for the production of low-carbon technology, but many are being thrown away because of the lack of a requirement to recycle them, industry experts have warned.

Concern is growing over the future supply of such elements, as the switch to green technology – including electric vehicles, solar panels and low-carbon heating – will require far greater volumes of rare earths and other critical raw materials.

Industry experts have called for tougher rules on recycling, in a report from Cewaste, a two-year project funded by the EU as part of its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The authors examined what happens to such materials currently, and their potential future supply and cost.

Well, OK, let’s just take that first one, indium. Yes, it’s the thing that makes touchscreens work. Lovely stuff. Normally extracted as a by product of getting zinc from spharelite. Usual concentrations in the original mineral are 45 to 500 parts per million.

Now, note something important about a by product material like this. If we recycle indium we don’t in fact save any indium from spharelite. Because we mine spharelite for the zinc, the indium is just a bonus when we do. So, we recycle the indium we’re already using. We don’t process out the indium in our spharelite. We just take the same amount of zinc we always did and dump what we don’t want into the gangue, the waste.

So, note what’s happened. We recycle indium and yet we dig up exactly the same amount of indium we always did. We just don’t use what we’ve dug up – we’re not in fact saving that vital resource of indium at all.

But it gets better than this. The concentration of indium in an iPhone:

Firstly, the screens were manually removed from cell phones…..The results showed that the best experimental conditions enabled extraction of 613mg of indium/kg of LCD powder.

The screens themselves and alone have about the same concentration of indium as the top end of our normal ore (600 ppm) – you know, the ore we’re going to dig up for the zinc anyway. But if we consider the phone as a whole we’ve got an indium concentration worse than the normal ore we regularly use. Plus, of course, we’ve got to collect all those phones, manually disassemble them and so on. At least the normal ore exists in thousands of tonnes at one place rather than being collected in in 500 gramme lots from vast areas of geography.

We’ll not save any indium, end up using a worse ore plus vast transport costs in the name of saving resources?

Hmm, well, do they have any sensible ideas here?

The number of waste fluorescent lamps arising has been declining since 2013. In 2025, it is
estimated there will be 92 tonnes of CRMs in waste fluorescent lamps (Ce: 10 tonnes, Eu: 4
tonnes, La: 13 tonnes, Tb: 4 tonnes and Y: 61 tonnes).

That would be the recovery from all fluorescent lamps in Europe being recycled. In a few – there’s not that much material so therefore only a few plants are needed, meaning considerable geographic spread – plants dotted around.

That’s $50k of cerium, about $100k of europium, $65k of lanthanum, $2.8 million of terbium and 2.2 million of yttrium. To all intents and purposes this is $5 million of material. For which we must have a Europe wide collection system?

They do realise this is insane which is why they insist that this must be made law. Can’t have people not doing stupid things now, can we?

Just to give another example – not one they mention. As some will know I used to supply rare earths to the global lighting industry. One particular type uses scandium. In a quarter milligram quantity per bulb. Meaning that even with perfect recycling you need to collect 4 million bulbs to gain a kilo of scandium – worth $800.

We would save resources by getting the Russians – for Sc – or the Chinese – for the others – to dig up a bit more hillside, wouldn’t we?

The entire idea is dumbfoundingly stupid. So, what’s the actual recommendation here?

CEWASTE recommends that:

• Legislation should require recovery of specific CRMs.

Yep, the law must insist everyone acts as sputum dribbling idiots.

This is, of course, a European Union insistence just coming over the horizon. Thank buggery we left, eh?

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146 Million Acres of Forest Thriving Globally, Soaking up More Carbon Dioxide Than U.S. Emits

Forests so large they could cover all of France have regenerated and thrived since 2000 and benefit the environment by absorbing one billion tons of carbon dioxide — a rate greater than the annual emissions from the United States.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation reported on the analysis conducted by researchers with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) released on Tuesday:

The research looked at forests that have grown back spontaneously or with little human help, such as planting native trees or fencing off land to reduce grazing.

Scientists say that protecting and regenerating forests is a better climate change solution than planting trees, because existing forests absorb more planet warming gasses while also safeguarding wildlife and biodiversity.

The study found the Atlantic Forest in Brazil regained an estimated 4.2 million hectares – an area roughly the size of the Netherlands – since 2000, something it described as a success story. Over the same period, 1.2 million hectares of boreal forests were regenerated in northern Mongolia, with other reforestation hotspots including central Africa and Canada, it said.

But the environmentalists are still not satisfied and pushed back against the strategy of planting trees to fight so-called climate change.

“The data show the enormous potential of natural habitats to recover when given the chance to do so,” John Lotspeich, executive director of Trillion Trees, the coalition of environmental organizations behind the study, said. “But it isn’t an excuse for any of us to wait around for it to happen.”

“We’ve known for a long time that natural forest regeneration is often cheaper, richer in carbon, and better for biodiversity than actively planted forests,” William Baldwin-Cantello, director of nature-based solutions at WWF-UK, said.

“This research tells us where and why regeneration is happening, and how we can recreate those conditions elsewhere,” Baldwin-Cantello said.

“If we give forests the space … to regenerate at scale, and if we create that space, and we ensure that last into the future, then this is going to play a major role in avoiding climate change,” Baldwin-Cantello said.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t need to stop deforestation, we definitely do. It doesn’t mean we don’t need to reduce emissions,” Baldwin-Cantello said. “But we need all of these things combined. And we can do much more to capitalize on that regeneration than we currently are.”

“Still, the authors said such ‘encouraging signs’ could not be taken for granted, warning the world was still losing forests at a ‘terrifying rate,’ much faster than that of restoration,” Reuters reported.

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WATER VAPOR VS. CO2 AS A CLIMATE CONTROL KNOB

By Joe Bastardi

One would have to disregard these principles to accept blindly the introduction of more Co2 to the system now is the prime control of the system.

Let’s start with Occam’s razor.

Occam’s razor is a scientific and philosophical principle that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. This is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex, or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

Next let’s look at Le Chatelier’s principle.

Le Chatelier’s principle states that if a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counteract the change to reestablish an equilibrium. If a chemical reaction is at equilibrium and experiences a change in pressure, temperature, or concentration of products or reactants, the equilibrium shifts in the opposite direction to offset the change. …..(This is) why catalysts have no effect on the equilibrium position.

One would have to disregard these principles to accept blindly the introduction of more Co2 to the system now is the prime control of the system. Hence skepticism to weighting attribution is warranted.

Lets look at the temperatures in the arctic where a lot of the warming has taken place. But lets look at WHEN to see if it gives us clues as to the WHY.

The warming is during the winter. There has been virtually no change in the summer. Now what are the reasons for that?

Well one is the ice melting and water freezing processes. When ice melts it takes energy from the air so in effect it retards warming. That would be occurring in the summer season. When there is a refreezing it’s the opposite. One can watch a freezing rainstorm with no wind or temperature advection. If its sleeting (ice pellets) temperatures will remain below freezing, but once the changeover to rain occurs, absent cold advection, temperatures will rise quickly to 32, which is not only the freezing point of water, but the melting point of ice. Many an ice storm in protected valley areas occur with little if any wind going on and the temperature hovering near 32.

But why would the winter arctic temperatures be so much warmer? The answer is water vapor. Slight increases in water vapor produce greater increases in temperature correlation. We can see that by looking at saturation mixing ratios, of grams per kilograms of WV.

(Note: I show this in my book, The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate War, in the chapter on Weaponizing the global temperature)

What this says is if you add more water vapor to the air, temperatures have to go up much more where its cold and dry, than where its warm and wet. Look at the change that correlates from -40 F to -30F. Only.09 grams/kg correlates to 10 degree change. So lets do the same thing centered around the earths temperature. (lets use 60) you need almost 5 grams/kg. So slight increases in WV affect where its cold and dry much more. Hence, the idea that the earth is burning up is nonsense since where human life thrives (lets again center it around the so called average temperature of the planet), the increase is so small in water vapor that it has had much less effect on the global temperature than the contribution from the Arctic and Antarctic winters!

But right off the bat, if we can visibly link water vapor to the temperature and changes in the weather and climate, and we have no such linkage of co2 to temperature, how is it co2 would have the finger pointed at it for what is plainly the domain of water vapor?

You can understand this very easily on a cold morning. You breathe out, you “see” your breath. That is because less water vapor is needed to form that “cloud” at lower temperatures. You are still exhaling the same amount of WV on a hot day, but you do not see it.

Now lets circle back to the principles above. Occams razor: What is the simplest answer to the problem? Is it the complexity of the addition of 1.5 gram/kg of co2 over what is almost century to the atmosphere, that is perfectly capable of adapting, or the dominant forcing mechanism of WV? ( note that same addition of WV at -30F is correlated to a 40 degree rise).

And then circling back to that word, adapting. That is Le Cheteliers. But who knows what the true equilibrium is anyway, just like who knows what the perfect temperature or amount of co2 in the air optimum for plant and animal life? No one. How is it what was a climate optimum in previous years is somehow a climate Crisis now? So why would we spend trillions of dollars chasing something that has not been defined? The old definition of weather and climate simply being nature’s attempt at finding a balance to a chaotic system where balances are impossible to maintain because of the design of the system, says of course there will be ups and downs ranging from hours to centuries. But as in all things in nature, the dominant forcing has the dominant effect

A few practical examples.

Lets just take US Summer temperatures over the last 10 years.

Using the temperatures vs the averages from 1961 to 1990 you can see how much warmer it is.

However, when we look at max temperatures we see the warming is not as great as min temperature, except in the west.

Max’s

Mins

Nightime lows are visibly higher

Now why would this be?

Well lets look at precipitation:

Contrary to all the yelling and screaming about a dust bowl it has been wetter in much of the nation where we grow our food. To refresh your memory, a look at the dust bowl years summer precipitation is in order:

The West has been drier so it is hotter by day. The eastern and southern warmth at night is a product of higher moisture content in the air. The heavier precipitation means the dreaded heat dome that occurred in the 1930s aloft (btw just how did that occur with co2 so low?) has not developed. So, as I mentioned above the higher amounts of WV due to the cyclically warmed oceans, is putting more WV in the air, which affects temperatures more when they are lower.

It also means it can not be warming as fast aloft since if it were, there would not be as much precipitation. If it remains cool enough the condensation processes are such that it rains more. If it warms more in the mid and upper then the increase in WV is offset enough and it dries out.

This was the missive in 2013 after the 3 hot dry summers. Yet no one called the people out that made a forecast that was almost laughable (and I said so at the time given it mimicked almost perfectly the 3-year drought of the early 1950s, including in the way it reversed). But that’s the game agenda driven zealots and their willing partners in the media play. They never get called out on their busts, and this was a spectacular one. In fact, the world is growing more food than ever, the US included. The planet is Greener than its ever been in the satellite era, a true Green New Deal that benefits mankind.

But let us not cherry pick the US. The last 10 years are the “hottest decade” on record correct? Well since when is a degree warmer over as long a period of time and mostly in places cold and dry, hot? Anyone go swimming at 59 degrees? When someone uses terms like hot or it burning up describing the earths temperature it is purposeful deception or ignorance, and no matter which, its simply to push a phony agenda. Its that simple.

But lets look at this

In the past 40 years we have warmed about .14C/decade

So taking a half degree C intervals, where can all of this warming be seen?

Mainly in the arctic (this is the entire year):

But lets look at the details. N hem Winter months.

Wow it’s the arctic. How about that?

What about summer?

Not nearly as much.

Now here is another question Do you really think this is so out of control rapid that we are not adapting to it? And given the nature of heat, the warmer it gets the harder it is to make it warmer, why isn’t that looked at? SST’s have gone up which means both more WV AND CO2 is being released into the air. Yet why do climate alarmists not quantify the increase of WV to where the temperatures are warming, when they are warming, and by how much? Because there is no provable linkage to co2, just a hypothesis that is being accepted in the face of what may be a simple, demonstrative cause and effect, the much larger GHG, WV. It would cast major doubt on their argument and is certainly a reason for skepticism.

Let me state my bias. I will use my chess playing prowess as the example. It is very difficult to beat me in 15 second chess. Its still hard at 30. But people I would clean off the board in short clock games would smoke me once they got to a minute or above. Most of the people I would play in college and beyond were much better students than me. But I could see the simple quicker.

So that is a known bias. I am using basic simple knowledge (Occams razor, Le Chetiliers principle) to provide an answer to a question that if we are going to get back to co2 feedback roles is more complex. The idea they are pushing is that co2’s attribution to the climate is far more important than the larger members of the system, the sun, oceans, stochastic events, (try a couple of well placed volcanoes sending ash into the stratosphere over the tropics) and the very design of the system which is always at odds with itself.

So I admit my bias to what is a 15-30 second clock chess game idea. And of course the simple thwarting the complex means those that live and die by the complex are rendered useless in their mission. Which questions their value. So simple ideas such as Occams razor and Le Chateliers are a big threat, and so are people who try to use them. As the agenda gets more extreme, the canceling of skeptical voices grows. But at least I understand (and admit) my bias as to opposed to a zealot driven intolerant agenda that is a form of tyranny, one that grows harsher daily.

Finally a link for those of you that really want to see more than just my “cherry picked” ( ah but the orchard is so ripe) WV examples. This from Dr Willie Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas

A Brief Review of the Sun-Climate Connection, With a New Insight Concerning Water Vapour

Its well worth your time.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Monday, May 10, 2021


Toyota's new £50,000 hydrogen fuel cell car: Should you steer away from traditional EVs and choose the Mirai with its 400 mile range?

Toyota's new eco-friendly Mirai gives a whole new meaning to 'stepping on the gas.'

Because when I got behind the wheel of this sporty four-door five-seater saloon, that's exactly what I was doing.

Except that in this case the 'gas' I was stepping on was not gasoline – or petrol as we call it in the UK – but lighter than air hydrogen: the most abundant element on the planet and probably the universe.

And, just like liquid petrol, also highly inflammable.

The new and surprisingly agile and sporty Mirai is the second generation of Toyota's zero-emissions motor and the Japanese car-maker says improvements have helped it boost fuel economy by 10 per cent to achieve a 30 per cent increase in range to 400 miles.

And although hydrogen is the principle source of the power that drives it, the Mirai is actually an electric car driven by electricity and electric motors.

That's because it uses a special fuel-cell which acts as a mini on-board power-station taking the hydrogen gas and, through a chemical reaction, creating electric power from the fusion of hydrogen from the fuel tank and oxygen atoms sucked in from the atmosphere.

The other by-product – as you may recall from school-days' chemistry lessons, is H20 – otherwise known as water.

This is what dribbles out of the exhaust pipe – and is so pure you can drink it.

Indeed, the car is such a marvel, that it even purifies the air around it as it goes as the air it sucks thanks the on-board chemical reaction.

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The 'Great Reset' is about to become the law in Europe — and America could be next

Citing concerns over climate change and the "golden opportunity" for societal change created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Economic Forum launched in June 2020 a radical "Great Reset" initiative, in partnership with various leaders from the public and private sectors.

CEOs of major corporations, as well as banks, central banks, financial institutions, labor unions, international organizations, and government leaders — including John Kerry, the Biden administration's "climate czar" — quickly signed on to the plan, which pledges to push the "reset" button on the global economy.

As World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab wrote in an op-ed about the Great Reset published in June, "The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a 'Great Reset' of capitalism."

Supporters of the Great Reset aim to alter the global economy through two different reform strategies. The first is to create a variety of new government programs, including policies similar to the far-left Green New Deal resolution proposed in 2019 by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The second, even more far-reaching part of the Great Reset is the widespread adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, which change the way businesses are evaluated.

Under an ESG model, companies are not only rated using traditional metrics, such as revenues and the quality of goods and services offered, but also on a variety of social justice metrics, such as their carbon footprint, air quality of a business' supply chain, and having the "right" ratio of Asians to Hispanics working in the company, among many other factors.

Thousands of companies have already adopted ESG standards around the world, including an estimated 82% of large companies in the United States, and to this point, they have done so voluntarily.

There are a number of reasons why the Great Reset has caught on among the heads of the largest corporations in the United States and many of the planet's wealthiest financial institutions, not least of which is that there is a great deal of money invested in the ESG movement. The highly influential Principles for Responsible Investment group claims investors controlling more than $100 trillion in wealth have already agreed to funnel immense amounts of cash into businesses that support ESG systems.

But supporters of the cause have also routinely suggested that voluntary ESG standards could soon become government mandates, and thus, smart businesses are better off getting on government's good side now, before the regulatory hammer drops.

It appears that those warnings could soon become a reality in Europe. On March 10, the European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution that demands all large companies in the European Union, as well as some smaller businesses, put ESG standards in place, or else face harsh penalties from their respective national governments.

Although the resolution passed by the European Parliament is not yet binding on EU member states, it is strong sign that it is likely to occur. In order for the resolution to become binding, the European Commission must first formally propose the resolution as legislation, and then the Parliament and member states must vote in favor of the legislation. This is a move that seems highly likely to occur, due to the overwhelming support for the resolution in the EU Parliament. The commission is expected to provide official legislation as early as June 2021.

According to international law firm Shearman and Sterling, the "proposed due diligence framework targets three categories of 'potential and/or actual adverse impacts,'" including "human rights," the environment, and "good governance."

These categories are deliberately broad and would in many cases require businesses to make sweeping reforms to align with left-wing goals, imposing them on the societies in which they operate. For example, the "human rights" category "means any potential or actual adverse impact that may impair the full enjoyment of human rights by individuals or groups of individuals in relation to human rights, including social, worker and trade union rights."

Protecting the environment would involve, according to Shearman and Sterling, "the right to a safe, clean, healthy, sustainable and biodiverse environment" as defined by "internationally recognized and EU environmental standards."

Further, the resolution demands that business "strategies should be aligned with ... the European Green Deal, and the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, and Union international policy, especially the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Paris Agreement," among other standards.

Perhaps most importantly for Americans and U.S. businesses, the Parliament's resolution calls for these ESG requirements to cover all of a business' activities, including its "value chain."

The "value chain" is defined in the resolution as "all activities, operations, business relationships and investment chains of an undertaking and includes entities with which the undertaking has a direct or indirect business relationship, upstream and downstream, and which either: (a) supply products, parts of products or services that contribute to the undertaking's own products or services, or (b) receive products or services from the undertaking."

Or, put more simply, if an American company wants to do business in the European Union or with any of the European Union's large businesses, it will also have to have ESG standards of its own, or it will at least be contractually obligated to adopt policies in line with European ESG mandates.

The Shearman and Sterling law firm confirms this interpretation of the resolution in its report, in which it wrote, "A company therefore will have to make all efforts within its means to ensure that its business partners (both direct and indirect, and upstream and downstream) have in place human rights, environmental and good governance policies that are in line with the company's obligation of due diligence."

The Great Reset is about to become the law of the land throughout most of Europe, and it is highly likely that if the European Commission passes legislation comparable to the resolution already approved by Parliament, it will, in effect, become the law for many of the largest corporations in the United States — a spectacularly disastrous development that will impose left-wing ideological changes to society on all Americans, whether they want them or not.

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Banks and Biden – here's how they'll team up to adopt AOC's Green New Deal

President Joe Biden, like many on the left, sells himself as a champion of the working class. But, time after time, Biden has proven that in order to promote his ideology, he will eagerly empower many of the same billionaires and massive financial institutions he claims to hate, often at the expense of hardworking American families.

A recent regulatory move governing financial institutions provides the latest, and perhaps best, example.

In January 2021, just weeks before President Trump left the White House, the Trump administration’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a new regulation – titled Fair Access to Financial Services – that would have made it illegal for large banks to discriminate against politically disfavored industries, such as fracking.

The Trump-era rule would have applied to banks "with more than $100 billion in assets" and "that may exert significant pricing power or influence over sectors of the national economy."

However, a little more than a week after Biden’s inauguration, his administration announced that it had "paused" the already finalized Trump-era banking regulation, sending a clear message that it will not survive a Biden presidency or even be allowed to appear temporarily in the Federal Register.

Although Biden will likely never talk about it in public, his administration’s decision to stop Trump’s Fair Access regulation – a decision widely supported by Democrats in Congress – will undoubtedly allow banks to push progressive ideas on the American people, whether they like it or not.

This is especially true when it comes to climate and energy policy. Public opinion polls have consistently showed that when the American voters are given all of the relevant information, including costs, they typically oppose many of Democrats’ most radical and expensive climate proposals.

For example, one 2019 survey by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 68% of Americans said they would not support paying even $10 more per month in higher electric bills as part of an effort to slow climate change. A whopping 83% of Americans, including many Democrats, said they would not pay $75 per month extra.

Perhaps even more telling, the highly publicized Green New Deal resolution promoted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., had become so politically toxic by the time it came up for a vote in 2019 that it failed miserably in both chambers of Congress. In the Senate, AOC’s resolution failed 0-57.

Fortunately for Democrats, however, Biden’s rule change will once again allow banks to cause immense harm to the fossil-fuel industry, as well as to any other business sector that relies on fossil fuels, by allowing banks to discriminate against businesses that aren’t "green" enough for the left.

If enough banks refuse to do business with fossil-fuel companies and related businesses, those companies will not be able to survive in the long run, forcing Americans to turn toward whatever energy options left-leaning banks allow to exist.

Banks have repeatedly promised to phase out conventional energy from their business operations.

This is not a warning or a problem that could emerge at some point down the road. It is already here.

Banks have repeatedly promised to phase out conventional energy from their business operations. In fact, they have gone much further.

Many banks are now telling investors that they will, over the next few decades, require their entire financial operations to become net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions. This means banks are planning a future in which they will only work with companies that agree to the left’s environmental agenda, regardless of how harmful that might be to the overall economy or how many jobs it could cost.

For example, in February, Bank of America said, "Building on Bank of America’s long-standing support for the Paris climate agreement, the company today outlined initial steps to achieve its goal of net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its financing activities, operations and supply chain before 2050."

Similarly, Citi CEO Jane Fraser said on March 1, "We believe that global financial institutions like Citi have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to play a leading role in helping drive the transition to a net zero global economy and make good on the promise of the Paris Agreement."

On March 8, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf announced, "Climate change is one of the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time, and Wells Fargo is committed to aligning our activities to support the goals of the Paris Agreement and to helping transition to a net-zero carbon economy."

Godman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley have also made similar pledges.

Of course, had Trump’s rule been allowed to stand, none of this would have been possible. Banks would have been required to base financing decisions on the creditworthiness of the applicant and other relevant financial information pertaining to a potential borrower’s business activities.

Banks would not have been allowed to simply throw up a sign saying, "Natural gas companies are not wanted," and then refuse to do business with anyone related to fracking, for example.

However, thanks to the regulatory changes now being made by the Biden administration, banks will have the power to collectively kill any industry they – or their allies in Washington – want, and not just those linked to fossil fuels, either. Gun manufacturers and sellers have also been targeted by some banks in recent years, for example.

Because many banks are private institutions, some, including many on the political right, might argue that they should be free to discriminate against any business they want, and if we lived in a truly free-market economy, I’d agree with them. But America doesn’t have a totally free-market economy.

Corporations and banks benefit from special tax provisions, legal protections and from laws that allow the nearly endless printing of money. In other words, large corporations are creatures of government, so it is more than reasonable that they should have to treat other businesses and individuals fairly and not become quasi-political institutions that do the bidding of political groups.

Why are banks so willing to go along with the left’s goals? This is just speculative – and there are many other potential reasons, including fear of regulatory retribution – but the catalyst most likely driving their decisions is that many banks, financial institutions and big Wall Street investors are convinced that the infrastructure and energy policies that Democrats are now attempting to put into place, as well as actions taken by central banks, offer a massive financial opportunity.

The flood of Federal Reserve-printed cash cascading into the financial system to stop a "climate crisis," as well as gigantic new spending bills by Biden and the Democrat-led Congress, would make bankers even richer than they already are. All banks must do to help move things along is to assist Democrats by promoting wind and solar energy companies and killing their competitors.

All of this sounds so diabolical, I know, but this is simply how business is done in the Swamp, and right now, the Swamp creatures are running the show in Washington.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Saturday, May 01, 2021



Economy-destroying climate plans target nonexistent 'crisis'

Proposals to fight global warming are unavoidably expensive and freedom-suppressing. Requiring American households and the economy to operate on expensive, diffuse, unreliable energy sources like wind and solar can only harm—and cannot help—American productivity and living standards.

If we were truly facing an imminent climate catastrophe, dramatic action would be justified. In the absence of an imminent climate emergency, however, radical climate policies are not warranted.

Adhering to the scientific method requires objectively testing theories and predictions using real-world observations and evidence. Measurable scientific facts and evidence should trump speculative future climate predictions, agenda-driven climate activism, and deceptive claims about a supposed “scientific consensus.”

Make no mistake, measurable scientific evidence makes it clear that global warming is not going to cause the world to end in 10 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years. In fact, a warmer world has always been a better world for human health and welfare, and this is not going to change in the foreseeable future.

The notion of an imminent climate crisis is a carefully crafted delusion, plain and simple. The more that objective science has debunked alarmist climate claims, the more that climate activists and their media allies have ratcheted up their rhetoric and sought to deflect attention away from real scientific evidence. Here are a few important scientific facts:

During most of the period since the dawn of human civilization, global temperatures have been significantly higher than they are today. And even without modern technologies, humans survived and thrived in those warmer conditions.

Colder climate periods have typically been associated with more famines, plagues, and severe extreme weather events, as well as with reduced crop yields and declining human populations.

Warmer climate periods have typically resulted in comparatively fewer famines, plagues, and extreme weather events. They also usually have higher crop yields and are more likely to produce golden ages of higher human population numbers and living standards.

The benefits of a warmer planet have held true throughout the past century. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization documents that crop yields globally and in most nations are enjoying long-term, mid-term, and short-term growth, resulting in new records for crop yields being set on a near-annual basis.

NASA satellites have documented a dramatic greening of the earth in recent decades, as more atmospheric carbon dioxide substantially assists plant growth. NASA satellites have also documented that wildfires are burning fewer acres of land as the earth’s atmosphere modestly warms. Health experts report that 20 times more people die as a result of colder temperatures as those who die of warm or hot temperatures. The evidence shows, as a result, the global warming humans have been experiencing in recent decades is saving many thousands of lives.

The data show alarmists’ doomsday predictions have consistently failed to materialize. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization dedicated to spreading climate change alarmism, admits it has low confidence that climate change is having any measurable negative global impacts regarding hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, and other natural disasters. More importantly, the actual scientific data similarly show little or no real-world negative impacts.

Predictions of future climate catastrophes are no more credible than past predictions that failed to materialize. Instead of being viewed as near certainties, doomsday predictions should be viewed as highly speculative and dubious. If the earth warms modestly over the next 50 or 100 years, that warming will be no more likely to create a climate catastrophe than it did during the past 100 years.

Members of Congress, media, teachers, students, and the general public should look at facts and evidence, not questionable predictions and agenda-driven propaganda, to form their opinions on climate change. To facilitate a factual and fair examination of the evidence, The Heartland Institute has launched two important websites containing concise and compelling facts regarding climate change.

Climate at a Glance (www.ClimateAtAGlance.com) provides one- and two-page summaries of climate topics from a scientifically realist perspective. A sampling of topics includes hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, tornadoes, and coral reefs. Each topical summary begins with a few bullet points summarizing key points, followed by a concise summary of the science and its meaning. Most summaries contain a visual graphic to illustrate one or more key points.

Climate Realism (www.ClimateRealism.com) is a website that examines each day’s media-promoted climate scares and provides a short summary of the scientific facts that debunk the scares. Now, when you see a media report hyping a global warming scare, you can go to Climate Realism and see what the scientific evidence truly says. New articles are added on a daily basis, with two or more articles often added in a given day.

Of course, global warming will not make all hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and other natural catastrophes suddenly stop occurring. However, the objective scientific evidence shows they are not getting worse because of warming. In fact, many are becoming less severe.

After millennia of relatively lower temperatures harming human health and welfare, and warmer temperatures benefiting the human condition, there is no reason to believe the situation has suddenly changed.

Policymakers should resist the urge to fix a “problem” that doesn’t need fixing, especially when it involves government policies that will inevitably cause more harm than good.

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Former Obama Administration Scientist Trashes Biden's Climate 'Hysteria'

To listen to the climate change alarmists, we only have a few years left to change the course of “man-made climate change” before the damage to our planet is irreversible, yada, yada, yada, we’re all going to die unless we pay billions of dollars to other countries.

Dr. Steven Koonin, the former undersecretary for the Department of Energy under President Obama, is calling out the Biden administration for its position on the “climate crisis” and says the data doesn’t support the “hysteria.”

“What I realized, is that, although you hear people talking about ‘we’re going to believe in the science, the science is settled, we’ve got an existential crisis’ – when you actually read the science, it doesn’t support that kind of hysteria at all,” he said in an interview with Fox News last week.

Koonin explained that according to the data in the assessment reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S.’s National Climate Assessment, there is no justification for radical measures proposed by Joe Biden’s climate agenda.

Joe Biden’s plan, announced during a two-day climate summit that began on Earth Day, calls for the slashing of carbon emissions by over half in less than ten years, and the United States becoming a zero-emissions economy by 2050.

“Eventually we will probably need to do something about this, but the scope and scale of what the Biden administration proposed for the U.S., I think is just not there in the data,” he said, adding, “It’s not there in the science.”

“For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heatwaves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years,” Koonin wrote in the New York Post last week. “When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile.”

Koonin also noted that humans have had “no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century,” that “Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago,” and that the “global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.”

“Trillion-dollar decisions about reducing human influences on the climate should be informed by an accurate understanding of scientific certainties and uncertainties,” says Koonin. He also called much of the public portrayal of climate science “an effort to persuade rather than inform, and the information presented withholds either essential context or what doesn’t ‘fit.”

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China’s strange endorsement of ‘net zero’

The Chinese path to supposed decarbonization starts with a lot more coal

Duggan Flanakin

You have to hand it to Xi Jinping. The Chinese “president for life” schmoozed United Nations royalty last September with his unexpected pledge that his country aims “to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality (Net Zero) before 2060.”

Xi also urged other nations “to pursue innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all” through rapid deployment of new technologies, to “achieve a green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era and thus create a powerful force driving sustainable development.”

Confident that the mantle of world leadership was passing from the United States to him and China, Mr. Xi concluded by saying: “The baton of history has been passed to our generation, and we must make the right choice, a choice worthy of the people's trust and of our times. Let us join hands to uphold the values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom shared by all of us and build a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for mankind. Together, we can make the world a better place for everyone.”

Just how is China preparing itself for Net Zero?

The London-based energy and climate research group Ember reports that China generated 53% of the world’s total coal-fired power in 2020, a jump of 9 percent from 2015, while adding 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power installations in 2020 alone. China is also financing billions of dollars’ worth of coal-fired power plants in African, Asian and other “developing” nations.

In 2020 China also added a record 71.7 GW of wind power and 48.2 GW of solar, while setting a goal of 70 GW of installed nuclear energy by 2025. But “progress is nowhere near fast enough,” says Ember power analyst Dave Jones, who insists “coal power needs to collapse by 80% by 2030 to avoid dangerous levels of warming.” Or so he and President Biden believe.

A joint analysis by Climate Analytics and the Asia Society Policy Institute concludes that, to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal limiting the global industrial era (post Little Ice Age) temperature rise to of 1.5o C, China would have to reach peak CO2 emissions by 2025 and reduce them rapidly thereafter, with a total phase-out of coal-fired power by 2040. Highly unlikely.

However, a typical coal-fired power plant has a 40-year lifespan. Would China throw away massive investments just to kowtow to the UN? Draworld Environment Research Center chief economist Zhang Shuwei says Chinese coal may have to absorb over $300 billion in stranded assets if the nation follows through and undertakes a “cliff fall of coal power generation after 2030.” Also highly unlikely.

Indeed, says the New York Post, China’s betrayal of its commitment to Hong Kong, its duplicity over the COVID pandemic and its dissembling on treatment of Uighurs suggest the Middle Kingdom cannot be trusted to keep its word. It shows there is no point negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party on issues like climate change, the Post added.

Agence France-Presse reported in March that China’s latest five-year plan increases investment in coal and omits any cap on total energy consumption. Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air analyst Lauri Myllyvirta also compares Xi’s words with China’s deeds, concluding “the central contradiction between expanding the smokestack economy and promoting green growth appears unresolved.”

Japanese journalists also questioned China’s commitment to any “green” economy. They contrasted China to supposedly “excellent” efforts by Japan and its Western allies to ramp up wind and solar – while failing to mention that new Japanese coal plants exceeded retirements in 2020, or that India and many other nations are also beefing up coal mining and power generation.

Other journalists are equally offended by China’s apparent duplicity. “Despite pledges to cut emissions, China goes on a coal spree,” a Yale Environment360 headline proclaimed. In the article, China-based free-lancer Michael Standaert argued that there is a “real and figurative haze about how strong its climate ambitions really are and how quickly the country can wean itself from … coal.” Mother Jones reposted the article under the headline “China is bingeing on coal.”

Vox correspondent Lili Pike provides a backstory excuse for China’s seemingly contradictory behavior. China’s provinces, she notes, have authority to approve new power plants on their own and see new coal plants as a way to boost their GDP and provide jobs. The economic slowdowns linked to COVID provided extra incentives for them to do so.

Perhaps Vox thinks the provinces will recognize their ill-considered investments and shutter their coal plants once their economies are again rolling along. Perhaps pigs will fly.

China’s “slouching towards Net Zero” approach belies the panicked warnings of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who insists “the climate emergency” is the defining crisis of our time and is happening even more quickly than we feared. It “is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win,” he says.

Guterres made a toothless plea to China last July to stop building new coal plants, but he giddily applauded Xi’s rhetoric in September. Xi has also won praise from mega-billionaire Bill Gates, who gushed over China’s “determination” to prioritize the climate and its contributions to carbon reduction.

Said Gates: “It's great that President Xi is making climate a priority and wants to work with other countries on this…. Without the contributions of China, many of the key ingredients [in fighting climate change], like batteries and solar power, wouldn’t be so affordable." [We’re on the same team, babee!]

In the real world, not every environmental disaster prediction has come true. Actually, hardly any of them have. For example, Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book, The Population Bomb, opened with this frightful assertion: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

The greatest famine since Stalin and Mao deliberately starved tens of millions to death never happened.

More recently, Ehrlich’s ideological offspring Greta Thunberg proclaimed: “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don't address climate change…. Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.” Criticizing China for detaining a young Chinese “climate striker,” Thunberg added: “Billions of people will die, and children will die while parents lose their jobs!”

Of course people are far more likely to lose their jobs or die if countries are forced to exist on minimalist, weather-dependent wind and solar power – under racist, carbon-colonialist restrictions imposed on them by woke climate alarmist banks, bureaucrats, pressure groups and ill-educated teenagers.

Perhaps Xi Jinping knows it’s too late to save the planet – so why not just “binge” on coal, keep his carefully watched subjects happy, and keep playing President Biden and other Western leaders like a piano. Perhaps he’s read the tea leaves, or the astronomical charts, and knows another killer asteroid is heading toward Earth – so why worry about death by fossil-fuel-driven climate change.

Or maybe he figures that by 2030 the whole world will be under his control – since his economy and military are growing, Beijing owns or controls supply lines and manufacturing for the entire panoply of pretend-renewable energy technologies, it steals intellectual property rights with impunity, and no foreign country will dare to take China on, for all those reasons.

Via email: pkdriessen@gmail.com

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CA electric power chief says serious problems lie ahead

The head of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) recently gave a revealing interview, in an obscure outlet he probably figured would not travel. It is “Yale Insights” published by the Yale School of Management. Elliot Mainzer, President and CEO of CAISO is a Yalie, so he gave something back.

Actually he gave a lot out, if you read the poli-speak correctly. Serious problems lie ahead. Below are some interesting insights, with translation where needed.

First, Mainzer explains his job: “CAISO operates the high-voltage transmission system and the energy market for about 80% of California and a small portion of Nevada. We’re the entity that matches the real-time supply of electricity with demand and is responsible for efficiently integrating the next generation of clean energy resources into the grid. In addition to our fundamental responsibility as a primarily single-state independent system operator, increasingly we’re taking on broader functions across the western United States. Those include monitoring reliability and operating an energy imbalance market that lets us buy and sell energy with the Northwest, the Intermountain West, and the desert Southwest.”

So CASIO’s job is to keep the lights on, just like ERCOT in Texas. It is a little scary to learn that California is also operating the energy imbalance market for the entire Western Interconnection, which is the western grid covering about a third of contiguous America. So if California goes black, which is increasingly likely, maybe the western grid goes with it!

As for last summer’s blackouts, Mainzer of course blames climate change. But he then goes on to finger solar power, saying this:

“California hadn’t planned for enough capacity to be available in the net peak period to ride out a super heating event effectively. As people are coming home in the evening, turning on appliances, ramping up air conditioners to cool down their houses, that’s the maximum point of stress on the system. That net peak, just after sunset, is also when over 10,000 megawatts of solar power stop generating. For most of the day, solar effectively acts like negative load, reducing demand for electricity from other resources. As the sun sets, those other resources have to ramp up rapidly to meet the load on the system. California just did not have enough dispatchable capacity available to meet demand. The resource adequacy planning and procurement standards hadn’t quite kept up.” (Emphasis added.)

So they failed to notice that the sun goes down. Sounds about right for California. I think his “hadn’t quite kept up” is wildly understated poli-speak.

Along the way Mainzer actually admits that the intermittency of renewables is the fundamental problem. Here is how he puts it, referring again to last year’s blackouts:

“The wind and solar energy resources performed largely as anticipated. But they are fuel-displacement resources that provide carbon-free energy to the system. We know they don’t provide dispatchable capacity, so we need to pair them with other resources. Certainly, the changes that are underway in the power system were contributing factors to what happened in August in California. Clearly, we need to accelerate and get better at that pairing. It’s going to be the critical factor over time in maintaining reliability.”

Of course his dispatchable “other resources” are future technologies that do not exist, rather than the obvious nuclear, coal and gas resources that California is busy shutting down. This is wishful thinking, not power planning.

Here is the so-called plan: “It’s going to take a portfolio approach, opening up new fuels, new storage technologies, investments in energy efficiency, and demand response. California is starting to look at off-shore wind. We’re exploring new energy-storage technologies that can supply power for longer durations compared to the four-hour duration of lithium ion batteries.”

The principle is clear however. Renewables must be paired with dispatchable power.

As for the coming hot summer, Mainzer is justifiably worried. He points out that there is almost no new dispatchable capacity compared to last year:

“We’re not expecting a ton of new capacity to be coming online between now and the summer; it’s too tight a timeframe. But the incremental dispatchable capacity resource that is coming on the grid is roughly 2,000 megawatts of lithium ion batteries, which can discharge electricity into the grid during that net peak period of maximum strain on the system, just after sunset on hot summer nights.”

Note that 2000 MW of storage does not make up for the 10,000 MW of solar lost when the sun goes down. Moreover, that 2000 MW is just the battery discharge rate, not the storage amount, which is measured in MWh. If 10,000 MW of solar are lost for 16 hours, which is standard, that is 160,000 MWh of juice. The batteries are only good for 4 hours, which is a mere 8,000 MWh or almost nothing compared to the lost solar. Batteries are a joke in cases like this.

As for the long term transition, electrification is a major issue. He notes that:

“We will also need additional capacity to support the electrification of the vehicle fleet and to take the place of fossil fuel systems that are coming offline. The California Public Utilities Commission is making sure that the utilities have the incentives and cost-recovery mechanisms to buy expanded capacity. CAISO and the big transmission owners in California need to make sure that the grid, substations, and transmission lines are updated, expanded, and modernized at a pace that will ensure that as new resources come online, they can be physically connected to the system. The people I work with are incredibly dedicated. It’s really challenging, but it’s also inspiring to be part of this clean energy transition.“

No word on what all this huge dispatchable new capacity, that is neither fossil or nuclear, will be. Wind is also not dispatchable. It must be magic! There is nothing left but magic.

And of course all this new magical capacity and a beefed up grid to handle it will cost a huge fortune. Here Mainzer’s talent for politically correct gross understatement really shows up. He simply says this: “The rate increases needed to accomplish this clean energy transition could get unwieldy if it’s not managed very effectively.”

Unwieldy? How about crushing, or punitive? We are talking about potentially trillions of dollars.

He does manage to squeeze in a good poke at the free riding rooftop solar buyers: “There are also concerns about equity. People who are purchasing rooftop solar and batteries are leaving behind significant fixed costs to be paid for by a shrinking pool of consumers. Many of those consumers can’t afford to buy their way off the grid.“

In true California style, CAISO President Mainzer even manages to finish up with a howling contradiction: “The state is full speed ahead towards meeting its clean energy objectives while understanding that energy rates and equity are critical variables that need to be addressed.“

There is no affordable way to power an electrified California without fossil fuels and nuclear power. In fact it is physically impossible at any price. The CAISO should be saying this, loudly and often. But at least they quietly admit there are problems.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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