Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Hole in the ozone layer has grown for a 3rd year in a row — but scientists aren’t concerned
Greenies are good at distorted views of the facts. So their mention of the 2015 ozone hole is interesting. They admit but downplay the fact that in October 2015 the Antarctic ozone hole was at that time the largest it had ever been. And it is apparently still large.
How does that square with the supposed shrinking of the hole? Refrigerant gases that supposedly open the hole have been banned for decades. So what we should see on Greenie theory is a gradual shrinking of the hole. It's clearly not happening. All we actually see is natural variability: No progress in shrinking the hole at all
The ozone hole that forms yearly over Antarctica has grown for the third year in a row. At nearly 10 million square miles (26.4 million square kilometers), the ozone hole is the largest it's been since 2015.
But despite that growth, scientists say that the hole's size is still on a downward trend overall.
"All the data says that ozone is on the mend," Paul Newman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's chief Earth scientist, told the Associated Press(opens in new tab).
The ozone hole was first observed in the early 1980s and reached its largest extent in 2006, according to NASA. This year’s ozone hole, which peaked on Oct. 5, was the biggest recorded since 2015. But scientists aren’t too concerned.
"The overall trend is improvement. It's a little worse this year because it was a little colder this year," Newman told the AP.
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A Governor Who Understands That Woke Corporations Undermine American Interests
“ESG is kind of rewriting how you invest. Instead of focusing on value for your shareholders, it’s more of a political agenda.”
These are the prudent words of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt about environmental, social, and corporate governance standards, dubbed ESG, which are nonfinancial yardsticks applied to firms and used by money managers in decision-making on investments.
With clarity, Stitt, a Republican, further noted in a Fox News interview this week that corporate use of ESG standards “breaks down the free market principles of capitalism that we’re used to in investing, and so it’s anti-American.”
Indeed, ESG is the Left’s (and its corporate enablers’) blatant mugging of our free-market economy, which has generated prosperity by creating more and greater opportunities than any economic system in history.
The ESG agenda insists that policymakers and private-sector leaders see themselves as the stewards of a newly “woke” planet. In actuality, it’s a way to force companies to take positions in the political arena on issues that may have nothing to do with their actual business activities.
The true path to ensuring environmental, social, and governance improvements lies in focusing on policies that enhance economic freedom. As documented in The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom, the linkage of economic freedom, individual liberty, and prosperity around the world is unambiguous. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
This prosperity is not just an end in itself. As the Index of Economic Freedom catalogues, preserving and advancing economic freedom enables individuals, entrepreneurs, and companies to care better for the poor and the environment, create better health care and education systems, ensure an abundance of food and clean water, and solve many other societal problems to make life better for a greater number of people.
Regrettably, under the tent of ESG activism, corporations around the globe have become woke. These corporations have weaponized capital, promoting a left-wing policy agenda.
Perhaps the not-so-surprising unfolding reality is that the environmental, social, and governance agenda largely is failing to produce what it promises in investment returns and positive impact. A recent Financial Times commentary headlined “Forget ESG. Bring on the BS Index” pointed this out in a witty, sarcastic way:
The jig is up for ESG. Regulators are swarming. Investor enthusiasm is waning. Executives are revolting. For the armies of asset managers, data providers, consultants and advisers that have sprung up in the past 10 years this is an existential threat. Here is our solution: pivot to bullshit. … Identifying BS is subjective but can be inferred with the help of several analytical frameworks, all of which can be used to charge more fees to companies and investors. Just like ESG.
Ill-guided and politically driven agendas such as ESG indeed present clear and present perils. And it’s people who seem to get lost in all of this.
For instance, under ESG, traditional American energy sources such as oil and gas are punished as part of the Left’s climate alarmism. Customers pay higher prices and receive inferior goods and services as companies become more focused on “social justice” than meeting the customers’ needs.
Stitt, Oklahoma’s governor, is right to point out that companies that embrace the environmental, social, and governance agenda are “not having an honest conversation about the needs of Americans.”
As underscored by Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action for America, at the launch of “ESG Hurts,” a new campaign by The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action:
The United States leads the world in innovation and economic opportunity because of the policies we put in place to empower our businesses and individuals. If we allow the left to use ESG to turn businesses into social justice tools and shareholder reports into social credit scores, our economy will suffer and our adversaries like China will succeed.
It should be noted that economic freedom—not the environmental, social, and governance agenda—makes America and the world cleaner, safer, and better governed. It’s not hard to find the economic damage inflicted by heavy-handed and misguided government policies, which result in lingering uncertainty, deteriorating entrepreneurial environments, and lower employment growth.
The year 2022 should mark the end of that unacceptable trend and the beginning of restoring America’s economic freedom.
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China to prioritise energy security over transition to renewables, Xi Says
President Xi Jinping has promised a slow and steady end to the growth of planet-warming emissions in China, with energy security taking top priority as the country contends with a flagging economy and tumult on global fuel markets.
In a two-hour speech to kick off the weeklong Communist Party Congress, Xi said that prudence would govern China’s efforts to peak and eventually zero out carbon emissions. The cautious wording comes after a spate of high-profile power shortages in recent years, and as global energy costs have soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended trade flows.
Xi’s speech made China’s path to decarbonization clear: It won’t stop burning fossil fuels until it’s confident that clean energy can reliably replace them. The speech shows more emphasis on energy security and the significant role of coal in China’s energy supply given the resources endowment, said Qin Yan, lead analyst with Refinitiv.
“We will work actively and prudently toward the goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality,” Xi said in his address. “Based on China’s energy and resource endowments, we will advance initiatives to reach peak carbon emissions in a well-planned and phased way, in line with the principle of getting the new before discarding the old.”
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Xi electrified climate activists two years ago when he vowed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 after peaking emissions before 2030. The announcement sparked a massive surge in investment in clean energy by local governments and state-owned firms.
But last year focus began to return to China’s mainstay fuel of coal after a shortage triggered widespread power curtailments to factories, slowing economic growth. The country vowed to increase mining capacity, and production has risen to record levels this year, keeping storage sites well stocked and reducing imports.
China will also expand exploration and development of oil and gas resources, and increase reserves and production as part of the measures to ensure energy security, according to a congress work report released after Xi’s speech.
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Major finance firms tell UK they won’t phase out fossil fuel
Some of the world’s biggest financial firms including BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group Inc. have told the UK they have no plans to halt the financing of new fossil-fuel supplies, in response to a list of questions sent by British lawmakers tasked with figuring out how the country can meet its own net-zero obligations.
The inquiry is being led by the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons. Britain, which was successfully sued by a group of climate activists earlier this year for putting forward an unclear net-zero plan, has asked firms to explain how they’re incorporating science-based requirements to phase out and ultimately halt the financing of new fossil-fuel supply, according to a statement published on Tuesday.
The Committee expects the finance sector “will play a significant role in helping determine whether the UK Government’s carbon budgets and its net zero target are likely to be met,” it said. Responses, which weren’t summarized by the Committee, were sent by more than 30 of the world’s biggest banks and investment managers.
BlackRock underlined that it is “obligated to always act in our clients’ financial best interests,” in its response. The firm also said its overall approach to the energy transition doesn’t include fossil-fuel exclusion policies, and that it doesn’t support the International Energy Agency’s net-zero scenario, which calls for no investment in new fossil-fuel supplies.
ESG is one of the largest, and most debated, investment approaches in markets today. Share your views on it. Take Bloomberg’s ESG survey. It’s not long, and we don’t collect your name or any contact information. Please click here to take the survey.
BlackRock’s goal “is not to engineer a specific decarbonization outcome in the real economy,” it said. And, like other firms surveyed, BlackRock said it’s the role of governments to set targets for private-sector actors. The asset manager also said it expects to remain a long-term investor in carbon-intensive sectors “on behalf of our clients.”
Vanguard provided a similar response, saying it “does not dictate strategy and operations in portfolio companies, and therefore does not have an enterprise view of the IEA net zero scenario and its recommendations for ‘no new investment.”’
The UK initiative to gather responses comes less than a month before world leaders are set to gather for the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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