Nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades
There is NO evidence given for this. Just a Warmist claim, possibly based on models but that is guesswork, not evidence
The idea that warming is bad for corals is completely unscientific anyway. Barrier reef corals are most diverse in the Torres strait, which is the WARMEST part of the reef. Like most living things, corals LIKE warmth
SHOCKING evidence has been released claiming that nearly all of Australia's coral reefs are at risk of being wiped out in less than two decades.
The report by the World Resources Institute claims that by 2030, 90 per cent of Australia's reefs will suffer from the overwhelming effects of climate change like warmer seas and acidification.
It also outlines the threat to the rest of the world's coral reefs, with research suggesting that many could be obliterated by 2050 due to pollution, climate change and over-fishing.
The report encourages Australia not to waste any time in fighting the prediction, particularly because of the impact reef degredation will have on tourism and the economy.
Dr Clive Wilkinson, the United Nations sponsored Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network coordinator, urged Australia "to be part of the global solution to climate change, as our reefs will suffer like others around the world and this will threaten the $5 to $6 billion per year that the Great Barrier Reef means to the Australian economy."
"Australians have no right to be complacent as the vast majority of our reefs will be seriously threatened by rising sea temperatures and increasing acidification in less than 20 years," he said.
Today, 40 per cent of Australia's reefs are under pressure from rising sea temperatures and other threats linked to climate change.
However, 75 per cent of the reefs are in marine protected areas, which is a contributing factor to the improvement in fish numbers and reef resilience.
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How ‘Net Zeroists’ will keep their lights on
Picture a Teal, perpetual querulousness of mien sharpened by the chill of the morning, shuffling fluffy-slippered across the freezing travertine from her bathroom, where the hot water’s run out, to her designer kitchen where, for all the glittering imported gadgets, she has trouble striking a match, the packet being so damp, to light the primus stove retrieved from the shed to make a cup of coffee on.
Or a climate scientist, lab coat drenched with sweat, fanning himself with The Guardian as he climbs onto his desk to bash the inactive Fujitsu vainly with his shoe in the hope of extracting a flow of cooling air.
You can picture it but it’ll never happen. The sun mightn’t shine and the wind mightn’t blow but the kind of zealots who, in their quest for Net Zero, will have reduced our power supply to an irregular flicker will be fine. Whatever shortages lesser mortals have to put up with, the people who run things in this country won’t be short of electricity and gas, you watch.
I used to think a few cold showers and the gas running out while the soufflé was in the oven would be enough to induce our Green-washed ruling class to take a more sceptical attitude to ‘renewable energy’. But not if the soufflé rises as it should and the hot water flows uninterruptedly.
This class imposes its pet projects and the rest of us pay for them through taxes, surcharges, or in the case of Net Zero, the inconvenience and privation to come. They may occasionally burble about ‘the welfare of all Australians’ but they don’t care about people on lower incomes, as they’ve shown by pursuing energy policies that have given us shamefully rising power prices many people scrimp to pay but the rich can easily afford and, if themselves ‘renewables’ investors, make fortunes out of.
You might have expected that the unions, representing so many workers on a fixed wage, would have opposed climate fanaticism and forced their Labor puppet government to protect reliable sources of energy. But no, as in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the union bosses and the people who run things are all pals together. The bosses have swallowed all the climate fiddle-faddle and are loftily uninterested in helping their members pay the soaring power costs.
The sensible thing to do, to ensure the growth and prosperity all governments claim to want, would be to abandon the obsession with ‘renewables’. It’s clear by now that the climate apocalypse so long predicted isn’t going to happen. But common sense will not prevail. There are too many vested interests in energy alarmism to allow the whole charade to be called off.
Faced then with the inevitable failure of wind and solar energy, which even if we could count on endless gales and sunny days and clothe the landscape with forests of skeletal windmills and drape every roof in photovoltaic panels would not generate enough power to make up for the fossil fuels we are banishing, how will the ruling classes cope? They have set themselves such absurd targets – Net Zero non-renewables by 2035 is one of the wilder flights of fancy – that it would be a most embarrassing climbdown to follow the European example and stay with dirty old coal to keep the country lit and heated.
No, they will cope by entrenching even deeper the differences between the haves and the have-nots. There won’t be enough power to keep everything going so they will make sure they get all they want, and whatever’s left can be shared among the rest of us. They will do this as they do everything else, through their superior wealth. They will create a category of ‘premium consumers’ – platinum users, gold users, some name like that, who by paying extra to the energy companies will be guaranteed a constant supply of power, especially at times of peak use.
This extra fee will be set high enough so that, when added to the already exaggerated costs of energy, it is beyond the resources of the average household. It is ordinary families who’ll have to put up with the shortage of power for every household task. See if you can find an ancient carpet sweeper at an op shop: the vacuum won’t work.
This power shortage will be presented as progress and wrapped in weaselly advertising. ‘Energy that’s tailored to your home needs’, the unctuous voice-over will intone through an image of swirling steam. ‘When you sign up with GoodGas you get just the amount of power you want, with no waste.’ Translated, this will mean you’re offered a ‘budget’ contract with the gas or electricity company stipulating supply at certain hours of the day or week. (The small print, naturally, will ‘regret that it may not be always possible to maintain supply at the contracted times’.) You’ll be ordered to switch everything off at peak times, as already foreshadowed by the European Union president, or have it switched off for you.
Then what? Having condemned us to shiver and starve, do Net Zero enthusiasts imagine that our ‘good example’ will touch the hearts of polluters like China and India, whose huge emissions make ours look like a puff of smoke from a Greenie’s spliff? That these industrial giants will convert their coal-powered economies to ‘renewables’ just in time to prevent the planet from becoming a molten ball or whatever the prediction is.
Are they dumb enough to believe that, or is the whole Net Zero crusade a fraud, just another weapon from the Marxist armoury in the never-ending strategy to weaken and ultimately destroy our civilisation? Either way, climate fanatics will soon have undermined the West from within, making us literally powerless.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/how-net-zeroists-will-keep-their-lights-on/
****************************************************Man Plugs $80k+ Electric Truck Into His House, Finds Out It Will Take Over 4 Days to Charge
Congratulations. You’ve just purchased one of the most expensive high-performance electric trucks on the market.
You’ve gone green and you’ve done it in style with the GMC Hummer, starting at $86,645. That’s right — the Hummer’s now a green vehicle! What was once the biggest villain in the left’s war on fossil fuels is now the poster child for responsible off-roading.
That’s a hefty chunk of change, but at least you’ll be able to save a bit with government incentives. Most importantly, you can charge the car at home just like it was any other appliance. Easy, convenient and cheap, right?
Well, if you have a day or four to spare, sure.
In a viral video from a YouTube channel that specializes in electric vehicles, a man who tries to plug the Hummer into his home to charge finds it will take, at best, one day to charge — and that’s with special equipment installed.
Without it, you could be there for four days.
The video begins with standard 120V charging — or Level 1 charging, to use official jargon. This is the standard current your home already offers.
“Right now it’s about 6 p.m. on Tuesday,” the man says. “And it says it will be full by Saturday at 10:55 [p.m.], which is four-plus days of charging. Wow.”
To be fair, however, this won’t be how most Hummer owners will be charging their vehicle. Level 2 chargers are upgraded home stations which deliver a significantly higher amount of electricity than your regular home circuit would be able to deliver — but they require special equipment and installation.
According to Compare.com, the cost of a Level 2 charger is about $500 without installation, which must be done by a professional electrician.
However, our intrepid Hummer owner had one of those — the JuiceBox, a 240v charger, installed in his garage.
How much difference did that make? Not as much as you might think.
“Now it says it will be done tomorrow by 6:30 [p.m.],” the video narrator says. “So about 24 hours of charging from four percent to 100 percent.”
Of course, you don’t have to go to full charge; the vehicle’s screen says the Level 2 charger was adding 14 miles of range per hour. However, when you can fill a gas-powered truck in five minutes and not have to worry about installing a fast charger or leaving your truck plugged in every night, that’s not exactly easy or convenient.
And by the way, it’s not entirely cheap, either — especially if you decide you don’t want to charge your Hummer at home but at fast-charging stations that can get the job done in two hours.
Car and Driver went to an Electrify America charging station, where it cost over $100 to “fill up” the Hummer at 43 cents per kilowatt hour.
This is roughly consistent with how much it would cost to fill up a gas-powered Hummer made in the final production year — although Electrify America does provide a membership program that reduces the cost by roughly one-quarter. If you charge it at home, you’ll only be spending about $35 to fill it up — but you’ll be waiting quite a while.
And, by the by, don’t expect to use your electric truck to do truck-like things quite as well as gas-powered trucks do.
Automotive YouTuber Tyler “Hoovie” Hoover put Ford’s F-150 Lightning — another electric truck, although somewhat more modestly priced than the Hummer — to the test by towing an empty aluminum trailer 32 miles, and then assessing how well it handled its maximum towing capacity by then ferrying a recently purchased 1930 Ford Model A pickup truck back to home base.
Hoovie called the experience a “complete and total disaster from beginning to end.” He started with a 200-mile charge but lost 68 miles of range in the 32 miles he was towing just the aluminum trailer. Once the Model A was aboard, he lost “almost 90 miles of range in 30 miles.”
Cheer up, Hoovie. Plug that baby into a Level 1 charger and you’ll be ready to make a return trip in another few days.
Now, I don’t pretend that most — in fact, almost any — Hummer owners are going to be using Level 1. If you can drop a cool $86k on a retro-styled EV pickup truck, you can also get a Level 2 charger installed in your garage without your bank account incurring too much of a scrape. That still means 24 hours of charging, though, something that could be critical in an emergency.
Say you live in the state of California, which plans to outlaw the sale of new gas vehicles by 2035. Let’s also say your residence is suddenly threatened by a wildfire — I know, a very unusual thing in California, but we’re just spitballing hypotheticals here. If you only have 10 percent charge and you have to load everything you can into your vehicle, you don’t have a day to get a full tank. Good luck getting far and good luck finding an open fast-charging station on the highway, particularly in times of natural disaster.
Look, this isn’t to say electric vehicles don’t have their time and place. If you don’t mind the charging times and high price, the Hummer is actually a pretty sweet ride; it can go from 0-60 mph in 3.3 seconds, something the original Hummer might not have been able to do in 3.3 hours. It’s a high-tech, versatile vehicle that, from all appearances, is a blast.
But let’s be clear: The Hummer and its electric brethren aren’t at the point where they can replace gas-powered trucks, the same way EVs across the spectrum aren’t at the point where they can replace equivalent internal-combustion vehicles. Why are we on the precipice, then, of forcing new-car buyers to pay more for a vehicle that’s less convenient and often can’t do the work they need it to do?
EV technology won’t be ready to replace gas-powered cars anytime soon, and ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away — no matter how many pro-EV laws the Democrats pass.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/man-plugs-80k-electric-truck-house-finds-will-take-4-days-charge
***************************************Energy crisis in Europe exposes the shortcomings of renewable energy
The global energy picture has changed drastically since the United Nations Climate Change Conference last November. Several European Union countries that once depended on Russia for their energy needs sought to cut ties with Moscow as a retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
While Europe attempts to find fast and affordable energy alternatives, the restrictions on Russian energy imports have raised concerns over the global energy security—and renewable energy transition.
Ukrainian environmental groups have logged 514 cases of potential environmental impacts caused by Russian forces so far, ranging from damage to industrial facilities to impacts on ecosystems. Two leaking Russian gas pipelines to Europe were discovered this week, and countries are turning to non-Russian gas and reopening coal-fired power plants, despite pledging to speed up the end of fossil fuel at the COP26.
In the U.S., some governments are even considering gasoline subsidies in response to the surging gas and oil costs. All seems to imply that in efforts to keep the lights on, the fight against climate change is falling off the priority list amid skyrocketing energy prices and supply shocks.
According to the European bureau chief for The Globe and Mail and award-winning reporter Eric Reguly, the ongoing energy war could threaten the European Commission’s bid to become climate-neutral by 2050.
“This crisis in Europe exposed the shortcomings of renewable energy,” said Reguly. “There just was not enough of it around to make up for the gas shortfall when Vladimir Putin turned off the taps.”
Reguly is one of the few foreign correspondents left in the world of journalism. Currently based in Rome, Italy, he has primarily covered stories on business, economic, financial, environmental, and war.
“The 2009 financial crisis, which I was here for, was very, very severe, but this is a different crisis,” he said. “It's more broad-based. It's not just a banking crisis. It's not a debt crisis. This is affecting every consumer, family, and business.”
For the EU, U.S.compressed natural gas, called liquified natural gas (LNG) has turned out to be the easiest and cheapest solution—the real “winner in this energy war,” told Reguly.
With the looming cold winter months without Russian gas flow, the European economy is believed to import almost 40% more LNG, while heating bills are expected to double from last year.
Due to the growing trend of corporations making ESG-related commitments, energy prices began rising well before the war, said Reguly.
Ironically, the current global state reveals that a green energy shift might be further than advertised, Reguly said.
“[Green energy] grew faster 20 years ago than it is now, which not many people realize,” he said. “You read the press, you read the hype, you go to the COP climate change conferences, and you hear that renewable energy is going to save the day. This crisis really showed, to me anyway, that green energy is just not there yet.”
On the other hand, the opposite is also believed to be true despite the crisis’ setbacks. Soaring oil and gas prices might have a similar effect as a carbon tax and push the need for green innovation and its commercial deployment, leading to greater climate action in the long-term.
What’s sure is that energy costs are bound to stay high for a while. We must hope and push our governments to ultimately stick to climate policies and accelerate the path toward a greener, fairer future for all.
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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)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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