The methane hoax hits NZ
The "danger" of methane arises wholly from laboratory studies. In real life, the electromagnetic frequencies obstructed by methane are all also blocked by water vapor so methane does not add any extra obstruction
It might sound like the start of a humorous riddle, but it's the subject of a huge scientific inquiry in New Zealand. And the answer could have profound effects on the health of the planet.
More specifically, the question is how to stop cows, sheep and other farm animals from belching out so much methane, a gas which doesn't last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but is at least 25 times more potent when it comes to global warming.
Because cows can't readily digest the grass they eat, they ferment it first in multiple stomach compartments, or rumen, a process that releases huge amounts of gas. Every time somebody eats a beef burger or drinks a milkshake, it comes at an environmental cost.
New Zealand scientists are coming up with some surprising solutions that could put a big dent in those emissions. Among the more promising are selective breeding, genetically modified feed, methane inhibitors, and a potential game-changer — a vaccine.
Nothing is off the table, from feeding the animals more seaweed to giving them a kombucha-style probiotic called “Kowbucha.” One British company has even developed a wearable harness for cows that oxidizes methane as it's burped out.
In New Zealand, the research has taken on a new urgency. Because farming is central to the economy, about half of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions come from farms, compared to less than 10% in the U.S. New Zealand's 5 million people are outnumbered by 26 million sheep and 10 million cattle.
As part of a push to become carbon neutral, New Zealand's government has promised to reduce methane emissions from farm animals by up to 47% by 2050.
Last month the government announced a plan to begin taxing farmers for animal burps, a world-first move that has angered many farmers. All sides are hoping they might catch a break from science.
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‘Green’ policies are destroying the natural environment and changing local weather
All green energy degrades its environment.
Take wind power.
Wind turbines steal energy from the atmosphere and must affect local weather. Turbines are always placed on the highest ground and along ridges to catch more wind. Natural hills already affect local weather by causing more rain along the ridge, and a rain shadow further downwind. Wind turbines enhance this rain shadow effect by robbing the wind of its ability to take moisture and rain into the drier interior. Promoting more inland desertification is not green.
Climatists also plan to defend Australia with offshore wind turbines – using bird slicers to protect Australia from hang gliders, cruising pelicans, seagulls, eagles, and the occasional albatross.
Solar ‘farms’ prefer large areas of flattish ground. They steal solar energy from all plant life in their solar shadow. This deprives wild and domestic herbivores of sustenance. Neither kangaroos, cattle, emus, parrots nor sheep thrive in solar energy deserts.
Green energy is very dilute – thus large areas of land are needed to collect wind/solar energy. Even more land is cleared for the ugly spiderwebs of power lines and roads needed to collect green energy in intermittent dribs and drabs and conduct it to cities, where it is needed. But most of the time, every day, these expensive assets produce nothing useful.
Already there is a petition circulating in Australia calling for ugly destructive power lines to be put underground to save farms, forests, wildlife, and scenery.
What a good idea.
Let’s bury the noisy bird-chopping wind turbines too.
Wind turbines and solar panels soon wear out and have to be replaced. Some have already reached their use-by date. Most of this ‘green’ debris cannot be recycled. To calmly bury that complex toxic waste of plastics, metals, steel, and concrete is not green at all. Soon chemicals will be leaking into the groundwater and water supply dams.
The manufacture, erection, and final disposal of green energy generators use more energy than they can produce over their short life. Their whole-of-life net energy production is negative and their net emissions are also negative.
Greens also worship biomass energy like wood. This is the fuel that cavemen used for warmth, cooking meat, and repelling wild animals. Primitive people like the British still burn wood for power generation but too much of the energy is consumed in collecting, drying, chipping, and transporting this low-energy fuel from distant forests to power station boilers. Germans are now showing confidence that their massive wind-solar apparatus will cope with the coming winter without Russian gas – by gathering firewood. And anti-fracking, anti-coal Britain is forced to plan for week-long winter blackouts and/or shortages of gas.
Greens also promote world hunger by promoting ethanol made from plant foods to replace better motor fuels such as petrol and diesel. The hill-billies of Tennessee were specialists in distilling corn whisky which had many uses for recreation and medicine. Others found ethanol could be produced from most plant material especially grains, beets, and sugar cane. Greens then pollute good whisky with a touch of gasoline to make it unfit for human consumption and then subsidise/mandate its use in motor vehicles. While some people starve, food is used for motor fuel.
US government biofuel mandates have also made the refining of diesel and other fuels more expensive.
Reliable electricity generators produce electricity when it is needed. But green energy needs batteries to keep the lights on when wind/solar fails (as it does every day). And to charge those batteries while also serving consumers requires a very large increase in generator capacity. This increases the need for more spiderwebs of landscape destroying power lines and roads between wind towers, solar farms, ‘Big Batteries’, pumped hydro and electricity consumers.
Not green at all.
Compare for a moment this ugly green energy mess with tidy concentrated reliable energy from long-life coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power stations.
Of course, Big Miners love Green Energy and electric cars because they consume heaps of metals like copper, nickel, lithium, rare earths, cobalt, silicon, aluminium molybdenum, silver, graphite, and steel as well as limestone and gas for producing cement. But every lithium battery in every electric car or bicycle is a spontaneous fire hazard – park them far away from anything flammable.
Finally, we have maybe the biggest Green Scam of all – Carbon Capture and Burial. Big coal and gas companies love this trick – it will consume far more coal or gas to produce the same usable energy – the rest is wasted in gas capture, compression, pumping, piping, and disposal. And the whole silly scheme relies on the assumption that the buried gas will stay where it was put. In rare places, pumped CO2 can be used to increase the yield from depleting oil or gas reservoirs, but in general this green hoax wastes energy, deprives the bio-sphere of plant food, increases electricity cost, and reduces the life of coal and gas reserves.
And what about the COP27 climate jamboree? Four hundred private jets attended. Even Saint Greta thinks it is a scam.
Green energy costs are large, obvious, and measureable. The climate benefits are illusory.
Not green at all.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/not-green-at-all/ ?
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ESG: The Merger of State and Corporate Power
In 2022, in the midst of a recession, record inflation, and a tumbling stock market, a corporate ideology known by the acronym ESG emerged from obscurity to become a headline topic. It has been called everything from a risk-management tool and a movement for a cleaner, more just world, to a “con,” a “fraud,” and even—in an Elon Musk tweet—“the devil incarnate.”
The term itself is opaque; ESG brings environmental, social, and governance causes together under one umbrella. The environmental component includes things like transitioning from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy, and from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles.
The social component includes racial and gender equity, diversity training for employees, economic equity, and gun control. The governance component focus on how companies are run and includes racial and gender quotas for corporate boards, management, and staff, and—in the case of Exxon—putting green energy advocates on the board.
The Origins of ESG Ideology
The ESG movement is a derivative of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are 17 SDGs in all, ranging from “no poverty, zero hunger, and good health” to “responsible consumption and production” and “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.”
In 2019, the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual gathering of the world’s most powerful political and corporate leaders in Davos, Switzerland, signed a strategic partnership with the U.N. to advance the SDGs throughout the corporate sector. Led by founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab, the WEF issued the “Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
The manifesto declared that “a company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfills human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system.”
During the annual meeting, Schwab told the gathered corporate executives and world leaders, “Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, by a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to improve the status of the world.”
In a CNBC interview in 2020, Bank of America CEO and WEF International Business Council Chairman Brian Moynihan said, “To solve these huge problems that the world faces—this is U.N. week and the SDGs are the statement to the world of what we’d like to make progress on—you have to bring capitalism to the task.”
On Nov. 4, 100 executives from the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders issued a joint letter to attendees of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27), stating, “We are ready to work side-by-side with governments to deliver bold climate action.”
“Accelerating the transition to net zero requires significant collaboration and shared responsibility between the private and public sectors.”
Signatories of the letter included Coca-Cola, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Nestle, PepsiCo, Siemens, Sysco, and Unilever.
Speaking at the COP27 conference, former Vice President Al Gore concurred, saying, “We need 4.5 trillion dollars per year to make this transition, and that can only come by unlocking access to private capital.”
Author and political analyst Michael Rectenwald told The Epoch Times, “This is a massive campaign that has already metastasized to almost all of the corporate world. The tentacles of the WEF extend to almost every sector of society.”
More than 500 of the world’s largest corporations have signed pledges to support ESG goals across industries including banking, insurance, asset management, tech, media, energy, manufacturing, and transportation. These pledges are signed as part of membership in international clubs like Climate Action 100+, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, the Net Zero Banking Alliance, and the Net Zero Asset Managers Alliance. There’s no segment of the American economy that’s outside the reach of this movement.
From its origins in U.N. think tanks and WEF conference rooms, ESG is then passed down to the corporate world via Wall Street, marketed as an investment strategy for companies to follow, voluntarily or involuntarily.
BlackRock’s head of sustainable investing research Carole Crozat explained to investors that “while measuring the alignment of investments to the U.N. SDGs is a complex and evolving task, we believe that their integration in investment decisions can help secure long-term financial performance.”
“Redirecting capital toward U.N. SDGs could offer $12 trillion of market opportunities linked to our long-term social and environmental well-being,” Crozat said.
ESG in Practice
In principle, ESG means that companies look beyond making profits and consider higher political and moral issues like the welfare of the planet; in practice, it means that corporations become political agents for left-wing causes. This concept is also called “stakeholder capitalism,” which has been endorsed by CEOs across the corporate world.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/esg-the-merger-of-state-and-corporate-power_4858981.html
****************************************************Extreme rhetoric about climate doom raises the temperature in Australia
The reception for Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has been exceptionally warm, unquestioning and optimistic. There are a number of obvious reasons for this.
The political/media elite, progressive to a fault, always welcomes the arrival of a left-of-centre government, especially after spending years demonising its Coalition predecessors. This was probably exacerbated by the nation coming out of the pandemic and looking for a period of reopening and renewal.
And to give credit where it is due, Albanese and his team did not frighten the horses. On the contrary, they made a sure-footed and reassuring start on foreign policy, an area where many, myself included, feared weakness and regression.
Yet now the trajectory for this government appears clear, and it suggests a path to economic hardship and political chaos. When the scales fall from the public’s eyes – and that might be a year or two away – the reckoning will be savage.
There are two outstanding questions. How much damage will be visited upon the country? And will the Coalition make the hard decisions to present the necessary alternative for repair?
Jim Chalmers neatly summarised the nub of the problem while attacking the Coalition this week. “Before the government changed hands interest rates were rising,” the Treasurer said, “real wages were going backwards, inflation was going up and a big part of the reason for that was the electricity price and energy market chaos that the shadow treasurer should come to the dispatch box and take responsibility for.”
A reasonably factual analysis. But the missing fact was that on each measure the situation has become significantly worse since the election and, worst of all, Labor’s climate and energy policies will turbocharge the harm.
The hubris of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is extraordinary. His evangelical zeal for a renewables-plus-storage model as the enlightened path to lower prices, more supply, green jobs and a cooler planet ignores the simple fact that, despite numerous attempts, no country has achieved this.
In fact, all that have tried have ended up in an energy supply and cost crisis.
The International Energy Agency warns that net zero cannot be achieved with current technology, and even net-zero and renewables advocate Kerry Schott, the former chairwoman of the Energy Security Board, admitted this week that the government’s renewables plan might be beyond our wit.
“It may not be possible,” she told the ABC. “But I think we’ve got to try.”
That such an admission from her did not generate broad news coverage goes to just how delusional the debate has become. Media, climate advocates, politicians and diplomats are sticking to a script of unchecked climate catastrophism while promoting implausible energy solutions.
When this bubble bursts it will get ugly. For a debate that is supposed to prioritise “the science” the biggest missing elements are scientific facts and rational arguments.
As an illustration, consider these numbered quotes:
1: “We are facing an existential crisis in our region, which is climate change.”
2: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
3: “We need radical change to save the planet.”
4: “There are no actions too extreme to take at this moment to draw attention to the urgency of fixing this problem now.”
5: “We are the developed country with the most to lose from unchecked climate change and natural disasters – floods, fires, and cyclones – all of this is at stake.”
These quotes are all of a likeness but come from the most radical protesters and people charged with implementing policy. We expect hysteria and hyperbole from the radical fringe but should see factual arguments and rational approaches from responsible politicians – yet now there is no difference.
The fearmongering from those who glue their body parts to roads at protests is indistinguishable from the speeches of the UN secretary-general or our own Climate Change and Energy Minister.
For the record, those quotes belong to Bowen; UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; Mali Cooper, who locked her head on to a car’s steering wheel as she blocked the approaches to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel; retired teacher Tony Gleeson, who glued himself to a Picasso in an Extinction Rebellion protest at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; and International Development and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
It should be deeply worrying that the fact-free alarmism is indistinguishable between this lot. It is as though the nation’s energy policy is being run by Greta Thunberg. (By the way, feel free to guess which quote belongs to who; I’ll include the quiz answers at the end of this column.)
Consider what this means for this country which, like every other developed nation, has built its prosperity on the foundation of cheap, reliable energy. We are accelerating an impossible renewable energy transition that has already constricted our electricity supply and elevated prices.
Through deliberate policy choices driven by ideology, we will further damage the reliability of our supplies while continuing to increase prices.
This is an act of national self-harm not seen since Kevin Rudd surrendered our borders – but the economic consequences will be much more severe and take longer to repair.
When the power shortages hit home, most likely over coming summers, the repercussions for the government will be dramatic. Ever-increasing power prices will cause household and business trauma along the way.
Two great lies are being perpetrated – and no, this is not climate denial, this is the opposite; this is recognising the supremacy of science, facts and rational analysis.
One is the gormless idea that renewables in countries such as ours are a practical solution to global warming, even as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise globally, thanks especially to China.
The other is the promotion of all natural disasters and weather events as being “unprecedented” and attributable to global warming. Scientists cannot make such links for our most recent droughts, floods or fires, but that does not stop some insinuating as much, and certainly it does not stop politicians and journalists leaping to conclusions.
This week the Prime Minister said: “We’ve had the devastating bushfires, including in areas of rainforest that had never burnt ever before – ever before!” This is typical of the alarmist claims we hear that scare our children and, presumably, help to justify radical but largely futile energy policies. They are simply wrong – yet stand uncorrected.
I have been through this in detail in these pages previously. Back in the spring of 2019 retired NSW fire commissioner and former NSW climate change councillor Greg Mullins told ABC radio that fires were “breaking out in places where they just shouldn’t burn … the west coast of Tasmania, the world heritage areas, subtropical rainforests, it’s all burning. And this is driven by climate change, there’s no other explanation.”
But the South Australian Chronicle of February 1915 reported lives lost and the “most devastating bushfires ever known in Tasmania sweeping over the northwest coast and other districts. The extent of the devastation cannot be over-estimated.” And The Canberra Times in 1982 detailed a “huge forest fire” burning out 75,000ha of dense rainforest in that region.
Around the same time Mullins made his claim, Guardian Australia linked bushfires in Queensland rainforests to global warming.
“I never thought I’d see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis?” asked Joelle Gergis, of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, who was then a member of the Climate Council.
“As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning,” she wrote.
Yet the Cairns Post reported on October 25, 1951: “A bushfire in Lamington National Park today swept through a grove of 3000-year-old Macrozamia palms. These trees were one of the features of the park. The fire has burnt out about 2000 acres of thick rainforest country.”
We live at a time when clear, recorded, easily researched precedents do not preclude the use of the word unprecedented and do not prevent concocted hysteria. And on the back of this fabricated alarmism, we undermine the reliable energy sources that underpin our industry, agriculture, economy, health, education and prosperity.
There is a lot of science denial going on. And it is on the climate action side. Most of the media that has been complicit so far will not apologise for their role. Rather, when the reckoning comes they will pivot to the interests of their audiences and amplify the assault on governments.
There will be economic, social and political disruption. Then we will have to embrace gas generation or nuclear power, or even carbon capture and storage to reclaim our plentiful energy endowment.
Meanwhile, China will have continued its economic and military expansion, perhaps with the assistance of “reparations” from the West. Spike Milligan could not have conceived of such satire.
Of course, I could be wrong. We might see $1 trillion invested to build 28,000km of heavy transmission lines through landscapes where communities welcome them, linking tens of thousands of hectares of wind and solar farms in places where their aesthetics are appreciated, and they could be firmed up by massive battery installations yet to be invented, and all this could be delivered to us at a colossal loss to the investors so our prices do not increase dramatically. And the former coal and gas workers, and those who used to work in manufacturing, could all have jobs mowing the lawns between the rows of solar panels, or collecting bird kills from under the wind turbines.
And all the while heatwaves will subside, floods diminish, droughts will shorten and fires will be quelled. It sounds too good to be true.
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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
1 comment:
Methane emissions from ruminants are natural and have been happening worldwide since grasses first became food. The only way they are going to reduce emissions is to reduce the number of ruminants or genetically engineer bacteria that don't produce methane (if it's possible) and given how frightened they've made the average Joe about genetic engineering that latter potential solution is already a bust.
So they've really just caved to the militant vegans (as opposed to the reasonable vegans) agenda of denying meat to those of us who prefer to eat it.
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