Biden moves to block oil drilling in Alaskan wilderness

The Biden administration moved to ban oil drilling in a swath of Alaskan wilderness, including cancelling all remaining oil and gas leases issued in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge under the previous administration.

The announcement on Wednesday comes after the Biden administration approved the Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve earlier this year over the objections of many Democrats and environmentalists.

The Interior Department’s proposed regulation would bar new oil or gas leasing on 4.3 million hectares, or more than 40 per centof the National Petroleum Reserve. The reserve is a 9.3 million hectare area managed by the department.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said she also authorised the cancellation of seven oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The leases had been suspended in 2021.

“As the climate crisis warms the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, we have a responsibility to protect this treasured region for all ages,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (Republican, Alaska) criticised the decision, suggesting it was driven by politics rather than sound policy.

“It just kind of sends a signal that when it comes to Alaska, it depends on the whim of an administration,” Senator Murkowski said. “But that’s not coherent, in my view.”

Politicians in Washington have been looking for a way forward on energy policy as they grapple with concerns over overseas threats, high prices and climate change. While the Biden administration has tried to strike a balance on oil drilling, Republicans have consistently pushed for increased energy production.

A GOP-authored bill that passed the House of Representatives in March would boost oil and gas production and accelerate new projects by streamlining environmental reviews, though it isn’t expected to move forward in the Democratic Party-controlled Senate.

Republican 2024 presidential hopefuls have made the same case for expediting production. “This isn’t that complicated, guys, unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal and embrace nuclear,” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said at last month’s GOP primary debate in Milwaukee. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he would “open up all energy production.” The approval of the Willow project earlier this year allowed Houston-based ConocoPhillips to go ahead with the roughly $US7bn ($11bn) project in the National Petroleum Reserve. At its peak, the company expects to produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day there.

The new actions by the Biden administration don’t impact the Willow project, which won the support of the oil-and-gas industry and Alaska’s congressional delegation, as well as many Alaskans.

The reserve was originally established in 1923 for the US Navy, and was later transferred to the Interior Department in 1976. The isolated region in northwest Alaska is home to caribou, polar bears and walruses. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while similar in size at about 7.7 million hectares, is in northeast Alaska and is managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. About the size of South Carolina, the refuge has no roads and was established in 1960.

Following the new rule proposed for the reserve Wednesday, there will be a 60-day public comment period. A draft of a supplemental environmental impact statement related to the cancelled leases will also be available for public comment.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/biden-moves-to-block-oil-drilling-in-alaskan-wilderness/news-story/aea66409eeabe2b606f43b24c823dcad

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British Conservatives warn government's pursuit of ‘cultish’ eco-policies could see customers paying more/div>

Conservative MPs have warned that the flagship Energy Bill is a “recipe for energy disaster” and risks making customers pay more to deliver “cultish” eco-policies.

Former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg was among a group of Tories who pressed ministers to “keep people with us” and avoid “undue burdens” while reforming the energy sector and pursuing net-zero emissions targets.

The Bill seeks to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, unlock investment in low-carbon energy technologies, increase resilience and produce more energy in the UK, and lower energy bills in the longer term.

The Government avoided a potential rebellion from some of its backbenchers by announcing ahead of Tuesday’s report stage debate that planning permission for onshore wind farms was to be relaxed.

Energy minister Andrew Bowie also confirmed changes to remove the proposed hydrogen levy on households and said the Government will explore the potential of renewable liquid heating fuel for heat by issuing a consultation within 12 months.

But several Tory MPs expressed concerns over the wider impact of the Bill and suggested it risks going too far too soon.

The Bill cleared the Commons after MPs voted 280 to 19, majority 261, to approve it at third reading – although the division list showed nine Tory MPs, including Sir Jacob, rebelled to oppose it.

Another rebel Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the backbench Tory Net Zero Scrutiny Group, told the Commons: “I have to say, I absolutely despise this Bill.”

On the plans that could see property owners who fail to comply with new energy efficiency rules facing prison, he said: “I do feel that when we create criminal penalties in this place, it is a duty that it is discussed properly that we put our fellow citizens potentially in prison for 12 months for an unknown offence of the future relating to net zero.

“This is going to be the first time that we are potentially criminalising people in this country for not being adherent to this new code of net zero. We should not be doing this lightly.”

The MP for South Thanet also argued the Bill will “drive even more of our high-energy businesses offshore and China will be very pleased that they can sell us more solar panels and wind turbines based on their steel that are being produced on the back of very cheap coal power”.

He went on: “This is a recipe for not energy security, this is a recipe for energy disaster and I could talk at length about what is wrong with the net-zero proposals, banning cars, banning oil boilers, banning this, banning that, that’s not what we do as Conservatives.

“We actually allow freedoms, we allow the market to decide and this Bill goes in the wrong direction.”

Sir Jacob said several amendments tabled by Mr Mackinlay sought to “ameliorate the burden this Bill is placing on all of our constituents”, adding: “Throughout this Bill, we are creating cost and regulation and penalties and obligations.”

He added: “We need to keep people with us and we risk losing them if we put undue burdens on them.”

Sir John Redwood, another Tory former minister, said: “The wish to carry through a great electrical revolution is going to require a lot of goodwill from the British people.

“My worry about this legislation is that it may antagonise them by being unduly restrictive and particularly by the threat of civil and even criminal penalties on some of their conduct.

“We need to persuade people that the green products are going to be cheaper, better, more acceptable and make a more general contribution, we shouldn’t be trying to bamboozle them.”

Richard Drax, Tory MP for South Dorset, said the “green revolution is coming”, but added: “We cannot impoverish our country to meet some, well, I’d like to call it in some cases almost cultish policy … until we can afford it, until it works, that’s when I think we should adopt all these policies.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/business/tory-mps-warn-pursuit-of-cultish-ecopolicies-could-see-customers-paying-more-b2405396.html

 

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‘Horrific - completely offensive!’ Outrage as Britons risk jail for breaking Net Zero rules

Pressure is mounting on Rishi Sunak over his Energy Bill that could lead to legal ramifications for homeowners across the country.

A group of MPs from his own party are set to rebel, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, as they cite draconian measures which could impact many, possibly even leading to jail terms.

Another disavowing Tory MP is Craig Mackinlay, who dubbed the bill “horrendous” in a scathing rant on GB News.

He added the bill could result in homeowners facing jail time for breaking new rules which all come as a part of the drive for net zero.

“I think it’s a horrendous bill”, he said.

“It’s 379 pages, there’s 144 pages of amendments, many of them in my name. It’s a bill of yesteryear, it was founded on Boris who certainly drunk the Kool-Aid on many of these environmental issues.

“This is a truly horrific bill. It allows all sorts of intrusive powers to tell you exactly what you must and mustn’t do.

“I would rather it was scrapped and we start again.”

Mackinlay told Andrew Pierce and Bev Turner that a specific clause relating to sanctions could spell grave consequences for those who break new rules.

He said: “I’m particularly concerned about clause 248. It’s helpfully called sanctions.

“Under section two there are civil penalties, up to £15,000 for not doing the right thing on net zero.

“It’s even worse in clause and subsection three - energy performance regulations may provide for criminal offences with imprisonment for up to 12 months.”

According to The Telegraph, the Energy Bill will allow councils the right to be able to build proposed wind farms if there is community support.

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/homeowner-jail-net-zero-rishi-sunak-jail-latest

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What is mis-dis in climate change debate?

Speaking in Suva in July 2022, Anthony Albanese declared a climate emergency in the Pacific. This came after joining regional leaders in Fiji to warn Australia’s neighbours face an immediate threat to their security and wellbeing. Pacific islands were sinking under rising sea levels, claimed the islands.

But back in January 2021, ABC News had reported new research that found hundreds of islands in the Pacific are growing in land size. Sticking stubbornly to the climate alarmist playbook like most politicians, the Prime Minister appears to give cover to those agitating for ever more draconian actions through misinformation about climate change.

At last count, a global network of over 1,600 scientists and professionals had signed the CLINTEL Climate Declaration stating there is no climate emergency. Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.

The persistent climate alarmism, now at ‘global boiling’ hysteria level, is one of the most pernicious elements of discussion in the public square. How would fact-checkers in the proposed new world of mis-dis laws deal with the diametrically opposed views within not just politics but science itself? The ruling orthodoxy as espoused by government is based on science that is still largely a science of computer simulations. The reality is, as often emphasised by scientists not captured by the orthodoxy or reliant on it, climate science is full of wicked problems; uncertainty not consensus is the dominant status.

When tech giant Meta suspended its partnership with FactLab at the beginning of September 2023, some took that as a public indication of how risky it is to have fact-checking as a fixture of media oversight. That relationship break-up was over apprehended bias in regards to fact-checking amidst the Voice referendum discussions online. Climate change is a topic ripe for such controversial procedures. The disparaging of and billion dollar funding for climate alarm orthodoxy skews the integrity of fact checking carried out on behalf of the ruling orthodoxy.

What would fact-checkers make, say, of geology Professor Ian Plimer’s observation that, ‘Annual human emissions (3 per cent of the total) of carbon dioxide [in the atmosphere] are meant to drive global warming. This has never been shown. If it could be shown, then it would also have to be shown that natural emissions (97 per cent) don’t drive global warming.’ The 3 per cent of the total of 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide, 0.0012 per cent, is what climate alarmists tell politicians is frying the planet. (That 97 per cent from natural sources includes outgassing from the ocean, decomposing vegetation and other biomass, venting volcanoes, naturally occurring wildfires, and belches from ruminant animals.)

‘When a society loses the desire to know the truth, that is a precursor to totalitarianism,’ observed author, Holocaust survivor, and political philosopher Hanna Arendt (1906–1975). And the truth is not going to be revealed by mis-dis fact checkers who are powered by authority to enforce the ruling orthodoxy.

It is indeed loudly broadcast disinformation that perpetrated the absurdity of climate alarmism in the first place. The unreliability of global warming enthusiasts was demonstrated long ago when Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was criticised in October 2007 by a high court judge in Britain who highlighted what he said were ‘nine scientific errors’ in the film. The mistakes identified mainly deal with the predicted impacts of climate change, and include Gore’s claims that a sea-level rise of up to 6 metres would be caused by melting in either west Antarctica or Greenland ‘in the near future’. The judge said: ‘This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ‘wake-up call’.’ He accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water ‘but only after, and over, millennia’.

How would mis-dis fact checkers deal with that part of the story?

The zealotry of climate and energy minister Chris Bowen, for example, helps propel any fact-checker to equal zealotry, ignoring the thousands of scientists who have nothing to gain by challenging the orthodoxy.

Dr Richard Lindzen, former MIT Professor of Atmospheric Science and past IPCC contributor, says: ‘The narrative of climate alarm … is pretty absurd. Many people (though by no means all) have great difficulty entertaining this possibility. They can’t believe that something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/what-is-mis-dis-in-climate-change-debate/

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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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Top scientist Patrick Brown says he deliberately OMITTED key fact in climate change piece he's just had published in prestigious journal to ensure woke editors ran it

A climate change scientist has claimed the world's leading academic journals reject papers which don't 'support certain narratives' about the issue and instead favor 'distorted' research which hypes up dangers rather than solutions.

Patrick T. Brown, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and doctor of earth and climate sciences, said editors at Nature and Science - two of the most prestigious scientific journals - select 'climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives'.

In an article for The Free Press, Brown likened the approach to the way 'the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause' of wildfires, including the recent devastating fires in Hawaii.

*He pointed out research that said 80 percent of wildfires are ignited by humans*.

Brown gave the example of a paper he recently authored titled 'Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California'. Brown said the paper, published in Nature last week, 'focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior' and ignored other key factors.

Brown laid out his claims in an article titled 'I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published'. 'I just got published in Nature because I stuck to a narrative I knew the editors would like. That’s not the way science should work,' the article begins.

'I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell,' he wrote of his recently-published work.

'This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.

'To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.'

A spokesperson for Nature said 'all submitted manuscripts are considered independently on the basis of the quality and timeliness of their science'.

'Our editors make decisions based solely on whether research meets our criteria for publication – original scientific research (where conclusions are sufficiently supported by the available evidence), of outstanding scientific importance, which reaches a conclusion of interest to a multidisciplinary readership,' a statement said.

'Intentional omission of facts and results that are relevant to the main conclusions of a paper is not considered best practice with regards to accepted research integrity principles,' the spokesperson added.

Science was approached for comment.

Brown opened his missive with links to stories by AP, PBS NewsHour, The New York Times and Bloomberg which he said give the impression global wildfires are 'mostly the result of climate change'.

He said that 'climate change is an important factor' but 'isn't close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus'.

Much reporting of the wildfires in Maui has said climate change contributed to the disaster by helping to create conditions that caused the fires to spark and spread quickly.

The blazes, which killed at least 115 people, are believed to have been started by a downed electricity line, but observers have said rising temperatures caused extremely dry conditions on the Hawaiian island.

Brown said the media operates like scientific journals in that the focus on climate change 'fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it'.

Scientists whose careers depend on their work being published in major journals also 'tailor' their work to 'support the mainstream narrative', he said.

'This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper,' he added. 'The authors should ignore—or at least downplay—practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change.'

He gave examples of factors which are ignored, including a 'decline in deaths from weather and climate disasters over the last century'. In the case of wildfires, Brown says 'current research indicates that these changes in forest management practices could completely negate the detrimental impacts of climate change on wildfires'.

Poor forest management has also been blamed for a record number of wildfires in Canada this year.

But 'the more practical kind of analysis is discouraged' because it 'weakens the case for greenhouse gas emissions reductions', Brown said.

Successful papers also often use 'less intuitive metrics' to measure the impacts of climate change because they 'generate the most eye-popping numbers', he said.

He went onto to claim that other papers he's written which don't match a certain narrative have been 'rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12482921/climate-scientist-patrick-brown-wildfires-started-people.html

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The Coming Green Energy Bailout

According to a report late last month by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda), large offshore wind developers are asking for an average 48% price adjustment in their contracts to cover rising costs. The Alliance for Clean Energy NY is also requesting an average 64% price increase on 86 solar and wind projects.

The IRA includes federal tax credits that can offset 50% of a project’s costs. But renewable developers say their costs are increasing faster than inflation and that the projects will “not be economically viable and would be unable to proceed to construction and operation under their existing pricing,” says Nyserda.

Irony alert: One reason is that the government-forced green energy transition is driving up demand for equipment, material and labor.·Growing demand for renewable energy projects nationwide ‘has exacerbated inflation for renewable project cost components relative to broader inflation levels,’” Nyserda says, citing the Alliance for Clean Energy NY.

Green energy developers are blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for increasing demand for renewable energy and its components. But the real culprits are government mandates and subsidies, which they lobbied for. Developers also blame rising interest rates for increasing project costs. But as Nyserda notes, “it does not appear reasonable for developers to have assumed that a low interest rate environment would persist throughout the period in which their projects were to be financed, given that the levels of interest rates witnessed today are indeed precedented.”

The climate lobby says power from wind and solar is cheaper than from fossil fuels, but that’s true only with generous subsidies and near-zero interest rates. Price adjustments that renewable developers want in New York would make solar and wind two- to five-times more expensive than natural gas power.

Another irony: The IRA’s prevailing wage and domestic content conditions for bonus tax credits, which are necessary to make projects viable, inflate costs. That means U.S. taxpayers will pay more for the green corporate welfare, and utility ratepayers will pay more for renewable power. The climate lobby hits you coming and going.

Nyserda adds that “requests for inflationary relief on clean energy projects” have also been submitted in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island, among other states. Electric customers will get no such relief when their bills increase.

Meantime, the computer chip maker Micron Technology recently disclosed that its planned factories in upstate New York, which are set to receive up to $5.5 billion in state subsidies, will consume as much power as New Hampshire and Vermont combined. Where will all the power come from?

Don’t be surprised if the state eventually asks New Yorkers to turn down their thermostats or turn off the lights at some hours of the day. The green energy crunch and bailout are coming.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/green-energy-nyserda-renewable-subsidies-rate-payer-bailout-b807ccb3?mc_cid=108c6fb6fc&mc_eid=cc88839e92

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Electric cars are a danger to pedestrians

As a driver, one of the best things about EVs is their swift, silent acceleration. As a pedestrian, this absence of noise could prove dangerous.

Whether you're aware of it or not, most of us rely heavily on the audio cues of conventional engines to warn us a vehicle is approaching.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a pedestrian walk out in front of an electric car I was driving, without even realising it was there.

In one instance, I tailed an elderly man who was walking down the middle of a side street for a good 20 metres before he realised I was there and almost jumped out of his skin with shock.

It's difficult to know what to do in that scenario, as beeping someone could frighten a pedestrian and result in injury while overtaking them is risky if they're not aware you're there. Your sole option is to roll down the window and shout at them... not ideal.

Making matters worse is the fact we are currently facing a mounting crisis of distraction.

Most pedestrians are wearing AirPods, texting on phones, listening to music or taking calls.

Don’t start me on drivers – many of whom use every stop sign or red traffic light to check notifications on their smartphone.

With road users reaching peak distraction, the subconscious signals we use to identify other vehicles are more crucial than ever.

This is – and has always been – particularly true for vision-impaired people who are already contending with footpaths littered with e-scooters or distracted pedestrians.

A colleague recently re-shared a 2020 Facebook post that has been shared by 828,000 people.

“Today my husband and I with our two guide dogs had another near miss with an electric car,” the post reads.

“We were crossing a side road and it came in off the main road and passed very close in front of us.

“If it’d been a petrol or diesel engine, or if it’d had a sound emitter fitted, we’d have heard it, but, apart from the sound of the tyres on the road, it was virtually silent.

“I am a confident guide dog handler but I can honestly say that silent electric vehicles scare me. I fear that it will take serious injury to a blind person, or even worse, death, before any meaningful legislation is put into place.”

It’s true that electric car manufacturers are trying to circumvent the issue of silent electric cars by adding fake acceleration noises and reversing tones to their vehicles.

Overseas, most markets have mandated all electric cars be fitted with acoustic vehicle alerting systems (AVAS) that make noise when the car is reversing or travelling at speeds at or below 20km/h.

A proposal to do the same in Australia is currently under consideration, and many models already sold here offer this functionality.

Unfortunately these systems play Jetsons-inspired bleeps and bloops – not the typical noises we associate with conventional cars.

Given electric cars are still a relatively new addition to our roads, pedestrians don’t immediately connect the dots and realise these noises belong to a vehicle. And I don’t believe they’ll recognise these sounds as “car sounds” for some time.

The better solution is to run extensive public education campaigns around electric cars and to start equipping electric cars with the ability of play fake engine noises when required.

The onus is also on EV owners to be hyper-vigilant of pedestrians while we're in this transition period.

https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/we-need-to-talk-about-this-problem-with-electric-cars

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Electric Vehicles Are Causing Issues After Hurricane Idalia

Electric vehicles are catching on fire after Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida last week.

According to local reports, at least two Tesla EVs ignited after saltwater from the storm surge damaged their batteries and other electrical components. One vehicle lit up in Pinellas Park and another car fire occurred in Palm Harbor.

“Carfax says owners need to understand the fire risk doesn’t go away after their EV dries out,” ABC Actions News told viewers.

“The salt water that is flooding can get into the battery and dry there and once it dries it creates what federal safety officials call bridges between cells and that can lead to fires and those fires can come anywhere from days to weeks later and once an EV catches fire it is incredible difficult to put it out,” said Patrick Olsen of Carfax.

After Hurricane Ian, 21 electric vehicles caught fire in the state, prompting officials to warn residents ahead of Idalia's approach.

“We saw a number of fires associated with EVs from Hurricane Ian. We know that the saltwater from storm surge can compromise these batteries, causing fires which cannot be easily suppressed,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said at the time.

“The best fire teams can do is keep water on the battery until the fuel burns out. If you’re evacuating and leaving an EV, or other lithium ion powered devices like scooters or golf carts in your garage, you’re creating a real fire threat for your home, your communities, and first responders," he added. "Take this threat seriously. If there’s even a small risk of your EV being impacted by storm surge, move it to higher ground before it’s too late.”

One home that managed to survive Ian ended up burning to the ground because of a saltwater-damaged EV.

EV vehicle owners are being advised to park affected cars at least 50 feet away from any structures that could catch fire.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/09/05/ev-florida-n2627949

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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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Droughts, Hurricanes, Wildfires Aren’t Living Up to Alarmists’ Expectations

H. Sterling Burnett

Just before the beginning of summer last year, I wrote a Climate Change Weekly article titled “It’s Climate Catastrophe Du Jour Season, Again!,” warning of what I predicted would be a coming tidal wave of stories claiming the then-extended drought and expected hurricanes and wildfires would be blamed on climate change. I was right. Hundreds if not thousands of stories were published by both the mainstream and progressive fringe media last year blaming the drought, every hurricane, and large wildfire season on climate change.

This despite there being no evidence that long-term trends in droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires showed any increase in number or severity. Absent such upward trends, it’s hard to honestly link one or a few years of extreme weather events to climate change, but then honesty has never been a strong point for climate alarmists or at the heart of the climate change debate.

With the current summer coming to an end, let’s revisit the dread three seasons—drought, hurricanes, and wildfires—and see how they went in 2023.

Headline stories on drought have been nearly nonexistent this year. That’s because, as I write on August 29, the U.S. Drought monitor reports nearly 57 percent of the United States is exhibiting no drought whatsoever despite a long, admittedly hot summer. Another 16 percent is recorded as “abnormally dry,” and only 27 percent of the country is listed as being in any category of drought, from moderate to extreme (5 percent) or exceptional (1 percent). Three months ago, at the beginning of summer, 66 percent of the nation was completely drought-free, with only 16 percent of the country listed as facing moderate, severe, extreme, or exceptional drought.

As El Niño left, it dumped huge amounts of precipitation across the country, and especially in the historically drought-prone western United States, much of it in the form of record-setting snow, resulting in a nearly record-low percentage of the country being considered very dry.

At the beginning of the “water year” in September 2022, the U.S. Drought Monitor recorded just 36 percent of the country was at any level of drought. As of September 27, 2022, more than 41 percent of the U.S. was experiencing some degree of drought—25 percent with severe, extreme, or exceptional drought—and 63 percent of America was listed as abnormally dry, at a minimum.

Oh, what a difference a year makes, not in climate but in weather—and in media coverage of claims of climate-induced drought!

With the Maui wildfire a recent memory and Hurricane Idalia hammering Florida’s Gulf Coast, it may seem an inopportune time to bring up wildfires and hurricanes, but that’s not so. As I’ve previously discussed, neither the wildfire in Maui, nor those in Canada, nor the ones that scorched Greece this summer, were caused by climate change: nature combined with human error, malfeasance, or evil was behind each of these devastating fires.

As of August 11, data showed wildfires in the United States in 2023 are the fourth-lowest in nearly 100 years of recordkeeping. Globally, over the past two decades of modest warming (but heightened fearmongering), satellite data from NASA show a 25 percent decrease in acreage lost to wildfires since 2003.

That leads us to the 2023 hurricane season and Hurricane Idalia. Although the global average temperature, a made-up metric if ever there was one, has increased modestly over the past 150 years, neither the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change nor hard data shows any increasing trend in the number or severity of tropical cyclones. Over the past 50 and 100 years, if anything, the data indicates there has been a modest decline in the yearly number of hurricanes and major hurricanes on average, according to multiple studies.

What’s true for the whole world is true also for the United States and Florida. From 2009 through 2017, America experienced the fewest hurricane strikes in any eight-year period in recorded history. And it was just in 2016 that Florida, America’s most vulnerable state for hurricanes, concluded an 11-year period without a landfalling hurricane, the longest such period in recorded history.

The “official” hurricane season runs from June 1 through the end of November. This year, until the past week, tropical storm numbers and accumulated energy or sustained wind speeds were below normal. The hurricane season typically peaks in late-August through mid-September, so there is absolutely nothing unusual about multiple storms forming during this short time span.

Idalia forming and strengthening now is not only not outside the norm, it fits the historic pattern perfectly.

This year’s climate disaster de jour season has been a bust so far. This is good for people but bad for those who hype the narrative that “climate change causes everything.” That is not true now, nor has it ever been.

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/09/climate-change-weekly-481-droughts-hurricanes-wildfires-arent-living-up-to-alarmists-expectations/

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Net Zero is condemning more Brits to energy poverty

Here’s another great idea from the net zero establishment: only heat your home when it is warm and sunny outdoors. In its Sixth Carbon Budget paper, the government’s Climate Change Committee advises homeowners to turn their heating on in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again during the evening when demand for electricity is higher. ‘Where homes are sufficiently well-insulated,’ it says, ‘it is possible to pre-heat ahead of peak times, enabling access to cheaper tariffs which reflect the reduced costs associated with running networks and producing power during off-peak times.’ In other words, boil yourself when the outdoor temperature is relatively warm, and with any luck you might still be tolerably warm when it is freezing outdoors at eight in the evening.

The advice is an admission of where we are headed. At the moment, for most of us, there is no difference between the price of electricity during the afternoon and the evening – it is only at night that we can buy off-peak electricity. That is not how it looks like being in the future. A big part of the plan for decarbonising the electricity system is to manage demand by varying tariffs throughout the day. That is the whole point of smart meters. We had a foretaste of this last winter when customers with smart meters were offered small discounts if they agreed to turn off appliances during the early evening on days when demand was high but, thanks to a lack of sun and wind, renewable energy was in short supply.

That, however, is only the beginning. At the moment, with the help of back-up from gas plants, we don’t have a huge problem in balancing demand and with supply. But by 2035 (2030 in the case of the Labour party) the government wants to remove all fossil fuels from the electricity grid. What do we do then? No-one seems able to explain. Investment in – very expensive – energy storage isn’t coming along at anything like the pace it would need to if we are going to be able to enjoy an uninterrupted supply of power throughout the day. Given that the supply of wind energy can fall away to virtually nothing during calm periods, and solar energy falls to zero every evening, we have a very serious problem. The tendency for still periods to concur with the coldest winter nights exacerbates the problem – especially if the country does as the government wants and switches to heat pumps.

As you can see, from the report of the Commons Business Select Committee ‘demand-side response’ is a big part of the energy industry’s plans. But it isn’t going to be nice little incentives like those offered to householders last winter in the form of £10 vouchers and the like. In future there will be a lot less carrot and a lot more stick – with surge pricing structures akin to those used by companies like Uber. Just think of the price of electricity is going to have to be jacked up to match supply and demand on a cold, still winter’s evening when – in normal times – demand would be at its highest.

In Britain’s net zero future it won’t just be a case of turning your heating on a few hours early to pre-heat your home. Many customers face being priced out of the electricity market altogether when supply of renewables is weak. On a sunny, windy afternoon you may be able to turn on your heating with abandon, even if you don’t need it on. But freezing, still evenings? Maybe there will be a special deal on woolly jumpers.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/net-zero-is-condemning-more-brits-to-energy-poverty/

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Fresh proof that New York’s ‘climate plan’ is pure fantasy

In a fresh sign that New York’s state climate agenda is pure fantasy, contractors key to making good on a major piece of the so-called plan just filed to charge 54% more to build their offshore wind farms.

Taxpayers won’t be on the line for that, but ratepayers will.

That’s the bottom line of New York’s “net zero” climate plan to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

It aims is to stop burning natural gas and other fossil fuels (even for cooking and heat), vastly increasing the use of electricity — even while magically switching the state’s electricity generation from mostly fossil-fuel-based to all-alternative energy.

Since we can’t add significant hydro power and won’t build more nuclear plants, that means ginormous increases in solar and wind power — plus new transmission lines.

And vast energy-storage capacities, for which affordable technology doesn’t even exist yet.

State officials pretend this will “only” cost a few hundred billion bucks (it’ll actually cost far more) but don’t dare appropriate enough tax dollars for it, which means they’re mandating outlays that must eventually show up in utility bills. (That’s what “Con Ed will pay” means, since it and other utilities have nowhere else to get the cash.)

This is the truth about the state Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act; recent hikes in your utility bills are just a taste of what’s coming unless and until the law gets changed.

That is: State law orders bureaucrats to shut down fossil-fuel power plants and utilities to get ever-more power from alternative sources that mostly aren’t even on the drawing board yet.

And as the wind-farm price-hike “request” filed in the runup to the holiday weekend (plainly so that few would notice it) indicates, the state’s leaders even lowballed the cost of the early rounds of building that alternative capacity.

Even if they weren’t going to soar past initial estimates, the costs to New Yorkers don’t remotely match the benefits to them.

Fact is, making New York and California and New Jersey and every other blue state — heck, the whole country — carbon-neutral will make only a minuscule dent in global carbon emissions: China’s still building coal plants at a record clip and doesn’t even pretend it’ll stop any year soon.

By the way, no one’s even talking about the big risks to New York’s plan.

One of them is the simple fact that the transition means the peak electric load will stop being in the summer, when power’s needed to run air-conditioning.

Instead, if the plan works as intended, most blackouts will come in the deepest part of winter, when everyone’s relying on electricity for heat.

Extreme cold already kills more people than extreme heat; that death toll will now grow.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state lawmakers imposing this idiocy will be long out of office when the bills in dollars and blood really start coming due.

They’re now just telling eco-conscious voters what they want to hear, trusting the public to forget that everything always costs more and takes longer, with fewer benefits, than politicians (and the bureaucrats who answer to them) claim.

The only real question is how much harm is done by this madness in the name only of fighting climate change before New Yorkers wake up to the truth and put a stop to it.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/04/contractors-up-the-price-by-54-for-offshore-wind-farms/

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Australia: Coal still needed in NSW

The NSW government will seek a deal with Origin Energy to prolong the lifespan of the state’s largest coal generator beyond 2025 after the state government said it has accepted the recommendations of an independent report that Eraring coal power station would need to stay open to safeguard electricity supplies.

Origin Energy’s Eraring coal power station was set to retire in 2025, but an independent report said such a closure at that time would expose the state to possible blackouts and further price increases.

NSW premier Chris Minns said affordability and guaranteeing electricity supply was paramount.

“One of the biggest challenges facing NSW is ensuring we can keep the lights on while managing the biggest change in energy mix and consumption in the shortest period of time in our nation’s history,” Mr Minns said.

Australia has endured two years of consecutive price rises of more than 20 per cent, a key driver in an affordability crisis.

Should a deal be struck, NSW will be the second state to move to guarantee a coal power station remains in the system as Australia’s energy transition falters.

To strike a deal, however, NSW will likely have to underwrite Eraring – leaving NSW taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Origin has said Eraring requires an annual spend of about $200m-$250m plus the cost of buying coal to run, though it earns money from selling electricity.

Eraring is, however, on course to be losing money as soon as next year when the emergency coal price cap finishes.

The federal government in conjunction with state counterparts introduced a $120 a tonne cap on the price of coal, a scheme designed to put downward pressure on household and business bills.

The scheme will end in 2024 and Origin’s supply costs will spike, likely plunging the facility back to a loss-making operation.

NSW taxpayers would likely have to cover the losses until the state has developed sufficient sources of renewable energy to compensate for the retirement of Eraring in Lake Macquarie.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/coal-plant-in-eraring-to-stay-open-longer-nsw-government/news-story/8fb5fe330f768085afc8ba1d743b1a3b

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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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Hurricane Season, Not Climate Change, Is to Blame for Hurricane Idalia

With Hurricane Idalia bearing down on Florida, climate activists and some media outlets are already blaming climate change for the storm. In reality, hurricane activity—and especially hurricane activity affecting Florida—is not getting any worse as the planet modestly warms. Hurricanes and other extreme weather events occur in spite of climate change, not because of it.

Global hurricane data show there has been a significant and consistent decline in the number of hurricanes during the past 40 years. Moreover, there has been no increase in the cumulative energy from all hurricanes and tropical cyclones. While climate pundits fill the airwaves with theories about warmer ocean temperatures fueling more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, the verifiable storm data show no increase at all. Indeed, scientists have long suspected that warming global temperatures facilitate wind shear, which pulls hurricanes and tropical storms apart.

Not only is there no global increase in hurricanes, but Florida in particular is enjoying a golden age of hurricane avoidance. Florida recently underwent an 11-year period without a single hurricane strike, which was the longest such period in recorded history. Yet when a hurricane finally put an end to Florida's record hurricane drought, climate activists and many media outlets predictably blamed climate change.

No matter what good news there is on the subject, climate activists and their champions in the media are committed to their apocalyptic narrative. It's why you probably don't know that the United States as a whole has enjoyed a remarkable lack of major hurricanes in recent years; from 2009 through 2017, the U.S. experienced fewer hurricane strikes than during any other time period in recorded history. Just as importantly, the United States recently underwent a record 11 years without a major hurricane strike of Category 3 or higher.

Yet when Hurricane Harvey finally struck and ended the record time frame without major hurricanes, climate activists and the mainstream media predictably blamed climate change for the storm.

They simply refuse to acknowledge the truth, which is this: The facts show climate change is not causing a worsening of hurricanes.

But to those invested in the truth, this should come as no surprise. Objective scientific data show a similar lack of climate change impacts on other extreme weather events.

More here:

https://www.newsweek.com/hurricane-season-not-climate-change-blame-hurricane-idalia-opinion-1823148

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British Prime Minister defies Net Zero ban on new airports

Rishi Sunak will face down the Government’s climate advisers over demands for ministers to halt the expansion of airports, The Telegraph can disclose.

In one of the most significant moves yet of the Prime Minister’s shift to approaching net zero in a “proportionate and pragmatic” way, the Government will reject the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) formal advice that all airport expansions must be halted.

The move comes days after Mr Sunak appointed Claire Coutinho, one of his closest political allies, as Net Zero Secretary, amid a growing backlash among Tory MPs over the Government’s climate policies and the cost they are adding to consumer bills.

Ministers believe airport growth will have a “key role” in boosting the UK’s global links and helping to grow the economy.

Bristol and Southampton airports are among those preparing to significantly expand their capacity after legal challenges against their expansions failed, while London’s Gatwick, City and Heathrow airports are also hoping to embark on major expansion projects.

Elsewhere in the world, new international airports are being built in cities such as Mumbai, while major expansions are under consideration in Dubai and Sydney.

The CCC was set up by the 2008 Climate Change Act to hold the Government to account over its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, with its most recent five-year “carbon budget” put into law by Boris Johnson in 2021.

Rejecting its recommendations would set the Government up for a major legal clash with environmental groups. Last year, a High Court judgment said that “considerable weight” should be given to the CCC’s advice. Groups such as Greenpeace are planning to cite the committee’s latest recommendation in legal challenges against further airport expansions.

But a Department for Transport spokesman told The Telegraph: “Airport growth, and the aviation sector as a whole, has a key role to play in boosting our global connectivity and helping grow the economy. We remain supportive of airport expansion where it can be delivered in a sustainable way.”

Ministers are putting their hope in the rapid development of green aviation fuels to decarbonise the sector. This week, Ms Coutinho will unveil a proposed legal duty on the Government to draw up plans to subsidise so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

The Government’s approach will heap pressure on Labour to take a position on the issue.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told The Telegraph last week that she would do “whatever it takes” to attract investment to Britain.

Heathrow is in the process of revising plans for a third runway, which Labour previously said failed its “four tests” for expansion of the airport.

But a Heathrow spokesman said: “We have always been clear that expansion will be delivered within strict environmental targets, including on carbon, minimising noise and local environmental impact, thereby meeting Labour’s four tests.

“We are confident Heathrow’s plans and the aviation industry roadmap provide a credible path to net zero flight by 2050.

“Adding capacity to the UK’s only hub airport would bring benefits to all of the UK, creating jobs, boosting Britain’s exports and delivering for the country’s global ambitions.”

The CCC’s decision to issue formal advice against further expansions was taken in one of the final meetings chaired by Lord Deben – formerly John Gummer – before he stepped down from the body this summer.

The committee was frustrated that plans to expand airports across the country were continuing despite its warnings that the net growth of airports was incompatible with the country’s net zero target.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/02/rishi-sunak-reject-net-zero-demand-airport-expansion/

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Like Communism, the Climate Change Agenda Will Kill Millions

As the Biden Administration and tyrannical central planners across the globe continue with their push to control people’s lives through an overbearing "climate change" agenda, implementing socialism under the guise of saving the planet, the human cost of their lunacy is becoming increasingly glaring.

When a brush fire ripped through the Maui town of Lahaina in August, traveling a mile a minute, water to keep it from advancing was unavailable. “Access to water should be predicated on ‘conversations about equity,’ according to the Hawaii official under fire for delaying access to water during the Maui wildfires,” the New York Post reports. "M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui.”

The local government still claims the death toll is just north of 100 souls, but at least 1000 people are still “missing,” many of them children.

On the global stage, former Secretary of State and Biden Climate Czar John Kerry is playing with fire by targeting the agriculture industry.

“Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday,” Reuters reported in May, “Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole - including packaging, transportation, and waste management - generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.”

“‘We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,’ Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington,” the report continues.

The essential component to human life, food, requires emissions. It's a basic cost of humanity. Wind and solar energy aren’t getting food out of the ground and to the market. Oil and gas do this successfully, preventing famine.

We’ve already seen this dangerous, nightmare experiment play out in Sri Lanka.

In April 2021, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned all chemical fertilizers, citing the need to cut down on emissions for the sake of fighting “climate change.” It was, and still is, a complete disaster.

Forced conversion to organic farming caused an economic collapse and a crop shortage.

“Farmers say their livelihoods are under threat and for the first time in its modern history, Sri Lanka, which usually grows rice and vegetables in abundance, could run out of food as harvests drop and the government can no longer afford the food imports the country has become overdependent on in recent years. The rice yield dropped to 2.92m tonnes in 2021-22, down from the previous year’s 3.39m, and the speaker in parliament last week warned of imminent starvation among the island’s 22 million people,” The Guardian reports.

But starvation isn’t the only human suffering the climate fanatics are willing to inflict on the population. They justify slave labor currently used to build solar panels in China and to mine rare earth minerals in Africa. In the United States, President Joe Biden and his bureaucrats are working to take away gas stoves, air conditioning, and cheap natural gas. All of these things make the human condition better and life affordable for the average person, which is why the left is working overtime to banish them — not for themselves, of course, but for those they rule over.

Kerry and his ilk have made it clear human suffering and death is just part of the agenda and a necessary cost to meet their “climate change” goals. If they aren’t stopped, much like communism, this central planner push for control will cause suffering and death for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of human beings around the world.

https://townhall.com/columnists/katiepavlich/2023/09/01/like-communism-the-climate-change-agenda-will-kill-millions-n2627869

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Australia: More waste in chasing the Green dream

A new deal has been struck to keep the Victoria/Tasmania Marinus Link undersea power cable project – central to the "battery of the nation" dream – afloat.

In a joint announcement on Sunday, the federal and Tasmanian governments said they were "acting with a new deal to keep the critical Marinus Link project plugged in – driving economic growth and putting downwards pressure on prices across Tasmania and the national east coast grid".

The project, which was to deliver a connection via more than 300 kilometres of undersea and underground high voltage cable between Tasmania and Victoria's Latrobe Valley, was originally estimated to cost between $3.1 billion and $3.8 billion.

However, the financial burden of the project saw the Tasmanian government announce last month it wanted to renegotiate the terms of the deal.

Today, in a joint statement the federal and Tasmanian governments said they had "worked closely to ensure the project continues" – with amendments made to the deal including:

The original vision of two cables downgraded to one, with "negotiations to continue on a second cable"

Tasmania's contribution towards construction drops by almost half, with the Commonwealth's share to increase and Victoria's to stay as originally negotiated

Tasmania to "have the option to sell its stake to the Commonwealth upon commissioning of the project"

Marinus Link is part of Tasmania's "battery of the nation" strategy and is also listed among the Australian Energy Market Operator's top five priority projects.

Tasmania has enough green hydro energy capacity to power the entire state and also has five wind farms, with several other wind projects under consideration.

However, some analysts have argued that as Victoria invested more in its own wind farms and battery storage, it made less business sense to fund an expensive multi-billion-dollar cable between the mainland and Tasmania.

Tasmania has long argued the largest benefits of the project go to the mainland and Tasmanians should not pay a disproportionate amount.

Today, both governments conceded Marinus Link was "competing in a global market with tight supply chains and is facing similar inflationary pressures to other major energy and infrastructure projects around the world".

Stage one of the project, the proponents say, would "deliver economic stimulus over $2 billion and over 2,400 jobs, with around 1,400 in Tasmania".

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said it was "a game-changing project for both Tasmania and the mainland and this updated agreement will not only deliver the benefits of Marinus Link, it will be cheaper to Tasmanians".

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff said it would mean "jobs, economic growth, energy security and lower power prices with Tasmania investing its fair share and no more".

The governments said they were "working towards a delivery time frame as close as possible to 2028, or earlier if possible".

In a statement, Marinus Link's chief executive Caroline Wykamp said today's announcement was "a signal of confidence for the project, which stood to deliver significant environmental, economic and social benefits".

"Marinus Link is more than an interconnector; it's an enabler," she said.

"This project will deliver more renewable generation development in Tasmania and the mainland, more energy security to both Tasmania and the mainland and more movement and access to lower-cost renewable energy sources, helping deliver lower energy costs in the long term."

Ex-Liberals question deal, condemn Father's Day timing
In a joint statement, Lara Alexander and John Tucker — former Liberals who quit the party in part over the Marinus deal — said the renegotiated deal "raises more questions than answers", saying the Tasmanians premier's "numbers simply do not stack up".

"The figures are not believable, the claim that Tasmania's maximum exposure would be $117 million dollars does not stack up with the federal minister's confirmation of that the cut down project will cost $3.3 billion dollars and the claim that Tasmania will be up for 17 per cent," the statement said.

"Today's announcement from the premier reveals nothing of the cost blowouts which the government has admitted would have sent the state broke if it pursued the deal it signed last October. It conveniently leaves out how much we have already spent on this project.

"It also does NOT address the impact of these massive energy projects on Tasmania's power bills with the exception of an unsubstantiated claim by the premier that it will deliver savings.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/marinus-link-undersea-cable-costs-renegotiated/102808504

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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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New study suggests global warming could be mostly an urban problem

A new study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Climate, by 37 researchers from 18 countries suggests that current estimates of global warming are contaminated by urban warming biases.

The study also suggests that the solar activity estimates considered in the most recent reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming since the 19th century.

It is well-known that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside. While urban areas only account for less than 4% of the global land surface, many of the weather stations used for calculating global temperatures are located in urban areas. For this reason, some scientists have been concerned that the current global warming estimates may have been contaminated by urban heat island effects. In their latest report, the IPCC estimated that urban warming accounted for less than 10% of global warming. However, this new study suggests that urban warming might account for up to 40% of the warming since 1850.

The study also found that the IPCC’s chosen estimate of solar activity appeared to have prematurely ruled out a substantial role for the Sun in the observed warming.

When the authors analysed the temperature data only using the IPCC’s solar dataset, they could not explain any of the warming since the mid-20th century. That is, they replicated the IPCC’s iconic finding that global warming is mostly human-caused. However, when the authors repeated the analysis using a different estimate of solar activity – one that is often used by the scientific community – they found that most of the warming and cooling trends of the rural data could actually be explained in terms of changing solar activity.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Willie Soon, of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-Science.com) described the implications of their findings,

“For many years, the general public has been assuming that the science on climate change is settled. This new study shows that this is not the case.”

Another author of the study, Prof. Ana Elias, the Director of the Laboratorio de Ionosfera, Atmósfera Neutra y Magnetosfera (LIANM) at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina, explained:

“This analysis opens the door to a proper scientific investigation into the causes of climate change.”

This study finds similar conclusions to another study that was recently published in a separate scientific peer-reviewed journal, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics. This other study involved many of the same co-authors (led by Dr. Ronan Connolly, also at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences). It took a different approach to analysing the causes of climate change – using an additional 25 estimates of solar activity and three extra temperature estimates.

https://www.ceres-science.com/post/new-study-suggests-global-warming-could-be-mostly-an-urban-problem

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Why are greens making it so hard to grow plants in NYC

Under the city’s Million Trees program, which offers to plant free trees around the five boroughs, I put in a request for the city to entrust my block with a new tree.

“Your Service Request has been sent to the Department of Parks and Recreation,” the automated response read. “DPR will respond within 720 days.”

Considering trees literally eat carbon from the air (one tree averages 48 pounds a year, according to the Arbor Foundation), 720 days seems a long time to wait for a response during a “climate emergency.” That was 457 days ago and I’ve yet to receive my tree — or a response.

It’s incredible to watch people who claim to love the environment do so little to actually improve it. In fact, many seem openly hostile to the idea. No one more than big city Democrats, who ironically embrace ugliness and sterility in their pursuit of a greener planet.

Environmentalists were once called tree-huggers and wore “Save the Whales” t-shirts. Now, they desecrate priceless works of art while turning a blind eye to the mass killing of both trees and historically endangered marine mammals

In fact, the government of Scotland admitted this week it had downed 15.7 million trees since the year 2000 to make way for wind farms as a part of its “green energy” and “net-zero” carbon emission goals. That comes out to around 1,700 trees a day.

Closer to home, activists claim controversial wind farm development off the coasts of New Jersey and Long Island has contributed to a record number of dead whales washing ashore this year, including at least 14 humpbacks so far.

While New York City bans plastic straws, shopping bags, and wood-fired pizza ovens, why hasn’t it occurred to any of these climate warriors to incentivize gardening?

Gardens not only remove carbon and combat the heat island effect of big cities, but they also increase human happiness. How much more incentivizing do we need?

Gardens beautify our streets and lower crime — a block with well-maintained gardens, in the broken-windows mentality, is less likely to attract lawlessness. How much less? According to a 2022 study in crime-plagued South Africa, for every 1% increase in total green space, there is a 1.2% decrease in violent crime and a 1.3% decrease in property crime.

Gardening is also a much healthier hobby than doom-scrolling or binge-watching Netflix.

But gardening can get expensive, as anyone knows. And in New York City’s “green” crusade, trees and plants for your stoop, backyard, sidewalk bed, or window box are still charged sales tax. The same goes for soil, fertilizer, gardening tools, containers, and anything else you might need.

While produce in grocery stores is tax-free, in New York, Uncle Sam wants his cut if you plant your own tomatoes or grow a bit of basil on your windowsill.

And just imagine how much carbon it takes to ship those veggies to the store, not to mention the plastic packaging. If the city was serious about being greener, it would eliminate this tax while awarding tax credits to serious citizen-greenskeepers.

Funny enough, New York Democrats have made this very point through legislation, but — surprise, surprise — it only benefits rich people and developers, not average New Yorkers and renters. The city offers a “Green Roof” tax Abatement of up to $200,000 for developers who cover residential rooftops of new buildings in at least 50% green space

https://nypost.com/2023/09/02/green-pols-are-making-hard-to-grow-trees-in-nyc/

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Why wind and solar power are running out of juice

Green energy and the push to electrify everything have been in the news recently but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the green energy nirvana politicians and green energy advocates have promised, economic and physical reality has begun to set in.

Start with the economic realities.

Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter.

Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.

In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised.

Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.

In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers.

That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.

Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha’s Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.

Rhode Island Energy, the state’s main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.

And Ørsted, the Danish government-owned company that is developing the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off Long Island — as well as the Ocean Wind project off the New Jersey coast — last week announced that, without additional subsidies and higher contract prices, it will have to write-off billions of dollars in potential losses.

The result: Even though Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch insists that “energy transition without wind energy does not work,” 2022 saw 16% less new wind-power capacity than in 2021, according to the American Clean Power Association.

In New Jersey, the legislature passed a law in July, which is likely unconstitutional, to bail out Ørsted.

The legislation will award the company with several billion dollars of investment tax credits that were supposed to go to consumers.

Back on dry land, opposition to siting land-gobbling wind and solar projects continues to grow.

Local governments in Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio have all rejected or restricted projects.

Rural communities, it seems, do not want to host massive turbine farms — nor the high-voltage transmission lines needed to deliver electricity to power-hungry cities.

According to the New York Climate Action Committee’s Final Scoping Plan, New York will meet that increased demand by building almost 15,000 MW of offshore wind, like the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, and over 40,000 MW of solar panels. (By comparison, the emissions-free Indian Point Nuclear Plant, which former Governor Cuomo forced to close, had a capacity of just over 1,000 MW.)

This “reserve margin” – basically, the amount of generating capacity available to step in and meet electric demand – will need to increase from the current 20% to over 100%.

In other words, for every MW of generating capacity in 2040, there will have to be an equal amount or more in reserve.

That’s like having to buy a second car and keep it idling all the time in case the first one won’t start.

The Scoping Plan claims this will be accomplished by building over 20,000 MW of so-called “dispatchable emissions-free generating resources” (DEFRs) and installing over 12,000 MW of battery storage.

Those claims are fantasy.

Start with DEFRs, which are generators that burn pure hydrogen manufactured from surplus wind and solar power.

They have yet to be invented (we repeat – they do not yet exist). Nor do any large-scale commercial plants to manufacture green hydrogen exist either.

Hydrogen cannot be transported in existing natural gas pipelines.

An entirely new infrastructure will need to be built.

Assuming a new technology will be invented by whatever date politicians decree is foolish.

That’s not how technology works.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/02/why-the-promise-of-green-energy-has-yet-to-deliver/

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Australia: Tyre Extinguishers target Toorak SUVs as part of environmental protest

An extremist environmental group has targeted one of Australia’s wealthiest suburbs, with SUV owners waking to find their tyres slashed and their cars undriveable.

Residents of Toorak in Melbourne woke on Friday to find the vandalised cars and an explanation note left on their windscreens detailing why SUVs are toxic to the environment.

The environmental group, Tyre Extinguishers, left those affected with a note alerting them: “Your gas guzzler kills.”

“We have deflated one or more of your tires,” the note reads.

“You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s your car. “We did this because driving around urban areas in your massive vehicle has huge consequences for others.

“SUVs and 4x4s are a disaster for our climate. SUVs are the second-largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade – more than the entire aviation industry.

“Even if you don’t care about the impacts on people far away from you, perhaps think about the impacts around your neighbourhood. SUVs cause far more air pollution than smaller cars.

“While the impacts on you so far have probably been minimal, every day millions of people are directly affected. Emergency action is needed to reduce emissions immediately.”

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said there had been several reports made following the group’s antics. “At least 10 four-wheel drive and sports utility vehicles in the vicinity of Tintern Ave were tampered with,” she said.

“Notes were also left on the vehicles describing the environmental impact of these types of vehicles. “The investigation is ongoing.”

Tintern Avenue was once home to Dame Nellie Melba, and Toorak is home to more members of The Australian’s Richest 250 list than anywhere else in the country.

Anyone who witnessed anything or with CCTV or other footage is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

The group is well known in the UK and the US, yet it’s understood this is the first time the group have targeted Melbourne.

It lists instructions on its website about the best way to deflate an SUV tyre.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/tyre-extinguishers-target-toorak-suvs-as-part-of-environmental-protest/news-story/99a954ab97290e3467c769b508b29c5b

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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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Over 1,600 Scientists and Professionals Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration

International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth.

“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.

The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

"Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming," the declaration said.

Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models "exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases" and "ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.

CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.

“To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”

Climate Models and Sunlight Reflection

Among the CLINTEL signatories are two Nobel laureates—physicists John Francis Clauser from the United States and Ivan Giaever, a Norwegian-American.

Mr. Clauser has made a significant addition to climate models to dismiss the narrative of global warming: the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds which, on average, cover half of the earth.

Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on Feb. 15, 2019. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on Feb. 15, 2019. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
Current climate models vastly underestimate this aspect of cumulus cloud reflection, which plays a key role in regulating the earth’s temperature. Mr. Clauser previously told President Joe Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies.

In May, Mr. Clauser was elected to the board of directors at the CO2 Coalition, a group focusing on the beneficial contributions of carbon dioxide in the environment.

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people,” Mr. Clauser said in a May 5 statement.

“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”

“It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/over-1600-scientists-sign-no-climate-emergency-declaration-5482554

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Central banks are fake climate heroes

The Bank of England has rejigged how it tenders for the polymer used in banknotes to reduce their carbon intensity. The UK central bank will investigate alternatives to gas-fired heating for its London headquarters and Essex printing works. Zoom calls are preferred to flights. Such are the details in the BoE’s first ‘Climate transition plan’ that was released in July and outlines how the central bank intends to reach net-zero emissions from its ‘physical’ operations by 2040.

The BoE is aiming to hit net zero a decade before the UK’s legislated goal because the central bank wants to ‘meet the standards it sets for others’ as it drives climate actions across the financial sector.

All the major central banks have adopted similar, ambitious green goals without any parliamentary or formal executive approval. Their motivation – as stated in a study released in April by the Reserve Bank of Australia – is that ‘climate change introduces new sources of risk’ for financial stability. In 2021, the European Central Bank even said it will embed environmental goals within monetary-policy decisions because wild and warmer weather can affect ‘inflation, output, employment, interest rates, investment and productivity; financial stability; and the transmission of monetary policy’.

Fired up about sustainability, central bankers are calling for net-zero targets. Warning of climate systemic risks, they talk of using their regulatory powers to enforce climate-risk-based capital standards on banks, conduct climate-change stress tests and force businesses to disclose carbon risks. To encourage such activism, governments have sought to appoint climate campaigners to leadership roles in central banks.

Many question whether it’s wise for central bankers who style themselves as above politics to tackle such a politically contentious issue. As central bankers push sustainability, two questions stand out.

The first is whether central bankers can achieve anything. Advocates say standardising climate-related disclosures and making them mandatory improves the pricing of climate risks. They say central banks highlighting the long-term financial risks of climate change will marshal public support towards net zero. They claim central banks can protect the financial system by limiting crises triggered by changed weather. They say central banks elevating climate risks would make commercial banks more wary of adding to – even reduce – the US$4 trillion lent to the fossil fuel industry.

Central bankers, however, might achieve less than activists hope. For one, climate change seems to pose little risk to financial stability. Bushfires, droughts, heat waves, rising and warmer oceans, storms and the like have never in modern times triggered a systemic crisis.

Second, the industries that lose from the shift to a low-carbon economy (‘stranded assets’) are unlikely to imperil the financial system. It’s usually the next big things that bubble to the point of crisis. Studies find that excessive debt is the common cause behind centuries of financial crashes, not weather patterns or passé things.

A third reason is banks don’t appear to be threatened by climate change and seem capable of judging such risks. Studies find no link between bank stability and disasters, even one on banks in the hurricane-prone Caribbean. A 2021 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found banks even gain from calamities due to lending for rebuilding.

Another disappointment for activists is that central bank climate activism is unlikely to trouble fossil fuel companies. The fact is that when commercial banks shun fossil fuel companies, private firms buy these businesses cheaply. The Economist estimates private equity firms have swooped on at least US$60 billion of ‘dirty’ assets in recent years.

The fifth problem is that central banks have little legal basis on which to act along green lines. Central banks lack authority to direct bank lending. As there is no link between interest rates and meteorological events, central banks can only target net zero indirectly by using regulatory powers.

The other overarching question is whether central banks might stir risks when they pursue sustainability. The answer is yes. The biggest risk is that climate-risk management clashes with mandates to control inflation. The problem is that a shift to net zero stirs ‘greenflation’. This is the term for when the price of fossil fuels jumps because their supply falls before demand does. It’s rife.

The second hazard is that central banks are adopting an explicit role of capital allocation, which breaches their principle of ‘market neutrality’. Climate stress tests, for example, apply pressure on banks to shun lending to fossil fuel companies. While central banks control the quantity of money, the allocation of money is a choice for the political sphere. Smudge the roles of central bankers and politicians and central-bank credibility and independence could be dented.

Another risk is central banks might encourage a green investment bubble, one that could metastasise into a systemic threat. Another concern is central banks might engage in ‘mission creep’. What, for instance, stops central banks pursuing other social goals such as reducing inequality? Another problem with central bankers sanctioning progressive causes is that it might encourage banks on similar frolics. Some bankers, for instance, might think it OK to ‘de-bank’ customers for their views on climate change.

The little central banks might accomplish through climate activism and the risks they stir as they try is another example where the use of public regulatory powers is a poor substitute for political solutions. Rather than become politically tainted, it’s best central bankers push aside climate-change concerns and focus on their legislated tasks, at which, as today’s elevated inflation shows, they are failing.

Now, central banks recognise that executives and parliaments have ‘primary responsibility’ to act on climate change and that their contribution might be modest. Then why speak up? It’s true that government action on climate could hurt the economy to the point of creating financial instability. But that’s different from saying the weather or stranded assets could.

Perhaps the true green vocation of central bankers is to warn the public of the risks (above all on inflation) that politicians are taking with their climate actions. Their efforts to have greener office blocks and climate-friendly banknotes are worthwhile if they boost their credibility to do that.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/central-banks-are-fake-climate-heroes/

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Net Zero Watch slams British Government’s ‘desperate’ and ‘unethical’ heat pump proposals

Campaign group Net Zero Watch has ridiculed the Government’s decision to remove consumer protections relating to the installation of heat pumps in homes.

Faced with a widespread consumer boycott of the technology, ministers are hoping that they can kickstart a heating revolution by removing the requirement that properties be adequately insulated before gas boilers are removed.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

"The insulation requirement was put in place to ensure heat pumps were only installed where they were likely to work. Removing a key consumer protection is hardly going to help the Government’s cause."

Mr Montford points to a recent study of heat pump economics, which shows that, even in a well-insulated property, most heat pump installations do not give lower bills, let alone justifying the substantial capital costs. This is because electricity is four times the price of gas.

Mr Montford said:

"The contradictions in Government policy are becoming clear. Renewables are incompatible with heat pumps because they make electricity so much more expensive than gas. In their desperation to persuade consumers to switch anyway, ministers are proposing steps that would be foolish, are arguably unethical, and would certainly be counterproductive. This is a brand of fanaticism as dangerous as Mr Khan’s ULEZ obsession."

https://mailchi.mp/143b803c7f3c/net-zero-watch-slams-governments-desperate-and-unethical-heat-pump-proposals-198271?e=cc88839e92

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The astonishingly woke Australian Academy of Science

Peter Ridd

The Australian Academy of Science (AAS) recently released a report Reef Futures Roundtable, which is ostensibly about the doomed Great Barrier Reef. However, the report only demonstrates that the AAS, Australia’s peak science body, has become not just unscientific, but anti-scientific. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has also become astonishingly Woke.

The AAS report predictably concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could already be ‘irreversibly’ damaged. The fact that UNESCO has just declared it not endangered did not rate a mention, and neither did the latest two years of statistics showing the reef is at record high coral levels. Remarkably, the report does not contain a single fact or figure to support any of its claims about the reef – except the area of the reef is 340,000 square kilometres. There are no figures, no percentages. Nowhere does it mention that coral grows 30 per cent faster for every degree increase in water temperatures. Or that there is 100 per cent more coral on the reef today than in 2012. Or that just 1 per cent of the reef has the potential to be impacted by farm sediment, fertiliser or pesticides, even in the slightest way. Or that the sea level has fallen by 1 metre in the last 5,000 years.

The problem with this completely unanalytical approach is seen in the ‘interventions’ it recommends to fix the reef. Their impracticality is breathtaking. For example, it suggests ‘solar radiation management’ – shading the reef from the sun with man-made fog and clouds to prevent the water heating up and causing coral bleaching. The only number cited in the entire report – the area of the reef, which is as big as Germany – should have given them a hint that this is crazy. How are you going to make a cloud as big as Germany and keep it anchored over the reef for the whole summer over the next few hundred years? And you will also have to stop hot water flowing into the reef from the Coral Sea at the same time. That would require a dam 2,000 kilometres long and 100 metres high.

While a simple calculation is all that is required to reveal the absurdity of this idea, modern science is full of people who are almost completely non-quantitative and, as such, impractical and virtually useless as scientists.

Next there is rubble stabilisation. The supposed experts worry that the Great Barrier Reef will break up from climate change. Each of the 3,000 reefs is an almost solid lump of calcium carbonate rock (fragments of coral glued together over eons) a few kilometres wide and 100 metres high. How this is going to be broken up by some climate change magic is unexplained. But even if that were to happen, are they seriously suggesting we can wire it back together with steel reinforcing and concrete? Just do the calculation on how much concrete and steel this would entail.

The unscientific nature of the AAS report is largely a result of its anti-scientific approach. The report is actually a parody of wokeness and romantic mythology. This starts with the way the roundtable committees of ‘experts’, whom they questioned about the reef, were formed. Each roundtable had two chairs, a non-Indigenous chair, and a specially selected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander chair. The romantic mythology about the special knowledge of any person with Indigenous heritage pervades the entire document, and starts in the foreword by the head of the AAS.

As the Academy approached the task of planning this project it became immediately obvious that there was no separating nature and culture when it comes to the GBR. Land and sea cannot be separated. No priority can be selected on an ecological basis alone. Having a Traditional Knowledges co-Chair in each roundtable allowed for different sources of knowledge to be shared and to form a basis for a number of the observations featured in this report.

Having a diversity of ideas and scientific thought would have gone some of the way to curing the AAS of the groupthink which renders its report risible. And the views and experience of people from the coral islands of the Torres Straits and northern Great Barrier Reef could have been used to great effect. These people tend to be deeply practical about the reef – like almost all seafaring people who live and work on the reef. And practical people know you cannot bolt the reef, which is the size of Germany, down to the seafloor. But selecting people for their ‘roundtables’ on the basis of their ethnicity rather than their scientific or real-world experience is a fundamentally anti-scientific approach.

But it gets worse. The dearth of statistics about the reef are made up for by an abundance of data on the gender identification of all those who participated in the ‘roundtables’. There is also the Indigenous percentage. And not just of those who participated, but also of those who were invited to participate but did not. One could quibble and point out that those claiming to be male or female added up to exactly 100 per cent in all categories, indicating a terrifying lack of diversity on the LGBQTI+++ spectrum. But there is no question, on the important matters for the Woke brigade, that this report is brimming with instructive statistics.

The AAS ascribes such importance to facts and figures on gender and race, but not to scientific facts. This demonstrates it is anti-science. Science is about evidence and logic. It does not matter whether one is male or female or whatever else, it is still impossible to make clouds as big as Germany for the next hundred years. That is called a fact, and facts do not vary with race, gender, or any ideology.

I have been saying for some time that many of our science institutions have become totally untrustworthy. By its wilful abandonment of quantitative analysis, the AAS has destroyed its reputation as a source of useful scientific advice. The media loves a bad news story – they should focus on what has happened to a once-esteemed organisation.

The Australian Academy of Science is now a joke.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-astonishingly-woke-australian-academy-of-science

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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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