2019-12-04
Canadian Carbon Tax Must Hit $210/tonne by 2030
The Ecofiscal Commission, a privately funded policy group has issued its final report: Bridging the Gap: Real Options for Meeting Canada 's 2030 GHG Target. As reported by the CBC the headline conclusion is that the federal carbon tax must reach $210/tonne by 2030 for Canada to meet its Paris Agreement target. This means a 40 ¢/L rise in the pump price in ten years ' time (on top of the $50/t CO2 tax scheduled for 2022.)
In a summary of the report the commission states that their modelling shows that carbon pricing delivers the lowest cost of achieving emissions reductions and will grow Canadian incomes on average by $3,300 more in 2030 relative to a policy approach that relies on a mix of subsidies and industry-only regulations. The 66-page report (page v) considers three approaches for meeting Canada 's 2030 goal of 513 Mt of CO2e emissions: (1) carbon pricing with dividends (all revenues remain in the promise of origin and are fully recycled to households); (2) economy wide regulations with subsidies; (3) industry-focused regulations and subsidies.
The commission used the Navius Research gTech model to simulate the effects of the three options. According to the model results approach (1) provides the highest 2030 GDP/capita (page vi, Fig. ES-1). On page 18 the report discusses the effects of a rising CO2 price, where a chart shows the per capita dividends by province in 2030 with a $210/t CO2 price. Residents in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Territories would get $2,000 - $4,000 each, while those in most other provinces would receive less than $1,000.
The reaction of Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason to the prospect of a $210/t CO2 tax: Fat chance. He reasons that such a figure is a large and easy target for those opposed to carbon taxes and will likely never see the light of day. Mr. Mason has little hope for Canada 's new environment minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, who doesn 't fill me with confidence that he fully grasps the immediacy of the situation. He told the Toronto Star in an interview that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged him to address climate change in a thoughtful way. ' And that he wants to be thoughtful and sensitive ' to the needs of people in attacking the problem.
The G20 Brown to Green Report
Carbon Transparency has issued its 2019 G20 Brown to Green Report, the world 's most comprehensive review of G20 climate action. The 63-page report consists of three parts Adaptation, Mitigation and Finance. According to the report Canada compares badly to other G20 countries: its emissions are 18.9 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per capita compared to the 7.5 t G20 average and it is not on track for a 1.5 °C world. Moreover, Canada, Australia and South Korea are the G20 countries furthest off track to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement (p.7).
Regarding the power sector (p.32), Canada and three other G20 countries have no policy to increase renewables. Canada 's per capita transportation emissions increased 2% on 2018 (p.35) and it has the second highest emissions (4.8 t).
Left Wing Thugs Fail to Force Cancellation of Climate Skeptic Conference
As in the 1920s and 1930s freedom of science and speech are under at-tack in Germany after dozens of distinguished but dissenting scientists have seen their long planned science conference cancelled due to intimidation by left-wing extremists. This latest climate conference cancellation comes just after leftists coerced the University of Hamburg to disinvite political leaders from making speeches. In Munich the 13th International Climate and Energy Conference, sponsored by the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) saw its contract with the conference facility torn up. EIKE went to court but lost. On November 18 EIKE posted this description (Google translation) of its struggle with the flash mob of environmentalist.
Then on November 22 the conference opened at a new venue, which the organizers kept secret from the mob. JoNova posted a livestreaming video and program for the conference (most of the presentations are in German.)
German Wind Industry Faces Extinction as Thousands of Jobs Lost
Mounting resistance by anti-wind farm citizens ' initiatives, stricter rules for wind projects, powerful anti-wind bureaucrats, and a draft law calling on wind operators to pay for grid expansion mean that the German wind industry could be seeing the final nail in its coffin. Already tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared in the wind energy sector. As the Climate Change Dispatch story notes, the bleak future for German wind energy has real environmentalists celebrating.
Just in Time for COP25: UN Issues Two Alarmist Reports
In the week leading up to the start of COP25 in Madrid on December 2 the UN released two reports intended to spur delegates into action. The first on November 25 was the World Meteorological Organization 's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. This showed atmospheric CO2 concentrations increasing from 405.5 parts per million in 2017 to 407.8 ppm in 2018. Said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas: There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of the mankind.
The second report, issued on November 26, was the UN Environmental Program 's Emissions Gap Report 2019. This one presents the latest data on the expected gap in 2030 for the 1.5 °C and 2 °C temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. It considers different scenarios, from no new climate policies since 2005 to full implementation of all national commitments under the agreement. For those needing a quick summary there 's a video On the Brink: Emissions Gap Report findings in 60 seconds. The Executive Summary of the report notes: (a) G20 countries account for 78% of global emissions and seven members, including Canada, are not on track to meet their 2030 commitments; (b) In 2030 annual global emissions need to be 15 Gt of CO2 equivalent lower than current commitments to meet the 2 °C goal and 32 Gt lower for the 1.5 °C goal; (c) To meet these goals countries must increase their ambitions threefold and fivefold, respectively. According to the UNEP global emissions have to decrease by 7.6% every year for the next decade.
Italian Schools: 33 Mandatory Hours/Year of Climate Hysteria
Next year Italy will become the world 's first country to make it compulsory for schoolchildren to study climate change and sustainable development. In an interview the education minister said all state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year, almost one hour per school week, to climate change issues from the start of the next academic year in September. Said the minister 's spokesman: "There will be more attention to climate change when teaching those traditional subjects. The idea is that the citizens of the future need to be ready for the climate emergency."
Communicating Better to the Public: Use Children for Propaganda
Greta Thunberg isn 't the only 16-year-old climbing a path to fame by fuming about adults ' responsibility for climate change. Now there 's the Outback Schoolboy Dylan Storer who has been praised on social media after slamming narrow-minded politicians while weighing in on Australia's bushfire crisis. An editorial by Insights & Issues opines that sycophants who flatter child climate oracles like Greta and Dylan deserve unrelenting ridicule. Greta was touted for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Dylan is being proposed for Australian prime minister. The online German news weekly Der Spiegel did an interview with philosopher Alexander Grau who thought that Greta Thunberg 's how dare you! performance at the UN was aggressive and fanatical.
NZ Offer of $10,000 Prize for Evidence of AGW
To emphasize its claim that there is no convincing evidence that carbon dioxide causes temperature warming beyond natural cyclical limits long observed and recorded, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition has offered the Professor Augie Auer prize of $10,000, to be granted to the first applicant to present real-world evidence showing that the man-made fraction of airborne carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming. Prof. Auer was appalled that climate scientists should be denied funding and be branded deniers ' unless they submitted to the political global warming narrative and renounced the ancient principle that science is never settled.
Ross McKitrick Interview
Rex Murphy interviewed Dr. McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph where he specializes in environment, energy and climate policy. Dr. McKitrick became interested in climate in the early 1990s when he did his PhD thesis on modelling the effects of carbon taxes. He later discovered certain datasets (e.g., from satellites) differed from the common narrative on climate change. Twenty years ago, he and Christopher Essex co-authored Taken by Storm, which examined the complexities of the climate (turbulence, non-linear systems, atmospheric chemistry and physics, geology, paleoclimatology), which make predicting it so difficult and uncertain. However, the public perception is that the science is settled, there 's no uncertainty left, and therefore politicians are in a position to make ambitious decisions.
In its history the IPCC has exaggerated matters and downplayed uncertainties, but now there 's a constituency that is detaching itself from the IPCC because the latter 's reports don 't match with what the alarmists want said. Climate science has so much riding on it that it 's like a bank that is too big to fail. However, Dr. McKitrick predicts that there 's going to be a reckoning for the climate modelling industry.
Activists publish polls showing that the public is concerned about climate change and wants government to do something but only if the cost is low. So, politicians avoid painful measures. For eight years Barak Obama made speeches on climate action with little effect. When Republicans introduced the Green New Deal in the Senate, not a single Democratic senator supported it.
During minutes 40-48 of the video Dr. McKitrick discusses the history of the hockey-stick graph. This includes how he and Steve McIntyre worked together starting in 2003 to find the technical errors that led to congressional hearings and lawsuits that continue to this day.
The last issue discussed is that of funding. It 's easy for researchers to get grant funding as long as they study what governments want to hear. When protesters such as Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion appear on the world stage, money is immediately available for them.
2019-11-19
COP25 Venue Moves from Chile to Spain
Facing the largest wave of political unrest since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, Chile 's president Sebasti ¡n Pi ±era announced on October 30 that his government was cancelling both the APEC trade summit (November 15-17) and the UN 's COP25 climate summit (December 2-13). Following Brazil 's November 2018 withdrawal of its offer to host the event, the HuffPost sees Chile 's cancellation as a dark omen for the climate movement.
While media outlets claim that income inequality is the reason that Chilean people are rioting in the streets, the protests began in response to fare hikes for the Santiago Metro, which hit low-income people especially hard. These fare hikes, even as oil and gasoline prices are falling, are the result of converting most of the Metro 's energy mix to expensive wind and solar power. The American Thinker adds Chile to the growing list of countries whose governments are facing a backlash as average people, tired of elites forcing costly climate policies down their throats, take to the streets to protest higher energy costs.
Two days after Chile withdrew Spain offered to host COP25 in Madrid, which will take place December 2-13 as originally scheduled. Greta Thunberg, who sailed across the Atlantic to attend COP25 in Chile, put out an urgent call on Twitter seeking a low-emission way back to Europe. Her call was answered by an Australian sailing couple on their plastic yacht that draws auxiliary power from twin Volvo diesel engines.
Sale of Indulgences to Dominate Madrid Climate Summit
In Madrid the negotiators will be trying hard to finalize the Paris Accord emissions trading scheme. The new trading scheme, called the Sustainable Development Mechanism (SDM), replaces the old Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year. China and India have banked huge amounts of CDM carbon credits, thanks to their rapid industrialization. So much that some fear there is danger of a glut making credits worthless. China and the other big holders of CDM credits do not see it that way.
There is also the feeling that the old CDM credits are mostly bogus. A 2016 EU-commissioned report found that just 2% of CDM projects were likely to ensure additional emissions reductions. Claiming emission reductions for projects that were going ahead anyway is cheating in many people 's eyes. There is a widespread movement to not allow CDM credits to be brought forward into the SDM pot. But China, India et al disagree strongly. They want to cash in on those old credits.
Ditching the Polar Bear Icon
The Guardian 's picture editor explains why the paper is going to be using fewer polar bears and more people in its coverage of the climate emergency. While people love appealing images of polar bears, and the picture of a bear on melting ice became a symbol of global warming, that imagery now appears remote and abstract not a human one, nor something urgent. Therefore, The Guardian is now going to show pictures of humans impacted by climate change, and definitely not people enjoying a sunny holiday weekend, or a fresh fall of snow at home or abroad.
The American Mirror responds to The Guardian story noting that there 's another good reason for climate change crusaders to shift away from pictures of polar bears: bear populations are booming, which undercuts the narrative that the changing climate is ruining the planet.
Climate Crisis: 11,000 Scientists Warn of Untold Suffering
On November 5 a letter signed by 11,000 scientists and published in BioScience warned that the world 's people face untold suffering due to the climate crisis unless there are major transformations to global society. The scientists say: The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. Among the remedies proposed: carbon taxes, stabilizing global population, ending forest destruction, eating less meat, and shifting economic goals away from GDP growth.
As Joanne Nova points out, in 2017 a similar declaration attracted the signatures of 15,000 scientists. Also, ten years ago, 31,487 American scientists signed the Global Warming Petition Project warning that there is no convincing scientific evidence that man-made CO2 will cause catastrophic heating, She notes that one of the signatories to the 2019 declaration was a Professor Mickey Mouse, but none of the top 10 climate scientists bothered to sign it. The American Thinker did a keyword search of the list of signatories to the BioScience letter and found that only 2% were individuals with professions that can be construed as bona fide meteorologists, climatologists, or atmospheric scientists.
Global CO2 Emissions Rising Again and Won 't Peak Before 2040
The International Energy Agency 's annual report on energy (World Energy Outlook), released on November 13, paints a grim outlook for efforts to rein in climate change and mark a setback for the increasingly vocal environmental movement. The WEO said emissions levels would have to start falling almost immediately to bring the world into line with ambitions in the Paris Agreement to limit temperature increases to well below 2 °C since the industrial revolution. Strong economic growth, surging demand for electricity and slower efficiency gains all contributed to a 1.9% increase in CO2 emissions from energy in 2018. This puts the world on track for further increases through 2040.
Trump Formally Pulls Out of the Paris Agreement
On November 4 President Trump began the year-long process of withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement, which will occur on November 4, 2020, one day after the US elections.
Also on November 4, the non-profit group Government Accountability and Oversight filed a lawsuit against the US State Department claiming that the Obama administration unlawfully entered into the Agreement. GAO uncovered an administration memo arguing that the US could sign the Agreement without Senate approval because it does not set legally-binding targets and timetables.
Texas Town Went 100% Renewable and Prices Jumped 22%
The city of Georgetown TX with a population of 75,000, gained global attention thanks to former Vice President Al Gore and others, with its claim to have 100% renewable power bought through fixed-price contracts. In 2018, the city bought enough power from wind and solar projects to account for all of the community's consumption. As a result, the bill for an average 1000 kWh/month customer jumped 22% in 2019, compared to 2018.
African Leaders Say Need for Oil Money Outweighs Climate Concerns
Delegates attending Africa Oil Week at the Cape Town International Convention Centre ignored protests, which included an Extinction Rebellion banner calling delegates climate criminals. Said Gabriel Obiang Lima, energy minister of Equatorial Guinea: Under no circumstances are we going to be apologizing, , adding that they need to exploit those resources to create jobs and boost economic development. The tension keenly felt at oil conferences in Europe was largely absent over the three-day event in Cape Town; there was little focus on climate change.
In Cape Town, African leaders touted the good that oil, gas and even coal can bring on a continent where some 600 million people lack access to electricity. Energy is the catalyst for growth, said Gwede Mantashe, South Africa 's energy minister and national chair of the ruling African National Congress. They even want to tell us to switch off all the coal-generated power stations, he said. Until you tell them, you know we can do that, but you 'll breathe fresh air in the darkness '.
British Academics Demand Career Breaks to Save the Planet from Climate Change
Over 700 British professors and lecturers have signed an open letter to vice-Chancellors and research funding chiefs warning that the very future of life on earth is in question if climate breakdown is not addressed. The letter, published by the Times Higher Education magazine, is signed by academics from the country 's leading institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol universities as well as those from the London School of Economics and Imperial College London.
An article in Climate Discussion Nexus notes that the professors seek to transform the universities into action-oriented institutions. If so, it argues, is it only fair if the taxpaying public asks the professors earning six figure salaries to teach eight months per year to quit their jobs and launch into activism on their own dime.
The Church of Extinction
Extinction Rebellion is building its church inside primary schools, colleges and town centres. This church has God (the Earth itself), the Devil (carbon dioxide), a Priesthood (climate scientists and their models), Saintliness (Greta Thunberg), Heretics (climate deniers), Redemption & Penance (the carbon footprint to measure sin, staying at home and renouncing any pleasures in life.)
Climategate 10 Years After
Judith Curry reflects on the legacy of the Climategate email scandal of November 2009. Her essay covers: Whether the various inquiries exonerated the Climategate scientists (not according to Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre); Whether the scientists learned anything from Climategate (they 've circled the wagons even tighter); Cultural shifts (advocacy by climate scientists is a ticket to professional success, but they are competing for attention with groups like the well-funded Extinction Rebellion and the social justice types); Wither the debate on climate change (in time, economics and common sense will prevail); Personal impact (Climategate was career changing for Dr. Curry.)
Michael Mann: Climate Deniers Are Exploiting the Lifestyle Change Movement
According to veteran climate conspiracy theorist Michael Mann, climate deniers are deflecting attention from large scale societal reform by deceiving people into focusing on climate-friendly lifestyle changes such as people 's diets, travel choices and other personal behavior. Dr. Mann said: This is a deflection campaign and a lot of well-meaning people have been taken in by it, and We should also be aware how the forces of denial are exploiting the lifestyle change movement to get their supporters to argue with each other. It takes pressure off attempts to regulate the fossil fuel industry. This approach is a softer form of denial and in many ways, it is more pernicious.
2019-10-29
Youth Lawsuit Against Canadian Government
On October 25 a group of 15 children and teens, ranging in age from 10 to 19, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over climate change, claiming that Ottawa has violated their fundamental rights by contributing to warming the planet, and demanding a national plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The statement of claim filed in a federal court in Vancouver alleges that, "despite knowing for decades" that CO2 emissions "cause climate change and disproportionately harm children," the government continued to allow emissions to increase at a level "incompatible with a stable climate capable of sustaining human life and liberties (i.e., a Stable Climate System).
The lawsuit was filed ahead of a climate strike in Vancouver, which was attended by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who stood quietly alongside the plaintiffs as they made their speeches.
In the statement of claim (para 222 e & f) the plaintiffs seek orders from the court requiring the federal government to prepare an accurate accounting of Canada 's greenhouse gas emissions and develop and implement an enforceable climate recovery plan that is consistent with Canada 's fair share of the global carbon budget plan to achieve GHG emissions reductions compatible with the maintenance of a Stable Climate System. In para 222g the plaintiffs ask the court to retain jurisdiction over the action until the government has fully complied and the court is satisfied that it will continue to do so. (This raises some interesting questions: A court can order the government (i.e., the executive) to develop a plan, but can it compel Parliament to enact legislation needed to implement the plan? Even if Parliament does comply, what happens if the electorate votes in a new Parliament that repeals the legislation?)
The Excommunication of Susan Crockford
Dr. Susan Crockford has been stripped of her Adjunct Professor status at the University of Victoria. Dr. Crockford is author of the popular blog polarbearscience.com as well as five books about these polar bears. She believes that she lost her position for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about the bears. Dr. Crockford describes her expulsion as an academic hanging without a trial, conducted behind closed doors. After being renewed unanimously in 2016 for a three-year term, her adjunct status was not renewed the next time around.
Quebec 's Carbon Market Threatened by Trump Administration Lawsuit
The Trump Administration filed a lawsuit on October 23 taking aim at California 's 2013 cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec, saying that the state had no right to conduct foreign policy, which is reserved for the federal government. Under the agreement, known as the Western Climate Initiative, Quebec and California companies to buy and sell emission credits on each other's carbon markets. Because of its participation in the WCI Quebec is exempted from the Canadian federal carbon tax.
If the WCI disappears, Quebec Premier Fran §ois Legault said the province would push ahead with its own carbon market.
Extinction Rebellion: All I see is white faces
Athian Akec a member for the UK Youth Parliament, a campaigner on climate change and a black inner-city teenager, wonders why all he sees are white faces in the Extinction Rebellion (XR) marches. His answer is that the tactics of XR (e.g., deliberately getting arrested by the police) are designed by and for middle-class, white Britain. Without the involvement of black voices Mr. Akec fears that the climate crisis movement may slip into a vehicle for climate colonialismï¼exploiting the resources of the global south as western economies are decarbonized.
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/19/extinction-rebellion-white-faces-diversity>
Extinction Rebellion Climate Celebrities Admit their Hypocrisyï¼But Blame Everyone Else
A group of celebrities supporting the Extinction Rebellion protests has responded to repeated accusations of climate hypocrisy (over luxury holiday flights) by blaming the system for their excesses. The group 's letter states: We live high carbon lives and the industries that we are part of have huge carbon footprints. Like you and everyone else we are stuck in this fossil-fuel economy and without systemic change, our lifestyles will keep on causing climate and ecological harm The stories that you write calling us climate hypocrites will not silence us.
Chile Explodes: Expensive Climate Policies Spark Mass Riots
Climate activists and the United Nations are suffering a major black eye as protests and riots resulting from high energy prices have erupted in Santiago, Chile, the site of the UN 's annual climate-change summit in December. The country earned praise from climate activists for recently imposing a CO2 tax on conventional energy sources and switching the Santiago Metro system to renewable power. On October 25 protestors took to the streets throughout Santiago in response to Metro fare hikes. The protests soon spread to other cities and led to rioting and at least five reported deaths.
The Chilean government and the legacy media blamed the fare hikes on rising oil prices. However, global oil prices are 25% lower than a year ago and 37% lower than five years ago, and gasoline prices in Chile reflect the lower cost of oil. Santiago Metro fares are rising, despite falling oil and gasoline prices, because government officials in 2018 traded out most of the Metro 's energy sources from conventional power to wind and solar power. The Chilean government also hit the portion of conventional power that remains with new CO2 taxes.
The Washington Post frets that Chile 's violence has a worrisome message for the world. Raising public transport fares and energy bills in order to reduce CO2 emissions incites rebellion like nothing elseï¼not just in Chile, but also in France, Mexico and Brazil.
Loophole on Counting Emissions Threatens Paris Climate Agreement
Four years after the signing of the Paris climate accord, a major hitch remains: Countries have not been able to reach an agreement on an accounting trick that would allow them to count emissions reductions twice. For example, a wind farm in India could reduce CO2 emissions by 1 tonne/year, and starting in 2020 a country such as Germany could buy this as an offset and count it under its reduction goals, while India could not. However, a group of countries led by Brazil argue that it should be counted for both, which would lead to overall global emissions greater than the sum of the amounts reported by each participating entity.
The need to avoid double counting is spelled out in the accord, but countries failed to finalize the rule book on the subject last year in Poland, and the issue will come up for debate once more at the Santiago UN conference in December. There is a similar problem for international aviation as airlines are exempt from the Paris accord. The International Civil Aviation Organization brokered an agreement to offset emissions above 2020 levels and airlines will have to buy CO2 credits from countries that are selling them, which increases the need to avoid double counting.
<https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/10/11/world/science-health-world/loophole-emissions-threatens-paris-climate-agreement/#.XbSN9S-ZPOR>>
27 Nations Pledge $9.8 Billion to Green Climate Fund
At a meeting in Paris on October 24-25 for the First Replenishment of the Green Climate Fund, 27 nations pledged a combined $US9.8 billion. Notable absences from the list of donors were the US and Australia. The UK, France, Germany, Japan and Sweden were praised for being the world 's top contributors to the fund. Canada 's pledge was $C300 million.
Russian Business Push-back Against Climate-change Plan
The Russian government has drastically watered down its new package of climate change legislation after push-back from the country 's leading businesses. Plans for quotas on carbon emissions at Russia 's largest companies, a new national carbon trading system and penalties for the biggest polluters have now been scrapped. Instead, Russia will only go ahead with proposals to measure and collect data on emissions as part of a five-year green audit.
The campaign against a stricter package of measures was led by the influential Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs one of the main lobbying groups for Russia 's largest businesses. The new laws were set to be introduced as part of Russia 's ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement.
<https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/17/russia-rejects-climate-change-plan-after-business-uproar-a67780>
Climate Scientists Go After Binge Watching
A study by Maxime Efoui-Hess of the Paris-based nonprofit the Shift Project found that 34% of web traffic goes to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. He estimates that watching a half-hour show via an on-demand video app emits 1.6 kg of CO2 into the environment the equivalent of driving almost 4 miles. According to a Nature study, data centres worldwide contribute to 0.3% of all CO2 emissions. According to a Greenpeace activist consumers ought to wield their wallets to encourage change, stating Exercising collective responsibility, with individuals demanding internet giants rapidly transition their data centres to renewable energy, has been the biggest driver thus far,
<https://nypost.com/2019/10/28/why-climate-change-activists-are-coming-for-your-binge-watch/>
Interview with Matt Ridley
In a level-headed discussion, not denying climate change but putting it into perspective, Julia Hartley-Brewer, an English broadcaster and newspaper columnist, interviews science and climate-change writer Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimistï¼How Prosperity Evolves. Topics covered include the recent phenomena of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, IPCC predictions and actual temperature change, the 2030 deadline to avoid 1.5 °C of warming, the fear of runaway global warming, obsession with recycling rather than incinerating plastic, the unprecedented improvement in human welfare over the past 50 years, climate policies killing more people than climate change itself, weaponizing a 16-year old and pushing for a more open debate on the issue.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAyY4luKr3w&feature=youtu.be>
2019-10-08
McKenna Pledges Net Zero Emissions by 2050
Federal Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna, promised that the Liberals, if re-elected, will make Canada a net-zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050. She acknowledged there isn 't a road-map of how to achieve this but is counting on future technology advances. She also promised the Liberals would build the goal of eliminating net emissions into legislation with the requirement of meeting targets every five years.
Ms. McKenna mostly blamed Canada 's constant failure to meet all climate-change targets since the Rio de Janeiro commitment in1992 on Conservative federal and provincial opponents.
Declaration to the UN: There Is No Climate Emergency
A group of 500 prominent scientists and professionals, led by the CLINTEL co-founder Guus Berkhout, has sent a registered letter to the Secretary-General of the UN, Ant ³nio Guterres. Professor Guus Berkhout of The Netherlands, who organized the Declaration, said: So popular is the Declaration with scientists and researchers worldwide that signatories are flooding in not only from within Europe but also from other countries such as the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The group 's letter warns the U.N. that the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose .
EU Struggling with Long-term Climate Objectives
Intense discussions at a meeting of EU environment ministers ended with no agreement on the bloc 's long-term climate goals. A group of states led by France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK wanted the EU to reinforce its commitment on emissions reductions in time for the next International Climate Conference in Santiago, Chile in December. The EU is currently committed to a 40% reduction below 1990 levels by 2030, but some states are pushing for as much as 55%, together with carbon-neutrality by 2050. However, a group of three countries (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic) refused to give the unanimous consent needed.
<https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/eu-affairs/71791/eu-struggling-with-long-term-climate-objectives/>
Green Dreams Splutter: Europe 's East-West Divide
In the recent elections for the EU Parliament, Green parties won seats in most Western European countries and three former Soviet bloc countries (Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania). However, they were shut out in all the others (Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria), together with Italy and Greece. Analysts say the EU 's younger member states have failed to catch Europe 's so-called Green wave because voters there care more about bread-and-butter concerns like jobs, healthcare and social security than global issues such as climate change.
Submit Your Confession to NBC News
NBC News is inviting those feeling guilty about their lifestyle and its effect on the climate to confess online. As its website puts it: Even those who care deeply about the planet's future can slip up now and then. Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change? Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week? Share your anonymous confession with NBC News.
You select one of six categories where you fall short in preventing climate change (plastics, meat, energy, transportation, paper or food waste), write you confession and submit. You can also read all the confessions, not all of which go along with NBC News ' intentions.
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/specials/climate-confessions-share-solutions-climate-change-n1054791>
Global Decarbonization Efforts Stall
Euroactiv reports that global decarbonization efforts must increase seven-fold if the world is to stand a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, according to a new PwC report which found decarbonization has slowed to its lowest level since 2011. The report, The Low Carbon Index Economy 2019, states that the fall in global carbon intensity in 2018 was only 1.6%/year, whereas it should be 11.3%/year to meet the 1.5 °C goal. According to the director of PwC: It 's worrying that progress on climate seems to have stalled. There 's a huge gap between the rhetoric of the climate emergency ' and the reality of an inadequate global response.
Net-Zero CO2 Emissions by 2050 Requires a New Nuclear Plant Every Day
Roger Pielke Jr. notes that, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2018 the world consumed 11,743 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in the form of natural gas, oil and coal, and the expected number for 2019 is 12,000 Mtoe. The combustion of these fuels released 33.7 billion tonnes of CO2. For these emissions to reach net zero by 2050 (about 11,000 days from now), we would have to need to deploy >1 Mtoe of CO2-free energy every day.
One Mtoe equals 11,630,000 MWh of electricity, which when divided by 8,760 hours/year, equals about 1,300 MW, approximately the capacity of a typical nuclear power station operating at 100% load factor. If wind turbines (operating at a typical 35% load factor) were substituted instead, then 1,500 x 2.5 MW turbines would have to be installed daily. These figures do not account for the fact that the International Energy Association estimates that global energy consumption will increase by 1.25%/year to 2040. This would add another 0.5 Mtoe/day by 2050.
Leaders Rebuke Greta Thunberg after She Sues France and Germany
After an uncompromising speech at the UN on September 23 where she told world politicians that they had stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, Ms. Thunberg and 15 other child protesters filed a formal complaint to the UN that nations including Brazil, Germany, Turkey and France had violated international children 's rights by failing to take sufficiently bold measures to reduce carbon emissions. The leaders of France and Germany, who had previously sided with Ms. Thunberg, distanced themselves from her.
Mr. Macron said: All the movements among our youth, or the less young, are useful. But now they must concentrate on the people who are further away, those who are trying to block [sustainable initiatives]. These radical positions will naturally antagonize our societies. Ms. Merkel was more subtle: [Ms. Thunberg] did not adequately address the way technology and innovation, especially in the energy sector but also in energy conservation, raise possibilities for reaching our goals.
The Electrical Industry 's Dirty Secret
Cheap and non-flammable, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) is a colourless, odourless, synthetic gas. It is effective insulating material for medium and high-voltage electrical installations. It also has 23,500 times the global warming potential claimed for CO2. According to the BBC, 1 kg of SF6 warms the earth to the same extent as 24 people flying between London and New York return.
The reason why SF6 is such a concern to the BBC is that the drive to combat climate change has resulted in more connections to the electricity grid, with a rise in the number of switches and circuit breakers, which use SF6 to quench arcs and stop short circuits. The gas gets into the atmosphere from leaks, and its installed base is forecast to grow by 75% come 2030.
<https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49567197>
2019-09-24
Tim Ball Beats Michael Mann 's Lawsuit
For nine years Michael Mann 's lawsuit against Tim Ball has been dragging its way through the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The suit claimed that Dr. Ball 's statement that Dr. Mann belongs in the state pen, not Penn State (over the hockey-stick graph) was libelous. Dr Ball 's legal team pursued the truth defense ' such that the case boiled down to whether Dr. Ball 's words accurately portrayed Dr. Mann i.e., that he knowingly and criminally misrepresented his claims by using statistical fakery.
On August 23 the Court dismissed the lawsuit and awarded full legal costs to Dr. Ball. Dr. Mann lost because he abused the discovery process by refusing to honour concessions he made in 2018 to show the math for his working out the hockey-stick graph.
$2 Million Prize to Tzeporah Berman
The Climate Breakthrough Project announced a $2 million award to Vancouver-based Tzeporah Berman to develop a strategic approach to limiting new oil and gas development globally to align with the UN Paris Agreement goals of a safe climate. The announcement also notes: Her goal is to engineer a large reduction in new oil and gas development that will ensure huge amounts of carbon stay uncombusted and out of the atmosphere.
Writing in the Calgary Herald, columnist Licia Corbella says When US organizations like Climate Breakthrough use the word globally, ' they really mean shut down the Alberta oilsands and never utter the word Texas, let alone glance in that state 's direction. '
The Physical Impossibility of Renewable Energy Meeting the Paris Accord Goals
The Green New Deal and a "new energy economy" are not physically possible despite what America's politicians believe and what is promoted in the media. For example, to meet the Paris accord benchmarks, the solar power required by 2050 would result in the disposal of solar panels equivalent to over double the tonnage of the world 's current plastic waste. Each wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel, glass, and other metals notably rare earth minerals.
Furthermore, mining and manufacturing require the consumption of fossil fuels. To supply half the world 's electricity using wind turbines would require nearly two billion tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel and two billion barrels of oil to make the blades. And, most (over 90%) of the world 's solar panels are built in Asia with electric power heavily fuelled by coal.
Renewable energy (wind and solar power) do not have the combination of low-cost, high-energy-density, stability, safety, and portability of fossil fuels. For example, if one spends $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines or solar panels, over 30 years of operation, each of them would produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours, while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate more than 300 million kilowatt-hours š over six times as much energy.
About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent in one pound of fossil fuels. For every one pound of batteries produced, 50 to 100 pounds of lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, and cobalt are mined and processed. A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds, and manufacturing it requires mining and processing over 500,000 pounds of raw materials. Using gasoline, one can extract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same number of vehicle-miles over the battery 's seven-year life.
<https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-physical-impossibility-of-renewable-energy-meeting-the-paris-accord-goa>
How to Lose the Climate-change War: Tell Britons They Can No Longer Own a Car
The UK House of Commons ' Science and Technology Select Committee endorsed a report from an Oxford-based group of academics, telling the government that technology alone cannot solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from transport. In its report, the committee said: In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonization. Even electric vehicles produce pollution through their tires and brakes. The government said it would consider the committee's findings.
New International Survey on Attitudes to Climate Change
YouGov surveyed 30,000 people in 28 countries and regions about their attitudes regarding climate change. Questions focused on whether climate change is happening, and whether humans are mainly/partially/not responsible; impact on their lives; whether it will cause serious economic damage; whether it 's too late to avoid the worst effects; whether they or their governments should be doing more. Surprisingly, people in Western countries, notably Scandinavian ones, are much less concerned than those in Asia and the Middle East.
Just 51% of Britons think that humans are the main cause of climate change, which prompted to the Global Warming Policy Foundation 's Benny Peiser to remark: The public can tell when they are on the receiving end of a hard sell. The more climate alarmists scream about emergencies, the more the mainstream media shut down any dissent, the less convinced the man in street will be.
Climate Hysteria: Rising Number of Children Treated for Eco-Anxiety
Protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, the recent fires in the Amazon and apocalyptic warnings by the teenage activist Greta Thunberg have prompted a tsunami of young people seeking help. Teachers, doctors and therapists are unable to copy. As a result experts have warned parents against terrifying their children with talk of climate catastrophe.
<https://www.thegwpf.com/crazy-adults-terrify-kids-with-their-climate-hysteria-rising-numbers-are-treated-for-eco-anxiety/>
The Apocalyptic Rhetoric over the Amazon Fires
The temptation to moralize on social media has spread the alarm over the current Amazon wildfires. A Portuguese expert on forests shared a 2013 picture taken in southern Brazil, nowhere near the Amazon. French President Emmanuel Macron posted a 20 year-old photo, and another bioscientist topped them both with picture from 30 years ago. According to NASA, wildfires and deforestation world wide are declining. A Nature study found that tree cover is up 7.1% compared toe 1982.
Roy Spencer 's blog posts a plot of declining deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from 1988 to July 2019. He notes that the year 's dry season (June-August) has been exceptionally dry, due to sea surface temperature patterns in both the Pacific and Atlantic, especially related to El Ni ±o and La Ni ±a activity. He blames the media for controlling the narrative and hypocritically placing the blame on a particular right-wing president
Europeans Must Face Their Own Role in the Amazon Destruction
Images of the Amazon forests burning caused global alarm, particularly in Europe, where France and Ireland are threatening to suspend ratifying a EU free trade agreement with Mercosur countries.. While the Brazilian government 's weakening of environmental laws is getting the most blame, European consumption of beef and soy are also responsible. Nineteen percent of all EU-consumed soy comes from Brazil, and 10% of all Brazilian beef is destined for the EU. This has resulted in increase pressure to clear Amazon forests for pasture.
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/08/30/europeans-must-face-role-destruction-amazon/>
WMO Secretary-General Warns against Climate Doomsters and Extremists
The Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the alarmist narrative on climate change has gone off the rails and criticized the news media for provoking unjustified anxiety. Specifically, Petteri Taalas speaking to Finland 's financial newspaper Talousel ¤m ¤ ( The Journal ) said: While climate skepticism has become less of an issue, now we are being challenged from the other side. Climate experts have been attacked by these people and they claim that we should be much more radical. They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats.
2019-08-27
How Canada Will Benefit from Climate Change
Former Minister of Natural Resources and Finance, Joe Oliver, points to a Moody Analytics study showing that Canada will benefit from climate change. He notes that Canada is a very large, cold country, with 90% of its population huddled within 100 miles of its southern border and an enormous agricultural potential if the land warms up. Moody 's study stated: when all the changes to things like tourism demand, crop yields and the growing season are factored in, there 's a slight net positive. With a 1 °C temperature rise the Canadian economy would be unaffected in 2048. A rise of 2.4 °C would increase GDP by 0.1% and 4 °C would boost it by 0.3%.
The impact on farming, however, would be dramatic. In the three Prairie provinces alone, an area more than twice the size of France, arable land could increase between 26% and 40% by 2040, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Is the Left Beginning to Abandon Renewable Energy?
Michael Moore has completed a new documentary, Planet of the Humans, that questions whether alternative energy is all that it 's cracked up to be. The film is a low-budget examination of what the filmmakers say are the false promises of the environmental movement and why we're still "addicted" to fossil fuels. It takes on electric cars, solar panels, windmills, biomass, biofuel, leading environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club, and even figures from Al Gore and Van Jones, who served as Barack Obama's special adviser for green jobs, to 350.org leader Bill McKibben, "It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side," the film 's director Jeff Gibbs said in a phone interview. "It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren't real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us ... but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money ... It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit center."
UN Chief s Climate Asks Fall Flat on BRICS Countries
As environment ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were meeting in Brazil, they gave only token acknowledgement of the UN Secretary-General 's call to ramp up ambition ahead of his climate action summit in September. Last month the S-G wrote to every head of state asking them to come to the summit ready to announce how they will strengthen their 2030 target and plan for carbon neutrality by 2050. He also asked them to tax CO2, stop subsidizing fossil fuels and stop building coal-fired power plants.
Last month the BRICS foreign ministers put out a statement saying that they looked forward to positive outcomes at the climate action summit, while reaffirming their commitments to the Paris Agreement including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities ï¼that is, the industrialized world should carry the burden.
Greta 's Plastic Boat Trip Will Require Transatlantic Flights
Greta Thunberg 's principled non-flying trip across the Atlantic in a carbon fibre and non recyclable plastic boat is going to require at least four crew members to fly across the Atlantic. The reason is that two crew members have to fly to the US east coast for the return trip, while the two crew for the voyage to New York will return to Europe, via air.
However, according to a Conservative Woman article, it 's worse. There will be three transatlantic flights for the current westbound crew to return from New York, plus five more for its replacement eastbound crew to get to New York. ConWom suggests that Greta avoid the eco-boondoggle by flying to New York with her father or, better still, addressing the UN via Skype.
Post-Modern Witch Hunt: Nature Publishes Blacklist Of Critical Scientists & Writers
Susan Crockford, Judith Curry and Joanne Nova were among the 386 people blacklisted by the science journal Nature Communications in a recently-published paper by three authors from University of California Merced. Their paper juxtaposes 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists by tracking their digital footprints across ˆ¼200,000 research publications and ˆ¼100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change. It found that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. As the the press release issued by UC Merced makes clear: It 's time to stop giving these people visibility, which can be easily spun into false authority.
According to Dr. Curry, "This ranks as the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal, and she lists the major methodological problems and dubious assumptions. She attributes her prominent inclusion on the list of contrarians to DeSmog 's hit piece on her.
Why Ireland is Nowhere Near Meeting Its Climate-change Goals
Though Ireland has been lagging in its efforts to meet its climate-change goals and its prime minister admits that he is not proud of the country 's record, he still wants his country to become a global leader on climate action. Carbon Brief examines the key factors driving Irish emissions. The big culprit is agriculture, particularly the booming dairy and beef industry, that accounts for one-third. With a dispersed population, highly reliant on private transport to connect its network of small towns and villages, emissions from transport are high. Individual oil-fired boilers are used for home heating.
In 2017 renewables made up 30% of Ireland 's electricity generation, but they still lag behind gas. The target is to have 70% renewable electricity by 2030. Nevertheless the Irish Environmental Protection Agency projects that, with existing policies, the country will see emissions increase 1% by 2020 and 6% by 2030. The EPA estimates that Ireland will exceed its carbon budget over the 2021-2030 period by 52-67 millions of tonnes of CO2 equivalent Without additional measures Ireland could face fines from the EU of up to ‚ 600 million per year after 2020. With rising costs of carbon credits, the country could face fines totalling ‚ 7 billion by 2030.
EU Wood Burning Under Fire
A group of scholars, advocacy organizations and European and US landowners filed a lawsuit with Europe 's General Court in March charging that the EU policy of burning wood pellets will increase greenhouse gas emissions. The wood-pellet business is based on the assumption that it is zero-emission, but researchers found that burning wood produces more CO2 per unit of electricity than coal, and the payback time for forests to offset the emissions released is from 44 to 104 years.
The defendants, the European Parliament and the European Council, say the plaintiffs don 't have standing in the suit because they aren 't directly impacted.
An Expensive Taste of the Zero-Carbon Future
Edinburgh University economics professor Gordon Hughes reports on the implications of energy costs of the flight from fossil fuels to renewables in the UK. A number of wind farms have contracted to supply power at prices too low to cover their costs, taking into account both costs of the investments and realistic estimates of performance. Prof. Hughes predicts that they will threaten to go bust, forcing the government to raise carbon taxes to bail them out. He compares this to a high-stakes game of poker, with the governmentsï¼to save faceï¼being forced to bail out the wind operators.
2019-08-08
Inside Quebec 's Green Climate Fund
Quebec's green fund was created in 2006 as a way of collecting billions in revenuesï¼in large part from the province's version of a carbon taxï¼and redistributing the money towards initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quebec collects hundreds of millions of dollars every year from a carbon credit cap-and-trade system, a total of $5.5 billion so far. When Ljiljana Latkovic was named to the council governing Quebec's multibillion-dollar green fund in 2017, she thought she was going to use her science background to help choose projects aimed at fighting climate change. Instead, she and the eight other council members were asked to sign off on proposals whose financing had already been approved by various government departments.
For many projects they were approving, councillors had no idea how the projects were actually going to reduce emissions. My opinion is that the (environment) ministry didn't care about the reductions, Ms. Latkovic said. The province 's new environment minister agrees, stating that, instead of promoting projects with strict greenhouse gas emission targets, the fund became a buffet for the pet projects of various ministers.
We Should Prepare for Extreme Weather, but Tying It to Climate Change is a Mistake
Joe Oliver, a former Canadian minister of finance and of natural resources, says that harm caused by extreme weather merits a national action plan, whatever the cause, or whether or not it is increasing in severity or frequency. He points to Judith Curry 's conclusion that recent international and national climate assessment reports have reported low confidence in any link between manmade climate change and observations of wildfires, hurricanes, floods and droughts. Dr. Curry had noted that the IPCC itself stated: there is not yet evidence of changes in the global frequency or intensity of hurricanes, droughts, floods or wildfires. Dr. Curry also makes clear, our vulnerability to extreme weather has increased with population growth, the movement of people, goods and infrastructure to areas susceptible to extreme weather, questionable land-use practices and continuing ecosystem degradation.
Rather than preparing for weather disasters, the Canadian government is imposing a controversial CO2 tax that, because of the relative inelasticity of demand, is too low to change consumer behaviour, let alone have any measurable effect on the climate.
Climate Change Head Scratchers
On June 17 Canada 's House of Commons passed a motion declaring a National Climate Emergency, However, climate change is a global issue, not a national one. In this article former Encana Corp. CEO Gwyn Morgan discusses this and seven other paradoxes and hypocrisy surrounding the climate issue.
Cost of the Green New Deal: $70k per Household in the First Year
According to a study of five model statesï¼Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Pennsylvaniaï¼ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's Green New Deal would cost more than $70,000 per household for higher costs for energy, housing, transportation and shipping. The study was co-authored by Power the Future and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to the CEI president: The Green New Deal is a radical blueprint to de-carbonize the American economy by refashioning how we grow food, move people and goods, source and distribute electricity, and build the structures where we live, work, and play. Our analysis shows that, if implemented, the Green New Deal would cost for American households at least tens of thousands of dollars annually on a permanent basis.
According to the National Interest, the Green New Deal prompted the AFL-CIO labour union federation to send a letter (see Twitter link) to the bill 's lead sponsors stating: The Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy. It is not rooted in an engineering-based approach and makes promises that are not achievable or realistic We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members ' jobs and their families ' standard of living go unanswered.
Pacific Islands Criticize Australia 's Climate Accounting Dodge
Pacific island nations have called out Australia for using Kyoto-era carbon credits to meet its climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. In 2015 Australia pledged to cut emissions to 26% below 2005 levels by 2030 and is not on track to meet its Paris target. Now, it is planning to use credits earned for overachieving its 1997 Kyoto pledge. Australia is currently the only country explicitly planning to use such credits, though Russia and Ukraine have left the door open to doing the same.
Communicating Better to the Public: More Propaganda
An effort coordinated by the Covering Climate Now project, which was co-founded by the magazine The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review, in partnership with The Guardian has resulted in over 60 media outlets committing to a week of focused climate-change coverage between September 16 and 23 (the latter being the date of the UN Secretary-General 's Climate Action Summit in New York). The initiative aims to increase the prominence and amount of the outlets' climate coverage and "to make it clear to their audiences that climate change is not just one more story but the overriding story of our time.
Greta Thunberg to Sail to New York Climate Summit in Racing Yacht
Greta Thunberg will sail across the Atlantic during the middle of hurricane season next month, to take a four-month climate tour of the Americas. Her first stop will be in New York to attend the climate action summit convened by UN chief Ant ³nio Guterres on 23 September. Thereafter, she is expected to tour the US, Canada and Mexico before traveling to the UN climate talks in Santiago, Chile, which start on 2 December taking a sabbatical year from school to dedicate herself to activism. Ms. Thunberg will go by sea on a 60-foot sailboat (constructed from carbon fibre composites derived from petroleum and propane) and fitted with solar panels and underwater turbines that generate electricity. The aim is a zero carbon voyage.
It has not been revealed how Ms. Thunberg will travel home to Sweden after ending her Americas tour in Chile.
114 Private Jets Flying to Google Summer Camp
The billionaire creators of Google invited who 's who of A-list names including former President Barack Obama, Prince Harry, Leonardo DiCaprio and Katy Perry to the Sicilian seaside for a mega-party they 've dubbed Google Camp. The three-day event focused on fighting climate change though it 's unknown how much time the attendees spent discussing their own effect on the environment, such as the scores of private jets they arrived in and the mega yachts many have been staying on. According to Italian press reports, the attendees were expected to show up in 114 private jets,
The Real Data on Energy Usage
The mainstream media and progressive politicians like to give a strong impression that the world is well on its way to an energy transition from the dirty fossil fuels of the past, and toward a low carbon and renewable energy of the future. However, the comprehensive Statistical Review of World Energy by BP gives a different picture. A chart of energy consumption by fuel type for 1992-2018 shows world consumption of fossil fuels of all types continues to increase at rapid rates, notably between 2017 and 2018. Two other graphs illustrate the utter futility of the US and Europe trying to save the planet by reducing coal consumption.
Marcel Crok 's Climate Adventures
In 2004 Dutch science journalist Marcel Crok researched and wrote an article on the Hockey Stick graph, pointing out that the algorithm used to produce it gave the same shape no matter what data was input. Mr. Crok 's article won an award, but journalistic colleagues dismissed him as a climate skeptic, and a Dutch government agency declared the article to be nonsense.
Mr. Crok quit his job to focus on the topic full time, and last December he spoke at a TEDx event that caused consternation at the TED head office. A link to the 21-minute video appears in the GWPF story below. In the video Mr. Crok describes his experience with the Hockey Stick graph and then discusses 20th century warming and the use of models and their shortcomings. He also coves trends in climate extremes, sea-level rise and greening of the earth due to CO2. Mr. Crok concludes by urging his audience to trust the observational evidence of the past and present, rather than the virtual future predicted by over-sensitive climate models.
If You Want Renewable Energy, Get Ready to Dig
Renewable energy is a misnomer. Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials, which wear out. Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass not to mention other metals. Global silver and indium mining will jump 250% and 1,200% respectively over the next couple of decades to provide the materials necessary to build the number of solar panels, World demand for rare-earth elements will rise 300% to 1,000% by 2050 to meet the Paris green goals. Building enough wind turbines to supply half the world 's electricity would require nearly two billion tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades.
If electric vehicles replace conventional cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, will rise more than 20-fold. A battery for an electric car weighs 1,000 pounds and requires digging, moving and processing 500,000 pounds of raw materials
2019-07-22
Cities Facing Climate Change: To Sue or Not to Sue?
As cities around the worldï¼particularly coastal ones ï¼ take a hard look at the costs of climate change, Vancouver 's council is debating asking fossil fuel companies to pay a share. The motion would direct Vancouver 's mayor to write a letter to the world 's largest fossil fuel companiesï¼ those with the highest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions ï¼asking them to be accountable for their share of climate emergency costs. West Coast Environmental Law, the organizer of the letter-writing campaign, has a list of 20 of those fossil fuel companies, none of which are based in Canada.
However, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps asks: Why spend time suing fossil fuel companies? If the tobacco lawsuits are any indication, it 's going to take 20 years just to officially get to court I just think small local governments taking on Big Oil is not the most practical way of fighting climate change.
<https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/dan-fumano-to-sue-or-not-to-sue-a-question-for-cities-facing-climate-change>
EU Destroys 700,000 Hectares of Rainforest for Biofuels
In order to save the climate with supposedly green biofuels, the EU has deemed palm oil sustainable. Last year 1.9 million tonnes of palm oil were added to diesel fuel in the EUï¼in addition to millions of tons of equally harmful rapeseed and soybean oils. The plantations needed to satisfy Europes's demand for palm oil cover an area of 700,000 hectares land that until recently was still rainforest and the habitat of 5,000 endangered orangutans. Despite the clear-cutting, the EU has classified palm oil as sustainably produced.
This policy has now blown up in the legislators ' faces, with scientists confirming what environmentalists and development experts have long asserted: biofuels help neither people nor the environment and they are most certainly not climate-neutral, as even studies commissioned by the EU show. Biodiesel from palm and soybean oil, but also from European-grown rapeseed, has a larger carbon footprint than diesel from fossil sources.
<https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/petitions/908/eu-destroys-700000-hectares-of-rainforest-for-biofuels#more>
Leaked IPCC Report Warns of Clash between Bioenergy and Food
The IPCC is preparing a special report titled: Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems. The report is intended to be coherent with, and complementary to, other IPCC reports, such as the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, that was issued last October. A draft of the new report 's Summary of Policymakers got leaked, and one of its main conclusions is that blanketing the globe with monocultures of forests and bioenergy crops will be no panacea to fix the climate crisis. In fact, hunger is likely to be worsened by competing food production with space for biofuels.
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/17/leaked-un-science-report-warns-clash-bioenergy-food/>
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/11fJPbJdtRLElzTKO6vjP6pCJWT0MZaZK/view>
Growing Frustration over the UN 's Consensus Model
During technical climate talks concluded in Bonn on June 27, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states blocked the IPCC 's report on the effects of 1.5 °C vs. 2 °C of warming from being included in formal UN climate negotiations. One European diplomat described a toxic political atmosphere during the Bonn talks. We need to be smart about how we use the UN space for political gains to drive ambition and not that [a] lack of consensus halts the whole system .
Former head of UN Climate Change between 2006 and 2010, Yvo de Boer vented his outrage on Twitter that a totalitarian, murderous, sexist regime can exploit consensus rules to block the consideration of science. He added: Does everyone need to be in consensus on everything or can you split topics more logically into smaller groups?
Therefore, UN chief Ant ³nio Guterres is looking elsewhere for energy and action. He called on young people to lead a green revolution, at a preparatory meeting in Abu Dhabi for his September climate summit.
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/05/row-1-5c-science-raises-frustration-un-consensus-model/>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/06/27/un-report-1-5c-blocked-climate-talks-saudi-arabia-disputes-science/>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/05/climate-weekly-no-time-consensus/>
Bidding for the Top EU Job
The German nominee for European Commission president has strengthened her climate ambition to win parliamentary backing from socialists and liberals. Ursula von der Leyen was chosen by the European Council (heads of government of the EU 's member states), but needed confirmation by the European Parliament. Initially Ms. von der Leyen backed a 50% cut in EU emissions by 2030. When that failed to impress, she promised that by 2021, her commission would put together a comprehensive plan to increase the goal to 55% in a responsible way.
The 55% promise was just enough, as Ms. von der Leyen scraped a 383-327 majority in the parliament on July 16. The Greens, which make up the fourth largest bloc, remain unconvinced by her offer, and want to see what Europe officially puts on the table when the Paris Agreement starts in December 2020.
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/15/von-der-leyen-offers-55-co2-cuts-2030-bid-eu-top-job/>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/16/climate-plays-decisive-role-ursula-von-der-leyen-annointed-eu-chief/>
<https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-strategy-2050/news/von-der-leyen-pressed-to-deliver-on-climate-after-winning-eu-vote/>
No Greta Effect as Lufthansa Reports Rise in Passengers
German airline Lufthansa expects passenger numbers to rise about four per cent this year, its chief executive said yesterday, playing down talk that public support for teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg might be curbing air travel. At this time, we don 't see restraint in fact, the opposite, Carsten Spohr told the NZZ Am Sonntag newspaper. In comparison to last year, already a record year, we 're expecting passenger growth of about four per cent, [Lufthansa unit] Swiss International Air Lines is also showing growth. The discussion of climate change is not leading to restraint with bookings. People want to fly.
<https://www.thegwpf.com/lufthansa-sees-no-greta-effect-as-passenger-numbers-show-rise/>
Are Electric Cars Really Green?
According to a study directed by Christoph Buchal of the University of Cologne, published by the Ifo Institute in Munich last week, electric vehicles have "significantly higher CO2 emissions than diesel cars." That is due to the significant amount of energy used in the mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, and manganese, which are critical raw materials for the production of electric car batteries.
A battery pack for a Tesla Model 3 emits 11 to 15 tonnes of CO2. Each battery pack has a lifespan of approximately ten years and total mileage of 94,000, would mean 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre (116 to 156 grams of CO2 per mile), Dr. Buchal said. Add to this the CO2 emissions of the electricity from power plants that power such vehicles, and the actual Tesla emissions could be between 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre (249 and 289 grams of CO2 per mile). German researchers criticized the fact that EU legislation classifies electric cars as zero-emission cars; they call it a deception because electric cars, like the Model 3, with all the factors, included, produce more emissions than diesel vehicles by Mercedes.
<https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/new-study-shocks-electric-cars-considerably-worse-climate-diesel-cars>
<https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/business/technology/55602/electric-vehicles-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones-german-study-shows/>
Educating Kids to Debate Climate Change
Science and public policy analyst Dr. David Wojick has launched an important new project to challenge climate literacy ï¼code for the false belief that humans are causing dangerous climate change. Dr. Wojick 's Climate Change Debate Education Project (CCDE) provides two kinds of educational materials. One is skeptical videos by leading scientist (e.g., William Happer, Patrick Michaels, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen). There are now 193 videos, and the goal is to have 1,000.
The second is what 's called gate breakers, one-page, nontechnical summaries that explain a particular issue in the scientific debate about climate change. There are three gate breakers on the CCDE website, addressing hurricanes, the Little Ice Age and the sun 's role in global warming and climate change. More are on the way.
<https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/08/educating-kids-to-debate-alarming-climate-claims/>
<http://ccdedu.blogspot.com>
CEI Files Complaint against NASA 's Claim of 97% Scientific Consensus
The Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned NASA to remove from its website the claim that 975 of climate scientists agree humans are responsible for global warming. The petition, filed under the Information Quality Act, points out the major flaws in the studies cited by NASA to substantiate its claim. It requests the agency remove the claim from its website and stop circulating it in agency materials. CEI asserts that there are flaws in the 97% claim, including: (a) Incorrectly categorizing scientists who take no-position ; (b) Failing to include relevant sources without explanation; (c) Failing to match the terms used as the basis for a study to the claim actually made by NASA.
<https://www.thegwpf.com/cei-files-formal-complaint-regarding-nasas-claim-of-97-climate-scientist-agreement-on-global-warming/>
Hundreds of Extinction UK Rebellion Activists to Face Court
Following the Extinction Rebellion marches that brought London to a standstill in April, the city 's Metropolitan Police plan to charge more than one thousand climate campaigners with public order offences. As of July 11, 180 of the 1,151 arrested in April had been charged with breaching the Public Order Act and/or obstructing the highway. In order to speed up the process the public prosecution service is considering trying ten people at a time.
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/07/15/hundreds-extinction-rebellion-activists-face-court-summer-prosecutions/>
2019-07-03
Is There an Existential Crisis and Climate Emergency ?
There is widespread belief that unless something is done , the world will go through an existential crisis because of climate change. As a result, several initiatives calling for drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are gaining traction. Gautam Kalghatgi, a professor of mechanical engineering at Oxford, answers this question with facts to conclude that there is no empirical evidence of an existential threat, and the world is a far better place in nearly all countries than in the past. He then answers questions about decarbonizing economies by 2025 or 2030, the impact of local sacrifices on climate change, convincing vulnerable children like Greta Thunberg that they don 't have much of a future, campaigning organizations like Extinction Rebellion. and whether the developing world can move their populations out of poverty through wind and solar (they can 't).
<https://www.thegwpf.com/gautam-kalghatgi-is-there-an-existential-crisis-and-a-climate-emergency-can-the-world-be-carbon-neutral-by-2030/>
Ross McKitrick: Extreme Weather Rhetoric and the Climate Mob
Dr. McKitrick uses quotes from the IPCC 's latest assessment report (AR5) counter current climate emergency rhetoric. Topics of these quotes include: flooding; droughts; precipitation; extreme precipitation, and tornado trends.
He also refers to an op-ed he published on June 7 telling the story of how Roger Pielke Jr. was vilified and bullied by the climate mob for climate research that didn 't support alarmist slogans. When Conservative MP Lisa Raitt tweeted a link to the op-ed she was bullied into deleting her tweet. Dr. McKitrick then wrote a Dear Lisa open letter, hoping that she would notice the pattern: legions of self-appointed fact checkers will ignore the most deranged exaggerations by politicians if they serve the cause of alarmism, but will aggressively pile on any attempts to bring evidence into the discussion.
<https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/ross-mckitrick-apocalyptic-rhetoric-about-extreme-weather-keeps-ramping-up-but-experts-say-theres-no-emergency>
<https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2017/09/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf>
<https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/dear_lisa.pdf>
Theresa May Introduces Net Zero Emissions Target for UK
The UK government introduced legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, despite warnings that meeting the target could cost £1trillion. Meeting the target would mean an end to heating homes with gas and a switch from traditional vehicles to EVs. The Prime Minister 's office said the move would boost public health, air quality and nature and will make the UK a leader on climate action, as the first G7 group of major economies to put a net zero target into law.
In the Conservative Woman, Andrew Montford questions whether there was any meaningful analysis behind the £1trillion.figure and laments that the political establishment in united on the idea that net zero is the way forward. He finds it hard to imagine a more complete dereliction of political duty than a decision to attempt a megalomaniac project like this without even considering the costs and benefits. Bj ¸rn Lomborg also weighs in on the issue, pointing out that achieving the target would zero impact on the climate and is simply a vanity project doomed to fail.
<https://www.thegwpf.com/theresa-may-introduces-net-zero-emissions-target-despite-warnings-it-will-cost-1trillion/>
<https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-cost-of-this-net-zero-madness-even-a-trillion-is-an-underestimate/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=a8fa3125b3-RSS_DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-a8fa3125b3-559868745>
<https://www.lomborg.com/news/theresa-may-is-about-to-spend-ps1-trillion-on-a-pointless-policy-this-climate-madness-has-to>
EU Fails to Set 2050 Emissions Target
At a heads of government meeting on June 20, a group of central and eastern European countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Estonia) vetoed a proposal to cut EU emissions to net zero by 2050. A net zero target would have meant that almost all emissions have to be cut. Fossil fuels would need to be phased out, diesel and gasoline cars replaces with electric vehicles, and meat consumption slashed. Emissions that could not be completely eliminated would have needed to be offset, for example by planting more trees that take CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Europe's current goal is to cut emissions by at least 40% by 2030. Several countries, the European Parliament and the European Commission have been pushing for even tougher targets. The June 20 summit was the last chance to set a goal before the global climate talks in September where UN negotiators hope to secure pledges to limit warming to 1.5 °C.
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/20/europe/eu-net-zero-emission-intl/index.html?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7d42970759-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_21_01_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-7d42970759-20168513>
<https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-summit-climate-change/ambitious-2050-climate-goal-relegated-to-footnote-at-eu-summit-idUKKCN1TL21M?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=7d42970759-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_21_01_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-7d42970759-20168513>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/06/21/eu-stumble-weakens-global-drive-climate-ambition/>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/06/21/eu-climate-deal-fails-amid-four-nation-revolt/>
Why Ireland is Nowhere Near Meeting Its Climate Goals
Despite the country 's taoiseach Leo Varadkar claiming that he wants Ireland to become a global leader on climate action and declaration of a climate emergency, Ireland is expected miss its EU emissions-reduction target for 2020 by the widest margin. It will fall short of the 2030 goal as well. Carbon Brief answers the question why. It 's because missions from agriculture will continue growing steadily for the next decade ( …” of all land is devoted to agriculture), and those from transport will rise until at least 2022. Coal and peat still play a key role in the country 's emission profile, and the population is widely dispersed, relying on oil-fired boilers for heating.
The Irish carbon tax is currently ‚ 20 per tonne of CO2 (in addition to the EU ETS, which applies to power stations and industrial plants). However, the tax is controversial, and fuel poverty is an important issue. In its 2019 budget the government decided not to raise the tax.
<https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-why-ireland-is-nowhere-near-meeting-its-climate-change-goals>
Climate Activists Protest against the New York Times
The New York Times ' coverage of climate change hasn 't been extensive or strident enough for the activists at Extinction Rebellion. So the group organized a protest blocking Eighth Avenue in New York on June 22, resulting in 70 arrests. According to a member of Extinction Rebellion 's press and fundraising teams, The lack of coverage of the climate crisis is completely unacceptable It 's a public safety crisis on a global scale. Protestors unfurled a banner outside the NYT 's headquarters encouraging the paper to use the phrase climate emergency instead of climate change .
A spokeswoman for the NYT tried to reassure its readers, noting that the paper ran 795 climate articles in 2018 and stating: There is no national news organization that devotes more time, staff or resources to producing deeply reported coverage to help readers understand climate change than The New York Times.
<https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/24/70-arrested-as-climate-activists-riot-against-new-york-times/>
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/22/new-york-times-protest-climate-crisis-coverage>
On the Promise of Green Jobs
One of the biggest selling points for renewable energy is the promise of green jobs. For example, the Center for American Progress predicts that a federal investment of $800 billion/year towards cutting CO2 emissions to zero would create 6.8 million new jobs. However, 325 million Americans already have full access to energy for all their needs without having to spend $800 billion more each year. Thus, the CAP proposal is that the same number of people would be paying an additional $800 billion/year for the same energy, or $2,500 per capita ($10,000 per family.) Since the median American family income is $60,000, cutting CO2 emissions to zero would reduce their income by 16%.
At the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, economist John Phelan did an analysis of what the arrival of green energy has meant for that state: via the magic of huge government subsidies and handouts, very large numbers of new well-paid people strive to produce the very same electricity that was previously produced by a small fraction of the number of people. Using 2017 statistics the power output per worker was 16,281 MWh (gas), 13,230 MWh (coal), 5,665 MWh (wind), and 157 MWh (solar). In other words, it takes 2-3 times as many wind power workers to produce the same amount of electricity as gas or coal, and 100 times as many for solar.
<https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-6-12-on-the-promise-of-green-jobs>
<https://www.americanexperiment.org/2019/06/energy-industry-produce-energy-not-jobs/>
Patrick Moore: Global Warming, a Fear Campaign by Scientists Hooked on Government Grants
Mr. Moore, a Greenpeace founder, points out that governments through history have used fear to gain control of peoples ' minds and their walletsï¼and the climate catastrophe is strictly a fear campaign. The proponents of AGW also use guilt, that you 're killing your children by driving your SUV. Most of the scientists pushing the catastrophic theory are getting paid with public money. The supposed 97% scientific consensus is the biggest lie since people thought the Earth was at the center of the universe. In other words, the climate threat is the biggest threat to the Enlightenment since Galileo.
<http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/global_warming_a_fear_campaign_by_scientists_hooked_on_government_grants_gr/>
The Futility of Western Decarbonization
BP 's Statistical Review of World Energy, issued in June, includes data on CO2 emissions from 1965 to the end of 2018. Having been relatively stable for seven years, global emissions rose ~2% in 2018. However, the contrast between Developed and Developing worlds remains stark: Developing world emissions overtook Developed world CO2 emissions in 2005; since 1990 CO2 emissions from the Developed world have decreased, whereas the Developing world has shown a fourfold increase since 1985; CO2 emissions in the Developing world are accelerating as the quality of the lives for people are progressively improving.
In October 2010 Professor Richard Muller made clear the dilemma for all those who hope to control global warming by reducing emissions, particularly by means of CO2 reductions from Western Nations: in essence he said: the Developing World is not joining-in with CO2 emission reductions nor should it have any intention of doing so. The failure of worldwide action negates the unilateral action of any individual Western Nation .
<https://www.thegwpf.com/the-futility-of-western-de-carbonisation/>
<https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html>
New Study Shows Climate Models Not Even Close To Be Useful For Policymaking
A new paper appeared in the journal Atmospheric Research titled: Climate classifications from regional and global climate models: Performances for present climate estimates and expected changes in the future at high spatial resolution. The study concludes, The modelling of precipitation remains the Achilles ' heel of models and thus of multidimensional indices, which are very sensitive to this variable. Since just about every major climate index is related to precipitation, if the models can 't get precipitation right then everything else will be wrong. Nonetheless , the authors write, the role of models as privileged tools to advance our scientific knowledge of the Earth 's system remains undisputed.
<https://notrickszone.com/2019/06/08/new-study-shows-climate-models-not-even-close-to-be-useful-for-policymaking-precipitation-remains-the-achilles-heel/>
2019-06-11
In Canada It 's Now a Climate Emergency
In late May the Trudeau government introduced into the House of Commons a motion to declare a climate emergency in Canada to draw even more attention to its policy governing carbon-dioxide pricing and taxation. Retired energy economist Robert Lyman 's article in the Financial Post describes how CO2 pricing in Canada departs from the theoretically ideal models embraced by economists, because it is simply added to over 600 existing federal, provincial and territorial programs and regulations. This we cannot know the effects on consumers and industry as the levies vary considerably across the country.
According to a Toronto City News report Justin Trudeau says the federal carbon tax will help deal with extreme weather events such as fires in northern Alberta. Extreme weather events are extraordinarily expensive for Canadians, our communities and our economy, he said, citing the recent tornadoes in Ottawa and wildfires in Western Canada. That 's why we need to act. In a Global Warming Policy Foundation article, Ross McKitrick says the evidence paints a different story, describing how heavily-funded left wing groups and politicians conducted a smear campaign against Roger Pielke Jr., who found convincing evidence that climate change was not leading to higher rates of weather-related damages worldwide.
Analyzing the Future: The Tug of War between Politics and Economics
According to Friends of Science consultant Robert Lyman predicting the future has always been a perilous and uncertain activity. For example, BP Energy Outlook 2019 edition analyzes possible global energy supply, demand and CO2-equivalent emissions trends to 2040, presenting four alternative scenarios of the futureï¼Evolving Transition (ET), More Energy (ME), Less Globalization (LG) and Rapid Transition (RT). The report notes that, in 2040 fossil fuels still constitute 78% of global primary energy consumption, coal consumption remains essentially flat for the next 20 years, and renewable energy grows from 4% to 15% over that period. In the ET scenario CO2 emissions increase, from 33.4 billion tonnes in 2017 to 36 billion tonnes in 2040, all of it in developing countries.
Mr. Lyman concludes that BP faced the threat of exposing itself to abuse by AGW adherents and so focused most of its analysis and commentary on the ET scenario. It included an outlier extrapolation of present trends (ME) and two higher emission scenarios (LG and RT), the latter coming close to a Green New Deal. Other prestigious forecasters, such as the International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information Administration and Exxon will be updating their forecasts in the coming months, and it will be interesting to see how they accommodate or resist the politicization of energy supply and demand analysis.
No, Alberta Didn 't Scrap Its Carbon Tax
On May 30 the new Alberta government made good on its vow to scrap the job-killing carbon tax by removing the the tax from certain fuels used daily by many individuals and businesses. However, the province will continue to levy a tax on more emissions than any other province: specifically, a $30/t charge on nearly 140 million tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions from the province 's largest emitters, including oil-sands projects, power generators, petrochemical facilities and more. This represents half of Alberta 's emissions and one-fifth of Canada 's total.
Forget Paris: EU Member States Plan to Stick with Coal beyond 2030
Two environmental NGOs have published a report, Just Transition or Just Talk?, revealing that, out of 21 EU countries that still use coal, only ten are committed to phasing it out by 2030, despite the remainder having receiving EU funds to transition away from coal. One of the key EU tools to fulfill commitments made under the Paris Agreement are National Energy and Climate Plans submitted by each member state. These plans cover climate and energy objectives, targets, policies and measures for the period from 2021 to 2030.
The 11 countries still planning to use coal-fired power in 2030 are (in order of increasing installed capacity) are: Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany and Poland.
Court Allows PG&E to Renegotiate $34 Billion in Renewable Contracts
A bankruptcy court ruled that Pacific Gas & Electric can proceed to renegotiate $42 billion dollars in costly energy power purchase contract commitments including many renewable energy contracts. These contracts include firms such as NextEra Energy Inc., Consolidated Edison Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The US government 's production tax credit, in an effort to promote renewable energy, currently pay 1.9 ¢/kWh for the first 10 years of a wind farm 's operations, has been extended several times by Congress. It is scheduled to begin phasing out at the end of 2019. The biggest recipient of PTC largesse is NextEra Energy, the nation 's largest wind power producer, with approximately 10,000 wind turbines and annual revenues of $17.5 billion. More than $5.7 billion in taxpayer dollars flowed to NextEra Energy courtesy of the PTC between 2007 and 2016, making NextEra one of the most subsidized Fortune 500 companies.
Environmentalism: About Achieving World Government
According to Tim Ball the environmental movement began as a basis for a socialist world government in the last 1960s with people like Maurice Strong and fellow members of the Club of Rome. A small group at Standford University chose April 22, 1970 as the first Earth Day, to coincide with the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. The underlying theme of the movement is: (a) Almost all change is a result of human activity; (b) Humans and unnatural; (c) We are not part of nature, but a blight on the face of the earth; (d) We should be eliminated or reduced in number; (e) If the Western world reduces CO2 emissions the rest of the world will follow.
As Dr. Ball states: We now know 50 years later that every single prediction concerning the environmental demise of the Earth and the people made in the original Earth Day Report was wrong. We also know that every additional claim, such as overpopulation, global warming, sea level rise, desertification, deforestation, and sea ice collapse, among many others, were wrong.
Judith Curry on Climate Scientists ' Apocalyptic Predictions
Dutch investigative journalist Marijn Poels recently interviewed Dr. Curry in a 17-minute video. In the interview she claims that climate scientists have been acting overconfident and have been ignoring too many unknowns and all the uncertainty which the science is fraught with. Pressure from policymakers to focus on man-made climate change made them too reliant on climate models that don 't include natural effects. The IPCC 's business as usual scenario (also known as RCP 8.5) is completely unrealistic. The apocalyptic predictions of the IPCC depend on unrealistic emissions scenarios and climate model simulations. There is a lot of overwrought hysteria blaming everything seen about the climate and weather on CO2 emissions.
For Dr. Curry the most important possible climate event in the 21st century would be the West Antarctic ice sheet, which sits on a range of subsea volcanoes and is affected by ocean currents. If this sheet broke off and melted, it could add a metre to the sea level.
Study: 100% Renewables Doesn 't Equal Zero-CO2 Energy
A new Stanford study, Why 100% Renewable Energy is Not Enough, finds that to guarantee 100% emissions reductions from renewable energy, power consumption needs to be matched with renewable energy generations on an hourly basis. Just purchasing more solar energy in a grid that already has lots of solar generation will not result in zero emissions.
Corporations that claim to be 100%renewable do not actually cover all their power use with renewables, as some acknowledge. Instead, they purchase or generate enough renewable energy to match 100% or more of their electricity use over the course of the year. For energy purchases dominated by solar power, an entity generates far more electricity than it uses during the afternoon and sells the excess. Then at nighttime it purchases power from the grid, which is much more carbon-intensive if generated by burning of fossil fuels.
World 's Largest Companies See $1 Trillion Hit in Climate Hysteria
More than 200 of the world 's largest listed companies forecast that climate change could cost them a combined total of almost $1 trillion, with much of the pain due in the next five years. However, as Joanne Nova points out, and supported by statistical plots, the projected losses come from broken climate models and are counter to past trends trends showing declining losses on a GDP basis.
2019-05-28
Ottawa Will Make Alberta Pay a Higher CO2 Tax than Quebec
If Alberta 's new government makes good on its pledge to repeal the province 's CO2 tax the federal government has promised to impose its backstop tax, currently $30/t of CO2. However, at this rate it would be 50% higher than the rate currently in place in Quebec as a result of its cap-and-trade system. This is because the price of Quebec 's cap-and-trade plan is linked to the price of permits sold on a market it shares with California, and where the California government deliberately oversupplies permits to keep prices low. Projections for prices on that market show permit prices rising to remain below $25/t by 2022, when the federal backstop is to reach $50/t.
A study by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation reported by the National Post points out how the CO2 tax is applied unequally in different provinces. While Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick pay the backstop rate that adds 4.4 ¢/L of gasoline, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island have offset their carbon taxes by cutting existing provincial gas taxes so that motorists there pay 0.42 ¢/L more.
Trump Administration Might Re-Examine Climate Modelling
Environmental activists and Scientific American are troubled by a statement by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler at a G-7 meeting hinting that the US might overhaul the way it uses climate data and modelling. The communiqu from the meeting included the following paragraph: The United States reaffirms its commitment to re-examine comprehensive modelling that best reflects the actual state of climate science in order to inform its policy-making decisions, including comparing actual monitored climate data against the modelled climate trajectories on an on-going basis.
Alden Meyer, director of policy and strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Luca Bergamaschi of the Britain-based E3G fear an attempt to undercut the IPCC 's report of last October on the impacts of 1.5 °C of warming.
Germany Set to Miss Climate Goals by a Wide Margin
Germany is set to widely miss its greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2020 and 2030 unless significant steps, such as the proposed coal exit, are taken. The environment ministry 's new emissions forecast shows that the country must introduce additional climate action measures in all economic sectors to reach its goals. Germany also comes near bottom in an EU-wide analysis that showed that none of the 28 countries was on track to meet the 2030 target.
Australia 's Vote: No Climate for Change
Up until the vote, polls and betting markets in Australia predicted a Labor victory in the country 's May 18 general election, as journalists and intellectuals insisted that ordinary Aussies wanted their government to fight climate change and soak the rich. Labor pledged a 45% emissions reductions target and 50% renewables by 2030. However, the governing Liberal-National Coalition under Prime Minister Scott Morrison prevailed with a majority win. Mr. Morrison, famous for posing in Parliament holding a lump of coal, reminded voters that no renewable energy source is as efficient as carbon and that China 's annual emissions rise is greater than Australia 's total emissions each year.
Joanne Nova 's blog quotes a rueful commentator from the pro-AGW Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Voters feared climate policy more than climate change.
EU Split on Climate Change Measures
In November 2018, the European Commission published A Clean Planet for All, a long-term strategy document, which reiterated the bloc 's goal of being carbon neutral (net zero in human-caused emissions) by 2050. In March the European Council (EU heads of state or government plus council president and EC president) confirmed that the EU should submit a long-term strategy by 2020, but was split on whether to pursue an ambitious 2050 target. Specifically, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are reluctant even to support already-agreed upon targets. The bloc 's largest economy, Germany, is facing divisions at the national level as it relies increasingly on natural gas.
EU Court Throws Out Climate Lawsuit
Ten families and an indigenous group, backed by NGOs Protect the Planet and Climate Action Network Europe, filed the People 's Climate Case in May 2018, arguing the EU 's inadequate 2030 goal of 40% emissions cuts from 1990 levels threatened their human rights. The European General Court rejected the suit, ruling that the fact that the effects of climate change may be different for one person than they are for another does not mean that, for that reason, there exists standing to bring an action against a measure of general application. The plaintiffs were ordered to pay the EU 's costs for this case, but plan to appeal to the European Court of Justice.
It 's Cheaper to Talk than Cut Emissions
Reflecting on the emissions cuts promised, but mostly not delivered, since the 1992 Earth Summit, Bj ¸rn Lomborg writes: Political rhetoric is cheap, but drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions remain prohibitively expensive and technologically challenging. Environmental protestors and several US presidential candidates are pushing for net zero emissions by 2050, but the cost of doing so would be far higher than any electorate is willing to pay.
While Americans are willing to pay $200/year, the figure in China is $30/year, and Britons are unwilling to cut their driving, flying and meat consumption. After protests by the Yellow Vests France climate goal has turned into an empty promise. Achieving net-zero emissions wouldn 't just cost a little more than people are willing to pay, but an order of magnitude more.
The costs of deep emissions cuts are so high because we are all utterly reliant on fossil fuels. Green-energy alternatives, including solar and wind, are generally not ready to compete. Declaring a climate emergency generates headlines and makes politicians and activists feel better. But empty rhetoric that ignores economic reality and common sense will not help the planet.
The Cliff-Falling Walruses: The Making of a Video Icon
Susan Crockford exposes the manipulation of fact behind the controversial walrus story promoted in the Netflix documentary film series, Our Planet, that was released early last month. In the Netflix film Sir David Attenborough blames a scene showing walruses bouncing off rocks as they fall from a high cliff on climate change. The WWF used the film sequence to suggest that the walrus was the new symbol of climate change .
Dr. Crockford says that much of what Sir David told viewers is a fabrication. Massive haulouts of walruses in late summer or fall is a well-documented feature of population health, not evidence of global warming.
<https://www.thegwpf.com/netflix-attenborough-and-cliff-falling-walruses-the-making-of-a-false-climate-icon/>
WWF Support for Sterilization Programs and Shoot on sight Uncovered
An investigation by Dutch TV revealed the WWF 's involvement in sterilization programs for women living around national parks. The investigation has also uncovered evidence that WWF personnel were not only aware of the existence of a shoot on sight policy in India, which used the phrase kill the unwanted, but made no attempt to change it.
A Million Species Facing Extinction?
On May 6 the UN 's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) issued a media release claiming that one million species are threatened with extinction due to human activities causing habitat loss. In her blog Joanne Nova debunks the scare, pointing out that the one-million figure is estimated from unverified models that count species that haven 't been discovered yet. Ms. Nova 's solution to the problem is cheap energy and spare wealth.
The Spectator did some digging and found that the species information came from the UN press release and accompanying summary for policymakers, concluding that we are supposed to take the IPBES figure on faith. Donna Laframnoise 's blog No Frakking Consensus points out that the IPBES is following the IPCC 's template in this case: the scientists write a report and a draft summary; then politicians and bureaucrats representing national governments attend a plenary meeting to go over the draft summary line by line and rewrite it; finally the scientists go back and change the underlying report to agree with the revised summary.
2019-05-07
Canada 's Extra Carbon Taxes
Ottawa has repeatedly drilled into Canadians that carbon taxes, rather than regulations, are the most efficient, least costly and entirely revenue-neutral solution to fighting climate change. However, alongside its new carbon taxes, Ottawa is also unleashing a host of new carbon-fighting regulations, covering such things as methane, coal and all other fossil fuels as well as costly energy efficiency programs and even buying CO2 emission offsetsï¼so called hot air ï¼from other countries. But the most significant of these is the federal government 's upcoming Clean Fuel Standardï¼a minefield of hidden costs, new regulatory burdens, inter-government duplication and bureaucratic uncertainty.
Under the proposed Clean Fuel Standard, all firms that produce or import liquid, gaseous or solid fuel in Canada will have to reduce the carbon intensity of their product by 11% come 2030: either by blending in lower carbon alternatives (such as ethanol into gasoline), changing their processes or switching to renewable energy. They can also buy credits from other firms to cover their obligations. This can be expensive. While Ottawa 's direct carbon tax is set to rise to $50 per tonne by 2022, the future cost of a Clean Fuel Standard credit is estimated at between $150/tonne and $180/tonne. A report by Navius Research pegs the ultimate impact of the Clean Fuel Standard on gas prices at about 5 ¢ per litre, or slightly more than Ottawa 's carbon tax just added at the pump. Diesel will rise by 7.5 ¢/L. Natural gas is also rising. But Canadian families will not get a climate action incentive to compensate them for these hidden increases.
Don 't Blame Population Growth for Pollution Problems
In a refreshing change for a mainstream publication like the Globe and Mail, two academics challenge the assumption that environmental impact is correlated with both population growth and economic development. Instead they argue that widespread use of fossil fuels has enabled humanity to grow and has played a positive public-health and environmental role in the past two centuries. They even point out how increased atmospheric CO2 has led to greater plant growth and agricultural productivity. In fact, population growth means more better-educated people to contribute to global well-being.
Skeptical Scientist Hijacks US Congressional Hearing
Climate statistician Dr. Caleb Rossiter from the CO2 Coalition hijacked the the House Oversight Committee Environment subcommittee hearing on The Public Effects of climate change by declaring that CO2 emissions have had a positive and modest impact on Americans ' health. Dr. Rossiter described the CO2 Coalition 's mission as: We save the people of the planet from people who think they are saving the planet. He used some of the IPCC 's own words and data to show that decadal rates of drought, storms, flooding, hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, and the rate of sea-level rise have not registered any statistically significant change during the recent period of warming that was partially induced by CO2.
Britain Asked to End Contribution to Global Warming
Climate Home News cheers a report by the UK 's Committee on Climate Change calling for legislation to set a path to net-zero emissions across the economy. The goal is to achieve net zero by 2050, which the CCC says would lead the world and mobilize ambition in other countries.
The Global Warming Policy Forum calls the net-zero target by 2050 grounded in nothing stronger than irresponsible optimism and arbitrary assumptions about cost and technological feasibility, adding In point of fact, the technologies seen as necessary, including carbon capture and sequestration, further expansion of renewable generation, widespread adoption of hydrogen, and the very rapid electrification of the UK 's entire heating and transport systems, are either known failures or are unproven at these scales and would cost two to three times the amounts claimed by the CCC.
Germany 's Dirty Green Cars
A study presented on April 24 in Munich concludes that, when CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more CO2 than their diesel counterparts. Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a lot of energy. A Tesla Model 3 battery, for example, represents between 11 and 15 tonnes of CO2. Given a lifetime of 10 years and an annual travel distance of 15,000 kilometres, this translates into 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
German Power Prices to Keep Skyrocketing in 2019
According to the online business daily Handelsblatt, German electricity are set to get significantly more expensive in 2019 due to the power grid becoming 8& more expensive to use. This will make already painfully high electricity prices even more excruciating. In Germany, electricity prices of around 30 euro cents per kilowatt hour for private consumers are among the most expensive worldwide, and are in fact the highest in Europe Handelsblatt reports.
How Radical Green Propaganda Relies On Tragedy Porn
Tragedy porn is now a standard green propaganda technique. First of all you need a victim. Animals preferably fluffy ones, and preferably with large eyes are ideal, but people will do at a pinch. Then you have to film them in the process of dying or otherwise suffering. A presenter or scientist needs to be on hand to describe the events, preferably choking away their tears. Then you blame global warming.
This scenario proved to be the undoing of Sir David Attenborough, when on Netflix a carefully contrived story that global warming was driving walruses over cliff tops unravelled over the course of a week, as a series of flaws were discovered in the narrative and in the tales spun by the production team as they attempted to cover up what they had done. Zoologist Susan Crockford led the pushback saying that the massive gatherings of walruses on the rocky beach, known as haulouts, have been recorded for nearly a century. As Dr. Crockford put it, Sir David 's story about climate change appears to be just that a fable.
The Cult of Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion
Ms. Thunberg is a wildly celebrated 16-year-old Swede who founded the climate strike movement for school kids. In a monotone voice and look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes, she talks of the great fire that will punish us for our eco-sins. Climate-change alarmism is becoming ever stranger, borderline religious, obsessed with doomsday prophecies. For example, the Extinction Rebellion marches in London were at times indistinguishable from old fundamentalist movements that warned mankind of the coming End of Days.
Climate Home News sees both Ms. Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion as necessary to keep the Paris Agreement alive, by mobilizing citizens to demand action by foot-dragging governments for the next round of national emissions pledges due in 2020.
<https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/04/19/extinction-rebellion-the-new-millenarian-cult/>
<https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/04/24/paris-agreement-always-needed-extinction-rebellion-greta-thunberg/>
Rebranding Climate Change
Since the expressions global warming and climate change do not frighten people enough, activists are proposing a shift in language to climate crisis or environmental collapse, with the help of advertising consultants. A company called SPARK Neuro used EEG devices and webcams to gauge the reactions of volunteers to various terms associated with climate change. Global warming and climate change performed the worst, beaten hands down by climate crisis, environmental destruction, weather destabilization, and environmental collapse.
According the the CEO of SPARK Neuro global warming and climate change are both neutral phrases, and people have gotten used to them, so they no longer pack a punch.
2019-04-21
Fraud: Trudeau Uses Photo of Wind Turbine-caused Fire to Support His Carbon Tax
Prime Minister Trudeau recently tweeted an article with a photo of last summer 's Parry Sound #33 fire in an effort to fear-monger Canadians into supporting his carbon tax. This fire was in fact caused by a construction project on a wind turbine. The text of Mr. Trudeau 's tweet: This is why we need #ClimateAction NOW, & a price on pollution is a key part of that. Our kids and grandkids are counting on us.
Canada 's Carbon Tax Will Kill People
Last month, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a dramatic working paper. Its conclusion: when US home heating costs fell, fewer people died. That price decline, the report says: caused a 1.6% decrease in the winter mortality rate for households using natural gas for heating. Only 58% of American households heat with natural gas, so the drop in the death rate for the US population as a whole over a full calendar year works out to about half a percentage point.
In Canada, Enbridge, the company which supplies natural gas to Ontario homes, says it needs to raise the price it charges households by 11% just to pay for the new federally-imposed carbon tax. Extrapolating from the US numbers, 1,100 Canadians will die unnecessarily next winter. And the winter after that. And the one after that. As the size of the carbon tax increases, the number of annual victims may well rise in tandem.
CO2 Removal Worries Climate Campaigners
British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering, boosted by $68 million invested by Chevron, Occidental and goal giant BHP, has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way, at less than $100/tonne. But climate campaigners are worried that the technology will be used to extract even more oil. "It's a huge concern," Tzeporah Berman, international programme director for Stand dot earth, told BBC News, adding We need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel - that's our moral and economic challenge but these technologies provide a false hope that we can continue to depend on fossil fuels and produce and burn them, and technology will fix it - we are way past that point.
US Senate Votes Down Green New Deal: 57-0
The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 's Green New Deal [FoS Extracts - 2019-02-24] as expected on March 26 with not a single senator voting yes for the progressive star 's signature policy initiative. The final vote was 57 nays and 43 present from the 43 Democratic senators taking part.
In the House, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez responded angrily to a Republican congressman who called the Green New Deal elitist.
After 25 Years of Failure, We Should Abandon the UNFCCC
March 21 marked the 25th anniversary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UNFCCC put out a statement noting 25 years of enormous progress and the potential of the Paris Agreement to finally achieve results in bringing down emissions.
Climate Home News, in a gloomy editorial, disagrees with Ms. Espinosa on both points. The UNFCCC 's objective was to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, but these have risen from 358 ppm in 1994 to 412 ppm in 2018. Despite the Kyoto protocol and the Cancun and Paris agreements, together with hundreds of climate-related decisions, GHG emissions are 60% above 1994 levels. Today there is doubt over the survival of a weak Paris agreement that leaves all countries on their own to mitigate, adapt and pay for the costs of climate impacts. The UNFCCC is now simply a platform to collect, synthesize and disseminate information.
As a result, Climate Home News advocates curtailing efforts at the UNFCCC and creating multiple sectoral and regional platforms to drive transformation. Since climate change is too important an issue to be left to governments alone, there has to be concrete actions from the private sector.
UNFCCC Seeks 26% Budget Increase
The UN climate body needs 26% more money to meet its core commitments in 2020 and 2021, according to a draft budget presented to government officials. The ask for extra funding from member states comes amid pressure from countries like the US and Brazil to rein in UN spending. These countries are ‚ 2.9 million ($3.3m) and ‚ 1.6m ($1.8m) behind on their expected contributions to the UN climate process, respectively, although both made payments in 2018.
US Judge Tosses Kids ' Lawsuit against Trump Climate Policies
Rejecting a claim by Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council and attorneys representing two Pennsylvania school boys that people have a constitutionally guaranteed due process right to a life-sustaining climate, a federal judge has dismissed a bizarre legal case challenging the Trump administration 's climate policies. The case dates to November 2017 when the two boys, aged 7 and 11 at the time, attributed their respective ailments, severe allergies and asthma, to Trump administration policies rolling back Obama-era climate initiatives. The trial judge showed little patience with plaintiffs willing to clog up an already overburdened court system with an issue that was best dealt with outside the judicial sphere.
The judge also took the extraordinary step of rebuking the US District Court of Oregon for its ruling in Juliana v. United States, which involves 21 children suing the federal government over climate change [See Friends of Science Newsletter of March 2019 - Political Developments].
Europe 's Climate Policy: A Disaster in the Making
Investment bank UBS, in a report entitled CO2 compliance in EU a disaster in the making? said PSA Group of France faces a 25% hit to its profits and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) will lose 20%. BMW, Mercedes parent Daimler and Renault of France are less vulnerable. The EU regulations express fuel consumption in terms of grams of CO2 emitted per kilometre. The trouble is, the EU 's regulations to curb fuel consumption assume electric cars will be available to take up the slack. That is not a foregone conclusion. Manufacturers worry that after spending massive amounts of money investing in electric cars, buyers will shun them on grounds of price and utility.
In a related story rating agency Moodys says that carmakers may be hit with fines of ‚ 2.4-11.2 billion for failing to meet EU emission targets in two years time. By 2021, manufacturers ' average car will need to emit a maximum of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre, versus 118.5 g/km in 2017.
New Study: Poverty and Lower Incomes Linked to Renewables
An empirical analysis using 2005-2015 data from 15 EU countries indicates that as more renewable energies (i.e., solar PV) are deployed, energy costs increase, household poverty risks rise, and incomes decline. As the paper 's abstract states: This paper proves that both income and risk of household poverty are directly linked with renewable energies, in both the short- and long-run.
IEA Asked to Stop Normalizing Dangerous Climate Change
According to 60 business leaders, scientists and investors the International Energy Agency 's World Energy Outlook report [FoS Extracts - 2019-03-26] is normalizing a dangerous climate future. The group sent a letter to the IEA 's head to make clearer that [its] business-as-usual scenario charts a dangerous course to a world with between 2.7 °C and 3 °C of warming. The WEO report typically leads its sections with more prominent discussion of the New Policy Scenario, or business-as-usual case. The letter 's authors asked that the IEA bring the Sustainable Development Scenario in line with 1.5 °C of warming and the section be made the report 's central reference.
2019-03-26
Last Chance for Tickets to Friends of Science Event
April 2 is the deadline for tickets to Polar Bears and Solar Flares, featuring two speakers. Researcher and author Dr. Susan Crockford 's topic is Polar Bears: Too Hot to Handle, about how a thriving species like the polar bear came to be classified as threatened ' with extinction based on untested computer models. Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon will discuss The Sun Also Warms, a probe of the long history in the quest to understand Sun-climate connections.
How Foreign-backed Anti-oil Activists Infiltrated Canada 's Government
The story begins in 2008, when a group of radical American anti-fossil-fuel NGOs created their Tar Sands Campaign Strategy 2.1 designed explicitly to landlock the Canadian oil sands by delaying or blocking the expansion or development of key pipelines. The Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, along with environmentalist charities, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the US-based Tides Foundation, a murky organization that provides cover as a legal laundering service that can funnel donations into activist groups, without revealing the source.
But the campaigners received a bonus beyond their wildest dreams when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed one of their most dedicated eco-warriors, Gerald Butts (formerly president and CEO of WWF Canada, a Tides campaign partner) as his principal secretary. Mr. Butts used his new powerful position to bring other former campaigners with him: Marlo Raynolds, chief of staff to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, is past executive director of the Tides-backed Pembina Institute. Zo « Caron, chief of staff to the minister for natural resources, is also a former WWF Canada official. Sarah Goodman, on the prime minister 's staff, is a former vice-president of Tides Canada. With these anti-oil activists at the epicentre of federal power, it 's no wonder the oil industry, and hundreds of thousands of workers, have plummeted into political and policy purgatory.
Congestion Forecast for COP25 in Santiago
This year 's UN climate conference is set for December 2-13 in Santiago, Chile. However, December will be a highly congested month in Santiago, so Chilean environment minister Carolina Schmidt pleaded with the UN to move the event into January. For example, the only venue with space enough for the COP is privately owned and already booked for other events. Holding it in December will mean splitting the COP between two venues, with an hour commute between them. Nevertheless, the UNFCCC refused the minister 's request, so the party will go ahead as scheduled.
IEA: CO2 Emissions Hit a Record High
The International Energy Agency reports that emissions from fossil fuel use hit a record in 2018 as world energy demand grew at its fastest pace (2.3%) in a decade. This reflects higher oil consumption in the US and more coal burning in India and China. Renewables growth is not keeping pace with the electrification of our society, said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. We need to see more support for renewables.
Report: Green Energy Economy is Simply Impossible
The Manhattan Institute has issued a report called The New Energy Economy : An Exercise in Magical Thinking, that concludes that there is simply no possibility that the world is undergoingï¼or can undergoï¼a near-term transition to a new energy economy. This new energy economy rests on the beliefï¼a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europeï¼that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency. But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information.
In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamicsï¼not clever software.
Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. The era of 10-fold gains in solar and wind power technologies is over.
The annual output of Tesla 's Gigafactory, the world 's largest battery factory, could store three minutes ' worth of annual US electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days ' worth of US electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50-100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.
Overheating about Global Warming
Bj ¸rn Lomborg comments on the school students in rich countries, inspired by 16-year old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who have walked out of classrooms to call for action against climate change. He blames adults for frightening the children unnecessarily. Leading politicians and media have prioritized climate change. For example the New York Times ran a front page commentary on the issue titled: Time to Panic. This normalization of extreme language reflects decades of climate-change alarmism.
In the Western world, decades of climate-change exaggeration have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and grand political promises that aren 't being delivered. We need a calmer approach that addresses climate change without scaring us needlessly and that pays heed to the many other challenges facing the planet.
Youth Climate Strikes: Motivation or Manipulation?
Kids are fast becoming the face of the climate change movement as teenagers, tweens and even younger children file lawsuits, stage walkouts and lobby lawmakers. But newly released documents have raised questions about whether the students are being motivated or manipulated. A cache of emails released Wednesday on Climate Litigation Watch showed that top climate activists at the 2012 La Jolla strategy session sought to involve children in a legal and civil offensive against the fossil fuel industry, which would include worldwide marches from the youth climate movement.
Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the group stands by the efforts at the La Jolla workshop, which created a blueprint for legal challenges to the fossil fuel industry based on the anti-tobacco litigation of the 1990s. Climate Depot 's Marc Morano said the emails show that climate activists have long planned on using school kids to agitate for their fear campaign and regulatory solutions. '
Germany Kills Ambitious EU Climate Plan
On March 22 the EU released its summit statement, which does not include any 2050 climate commitment or target in what is a big win for Eastern European governments and their new German ally. Germany broke ranks with other countries, such as France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands which support a call by the European Commissions to meet a 2050 goal of climate neutrality. Poland, supported by Hungary and the Czech Republic, had been blocking the goal.
Green Killers: Congo 's Miners Dying To Feed World 's Hunger For Electric Cars
While electric car owners might feel smug about cutting carbon emissions, the dark side of the green revolution is that EVs depend on cobalt, 70% of which comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest, most violent and corrupt places on Earth. Known as creuseurs, or diggers, cobalt miners use no equipment more sophisticated than spades, shovels and plastic head torches as they burrow into the ground looking for the tell-tale blue veins of cobalt. Those who strike lucky fill sacks with the metallic grey sludge. The conditions of mines are terrible, said Josue Kashal, a lawyer for miners. Any time a tunnel can collapse, but they keep going. . Child labour is common and safety standards are non-existent.
Roy Spencer: The Science of Climate Change Is Anything but Settled
On March 5, 58 senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel to take a critical look at the science underpinning climate change claims. Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the science is settled. If so, Dr. Spencer asks what are they afraid of? Wouldn 't a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists? He continues: In fact, a peer-reviewed paper published last year in the prestigious Journal of Climate found that the observed level of global warming since the late 1800s, including the deep oceans, was consistent with a climate system only half as sensitive as are the climate models guiding US energy and national security policy.
Google Vanishes Patrick Moore from Greenpeace 's History
Mr. Moore 's role in co-founding Greenpeace became an embarrassment to the organization after he became publicly skeptical about the climate science consensus. In a scheme of historical revisionism reminiscent of Stalin 's famous The Commissar Vanishes photo editing, Google helped Greenpeace erase Mr. Moore 's photo and name from the Founders of Greenpeace.
2019-03-12
Climate Horrorscopeï¼Modern Day Forms of Medieval Prognostation
Friends of Science 's Communication Manager Michelle Stirling compares the dire prognostications in The Augsburg Book of Miracles, written and compiled in ~1550 Europe in the midst of the Little Ice Age, with the climate predictions of modern-day prophets such as Al Gore, mainstream media, authors, climate scientists and child climate activists.
Collateral Damage in the WWF 's Secret War
The World Wide Fund for Nature has long helped fund and equip forest rangers who patrol against poachers in Nepal 's renowned Chitwan National Park. When three of the rangers were charged with murdering a Nepalese suspected of helping his son bury a rhino horn, the WWF swung into action by successfully lobbying the government to drop the case and then continued to work with the rangersï¼and then claimed that the case was a victory against poaching. This was no isolated incident. BuzzFeed News conducted a year long investigation across six countries, revealing a pattern that persists to this day.
In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents, the family told BuzzFeed News. Their village submitted a complaint to WWF, but months later, the family said they still hadn 't heard back.
Parts 2 and 3 of the BuzzFeed News series detail how the WWF commissioned an internal review in 2015 implicating the charity in violence against indigenous people in Cameroon, and got the EU to fund a national park in the Republic of Congo over the objection of locals opposed to the park.
Maine Becomes Most Recent State to Reject a Carbon Tax
On March 7 Maine 's House Committee on Energy Utilities and Technology voted against reporting a carbon tax bill out of committee. In a hearing on Bill 60 Maine residents testified in opposition and one in favour. Maine becomes the most recent blue state to reject a carbon tax. Legislation to impose a carbon tax has also been introduced in Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Oregon, and other states, but all have declined to implement one. Ballot measures to enact the nation 's first statewide carbon tax were rejected by Washington State voters in both 2016 and 2018.
Half of Europe No Longer Wants Wind Energy
Twelve countries in the EU failed to install a single wind turbine last year, moaned the CEO of industry body WindEurope on February 21. Giles Dickson said that while more and more people and businesses were benefiting from wind power, many things were not right beneath the surface. He added that growth in onshore wind fell by more than half in Germany last year and collapsed in the UK , stating that, in the EU, 2018 was the worst year for new wind energy installations since 2011.
Trillion-euro EU Climate Finance Pact
A group of experts has published a draft treaty for a sweeping European climate finance pact, to inject more than a trillion euros into the fight against global warming. The climate finance pact proposes two new tools to address global warming and social inequality: a green subsidiary of the European Investment Bank, to lend to member states, and a fund to disburse grants across Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa. Under the proposal, the bank subsidiary would provide concessional loans for climate projects to each EU member state worth up to 2% of their GDP. That amounts to ‚ 65 billion in Germany 's case or ‚ 45 billion for France.
A 2017 report by the European Court of Auditors calculated that the bloc would need to invest ‚ 1,115 billion a year between 2021 and 2030 into the transport, buildings, services, energy and industrial sectors, for the bloc to meet its 2030 climate targets.
Senator Feinstein Upsets the Climate Lobby
Veteran US Senator Dianne Feinstein got herself in hot water with climate activists when, on February 22, she clashed with a group of children by criticizing the kids ' request to back the Green New Deal [FoS Extracts - 2019-02-24]. The California Democrat argues that the GND policy is unworkable, saying there 's no way to pay for it and That resolution will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here. Sen. Feinstein proposes to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through regulation and carbon taxes, rather than the GND 's radical ten-year plan.
Sen. Feinstein 's reply was too much for the New Republic, which says that the senator is a bigger threat to the left 's goal of slowing climate change than Donald Trump.
California 's San Bernardino County Stops Big Solar Projects
California's largest county has banned the construction of large solar and wind farms on more than 1 million acres of private land, bending to the will of residents who say they don 't want renewable energy projects industrializing their rural desert communities northeast of Los Angeles. State lawmakers passed a bill last year requiring utility companies to get 60% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and 100% from climate-friendly sources by 2045. But achieving those goals will require cooperation from local governments and big solar and wind farms, like many infrastructure projects, are often unpopular at the local level.
Green Lawyers Target Toilet Paper
The Natural Resources Defense Council and Stand.earth issued a report The Issue with Tissue: How Americans Are Flushing Forests Down the Toilet. The report argues that products such as toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissues, while cheap and convenient, are made from wood pulp, with devastating consequences for Indigenous Peoples, wildlife and the global climate. Instead of wood pulp the report advocates using recycled fibres.
Donna Laframboise 's blog NoFrakkingConsensus, however, points to this report as part of a decades-long war against the forestry industry conducted by parasite lawyers. She notes that it costs money to collect, sort, bleach, and sanitize material from residential recycling programs, and these use massive amounts of fossil-fuelled energy and water. The lawyers ' goal is to coerce manufacturers to into making toilet paper with ever higher amounts of recycled paper (due to government-imposed mandates), thus forcing everyone to pay more.
Climate Science 's Myth Buster
City Journal interviewed Judith Curry, who gave up her post as head of the the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology because Independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible. Dr. Curry points out that climate models can 't explain the 1910-1940 warming (similar to the current warming, but with much less CO2 emissions) nor the 1950-1970 cooling. There had to be natural factors at work. She is skeptical of environmental treaties like the Paris Accord, whichï¼if the climate models are correct and all states respect their commitmentsï¼will reduce 2100 temperatures by an insignificant 0.2 °C. Dr. Curry recommends research be diversified to study of the natural causes of climate change and not focus so obsessively on the human factor. Also, instead of wasting time on futile treaties and in sterile quarrels, we would do better to prepare ourselves for the consequences of climate change, whether it 's warming or something else.
2019-02-24
Susan Crockford: Polar Bear Lecture in April at Friends of Science Event
The title of Dr. Crockford 's lecture, on April 10 in Calgary is Polar Bears: Too Hot to Handle. Also at the event is astrophysicist Willie Soon whose talk is titled: The Sun Also Warms. Just prior to the event, Dr. Crockford will be launching her new book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe that Never Happened.
BC Government Putting Alternative Energy on Ice
Dozens of solar, wind and run-of-river power projects have been indefinitely suspended by the British Columbia government in an effort to manage the cost of electricity from independent power producers. The government 's Clean BC program calls for massive electrification of home, industry and transportation with aggressive emission reduction targets for 2030. By 2040 every car sold in BC must be zero emissions, while every home is to be zero-energy ready by 2032.
However, BC Hydro, the province 's electric utility predicts that it will have a surplus supply until the early 2030s, while Clean Energy BC forecasts electricity demand increasing 50% by 2030. On February 14 BC Hydro suspended its Standing Offer for independent power producers, stalling about 250 alternative energy projects and causing consternation at Clean Energy BC.
The White House 's Climate Security Panel
The White House is considering establishing a presidential committee to assess the consensus of scientists and the Pentagon that climate change poses a national security threat. The move, being spearheaded by William Happer, a physicist and National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions, could give climate skeptics a platform to push back against conclusions reached by Pentagon and other agencies within President Trump 's own administration that climate change is a major national security threat.
Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind and Solar
Mr. Gates, a true believer in the climate change scare, gave an interview at Stanford University during which he scoffed at the notion that wind and solar power, together with battery back-up, could ever replace conventional electricity generation. He quoted Vaclav Smil who said: Here 's Tokyo, 27 million people, you have three days of a cyclone every year. It 's 23 GW of electricity for three days. Tell me what battery solution is going sit there and provide that power. He pointed out that electricity is responsible for only 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and asks how steel is going to be manufactured without them, as well products such as plastics, fertilizers and cement, as well as air travel. There is no substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.
The Green New Deal
On February 7 congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and senator Ed Markey presented an outline of a sweeping federal program aiming at decarbonizing the US economy, known as the Green New Deal. The GND, a non-binding resolution, calls for getting all US energy needs by 2030 from clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources by dramatically expanding and upgrading existing renewable power sources. It also includes a variety of social justice and welfare state goals, including a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security and high-quality health care benefits for Americans.
The text of the GND is less than 14 pages. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ' office released six pages of FAQs that quickly became the subject of ridicule and were withdrawn, but preserved by NPR. The GND would be paid for, not by taxes, but by a massive expansion of credit by the Fed and new public banks.
In a piece published by the Global Warming Policy Forum, Robert Lyman, a former director-general of environmental affairs at Transport Canada, explains why a timeframe of 50 to 70 years would be needed to manage the GND 's proposed energy transition. A story in The New American describes an interview with Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore wherein he calls the GND a recipe for mass suicide, adding Why would anyone vote for something that was going to result in the death of nearly all humans on Earth?
Judge Tosses Kids Climate Suit in Pennsylvania
A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a climate lawsuit brought by an environmental organization and two children against the federal government. The lawsuit, Clean Air Council v. United States, claimed that Trump administration rollbacks of environmental regulations and other anti-science decisions violate Constitutional rights and the public trust. The judge scoffed at what he interpreted as a request that he supervise any actions the President and his appointees take that might touch on the environment. '
The judge also rebuked another judge for her ruling in the Juliana v. United States case [FoS Extracts - 2019-01-03 and 2018-10-27] that the young plaintiffs had a Constitutional right to a livable climate, stating that her ruling is at odds with previous court decisions and the Juliana Court certainly contravened or ignored longstanding authority.
EU Shelves Climate Concerns in US Trade Talks
The EU is preparing to negotiate two trade agreements with the US, contrary to pledges to only strike deals with countries committed to the Paris Agreement. A committee of the European Parliament on February 19 endorsed opening talks. Adopted by 21 votes to 17, the resolution by the committee for international trade empowers the European Commission to discuss two trade deals, respectively designed to lift tariffs and iron out bureaucratic hurdles between the two. It goes to a full parliamentary vote in mid-March.
EU Commission Report Reveals Competitive Disadvantage of Climate Policies
The third release of the EU Commission 's periodic study of global electricity and gas prices for the first time compares the EU 28 with the whole of the G20 for the period 2008 to 2016. EU 28 household electricity prices are now more than double those in the G20, while industrial electricity prices are now nearly 50% higher. The only G20 states with higher industrial electricity prices are those with heavy commitments to renewables.
The authors attribute the high electricity prices in the EU 28 to the tax regime , by which of course is meant energy and climate policies, where the EU is out of step with the rest of the world. As the authors themselves gloomily comment: Whilst a convergence in tax rates may occur if other G20 countries implement similar fiscal measures as the EU as part of their climate mitigation policies, there is as yet little evidence that this is the case (p. 16). So much for the leadership exhibited by the EU; no one is following that lead or seems likely to do so.
Australia: The Renewable Energy Superstar
Three academics at Australian National University have published a paper showing that, per capita, Australia is installing unreliable generators in a blitzkrieg pace, more than twice as fast as Germany is, and 4-5 times as fast per capita than the EU, the US, Japan and China. The largest coal exporter in the world is working harder than anyone to destroy its largest export earner. According to the experts at ANU the net cost of adding renewables is zero (ignoring the subsidies, the extra transmission lines, the blackouts and the emergency demand management.)
However, as Joanne Nova points out Australians have the most expensive electricity in the world, for a reason.
Response to Manifesto by 3,400 Belgian Academics
On February 10 more than 3,400 academics from across Belgium published an open letter to the federal and regional governments, backing the call from school and university students for better and more rapid government action to mitigate the effects of climate change.The Climate Intelligence Foundation has prepared a rebuttal to the seven assertions made by a the academics. Among the assertions is that almost 100% of the observed warming is human caused and that CO2 is the cause of it.
Behind Climate-Change Activist Greta Thunberg 's Rise to Fame
Less than a year ago Ms. Thunberg was an unknown schoolgirl in Sweden. Last August she came into the public eye with her decision to stage a school strike to draw attention to climate change. This led to appearances at the UN climate conference in Poland and most recently in Davos. At the latter event her message to the billionaires was: I want you to panic about climate change.
However, her sudden appearance in the limelight has led to some pointed questions: is Ms. Thunberg 's celebrity status less to do with chance and more to do with a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign? It turns out that her school strike was timed to coincide with the launch of a book about climate change written by her mother. The book 's PR man has recently launched a business called We Don 't Have Time , a sort of climate-focused PR agency.
2019-02-06
Hothouse Earth? Advertorials in Science
Friends of Science 's Communication Manager Michelle Stirling responds to an oft-cited climate-change story in Slate that refers to a Hothouse Earth paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (the paper is actually titled: Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene). As Ms. Stirling points out, the International Union of Geological Sciences, the body that issues the stratigraphic charts and names epochs, doesn 't include the term Anthropocene . However the Hothouse authors still plowed ahead with this term, using repetitive hot, tipping-point, hyperbolic language throughout a scientific paper.
The IUGS tweeted that the term Anthropocene has more meaning sociologically than stratigraphically.
Carbon Credits Could Cost Canadian Taxpayers Billions
The Trudeau government 's national carbon price alone will not achieve the 192 Mt reduction in greenhouse gas emissions promised in the Paris Agreement (2030 commitment = 512 Mt; 2016 emissions = 704 Mt.) To help meet its target the government is considering buying international carbon credits to offset its shortfall. On the California carbon market, where the current price is $C20/t the 192 Mt reduction would cost Canadian taxpayers $3.84 billion/year. If Canada agrees to the UN 's recommendation of a more stringent 45% reduction below 2010 levels by 2030, we would have to cut emissions by 322 Mt (to 382 Mt). That would cost $6.44 billion annually.
IBC Exaggerated Insurance Climate Risks
The Insurance Bureau of Canada has waged a decade-long campaign to raise alarms about the ravages of floods. Blair Feltmate, a favourite star climate-change witness for the biggest insurers, heads the industry-funded Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at Waterloo University, which claims that climate change has triggered a surge in flood events in recent years. At a recent public meeting Mr. Feltmate said: The elephant in the room, from a climate-change perspective, is too much water in the wrong places.
The real elephant sharing the room turned out to be a detailed report from Guy Gendron, a CBC/Radio Canada International ombudsman, outlining how such distorted flood claims led the news network to publish stories last fall that contained inaccurate and irrelevant information. Last September Mr. Feltmate was interviewed by the CBC 's English-language Radio Canada International arm, promoting the insurance industry 's sensational new report that claimed bad weather and flood events are soaring due to climate change.
An Ontario municipal engineer complained to the CBC ombudsman, pointing to flaws in Mr. Feltmate 's and the insurance lobby group 's claims. He alleged that the CBC report misrepresented science and insurance risks. In his review of the complaint, the ombudsman delivered a scathing critique of the CBC coverage on its Radio Canada International site, saying that the CBC report had failed to comply with journalistic standards in assessing and reporting on the industry 's claims.
On January 29 the CBC published corrections to its reports. saying: Certain statements relating to rainfall amounts and the so-called 100-year events deemed to be inaccurate or irrelevant to the story have been removed and/or replaced. Information from Environment Canada has been added to indicate their statistics show no increase in rainfall or extreme rain events beyond normal ' variations
Decline in GDP-Adjusted Global Catastrophic Losses over the Past 25 Years
When MunichRe and other insurers disseminate statistical loss figures they do so in absolute terms, without accounting for the growth in total gross domestic product. A new study by Roger Pielke, published in the journal Environmental Hazards, finds that since 1990 both overall and weather/climate losses have decreased as proportion of global GDP since 1990.
Media Climate Hype
As a mid-winter freeze hits the Great Plains and the Midwest of the US, many in the media are rushing to blame the deep freeze on global warming, The New York Times filled the top of its website with coverage of the Midwest 's polar plunge, including one prominent article that claims record heat in Australia and record cold in the US were two sides of the global warming coin. Also, broadly speaking, scientists say, a hotter planet makes extreme weather more frequent and more intense, reads the Times article, warning we live in the Age of Weather Extremes.
The Chicago Times, Axios, The Washington Post and others echoed the theory that global warming was weakening the jet stream, allowing the polar vortex to meander south and bring record cold. Many experts don 't think this is correct and say it 's media climate-hype. In fact, weather events that used to be considered, well, weather are now attributed to global warming that 's supposed to play out over decades and measured in trends, not short-term weather variability.
Climate change ' once referred to outcomes measured via statistics ( detection ') tracked over decades, University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. noted. Today climate change ' is most often used as a causal factor in attributing events over hours, days or weeks, Dr. Pielke said. We 've become dumber. Even Kevin Trenberth, a mainstream climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research said: Frankly, it is a stretch to make that link There is always cold air over the Arctic in the polar night and the question is whether it sits there or breaks out So all this is in realm of weather. Not climate.
Clean Energy Leader PG&E Files for Bankruptcy
Pacific Gas & Electric, a distressed California utility facing claims of $30 billion resulting from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires, rejected last-minute rescue bids and decided for file for bankruptcy. PG&E used to boast that it and California led the nation in clean energy development. If only it had spent more money on maintaining its infrastructure than chasing green dreams.
A day after PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection a federal judge spent three hours excoriating the company for its role in the blazes that have ravaged Northern California over the past two years. PG&E is asking the court to allow it to potentially cancel $42 billion in power purchase contracts it signed over the past 15 years. The majority of these contracts commit PG&E to purchasing solar, wind or other renewable energy over terms of 15 to 20 years to meet California 's environmental goals.
Carbon Disclosure Project and PG&E
The PG&E collapse will likely ramp up the already intense demands by climate activists for companies to confess that their business models fail adequately to reflect climate risk. One of the most prominent promoters of the disclosure of emissions and climate programs is a London-based NGO named CDP (previously the Carbon Disclosure Project). CDP ranked PG&E as A- in 2017 (the 2018 score is forthcoming ). If this disclosure ritual was meant to assure investors that PG&E was a sound investment, they were misled.
Meanwhile, the last thing that PG&E 's stumble justifies is any redoubling of international climate conferences to conjure up more fake commitments. It is bordering on insanity to suggest that the way to deal with California wildfires is to force more solar panels on Burundi, windmills on Spain, or electric cars on China.
Canadian petroleum companies have lined up to be ranked by CDP, an organization that is part of an agenda to shut them down. In this year 's rankings, Husky and Suncor scored B s. Enbridge and TransCanada scored C s. CNR and Encana sat bottom of the class with D s. Still, one encouraging sign is that last year both Exxon Mobil and its Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil, stopped reporting. CDP ranks such refusal under F, for failure.
Good News: The UN 's Global Green Law is Going Nowhere for Now
The first major meeting of the UN 's Ad hoc Open-ended Working Group towards a Global Pact for the Environment (OEWG) convened on January 14, 2019 at the United Nations Environment Program offices in Nairobi, Kenya. During the week-long session, delegates considered the report of the UN Secretary-General titled Gaps in international environmental law and environment-related instruments: towards a global pact for the environment. The object of the exercise was enact a binding set of new global laws that both encompasses and surpasses all of the existing multinational environmental treaties and agreements.
About 300 participants attended the meeting, including government delegates from many countries plus representatives of various international and UN organizations. The good news is that the meeting turned into something of a fiasco, as countries proved unwilling to surrender existing treaties and agreements. The US delegation questioned whether the gaps exist, saying that many are instead biased wishes.
The second of three OEWG meetings is now scheduled for March 18-20, 2019, again in Nairobi.
End of the Road for UK Citizens ' Climate Case
In December 2017 the NGO Plan B and 11 UK citizens filed a case seeking to compel the UK 's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary to raise the country 's target for cutting emissions by mid-century. Last July the High Court decided not to hold a full hearing on the case, and the plaintiffs took that decision to the Court of Appeals. On January 28 the appeals court refused the appeal, stating that the plaintiffs ' arguments had no prospect of success.
This is one of a growing number of cases in which civil society and individuals are challenging government policies on climate change. The Irish High Court heard arguments in late January on an NGO 's case over the country 's plan for limiting emissions, while the European General Court has said it will hear a case over the EU 's 2030 targets
Global Warming Myth Debunked
Global warming activists argue CO2 emissions are destroying the planet, but the climate impacts of CO2 are minimal, at worst. Claims of unprecedented CO2 levels ignore most of Earth 's 4.6-billion-year history. For example, 600 million years ago, when history 's greatest birth of new animal species occurred, atmospheric CO2 concentrations exceeded 6,500 parts per million, which is 16 times today 's 410 ppm. Over billions of years, the geologic record shows there is no long-term correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and Earth 's climate.
Currently all living things on Earth produce 440 billion tonnes of CO2 each year, or 13 times the amount from fossil-fuel emissions. When the activists make their apocalyptic pronouncements, the primary goal is not to save plants, humans or animals, but to use climate change as justification for centralizing power into the hands of a select few.
2019-01-26
Dark Green Money Reveals Vast Self-Dealing Network in Canada 's Climate Change Leadership
Dark Green Money is a new report by Ottawa energy policy consultant, Robert Lyman, that takes the mask off the big green funding machine behind Canada 's Climate Change Leadership , was issued by Friends of Science on Jan. 15, 2019. According to Friends of Science, what is in play in Canada sounds like the proposed US Green New Deal, as outlined by Vox, Jan. 7, 2019.
Dark Green Money gives a glimpse into a vast self-dealing network of foreign billionaire foundation funding in Canada, detailing staggering amounts of money pouring into questionable climate change initiatives.
Exposing the Money behind the US-based Campaign to Kill the Alberta Oilsands
Vivian Krause has become synonymous with the fight against the concerted effort by US oil interests working to land-lock Canadian oil and gas by using environmental groups to protest against the industry with the stated aim of grinding development to a halt. On January 16 she warned the Indian Resource Councilï¼which represents 134 First Nations that have oil and gas resources on their landï¼ what kind of opposition it will face if it pushes forward with a plan to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline from the federal government, saying: you don 't just get the pipeline, you get a foreign-funded campaign along with the pipeline.
Eight years ago, while researching who was behind an unscientific, misinformation campaign against farmed Canadian salmon, Ms. Krause came across these three little words: Tar Sands Campaign in the tax forms of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (which, ironically, made its billions from oil and gas). She saw that the foundation donated $1.4 million in 2007 to Corporate Ethics, to recruit the groups, develop the strategy, create a co-ordinated campaign and act as a re-granting agency for the North American Tar Sands Campaign, states
CorpEthics.org, the group 's website. This strategy is successful to this day, adds the CorpEthics post. All the proposed pipelines in Canada have effectively been blocked.
Ms. Krause finished her talk with this question: We need to ask ourselves, what would Texas do if a group of charitable foundations from Canada were running a multimillion-dollar campaign to land-lock Texan crude? Would they let it go on for 10 years? I don 't think so. Maybe that 's what we need. We need to think like Texas.
Blaming Canada 's Sky-high Emissions on Alberta
The City of Victoria, which gets more than 200 cruise ship visits a year and is aggressively trying to attract more, has announced plans to launch a class action lawsuit against the oil and gas sector. The idea is to tally up the various damages done to the city by climate change and send the bill to the likes of Suncor or CNRL. This is the latest salvo of a movement that seeks to singularly blame the oil industry for climate change while conveniently ignoring the millions of daily consumer choices, often made by activists themselves. Across the Georgia Strait the City of Vancouver hosts the largest single coal export facilityï¼Westshore Terminalsï¼in North America. Coal is British Columbia 's main export commodity, with $3.32 billion worth being shipped in 2016.
In fact, it turns out that everywhere in Canada, except Alberta, is emitting more CO2 than they assume. In per-capita terms, Alberta has a carbon footprint of 67 tonnes/year, compared to 13 t for the average Ontarian and 10 t for the average Quebecer. The reason is all the emissions in producing petroleum products is charged to Alberta. If the oil-production emissions were charged to the end users, the emissions for Alberta, Ontario and Quebec would be 39.5 t, 17.6 t and 15 t, respectively.
Also, Canadians are driving more and bigger cars. Only ten years ago trucks, vans and SUVs made up 45% of Canada 's private vehicle sales. In 2017 that figure had risen to 69%. In Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, most commutes are by car. More and more Canadians are sending up their carbon footprint by flying. Every anti-oil sands activist uses eye-watering quantities of fossil fuels.
Carbon Taxation Needs a Buy-in
Joe Oliver, a former minister of finance and of natural resources, says that the outcome of next fall 's federal election will depend on whether the public buys into climate-change alarmism. Mr. Oliver describes five ways in which extreme polarization of the debate over climate change has occurred. However, the public may sense that alarmist hysteria suggests uncertainty and that hard evidence does not point to an inevitable catastrophe. Thus Canadians are unwilling to make painful sacrifices today to prevent an unsure dystopian future that the government has not demonstrated it can do anything to prevent. Other countries are putting their own economic interests first, despite their hypocritical posturing at the UN.
Rex Murphy: Spare Us the Mantras about the Environment and the Economy
Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna likes to state: The environment and the economy go hand in hand. These two concepts are too vast and complex for any one-to-one equivalence. This simplistic slogan tries to pass off as a truism that there is equal and mutual correspondence between two of the most intricately dynamic, various systems known to peoplekind.
For example, consider the question: Should one build a small waste-disposal plant, get 15 jobs for a small town, or save the rare puff-breasted, beakless codswallop? Both cannot be accommodated. As that campaign against Alberta energy shows, for professional activists and protesters, the environment is a concept-weapon to be used to confound and obstruct the economy.
For the activists the economy is the enemy of the environment. Anywhere you find Green radicalism, Green advocacy, Greenpeace, or Green parties, you will find attacks on industry and jobs wrapped up in the false flag of concern for the environment and the avoidance of global-warming perdition. This Minister McKenna 's chirpy slogan is a mockery of the biggest internal issue in Canadian politics today.
Green No More: Germany Delays Coal Exit
Economy and Energy Minister, Peter Altmaier, said that Germany needs to retain half its coal-generation capacity until 2030, to offset the closure of its nuclear reactors by 2021/22. Specifically he stated: "No other country getting out of coal is also getting out of nuclear power, adding that the ending of nuclear and the phasing-out of coal should not overwhelm each other.
After late-night talks on January 25, a commission drawn from industry, civil society, green groups and government outlined a plan to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2038.
More and Bigger Private Jets Land at Davos as Elites Discuss Climate Change
At least 1,500 private jets are expected to arrive at the World Economic Forum in Davos, up from last year 's 1,300. Also, this year 's jets tend to be larger and more expensive. This is at least in part due to some of the long distances traveled, but also possibly due to business rivals not wanting to be seen to be outdone by one another, said Andy Christie, the private jets director at Air Charter Service.
The high-profile event started on January 21 with naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough urging attendees to take action against global warming before it 's too late. What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years, he implored. The effects of global warming are well known to the WEF. Its own Global Risk Report, published earlier this year, identified climate change and environmental degradation as the gravest threats over the next 10 years.
IEA: Electric Cars Will Not Stop Rising Oil Demand
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, reported that while electric car use may be growing exponentially, they are doing little to curb rising CO2 emissions and oil demand. He said: This year we expect global oil demand to increase by 1.3 million barrels per day. The effect of 5 million cars is [to diminish that demand by] 50,000 barrels per day. 50,000 versus 1.3m barrels. Last year, the IEA predicted that the number of electric cars globally would grow from 3 million today, to 125 million by 2030. But Mr. Birol said the number paled in comparison to the 1 billion cars powered by internal combustion engines.
China 's Coal Output Highest in Three Years
China 's December coal output climbed 2.1% from the year before, government data showed, hitting the highest level in over three years as major miners ramped up production amid robust winter demand and after the country started up new mines. Miners produced 320.38 million tonnes of coal in December, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics. That is the largest volume since June, 2015.
US Conservatives Push for More Permanent Exit from Paris Agreement
While President Trump announced that the US will withdraw from the agreement, the withdrawal takes three years and won 't be completed until after the 2020 election. If Mr. Trump were defeated a future administration could reimpose it. To prevent this, the solution is to submit the Paris Agreement to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, where it would be defeated, for good.
Climate Change Concern is Surgingï¼But Nobody Wants to Pay More Taxes
A poll from Yale and George Mason University found that Americans believe that climate change is happening and could harm their families and the country. However, another poll conducted by Associated Press and the University of Chicago says they are not willing to pay any more to fight climate change than they were three years ago. In fact, 70% of Americans say they wouldn 't pay $10/month to cool the planet.
Part of the problem might be that people don 't trust politicians. Also, the greens have been saying for years that renewable energy is the cheapest option. If so, why would anyone pay more for something which is supposed to be cheaper?
97% of Scientists Agree on: Nothing
According to Prof. Ian Plimer, while it is often claimed that 97% of scientist conclude that humans are causing global warming, it is a zombie statistic. In his 50-year scientific career he has never seen a hypothesis where 97% of scientists agree. The oft-quoted 97% figure derives from a survey sent to 10,257 people with a self-interest in human-induced global warming who published science supported by taxpayer-funded research grants. Replies from 3146 respondents were whittled down to 77 self-appointed climate scientists of whom 75 were judged to agree that human-induced warming was taking place. Thus the 97% comes from a tribe with only 77 members, and there is no mention that 75 out of 3146 is only 2.38%.
More recently a paper claimed that published scientific papers showed there was a 97.1% consensus that man had caused at least half of the 0.7 °C global warming since 1950. This was determined by inspection of 11,944 published papers by a citizen science group of volunteers contributing to the Skeptical Science website. This study was a biased compilation of opinions from non-scientific, politically motivated volunteer activists who used a search engine for key words in 11,944 scientific papers, were unable to understand the scientific context of the use of global warming and global climate change , who rebadged themselves as citizen scientists to hide their activism and ignorance, who did not read the complete papers and were unable to evaluate critically the diversity of science published therein.
As Dr. Plimer concludes: Activists with no skin in the game are setting the scene for economic suicide. Time for yellow shirts to shirt-front politicians about their uncritical acceptance of a fraud that has already cost the community hundreds of billions of dollars.
2019-01-03
StatCan Exposes How Worthless Green Industries Are
Statistics Canada reported last month that environmental and clean-tech industries accounted for 3.1% of Canada GDP in 2017, about the same as in 2007, despite ten years of pro-green policies and hefty government support. The green economy is even less important for jobs, contributing only 1.6% of total employment. This ignores the job losses resulting from the higher cost of renewable energy. Despite the evidence showing environment and economy work in opposite directions, politicians like federal environment minister Catherine McKenna keep repeating that they don 't.
There are two lessons to be drawn from the tepid growth of Canada 's green sector. It will be a long time, if ever, before it makes a significant contribution to jobs and income in Canada. And in the meantime, even its marginal and largely meaningless existence will be expensive for both taxpayers and electricity customers.
Poll: Trudeau 's Carbon Tax Won 't Motivate Canadians to Switch to More Fuel-efficient Transportation
An Ipsos poll of 2001 Canadians conducted last month suggests a disconnect between Canadians ' acceptance of climate change as a problem and their willingness to potentially incur financial loss to help the government tackle it. Fewer than one in five Canadians said gas prices between $1.00 and $1.25 a litre would prompt them to switch to a more fuel-efficient car or find alternate modes of transportation; it would take a near doubling of gas prices to $2.00-$2.25/litre to make them rethink their vehicular choices.
The dilemma facing the Trudeau government is that gas prices in that $2.00 to $2.25 per litre range wouldn 't merely convinces Canadians to switch to fuel-efficient transportation, they might also convince many Canadians to vote the Liberals out. Only 19% of respondents chose climate change among the three issues that they said are most likely to influence their voting decisions in this year 's federal election.
US Court Rules Against Young Climate Activists
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a Dec. 26 ruling that granted the DOJ 's petition for interlocutory appeal that decreases the chances of the climate lawsuit going to trial anytime soon. Our Children 's Trust filed the suit against the federal government in 2015 on behalf of 21 youths, aged 11 to 22, arguing their right to a stable climate system was being violated. The suit asks the court to order the government to issue laws and regulations to fight global warming. The legal process will continue during 2019.
US Democrats ' Green New Deal
Following the recent midterm elections some Democratic members of Congress, in particular NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are proposing a green new deal to decarbonize the US economy. In less than 10 years under this deal: 100% of electricity would come from renewable sources; a national smart grid ; upgrading of every residential and industrial building for state-of-the art energy efficiency and comfort; decarbonizing manufacturing, agricultural and other industries; decarbonizing, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure; funding massive investment in the drawdown and capture of greenhouse gases.
The massive investment required would be funded not only through taxation, but primarily by increasing the money supply via the Federal Reserve and by new public banks to extend credit.
The Greenpeace Business Report
The Heartland Institute has published a report, by an international team of five authors, on Greenpeace 's business model and philosophy. Over the last 20 years Greenpeace 's annual income has risen from $150 million to over $350 million. Greenpeace is a Dutch company with assets of $277 million, of which 64% is in cash or equivalent. It has a highly-centralized structure and requires local (i.e., national) branches to prioritize the organization 's global agenda.
Greenpeace 's modus operandi is to find a catastrophic and urgent campaign issue; choose a villain and a sympathetic victim; choose a simple and plausible solution to the issue while accusing the villain of preventing the solution from being implemented; issue a call to action and get people engaged; control the narrative by using sympathetic media outlets. Education increases knowledge and understanding, which undermines the campaign 's call to action.
Over 1994-2015 Greenpeace waged campaigns on a variety of issues that have waxed and waned over time with some campaigns (e.g., biodiversity, GM foods, nuclear, peace & disarmament) being discontinued. However, the campaign on man-made climate change continued throughout the study period, though its relative importance has recently declined.
In the words of the Wilderness Society vice president of public policy Rindy O 'Brien: Greenpeace has tended to look for ways to publicize problems instead of ways to actually solve them.
Furious NGOs Sue French Government over Carbon Tax Retreat
Four NGOs Oxfam, Greenpeace, Notre Affaire Tous, and Fondation pour la Nature et l 'Homme have initiated legal proceedings saying France has defaulted on its environmental obligations. This is the result of the gilets jaunes protests over the government 's attempted increase in carbon taxes on automotive fuels and its subsequent rescinding of the tax. The initial December 18 filing gives the government two months to respond, after which the organizations can choose to move forward with their lawsuit in administrative court.
Climate Skeptics: The Despised Minority
Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist and 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, declines to use the word skeptic. In November 2018 he published in the Times an opinion piece, The Depravity of Climate Change Denial - Risking civilization for profit, ideology and ego. In his words: there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers.
As Donna Laframboise concludes: In other contexts, we make a point of treating minorities with courtesy. But it remains open season on people who think humanity has more pressing problems than climate change, who draw different conclusions from the available scientific evidence, who 've concluded that science is being abused by political operatives, or who 've noticed that many similar eco-apocalyptic predictions have failed to materialize.
The World Is Bored with Climate Change
Public interest in climate change peaked in March 2007 as Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth basked in the glow of an Academy Award win, but faded away ever since. RealClear Politics surveyed climate change news on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, as well as worldwide news coverage in 65 languages. Also surveyed were Google searches for climate change and global warming. Coverage peaked in 2009 with the Copenhagen climate conference, in 2015 with the Paris Accord and again in 2017 when President Trump announced US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
RealClear Politics ' conclusion: Whether this means the world believes the debate about causality and consequences is settled or whether the public has been so inundated with climate messaging that it simply can 't sustain the same level of concern anymore, the end result is that the topic has been slowly fading from the public view.
Germany 's Green Transition Has Hit a Brick Wall
While Germany has installed enough wind and solar power to theoretically supply the power requirements on any day with sufficient wind and sunshine, both of the latter are frequently lacking. More problematical is that wind turbines and solar panels often overproduce, creating major problems in equalizing production and consumption. Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to major energy losses and forced power exports to neighbouring countries ( load shedding ) at negative prices. In 2017 about half of Germany 's wind power was exported.
Germany can never shut down its thermal power plants as planned. Without them a stable network frequency is impossible. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany 's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world. Yet the country 's goal still is to get 60% of total energy from renewables by 2050.
<https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/21/germanys-green-transition-has-hit-a-brick-wall/>
Can Wind and Solar Replace Fossil Fuels?
Politicians, such as New York 's Andrew Cuomo, sometimes make announcements like: The Clean Energy Standard will require 50 percent of New York 's electricity to come from renewable energy sources like wind and solar by 2030 To determine whether that is even possible, it 's worth considering the example of Germany, which has some of the highest electric bills in the world as well as a high proportion of its electric power produced by wind and solar (19%). As the plots in the WUWT article show, the increase in wind and solar between 2011 and 2016 (from 68 to 116 billion kWh) had no effect on fossil fuel use. However, the grid suffered from increasing stability problems, and Germany is now plagued with blackouts.
As advertised by its politicians, Germany gets 19% of its energy from wind and solar. What they do not say is that it also exports 1/3 of that energy out of country, leaving its carbon footprint unchanged since 2011. Some small countries, notably Denmark, have advertised that they get 50% or more of their energy from sun and wind. What they really mean is that they have a large country (in the case of Denmark, Germany) next to them absorbing that power and selling them power when the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down.
Sustainable Fuels Unlikely to Replace Hydrocarbons for Air Travel
Commercial air travel poses a problem for climate change fighters. There is no viable low-carbon substitute for most of today 's air travel. Aircraft CO2 emissions are projected to quadruple by 2050 from 2010 levels. Airlines are counting on what they call Sustainable Aviation Fuel, produced from vegetable oils or biomass, such as soybeans, sugar cane, or algae.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization replacement of traditional aviation fuel from hydrocarbons with SAF would require 170 new large bio refineries to be built every year from 2020 to 2050 at a cost of up to $60 billion per year. But it 's not clear that sustainable aviation fuels will significantly reduce CO2 emissions. When traditional aviation fuel combusts, about three tonnes of carbon dioxide are created from each tonne of fuel. When SAF is burned, about three tonnes of CO2 is also exhausted for each tonne of fuel. Hence, hydrocarbon fuels will remain essential for air travel.
Organic Food Worse for the Climate
A new international study published in Nature finds that organically-farmed food has a greater climate impact than the conventionally-farmed kind. While organic farming has lower direct emissions through use of less fossil fuel, it produces less crops per hectare, which leads to greater indirect CO2 emissions from deforestation. For example, organically-farmed peas in Sweden have a 50% greater impact; for Swedish winter wheat the difference is closer to 70%.
The researchers used a new metric, which they call Carbon Opportunity Cost , to evaluate the effect of greater land-use contributing to higher carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. This metric takes into account the amount of carbon that is stored in forests, and thus released as carbon dioxide as an effect of deforestation. The study is among the first in the world to make use of this metric.
Friends of Science 's Goal: To educate the public about climate science and through them bring pressure to bear on governments to engage in public debates on the scientific merits of the hypothesis of human induced global warming and the various policies that intend to address the issue. Please donate through our website.
This issue of FoS Extracts is also found at <https://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=519>. Current and previous issues of FoS Extracts, FoS Climate Science and FoS Quarterly Reports are at <https://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=605>
You can also visit our other website at <http://www.climatechange101.ca>
©2002-2024 Friends of Science Society
