Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Links - 25th September 2024 (2 - Climate Change)

Meme - "50 YEARS OF CLIMATE SCIENCE IN 1 GRAPH
100 trillion billion megadegrees K
Very hot weather
Past - Current temp: *stable temperature* Cherry picked temperature reconstruction showing stability
Present - Current temp-Very hot weather: *slowly rising temperature* Adjusted temperature record to show omnious acceleration
Tipping point (tomorrow) - *temperature surging* Computer model showing you the infernal climate apocalypse future that wait if my funding isn't increased

Wilfred Reilly on X - "The hard reality of environmentalism is that none of the cute stuff you do - "My girl and I have begun to COMPOST!!!" - will make any difference whatsoever to the future of the world. Western emissions are already down more than 12% from 2000, the real problem is China and India, and the problem will be solved with nuke."

Why are some Australian households about to be charged for generating too much solar power? - "Since 2021, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has been assessing the states or territories where electricity prices should take into account the cost of having lots of solar panel owners exporting power to the grid.  The move was originally prompted by groups such as the Australian Council of Social Service and St Vincent de Paul. They argued it was unfair that households unable to afford solar panels (or batteries) had to pick up additional costs caused by modifying the grid to absorb “two-way” electricity flows. The public interest advocacy centre also supports the move. The AER’s five-year rolling regulatory pricing updates meant three NSW-based energy firms – Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential – were told in April they could impose a fee on households exporting surplus power during the period of the day that is sunniest when the spot power prices are often negative... The Australian Energy Regulator said the electricity network “was not designed for large amounts of energy flowing back into the network”.  “This two-way flow of energy, with peaks in supply during the middle of the day, is overloading the network in many areas,” it said."
Climate change hystericists don't understand the problems that "renewables" have with intermittency and unreliability

Why climate change ISN'T going to end the world and why we need to stop obsessing about net-zero, according to Cambridge University professor - "Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but the world is not actually ending, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme. Humanity is not teetering on a cliff's edge, he says, at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don't reach net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date. And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are. In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn't Everything, Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology. Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, dubs this ideology 'climatism,' and he argues that it can distort the way society approaches the world's ills, placing too much focus on slowing Earth from warming. The problem, he said, is this narrow focus takes attention away from other important moral, ethical, and political objectives - like helping people in the developing world rise out of poverty... As with other 'isms' - like cubism or romanticism - ideologies provide a way of thinking about things, explained Hulme. 'They're like spectacles that help us to make sense of the world, according to a predefined framework or structure,' he said... many journalists, advocates, and casual observers of climate change have become devotees of climatism, inaccurately attributing many events that happen in the world as being caused by climate change. He gives the examples of a fire, flood, or damaging hurricane. 'No matter how complex a particular causal chain might be, it's a very convenient shorthand to say, 'Oh, well, this was caused by climate change,'' Hulme said. 'It's a very shallow and simplistic way, I would argue, to try to describe events that are happening in the world.'... 'Fundamentally, we're going to have to deal with hurricanes, and we're not going to deal with them just by cutting our carbon emissions,' he said. The solutions, he argues, will include better forecasting, better early warning systems, better emergency plans, and better infrastructure. 'There are all sorts of things that we can do to minimize the risks and dangers of hurricanes, that are way more effective in the short term than trying to cut our carbon emissions,' said Hulme. The danger of climatism, he pointed out, is that it leads people down a false chain of events: If all of these things happening in the world are caused by climate change, then all we have to do is stop climate change, and all the other things will stop themselves. 'So whether it's Putin's war, or whether it's the Hamas-Israel conflict in Gaza, whether it is a hurricane hitting Miami - if all of these things are caused by climate change, let's get rid of climate change,' said Hulme. 'And that clearly is a very inadequate way of thinking about the complexities of most of the problems we we face in the world today.' This distorted thinking can make people forget about other important concerns, he argues. As an example, Hulme points to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 17 areas that the world's governments have identified as top priorities for humanity. The SDGs include building peace and justice, eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, and ensuring clean sanitation and water for billions of people on the planet. 'These are really important goals, and the danger is if we obsess about just climate change, if we think that climate change holds the key to wellbeing and a better future, we take attention away from interventions that will make progress on the sustainable development goals,' he said. As an example, Hulme points to Western European governments that are not willing to put money into the transition away from open wood burning cookers in many rural villages in the global south, which cause very high mortality levels, particularly amongst women and children. 'Liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is much cleaner, much more efficient, much easier for women and girls to get access to,' he said. 'But in the name of climate change, well, we can't put money into LPG transition, because that's a fossil fuel.'... If society were to put climate change priorities into their proper proportions then, Hulme said it would still be on the list. It just wouldn't be the only item on the list, and it wouldn't be at the top. 'There's 17 SDGs, and two of them are related to climate. So that begins to rebalance, or re-proportion, the amount of effort and attention we might wish to pay,' said Hulme. Beyond these mixed up priorities, Hulme also takes issue with what he sees as an obsession with deadlines: 'There's this idea of the ticking clock counting down to Ground Zero - we've only got five years, 10 years, two years - however long different commentators put the deadline.' He calls this line of thinking 'deadline-ism,' a sort of sub-ideology of climatism, and he says he finds it unhelpful. 'It's like holding a gun to your head and saying, 'You've only got three seconds to make a decision.' And under those circumstances, most human beings would not make a very good decision,' he said. Perhaps even worse, it has the potential to undermine the gravity of the true threat posed by climate change. One danger of deadlines can be that they cultivate a sense of fatalism: 'Well, if we've only got three more years, clearly we're not going to solve it in three years time. So what the heck, let's give up,' Hulme said. The other danger is cynicism: The average person sees deadlines come and go, but the world is still here, and as far as most people can tell, climate disaster has not befallen us. 'We've had many of these supposedly decisive years, said Hulme. 'And you know, it's not surprising that people may become somewhat cynical or fatigued by this type of rhetoric.'... this public framing has led to a phenomenon called 'eco-anxiety,' which Hulme said he sees among his students at Cambridge University 'They have absorbed these claims of tipping points, and they take these things literally, and feel that there is no future for them because the climate is going to go out of control,' he said. 'They feel that it will be too late, and everything will collapse.' As an educator of young adults, and as someone who has studied climate change over a 40-year career, Hulme sees a pastoral dimension to his role. 'I see people unnecessarily going down a spiral of despair and hopelessness that I find deeply concerning and worrying,' he said. Part of what makes this so unfortunate is that he still sees many reasons to feel hopeful about the future. Chief among them, the irrepressible ingenuity and spirit of humans and their social formations."
Damn climate change denier spreading dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories! He needs to be unpersoned!

How a green fuel and Biden's climate law poisoned the South - "Wood pellets were supposed to be a green energy. And President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was meant to be good for America's air, forests, and rivers. But environmentalists say government-subsidized wood pellet production is wreaking havoc across the South. Swathes of forests have been chopped down to make pellets for power stations in Europe. And residents living near those plants say they leave their air dustier and people sicker... Quaranda and other critics say the pellets are even dirtier than fossil fuels... Studies have found firing wood pellets puts more carbon immediately into the atmosphere than coal... Pollution from biomass-based facilities is nearly three times higher than that of other energy sectors, according to a 2023 paper in the journal Renewable Energy. In a 2018 letter, hundreds of scientists warned the EU that the 'additional carbon load' from burning wood pellets means 'permanent damages' including glacial melting."

Now eco-fanatics threaten to ruin opening week of school holidays - "Eco-fanatics have threatened to ruin the opening week of the school holidays for millions of families by targeting National Trust properties. Protesters from the group Christian Climate Action will disrupt visitors going to tourist hotspots across the UK including Chartwell in Kent, which belonged to Sir Winston Churchill and Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed."

Kelly McParland: Jasper wildfire disaster reflects failure of climate moralizing to produce results - "The most recent gathering , COP 28, was held in the sweltering desert city of Dubai, where some 85,000 delegates, “including more than 150 Heads of State and Government” and “representatives of national delegations, civil society, business, Indigenous Peoples, youth, philanthropy, and international organizations” jetted in to shelter in air-conditioned convention rooms and discuss the crisis for the 28th time. Lord knows how many limousines were required... If you’re one of the people who think summits in foreign capitals, lectures by peripatetic activists or tax hits on fossil fuels are what’s needed to save the planet, the devastation in Fort MacMurray, Jasper or Lytton is the tragic result of people failing to listen. On the other hand, three decades and trillions of dollars in expenditures have passed since that first gabfest, and homes are still burning, communities being flooded and people seeing their lives upended. Jasper evacuees can be forgiven for seeing their nightmare not as retribution by the climate gods but as an epic failure by a climate crusade committed to decades of moralizing, bad ideas and political posturing over practical remedies to predictable needs. In 2018 the CBC quoted two veteran foresters warning that a major fire in Jasper was inevitable due to years of buildup of combustible tinder collecting on the forest floor. “You’ve got a major catastrophe on your hands if you get a match thrown into that,” said Ken Hodges, one of the two. Jasper’s mayor had issued a similar alarm a year earlier, warning that the pine beetle epidemic had left a swath of dead forest just waiting to ignite... At some point the activists, academics and politicians will have to accept that three decades of summits, briefings, demonstrations and photo ops haven’t got the job done. Too much of the world is too weighed down by poverty to be persuaded by moralizing. A quarter billion people living hand to mouth in India aren’t about to swear off “dirty” fuel because people in Toronto or New York or Paris have noticed the weather is becoming weirder. A more prosaic approach, like paying for flood control, wildfire prevention and infrastructure upgrades, might not bring down temperatures but would temper the impact. Governments in Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec have dedicated tens of billions in tax breaks and subsidies to multinationals to build battery plants at a time demand for electric vehicles is waning. Umicore , a Belgian firm, said Friday it would halt a planned $2.8 billion Ontario plant because “customers’ demand projections for our battery materials have steeply declined.” Ford Motor Co. reversed a plan to build EVs at its assembly plant outside Toronto and will instead retool it to produce gas-guzzling Super Duty pickup trucks. Yet while billions flow to help suburbanites buy Teslas, B.C. officials revealed in June that a $2 billion long-term flood mitigation plan developed in the wake of the 2021 floods had been “turned down flat” by Ottawa in its request for funding. “It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens complained. Though Ottawa has $3.4 billion set aside in a disaster-prevention fund, communities are required to compete for the money, meaning “smaller municipalities and communities do not always have the resources needed to undertake the lengthy and sometimes costly process of preparing an application,” B.C. officials said. Mayor Michael Goetz of Merritt, whose entire city was ordered evacuated during the floods, said federal authorities “told us this was the way to get” federal support, but has changed its tune. “Honestly, if preventing an almost guaranteed future disaster with a project like this doesn’t make the cut, I can’t imagine what projects in Canada will.” Canada takes a back seat to no one when it comes to sanctimonious moralizing, and we’re into our fifth year of a contentious carbon tax that vacuums up money from daily purchases, then sends it back in quarterly cheques. Maybe if more effort went into dikes, floodways, pumping stations, firebreaks, water mains, forest management and the like, fewer summits would be necessary and a measure of real progress would be visible."

EDITORIAL: PM’s climate plan costs $200 billion - "Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault boasted last year that the federal government has committed more than $200 billion of taxpayers’ money to addressing climate change in more than 100 government programs. Among other polices, this includes a carbon pricing system for large industrial emitters, a cap on emissions in the oil and gas sector, methane regulations, clean fuel and clean electricity regulations, green energy tax credits, electric vehicle mandates, subsidies for people who buy EVs and more. While many economists argue that a carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions compared to more expensive programs such as regulations and subsidies, the problem with the Trudeau government’s climate change plan is that it has imposed regulations and subsides on top of its carbon tax."
Left wingers don't mind how much money is wasted, because they think that this can be paid for by "taxing the rich" (rhetoric the government explicitly repeats)

Meme - Kurtis Blow: "The 2020s: we've never seen temps this high before!
The 1930s:
"All-Time" Statewide High Temperature Records
*ranging from 1898 to 2021, with most being in the first half of the 20th century or earlier*"

Melting Antarctic ice could actually slow sea level rise | New Scientist
Weird. I thought the science was rock solid and the models were airtight

Wide Awake Media on X - ""They build a computer model that gives them the answer they want, and then tell you that they've got evidence that this is going to happen in the future." Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, on the fraudulent climate modelling held up by climate alarmists as "evidence" of impending climate catastrophe.  Where have we seen that before? 🤔"
Trust the "Science"!

@levelsio on X - "This MAY be very farfetched but hold my sparkling water:
- Global temperatures started rising in ~1950
- US started installing ACs in ~1950
- 90% of US homes have AC
- EU never did: only 19% of EU homes have AC (!)
- Only 16% of the top EU companies were founded after 1950
- But 64% of top US companies were founded after 1950
Could it just all be down to having AC and being able to think clearly? Lee Kaun Yew, the founder of Singapore, said the #1 reason Singapore became rich was AC while its surrounding countries stayed relatively poor"

spain energy crisis: Lowering AC below 27 degrees Celsius banned in Spain - "As Europeans battle sweltering temperatures and rising energy prices, Spain adopted a rule mandating that air conditioning be set at or above 27 degrees Celsius in public areas, including offices, shops, bars, theaters, airports, and train stations... The rules include maintaining heating at or below 19 degrees Celsius in the winter... Greece and Italy announced measures last month to similarly restrict energy use when cooling public buildings, requiring air conditioning to be set to 27 degrees Celsius or higher.  France has ordered public premises to set thermostats higher in the summer and lower in the winter and will fine air-conditioned businesses 750 euros ($764 approx) if they leave their doors open. The city of Hanover, Germany, has banned the use of mobile air conditioning units and fan heaters everywhere other than in hospitals and schools.  However, the Madrid region president Isabel Diaz Ayuso tweeted, "Madrid isn't going to switch off. This generates insecurity and scares away tourism and consumption"."
Spanish government to allow flexibility on air-conditioning, but rules out U-turn on decree - "The regions of Andalusia, Murcia, Galicia, Madrid and Castilla y León have all requested the withdrawal of the royal decree... Ayuso tweeted that from ‘tomorrow night, the only shop windows in Europe that will be off will be those in Spain. The decree goes against trade, tourism and the feeling of security. An imposition without dialogue that does not measure its economic impact and invades powers. We will take it to the courts.’"
From 2022

Meme - *Clown Applying Makeup*
End oil pipelines
End nuclear power
*Dark* Sign the largest energy deal
*Pitch black* yo where my lights at"

The US planned to install thousands of EV chargers. Only 7 have been built. - The Washington Post - "President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.  But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars... The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of that, $5 billion was allocated to individual states in so-called “formula funding” to build a network of fast chargers along major highways in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program.  But after two years, that program has only delivered seven open charging stations with a total of 38 spots where drivers can charge their vehicles, according to a spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration. (The funding should be enough to build up to 20,000 charging spots or around 5,000 stations, according to analysis from the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy.) Stations are open in Hawaii, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and under construction in four other states.  Twelve additional states have awarded contracts for constructing the charging stations; 17 states have not yet issued proposals... many non-Tesla fast chargers have a reputation for poor performance and sketchy reliability. EV advocates have criticized Electrify America, the company created by Volkswagen after the company’s “Dieselgate” emissions scandal, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on chargers that don’t work well. The company has said they are working to improve reliability. The data analytics company J.D. Power has estimated that only 80 percent of all charging attempts in the country are successful... each charging spot will require the same maximum power as around 20 homes — a huge lift for local utilities not used to installing chargers."
Combating climate change is too important a job to be left to the private sector, and greedy companies will just wastefully profit from taxpayer money, so the government needs to lead the way and do everything
Clearly, even more money is needed.

Clean Fuel Startups Were Supposed to Be the Next Big Thing. Now They Are Collapsing. - WSJ - "Many clean-fuel projects have become money pits, in part because of the great amounts of power they need. High interest rates, supply-chain disruptions and expensive power-grid upgrades have driven up electricity prices. Clean-fuel producers are also competing for renewable electricity with big technology companies that operate artificial-intelligence data centers and can often pay higher prices for power. “The only way to fix it is by lowering the cost of green electricity,” said Andrew Forrest, one of the most vocal advocates of hydrogen."
James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "ESG is a scam. None of this was ever supposed to work. It's just a way to undercut the productive capacity and standards of living of Western nations and to achieve strategic geopolitical advantages over them."

'Wake-up call:' Government's own research suggests Canadians are worried about cost of clean energy transition - "Participants expressed the belief that “they would take on a large burden of the associated costs,” rather than Ottawa, which they said should step up its funding... Some of the cost concerns those in the study raised were around home renovations and buying an electric vehicle. While the government offers rebates to help purchase a zero-emission vehicle and renovate a home to make it more energy efficient, “individuals feel they would struggle with significant upfront costs.” They also saw a lack of options for those who are low and middle income or are renting. “The initiatives seemed to favour higher-income households in general,” the study read."
Clearly, government money is magic and comes from nowhere

Meme - "Estimated Land Use Required to Generate ~4100 TWh
Nuclear ~ 192 km2
Chicago ~ 590 km2
Wind ~ 76,960 km2
Solar ~ 86,581 km2
Ohio ~ 116,098 km2"

Global warming melts Swiss mountain pass unseen since Roman times - "In Switzerland, between the Scex Rouge and Tsanfleuron mountains, the Col de Tsanfleuron pass has been covered by ice for over 2,000 years."
Damn Romans and their carbon emissions leading to climate change!

Meme - Sophie Corcoran @sophielouisecc: "How to be a good climate activist:
Step 1 - own a private jet
Step 2 - lecture the poor
Step 3- fly to Davos
Step 4 - give yourself an award
Step 5- make rules to make the poor poorer
Step 6 - don't follow the rules yourself."

GREEN: Trudeau’s tariffs undercut Trudeau’s EV mandate - "Seemingly every week, Canada’s e lectric v ehicle (EV) t ransition policy framework grows more incoherent. The goal of Canada’s EV policy is to ensure all new light-duty vehicle sales in Canada are zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), with a strong emphasis on battery-electric vehicles , by 2035. The latest incoherence is Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EV imports and 2 5% tariffs on Chinese s teel and a luminum imports ( Canada need s to build EVs). This will directly undercut the government’s EV transition targets by denying Canadians access to affordable electric cars... By d riving up the costs of buying EVs in Canada , the Trudeau government will directly undercut its EVs-by-2035 mandate . If people can’t afford EVs, as most currently cannot, the EV mandate targets are doomed. People will simply hold on to their old internal combustion vehicles for longer. This trend is already observable in the U nited States where new vehicles have become more expensive. Americans are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever , with the average vehicle age reaching 13.6 years. The Trudeau government’s highest priority has been the war on c limate c hange, which various government leaders in Canada and around the world have proclaimed the greatest threat to people and the planet in human history. But if the government is sincere about this, then the priority should be to maximize Canadians ’ access to cheaper EVs , and t he p rime m inister should be largely indifferent to where Canadians choose to source those EVs . Indeed, he should urgently want low-cost EVs available to Canadians for there to be any hope of achieving his all-EV by 20 35 goal ."

CHARLEBOIS: 'Charging' ahead, canola be damned - "Canada’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) last week was a predictable move. Ottawa fully anticipated retaliation, which came swiftly as China announced an anti-dumping investigation into Canadian canola exports. While there is no evidence of actual dumping, the facts are largely irrelevant in this case. China will proceed with sanctions regardless of the explanations provided by the Canola Council or Canadian diplomatic channels... Western Canadian farmers now face significant uncertainty, largely a result of Ottawa’s aggressive push to bolster the battery and EV sectors. The federal government has committed nearly $50 billion toward building battery factories, a bold gamble that led to the imposition of tariffs on Chinese EVs. The official rationale, it seems, is to protect domestic manufacturers from an influx of cheaper green vehicles from China, even if that means limiting affordable options for Canadian consumers and straining relations with China. This approach prioritizes the development of Canadian-made EVs over the potential benefits of allowing lower-cost imports to help reduce carbon emissions. This industrial strategy follows a familiar pattern: when a government decides that a product must be produced domestically, at all costs, it often results in less competition, higher prices, and questionable product quality. The dairy industry offers a prime example. Ottawa has funneled billions into the sector, supported by highly restrictive trade barriers. While this policy has propped up dairy farmers, it has done so at the expense of other agricultural sectors — wheat, canola, beef, and pork — all of which could arguably benefit from the same level of government support. In the end, the federal government will likely compensate canola farmers for their losses, as it has done before"
Climate change is such an existential threat that EVs must be kept expensive

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