Same-sex couples more vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change
"Climate change is homophobic". The left wing agenda is all connected
Canada's 'energy blindness' must end - "Statistics Canada reported this week that this year, for the first time ever, Canada has become a net importer of electricity. The switchover in our electricity trade balance reveals the shortcomings of an energy strategy that now emphasizes decarbonization over energy security, leaving customers vulnerable to supply shortfalls and higher prices. Traditionally, Canada has generated surplus electricity that it has exported to the U.S. But in April total electricity generation was down 6.9 per cent from a year ago, continuing a trend that began earlier this year. The decline is the result of droughts across much of the country that have curtailed hydroelectric generation as well as planned maintenance at nuclear stations... Critics of wind and solar power often emphasize their intermittent nature when the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining. Intermittent electricity sources like these require maintaining reliable backup energy sources, notably power plants that burn fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas or coal. The recent reduction in hydro generation highlights how it, too, can sometimes be an unreliable source of power... As former Ontario cabinet minister Dwight Duncan observed at a recent conference on energy policy, Ontario and Quebec have the highest energy demand in the world because of peak demand in both winter and summer. But there is a disconnect between Canada’s ambition to electrify our power grid and our reluctance to expand electricity capacity. Electrifying our homes and vehicles while using energy-hungry technology implies a massive increase in our electricity consumption. Only recently have governments begun to realize projected electricity demands far exceed supplies. That is why Ontario and Quebec recently announced ambitious and expensive plans to boost generation. Ontario is expanding and refurbishing its extensive network of nuclear plants. In Quebec, the Legault government recently installed Michael Sabia as head of Hydro Quebec to carry out a plan to substantially increase hydro and wind power to meet future demand, discarding plans that emphasized energy conservation and inevitably would have required unpopular price hikes. Alberta’s near-death experience has led it to restructure its grid to reduce the priority given to unpredictable renewable sources... The European Union’s single-minded focus on decarbonizing its energy supply ended even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the cost to households, industry and governments mounted. Richard Norris of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute characterizes our own refusal to acknowledge the primordial importance of abundant and cheap energy as “energy blindness.” That blindness needs to end."
Philip Cross: Flawed emissions data in means flawed emissions policy out - "If climate-change activists were more aware of the flaws in the emissions estimates, as well as the uncertainty surrounding them, they might be less dogmatic about achieving an imperfect target that won’t deliver what it supposedly promises... Forests are a good example of the problem in measuring the impact of land use on carbon emissions. As The Economist puts it, “the world lacks a shared, sensible system for valuing the contribution of trees to sequestering carbon. This is an accounting problem of great complexity.” Growing trees act as a carbon “sink” by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. But when they die or burn this carbon is released. The benefits of growing trees as a carbon sink are recognized in programs such as the One Trillion Tree Initiative (which even Donald Trump championed) and the Trudeau government’s plan to plant two billion trees in Canada. But these programs ignore carbon that is released when trees die or burn. Taking into account the full life-cycle impact of trees makes clear they’re a little like a Ponzi scheme for reducing emissions: trees planted today remove carbon for a while but then release it when they die or burn. To keep ahead, you have to keep planting and growing more and more trees. What do we do when, ultimately, the planet is all forest?... Methane emissions are another hornet’s nest for emissions statistics. Methane originates in oil and gas operations, hydro reservoirs, wetlands and ruminant animals. (Yes, Ronald Reagan was right when he attributed the problem to cows.) Hydro reservoirs are of particular importance in Canada. Not only do trees covered in water not absorb carbon but reservoirs generate methane and other GHG emissions as vegetation decomposes. As Bill Gates wrote in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster , “a dam can actually be a worse emitter than coal for 50 to 100 years before (by producing clean electricity) it makes up for all the methane it’s responsible for.” But emissions from dam reservoirs are not included in the UN’s guidelines for reporting national emissions. (Nor are they subject to Canada’s carbon tax.) They are omitted because although academic research has found emissions from reservoirs can be substantial, their magnitude remains mostly guesswork. International air travel is also excluded from official national emissions statistics. This is because it’s hard to decide who is responsible for emissions generated by a flight between Canada and another country... Canada favours hydroelectric capacity because it is regarded as emissions-free. But adding new hydro capacity means more forests are flooded and as a result no longer sequester carbon. Similarly, as Richard Fortey points out in his book The Wood for the Trees , wood pellets contribute nearly half of Europe’s renewable energy — at least partly because wood does not count as a source of emissions. Together, the exclusion of forests and international air travel from official emissions statistics and the considerable uncertainty surrounding other emissions estimates mean we could achieve the statistical goal of net-zero emissions even if true emissions were still net-positive, global warming was continuing and stopping and reversing it would entail even more massive costs than anyone has so far suggested."
Singh targets carbon tax in a flaccid attempt to imitate Poilievre - "In August 2021, pre-coalition deal, EKOS had the Conservatives polling 52 per cent higher than the NDP among working-class voters; by August 2024, that lead grew to 119 per cent. Take it with an EKOS-worthy pinch of salt, but the results should trouble any NDP-supporter regardless. Singh, it seems, had to learn the hard way that punitively taxing people for existing in a modern (but cold) economy isn’t exactly the way into a working voter’s heart... The NDP has largely veered from labour politics toward campus-style identity concerns, even supporting the Liberal government as it caved to the rail duopoly in its dispute with train engineers. The free amenities don’t resonate all that much better. Liberal free school lunches, Liberal free birth control — all while Canada is getting collectively poorer respective to peer countries. Trudeau, confronted by a dissatisfied steelworker two weeks ago, even tried to play the free dental-care card. Didn’t this tradesman appreciate the latest expansion of the welfare state? No, of course not. “I pay for it myself…. Why? I have a good job,” responded the worker. The Liberals, and to a lesser degree, the NDP, struggle to understand the great insult of having welfare jigged in front of one’s face like a lure. No, a few hundred-dollar “Climate Action Incentive Payment” isn’t enough to buy someone’s vote, and it’s offensive to even suggest that it might be. No, another free service that everyone could afford in 2005 isn’t going to cut it, especially when many of us can’t reliably find a doctor. Climate justice was only fun when the rich were the ones paying, and handouts only felt great when most workers didn’t need them."
Randall Denley: It's put-up or shut-up time for wind power in Ontario - "Ontario’s new energy procurement will now be “energy agnostic” and will decide on future energy sources based on lowest prices. The expansion could include natural gas and nuclear, as well as wind and solar. Politically, the new approach is rather subtle. It allows the Ford government to claim it doesn’t oppose wind and solar while engaging in a procurement process that is likely to produce little of either. The plan includes multiple protections for farmland and allows communities to veto energy projects if they don’t want them. More than 150 Ontario municipalities have already said no to wind, one-third of all the municipalities in the province. Together, those provisions will make it tougher for wind and solar projects to proceed... For those who worship at the Church of Renewable Energy, this new agnosticism is bad news. They argue that wind power, which is far more prevalent than solar, has significant climate benefits. Further, they say the cost of wind power has come down dramatically, so much so that it’s now cheaper than alternatives. If so, this is the put-up or shut-up moment for the wind industry and its supporters. There is one thing working in wind power’s favour. Ontario has commissioned battery storage facilities across the province. These would enable unneeded wind power to be stored for times when it’s required. The good news ends there. Wind fans received a new blow this week in the form of a thorough examination of Ontario wind power costs by the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute. The think tank concluded that not only is wind power costly now, it will continue to be costly in the future while delivering minimal environmental benefit. The report’s author, Toronto economist Edgardo Sepulvada, has done a detailed analysis of the real cost of wind power, taking into account its environmental benefits. As the MLI report points out, wind is only valuable to the extent that it replaces natural gas-generated power. If it is replacing emissions-free nuclear or hydro, as it often does, there is no net environmental gain. Ontario is currently paying $151 per megawatt hour (MWh) of wind power. Ontario taxpayers subsidize 70 per cent of that price. Power users pay the rest. Subsidies to keep wind and solar power superficially affordable for power users cost the government $3 billion a year. In total, Ontario will spend $7.3 billion this year on various electricity subsidies. The subsidies began in 2017, under the Liberals. Sepulveda notes that no other provincial government has subsidized power by so much for so long. To be competitive, wind’s price will have to drop dramatically. Sepulvada estimates that wind would have to be priced at $46 MW/h for its benefits to equal its costs. Ontario expects to pay nearly double that in the next supply procurement. The full impact of wind power can’t be captured by prices or emissions numbers, however. Wind “farms” and solar energy installations deface the rural landscape and reduce the quality of rural life. That’s of little concern to city dwellers who like to be green, but it’s a real issue for rural Ontarians."
As solar capacity grows, duck curves are getting deeper in California - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - "As more solar capacity has come online in California, grid operators at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) have observed a drop in net load (or the demand remaining after subtracting variable renewable generation) in the middle of the day when solar generation tends to be highest. When graphed for a typical day, the pattern created by the midday dip in the net load curve, followed by a steep rise in the evenings when solar generation drops off, looks like the outline of a duck, so this pattern is often called a duck curve. As solar capacity in California continues to grow, the midday dip in net load is getting lower, presenting challenges for grid operators... Unlike conventional power plants (for example, nuclear, coal-fired, and natural gas-fired plants), solar and wind resources can’t be fully dispatched at will to help meet demand, and utilities may have to curtail them to protect grid operations. Solar power is only generated during daylight hours, peaking at midday when the sun is strongest and dropping off at sunset. As more solar capacity comes online, conventional power plants are used less often during the middle of the day, and the duck curve deepens. The duck curve presents two challenges related to increasing solar energy adoption. The first challenge is grid stress. The extreme swing in demand for electricity from conventional power plants from midday to late evenings, when energy demand is still high but solar generation has dropped off, means that conventional power plants (such as natural gas-fired plants) must quickly ramp up electricity production to meet consumer demand. That rapid ramp up makes it more difficult for grid operators to match grid supply (the power they are generating) with grid demand in real time. In addition, if more solar power is produced than the grid can use, operators might have to curtail solar power to prevent overgeneration. The other challenge is economic. The dynamics of the duck curve can challenge the traditional economics of dispatchable power plants because the factors contributing to the curve reduce the amount of time a conventional power plant operates, which results in reduced energy revenues. If the reduced revenues make the plants uneconomical to maintain, the plants may retire without a dispatchable replacement. Less dispatchable electricity makes it harder for grid managers to balance electricity supply and demand in a system with wide swings in net demand... The duck curve is not unique to California. It’s increasingly occurring in other parts of the country and around the world in places where the share of solar generation is increasing compared with generation from conventional sources. In addition, a duck curve is becoming visible at the national level in the United States."
“California's Duck Curve Hits Record Lows” - "“The forced energy transformation crowd continues to be in denial about how badly the California grid has been compromised by wind and solar, how expensive the battery solution is, and the prospect of Big Brother in the home (setting temperatures and restricting power use at will). As Ludwig von Mises observed, the failure of government intervention leads to more and more intervention, posing a choice between free markets and Leviathan.”
Social media is where the industry experts and talented professionals are effectively challenging the “magical thinking” behind climate alarmism/forced energy transformation, given the blackout of the mainstream media...
'The takeaway is that no new solar projects should be permitted (or are needed) without an equal amount of storage being made available.'...
'No amount of batteries will address this problem at a fiscally sensible level. Pursuing further penetration of solar and wind, along with batteries will push California’s electricity rates ever higher to the point of impoverishing the population and driving any sensible business away.'
Scott Tinker made the obvious point of more-of-the-same-is-worse:
' … the logic of integrated more of the thing that is causing the duck into the system is somewhat lost on people who understand and have to manage these things. Perhaps additional dispatchable sources like natural gas and nuclear to create reliable electricity would be useful. And also have the benefit of bringing California’s highest in the nation [lower-48] electricity prices down for the consumer. Or, you could continue to follow Europe…'...
The forced energy transformation crowd continues to be in denial about how badly the California grid has been compromised by wind and solar, how expensive the battery solution is, and the prospect of Big Brother in the home (setting temperatures and restricting power use at will)"
Violent tsunami will ravage several European countries - "It's no longer necessary to prove that global warming is causing chaos in several regions of the world. Natural disasters are multiplying: forest fires, intense droughts, torrential rains... The consequences on our planet are devastating."
Everything is the fault of climate change, even seismic activity!
James Clark ๐๐ ¯\_(ใ)_/¯ on X - "There are 9 nuclear plants in the UK supplying about 15% of our energy. So the UK would need about 60 plants to supply all its energy, so we need another 51 plants. The Koreans are building the Czechs a new nuclear plant for about £6.5bn. Based on this (and without any discounts or efficiencies) the cost of building nuclear plants to supply all the UK's power needs for over 50 years would be about £330bn. We spend this in less that 2 years on the NHS.
Net Zero is supposed to cost £50bn PER YEAR by 2050:
Also, bear in mind, one of the factors that destroys the Truss budget in 2022 was the uncosted guarantee for retail energy needs, budgeted around £150-200bn."
Jan Rosenow on X - "THIS IS A HUGE ACHIEVEMENT: The EU now generates more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels. Graph from @NatBullard data @EmberClimate"
Bjorn Lomborg on X - "It is indeed huge that the EU gets more electricity from solar and wind than from fossil fuels Mostly it is a huge cost — EU industry electricity prices have increased 70% since 2000, almost 2.7x the cost in the US"
The return of the boiler tax is the last straw - "Will Ed Miliband never learn? While electric heat pumps are a perfectly respectable choice for heating your home, particularly modern ‘sealed box’ new builds, or those without a gas supply, the person best placed to make that choice is you, not a Minister. The ‘Boiler Tax’ or Clean Heat Market Mechanism, attempts to force suppliers of gas boilers to sell an increasing market share of pumps until 600,000 are sold every year by 2028. The Conservatives conceived the policy, then delayed it until 2025, and now admit they should have killed it. Miliband, an veteran interventionist and tinkerer, who often conveys a sense he would happily double energy bills, bankrupt industry, and risk blackouts rather than miss a climate target, clearly loves it. Whatever you think of Net Zero however, the policy is bad. Forcing boiler makers to make and sell heat pumps is like requiring teapot makers to launch cafetieres... Meanwhile many more people still want the boilers. They work, are quieter, smaller, and easier to hide, don’t require extensive home improvements, and even with outrageously regressive subsidies for early switchers, they’re still cheaper to fit and maintain. Dictating sales volumes, when there is weak demand, like the zero emissions vehicle mandate, means the cost of the inevitable fines are being added to boiler ticket prices, some say up to £180 per unit, hence ‘boiler tax’. These higher prices in turn mean people delay upgrades, leaving older less efficient boilers in situ longer, using more gas, meaning higher emissions. In short, as with so many Government interventions the policy is not only expensive and damaging to industry, but actively undermines its own objective. The sensible policy for die-hard climate activists is to set a competitive carbon price, and let the market decide how best to decarbonise heat. No technology targets, no grandiose missions, no sweetheart meetings for cronies and donors in the Ministry, no pretence that the Government has the first clue how to plan the future. Miliband of course will not do this, nor will he reduce household bills by £300 a year. Instead he will likely preside over the worst energy misselling scandal since various policies encouraged homeowners to inject their walls with foam and Councils to clad tower blocks. Many beneficiaries of the Government subsidies will have heating systems that fail, domestic producers hit by the boiler tax will move production offshore, and many British homes will remain colder and more expensive to heat than they ought. They never learn."
‘They encouraged us to insulate our home. Now it’s unmortgageable’ - "Jim Bunce thought he was doing the right thing for his purse and the planet: in 2022, as fuel costs soared, he and his wife decided to improve the energy efficiency of their house. They discovered that the government had endorsed spray-foam insulation, a quick and unobtrusive technique by which liquid foam is spray-gunned into roof spaces and walls. Their loft was successfully treated at a cost of £2,800 and their gas bills duly fell. Now, two years on, they have found that, by making their home more energy efficient, they have also made it unsaleable. “We are unable to borrow against it, or potentially to sell it, unless the foam is completely removed,” says Bunce. The couple had hoped to take out an equity release mortgage to fund their retirement. “No provider will offer equity release on a property with spray-foam insulation due to fears that it damages roof timbers,” he says. “The removal will cost us £3,370 and, apart from the waste of money, there’s the environmental impact of 50 square metres of spray foam being sent to landfill.” Thousands of other householders are in the same position. It’s estimated that up to 300,000 properties could be affected, some of which had government funding for the work. A report published in March by the government’s Health and Safety Executive found that condensation could cause 25% of roof timber to decay within five years if spray foam is applied directly to roof tiles, or certain underlays. The general risks increase the further north the property is, because of colder climates... because surveyors are unable to inspect the roof timbers behind the layers, mortgage lenders tend to issue blanket refusals on properties where any foam is present... Homeowners say they were misled by the government, which exempted the insulation from VAT to promote uptake, as well as issuing grants worth up to two thirds of the installation costs. They feel this suggested the insulation was being endorsed... The spray-foam insulation has been excluded from the government’s latest green retrofit scheme, the Great British Insulation Scheme. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero says: “All spray-foam insulation funded by any current government grant must be installed by a TrustMark registered company. Certified installers suggest the most suitable insulation measures, with homeowners deciding which products they want to install.” Bunce says the experience has destroyed his confidence in any future eco-upgrades to his home. “As well as being out of pocket, we now find that we have lost trust in anyone selling services,” he says. “We’ve also lost confidence in our ability to make the correct decisions when looking at spending large sums, including who we would engage to remove the foam.”"
This won't stop left wingers calling for more regulation, because they think the government is always right
Meme - Into the Memory Hole: "Are you starting to see the writing on the wall now?"
Bloomberg. Business: "Want to Slow Climate Change? Stop Having Babies"
Bloomberg Opinion. Politics & Policy: "Only Immigrants Can Reverse America's Baby Bust"
Better Plan: The Trouble With Industrial Wind Farms in Wisconsin - Wisconsin Farmer Regrets Saying Yes To Turbines - "I contacted the Public Service Commission for help. The PSC approved the terms of project and I believed the utility was violating those terms. The PSC responded by telling me they could do nothing because the issue involved a private contract between myself and the utility. They told me my only option was to sue the utility. My father and I both worked those fields. Watching the way they’ve been ripped apart would sicken any farmer. But what farmer has the time and money it would take to sue a Wisconsin utility? By signing that contract I signed away the control of the family farm, and it’s the biggest regret I have ever experienced and will ever experience. I have only myself to blame for not paying close enough attention to what I was signing. We had a peaceful community here before the developer showed up, but no more. Now it’s neighbor against neighbor, family members not speaking to one another and there is no ease in conversation like in the old days. Everyone is afraid to talk for fear the subject of the wind turbines will come up. The kind of life we enjoyed in our community is gone forever. I spend a lot of sleepless nights wishing I could turn back the clock and apply what I've learned from this experience. Now corn and bean prices are up. The money from the turbines doesn't balance out our crop loss from land taken out of production. The kind of life we enjoyed on our family farm is gone forever too. I would not sign that contract today. As I write this, the utility is putting up the towers all around us. In a few months the turbines will be turned on and we'll have noise and shadow flicker to deal with. If I have trouble with these things, too bad. I've signed away my right to complain. These are some of the many problems I knew nothing about when I signed onto the project."
Gassy cows and pigs will face a carbon tax in Denmark, the first country to do so - "Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming... Denmark's move comes after months of protests by farmers across Europe against climate change mitigation measures and regulations that they say are driving them to bankruptcy."
Damn greedy companies charging too much for food and driving poor farmers bankrupt!
Greenpeace activists who scaled Sunak’s roof cleared by judge - "Four Greenpeace activists who staged a “no new oil” protest on the roof of Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire manor house have had charges of criminal damage thrown out. The activists said “justice and common sense” had prevailed after a judge on Friday ruled the evidence against them was “tenuous” and they had no case to answer... 15 roof tiles on the former prime minister’s house at Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, were damaged during the rooftop demonstration in August 2023. Six were Welsh blue tiles and nine were Westmorland tiles, the court was told. The repair cost was £2,937.96 including VAT, the court heard, and tree surgeons who were not able to work at the property because of the protest still charged their daily rate of £1,450... Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, and their two daughters were away from the house, on their summer holidays, when the four activists climbed on the roof and covered one side of the building in black fabric, in protest at the decision to license “hundreds” more oil and gas drill sites in the North Sea. The prosecution argued that the defendants were “reckless” when they climbed the roof for what was a five hour protest. Delivering a statement outside the court building, Grant said: “We have become a country that regularly sends peaceful protesters to jail, with some facing years behind bars for trying to preserve a habitable planet for us all. This has to stop.” He said peaceful protest was a vital part of democracy which had brought equal votes for women, the right to a weekend and bans on commercial whaling and fracking. “For Keir Starmer’s government we have a simple question: how much longer will they sit back and watch as this draconian crackdown on dissent keeps unfolding on their watch.”"
Luckily they didn't do anything truly terrible, like challenge the left wing consensus on migration online
Climate activists use potholes to win support by stealth - "Roger Harding, director of green group Round Our Way, highlighted the success of a campaign focused on how climate change causes problems with Britain’s roads - and encouraged other groups to follow suit."
In a roundabout way, climate change does make potholes worse: governments have a new excuse
Michael Taube: New Democrats haven't learned from their Liberal carbon tax mistake - "Guess who’s become the most vocal critic of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal carbon tax? Brace yourselves: the NDP... The coup de grรขce came courtesy of B.C. NDP Premier David Eby. He leads the province that’s most to blame for Canada’s unnatural infatuation with carbon taxes, but walked away from it, too. Eby slammed the Liberals for “politicizing” the federal carbon tax with large hikes and provincial exemptions. He said B.C. would eliminate this tax from consumers and, if Ottawa removed the federal backstop, would make “big polluters pay the carbon price.” Miracle of miracles! The impossible became possible! New Democrats have finally seen the light!... The carbon tax is a regressive policy that adversely affects overall market outcomes through social costs rather than private costs. It’s unnecessarily increased the role of the state in our daily lives. It’s crippled our domestic economy. It’s given Trudeau billions of additional taxpayer dollars to waste. It’s also played a significant role in increasing the affordability crisis that has adversely affected many hard-working Canadians and their families. Trudeau’s position that a carbon tax would be revenue-neutral was a non-starter, too. Many left-leaning economists and policy analysts have touted this position for decades, but it’s complete nonsense. A tax that’s collected by any level of government is absorbed into the system and cannot be specifically returned in a different guise. The Fraser Institute proved this in a 2017 analysis of B.C.’s supposedly revenue-neutral carbon tax. It clearly used smoke and mirrors to claim revenue neutrality, when in fact it “was no longer solely relying on new tax measures to offset the carbon tax revenue and instead began using pre-existing tax reductions in its revenue neutral calculation.” The B.C. premier at the time? Christy Clark, who wasn’t a New Democrat — and should have known better. Hence, the carbon tax is nothing more than a regressive Pigouvian tax"
Experts Warn Hurricane In Hurricane Alley During Hurricane Season Clear Sign Of Climate Change - "Climate experts noted today that hurricane Helene, which is currently forming in hurricane alley during the peak of hurricane season, is undeniable proof of climate change... At publishing time, climate experts warned that climate change was also expected to cause freezing weather and heavy snow in the Canadian Rockies this winter, followed by high temperatures across Texas next July."
Mythinformed on X - "“I learn from them just like I do from the scientists coming up with the breakthroughs.” In his new Netflix documentary, Bill Gates claims that the Woke and emotionally unstable climate activists are “super important” to his efforts in fighting ‘climate change’."
Meme Kevin Bass PhD MS @kevinnbass: "89% of ivy league graduates favor the strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity to fight climate change."
Weird. I thought this was a far right conspiracy theory and misinformation
James Melville ๐ on X - ""In five years, scientists predict we will have the first ice-free Arctic summer." John Kerry back in 2009."
Even if you want to say that Kerry isn't a scientist, so scientists can't be blamed for what he said, it's clear we can't trust what climate change hystericists tell us "science" says