Climate Initiatives

How the Carbon Cult Subverts Political Discourse

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Trudeau Turns the Carbon Tax Screws on Canadians April 1

Ross Mckitrick explains the smoke and mirrors in Trudeau’s justifications for his racheting carbon tax in a National Post article Wanted: A leader who is honest about climate policy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Pierre Poilievre is leading anti-carbon tax rallies around the country, ginning up support for an old-fashioned tax revolt. In response, Justin Trudeau went to Calgary and trumpeted — believe it or not! — his love of free markets. After explaining the economic logic of using a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases, the prime minister slammed regulatory approaches, which, he said, “all involve the heavy hand of government. I prefer a cleaner solution, a market-based solution and that is, if you’re behaving in a way that causes pollution, you should pay.” He added that the Conservatives would instead rely on the “heavy hand of government through regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the economy as opposed to trusting the market.”  Amen to all that!

But someone should tell Trudeau that his own government’s
Emission Reduction Plan mainly consists of heavy-handed
regulations, subsidies, mandates and winner-picking grants.

Within its 240 pages one does find a carbon tax. But also 139 additional policies, including:

♦  Clean Fuels Regulations,
♦  An electric vehicle mandate that will ban gasoline cars by 2035,
♦  Aggressive fuel economy standards that will hike such cars’ cost in the meantime,
♦  Costly new emission targets specifically for oil & gas, agriculture, heavy industry and waste management,
♦  Onerous new energy efficiency requirements both for new buildings and renovations of existing buildings, New electricity grid requirements, and page upon page of
♦  Subsidy funds for “clean technology” firms and other would-be winners in the sunlit uplands of the new green economy.

Does Trudeau oppose any of that? Hardly. But the economic logic of a carbon tax only applies when it is used on its own. He doesn’t get to boast about the elegance of market mechanisms on behalf of a policy package that starts with a price signal then destroys it with a massive regulatory apparatus. Trudeau also tried to warm his Alberta audience to the carbon tax by invoking the menace of mild weather and forest fires. In fairness it was an unusual February in Calgary. The month began with a week of above-zero temperatures, hitting five degrees Celsius at one point, then there was a brief cold snap before Valentine’s Day, then the daytime highs soared to the low teens for nine days and the month ended with soupy above-zero conditions. Weird.

Oops, that was 1981. This year was weirder: February highs were above zero for 25 out of 28 days, eight of which were even above 10 degrees C.

Oops again, that was 1991. Granted, February 2024 also had
its mild patches, but not like the old days.

Of course, back then warm weather was just weather. Now it’s a climate emergency and Canadians demand action. Except they don’t want to pay for it, which is the main problem for politicians when trying to come up with a climate policy that’s both effective and affordable. In fact, you can only have one of those two. Take your pick: effective or affordable, affordable or effective.

In practice, of course we typically end up zero for two,
with policies that are both ineffective and unaffordable.

You can claim your policy will yield deep decarbonization while boosting the economy, which almost all politicians in every western country have spent decades doing. But it’s not true. With current technology, affordable policies yield only small temporary emission reductions. Population and economic growth swamp their effects over time, which is why mainstream economists have long argued that while we can eliminate some lowvalue emissions, for the most part we will just have to live with climate change. Trying to stop it would cost far more than it’s worth.

Meanwhile the policy pantomime continues. Poilievre’s anti-carbon tax rallies are popular, but what happens after we axe the tax? If he plans to replace it with regulatory measures aimed at achieving the same emission cuts, he really should tell his rallygoers that what he has in mind will hit them even harder than the tax they’re so keen to scrap.

Or does he have the courage to do the sensible thing
and follow the mainstream economics advice?

If he wants to be honest with Canadians, he must explain that the affordable options will not get us to the Paris target, let alone to net-zero, and even if they did, what Canada does will have no effect on the global climate because we’re such small players. Maybe new technologies will appear over the next decade that change the economics, but until that day we’re better off fixing our growth problems, getting the cost of living down and continuing to be resilient to all the weather variations Canadians have always faced.

Addendum

Notice that Trudeau asserts that his carbon tax is needed so that “polluters pay.”  Millions of Canadian taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on prime time TV ads reminding viewers that we have to do something to stop “carbon pollution”, by which they mean CO2 emissions.  No matter that CO2, far from being an unnatural contaminant, is plant food without which (less than 150 ppm) plants and animals die.  No mention of thousands of scientists proclaiming that “There is No Climate Emergency,” and that global warming and rising CO2 since the Little Ice Age have led to unprecedented human flourishing.

So essential CO2 is labeled as a pollutant in order to insist that emissions from burning hydrocarbons must be reduced to avert a crisis: heat waves, forest fires, floods, droughts, etc. etc.  The premise is “We have to do something to stop emitting CO2.”  Politicians of all stripes dare not question it.  And a video interview below demonstrates how that premise prevents any reasonable discussion of energy policy.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report looking into how much the carbon tax is actually costing Canadian households. In the CBC interview, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux breaks down the report. And, Dale Beugin, executive vice-president of the Canadian Climate Institute discusses the analysis his organization has conducted on the government’s emissions reduction plan. Note the PBO role is non-partisan, while the CCI agenda is open and obviously Gung Ho against CO2.

The discussion with the PBO ends at 11 minutes into the video, the remainder being CCI talking about ways to shape industrial policies to force additional emissions down to meet Paris targets.  A few excerpts from the first part show how difficult it is to escape the premise that we have to do something about CO2.

CBC:  I’m sure have been watching what’s been happening in the House of Commons the conclusions in your report they’re being cited by the conservatives in particular as proof that Canadians are worse off because of carbon pricing and that means this policy needs to go. Is that a fair representation of your findings?

PBO: Well it’s a representation of our findings once you also include the economic impacts of introducing a carbon tax. So there’s the fiscal impact on households paying the tax versus the amount of the rebate that households are receiving. But once you also include the economic impacts due to the introduction of a carbon tax, for example the reduction in activity or the slower growth in economic activity in some sectors then that’s the full impact.

CBC:  The fiscal analysis is the financial analysis that the government points to. They say most families will still get  more in rebates than they pay, sort  of Straight Cash Out, Straight Cash in.  Is that a fair representation?

PBO: The conclusion we arrived at if you take into consideration the carbon tax that households pay on their fossil fuels that they’re buying: gasoline, natural gas, diesel and so on, they pay that directly as well as the embedded energy component of whatever goods and services they buy and they subtract from that the the rebate then about 80% of households are better off.

CBC: It gets complicated and this is where it gets controversial because you took a look at the broader effect that carbon pricing, any kind of tax has on an economy, it can have an economic impact to the negative and this is the line from report that conservatives point to once you factor in the rebate but also the economic impacts the majority of the households will see a negative impact as a result of the carbon tax. The rebuttal to that conclusion is that it doesn’t tell the whole story it doesn’t look at other options and other impacts. What do you say in terms of people understanding the meaning of that analysis?

PBO: The analysis looks at the world where the we have a carbon tax versus the absence of a carbon tax which is how we do economic analysis. So the impact of a carbon tax on the economy will have impacts on some sectors; the transportation sector to take one example, or the oil and gas sector, lower employment than would otherwise be the case or lower profits than would otherwise be the case. So that translates into economic impacts on average for households: lower employment, lower profits, lower dividends for those who own stocks Etc. so these are the economic impacts.

CBC: This is where the analysis has caused some confusion and drawn some criticism because the analysis only compares the impact as you said of a carbon price versus nothing, and nothing isn’t an option right? It doesn’t compare carbon pricing versus other options that other experts would say could be even more expensive. So how should people assess the political arguments we’re seeing without a clear comparative analysis of the options?

PBO: So my mandate is to provide cost estimates of policy proposals by the government or policy measures that the government has introduced. My mandate does not include providing cost estimates of alternative scenarios or multiple options. So you’re right that doing something else to reach International targets or a Canada’s commitment under the Paris Accord would also have costs. For example if we were to introduce massive subsidies for new technologies to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, that would obviously have costs. Introducing regulations also has costs and these costs could could be measured if we knew exactly what these alternatives are but there’s no clear policy proposal from the government as what would be the alternative to a carbon tax. So it’s difficult to cost something that has not been proposed yet.

It’s true that the consensus among economists is generally speaking a carbon tax is probably the least disruptive way to reduce emissions. That being said we see that the government itself is not relying solely on a carbon tax for various reasons. So the government itself is introducing subsidies for clean fuel and many regulations.

CBC: So you can’t assess this compared to another proposal because there is no other proposal to assess.  You also don’t factor in the cost of climate change. We’ve seen massive wildfires still burning from last year throughout the winter In British Columbia and in Alberta; you know the extreme weather on the East Coast, flooding and storms, all of that has a massive economic impact as well and a loss of productivity and cost to governments.

The idea is to stop that from getting worse or more frequent,
how do we assess that versus the cost
of using carbon pricing to lower emissions.

PBO: That’s a very difficult field to to venture into because the number of unusual weather events that’s occurring. We don’t know which ones are due to climate change and which ones would have occurred anyways, or whether their extent would have been smaller or even worse, probably  smaller especially in a short period of time. We’ve tried to estimate the impact of climate change between now and the year 2100 and we find that there is a cost to climate change but for the next few years between now and 2030 it’s very difficult to determine precisely the cost of climate change.  It’s an area that we ventured into but it’s not easy and not that many institutions and organizations have established clear parameters under which to estimate the cost of climate change.

It’s very unlikely that there’ll be significant technological breakthroughs between now and
2030 sufficient to even partially offset the cost of a carbon tax for example, or any measures to mitigate or reduce our carbon emissions. But it’s quite possible that Beyond 2030 once technologies become more mature they’ll be able to offset some of the costs that we’ll we’ll have to incur to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So that’s why it’s difficult to say whether the costs will be offset by the benefits over the longer term but between now and 2030 it’s clearly not going to happen.

I’m providing unbiased nonpartisan information, information not pronouncements, not verdicts on policies. It’s up to decision makers and Canadians to make up their own minds based on the information we provide them so they can decide whether a carbon tax or other measures are the best way forward to reduce carbon emissions. We’re not passing judgments as to whether a policy is working or not.

My Observations

This interview shows that the carbon cult narrative
subverts rational policymaking in three significant ways.

Firstly, there is no accounting of all the economic and social damage done by the multitude of federal government climate policies and regulations (139 that McKitrick found in the Emission Reduction Plan). Secondly the benefits to offset the carbon tax costs consider only saving some damages from extreme weather. This is problematic in two ways. There is no certainty that imposing these costs on Canadians will have any effect on CO2 levels, or  that climate and weather will be any different for having made the effort.

Add to that the ignoring of actual benefits to humankind and to the biosphere from rising atmospheric CO2 and warming temperatures. Virtually every year global agricultural production sets records because of warming and CO2 enhancing photosynthesis. That puts food on the table for billions of people. What insanity to pursue things like carbon capture to rob the biosphere of CO2, while dreaming of a cooler future planet. Both objectives would threaten the world food supply and can hardly be benefits to justify emissions reductions.

Finally CCI gives the game away when they say, in effect:
“You don’t like the carbon tax, but doing nothing is not an option.”

In fact doing nothing to reduce CO2 emissions is the best option, though politicians are loath to admit it. Few nations are achieving their Paris Treaty targets, and their emissions dwarf Canada’s.

The prosperity that comes from hydrocarbons can serve to build and maintain robust infrastructure and means of production for humanity to adapt to any changes in the climate, such as those in the past likely to happen again beyond our ability to stop them.

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Wind and Solar The Grand Illusion

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Mills explains the many ways the deck is stacked against those gambling on Wind and Solar energy to replace hydrocarbon fuels.  The transcript is below in italics with my bolds and added images.

Have you ever heard of “unobtanium”?

It’s the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It’s a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they’ve found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power.

They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries.

The simple truth is that we can’t. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet.

To understand why, consider some simple physics
realities that aren’t being talked about.

All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.

So, we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we’re told is to use batteries.

Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.

Consider the world’s biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day’s worth of America’s electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world’s energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.

Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from nonrenewable materials.

Consider some sobering numbers:

A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.

Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.

Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.

Where’s all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.

Australia’s Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global “gold” rush for energy materials will take miners into “…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.”

And who is doing the mining? Let’s just say that they’re not all going to be union workers with union protections.

Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: “The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks.”

And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware.

Then there’s the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as long.

With current plans, the International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that by 2050, the disposal of worn-out solar panels will constitute over double the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste. Worn-out wind turbines and batteries will add millions of tons more waste. It will be a whole new environmental challenge.

Before we launch history’s biggest increase in mining, dig up millions of acres in pristine areas, encourage childhood labor, and create epic waste problems, we might want to reconsider our almost inexhaustible supply of hydrocarbons—the fuels that make our marvelous modern world possible.

And technology is making it easier to acquire and cleaner to use them every day.

It would take a wind farm the size of Albany county NY to replace the now closed Indian Point nuclear power plant.

The following comparisons are typical—and instructive:

It costs about the same to drill one oil well as it does to build one giant wind turbine. And while that turbine generates the energy equivalent of about one barrel of oil per hour, the oil rig produces 10 barrels per hour. It costs less than 50 cents to store a barrel of oil or its equivalent in natural gas. But you need $200 worth of batteries to hold the energy contained in one oil barrel.

Next time someone tells you that wind, solar and batteries are
the magical solution for all our energy needs ask them
if they have an idea of the cost… to the environment.

“Unobtanium” works fine in the movies. But we don’t live in movies. We live in the real world.

I’m Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University.

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America’s Energy Scam Exploiting Humanity

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ronald Stein’s article at Eurasia Review is America’s Energy Scam: A Deliberate Exploitation Of Humanity That Only Increases Emissions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H\T John Ray

America is aggressively pursuing “green” electricity and actively phasing out of crude oil to reduce emissions generated in America by deliberately increasing worldwide exploitations of humanity, environmental degradation, and increased emissions.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden, and world leaders are not cognizant enough to know that wind turbines and solar panels only generate occasional electricity and are unable to manufacture tires, cable insulation, asphalt, medicines and the more than 6,000 products now made from the petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Without a replacement for those petrochemical derivatives manufactured from crude oil, phasing out oil would phase out the Medical Industry, Militaries, Transportation, Communications, and the Electrical Power industries, none of which existed before the 1800’s.

Climate changes may impact millions, but without fossil fuels and the infrastructures and products we have today that did not exist before 1800’s, we may lose BILLIONS from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths.

Eradicating the world of crude oil usage would ground the 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft in the world and leave the 50,000 merchant ships tied up at docks and discontinue the military and space programs! Without a backup plan to replace crude oil, the 8 billion on this planet will face the greatest threat to humanity without jets, merchant ships, and space programs.

America’s climate policies being introduced are particularly harmful for developing countries. America is probably the most environmentally controlled county in the world, but by deliberately relying on poorer developing countries for our fuels and products, we are “leaking” to other countries:

    • Leakage of emissions to countries with minuscule environmental laws.
    • Leakage of the exploitations of people with yellow, brown, and black skin to counties with minuscule labor laws.
    • Leakage of environmental degradation to landscapes in developing countries where there are minuscule environmental laws.

In the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis in 1977, the Department of Energy was established to lessen our dependence on foreign oil but today, with its 14,000 employees and a $48 billion dollar budget the D.O.E. continues to remain dead silent and has allowed California, the 4th largest economy in the world to increase imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption. 

For the past 25 years the amount of oil supplied to California’s refineries has essentially held steady at around 660 million barrels per year, but the source of the supply has changed drastically. In 1995, nearly all of that oil came from within California’s borders and Alaska. Today, the majority of the oil comes from foreign imports as data from the state’s Energy Commission shows.

California is home to 9 International airports, 41 Military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in America. California’s growing dependency on other nations is a serious national security risk for America!

China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are great War historians. As World War I and II historians, Russia, China, and OPEC know, the country that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world!  It’s shocking that of all the Generals that report to President Biden (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Program), NONE have asked the President how are we going to run our military ships, planes, vehicles, and supply products to our troops WITHOUT oil?

It’s a no-brainer that an attack on the ports at San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Long Beach could paralyze the American economy with huge reductions in fuels for California’s in-state infrastructures and stagnate the supply chain of products for the entire country.

Meanwhile, California continues to constantly reduce in-state refining capacity that refines fuels and petrochemicals for the materialistic demands of society and continue its growing dependency on foreign oil.

A few notes about ELECTRICITY:

  • Everything that needs electricity, like the basic light bulb, computers, iPhones and iPads, televisions, washing machines, X-ray equipment, etc., are all made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
  • Every method of generating electricity, like wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants all exist only because all the parts and components of the generation system are made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, only generate occasional electricity from inconsistent breezes and sunshine, but manufacture no products for society. 

Fossil fuels, on the other hand, manufacture everything for the 8 billion living on this planet, i.e., products, and transportation fuels.

And MOST importantly today, there is a lost reality that the primary usage of crude oil  is NOT for the generation of electricity, but to manufacture derivatives and fuels which are the ingredients of everything needed by economies and lifestyles to exist and prosper. Energy realism requires that the legislators, policymakers, and media that demonstrate pervasive ignorance about crude oil usage understand the staggering scale of the decarbonization movement. 

The ruling class and powerful elite have yet to identify the replacement for the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products and all the fuels for the merchant ships, aircraft, military, and space programs that support the 8 billion living on this planet?

The American government provides incentives and tax deductions to transition society to EV’s, but those incentives are financial incentives for the continuation of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction “Elsewhere”. Is it ethical and moral to provide financial support to the developing countries that are mining for exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries for Americans? 

We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for planes, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s. Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a back-up plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products of our materialistic society.

Today’s materialistic world cannot survive without crude oil!  Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. Wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.

How dare the ruling class, powerful elite, and media, avoid energy literacy conversations about the “Elephant in the Room”, as the end of crude oil that is manufactured into all the products and transportation fuels that built the world to eight billion people, would be the end of civilization as “unreliable electricity” from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.

Background Post

Four Ways Net Zero Ruins Us

 

 

 

 

Four Ways Net Zero Ruins Us

Posted on by Ron Clutz

This is a beginning post toward infographics exposing the damaging effects of Climate Policies upon the lives of ordinary people.  And all of the pain is for naught in fighting against global warming/climate change, as shown clearly in the image above.  This post presents graphics to illustrate the first of four themes:

  • Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs
  • Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation
  • 100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet
  • Leave it in the Ground Means Perpetual Poverty
Part 1:  Zero Carbon will Decimate US Workforce

WHCP fig1r

WHCP fig1ar

WHCP fig2ar

WHCP fig3a

WHCP fig3

Tables of Oil and Natural Gas Employment and Economic Impact come from API Price Waterhouse Cooper  Impacts of the Oil and Natural Gas Industry on the US Economy in 2019    As for Coal, EIA estimates the industry lost 75% of its workforce down to 53,000 employees (2019) working in coal mines, and the number has stabilized with exports offsetting declines in domestic consumption.  The losses of jobs in oil and gas come from EID (Energy in Depth) CLIMATE ACTIVISTS PUSH STUDY SHOWING 3.8 MILLION LOST JOBS FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY TRANSITION.

“While many experts dispute the feasibility of Jacobson’s plan for a renewables-only energy grid, the severe job losses are far more difficult to dispute, given that they come directly from Jacobson’s research. Those job losses would undoubtedly be devastating for millions of American families.”

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And about Those Promised Green Jobs to replace the lost ones:  

In February 2009, the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden flew to Colorado to sign their $787 billion stimulus package into law.

The plan was to invest $150 billion over 10 years that would advance a “clean energy” economy built around biofuels, hybrid cars, low-emission coal plants, and renewable sources such as solar and wind. Obama and Biden promised to create five million green jobs that would specifically benefit low-income earners, claiming that the stimulus package included “help for those hit hardest by our economic crisis.”

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A decade later, we now know that the 2009 green jobs program was a complete failure. The Department of Labor (DoL) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued several reports on the green jobs program. Each report was an indictment on the program, as job placement met only 10 percent of the targeted level, and many of those who were hired remained employed for less than six months.

Even the new, redefined green jobs did not reach the five million promised in February 2009. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, the Obama–Biden administration identified nearly 2.7 million green jobs, but most were bus drivers, sewage workers, and other types of work that do not match the “green jobs of the future” that the administration promised. Most of them were preexisting jobs, which were simply re-characterized by the government, apparently in an effort to boost the numbers.  Source: If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try ‘Green Jobs’ Again

See also Green Energy Failures Redux

Parts Two, Three and Four

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 2

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 3

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 4

 

Machinery for Global Sustainability Tyranny

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Terence Corcoran shines light on the emerging global control structure in his Financial Post article Is the global march towards sustainable development unsustainable? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Regulations related to climate risks could prove a costly burden
for Canadian corporations, institutions

The planned reset of global corporate capitalism to save the planet continues to stumble toward the great unknown, in the sense that even after decades of effort the machinery to expand regulatory control over investment and business decisions remains bogged down in murky conceptual clay. Developments in regulatory and legal circles suggest 2024 will be a pivotal year for the revolutionary ideas that are supposed to lead to a fundamental transition from bad economic policy to green.

The underlying concepts are well known by name. We have corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental and social governance (ESG), the precautionary principle, and sustainable development. What all these buzz-phrases mean is another question. Looking through the latest developments around the initiatives, however, a certain sense of apprehension, doubt and even a bit of squeamish uncertainty seem to have taken hold.
In recent days major global investment firms such as U.S.-based JP Morgan and State Street have pulled away from Climate Action 100+, a global industry-led coalition with grandiose objectives to fight the “systemic risks” of climate change. The claim is that investors must ensure the businesses they own have strategies that “accelerate the transition to net-zero emissions by 2050, or sooner, and align with the goal of the Paris Agreement” set by the United Nations in 2015.  Despite decades of talk following the radical Limits to Growth movement of the 1970s, the 1987 Brundtland report and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit’s endorsement of “sustainable development,” the remake of corporations into vehicles for economic and climate control remains far from complete.
In New York this week, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation held a symposium to inform corporations, institutions, regulators and advisors on the emerging accounting and reporting standards surrounding sustainable development. “Achieving a truly global baseline of sustainability-related disclosures necessitates a strong focus on supporting implementation across all economic settings, so that all market participants can access its benefits.”One of the symposium sessions was titled: “Get ready for jurisdictional adoption: How regulators are responding to the ISSB” — the International Sustainability Standards Board. Released last June, the ISSB standards will require corporations and investment organizations around the world to adopt common reporting approaches to climate and other environmental issues. It’s an authoritarian, top-down and anti-competitive regime that leaves no country or sector free to set its own rules.

All nations and regulators are to be locked in a global climate-control structure.

Canada is part of that structure through the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board, which this month announced a public consultation to advance adoption of sustainability disclosure standards in Canada. The consultation begins in March and runs through to June. One objective is to determine, with provincial securities regulators, how to impose mandatory reporting to replace voluntary standards on climate and environmental issues.

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), which includes provincial securities commissions, is being pressured to take action on the grounds that Canada could get left behind. A paper released earlier this month by the Canada Climate Law Initiative at the University of British Columbia urged regulators to move forward quickly with new sustainability standards. Failure to act in concordance with the ISSB could cause Canada to lose international investment flows, the report claims.

The document continues through 20 pages of detailed recommendations covering climate-related strategies, investments, metrics, targets, performance, cash flows, scenarios, climate transition plans and science-based taxonomies. How any of this massive effort relates to corporate performance for shareholders is not addressed.

Looking to the future, the Law Initiative suggests the CSA should also begin thinking about requiring future reports  related to a corporation’s “relationship to terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats, ecosystems and populations of related fauna and flora species, including diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems, and their interrelation with Indigenous and affected communities.”

Internationally, Canada must also deal with the uncertainty surrounding the differing emerging global standards, including the still-to-be-determined U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approach to sustainable development. As the consulting firm EY put it in an updated report last month, “Entities with significant operations in multiple jurisdictions need to understand the key differences among the SEC proposal, the ESRS [European Sustainability Reporting Standards] and the ISSB standards because they might be subject to more than one set of requirements.” Another EY report this week warns that sustainable development “continues to face a range of challenges” in terms of costs, technologies and standardization.

The legal proposals would burden Canadian corporations and institutions with massive reporting responsibilities and costs related to climate risks. On corporate governance, for example, the Climate Law Initiative calls for securities issuers to “disclose the governance processes, controls, and procedures it uses to monitor, manage, and oversee climate related risks and opportunities.”

All of this is taking place on a shaky theoretical foundation
in economics and environmental change.

The 1987 Brundtland Commission simplistically defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Exactly what “needs” are is unclear. Maybe it was intended to capture Marx’s slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Meaning: Take from wants of the developed world and give to the needs of the developing world?

The missing fundamentals of the 50-year-old movement to reshape the corporate model should receive a little more attention in the months ahead. Could it be that sustainable development is unsustainable?

Postscript

Meanwhile, the sustainability movement is transitioning to students. In Kelowna, B.C., and Toronto this week the goal is to inspire the next woke generation of environmentally active citizens. At the Toronto event, the organizers summarized their plan. “We welcome high school students and their teachers to this dynamic one-day conference that brings together youth and community organizations from across Ontario to discuss, collaborate and learn how to make sustainable and equitable change in our world.”

 

 

 

Wind Power Ripoff Ontario 2024 Update

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Parker Gallant explains the cash flow and the grid decay in his blog article Industrial Wind Turbines demonstrate their Unreliable and Intermittent Nature From 2% to 80% of Capacity  H/T John Ray.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

IWTs Generating 1.8% of their Capacity then jumping to 80.4% only a few days later

Yesterday, February 9th, 2024, those IWT spread throughout Ontario were impressive generating 94,605 MWh or about what 3.1 million average households would consume in a day suggesting they are the panacea to stop climate change!  Mere days before on February 3rd and the first seven hours on February 4th they generated only 2,673 MWh which was 1.8% of their capacity in those 31 hours.

As the expression goes; they continually demonstrate their “traditional yo yo” tendencies as the following screenshot from IESO February 5th to the 10th demonstrates. They are the “green” in the chart which basically shows their intermittent and unreliable nature whereas the dark blue is natural gas which has the ability to ramp up and down as demand changes and to keep our grid from failing and causing blackouts.

Wind in green, NatGas in dark blue, Hydro in light blue, Nuclear in orange

So, the question one should ask, was the power delivered by
those IWT on the 9th of February needed here in the province? 

As it turns out 65.8% of the IWT generation or 62,259 MW were not really needed as IESO’s intertie data (net-exports) shows it went to our neighbours in Quebec, New York and Michigan and the average sale price over the 24 hours was $19.42/MWh and well below what we Ontario ratepayers/taxpayers paid for it.  If we assume it was all surplus IWT generation those net-exports, we paid those contracted parties $135/MWh for; suggests the total cost of what was sold to our neighbours came to $8,404,965 but the price we were paid by our neighbours was an average of only that $19.42/MWh. Using the latter average price received over the 24 hours means we earned only $1,227,774!

The net result is we Ontario ratepayers/taxpayers have to eat the loss of $7,177,218 for just that one day’s IWT generation.  The foregoing is not the exception particularly when Ontario’s peak demand is relatively low as it was yesterday reaching only 17,057 MW at hour 19.

For the foregoing reasons, we should wonder why the Ontario Minister of Energy is instructing IESO to extend the IWT contracts when their 20-year terms are up as they do nothing but increase our electricity costs.  Those costs will be exacerbated by the addition of BESS (battery energy storage systems) as the latter will simply add another costly layer in an attempt to keep our grid reliable!

The IESO  current Contracted Generation List associated with BESS (battery energy storage systems) suggests they are expecting to contract for 1,140 MW!  BESS are able to provide their rated capacity for four hours meaning the 1,140 MW could provide 4,560 MW before needing to be recharged. It is humorous the megawatts those BESS units may be able to provide is only slightly more then the IWT provided during their peak generation hour yesterday. Today (Feb. 19) at Hour 9 those IWT only generated 316 MW!

At this point we should wonder if the batteries to be utilized by those BESS contracted generators will include CATL batteries, manufactured in China and now banned in the USA as pointed out in a recent article. If so, Canada could be in trouble with its neighbour, the USA, who have security concerns about CATL batteries. That may have a negative impact on our intertie connections with US States, amusingly, where much of our surplus IWT generation went to yesterday!

Oh, what tangled webs we weave!

Footnote More Grid Corrosion from Wind and Solar

Not mentioned above is a slow deterioration of baseload electricity because of renewables  unreliables.  Gail Tverberg explains in the background post below:

In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today. There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves. It is these secondary costs that are problematic. Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas. The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.

Climateers Tilting at Windmills Updated

 

 

What Big Climate Wants to Censor

Posted on by Ron Clutz

(Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Oceana)

Nick Pope writes at Daily Caller Foreign Billionaire-Backed Climate Org Pressuring Broadcasters To Censor Ads Critical Of Biden’s EV Mandate.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.

Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until 2023, a spokesperson for Climate Power previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AFPM launched its seven-figure ad campaign designed to highlight and criticize the administration’s EV policies on Tuesday. The ads, which describe Biden’s policies as an EV mandate, are airing in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Montana and Washington, D.C.

Climate Power’s warning letter to local affiliates states that the broadcasters “must remove these ads from the air immediately” because “there is no pending federal ‘car ban,’ and to claim otherwise is patently false and intentionally misleading.” The letter suggests that AFPM’s ads could be in violation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and instructs the broadcasters to contact Climate Power — an Internal Revenue Service-recognized 501(c)4 that is spending more than $80 million to tout Biden’s climate policies ahead of the 2024 presidential election — to confirm that the ads are no longer running on their stations.

What Big Climate Wants to Hide

A recent Wall Street Journal video says it out loud: EVs are not practical for most people.  The short video can be seen here.  A transcript is below for those who prefer to read.

Hertz announced last week that it is selling one third of its EV fleet, about 20.000 vehicles, and will replace them with gas powered cars, citing weaker demand for electrics and their higher operating and repair costs. The car rental giant had previously vowed to convert 25% of its fleet to electric by the end of 2024. In an interview in Davos this week, President Biden’s soon to be former climate envoy,

John Kerry, blamed recent setbacks in the industry on electric car critics,
accusing them of engaging in “high levels of disinformation.”

Kerry also told the panel at the World Economic Forum that the green energy transition will continue no matter who wins the 2024 presidential race. “You think those CEOs are gonna say, Oh My God, they just elected a new president. Let’s go back and build internal combustion engine cars. Not on your life. This economic revolution is underway and it’s much bigger than any politician, any one person.”

We’re back with Dan Henniger, Kim Strassel, and Wall Street Journal columnist, Allysia Finley. So Allysia, also this week Ford announced that it is cutting back on production of its Lightning 150 electric trucks. So this is a pretty broad cutback in production.

Well, the biggest reason is there’s flagging demand. So there were a lot of, “early adopters. It was people who lived in California and big cities who bought EVs. Especially Teslas which make up about 60% of sales. And so there was a big rush of automakers, and partly propelled by the government mandates, both California’s Air Resources Board and the Biden administration’s coming mandate, which ratchets up to two thirds of all sales to be EVs by 2032.

And so they all rushed in, they started mass producing EVs. And all of a sudden they’re realizing demand’s actually softening for the mainstream public because they’re actually not ready.

And suffering difficulties. And what we saw in Chicago with the lines of people and the cold weather.  It’s cold weather and EVs don’t really work in the north very well. It’s repair costs. So it’s not easy to go long distances. It’s charging station availability, and people want sometimes to go long distances. Are those the reasons consumers are resisting?

I mean the costs are still about $20,000 higher on average, and the have to factor repair costs, yes. But also insurance costs, which are about 20% higher. In part because they’re more expensive, but also because the replacement parts are more expensive. And so they’re just not really practical for most people. This isn’t to say that someday then they’ll be much more practical and popular.

Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense to be mandating and subsidizing them at this juncture. Dan, what do you make of John Kerry’s line that this reluctance is just all disinformation by critics?

When Kerry said that, I thought he might take a side trip from Davos, Switzerland, to Germany to see what’s happening with EVs there. In December EV sales in Germany dropped by 50%. The auto industry there is really on the brink of collapse because people are simply not buying electric vehicles. And as Allysia was just describing, it that happens here, and it could, people simply say, “I’m not gonna put up , Ford and GM are really gonna get strung out and hit hard by the refusal of people.

Allysia, the one thing Kerry has going for his prediction is EVs which are being mandated by the government is that the flow of money from the Inflation Reduction Act will be so great, how much money they’re throwing at charging stations and subsidies for consumers and subsidies for production. It’s astonishing, even subsidies for batteries. Will that ultimately push EVs over the top?

Well, that is the risk in my mind, that consumers at the moment don’t want them. But the plan on the left is always that you get something in motion, you make the industry change its standards and retool and regear itself toward this goal. You put money out there as incentive for them to keep doing it and for buyers to get them. And then you can’t reverse it.

And you hope that it trundles along of its own accord. Which is why there’s growing attention in Washington, especially among Republicans, that if they’re going to try to claw back money, it ought to be more out of this area. Because if they really do care about issues like consumer choice, giving people the ability to drive what they want to drive, you’ve got to remove this government distortion that is creating this supposed economic revolution.

It’s not an economic revolution, it’s a government imposed transition.

Allysia, you wrote an interesting column about how CEOs not too long ago were cheering on this and all thinking alike about the great EV future. One of those was the Hertz CEO, another one, the Ford CEO. Are they really having second thoughts?

Well, it’s funny now in recent months, they’ve all been coming out saying, “Oh well, we need to cut production”, and “This is just not sustainable.” Across the industry, they’re definitely having second thoughts, and some of their statements are more public than others. And they’re pleading to the administration. Again this is representative of the auto industry, not the individual automakers, but they’ve sent a letter saying, please, we cannot do this. These aggressive goals are not achievable and auto workers would lose their jobs.

Climatists Mistake Means for Ends

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Roy Gilbert exposes the fundamental mistaken thinking regarded global warming/climate change.  His Spectator Australia article is Conceptual Error in Climate Change Analysis.  H/T John Ray  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

It is often said that the ‘science is in on climate change’. Is it? We should always adhere to the principle of the ‘working hypothesis’ and have an open mind on scientific questions no matter how well-recognised the researchers are. In the study of science, there is always the chance new information can come along to cause a rethink.

A common error in problem-solving and policy development is to confuse
a technical strategy for a desired client outcome.

Our Climate Change Minister could be accused of this. Reducing emissions is a ‘strategy’, not the fundamental desired client outcome. With the mission ‘to reduce carbon emissions’ by increasing renewable energy, the way to assess performance is to concentrate on measuring emission reduction, and then to follow this up with how quickly the renewables are built and their cost (wind farms, solar panels, transmission lines).

Instead of the current strategy-driven mission, a fundamental client outcome statement would be: ‘To protect against, and where possible, prevent damage from extreme off-trend fluctuations in climate.’ How would you go about managing your program using this mission statement?

First, you gather accurate temperature, rainfall, and weather measurements. They are the valid and fundamental ‘outcome’ measures – not data on CO2 emissions. If there is an undeniable and dangerous increase in temperature and rainfall, more cyclones, and a clear and unabated rise in sea level, then the possible cause must be thoroughly identified. Depending on the answer, you would adopt appropriate mitigation strategies, or strategies that adapt to weather patterns and temperature levels.

Another principle of problem-solving is to map out the total picture and not be driven by ideology. The Climate Change Minister should consider possible causes other than human-induced emissions. It was announced in April 2023 that coronal cones 20 times larger than Earth have been discovered and may cause a massive outburst of energy from the sun. What could be the implications for our planet? Ask solar physicists.

Chief scientist in applied helio-physics at John Hopkins, Ian Cohen, has suggested that solar storms could take out satellites, cut power and shut down the internet. In 1972 a solar storm caused 4,000 magnetically sensitive mines in water off Vietnam to detonate. Earth is said to be entering a period of peak activity as part of an eleven-year cycle. It is suggested this potentially could be more violent than the solar cycles of the past three decades. Now that would be something for climate scientists to really worry about…

With respect to the world’s temperature, there are several sources that claim to present the precise figure. One says the 2023 average global temperature was 1.45c above the 1950-90 average. Another says since 1880, Earth’s temperature has increased by 0.08c. Another says during the last 50 years the increase is 0.13c. To the unscientific mind, these temperatures do not appear to be verging on catastrophic boiling us all to death.

As of 2024, data on natural changes in temperature, rainfall, and sea level
do not show any statistically significant difference to historical records.

There are respected scientists who question the current climate orthodoxy. Physicist Prof. William Happer of Princeton University and Prof. Richard Lindzen, Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT have argued science demonstrates there is no climate-related risk caused by fossil fuels and CO2, and that 600 million years of CO2 and temperature data contradicts the theory that high levels of CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming. They state reliable scientific theories come from validating theoretical predictions with observations, not consensus, peer review, government opinion, or manipulated data.

In July 2023, the International Monetary Fund cancelled a planned talk on climate change by 2022 Nobel physicist John Clauser when they learned he had stated publicly: ‘I can confidently say there is no real climate crisis, and that climate change does not cause extreme weather events. The IPCC is one of the worst sources of dangerous disinformation.’  Clauser pointed out that the US Environmental Protection Authority has charts that show a heatwave Index going back to 1895, showing heatwaves were more common before the 1960s and especially in the 1930s.

In addition to these physicists, there are eminent Australian geologists who challenge the CO2 cause theory. Emeritus Prof. Ian Pilmer of the University of Melbourne, and Prof. Michael Asten of Monash University, have argued that throughout the history of the planet, there have been long periods of major change in climate due to natural forces. This would indicate recent human-based emissions may not be the important factor that we have been led to believe.

With respect to measuring emissions (nitrous oxide and methane), there is an expectation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would have collected accurate data. Then one reads an independent 2023 report of these greenhouse gas emissions from farm dams in Australia’s irrigation regions, that the measurements had been massively over-estimated by the IPCC by 4 to 5 per cent.

To add further confusion to the issue, a 2023 research paper submitted to the European Physical Journal Plus claimed climate science has become ‘highly politicised’. Italian scientists analysed long-term data on heat, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and ecosystem productivity, and found no clear trend of extreme events. The statements by these scientists would appear worthy of examination. Unfortunately, comments to the publisher by other climate scientists caused the withdrawal of the article.

If activists are correct, and if temperatures and rainfall start to show a significant increase without any influence from natural factors such as the sun or outer atmospheric disturbances, the second ‘outcome’ mission opens your mind to several strategies that could be compared against each other on cost and effectiveness – renewables, outer space satellites capturing solar energy and transmitting to Earth, small nuclear, carbon capture, examine possibility of amalgamating carbon and turning it into a useful product, lower emission coal-fired power stations, hydro, hydrogen fuel cells, a scientific search for a predator for carbon other than trees (or the planting of more trees), and so on.

A valid client ‘outcome’ statement encourages you not to jump to a conclusion
in the initial stages of critical thinking about the cause of any global warming.

If you make a mistake at that point, there are significant productivity implications. Governments could waste a significant amount of money (a catastrophic amount) on a less than optimum strategy. Rather than relying almost entirely on climate scientists who concentrate on carbon emissions, a politician with a mind focused on validity could bring together an inter-disciplinary team – climate scientists, nuclear physicists, solar physicists, atmospheric physicists, examine the moon’s behaviour, plant technologists, oceanographers, geologists, volcanologists, botanists, bushfire specialists and so on. Has any national government followed this approach? Has any Minister for Energy, in any country, expanded their vision beyond their own narrow ideology is a potential danger to their country…?

There are very obvious reasons why some politicians and many rich investors in renewable energy would oppose a serious questioning of the renewable strategy and switching to nuclear instead. If small nuclear was introduced – as is being done in many countries – it would make current renewable energy strategies redundant. That would mean all the billions of dollars spent on wind and solar would have been a waste of money. We wouldn’t need them. Admitting that would be far too embarrassing for any ideological politician and far too financially damaging to any rich wind farm investor obtaining government grants.

If the Sun is found to be the fundamental cause of the problem (variations in energy output, massive infrequent solar flares, and/or variations in distance between Earth and Sun), or if there is a slight tilting of the Earth on its axis, or the Moon changes position, or even disturbance further out in our solar system, you would evaluate adaptation strategies.

It seemed reasonable for some people to assume the vast flooding in 2022 could be attributed to human-induced climate change. There is however, a different possibility … nature. Environment analyst Graham Lloyd explained.

‘The meteorological processes at play are well understood. Three consecutive La Nina weather patterns have left the eastern seaboard soaked and prone to flooding. Triple La Ninas have happened four times in the Bureau of Meteorology’s 120-year record … The Southern Annular Mode is a climate driver that can influence rainfall and temperature. Although wet, the latest BoM figures show that 2022 was the ninth wettest year on record (not the wettest).’

fWhen the above material, stressing the need to examine the total picture in any critical thinking, was shown to a high school Principal, to a high school science teacher and to an environmental engineer, they were all surprised and quite critical that one would want to show this to students. Annoyed actually. One was emphatic…

‘Why waste the students’ time having them look at irrelevant issues?
We KNOW what the problem is. It is CO2 emissions.
And we KNOW what the solution is. It is 100 per cent renewables.’

My answer to them was:

‘The difference between you and me, is that you want to tell the students WHAT to think. I want to teach them HOW to think. I want them to understand insightful thinking. Not to be indoctrinated’.  You can be the judge as to who is on the right track.

See Also

Answers Before Climate Action

 

Net Zero Not Only Inhuman, It’s Also Ecocidal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Roger Palmer speaks quietly, but with the force of knowledge and logic on the subject of global warming/climate change.  Two expressions of his perspective are presented here: firstly a brief video and transcript, and secondly excerpts from his 2024 paper. Transcript in italics with my bolds and added images.  H/T Raymond Inauen

1. Trust Climate History, Not Hysteria

I’m Roger Palmer, a retired engineer living in Victoria, British Columbia. Today I want to talk about climate change hysteria. The popular press is overflowing with sensational but scary headlines: the hottest day on record, sea levels are rising, climate catastrophe. It’s never been like this before, climate change is an existential threat, we are declaring a climate emergency, it’s man’s fault.

These hysterical messages are reinforced at disruptions organized by career demonstrators and professional protesters. Politicians are falling over themselves to agree with these claims and position themselves as the only viable saviors of mankind who are able to stop the climate from changing. You can’t get elected if you are perceived as being soft on climate change.

The authors of all this spurious noise unfortunately do not have a good understanding of science or the historical paleoclimatic record. These people are so arrogant and self-centered that they believe that man can control the solar system and somehow cancel the naturally occurring climate cycles, so that the earth’s climate stays just the way they want it.

Let’s start the discussion by outlining a difference between weather and climate. When a person speaks about weather they are referring to how the atmosphere is behaving over the short term hours or days and usually over a small area. The term climate refers to the statistics of weather over a defined large region over a long period of time, decades or more. the atmospheric characteristics being described include temperature, winds, moisture, clouds and precipitation.

But it is the temperature that most people seem to focus on. In the 1970s the concern was about global cooling, but it has now shifted to global warming. An example of a weather statement is: “It will be cooler and windy in downtown Ottawa tomorrow.” An example of a climate statement is: “North America will be warmer over the next two decades.”

Reliable equipment for measuring temperature has been available since the early 1800s, but unfortunately the number and placement of temperature recording stations has changed considerably over time. So it is often difficult to get a complete and consistent record for a specific area temperature history. The period preceding the 19th century must be inferred by analyzing ice cores, tree growth rings, sediments and corals. Ice cores typically from Greenland, Antarctica or the Arctic are the most commonly used proxies. And it is possible to infer temperatures from thousands or millions of years ago. It is also possible to use ice cores to estimate the historical composition of the atmosphere.

Although surface temperature is what humans actually feel on a day-to-day basis, that data can be contaminated by urban heat islands. So it is sometimes more meaningful to talk about the temperature of the troposphere, which is the lowest layer of the earth’s atmosphere about 20 kilometers thick and is where all the weather takes place; the clouds, precipitation, storms, winds etc.  Temperatures in the troposphere can be directly measured by balloon-borne radiosondes or inferred from satellite radiometry.

Geological records show that the earth’s average temperature has varied cyclically for many millions of years. Sometimes it has been much hotter than today and sometimes much cooler. This graph estimates variations in temperature during the last 500 million years. The earth is approximately four and a half billion years old; predecessors of man have been on earth for about two and a half million years; and modern homo sapiens have been around for about two hundred thousand years.

Here is what the earth’s temperature has been doing over the past five hundred thousand years and here is the temperature record for more recent times; the last 11, 000 years otherwise known as the Holocene era.

The earth would be a much cooler place if it did not have an atmosphere. The atmosphere contains a number of gases that warm the earth by what is called the greenhouse effect. Which is when solar radiation from the sun can easily pass through the gases to the earth, but outgoing infrared radiation from the earth’s surface is partially blocked from radiating off into space by these same gases. Further details of this mechanism are given in the references.

There are several different greenhouse gases but everyone seems to focus on just one of them: carbon dioxide known as CO2. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sometimes thought to be the driver of the earth’s temperature, but the geological record shows that there has been no correlation.

The absolutely dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor. The earth’s glaciers and ice caps have grown and shrunk cyclically over time. The earth recently exited the Little Ice Age and is currently warming just as in previous cycles. There is definitely a new ice age coming, but none of us will live to experience it. We are currently in an interglacial, which is a period between ice ages.

As shown by the earlier graphs the earth’s climate is not being driven by changes in the co2 level. Indeed changes in the atmospheric CO2 concentration are probably a result of changes in the earth’s temperature as oceans and land masses release stored CO2 resulting from long-term temperature changes. As the glaciers and ice caps cyclically build and recede, there are corresponding changes in the sea level. The sea level has cyclically varied from today’s levels by as much as plus or minus 200 meters. And these fluctuations are expected to continue for thousands of years to come.

So what is causing these long-term cyclical changes in the earth’s average temperature? A recently posted youtube series entitled Paleoclimatology parts one through three gives an in-depth analysis of the factors at work. Here is a summary of just some of the main factors:

♦  Continental drifts as result of plate tectonics has caused very long-term climate changes as the ocean’s heat carrying currents have been forced to take different paths;

♦  Milankovitch cycles due to changes in the earth’s tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity and cyclical changes in the solar system’s orbital alignments have demonstrably produced corresponding changes in the earth’s climate over both the long term and the short term;

♦  Cyclical changes in the sun’s total output radiated power. cyclical changes in the sun’s output spectral distribution especially the ultraviolet component

♦  Variations in the earth’s magnetic field resulting in changes in the magnitude and position of the earth’s magnetosphere which shields us from incoming cosmic particles and the solar wind

♦  Variations in upper level bacteria which serve as nucleation sites for clouds and precipitation

♦  Changes in the earth’s average cloud cover as a result of changes in many of the factors just mentioned

♦  Changes in the earth’s upper atmospheric wind currents that are used to distribute heat energy throughout the pallet of the planet

Note that carbon dioxide concentration is not a significant cause of these natural cyclical changes. CO2 has some effect on long-term climate changes but it is not the dominant determinant of global temperature. Then why are the agitators and politicians so obsessed with this and why are they arbitrarily blaming man-made CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels as threatening disruptions to their climate nirvana?

Perhaps there’s a hidden agenda. Current proposals to decarbonize the earth by eliminating fossil fuels will have a minor effect on climate, but will cause extraordinary economic harm. Maybe the true goal of the protesters is to destroy capitalism in the western world.

CO2 is a clear odorless gas. Atmospheric CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and were sometimes much lower. CO2 is not a pollutant–it is essential to life. If the atmospheric CO2 concentration were to drop below 150 parts per million, the earth’s vegetation would not be able to survive and the earth would become a barren wasteland.  There have been proposals to use large-scale geoengineering to alter the earth’s climate, such as by surrounding the earth with orbiting reflective particles or mirrors. But such schemes are fraught with political as well as technical dangers.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change known as the IPCC is often identified as the final authority when it comes to questions about the earth’s climate.  However the IPCC does not conduct research; it merely reviews papers in the field. And the IPCC should not be considered as unbiased. Because when they were created by the United Nations they were specifically charged to investigate how mankind is causing the earth’s climate to change.

In other words the conclusion had already been reached that man was to blame before any investigations were performed. The IPCC is a political animal; nothing is published before it has been approved by the representatives of all the participating countries to make sure that it aligns with their governments’ objectives and policies. IPCC has published numerous forecasts of ever increasing global temperatures being driven by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But these are based on incomplete and inaccurate computer models and they have all drastically overestimated the forthcoming temperature rise.

These computer models ignore or inadequately account for many factors, including clouds and solar variations. It is claimed that 97 % of scientists agree that man-made emissions of CO2 are having significant negative effects on the earth’s climate. However consensus is not a valid way to conduct scientific research. Group think is a major problem in this field. Remember Galileo was able to prove that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around. But public opinion and the church forced him to recant his findings. Consensus overruled scientific evidence just like it appears to be doing today.

The earth is getting warmer and it will continue to do so until the temperature trend reverses sometime in the future and we head into the next ice age. Mankind needs to recognize that we are an observer of naturally occurring climate cycles. There is very little that we can do to stop, change or influence these cycles. The best thing that man can do is learn to adapt to these natural cycles. Stop wasting our money and damaging our economy on futile and inefficient schemes to reduce man’s CO2 emissions, appearing to be trying to thwart what are perfectly natural cyclical changes of the earth’s climate.

Learn to live with these changes. Mankind has to adapt. Have a nice day and enjoy the warmth while we have it. Here are links to references providing more details on many of these points

2. Net Zero is Both Suicidal and Ecocidal

Source: Roger Palmer publication  Understanding Climate Change.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Net Zero

As mentioned above, many governments have decided to pursue the goal of becoming “Net Zero” by 2050 (or possibly later). This means that they want all CO2 emitted by man’s activities either to be eliminated or somehow compensated for by 2050 in the belief that this will slow the current rise in global temperatures, and limit the rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

As discussed in previous sections, CO2 concentration is not the primary driver of global temperature, and indeed, rising CO2 levels might actually be a result of warming due to entirely natural factors. Despite the dubious scientific justification, politicians and special-interest groups have embraced the “Net Zero” battle cry, and are falling over themselves with announcements, proclamations, and protests as they attempt to destroy the world’s economy.

The concept of Net Zero is that any continuing emissions of CO2 need to be “offset” by actions to remove the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. These “offsets” could be the planting of trees that absorb CO2, or they could involve operating actual equipment that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and then sequesters it in a safe storage facility (this is called CCS, which stands for Carbon Capture and Sequestration). A marketplace has now developed whereby “carbon credits” are bought and sold, and some rather flimsy schemes have been created.

As an example of how ludicrous this churning process is, consider the example of the DRAX power plant that is located in the U.K. This power plant was built in 1974, and burned coal to generate electricity (in a conventional steam turbine system). Starting in 2013, this power plant was converted to burn compressed wood pellets. The pellets are manufactured in Canada, and shipped to the UK from the port of Prince Rupert, BC. The pellets were originally supposed to use scrap wood left over from existing logging operations, but demand eventually required that trees be specifically grown to feed the process. It was claimed that the entire process (growing trees, converting the wood to pellets, transporting them between continents, and then burning them in a thermal power plant) was “sustainable”, because new trees were planted to replace those that were cut down!

Direct Carbon Capture(DCC)

There are several companies developing technology and equipment for actually extracting (“capturing”) CO2 from the air. The CO2 is then stored (“sequestered”) either as a gas, or converted to some other form. The justification for doing this is that governments and agencies mistakenly believe that CO2 emissions from human activities is causing the world to warm, and that not only must these emissions stop, but some of the CO2 must be removed in order to lower the concentration in the atmosphere, thereby supposedly preventing future temperature rises.

The processes used for DCC are complex, and require large amounts of energy to operate. It is claimed that the energy will come from “sustainable” sources (hydro, solar, wind, nuclear), so the whole process will help a country reach the goal of “net zero”. Funding for these projects effectively comes from selling “carbon credits”, because governments have inadvisably placed a dollar value on CO2.  If these proposed projects go ahead, the scale and costs involved will be enormous. And remember, lowering the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by 1 ppm will only potentially reduce the temperature by between 9 and 15 thousandths of a degree C!

Energy and Transortation

As part of the charge toward the Holy Grail of “Net Zero”, the entire transportation infrastructure is being forced to dispense with the burning of fossil fuels. Governments apply so-called “Carbon Taxes” on the sale of hydrocarbon fuels, and the tax rates are methodically being increased as time goes by, in an effort to get users to switch to another type of energy.

Oil has been a major energy source for over two centuries. It has a high energy density (ie: a small and light weight amount of the substance has the potential to create a large amount of energy). A few decades ago, there was worldwide concern that we were running out of these fuels and only had a limited supply, but new exploration/extraction techniques, combined with more efficient energy use have allayed those concerns.

Fossil fuels are converted to energy by the process of combustion. Almost 40% of the material’s potential energy is extracted in modern gasoline or diesel engines, and almost 55% in modern combined-cycle gas-fired power plants. The remaining energy is turned into waste heat. In building heating applications, the fossil fuel is burned to directly create heat: this process can have efficiencies of over 95%. All of these combustion processes generate CO2, and this is the main focus of politicians, scientists, and environmentalists, despite evidence (as outlined earlier) that climate change is not being primarily driven by increases in CO2 concentration.

Wind turbines and solar cells have received most of the publicity in recent years as large arrays of these devices have been installed around the world. The biggest problem is the intermittent nature of their output. To compensate for this, excess generating capacity has to be installed, and very large energy storage devices (batteries, pumped water, etc) have to be included to ensure a reliable source of supply. If electricity is produced by techniques (such as hydro, solar, wind, or nuclear) that do not emit any greenhouse gases, there is strong political motivation to convert existing consumers of fossil fuels to use electricity as their energy source. Transportation has been a major user of fossil fuels, and the sector is highly visible to the public, so there is considerable pressure to electrify it.

Fossil fuels are an ideal way to power mobile devices (especially road vehicles, aircraft, and ships): the energy density (KW-h per Kg) is very high, and it is easy to quickly refuel as required. There has been much development in electrical technology for road vehicles, but the major problem has been the availability of electrical energy storage devices (primarily batteries) that are small and light enough to fit into the vehicle, and that have sufficient capacity to provide decent range between charges. The energy density (KW-h per Kg) of modern Li-ion batteries is about 2% that of gasoline or diesel fuel. Some electric cars have met with market success, but battery technology needs to develop a major increase in battery energy density before they are considered viable for mainstream applications, and then the problem will be one of installing enough charging infrastructure to allow for unimpeded travel without the drivers suffering from “range anxiety”.

Ships, highway trucks and airliners pose their own problems, and are unlikely to be weaned off of fossil  fuels for some time to come. These applications need energy storage devices that have much higher density (both by volume and by weight) than batteries – the use of hydrogen (produced by electrolysis of water) and fuel cells is being vigorously pursued. Hydrogen can also be burned directly in modified jet engines or even reciprocating engines, but hydrogen has storage issues that need to be addressed.

Hydrogen’s energy density (KW-h per Kg) is quite high, but it occupies a large volume, so must be stored at very high pressures if storage tanks are to be kept to a reasonable size. Hydrogen can also be stored in a liquid form, but the extremely low cryogenic temperatures required (-253°C) present significant
challenges.

If it were possible to convert all power generation, heating, and transportation applications to non fossil fuel technology, it would be possible to reduce the total amount of man-made CO2 emissions by over 50%, but this would have a negligible effect on global temperature. It would of course still be required to extract oil and natural gas from the ground for the manufacture of synthetic materials, plastics, asphalt, lubricants, and pharmaceuticals.

Summary and Conclusions

The material reviewed so far in this paper confirms that there are a large number of factors that affect the earth’s climate. Many of these are poorly understood by man, and there are some factors that probably haven’t even been discovered yet. A number of conclusions can be taken away from the information presented so far in this document:

a) Climate change is a naturally-occurring, cyclic phenomena, and it has been going on for millions of years.
b) Climate change is primarily driven by changes in the energy of the sun that impinges on the earth. The dominant factors driving this are variations in the sun (total output power, spectral distribution, sunspot cycles) Milankovitch Cycles, variations in ocean currents (ENSO, PDO, and AMO). Other factors include the effect of varying cosmic particle influx and high altitude bacteria, causing changes in cloud cover.
c) The primary greenhouse gas is water vapour. The effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperature change is much less. Because of the non-linear effect of CO2 concentration, increases beyond the current level will have a decreasing effect on the earth’s climate.
d) Man-made CO2 does have a minor effect on global temperature changes, but it is not the dominant factor. A reduction of man-made CO2 emissions would have a negligible effect on global temperature.
e) Man’s understanding of the various climate-influencing factors is very limited.
f) Climate models are not effective at forecasting future long-term global temperatures.
g) There is very little that mankind can do to affect global temperature change. It does not make sense to introduce regulations that will have a negative impact on Western economies in a pointless attempt to change the natural rate of global climate change.
h) Mankind will have to learn to adapt to future climate changes. If mankind is still around in a few thousand years, they will then have to adapt to global cooling and glaciations!

Any legislative efforts to limit man-made carbon dioxide emissions at the local, regional, provincial, or federal levels may be well-intended, but are ultimately futile, and potentially dangerous. These efforts will harm the economy, waste resources, and not significantly affect the naturally-occurring cyclic climatic changes.

 

 

Green Electrical Shocks in 2024

Posted on by Ron Clutz

These days electrical grid managers are shocked and sounding alarms, not about climate itself, but about dangerous energy policies by ignorant politicians rendering the grid unstable and supply unpredictable.  For example today’s Just The News article Analysts: ‘Irrational’ policies drive coal plant shutdowns, incentivize overbuilding wind farms.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission told the utility that the “premature closure of these [coal] plants adds to the uncertainty of electrical generation resource adequacy in the upper Midwest.” Some energy experts call the government’s policies “irrational.”

Despite ongoing warnings that the electricity grid of the United States is becoming increasingly unstable, a major utility is moving forward with the elimination of two major coal-fired power plants in the upper Midwest. Energy analysts say the instability is a byproduct of the shutdown of reliable generation sources.

In its latest assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a grid watchdog, warned that the MISO region is under some of the highest risks for resource inadequacy, which means that during peak demand periods, rolling blackouts are a possibility. Xcel Energy, according to the Energy News Network, is even looking at variable rates to encourage customers to conserve energy and use it during off-peak periods.

Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska have all set goals to decarbonize their grid by 2040 or 2050, which will mean eliminating coal-fired power plants entirely. These goals are on top of federal green energy mandates.

The Public is Blissfully Unaware–That Needs to Change

Some years ago, a weekly news program aired in the Netherlands on the subject Green Electrical Shocks. It employed images and humor to reveal electrical realities to an audience burdened with misconceptions.  The video clip is below with English subtitles. For those who prefer reading, I provide the substantial excerpts from the program with my bolds.

How many of you have Green Electricity? I will estimate 69%
And how much nationally? Oh, 69%!
So we are very average, and in a good way, because the climate is very important.

Let me ask: Green electricity comes from . . .?
Yes, electricity produced from windmills and solar panels.
Nearly 2/3 of the Dutch are using it. That’s the image.

Well I have green news and bad news.
The green news: Well done!
The bad news: It is all one big lie.
Time for the Green Electrical Shocks.

Shock #1: The green electricity from your socket is not green.
When I switched to green electricity I was very proud.
I thought, Yes, well done! The climate is getting warmer, but not any more thanks to me.

Well, that turned out to be untrue.
All producers deliver to one communal grid. Green and grey electricity all mix.
The electricity you use is always a mix of various sources.
OK. It actually makes sense not to have separate green and grey cables for every house.
So it means that of all electricity, 69% is produced in a sustainable way. But then:


Shock #2: Green Electricity is mostly fake.
Most of the green electricity we think we use comes from abroad.
You may think: So what. Green is green.

But that electricity doesn’t come from abroad, it stays abroad.
If you have green electricity at home, it may mean nothing more than that your supplier has bought “green electricity certificates”.

In Europe green electricity gets an official certificate,
Instead of selling on the electricity, they sell on those certificates.
Norway, with its hydro power, has a surplus of certificates.
Dutch suppliers buy them on a massive scale, while the electricity stays in Norway.

The idea was: if countries can sell those certificates, they can make money by producing more green electricity.
But the Norwegians don’t produce more green electricity.
But they do sell certificates.

The Dutch suppliers wave with those certificates, and say Look! Our grey electricity is green.
Only one country has produced green electricity: Norway.
But two countries take the credit.
Norway, because they produce green electricity, and the Netherlands because, on paper, we have green electricity. Get it? That’s a nice deal.

More and more countries sell those certificates. Italy is now the top supplier.
We buy fake green electricity from Italy, like some kind of Karma ham.

Now, let’s look again at the green electricity we all think we use.
So the real picture isn’t 69%. If you cancel the certificates, only 21% of electricity is really green.
Nowadays you can even order it separately if you don’t want to be part of that Norway certificates scam.
You may think: 21% green is still quite a lot. But it is time for:

Shock #3: Not all energy is electricity.
If you talk about the climate, you shouldn’t just consider electricity but all energy.
When you look at all energy, like factories, cars, trains, gas fires, then the share of consumer electricity is virtually nothing.
If you include everything in your calculation, it turns out that only 6% of all the energy we use in the Netherlands is green. It is a comedy, but wait:

Trees converted into pellets by means of petroleum powered machinery.

Shock #4: Most green energy doesn’t come from sun or wind, like you might think.
Even the 6%, our last green hope, is fake. According to the CBS we are using more sun and wind energy, but most of the green energy is produced by the burning of biomass.
Ah, more than half of the 6% green energy is biomass.

Ridiculous. What is biomass really? It is organic materials that we encounter every day.
Like the content of a compost heap. How about maize leaves or hay?
The idea behind burning organic materials is that it will grow up again.
So CO2 is released when you burn it, but it will be absorbed again by new trees.

However, there is one problem. The forest grows very slowly and our power plants burn very fast.
This is the fatal flaw in the thinking about biomass. Power plants burn trees too fast, so my solution: slow fire. Disadvantage: it doesn’t exist. So this is our next shock.

Shock#5: Biomass isn’t all that sustainable.
It’s getting worse. There aren’t enough trees in the Netherlands for biomass.
We can’t do it on our own. We don’t have enough wood, so we get it from America.

In the USA forests are cut at a high rate, Trees are shredded and compressed into pellets.
These are shipped to the Netherlands and end up in the ovens of the coal plants.
It’s a disaster for the American forests, according to environmental groups.

So we transport American forests on diesel ships to Europe.
Then throw them in the oven because it officially counts as green energy.
Only because the CO2 released this way doesn’t count for our total emissions.

In reality biomass emits more CO2 than natural gas and coal.
These are laws of nature, no matter what European laws say.
At the bottom line, how much sustainable energy do we really have in the Netherlands?
Well, the only real green energy from windmills, solar panels etc. Is only 2.2%. of all the energy we use.

In Conclusion
So the fact that 2/3 of the audience and of all Dutch people use green electricity means absolutely nothing. It’s only 2.2%, and crazier still, the government says it should be at 14% by 2020.
They promised: to us, to Europe, to planet Earth: 14 instead of 2.2.

Instead of making a serious attempt to save the climate, they are only working on accounting tricks, like buying pieces of paper in Norway and burning American forests.
They are only saving the climate on paper.

Summary Comment

As the stool above shows, the climate change package sits on three premises. The first is the science bit, consisting of an unproven claim that observed warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. The second part rests on impact studies from billions of research dollars spent uncovering any and all possible negatives from warming. And the third leg is climate policies showing how governments can “fight climate change.”

It is refreshing to see more and more articles by people reasoning about climate change/global warming and expressing rational positions. Increasingly, analysts are unbundling the package and questioning not only the science, but also pointing out positives from CO2 and warming.  And as the Dutch telecast shows, ineffective government policies are also fair game.

More on flawed climate policies at Reasoning About Climate