Climate Policies

Great News! IPCC Final Warning Now!

Posted on by Ron Clutz

OK, they’ve exaggerated before, so could be that “final” may not stick.  For anyone following climate science and politics, this is not their first rodeo (or circus, if you prefer.)  But we can hope for peace at last from the doomsters.  Chris Morrison goes into what’s unconvincing about this final warning in his Daily Sceptic article Latest UN Climate Doom Report Falsely Claims Global Temperatures Are “Highest for 125,000 Years”.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Doomsday had to be postponed for five months, but ‘pausing’ IPCC writers have finally delivered another ‘Net Zero or Else’ report highlighting increasingly improbable climate change scenarios. Every IPCC report ramps up the desperation, and this latest ‘Synthesis Report‘ known as SYR is long on opinions, attributions and modelled results, but somewhat shorter on actual scientific facts.

The latest document collates the IPCC’s sixth assessments reports (AR6) into a short format that was originally scheduled to ramp up fears ahead of last year’s COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh. But in May and June last year, the planet-saving authors seem to have gone on strike. A few details about the incident are referred to in recently published IPCC minutes, which record how attempts were made with the writers to “rebuild the trust required to have them end their pause in writing, and to engage in the SYR production process”. Not before time, since IPCC reports need to be agreed with large numbers of interested parties, including almost 200 member governments. ‘Settled’ science, it need hardly be added, demands a lot of happy and settled funders.

Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice

Current global temperatures are said by the IPCC to be the highest for 125,000 years, an astonishing claim given the many scientific surveys that show much higher temperatures in the recent past. It is also claimed that temperatures will rise by 0.4°C in around a decade, an interesting opinion, based presumably on surface records that can be retrospectively adjusted, but an unlikely scenario given global warming ran out of steam over two decades ago. By 2100, the IPCC says global warming could rise to 4.4°C, although things need to be moving on a bit smartish given barely 0.1°C warming in the first two decades of the century.

Satellite Global Warming Up and Down

There have been one or two concerns of late that the IPCC’s scare tactics have sent half the world doolally with climate fear, especially the impressionable young. These criticisms seem to have been taken on board. UN Secretary General Antonio ‘Code Red’ Guterres hailed SYR as a “survival guide to humanity”. All we need to do, continued the Left-wing Portuguese radical, is for all countries to bring forward their Net Zero plans by a decade. Dr. Friederike Otto from Imperial College specialises in so-called ‘attribution’ studies and the pseudoscience of claiming specific weather events are caused by the activities of humans. She helped write the latest report and was also in optimistic mood telling the BBC: “If we aim for 1.5°C and achieve 1.6°C, that is still much better than saying, it’s too late and we are doomed and I’m not even trying. And I think what this report shows very, very clearly is there is so much to win by trying.”

Extinctions Overblown

Back on Planet Reality, it might be noted that there are a number of possible disadvantages connected to removing fossil fuels, a reliable, inexpensive energy supply that powers 80% of global needs, within less than 17 years.

Starvation, death, widespread warfare, societal and economic breakdown and rampant disease being just a few that come immediately to mind.

Coastal Flooding, Not

Traditional Landing Site of Mayflower Pilgrims.

It is not difficult to see why the IPCC continues to claim current global temperatures are the highest for 125,000 years, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that shows this is untrue. The rebound rise of about 1°C seen over the last 200 years is very small, and similar changes have obviously occurred countless times in the historical and paleo past, sometimes over even shorter time periods. It is difficult to worry too much about something that seems natural and in fact is beyond the control of humans. Placing the rise in the longer context of 125,000 years and adding all manner of invented weather event attribution and ‘tipping’ point stories adds some firepower to a political narrative ultimately designed to move society towards the collectivist Net Zero agenda.

Net Zero:  Who Gains, Who Loses

The Daily Sceptic has reported on a number of science papers that track the higher temperatures in the past, in particular the period since the last ice age started to lift about 12,000 years ago. A sample can be read here, here and here.

Earlier this year, a group of European scientists published a paper analysing tree remains that suggested there was a much warmer climate in the Alps during most of the last 10,000 years.

Adjusting Temperature Records.

‘Settled’ science, it might be observed, needs consensus from the world and his wife. The recent IPCC minutes, for instance, noted that the SYR team, “should ensure policy relevance and usefulness for policymakers”. Needless to say this is not to the taste of some independent-minded scientists, especially those retired with no need to hustle for state research or Left-wing foundation funds. In fact they can be quite disobliging about the entire IPCC process. In a recent paper titled ‘Challenging “Net Zero” with Science‘, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively called Net Zero “scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people”. In fact they have previously dismissed the peer review system around climate change as a “joke” – pal review, not peer review, they quipped. The IPCC is “government controlled and only issues government-dictated findings”.

Sketchy Warming Evidence

Source: Real Climate Science

“Climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence,” they added.

Footnote: So What Happens Next

As I said above, we’ve seen this show before.  Caleb Rossiter explains how it goes down:

For years I assigned statistics students to pick any apocalyptic climate claim in the media and trace it back through the UN reports to its genesis in a scientific study. I knew they would discover that these reports are not scientific documents based on the peer review process, but political documents “approved by governments” and intended to scare the public into supporting constraints on the production and use of energy.

A powerful publicity machine magnifies the alarm, bombarding citizens with exaggerations and claims of certainty that are proven wrong as you dig down to their underlying scientific studies:

  • Public figures, news editors, and commentators make claims that are more alarmist than what individual IPCC authors say at the release of the report.
  • Individual IPCC authors make claims at the release of the report that are more alarmist than what the official press release says.
  • The official press release makes claims that are more alarmist than what the report’s summary for policy-makers says.
  • The summary for policy-makers makes claims that are more alarmist than the various chapters of the reports.
  • The chapters of the report make claims that are more alarmist than the studies they reference in the footnotes.

More at

UN Horror Show

How to Break the Climate Spell

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Getty Images

Mark Imisides advises climate skeptics to reconsider how to dispute claims from climate believers in his Spectator Australia article Changing climate change: debunking the global colossus.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

How is it that despite the scientific case for a climate apocalypse comprehensively collapsing some 20 years ago, we have seen a 16-year-old girl (at the time) being invited to address the United Nations, weeping children marching in our streets, and a federal election outcome in which this issue dominated the political landscape?

Where did we go wrong? And by ‘we’ I’m referring to those of us termed sceptics – people who understand the science, and the house of cards that comprises the notion of Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Put simply, we must learn the art of the polemic. The art of rhetoric. We must recognise that there’s no point in having evidence on our side if we don’t know how to use it.

We begin with this proposition. There is no case for reducing our carbon footprint unless all four of these statements are true:

  1. The world is warming.
  2. We are causing it.
  3. It’s a bad thing.
  4. We can do something about it.

No rational person can have any problem with this, and if they do, we need to find out why.

Here’s where we have to decide which of these points we want to contest. Remember, you only have to falsify one of them for the whole thing to collapse like a house of cards.

Most sceptics, in my view, pick the wrong fight. They do this by attempting to prosecute the case based on one of the first two points. This is a mistake.

Here’s why.

Arguments about whether the world is warming revolve around competing graphs: ‘My graph shows it’s warming. If your graph shows it isn’t, then it’s wrong – no it isn’t – yes it is – no it isn’t…’  This argument also looks at Urban Heat Island Effects, and examines manipulation of data by government agencies.  This is a poor approach to take because:

  • You’re never going to prove your graph is right.
  • You can be very easily and quickly discredited as a conspiracy theorist (Brian Cox did this to Malcolm Roberts on Q&A a few years ago). People just do not believe that government agencies would manipulate data.
  • We should not fear a warming world. Records began at the end of the last ice age, so it’s only natural that the world is warming. And the current temperatures are well within historical averages.

Source: Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change: (1) The Recovery from the Little Ice Age (A Possible Cause of Global Warming) and (2) The Multi-decadal Oscillation (The Recent Halting of the Warming):

As for arguments about whether we are causing the warming, this is even more problematic. The various contributions to global temperatures are extremely complex, involving a deep understanding of atmospheric physics and thermodynamics. With a PhD in Chemistry, this is much closer to my area of expertise than Joe Public, but I am very quickly out of my depth. I recognise most of the terms and concepts involved, but know just enough to know how little I know.

Sadly, many people on both sides of the debate don’t understand how little they know, nor how complex the subject of atmospheric physics is, and it is nothing short of comical seeing two people debating about a subject of which both of them are blissfully ignorant.

The bottom line is this – they simply don’t change anyone’s minds – ever.

Having seen these arguments used for years, and having used them myself, I cannot point to a single person that has said, ‘Oh yes! I see it now…’ The whole point of arguing, or debating, is to change someone’s mind (including, at times, your own). If that isn’t happening, then it’s futile to continue with the same approach.

I think the reason both these approaches fail that most people do not believe that all these experts, and the government, can be wrong. You say the world isn’t warming? Oh, I’m sure you have the wrong graph. You say that CO2 is not responsible? Oh, I’m sure the government scientists know more than you do.

This then brings us to the third point. Why is a warmer world a bad thing?

This is even more tempting than the first two points, as it’s so easy to prove that a warming world, so far from being a crisis, is actually a good thing. The reason for this is that, unlike with the first two points, they don’t have to look at a complex scientific argument. They just have to look at the weather. Are cyclones and hurricanes increasing? Are droughts increasing? Are flooding events increasing?

Regretfully, it is impossible to get people to even look at this. Even worse, they seem oblivious to the simple concept of cause and effect. We see this in that they simply can’t see that droughts and floods are opposites, and the same cause cannot produce exactly opposite effects. Astonishingly, they somehow think that charts that plot these extreme events are somehow manipulated, even when they come from a primary source such as the BOM, and that there really is a ‘climate crisis’.

Where does that leave us? Well, before we adopt Catweazle’s mantra of ‘nothing works’, there is one more point – point 4 (can we do anything about it?).

Most people will have seen the address of Konstantin Kisin at an Oxford Union debate, where he prosecuted this case to great effect. He pointed out, in simple terms, that as the UK only contributes 2 per cent to the global CO2 budget, anything they did will have negligible effect, and that global CO2 levels will be determined by people in Africa and Asia. He then pointed out that people in these countries ‘didn’t give a sh*t’ about climate change, as all they want to do is feed and clothe their children, and they don’t care how much CO2 that produces.

Finally, he pointed out that Xi Jinping knows that the way to ensure that he isn’t rolled in a revolution, as happened to so many other leaders in former communist regimes, is to ensure prosperity for the Chinese people. And indispensable to that goal is cheap, reliable, power, which is the reason that China is now building lots more coal-fired power plants – in 2021 alone they built 25 GW of capacity – equivalent to 25 x 1000MW plants.

By all accounts, his speech was well-received, with many people turning to his side. The beauty of prosecuting this case, as opposed to the other three, is that people don’t have to look at any evidence. They don’t even have to look at the weather.

The argument is at the same time simple, compelling, and irresistible. The question is this: will we see a major political party with the courage to take it on?

That part remains to be seen. But what is certain is this – the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. If, for twenty years we’ve been telling people either that the world isn’t warming, or if it is we aren’t causing it, or if it is warmer but there’s no climate crisis, and not a single person has been persuaded by our arguments, then we have the brains of a tomato if we think anything is going to change.

Konstantin Kisin’s talk, and in particular the way it was received, fill me with hope that I haven’t had in years. It fills me with hope that if the case is prosecuted wisely, the climate change colossus can be brought to a grinding halt, politicians will unashamedly take on energy security as a political mantra, and the notion of climate change will at last be exposed as the unscientific, anti-human, regressive, apocalyptic cult that it is.

 

 

Bypass Contrived Catastrophes

Posted on by Ron Clutz

“Nothing so focuses the mind as the sight of the gallows.” wrote Samuel Johnson.  He went on to say,

“Executions are intended to draw spectators. If they don’t draw spectators, they don’t answer their purpose”,  Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Terrence Keeley discusses how to resist our current crop of elites who govern by declaring emergencies instead of solving problems. His insights are timely since this week PM Trudeau was given a free pass by a Canada Appeals court judge to repeat his emergency sanctions against protesting truckers should anyone else object to his policies. The article at Real Clear Wire is Navigating Contrived Catastrophes Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Perhaps this explains why political leaders repeatedly fabricate existential crises in lieu of governing responsibly. Without the sword of Damocles overhead, policymakers just can’t seem to get the adulation they so desperately crave.

Take the fake debt ceiling crisis. The U.S. federal debt cap was first enacted in 1917 when our national debt stood at $5.7 billion. Congress has since raised it more than 90 times with broad bipartisan support. There is ZERO chance they won’t do so again, yet we are told we must quiver and quake until they do. For some reason, a $31.4 trillion limit just isn’t enough to run the greatest country on earth properly.

Or better yet, consider the much-ballyhooed “Net Zero by 2050” time bomb. There was no science behind its selection of the 1.5 degree above pre-industrial temperature target. It was intentionally contrived so politicians and pundits could insist we spend hundreds of trillions of dollars reconfiguring every personal and industrial process to mute it, possibly by a degree or two. Anthropogenic activities are clearly taxing our air, water, and lands. Depending upon tradeoffs like affordability and reliability (and what China, India, and Russia decide to do), less carbon-intensive energy sources may well be preferable, too. Convincing our younger generation they will all die unless the globe urgently reduces its net carbon footprint to zero is another matter altogether. Being more mindful about our consumption patterns while preparing our communities for the probability of more violent weather would be too simple. Better to scare everyone out of their wits so we can get on with doing witless things.

Great societies thrive on consistent policy competence. Failing ones lurch
from crisis to crisis. Contriving catastrophic scenarios all but ensures
hysteria will supplant sober, reasoned analysis.

Some will argue extreme threats are needed to force modest, salutary changes. After all, a handful of U.S. debt ceiling votes brought about useful policy changes, like the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings breakthrough and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Similarly, threats of impending climate doom have led many individuals and corporations to examine their energy use, seek cleaner alternatives, and eliminate unnecessary waste.

But have these modest advances been worth the price of the abject delirium
that has accompanied them? And are recurrent, contrived catastrophes
somehow producing better policy outcomes?

Evidently not. Three essential U.S. social programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – are barreling along towards insolvency. Just as the retirement age in France must rise to reflect longer life expectancies and taxation tipping points, so too must U.S. retirement programs respect demographic realities. Maintaining peace through strength in an increasingly dangerous world requires that the U.S. spend more on defense, not less. Unless the current debt ceiling crisis leads to an honest rUeckoning about our most urgent tax and spending priorities, heightened hysteria serves no useful end. Worse, all the faux debt ceiling dynamics convince politicians they’ve somehow done their jobs when instead, they’ve abrogated them entirely.

Similarly, we speak about an “energy transition,” but no realistic projection of future fossil fuel consumption shows any meaningful decline in the century to come. Rising populations, improved living standards, reliability needs for the three billion humans who are still energy insecure, and the first order demands of national security reveal oil and gas will remain crucial sources of our energy mix for as far as the eye can see. The most logical response would be to prioritize energy reliability while recalibrating our emissions mitigation spending towards more climate adaptation priorities. Why spend $100 trillion or more on something that has been entirely contrived and is all but certain to fail when you can spend $50 trillion or less on something that would demonstrably save human lives while improving their livelihoods?

History is festooned with countless ruses about the end of time, some more disruptive than others. They include those of French Bishop Martin of Tours in 375 A.D., and Jim Jones in 1967. Many thousands believed the so-called Y2K cliff would crash every computer, triggering global economic ruin and the rise of the Antichrist. Yet, remarkably, here we all still are, higher in number than ever.

In time, trillions of dollars of investment products now priced against
Net Zero 2050 deadlines will need to be abandoned.

Similarly, the U.S. debt ceiling will be lifted multiple times before responsible members of both parties finally put our tax and spending trajectories into sustainable balance. Panic, like blackmail, compromises sensible thinking. Calm acceptance of measurable risks and their reasonable mitigation are the essence of wise decision-making.

The next time a politician tells you Armageddon is nigh, remind them it’s their only job to make sure it isn’t. If you’ve got the patience for it, you can also show them how easy it would be to avoid.

 

Energy Transition and Impossible Dreams

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Daniel Yergin writes at Project Syndicate The Energy Transition Confronts Reality.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Given the scale and complexity of the transition away from hydrocarbons, some worry that economic analysis has been given short shrift in the policy planning process. A clear-eyed assessment of the transition’s prospects requires a deeper understanding of at least four major challenges.

Overview

The “energy transition” from hydrocarbons to renewables and electrification is at the forefront of policy debates nowadays. But the last 18 months have shown this undertaking to be more challenging and complex than one would think just from studying the graphs that appear in many scenarios. Even in the United States and Europe, which have adopted massive initiatives (such as the Inflation Reduction Act and RePowerEU) to move things along, the development, deployment, and scaling up of the new technologies on which the transition ultimately depends will be determined only over time.

Progress of civilization through changing mixes of energy sources.

Beware:  The Imagined Transition is to be Sudden and not Additive.

The term “energy transition” suggests that we are simply taking one more step in the journey that began centuries ago with the Industrial Revolution. But in examining previous energy transitions for my book The New Map, I was struck by how different this one is. Whereas technology and economic advantage drove earlier transitions, public policy is now the most important factor.

Moreover, previous energy transitions unfolded over the course of a century or more, and they did not wholly displace the incumbent technologies. Oil overtook coal as the world’s top energy source in the 1960s, yet we now use three times more coal than we did back then, with global consumption hitting a record high in 2022.

By contrast, today’s transition is intended to unfold in little more
than a quarter-century and not be additive.

Given the scale of what is envisioned, some worry that macroeconomic analysis has been given insufficient attention in the policy-planning process. In a 2021 paper for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the French economist Jean Pisani-Ferry notes that moving too rapidly to net-zero emissions could precipitate “an adverse supply shock – very much like the shocks of the 1970s.” He warns that a precipitous transition “is unlikely to be benign and policymakers should get ready for tough choices.”

Hard Reality #1  Energy Security is Top Priority

Developments since energy markets began to tighten in the late summer of 2021 point to four big challenges to watch out for. First, owing largely to the disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, energy security has become a top priority again. For the most part, keeping the lights on and factories operating still requires hydrocarbons, so energy security means ensuring adequate and reasonably priced supplies and insulation from geopolitical risk and economic hardship.

Even with climate change remaining a central focus, US President Joe Biden administration’s has urged domestic companies to increase their oil production and released supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a far greater scale than any previous administration. In Germany, the Greens in the governing coalition have spearheaded the development of the country’s capacity to import liquefied natural gas, with the first deliveries of LNG from the US arriving this month through infrastructure built in less than 200 days. Energy security is not something that is going to be assumed away in the years ahead.

Hard Reality #2  The Scale Reaches Beyond Our Means

The second challenge concerns scale. Today’s $100 trillion world economy depends on hydrocarbons for over 80% of its energy, and nothing as massive and complex as the global energy system can be transformed easily. In an important new book, How The World Really Works, noted energy scholar Vaclav Smil argues that the four essential “pillars of modern civilization” are cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia (for fertilizer), each of which is heavily dependent on the existing energy system.

Given these starting conditions, will solutions like veganism help? Smil points out that five tablespoons of petroleum are embodied in the system that gets a single tomato from cultivation in Spain (including the required fertilizer) to a dinner table in London. Yes, energy efficiency could be improved. But the main effects will show up in developed countries, rather than in the developing world, where 80% of all people live, and where rising incomes will drive up energy demand.

Land required for wind farms to power London UK.

Hard Reality #3 North and South Interests Conflict

That points to the third challenge: the new North-South divide. In the Global North – primarily Western Europe and North America – climate change is at the top of the policy agenda. But in the Global South, that priority coexists with other critical priorities, such as boosting economic growth, reducing poverty, and improving health by targeting indoor air pollution from burning wood and waste.

Hence, for many in the developing world, “energy transition” means
moving from wood and waste to liquefied petroleum gas.

This divide was vividly illustrated last year when the European Parliament passed a resolution denouncing a proposed oil pipeline running from Uganda through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean. MEPs objected that the project would adversely affect the climate, the environment, and “human rights.” Yet they cast their votes from a body located in France and Belgium, where per capita income (in current dollars) is, respectively, 50 times and 60 times greater than in Uganda, where the pipeline is seen as a foundation for economic development. The resolution provoked a furious reaction. The deputy speaker of Uganda’s parliament denounced the Europeans for exhibiting “the highest level of neocolonialism and imperialism against the sovereignty of Uganda and Tanzania.”

Hard Reality #4 Materials Demands Blow Away Supplies

The fourth challenge concerns the material requirements of the energy transition. I see this as the shift from “Big Oil” to “Big Shovels” – that is, from drilling for oil and gas to mining the minerals for which demand will increase enormously in a world that becomes more electrified.

In a new S&P study, The Future of Copper, we calculate that the supply of “the metal of electrification” will have to double to support the world’s 2050 climate objectives. Recently, a host of authorities – including the US and Japanese governments, the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Energy Agency – have all published alarming reports about the expected exponential growth in demand for minerals such as lithium and cobalt.

But alarm itself will not open major new mines, a process estimated to take 16-25 years and which faces ever-more complex permitting requirements around the world. In some key resource countries, governments are openly hostile to mining.

So, while the direction of the energy transition is clear, policymakers and the public must recognize the challenges that it entails. A deeper and more realistic understanding of the complex issues that need to be addressed is essential as the effort to achieve the transition’s goals proceeds.

My Comment

The direction of the called for energy transition is clear alright, but is it necessary?  Recently, no less than John Kerry. told the World Economic Forum the world will eventually move to a low-carbon economy, but it may be too late to avoid the worst effects of climate change.  Meanwhile, there are a number of serious scientists who expect global cooling in coming decades.

The unmentioned Hard Reality #5:  Smart People will Adapt to Climate and Weather, as they always have. That is, if they haven’t already trashed their energy system and planetary resources chasing an impossible dream.

Zero Carbon Lemmings in a Rush.

 

 

 

 

With These Climate Policies, Doing Nothing is the Good

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Matthew Lau writes at Financial post When climate policy is all error, doing nothing could be good.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

It may not be a bad thing for Canadians that Pierre Poilievre
has been largely quiet on climate and environmental policy

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has not proposed much in the way of climate and environmental policy beyond scrapping the carbon tax, but if he is searching for policy ideas, one place he best not look — except for examples of what not to do — is across the pond to the U.K.’s Conservative government. Its environmental agenda is a shambolic mishmash of impoverishing energy policies, climate alarmism, excess spending, and virtue-signalling regulations that afflict consumers and businesses without any compensating environmental benefit.

If all this sounds familiar, it is because Canadians are already suffering
from the same policy agenda under the Liberals.

The British government’s latest regulatory effort is a ban on plastic utensils, plates and cups. It follows a 2020 ban on plastic straws, stir sticks and cotton swabs. The latest ban applies only to restaurants and cafes, as the government is planning a separate policy for grocery store sales of the same products next year. It is a little inconsistent that people can still buy bulk packages of plastic forks at the grocery store while not being allowed to access a single fork at a restaurant, where they might actually want to use it. But having two sets of policies implemented a year apart lets the government maximize bureaucrat-hours and so keep the public sector happy.

The problems with plastic bans are well documented.

First, plastic pollution is overwhelmingly caused by waste management problems, primarily in Asia, not single-use products in developed countries. As reported in Reason, the U.K. accounts for only 0.05 per cent of global marine plastic waste.

Second, the alternatives to single-use plastics are more expensive and of lower quality.

Third, despite decomposing more quickly, the alternatives are also often worse for the environment overall. A 2018 Danish Environmental Protection Agency study found that in order to be better for the environment than a plastic bag a conventional cotton bag would have to be re-used 7,100 times.

The environmental policy madness pursued by the U.K. Conservatives and similarly hopeless governments, like the Liberals in Canada, extends past the war on plastic to the war on gasoline-powered cars. In Canada, the federal government plans to mandate that at least 60 per cent of new vehicles sold must be electric by 2030, and by 2035 the sale of all new gasoline-powered vehicles will be banned. The U.K.’s mandate is even worse, as in 2020 then-prime minister Boris Johnson, for reasons unknown, decided to advance the date for banning gasoline-powered cars from 2035 (the year selected by the EU) to 2030. Hybrids will be banned by 2035.

As the Telegraph reports, government enthusiasm for switching to electric vehicles is not matched by consumer enthusiasm: higher price tags and rising electricity prices have flattened demand. A green energy group that three months ago forecast 360,000 electric vehicles would be manufactured in the U.K. by 2025 has just slashed its estimate to 280,000. Unfortunately, consumer reluctance has not stopped the government from trying to control motorists’ behaviour in order to achieve its climate ambitions. A report earlier this month from the U.K. Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee on accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels proposed such measures as a public information campaign to lecture motorists on driving more efficiently, cutting speed limits, imposing “car-free Sundays” in large cities and car-sharing.

Philip Dunne, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, declared the U.K. needs “a national war effort” to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, in addition to the hassling of motorists there will be many more billions in spending, “green mortgages,” a call for all housing developers to fit solar panels on new houses as standard and other governmental interventions, all in pursuit of the “guiding star” of net-zero emissions by 2050. The 99-page report is not entirely bereft of reason, but as National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford concludes, it appears to be written by people who learned too little “from the economic and geopolitical disaster that Europe’s climate policy-makers have done so much to enable” and its overall direction is to push Britain faster down the path of more poverty and less freedom.

In view of all this, it may not be a bad thing for Canadians that Pierre Poilievre has been largely quiet on climate and environmental policy. A children’s book of Winnie-the-Pooh-inspired wisdom once offered the suggestion, “Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing.”

Given the climate-policy disasters of governments of all stripes in Europe, the U.K., and Canada seeking to do something, doing nothing may not be bad advice.

Footnote

Climatists Aim Forks at Our Food Supply

Posted on by Ron Clutz

It’s not enough to apply Chinese-style lockdowns in the name of “fighting climate change.”  Now climatists want to stick forks in our food supply, thereby reducing populations to a more “sustainable” number.  The attack on world food supply has four prongs to it, just like the forks in the image above.

1.  Exaggerate the Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

2.  Oppose Methane from Livestock as a Fossil Fuel, like Coal and Oil.

3. Freak Out over N2O as an Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

4.  Meat Shame People’s Diets Because Vegans Love Animals

Background:  The Carbon Cycle is Natural

This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white indicate stored carbon.

Instead of delusions about CO2 as the planet’s climate “control knob”, Viv Forbes provides us a wise, sane view how the carbon cycle works, and what we know and don’t know about it. And rather than exaggerate the effects of humans recycling fossil fuels, he puts the carbon cycling sources and sinks into a sensible perspective. His recent article is entitled: Carbon Delusions and Limited Models

The IPCC models misread the positive and negative temperature feedbacks from water vapour (the main greenhouse gas) and their accounting for natural processes in the carbon cycle is based on very incomplete knowledge and numerous unproven assumptions.

The dreaded “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide and methane) are natural gases. Man did not create them — they occur naturally in comets and planets, and have been far more plentiful in previous atmospheres on Earth. They are abundant in the oceans and the atmosphere, and are buried in deposits of gas, oil, coal, shale, methane clathrates and vast beds of limestone. Land and sea plants absorb CO2 and micro-organisms absorb methane in the deep ocean.

Earth emits natural carbon-bearing gases in huge and largely unknown and unpredictable quantities. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and various hydrocarbons such as ethane, methane and propane bubble out of the ocean floor, seep out of swamps, bubble naturally out of rivers, are released in oil seeps, water wells and bores, and are sometimes delivered via water pipes into drinking water. They are also released whenever carbon-bearing rocks such as coal and shale are eroded naturally, catch fire or are disturbed by earthquakes, construction activities or mining. The vast offshore deposits of frozen methane are released naturally when geothermal heat or volcanic intrusions melt the ice containing the methane.

The Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

Methane  
Natural gas is 75% Methane (CH4) which burns cleanly to carbon dioxide and water. Methane is eagerly sought after as fuel for electric power plants because of its ease of transport and because it produces the least carbon dioxide for the most power. Also cars can be powered with compressed natural gas (CNG) for short distances.

In many countries CNG has been widely distributed as the main home heating fuel. As a consequence, in the past methane has leaked to the atmosphere in large quantities, now firmly controlled. Grazing animals also produce methane in their complicated stomachs and methane escapes from rice paddies and peat bogs like the Siberian permafrost.

It is thought that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas because it absorbs some infrared wavelengths 7 times more effectively than CO2, molecule for molecule, and by weight even 20 times. As we have seen previously, this also means that within a distance of metres, its effect has saturated, and further transmission of heat occurs by convection and conduction rather than by radiation.

Note that when H20 is present in the lower troposphere, there are few photons left for CH4 to absorb:

Even if the IPCC radiative greenhouse theory were true, methane occurs only in minute quantities in air, 1.8ppm versus CO2 of 390ppm. By weight, CH4 is only 5.24Gt versus CO2 3140Gt (on this assumption). If it truly were twenty times more potent, it would amount to an equivalent of 105Gt CO2 or one thirtieth that of CO2. A doubling in methane would thus have no noticeable effect on world temperature.

However, the factor of 20 is entirely misleading because absorption is proportional to the number of molecules (=volume), so the factor of 7 (7.3) is correct and 20 is wrong. With this in mind, the perceived threat from methane becomes even less.

Further still, methane has been rising from 1.6ppm to 1.8ppm in 30 years (1980-2010), assuming that it has not stopped rising, this amounts to a doubling in 2-3 centuries. In other words, methane can never have any measurable effect on temperature, even if the IPCC radiative cooling theory were right.

Because only a small fraction in the rise of methane in air can be attributed to farm animals, it is ludicrous to worry about this aspect or to try to farm with smaller emissions of methane, or to tax it or to trade credits.

The fact that methane in air has been leveling off in the past two decades, even though we do not know why, implies that it plays absolutely no role as a greenhouse gas.  (From Sea Friends (here):

More information at The Methane Misconceptions by Dr. Wilson Flood (UK) here.

Give Daisy a Break!

Methane Risk from Livestock is Overstated

Frank M. Mitloehner is Professor of Animal Science and Air Quality Extension Specialist, University of California, Davis.  He writes at the Conversation Yes, eating meat affects the environment, but cows are not killing the climate.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. And its persistence has led to false assumptions about the linkage between meat and climate change.

My research focuses on ways in which animal agriculture affects air quality and climate change. In my view, there are many reasons for either choosing animal protein or opting for a vegetarian selection. However, foregoing meat and meat products is not the environmental panacea many would have us believe. And if taken to an extreme, it also could have harmful nutritional consequences.

Many people continue to think avoiding meat as infrequently as once a week will make a significant difference to the climate. But according to one recent study, even if Americans eliminated all animal protein from their diets, they would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by only 2.6 percent. According to our research at the University of California, Davis, if the practice of Meatless Monday were to be adopted by all Americans, we’d see a reduction of only 0.5 percent.

Moreover, technological, genetic and management changes that have taken place in U.S. agriculture over the past 70 years have made livestock production more efficient and less greenhouse gas-intensive. According to the FAO’s statistical database, total direct greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. livestock have declined 11.3 percent since 1961, while production of livestock meat has more than doubled.

Removing animals from U.S. agriculture would lower national greenhouse gas emissions to a small degree, but it would also make it harder to meet nutritional requirements. Many critics of animal agriculture are quick to point out that if farmers raised only plants, they could produce more pounds of food and more calories per person. But humans also need many essential micro- and macronutrients for good health.

The world population is currently projected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. Feeding this many people will raise immense challenges. Meat is more nutrient-dense per serving than vegetarian options, and ruminant animals largely thrive on feed that is not suitable for humans. Raising livestock also offers much-needed income for small-scale farmers in developing nations. Worldwide, livestock provides a livelihood for 1 billion people.

Climate change demands urgent attention, and the livestock industry has a large overall environmental footprint that affects air, water and land. These, combined with a rapidly rising world population, give us plenty of compelling reasons to continue to work for greater efficiencies in animal agriculture. I believe the place to start is with science-based facts.

N2O is No Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

Methane and Climate is a paper by W. A. van Wijngaarden (Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Canada) and W. Happer (Department of Physics, Princeton University, USA) published at CO2 Coalition November 22, 2019. It is a summary in advance of a more detailed publication to come. Excerpts in italics with my bolds. [Note the paper is a thorough and deep expert analysis of atmospheric radiation physics which I do not fully comprehend.  So the excerpts below are necessarily superficial, but intend to provide the core findings from these scientists.]

Figure 2: Left. A standard atmospheric temperature profile [9], T = T(z). The surface temperature is T(0)= 288.7 K. Right. Standard concentrations [10], Csd = Nsd /N for greenhouse molecules versus altitude z.  The total number density of atmospheric molecules is N and the number density of molecules of type i is Nsd. At sea level the concentrations are 7750 ppm of H2O, 1.8 ppm of CH4 and 0.32 ppm of N2O. The O3 concentration peaks at 7.8 ppm at an altitude of 35 km, and the CO2 concentration was approximated by 400 ppm at all altitudes. The data is based on experimental observations.

As shown in Fig. 2, the most abundant greenhouse gas at the surface is water vapor (H2O). However, the concentration of water vapor drops by a factor of a thousand or more between the surface and the tropopause. This is because of condensation of water vapor into clouds and eventual removal by precipitation.  Carbon dioxide CO2, the most abundant greenhouse gas after water vapor, is also the most uniformly mixed because of its chemical stability. Methane, the main topic of this discussion is much less abundant than CO2 and it has somewhat higher concentrations in the troposphere than in the stratosphere where it is oxidized by OH radicals and ozone, O3. The oxydation of methane [8] is the main source of the stratospheric water vapor shown in Fig. 2. 

Figure 9: Projected midlatitude forcing increments at the tropopause from continued increases of CO2 and CH4 at the rates of Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 for the next 50 years. The projected forcings are very small, especially for methane, compared to the current tropospheric forcing of 137 W m−2.

The paper is focused on the greenhouse effects of atmospheric methane, since there have recently been proposals to put harsh restrictions on any human activities that release methane. The basic radiation-transfer physics outlined in this paper gives no support to the idea that greenhouse gases like methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) or nitrous oxide (N2O) are contributing to a climate crisis. Given the huge benefits of more CO2 to agriculture, to forestry, and to primary photosynthetic productivity in general, more CO2 is almost certainly benefitting the world.  Radiative effects of CH4 and N2O are so small that they are irrelevant to climate.

Source: Global Monitoring Laboratory

The chart above informs on the scale of N2O concentrations. At first glance, it appears comparable to CO2, but on closer inspection the amounts are in ppb (parts per billion), not ppm (parts per million) as with CO2. To get comparable amounts requires dividing by 1000, thus the vertical axis goes from 0.315 ppm to 0.340 ppm. Yes, the dramatic rise over the last 22 years is 0.025ppm.

Then we have the annual global increase of N2O from all sources ranging from about 0.5 to 1.3 ppb. Does anyone believe they can measure N2O down to 0.0005 ppm?

 Vegans Pushing Their Anti-Meat Agenda

The origin of these alarms are studies published in Lancet, once highly reputed but recently given over to climate ideology rather than objective science. Most recently is Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems  The preceding Lancet study stated this main finding:

Following environmental objectives by replacing animal-source foods with plant-based ones was particularly effective in high-income countries for improving nutrient levels, lowering premature mortality (reduction of up to 12% [95% CI 10–13] with complete replacement), and reducing some environmental impacts, in particular greenhouse gas emissions (reductions of up to 84%). However, it also increased freshwater use (increases of up to 16%) and had little effectiveness in countries with low or moderate consumption of animal-source foods. (here).

Georgia Ede MD writes in Psychology Today EAT-Lancet’s Plant-based Planet: 10 Things You Need to Know. Excerpts in italics below with my bolds. Title is link to full text which is recommended reading.  Georgia Ede, MD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and nutrition consultant practicing at Smith College. She writes about food and health on her website DiagnosisDiet.com.

We all want to be healthy, and we need a sustainable way to feed ourselves without destroying our environment. The well-being of our planet and its people are clearly in jeopardy, therefore clear, science-based, responsible guidance about how we should move forward together is most welcome.

Unfortunately, we are going to have to look elsewhere for solutions, because the EAT-Lancet Commission report fails to provide us with the clarity, transparency and responsible representation of the facts we need to place our trust in its authors. Instead, the Commission’s arguments are vague, inconsistent, unscientific, and downplay the serious risks to life and health posed by vegan diets.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a human clinical trial designed to test the health effects of simply removing animal foods from the diet, without making any other diet or lifestyle changes such as eliminating refined carbohydrates and other processed foods. Unless and until such research is conducted demonstrating clear benefits to this strategy, the assertion that human beings would be healthier without animal foods remains an untested hypothesis with clear risks to human life and health. Prescribing plant-based diets to the planet without including straightforward warnings of these risks and offering clear guidance as to how to minimize them is scientifically irresponsible and medically unethical, and therefore should not form the basis of public health recommendations.

Summary:

Natural Gas (75% methane) burns the cleanest with the least CO2 for the energy produced.

Leakage of methane is already addressed by efficiency improvements for its economic recovery, and will apparently be subject to even more regulations.

The atmosphere is a methane sink where the compound is oxidized through a series of reactions producing 1 CO2 and 2H20 after a few years.

GWP (Global Warming Potential) is CO2 equivalent heat trapping based on laboratory, not real world effects.

Any IR absorption by methane is limited by H2O absorbing in the same low energy LW bands.

There is no danger this century from natural or man-made methane emissions.

Conclusion

This is a bogus war on fertilizers, farmers and food. Everything is exaggerated for the sake of an extreme agenda to impose controls on free enterprise developed societies. It is true that use of fertilizers results in some release of N2O into the air, but even this has been overstated. And as the video demonstrates, farmers have a vested interest in using fertilizers wisely and are applying techniques that improve efficiency. As well, there is evidence of efficiency gains in the process of producing ammonia and then urea from air and natural gas. The attack on food supply is in effect an effort to reduce the population.

Resources

Much Ado About Methane

More Methane Madness

Washing Methane Away: Atmospheric Chemistry

Mastering Methane Mania

Let Them Eat Steak!

Climate Ideology = Bad Nutritional Advice

Carbon Sense and Nonsense

 

Time for a GOP Rational Climate Policy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Recently in a post called Silence of Conservative Lambs I wrote:

The 1991 blockbuster movie revolved around meek, silent victims preyed upon by malevolent believers in their warped, twisted view of the world. A comparison can be drawn between how today’s conservative thinkers and politicians respond to advocates of the pernicious global warming/climate change ideology. Instead of challenging and pushing back against CO2 hysteria, and speaking out with a rational climate perspective, Republicans in the US, and Conservatives in Canada and elsewhere are meek and silent lambs in the face of this energy slaughter. Worse, when they do speak it is to usually to pander and try to appease offering proposals for things like carbon taxes or other non-remedies for a non-problem, essentially ceding the case to leftists.

So to be more constructive, let’s consider what should be proposed by political leaders regarding climate, energy and the environment.  IMO these should be the pillars:

♦  Climate change is real, but not an emergency.

♦  We must use our time to adapt to future climate extremes.

♦  We must transition to a diversified energy platform.

♦  We must safeguard our air and water from industrial pollutants.

 

For those not familiar, Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.  Their 1000+ members are signatories of a declaration There is No Climate Emergency

A global network of 900 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.

One example of a national energy and environment strategy is provided by Clintel for The Netherlands.  The document is Clintel’s Integrated Energy Vision.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Preamble

We all agree in CLINTEL that:
– There is no climate emergency. We have ample time to improve our climate models (for a better understanding of the factors that regulate the climate) and to search for better adaptation technologies.

– The influence of CO2 on global warming is overestimated and its influence on greening is underestimated (even worse, it is often ignored). Nobody knows what the optimum value of atmospheric CO2 concentration is, but from a geological point of view we may conclude that we live in a time with historical low concentrations. Again, there is no climate emergency.

– There is an energy emergency.  Decarbonisation policies – in terms of the current energy transition are most destructive. They do much more harm than good. These energy policies must be terminated immediately.

– The new generation (III and IV) nuclear power plants ought to get all our attention. These plants promise low-priced, reliable, safe and clean energy. In combination with natural gas nuclear energy is a ‘No Regret Solution’. Wind and solar energy are at most niche technologies. Their contribution is and will stay marginal.

With respect to the energy transition, CLINTEL emphasises that there exists not something as a global uniform energy system.  Every country needs a tailor-made energy system depending on its geography, mineral resources, development phase, industrial specialization, population density, etc. For instance, The Netherlands – being a very densely populated country and being severely divided on the CO2 issue – it looks like the new generation of nuclear power plants may function as a breakthrough in the political process:

Part I shows that current Dutch energy policy – having the ambition to reduce CO₂ emissions as much as 49% by 2030 – is based on panic and shall lead to immense additional costs and a drastically deteriorated living environment. Below, we will propose an inspiring long-term energy vision that fits our (and many other) country’s needs, is based on scientific facts, and aimed at a prosperous future for everyone. A positive vision that replaces the gloom and doom predictions of the climate models. A vision with a hopeful perspective for the future.

A Guiding Vision for the Future

It is well known that high-risk, capital-intensive decisions should be based on a policy that is as insensitive as possible about the way the future will unfold. We have called it a No Regret Policy. It represents a long-term policy, implemented by taking small steps, and continuously adapted to what is happening in reality. CLINTEL has drawn up a No Regret Energy Policy, especially aimed at the Dutch energy transition.

The proposed NRE policy is insensitive for the impact that CO₂ might or might not have on climate change (dominant or marginal). In addition it is insensitive for what role the future electricity grid will play and for what the best mobility energy option will be. An extra bonus of the NRE policy is that the Netherlands’ energy supply will become less dependent on Russian natural gas and Middle Eastern oil.

CLINTEL’s proposal consists of three main elements:

1. Introduction of nuclear energy
If we base ourselves on the most up-to-date insights in energy supply, and we look at our four objectives as well as to our ‘no regret demands’, then nuclear energy is the only choice that meets these needs:

• No CO₂ emissions (mandatory requirement in the climate policy in force) as well as excellent controlled waste treatment (pollution requirement)
• High safety level (safety requirement)
• Demand-driven, reliable and affordable (prosperity requirement)
• High energy density (environmental requirement)

About the last entry, please compare a medium-sized 500 MW nuclear power plant with a medium wind turbine park of 4 MW full load. For this reactor, we will need a terrain of approximately 1 km², for the wind farm approx. 300 km². In addition, a nuclear power plant delivers guaranteed for at least 60 years power with low operational costs.  Wind turbines on the other hand deliver unreliable power with high operational costs for a maximum of 25 years.  Solar panels aren’t performing any better. Moreover, the corresponding inverter (from direct current to alternating current) only lasts about 10 years.

2. Transforming green electrons into green molecules

Transport and storage of much larger than the current quantities of electrical energy is
technically difficult and economically unattractive. Every physicist will say: Don’t do it!
The real alternative is that with a large supply of cheap and reliable electrical energy we can afford to transform this energy into any desired molecular clean energy carrier, in the form of synthetic gas and synthetic oil.

There are attractive candidates with an appropriate energy density, such as methanol (CH3OH), ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen (H2), or a combination. These truly green energy carriers can be used safely and affordably be stored and transported using the existing infrastructure (bear in mind that 100% H2 is very aggressive and highly flammable, so there is still a lot of work to be done before this energy carrier can be implemented safely at a large scale).

Oil companies should not be tempted by substantial public subsidies to participate in solar fields and wind farms. Instead, they should concentrate on production, transport and distribution of green molecules (green gas, green oil), so do what they are good at.  Plans to store surplus CO₂ underground may turn out to be a silly activity. Oil companies, be critical before starting such an activity at a large scale.

3. Hybrid applications

With the supply of truly clean electricity and truly clean energy carriers, optimal choices can be made without large and expensive  grid reinforcements and polluting battery packs. Examples:

• Clean high-efficiency boilers (green gas)
• Clean road traffic (green petrol, green diesel)
• Clean aviation (green kerosene)
• Clean industrial production (green gas)
• Clean desalination of seawater (green potable water)

Interestingly, for each application there also is a hybrid solution (fossil-fuel molecules combined with green molecules and/or green molecules combined with green electrons). Here are also great opportunities to meet the ever-growing need for potable water. After all, it is bad for the soil if we keep on pumping up groundwater (e.g. soil desiccation, and soil subsidence). This can be done much better if we link our energy policy to our drinking water policy.

NRE policy excludes burning of biomass (‘the most stupid policy of all times’) and includes sun and wind as niches only. Batteries are only used for low-power applications, as in the information sector. Natural gas and natural oil are primarily still raw materials for the industry. ‘Saying goodbye to ‘natural’ gas, is utterly silly. Any CO₂ tax is even more silly.

Nuclear energy is proposed as the only truly sustainable solution.  To start with, nuclear power will have to take over the energy and heat supply from existing power plants that have almost reached the end of their technical and/or economic lifespan. Next are the energy applications proposed by CLINTEL being part of this vision. The present nuclear technology works with enriched uranium. Breeder reactors on uranium and thorium will in the long run take over the role of these traditional nuclear reactors. Hopefully, nuclear fusion will follow. The Netherlands will, together with other countries, have to participate in research and development efforts, thus acknowledging the importance of a 100% clean, reliable and affordable global energy supply for the foreseeable future. 

Footnote:  US Republicans Get Behind a Six-Point Plan

ClearPath Action

♦  Leverage American Innovation

Innovation and creating jobs is just part of who we are. And thanks to innovation, America has reduced its emissions by more than any other country in the last 20 years. We did this through new American technology, research at the Department of Energy, and strong bipartisan support.

We need to double down and get more American innovations to market.

♦  Modernize Permitting

We need to build cleaner, faster. Clean energy and grid modernization present tremendous economic opportunities, but burdensome and outdated regulations mean that new projects take five years on average to come online.

We have to move faster by enacting common sense reforms to the permitting process.

♦  Bring American Industry Back

American manufacturing is the cleanest in the world with the highest environmental standards. Unfortunately, countries like China and Russia don’t have the same standards.

We can restore American manufacturing leadership in industries like steel and concrete by strengthening our own supply chains and eliminating dependence from countries that don’t meet our environmental standards.

♦  Unleash American Resource Independence

A new industrial revolution is going to require an enormous amount of resources like lithium, copper, cobalt, graphite, and nickel. Currently, we are too dependent on countries like China to supply our needs.

This dependence increases emissions and handicaps American businesses. We have to make it easier to safely supply manufacturers with American-made materials and employ American workers.

♦  Make Our Communities More Resilient

As conservatives, we plan ahead. When it comes to natural disasters, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. One dollar invested now equals six dollars after the disaster.

We can help take common sense measures and make sound investments that make our communities and farms more resistant to natural disasters like floods, fires and droughts.

♦  Use Natural Solutions

Crop production depends on access to healthy soil, adequate water supplies and predictable weather conditions, all of which are more difficult to manage as the climate changes.

Natural climate solutions – planting trees and farming practices that improve soil health – have a major impact on reducing carbon emissions while making forests and farms more resilient to floods and fires. They are also profitable.

Toward a Congressional Resolution

The current world political climate is shame-and-blame in order to gain approvals for drastic reduction of CO2. Thus pressure is applied to political officials at every level to show their colors on acting to “fight climate change.”  The so-called Zero Carbon notion is widely and naively proclaimed as the way forward.  It seems timely to propose an alternative resolution.

There is no place to hide these days, and politicians who have a rational position on climate science had better legislate on the issue. A common sense legislative motion could read something like this (followed by supporting documentation and references).

Whereas, Extent of global sea ice is within the range of historical variability;

Whereas, Populations of polar bears are generally growing;

Whereas, Sea levels have been slowly rising at the same rate since the Little Ice Age ended 150 years ago;

Whereas, Oceans will not become acidic due to buffering from extensive mineral deposits and marine life is well adapted to pH fluctuations that do occur;

Whereas, Extreme weather events have not increased in recent decades and such events are more associated to periods of cooling rather than warming;

Whereas, Cold spells, not heat waves, are the greater threat to human life and prosperity;

Therefore, This chamber agrees that climate is variable and prudent public officials should plan for future periods both colder and warmer than the present. Two principle objectives will be robust infrastructure and reliable, affordable energy.

Comment:

The underlying issue is the assumption that the future can only be warmer than the present. Once you accept the notion that CO2 makes the earth’s surface warmer (an unproven conjecture), then temperatures can only go higher since CO2 keeps rising. The present plateau in temperatures is inconvenient, but actual cooling would directly contradict the CO2 doctrine. Some excuses can be fabricated for a time, but an extended period of cooling undermines the whole global warming mantra.

It’s not a matter of fearing a new ice age. That will come eventually, according to our planet’s history, but the warning will come from increasing ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere. Presently infrastructures in many places are not ready to meet a return of 1950s weather, let alone something unprecedented.

Public policy must include preparations for cooling since that is the greater hazard. Cold harms the biosphere: plants, animals and humans. And it is expensive and energy intensive to protect life from the ravages of cold. Society can not afford to be in denial about the prospect of the current temperature plateau ending with cooling.

UN’s Imaginary Planet

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A banner advertising the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, U.K., on Oct. 20, 2021. PHOTO BY IAN FORSYTH/BLOOMBERG FILES

William Watson writes at Financial Post What planet do UN carbon-fighters live on? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If current trends continue, the chance of the world hitting the UN’s goals are slim to none

One of the biggest news stories in Quebec this week is the partial closing of the Louis Hippolyte-Lafontaine tunnel, a major commuting artery under the St. Lawrence River, for what are termed “urgent” repairs. Half the tunnel’s lanes will be closed for three years — though that’s probably optimistic. Montreal’s brand-spanking-new light rail system, which for some reason the people who run the public pension plan think will be a big money-maker for them, recently had its opening delayed until next spring. In Quebec, big projects delays are like winter snow: simply assumed.

Though big for the affected commuters, these are tiny projects for the world. Yet they’ll take three years. Slowly, very slowly, does seem to be the way things work in many parts of the world these days. (Is there, by the way, a more aptly named figure than former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly, whose approach to the truckers’ incursion seems to have been the opposite of speedy — and therefore of course very, very Ottawa?)

The tunnel, the bridge and the Réseau express métropolitain LRT came to mind as I scrolled through the latest edition of the United Nation Environment Programme’s (UNEP) update on the progress — or, in its view, shameful lack of progress — the world has made decarbonizing itself.

Judging by the 2½ pages of acknowledgements, this annual “Emissions Gap Report” is an immense undertaking by all sorts of committed people from universities, the UNEP itself and organizations such as the Bezos Earth Fund, the International Council on Clean Transportation, the ClimateWorks Foundation and so on. IKEA itself gets a shout-out for contributions from its foundation.

Not all the carbon news is bad. In a lovely set of graphs — production values, as always at the UN, are world-class — the team reports on how each G20 country is doing on its 2050 target (or NDC: nationally determined contribution). The arrow emerging from Canada’s trend points downward and to the right, heading for what looks like an exact bull’s eye with our commitment. If we do what we’ve said we’ll do — though that’s obviously a big if — we’ll get there. The EU27, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia (though its aim is off by a few years) are in essentially the same situation.

But other countries are not, including five that already account for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus the arrows for China, India, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia are headed skyward, soaring to levels far above their 2060 (not 2050) commitments. Maybe a decade or two of rapid economic growth will persuade them they’re now rich enough to go after carbon. But if current trends continue, the chance of the world hitting the UN’s goals are slim to none.

Which leads to a lot of foot-stamping scolding on the part of the emissions-gap team. Watching 20th-century international hockey, we Canadians were always shocked that Soviet coaches evidently thought they could get more out of their players by haranguing them on the bench after a lousy play. For some reason, the UN folk don’t seem to understand that being harangued puts most people off.

LULUCF refers to emissions from land use and forestry, which can be in addition or subtraction.

Yet the report argues what we need is “wide-ranging, large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation” in order to reach the goal of a two-degree, let alone 1.5-degree, increase in average global temperatures. “Is it a tall order to transform our systems in just eight years?” asks the executive director of UNEP, apparently with a straight face. “Yes,” she concedes, “but we must try.” And so the report goes on to provide a long list of imperatives for governments, industry and (they get their own chapter) bankers.

We all understand that ardent environmentalists are driven by their love for the planet. But which planet exactly do they live on? In the part of planet earth I live on (and love, too, in my own conservative way), it takes three years to perform “urgent” repairs on an important tunnel — and it probably took at least as many to clear the decision to go ahead. Yet here are apparently intelligent and certainly well-educated people saying the world must turn its agricultural sector upside down, or at least get a good start on doing so, in just eight years.

Figure 6.2 Food systems emissions trajectory and mitigation potentials by transformation domain

Societies do undergo radical transformations. The other day I found myself talking to a speaker, telling it which radio station to play. We of a certain age are living quite differently than we did as children. But people only make these big transformations voluntarily, when new technologies or ideas come along that are self-evidently desirable and appear worth spending money on.

That would not be the case with a precipitate, top-down overhaul
of our agricultural and industrial systems.

We’ve only just figured out how to feed eight-billion people. What happens to a billion or two of them if the grand agricultural experiment the UN wants us all to try doesn’t work out? Environmentalists always say this is the only planet we’ve got. It is indeed. But that means there’s nowhere else to import food from if global experiments go wrong.

Alarmist Climate Consensus Collapses

Posted on by Ron Clutz

‘There is No Climate Emergency’ (1,107 Signatories and Counting)

The World Climate Declaration (Global Climate Intelligence Group) follows:

    • There is no climate emergency Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
    • Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
    • Warming is far slower than predicted. The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
    • Climate policy relies on inadequate models Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
    • CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
    • Global warming has not increased natural disasters There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.
    • Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.

Our advice to the European leaders is that Science should strive for a significantly better understanding of the Climate System, while Politics should focus on minimizing potential climate damage by priortizing adapation strategies based on proven and affordable technologies

COP27 is several months ahead. The world is recommitting itself to fossil fuels, while only government largesse keeps the wind/solar/battery gravy train going. Global Climate Intelligence Group’s World Climate Declaration stands as a beacon light to a wholly different approach of free-market adaptation, not government mitigation.

See also CLINTEL Declaration Essay

 

Wasting Money on Carbon Capture

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Bryce explains in his Real Clear Energy article Carbon Capture Didn’t Make Sense 12 Years Ago And It Doesn’t Make Sense Now.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

It appears the reconciliation bill that includes some $370 billion in energy-related spending is going to become law. The measure includes a panoply of tax credits for alternative energy technologies, including incentives for electric vehicles, hydrogen, energy storage, and of course, billions of dollars in tax credits for wind and solar energy.

The measure also includes, according to the Congressional Budget Office, some $3.2 billion in tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that has plenty of supporters but precious little in the way of commercially successful projects. Back in 2018, Al Gore blasted CCS, calling it “nonsense” and an “extremely improbable solution.”

The new tax credits for CCS remind me that I published a piece in the New York Times on May 12, 2010, about the technology. In looking back, the piece is still relevant today. In fact, I wouldn’t change a word of it. Furthermore, my prediction about the difficulty of siting the pipelines needed to move the CO2 has already come true. For proof, see this August 6, Wall Street Journal article about the opposition to a proposed CO2 pipeline in Iowa.

In any case here’s my 12-year-old take on why CCS is a bad bet:

On Wednesday, John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman introduced their long-awaited Senate energy bill, which includes incentives of $2 billion per year for carbon capture and sequestration, the technology that removes carbon dioxide from the smokestack at power plants and forces it into underground storage. This significant allocation would come on top of the $2.4 billion for carbon capture projects that appeared in last year’s stimulus package.

That’s a lot of money for a technology whose adoption faces three potentially insurmountable hurdles: it greatly reduces the output of power plants; pipeline capacity to move the newly captured carbon dioxide is woefully insufficient; and the volume of waste material is staggering. Lawmakers should stop perpetuating the hope that the technology can help make huge cuts in the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions.

1. An Energy Intensive Process

Let’s take the first problem. Capturing carbon dioxide from the flue gas of a coal-fired electric generation plant is an energy-intensive process. Analysts estimate that capturing the carbon dioxide cuts the output of a typical plant by as much as 28 percent.

Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet booming demand for electricity, it’s hard to believe that the United States, or any other country that relies on coal-fired generation, will agree to reduce the output of its coal-fired plants by almost a third in order to attempt carbon capture and sequestration.

2. Costly Pipelines for a Waste Gas

Here’s the second problem. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has estimated that up to 23,000 miles of new pipeline will be needed to carry the captured carbon dioxide to the still-undesignated underground sequestration sites. That doesn’t sound like much when you consider that America’s gas pipeline system sprawls over some 2.3 million miles. But those natural gas pipelines carry a valuable, marketable, useful commodity.

By contrast, carbon dioxide is a worthless waste product, so taxpayers would likely end up shouldering most of the cost. Yes, some of that waste gas could be used for enhanced oil recovery projects; flooding depleted oil reservoirs with carbon dioxide is a proven technology that can increase production and extend the life of existing oilfields. But the process would be useful in only a limited number of oilfields — probably less than 10 percent of the waste carbon dioxide captured from coal-fired power plants could actually be injected into American oilfields.

3. Impossibly Massive Scale

The third, and most vexing, problem has to do with scale. In 2009, carbon dioxide emissions in the United States totaled 5.4 billion tons. Let’s assume that policymakers want to use carbon capture to get rid of half of those emissions — say, 3 billion tons per year. That works out to about 8.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per day, which would have to be collected and compressed to about 1,000 pounds per square inch (that compressed volume of carbon dioxide would be roughly equivalent to the volume of daily global oil production).

In other words, we would need to find an underground location (or locations) able to swallow a volume equal to the contents of 41 oil supertankers each day, 365 days a year.

There will also be considerable public resistance to carbon dioxide pipelines and sequestration projects — local outcry has already stalled proposed carbon capture projects in Germany and Denmark. The fact is, few landowners are eager to have pipelines built across their property. And because of the possibility of deadly leaks, few people will want to live near a pipeline or an underground storage cavern. This leads to the obvious question: which members of the House and Senate are going to volunteer their states to be dumping grounds for all that carbon dioxide?

For some, carbon capture and sequestration will remain the Holy Grail of carbon-reduction strategies. But before Congress throws yet more money at the procedure, lawmakers need to take a closer look at the issues that hamstring nearly every new energy-related technology: cost and scale.

Footnote:  The project is not only impractical, its deluded objective is to deprive the biosphere of plant food.