Actually I discovered this news by way of Desmog whose report was in the spirit of Greta’s reaction to disbelief in CO2 hysteria. Alberta Conservatives Pass Climate Denial Resolution 12 to Celebrate CO2 Pollution. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
UCP pledges to abandon the province’s net zero targets,
and remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant.
UCP members voted in favor of a resolution to “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.” Credit: Danielle Paradis [Participants numbered over 6000]
Resolution 12, which falls under the “environmental stewardship and emissions reduction” area of the policy discussion, will “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.”
In approving the resolution, the UCP resolved to abandon the province’s net zero targets, remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant, and further “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”
“We must prioritize policies that protect our economy and our way of life. CO2 is an essential nutrient for mass, driving growth and boosting plant production. According to the CO2 Coalition, higher CO2 levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide,” said a UCP member speaking in favour of the policy who cited the notorious CO2 Coalition.
The resolution passed by a wide majority.
I searched in vain for any news report citing reasons favoring such a resolution. Instead, the journalists repeated the activist mantras, like lemmings impervious to any POV not proscribed by the canon. Before getting into that content, let’s remember that this political party is faithful to its constituents.
In 2015 Canadians were asked for their candid views of global warming/climate change. The two principle questions were:
1. “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades?”
2. [If yes, solid evidence] “Is the earth getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels or mostly because of natural patterns in the earth’s environment?”
The responses were quite diverse, to the pollsters’ surprise, yet Trudeau claimed the results justified his push for a carbon tax and other measures to regulate and reduce CO2 emissions. Buried in the supporting documents, and ignored by him and the media was this finding:
This process did determine a survey result about the size of the population who believes warming is happening and mostly caused by humans. Everything else is subject to interpretation, including how much is due to land use, urbanization or fossil fuel emissions. The solid finding is displayed in the diagram above. Yes, the map shows I am living in a hotbed of global warming believers around Montreal; well, it is 55%, as high as it gets in Canada. Yet Trudeau went on to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda despite most of the nation opposed to the idea. More to the point, that dark blue province in the west is none other than Alberta. Clearly, their common sense skepticism of climate alarm is not a recent position. [For more on that survey see Uncensored: Canadians View Global Warming]
The Offenses Taken by Warmists from Alberta’s Resolve
1. Media reports repeated the claim that CO2 is a pollutant because it has caused rising temperatures. For example, from Desmog:
Carbon dioxide is the gas principally responsible for exacerbating the greenhouse effect, the consequence of which is global warming. Whereas carbon is a foundational building block of life on Earth, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiating gas whose atmospheric proportions are so high they’re disrupting the normal function of the carbon cycle.
That reference to “greenhouse effect” ignores the fact that changes in CO2 follow changes in global temperatures on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice core datasets spanning millennia. Since CO2 is the lagging variable, it cannot logically be the cause of temperature, the leading variable. It is folly to imagine that by reducing human emissions of CO2, we can change global temperatures, which are obviously driven by other factors. [See Mid 2024 More Proof Temp Changes Drive CO2 Changes]
It also exaggerates the importance of the trace gas CO2 upon planetary heat transfers dominated by H2O.
The asphyxiating label denies scientific knowledge about the properties of CO2 in our environment.
2. Advocates also disputed that CO2 is the “gas of life”, claiming that CO2 diminishes rather than enriches plant life. For example, again from Desmog:
In the “rationale” section of the resolution, the United Conservative Party document argues that “CO2 is a nutrient foundational to all life on Earth.”
While plants need both light and carbon dioxide to thrive, the over-supply of CO2 in recent decades is leading to plants being deprived of their nutrients. One biologist was quoted in a 2017 Politico article describing this as akin to “the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history,” and that injection is diluting the nutrients in the food supply.
Firstly, there is no doubt more CO2 is good for plants. That’s why operators of greenhouses for growing them add CO2 up to three or four times our present 420 ppm.
Experiments have confirmed the botanical principle of limiting factors. At present concentrations, rising CO2 always increases plant productivity unless another factor is sub-optimal and constrains growth. The researchers, aided and abetted by the media are spinning this to say more CO2 is not good for plants. In reality, the lack of phosphorus or other nutrients is not the fault of CO2, and will not be enhanced by somehow reducing CO2. [See CO2 Destroys Food Nutrition! Not.]
3. And media reports added the fear of extreme weather events, attributing them to CO2 emissions. Again from Desmog:
As the principal driver of the climate crisis and global warming, increasing CO2 levels will exacerbate droughts, wildfires, and floods, among other disasters, in turn resulting in loss of life and major disruptions to global supply chains. The consequent economic disturbances and their aftereffects will worsen the affordability crisis and result in increasingly negative economic outcomes for all, not just Albertans. Rather than stimulate Alberta’s agricultural sector, climate change will destroy it, and the evidence this is already happening is quite clear.
This is again the doomsday litany that rising CO2 will destroy life as we know it. None of the data support that narrative. Just one of many examples of facts vs. fears is the above showing how droughts and flooding have always happened. These events are within the past range of variability and have not increased with rising CO2. Rather than show more such graphs, this video is a brief realistic summary of our climate circumstances.
Albertans are wise and courageous to take their position, and have many experts who share their understanding.
Gas stoves are the thin edge of the wedge.
Megan K. Jacobson explains the fight and what’s at stake at msn A Washington State Revolt Against the Gas-Stove Grabbers. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Environmentalists have waged a campaign against natural gas, but users of this efficient, low-emission fuel are fighting back. A wide range of industry groups are backing Washington state’s Initiative 2066 to protect the right to choose natural gas.
By 2030, Washington is supposed to reduce carbon emissions to 45% below 1990 levels—one of its many overlapping climate goals. The state’s most recent energy plan declares that the cheapest route to meeting Olympia’s climate targets is to switch many uses of oil and gas to electric sources. Last year the Building Code Council amended the state energy code to make it prohibitively costly to install gas appliances in new buildings. In March the Legislature passed a law allowing the state’s largest natural-gas and electricity utility, Puget Sound Energy, to pass the costs of going green onto consumers and mandating the utility files a plan “to achieve all cost-effective electrification of end uses currently served by natural gas.”
To the Washington Hospitality Association and the Building
Industry Association of Washington, Initiative 2066’s cosponsors,
this sounded like an economic wrecking ball.
Anthony Anton, CEO of the hospitality association, says 84% of the restaurateurs he represents rely on natural gas. Remodeling to go electric is a “massive cost at a time where operators just can’t afford it,” he says. Some say the quality of their product would suffer, as some cooking methods, such as stir-frying, are difficult to perform on lower-heat electrical stoves. Most of the association’s members are very small businesses with substantial debt from Covid lockdowns.
The building association worries the new energy code will raise the state’s already high housing costs, locking out potential buyers. The code requires that new buildings meet a certain environmental “score.” Without the points from an electric heat pump, a builder will have to make up the difference with other green measures that run between $15,000 and $20,000 in a single-family home. “Every time they raise the price $1,000, it prices out another 500 Washington families,” says Greg Lane, the association’s executive vice president.
Dozens of varied industry groups support Initiative 2066. Each has its own reasons. The Washington Denturist Association worries about the expense of switching from propane- or gas-based equipment and a lack of reliable power. Most members are small businesses and it’s a good path for immigrant dentists whose credentials don’t carry over to the U.S.
The Washington State Tree Fruit Association (of which my paternal grandfather’s company, Apple King, is a member) is concerned about rising costs of refrigeration to keep produce fresh. A sudden power outage could be catastrophic for the state’s apple industry. Trade regulations for its top two export markets require that fruit be constantly refrigerated at a specific temperature for as long as 90 days.
The state’s cheapest energy plan would almost double electricity demand in Washington by 2050, putting an unprecedented strain on the grid. The only real option is to increase wind and solar generation, since the state’s plentiful hydroelectric capacity can’t do more without potentially threatening salmon. Wind and solar tend to falter in Washington in the winter, when energy demand peaks.
Consumers would also suffer in Washington’s green utopia. Everything from a haircut to a ballgame would become more expensive as the price of electricity rises. Climate advocates argue that Washingtonians will recoup their costs over time thanks to efficiency gains. But a 2021 report from Home Innovation Labs estimates that recovering the cost of a heat-pump installation could take 47 to 49 years. It’s worse for existing gas customers. The Building Industry Association of Washington estimates that switching from natural gas to electricity in a single-family home would cost as much as $70,000. Heat pumps also tend to fail in the sort of frigid weather that hits rural Washington in winter.
Proponents of electrification insist that technology will improve over time. But if they’re really confident that green energy will be the best option for consumers and businesses, then Initiative 2066 is no threat. Washington voters should ask why climate advocates still see it as one.
Commentary from Anthony Watts and Friends:
Our second climate news item is from a wonderfully titled media outlet called motor biscuit: Electric truck fire burns down brand new German fire station. The fire station in Stadtallendorf is really new, in fact they opened its bay doors less than one year ago to accommodate 10 fire engines and many firefighters. However a tragic fire destroyed the the fire station despite its fire fighting purposes. According to Euro News the fire originated with quote an emergency vehicle belonging to the fire department which contained lithium ion batteries and an external power connection. Unfortunately the electric emergencies vehicle blaze destroyed at least 10 fire truck models and caused around 25 million euros in damage.
Now firefighters’ woes and electric vehicles aren’t a new phenomenon. Departments in the United States have different tactics for battling EV battery fires. Ideally First Responders can suppress EV fires with mass quantities of water. However some firefighters claim that depending on the circumstances it’s best to cordon off the area and allow the EV to burn and eventually burn itself out.
Well, allowing a fire to burn itself out in this case took out 10 useful life-saving fire trucks and caused 25 million Euros in damage. Where where to start really with the idiocy of this particular story? For one thing, with all we know about fires from these things, having an EV fire truck and having it plugged into your station. And then I guess firefighters just think, well we’re firefighters so we’re immune, so no fire alarms, no fire suppression system. We don’t need fire alarms, we have fire experts right there exactly with badges. So the first truck goes up in flames. Are the other trucks all just sort of compacted around it? Were none of them far enough away to go over and drive them out of the garage as a as a brave firefighter? Was nobody in the firehouse despite the fact that all the trucks were there?
So you’ve got the error with no smoke alarms evidently no fire suppression system or at least not one geared to fight electric vehicle fires, which should tell you something right there. You have plugged an EV vehicle indoors in closed space next to vehicles that I presume have diesel in them. It’s a Murphy’s disaster waiting to happen. As I’m fond of saying, and it’s very apt in this case: the stupid it really burns.
I would like to think that the first time someone dies because of an electric vehicle fire and it happens multiple times again, the consumer product safety commission gets involved and says: you know what these aren’t safe on the roads these aren’t safe in your house. It’s time to withdraw them until we fix this problem.
But I would be wrong about that. Either people are that stupid or they’re just into the climate scare narrative and the need to do something even if it kills your neighbors or yourself. You know in the 1980s, the consumer product safety commission banned lawn darts pretty quickly because throwing lawn darts had killed a few people. But ebikes for example have killed a lot more, just in New York City alone killed a bunch and they’re still on the market.
Joel Kotkin explains in his National Post article Western nations cripple their economies with green initiatives while China and others laugh. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Despite massive subsidies and world forums,
green power still only represents one-fifth of global energy
North America, with its vast resources, may be in a position to save the economies of the west. But governments on both sides of the border seem more concerned with green virtue signaling than actually finding a workable approach to carbon emissions that does not undermine our economies and ability to defend ourselves.
The prevailing notion, both in Ottawa and D.C., is that our countries should ignore our resources, and how best to use them, in order to fulfill a messianic vision of massive, rapid emissions reduction.
However, as much this appeals to academics and wealth
pearl-clutchers in cities, it translates into higher prices than normal.
As the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh suggested, it places unfair “burdens” on the working class, one reason for his opposition to the tax. Worse still, the biggest green targets of what climatistas label as “industrial carbon” could devastate those same NDP voters — blue collar workers in mining, like manufacturing, logistics and agriculture.
Canada does not need another way to slow its economy. One recent estimate suggests that the proposed $170 a ton proposal would slice 1.8 per cent from the country’s already anemic GDP and cost upwards of 185,000 net jobs. Even Liberals admit something close to a 1 per cent decline. Some may see these draconian attempts to wipe out fossil fuels as the Lord’s work, but on the ground level it seems closer to class warfare.
Trudeau and his supports insist these policies are critical for saving the planet. Yet, attempts to follow such approaches elsewhere have not ended well. In Europe, most obviously Germany, as well as California, the shift to “renewable energy” has led, as it usually does, to high prices that already are driving German industry off the continent. Although not nearly as well-endowed with energy as North America, the climate lobby in Europe makes sure to throttle anything, such as offshore oil in the UK — in pursuit of green puritanism.
There’s something delusional in many of these initiatives. A key mistake is the common green assertion that fossil fuels are becoming obsolete and should be wiped out for the benefit of fitting a new economy. Yet, in the real world, despite billions in subsidies for “green power,” fossil fuels still represent roughly four fifths of global energy generation, just as it did twenty years ago. This is after expenditures of over one trillion were spent on solar and wind. The West has been reducing per capita emissions for years, but this is utterly subsumed by growth in developing countries, notably China, which not only buys huge amounts of natural gas but continues to open new coal-fired plants at a rapid rate.
North Americans be forewarned that in imposing burdens on themselves, but not competitors, green governments are essentially guaranteeing their own decline. Already in the EU, nearly a million industrial jobs have been lost over the past few years, with investment shifting to countries like China and India, which freely use coal and fossil fuels to keep costs down.
Britain’s path may give the starkest preview of the future Biden and Trudeau have in mind for us. Since 1990 the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP has dropped roughly 50 per cent along with several million jobs. This parallels a two thirds drop in UK energy production, while consumption has fallen by only one third. Three decades ago, a net energy exporter, the UK now increasingly depends on imports from the Middle East and other unstable regions.
The winner here is clearly China, a country that emits more GHG than all developed countries put together. Ironically, carbon reduction policies fit brilliantly into its strategy to use its coal and other fossil fuel energy to power their takeover of the “green economy.” China has placed itself in the catbird’s seat on renewable energy, including utter domination of solar panels and electric vehicles. China already produces twice as many EVs as the US and the EU combined, and seeks to leverage its total domination of the solar-panel industry — its battery capacity is now roughly four times ours. China also exercises effective control of the requisite rare earth minerals and the technologies used to process them.
As the west’s own overpriced EVs sit on lots, China plays us for utter fools as we undermine our own industrial economy. The forced march to EV will be particularly tough on the 125,000 who work in Canada’s car factories. Manufacturing and mining, much of it energy-related, represent, along with real estate, two of the country’s largest industries. Under the current circumstances, they are heading for a spectacular fall. Overall, the EV industry in the U.S. uses 30 per cent less domestic labor than traditional gasoline car manufacturing, and under current circumstances can only hope for some basic assembly work using Chinese components.
These policies will affect every industry and consumer as cars and things like heaters are all forced to electrify. Britain’s shift to EVs is projected to double the demand for electricity by 2040, and its government is already looking to ban the use of home chargers during peak hours. By 2050 in California, state consultants estimate total energy demand will skyrocket, by some estimates rising 60 to 90 per cent. Not surprisingly, the state will face “acute electricity shortages” over the coming decade, according to one recent analysis.
Rising demands for electricity for artificial intelligence seems likely to add to this burden. Microsoft alone is opening a new data centre globally every three days. These power-hungry operations are expected to grow from 4.5 per cent of energy demand to 10 per cent by 2035. Artificial intelligence and data center demand are leading to massive expansions in projected energy use around the world at a time of restricted supply. Google, renowned for its green virtue signaling, has boosted its own emissions by 50 per cent since 2019.
Ultimately, the oligarchs will likely get their juice from sources like decommissioned nuclear energy, while the average family will take the economic hit in order to fulfill the agenda pushed by the likes of Steve Jobs’ widow, Lauren, Michael Bloomberg, the Rockefellers, Jeff Bezos and venture capitalist John Doerr. These, and other oligarchic allies, are waging a sophisticated and well-financed media and institutional campaign to catastrophize the climate issue as a way to ban gas stoves, stop new LNG facilities, and crack down on plastics.
Finally, there is the issue of security, particularly relevant in an age of declining western power. The new green mandates, if adopted, presage yet another force to further reduce the industrial prowess of western countries, while driving more industries to China, India, and other countries who produce their goods with dirtier fuels and develop resources with less environmental care. At the same time, third world countries, for the most part, are not embracing “net zero,” as it is totally infeasible for them and will likely resist western lectures on climate policy.
All of this is occurring as a concert of ugly energy producers — Russia, Iran, and Venezuela — press their advantage on western countries. They stand to benefit from continued de-industrialization as one way to further weaken the military capacity of the west. Taking away North American liquified natural gas from Europe simply makes the continent more dependent on such malefactors as Qatar, a primary backer of terrorists and their supporters, and may lead the west, hat in hand, to beg from even worse regimes, like Russia and Iran.
The good news — while green virtue-signaling may appeal to Trudeau, Biden, and Harris — these policies could be impacted by political realities. Worried about voters in industrial states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, Harris, even as she embraces environmental bromides, has backed away from EV mandates and opposition to fracking, albeit with dubious credibility. Yet, perhaps she realizes, or those around her do, that these policies do not sell well compared to promoting more affordable and reliable energy. Trudeau, if he wants to remain relevant, may similarly need to flip the script if he hopes to forestall an utter political defeat.
David Blackmon provides the background in his Daily Caller article Bureaucrats Worry Democracy Will Get In The Way Of Their Climate Agenda. As the above image suggests some of those in power have not shied away from acting in defiance of democratic norms. By imposing climate policies and regulations they have diminished the livelihoods and freedoms of the public they supposedly serve. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
I have frequently written over the last several years that the agenda of the climate-alarm lobby in the western world is not consistent with the maintenance of democratic forms of government.
Governments maintained by free elections, the free flow of communications and other democratic institutions are not able to engage in the kinds of long-term central planning exercises required to force a transition from one form of energy and transportation systems to completely different ones.
Why? Because once the negative impacts of vastly higher prices for all forms of energy begin to impact the masses, the masses in such democratic societies are going to rebel, first at the ballot box and if that is not allowed by the elites to work, then by more aggressive means.
This is not a problem for authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government, like those in Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, where long-term central planning projects invoking government control of the means of production is a long-ingrained way of life. If the people revolt, then the crackdowns are bound to come.
This societal dynamic is a simple reality of life that the pushers of the climate alarm narrative and forced energy transition in western societies have been loath to admit. But, in recent days, two key figures who have pushed the climate alarm narrative in both the United States and Canada have agreed with my thesis in public remarks.
In so doing, they are uttering the quiet part about
the real agenda of climate alarmism out loud.
Last week, former Obama Secretary of State and Biden climate czar John Kerry made remarks about the “problem” posed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that should make every American’s skin crawl. Speaking about the inability of the federal government to stamp out what it believes to be misinformation on big social media platforms, Kerry said: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” adding, “I think democracies are, are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing.”
Never mind that the U.S. government has long been the most focused purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in our society, Kerry wants to stop the free flow of information on the Internet.
The most obvious targets are Elon Musk and X, which is essentially the only big social media platform that does not willingly submit to the government’s demands for censoring speech.
Kerry’s desired solution is for Democrats to “win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to, to, implement change.” The change desired by Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats is to obtain enough power in Congress and the presidency to revoke the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, enact the economically ruinous Green New Deal, and do it all before the public has any opportunity to rebel.
Not to be outdone by Kerry, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada, who is a longtime member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, was quoted Monday as saying: “Our shrinking glaciers, and our warming oceans, are asking us wordlessly but emphatically, if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change.”
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the central governments of both Canada and the United States have moved in increasingly authoritarian directions under their current leadership, both of which have used the climate-alarm narrative as justification. This move was widely predicted once the utility of the COVID-19 pandemic to rationalize government censorship and restrictions of individual liberties began to fade in 2021.
Two sides of the same coin.
Frustrated by their perceived need to move even faster to restrict freedoms and destroy democratic levers of public response to their actions, these zealots are now discarding their soft talking points in favor of more aggressive messaging.
This new willingness to say the quiet part out loud
should truly alarm anyone who values their freedoms.
Chris Morrison provides the analysis in his Daily Sceptic article ONS Reveals the Pitiful Number of New Green Jobs Being Created in the U.K. Economy. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The problem with the green U.K. economy, and its associated destruction of the hydrocarbon environment, is that there are very few jobs being created. The few remaining ‘workers’ in the ruling Labour party are starting to rumble all the luxury boondoggles that are set to further decimate well-paid jobs in their communities. The figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), trying to estimate the actual number of green jobs, are always a highly creative hoot, and the latest batch are no exception. Many jobs identified are simply displacement activity, with one repair or maintenance occupation taking over from another. Around 6% of the total are to be found in ‘environmental charities’, an interesting way to describe elite billionaire political funding to push the Net Zero fantasy. Such is the seeming desperation to rustle up a green job, the ONS even includes repairing home appliances, controlling forest fires and separating hydrogen by carbon dioxide-producing electrolysis.
The latest ‘estimates’ from the ONS cover 2021 and 2022, and they are said to show an increase in both years. But as the graph below reveals, the rises are pitiful over a decade, and the 2022 estimate of 639,000 is less than 2% of jobs in the economy as a whole.
As can be seen, environmental charities employ 40,000 people, almost as many as the 47,000 that work in renewable energy. But the charities figure does not include all those make-work jobs in environmental consultancy and education or what is described as in-house environmental activities. If all the displacement, invented or re-badged jobs in repair, electric vehicles, waste disposal, water treatment, energy efficiency, Net Zero promotion, teaching and the ubiquitous bureaucracy are rightly ignored, it is unlikely that more than 150,000 new jobs have been created.
Fairly small pickings, it might be thought, from all the cash sprayed at subsidy-hunting chancers over at least two decades. Even worse, any new jobs are easily offset by the occupations being destroyed in steel making, refining hydrocarbons, coal mining and oil and gas exploration. Fracking for gas would transform a number of deprived areas in the U.K. at little environmental cost, as it has done in the U.S. Energy security would likely be achieved, and the tax take would be considerable. But fracking is anathema to the major political parties in the U.K., except the emerging Reform party.Last week saw some real push back on the madness of Net Zero and the so-called green economy. The boss of GMB, the third largest trade union in the country, told the annual Labour party conference that its plans to decarbonise the energy network by 2030 will cost up to one million jobs, decimate working communities and push up bills for the poorest. According to Smith, Government’s plans for Net Zero were “bonkers” and “fundamentally dishonest”. In a week when it was revealed that British consumers, both industrial and private, had some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world, he charged that current energy policy amounted to virtue signalling by politicians. He accused them of exporting jobs and importing virtue because the jobs were being created abroad rather than in the U.K.
Meanwhile, a recent paper published in Science came to a damning conclusion that will not surprise sceptics, namely that 96% of climate policies over the last 25 years, ultimately designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, have been a waste of money. “That’s where green spin has got us,” writes George Monbiot, although these days the Guardian’s extremist-in-chief seems to have given up on all life enhancing processes that run the risk of disturbing anything on the planet. “Finally, 15 years and a trillion dollars too late, George Monbiot says what sceptics have been saying all along,” observes the sceptical journalist Jo Nova. “Nearly every single carbon reduction scheme is a useless make-work machination that creates the illusion that the government is doing something,” she says.
As we can see, the ONS survey is full of these make-work schemes providing jobs that can only exist by rigging free markets and providing eye-watering subsidies from consumers and taxpayers. As the more concerned trade unionists can see, much of the cost of these fantasy ventures falls on the poorest members of society forced to pay higher prices for many of the basic essentials of life. In addition, as we have observed, most green schemes make mugs of the wider investing public, with the RENIXX, a stock capitalisation global index of the 30 largest renewable industrial companies, showing near zero growth since it was started in 2006. None of this matters, of course, to the Mad Miliband and his weird wonks at the U.K. Department of Energy, who are ramping up ideological plans to hose cash at daft ideas like carbon capture, battery energy storage and hydrogen production.
Not only is CO2 Capture and Storage wildly impractical, its aim is to deprive the biosphere of plant food.
But all is not lost on the jobs front – opportunities must be taken when they occur. Earlier this year, Gary Smith was able to point to some new employment clearing away the animal casualties of wind farm blades. “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds,” he observed.
Q: What is the difference between Golf and Government?
A: In Government you can always improve your lie.
–Anonymous Source
The news and analysis from University of Groningen is reported at Science Daily European Green Deal: A double-edged sword for global emissions. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Greenhouse gas emissions will fall in the EU, but rise even more elsewhere
Summary: The European Green Deal will bring down the emission of greenhouse gases in the European Union, but at the same time causes a more than a twofold increase in emissions outside its borders.
The European Union aims to be carbon-neutral by 2050 as part of the comprehensive Green Deal that was agreed upon four years ago. However, an analysis of the policy documents outlining the practical measures of the Green Deal shows that it will decrease carbon emissions in Europe, but also increase carbon emissions outside of the EU. This increase is more than double the amount of carbon emissions saved by the Green Deal. This analysis was published in Nature Sustainability on by an international team of scientists led by Klaus Hubacek, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Groningen.
The European Green Deal is a set of policies intended to fully decarbonize Europe by 2050, but it also includes measures for clean energy production and ecological restoration. Hubacek and colleagues from the United States and China carried out full supply chain analyses of the policy documents underlying the Green Deal. Their conclusion is that the Green Deal in its current form will lead to an increase in emissions in countries outside the EU by 244.8 percent compared to the Green Deal’s carbon reduction goal in the land, land use change, and forestry sector within EU borders.
One example is the measure to increase biodiversity in Europe by planting three billion trees. ‘However, trees require a lot of land that cannot be used to produce food. That means that food must be produced elsewhere, and to do this, land must be converted into cropland. This increases the carbon dioxide emission and reduces biodiversity,‘ says Hubacek. In this way, the EU would reduce carbon emissions within its borders, but ‘export‘ them to the countries that would produce our food, for example Africa or South America.
Of course, the Green Deal does contain a paragraph forbidding the import of products (such as meat or animal feed) for which woodland is converted to farmland. Hubacek is sceptical: ‘Nothing stops these other countries from growing products for Europe on existing farmland and felling forests to produce for the local market. There are simply too many uncertainties in these types of regulations.’ The Green Deal also calls for an increase in organic farming, but this requires more farmland in Europe. Hubacek: ‘Again, there is very little information available on the impact on land use.’
However, the scientists did not just reveal the negative impacts of the Green Deal on the rest of the world. They also looked at different scenarios to see if overall carbon reductions could be enhanced. ‘We found one very effective way to do this.’ says Hubacek, ‘By adopting the more plant-based “planetary health diet,” it is possible to save an enormous amount of carbon emissions.’ Another measure is to phase out food-based biofuels within the EU, which would reduce the amount of farmland needed and thus save carbon emissions and prevent biodiversity loss. Also, the EU could assist developing regions to increase their agricultural efficiency, which would also reduce land use.
Although the Nature Sustainability article shows that the European Green Deal in its present form could result in a net loss for the global environment, the scientists conclude that it can be remedied. ‘By adopting the planetary health diet, which is relatively simple’, says Hubacek. However, there is one more thing that needs to change, he stresses: ‘The programme is driven by techno-optimism, but our analysis underlines that there is no free lunch. I very much doubt that “Green Growth” is possible, as everything you produce requires an input of resources. So we really need to consume less.’ There is a strong sense of urgency now that global warming seems set to surpass the 1.5 degrees from the 1995 Paris Agreement, and many other planetary boundaries are also being overstepped. Hubacek: ‘It is time to implement measures that work.’
The authors share the IPCC notion of climate emergency caused by GHGs, but are practical enough to realize the proposed policies are counter productive. I am among those who agree with Dr. Happer that the only climate crisis is coming from the torrent of ill-advised governmental policies that are not likely to reduce GHG emissions or temperatures, but will achieve great economic and social destruction.
See the series of four posts World of Hurt from Climate Policies
See Also
Ronald Stein explains the devastation in his Heartland article The Golden State of California Is Turning Brown Without Continuous Electricity. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
As a resident of California for more than six decades, I am aware that the availability of continuously generated electricity in California is deteriorating and will get worse!
The “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California that are supported by Governor Newsom and the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris have led to the state’s most expensive electricity and fuel prices in America and increasingly high cost of living, housing, and transportation, coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, homelessness, pollution, and congestion that has caused many tax-paying residents and companies to exodus California to more affordable cities and states.
California’s net move-out number of residents in 2022 alone was more than 343,000 people that left California — the highest exodus of any state in the U.S.
The California Policy Institute counted more than 237 businesses that have left the state since 2005. Among these businesses were eleven Fortune 1000 companies, including AT&T, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission: U.S. electricity demand will double by 2050, and meeting that soaring demand will require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
The last California Nuclear Power Plant at Diablo Canyon, a 2.2 GW plant generating continuous uninterruptable electricity, is projected to close soon. In nameplate only, it would take 1,000 2.2MW wind turbines to generate 2.2 GW, but then, it’s only intermittent electricity vs. the continuous uninterruptable electricity from Diablo demanded by the California economy!
As a result of the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies and renewables of wind and solar stations built at the expense of taxpayer dollars, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second-largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of continuous electricity in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run the economy on sunshine and breezes.
Projected electricity costs for California Businesses
Further, these so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
California’s economy depends on affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner electricity and fuels. Unfortunately, policymakers are driving up California’s electric and gas prices, and California now has the highest electricity and fuel prices in the nation. Those high energy prices are contributing to the pessimistic business sentiment. California’s emission mandates have done an excellent job of increasing the cost of electricity, products, and fuels to its citizens.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed “green” alternative methods of generating electricity won’t work — especially as electricity demand is projected to double by 2050 due to AI, charging of EVs and data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries. Intermittent electricity from wind and solar cannot power modern nations.
These “green” wind and solar projects primarily exist because they are financed with taxpayer money, i.e., disguised by taxpayers as “Government Subsidies.”
“GREEN” policymakers are oblivious to humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels from fossil fuels, as they are to these two basic facts:
(1) No one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil!
(2) “Renewables” like wind and solar only exist to generate intermittent electricity; they CANNOT make products or fuels!
To rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to over-regulate or over-tax the oil industry; just STOP using the products and fuels made from crude oil!
Simplistically:
STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc., that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
STOPPING the demands of society for the products and fuels made from oil will eliminate the need for crude oil.
The primary growth in electric power usage is coming from new data centers housing AI technologies. It is expected that over the next few decades, 50% of additional electric power will be needed just for AI, but data centers CANNOT run on occasional electricity from wind and solar.
Cal matters raises concerns about state policy to phase out ICE vehicles in favor of EVs.
How will the occasionally generated electricity from wind and solar support the following:
Despite Governor Newsom’s and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s support for the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California, it’s time to stimulate conversations about the generation of continuously generated electricity to meet the demands of America’s end users.
A recent international analysis of 1500 climate policies around the world concluded that 63 or 4% of them were successful in reducing emissions. The paper is Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades published at Science.org. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approachintegrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning–based extension ofthe common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2 . Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.
(1). Although the [Paris] agreement seeks to limit global average temperature increase to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C,” its success critically hinges on the implementation of effective climate policies at the national level. However, scenarios from global integrated assessment models suggest that the aggregated mitigation efforts communicated through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) fall short of the required emission reductions.
(2)The United Nations (UN) estimates quantify a median emission gap of 23 billion metric tonnes(Gt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) by 2030
(3). The persistence of this emissions gap is not only caused by an ambition gap but also a gap in the outcomes that adopted policies achieve in terms of emission reductions.
(4). This raises the fundamental question as to which types of policy measures are successfully causing meaningful emission reductions. Despite more than two decades of experience with thousands of diverse climate policy measures gained around the world, there is consensus in neither science nor policy on this question.
The exhibit above shows the scope and complexity of the analysis. But the bottom line is that 96% of the effort and trillions of $$$ were spent to no avail. It is estimated that on the order of 1.2 Billion tonnes of CO2 were prevented over the last 20 years, with an additional 23 Billion tonnes to be erased by 2030.
Any enterprise with that performance would be liquidated.
That is an epic failure in fact.
And recommending mixing of policies including subsidies and regulations along with pricing goes against economic theory and fails in practice. Ross McKitrick explains the dangers of making climate policies willy-nilly in his Financial Post article Economists’ letter misses the point about the carbon tax revolt. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Yes, the carbon tax works great in a ‘first-best’ world where it’s the
only carbon policy. In the real world, carbon policies are piled high.
An open letter is circulating online among my economist colleagues aiming to promote sound thinking on carbon taxes. It makes some valid points and will probably get waved around in the House of Commons before long. But it’s conspicuously selective in its focus, to the point of ignoring the main problems with Canadian climate policy as a whole.
EV charging sign Electric-vehicle mandates and subsidies are among the mountain of climate policies that have been piled on top of Canada’s carbon tax. PHOTO BY JOSHUA A. BICKEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
There’s a massive pile of boulders blocking the road to efficient policy, including:
Not one of these occasioned a letter of protest from Canadian economists.
Beside that mountain of boulders there’s a twig labelled “overstated objections to carbon pricing.” At the sight of it, hundreds of economists have rushed forward to sweep it off the road. What a help!
To my well-meaning colleagues I say: the pile of regulatory boulders
long ago made the economic case for carbon pricing irrelevant.
Layering a carbon tax on top of current and planned command-and-control regulations does not yield an efficient outcome, it just raises the overall cost to consumers. Which is why I can’t get excited about and certainly won’t sign the carbon-pricing letter. That’s not where the heavy lifting is needed.
My colleagues object to exaggerated claims about the cost of carbon taxes. Fair enough. But far worse are exaggerated claims about both the benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the economic opportunities associated with the so-called “energy transition.” Exaggeration about the benefits of emission reduction is traceable to poor-quality academic research, such as continued use of climate models known to have large, persistent warming biases and of the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, long since shown in the academic literature to be grossly exaggerated.
But a lot of it is simply groundless rhetoric. Climate activists, politicians and journalists have spent years blaming Canadians’ fossil fuel use for every bad weather event that comes along and shutting down rational debate with polemical cudgels such as “climate emergency” declarations. Again, none of this occasioned a cautionary letter from economists.
There’s another big issue on which the letter was silent. Suppose we did clear all the regulatory boulders along with the carbon-pricing-costs-too-much twig. How high should the carbon tax be? A few of the letter’s signatories are former students of mine so I expect they remember the formula for an optimal emissions tax in the presence of an existing tax system. If not, they can take their copy of Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy by Prof. McKitrick off the shelf, blow off the thick layer of dust and look it up. Or they can consult any of the half-dozen or so journal articles published since the 1970s that derive it. But I suspect most of the other signatories have never seen the formula and don’t even know it exists.
To be technical for a moment, the optimal carbon tax rate varies inversely with the marginal cost of the overall tax system. The higher the tax burden — and with our heavy reliance on income taxes our burden is high — the costlier it is at the margin to provide any public good, including emissions reductions. Economists call this a “second-best problem”: inefficiencies in one place, like the tax system, cause inefficiencies in other policy areas, yielding in this case a higher optimal level of emissions and a lower optimal carbon tax rate.
Based on reasonable estimates of the social cost of carbon and the marginal costs of our tax system, our carbon price is already high enough. In fact, it may well be too high. I say this as one of the only Canadian economists who has published on all aspects of the question. Believing in mainstream climate science and economics, as I do, does not oblige you to dismiss public complaints that the carbon tax is too costly.
Which raises my final point: the age of mass academic letter-writing has long since passed. Academia has become too politically one-sided. Universities don’t get to spend years filling their ranks with staff drawn from one side of the political spectrum and then expect to be viewed as neutral arbiters of public policy issues. The more signatories there are on a letter like this, the less impact it will have. People nowadays will make up their own minds, thank you very much, and a well-argued essay by an individual willing to stand alone may even carry more weight.
Online conversations today are about rising living costs, stagnant real wages and deindustrialization. Even if carbon pricing isn’t the main cause of all this, climate policy is playing a growing role and people can be excused for lumping it all together. The public would welcome insight from economists about how to deal with these challenges. A mass letter enthusing about carbon taxes doesn’t provide it.
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Conrad Black writes at National Post Time for the climate insanity to stop. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
We have been racing to destroy our standard of living
to avert a crisis that never materialized
We must by now be getting reasonably close the point where there is a consensus for re-examining the issue of climate change and related subjects. For decades, those of us who had our doubts were effectively shut down by the endless deafening repetition, as if from the massed choir of an operatic catechism school, of the alleged truism: “98 per cent of scientists agree …” (that the world is coming to an end in a few years if we don’t abolish the combustion engine). Decades have gone by in which the polar bears were supposed to become extinct because of the vanishing polar ice cap, the glaciers were supposed to have melted in the rising heat and the impact of melting ice would raise ocean levels to the point that Pacific islands, such as former U.S. vice-president Al Gore’s oratorical dreamworld, the Pacific island state of Tuvalu, would only be accessible to snorkelers. There has been no progress toward any of this. Ocean levels have not risen appreciably, nothing has been submerged and the polar bear population has risen substantially.
A large part of the problem has been the fanaticism of the alarmist forces. This has not been one of those issues where people may equably disagree. There was a spontaneous campaign to denigrate those of us who were opposed to taking drastic and extremely expensive economic steps to reduce carbon emissions on the basis of existing evidence: we could not be tolerated as potentially sensible doubters; we were labelled “deniers,” a reference to Holocaust-deniers who would sweep evidence of horrible atrocities under the rug. For our own corrupt or perverse motives, we were promoting the destruction of the world and unimaginable human misery. There has been climate hysteria like other panics in history, such as those recounted in Charles MacKay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” particularly the 1630’s tulip mania, in which a single tulip bulb briefly sold for the current equivalent of $25,000.
In western Europe, and particularly in the United States, where the full panic of climate change prevailed, the agrarian and working echelons of society have rebelled against the onerous financial penalties of the war on carbon emissions. There have been movements in some countries to suppress the population of cows because of the impact of their flatulence on the composition of the atmosphere. This has created an alliance of convenience between the environmental extremists and the dietary authoritarians as they take dead aim at the joint targets of carbon emissions and obesity. Germany, which should be the most powerful and exemplary of Europe’s nations, has blundered headlong into the climate crisis by conceding political power to militant Greens. It has shut down its advanced and completely safe nuclear power program, the ultimate efficient fuel, and has flirted with abolishing leisure automobile drives on the weekends.
Claims that tropical storms have become more frequent are rebutted by meticulously recorded statistics. Claims that forest fires are more frequent and extensive have also been shown not to be true. My own analysis, which is based on observations and makes no pretense to scientific research, as I have had occasion to express here before, is that the honourable, if often tiresome, conservation movement, the zealots of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, were suddenly displaced as organizers and leaders of the environmental movement by the international left, which was routed in the Cold War. Their western sympathizers demonstrated a genius for improvisation that none of us who knew them in the Cold War would have imagined that they possessed, and they took over the environmental bandwagon and converted it into a battering ram against capitalism in the name of saving the planet.
Everyone dislikes pollution and wants the cleanest air and water possible. All conscientious people want the cleanest environment that’s economically feasible. We should also aspire to the highest attainable level of accurate information before we embark on, or go any further with, drastic and hideously expensive methods of replacing fossil fuels. Large-scale disruptions to our ways of life at immense cost to consumers and taxpayers, mainly borne by those who can least easily afford it, are a mistake. We can all excuse zeal in a sincerely embraced cause, but it is time to de-escalate this discussion from its long intemperate nature of hurling thunderbolts back and forth, and instead focus on serious research that will furnish a genuine consensus. I think this was essentially what former prime minister Stephen Harper and former environment minister John Baird were advocating in what they called a ”Canadian solution” to the climate question. Since then, our policy has been fabricated by fanatics, including the prime minister, who do not wish to be confused by the facts. The inconvenient truth is now the truth that inconveniences them.
Western Europe has effectively abandoned its net-zero carbon emission goals; the world is not deteriorating remotely as quickly as Al Gore, King Charles, Tony Blair and the Liberal Party of Canada predicted. Some of the largest polluters — China, India and Russia — do not seem to care about any of this. Canada should lead the world toward a rational consensus with intensified research aiming at finding an appropriate response to the challenge. What we have had is faddishness and public frenzy. Historians will wonder why the West made war on its own standard of living in pursuit of a wild fantasy, and no immediate chance of accomplishing anything useful. We have been cheered on by the under-developed world because they seek reparations from the advanced countries, although some of them are among the worst climate offenders. It is insane. Canada should help lead the patient back to sanity.
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.
This is your brain on climate alarm. Just say N0!
Science Matters 