Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
German energy monitoring site Agora-Energiewende looks at the year 2022 and it winds up only as it possibly could. The return to coal shows up quite clearly in the numbers, the FAZ reports.
The increased use of coal-fired power plants as a gas substitute has thwarted Germany’s climate goals in 2022, according to a study. Although overall energy consumption fell by almost five percent, mainly due to high prices, the use of coal and oil cancelled out the greenhouse gas savings, according to an evaluation published Wednesday by think tank Agora Energiewende.
Also the transportation and construction sectors could not reach its targets in the past year again. Thus Germany, based on provisional figures, produced 761 million tons of greenhouse gas almost exactly as much as 2021. The self-imposed upper limit for 2022 was missed by about five million tons.”
Thematically, an article from Die Welt (paywall) fits in:
Insulation chaos and nuclear phase-out end the dream of clean energy … Gedaschko went on to say, ‘The experience of recent years shows more than clearly that, with a political tunnel vision, the requirements for the energy efficiency of individual buildings have been unilaterally set far too high. This has led to very expensive compulsory energy measures with far too little savings effect.’
In new building construction, for example, the Efficiency House 40 standard will be mandatory from next year on, and a sustainability certificate will also be required. Many project developers view the requirements as being hardly feasible against the background of high construction costs. The Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Construction nevertheless intends to stick to its current strategy. ‘We will do everything we can in the new year to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in construction, remodeling, renovation and housing,’ said a spokeswoman. There continues to be ‘great potential for reduction.’ That’s why the federal government is currently working on an “immediate program.’”
In other words, we shall never convince most of the core cadre of climate believers. Most of the core cadre will go to their graves still waiting for the great global warming breakout, regardless of observational evidence which contradicts their model predictions.
h/t Hedley; “People are already dying of climate change right now” – but “accelerating solar and wind” will save us from “the most severe climate change scenarios”.
A new climate reality: Less warming, but worse impacts on the planet
The most severe climate change scenarios now appear less likely, but extremes are nonetheless poised to overwhelm societies, scientists say
Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say. At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming.
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Scientists pointed to recent signs of societies’ fragility: drought contributing to the Arab Spring uprisings; California narrowly avoiding widespread blackouts amid record-high temperatures; heat waves killing tens of thousands of people each year, including in Europe, the planet’s most developed continent.
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“People are already dying of climate change right now,” said Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland. “We have started to see events at near-zero probability of happening without human-induced climate change.”
So what has brought on this desperate attempt to talk up lesser climate scenarios, and claim, despite the lack of evidence, that wind and solar is about to have an impact the global rise of CO2?
My guess, and this is only speculation, is climate scientists are worried about the impact on their credibility of the growing pause in global warming.
I’m not suggesting any of them have considered the possibility they might be wrong. Alarmist climate scientists truly believe in their models. But pauses and warming trends which deviate from their predictions upset them, even when they tell each other the deviation is due to natural variation.
Many of them are expecting a breakout of extreme global warming any moment now, once the unexplained natural variation which is hiding pent up global warming releases its grip. In my opinion this is why they keep making ridiculous “end of snow” predictions.
… Where did the heat go? … How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter? We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless, as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! …Climategate Email 1255523796.txt (10/14/2009 speaker Professor Kevin Trenberth)
Some of them have even expressed hope the world will suffer a global climate catastrophe, just so they can be unequivocally proved right.
… This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK, it has, but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant. … As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish. …Climategate Email 1120593115.txt (7/5/2005 speaker Professor Phil Jones)
How much evidence would it take to convince alarmist climate scientists they are wrong about global warming?
In 2015, then British climate change secretary Amber Rudd tried to get skeptics and alarmists together in the same room, to see if they could resolve their differences.
According to Breitbart;
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“We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years? “
Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.
“We asked would that be fifty years from now, or fifty years from 1997, when the hiatus started? They said they wouldn’t change their mind for fifty years from now.
In other words, we shall never convince most of the core cadre of climate believers. Most of the core cadre will go to their graves still waiting for the great global warming breakout, regardless of observational evidence which contradicts their model predictions.
“People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful. Our approach is not entirely empirical.” – John Mitchell, UK MET.
If we can’t convince the most committed alarmist climate scientists, we can try to reach people who are less committed to their theories. We regularly demonstrate predictions of imminent climate catastrophe are not credible, by highlighting all the absurdities and failed predictions.
The German grid regulator and Green-led ministry of economy and climate action aim to construct up to 21 GW worth of additional gas power plants to guarantee a stable and reliable grid, according to internal documents.
The German grid regulator and Green-led ministry of economy and climate action aim to construct up to 21 GW worth of additional gas power plants to guarantee a stable and reliable grid, according to internal documents.
By 2030, the German government wants the country to run on 80% renewable electricity and fully phase out coal. Gas power plants are expected to cover the remaining 20% and account for low wind and low sun periods.
“Investments in gas-fired power plants […] continue to make sense provided that corresponding LNG [liquified natural gas] capacities are created and prices normalise,” reads a ministry document.
In total, while German gas consumption is expected to go down due to the electrification of heating, gas power plants are expected to almost double in capacity. In November 2022, gas power capacity amounted to 27.5 Gigawatts (GW).
Going forward, the regulators note that 17 to 21 GW of extra capacity will be built, as part of their bi-annual grid stability report for the period of 2025 until 2031. This would be the most cost-effective approach, the regulator adds.
The government took ownership of this suggestion, the documents confirm, confirming that Germany’s path has hardly diverged, despite the fact that its largest gas supplier, Russia, turned off the tap.
In October 2021, Markus Krebber, CEO of energy company RWE, predicted similar figures. “We need about 20 to 30 gigawatts of new gas-fired power plants in Germany,” he told WirtschaftsWoche.
To ensure that enough gas is available, the government is strongly committing to LNG. “The import capacities of LNG are to be further increased in Germany,” the document adds.
Germany needs at least 60GW of power at peak periods. This plan will take gas power up close to 50GW, which is a startling admission that there will be times when wind and solar’s contribution will be minimal.
Coal power capacity, including lignite, is currently 36GW, so the closure of this will be mainly offset by new gas capacity.
h/t Cam_S; Other than the Covid lockdown dip, there is no evidence of a drop in demand for oil.
Robert Lyman: The ‘truth about oil’ is that the world keeps using more of it
It is time to confront the illusory truth about oil for the sham that it is
Robert Lyman, Special to Financial Post Published Jan 05, 2023 • Last updated 18 hours ago • 2 minute read
What psychologists refer to as “illusory truth” is the tendency people have to believe anything, no matter how false, so long as they hear it repeated often enough. Proponents of climate alarm endlessly repeat that the world is using less and less oil and that this trend is relentless and inevitable. As their logic goes, reducing and eventually ending oil production is merely facilitating a trend that is happening anyway. But that “truth” is completely illusory.
The 2022 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy provides data on global demand for crude oil. According to the review, between 2002 and 2019, total world demand rose by 19.5 million barrels per day, from 78.3 million to 97.7 million. The annual average increase from 2009 to 2019 was over one million barrels per day per year. This is the fastest absolute growth in oil demand over a comparable period ever.
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The data for 2022 are not yet available, but reports from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicate that global oil demand has resumed its pre-pandemic trend of large annual increases. That’s not surprising, given the experience of 2009-10. As the chart shows, consumption fell sharply following the financial crisis but then after about two years was back on essentially the same growth path as before.
Interestingly there does seem to be a lot of pent up demand for electric vehicles, if only they were cheaper, had more range, and were easier to recharge.
Interest in EVs has grown substantially, survey shows
Still, initial cost and concerns around range and charging logistics are holding back many potential buyers.
Published July 8, 2022
U.S. consumer interest in electric vehicles is growing rapidly, according to findings from a Consumer Reports survey released Thursday. This year, 14% ofconsumerssaid they would definitely buy or lease an electric-only vehicle if they were to get one today, compared with just 4% in the organization’s 2020 survey.
“What surprised me about the results of the survey is how many Americans really express interest in buying or leasing an EV,” said Mary Greene, senior policy counsel for CR’s sustainability policy team. Greene attributed the change primarily to two factors: the high cost of gas, and people “who are concerned about the impacts on the environment” who are aware that EVs may lessen that impact.
Overall, 71% of respondents in the nationally representative survey of 8,027 U.S. consumers expressed some level of interest in buying or leasing an EV. But just 9% described themselves as “very familiar” with the fundamentals of owning an EV. According to the survey, the top concerns holding consumers back from buying an electric vehicle are charging logistics, how far they can drive before needing to recharge, and the costs associated with buying and maintaining an EV.
Even if the price comes down and chargers are built, there is a big issue with electricity availability. The generators and power lines created for households which use 5-20KWh per day are going to faceplant, if lots of people start plugging in EVs, and demand jumps overnight to 60-100KWh per day per household.
The unusually mild weather at the turn of the year in Central Europe strengthens some in this country in the view that CO2-related global warming is in full swing. Globally – and that’s all that matters – temperatures are moving in a different direction.
The unusually mild weather at the turn of the year in Central Europe strengthens some in this country in the view that CO2-related global warming is in full swing. Globally – and that’s all that matters – temperatures are moving in a different direction.
If one forms the average of recent years, the global temperature has been constant for 8 years and 4 months.
In December, the deviation of the global temperature from the 30-year average of satellite-based measurements of the University of Alabama (UAH) fell again, to 0.05 degrees Celsius. (see graphic above).
Although there is a long-term temperature increase until 2015. But it has averaged only 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979. But it gets even better: the latest scientific studies show that Europe will go slightly downhill for 15-20 years.
Study in “Nature”: North Atlantic cools down
It is climate science heavyweights who recently caused a stir in the Nature Journal “climate and atmospheric science”.
Katja Matthes, Director of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Johann Jungclaus from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and Nour-Eddine Omrani from the Norwegian Bjerknes centre for climate research published a study that shows that we are facing a weakening of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a cooling of the North Atlantic and the associated global temperature development as between 1950 and 1970 ( according to the authors in of their summary).
The graph shows the decline in temperatures in the North Atlantic until 2040. Because of the global warming trend, temperatures do not fall back to the levels of the years 1950 to 1970, explains one of the authors, Eddine Omrani. According to Omrani, the expected warming pause gives us time to work out technical, political and economic solutions before the next warming phase, which will regain the upper hand around 2050.
Why is there no reporting on the coming slowdown in Europe?
It is astonishing that so far not a single German daily newspaper has reported on this encouraging message.
On the other hand, the apocalyptic madness of the “last generation” financed with American foundation money is given ample space and benevolent judges.
Hardly anyone questions the false narrative of “glue”. Anyone who suppresses such news about an impending slowdown is complicit in the politically induced destruction of our community.
What did Robert Habeck say recently in Qatar?
He will need natural gas in the next few years, but in 7 years he will no longer need it, as Germany will then phase out gas anyway.
Why does he want to get out if it will not get warmer in Europe in the next 20 years, but rather colder?
Don’t we need even more gas when we cool down than we do today?
The publication of the climate researchers from Kiel, Hamburg, Bergen, Venice and Houston brings us another important insight.
The warming of the years 1980 to 2015 was significantly influenced by the warm phase of the Atlantic.
We can estimate that a significant part of the warming is attributable to this natural cycle.
However, this period is used, among other things, to make temperature forecasts into the future.
However, the models add the natural warming contribution to the CO2 effect.
This incorrectly calculated, higher CO2 effect will be extrapolated into the future. Models that do not take into account the natural cyclical influences – and the models cannot yet do so – thus come to much too strong warming forecasts.
It should not go unmentioned that there are a large number of publications (such as this one, in which Matthes and Omrani were involved, Solar forcing synchronizes decadal North Atlantic climate variability) that consider a coupling of the strength of the solar cycles with the North Atlantic oscillation to be likely.
The last solar cycle from 2008 to 2019 was the weakest in 100 years. The current cycle has been just as weak so far. The one- dimensionality of the climate and energy debate, which culminates in CO2 emissions alone determining our climate, is frightening.
On 19.1.2023 the congress “Save our industry” will take place at the Hotel Elysee in Hamburg. Participants include Michael Shellenberger, Prof. Patzelt, Prof. Koch, Dr. Pillkahn, Prof. Mayer, Roland Tichy and myself. The event can be found here.
Unfortunately, it is already fully booked two weeks after the announcement; more are planned. However, the Hamburg event can be followed here.
In addition, I would like to point out that my new book “The Great Energy Crisis – and How We Can Overcome It” will be published on 17 February. The book will be presented at a press conference at the German Press Club in Berlin together with Otto Schily, former Federal Minister. The book has 207 pages and costs 22 €. The book is published by LangenMüller Verlag.
The move shows just how corrupt the UN’s WMO has become.
To most people the last thirty years is the climate we have grown up with and grown used to. Half of the world’s population has never known anything else.
And why should the 1961-90 period be in any way regarded as “normal”. Or for that matter the pre-industrial era?
There is only one reason why the WMO still tries to cling to the past, and that is so they can try to scare the public with their global warming agenda.
According to testimony before the NCUC, high winds had already left 300,000 without power during the day of Dec. 23 before a severe cold snap later that night and into Dec. 24. Company officials called the weather combination “unique,” saying they used rolling blackouts for the first time in the utility company’s history.
“I want to express how sorry we are for what our customers experienced,” said Julie Janson, executive vice president, and CEO, of Duke Energy Carolinas. “Winter storm Elliott was an extremely powerful event with a unique confluence of high winds, extreme temperature drops, and other conditions that forced us to curtail power as a last resort. We regret not being able to provide customers as much advance notice of the outages as we would have liked, and we acknowledge that the outages themselves lasted far longer than we expected.”
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“The power that we purchased did not show up, therefore, we were confronted with the hard truth that our energy demand would soon be eclipsed by our capacity,” stated Bowman. “At that time, we made the only decision that we could. For the first time in our company’s history, we began rolling service disruptions.”
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Duke Energy’s “nuclear fleet” was reliable during the storm, according to Preston Gillespie, Duke Energy’s executive vice president and chief generation officer. Still, he said, in a few cases, insulation and heat tracing did not prevent instrumentation lines from freezing which caused a reduction in generation.
To her credit Duke Energy’s CEO Julie Janson seems genuinely contrite for failing her customers.
Let us hope Duke Energy and North and South Carolina learns from this experience, and they ditch the useless solar energy and build more “reliable” nuclear power plants.
Renewable advocates in other states should also take note. You cannot rely on power purchased from other providers, when others are struggling with their own power shortages, and you can’t rely on renewable energy – it always lets you down when you need it most, like just before sunrise on a bitterly cold December morning.
Update (EW): Fixed a typo in the title, changed “Apologies” to “Apologises”.
The last El Niño was 6-7 years ago, but elapsed time can’t on its own be a guarantee of one this year. Neutral ENSO conditions are another option. As usual an assertion about warming from greenhouse gases is thrown in, with no evidence to back it up.
The last El Niño was 6-7 years ago, but elapsed time can’t on its own be a guarantee of one this year. Neutral ENSO conditions are another option. As usual an assertion about warming from greenhouse gases is thrown in, with no evidence to back it up. – – – Climate models indicate La Niña is on the way out, with El Niño conditions expected later this year, claims Phys.org.
CSIRO Climate Scientist Dr. Wenju Cai explains what this means for Australia’s weather and how changing conditions will affect the country.
Is La Niña really on the way out? What do the climate models tell us?
We are in the mature season of the current three-consecutive La Niña years. During the three years, heat has been stored in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
There is no precedent for four-consecutive La Niña years. Models that predict the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles are indicating a demise of the current La Niña condition.
Does this mean El Niño is on the horizon?
With so much heat charged in the equatorial Pacific, an El Niño is readily triggered by relaxation of the trade winds over the equatorial Pacific. Many models are predicting an El Niño by the northern hemisphere summer months. ENSO predictions are more accurate after June, when noise is low. Several previous three-consecutive-year La Niña events, such as the 1973–1975 or 1983–1985 events, were followed by an El Niño.
What will El Niño mean for Australia?
During El Niño, drought occurs over eastern and north-eastern Australia in spring and summer. During winter and spring, a developing El Niño often drives an Indian Ocean Dipole (cooling in the eastern Indian Ocean), inducing droughts over southern Australia in the rain seasons.
Overall, Australia experiences drought, higher temperatures, bushfires and more intense and frequent heatwaves on land and sea, and these extremes are likely exacerbated by warming from increasing greenhouse gases.
Droughts and heat waves cause damage to Australia’s iconic ecosystems, such as the drying of the Murray and Darling Rivers, and coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Drought in the Murray Darling Basin and the drying Murray and Darling Rivers affect agriculture and mining activities, often reducing economic outputs by tens of billions of dollars.
Bushfires kill and displace wild animals, and affect them in the aftermath by causing starvation, lack of shelter and predator attacks. One estimate suggested that the 2019/20 Black Summer Fires affected over three billion wild animals, most of which likely perished.
El Niño and La Niña explained
Both El Niño and La Niña are known as climate phenomena. The oceans switch between these states roughly every two to seven years, depending on the wind and ocean conditions across the equatorial Pacific Ocean between Australia and South America.
El Niño is known as the warm phase and La Niña the cold phase, but it’s also possible to be in a neutral ENSO phase.
h/t Carl – Will woke fossil fuel hating banks like BlackRock have to disclose the risk of being boycotted by GOP states on their SEC climate risk declarations?
Another State Puts Energy-Boycotting ESG-Loving Companies On Notice
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, GOP leaders are not messing around when it comes to woke ESG — environmental, social, and governance — policies that endanger the Bluegrass State’s economy and the well-being of its citizens.
In addition to joining investigations against companies over their use of ESG in attempts to “decarbonize” the global economy and fighting to keep woke asset management firms from scooping up shares of publicly traded utilities, Kentucky is putting the companies that boycott reliable and affordable energy on notice. [emphasis, links added]
On Tuesday, Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball named 11 such financial companies currently boycotting energy companies, following the passage of a 2022 law that directed Ball’s office to publish a list of companies actively engaged in energy boycotts, which then puts said companies on a path toward divestment by the Commonwealth.
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The updated list of companies engaged in energy boycotts was based on a “careful review of publicly available statements and commitments made by the companies” and includes the following entities:
So far at least the companies affected appear to be shrugging off these state legislature boycotts.
But upsetting regulators is never a good thing if you are a bank.
If banks ignore these warning signals, and continue upsetting GOP legislators with their anti-fossil fuel discrimination, next time they ask for a GFC financial bailout, say if the Chinese economy implodes and drags China exposed banks underwater, they might find nobody at the GOP controlled congress wants to answer their phone call.
The speed limit on motorways should be reduced to 64mph. Restrictions could be imposed on going from one part of your city to another. Short-haul flights might be banned, and rings of cameras built around every major town to levy charges on anyone moving in and out. Almost every day brings calls for some kind of curb on travel. And yet, underneath them all is one simple force: a movement by green extremists to take us back to the dark ages. It is effectively a plot to reinvent feudalism, a time when people rarely left their own villages and were taxed if they dared do so.
That’s why, for all the temptation to ridicule the Great Unwashed, we have to take their politics seriously. It wasn’t some Extinction Rebellion activists but a Commons committee that suggested reducing the speed limit to 64mph (and what is to stop them from taking it to 60mph or 58.32mph?) In London, it is the mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is championing the expansion of the Ulez charge, which will kill road traffic into the capital. Other cities with congestion or pollution charges, like Birmingham, will likely follow suit. Leaders in Oxford and Canterbury, meanwhile, have proposed what many fear will turn out effectively to be restrictions on driving from one zone of their cities to another, unless you have a permit or are willing to pay a hefty fine.
Then there is France, which is banning short-haul flights between cities that are connected by train in under 2.5 hours – which would not be of much use here in Britain, where the rail unions are always striking. The sci-fi writers of the 1950s and 1960s imagined a world where we zipped around effortlessly in robot-driven flying vehicles by the 2030s. Instead, it looks as if we will all be forced to stay at home, venturing out of our local areas once or twice a year when we have a permit to do so, hoping the cameras don’t flash when we pass the one-mile mark.
The environment should be protected. Carbon emissions need to be brought down and air quality improved. It might even be sensible to encourage people to travel at different times to ease congestion, or to create more pedestrian zones to make urban areas more livable. But that isn’t what this is about. Instead, climate change is being used as cover to wage war on the very concept of travel.
Those wanting to restrict it forget that the economy, science, culture and health all depend on people and goods getting from one place to another. There are few forms of economic activity that don’t rely on the movement of these things. Science would make fewer breakthroughs without experts meeting at conferences. Music would be unimaginably duller without the cross-pollination of rhythms, melodies and beats between continents. Our language would be poorer, too.
It is surely not a coincidence that we began to emerge from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance and then into modernity when travellers started linking up Asia, Europe and America, carrying plants, technologies and, most of all, ideas. We risk shutting down that infinite channel of progress with foolish green virtue-signalling.
Working from home won’t save us, and nor can the internet replace real communication. The world of green extremism is closed and neo-medieval, offering about as much opportunity to people as that enjoyed by a 12th-century serf. Even the Great Unwashed couldn’t survive that.
Eco-servitude: environmentalist plans are taking us back to a world where ordinary people were unable to travel CREDIT: Pieter Brueghel the Elder/Getty
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