Day: February 23, 2023

From STOP THESE THINGS

Vlad Putin can’t be blamed for blanketing Germany’s millions of solar panels in snow and ice, or freezing solid their 30,000 wind turbines. Nor can Vlad be convicted for this (and every previous) winter’s long periods of gloomy, windless weather – ‘dunkelflaute’, as Germans call it.

No, Germany’s current energy catastrophe is the perfectly predictable consequence of perfectly avoidable government policy. The German government called their grand wind and solar transition the ‘Energiewende’; anyone gifted with common sense and reason deemed it ‘delusional’.

And so it’s come to pass: Germans are now suffering Europe’s highest power prices and are lucky to have power, at all. Power rationing is a regular feature of German daily life; faced with that debilitating prospect, heavy industry and manufacturing businesses are heading to the USA, or Singapore, where power prices are a mere fraction of those suffered at home.

Rick Mills provides a helpful roundup on the causes and consequences of Germany’s self-inflicted renewable energy disaster.

Inside Germany’s renewable energy boondoggle
Mining.com
Rick Mills
6 February 2023

For all their successes building Europe’s strongest economy, the Germans have made some pretty dumb moves regarding energy policy.

I first started writing about this in 2011, soon after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and subsequent meltdown at Fukushima, forced a re-think of nuclear power.

With startling accuracy, I must say, I suggested that the real proving grounds for nuclear power would not only be in China, India and Russia, as the IEA predicted, but also in Germany and the European Union.

Twelve years later, Germans have re-established their faith in nuclear amid an energy crisis caused, first, by the failure of renewable energy to meet expectations, and second by the war in Ukraine.

Nuclear phase-out…
In 2002, Germany enacted a law to phase out nuclear power, but the government led by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel decided in 2010 to extend the lifetimes of its reactors by 12 years. This was based on the judgment that Germany would not be able to meet its power demand using renewable energy sources – wind and solar power – nor could it meet the government’s ambitious goal of a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, by burning more coal and natural gas.

Then, playing populist politics and over-reacting to the partial meltdowns in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, Merkel’s government immediately shut down almost half of the country’s nuclear power. Germany, overnight, decided 40% of its nuclear power capacity would be eliminated, and removed 8,800 megawatts (MW) from the grid; the remaining 12,700 MW of nuclear-supplied electricity was to be gone by 2022.

The country rapidly approaching that deadline, Germany in 2021 moved to shut down six nuclear plants or 8.5 gigawatts (1GW = 1,000MW). Three of its newest and best plants closed, removing 4.05GW, equivalent to the average electricity consumption of Denmark, from northern Europe’s power grid.

That left three still running. They currently produce around 6% of Germany’s power supply, a far cry from the 1990s, when 19 nuclear power plants produced a third of its electricity.

Germany also plans to take all its natural gas plants offline by 2038.

According to Clean Energy Wire, the country in 2022 got 44.6% of its power from renewables; 20.4% from lignite, a form of coal; 13.5% from natural gas, 6.0% from nuclear and 11.5% from hard coal.

But Germany has had to restructure its energy mix due to a collapse in natural gas supplies from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. The interruption included the rupture of two gas lines between Russia and Europe last September, a suspected act of sabotage that Germany, Denmark and Sweden are investigating.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly ordered Germany’s three remaining nuclear plants to remain in operation until April, 2023, to fend off an energy crunch during the coldest months — although Environment Minister Steffi Lemke has apparently promised the country will stick to its nuclear phase-out at the end of that month.

…and revival
The decision to extend the nuclear plants beyond their planned 2022 de-commissioning, is happening amid a remarkable shift in German popular opinion regarding nuclear power.

According to Oilprice.com, while the German Green Party and the Social Democrats have long supported a move away from nuclear energy, it is now seen as preferable to burning coal.

After the Fukushima disaster, most Germans were in favor of a nuclear phase-out; now, over 80% want to extend the lifespan of their existing nuclear reactors. We can only speculate on the public mood, but likely, faced with continued high power bills — despite the government’s recent energy price cap — and more importantly, breathing in polluted air from coal-fired burners, most residents are seeing low-emissions, reliable nuclear power in a new light.

Nuclear power plants produce just 117 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour, compared to lignite coal, which, when burned emits over 1,000 grams of CO2/kwh.

Renewable failure
In another nod to nuclear, the energy sources designed to take nuclear’s place in Germany have proven inadequate.

“Energiewiende” (energy transition) refers to Germany’s policy of increasing its share of renewables, and phasing out nuclear power, which before Fukushima amounted to about 25% of the country’s total electricity load.

However Germany’s production of solar and wind power has failed expectations, with the gap between supply and demand having to be met by nuclear and coal, and consumers faced with horrendous power bills.

According to Statista, the average wholesale electricity price in Germany in December, 2022 was 256.66 euros per megawatt-hour, an increase of 16%, year on year. Four months earlier, German power prices hit a record-high 469 euros. Compared to January 2019, that is close to a 10-fold increase!

Statista blames a number of factors on the spike, including increased heating demand due to a cold last winter, a rise in natural gas and coal prices, a drop in wind power generation due to low wind speeds, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and last summer’s heat wave in Europe.

Energiewiende was implemented in 2000. Nineteen years later, the average power cost per household had doubled. According to data from IEEE Spectrum, Germans in 2019 were paying USD$0.34 per kilowatt-hour, compared to 22 cents/kwh in France and $0.13 in the United States.

The real kicker though, is what they didn’t get for their money. While in 2000 Germany had an installed solar and wind capacity of 121 gigawatts, with 577 terrawatt-hours generated, in 2019 the country only produced 5% more electricity from renewables, @ 607twh.

The photo below shows what happened in 2021, during the coldest winter in a decade in Western Europe. Snow blanketed millions of solar panels, rendering them useless, along with 30,000 wind turbines.

A 2021 article in Tech Startups quoted a number of experts on Germany’s renewable energy failure, including Professor Harald Schwartz, professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus:

“With this supply of wind and photovoltaic energy, it’s between 0 and 2 or 3 percent – that is de facto zero. You can see it in many diagrams that we have days, weeks, in the year where we have neither wind nor PV. Especially this time for example – there is no wind and PV, and there are often times when the wind is very miniscule. These are things, I must say, that have been physically established and known for centuries, and we’ve simply totally neglected this during the green energies discussion.”

A team of German academics, led by physicist Manuel Frondel, in a 2009 report had already concluded the following regarding Germany’s record with renewable energies:

Germany’s conversion to green energy imposed “high costs without any of the alleged positive impacts on emission reductions, employment, energy security, or technological innovation… The government’s [subsidies] have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.”

“Although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as a ‘shining example’ … for the world, we should instead regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic or environmental benefits.”

The Frondel report also found that far from creating the much-publicized tens of thousands of jobs, “the net employment balance is zero.”

In 2011 I concluded the path the country will be compelled to take is to import more electricity – either nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic, coal from Poland or natural gas from Russia. Germany did them all.

It wasn’t enough – twelve years later a fourth and a fifth option emerged: burn more, a lot more, coal and bring in LNG.

Back to coal
Despite energiewiende, Germany’s energy sources in 2021 were dirtier than previously, with hard coal consumption 20% higher from January to September and electricity and heat generation from hard coal increasing by 28%. (Germany has two types of coal, hard coal and lignite). Coal-fired power production is considered to be the worst form of electricity generation for the environment, despite power plant companies’ use of scrubbers and claims of “clean coal”.

The irony is, notwithstanding the country’s disdain for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, if it wasn’t for these traditional base-load sources, deployed to make up for the failure of solar and wind to deliver as expected, Germany would have been facing black-outs.

The prospect of either paying through the nose for heat and light, or freezing in their homes & businesses this winter, has meant that greenhouse gas emissions are less of a priority for energy-starved Europe. According to a report by the Observer Research Foundation, via Oilprice.com,

energy supply disruptions triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine took LNG prices even higher, leaving coal as the only option for dispatchable and affordable power in much of Europe, including the tough markets of Western Europe and North America that have explicit policies to phase out coal.

Coal mines and power plants that closed 10 years ago are being brought back to life in Germany, with other European countries such as Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and Greece also restarting plants.

The article goes on to say that China’s coal imports have been surging, as utilities stockpile material ahead of peak summer electricity demand. China has the largest number of operating coal plants with 3,037, while Germany, the largest economy in the EU, has 63. The price of thermal coal used to generate power has shot up 170% since the end of 2021. It appears that King Coal is back.

According to Reuters, more than a third (36.3%) of the electricity fed into German power grids between July and September came from coal-fired power plants, compared to 31.9% in the third quarter of 2021.

Global coal consumption in 2022 reached a record-high 8 billion tonnes, with Germany one of the highest-consuming countries at 26 million tonnes, a 19% rise over 2021 (IEA figures).

Rather than shutting down 1.6 GW of lignite-fired power plants by the end of 2022, the German government is allowing production until March, 2024.

Furthermore, a “gas replacement reserve” with total capacity of 11.6 GW has been created, including 1.9 GW of lignite and 4.3 GW of hard coal power plants that are allowed to operate until 2024. Reuters adds that the decommissioning of 2.6 GW of hard coal power capacity and 1.2 GW of lignite capacity has been postponed.

LNG
According to Clean Energy Wire, Germany stopped receiving pipeline gas from Russia in late August 2022. The only direct gas links between Russia and Germany, the Nord Stream pipelines, were destroyed by explosions the following month.

This prompted Chancellor Scholz to set up a domestic liquefied natural gas terminal to receive imports, where none existed before. The country’s first floating LNG terminal went online at the end of 2022. Germany can also be supplied via neighboring countries, where the LNG is re-gasified and fed into the natural gas pipeline infrastructure, states Clean Energy Wire.

A brief investigation reveals that Germany sees LNG imports as a panacea to its problem of disappearing Russian natural gas coming via pipelines. As reported by Clean Energy Wire,

Germany has since gone full steam ahead on expanding its import infrastructure and the first terminal went online in December 2022.

Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, chancellor Scholz announced Germany would build two domestic import terminals. Economy and climate minister Robert Habeck said this is necessary to “govern energy supply on our own state territory and guarantee sovereignty.” The German government quickly announced it will co-fund with a 50 percent stake the terminal project in Brunsbüttel, and later announced further support for other projects…

In addition to one or more fixed onshore terminals, the German government plans to lease five so-called Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRU) in the short term, two of which were installed by winter 2022/23.

The country is already one of the world’s biggest gas importers and sources some 95% of its consumption from abroad. Natural gas supplied about a quarter of Germany’s energy demand in 2022, the second most important source after oil.

Conclusion
But that doesn’t make it green. While many like to view natural gas as a bridge fuel between fossil fuels and renewables, the reality is it is anything but.

Extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, transporting it to a terminal, and then super-cooling it for transport in tankers, is far from clean; in fact, it may even be dirtier than coal.

To turn it into liquid form, the gas must be cooled to 163 degrees below zero. To do that requires a great deal of power, with massive compression units running 24/7. Where does that power come from? In most cases, the same fracked natural gas is used to run the compression units, which pretty much defeats the purpose of LNG as “clean”.

Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas that is over 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The Global Methane Pledge from COP26 acknowledges that methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, responsible for a third of current warming from human activities.

Forgetting all that, the use of fracking technology itself has raised big concerns over the safety of freshwater supplies.

Fracking just one well can use 2 to 8 million gallons of water with the major components being water (90%), sand or proppants (8-9.5%), and chemicals (0.5-2%). One 4-million-gallon fracturing operation would use from 80 to 330 tons of chemicals, and each well will be fracked numerous times. Many of these chemicals have been linked to cancer, developmental defects, hormone disruption, and other conditions.

It’s also been proven that fracking causes earthquakes. A study published in 2016 found that both fracking wells and wastewater disposal wells increase seismicity. A major research project testing seismicity in northeastern BC found a 13-fold increase in the number of earthquakes under 2.5 between August 2013 and August 2014.

If LNG is bad for the environment, and coal is worse, that leaves nuclear as the only form of base-load power generation that produces zero carbon emissions. Wind and solar which can only generate electricity under optimal weather conditions, making them unsuitable for base-load power, and energy storage solutions are still many years away — if they are even viable on a large scale.

Germans have finally realized the folly of renewable energy and are re-establishing their support for nuclear. Unfortunately, people and politicians on this side of the Atlantic continue to cling to out-dated ideas and technologies. Nuclear gets a bad rap but it is bar-none the safest form of power generation. The accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima were all due to human error – poor design, poor site placement and poor training. The technology itself is extremely safe.

Where I live in British Columbia, we get most of our electricity from hydroelectric power. Some time ago, I investigated the possibility of replacing Site C, a $16-billion boondoggle, with small modular nuclear reactors, which Natural Resources Canada calls the “future of its nuclear industry.” (BC has prohibited nuclear plants and uranium mining, but not provinces like Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.)

The Site C dam is slated to provide 1,100 megawatts of capacity – enough to power half a million homes. The same goal could be reached by using a small nuclear reactor capable of delivering 1,000MW (1GW) – at less than a 10th of the cost.

Another way of looking at it, is we could have built 16 reactors, each @ 1GW, for $16B, the price of one dam that is being threatened by earthquakes from fracking, and that if it ever bursts, would flood most of northern BC.

As I predicted, Germany and Europe were the proving ground for renewable energy, and they have failed. Isn’t it about time we stopped seeing solar and wind as the be all end all, and start talking about what is a realistic mix of fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energy, needed to make the transition to a green economy, one that helps to reduce carbon emissions at a reasonable cost to taxpayers?
Mining.com

She knows where the future is.

SKAGEN Fondene

Energy expert Mark Mills speaks at SKAGEN Funds New Years Conference 2023

By JoNova

In the great Covid backpedalling of 2023, even the Australian ABC has finally admitted that natural immunity from Covid “lasts as long as vaccination” which is still false and misleading (because it lasts longer and is higher) but must have caused angst at the office.

They go on to say their holy rosary incantation: “but experts have cautioned that vaccines are still the safer option”. Safer than what now, though?

The new meta-review in the Lancet  says nothing at all about side effects of  vaccines or new variants, but people-who-believe-experts and people who think they are “good journalists” need to say their medical Hail-Marys, otherwise they have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and sometimes obnoxiously, insufferably, stupidly so.

The new Lancet metastudy looked at 65 studies from 19 countries. 

They found the reinfection rate of people who caught Covid was lower than people who were given Pfizer or Moderna.

About a year after catching Covid, people with natural immunity still had about 37% protection against getting Omicron BA.1, about four times higher than people who had two Moderna doses. Yet the people with the better protection were locked out, punished, and sometimes even banned from treatment like organ transplants.

For some reason that no one can explain, despite millions of people using Pfizer vaccines, there were apparently no useful studies lasting beyond 30 weeks against reinfection.

A study has found natural immunity could provide as much protection against reinfection of COVID as two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines.(Reuters: Dado Ruvic/File)

But there is no apology, and no admission that they should have been collecting and publishing the data on natural immunity all along. There’s no admission that vaccines were never the right tool to use in a coronavirus pandemic, especially when results were so uncertain and there were so many safe alternatives. 

Figure 4 Comparison of protection efficacy from past COVID-19 infection versus protection from vaccination (by vaccine type and dose) against re-infection… for omicron BA.1 variants

Our immune systems can tell the difference between a real infectious threat and a pretend virus

It makes sense that a true infection generates a longer stronger response than a fake one. We evolved from people whose immune systems didn’t waste protein and energy on things that don’t matter. Our personal defense force can’t be bothered staying in DefCon 1 when it’s only the Avon lady at the door again and not the Vikings. So it’s no surprise that usually the antibody protection varies according to the threat. The older nastier SARS-1 virus killed about 10% of those infected, and T-cell immunity was still there 17 years later.  Its dark cousin MERS killed about 35% and is not as well studied, but antibodies were still present three years  after infection.

On the other hand, protection against the tame common cold sort of coronaviruses is a big “so what” for our immune system. Immunity wears off in months which means we can catch the exact same dang virus the next year, and year after year. Since vaccines are (supposedly) safe, the hard part in vaccine design is to trick our immune system into caring at all about something that isn’t very scary.

In this graph below we see the waning of protection against not just reinfection but “getting sick” or being symptomatic. The result is much like the graph above, with a few more variants of vaccines. I added the labels on the lines in these graphs to hone the point that the top line in every graph was natural immunity. (It wasn’t always obvious which lines were which, especially for anyone who was colorblind).

Figure 4 (D) Comparison between waning of immunity with time of the protection conferred by SARS-CoV-2 infection against symptomatic disease with omicron variant versus vaccine protection against primary infection with omicron by type of vaccine and dose.

“Risk of COVID death or hospitalisation 88 per cent lower for those previously infected…”

The headline conclusion of the ABC story is shown in the graph below. Most people who caught Covid have good protection against getting a severe case of Covid on the second round. But try looking at this graph and reading the ABC description with a straight face: “…natural immunity [is] “at least as durable, if not more so” than two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines… “

At least indeed… natural infection had higher efficacy than all the vaccines for 50 out of the last 60 weeks.

Figure 4 Comparison of protection efficacy from past COVID-19 infection versus protection from vaccination (by vaccine type and dose) against re-infection… for omicron BA.1 variants

Hallelujah. 18 months too late we get the big admission — those who had natural immunity should be treated as equivalent to being “vaccinated”

One day we might even hear that the unvaccinated should be treated as equivalent to being human. We live in hope.

For the moment at least researchers are saying what we’ve known for a hundred years: We should take natural immunity into account when making policies.

Our findings have several important policy implications. … restrictions of movement and access to venues based on immune status and vaccine mandates for workers should take into account immunity conferred by vaccination and that provided by natural infection. Countries have taken different approaches to this; for example, immunity from past infection was considered as part of eligibility for the EU COVID certificate but not in countries such as the USA or Australia.

People with natural immunity are still to this day — barred from entering the USA unless they get a vaccine. I’ve turned down an expenses paid trip to Florida this very week. Hawaii too! — (Thanks Craig and thanks Stephen.)

The bottom line is that far from sacking people who had already had covid — they would have made ideal employees. (As would the uninfected when using anti-virals, ivermectin or some other protocol prophylactically like the FLCCC suggests).  We could have tested for prior infection long ago. The San Diego Blood Bank was already testing donations for antibodies by the end of May 2020. The FDA approved the first blood test for antibodies as early as April 3, 2020. And before vaccinations were even being conducted we had tests that could tell whether someone was vaccinated or naturally immune by looking for antibodies to the parts of the virus that were not in the vaccine (like the N or nucleocapsid antibodies as opposed to the S or Spike antibodies). Yet those tests were largely banned, as were the safe, cheap antivirals like ivermectin and HCQ.

Hypothetically: If the entire medical system were a mafia cabal designed to create Pfizer profits by banning cheap drugs and useful tests, while guaranteeing indemnity in secret contracts and forcing drugs on people who didn’t want them, what exactly would our Minister of Health have done differently?

And ignorance is no excuse. When there was only a few months of data on the efficacy of vaccines, there was already a whole year of data with natural immunity. In fact, doctors were saying natural immunity worked very well in the BMJ as early as September 2021:

Infection generates immunity. The “SIREN” study in the Lancet addressed the relationships between seropositivity in people with previous COVID-19 infection and subsequent risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome due to SARS-CoV-2 infection over the subsequent 7-12 months (2). Prior infection decreased risk of symptomatic re-infection by 93%. A large cohort study published in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at 3.2 million US patients and showed that the risk of infection was significantly lower (0.3%) in seropositive patients v/s those who are seronegative (3%) (3).

But the study, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation comes too late to help thousands forced into vaccinations they didn’t want, and we have to wonder whether the purpose of the study is not just a belated nod to a reality which has become obvious, but as the Defender suggests — to tacitly still endorse vaccine passports, now with the minor, fairly useless proviso that people with natural immunity would have qualified “if only we’d known”. But they knew this was likely. And they had enough data 18 months ago.

The vaccines promising immunity,
Could be seen as a sly opportunity,
To sell boosters to follow,
Which would also prove hollow,
And all this was done with impunity.

–Ruairi

h/t David B, another ian, crakar24

The Abstract

We identified a total of 65 studies from 19 different countries. Our meta-analyses showed that protection from past infection and any symptomatic disease was high for ancestral, alpha, beta, and delta variants, but was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant. Pooled effectiveness against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant was 45·3% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 17·3–76·1) and 44·0% (26·5–65·0) against omicron BA.1 symptomatic disease. Mean pooled effectiveness was greater than 78% against severe disease (hospitalisation and death) for all variants, including omicron BA.1. Protection from re-infection from ancestral, alpha, and delta variants declined over time but remained at 78·6% (49·8–93·6) at 40 weeks. Protection against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant declined more rapidly and was estimated at 36·1% (24·4–51·3) at 40 weeks. On the other hand, protection against severe disease remained high for all variants, with 90·2% (69·7–97·5) for ancestral, alpha, and delta variants, and 88·9% (84·7–90·9) for omicron BA.1 at 40 weeks.

We identified 65 studies from 19 different countries (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, France, India, Italy, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Qatar, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA; figure 1A)

REFERENCE

Covid forecasting team (2023) Past SARS-CoV-2 infection protection against re-infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Published:February 16, 2023 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02465-5

From Climate Scepticism

By JIT

Childish attempts to raise the temperature

Just a quick one from me. This note follows Mark’s Upping the Ante from last year, in which he documented the Guardian style change that turned “climate change” into “climate crisis” or “climate emergency.”

Sometimes when looking for a particular datum you accidentally find something else interesting in its own right. The datum I was looking for will eventually contribute to a rant in these pages, so I won’t tell you what that was right now. Suffice to say that I came across a link to “climate crisis” in Wikipedia, and clicked on it. Why? Well, just to confirm that it would redirect me to “climate change”. It didn’t. There really is such a page on Wiki, where – rather than describing the collapse of the sky – the term’s history and usage is discussed.

My position on the ludicrous term “climate crisis” has been a simple one for quite a while now. It’s this: If you use the term “climate crisis” in a non-ironic way, I will not take anything else you say seriously.

Of course, users of this term do not care what I think of them. They don’t know who I am, and if they did, they would probably see my haughty judgement as a badge of honour. But what did I find when I clicked on “climate crisis”?

Well, the first thing was this:

[I didn’t follow the link to “climate apocalypse”, nor to the link lower down to “climate endgame.”]

Wiki describes what is meant by the term “climate crisis”, its “scientific basis” and its history. Then it goes on at length about the effectiveness of the term’s use, including psychological and neuroscience studies, and there is even criticism of it. Then we reach the section “Related Terminology.” Here we find the lexicon of doom itself. Below is Wiki’s list, together with coiners or notable users:

Climate catastrophe (NYT, ABC Australia, Guardian) (2019)

Threats that impact the earth (WWF) (2012-)

Climate breakdown (Peter Kalmus) (2018)

Climate chaos (NYT, US Democratic candidates, Ad Age marketers) (2019)

Climate ruin (US Democratic candidates) (2019)

Global heating (Richard Betts) (2018)

Climate emergency (The infamous “letter” in BioScience, Guardian) (2019)

Ecological breakdown, ecological crisis and ecological emergency (Greta) (2019)

Global meltdown, scorched Earth, the great collapse, Earthshattering [sic] (Ad Age marketers) (2019)

Climate disaster (Guardian) (2019)

Climate calamity (LAT) (2022)

Climate havoc (NYT) (2022)

Climate pollution, carbon pollution (Grist) (2022)

==

I have also caught Wikipedia using the term “climate crisis” not just in the page trying hard to discuss the term neutrally, but also, unironically, in another article. How do you think I fell through this particular trapdoor? Yes. A lazy Wiki editor linked to the “climate crisis” page, thinking that it would tell me all about just what a “crisis” we are in – rather than fairly dispassionately discuss the term itself.

Wiki is very good on some things. If you want to know what banners rode out at the battle of Grunwald 600 years ago, you’ll get a reliable answer there. And although you can’t trust it on climate change, I must thank it for providing me with the above list of juvenile attempts at raising the rhetorical temperature, together with a partial list of outlets and people that I no longer need to take seriously.

One day, when I have run out of paint to watch dry on the wall, I will begin to compile a list of my own: the list of shame of all those who have spoken about the “climate crisis” as if it is a real phenomenon. In so doing they wantonly disseminate disinformation, a sin they simultaneously and casually accuse their opponents of.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Do the Tories have a death wish?

 

Grant Shapps, the new Energy Secretary, is facing a Tory backlash over plans for a hydrogen levy to be added onto household bills.

The extra green levy, which under Government plans would be added onto energy bills from 2025 to fund the production of low-carbon hydrogen, has been met with anger amid concerns households will be paying for energy that they never use.

It would be the first piece of legislation passed by Rishi Sunak’s new energy department, but Mr Shapps has been warned that the levy, which critics have branded as another tax, would stoke inflation, going against one of the Prime Minister’s five key priorities announced last month.

Former Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg said he tried to block the levies when he was the minister in charge of the bill under Liz Truss. 

“Let’s not beat around the bush, these levies are taxes and tax is already too high,” he told the Telegraph. “Putting more taxes will make the UK more inefficient.

“Energy is already expensive enough,” he added. “The Government should try to help people get cheaper energy, not more expensive energy. There is no justification for further levies on bills.” 

Mr Rees-Mogg said the row over the funding exposed the risks of having a standalone net zero department, after it was hived off from the business department in Rishi Sunak’s recent reshuffle.

“When I was in the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, there was some countervailing pressure from the business side to say is this economic?” he said. “But if they are just net zero zealots this is unlikely to be very economic.”

More Tory MPs have raised concerns that the levy would harm the economy.

Andrew Lewer, the Tory MP for Northampton South, said: “Anything in this current climate – just as it looks like bills will maybe start to come down – that will put them up again, will obviously cause a large number of people a great deal of concern.”

Marcus Fysh told the Telegraph: “I would be concerned about anything that was going to increase inflation at the moment, and it is inherently inflationary to put lots of new taxes on things.”

He also raised concerns about the viability of the “unproven” gas, saying: “I am concerned that hydrogen, unless it is really well thought through as an idea, is slightly problematic as it takes an awful lot of energy to make it in the first place.”

Energy bills have more than doubled since 2021, even after the government’s Energy Price Guarantee, and they are expected to stay high in the long term.

The Government has targeted the development of 10GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030. The gas, which can be made using electricity or methane, could help decarbonise several sectors, including industry, fertiliser and heavy transport.

A decision has yet to be made about its use as a replacement for natural gas in home boilers. But dozens of recent studies suggest it will have limited use, partly because of costs, which are predicted to be at least 70 per cent higher than gas prices.

Tory peer Lord Lilley, who sits on the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee said: “Hydrogen is a non-starter as a replacement for domestic gas to make households pay for something they will never receive is a double insult. It’s absurd to make people pay for something that is never going to happen.”

Labour Lords have drafted an amendment to the Energy Bill that would mean the levies could not be applied to households.

If successful, it would mark the first major setback for Grant Shapps since his appointment at the newly formed department last week.

Baroness Bryony Worthington, a cross-bench peer who co-authored the 2008 Climate Change Act, said she would support the Labour amendment.

“It’s a crazy idea, environmentally, plus cost and safety. All of those things point towards it being a mad idea,” she said. “And there’s absolutely no reason why the electricity bill payer should be picking up the tab for something which is essentially a way of the gas industry trying to save itself.”

Craig Mckinlay, the chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said he would back an amendment that removed the powers to levy hydrogen costs on energy bills.

“Any idea that hydrogen can ever be used for home heating in lieu of natural gas is fanciful – the infrastructure issues of the gas pipe network, which hydrogen cannot safely use, immediately makes it a non-starter,” he said. “By considering a further levy on household energy bills, the government is again trying to buck markets in trying to pick a technology.”

There are also concerns over the disruption to homes, which would need new appliances, pipes and smart meters, as well as extra ventilation to mitigate the combustion risk.

The Government’s plans only expect hydrogen to provide enough energy for 67,000 homes, or 0.2 per cent, by 2030, rising to meet up to 10 per cent of domestic heating demand by 2035.

The Energy Bill, which is going through the House of Lords, includes a provision that could see the development of hydrogen funded in a similar way to the offshore wind industry. Those costs are part of the roughly £150 of green and social levies applied to household energy bills.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/11/grant-shapps-faces-tory-mutiny-hydrogen-levy-plans/

Since the Tories are certain to lose the next election, why not just abandon all of these unpopular plans and let Labour get the blame for them?

At least some of the Tory MPs are starting to show a bit of backbone and common sense. Marcus Fysh, for instance, hits the nail on the head when he says:

“I am concerned that hydrogen, unless it is really well thought through as an idea, is slightly problematic as it takes an awful lot of energy to make it in the first place.”

The harsh reality is that most of the hydrogen that is likely to be produced in the foreseeable future will be via steam reforming natural gas, in a process which is energy inefficient, expensive, and carbon intensive. In other words, an utterly pointless exercise.

Bryony Worthington hints at the same problem when she says it is a way for the gas industry to rebrand itself.

As usual, of course, Labour oppose the levy, (though not the hydrogen programme), but don’t say where the money will come from instead! It is ironic then that it was the same Labour Party that set up the Renewables Obligation subsidy system, paid for through household energy bills!

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Essay by Kip Hansen

You would think that science journalists have been carefully trained to research the topics they write about, especially in high-profile media outlets such as the New York Times.  It is a shame that careful back-grounding has become a thing of the past even in these prestigious newsrooms. 

The latest Climate Change alarm comes from a science journalist who should know better, Apoorva Mandavilli.  Her latest piece is titled “How Climate Change Is Spreading Malaria in Africa”.  

The lede to her story is this:

 “A new study offers a glimpse of the future by looking to the past. Mosquitoes that transmit malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have moved to higher elevations by about 6.5 meters (roughly 21 feet) per year and away from the Equator by 4.7 kilometers (about three miles) per year over the past century, according to the study.”

“That pace is consistent with climate change and may explain why malaria’s range has expanded over the past few decades, the authors said. The results have serious implications for countries that are unprepared to cope with the disease.”

The article was prompted by a recent study (yes, “There is a Study!”) that appeared in Biology Letters with the title: “Rapid range shifts in African Anopheles mosquitoes over the last century”   by Carlson et al. (2023).

This study claims to have found “Mosquitoes that transmit malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have moved to higher elevations by about 6.5 meters (roughly 21 feet) per year and away from the Equator by 4.7 kilometers (about three miles) per year over the past century, according to the study.” 

I won’t quibble with their actual findings….it is a result of rather obtuse calculation across heterogenous data sets. But we catch the lead author, Colin Carlson, giving this quote to the Times:

“If this were random, and if it were unrelated to climate, it wouldn’t look as cleanly climate-linked.”

Our Times journalist, Mandavilli, said “A new study offers a glimpse of the future by looking to the past.”

Unfortunately, the neither the authors or Mandavilli seem to have looked far enough or closely enough into the past to realize that their conclusions and worries are not supported by real world historical facts. Other epidemiologists have taken notice, as reported in the “Discussion” section of the paper: 

“Others have disputed these conclusions, suggesting that they are irreconcilable with long-term progress towards malaria elimination, that trends in the region are better explained by lapsed control programmes and growing drug resistance, and that climate change is inconsistent with long-term trends at the continental scale.”

And these others have quite rightly disputed the conclusions, which totally fail to take into account several overriding facts:

1)  The worry isn’t that Africans might be bitten by mosquitoes – they will, always and almost everywhere in Africa (except the Sahara and other northern deserts).  It is about the locations of African malaria mosquito vectors (Anopheles spp.). 

2) But what is the real historical data about where in Africa malaria is a threat — where malaria is endemic?

That map is Malaria Transmission – not just where Anopheles  mosquitoes live.  That shows the history malaria transmission in Africa since 1900.

And closer to today?

This map shows where the species that is the reservoir of malaria has been actually found to have malaria in its blood — meaning the individual is sick with malaria or is a carrier of malaria.

What species is that?

“Reservoir:   Humans are the only important reservoir of human malaria. Mode of Transmission: Malaria is transmitted by the bite of an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Transfusion of blood from infected persons and use of contaminated needles and syringes are other potential modes of transmission.  Apr 2, 2014   MALARIA FACT SHEET  State of Georgia” (.pdf)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Reservoir and Vector in Malaria

Humans are the Reservoir of malaria – The Agent of malaria is an amoeba of the Plasmodium group (there are several) – The Vector of malaria is an Anopheles  mosquito – The Host of malaria is, again, a Human, who becomes part of the Reservoir.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

3) Wasn’t malaria spread around the world by Anopheles  mosquitoes?

Not exactly:

“MALARIA’S GLOBAL SAGA”

“Malaria occupies a unique place in the annals of history. Over millennia, its victims have included Neolithic dwellers, early Chinese and Greeks, princes and paupers. In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 percent of all deaths (Carter and Mendis, 2002). Although its chief sufferers today are the poor of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Amazon basin, and other tropical regions, 40 percent of the world’s population still lives in areas where malaria is transmitted.”

“Malaria’s probable arrival in Rome in the first century AD was a turning point in European history. From the African rain forest, the disease most likely traveled down the Nile to the Mediterranean, then spread east to the Fertile Crescent, and north to Greece. 

Greek traders and colonists brought it to Italy. From there, Roman soldiers and merchants would ultimately carry it as far north as England and Denmark (Karlen, 1995).”

“For the next 2,000 years, wherever Europe harbored crowded settlements and standing water, malaria flourished, rendering people seasonally ill, and chronically weak and apathetic. “

From : “Saving Lives, Buying Time:  Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance”

Malaria, historically, has been spread by human movements – humans who harbor the malarial parasites and humans who inadvertently spread the mosquitos that transmit malaria to new locales.

4)  But isn’t malaria eliminated by eliminating Anopheles  mosquitoes?

No, not exactly.  Maybe not at all.  Here’s a map of malaria deaths in the United States in 1870:

Malaria deaths as far north as Michigan, above Chicago, and even some in Vermont.

When was it eliminated?

With this blow-up, we see that malaria wasn’t eliminated in the United States in some areas until as late as 1965. 

How do we eliminate malaria?  Kill all the mosquitoes?

Nope.

The Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquito is found today in a wide range of east of the Rocky Mountains, but malaria has been totally eliminated. 

How?  By quarantining humans who contract malaria until their blood is free of the parasites.  Humans are the reservoir of malaria, without malarial humans, the mosquitoes have nothing to spread. 

Note:  Occassionally, travelers return to the United States having contracted malaria in the Caribbean or Africa or other malarial areas.  Once they are identified, they are treated in a hospital with anti-malarials.  Malaria is a “nationally notifiable disease” which means doctors and hospitals are required/encouraged to report cases to the CDC.

5)  In areas that are prone to outbreaks of mosquito transmitted diseases, and there are several, tracking mosquito problem areas and spraying for mosquitoes is an important public health effort.  Outbreaks are often traced back to ”lapsed control programmes” — failure to maintain mosquito spraying programs by states, counties, and municipalities.  Activists and lack of funds are the two most common reasons that spraying is discontinued.

Bottom Lines:

1.  Humans, not mosquitoes, are the reservoir of malaria.  Humans sick with malaria spread malaria.  Historically, human trade, exploration and military movements are responsible for spreading malaria worldwide. Mosquitoes are just the vector which moves malaria from one sick human to another (sometimes many).

2.  Malaria is eliminated by treating humans and preventing malarial humans from being bitten by mosquitoes, who would then spread the disease.

3.  Claims that small expansions or changes in habitat size or location of various Anopheles mosquito species are a “new threat” to African populations that might somehow, after centuries, be  “unprepared to cope with the disease” are unfounded and alarmist. 

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

This is not the first time I have written about malaria and mosquito vectored diseases here.

I spent a day and a half on this essay — Apoorva Mandavilli at the Times writes one story every couple of weeks.   Maybe she has another job that I don’t know about.  But maybe she could have researched the history of malaria and determined that the study did not uncover yet another threat to humanity.

Mandavilli does at least include this caveat paragraph: “Some mosquito movement may also be because of changes in land use, the availability of food or a side effect of people migrating to higher elevations because of climate change, experts said. Still, disease-bearing mosquitoes are of serious concern in areas where people and institutions are unprepared.”  Or rapidly increasing African populations that just need somewhere to farm and live.

Thanks for reading.

# # # # #

Sabine Hossenfelder

Replacing fossil fuel with hydrogen seems like an ideal solution to make transportation environmentally friendly and to provide a backup for intermittent energy sources like solar and wind.

But how environmentally friendly is hydrogen really?

And how sustainable is it, given that hydrogen fuel cells rely on supply of rare metals like platinum and iridium?

In this video, we have collected all the relevant numbers for you.

00:00 Intro

00:49 Hydrogen Basics

03:39 The Hydrogen Market

06:04 The Colours Of Hydrogen

12:11 Water Supply

13:34 The Cold Start Problem

14:05 Rare Metal Shortages

15:55 Hydrogen Embrittlement

16:45 Summary

18:16 Protect Your Privacy with NordVPN

From Net Zero Watch

By Dr David Whitehouse, Science Editor

The Holocene – the time since the end of the last glaciation – which has witnessed all of humanity’s recorded history and the rise and fall of civilisations – began only 11,700 years ago. It is a relatively warm period, but how warm was it at its warmest? What happened in the past informs current climate models placing the current global warming into perspective.

There have been contrasting views on the warmth of the Holocene. Marcott et al (2013) says 0.8°C higher than the pre-industrial period, Lui et al (2014) says 0.5°C cooler. In general, recent CMIP6 models fail to cast much light on the so-called Holocene temperature conundrum.

In a new review of available data Kaufman and Broadman (2023) find a relatively mild thermal maximum, but say more research is needed to understand slow-moving climate variability. They looked at a large variety of natural processes operating in many settings which the researchers say do not all point in the same direction. The temperature probably peaked about 6,500 years ago about 0.5°C higher than when compared to 1850 – 1900, the warmth chiefly occurring in middle to high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. This is a curious finding as today’s more rapid warming also occurs predominately at high northern latitudes – Arctic Amplification.

Global Temperature relative to 1850-1900, from Kaufman and Broadman.

Europe’s Summer Hydroclimate

Looking less farther back Freund et al (2023) use tree ring data to examine the European summer hydroclimate back to 1600 and make some interesting findings.

The current analysis utilises widespread, long-term data sets spread over many centuries. Those familiar with the controversy of the “hockey stick” tree-ring analysis will know that tree-ring widths require statistical detrending, making it difficult to use them to reconstruct some aspects of low-frequency climate variability. Furthermore, tree-ring width data from European lowlands can display weak and ambiguous climate signals. In contrast, tree-ring stable isotopes are thought to be a more useful proxy as they can require less statistical processing,

One of the tree-rings used to establish Europe’s hydroclimate. Tree-rings allow precise dating into the past:The isotope ratios of carbon 12C to 13C and oxygen 18O to 16O in the cellulose of the tree trunk are indicators of drought or moisture at the time of tree growth.

There has been much debate about whether the European summer drought (2015–2019) was within the range of natural variability or is due to anthropogenic warming. Looking back at historical records suggests there has not been two consecutive summer droughts in central Europe in the previous 250 years. Also, an extensive tree-ring isotope record from the Czech Republic indicates that the recent drought was unprecedented in the last two millennia. Others have said that based on tree-ring records and reanalysis products, the recent drought is well within the range of natural variability is thus not unprecedented.

In the new study the researchers reconstructed European hydroclimate based on a network of tree-ring stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon ratios. The network combines up to 400-year long, annually resolved records of deciduous oaks from European lowlands and conifers from boreal and mountainous sites. This is the first time that stable isotope records from tree rings, with their so far untapped high climate reconstruction potential, are used to obtain a gridded spatial reconstruction of the European summer hydroclimate.

Solar Signature

They find three distinct phases and the possible signature of solar activity. Firstly, the years 1600 – 1652 had a wetter climate most apparent in west-central and north-west Europe. Secondly, shortly after the start of the Maunder Minimum (a period of low solar activity) drier conditions began that lasted two centuries affecting the Mediterranean, East and northern Europe. By the end of the Little Ice Age, about 1875, another change occurred. Central, northern Europe and the Mediterranean show milder summer conditions that prevailed until the 1950s.

There is a trend towards drier conditions in the second half of the 20th century with 2003 and 2006 being the driest years on record which the researchers say is unusual through not unprecedented. As for the 2015 – 2019 drought most of Europe experienced an unprecedented drought with moisture conditions very much below average and in some parts the lowest on record. At the same time however Scotland and parts of Scandinavia as well as Greece and Turkey experienced unusual wet conditions. The researchers conclude that whilst it seems that 2015 – 19 drought was unprecedented there might be evidence of longer and more severe droughts.

Anthropomorphic Influence

Another recent research report has scientists analysing 1,000-year old ice from Greenland. The Greenland Ice Sheet has a central role in the global climate system sometimes described as a potential tipping point due to its sudden collapse.

Greenland Ice Cap temperature; something happened in 1800?

Greenland’s coastal regions are warming but the researchers point out that the imprint of global warming in the central part of the ice sheet is unclear due to a lack of long-term observations. Ice-core based reconstructions are ambiguous and cannot separate global warming forcing from natural variability.

The researchers produced an ice- core from central Greenland from which they are able to deduce temperatures between AD 1000 – 2011. They find that by 2011 it is 1.5°C +/- 0.4°C warmer than the 20th century leading them to conclude that the anthropomorphic influence has reached central and northern Greenland, although confirmation is clearly needed.

Feedback: david.whitehouse@netzerowatch.com

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Net Zero Watch today condemned this so-called “Households Payment Mechanism” as deeply unfair to consumers, but utterly inadequate as help to industry.

It is reported that the so-called ‘British Industry Supercharger’ will cost each household about £3 to £5 per year, suggesting that the scheme will move about £80m to £130m of green energy costs from industry to households.

This is simultaneously deeply unwelcome for domestic consumers, who are struggling as it is with high energy bills, but trivially weak for businesses.

The measure is not expected to come into force until 2025, when the Office for Budget Responsibility expects levies to support fundamentally uneconomic renewable energy (such as wind and solar energy) to amount to £9 billion per year (and over £10 billion including the Feed-in Tariff for smaller generators).

This huge annual green surcharge is being paid by all energy consumers, with severely negative economic consequences.

The government’s support package for industry is trivial by comparison and seems designed simply to get a few good headlines in response to the bad news of more closures and job cuts in the steel industry.
Dr Benny Peiser, Director of Net Zero Watch said:

“As long as the UK continues to prioritise Net Zero over the national interest, energy security and economic competitiveness, Britain will lose the last traces of its industrial base, its prosperity and its global status.”

Dr John Constable, Net Zero Watch’s energy editor, said:

“The laughably named ‘British Industry Supercharger’ is nasty in principle but pathetically weak in practice. Instead of playing PR games, government needs to tackle the root cause of our energy problems, namely the wind and solar and biomass subsidies that are costing all consumers many billions per year. The green levies must be cut to the bone. We simply can’t afford them.”

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

 February 20, 2023 by oldbrew

An interesting (?) concept from renewables promoters here, partly to boost ‘innovative’ (generally expensive) technologies. We’re supposed to believe that bigger subsidies, or ‘fiscal incentives’, will lead to lower bills.
– – –
The energy sector is ramping up pressure on the government to bolster investment in green projects, with Renewable UK the latest to raise concerns the country could be overtaken by rivals such as the US and EU, reports City AM.

The industry body, which supports wind and tidal energy, has called on Downing Street to bring in fiscal incentives such as new capital allowances for renewable technology.

It also favours sustained supply chain investment in the UK to expand green jobs, and speeding up the planning process – with offshore wind developers waiting an average of five years for planning approval under current restrictions, and some projects taking up to a decade to secure a grid connection.

Onshore wind also remains effectively banned under current restrictions, even though projects could in theory take as little as a year to complete from development to generating, according to Renewable UK.

Alongside incentives, the group has urged the government to set sustainable prices for renewable electricity in in this year’s upcoming auction for clean power, which takes into account the effect of inflation on the rising cost of labour and raw materials.

Renewable UK argues these measures are essential for ensuring the UK can boost offshore wind generation in line with energy security targets, while commercialising innovative technologies like floating wind, tidal stream and green hydrogen.

Full report here.
– – –
For solar and wind, add ‘daylight and/or weather conditions permitting’.

Credit: City AM