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.
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says out of vanity and “wilful ignorance” Australia’s political class has decided to make people “poorer and weaker”.
“They’ve decided to get rid of our reliable electricity, electricity that used to be about the cheapest in the world, electricity that made us so rich, that let us set up smelters, and car plants, and factories of all kinds that gave us jobs,” Mr Bolt said.
“And they’re going to get rid of this cheap and reliable electricity without – and get this – without having anything reliable to replace it.”
Mr Bolt said the green projects by the government have “blown their budgets or are years behind”.
“It’s a farce, except there’s nothing funny about it. I mean look at your power bills, are you laughing? Look at the jobs already lost, is that funny?” he said.
“One green scheme after the other, failed or in strife, costing billions more than promised.”
In recent months, some demonstrators in Quebec have denounced what they consider government fear campaigns over COVID-19. The new measures included a mandatory rule on wearing masks during demonstrations. Sept. 2020 (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
John Hardie et al. dissect a recent publication attempting to whitewash blacken over suspension of citizens’ rights as well public health principles during the pandemic. Their Epoch Times article is Pandemic Performance Study Blatant Attempt to Justify Feds’ Actions? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The Public Health Agency of Canada study’s conclusions are a fantasy, quite divorced from reality
Rather than learning from the painful lessons of the past three years, it’s obvious that we’ve entered a post-pandemic phase of government-led alarmism.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)—including Theresa Tam—has published a study in a Canadian public health journal declaring that pandemic-inspired restrictions substantially reduced the impact of COVID-19 in Canada. “Counterfactuals of effects of vaccination and public health measures on COVID-19 cases in Canada: What could have happened?” asks us to believe an imagined story about what may have happened had Canada’s public health measures not been implemented.
However, the result is a counterfactual narrative of a fantasized Canada quite divorced from reality.
An elementary school in Montreal North is seen, Thursday, May 14, 2020 in Montreal. PHOTO BY RYAN REMIORZ /THE CANADIAN PRESS
Recent debate on the study’s findings has made it evident that Theresa Tam and her collaborators (“the authors”) are victims of common modelling pitfalls that have stripped their objectivity and, accordingly, affected the quality of their model and its output.
Instead of relying on modelling forecasts, the authors resort to “back-casting” to state “what may have happened” or “what could have been” had governments not acted on our behalf.
However, giving credence to such questionable results occurs all too often when sensational outcomes are observed. Unfortunately for any modelling study, the historical path—the one involving no interventions—was foreclosed the moment pandemic responses began. Neither the authors, nor anyone else, can ever observe the simultaneous response and non-response of Canada’s experience with COVID-19.
Quebec Premier François Legault says police in the province’s red zones — regions where COVID-19 cases are surging — will be issuing $1,000 fines to those who violate newly strengthened public health rules. With fees, those fines will top $1,500 and can be issued for gathering in private residences or protesting without a face covering.
Their most dramatic claim is that, without social restrictions and vaccines, up to 800,000 COVID-related deaths could have occurred. The figure below shows 12 years of all-cause mortality data in Canada (blue line), with the authors’ “worst case” superimposed (red line).
The figure shows 12 years of all-cause mortality data in Canada (blue line), with the authors’ “worst case” superimposed (red line).
For us, two things make the authors’ assertion incompatible with any reasonable view: one, there was no obvious increase in all-cause mortality between 2020 and 2021 that exceeded historical trends (blue line), and two, the death count of “up to 800,000 people” (red line) surpasses the number of Canadians killed in the 1918 influenza pandemic and two World Wars—combined. It begs the question:
Could an infection with a survival rate >99 percent really have been the single most devastating health event in a century? The reader can decide if they find these results plausible, or fantastic.
All models are unrealistic to a degree (although this is not a “fatal flaw”). However, models are only as good as the assumptions upon which they are based. Unfortunately, the authors have hung their results on assumptions that underestimate the acquisition, extent, and durability of natural immunity and that very likely overestimate early viral spread and the duration of vaccine-acquired immunity.
The authors also assume that the spread of infection dropped consistently with the stringency of closures and other social restrictions: when strict, transmission was low; when relaxed, transmission increased. However, there is evidence that these measures didn’t work “as advertised.” In many provinces, their effect may have plateaued by April 2020.
Stricter measures did not translate into a proportionately slower spread.
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the authors from forcing their model to respond as if they had. In their “worst case” scenario, large amounts of infection and disease are—conveniently—a foregone conclusion unless they get flattened by top-down government actions. The agency of Canadians and its bottom-up influences on transmission, such as people’s natural tendency to avoid contagion, are never considered.
Their least subtle omission was the failure to disclose conflicts of interest. While PHAC scientists might claim they only provide guidance on sub-national pandemic responses, the interests of many federal health-related agencies are certainly evident.
For example, the federal government’s purchase of COVID-19 vaccines preceded their approval by Health Canada, and some of the most restrictive measures imposed on Canadians (such as vaccine requirements for commercial travel) came from the federal level. As it happens, four of the authors are also directly employed by the federal government.
The study’s authors can hardly be viewed as not having competing interests in favourably evaluating pandemic policies.
All this leads us to wonder: was their article a genuine evidence-based analysis of government policies? Or, rather, a blatant attempt to justify these policies? To their credit, the authors admit that Canada’s response to the pandemic was imperfect and any unintended consequences need to be investigated. It will truly be a measure of the honesty and integrity of PHAC and their provincial partners if the latter is ever realized.
Footnote Quebec Covid Situation October 1, 2020
Note that testing has quadrupled since July and the number of new cases followed, especially in the last month. Meanwhile daily deaths are unchanged at less than five a day, compared to Quebec losing 186 lives every day from all causes.. Recoveries are not reported to the public, perhaps due to the large number of people testing positive but without symptoms or only mild illness and no professional treatment. The graph below estimates recoveries assuming that people not dying 28 days after a positive test can be counted as cured or in recovery.
Recoveries are the number of people testing positive (misleadingly termed “cases”) minus deaths 28 days later. Obviously, the death rate was high early on, and now is barely visible. Meanwhile the Positivity rate (% of people testing positive out of all subjects) went down to 1% for several months before rising recently. Since there is a lag of 28 days, we don’t yet see the outcome of the rise in positives along with the increased testing.
Houston Chronicle business columnist Chris Tomlinson said many of the obstacles to combatting climate change, especially in Texas, boil down to economics.
“’We fundamentally have to transform our economy in ways that are unimaginable to people who are over 40,’ Tomlinson said. ‘We have to cooperate, innovate and compromise, and most of all, we have to set aside our pride.’”
“[Tomlinson] said there is an unwillingness of pastors of all faiths to address climate change, knowing that many of their parishioners are involved in or invested in oil and gas.”
The Houston Chronicle business editorialist, Chris Tomlinson, is angry, impatient, and closed-minded when it comes to all things climate. A bona fide climate alarmist, he bullies the oil and gas industry to stop what they are doing. He wants Texans to stop eating meat to help save the planet. And he personally tells me in emails that I am not considered for his columns because I am critical about him (so be it).
Tomlinson sees little-to-no problem with wind and solar wounding the Texas grid, resulting in the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021. Far from being critical of dilute, intermittent, government-enabled wind and solar, he can hardly criticize what has personally made him, in wedlock, a millionaire.
Here is the latest on Tomlinson from an article by Annette Baird in the Texas Catholic Herald, “Now is the Time to Act to Protect the Planet, Advocates Say.” Reading the article below, consider what the Church of Climate is all about–Deep Ecology plus a ego-complex of controlling other people’s lives because they have the truth, the vision, of goodness.
Now is the time to act to protect the planet, advocates say BY ANNETTE BAIRD Herald Correspondent HOUSTON — Scientists and local leaders at recent Archdiocesan conference on environmental issues said the Church must do more to heed the call of Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical “Laudato Si’” to mitigate and prevent the dire consequences to human life stemming from climate change caused by human activity.
Quoting the encyclical, Daniel Cardinal DiNardo opened the event by emphasizing that the call to action and solidarity by all to be responsible for the care of “God’s handiwork is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
More than 100 people attended the “Faith in Action for Our Common Home” conference held at St. Dominic Center on Oct. 1. The Archdiocese’s first-of-its-kind conference was prompted by growing concern about the state of the environment in light of the pope’s seminal encyclical in which he calls on Catholics and non-Catholics unite to protect “our common home.”
Dr. Philip Sakimoto, director of the Minor in Sustainability at the University of Notre Dame, a keynote speaker, said if we don’t act now, we can expect more death and destruction from extreme weather events and massive migration as people seek to escape increasingly hostile environments.
Taking a theological approach, Sister Linda Gibler, OP, also a keynote speaker, said Catholics have a duty to take care of one another and the environment that God has created. Sister Gibler referred to “integral ecology,” the Church’s approach to tackling today’s ecological crisis by everyone working together to protect the planet. “When we care for creation, we are caring for the poor,” Sister Gibler said, noting that all are dependent for life on God’s gift of the natural world.
Sakimoto, who has attended Vatican events on the environment, also painted a dire picture with glaciers and polar ice caps melting at an accelerated rate, rising ocean temperatures and extreme weather across the globe, including the droughts and wildfires in the southern and western U.S. and recent Hurricanes Ian and Fiona. “We can expect more and more of these extreme weather catastrophes every year,” Sakimoto said. He added the cost, in terms of deaths, clean up, food shortages and migration will only increase, saying there could be an estimated 200 million asylum seekers by 2050.
The goal of the conference, organizers said, was to spotlight the Church’s moral obligation to make caring for the environment a priority. Panelists of everyday activists in Galveston-Houston called on Church leaders to make climate change a top issue, whether it’s in the homilies or supporting parishioners who want to take action and galvanize others into action in their parishes and personal lives. Living simply, conscientiously, and with concern for the impacts of our consumption and behavior on our neighbors and the natural world are core to leading a Christian way of life, they said.
Roger Ingersoll, a Catholic climate educator, said the biggest obstacles to addressing climate change are apathy and a lack of urgency. He said climate change that impacts all life should be the top priority of the U.S. bishops’ conference. One speaker, Sister Ricca Dimalibot, CCVI, spoke of the health threats to fetal life by air pollution, which affects the developing brains and lungs of unborn babies. “Climate change is a critical life issue,” Ingersoll said. “The Church needs to … be consistent about life.”
Deanna Ennis, director of construction and preventative maintenance for the Archdiocese, said she would like to see more urgency for combatting climate change from more priests and Church leaders. “We don’t hear about these issues in the pews — that’s pretty stunning,” Ennis said. “We have to learn, to educate, to act. We have to be willing to change.”
Enter Tomlinson
Houston Chronicle business columnist Chris Tomlinson said many of the obstacles to combatting climate change, especially in Texas, boil down to economics. He said there is an unwillingness of pastors of all faiths to address climate change, knowing that many of their parishioners are involved in or invested in oil and gas.
“We fundamentally have to transform our economy in ways that are unimaginable to people who are over 40,” Tomlinson said. “We have to cooperate, innovate and compromise, and most of all, we have to set aside our pride.”
———————–
While the situation is dire, Sister Gibler said they believe the window of opportunity is still open. “We have time to do something, but the time is now,” Sister Gibler said.
Sakimoto called on Catholic organizations across the globe to make a commitment to fight climate change by coming up with their own plan and putting it into action. He advocated for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, changing the means of energy production, switching to a plant-based diet, and buying less “stuff.”
Ennis said the Archdiocese is concentrating on energy efficiency in parishes and pointed out that all electric contracts now draw power from renewable sources. At the parish level, Ennis said staff and parishioners can reduce energy costs and create “care teams” to raise awareness.
Deacon Arturo Monterrubio and his wife Esperanza of St. Paul the Apostle in Nassau Bay were eager to take what they had learned and raise awareness in their Spanish-speaking church community about the desperate need to fight climate change and change habits. “This is an opportunity to make clear the message from the pope’s Laudato Si’ — read it, practice it, and respond to it,” Deacon Monterrubio said….
Sea surface temperature (SST) did not increase appreciably from 1951 to 1990.
1981 to 1990
with a marked increase in SST as underwater seismic activity increased
Most recent decade
increase in underwater seismic activity
there is a way to approximate how much, if any, CO2 has contributed to the warming
1) Quantify the change in atmospheric water vapor over the last 40 years
2) correlate that to the change in temperatures based on the increase of grams/kg of wv in the atmosphere
This is why I am so gung ho on water vaport (WV). THE MAJOR INCREASE SHOWS UP IN THE COLDEST DRIEST AREAS.
So if we can approximate the increase of WV ( we should have been tracking this religiously as it explains temperatures. Temperatures are a poor climate metric Wet bulb temperatures are much better and saturation mixing ratios are best) it will be able to explain much of the warming. What is left over is CO2
We have no correlation between CO2 and temperature.
We have water vapor and temperature ( saturation mixing ratio). We have been tracking the increase in CO2. It seems that makes little sense if you are not tracking the increase in water vapor since we can correlate it to temperature changes at different temperatures. We can not do that with CO2. So it leaves us with people pushing an agenda and not even showing the major elephant in the room.
It comes down to this, How much water vapor is in the air now compared to 40 years ago?
Once you approximate that, you then look at changes in temperature relative to that. Since for instance .1gram’/kg is correlated with a 10-degree rise at -40F. but it takes 90x more at 85 degrees, with the increase in water vapor having to be greater to affect temperatures the higher the temperature goes, one can figure out what the average increase grams/kg is across the planet and then apply it to the temperature. You can’t do that for CO2. No weather is driven by CO2.
The next logical step is to ask where the source of the WV is. It’s the ocean. Why are the oceans warming?
The answer that it is because of co2 makes no sense given we don’t even have a temperature correlation to it, Its assumed and force-fed down people’s throat without even adding in another natural cause, and one that I suspect is purposely ignored or dismissed because of what it may reveal.
Why should you not be skeptical of CO2 induced warming when 1) there is no attempt to quantify and correlate the increase in the most important GHG, water vapor?. 2) There is no attempt to explain the oceanic warming, other than blaming it somehow on the very CO2 that takes a back seat to Water Vapor in the first place.
So figure out the rise due to the ocean warming. There is no way that if the oceans were as cold as 40 years ago we would have had the warming we have had. I suspect whatever is leftover can arguably be attributed to man but would be so small it would blow the whole man-made climate change agenda out of the water
Which is what these underwater volcanoes, if we research them, may do in the first place.
Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting.
He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore.
His new book The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate war can be found here. phonyclimatewar.com
I have published three previous articles about New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) analyses related to New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). This post describes their new webpage that summarizes their activities “to design and implement the operations, planning and market enhancements necessary for the grid in transition.” It does a good job explaining some of the issues associated with a net-zero transition. The only thing left is to get New York policy makers to listen.
Background
The implementation plan for New York’s Climate Act “Net Zero” target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050 is underway. At the end of 2022 the Climate Action Council completed a Scoping Plan that makes recommends strategies to meet the targets. The Hochul Administration is developing regulations and proposing legislation to respond to those recommendations in 2023.
Unfortunately, the Scoping Plan is just a conglomeration of control strategies that are projected to provide the emission reductions required. The Plan did not do any feasibility analyses or address any “what if” questions raised by the NYISO. I have written three posts that described issues raised by NYISO, The first post (New York Climate Act: Is Anyone Listening to the Experts?) described the NYISO 2021-2030 Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP) report (appendices). The difficulties raised in the report are so large that I raised the question whether any policy maker in New York was listening to this expert opinion. The second post (New York Climate Act: What the Experts are Saying Now) highlighted results shown in a draft presentation for the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook that all but admitted meeting the net-zero goals of the Climate Act are impossible on the mandated schedule. The third article described the final version of the 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook. It shows that in order to minimize the storage and renewable over-build requirements that a Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) is needed but goes on to point out that DEFRs such as hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and small modular nuclear reactors are not commercially viable today. “DEFRs will require committed public and private investment in research and development efforts to identify the most efficient and cost-effective technologies with a view towards the development and eventual adoption of commercially viable resources.”
The NYISO oversees system reliability and the competitive electric market in New York. They are responsible for “keeping the lights on for New Yorkers by managing today’s energy flows and by planning the grid far into the future.” Frankly, with regards to the Climate Act transition they are in a very difficult position because New York’s Climate Act was written by climate activists who had a very poor understanding of the challenges of a transition to a zero-emissions grid. There are two options for the future. If the State comes to its senses and takes the work done by the NYISO to heart and chooses a path consistent with their recommendations, then NYISO will be characterized as obstructionists who just don’t understand that academics know better than anyone in the industry. If the State ignores their warnings and there is a catastrophic blackout, then they will be blamed for improperly implementing the vision of the academics. Either way they will be scapegoats.
Information for Policy Makers
The new website (pdf copy) is obviously designed to try to explain the complexities of electric system operations and planning for a non-technical audience. The documentation has three main sections: “Planning for Reliability”, “Wholesale Electric Markets”, and “Our Independence and Transparency”. Because the information is a useful overview, I will summarize each section below.
The Planning for Reliability section explains that the NYISO is responsible not only for the real-time matching of generation with load operations for the electric system, but also “planning far into the future to make sure the electric system and its interrelated components can meet customer demand.” The introduction concludes: “The acceleration of New York’s transition to a zero-emission grid is creating a system of new, intermittent generation, which benefits the environment but can make it more challenging to keep the system reliable.” So how does the website describe the challenges?
They explain that wind and solar are not dispatchable resources and are intermittent so energy storage is needed. They point out that the current energy technology is limited. The website goes on to explain:
The grid will always need sufficient flexible and dispatchable resources to balance variations in wind and solar resource output. These resources need to be long-duration, dispatchable, and emission-free. Essentially, they must have the attributes of fossil generators (responding quickly to rapid system changes) without the emissions. Such resources are not currently commercially available and may not be for many years.
This is a wind-up to make the point that:
The retirement of fossil-based resources is outpacing the development of new renewable-based resources and other dispatchable, emissions-free resources. The effect is that reliability margins will thin to concerning levels beginning in 2023, highlighting the need for a careful transition that maintains grid reliability and resilience.
I am a bit disappointed with this description. In order to really emphasize the risk involved it is necessary to understand the current reliability standards are the result of decades of experience and evaluation. The resulting standards have done a good job preventing blackouts. However, in the future there are potential issues because the standards are based on the presumption that the system is static. The unprecedented introduction of significant amounts of new intermittent and non-dispatchable resources changes things a lot. I don’t think this discussion explains how much riskier planning is becoming as a result.
This section also points out the importance of transmission. The fact is that New York City will never be able to produce enough electricity from in-City wind and solar so the power necessary will have to be transmitted from elsewhere. They are constraints on this transmission regionally and also locally where upgrades are needed to get the power from newly developed wind and solar projects. The website explains the transmission planning process and concludes: “A historic level of investment in the transmission system is currently underway, with projects that will deliver more clean energy to consumers while enhancing grid resilience and reliability”.
The website raises a little discussed aspect of the transition process. There is an interconnection procedure where the NYISIO determines if a proposed new resource will have reliability issues and whether transmission system upgrades are needed to address them. The website brags about the transparency of their process but does not bring up another uncertainty. In particular, the interconnection hardware for intermittent resources must be able to differentiate between power fluctuations caused by variable wind, for example, and transient power changes in the grid. If they don’t handle this correctly problems ensue. For example, the 2022 Odessa Texas disturbance illustrates the “need for immediate industry action to ensure reliable operation of the bulk power system with the ever-increasing penetrations of inverter-based resources”.
This section of the website concludes with a description of the planning process and “NYISO’s role in identifying system needs, and finding solutions, is part of the process of planning for the grid of the future.”
The next section, Wholesale Electric Markets, gives an overview of competitive wholesale electric markets. It is not surprising that they extoll the virtues of market-based solutions including consumer benefits because that is the basis for their existence. Nevertheless, it also is a useful overview of how the markets work.
In order to match the generation with the load the NYISO has three markets: the energy market, ancillary service market, and capacity market.
These three markets work together. In simple terms:
Energy markets secure resources to supply the demand on a minute-to-minute basis.
Ancillary service markets procure a variety of additional services to protect the electric system and balance supply and demand to meet system needs instantaneously.
Capacity markets provide incentives to generation resources to maintain additional energy reserves over a longer period. Through the capacity market, we determine how much capacity is needed to meet the expected peak demand for the year plus a margin of additional resources to call on, if necessary.
According to the NYISO website the wholesale market can support New York’s Climate Act goals. It states:
Competitive, wholesale markets can help with the transition to a zero-emission grid by sending the right economic signals to developers to invest in new technologies in the right geographic area to best serve the grid. These markets leverage competition to keep electricity as cost-effective and efficient for New Yorkers as possible, and to help make sure there are adequate resources in place in the future.
I disagree with the implication of the statements that “Competitive markets have over time created pressure on the generating fleet to switch to newer, more efficient generation plants” and “Since 2000, electric generators that primarily combust natural gas increased from less than 50% to more than 60% of the generating capacity in the state”. This is the same argument that proponents of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative make when they argue that emissions have come down significantly and insinuate that the emissions trading system was a primary factor in the emission reductions. The price of natural gas came down so much relative to other fuels that the generating fleet would have switched to newer, more efficient generating plants with or without the RGGI program. I believe that the conversions would have happened even without competitive markets.
I am disappointed with the following explanation how the market can support the Climate Act:
Additionally, the NYISO has implemented market enhancements to support climate goals and to position the NYISO as a national leader in competitive wholesale electricity markets. Through engagement with stakeholders and regulators, new market rules for energy storage integration, participation in our wholesale electricity markets by distributed energy resources, and new ancillary services products support reliability and minimize costs for consumers. Market rules that incentivize investment in resources that can respond rapidly to changing conditions will be essential for maintaining reliability of the grid of the future.
In my opinion, the transformation of the electric system that was built up over decades using dispatchable synchronous generating resources into a system that relies on a significant amount of intermittent, asynchronous generating resources is an enormous challenge. NYISO planners have to not only attempt to anticipate all the effects of all these changes to the electric grid but also try to design market rules that provide the resources needed. The addition of the market component should have been highlighted as a significant additional challenge to get a system that works.
The final portion of this section discussed electricity prices in the NYISO region.
The Our Independence and Transparency section explains how the NYISO was formed and how it operates. It provides a concise overview of the regulatory and reliability organization oversight requirements for any independent system operator. There is a description of the governance policies and budgeting.
They also emphasize their independence but there is some backstory here. At one point in the previous Mario Cuomo Administration, the current chairman of the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority, Richard Kauffman was Cuomo’s energy czar. In a filing to the Public Service Commission, the NYISO noted that in order to meet Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard, a predecessor regulation to the Climate Act, New York would have to install over 1,000 new miles of bulk transmission lines at great cost and effort. In response, , Richard Kauffman, accused NYISO Director Brad Jones and his NYISO report as “misleading, incomplete, and grossly inaccurate…revealing an alarming lack of developed analysis into the imperative to address climate change…” Kauffman’s letter accused Jones of protecting fossil fuel generators and said that he was “dismayed by [Jones’] public comments. Not long after that Jones left and ever since comments have been much more guarded. Kaufmann also authored a commentary for The Hill about a “carbon bubble” that claimed that government intervention will be necessary if the market response to climate change is delayed too long. In this political climate it is not surprising that all NYISO planning reports are carefully worded to not antagonize the Administration. In my opinion, however, the Administration needs to hear the unvarnished truth.
Discussion
The title for this webpage says it is information for policy makers. New York climate policy is driven by the Climate Act’s Climate Action Council. That body consists of 22 members that were chosen by ideology not expertise. Their contribution to the Climate Act implementation was the Scoping Plan that was approved last December. The Council only paid lip service to any pretense of addressing reliability concerns with the NYISO so even if this document had been available at the start of the Scoping Plan development process I doubt that the majority of the members would have read it, much less acted on the recommendations.
This year the Hochul Administration is pushing to implement the recommendations of the Scoping Plan either by new legislation or by proposing new regulations. When pressed about the lack of feasibility analyses in the Scoping Plan the Climate Action Council has said those concerns would be addressed in the regulatory process. I imagine the policy makers who are responsible for the new legislation and regulations are the target audience. Unfortunately, I fear their minds are already made up and the issues raised here will be ignored.
The summary for policy makers has several key messages that New York policy makers need to consider as they develop legislation and regulations. The state should not shutdown existing fossil-fuel generators until sufficient clean energy resource are available. A new resource is needed but is not ready for use and may not be available for “many” years so an emphasis on developing that resource must be a priority. Because New York’s fossil resources are retiring faster than new resources are coming on line there already are concerns about the reliability margin. Unprecedented upgrades to the transmission system will be required to get the power from wind and solar projects to New York City where it is needed the most.
Conclusion
I think this is a very useful overview of policy issues that the NYISO is considering relative to the implementation of the Climate Act. However, I am not optimistic that the target audience will consider these issues as implementation proceeds. In the political climate of Albany it is not clear how to get policy makers to consider the risks of ignoring the issues raised.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of over 250 articles about the Climate Act is also available. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
The collapse in Atlantic Right Whale numbers runs in parallel with the increase in the number of offshore wind turbines planted into their (once) natural environment: numbers declined from 480 to 340 whales between 2010 and 2022.
The collapse in Atlantic Right Whale numbers runs in parallel with the increase in the number of offshore wind turbines planted into their (once) natural environment: numbers declined from 480 to 340 whales between 2010 and 2022.
But, rather than putting a halt to the imminent and complete destruction of a charismatic seaborne mammal, the US government has given the wind industry a license to kill; known in the trade as an ‘Incidental Harassment Authorization’. Where ‘harassment’ means doing whatever is necessary to construct and operate giant industrial wind turbines offshore, up to and including killing whales in the process, and doing so with complete impunity.
To equate the wind industry with ‘environmentalism’ is a first-order error. But to grant them a state-sanctioned licence to destroy marine environments – along with the rare and endangered species that environment supports, is flat out criminal.
As Leighton Woodhouse and Michael Shellenberger point out, once upon a time, the protection of endangered species – like the North Atlantic Right Whale – was something that environmentalists took seriously. Now, not so much.
Why Environmentalists May Make This Whale Species Extinct Substack Leighton Woodhouse and Michael Shellenberger 30 January 2023
Since the passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, environmentalists have fought for strict protections for endangered species. They have demanded that the government apply what is known as the “precautionary principle,” which states that if there is any risk that a human activity will make a species extinct, it should be illegal.
And yet here we are, on the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, watching the whole of the environmental movement — from the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation to scientific groups like the Woods Hole Institute, New England Aquarium, and Mystic Aquarium — betray the precautionary principle by risking the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.
The cause of this environmental betrayal is massive industrial wind energy projects off the East Coast of the U.S. The wind turbine blades are the length of a football field. Sitting atop giant poles they will reach three times higher than the Statue of Liberty. The towers will be directly inside critical ocean habitat for the North Atlantic right whale.
There are only 340 of the whales left, down from 348 just one year earlier. So many North Atlantic right whales are killed by man-made factors that there have been no documented cases of any of them dying of natural causes in decades. Their average life expectancy has declined from a century to 45 years. A single additional unnatural and unnecessary death could risk the loss of the entire species.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has given the wind industry 11 “incidental harassment authorizations,” or permits to harass hundreds of whales, including 169 critically endangered right whales.
The industry will bring more ships into the areas that could strike and kill whales. Submarine noise pollution from the wind farm’s construction and operation, and entanglements in equipment, also add to the risk. So too could air turbulence generated by the turbines harm or destroy zooplakton feeding grounds.
Defenders of the wind projects say they can reduce and mitigate the noise and ship traffic from the wind farm construction, but a senior scientist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contradicted that claim last spring when he wrote in a letter that “oceanographic impacts from installed and operating [wind] turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project unless they are decommissioned.”
Scientists representing many of the same environmental groups supporting the industrial wind energy projects wrote in a 2021 letter that “the North Atlantic right whale population cannot withstand any additional stressors; any potential interruption of foraging behavior may lead to population-level effects and is of critical concern.”
Industrial wind projects “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species,” concluded the NOAA scientist, Sean Hayes. What are “population-level effects?” In a word: extinction.
What is going on? How is it that nearly every major conservation and environmental organization is actively championing industrial energy projects that could lead to the extinction of a whale species? Substack
Sperm whales: also covered by the government’s licence to kill.
It seems like all the smart people have made up their minds that the future of automobiles belongs to electric vehicles. In August 2022, California, by regulation, adopted a ban on gasoline-powered cars by 2035; and in September 2022, New York promptly followed with its own ban, also by regulation, and also set for 2035. And at the federal level, in 2021 the Biden Administration ordered that all agencies move toward 100% procurement of electric vehicles, also by 2035. Meanwhile, by means of a thicket of regulations — from vehicle mileage standards to pollution caps and more — the administration overtly seeks to force manufacturers to convert their lineups to EVs as fast as possible.
So, are electric vehicles about to sweep the country and become the dominant form of transportation? I bet against it. This is just a specific instance of the general principle that it is always wise to bet against central planning of the economy. EVs may be a successful niche product for a small number of wealthy consumers, but the idea that they will fully replace gasoline powered cars in short order is the dream of central planners, who think they can implement their dream by coercion. Central planning never works, and won’t work this time either. The reason is that the would-be central planners don’t know enough, and can’t ever know enough, to put together all the elements to make a fully functioning economic sector.
Mark Tapscott has an interesting piece today at PJ Media titled “Three Huge Reasons Why Electric Vehicles Will Never Dominate American Roads.” Tapscott’s reasons are all good ones, which I would summarize as (1) despite vast government subsidies and rebates, EVs are still far more expensive than gasoline-powered cars, (2) even with greatly increased sales, the existing gasoline-powered cars will not go away and will still be on the road and the dominant vehicles in 2035 and even 2050, and (3) the increased amounts of necessary minerals for the batteries, from lithium to nickel to cobalt, are never going to materialize. Key quote:
[All the] federal tax credits are available to help obscure the fact that EVs remain extremely costly for consumers and offer unproven maintenance and reliability records. No wonder that, despite the immense pressure being put upon consumers to buy EVs, they still only make up about seven percent of all new-vehicle purchases.
Let me generalize from that. The current automotive sector of the economy represents thousands of elements coming together via private markets to satisfy customer demand. Each of the elements falls into place because someone perceives an opportunity to make money by providing that element. As just one example, gas stations don’t exist because the government ordered them up, but because entrepreneurs perceived that they could make money by building the stations and buying the pumps and making gasoline available at that location at a price that would cover all costs and allow for a profit.
Contrast that to what is now supposed to happen for electric vehicles. The government is allegedly going to be paying for some half a million charging stations around the country. Maybe that’s happening, but I don’t notice any of them around where I live. And why does the government have to do this? If the demand were there, entrepreneurs would already be installing the stations. It turns out that the stations are quite expensive to construct (at least the “fast charging” variety), and then you can’t really mark up the electricity that has to be purchased from the local utility. So it has to be done with government subsidy.
And in the next step, the same thing happens with the charging stations that happens with every other government-ordered business: the stations break down, and since no one makes more money to be sure they keep running, they don’t get fixed. Among many, many articles on this subject, here is one from August 2022 at The Verge, headline “Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software.”
JD Power surveyed 11,554 electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid vehicle owners from January through June 2022 for its second annual Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study. Despite big growth in the number of public EV chargers in the US, EV owners say the overall experience still sucks.
Well, check out the state of elevator operations or plumbing in the New York City Housing Authority projects. This is how socialism works.
Similarly, who has the incentive to be sure that there is sufficient electricity on the grid to recharge all the EVs when the owners want to charge them? In the gas car arena, oil companies make big money by finding and refining and delivering the product to the places where the customer wants to buy it. Over in the EV arena, the same jurisdictions like New York and California that presume to order up an all EV fleet also organize their grid on a central planning/regulated price model. Reliable fossil fuel power plants are ordered to be closed, and replaced with intermittent wind and solar generation. The all-knowing regulators then order that everything shall be electrified, and somewhere the little people are supposed to respond and make it happen, without any appropriate economic incentive. We shall see.
Inside EVs on January 18 reports that EVs had a big increase in sales and market share in the U.S. in 2022, going all the way to a 5.8% market share, after only a 3.1% share in 2021. The article somehow omits to mention how much of the sales increase was driven by the latest rounds of massive government subsidies. I have no doubt that the 5.8% can increase somewhat further over the next few years, particularly as government subsidies turn into a gusher. But ultimately a successful economic sector requires market incentives at all levels of the food chain. EVs don’t have that, and they almost certainly never will — except in the highly unlikely event that consumers suddenly decide that the advantages of EVs are so great that they are willing to pay double and more for a car. I’ll place a solid bet that market penetration of EVs will stall out at a low level well before 2035.
If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).
Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced,but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.
CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense.
This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.
I have a particular interest in Reuters’ attitude because I spent 32 years there as a reporter and editor. The global news agency’s traditional insistence on high standards in reporting makes this liaison with CCN seem questionable.
When Reuters announced its tie-up with CCN in 2019 it said this, among other things.
The (CCN) coalition, which includes more than 350 organisations [there are many more now] has no agenda beyond embracing science and fair coverage and publishing more climate change content.
That is clearly not true. It has a partisan agenda and encourages reporters to dismiss those with contrary opinions as ‘deniers’.
The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.
When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.
My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.
My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.
Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.
The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.
The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty.
They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.
Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.
New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith is outraged by the ever growing whale death toll, that coincides with rapidly increasing offshore wind development. He has introduced a much needed bill calling for an investigation of the impact assessment practices of those federal agencies that approve and oversee OSW.
Smith’s Bill is short but sweeping. It requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—commonly known as the congressional watchdog—to investigate the sufficiency of the federal environmental review process for “offshore wind projects, including the impacts on whales, other marine mammals, commercial and recreational fishing, air quality and greenhouse gas emissions, vessel traffic, tourism, and the sustainability of shoreline beaches and inlets.”
Smith’s press release puts it this way: “As part of a full-court press for answers, my legislation will investigate the level of transparency from federal agencies that green-lighted this aggressive offshore wind development and determine how much scrutiny was implemented in reviewing the environmental and maritime safety of this project, especially given its unprecedented size and scale.”
In the crosshairs are the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which does the environmental impact assessments, and NOAA Fisheries which is supposed to protect the whales and other sea critters.
I have already reported on at least three glaring impact assessment procedural gaps in prior articles, as follows. Hopefully GAO will flag them.
First, BOEM failed to conduct an environmental impact assessment for the OSW leasing program, or for any of the many specific leases it granted. Extensive development activity was certain to occur, especially the sonar site surveying now implicated in the mounting whale deaths.
Second, NOAA Fisheries failed to conduct environmental impact assessments when it approved massive and potentially deadly harassment of huge numbers of whales and other marine mammals. Each sonar survey and construction approval actually estimates the number of critters in each species that is likely to be adversely effected. What the likely impact of these effects, especially panic, stress and/or deafness, might be has never been assessed.
Third, BOEM’s environmental impact assessments of these huge OSW projects to date are incredibly inadequate. For example they consistently fail to address the impact of operational noise. Nor is there any consideration of the cumulative impact of the thousands of monster wind turbines now in the approval pipeline.
The assessment requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act are based on what is “reasonably likely”. If an agency action is reasonably likely to have an environmental impact then that impact must be assessed. The impacts to be assessed are those that are reasonably likely to occur. It is a two step standard.
It is obvious that leasing an area for offshore wind development is reasonably likely to lead to such development, which certainly has reasonably likely environmental impacts. So assessment of those impacts should have been done prior to leasing.
It is likewise obvious that authorizing the noise harassment of thousands of whales and other marine mammals is reasonably likely to adversely affect them, so those effects should be assessed prior to authorization. This is true for sonar survey noise, construction noise (especially pile driving) and operational noise.
Moreover, NEPA is clear that when multiple agency actions are contemplated, as part of an overall program like offshore wind development, the cumulative impact of these actions must also be assessed. For example, last year NOAA Fisheries issued 12 separate authorizations for harassment of large numbers of whales and other marine mammals.
GAO is normally scrupulously apolitical when it comes to investigating or evaluating agency programs. The study Smith is proposing is desperately needed, so here’s hoping his bill becomes law.
Instead of blubbering on about climate change, maybe the Scottish government should be helping Malawi to build a reliable electricity grid, based on fossil fuels.
Scotland is one of the first countries in the world to stump up cash for “loss and damage” caused by climate change in poorer countries.
When torrential rains came to the village of Mambundungu in Malawi, people’s homes were washed away but that was not the worst of it.
The flood waters were infested with crocodiles. Children were carried away by them. It was terrifying.
Eventually, in 2015, the villagers couldn’t take any more and moved their entire community to higher ground.
Then the new village began to flood too.
Malawi in southern Africa has been hard hit by the effects of climate change
But it is one of the poorest countries in the world and struggles to pay for the measures needed repair the damage.
That’s where the Scottish government has stepped in, promoting the notion that rich nations should help pay for the damage from climate change in less developed countries.
As we know, deforestation leads to increased rainfall runoff, siltation and floods down valley.
The World Resources Institute studied the problem in 2017, writing:
Nearly a year ago, the New York Times ran a devastating story about the deforestation crisis in Malawi and its impact on residents of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. Illegal cutting of nearby forests was causing water shortages and disrupting the city’s hydroelectric power supply, forcing the government to deploy soldiers to protect the forests. The root of this problem was Malawi’s dependence on wood for meeting energy needs―more specifically, charcoal. Nearly 97 percent of Malawian households depend on wood or charcoal for cooking or heating. Even in urban areas, 54 percent of households use charcoal (a product of wood) for cooking. But there are only so many trees.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa, where electricity is an uncommon luxury and subsistence farming is the norm. With seemingly few options and climate change adding uncertainty, the situation depicted in the New York Times article seemed hopeless.
Instead of blubbering on about climate change, maybe the Scottish government should be helping Malawi to build a reliable electricity grid, based on fossil fuels.
Sky News Australia
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