Day: March 30, 2023

From CFACT

By Rupert Darwall

As regular as the turn of the seasons, each January sees Larry Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, publish a lengthy letter on the state of the world and its implications for finance and investors. This year, January turned to February, and still no letter. Instead, February saw Tim Buckley, CEO of Vanguard, global number-two asset manager, give a groundbreaking interview explaining Vanguard’s decision late last year to quit the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, which had been formed ahead of the 2021 Glasgow climate conference to reallocate capital in line with net zero emissions targets.

“It would be hubris to presume that we know the right strategy for the thousands of companies that Vanguard invests in,” Buckley told the Financial Times, adding that Vanguard was “not in the game of politics.” He warned investors against expecting superior returns from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing.”

Writing five days later in the Wall Street Journal, Terrence Keely, former BlackRock executive and author of Sustainable, zeroed in on the conflict of interest highlighted by Vanguard’s departure from NZAM and NZAM’s net zero goal.

Swept along by climate-change fervor, an investment manager “can’t make such commitments without reneging on its fiduciary duties,” Keeley argued. Membership of an alliance committed to achieving net zero demands clairvoyance that no investment manager can promise.

“If Mr. Buckley is right, then hundreds of other financial institutions with trillions of assets under management are wrong”—Keeley’s unstated implication being that if Vanguard is right, BlackRock is also wrong.

When it came earlier this month, Fink’s 2023 letter colored in the new investment climate adumbrated by BlackRock’s chief competitor. Whereas Fink’s 2021 letter to CEOs mentioned net zero 22 times and his 2022 letter, nine times, net zero was referred to only once this year—and then, only in passing (“European governments are also developing incentives to support the transition to a net zero economy and drive growth.”) Similarly, mentions of ESG have fallen from ten in 2021, to one last year, to none this year. How times have changed.

Two years ago, BlackRock made a blunt demand of the companies that it invests in: “We are asking”—that’s an instruction; you can hardly say no to the world’s largest investor—“companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy.”

This hasn’t been entirely walked back. BlackRock, Fink says, has been vocal in the past about companies disclosing how they plan to navigate the energy transition, but the tone now is softer and less vocal. It is not the role of an asset manager like BlackRock to engineer a particular outcome in the economy, Fink writes, and it’s not its place to tell companies what to do.

Forswearing the clairvoyance that Keeley criticizes, Fink says that BlackRock doesn’t “know the ultimate path and timing of the transition,” a position that is not as crystalline as Buckley’s but is hard to reconcile with BlackRock’s continued membership of NZAM. Had this been BlackRock’s position two years ago, it would have been noisily condemned by climate activists and BlackRock would have been accused of sabotaging the Glasgow climate conference. So far, there has scarcely been a murmur. The world is quietly moving on from net zero.

So have BlackRock’s priorities.

Whereas climate rates five mentions this year, compared with 27 two years ago, there are 122 mentions of clients—over four times the number in the BlackRock Global Executive Committee’s “Dear Clients” letter two years ago. Even more revealing is the change in the number of mentions of trust and fiduciary.

There are 21 mentions of trust this year and one in the 2021 letter. That letter, billed “Net zero: a fiduciary approach,” contained only one other mention of fiduciary, a lapse that bears out Keeley’s argument on the incompatibility of imposing climate targets on asset portfolios and investment managers discharging their fiduciary duties.

Fink’s emphasis has changed, too. Two years ago, Fink compared climate change with the Covid pandemic as an existential threat exposing the fragility of society.

This year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heightened geopolitical tensions bring national and economic security “front and center.” In the short term, making supply chains more resilient is highly inflationary, Fink writes, and it’s fair to say that Fink doesn’t believe that the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation. “I believe inflation is more likely to stay closer to 3.5 percent or 4 percent in the next few years.”

The crisis that Fink highlights in this year’s letter is not a climate crisis, but a silent crisis of people not saving and investing sufficiently for their retirement. Results of an Edelman Trust Barometer survey asking whether people thought their families would be better off in five years were at an all-time low in 24 out of 28 countries.

“When people are afraid, they may save, but they won’t invest,” Fink observes.

“We need leaders today who will give people reasons to be hopeful, who can articulate a vision for a brighter future.”

Amen to that. It’s high time to end talk about existential crises to be addressed with extraordinarily costly measures that make people poorer, weaken national and economic security and, instead, turn attention to tackling soluble problems with positive solutions.

Author

• Rupert Darwall
• Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

From Daily Caller

By JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Tuesday that the House GOP would investigate the funding sources of “radical environmental groups” that he alleged abused environmental regulations to limit U.S. energy production at a panel hosted by the America First Policy Institute.

“Follow the money, which countries are benefiting by shutting down American production?” asked Scalise.

“There’s some bad actors around the world. But if you look at what they do they’ll … abuse the Endangered Species Act and then go to the [Environmental Protection Agency], they’ll go to the [Army] Corps of Engineers. And they’re gaming the system to kill a project that takes you seven, eight years to get the permit.”

Several prominent environmental groups, including The Sierra Club and the World Resources Institute, have well-documented ties to foreign funding sources.

Several high-level staff at the Chinese office of the National Resource Defense Center (NRDC), a prominent environmental group that has connections with the Biden administration, either previously worked for the Chinese government or left the NRDC to take up a position with the government, according to an investigation by Fox News. The organization told Fox that U.S.-based executives have final say regarding any policy positions it took, even those in China.

In February, the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit with links to China, received roughly $750,000 from the Biden administration to “create a roadmap” for electric vehicle electrification infrastructure in California. RMI was a co-author of the December 2022 study that motivated the Biden administration’s consideration of a ban on gas stoves.

In June 2022, a coalition of environmental groups sued to block a Wyoming oil drilling project using the novel argument that the process would release carbon dioxide, which would harm endangered species around the world, according to The New York Times.

Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has previously said he would support investigations into alleged relationships between environmental groups and foreign entities like China, according to Axios.

Scalise’s comments came after Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas questioned the “political ping pong” of successive Democratic and Republican administrations denying and approving permits for infrastructure projects.

A streamlined permitting process for energy infrastructure — including green energy projects — has been a core component of the GOP’s pitch for its major energy package, known as H.R. 1 or the Lower Energy Costs Act. (Inflation Reduction?

Dems’ Climate Spending Spree Could Cost $1.2 Trillion, Analysts Say)

“The Obama administration pulled the lease on the Twin Metals project, the Trump administration put it back in place,” said Westerman, referencing a proposed mine in Minnesota. “The Biden administration pulled the lease … What does that signal to investors? … It’s death by a thousand cuts. But that mine in Minnesota has the largest deposit of cobalt, it has nickel, platinum and palladium and copper, and with all the money in the [Inflation Reduction Act] and everything, the left’s looking at creating a non-carbon economy, that mine is absolutely essential, yet they pulled the lease on it.”

Scalise’s office did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Bill McKibben. Screenshot from Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”

McKibben believes the reason the IPCC’s increasingly frantic climate warnings are being ignored is people don’t believe they can make a difference.

Climate change is the legacy of people over the age of 60. That’s why we must protest

Bill McKibben
Tue 28 Mar 2023 00.38 AEDT

I’m proud to be part of Third Act, a climate activist organization for people over the age of 60

The brutal truth is that last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report didn’t have the effect it should have had, or that its authors clearly intended. Produced by thousands of scientists who synthesized the work of tens of thousands of their peers over the last decade, and meticulously drafted by teams of careful communicators, it landed in the world with a gentle plop, not the resounding thud that’s required.

In China, the world’s biggest emitter, official attention was focused instead on Moscow, where Xi Jinping was off to do a little male bonding with fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin, incidentally the world’s second largest producer of hydrocarbons. In America, the historical emissions champ, we were riveted by the possibility that would-be autocrat Donald Trump might be indicted. In the New York Times, our planet’s closest thing to a paper of record, the IPCC report was the fourth story on the website.

The reason, I think, is a disconnect between the dire words of the report and the actions most people feel they can effectively take. If the world has begun to fall off a cliff – due, as the report says, to a lack of political commitment – then installing a heat pump in your basement seems like a useful gesture but also not enough. “The climate timebomb is ticking,” the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said. If a bomb is about to go off, you need to actually do something.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/27/older-people-climate-protest-banks-ipcc

“It landed in the world with a gentle plop” – I wish I’d thought of that line.

The problem is not the disconnect between the words of the report and the actions people feel they can take. The problem is the disconnect between the IPCC and their credibility.

For more than 30 years we’ve been listening to the United Nations and other tax money guzzling organisations try to scare us with imaginary climate hobgoblins, ozone holes, acid rain, it’s a long list of utter nonsense.

If the IPCC wants to make more than a “gentle plop” in the world with their apocalyptic but widely ignored pronouncements, they need to start getting some predictions right.

CDN

Dr. John Robson comments on key items from the latest Climate Discussion Nexus weekly “Wednesday Wakeup” newsletter (https://climatediscussionnexus.com/ne…, from polls showing that people are scared and demoralized by climate alarmism supposedly justifying climate alarmism to campaigners for high energy prices complaining about Britons being forced to eat turnips by high energy prices to Ontarians losing their shirts on wind power, the Canadian government being unable to plant trees and a suspicious “Fact Check” of CNN for publishing inconvenient truths, the U.S. government making carbon emissions central to all policy at least rhetorically, the West being so spoiled by affluence it thinks it can trash its energy heritage and stay rich, Al Gore ranting about droughts in Davos, a plant physiologist saying hey, warmer weather was great for Canadian farmers and more CO2 helping plants in China again.

From Watts Up With That?

While wind and solar power are taking a larger piece out of a growing world primary energy pie, fossil fuels are expected to have more absolute growth through 2050.

#energy #oilgas #oilandgas #renewableenergy #solarenergy #windenergy

By: Leen Weijers, VP Engineering, Liberty Energy

As Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright explained in his viral video a few weeks ago, dishonest terminology surrounds the climate debate.  One of these terms is “Energy Transition”.  The term’s use gives the impression that there exists a quick, easy and scalable alternative to eliminate fossil fuel use without serious impact on people. 

Current primary energy distribution by source, and forecasts by organizations like the EIA in their International Energy Outlook 2021, show that this “energy transition” is non-existent.  As you can see in the title graph above, and also in Liberty’s ESG report on Bettering Human Lives, no present quantity of primary energy generated by oil or gas is currently replaced by renewables.  A couple of headlines from the report that you don’t hear a lot:

• Global primary energy use is about to grow by almost 50% between 2020 – 2050 as impoverished people rise from poverty;
• Oil consumption rises in all EIA scenarios. In their “Reference Scenario”, oil consumption rises at about 1 million bopd/year for the next 30 years, almost the same steady yearly increase of the last 5 decades;
• Natural gas consumption will continue to growth through 2050.

The reason for this growth is simple: fossil fuels are abundant, cheap and efficient to provide reliable and dense energy at scale.  They have helped to generate a quality-of-life revolution for a portion of humanity, and people in poverty who have missed out on this blessing rightfully want what you and I already have.

Sadly, few report on this blessing we take for granted. Good news about renewables breaking records, however, is widespread and often inflated.  There are a few marketing strategies renewable advocates have used that make it appear as if renewables have a larger market share than they really have:

First, using the word “energy” or “power” when they mean “electricity”.  Take this Reuters report as an example: “Renewable energy is expected to account for around 46% of German power consumption this year….” This sounds like Germans are running on renewables for almost half of their energy needs.  But this is JUST for electricity.  According to the BP Statistical Review and graphed below by OurWorldInData.org for world electricity vs primary power, worldwide electricity represents only 17% of all primary power.  That’s also where is currently stands in Germany. In 2021, Germany’s top three primary energy sources were oil, natural gas and coal. 

Second, reporting renewable records without mentioning they only last a short time.  As an example, this article boasts renewables powering 85% of Germany’s electricity needs.  But like the electricity primary power sources reported in the plot below reported by Timera Energy, records in wind and solar don’t last very long, and there are times when they don’t provide anything at all.  Fossil fuels are there to back them up – you are welcome.  Energy reliability is a marathon, not a sprint.

Third, reporting power capacity, not energy output. Renewables really shine using this metric because they don’t work most of the time.  If you have ever spent time in western Europe, you will know that the sun there, like most Europeans, only has a 32-hour work week, while it gives little heads up when it will show up. 

What to do during the remaining 136 hours that week?

You need to build a lot of power capacity to harvest a little energy.  As per BP Statistical Review, the world capacity factor is only 14% for solar and 26% for wind.  Therefore, if you see a historical power capacity growth curve, divide the solar curve’s slope by 7 and the wind curve’s slope by 4 to get energy output.  Consumers pay for MWh, not MW.

Lastly, lumping in “traditional biofuels” to boost the share of renewables as part of total energy needs.  These traditional biofuels kill millions of people yearly through PM2.5 particle release during indoor cooking.  If there is a “transition” humanity needs ASAP, it is the transition from the traditional renewable cooking fuels to clean-burning fossil cooking fuels.

These unfair reporting methodologies have led to confusion and a belief that an “Energy Transition” is currently in the making.  It is not.

The EIA primary energy forecast for the next 30 years shows that ALL sources of energy are growing. While renewables claim a larger fraction of a growing pie, fossil fuels are expected to grow faster in absolute terms.

Recently, a spark of sanity has returned to the debate about nuclear power.  For a reliable, cost-effective, low-carbon and scalable energy transition, we need to take the path proposed by Robert Bryce in his book Power Hungry. 

In the near-term, we need more natural gas, which reduces our CO2 footprint and is cheap, reliable and abundant. 

For the long-term, we need to build nuclear energy, hopefully eventually nuclear fusion. Before that, let’s hope a spark of sanity returns to the discussion about the “Energy Transition”.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article by the BBC reports on a new study from researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) who used historical documents to determine that trees in the region have experienced a nearly month long expansion of their growing season when compared to the 19^th century. This is not surprising. Copious amounts of research and hard data show also show that plant life in general is benefitting from additional atmospheric CO2 and modest warming.

The article, “Climate change: trees grow for extra month as planet warms – study,” describes an OSU study, which is partially based on notes taken by an Ohio farmer between 1883 and 1912. The farmer kept detailed records of meteorological data and tree growth on his property from season to season.

The lead author of the study then recorded data from the farmer’s hometown between 2010 and 2014 and compared contemporary hardwood tree growth to the farmer’s notes, coming to the conclusion that leaves stay on the trees 15 percent longer than they did in the 19^th century. This equates to about an extra month of growth.

The BBC writes that the “implications of the longer growing period are unknown,” but also that since trees take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, “the researchers said a longer growing period probably meant they did more of that.”

The results of the study should come as no surprise to those who have paid attention to the data on plant growth trends.

According to satellite data from NASA’s Vegetation Index, the Earth’s vegetation cover has increased over the last twenty years. Depending on what statistical analysis method is used, as explained in a Climate Realism post, here, the greening over the past twenty years is between 5 and 10 percent globally. (See Figure below)

Figure 1 16 day NVDI data plotted with a 1 year moving average by Zoe Phin, source: https://phzoe.com/2021/03/08/accurate-global-greening/

In addition, a 2020 study by Harvard et al describes how the present greening trajectory alone will offset 17 years of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide by 2100, and that about 70 percent of post-1980s greening is being caused by carbon dioxide fertilization. Another study found that the Sahara desert has shrunk by about 8 percent over a similar timeframe.

The greening of the Earth is good for human beings and animals, alike. This is especially true in major crop growing regions, where additional CO₂ fertilization has contributed to increasing production and yields of important crops, as Climate Realism has shown here, here, and here, among many other posts.

Seemingly unable to end a story about climate change on a positive note, the authors of the BBC story and the researchers caution that “higher, fluctuating temperatures may also stress trees in ways so far unknown.”

The ways are “so far unknown,” because despite more than hundred years of warming, evidence of dangerous stress has not materialized, but the benefits certainly have.

The BBC struggled to generate an alarmist message with this story, because the net impact of additional atmospheric CO₂ and modest warming over a long period of time has largely been beneficial to plant life, trees included, not harmful. Available data proves that extended growing seasons have been and will continue to be good for forest growth, as well as vital crop production around the world. The OSU research team and BBC reporters should not try to throw a wet blanket on the findings of this study, which only reinforces what previous research has shown about the benefits of climate change to plant growth.

Linnea Lueken

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”

Linnea Lueken

From Watts Up With That?

By Renee Hannon

This post examines how present global surface temperatures compare to the past 12,000 years during the Holocene interglacial. The AR6 IPCC climate assessment report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, by Working Group 1 states in their Summary for Policymakers section A.2.2:

“Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years (high confidence). Temperatures during the most recent decade (2011–2020) exceed those of the most recent multi-century warm period, around 6500 years ago [0.2°C to 1°C relative to 1850–1900] (medium confidence). Prior to that, the next most recent warm period was about 125,000 years ago, when the multi-century temperature [0.5°C to 1.5°C relative to 1850–1900] overlaps the observations of the most recent decade (medium confidence).”AR6

Paleoclimate proxy data records have low temporal resolution.

Comparing present instrumental data to the past is no small task. Temperature data during the Holocene and older are indirect measurements based on proxies. Scientists have compiled and extensively analyzed these proxy data covering the past 10,000 years. The datasets contain 100’s of records and include terrestrial, marine, lake, and glacial ice proxy data, to name a few.

Unfortunately, lake and marine proxy data are smoothed due to sediment mixing and uncertain age control. Smoothing of paleoclimate proxy data also occurs due to averaging of multiple data types together which destroys higher frequency decadal data (Kaufman and McKay, 2022). Hence, proxy data during the Holocene is multi-century at best, representing an average temperature smoothed over a couple hundred years.

The IPCC statement above is correct but can be misleading. They compare decadal average temperatures to multi-century average proxy data. To better understand how modern temperatures compare to the past, one can either deconvolve past proxy data or smooth present instrumental temperatures to produce a similar temporal resolution comparison.

Kaufman and McKay, 2022, wrote a technical note comparing multi-century present and future temperatures to the past. They used the average of instrumental data plus AR6 model projections to show global mean temperatures of about 1 deg C during a 200-year period from 1900-2100 shown in Figure 1. These averages include 120 years of present instrumental data and 80 years of future modeled projections. The pre-industrial baseline is defined by the IPCC as the average global temperature during 1850-1900.

Figure 1. Global surface temperature from instrumental data used by the IPCC consists of 4 datasets (Hadcrut, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, Kadow) shown in black from Trewin, 2022. Global temperature projections using three emissions scenarios (low, intermediate, and high) from AR6 also shown. The length of the dashed line indicates the period over which data were averaged. All datasets have been calibrated to a 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline. After Kaufman and McKay, 2022.

Instrumental temperature data have been around since 1850, about 170 years. These data are closely approaching a bicentennial timescale. To note, pre-1950 HadCRUT instrumental data is considered lower quality due to sparser data coverage and increased noise (McLean, 2018). Since IPCC scientists use simple averages for comparison to the past, then averaging instrumental data should also be considered as a present base case. Using the IPCC’s instrumental dataset, a simple average for the last 170 years shows a global temperature anomaly of a whopping 0.3 deg C, uncertainty range of 0.1, above the pre-industrial baseline shown in Figure 1.

Smoothing instrumental temperature during the last century and a half allows for a truer comparison to smoothed multi-century proxy data. This smoothed instrumental data is 70% cooler than the 1 deg C represented by present plus future temperature means over a 200-year period. Annual global instrumental temperatures have only been slightly at or above 1 deg C for about one decade. That’s not even close to being a multi-century comparison to the past.

A More Valid Comparison of the Present to the Past

Using instrumental data without adding in uncertain future modeled projections seems to be a better way to compare present temperatures to the past. Nobody knows how accurate model projections are especially considering the debates about their track record of not matching observed temperatures and past proxy data. A smoothed instrumental average for comparison to the past is absent in the AR6 report and never established, mentioned, or recognized by the IPCC. Figure 2 shows the 170-year instrumental temperature average (small black square) compared to past proxy data during the Holocene.

Figure 2: Millennial global surface temperature ranges from proxy data over the Holocene. Temperature 12k data from Kaufman, 2020. Data are calibrated to a 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline. Instrumental data represents less than 1.5% of the past 12,000 years.

The Holocene climatic optimum (HCO) occurred 6000-7000 years ago with the warmest 200-year long interval estimated at 0.7 deg C with an uncertainty range of 0.3 to 1.8 deg C according to extensive proxy data compiled by Kaufman, 2020. An earlier proxy study by Marcott, 2013, shows an HCO temperature mean of 0.8 deg C with a two-standard deviation of 0.3 above the pre-industrial period. Marcott also confirms that proxy records completely remove centennial variability, and no variability is preserved at periods shorter than 300 years in his reconstruction. Andy May also performed a Holocene global reconstruction using proxy data here. His reconstruction shows an HCO of 0.85 deg C above the pre-industrial baseline and over 1 deg C warmer than the coldest time of Little Ice Age. Figure 3 shows the 170-year instrumental temperature average compared to the HCO temperature of these reconstructions.

Chemical, biological, and physical data supports a warmer Holocene past. A mid-Holocene climatic optimum is supported by pollen records which show expanded grass and shrub vegetation in the African Sahara, increased temperate forest cover in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes and boreal forest instead of tundra in the Arctic (Thompson, 2022). Glacier and ice cap fluctuations from lake studies in the Arctic were smaller than present or absent during the early and mid-Holocene (Larocca, 2022). Both Javier Vinos, 2022, and Kaufman, 2023, have a thorough discussion of empirical evidence at different latitudes supporting a warmer past mid-Holocene.

Figure 3: Histogram of proxy temperature reconstructions in gray showing the warmest temperature of the Holocene compared to the multi-century average of instrumental data in red. Error bars shown by black line. All temperature deltas are from the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period. No climate model data is included.

Even the IPCC states that around 6500 years ago temperatures ranged from 0.2°C to 1°C warmer relative to 1850–1900 pre-industrial period. Therefore, the present global temperature 170-yr average is mostly cooler than the past Holocene climatic optimum 6500 years ago. As a matter of fact, the present average temperature barely hits the 5% minimum error bar on one of the reconstructions and is just over the IPCC minimum range.

In the IPCC technical justification note, Kaufman and McKay 2022, conclude that global recent plus the modeled upcoming warming reaches a level unprecedented in more than 100,000 years. My emphasis on the word plus. Without including future modeled temperatures, present instrumental temperature, averaged over 170 years, does not exceed the warmest multi-century period of the Holocene based on proxy data. And it’s not even close to the last interglacial period when multi-century temperatures were almost 1.5 deg C warmer than the pre-industrial period. If, big IF, the climate models are considered reliable, then perhaps in the future 80 to 100 years, present global temperatures might be as warm as the past Holocene Climatic Optimum.

Download the bibliography here.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The latest propaganda from the Committee on Climate Change:

England is not ready for the unavoidable impacts of global warming, the government’s advisers on climate change say in a new report.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said the government hasn’t achieved any of its targets and needed a policy “step change” to avoid loss of life.

The CCC reviews the government’s adaptation plans – preparations to cope with the effects of global warming.

The government said it would take the recommendations into account.

The committee, also known as the CCC, is an independent group of experts set up to provide the government with advice on the climate crisis.

Baroness Brown, chairwoman of the CCC’s sub-committee on adaptation, said that the government wasn’t taking the issue seriously enough.

“The government’s lack of urgency on climate resilience is in sharp contrast to the recent experience of this country,” she said.

Over the last couple of years, England has faced a series of extreme weather events, likely made worse by climate change.

Last year was the warmest on record for the UK – temperatures broke 40C for the first time and more than 25,000 wildfires broke out.

As well as extreme heat, rainfall has been consistently low for parts of south and southeast England, affecting crop yields.

Andrew Blenkiron’s 6,000-acre (24 sq km) farm in Thetford, Norfolk saw just 2.4mm of rain in February compared to the local average for that month of 43mm. He has now been forced to cut back on plans to plant potatoes, onions, parsnips and carrots by around a fifth.

He said: “Farmers are at the very forefront of climate change on a day-to-day basis… we are used to working with these issues, but we are concerned with the extremes we are now facing.”

To cope with the impacts of extreme heat Mr Blenkiron has enlarged reservoirs on his farm and shifted harvesting patterns to prevent wildfires.

But he said that farmers needed more money from government to implement their climate plans, especially if they involved new infrastructure projects like reservoirs.

The report singled out England’s internet networks as being woefully unprepared for climate change despite their crucial importance.

England’s internet networks – made up of hundreds of data centres, and extensive networks of cables and masts – underpin the UK’s service-based economy.

This infrastructure is already at risk from extreme weather, including heat and strong winds during storms. In November 2021, Storm Arwen left one million British properties without power and internet supply.

The committee found “there was no visible plan by the industry or government, to manage long-term risk”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65099546

It really is time that the CCC was shut down. It fulfils no useful purpose, and exists only to promote its radical climate agenda.

The idea that the government needs to do anything differently to what it has in the past regarding weather events is absurd. Indeed given the projections of milder winters, it arguably needs to do less. The pretence that two days of hot weather last year needed government action is an insult to our intelligence.

And let’s test the claims of climate-related drought in East Anglia:

February this year was certainly very dry, but it was drier in 1891 and 1959. More importantly the winter as a whole was actually wetter than average in East Anglia, and the trend is to wetter, not drier winters. Similarly annual rainfall is not trending down either.

So why is Farmer Blenkiron blathering on about climate change? I suspect there is more here than meets the eye, as we have come across his type before. They are often NFU officials, out to extort money from the government.

UK State of the Climate

It is time that the government grew a pair, and told the CCC in no uncertain terms that it is not prepared to spend taxpayers’ money on the warped priorities of the CCC, and that they are going to file their report in the waste paper basket!

From CFACT

By Ronald Stein 

As old refineries accelerate their closure rates in the coming years, new Asia refineries are coming to the rescue! Does Asia’s rescue represent the good news or the bad news?

The future does not bode well as 20 percent of the 700 worldwide aging refineries are projected to close in the next 5 years that will result in less manufacturing with the loss of 140 sites to meet the ever growing demands of ships, jets, and the derivatives needed for all the products demanded by society. With less manufacturing in wealthy countries in the days ahead, further shortages and inflation of both fuels and products in perpetuity are guaranteed.

As old refinery closures accelerate, it’s becoming obvious that wind turbines, solar panels, and EV’s may face challenging growth as they are 100 percent made with those limited light end hydrocarbons that will diminish with refinery closures. But wait, Asia is coming to the rescue!

Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries.

 As of 2021, there were 88 new facilities in planning or under construction in Asia.

The amount of oil fed through refineries in Asia has significantly increased in the past three decades as demand for petroleum products surged in developing countries such as China and India, both with significant less stringent environmental regulations than those in America. China is on track to succeed the United States as the country with the greatest oil refinery throughput.

These new Asian refineries, just like the mining in China, Africa, and Brazil for the exotic minerals and metals required for wealthy countries to achieve their net-zero emission goals, will be constructed and maintained on some of the LEAST environmentally controlled landscapes on this planet.

A subject for another time: Is the rescue by Asia’s new refining manufacturing capabilities exposing national security issues for America?

Today, oil refineries around the world are designed for specific crude oil feedstocks available to those sites, and then manufacture a 42-gallon barrel of oil into light and heavy hydrocarbon products available from that feedstock to support the world’s 8 billion on this planet are dependent on the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the militaries of each country, and space programs that are based on the heavy hydrocarbons for the various fuels manufactured from crude oil. In addition, those light hydrocarbons are primarily used for making the more than 6,000 products now in society.

With enough money and technology, new refinery facilities could be designed to extract light hydrocarbons like ethylene from natural gas, and transportation fuels can be manufactured from coal, but both processes come with new equipment and produce excessive emissions.

No new refinery has been built in America since 1977, 46 years ago, so the need for new American refinery facilities to treat natural gas and/or coal may be a pipe dream to obtain environmental and construction permits for a new fossil fuel manufacturing site, when America is motivated to rid itself of both natural gas and coal, along with crude oil.

Today, about 90 percent of that 42-gallon barrel of crude oil is manufactured into the heavy hydrocarbon products like automotive gasolines, jet fuels, distillate fuel oils, diesel fuels, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and those “other products” which comprise the other 10 percent of a barrel of crude oil that contains light hydrocarbons, usually referred to as “oil derivatives” that are manufactured from crude oil.

Today, the big push is to reduce emissions, and the target is a future with net zero emissions. Here’s a very short scope of net zero (partial listing)

1. Electrify all cars, trucks, and train use.
2. Electrify most heat uses, especially gas heat.
3. Rebuild the grid so wind and solar generated electricity with battery storage are the primary electricity power source.

To achieve a world of only those light ends to make all the products now in society that supports lifestyles and all the infrastructures, there are thoughts among the green community that we can convert the existing old refineries to produce nothing but derivatives, and/or replace the existing refineries with derivative refineries, or just manufacturing those light ends. That may be another pipe dream as each refinery is designed for specific crude oil feedstocks available to those sites, and conversions may be technically too expensive and not even permittable.

From the proverb: You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip: 

• A corn cob weighs in at about around 1 to 1.5 pounds per mature ear of corn.  Fresh cut cobs yield around 6-7 ounces of corn. We can’t squeeze more kernels from a cob.
• A 42-gallon barrel of oil contains about 90 percent of heavy hydrocarbons for various fuels, and about 10 percent of light hydrocarbons that are the basis of thousands of products made from those oil derivatives by -products. We can’t squeeze more light end hydrocarbons from a barrel of oil.

Such a switch of those old refineries to derivative refineries is a pipedream or an environmental and emissions disaster as 90 percent of that 42-gallon barrel of crude oil would need to be disposed of if not marketable as manufactured products like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), automotive gasolines, jet fuels, distillate fuel oils, diesel fuels.

From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:

1. you can’t rid America of only the “fuels” manufactured from fossil fuels and
2. continue to enjoy just the by-products of those light ends hydrocarbons that are manufactured from the same crude oil.

We may get to zero emissions, like we had in the pre-fossil fuel days in the 1800’s, but once we rid America of those fuels that generate emissions, manufactured at old refineries, we also rid America of the light ends that are the basis of the 6,000 products that did not exist before the 1900’s.

Just a few hundred years ago when the world’s population was around just one billion, before oil, the world was unspoiled, decarbonized, and dominated by mother nature and the wild animal kingdom. In the 1800’s there was no coal fired power plants, nor natural gas power plants, and the Beverly Hillbillies had not yet discovered oil.

There were fewer humans competing with the animals due to humanity’s limited ability to survive what mother nature provided. Before oil, life was hard and dirty, with many weather and disease related deaths.

The ruling class, powerful elite, and the media lack some energy literacy which may be the reasons they avoid conversations about the ugly side of “green” mandates and subsidies. Before anyone in Washington decides to procure wind turbines, solar panels, or an EV, they should read the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”,  and decide for themselves if they wish to financially support the humanity atrocities and environmental degradation among folks in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skin, so that the wealthy countries can go green.

Thus, without planned replacements in America for what is now manufactured from fossil fuels, we may get to the net-zero emissions society but with heavy reliance on Asia to achieve those lofty goals.

Author

• Ronald Stein
• Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy

From blackout-news.de

The CEO of the German photovoltaic company Goldbeck Solar, Joachim Goldbeck, warns against too much dependence on Chinese solar technology. In an interview with Handelsblatt, he explains that Germany is dependent on renewable energies for the energy transition and that solar technologies make up an important part of it (Handelsblatt: 26.03.23).

Germany more dependent on Chinese solar technology than on Russian gas

However, Germany is now so dependent on Chinese solar products that this dependence is even greater than its dependence on Russian gas. Goldbeck justifies his statement with the fact that China is now the world’s largest producer of solar cells and modules and controls about 70 percent of the global photovoltaic market.

Germany is more dependent on Chinese solar technology than on Russian gas. China invests heavily in research and development
Image: Victorgrigas at en.wikipedia, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

German companies would continue to produce solar products, but these products would often consist largely of Chinese components. The dependence on Chinese solar technologies is therefore a strategic risk for the German energy transition and Germany’s independence from fossil fuels.

Reduction of dependency and strengthening of own production

According to Goldbeck, German companies and politicians must therefore work to reduce dependence on Chinese solar products and strengthen their own production. This also means investing in the research and development of new technologies and intensifying cooperation with other European countries.

However, it is important that politicians provide a clear strategy to promote the energy transition and independence from fossil fuels. Goldbeck emphasizes that this is not only a question of independence, but also a question of competitiveness.

China invests heavily in research and development

China is investing heavily in research and development of solar technologies and is in danger of losing the lead that Europe has had in this area. Germany must therefore act quickly and develop a clear strategy for the energy transition and the future of solar technology.

Joachim Goldbeck’s warning against too much dependence on Chinese solar technologies shows that Germany should not only rely on renewable energies in the energy transition, but also on its own production and research. A clear political strategy is essential in order to advance the energy transition and Germany’s competitiveness.