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.
Poland’s abundant coal-fired power is often the only thing keeping Germany’s lights on when ‘dunkelflaute’ – gloomy, windless weather – strikes. The ever-pragmatic Poles are likely to keep their coal-fired plants running for generations to come.
Poland’s abundant coal-fired power is often the only thing keeping Germany’s lights on when ‘dunkelflaute’ – gloomy, windless weather – strikes. The ever-pragmatic Poles are likely to keep their coal-fired plants running for generations to come. But, keen to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas, Poland is developing a plan to build new-generation nuclear plants – with the help of a $4 billion injection of funds from America’s Export-Import Bank and International Development Finance Corporation.
Putin’s Ukrainian adventure has managed to focus attention on having safe, reliable and affordable energy on tap, across Europe – Poland, no exception.
Monica Scislowska reports on Poland’s move to tap into a new nuclear-powered future.
US ready to lend Poland $4 billion for nuclear energy plan ABC News Monica Scislowska 17 April 2023
WARSAW, Poland — A project to develop small nuclear power reactors in Poland is moving forward, with Polish energy company Orlen and two U.S. government financial institutions signing an agreement Monday.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated Poland’s drive to cut its dependence on Russian oil and natural gas.
In a ceremony at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Warsaw, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation signed letters of interest to lend up to $3 billion and up to $1 billion, respectively, to the Orlen Synthos Green Energy project. Its aim is to develop around 20 small BWRX-300 modular reactors designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
U.S. Ambassador Mark Brzezinski stressed that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine almost 14 months ago reinforced the need to turn toward safe and reliable energy sources.
Later, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a news conference that the country needed a “cheap, clean and reliable energy source” like the small nuclear reactors that will produce emission-free energy and be a driving force for the economy for decades to come.
Coal mining is among Poland’s largest employers, providing around 80,000 jobs and supplying about 70% of the country’s energy, and Morawiecki said the industry will continue to guarantee power security.
Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek told The Associated Press that only nuclear power can guarantee energy security and keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing or sun isn’t shining.
He said the support of the U.S. financial institutions “shows the credibility of the process” of developing nuclear energy.
It comes after Germany shut down its last three nuclear power plants this past weekend as it claims to be able to transition to renewable energy like wind and solar, which has drawn skepticism at home and abroad.
Poland’s first BWRX-300 reactor should launch in 2029 and will be the world’s second, after a similar one opens in Darlington, Canada.
Synthos Green Energy owner and Polish billionaire Michal Solowow, Obajtek’s business partner in the project, calls it an “energy revolution” for the country.
Last year, Orlen drew criticism for expanding and acquiring Polish fuels company Lotos and gas firm PGNiG under one label, making it the biggest energy operation in Central and Eastern Europe. It also has a refinery in Lithuania and fuel stations in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Obajtek defended the move, saying it gave the company greater potential and resilience in changing or unfavorable economic conditions.
“A multi-energy company is more stable in an unfavorable environment in all sorts of challenges in the economy,” he said in his spacious Warsaw office.
The company plans to expand further, Obajtek said, but refused to divulge the details.
He said at a news conference earlier that “there is no stopping of energy transformation” and that the oil and gas company — 49.9% owned by the Polish state — is planning 320 billion zlotys ($75 billion) of investments.
Orlen’s oil comes from Saudi Arabia, the North Sea, west Africa and from the U.S.
Obajtek said the deal with Saudi Aramco, which obtained a 30% stake in a refinery in Gdansk, secured joint development of new technologies and “stable deliveries (of the required quality of oil from) a stable partner who is the biggest oil producer in the world.”
In February, Poland’s government and the U.S. Westinghouse Electric Company signed a deal for pre-design cooperation on the central European nation’s first large nuclear power plant, using the American company’s technology. Construction is to begin in 2026, and it aims to start supplying the energy grid in 2032. ABC News
Climatists are increasingly complaining about critics dismissing their doomsday claims as false alarms. Recently I posted on meteorologists upset about negative pushback from their audiences.
Climatists are increasingly complaining about critics dismissing their doomsday claims as false alarms. Recently I posted on meteorologists upset about negative pushback from their audiences. [See Enforcing Climate Correctness (Fact Checking)]
What is happening of course is that the horrors of the collectivist Net Zero project are becoming increasingly apparent, as a widespread attack on almost all human activity is launched under the suggestion that the climate is breaking down. Until recently the ‘settled’ science promoting this view had a safe, largely uncontested space to prosper. But scepticism about the unproven hypothesis that humans operate the climate thermostat by burning fossil fuels is growing, with two recent polls showing that over 40% of people surveyed worldwide believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes. Far from coughing up the huge sums required to hit Net Zero, 4 in 10 Americans are not even prepared to pay more than two dimes a week to combat climate change.
It is hardly surprising that the banning of meat eating, along with all the other notable Net Zero suggestions such as no flying, shipping, barely enough energy to heat homes and cook food and restrictions on all common building materials, is starting to foster wide debate – even sometimes robust debate. Maslin, along with many of his fellow climate extremists, seem oblivious to this gathering trend. This is perhaps not surprising. In 2018, he was one of a number of eco-activists who signed a letter to the Guardian saying they would no longer “lend their credibility” by debating climate change scepticism.
The loss of Twitter as a ‘safe’ space for climate alarmists has been a bitter blow. It is not seemingly enough to exert considerable control over most other public platforms including social and mainstream media. Global Witness is of the view that if climate scientists are unable to do their work because of “stress and fear caused by harassment”, the critical evidence that undergirds climate action and solutions is put at risk.
It is reasonable for social media users to tell delicate activists like Maslin that there is really nothing to worry about from our climate. It’s just free speech, and it applies – in fact it is vital – in science and geography, as elsewhere. But it’s not just about science anymore. It is becoming apparent that Net Zero is being used as an attack on almost all human activity. Everything humans do to survive, from keeping warm to growing food, is being cast as an attack on Mother Earth.
Expert Findings Awaken Censorship
The alarmists are calling for greater censorship of growing numbers of studies and perspectives that refute and contradict claims made by “consensus” scientists. For example Fraser Institute recently published Celebrate Earth Day by burning latest UN climate report. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Ahead of Earth Day, and not coincidentally, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its summaries of summaries of a massive unreadable multi-volume report that specifies how the climate is changing and what must be done. Again, not surprisingly, the new plans are more stringent than the already unachievable previous plans.
In presenting the report, which is still not available in its final form, Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general, called on developed countries to move up their already impossible “net-zero” greenhouse gas emission timelines from 2050 to 2040. He also wants coal use to end entirely by 2030 in developed countries, and wants the developed world on carbon-free electricity generation by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants. Yes, only 12 years from now.
If we don’t follow that advice, we’re told, we’ll cruise past the politically-determined target of limiting increased global average temperature to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. And, we’re told, UN scientists believe we’ll see all kinds of negative trends—droughts, floods, storms, hot weather, cold weather, ocean acidification, glacier retreat (basically all the worst parts of the Bible). Some of this may be true, much is likely untrue, as almost all of it is based on speculative computer models infused with assumptions about how things might work in nature, rather than rigorously measured values that establish how they actually work in nature. Canadians who believe computerization can correct soothsaying will be concerned; those who believe the future is unpredictable will be less so.
But either way, the secretary-general’s net-zero acceleration is a terrible idea that Canada’s governments should ignore, mainly because the side effects of this prescription will be far worse than the ailment. In 2021, RBC estimated it would cost a cool $2 trillion to reach net-zero by 2050. Broken down by year, the estimated cost rivalled spending on our health-care system. And RBC’s estimate assumed continued use of natural gas, which the UN is taking off the table. And even though, through RBC’s rose-coloured glasses, a “nation of electric vehicles, solar-powered houses and hydrogen-fueled airplanes” will help enormously, RBC found even the best-case scenarios for these technologies might only get Canada three-quarters of the way to net-zero—the old net-zero of 2050, not the potential new net-zero of 2040.
Finally, as always, the climate benefits from all of this will be negligible.
Nothing Canada can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (already a small and diminishing fraction of global emissions) would be enough to exert a measurable influence on the climate. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Trudeau’s friends in China, the world’s largest emissions emitter, are allowed to emit with abandon. Hopefully, Canadian policymakers will file the new UN report in the voluminous burn bin with other silly UN reports, and with the Trudeau government’s current woes, there’s room for hope.
Ben Pile’s Compilation of Climate False Alarms
Pushback Against Ruinous Climate Policies Takes to the Streets
The growing resistence to elite’s agenda is not only in discourse, but now working people are protesting in the streets. Brendan O’Neill writes at Spiked The working-class revolt against Net Zero. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Danish truckers are the latest workers to rise up against eco-authoritarianism.
Danish truckers are the latest workers to join the rebellion against green authoritarianism. Yesterday, they caused ‘road havoc’ in Denmark. They parked their huge hauliers side by side on key roads. Sections of the border with Germany were affected, as were the M11 and M16 around Copenhagen. Roads towards the ferry docks at Helsingor – ‘one of the most important ports in Denmark’ – were also briefly clogged by angry truckers.
Their beef? The government’s plan to introduce a ‘truck tax’ in 2025. As part of its devotion to the cult of Net Zero, the Danish ruling class wants to slash carbon emissions by 70 per cent before 2030. And one way it intends to do that is by imposing a punitive mileage-based eco-tax on the drivers of diesel trucks, in the hope that the financial pressure will become so unbearable that they’ll switch to electric trucks instead.
The ingratitude is staggering.
Truckers are the lifeblood of a modern society. They transport the fuel, food and other goods that are essential to everyday life. They drive alone, for hours, in all weathers, to keep society well stocked. And how do the elites in Copenhagen repay these people who, without fuss or fanfare, bring them everything they need? By slapping them with a new kind of sin tax – the sin in this case being to drive a vehicle that the eco-minded consider to be ‘dirty’ and ‘polluting’.
No wonder the truckers are angry. Others are, too.Dutch farmers have been in a state of revolt for a couple of years now. They’re raging against their government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions by half before 2030, which would entail farmers getting rid of vast numbers of their livestock and possibly lead to the closure of 3,000 farms.
The nitrogen-slashing policy was drawn up under pressure from the eco-oligarchs in the EU, who are heaping pressure on all member states to hurry toward that secular heaven of Net Zero. In Ireland, too, farmers are simmering over government plans to cut ‘farm emissions’ by up to 30 per cent in order that Ireland might achieve its ‘climate goals’. They’re worried that 58,000 farm jobs could be lost to the elites’ slavish devotion to the Net Zero ideology.
Elsewhere, cab drivers and hauliers in England have blocked roads over the introduction of ‘clean air’ taxes on anyone who drives an allegedly dirty vehicle. Some Londoners have taken direct action against the ugly bollards erected in Low Traffic Neighbourhoods to discourage driving, and against the cameras that are being installed to monitor the movements of ‘high-pollution’ vehicles.
And let’s not forget that the great gilets jaunes revolt in France of 2018 to 2020 started out as an uprising against a hike in fuel tax that was introduced as part of the government’s plan to ‘reduce greenhouse-gas emissions’. Yet another Net Zero assault on working people’s pockets. The French knew very well that this eco-punishment was an act of Jupiterian overreach by Emmanuel Macron.
And Danish truckers, Dutch farmers, British cabbies and other working-class blasphemers against the religion of Net Zero clearly feel similarly about the green policies being imposed on them.
These uprisings throw into sharp relief the elitism of the climate-change ideology. They expose the class element in the green tyranny. It is increasingly clear that where the pursuit of Net Zero might benefit the elites, providing them with a sense of moral mission as they tackle the fantasy apocalypse of their own fever dreams, it is incredibly destructive for working-class communities. Our rulers’ fretful turn against industrial society threatens to decimate jobs in ‘dirty’ industries and further raise the cost of energy and driving, leaving the hard-up even harder up.
Look On The Bright Side
There is a brighter side to emphasize in contrast to the climatists’ gloom and doom. Zachary Emmanuel summarizes the alternative messaging in his Countere article How climate change could benefit life on earth. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
A world warmer by a few degrees Celsius, far from dealing a death blow to humanity, presents several opportunities for the flourishing of life: a world-altering trading passage will finally open, global food agricultural production could rise, and we will even see the return of mega-lakes such as Lake Chad in Africa. This certainly depends on the degree of warming: for example, a 2.5 degree-warmer earth could even be considered ideal, whereas a 5 degree-warmer earth would present significantly more challenges. Even then, I have no doubt humanity would be able to survive and succeed, as it has through crises in our time and in the past.
This is an unpopular opinion. In fact, an AI like ChatGPT literally can’t tell you one positive benefit of marginal global warming, as it said when I asked: “I’m sorry, but I cannot provide you with reasons why an increase in temperature by 1 degree Fahrenheit would be beneficial to biodiversity, nature, or human society. Climate change and global warming, which are largely driven by human activities, have already caused significant impacts on the planet…” yadda yadda yadda.
There will be negative effects of global warming. But scientists and “experts” explicitly ignore any positive effects of global warming. Dissident climatologists like Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have stated this is because entire academic careers, professional recognition, and media spotlights are linked to one’s degree of alarmism over climate change. (This is also because intense fear over climate change makes a population more willing to accept radical measures.)
Well, that’s why we have Countere. Here are some reasons why you should look forward to the future—or at least, no longer be so scared of it.
Climate change is not a new phenomenon. The Earth has been much hotter and colder before. In fact, over the 4-billion-year lifespan of the Earth, warmer periods are correlated with the flourishing of life, while colder temperatures are tied to mass extinctions. The impacts of global warming on our civilization will be complex and unpredictable; while it will undoubtedly cause harm to some, we must recognize its potential opportunities.
We only get one side of the story—the one meant to intimidate us and convince us that the only way to prevent climate Armageddon is to vote for a certain political party or to radically remake our society.
Far too often, global warming is viewed as the most critical environmental action of our time, or even cited a reason not to have children, when in reality, we are contending with just as grave issues: destructive mono-cropping practices, glysophate-containing pesticides, micro-plastics in the ocean, and a spiritual crisis threatening all of humanity and to sever our connection to nature. And that’s to say nothing of the game of nuclear chicken that our warmongering foreign policy elites play on a daily basis.
You are being lied to about climate change.
Global warming does not mean the end of the world. It means a new world with new challenges. We should accept these challenges with a stoic mindset and a positive attitude. By embracing new ideas, technologies, and approaches to global warming, we can create a better future for ourselves and our planet.
It’s hard to think of anything more damning about the King’s obsession with climate change:
A care home charity backed by the King is being forced to shut down properties because of Government net zero rules.
Martin Green, chief executive of the country’s leading social care body Care England, said on Friday that the Government had “slapped another fee” on chronically underfunded care homes by introducing legislation which will force providers to meet new energy efficiency standards at great cost.
He warned care providers across the country faced closure due to the prohibitive expense of installing more energy efficient double glazing, insulation and heating systems, expected to cost social care providers hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He said: “The Government needs to see that, without help, care homes will not be able to deliver on this without losing beds.”
It came as the 60-year-old care home provider Abbeyfield, of which the King has been a patron for more than 40 years, confirmed 43 of its homes face closure because of the unmanageable costs of improving their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating to C by 2030.
In a letter seen by this newspaper, residents were this week told an extensive review had concluded the cost of upgrading its properties under government net zero plans was “too great” for the charity to meet, saying it had identified a number of homes “which can no longer be operated sustainably”.
Residents of an Abbeyfield home in Cornwall told local news reporters it was “one of the worst things I have heard in my life” and that the prospect of losing their home was keeping them up a night, while a 76-year-old resident of a care home in Wiltshire said she “didn’t know why this was happening”.
Charities have warned elderly residents’ lives were at risk, due to the shock of the prospect of losing their homes. The upgrades are necessary because of the Government’s efforts to meet its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
This fiasco lies at King Charles’ door as much as the political establishment’s.
It is all very well for Charles to pontificate and issue warnings of X months to save the planet. But we are now seeing the practical outworkings of his incessant political campaign, which he began years ago.
The era of opinion domination of the mainstream media is clearly coming to an end. Viewership and circulation figures continue to plummet – as does trust in reporting. The latter was recently found in a study by the University of Mainz. According to the study, public broadcasting, for example, has recorded the lowest trust value since the beginning of the long-term study. After it became known how many journalists are in the pay of the state, hardly surprising.
The era of opinion domination of the mainstream media is clearly coming to an end. Viewership and circulation figures continue to plummet – as does trust in reporting. The latter was recently found in a study by the University of Mainz. According to the study, public broadcasting, for example, has recorded the lowest trust value since the beginning of the long-term study. After it became known how many journalists are in the pay of the state, hardly surprising.
According to the study, 66 percent of West Germans, but only 41 percent of citizens in the new federal states, express their confidence in state broadcasters. Of course, as AUF1.INFO reported, this loss of trust does not come out of nowhere.
Hundreds of journalists bought
Media reports about bought journalists have accumulated in recent weeks and months and paint a disastrous picture of the German media landscape. It became public that well over a hundred journalists received government funding. Among them, for example, Johannes B. Kerner, Eckart von Hirschhausen and Florian Schroeder, who held out their hands as well as “Mr. Wissen2Go”, Mirko Drotschmann. Harald Lesch and Dunja Hayali are also on the state “payroll”, as Pleiteticker.de reported. And if the state pays supposed journalists, then it should also be clear that this is not exactly conducive to independent reporting that deviates from the government line.
Climate dwindling on RTL and 3sat – unthinkable today
For example, a critical examination of the climate hoax in the system media would be unthinkable in times of the green-dominated traffic light government. This was not always the case: In 2007, the private broadcaster RTL had shown a critical documentary as part of its “RTL Extra” format. The main message of the approximately 40-minute contribution: The theory of man-made global warming is wrong. “The climate hoax” was the title of RTL’s contribution. It was an edited version of the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which had previously been heavily criticized for errors.
“The climate catastrophe does not exist”
In it, scientists and climate researchers point out, for example, the extreme susceptibility to error of climate models. Such predictions, which are often astronomically wrong, have also been known since Corona from the always incorrect forecasts of the number of deaths. The documentary also points out that there have been times in the history of the earth with 3 times, even 10 times as much CO2 as today. And the founding director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Prof. Akasofu, declares that “the climate catastrophe does not exist.”
In this video entitled “Climate hoax: What are the real facts?”, AUF1 has shown that years ago the mainstream media refuted this new religious nonsense even with scientifically correct facts:
Climate religion: The new “opium of the people”
A report broadcast by 3sat in 2010 went in a similar direction. Under the title “Climate Protection as a New World Religion“, the religious delusion of the climate sect was critically examined. Politicians and scientists are therefore the prophets and priests of this religion, Greta Thunberg its pillar saint. The sociologist Prof. Norbert Bolz explains in the article that for our largely atheistic society, this new offer of faith is irresistible. Because the promised apocalypse gives people the opportunity to feel religiously without having to believe in a God.
More than one billion taxpayers’ money for media in Austria
Whether the journalists in the mainstream media believe in God or not remains to be seen, but they obviously “believe” in the vile mammon. Also in Austria: The Telegram channel “Fact Sheet Austria” has published a compilation. This shows that in 2022, 325 million euros were made available for press funding in Austria – 20.7% more than in the previous year. In total, an enormous 2019.1 billion euros have been redistributed by taxpayers to system media since 1. The fact that alternative media such as AUF1 came away empty-handed is hardly surprising. And the fact that current reports, such as the one that there is a new temperature minus record of -76.4 °C at the South Pole and Antarctica, do not make it into the mainstream media should come as no surprise to anyone. Because it doesn’t fit into the grand narrative of the rulers…
About the author: Christoph Uhlmann worked as a citizen journalist and started as a career changer at “Wochenblick” in 2021. The main topics are Corona, science and the Great Reset. In October 2022, he then moved to AUF1.
The image above shows 2023 Arctic ice extents from Mid April (day 106) to Mid May (day 135). As usual, the LIFO pattern is observed: ice that is Last In is the First Out. The Pacific basins of Okhotsk (top left) and Bering (bottom left) rapidly turn to open water.
The image above shows 2023 Arctic ice extents from Mid April (day 106) to Mid May (day 135). As usual, the LIFO pattern is observed: ice that is Last In is the First Out. The Pacific basins of Okhotsk (top left) and Bering (bottom left) rapidly turn to open water. Baffin Bay (lower right) melts more slowly. Barents Sea (top center loses ice extent steadily. Note Hudson Bay (bottom) keeps its ice, and Canadian Archipelago (lower center) retains most of its ice. On the left center, the Eurasian coastline remains frozen.
The graph below shows 2023 compared to 17 year average and some recent years for this time period.
Firstly, on average this period shows ice declining 1.44 M km2 down to 12.68M km2, Note that 2023 matched the average in April, then retained more ice than usual during first two weeks of May. Sea Ice Index (SII) was close to MASIE throughout.. The other years, including 2007, were ~300k km2 lower than average.
Region
2023135
Day 135 Average
2023-Ave.
2007135
2023-2007
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
12771477
12677903
93574
12431928
339549
(1) Beaufort_Sea
1050531
1046418
4113
1057649
-7118
(2) Chukchi_Sea
943942
926464
17478
953491
-9549
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
1085822
1081321
4501
1075314
10508
(4) Laptev_Sea
897060
881069
15991
828738
68322
(5) Kara_Sea
919027
879799
39228
876053
42974
(6) Barents_Sea
407569
418431
-10862
351553
56016
(7) Greenland_Sea
730714
619664
111050
564865
165849
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
979333
1076523
-97190
1018780
-39447
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
841610
839708
1902
830604
11006
(10) Hudson_Bay
1153016
1186552
-33536
1167310
-14294
(11) Central_Arctic
3247995
3223255
24740
3234305
13690
(12) Bering_Sea
296036
301878
-5842
298268
-2231
(13) Baltic_Sea
6134
7668
-1534
6368
-234
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk
211027
186778
24249
164833
46194
The table shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic basins. The main deficits to average are Baffin and Hudson Bays, more than offset by surpluses in Kara and Greenland Seas. Most other regions are surplus with a few slighlty negative.
With 800,000 British car-making jobs on the line because we’re not making enough batteries for electric vehicles, leading motor manufacturers are demanding renegotiated trade rules with the EU to give us more time to catch up.
Lord Frost, Britain’s chief negotiator for Brexit from 2019 to 2021, is clear where the fault is.
If only we had more guys like David Frost with a bit of common sense:
With 800,000 British car-making jobs on the line because we’re not making enough batteries for electric vehicles, leading motor manufacturers are demanding renegotiated trade rules with the EU to give us more time to catch up. Lord Frost, Britain’s chief negotiator for Brexit from 2019 to 2021, is clear where the fault is.
“The underlying problem is that we’re rushing at electrification of cars far too fast for the technologies we’ve got,” he insists.
“What it shows is that the expectation we had in the trade agreement when we negotiated it was that things would have moved by 2024, and that is not true.”
Vauxhall’s parent company, Stellantis, told MPs earlier this week that it would be unable to keep a commitment to make electric vehicles in the UK without changes to the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
From next year, under the agreement, 45 percent of an electric vehicle’s parts should originate in the UK or EU to qualify for tariff-free trade between the two.
Without meeting the requirements, cars made in the UK would face a 10 percent tariff if sold in the EU – rendering them uncompetitive. Electric car batteries are mainly sourced from Asia and can be up to 50 percent of a car’s value.
But it’s not only car manufacturing, Lord Frost believes, but that is also under intense pressure from the rush to achieve net zero – a government commitment to ensure the UK reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by 100 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, Lord Frost insists: “Everyone can see we’re not ready. The [electricity supply] grid is not ready, the costs are too high; all we’re doing is needlessly causing problems for our own industry.” Not only that but the poorest are hit hardest by the transformation.
“We are told constantly that net zero 2050 is not only something that must be done, but it’s also something that’s going to be good for you and is going to increase economic growth and everyone’s going to be better off,” he says.
“I don’t think that is true. We are replacing a lot of perfectly good ways of generating electricity with gas and nuclear for bad ways of generating it with wind and solar, so why would you not expect costs to go up?
“If we’re requiring poor technologies like heat pumps to be installed then that’s going to hit the poorest worst. If it’s good technology, people will install it anyway.
“If it’s bad and expensive technology, the Government has got to make people do it.”
Once dubbed the “greatest Frost since the Great Frost of 1709” by Boris Johnson, the 58-year-old is considered by many Tories to be a leading voice of common sense and even a potential future party leader.
A former diplomat, civil servant and Minister for State, he will be giving the annual lecture next week at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
He strongly believes the Government’s policy of net zero going too fast will cause considerable damage to the UK economy, making us all poorer, especially the less well-off.
Lord Frost does not dispute that climate change is happening. Nor is he repudiating the need for green policies to combat global warming.
“But that’s not the same as saying we’re in climate crisis or emergency, and it’s not the same as saying the only choice we have is to do net zero by 2050,” he says.
“Those are political choices – they’re not scientific choices. And with all political choices, you’ve got to weigh up the pros and cons; the costs against the benefits. And that’s what we’re not doing. You don’t have to deny science to say we need to look at the way we’re going about this and whether it makes sense.”
Lord Frost says what’s especially frustrating about this debate is that many people assume if you’re sceptical about net zero then you’re not interested in protecting the environment. “They’re not the same thing at all,” he insists.
“We all want a cleaner environment. That has nothing to do with the net zero ideology. When this country was first industrialising, the environment was much more polluted than it is now. What has enabled us to improve the environment is economic growth; more efficient ways of doing things. When we get richer, we can spend on clearing up pollution.”
With China set to dominate the electric car market in Europe, and the US supplying us with shale gas, the former minister is incensed we are making other countries richer while making ourselves poorer.
“It obviously makes no sense as a policy,” he says. “As a country, we’re [responsible for] about two per cent of global emissions. We could shut down the British economy tomorrow and it would make no difference to the nature of the problem.
“We are helping [China] by off-shoring our own production and making energy more expensive. We’re going along with that and making ourselves weaker. It makes no sense in a world that’s got more dangerous.”
Energy security has to be a prime concern for Britain, especially as we import so much of our energy from unreliable foreign nations.
“More than ever now, since the Ukraine War, we need an energy system that is productive,” says Frost. “One that we can rely on and we have control over. We’re going in the other direction. We’re installing unreliable technology that has to be backed up. The wind doesn’t blow all the time so you need a back-up to fill the gap. Well, why would that not be more expensive?
“Why not just have the back-up and forget about the wind farms? With our current state of technology, the idea that renewables are going to make us more secure seems to be a total fallacy.”
He stresses how it’s all the more frustrating when we know what the solution is.
“It’s gas, moving to nuclear – that’s the way of reducing emissions in a way that powers the economy,” Lord Frost adds. “It isn’t reducing our capacity to produce energy, crushing the economy, and making people live in a different way. I don’t think people are going to put up with that.”
Lord Frost is exasperated by the current moratorium on shale gas exploration.
“We have so much shale gas in this country that we could be tapping. A shale gas facility that’s about the size of Parliament Square can produce the same amount of power as a wind farm 10 times the size of Hyde Park. “This is not a disruptive technology unless your vision of the future is that we don’t have any industry. All of us politicians have to care about voters but I think, in the interest of the country, you have to take on the argument.”
There’s a suggestion that we have removed the shackles of the EU, only to replace them with net zero.
“Yes, a lot of the net zero legislation is inherited through the EU and it is now in our hands to change it, but we don’t seem anxious to do so,” Frost says.
“I think people have got captured by this ideology. They believe the messaging without thinking about it rigorously.”
A week ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury was convicted of speeding in a 20 mph limit and fined a total of £510 (as reported e.g. here). Apparently administrative errors prevented him from paying the fine in a timely manner and thereby avoiding a (virtual) trip to the Magistrate’s Court.
A week ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury was convicted of speeding in a 20 mph limit and fined a total of £510 (as reported e.g. here). Apparently administrative errors prevented him from paying the fine in a timely manner and thereby avoiding a (virtual) trip to the Magistrate’s Court. The minimum penalty for speeding – unless you are lucky enough to dodge it by being sent on a useless speed awareness course – is £100 and 3 points on your license. Presumably Welby would have received this but for the “administrative errors.”
So much so topical. But lurking at the back of my mind when I read about that was another news story, this one from a month ago, as for example here.
Use of 20mph speed zones in built up areas ‘usually advisory’ and many CANNOT be enforced, police chief admits
[I don’t know why I picked the Daily Mail’s version of the story to share with you. Their site is near unusable unless you block scripts/ads.]
A police chief has admitted 20mph speed zones in built up areas are ‘usually advisory’ and many cannot be enforced.
Giles Orpen-Smellie, Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk, made the admission despite a third of local authorities having rolled out the measures in recent years.
Speaking at a public meeting, he said: ‘It’s extremely difficult for police to prosecute… if it goes in front of magistrates they will throw it out.’
Well, Welby’s case was certainly not thrown out.
Personally I am ambivalent about 20 mph zones*. I like them when I’m a pedestrian; on the other hand, if I’m in a car trying to get somewhere… not so much. Nonetheless, I dutifully stick to the limit – and my anecdotal observations tell me that I’m in the minority. Only yesterday a brand new MG EV zoomed up behind me in a 20 limit (you can’t say “roared up” any more), wanting me to speed up. I declined with a sneer. When it finally overtook, I was surprised to note that it was a taxi.
There is a 20 mph road near me where there have been a succession of wildlife casualties over the years. Mostly these have been woodpigeons; not the rarest of birds, but apparently now amber listed. Then there are the hedgehogs – whose response to an oncoming car is not exactly adaptive. The woodies do like to flirt with the passing cars – but at 20 mph, they can afford to. At the speed some drivers go, not so much.
According to our soi-disant government, 20 mph zones are popular. They are:
“…supported by the majority of residents and drivers.”
But the majority of drivers – at any rate, the majority of vehicles – do not adhere to the 20 mph limit. In fact the data shows that more than half of all cars travelling [in free flowing conditions] through 20 mph zones went as fast as, or faster than, the Archbishop. Note that only the first two columns are compliant; 87% of cars exceeded the 20 mph limit.
In general, the lower the speed limit… the fewer cars adhere to it. (I don’t know about you, but one of my least favourite types of driver is the Zen 40 driver. This type proceeds at what seems a stately 40 where there are no limits… and then at a seemingly reckless 40 when they pass through a 30 zone.) Other data shows that introducing a 20 mph limit has essentially no effect on road speeds, but here it appears that this is “real-world” data, i.e. all traffic, not skimming off only the vehicles that were were not slowed somewhat by conditions. The figure comes from a 2018 report by Atkins and others for the DfT, available here (also apparently the source for the claim that 20 mph limits are popular). The median speed in a residential area dropped by less than 1 mph when a 20 limit replaced a 30 – but as you can see, the speeds in the sample are in general a lot lower than the “free-flow” speeds in the frequency distribution figure. (In free-flow conditions, the data [same table as the above figure] shows that average speeds are 5 mph slower in a 20 limit than they are in a 30 limit; 31 vs 26 mph.)
What about the justifications of 20 mph lengths of road, excepting pigeons? Well, there is data that shows that accidents involving pedestrians at 20 are less likely to cause fatalities than accidents at 30, although your probability of dying if you are hit at 30 is still “only” 7%. The figure is from a 2010 report by D.C. Richards, again for the DfT.
EVs
One thing that is not often remarked upon is that, since EVs are heavier than ICE cars, they are likely to be more dangerous for pedestrians when shifting at the same velocity. The braking distance – despite rumours on the internet – does get longer the heavier the vehicle. (The internet rumours rely on elementary mechanics to prove that mass is not relevant to stopping distance; it appears on both sides of the equation when you equate the energy expended in stopping a moving object with its kinetic energy and therefore disappears. And this is true for sliding block puzzles – but not where tyres are involved. It’s possible to prove a lot of wrong things with elementary maths. My physics teacher challenged the class to choose between being shot or hit by a car. Probably everyone picked the car. But the “correct” answer was the bullet – as the teacher soon demonstrated with mathematics. Nevertheless, I would still have taken the car then, and would today.)
The performance of EV tyres depends on the tension between maximising grip and minimising wear and rolling resistance. This is the case for all tyres of course, but rolling resistance is a particular issue in EVs, where range is a key selling point. Add to that the fact that EVs are heavier, and we are left with a possible safety issue. I am not the first to notice this, although the headline I’ve picked out in the snip perhaps exaggerates matters just a tad:
Conclusion
In general, although people are in favour of 20 mph limits, they ignore them. There seems little point in creating them – they have little to no effect on driving speeds. But if people did stick to the new limit, it seems likely that pedestrians and pigeons alike would be safer. Was the Welby fine fair? No. 53% of cars go as fast or faster than Welby went when they travel through a 20 limit; the people say they are in favour of a 20 limit when asked, but their actions demonstrate the opposite. Should a minority be fined for something the majority do? That does not seem right to me.
However, I don’t think there is any reason for side roads in residential areas not to be limited to 20 mph. For through roads, the debate is more nuanced; you have to balance the needs of people trying to get somewhere with the residents who want calm streets. But if you actually want people to slow down, only speed bumps or other physical paraphernalia will help. A signpost – or a beacon as in the featured image – is generally ignored.
Notes and Data
* There is a distinction in some reports between a 20 mph limit (signposts only) and a 20 mph zone (with added bumps etc). The latter seems far more effective than the former.
The data for the frequency distribution comes from table SPE0111 (for 2021), at the link given above the figure.
Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.
Kerry: “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.” … Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions. … I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”
#
“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.
Kerry lamented that agriculture production alone creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming, during remarks Wednesday morning at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. The former secretary of state also touted so-called climate smart agriculture as a potential solution.
“A lot of people have no clue that agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world,” he said during his keynote address. “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.”
“Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way in which we do the things we’ve been doing,” he continued. “With a growing population on the planet – we just crossed the threshold of 8 billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are projected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”
Overall, the global food system – which includes land-use change, actual agricultural production, packaging and waste management – generates about 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of 34% of total worldwide emissions, according to a March 2021 study published in the Nature Food journal.
In the U.S., though, agriculture alone generates about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, federal data showed.
…
“This sector needs innovation now more than ever,” Kerry continued Wednesday. “We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis. And I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”
“We need economic, social and policy innovation in order to scale adaptation of these technical solutions and get them into the hands of folks in the fields of small farmers on a worldwide basis. This is the promise of AIM for Climate Summit.”
WASHINGTON, May 10 (Reuters) – Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday.
Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole – including packaging, transportation, and waste management – generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.
“We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.
He said that without cutting agricultural emissions, the world may not reach its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – which scientists say must be achieved to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
President Joe Biden has pledged the U.S. will reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Rising global temperatures have severe implications for malnutrition and food security worldwide, Kerry said.
“A 2-degree future could result in another 600 million people not getting enough to eat,” said the former U.S. secretary of state. “You can’t continue to warm the planet while also expecting to feed it.”
AIM for Climate is a global initiative, co-led by the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, to drive investment in farming practices that cut the sector’s emissions.
Santiago, Chile – Today, the Global Methane Hub announced that agriculture and environment ministers and ambassadors from 13 countries, including the United States, have issued a commitment to reduce methane emissions in agriculture. Last month, the Global Methane Hub collaborated with the Ministries of Agriculture of Chile and Spain to convene the first-ever global ministerial on agricultural practices to reduce methane emissions.
…
“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge,” said John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.
#
Related:
Daily Mail: ‘Leave us alone to do what we do best’: Fury at UK plan to hand millions to farmers to turn 741,000 acres of land into nature reserves pushed by ‘rewilding cult’
George Eustice launches £2.4billion-a-year plan replacing EU’s £2.4bn common agricultural policy
Farmers and landowners will be paid for planting trees and restoring wetlands in 15 new nature reserves
The ‘landscape recovery scheme’ will eventually cost the taxpayer £800million a year from 2028
But there are concerns about risk to food security and policy will benefit Britain’s richest landowners
Farmers say Boris Johnson’s ‘mad’ obsession with rewilding will drive smaller farmers out of business
Ministers claim plans will turn 741,000 acres into wildlife habitats in 20 years and will not risk food supply
Since the Socialists and Greens took over power in Germany a year and half ago, the government has announced one ban after the other.
Wood heat may be the next heat source to be banned from homes in Germany as verbot-orgy expands. Image: P. Gosselin
It’s becoming clear that the climate movement is all about stripping citizens of choices, comfort and ability to move around.
One of the boldest initiatives, introduced under the guise of independence from Russian energy, particularly natural gas, was the controversial plan to phase out oil and gas heating systems beginning already next year. In their place, Germans would be ordered to invest in heat pumps – a costly and for many an unfeasible measure.
The latest crackdown on human comfort is the German Socialist/Green federal government’s calling into question the future of wood stoves and pellet heating systems. As gas prices skyrocketed, many German households opted for wood heat using firewood or pellets. But that option for heat has since become environmentally controversial. Today a delivery time for a wood stove is over one year in many cases. Firewood prices have skyrocketed as well.
According to Blackout News here, “From 2024, it will no longer be permitted to heat new buildings with wood. If an existing system has to be retrofitted or replaced, buffer storage, fine dust filters and an alternative heat source such as a solar thermal system or photovoltaics must also be installed. This is provided for in the federal government’s draft for the new version of the Building Energy Act. There will be only a few exceptions.”
And, as expected, criticism has been immediate, for example from the opposition parties and groups like the German Association of Forest Owners, AGDW. But government authorities are saying the step is necessary because they claim more than 20 per cent of all fine dust emissions are due to the burning of wood, which is roughly equivalent to road traffic emissions. Fine dust has suddenly been reactivated as a major health issue again.
The proposed idea of banning wood stove, has however, run up against opposition from even within the government itself. For example, “The SPD parliamentary group has already announced that it wants to prevent the ban on wood and pellet heating in new buildings,” reports Blackout News.
However, controversy is swirling whether heating with wood is even “climate-friendly” at all. The Federal Environment Ministry states that cheating with wood is not climate neutral. Trees are carbon sinks that store CO2. Mass forest clearing not only destroys biotope, but also leads to a premature release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The German Greens, are against wood as a fuel, but supports using wood as a construction material.
In the pre-globalised world, the art of taxation was pretty much as Louis XIV’s finance minster, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, described it: plucking the goose in a way that delivered “the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”.
As wind and solar capacity increases, it becomes increasingly evident they are hopelessly incapable of delivering power as and when we need it.
Back in January 2021, Germany shut down 11 coal-fired power plants (with a total capacity of 4.7 GW). That shutdown lasted eight days, with most of the plants up and running by February that year.
Australia is hellbent on committing the same form of suicide; ideologues cheered as another large, perfectly operable 2,000 MW coal-fired power plant (Liddell in NSW) was shut down earlier this month. Power consumers were less enthusiastic, as wholesale power prices jumped 80%, almost overnight.
Australia’s big pumped hydro scheme, Snowy 2.0 has turned into a ludicrously costly fiasco, which is unlikely to be completed anytime between now and kingdom come. Snowy 2.0 was meant to act like a big battery and make up for routine total collapses in wind and solar output. So much for that grand plan.
Notwithstanding the wind and solar debacle playing out in Europe (and elsewhere), Australia’s Federal Energy Minister, Chris Bowen is pressing on with his delusional plan for an 80% wind and solar target by 2030.
Following the deliberate shutdown of Liddell and with construction on Snowy 2.0 grinding to a halt, Paul Broad, former Snow Hydro CEO called Bowen’s 80% wind and solar target “bullshit”, said that reaching it would take “80 years not eight” and pointed out that blackouts are guaranteed, in the meantime.
The Australian’s Nick Cater picks up on Paul Broad’s broadside below.
Renewable fairytale is running out of power and cash The Australian Nick Cater 8 May 2023
At the time of publication there has been no response from Energy Minister Chris Bowen to Paul Broad’s claim that his green energy plan “is, to use the vernacular, bullshit”. Nor has Bowen reacted to the former Snowy Hydro chief executive’s advice that he should stick to telling the truth.
Text messages began to be exchanged by industry players within minutes of Broad’s frank exchange with Ben Fordham on 2UE last Thursday. Broad had said what many were thinking, but no one had been prepared to say: Bowen’s target of 82 per cent renewable electricity by 2030 is patently absurd.
The announcement by Snowy Hydro last week that Snowy 2.0 won’t be online until the end of 2029 added weight to Broad’s claim that the engineering challenges alone rule out any possibility of meeting the target in just eight years. As if boring 27km of tunnels, with perfect precision through geo-technologically uncharted subterranean territory, wasn’t hard enough. Now the task is compounded by the need to construct hundreds of kilometres of high-voltage power lines across fields, valleys, woodlands and hilltops in the face of growing community resistance.
Assuming this water-pumping mega-project is completed, the couple of gigawatts it will deliver is tiny in the scale of things. Clean Energy Council chief executive Kane Thornton told AAP last week: “We’re deploying about five or six gigawatts of renewable energy a year and that needs to be close to 10 or 12.”
That won’t be happening. Even if Bowen was able to overcome the obstacles listed above, there is still the little matter of investment capital, something to which this government has paid precious little attention. Bowen assumes the well of investment capital is bottomless and the cost of drawing it is zero.
Renewable energy investors, unlike the more greedy type of capitalist, don’t care about return on investment apparently. How else could Bowen arrive at the conclusion that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy?
The realisation that Australia is in competition for global capital with energy-producing countries around the world is about to land with a thud on the Energy Minister’s desk – if it hasn’t already.
President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal – amateurishly disguised as the Inflation Reduction Act – is about to become a super magnet for renewable energy investment. It promises subsidies for the next 10 years to renewable energy companies equivalent to more than $50bn a year at the current exchange rate.
If Bowen wants to achieve his target, he’ll need a dirty big capital magnet of his own. There will doubtless be a few titbits in the budget, but Anthony Albanese’s recent reluctant conversion to a weak form of fiscal conservatism makes the prospect of subsidies on the US scale unlikely.
Which leaves us to ponder why others in the energy sector have held themselves back from declaring, as Broad has done, that the emperor has no clothes.
Surely, they can see as clearly as Broad can that Bowen has fallen victim to swindlers who set up looms and pretended to weave, while slipping the fine silk they demanded into their travelling bags. Perhaps, like the emperor’s courtiers, they were trapped in what social psychologists call pluralistic ignorance. They were prepared to put their intellectual doubts aside in the mistaken belief everyone else thinks differently. They refrained from speaking their minds for fear of professional or social ostracism, or the embarrassment of being called stupid.
The conspiracy of silence might have been reinforced by the naked self-interest of those who have found ways to make money from a market corrupted by ad hoc government intervention, using business models in which profits from the sale of electricity are mere icing on the cake.
Broad’s advice to Bowen in his radio interview was that he should front up to the failings in his renewable energy policy before the voting public catch on. “You’ve got to put it all on the line and you’ve got to be honest to everybody about it. I mean, fair dinkum, why not just tell the truth?”
Everything we have gleaned in the past year about Bowen’s character and his modus operandi suggests he will dismiss this advice. He is far more likely to act like the shivering emperor being jeered by his own people in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, strutting more proudly than ever as he declares: “This procession has got to go on.”
The rudiments of the plan B the country badly needs are not hard to fathom. The life of coal plants must be extended in the short term and gas supplies expanded. In the short-to-medium term, federal and state moratoriums on nuclear energy must be removed, and the promise of small modular reactors embraced.
The electricity market must be reformed to move away from spot pricing and back to contracts. The engineers should be put back in charge of maintaining a stable grid rather than the accountants. Without such change it will be next to impossible to correct the distortions that prevent scarce capital flowing where it is most needed.
The government’s ignorance of the dynamics of capital flows will be on display in Tuesday’s budget when it delivers a fifth blow to the gas industry.
Increasing the petroleum resource rent tax on natural gas places another tourniquet stopping the flow of inward investment. Coming on top of price caps, the safeguard mechanism, delays to approvals and the failure to support carbon capture and storage, the PRRT will take us further towards the government’s apparent goal of making Australia the most unattractive place to invest in the known universe.
It means Australia is on track to lose its position among the world’s top three LNG exporters by the middle of the decade. The Qatar government is spending around $US50bn to expand production of two giant gas fields that boost the country’s capacity from 77 million tonnes to 126 million.
In the US there is bipartisan support for gas, which is encouraging substantial investment in export capacity. Australia’s market share will shrink just as the current inflated prices start to decline.
In the pre-globalised world, the art of taxation was pretty much as Louis XIV’s finance minster, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, described it: plucking the goose in a way that delivered “the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”.
Successful countries in the future will be those led by governments that realise the old rules no longer apply. That is to say, governments somewhat more worldly and street smart than ours. The Australian
You must be logged in to post a comment.