Day: September 20, 2023

Biden Nanny State Coming At You

Biden’s DOE wants to eliminate alternatives to electricity. 

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Mark Krebs exposes federal shenanigans in their war on home appliances in his Master Resource article Update: DOE Appliance Minimum Efficiency Standards.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“It started with gas cooking.  It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can. Basically, what we’re witnessing is the energy equivalent of ethnic cleansing. I’ve been saying this for years but now it should be obvious.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Biden Administration has significantly accelerated the pace of minimum appliance efficiency rulemaking. With this acceleration, there has been a marked decrease in DOE’s analytical quality and transparency. The purpose of this update is to summarize:

  1.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products

2.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Products; Boilers

3.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters

Note: In DOE-speak, the term ‘consumer’ means non commercial/industrial, or just residential.

Part 1: Consumer Cooking Products

On April 27, 2023, MasterResource published DOE vs. Gas Cooking: A Review of Critical Comments. On August 2, 2023, DOE reopened the docket with a “Notification of data availability and request for comment (NODA) with comments due September 1. More than 100 comments were filed.

Some commenters viewed the NODA and relatively short (30-day) comment period as a violation to the Administrative Procedures Act codified by 5 U.S.C. § 551(5)–(7) and the DOE’s “process rule” codified by 10 CFR 430 Appendix A to Subpart C. One such commenter making this case was the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Other comments privided detailed content in opposition of DOE’s proposal for consumer cooking products.  My comments addressed what has changed since DOE determined (in 2019) that additional efficiency mandates for gas cooking appliances is not justified. In short, Biden happened. With that change, DOE resorted to a longstanding bias that any amount of net positive cash flow (greater than zero) on average was sufficient economic justification. I cited AHAM’s press release “Gas Cooking Appliances Remain at Risk Despite New DOE Data” for this NODA that succinctly justified what that amount now is:

“The revised data reduces consumer savings to just 9 cents per month.”

I contend no one would freely elect to invest in anything with that kind of return-on-investment (ROI). Additionally, 9 cents per month is far less than the uncertainty range within DOE’s economic calculations.  Besides, DOE’s economic calculations typically low-ball increased maintenance costs and over-inflate fuel costs (among many other biased input assumptions).

What else has changed is that DOE cost-effectiveness now includes highly controversial benefits from reduced climate change allowed by grossly inflated social cost of carbon (SCC) avoidance and health benefits from improved indoor air quality (IAQ).

Part 2: Consumer Boilers

On September 12, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential boilers. A 59-page slide deck for that meeting is here. (If you have never read one of these slide decks, I urge you to do so. It’s a relatively painless way of getting familiar with the ‘administrative state’ going about its business of picking winners and losers.)

There were many participants representing manufacturing interests that would be adversely impacted by DOE’s proposal, and they were quite vocal about it (in a professional way of course).  But why would manufacturers want to litigate? DOE would put some of them out of business. 

Part 3: Consumer Water Heaters

On September 13, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential water heaters that lasted 3 hours. A 74-page slide deck for that meeting is here. There were nearly twice as many participants on line compared to the number of webinar participants the day before for consumer boilers; and many of the participants represented water heater manufacturers, some of which would be devastated if DOE’s proposed mandates were finalized.One manufacturer that stood out in this regard was Rinnai America. Rinnai is the sole manufacturer of non-condensing tankless water heaters in the U.S. Rinnai’s President stated, as I recall, that DOE’s proposed ban of non-condensing water heaters would shut down Rinnai’s new factory that cost $70 million. That, of course, would devastate the many involved.

Conclusions

DOE has been (ostensibly) ‘improving’ appliance efficiency for nearly a half-century. The low hanging fruit is long gone. In many cases, DOE is doing more harm than good and using unfair tactics to maintain control and reward its minions. What we have now is relentless self-serving “mission creep” of the administrative state and its “useful idiots” that forces consumers to fund the erosion of viable energy alternatives. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is greatly aiding and abetting this forced transformation away from free market forces.

DOE doesn’t care what it costs to litigate. After all, DOE has the backing of the Department of Justice for such matters. In my opinion, DOE has strayed too far from any redeeming virtue that may have originally existed from the 1975 passage of EPCA. It’s past time for Congress clean up the mess it created by enacting EPCA and the numerous ambiguous loopholes that gives undeserved deference to the administrative state to interpret. A valid question is whether EPCA (and DOE for that matter) should be salvaged or scrapped.

Biden’s DOE wants to eliminate alternatives to electricity. 

This fixation became apparent to all with their planned elimination of gas cooking and ran head-on with consumers that hold gas cooking near-and-dear. Consumer preferences for gas cooking was and is a major obstacle to control via societal electrification overall. As this article hopefully conveys, it started with gas cooking. It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can.

Postscript:

The Department of Energy (DOE) quietly promoted a top adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to a senior role overseeing home appliance regulations after he failed to clear Senate confirmation.

The DOE announced last week that Jeff Marootian was appointed to be the principal deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The appointment came days after the White House withdrew his name from consideration to lead EERE as the office’s assistant secretary.

While Marootian’s nomination failed after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed him over the Biden administration’s crackdown on natural gas-powered stovetops, his appointment last week makes him the effective chief of the DOE’s EERE office.

Too little, too late

But there is no true interest in stopping the onslaught of climate propaganda, I suspect it’s too late

 From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

12635713 – ecology landscape – climate change concept, desert invasion

It became apparent to me after the Super Nino of 15-16 that the situation with climate had little to do with climate and weather.  This is the result of the step-up function of temperatures that occurred after the Super Nino of 97-98:

Repeated again. It was then crystal clear that the warming of the oceans and the supernino response pumped the water vapor into the air that led to the overall “global” warming, when in reality the warming was distorted, in the coldest driest areas at their coldest driest time ( example the arctic or antarctic gets their big deviations from average in the winter, which then gets factored into the entire global temperature and distorts the warming).

The back radiation of CO2 that penetrates a mm or 2 of the ocean is not warming the oceans.  It is large natural forcing for the most part, Please read previous posts over the last year.   My writings are here:

https://www.cfact.org/author/joe-bastardi/

I grew extremely frustrated with people in power who were supposed to actually do more than pay lip service to all this over the years.   I am frustrated with what is a cottage industry built on arguing over what is a giant red herring.  As the years have gone by, the warming itself is proving it can not be the rise of co2, but instead large natural inputs,  Even if it was CO2, you adapt and move on.

But there is no true interest in stopping the onslaught of climate propaganda, I suspect it’s too late. I live next to a major university and precious few students have any knowledge of all the factors involved here.  A lot of them simply don’t care, the byproduct of a life of relative ease, and the assumption that we go along to get along. So they are lukewarm. A whole generation that either does not care or if they do, has succumbed to the brainwashing that is the center point of a lot of this.

Take Ukraine. This is not making a judgment on the issue of Ukraine, but instead the kind of threat being pushed that Putin, who can’t even win this war, is going to use this as a stepping stone to even more conquests. How, given what has happened does that make any sense?  So instead of forming an opinion on Ukraine based on the reality of the current facts, conjecture and non provable ideas are used. Same as climate change.. Does any serious person believe that Putin, having so much trouble here,  has designs to overwhelm Europe?  He may be committing national suicide in what is a standoff war in Ukraine, and he is going to march on?. This is not Hitler marching into Czechoslovakia,  yet the FEAR of something that is based on unknowns and most likely false premises is used as a propaganda point to instill fear in people, See the link? Say it something else, create fear, and then take the leadership in it.  The climate agenda does the same thing.

Again the message is not pro or anti-Ukraine. It is saying to evaluate the real situation, not assume things are going to happen that make little sense given what is actually going on.

Covid. Same thing. 2 chapters in my book, and I am not going to rehash it, said this was going to lead to what you are seeing in climate.

The immigration problem, Apparently the people pushing the open borders in sanctuary cities do not like the shared misery of socialism that the governor of Texas has decided to bestow upon them.  Again, another fake red herring to disguise the real issue, That there are people that are ILLEGALLY coming into the country and that the states next to the country of entry are taking the brunt of it, But like COVID, like Ukraine Like climate, like anything today, the response with truth and fact is too little too late.

I am writing this because I saw my 2 friends Marc Morano and Steve Milloy on Laura Ingraham. My question for her is WHERE THE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN SINCE 2015-2016 AND THAT SUPER NINO?  There has been plenty of evidence of what was going on. There is the problem. Even in the so-called conservative media, no one pays attention to what is going on to set the stage to counter it, Instead, it is wait till it happens and then counter it,  By that time it’s too late. The left knows this, They use it incessantly and why not?  People who are supposed to be resisting over the years, ( there is only so much a Marc Morano or Steve Milloy can do) have done nothing but pay lip service to all this,  I know personally because in trying to contact people over the years, with suggestions on how to get in front of this, the silence has been deafening. Sure CFACT allows it, but until we are in the abyss, people who are supposed to be manning the watchtower in the seats of power have been helpless and hapless and I fear the result is hopeless..

I cant even comment on the absurdity of what I heard from Joe Biden and Zelensky in the UN on climate change.

There is a common thread here. I wrote about it in this:

https://www.cfact.org/2023/05/09/the-three-ds-of-the-climate-change-agenda-deception-distortion-delusion/

It is in every issue.  Who is at fault? In the end, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Many of the Gen Z people have no idea what the heck they are pushing. We didn’t stand up when we had to.  And the kind of pushback now, given the complete abdication of the true battlefield which is the defense of our way of life, the past several years, means it’s likely too little too late.

In a way it is the only comfort I can find.

From this outstanding answer to the why of what you see:

https://wake-up.org/morality/god-raises-up-kings-or-nations-and-removes-them-larry-w-wilson.html

Civilizations come and go, and governments rise and fall.  Because our Creator loves people, He also blesses each nation with a span of time so it might prosper and do well, but this blessing ends when a nation becomes degenerate, rebellious, and unfit for self-rule.  When God determines that extended mercy for a nation has no redeeming effect, He marginalizes or destroys that nation.

It seems to me it describes what we are seeing today.

So to the people now waking up. Do want to try to find answers?. Well, whatever it is you have been doing is not working. We are either staring into the abyss or are in it.  And I have watched the last 8 years, people having no idea what it is really about.

We are supposed to be one nation under God.  So what do you think is going to happen when that is no longer the center point of our vision?

Author


Joe Bastardi

Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting.

He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore.

His new book The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate war can be found here. phonyclimatewar.com

And the Walter Duranty Award Goes To …

An international renewables-lobby outfit called Covering Climate Now (CCN) this week announced its 2023 prizes for media’s best hyping of the non-existent “climate crisis”, objectivity be damned. This “crisis” was most recently elevated to “global boiling” by the UN’s top idiot and socialist Antonio Guterres.

From Climate Scepticism

BY TONY THOMAS

In 1932, Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty of the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for his glowing reports of happiness and progress in the Soviet Union. He followed that with denials of the genocide-by-famine in the Ukraine, in which Stalin engineered the death by starvation of four million peasants. Duranty’s peers at the time described his reporting as “the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.”[1] But the verdict of Duranty biographer Sally J Taylor in “Stalin’s Apologist” (1996) was that his output involved “some of the greatest lies history has ever known”.

Prizes for journalists are akin to the beads and mirrors offered to grateful savages. High-profile print and TV journalists locally – I’d better not name them — have been showered with recent prizes for Canberra stories involving more spin than substance.

An international renewables-lobby outfit called Covering Climate Now (CCN) this week announced its 2023 prizes for media’s best hyping of the non-existent “climate crisis”, objectivity be damned. This “crisis” was most recently elevated to “global boiling” by the UN’s top idiot and socialist Antonio Guterres. And who should feature among the CCN prize-winners but our taxpayers’ very own Australian Broadcasting Commission. The ABC’s podcast “Who’s gonna (sic) save us?” won the radio/podcast category. The CCN commendation:

This engaging podcast tells the story of people who are standing up for their convictions and pushing back against organizations and companies acting with disregard for the climate crisis. The production draws the listener in with moments of high drama, like an Aboriginal woman boldly approaching an energy executive at a company board meeting to present “cease and desist” papers for trespassing on her people’s land, followed by a discussion about how Australians are using the law to stop climate change … Highlighting how everyone can take action, the podcast speaks to audiences in a way that sounds like an everyday conversation.

As a journalist myself, I don’t like outfits that work to turn journalists into propagandists, whether for “climate crises”, renewables or anything else. I remember 30-40 years ago, when the media had more ethics, my boss at BRW magazine banned journos from making extra money from media-training consultancies. Those outfits coached company chieftains on how dodge around aggressive interviewing. But today the ABC not only solicits and accepts prizes from media-corrupting groups like CCN, but has joined several international consortia dedicated to censoring inconvenient views which the censors label as ‘misinformation’.

CCN is a creature of the leftist Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and the dark-green Guardian. It has persuaded close to 600 media groups to sign up to “educate” the public about supposed climate peril, and to stifle evidence that then campaign for Net Zero is sabotaging the West’s fossil-fuel-derived prosperity. As it boasts,

CCNow collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture — and to drive a public conversation that creates an engaged public.

CCN’s 600 rogues’ gallery includes news-syndicating giants Reuters, Bloomberg and AFP, along with a host of print, TV and radio channels such as Al Jazeera, CBS, NBC, Deutsche Welle, Lancet, New Scientist, NZ Herald, Teen Vogue, Science Alert(Australia), Nature, and of course The Conversation(Australasia). CCN claims its members indoctrinate a two-billion strong audience.

The ABC has not signed up to CCN because it would be too naked a breach of its statutory charter for taxpayer-funded impartiality. It’s signed up instead to “truthist” coalitions like Reconciliation Australia and the troubled RMIT/ABC Fact Check. It’s also in alliance with UK-based BAFTA-albertwhich wants to “set the cultural agenda” by promoting leftist memes in TV shows, documentaries and movies.

Last year the ABC joined the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative” (TNI) – an international censorship alliance and, according to Robert Kennedy Jr, a cartel that labels material hostile to leftism as “misinformation”. TNI, with ABC assistance, stifles internet sites opposing Deep State narratives about Covid, elections, climate, and renewables being the cheapest form of energy (checked your power bill lately?)

So, what about the ABC’s prize from Covering Climate Now? It’s for the podcast called Who’s gonna (sic) save us, which is “a co-production of the so-called “science team” at ABC Radio National and triple j’s Hack.” Its brand logo involves, appropriately, a drum being banged, and a diversity-tick youth of colour screaming into a megaphone. In the background is a mob waving placards like “Don’t be a fossil fool”, “Go Solar! Save the planet”, and the hackneyed one about “No Planet B”. The text below reads,

We’re all looking for a way through the climate crisis. [Better, “climate madness”]. Who’s going to get us there — and how will they do it? Meet the people who are trying to draw the map to a better future. 

These people, led by Climate Minister Chris Bowen, are giving us a “better future” involving tripling of household energy bills and, probably, blackouts.

The podcast’s presenter is Jo Lauder, who we’re told has “reported extensively on climate change, the environment and young people.”

When I checked her social media, her top post on Xread

So I messaged her, “Hi Jo, isn’t it hypocritical to be carrying on about climate change while jetting to hang out in New York?” No reply yet.

The “Who’s gonna (sic) save us” series ran intermittently late last year. Although its ABC Listen app says we can “hear the world differently” the Jo Lauder series is same-old climate guff, with episodes of up to 50 minutes including “Citizens assemble!”, “Standing up for the climate”, “[activist] Scientists on strike”, “We fought the law”, “Community power”, and “Who do YOU think is going to [as distinct from ‘gonna’] save us?”

Dutifully, I listened in for well over an hour, absorbing Jo’s material:

“Who is your climate hero? Think big and small. Is it Saul Griffith, with his ambitious plan for decarbonising the entire nation or, hey! the world, or a small local like the gang at Totally Renewable Yackandandah who are focused on transforming their community’s future?”

“Traditionally Australia’s electricity system has been dirty, and heavily centred around coal communities. But there’s a shift happening. Towns around the country – from Yackandandah to Shackleton to Marlinja – are using renewables to take control of their energy. The benefits are flowing back into local communities, and remote places are finally getting reliable power.” 

I’d say that if Yakandandah wants to go right off the (coal-assisted) grid, good luck to them when the wind drops.

Who, by the way, is that ABC world-decarbonising climate hero Saul Griffith? The podcast invite reads,

Saul Griffith has an ambitious plan to save the planet. And it all begins at home. It’s an electrified revolution for the Australian household!

Saul turns out to be (thanks, Wikipedia) a successful Australian-American engineer and inventor from a Greenpeace-oriented family, now back in Wollongong after great times with Silicon Valley startups like Otherlab and Squid Labs (no relation to Squid Games). He advocates forcing every citizen into compliance with the Net Zero agenda. He’s also truly on board with the need for urgings from the likes of the ABC. Jo Lauder’s podcast opens with him saying, “Don’t under-appreciate the importance of storytellers. We need story-tellers more than anyone right now. We need the storytellers to make it OK for you to give up the V8 [desirable car engine].”

 As he’s written, (it sounds to me like one of those Soviet-era five-year plans):

Across the board we now need [renewables] adoption rates of 100%. This complete adoption rate [e.g. for electric cars] is required by the end-game decarbonization we ultimately need… A 100% adoption rate is only achieved by mandate—and robust financial incentives to back it up… The challenge of 100% adoption presents a giant conflict that we need to address head-on: the “free market” as we know it is not up to the task… This is not to say that businesses and the market don’t have roles; they are critical [I welcome that he rejects the North Korean model]. But in emergencies, ideologies must be put aside. When Mother Nature arm wrestles with the invisible hand, she will always win. As my friend, the economist Skip Laitner, says, the free market needs an invisible foot to give it a swift kick in the ass now and then…

We can rebuild a prosperous and inclusive middle class, as we enjoyed after World War II, with tens of millions of good new jobs that are vital and prideworthy. If America does it right, everyone’s energy costs will go down. [Should that read, “up”]. Everyone has a role to play in the war effort.

We now face a climate emergency as challenging as all of our other 20th-century emergencies combined. [e.g. World War One, the Great Depression, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and the Cold War combined]. It requires mass mobilization with extraordinary speed and resources. Without a doubt, you are worried, scared, or worse. That’s reasonable, but we can’t do nothing, and this is also a vast opportunity to make the world, and our economy, better for everyone. (My emphases).

Call me out for misinformation but isn’t the real question, “Who’s gonna [sic] save us from Covering Climate Now, Saul Griffith, Buffoon Bowen and the ABC?”

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 and available here

[1] Conquest, R. Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Oxford University Press, New York. 1986, p. 320.

Could Extreme Weather Hit the 2026 World Cup?

The latest fake news from the BBC

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

The latest fake news from the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/av/66818689

According to BBC weatherman Simon King:

“Canada, the US and Mexico often get extreme weather. We’ve seen heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in recent years.

And with the 2026 World Cup being held in these locations, how much of a problem is extreme weather going to be?”

He uses as his example this year’s heatwave in Texas, which he falsely claims to be “record breaking”:

Far from being record breaking, temperatures of 38C (100F) in Dallas occur virtually every summer. The record there is 112F set in 1980.

And although the heatwave lasted a bit longer than normal this summer with 43 days of 100F or more, there is nothing unusual about this either:

In neither city is there any evidence that temperatures are increasing.

Maybe Simon King should go and check what the weather was like the last time the US hosted the World Cup in 1994:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_FIFA_World_Cup

Sunak Blinks

Late yesterday someone leaked Rishi Sunak’s plans to water down the UK’s Net Zero measures to the BBC. He was not, everyone was at pains to note, discarding the overall 2050 target. The leaked changes were all about softening and delaying the pain.

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

Has he seen the light?

Late yesterday someone leaked Rishi Sunak’s plans to water down the UK’s Net Zero measures to the BBC. He was not, everyone was at pains to note, discarding the overall 2050 target. The leaked changes were all about softening and delaying the pain.

Here is the BBC’s list of the eight rumoured policy changes:

  1. Push back the ban on petrol cars to 2035 from 2030
  2. Soften the ban on gas boilers from no new gas boilers in 2035 to 20% of new boilers still gas in 2035
  3. Rescind looming energy efficiency regulations for homes
  4. Push back the ban on oil boilers from 2026 to 2035
  5. No new taxes to discourage flying
  6. No interference in people’s diets
  7. No measures to encourage carpooling
  8. Not implementing a recycling strategy requiring householders to operate 7 bins.

Updates will follow here when Sunak makes his speech.

Reactions from important people will be posted in comments. Readers are encouraged to add to these.

“A Missed Opportunity”: Biden to Skip This Week’s New York UN Climate Summit

In the midst of large New York climate protests, Biden has decided to skip the UN summit and send John Kerry in his place.

Awkward moment John Kerry shakes hands with Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

In the midst of large New York climate protests, Biden has decided to skip the UN summit and send John Kerry in his place.

Biden to skip U.N. climate summit 

By Sara Schonhardt, Robin Bravender | 09/15/2023 04:09 PM EDT

President Joe Biden is expected to skip a U.N. summit next week where global leaders were asked to bring their ambitious plans to tackle climate change.

“Currently, the president is not scheduled to participate in the U.N. climate summit on Wednesday,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Friday.

Biden is sending climate envoy John Kerry to represent the United States, a State Department spokesperson said Friday, but Biden’s absence is noteworthy at a forum where global leaders were invited to make sweeping climate commitments and highlight action ahead of global climate talks known as COP28 that kick off in late November.

“It’s a missed opportunity,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G. “To not have major leaders from developed countries there [at the U.N. summit] … it’s not a good signal when you’re trying to build momentum in the run-up to COP28 in Dubai and get other countries on board.”

…

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has secured a speaking slot, the E.U. delegation in New York confirmed. 

But other leaders of some of the world’s major polluters aren’t expected to be in attendance, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

…Read more: https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-to-skip-u-n-climate-summit/

I think it hilarious that even greens describe Kerry’s attendance in place of Biden as “a missed opportunity”. No word yet if Kerry plans to shake the hand of anyone on the DEA most wanted list at this week’s climate conference.

Regarding the climate protests, the media has made a lot of noise but I’m not sure how widespread the allegedly worldwide climate protests actually are. Apparently there is quite a presence in New York, but I haven’t exactly seen anyone in my town holding any banners.

The Guardian claims “10s of thousands” attended the New York protest, to listen to speeches by AOC, though it is difficult to judge numbers from the Guardian photos. I also looked at NPR, they also have a poor quality photo which makes it difficult to judge numbers. New York Times has a short video, but the video is strangely lacking in viewpoints which would allow us to be impressed by the 10s of thousands of marchers. Judge for yourself.

Climate Week Protests Draw Thousands In New York City | NPR News Now

The Guardian report on AOC speaking at the conference;

Tens of thousands in NYC march against fossil fuels as AOC hails powerful message

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the crowd must become ‘too big and too radical to ignore’ as Biden came under fire for oil projects

Dharna Noor and Aliya Uteuova in New YorkMon 18 Sep 2023 07.18 AEST

Tens of thousands of climate activists took to the streets of New York City on Sunday in a “march to end fossil fuels”, with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez telling the crowd that the movement must become “too big and too radical to ignore”.

To cheers from the crowd, the progressive Democrat criticized the US continuing to approve fossil fuel projects, something which the Biden administration did earlier this year with the controversial Willow project in Alaska.

“We are all here for one reason: to end fossil fuels around the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez told a rally at the finish of the march, which ended close to the UN headquarters where world leaders will gather this week. “And the way we create urgency is to have people around the world in the streets.”

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/17/march-to-end-fossil-fuels-new-york-city

The Guardian picture of AOC speaking at the climate protest shows AOC wearing what appears to be mostly fossil fuel based synthetic clothing. But I guess it is not easy to explain to someone who thinks all her political critics want to sleep with her, that she is acting like an ignorant green hypocrite.

Electricity Competition in Georgia

“While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.”

From  Master Resource

By Jim Clarkson

“While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.”

The prevailing goals sought by those seeking reform in the power market are mandated access and common carriage for state regulated utilities. However, this alternative is at odds with unleashing entrepreneurship in this power market. The far better development would be the spontaneous, voluntary, indigenous, bottom-up approach for the development of market relationships rather than government mandates.

The state of Georgia has a system that is near such a market. With a few changes, a truly liberalized market is possible. The ninety different utilities in the state share the high voltage system in common. There is active and vigorous competition for new customers with a connected load of 900 kilowatts or more in most of the territory. The changes needed are to drop any minimum load requirements and allow the choice of serving utility to be perpetual instead of a one-time choice.

This sharing of transmission facilities has precedent with petroleum pipelines. Oil companies are very competitive on the gasoline retail level but developed sharing arrangements long ago for intrastate and interstate pipelines. It was in their common interest to avoid duplicate, single-owner pipelines. This came about without regulation, in contrast to the natural gas pipelines that developed under regulation.

The development of the Georgia transmission sharing system has a unique history and shows how the lack of government interference allows beneficial market relationships to develop. By the 1970s, a consortium of electric membership cooperatives and municipal electric systems already had partial ownership in certain generating plants with Georgia Power.

Georgia Power began construction of a nuclear plant and soon ran into serious cost overruns. At that time the doctrine of “used and useful” was in effect for allowing capital recovery of new generating assets. Despite some efforts by the state regulatory agency to provide some relief, the utility faced bankruptcy. In a period when interest rates were high, Georgia Power sought partnerships with the EMCs and municipals that had access to low-interest borrowing to bailout their problem. The potential partners had some transmission assets and demanded that all transmission be accessible for all the owners of a common system.

This was a negotiated, not mandated, solution to the various problems and the interests of the parties. This agreement was not ordered by either the state regulatory agency or by a legislative directive. The sharing agreement happened in 1974 when the court-ordered breakup of AT&T included the common mandated carriage by non-owners of the AT&T and “Baby Bells” long-distance systems. Unfortunately, this mandated carriage with recovery of stranded assets model was followed in wholesale electricity market.

In Georgia there are 47 municipal power systems. Long ago these utilities attracted cautious big power users by agreeing to allow them to switch to the big investor-owned utility if they found municipal service was unsatisfactory. The 39 EMCs in the Georgia Power territory (there are three on TVA) have also make the switch option available to large new customers. In fact, a number of customers have indeed exercised this option. The Georgia Public Service Commission in recent years has declared, at Georgia Power’s urging, that such contract provisions are not allowed. However, the court case law which trumps the PSC has yet to be overturned.

Georgia Munies like Georgia Power have a strategy of going long on power generation in hopes of selling extra generation off-system. The wholesale group for Municipals has successfully sold their share of current very costly Vogtle nuclear capacity under construction to other utilities in Florida and Alabama for 20 years. This relieves them of collecting capital recovery for the nuclear plant and thereby can offer lower bids for competitive new customers.

Georgia Power meanwhile adopted a strategy of building more generation than they needed to sell into the wholesale market. The strategy included building cheaper combined-cycle gas-fired plants under their unregulated sister company while building risky nuclear capacity under almost certain recovery state regulation. However, the wholesale power market is turning to hourly-priced commodity exchanges, and the long run demand does not look good for Georgia Power who must now try to recover unneeded capacity cost from captive domestic customers.

Meanwhile the EMCs adopted a strategy of being short on capacity and being net buyers from the wholesale market. Unlike the high customer density of the Munies and Georgia Power, the EMCs still have room for growth and are gaining far more new customers than the land-locked, flat-growth competitors. EMCs buy from various wholesale suppliers. Individual EMCs are acting like marketers by, in effect, giving their customers access to the wholesale market which does not tolerate any nuclear surcharges. The EMCs can beat Georgia Power in competitive situations.

The enabling legislation for this sharing of transmission and serving customers in other distributor’s territories was sponsored by the utilities themselves and is a weaking of the exclusive franchisee policies in force throughout the rest of the country. This is a demonstration of what could be the polices of the future.

The proper aim of consumer groups and free market advocates should be not to force utilities to allow others to use their private property but to reduce the impediments to competition between existing and new suppliers. Franchisee territories should be completely abolished, and all customers should have the right to pick and change their electric utility. The government action needed is only to get out of the way and let a freed-up market develop. Abolish state and federal utility regulation along with the enabling legislation. Then going forward the best utility public policy is no public policy.

Some may worry about the old utility false warning concerning duplicate wiring. But it is in the mutual interest of the parties to share facilities, including the last mile distribution wiring. Let’s say a stubborn utility starts losing customers in a subdivision to a neighboring utility with better rates and policies. At first the aggressor will expand its wiring into the incumbent’s territory. The incumbent soon realizes stranded wiring is being created and realizes they can at least get some recovery by selling what would otherwise be abandoned wiring. Or they can agree to sharing as a means of getting partial revenue instead of nothing.

While limited, customer choice and utility switching in Georgia has a large impact on the utility behavior and regulatory policies. Because of options, utilities try to treat customers like, well, customers. But it is time to promote markets in place of remaining governmental mandates and controls.

Green Revolution Fail: Congress to Refuse Funding for Ukraine?

Back in March, George Soros wrote that the Ukrainian defeat of Russia was vital for progressing the global green revolution. The Republican Congress may be about to refuse Biden’s request for more military aid.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Back in March, George Soros wrote that the Ukrainian defeat of Russia was vital for progressing the global green revolution. The Republican Congress may be about to refuse Biden’s request for more military aid.

Playbook: McCarthy’s latest gambit falls flat

By RACHAEL BADE, EUGENE DANIELS and RYAN LIZZA 

09/18/2023 06:04 AM EDT

…

IS UKRAINE AID DEAD? — Which brings us to the bigger picture: Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY heads to Washington later this week in a last-ditch effort to shore up American support for his war-torn nation. But while there’s a broad bipartisan coalition keen on continuing aid to Kyiv, it increasingly looks like that assistance could become the latest casualty of the battle inside the GOP.

To recap: The White House and Ukraine’s bipartisan allies in the Senate have plotted for weeks to advance $24 billion in supplemental Ukraine aid alongside whatever temporary funding patch moves around the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline. House conservatives have erupted at the notion of attaching Ukraine aid to a CR, and even McCarthy’s gambit of moving it separately with border security legislation has gotten a chilly reception.

Now the notion of moving any Ukraine aid has appeared on the litany of grievances the hard right is using to threaten McCarthy’s speakership. And even Greene, one of McCarthy’s top allies on the right, told Playbook recently that no amount of border funding could compensate for another injection of U.S. taxpayer money overseas.

“It’s getting to be a very taboo issue in our conference, and the American people don’t support it,” Greene said, calling the battle against Russia’s invasion “a war that should be over.”

…Read more: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/09/18/mccarthys-latest-gambit-falls-flat-00116484

Soros’s article from March;

Russian defeat is inevitable, and will allow world to focus on our real problem — Climate change

The countries of the former Soviet empire eagerly await defeat of the Russian army in Ukraine, and the world will be able to focus on climate change, writes George Soros

THU, 23 MAR, 2023 – 01:28
GEORGE SOROS

It is just over one month ago that I gave a speech on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. Since then, so many remarkable things have happened — and have happened so fast — that it is worth comparing my predictions of a month ago with actual developments.

…

The countries of the former Soviet empire, eager to assert their independence, can hardly wait for the Russian army to be crushed in Ukraine. At that point, Putin’s dream of a renewed Russian empire will disintegrate and cease to pose a threat to Europe.

The defeat of Russian imperialism will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. It will bring huge relief to open societies and create tremendous problems for closed ones. Most importantly, it will allow the world to concentrate on its biggest problem, climate change.

…Read more: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41098510.html

If the opportunity to do the opposite of what Soros wants isn’t convincing enough, there is an additional problem which must be considered.

There is evidence Europe is spending a lot of cash on interfering with US domestic politics, by attempting to bypass US politicians who oppose the extreme European green agenda, and by providing substantial support to US politicians who share Europe’s green ideals.

We don’t often get to glimpse behind the curtain with European politics. Quite apart from the language barrier, European politics is generally a lot less open than US politics. But European politicians occasionally let important information slip.

One such slip was a public boast by then British Climate Change Minister Claire Perry, about all the good they were doing, reaching out to elected US politicians, and helping them to coordinate and sabotage President Trump’s America First agenda.

UK bypasses Donald Trump to discuss climate change with US city mayors directly

Claire Perry, the Climate Change Minister, says British Government is now speaking to ‘other players’ in US about how to fight global warming

Ian Johnston
Environment Correspondent
Tuesday 25 July 2017 14:21

The UK has started bypassing Donald Trump over climate change, talking directly to city mayors and other officials committed to trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the new Climate Change Minister has revealed.

Claire Perry, who was appointed to the post after the general election last month, said that British ministers had not “missed an opportunity” to tell the US President that they were disappointed he had decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the news service Bloomberg reported.

She said she had been speaking to “other players” in the US, including the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, who visited the UK last week.

…Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/uk-donald-trump-climate-change-us-city-mayors-talk-direct-paris-agreement-houston-sylvester-turner-a7859291.html

If you want to know why US politics today is so messed up, I suggest a potential explanation for what went wrong is good people in the USA are experiencing collateral damage from an ongoing and well funded European effort to destabilise and reshape the political landscape of the United States. These are the people Biden wants US taxpayers to help.

Stopping US financial aid to Ukraine, forcing Europe to step up and commit their own resources to stopping Russia, instead of treating the people of the USA with contempt, yet still expecting the USA to pay all their bills, would not only impede George Soros’ global green revolution, and potentially save the people of Russia from a completely unnecessary replay of the 1990s post Soviet social chaos and economic and political collapse, it would hopefully also draw resources away from whatever nasty games state sponsored European influencers are playing on the ground inside the United States.

For more information on climate politics click here.

Update (EW): Just published, UN Zelensky speech confirming climate action is a key reason for supporting Ukraine.

… We know the possible effects of spreading the war into the cyberspace. The artificial intelligence could be trained to combat well – before it would learn to help the humanity. Thank God, people have not yet learned to use climate as a weapon. Even though humanity is failing on its climate policy objectives – this means that extreme weather will still impact the normal global life and some evil state will also weaponise its outcomes.

And when people in the streets of New York and other cities of the world went out on climate protest – we all have seen them… And when people in Morocco and Libya and other countries die as a result of natural disasters… And when islands and countries disappear under water… And when tornados and deserts are spreading into new territories… And when all of this is happening, one unnatural disaster in Moscow decided to launch a big war and kill tens of thousands of people.

We must act united – to defeat the aggressor and focus all our capabilities and energy on addressing these challenges.

…Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/20/full-text-zelenskyys-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly

My opinion, European climate activists are desperate for Russia to be utterly crushed, and soon, so they can turn the billions of dollars of resources they are currently spending on Ukraine against the political opponents of their extreme green agenda. Every dollar the USA sends to Ukraine brings that opportunity closer to their grasp.

Update (EW): Like I said, glimpses behind the curtain. US citizen in jail in Ukraine, facing 5-8 years for the crime of journalism. Claims he has been beaten and extorted in prison. No contact since July. I wonder how long any of us who have ever criticised Zelensky would last, were we to ever set foot on Ukrainian soil?

Sunak breaks the Net Zero consensus

According to news reports, Rishi Sunak is set to delay a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 amid economic hardship for millions of families. The Prime Minister is also considering watering down the ban on gas boilers in homes in order to cut costs for consumers.

From Net Zero Watch

Net Zero Watch has welcomed reports that the government is planning to delay and water down some of its Net Zero targets.

According to news reports, Rishi Sunak is set to delay a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 amid economic hardship for millions of families. The Prime Minister is also considering watering down the ban on gas boilers in homes in order to cut costs for consumers.

Net Zero Watch has long warned that current Net Zero plans are astronomically costly, technologically impossible and politically unsustainable.

As European governments have begun to retreat from their own Net Zero plans, it was just a question of time before the UK, which has even more utopian targets, had to make a U-turn, and return to the path of economic and technological realism.

The Home Secretary’s statement that the UK ‘is not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people’ is a welcome acknowledgment of Net Zero Watch’s warnings that current Net Zero plans are economically self-destructive and politically irrational.

If the reported changes turn out to be true, they could represent a significant first move towards a complete reassessment of the unilateral Net Zero targets embedded in the Climate Change Act.

There has been a noisy backlash from green Conservatives and big corporations, arguing that delaying the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles reduces business certainty. This suggests that they have limited confidence that people will purchase EVs without an element of state coercion.

Net Zero Watch hopes that in the coming days the Prime Minister will stick to his guns.

Further information on the cost of Net Zero is available on our website

Let the mind games begin: Scorching summer of brutal bushfire hell is in the news before it even happens

It’s as if we’re preparing for Pearl Harbour or something — and if you are not scared, you should be, and even if this summer isn’t that unprecedented, you will feel like it is, and if the hellfire doesn’t eventuate, there’ll be no headlines saying “Oops. We panicked for nothing!”

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

It’s like the bushfires and baking heat are already here (in your mind, if not in reality)

It’s as if we’re preparing for Pearl Harbour or something — and if you are not scared, you should be, and even if this summer isn’t that unprecedented, you will feel like it is, and if the hellfire doesn’t eventuate, there’ll be no headlines saying “Oops. We panicked for nothing!”

After 150 years of Pacific Oscillation, the Pacific has oscillated again. An El Nino has been declared, and like the last 27 El Ninos since Federation, it will probably be warmer and drier “than average” in Australia. But the Merchants of Panic are already calling it a summer of severe wildfires and droughts. There’s no flames yet, but Reuters is wheeling out the photos of burnt out wrecks. SBS found experts to badger us into making a “heat wave plan” — like seriously, as if Australians need three months to remember what summer is. No really — The Executive Director of Sweltering Cities (whatever that is), says you should buy up those extra ice cube trays now and learn the signs of heat exhaustion. Prepare your home — like what, find the air conditioner remote?

Even in France, apparently the risk of an Australian bushfire and drought that might, maybe potentially happen is now worth a headline. See how this works? Even if the world were cooling, there’s always someplace that might have a hot summer coming, and when all the world shares headlines of hellfire, people will feel like climate hell is truly here, even if the weather was just exactly what it has always been.

For perspective, here are the last 147 years of Pacific variation, just so people can appreciate how extraordinary this isn’t. This is a BOM graph, made by an agency that gets a million dollars a day from Australians to understand our climate, but somehow our billion dollar public news agencies can’t find it, and the BOM forgot to mention it in the press release.

It’s just another day in the land of droughts and flooding rains:

What matters is that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is the largest short term driver of Earth’s climate, and we have no idea what makes it tick; we can’t predict it more than a few months in advance, and we have no clue at all about what it will do this time next year. (If we did, the BoM could tell our farmers useful things, like what kind of rainfall they’ll get before they put the seed in. )

Hidden in the small print on the ABC site, but not mentioned on the nightly news, is that El Nino’s don’t always create widespread drought, and that the models are sometimes wrong, and the slow development of this years event “might limit its strength”.

How to manufacture climate anxiety

SBS News really takes the cake today. The new normal is a world where you practically need a roster on the fridge to plan who does the 3pm check to see if Nana had her glass of water.

The Executive Director of Sweltering Cities, Emma Bacon, says people should have a heat wave plan.

“That means looking at our homes now and saying ‘how can I make it easier to keep cool inside? Do I need to get an extra fan? Do I need to get more ice cube trays? How can I block the heat from entering the house with extra awnings or things like that. So that’s one of the big things. it’s familiarising ourselves with the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke to make sure if we need medical care, then we know when that needs to happen. And what we also can do is we can figure out who we’re going to check in on during a heatwave that could be a colleague, it could be grandma, it could be you know a family member who’s pregnant, you know, people who might be suffering in the heat, who we are going to check in on and let’s make a plan to do that because community connection is one of the best ways to keep safe during a heatwave.”

It’s almost like prepping for a summer blackout without saying the word “blackout”? But, silly me, in the Renewable Crash Test Zone, being NetZero or living in a blackout are nearly the same thing.