Day: November 27, 2023

Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer: Alarms about climate change ‘are delusions’ – ‘This can be compared to the time of the witch hunts’

From the ClimateDepot

By Marc Morano

Albrecht Glatzle William Happer visited Paraguay last week on invitation of the Federation of Production Cooperatives FECOPROD. He gave several presentations and talked to political and technical decision makers (including the head of state Santiago Peña).

Here are two short, but very clear press statements following his visit, which went viral in the social media.

https://www.abc.com.py/politica/2023/11/26/las-alarmas-por-el-cambio-climatico-son-delirios-afirma-cientifico-de-eeuu/

Nuclear physicist, William Happer, professor at Princeton University, home of Einstein and Oppenheimer.

This visit was well timed, just before COP 28 in Dubai. Hopefully, William Happer’s message will strengthen the resistance of Paraguayan politicians against the pressure exerted by the global climate alarmist community of the UN to sign the global methane pledge which would tremendously harm the paraguayan cattle industry and which has, totally incomprehensibly, already   been signed by mayor livestock producing countries, such as Brasil, Australia, Argentina and Uruguay (mass hypnosis?).

#

https://www.abc.com.py/politica/2023/11/26/las-alarmas-por-el-cambio-climatico-son-delirios-afirma-cientifico-de-eeuu/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Alarms about climate change “are delusions,” says US scientist – Politics – ABC Color

Alarms about climate change “are delusions,” says US scientist – Politics – ABC Color

– I came for a week, invited by friends like Alfred (Fast) from Fecoprod (president of the Federation of Production Cooperatives)…– Physicist from Princeton, the University of (Albert) Einstein and (Robert) Opennheimer…– Yes. I am a physicist, a nuclear physicist. I am also an expert in atmospheric physics. I am an emeritus professor. I still work. I have an office in the Department of Physics, the same place where Einstein was. Oppenheimer was also there. I knew Oppenheimer. My invention is something very well known, sodium guide stars, which were used in the Star Wars. This invention was very important because it allowed one of the layers of the atmosphere to create a guide, a reference through sodium atoms. It is used today in all observatories.

Read more: Video: CAF proposes in Paraguay to stop agricultural expansion

– Travels a lot?

– Quite. I was in Australia a few days ago, also invited by friends like Alfred who invited me to come to Paraguay. I loved it. I was there five days. I gave a series of conferences where I explained why there is no emergency in climate change, as they say.

– What is its foundation?

– The rising levels of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) have in some way even helped plants grow better today. The higher the carbon dioxide is, this actually has a beneficial effect. Now, even the world is greener, including Paraguay.

– Yours is a 180 degree different position…

– Climate change is real. It has always existed since the world existed. This particular change, this warming, already began in the 1800s long before the rise of greenhouse gases. The scientific evidence is very clear.

– What is your theory then? Climate change is attributed to human activity.

– Only now it is attributed to humans. This however began more than 150 years ago.

– How can you refute a (scientific) consensus of countries on climate change?

– The first thing we have to understand is that scientific truth can never be a matter of consensus. It is the empirical evidence. In the 1930s, for example, there was great opposition to the ideas of Einstein’s theory of relativity. There was even a book supported by a hundred scientists that proved, in quotes, that he was wrong. With great humor, Einstein responded to that book by asking “why did 100 get together if one that refuted with evidence what I said was already enough…”

https://www.abc.com.py/resizer/VHsOnuyLRB6bPLB3pzYOJkYJm0U=/fit-in/770xorig/smart/filters:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/abccolor/NAMHMYDENJBH3BYTSLDBDTQDUA. jpg
Nuclear physicist, William Happer, professor at Princeton University, home of Einstein and Oppenheimer. On ABC TV.

– Isn’t it true then that global warming in the last 50 years is attributed to humans?

– Of course, because it is actually a natural process that already exists prior to industrialization, long before human activity. Therefore, this is not a cause of human activity.

– What is it then, mass hysteria?

– It’s true. This can be compared to the time of the witch hunts. At that time, when there was a very bad harvest, a bad year, people looked for someone to blame and that’s why they invented witches, women who were even led to die at the stake. There is a very famous book called “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of the masses” by Charles Mackay (1814-1889), a book of great impact.

– What era is the book from?

– From 1842.

– What is it about?

– The book mentions how the masses are susceptible to lies and delusions that come from political power. When reading the history of nations we discover that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness in which they do not care what their leaders do. They impress with deception. The masses believe and follow until the madness ends or a new one captivates them. It is a fragility of human beings when they act collectively…

– What is global warming attributed to then…

– Since the beginning of time the earth’s temperature always rises and falls. There are other factors to consider. A thousand years ago, for example, the earth was so hot, much hotter than now when Greenland was green. It was not a mass of ice as it is today. In South America, the glaciers that one sees in the Andes were much further removed than now. The cooling was so great that the Thames River (in London) froze, the canals of Amsterdam too… In reality, there are many factors involved in warming and cooling.

– What is attributable to man then?

– One of the main reasons is ignorance. A common thing in politics is the use of fear as something useful. Manipulation is a resource of political power. One gains economic advantages through fear. It is a political technique.

– Why do they say that carbon dioxide is a danger?

– Carbon dioxide (or carbon dioxide) is not a pollutant. On the contrary, each of us is exhaling approximately one kilo of (carbon) dioxide per day. At night, plants release carbon dioxide. During the day they use them for photosynthesis. It is something totally natural. And now we don’t have enough. We should have more…

– What data do you have to prove that warming is not caused by man?

– I do not believe that men are exempt from responsibility. What I am saying is that human intervention is minimal in global warming.

– Why do countries demand reduction?

– It makes no sense to ask countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There are other greenhouse gases.

The effect of these gases is much greater in areas that are very remote, that are very cold: northern Russia, in Patagonia. The effect of the gases at the level of the Equator is almost zero. The intervention of its greenhouse effect is much greater at night than during the day. Countries should not reduce their emissions. It’s crazy.

-Those summits, the one in Copenhagen, the one in Paris, the one coming up now in Bombay, what are they then: tourist outings? Why do countries give it so much importance?

– I insist: it doesn’t make sense. My country, the United States, banned alcohol in the 1920s with Prohibition. This allowed the growth of organized crime to traffic alcohol clandestinely. It was wrong. Many of the drug problems we have today already began at that time, because of state actions that make no sense. Pollution is real. For example, if you have a coal plant and you do not have your cleaning system properly, that will produce real pollution. In large cities it is solved by restricting the circulation of vehicles that emit real pollutants. Their energy sources are not clean.

https://www.abc.com.py/resizer/TRgZcdtR-EQ0PZKA3J3sSlceAh0=/fit-in/770xorig/smart/filters:format(webp):format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing .com/abccolor/NNRCZ2ED3NGPLDQRTQHQCSJ63M.jpg
Nuclear physicist, William Happer, professor at Princeton University, home of Einstein and Oppenheimer.

– Are you a denier?

– I am against hysterical legends. Climate change is real. Dioxide is not the reason. Carbon dioxide is invisible. That’s not what warms up the atmosphere.

– But are human beings in danger or not?

– No. We are not in danger: famines and floods exist and will continue to exist but it is not because of climate change. If man actually wants to contribute to the elimination of hunger, the best thing is to increase carbon dioxide. In the United States, the increase in this period caused wheat yield to rise 40%. It is thanks to that small elevation of carbon dioxide.

– It’s natural?

– It’s natural.

– So, who should we attribute this global consensus on global warming? The new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, says that it is an invention of socialism, the Marxism that “dominates” global culture…

-There is a principle known as “Hanlon’s razor”. It is a rule of thumb that states: “never attribute to evil what is adequately explained by stupidity.” It is a human characteristic. Much was written about that.

– Does it have to do with a campaign of global domination?

– I worked for the United States Government. In the George Bush Sr. Administration I was in the Department of Energy. I was in charge of 1,000 officials when I only needed 300. That is the problem of governments. They hire many officials and those officials look for what to do. Sometimes they invent charges and give themselves (fictitious) causes to fight for those causes. That could be it.

– Are you a Republican?

– Yes, but don’t worry, Republicans are just as bad at those weaknesses as Democrats. Politicians often have to somehow reward the people who put them in that place.

– It is political clientelism as we know in Paraguay.

– Exactly. There are people who access public positions on a supernumerary basis because political clientelism – which also exists in my country – makes them look for causes that justify their presence in the State. Maybe that’s it.

– There are rulers who fully support and do politics with the climate of global warming: Lula, López Obrador, Biden, Petro in Colombia, Maduro, Boric in Chile, Arce in Bolivia, to name some socialist governments…

-Angela Merkel too, and she is right-wing. It is not a right or left issue. What we have to see here is whether the data that is put on the table is real or not. That is the point. It’s not so much the politics but the science behind it.

– Why do they say that your point of view is anti-scientific, obscurantist, reactionary? They say it is the expression of “decadent capitalist” politics…

– It’s typical as always. It is the ad hominem argument, that since one has no way to refute the facts then one targets the people. What I transmit are not ideas, they are facts.

– What do you think about investing in the so-called green economy?

– Most of it is a waste of money. The result of this policy is that energy prices are suffering enormously and produces capital flight. Companies do not want to be where the price of energy is expensive. In green conversion, so much money is being spent and so many opportunities are being lost that in the end there is no investment.

https://www.abc.com.py/resizer/No0xCblrOk7Pgrpe3eb53nVnc4w=/fit-in/770xorig/smart/filters:format(webp):format(webp):format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1. images.arcpublishing.com/abccolor/ZQ4VXTSFL5FWZLHQWAHME6POW4.jpg
Nuclear physicist, William Happer, professor at Princeton University, home of Einstein and Oppenheimer.

-How do you see Paraguay in the global context? Sell ​​clean and cheap energy…

– Its energy is clean and renewable. That’s the advantage. There is no need to do any type of energy conversion.

– Does Paraguay have to continue investing in hydroelectric plants?

– If you have abundant hydroelectric energy, go in that direction. I assume they will continue to develop this energy in the future.

– And the Chaco? It is far from power generation sources.

– Looking to the future, in-depth geological studies must be carried out to see what resources the Chaco has in all terms: if there are hydrocarbons, if there is gas. You must have all the information about your energy riches.

– Solar energy?

– Solar energy is probably the least convenient because it is very expensive. It doesn’t work at night. On cloudy days it does not produce, in winter it produces less, even in sunny countries like Paraguay. In the Chaco, solar energy is not a bad idea as long as it is for something specific. Outside of that it is not very useful.

– Is it better to carry hydroelectric energy despite the distance? It’s like 500 km at least from Itaipu or Yacyretá.

– Hydroelectric energy is a good investment. In the United States, energy is normally transported 1,000 km inclusive…

World’s Largest Iceberg, Three Times The Size Of NYC, Starts Moving For First Time In Over 30 Years

A satellite imagery of the world’s largest iceberg, named A23a, seen in Antarctica, November 15, 2023. 

From The Daily Caller

JOHN OYEWALE

CONTRIBUTOR

Image not from story. (Photo by OLIVIER MORIN/AFP via Getty Images)

The world’s largest iceberg, which was an ice island for more than 30 years, has resumed drifting, several reports noted.

Iceberg A23a, 1,280 sq. nautical miles (about 1,695 sq. miles or about 4,390 sq. km.) in area, is the largest iceberg in the world, per the U.S. National Ice Center. This makes it more than three times larger than the about 300.45-sq.-mile New York City, and larger by about 661 sq. miles than Rhode Island, the U.S.’s smallest state. However, the visible cliffs are only the tip of the iceberg, as the ice extends farther down below the waterline, per the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

A23a is about 1,312 feet thick, the BBC reported. This makes it 464 feet shorter than the One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the U.S., and nearly twice as tall as the Trump Tower.

A23a calved from West Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf on the Antarctic coastline in 1986 but soon became stranded on the Weddell Sea just north of the shelf, Reuters reported. It hosted a Soviet research station, Druzhnaya 1, at the time, the BBC noted. (RELATED: Video Of Giant Iceberg Approaching Homes Is Something Straight Out Of A Nightmare)

“It was grounded since 1986 but eventually it was going to decrease (in size) sufficiently to lose grip and start moving. I spotted first movement back in 2020,” Dr. Andrew Fleming, a remote sensing expert from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC.

Strong winds and currents are whipping the nearly a trillion-metric-tonne iceberg towards the South Atlantic along the “iceberg alley” path, and it could possibly halt at South Georgia Island, per Reuters. Once there, it reportedly could block access to the island for millions of seals, penguins, and seabirds which breed and forage there. However, it could also release mineral dust, a key source of nutrients for the ocean’s food chains, the BBC noted.

A23a briefly lost its top ranking to another massive iceberg, A76, in 2021. A76, however, has since melted somewhat and splintered off in turbulent, warmer but still chilly waters and is near South Georgia Island.

A23a, like all icebergs, appears doomed to a similar fate, the BBC noted.

“Climate expert” Michael Mann blatantly misinformed public about Maui’s Lahaina fire.

By Jim Steele

Just one day after the tragic Lahaina fire, Michael Mann fearmongered a tweet, “What we’re seeing in #Maui is a “compound”climate catastrophe.” So the far-left socialist news organization, DemocracyNow, eagerly interviewed Michael Mann to hype that a climate crisis drove the fire’s devastation.

Mann obliged, suggesting the high winds, which are not uncommon in Lahaina, “interacted with epic drought, higher pressure, hotter temperatures, less rainfall,” But the so-called expert was demonstrably lying.

Lahaina’s temperature was normal and there was no epic drought. Mann failed to mention Maui experiences seasonal droughts most years, as its warm climate alternates between a wet season and a dry season. Maui’s 2023 wet season totals were mostly 90 to 120% of average.

Maui’s dry season lasts April–October, creating high fire risk each summer. However, by May 2023, there was no drought anywhere on Maui. http://Drought.gov wrote, “due to late wet season rainfall, significant wildfire risk is expected to develop later than the normal late-July to early-August time frame.”

As the US Drought Monitor data shows by August 8th (highlighted by blue rectangles) there were no areas in Maui experiencing extreme or exceptional drought, never mind Mann’s dishonest claim of an epic drought.

Yet Mann persisted in his climate crisis fearmongering stating, “Huge amount of fuel in form of dry materials impacted by climate change and the crisis.” Again Mann failed to inform anyone that the fire’s fuel was mostly dead invasive grasses and shrubs on abandoned plantations.

Fire weather experts (Mann is not one) categorize dead grasses and shrubs as 1-hour and 10-hour fuels, meaning they become highly flammable in less than a day of dry weather, weather that always occurs between April and October dry season. Furthermore, located on the leeward slopes, Lahaina is naturally one of the driest areas in Maui.

Mann knows damn well a single day of dry weather tells you diddly squat about a changing climate. Yet Mann and DemocracyNow hid all the important weather facts to manipulate you with a false narrative that a climate crisis causes more fires, concluding “Defining crisis of our time is the climate crisis.”

Mid-Nov. 2023 Arctic Ice Grows to 10 Wadhams

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The animation shows the rapid growth of Arctic ice extent during November 2023, from day 304 to yesterday, day 319.  For all of the fuss over the September minimum, little is said about Arctic ice growing back rapidly; that’s 4 Wadhams in October, plus another 1.3M in Nov to total 10M km2, or 10 Wadhams.  The Russian side on the left froze over in October, and now at the center bottom you can see Beaufort sea and Canadian Archipelago icing up. Center right is Baffin Bay growing ice as well.

The graph below shows the last 30 days of 2023 compared to the 17 year average (2006 to 2022 inclusive), to SII (Sea Ice Index) and some notable years.

From Mid October to Mid November 2023, MASIE shows NH ice extent growing from 6.3 M km2 to 10M.  That matches 2022 and exceeds the 17 year average by more than 200K km2.   SII (Sea Ice Index) is only slightly lower.

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins.

Region2023319Day 319 Ave.2023-Ave.20073192023-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere99970689784253 212815 9737614259454 
 (1) Beaufort_Sea10511941063450 -12257 1053727-2533 
 (2) Chukchi_Sea596947629695 -32748 50378393164 
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea10649131075985 -11072 104395220960 
 (4) Laptev_Sea897845897217 628 8978450 
 (5) Kara_Sea696199658489 37710 765376-69177 
 (6) Barents_Sea245998154920 91078 145438100560 
 (7) Greenland_Sea613312460620 152692 52757585737 
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence536576526706 9870 5339312645 
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago841536850736 -9200 852539-11003 
 (10) Hudson_Bay161371234076 -72704 231544-70173 
 (11) Central_Arctic32368213174741 62081 315622880594 

Overall ice extent has 212k km2 above average or 2%.  The only sizeable deficit is in Hudson Bay,  more than offset by surpluses elsewhere, especiallly in Greenland and Barents seas, along with the Central Arctic.

Three Graphs That Show There Is No ‘Climate Crisis’

From The Daily Sceptic

BY JOHN STADDON

As the West fitfully weakens industrial civilisation by trying to eliminate oil, coal and natural gas as energy sources, the scientific basis for Net Zero is based more on ‘general agreement’ than hard data. Climate scientists nevertheless sound optimistic about the progress that’s being made in destroying society’s carbon energy base.  

There are of course criticisms of the idea of a carbon-dioxide-induced apocalypse, largely supported as it is by general circulation (i.e., whole-earth) planetary models. There are too many different GCMs all with too many free parameters (aka ‘fudge factors’), as well as wildly divergent readings of historical climate records: Are violent climate events really more frequent, and how does weather actually relate to climate? The popular press cries havoc, but the data are not so clear. The looming economic costs of a Net Zero target are leading to some political pushback. Nevertheless, the recent jury acquittal of nine Extinction Rebellion vandals shows that passionate belief in the imminent dangers of CO2 is not limited to activists.

Climate science is complicated, but the key question is simple. The climate does seem to be getting warmer, but are we responsible? Does the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide have a major effect on the temperature of the earth? The standard answer is “yes, of course”. But in fact there are good reasons for doubt. 

Popular accounts of the ‘climate emergency’ rarely show quantitative data. Yet there are widely available graphs that anyone can understand. Here are three graphs which suggest that the answer to the question is probably “no”. It is likely that beyond a certain point, carbon dioxide has a relatively minor effect on planetary temperature. 

The very long-term historical record

This graph is controversial, simply because estimates of CO2 concentration and temperature before thermometers were widely available – i.e., through 99.99% of the Earth’s history – must be estimated indirectly, by proxies such as ice cores, tree rings and isotope measurements.

If this graph of global temperature and CO2 concentration over the past 600 million years is approximately valid, it shows two things:

  1. According to one expert, and as the far right point on the graph shows, “the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere today is the lowest in Earth history except for a period just following the end-Permian extinction event and very early in the Phanerozoic (that is, around 550 million years ago). [emphasis added]” 
  2. There is no correlation between the CO2 level and global temperature: when CO2 is high, temperature may be low, and vice versa. 

The second conclusion is less certain than the first. But, certainly vertebrate life has flourished on earth at CO2 concentrations much higher than today’s. 

The long-term historical record

The CO2-temperature correlation is much clearer over a shorter time scale, 800,000 years, as in the next graph (which is not at all controversial). The graph shows temperature (red line) and four estimates of atmospheric CO2 from the EPICA Antarctic ice dome studies across an 800,000-year time period.  

The two main conclusions to be drawn from this graph are:

  1. At this time scale CO2 concentration and temperature are strongly correlated: CO2 and temperature go up and down together.
  2. But CO2 increases reliably lag behind temperature increases, showing that the CO2 changes are caused by the temperature increases, rather than the reverse. Reason: As oceans heat up, gases, including CO2, are expelled, when they cool atmospheric CO2 is absorbed; warm water can hold less dissolved gas than cool (most planetary CO2 stored in the oceans).

There are arguments, based on positive feedback, that even though ocean heating precedes rather than follows CO2 increase, the effective causation is opposite: CO2 causes heating, not the reverse. But the simplest conclusion is that major changes in atmospheric CO2 are caused by changes in planetary temperature, not the other way round.

 Physics

The final graph is from a recent long paper by two physicists, William Wijngaarden (York University, Toronto) and William Happer (Princeton). The article just considers the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, given the physical properties of air and the handful of low-concentration greenhouse gases (CO2, nitrous oxide and methane) that it contains. 

The blue bell-shaped curve shows the amount of solar energy flux (at different wavelengths, x-axis) radiated to space from an earth with no atmosphere. (Most is in the infrared region 400-1000 or so.) The green line is the flux with an atmosphere with no CO2 but with all other greenhouse gases at their standard concentrations. The black line is for all greenhouse gases, CO2 included, at their standard concentrations. The red line is for twice the standard concentration of CO2 (400 to 800 ppm) but with all the other greenhouse gases unchanged.  

At 400 ppm CO2 does have a greenhouse effect: Radiated energy is reduced in the 500-700 frequency range. But an increase to 800 ppm has almost no additional effect – the black and red lines are almost the same. Doubling the standard concentration of CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm has almost no additional greenhouse effect. 

Conclusion

Taken together, these three bits of data should make anyone doubt that further increases in CO2 pose any kind of environmental threat. The earth may be warming, but it is unlikely that CO2 is responsible. There is almost no chance that these changes are life threatening or even – granted that human activity is probably not responsible – that warming will continue indefinitely. It’s time to cease panicking. Let’s zero Net Zero.

John Staddon is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Professor of Biology emeritus at Duke University.

Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse

This year has been a financial disaster for Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for the biomass energy industry. With more than $250 million in losses to date and worsening results expected in the fourth quarter, the once high-flying company’s viability, by its own admission, is in grave doubt.

Enviva’s stock collapse this year: The company’s stock was trading above $51 per share on January 13, 2023, and gradually slid to half that until the May 3 plunge. It dived again on November 9, bottoming out at 62 cents per share that day, and has not recovered much value since. It is now trading as a penny stock. Source: November 16 end of day trading screenshot from Google.com.

By Justin Catanoso on 20 November 2023

  • The forest biomass energy industry took a major hit this month, as Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets — burned in former coal power plants to make energy on an industrial scale — saw catastrophic third quarter losses. Enviva’s stock tanked, its CEO was replaced and the company seems near collapse.
  • Founded in 2004, Enviva harvests forests in the U.S. Southeast, with its 10 plants key providers of wood pellets to large power plants in the EU, U.K., Japan and South Korea — nations that use a scientifically suspect carbon accounting loophole to count the burning of forest wood as a renewable resource.
  • A former manager and whistleblower at Enviva told Mongabay in 2022 that the company’s green claims were fraudulent. Last week, he said that much of Enviva’s downfall is based on its cheaply built factories equipped with faulty machinery and on large-scale fiscal miscalculations regarding wood-procurement costs.
  • How the firm’s downfall will impact the global biomass for energy market, and worldwide pellet supply, is unknown. European and Asian nations rely on Enviva pellets to supply their power plants and to meet climate change goals, with the burning of forests to make energy erroneously claimed as producing zero emissions.

This year has been a financial disaster for Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for the biomass energy industry. With more than $250 million in losses to date and worsening results expected in the fourth quarter, the once high-flying company’s viability, by its own admission, is in grave doubt, reports news.mongabay.com.

Also in question is where Enviva’s European Union and Asian customers will source the pellets they burn in their converted coal power plants and — without those pellets — how nations will meet their energy needs and their pledged Paris Agreement carbon emission cuts.

To many financial analysts who closely follow company performance, Enviva’s near collapse this month appears to have happened rapidly and suddenly. But did it?

“The problems have been there for years. There are lots of issues, but they stem from fundamental challenges Enviva faces in wood costs and keeping its manufacturing plants operating at full capacity,” a former Enviva maintenance manager told Mongabay. “It’s all coming home to roost in a kind of cumulative way.”

In exclusive interviews with Mongabay, the former Enviva employee detailed critical problems he witnessed and grappled with as a top operations manager at two of Enviva’s 10 Southeast U.S. plants between mid-2020 and mid-2022. His insights help explain why Enviva is now in dire financial straits.

In a Dec. 5, 2022, Mongabay story that reverberated globally, this Enviva whistleblower was the first insider from the multibillion-dollar international wood pellet industry to ever go public. At the time, he accused Enviva of falsifying its green claims and not being truthful about where and how it sourced forest wood for the tons of pellets it makes every day in the U.S. for export.

“The company says that we use mostly waste like branches, treetops and debris to make pellets,” the whistleblower told Mongabay a year ago. “What a joke. We use 100% whole trees in our pellets. We hardly use any waste. Pellet density is critical. You get that from whole trees, not junk.”

But junk wood is cheap, while whole trees are not, and therein lies a part of Enviva’s operational problems.

The former employee — who declined to be named to protect his professional and family’s privacy — said last week that this wood-sourcing deception is one reason Enviva has been losing money.

“Enviva built a business model saying it uses mostly scrap and waste from lumber mills and cut sites to make its pellets,” he said. “If that were true, its feedstock would basically be free. But it has to buy trees, a lot of trees, and it’s competing for them with other companies that want that wood. Loggers sell to the highest bidder, right, and that drives up the price. It’s something Enviva can’t control.”

In its 2023 third quarter filing on Nov. 9 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Enviva wrote that among the myriad reasons impacting its financial viability is “the amount of low-cost wood fiber that we are able to procure and process.”

“So that’s your first problem,” the former employee said. “Your feedstock is costing way more than you’re letting on, and that’s before you start dealing with the costs of making pellets.”

Enviva did not respond to multiple requests from Mongabay for comment.

Tracking the collapse

For Maryland-based Enviva, 2022 looked to be a financial launchpad for future growth. Revenue topped $1 billion for the second year in a row, up 24% from two years prior. Its stock price hit a peak of $87 per share in April 2022. New multiyear contracts were locked in with taxpayer-subsidized customers across the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea as the firm dominated the global market for wood pellets used by the energy industry.

Enviva boldly predicted it would double wood pellet output, from 6.2 million metric tons shipped overseas in 2022, to 13 million metric tons by 2027. With 10 pellet mills operating between southern Virginia and the Gulf Coast, the company secured a $570 million line of credit to build its biggest plants yet in Alabama and Mississippi, which have been under construction.

Enviva could even afford to ignore its persistent global critics, forest advocates who argue the company is increasing deforestation amid the climate crisis by exploiting a renewable-energy policy loophole overseas that — with little scientific validity — designates wood burning as a renewable, carbon-neutral substitute for coal.

The company was on a steady upward trajectory since its founding in 2004. But cracks in the corporate façade broke wide open May 3 of this year in reporting of its first quarter results. Wall Street analysts, who were bullish on Enviva stock at the time, were stunned when the company lost $117 million between January and March, three times worse than it forecasted. Enviva canceled its shareholder dividend, a red flag for a company in distress. Its declining stock price plunged in hours from $21 to less than $8.

In a conference call, CEO Thomas Meth made a passing reference to operational challenges at Enviva’s plant in Southampton, Virginia — challenges he said were a priority to address.

Things got far worse for Enviva, and Meth, on Nov. 9 with Enviva’s third quarter results. Another $85 million lost, four times more than third quarter losses in 2022. The stock price, which had climbed above $13 in August, plunged to 61 cents as major shareholders dumped their shares. The company acknowledged it had exhausted its $570 million line of credit used for construction of those plants in Alabama and Mississippi, casting those projects in doubt.

Meth was demoted from CEO to president, and Enviva made this startling admission: “The conditions and events in the aggregate raise substantial doubt regarding the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Glenn Nunziata, who had joined Enviva just three months ago as chief financial officer, was named interim CEO. In a conference call to investors on Nov. 9, Nunziata also referenced the Southampton plant, saying it had improved its operating costs by shutting down half of the manufacturing lines that make pellets.

The former Enviva maintenance manager told Mongabay he knew why.

Read the full story here.

This aerial view of Enviva’s wood pellet production mill in Ahoskie, North Carolina, pictured in fall 2022, shows the large conveyors and chains in the background that move pine and hardwood chips into dryers to pull the moisture out of the wood before it is pressed into pellets roughly the size of medicine capsules. According to a former Enviva maintenance manager, those conveyors and chains are composed of carbon steel, which corrodes and rusts quickly when exposed to moisture, especially from drying resinous pine. This causes frequent and costly facility shutdowns and delays, which has contributed to Enviva losing millions of dollars over the past two years due to maintenance and manufacturing costs per ton of wood pellets made, creating a huge loss for the company as it sells pellets under fixed-price contracts. Image courtesy of the Dogwood Alliance.

Net Zero Electricity Fantasies to Cost British Consumers £100 Billion Over Next Six Years

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Net Zero electricity taxes and levies are set to cost British consumers almost £100 billion over the next six years, according to the latest official figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The ‘environmental levies’ total includes a variety of green rackets from paying suppliers to produce uneconomic energy to persuading consumers to install inferior technologies. As the insane dash towards Net Zero continues in elite political circles, the costs have started to spiral out of control.

Almost all green technologies seem to require huge amounts of public subsidy with no end in sight to constant demands for cash. Recently, offshore wind generators refused to take further Government licences in the North Sea unless the U.K. Government complied with their demands for higher guaranteed prices. In real terms the Government is now prepared to pay over £100 per megawatt hour, a price more than the current estimated cost of gas-powered electricity.

The investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood has been digging into the figures for years, and notes the offshore wind business is already being subsided to the annual tune of £4.8 billion. This despite the fact that we have been promised ‘rapidly falling’ wind power costs that would bring our bills tumbling down. “Now we know that was always a lie,” observes Homewood. Looking at the financial accounts, Homewood concludes that there is “no prospect” that costs will decline in future. On the contrary, he continues, they are likely to continue increasing as supply chain and manufacturing problems mount.

“We are therefore now locked into permanently high electricity prices, with contract prices guaranteed for 15 years,” he notes.

Homewood has produced the table below from the latest figures from the OBR. In total it shows how all the ‘environmental levies’ surrounding the production of electricity are set to provide hard-pressed U.K. consumers with an entirely unnecessary collective bill for £95 billion over the next six years. As Homewood notes, the figures below show the cost added to energy bills by the various assortment of renewable subsidies, capacity market payments and the climate change levy.

Homewood has added in three relevant costs to the OBR table. The feed-in tariffs scheme was recently excluded, but in Homewood’s view it is wrongly left out since it increases energy bills. The Climate Change Levy on productive business is noted elsewhere in the OBR report, but Homewood has “taken the liberty” of adding it to his table. It need hardly be added that this does not involve all the cost of runaway Net Zero fiscal madness. Homewood notes, for instance, that there is no mention of the costs of electricity grid upgrades, system balancing cost and constraint payments – all the direct result of increased renewable generation. And, of course, one can take it out even wider to include the cost of keeping vast amounts of gas capacity idle, waiting to fire up when the wind stops blowing, often for days at a time.

But it might be asked, what is £100 billion when an almost complete dismantling of modern economic society is being planned? A mere down payment on wealth destruction on an unimaginable scale. At a time when the political will to control immigration has withered, massive deindustrialisation is being planned in Europe, with unimaginable effects on the less affluent members of society. On the basis of an unproven hypothesis that human-produced carbon dioxide controls a climate headed for disaster – now deemed ‘settled’ and beyond debate – small, well-funded elite groups in society are planning to remove 85% of the world energy supply within less than 30 years. How far they will get in this madcap, nightmarish scheme before being repelled by gathering rational and democratic forces, only time will tell.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

How NPR Converted a Southern Christian to the Church of the Climate Crisis

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

What kind of religion would climate change be, without some good old fashioned conversion stories?

‘I thought climate change was a hoax. Now I’ve changed my mind’

Sarah Ott spent years believing climate change was a hoax, influenced by friends at church in the US south and a popular right-wing radio host. Here she shares her journey from being a climate sceptic to becoming an advocate for clean energy, with a passion for teaching teenage school students the science of climate change. She features on this year’s BBC 100 Women list.

I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn’t believe in the science either.

When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.

…

We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.

…

My conviction that climate change was a hoax solidified when I heard Limbaugh talk about Climategate. It was a controversy involving research from the University of East Anglia. Only much later did I learn that the material was twisted and taken out of context.

…

An independent enquiry cleared the UEA scientists of wrongdoing and concluded that “their rigour and honesty are not in doubt”.

…

That’s when the big turning point came.

I tuned into NPR, a US non-profit broadcaster. I don’t remember which show it was, or the specific news story, but I remember how they described the issue in a completely different way from what I had heard on my usual stations. And it sounded so reasonable.

…Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67483064

Sarah Ott once believed climate change was a hoax, but now she is passionate about the environment

What I find most striking about Sarah’s conversion story is the lack of detail.

Sarah claims she realised how wrong she was about climate change when she started tuning in to NPR.

Would that be the same NPR / PBS which somehow blurred the signature of physics legend Edward Teller, during their rather feeble expose of the climate skeptic Oregon Petition? PBS claims Teller’s signature was blurred to emphasise other content, not to hide the fact a climate skeptic petition signatory was one of the USA’s greatest physicists.

Sarah Ott claims she doesn’t remember which NPR story triggered a fundamental re-appraisal of her life views.

I find this claim to not remember the details of such a life changing event a little puzzling. Why wouldn’t Sarah make an effort to share that special life changing story which can reach climate skeptics and Conservatives?

I don’t know about you, but the handful of life events which caused fundamental pivots in my values and life choices, I remember them like they were yesterday. Like the time I got so mad I finally decided to defend myself against the schoolyard bully. Such pivotal moments in one’s life tend to stand out.

Sarah accepts at face value that an “independent inquiry” concluded the Climategate scientists’ “rigour and honesty are not in doubt” – but doesn’t mention any specific emails she found troubling. Did she not bother to look at Climategate for herself?

The British BBC, which published this religious and political conversion story, would love for you heathen climate deniers to blindly follow Sarah’s example, to switch off conservative commentators and tune in to NPR, so you can have your scientific, political and religious views corrected. But they must think we are all really dumb, if this pathetic conversion story is their idea of persuasive marketing.

Perhaps the BBC is so used to abusing the trust of their own loyal fans, they have gotten complacent, and think everyone is easy game.

Trudeau’s ‘climate czar’ is the losingest loser in cabinet

Steven Guilbeault has lost three high-profile recent court battles but refuses to come to his senses, even when a judge smacks him down.

From Rebel News

By Sheila Gunn Reid

This is a free episode of The Gunn Show, which airs every Wednesday @ 9 p.m. ET | 7 p.m. MT. To watch new feature-length, ad-free episodes, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on November 22, 2023.

Then Guilbeault lost a legal challenge to Bill C-69, the no more pipelines law, which created an impossible bar for energy projects to achieve approvals. The challenge to the law, led by the province of Alberta, struck down the new requirement to consider social, gender and climate agendas in the regulatory process for energy projects as unconstitutional.

Good things come in threes. Trudeau’s Climate Czar just lost another court challenge.

This time, the court ruled against Trudeau’s unscientific ban on single-use plastics, which found the safe, sterile petrochemical classified as a Schedule One toxin, along with asbestos and lead.

However, Guilbeault hasn’t paid the money he owes to Rebele News. And he vows to keep the no pipeline law and his plastics ban despite the court ruling against him. Like his boss, he thinks the law is for the little guy.

Robbie Picard, of Oilsands Strong and Oil and Gas World Magazine is joining me to discuss Guilbeault’s legal losses.

Then, celebrated Canadian Indigenous artist Buffy Sainte Marie is neither Canadian nor Indigenous, according to an investigative report by CBC’s Fifth Estate. I ask Robbie, a Metis man, for his take on the latest “pretendian” to be exposed as a fraud.

Grand ‘Green’ Energy Flop: Europeans Wake Up to Wind & Solar Debacle

STOP THESE THINGS

The results of attempting to rely on sunshine and breezes can’t be hidden forever. As wind and solar generating capacity increases, the inevitable consequences are soon revealed: namely, routine power rationing, mass blackouts and crippling power prices.

And yet the acolytes continue to maintain that we’re only a few mythical mega-batteries away from an all-wind and sun-powered future.

The dogged insistence that the grand transition remains well on track makes plain that this is all being driven by ideologues and not engineers. However, you don’t need a PhD in engineering to understand simple phenomena like sunset and calm weather, as Michael Kelly highlights below.

The crippling problem of renewable green energy cannot be solved
The Telegraph
Michael Kelly
31 October 2023

In a Net Zero world, what will we do when the wind isn’t blowing? Environmentalists like to point out that we will have solar power as well, but of course the sun doesn’t shine at night, so windless nights are a big problem.

Next, it is suggested that we can store electricity. But in winter we frequently get long wind lulls, and with the sun low in the sky, there will be little or no solar power either. These so-called “dunkelflautes” mean little or no electricity supply from the renewables fleet.

A dunkelflaute can last for weeks. That means you need huge, unfeasible quantities of electricity storage. The Royal Society recently concluded we’d need enough to cover more than two months’ demand, and, whatever storage technology is adopted, this isn’t going to be affordable or probably even possible. The Royal Society’s numbers suggest we’d need to deliver a project equivalent in size to HS2 every year, forever. Worse, that number is likely to be hugely understated, because the report’s authors used extraordinarily optimistic projections of what might happen to costs and efficiencies in the next 25 years. Using assumptions grounded in the technologies and costs prevalent today, we’d conclude that we’d need six months’ storage, and would have to settle ongoing annual bills equivalent to five HS2 projects per year.

It’s a huge problem, which makes the idea of Net Zero a hard sell. One of the wheezes dreamt up by the greens to make the costs look a bit smaller is to assume that we will get a significant proportion of our electricity down the “interconnectors” – the big cables that connect the UK grid to our European neighbours, or which would stitch together the various grids of North America. There are already several international interconnections in operation – from the UK to Norway, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands – as well as others bringing power from region to region. More are on the way.

However, as with so much of the energy “transition”, there is a lot of wishful thinking going on.

Firstly, it is glibly assumed that the electricity delivered down interconnectors is zero-emission. Remarkably, this is the case, no matter how many coal-fired power stations are in operation on the continental grid at the time. In other words, replacing an idle wind farm in the UK with a coal-fired power station in Belgium would be assumed to represent an emissions-reducing move.

Secondly, it is assumed (in equally glib fashion) that the continental grid will always have power to spare for the UK, and that there will always be power to spare somewhere in the USA. This is simply not the case. Firstly, if it is midnight in the UK, it is dark across the whole of Europe. If it is two AM in New York it is midnight in Los Angeles, so nobody is going to be generating any solar power.

Secondly, although we are frequently told that “the wind is always blowing somewhere”, weather systems are extremely large things and they frequently affect whole continents. As a result, wind speeds are highly correlated across any continent; if there’s no wind in the UK, the chances are high that it’s not windy anywhere nearby either.

Even if the continent is windy when it’s calm in the UK, or if it’s windy in Texas when it’s calm in California, the ability to send power where it’s needed depends on there being surplus generating capacity in the precise place where the wind is blowing.

If, say, it’s windy in Scandinavia but the rest of Europe is experiencing a lull, you need enough spare windfarms in the Baltic and Nordic seas to meet demand from almost half a billion people. That’s a huge amount of windfarms. Then again, the windy spot might be in the Atlantic, off the coast of Iberia. So you’d need to build the same enormous number windfarms again, this time off the coast of Portugal. The again, and again – basically every local neighbourhood would have to have enough capacity to supply the entire continent. Hopefully this shows that the idea is rather ridiculous.

The same arguments apply to the idea of getting power from further afield. There is a currently a proposal to build an interconnector to Morocco, where the stiff breezes found in the seas off the Atlantic seaboard and deserts full of solar panels will, it is claimed, deliver an electricity bonanza. Unfortunately, as I write, wind speeds are rather low across most of Europe, while off the Western seaboard of Morocco they are … even lower. It’s gusty off Portugal though.

A lack of generating capacity in the right place is only one of the problems with interconnectors. They also turn out to be rather unreliable. For example, the Western Link, one of the interconnectors from England to the South of Scotland has failed regularly in its short lifetime, going down for months at a time, causing nightmares for grid managers tasked with making up the difference. Similarly, the IFA1 interconnector to France was hit by a fire in 2021, losing half of its capacity for a period of more than a year. Of course, any part of the electricity grid can suffer an outage, but the loss of an interconnector can take out a significant proportion of supply for long periods.

Worse still, interconnectors represent a risk to security of supply in other ways. Those long cables, hidden deep beneath the waves, are an inviting target for hostile powers. Just last week, a small flotilla from the navies of several European nations was scrambled to an area adjacent to the East Anglia One windfarm, after a Russian vessel was seen to be hanging around the area. We can’t know if it was sizing up the windfarm’s grid connection or the adjacent gas pipeline, but the point is the same; it is very hard to protect subsea infrastructure from sabotage (and impossible when it is a thousand-mile cable from here to Morocco).

The problem of what to do when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining is all but insurmountable. In technological terms, the only feasible solution is a vast fleet of windfarms and a gigantic store of green hydrogen, along the lines envisaged by the Royal Society. However, barring a series of dramatic technological breakthroughs, the costs would make the recent energy price crisis look like nothing.

It’s high time to put a stop to the wishful thinking on Net Zero.
The Telegraph