Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Continuing the transformation of universities from education to indoctrination centers, the University of California, San Diego, has announced the Jane Teranes Climate Change Education Requirement (JTCCER) for incoming first-year students, starting fall 2024. This requirement, approved by the Academic Senate, is a clear example of the university’s shift from fostering critical thinking to promoting a singular ideological agenda.
Continuing the transformation of universities from education to indoctrination centers, the University of California, San Diego, has announced the Jane Teranes Climate Change Education Requirement (JTCCER) for incoming first-year students, starting fall 2024. This requirement, approved by the Academic Senate, is a clear example of the university’s shift from fostering critical thinking to promoting a singular ideological agenda.
The JTCCER is presented under the doublespeak guise of “empowering students with knowledge and skills”, however, by mandating a specific viewpoint on a complex and multifaceted issue, UC San Diego is effectively narrowing the intellectual horizons of its students, guiding them towards a predetermined conclusion rather than encouraging open inquiry.
Indoctrination Disguised as Education
The requirement does not increase the number of courses for graduation, but it does increase the ideological load.
Courses approved to satisfy the JTCCER will overlap with general education or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) courses, as well as courses that apply to major and minor requirements.
Courses approved for the JTCCER will overlap with general education or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) courses, as well as major and minor requirements. This integration ensures that the climate change narrative permeates various aspects of the undergraduate curriculum, leaving little room for dissenting perspectives or critical analysis.
The Illusion of Choice
While the list of courses satisfying the JTCCER will be made publicly available, the real choice is illusory. The courses, undoubtedly, will be designed to align with the prevailing climate change orthodoxy, offering a one-sided view of a highly debatable field. This approach stifles academic freedom and critical thinking, turning education into a tool for ideological conformity.
Honoring Ideology over Inquiry
The JTCCER is named in honor of the late Jane Teranes, a teaching professor known for her contributions to climate change education. It symbolizes the university’s commitment to a specific ideological stance, rather than a dedication to unbiased academic inquiry.
The Future of Academic Freedom
The formation of a new Senate committee to oversee the JTCCER’s implementation is a concerning development. It indicates a long-term commitment to embedding this ideological stance in the university’s curriculum. The committee’s role in finalizing criteria for JTCCER courses further consolidates the control over what perspectives are deemed acceptable.
Conclusion: A Step Towards Ideological Uniformity
UC San Diego’s JTCCER is another in a long line of troubling steps towards ideological uniformity and intellectual conformity. The ongoing shift from education to indoctrination, where students are molded into ideologically aligned activists rather than being equipped with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate complex issues, has become of hallmark of universities nationwide.
In late August, President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted the historic 15th annual BRICS summit, at which the five-member group [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] voted to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates into membership.
It has been quite a season for the Republic of South Africa’s diplomatic corps.
In late August, President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted the historic 15th annual BRICS summit, at which the five-member group [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] voted to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates into membership. [Newly elected Argentine President Milei has stated his intention to decline the offer.]
Less than three months later, diplomats came out to welcome principals and other participants at the 20th annual U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation (AGOA) Forum in Johannesburg. With AGOA expiring in September 2025, the theme of “partnering to build a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive AGOA to support economic development, industrialization, and quality job creation” took on additional importance.
China, Russia, India, and the United States all came to President Ramaphosa in Johannesburg, each with different, perhaps irreconcilable, goals – and pitfalls for the host nation, which has a vested interest in staying in both camps.
While BRICS was initially a medium for highlighting investment opportunities, since South Africa joined in 2010, the group has morphed into a more cohesive geopolitical bloc. Adding new members was lauded by President Ramaphosa, who stated that “an expanded BRICS will represent a diverse group of nations with different political systems that share a common desire to have a more balanced global order.”
By 2016, the founding members of BRICS had pooled $100 billion of foreign currency to form the New Development Bank, a World Bank-inspired institution that has approved more than $32 billion of loans for water, transport, and other infrastructure projects. South Africa borrowed $1 billion from the bank to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
While some nations have pushed for a BRICS currency, India has vetoed that idea for the moment. Still, trade between bloc members has surged by 56 percent to $422 billion over the past five years, notably as Brazil and Russia have sent natural resources and farm products to feed growing Chinese demand.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the New Development Bank froze Russian projects and denied Moscow access to the BRICS shared foreign currency system. The four nations likely prioritized ongoing access to the dollar-based financial system over helping Russia and thus opted to avoid U.S. sanctions.
Earlier this year, President Ramaphosa and several other African heads of state, traveling as the African Peace Initiative, met with Russian and Ukrainian leaders in an effort to prevent further disruptions in grain shipments badly needed by African nations otherwise facing drastic food shortages.
While the effort did not achieve its goals, Ramaphosa hailed it as historic, “the first time African leaders have embarked on a peace mission” beyond the continent. South African industrialist Ivor Ichikovitz called the Initiative “an inflection point for the continent,” showing that “Africa can take charge of its own destiny, despite the incredible international pressure placed upon its leaders to take sides.”
But therein lies the problem for President Ramaphosa and South Africa. As noted by the nonpartisan Wilson Center, there is an ongoing debate in the U.S. over South Africa’s compliance with the eligibility criteria for preferential trade benefits under AGOA, one that revolves around two sets of concerns – barriers to U.S. trade and actions that undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) has proposed a mandatory out-of-cycle review of South Africa’s eligibility compliance, and that has generated what is described as “a high risk of misinformation and disinformation … on the U.S. legislative efforts to extend AGOA and exercise more oversight on South Africa.”
The socialist Peoples Dispatch noted that Sen. Coons, Sen. James Risch (R-ID), and other U.S lawmakers had urged the Biden Administration not to hold the AGOA Forum in South Africa, citing intelligence that South Africa had supplied arms to Russia. Writer Tanupriya Singh claimed that “not only is AGOA blatantly manipulated as a tool of U.S. foreign policy, the program’s terms itself do little to advance the developmental concerns of its supposed beneficiaries.”
But President Ramaphosa, whose nation has been AGOA’s biggest beneficiary, has called AGOA “an important instrument for growing and transforming our economy. The benefits of AGOA are felt in the lives of our people through increased economic activity and the jobs that such activity created.” Indeed, South Africa was “the largest destination for U.S. foreign direct investment among AGOA-eligible countries,” he added.
In his view, “AGOA enhances the diversification of African economies, enabling them to export value-added products.” This, in turn, incentivizes African countries to develop and export these goods and services, reducing the continent’s dependence on primary commodities and enhancing its ability to participate in global value chains.
The technical assistance supplied via AGOA also enables African businesses to enhance skills, knowledge, and infrastructure to meet international standards. In short, Ramaphosa sees the value of both AGOA’s reauthorization and keeping South Africa eligible for its benefits.
The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service cites as major benefits of AGOA for South African agriculture the fact that two-thirds of the nation’s agricultural exports to the U.S. are now tariff-free and that these exports have totaled over US$7 billion since 2000. The South African auto industry is the largest beneficiary of AGOA’s engagement.
It is easy, then, to see that President Ramaphosa is in a tough space trying to balance his nation’s vital alliances with the BRICS nations and the U.S. at the same time. Moreover, Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party is facing perhaps its greatest challenge in 2024’s national elections. Critics point to daily blackouts often caused by ailing coal-fired power plants that routinely break down. The state-owned utility that produces 90 percent of the nation’s electricity has debts approaching US$20 billion, and the outages are affecting businesses and households already suffering from pandemic-induced inflation.
In the 2019 elections, the ANC only garnered 57 percent of the vote – its lowest share ever. This weakness has emboldened opposition parties, some of whom may be less interested in straddling between East and West while seeking to maintain the integrity of independence or neutrality in matters not directly of national concern.
Could a U.S. move to deprive South Africa of AGOA’s benefits foster a further downward spiral in the South African economy? Does the U.S. want to risk further destabilization of the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa and a major U.S. trading partner?
Some in Congress are demanding that South Africa’s stance in the Israel-Hamas conflict justifies a cutoff of eligibility. But as the AGOA website suggests, cutting off South Africa makes little real-world sense.
The U.S., they noted, has the largest African diaspora, close-knit business, educational, and cultural links with African countries. Cutting off the largest AGOA trading partner could well be seen as a slap in the face to hard-fought African independence and self-determination.
African nations are urging a quick, 10-year renewal of AGOA, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks about working with Congress to make it “better.” Special Assistant on Africa Judd Devermont agrees that “the absence of AGOA legislation would be deeply troubling for African economies” while also suggesting that reforms might be needed.
Ramaphosa sees extending AGOA for a “sufficiently lengthy period” as an incentive for investors to build factories in his nation. That kind of speaking up for Africa – and South Africa in particular – is an example of Africa “finding its voice and using it.”
The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.
Enel’s trespass on the tribe’s mineral estate echoes themes in Killers Of The Flower Moon
These turbines are part of the Osage Wind project near Fairfax, Oklahoma. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Tulsa ruled that the 84-turbine wind project must be removed. This photo is a still image from the upcoming docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid. Credit:Tyson Culver.
The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.
As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass.”
The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Graves is the culmination of 12 years of litigation that pitted the tribe and federal authorities against Enel. During the construction of the project, the company illegally mined rock owned by the tribe, and it continued to do so even after being ordered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop. Instead of halting work, the company sped up construction. Enel must now remove the 84 turbines that it built on 8,400 acres of the Tallgrass Prairie located between Pawhuska and Fairfax. Removing the turbines will cost Enel some $300 million.
Under the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, the tribe owns the rights to the minerals beneath the land it bought from the Cherokee Nation in the late 1800s. Those mineral rights include oil, natural gas, and the rocks that Enel mined and crushed for the wind project. By mining without permission, the company violated the tribe’s sovereignty. Choe-Graves concluded that Enel “failed to acquire a mining lease during or after construction, as well as after issuance of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision holding that a mining lease was required” in 2017. She continued, saying the company’s “past and continued refusal to obtain a lease constitutes interference with the sovereignty of the Osage Nation and is sufficient to constitute irreparable injury.”
Lily Gladstone (second from left) stars in Killers Of The Flower Moon, the epic new Martin Scorsese film about the murders of Osage tribal members during the Reign of Terror in the 1920s. Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.
The court victory comes at the same time that the Osage Nation is getting massive media attention due to the October release of Martin Scorsese’s epic film, Killers Of The Flower Moon, which is still being shown in theaters. Last week, Richard Brody, the film critic at the New Yorker, declared that Killers is the best movie of 2023. The movie is also racking up accolades and nominations for numerous awards. For instance, Lily Gladstone, who stars in the film as Mollie Burkhart, has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress.
Judge Choe-Graves’ decision is a huge win for tribal members like Tommy Daniels, who have long pushed for the removal of the wind turbines. “If I had the power, boom!, they’d be gone,” Daniels said in an interview I did with him last year in Fairfax. Daniels is one of the last full-blood Osages. The wind project “kills birds, like eagles, I don’t like that,” he added.
Still image from the upcoming docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid. Credit: Tyson Culver
Daniels and other Osage tribal members opposed the project because of its potential intrusion on sacred burial sites, as well as the 420-foot-high turbines’ deadly impact on eagles. In 2021, I interviewed Joe Conner, a tribal member and publisher of The Fairfax Chief. Conner, who passed away on September 12, 2023, told me, “Many tribal members have objections because of the fear of damaging the environment, sacred birds, particularly eagles, that would be caught up in the turbine blades.”
The interviews with Daniels, Conner, and other tribal members are featured in my upcoming docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid. That five-part docuseries, directed by my colleague, Tyson Culver, will be released on YouTube beginning January 31, 2024. (The docuseries includes more than 30 interviews with top thought leaders. Tyson has done an amazing job putting the episodes together. More details to come in early January.)
By thrashing Enel in court, the Osage tribe not only stands to collect millions of dollars in damages and the removal of the loathsome turbines, it also has handed Big Wind the biggest public relations debacle in its history. It’s not just that the wind industry lost; it lost to a Native American tribe. That’s a particularly bad look when it comes to the branding of wind energy as “clean,” “green,” “sustainable,” and, of course, “renewable.”
Still image from the upcoming docuseries, Juice: Power, Politics, And The Grid. Credit: Tyson Culver
The tribe’s victory will be costly for Enel. But it’s also an embarrassing loss for Big Wind and its allies. For years, big business, big banks, big law firms, academics from elite universities, and big NGOs, have been siding with the wind industry as it tried to steamroll rural landowners and governments. Further, while the industry has dealt with scattered instances where a handful of wind turbines have been torn down due to opposition, such as the removal of two turbines last year in Falmouth, Massachusetts, it has never faced a loss of this magnitude.
Getting rid of two wind turbines in Falmouth can be ignored. Removing 84 turbines? That is unprecedented.
The Osage tribe’s victory over Enel provides more proof of the increasing opposition to wind energy from rural residents all over the world. Earlier this month, a French court ordered a wind project in southern France to be dismantled. That project faced years of complaints from residents about noise pollution. (More on that in a future Substack.) Indeed, the Osage tribe’s victory shows — yet again — that all across rural America, local people are fighting to preserve their neighborhoods against the landscape-, viewshed-, and wildlife-destroying impact of massive wind turbines. That is particularly true for members of the Osage tribe, who believe in the sacredness of the place where the earth meets the sky.
The extent of rural resistance to Big Wind and Big Solar is evident in the Renewable Rejection Database. Since 2015, there have been 417 rejections or restrictions of wind energy in the U.S. and those rejections have occurred from Maine to Hawaii. So far this year, there have been 50 rejections or restrictions of wind energy and 68 solar rejections. Actually, come to think of it, Wednesday’s court ruling brings the total to 51 rejections of wind energy in 2023.
The tribe’s court victory shows that Killers Of The Flower Moon is not ancient history. Scorsese’s film, (it’s terrific, by the way), based on the remarkable book of the same name by David Grann, shows, in sometimes-too-graphic detail, how outsiders took advantage of the Osage tribe and its oil wealth by murdering dozens of tribal members. But the effort to exploit the tribe’s minerals didn’t end in the 1920s. It continues to this day.
In its pursuit of the wind project, Enel displayed a staggering amount of arrogance and greed. It repeatedly ignored the federal government’s warnings that it must not violate the tribe’s mineral rights. Why was Enel in a rush? The answer is obvious. Just as Bill Hale (the “King of the Osage Hills”), his nephew, Earnest Burkhart, and many other whites conspired to murder wealthy Osage tribal members during the Reign of Terror a century ago, Enel did it for the money.
By ignoring the tribe and attempting to take its minerals, Enel aimed to collect tens of millions of dollars in federal tax credits. As Conner explained it, Enel “completely dismissed us as anything they needed to take seriously.” He continued, saying the Italian company was among “a long line of exploiters, if you will, who decided this is something they can do, and not have to pay much for, and make, you know, lots and lots of money.”
In 2011, according to an article by Benny Polacca of the Osage News, the superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Pawhuska wrote a letter to the tribe four days after the Osage County Board of Adjustment approved a variance request for the wind project. The BIA official warned that the project “may have to be removed or relocated” if it interferes with the tribe’s mineral estate. Despite that warning, Enel began building the wind project in 2013. As seen below, on October 9, 2014, the BIA sent a letter to Enel telling it to “refrain from any further excavation of minerals” for the wind project “until such time that you have obtained a Sandy Soil Permit through the Osage Agency. Failure to comply may result in this matter being forwarded to the Office of the Field Solicitor for further action.”
In 2014, the federal government filed a lawsuit seeking a judgment that Enel had engaged in unauthorized mining. That still didn’t stop the company, which commissioned the wind project in 2015. Since then, Enel, by my calculations, has been collecting about $10 million per year in federal tax credits. And remember, the company has been getting that $10 million per year before it sells any of the juice from the project.
I made two attempts to get a comment from Enel about the ruling, including a phone call and email to their Oklahoma City-based spokesman. Enel did not reply.
1890 map of the Osage Reservation from the Cherokee Nation deed, Chief Justice M. John Kane IV, promotional poster for Killers Of The Flower Moon
Wednesday’s court ruling may also prove embarrassing (and costly) to some of Osage County’s most prominent people, including the Chief Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, M. John Kane IV. Property records show that a large portion of the Enel wind project was built on land owned or controlled by Kane’s family. Kane was appointed to the state’s highest court in 2019 by Governor Kevin Stitt, who has been antagonizing Oklahoma’s tribes ever since he took office. Kane became chief justice earlier this year. On Monday, I called Kane’s office to ask about the Osage tribe’s litigation against Enel. His assistant, Kinsey Hicks, told me that Kane would not comment because justices are “not allowed to talk about things involving pending litigation.”
After the ruling, the Tulsa World quoted Osage Minerals Council Chairman Everett Waller saying, “This is a win not only for the Osage Minerals Council; this is a win for Indian Country.” He continued, “There are a lot of smaller tribes that couldn’t have battled this long, but that’s why we’re Osages…We’re here, and this is our homeland, and we are going to protect it at all costs.”
On Friday morning, I talked to Scott Lohah, an Osage tribal member who has been a longtime opponent of the Enel wind project. (Lohah is also featured in our docuseries.) When I asked him about the court ruling, he said, “Everyone in the tribe is ecstatic.”
The alternative climate reality that the U.K. Met Office seeks to occupy has moved a step nearer with news that a group of its top scientists has proposed adopting a radical new method of calculating climate change. The scientific method of calculating temperature trends over at least 30 years should be ditched, and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade.
The alternative climate reality that the U.K. Met Office seeks to occupy has moved a step nearer with news that a group of its top scientists has proposed adopting a radical new method of calculating climate change. The scientific method of calculating temperature trends over at least 30 years should be ditched, and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade. The Met Office undoubtedly hopes that it can point to the passing of the 1.5°C ‘guard-rail’ in short order. This is junk science-on-stilts, and is undoubtedly driven by the desire to push the Net Zero collectivist agenda.
In a paper led by Professor Richard Betts, the Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, it is noted that the target of 1.5°C warming from pre-industrial levels is written into the 2016 Paris climate agreement and breaching it “will trigger questions on what needs to be done to meet the agreement’s goal”. Under current science-based understandings, the breaching of 1.5°C during anomalous warm spells of a month or two, as happened in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2023, does not count. Even going above 1.5°C for a year in the next five years would not count. A new trend indicator is obviously needed. The Met Office proposes adding just 10 years’ past data to forecasts from a climate model programmed to produce temperature rises of up to 3.2°C during the next 80 years. By declaring an average 20-year temperature based around the current year, this ‘blend’ will provide ”an instantaneous indicator of current warming”.
It will do no such thing. In the supplementary notes to the paper, the authors disclose that they have used a computer model ‘pathway’, RCP4.5, that allows for a possible rise in temperatures of up to 3.2°C within 80 years. Given that global warming has barely risen by much more than 0.2°C over the last 25 years, this is a ludicrous stretch of the imagination. Declaring the threshold of 1.5°C, a political target set for politicians, has been passed based on these figures and using this highly politicised method would indicate that reality is rapidly departing from the Met Office station.
Using anomalous spikes in global temperature, invariably caused in the short-term by natural variations such as El Niño, is endemic throughout mainstream climate activism. ‘Joining the dots’ of individual bad weather events is now the go-to method to provoke alarm. So easily promoted and popular is the scare that an entire pseudoscience field has grown up using computer models to claim that individual weather events can be attributed to the actions of humans. ‘Weather’ and ‘climate’ have been deliberately confused. Climate trends have been shortened, and the weather somehow extended to suggest a group of individual events indicates a much longer term pattern. Meanwhile, the use of a 30-year trend dates back to the start of reliable temperature records from 1900, and was set almost 100 years ago by the International Meteorological Organisation. It is an arbitrary set period, but gives an accurate temperature trend record, smoothing out the inevitable, but distorting, anomalies.
By its latest actions, the Met Office demonstrates that the old-fashioned scientific way lacks suitability when Net Zero political work needs to be done. Trends can only be detected over time, leading to unwelcome delays in being able to point to an exact period when any threshold has been passed. Whilst accepting that an individual year of 1.5°C will not breach the Paris agreement so-called guard-rail, the Met Office claims that its instant indicator will “provide clarity” and will “reduce delays that would result from waiting until the end of the 20-year period”. The Met Office looks forward to the day when its new climate trend indicator comes with an IPCC ‘confidence’ or ‘high likelihood’ statement such as, “it is likely that the current global warming level has now reached (or exceeded) 1.5°C”. In subsequent years, this might become, “it is very likely that the current global warming level exceeded 1.5°C in year X”.
Why is this latest proposal from the state-funded Met Office junk science-on-stilts? A variety of reasons include that climate models have barely an accurate temperature forecast between them, despite 40 years of trying. Inputting opinions that the temperature of the Earth might rise by over 3°C in less than 80 years is hardly likely to improve their accuracy. There are also legitimate questions to be asked about the global temperature datasets that record past temperatures. Well-documented poor placing of measuring devices, unadjusted urban heat effects and frequent retrospective warming uplifts to the overall records do not inspire the greatest of confidence. At its HadCRUT5 global database, the Met Office has added around 30% extra warming over the last few years.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
A solar-power generating firm that uses Greta Thunberg to promote its products is being sued for more than £1.5 million damages over claims its panels led to a devastating house fire.
By Patrick Sawer and Sarah Limbrick
A solar-power generating firm that uses Greta Thunberg to promote its products is being sued for more than £1.5 million damages over claims its panels led to a devastating house fire.
Mark and Sarah Evans are suing the award-winning firm Green Energy Electrical, which installed solar panels on their five-bedroom detached house in Essex. The Telegraph has the story.
The couple claim the catastrophic fire, which destroyed their home in April 2021, was caused either by a fault in one of the firm’s photovoltaic panels or a heating fault between a panel and electrical cables.
Essex-based Green Energy Electrical uses the example of Greta Thunberg’s activism over climate change as a way of encouraging customers to go solar.
Its website states: “Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s recent school strikes? Installing solar panels will reduce your carbon footprint as well as save you money on your energy bills.”
The firm rejects Mr and Mrs Evans’ claim, dismissing the couple’s theories of how the fire started as “speculative, inherently improbable, and not the most likely causes”.
Instead it said the fire in April 2021 was probably caused by someone else’s defective installation of electrical wiring in the roof, microcracking of panels caused during this work, and physical damage to parts of the panels, possibly when the roof was tiled around the solar panels, or when a chimney flue was put in for a wood-burning stove.
Mr and Mrs Evans said they paid Green Energy £4,627 for a solar-heating system with 14 panels to be fitted on their roof at Evershot Hall in Tolleshunt Knights, near Maldon, in 2017.
They said they cannot give details of the specific fault in the system that caused the fire, as it was completely destroyed in the fire.
But they claim the inferno was caused by a fault in the system and its negligent installation.
An independent witness saw smoke and flames coming from only the bottom-right solar panel, which is consistent with photos taken of the fire.
Firefighters from six fire stations put out the blaze, which also destroyed wall insulation.
The Biden administration proposed eligibility rules for hydrogen industry subsidies Friday, but some conditions may ultimately stymie innovation and production of the technology, Bloomberg News reported.
The Biden administration proposed eligibility rules for hydrogen industry subsidies Friday, but some conditions may ultimately stymie innovation and production of the technology, Bloomberg News reported.
Hydrogen is one of the key green energy technologies that the administration is counting on to replace fossil fuels on the path to reaching its goal of a fully decarbonized power sector by 2035. The proposed rules for billions of dollars of hydrogen subsidies are governed by strict environmental constraints intended to ensure that hydrogen production does not generate more emissions than it effectively cancels out, but green energy trade groups say that those conditions may actually stifle the nascent industry, according to Bloomberg.
The tax credits are meant to bridge that gap, but the proposed rules mandate that subsidy-eligible hydrogen can only be generated if new green power is being produced during the same hours, according to Bloomberg. Administration officials reportedly said that they chose to restrict the subsidies to hydrogen that is produced with green energy brought online within the last three years, on the same power grids and at the same times.
Several green energy trade associations and executives criticized the proposal. The guidelines “will fall woefully short in achieving the Administration’s decarbonization objectives” and “are counter Congress’ intent,” Andy Marsh, the CEO of Plug Power Inc., a hydrogen company, told Bloomberg.
“Unfortunately, the Administration proposal contains a fatal – but fixable – flaw that must be addressed to realize the economic, environmental, and climate benefits of commercially scaling a domestic green hydrogen industry … the rushed imposition of the most burdensome restrictions fails to acknowledge the market realities of new technology deployment,” American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet said of the proposed rules. ” Specifically, imposing an hourly matching provision too early for first-wave green hydrogen projects will discourage a significant majority of clean power companies from investing in green hydrogen manufacturing and facilities.”
The green energy requirements attached to the eligibility rules could spawn a price premium of up to 150%, which would make hydrogen economically unfeasible for most potential applications, according to Bloomberg, which cited a previous analysis conducted by the American Clean Power Association.
The guidelines are still in draft form, and will now be subjected to a 60-day public comment period and potential revisions, according to Bloomberg.
The White House, the Treasury Department and the Energy Department all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Lithium prices are down lately, and EV manufacturers, the major users of Lithium, have recently announced substantial cuts to production. So why are Lithium miners so optimistic?
Lithium prices are down lately, and EV manufacturers, the major users of Lithium, have recently announced substantial cuts to production. So why are Lithium miners so optimistic?
Electric Vehicles Are Stuck In A Lull. What That Means For Tesla, Other EV Stocks And EV Battery Manufacturing.
The transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles was never going to be easy. But the gradual arrival of battery-powered cars drove sprawling plans to make EVs and EV batteries in the U.S., with companies like Tesla (TSLA), Ford Motor (F) and General Motors (GM) leading the charge.
Federal funding combined with geopolitical and climate concerns to expand the promise of industry growth for EV stocks and the so-called battery belt taking shape across the U.S. and beyond. The hope was to strengthen the Achilles’ heel of the nation’s electric vehicles boom: its reliance on batteries and critical minerals from abroad, especially China.
But consumer enthusiasm for electric cars has recently lost some of its charge, with Tesla, Ford, GM and Rivian Automotive (RIVN) among those turning cautious and scaling back, among other things, their battery manufacturing plans. Now analysts and executives are reading the data and the tea leaves, trying to determine whether the vibrant outlook for EVs and battery manufacturing is paused, broken or evolving into something new entirely.
…
“Automakers are losing tens of thousands of dollars for each electric vehicle sold,” said CFRA equity analyst Garrett Nelson. “Something had to give, and it has given.”
Lithium prices crashed in 2023, but these figures show white gold is still the market’s biggest bet
Lithium prices have tumbled in 2023, but new data shows the money men continue to bet on the battery metal
BDO’s Sherif Andrawes says financiers and punters are looking at long term demand for lithium by backing equity and debt raisings in the metal ahead of traditional stayers like gold
Weak IPO market and falling cash balances should see even more lithium and gold M&A in 2024
As gold prices picked up steam and lithium prices began to crash, the flow of money into ASX explorers ran the opposite direction in a sign investors continue to view lithium as the commodity of the future.
Oversupply in China and the consequences of a small, volatile market have seen spodumene concentrate prices fall to a little over US$1000/t, just 12 months after rising to upwards of US$8000/t in an unprecedented bull run.
Chemical prices have fallen from around US$80,000/t to a little over US$15,000/t in the same time.
The fall has revived memories of the bear market from 2018 to early 2020, when against many industry projections, but inline with the warnings of some investment banks like Morgan Stanley, spodumene prices fell to around US$500/t and only the strong survived.
…
BDO’s head of global natural resources Sherif Andrawes said investors continued to punt on a massive uptick in electric vehicle demand going forward.
“There is a long term view that even despite the short term prices coming down and a lot of volatility in the lithium price, the long term demand for lithium will be there,” he told Stockhead.
It might be because they think politicians are still in their corner.
But the politicians have been slow to inflict promised EV mandates on voters, in what promises to be a difficult election cycle for Net Zero aligned politicians – so slow that EV manufacturers are starting to complain.
Ford UK says any delay on government petrol car ban risks EV transition
Reuters
September 20, 20239:30 PM GMT+10 Updated 3 days ago
…
Ford said dropping the [British] 2030 deadline would be a mistake, and hinted it could put further investments at risk.
“The UK 2030 target is a vital catalyst to accelerate Ford into a cleaner future,” Ford UK chair Lisa Brankin said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Our business needs three things from the UK government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three.”
For starters I don’t think Lithium is going away forever. Even if current generation EVs turn out to be a bust, as seems increasingly likely, there really is no substitute for Lithium when it comes to batteries. The nearest relative to Lithium (atomic weight 7) is Sodium (atomic weight 23). But Sodium on an atom for atom basis is 23 / 7 = 3x heavier than Lithium. So in any application where weight is important, Sodium has a huge disadvantage compared to Lithium.
Having said this there are alternatives to batteries, which might one day supplant Lithium batteries – so there is no absolute guarantee Lithium batteries are the future.
For vehicles, the distress of EV manufacturers is creating an opportunity for hydrogen and ammonia fuel proponents. Even laptops may one day be powered by fuel cells rather than batteries. And there is the ever present possibility of a supercapacitor nanotech breakthrough which could upset everyone’s apple cart.
Frankly I find the green alternatives to EVs scarier than EVs. When an EV catches fire you usually have a chance to get out, a few seconds between smoke and deadly fire. But ammonia can kill you on contact, it chemically attacks and burns any flesh it touches. And hydrogen is horrifyingly explosive and flammable – as residents of Bakersfield discovered in July this year.
As for supercapacitors – anyone who has seen an old style TV fail with a bang has witnessed a small scale capacitor dielectric failure. Imagine that scaled up million times, and you get the idea of why I’m going to let someone else drive the first supercapacitor EVs.
Given I think “green” alternatives to EVs are even worse, am I saying EVs are the future?
The answer, for now at least, is no.
Consumers are clearly voting with their wallets, rejecting EVs, leaving them on the dealer lots. And politicians are caving in to demands from voters to extend the deadline for phasing out gasoline vehicles.
Barring an unexpected range, price and reliability breakthrough, I can’t help thinking the Lithium bulls could be in for a long wait, to realise a return on their investments.
Update (EW): Added a quote from the first article “Automakers are losing tens of thousands of dollars for each electric vehicle sold…”
Just about all of the media have been peddling the “Hottest for 125,000 years” claim, which suggests a very concerted effort by the climate establishment in the run up to COP28.
The claim is self evident and baseless nonsense for a number of good reasons:
There is no such thing as “a global average temperature”
Even now we have very sparse coverage of temperature measurements. Prior to satellites, we had virtually no data outside of the US, Europe and a few other built up areas
The temperature record we do have is thoroughly corrupted by UHI, and only dates back to the late 19thC
Natural variations, including ENSO, volcanic activity etc, can easily cause temperature swings of a degree Celsius from year to year, and decade to decade. But historical proxies don’t have the fine resolution to pick these up, they merely give an idea of average temperatures over decades and even centuries. Consequently you cannot compare one year now with the general climate of, say, 2000 years ago.
But forget about all of these theoretical objections, because the climatic evidence we do have is overwhelming, and it tells us that the climate has been much warmer than now for most of the last 10000 years, since the end of the ice age.
Here are ten powerful, incontrovertible pieces of evidence:
I agree totally we have had a global temperature increase in the 20thC – but an increase from what? ..Probably an increase from the lowest point in the last 10,000 years.
We started to observe meteorology at the coldest point in the last 10,000 years. – Professor Steffensen
As Professor Steffensen explains in the above video, temperatures in Greenland have been much higher than now for most of the last 8000 years.
Many other studies confirm that the temperature trends found in Greenland ice cores also exist elsewhere around the Arctic. For instance, Briner et al, above. analysed a wide selection of proxies in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and identified a long running decline in temperatures over the last 3000 years.
They also found that the Greenland ice sheet has grown since since that time.
3) Russia
Summer temperatures were between 2.5 and 7.0C warmer 7000 years ago in northern Russia:
Tree line studies offer strong evidence that temperatures in the White Mountains of California and the Alps were 2 degrees higher than now from 5000 BC to 2200 BC.
HH Lamb: Climate History & The Modern World
Lamb also writes about other tree line studies encompassing the Alps, Carpathians, Rockies, Japan, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa and the Andes. These also show similar results, with a climate that was 2C warmer around 5000 BC.
7) North America
There is ample evidence that Alaskan glaciers were smaller than now in the Middle Ages, easily proven by the remains of forests carbon dated back to then, which are being uncovered as the ice melts.
There is also evidence that Alaskan glaciers were smaller still prior to 2000 BC, and that most of the glaciers south of 57N were only formed after that time.
HH Lamb wrote:
The rise of world sea level over the last 10 000 years, seen already in fig. 13.27, gives an overall view of the course of deglaciation. It is, however, a trend which must have been lagged on the trend of world temperature in such a way that the highest sea level — which probably occurred around 4000 years ago — should coincide with the end of the period of highest temperature, which reduced the glaciers and ice sheets to their postglacial minimum. It was after 2000–1500 B.c. that most of the present glaciers in the Rocky Mountains south of 57°n were formed ( Matthes 1939) and that major readvance of those in the Alaskan Rockies first took place.
And at their subsequent advanced positions — probably around 500 B.C. as well as between A.D. 1650 and 1850 — the glaciers in the Alps regained an extent estimated in the Glockner region at about five times their Bronze Age minimum, when all the smaller ones had disappeared.
This conclusion is backed up by the recent discovery of 4000 year old trees at the edge of a Swiss glacier by the distinguished geologist Dr Christian Schlüchter.
Other research, including the discovery of a Swiss pass, which has been covered by snow for 2000 years, and the exposure of more ancient trees under the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, in Switzerland, where research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, glaciers were smaller than today, and 7,000 years ago they probably weren’t around at all.
9) South America
Ancient plant beds, radiocarbon dated to 5000 years ago, are being uncovered as the Quelccaya glacier recedes in the Peruvian Andes, according to glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, who also
analysed ice cores from another glacier, the Huascarán in the north-central Andes of Peru, and found:
“ the climate was warmest from 8400 to 5200 years before present, and that it cooled gradually, culminating with the Little Ice Age (200 to 500 years before present).”
Other research from the Missouri Botanical Garden, which studies tree lines in the Andes, came to similar conclusions:
During the period from 7500 yr BP to ca. 3000 yr BP temperatures rose about 2°C more, causing another upward shift in the forest line of about 300-400 m higher than today, and thereby reducing the area occupied by páramo. Finally, at about 2900 yr BP, there was a noticeable lowering of the temperature that marked the last downward movement of the forest and páramo belts to their present-day positions.
And as in Alaska, retreating glaciers in Patagonia have been uncovering the remains of forests, which are carbon dated to the late Middle Ages.
Reconstruction of New Zealand’s past climate by NIWA, using a wide variety of proxies,
indicate a warmer climate than now until about 3000 years ago.
NIWA comment:
The warmest conditions of the present cycle occurred between 10,000 and 6,000 B.P with temperatures about 1°C above modern values. This warmer climate was mild, with light winds and lush forests. Speleothems indicate a lowering of temperature after 7,000 B.P, with a resurgence of small glacial events in the Southern Alps at 5,000 B.P.
Similarities between the New Zealand climate changes during the last millennium using tree rings (Cook et al., 2002) has been compared to the Northern Hemisphere Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age (Lamb, 1965).
More direct evidence comes from the Franz Joseph glacier. Historian Brian Fagan described the changes of this glacier in his book “The Little Ice Age”:
In New Zealand the Franz Joseph glacier was “a mere pocket of ice on a frozen snowfield nine centuries ago”…. Then Little Ice Age cooling began and the glacier thrust downslope into the valley below smashing into the great rain forests that flourished there, felling giant trees like matchsticks. By the early 18th Century, Franz Joseph’s face was within 3 km of the Pacific Ocean .
The high tide of glacial advance at Franz Joseph came between the late 17th Century and early 19th Century, just as it did in the European Alps.
This does not directly relate to the early and mid Holocene, but is strong evidence of the LIA and the MWP, which NIWA say was not as warm 3000 years before.
The World Was Hotter
Let’s be absolutely clear.
These events were not “regional” or “transitory”, as Holocene Optimum deniers would like you to believe.
Large scale retreats and advances of glaciers don’t happen as a result of a few years of weather. Neither do advances of tree lines hundreds of feet up mountainsides. The evidence from these events and the likes of ice cores is irrefutable and clearcut.
It is well established from these studies that the Holocene Optimum lasted for thousands of years, during which time there would have been the same sort of climatic cycles we see today, whether short term events such as El Nino, or centuries long ones like the LIA, all bringing warmer and colder intervals. But throughout, the overall climate was still warmer than the current one.
And it is equally apparent that this warmer climate was worldwide. Even where there are no proxies, there is still evidence in places like the Sahara, where the lush climate there a few thousands of years ago is indicative of an expansion of the Tropics resulting from a warmer world.
Anybody who claims that this year is the hottest for 125,000 years is fraudulent.
Much maligned coal continues to support human flourishing. Its use in the developing countries will continue to grow in the decades to come. Meanwhile, we will see just how “temporary” is Germany’s existential move back to coal this winter. Old King Coal was the elephant in every COP28 meeting room and conference hall.
Last Friday, just two days after the Dubai COP28 meeting ended, a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that global coal demand will set another new record this year. Although coal use in the West is falling, demand in developing economies “remains very strong, increasing by 8% in India and by 5% in China in 2023 due to rising demand for electricity and weak hydropower output.”
Perhaps the best preamble to COP28 was delivered by India’s Power Minister, R. K. Singh. On November 6th, he stated “There is going to be pressure on nations at COP-28 to reduce coal usage. We are not going to do this… we are not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth, even if it requires that we add coal-based capacity”. India plans an additional 30 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fueled power generating capacity in addition to the existing 50 GW and plants already under construction. It is also set to increase coal production by 60% by 2030, from its current level of 1 billion tons, to ensure ample supply for its thermal power plants.
This insistence on affordable coal-based power for economic growth is not unique to India. Other large developing countries such as China, Indonesia, South Africa and Vietnam all have similar plans to ramp up coal power plant construction despite policy “promises” to curtail fossil fuels made at UN climate forums since the “Paris Agreement” of 2015. Despite the “net zero by 2050” mantra ceaselessly trumpeted in the Western legacy media, the insistence by the developed countries that poorer countries reduce their “carbon footprint” to “save the planet” is bound to be disappointed.
Economic planners in developing countries are under an existential compulsion to improve the standards of living of their citizens. To believe that poorer countries will forego fossil fuels requisite to their hopes of a more prosperous future because “we are all in this together” can only be described as fantastical.
King Coal in History
No country ever has reached “developed country” status without relying on fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). Modern economic growth, commencing in the late eighteenth century and “picking up steam,” as it were, in the centuries thereafter, drastically improved material well-being the world over. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, coal rapidly emerged as the source of human flourishing like never seen before in human history. Coal greatly improved productivity in transport and manufacturing, which proved crucial to raising income and living standards over increasing swaths of the world. Per capita GDP in the U.S. rose 20-fold over the past two centuries to 2018 and 14-fold globally, in lock step with the increased use of coal followed by oil and natural gas.
Coal transformed economic life first in northwest Europe, then in the U.S., and later in other parts of the world. In the U.S., between 1870 and 1920, during the country’s will to power, as it were, coal production grew 16-fold. By the 1880s it had become the leading source of energy in the country and remained so until the middle of the twentieth century when it was superseded by oil. By 1900, the U.S. had also become the richest and most powerful country in the world. Even in 2022, after a century and a half of intense mining, the U.S. remains the world’s 4th largest producer of coal. The U.S. also retains the largest coal reserves in the world.
Quite simply, we are still in the age of fossil fuels, including coal. They currently provide over 80% of world consumption of primary energy, with most of the rest accounted by nuclear energy and hydropower. This is despite the trillions of dollars spent on subsidizing “renewable energy”, primarily wind and solar power, in Europe and the U.S. Coal still provides over a quarter of global primary energy consumption; it accounts for almost half (47%) of Asia’s energy supply. In contrast, wind and solar provided less than 5% of the world’s primary energy supply last year.
The Global South Opts for Coal
The demonization of fossils fuels in general, and coal in particular, by environmental groups and organized lobbies of the climate-industrial complex has been an established feature of past COP conferences. Threats of an impending global environmental catastrophe allegedly caused by fossil fuel emissions dominate the legacy media. To avoid climate Armageddon, the IEA asserts that an immediate and drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels is necessary.
The “High Ambition Coalition”, an informal 15-nation bloc within the UN primarily consisting of EU countries and the UK, is campaigning for a global commitment to phase out new coal production. The group has already published a statement demanding the “urgent phase out of coal-fired power generation” ahead of the COP28 climate summit. Just prior to the Dubai COP28, France, backed by the U.S., announced its plan to seek an agreement to halt all private financing for coal-based power plants during the UN climate conference.
Developing nations are having none of it, increasingly pushing back against the West’s radical anti-fossil fuels campaign. The divide between an evangelizing West and leading developing countries, especially in Asia, which heavily depend on coal for affordable power and energy security, played a disruptive role in the Dubai summit.
Coal is a dense energy source, and it is cheap, versatile and readily transportable. To illustrate coal’s energy density, a Tesla battery that weighs over 500kg and takes 25-50 tons (i.e. thousand kgs) of minerals to be mined, processed, and transported, can store the same energy as a mere 30kg sack of coal. Unlike oil and natural gas, it is considered a “non-political” fuel given that it is the world’s most abundant energy resource. Coal deposits are spread widely, if unevenly, around the world. Its biggest exporters, in rank, are Indonesia, Australia, Russia, the U.S., Colombia, and Canada. China and India, the world’s two largest consumers of coal and among its largest producers, depend heavily on it for their energy, and hence national, security.
Coal is commonly vilified for being the dirtiest of fossil fuel. But coal-based power generation is to the contrary a success story of scientific progress. Key pollutants from coal combustion in power generation plants have fallen dramatically with technological improvements over the past several decades with the development of high-efficiency, low-emission plants. These have dramatically reduced emissions of pollutants that adversely affect human health, including carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide (by 98%), oxides of nitrogen (83%), ground-level ozone and particulate matter (99.8%). Carbon dioxide, contrary to common perception, is not a pollutant.
India has come out clearly with its pro-coal stance as we have seen. Last week, South African officials confirmed that the country will miss its 2030 carbon emissions targets under the Paris climate agreement, as the country plans to run eight coal-fired power plants for longer than planned as a matter of necessity. This is so despite the approval a $1 billion loan for South Africa by the World Bank last month to help it address an energy crisis that peaked this year with the country’s worst electricity blackouts.
Likewise, Indonesia will continue to build new coal power plants despite earlier blandishments of a $20 billion financial package by a group of rich countries to help the country wean itself off its coal dependence. In October, it emerged that Vietnam, despite its Paris Agreement “commitment” of carbon emission reductions, may double the amount of coal-fired electric generation capacity by 2030 under a draft power development plan submitted to the prime minister for approval.
China, the world’s coal heavyweight, continues its building spree of coal power plants with over 50 GW of new capacity just in the first half of this year. It permitted two new coal power plants per week in 2022 and has six times more coal-fired power plants under construction currently than the rest of the world combined.
Germany, the world’s leader in green energy ambitions, provides the best lesson in abject irony. When faced with the prospect of entering the winter of 2022-2023 without sufficient energy supplies (after having shut its nuclear power plants and losing its access to piped Russian natural gas by invoking sanctions against Russia which was followed by the sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline), the country retreated to coal power generation. According to a Twitter (now called “X”) thread by Doomberg, Germany’s has moved back to coal “with the speed and efficiency of the British evacuation of Dunkirk.” According to the IEA, Germany’s “significant reversal” drove European coal consumption for power up 9% in 2022.
Much maligned coal continues to support human flourishing. Its use in the developing countries will continue to grow in the decades to come. Meanwhile, we will see just how “temporary” is Germany’s existential move back to coal this winter. Old King Coal was the elephant in every COP28 meeting room and conference hall.
Tilak Doshi is a London-based energy economist and Forbes contributor.
Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
You must be logged in to post a comment.