Day: February 16, 2024

Academics Blame Lower Trust In Scientists On Everything But Bad Scientists

The second sentence of the abstract of a new paper about trust in scientists, which is generally high but in some places low, provides the very reason for distrust: “Public trust in science can help decision-makers act based on the best available evidence, especially during crises such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic.”

From Watts Up With That?

Reposted from William M Briggs’s Substack Science Is Not The Answer

The second sentence of the abstract of a new paper about trust in scientists, which is generally high but in some places low, provides the very reason for distrust: “Public trust in science can help decision-makers act based on the best available evidence, especially during crises such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Climate change” is not a crisis, and it is absurd for scientists to claim it is. The covid panic was. But only because scientists in the name of Science first created the damned bug, and then repeatedly botched its “solutions”. What rulers and Experts did to the body politic in the name of Science would make a San Francisco bathhouse habitué blush.

Incidentally, trust in scientists, they say, and not in Science. An interesting and important distinction.

The paper is “Trust in scientists and their role in society across 67 countries” by Viktoria Cologna, Naomi Oreskes, whom we have met several times, and a legion of others. We have met, and have not enjoyed meeting, Oreskes many times before.

Like the abstract, the paper itself begins in a bizarre way: “Public trust in science provides many benefits to people and society at large.”

Yes and no. Sometimes the fruits of science provide benefits, true, but sometimes they provide harms; e.g., gain-of-lethality research and nuclear bombs. Perhaps the net, at least at the date of this writing, is a benefit, but this is unclear. To be clear we’d have to have an agreed upon definition of The Good. We would have to know the purpose and meaning of life, and how our toys and machines fit into this scheme.

Which is not the purview of science. And which, in our decaying culture, our Experts, elites and rulers never discuss.

This is important because this paper, as in most minds, production of tools and toys are conflated with science. Science is the understanding of the nature of world. Controlling the world via this understanding is not science, but something else. Confusing the two leads to scientism.

Now this paper is a mess, and there is no point taking it too seriously. The ambiguity of translating the questions asked, the state and history of country-level science education and production, culture itself, and things like this mean that absolute numbers cannot be used or compared with anything close to certainty. For instance, a picture (their Fig. 1) shows Egypt (!) and India far outpacing other countries in scientist trust. Japan and Russia are near the bottom.

Then the authors say things like this: “Societies with high public trust in science dealt with the COVID19 pandemic more effectively, as citizens were more likely to comply with non-pharmaceutical COVID-19 interventions and had higher vaccine confidence.”

No they didn’t. The USA, which Followed The Science, had one of the highest crap-out rates. Sweden, which did not, did much better.

Who really knows, though, because countries reported numbers with different levels of assiduity. Complying with idiotic and vain “non-pharmaceutical” “interventions” is a definite strike against trusting scientists. Follow the arrows on the floor or die! Wear a mask standing but not sitting or die! Break the 6 foot barrier and die!

What struck me as bizarre was this:

Trust is significantly associated with attitudes towards science. We find positive relationships between people’s trust in scientists and their willingness to rely on scientific advice and thus make themselves vulnerable to scientists, the belief that science benefits people like them, and trust in scientific methods.

Make themselves vulnerable to scientists. Drips with effeminacy and toxic femininity. Same kind of stuff you see from synodalians listening and accompanying us on our spiritual journey together. Mental sugar poisoning. Vulnerable to scientists forsooth!

We also find that science-related populist attitudes—that is, beliefs that people’s common sense is superior to the expertise of scientists and scientific institutions—are associated with lower trust in scientists.

Here’s where the scientism really creeps in. Knowing how the world works does not, in any way, tell us the best and worst ways of manipulating the world. Ordinary people can often tell when they are being shafted by Vlad The Scientist Impaler. Their commonsense solutions can work better than scientist “solutions”.

The mistake the paper makes is assuming scientists’ expertise is always better than people’s. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But never always.

Think of the scientist whose bright idea it was to put lithium in water supplies to calm the indigenous populants—and make them love scientists more? Or the scientist who wants to—and I swear this is true—shrink people to make war on “climate change.”

Scientists, even PhD-bearing mathematical prodigies, can be stupid. Because of DIE and the work, that stupidity on public display increases.

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By William M Briggs · Launched 2 years ago

The philosophy of science and scientism, and putting uncertainty in its place.

When You Crunch The Numbers, Green Hydrogen Is A Non-Starter

If you think that a “de-carbonized” energy system is some kind of urgent priority for humanity, and you put your mind to how to achieve that, it won’t take you long to realize that hydrogen is the only way to get there. OK, there’s nuclear, but environmentalists and regulators have nuclear completely blocked. That means that to be carbon-free, most electricity must come from the wind and sun, and in turn that means need for energy storage far beyond the capabilities of any batteries. Hydrogen is the one and only remaining solution.

From The Manhattan Contrarian

Francis Menton

This post reports on two new instances of people applying a little critical thinking to the issue of using so-called “green” hydrogen as an essential piece of a future de-carbonized energy system. This is a subject that I have previously addressed, here in a post of June 13, 2022, and here again in my energy storage Report of December 1, 2022.

The two new pieces covered in this post are (1) a February 1 Report for the Manhattan Institute by Jonathan Lesser titled “Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle,”, and (2) a February 13 article in the Washington Examiner by Steve Goreham titled “Can the government create a green hydrogen fuel industry?”

If you think that a “de-carbonized” energy system is some kind of urgent priority for humanity, and you put your mind to how to achieve that, it won’t take you long to realize that hydrogen is the only way to get there. OK, there’s nuclear, but environmentalists and regulators have nuclear completely blocked. That means that to be carbon-free, most electricity must come from the wind and sun, and in turn that means need for energy storage far beyond the capabilities of any batteries. Hydrogen is the one and only remaining solution.

And not just any hydrogen. Only “green” hydrogen will do — that is, hydrogen that is itself produced by some carbon-free process. The alternative is to get your hydrogen the way almost all hydrogen is produced today: you “reform” methane (CH4), separating out the hydrogen and discarding the carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere. But this process has the same CO2 emissions as if you just burned the methane (aka natural gas) in a power plant to get your energy in the first place. If the entire goal is de-carbonization, that is clearly not allowed.

Over at the government, their minds move slowly, but they have recently figured out that keeping their energy transition fantasy alive can only be accomplished with vast amounts of green hydrogen. And so they have undertaken to address the issue in the only way they know, which is to throw oodles of taxpayer funding at it. This piece from JPT on October 24, 2023 covers the government’s latest big announcement:

US President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced that seven regional clean hydrogen hubs have been selected to receive $7 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding in an effort to accelerate the domestic market for low-cost, clean hydrogen. The seven selected regional clean hydrogen hubs are expected to catalyze more than $40 billion in private investment and create tens of thousands of jobs, bringing the total public and private investment in hydrogen hubs to nearly $50 billion.

Note that the government’s big initiative came just about a year after the two Manhattan Contrarian pieces in 2022 explaining why this could never be done economically. But anyway, now that the government funds are flowing, and so-called “infrastructure” is getting built, others are starting to look at whether this makes any sense.

Of the two new pieces covered here, Lesser’s is far the longer and more detailed. He goes through a careful look at all the elements of trying to produce this green hydrogen stuff — building the electrolysis facility, operating and maintaining the facility, buying electricity from wind and solar producers, transmitting the wind/solar electricity to the site of electrolysis, and compressing the hydrogen into a form ready for transit somewhere to be used — and puts assumed cost figures on each piece of the process. He comes up with a total cost range of $2.74 to $5.35 per kg of hydrogen produced. Here is Lesser’s chart:

Note that Lesser comes up with even higher figures of $3.62 to $8.85 per kg of hydrogen if he further adds costs of battery storage of electricity to make it so that the electrolyzers can run all the time and not be dependent on the intermittency of wind and sun. Green hydrogen advocates would dispute whether this is necessary, so let’s leave it out for now. Even without this additional cost, we are at $2.74 to $5.35 per kg for the hydrogen.

Since a kg of hydrogen is good for about 33.3 kwh, that would mean something in the range of 8.3 to 16.2 cents per kwh just for the fuel, without yet considering any cost to get the fuel to a power plant to be burned.

I would comment that some of Lesser’s assumptions are very low, and by “low” I mean favorable to the economic viability of this green hydrogen. Most notably, he has an assumption of an unsubsidized cost of 4 cents per kwh for the wind/solar-generated electricity. Crazy. Here in New York, off-shore wind developers who had bid last year for contracts at about $90-100/MWH (i.e., 9 – 10 cents per kwh) have recently reneged and demanded prices in the range of $150-160/MWH, or 15-16 cents per kwh. If the recent New York demands represent the real cost of wind/solar electricity, then you can multiply Lesser’s figure for the electricity input to produce a kg of hydrogen by 4, adding about $6 per kg, bringing the total cost of a kg to around $9 – 11, instead of Lesser’s $2.74 – 5.35. In cents/kwh that would be about 18 additional cents per kwh, in either the high or low scenario; instead of a range of about 8 to 16 cents, it would be 24 to 32 cents per kwh to make the green hydrogen.

Goreham does not give us such a detailed calculation, but his bottom line is about the same (including a more realistic cost for the wind/solar electricity):

Hydrogen feedstock made from natural gas or coal is inexpensive, with a cost as low as $1 per kilogram. . . . To produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis, electricity alone costs $3 to $6 per kilogram, resulting in a total cost of at least $5 per kilogram. This makes hydrogen from electrolysis more than five times as expensive as hydrogen made from natural gas or coal.

Goreham’s “at least $5 per kg” for green hydrogen is actually well below Lesser’s figure after we adjust for the cost of electricity from wind and solar generation.

Note that, as I reported on January 12, recent bids in the UK for producing green hydrogen using electricity from off-shore wind came in at about $306/MWH, or 30.6 cents per kwh. Using the conversion factor of 33.3 kwh/kg of hydrogen would make this the equivalent of over $10 per kg of hydrogen.

We won’t really know how much this green hydrogen stuff actually costs until there are some real facilities up and running. But whether it is ten times as expensive as the stuff produced from natural gas, or only five times as expensive, doesn’t really matter. It is uneconomic, and nothing is going to change that. Nobody will ever buy it or use it without government mandates or subsidies or both.

Goreham’s conclusion:

[G]overnments now want to create a new hydrogen fuel industry using market intervention, mandates, and massive subsidies. But physics and economics strongly oppose the development of a green hydrogen fuel industry. Get ready for a spectacular failure of these government-sponsored efforts.

How a crashing second-hand market slammed the brakes on EVs

Fluctuating demand is creating a heightened degree of uncertainty for buyers and sellers.

Fluctuating demand is creating a heightened degree of uncertainty for buyers and sellers.

“The moment for electric cars is now,” proclaimed the website of rental start-up Onto.

“Once you get behind the steering wheel and feel what they’re capable of, we know there’s no going back.”

The Warwick-based company matched words with actions, amassing one of Britain’s biggest EV-only fleets with 7,000 cars overall. The Telegraph has the story.

Instead of leasing or selling the vehicles, customers were offered “hassle-free subscriptions” that included a car, insurance, maintenance and even charging from £359 a month.

Yet today customers are greeted with another message, explaining that Onto Holdings Limited was placed into administration in September.

According to accounts for the first seven months of 2023, Onto was forced to write down the value of its EV fleet by £21m – more than its total revenues for the same period.

Administrators for Onto blamed the company’s collapse on a “steep fall” in the value of electric cars, rising interest rates and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on drivers’ disposable income. It was unable to secure additional funding from its shareholders as a result, administrators Teneo added.

Onto is far from alone in having suffered these challenges.

Second-hand EV prices plunged across the board last year, as manufacturers including Tesla slashed prices and a wave of ex-lease and rental vehicles flooded the market.

As experts have pointed out, this has long been predicted and it is generally good for consumers, the vast majority of whom only buy used cars.

But the trend has also dealt a blow to others – namely, companies and early adopters who paid higher prices and will now recoup less of their investment.  

For the moment, used EV prices are stabilising again as the bargains available stoke strong demand, says Marc Palmer, head of insights at Auto Trader.

But with competition in the new car market intensifying, there are fears Chinese brands will seek to undercut their European rivals by slashing prices further – causing further ructions for second-hand sellers.

“That is the big question – ‘will the Chinese come in more cheaply?’”, says Palmer.

“We think they could, because they sell their cars more cheaply in China than they do in Europe. So they’ve got the ability to start more aggressive pricing.

“And if new cars become more affordable, then prices of used cars will probably need to come down a bit to make sure they still provide value for consumers.”

That could make more grim reading for existing EV owners, who have already been clobbered in the past year.

Based on figures for December, Auto Trader found that an EV costing £50,000 is currently expected to lose about £24,000 of its value after just three years on the road, significantly more than the typical £17,000 reduction seen with petrol cars.

Some of the worst-hit cars include the Renault ZOE, which has shed 56pc of its value on average and now sells for £7,700, according to separate data from Motorway.co.uk. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen ID3 fell by 41pc and the Nissan Leaf lost 40pc.

Read the full story here.

New Study: Denmark Coast Has Been Expanding Seaward At A Rate Of +1.4 Meters Per Year Since 1900

Scientists have found evidence that the coastal land area grew (prograded) by 120 meters from 1900 to 1985 at a study site in central Denmark. 

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard 

Scientists have found evidence that the coastal land area grew (prograded) by 120 meters from 1900 to 1985 at a study site in central Denmark. 

Per a new study, relative sea levels (RSL) in central Denmark were “~4.5 m higher than present between c. 6.6 and 5.9 ka ago.” After this highstand, RSL declined towards the present.

The 20th century rates of coastal expansion and retreating seas were similar to the declining RSL and progradation rates reached in the Middle Holocene.

Image Source: Riis et al., 2024
Boreas-2023-Riis-Middle-and-Late-Holocene-relative-sea-level-changes-and-coastal-development-at-Rug-rd-DenmarkHerunterladen

Health of Fish Stocks Contradict Climate Alarmists Predictions

Now, evidence emerging from scientific studies shows that marine life may be benefiting from the relative warmth of modern temperatures.

From The CO2 Coalition

By Vijay Jayaraj

The oceans are still very much a mystery to humankind, with a vast majority of it yet to be explored. Early in my career, I wanted to make an in-depth study of how climate affected marine life. After all, many media reports claimed that “oceans will become empty by 2048.”

So, as a graduate research assistant, I explored the adaptability of marine fish and invertebrates to fluctuations in ocean temperatures. I found that both are highly adaptable to changes in the water around them. That is the way they are made.

Now, evidence emerging from scientific studies shows that marine life may be benefiting from the relative warmth of modern temperatures.

Contrary to the hyperbole of climate reporters, there has been no alarming increase in global sea-surface temperatures. Even if temperatures increase substantially, fish are free to migrate to cooler waters and do, as documented by scientific studies.

Fish also have natural adaptive mechanisms. Since their initial emergence in Earth’s waters, fish have developed genetically in ways that allow them not only to survive but to thrive in a variety of environments. In addition to the generational genetic adaptability, fish also display short-term phenotypic plasticity which allows them to adapt to temperatures and other physical factors. When combined, these mechanisms act as significant protection against the ill-effects of the physical environment.

Despite this, it is not uncommon to see news of fisheries crashing under the weight of a climate crisis. However, real-world data contradict such negative reports, indicating instead that global fish catches will improve in the coming decades.

A 2016 scientific study “assembled the largest-of-its-kind database and coupled it to state-of-the-art bioeconomic models for more than 4,500 fisheries around the world.” The study found that global fisheries will profit from an increase in marine species. The degree of this commercial success will depend on a range of policy measures, including ones that enable increased catches for individuals and communities.

In 2020, there was a record 214 million tonnes of production from both wild catches and aquaculture. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022 report says that this production is expected to grow 14 percent by 2030. Fish are expected to become more affordable and accessible, with prices decreasing between 2024-2029, according to two international bodies: the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that published the data in Agricultural Outlook.

As of 2017, around 65% of fish stocks were biologically sustainable. An index of population health is maximum sustainable yield (MSY), which is the point at which the stock can sustain itself without limits on fishing. The MSY calculation involves collaborative information gathering by marine biologists and fishers.

The 2022 report states that the number of catches from biologically sustainable stocks has been on the rise! This signals that catches can be increased without depleting the stock to levels that neither the species nor continued fishing is at risk. While some concerns remain for a few species, studies show that in regions where we have high-quality population data, the majority of fish stocks are either stable or improving.

In short, any threat to future catches is not “empty” seas but rather the effect of activities such as illegal fishing and overfishing. Fish as an important protein source is likely to remain available in large quantities. Reality contradicts the fallacious climate crisis that dominates popular media and politics.

This commentary was first published in American Thinker on February 10, 2024.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.  He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.

Met Office Says it Cannot Back Up its Senior Meteorologist’s Claim on BBC Radio That Storms in the U.K. are “More Intense” Due to Climate Change

The Met Office has been unable to back up a claim that storms in the U.K. are “more intense” due to the effects of climate change. The claim was made by senior Met Office meteorologist Claire Nasir on January 22nd on BBC 5 Live Breakfast in the aftermath of Storm Isha, and led to a freedom of information request for an explanation by investigative journalist Paul Homewood. The Met Office has replied that it is unable to answer the request due to the fact that the information “is not held”.

From The Daily Sceptic

By CHRIS MORRISON

The Met Office has been unable to back up a claim that storms in the U.K. are “more intense” due to the effects of climate change. The claim was made by senior Met Office meteorologist Claire Nasir on January 22nd on BBC 5 Live Breakfast in the aftermath of Storm Isha, and led to a freedom of information request for an explanation by investigative journalist Paul Homewood. The Met Office has replied that it is unable to answer the request due to the fact that the information “is not held”.

In fact the Met Office could have addressed the claim that storms are growing in intensity by referring to its own ‘State of the Climate 2022’ report:

The most recent two decades have seen fewer occurrences of maximum gust speeds above these thresholds [40/50/60 knots] than during previous decades, particularly comparing the period before and after 2000. This earlier period [before 2000] also included among the most severe storms experienced in the U.K. in the observational records including the ‘Burns Day Storm’ of January 25th 1990, the ‘Boxing Day Storm’ of December 26th 1998 and the ‘Great Storm’ of October 16th 1987. Any comparison of storms is complex as it depends on severity, spatial extent and duration. Storm Eunice [in 2022] was the most severe storm to affect England and Wales since February 2014, but even so, these storms of the 1980s and 1990s were much more severe.

An explanation for the remarks broadcast unchallenged on the BBC was provided by the Met Office, “in order to provide advice and assistance”. The statement about more intense storms being due to climate change was, the Met Office explains, in reference to “our published U.K. Climate Projections, looking at projections in the future”. This is straight out laughable, since it seeks to justify a statement firmly in the present with waffle about future modelled projections. Paul Homewood comments that it is “small wonder that so many have little confidence in the Met Office anymore”. Meanwhile, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has demanded that the Met Office retracts the “false ‘more intense storms’ claim”. The foundation notes that there is no compelling trend in maximum gust speeds recorded in the U.K. since 1969.

Of course these remarks by Claire Nasir are just the latest in a long line of scares that are being spread by state-funded operations promoting the collectivist Net Zero project. In the mainstream media there is little or no push back on often outrageous and improbable claims of climate collapse and potential future human misery.

In December, the headlines were full of the news that London could suffer an endemic dengue plague by 2060 due to changes in the climate. The claim from the Health Security Agency arose from a computer model fed with an implausible rise in temperature of 3-4°C within 80 years. Paul Reiter, retired Professor of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, called the claims “entirely  fictional” and “shameless”. Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch commented that science is being misused to generate fear and to ‘nudge’ us in a desired direction. “This kind of shameful disinformation brings the Civil Service into disrepute,” he said.

The cynical might observe that climate Armageddonites know they are unlikely to be challenged on any claim on climate change, however improbable. In mainstream media, politics and academia, the science is ‘settled’. As a matter of policy, the BBC no longer gives airtime to anyone challenging the politicised narrative. As a result, many scientists seem to have lost the ability to engage in a rational debate with anyone taking a sceptical view of their work. Last December, the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper from the Met Office that proposed a radical new method of calculating climate temperature change. The scientific method of calculating trends over 30 years was to be ditched and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade. The motive behind this controversial move was obvious since the hope would be to claim an earlier breach of the 1.5°C political threshold. The paper was led by Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, and this is what he tweeted as a rebuttal.

The only mainstream broadcast media outlets in the U.K. offering a platform for sceptical discussion of climate change and its role in promoting Net Zero are Talk TV and GB News. Almost all salaried academics working in ‘climate science’ subscribe to the ‘settled’ narrative and will not debate with people they frequently term ‘deniers’. In fact they hide behind this and similar abuse because they fear a forensic examination of much of their fearmongering. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are scared of what might happen in an uncontrolled debating environment. Perish the thought that Professor Betts might be asked to explain how he keeps a straight face when promoting the Met Office’s 40.3°C U.K. temperature  ‘record’. The one recorded for 60 seconds on July 19th 2022 by a runway at RAF Coningsby as three Typhoon jets were landing.

To ‘balance’ their coverage, and seemingly to keep the state regulator Ofcom happy, Talk TV and GB News are forced to give a platform to  people inhabiting the more colourful end of the climate spectrum. Step forward Jim Dale, one time Royal Navy weather observer, who can be relied upon to point to any bad weather event or natural disaster such a wildfires and claim it is all due to a human-caused collapsing climate. Any reference to actual data is met with shouty denial and frequent abuse. The regular brawls on Nana Akua’s GB News Sunday show with retired hydrologist Paul Burgess are a classic of their kind.

Let’s call it the Daleification of climate science, and as we can see it is not just confined to our eponymous hero.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

The BBC: ‘Are the politics of climate change going out of fashion?’

Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer’s election campaign decision to cancel a pledge to spend £28 billion per year on green projects has rocked the British political landscape.

From ClimateRealism

By Guest Contributor

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer’s election campaign decision to cancel a pledge to spend £28 billion per year on green projects has rocked the British political landscape.

Kuenssberg: Are the politics of climate change going out of fashion?

By Laura Kuenssberg

Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

…

Politics has fashions too – what’s in and out. It’s not so long ago that world leaders were jostling to be pictured with celebs like Leonardo diCaprio, Stella McCartney or Emma Watson at the huge COP26 climate conference in Glasgow where Boris Johnson played host. 

Then, it was hip to be green – being at COP in 2021 was the political equivalent of the fashion week front row. But with Labour shrinking away from its big £28bn commitments this week, and the Conservatives shifting tack and rumoured to be dropping the so-called “boiler tax”, there’s no doubt trends have changed.

What’s different?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took the first steps back in September. He didn’t junk the government’s green commitments but slowed the pace of existing plans.

…

The leaderships of both main parties have moved, but there isn’t agreement among their ranks either. On the right of the Conservatives, there’s pressure on No 10 now to ditch the so called “boiler tax” – planned fines payable by boiler makers if they fail to hit targets for selling new heat pumps.

…

In 2020 that was followed by another target to cut emissions by nearly 70% by 2030. 

…

One of those involved in the decision told me this week: “We thought it was the right thing to do but we understood we didn’t have all the answers. It was a bit like when JFK said we are going to land a man on the moon at the end of the decade. He had no idea how he’d do it but it was a clear ambition.”

…

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68261445

Has Britain truly wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on useless green projects, because a bunch of British politicians wanted to feel like JFK?

Getting green energy to work, if this is even possible, is a different order of problem to the moon landing.

I’m not in any sense dissing the moon landing, it was a remarkable feat, decades ahead of its time, which to date only one great nation has achieved. But from the outset of the moon landing project, there was a plausible technological path to success. There were huge engineering challenges to be overcome along the way, like how to prevent the rocket engine from melting during a burn which lasted minutes rather than seconds, and how to build a structure which was lightweight enough to maximise rocket efficiency, yet sturdy enough to survive a rapid ascent through the atmosphere and acceleration G-forces. But in a very real sense, the Saturn V rocket which carried men to the moon was a massively scaled up version of genius American inventor Robert Goddard’s original Liquid Fuel Rocket.

During his life, Goddard’s breakthrough and claims attracted both excitement and criticism. In 1969, the New York Times published a posthumous “correction” to their 1920 critique of Goddard’s claim that rockets could work in space. The 1920 NYT article claimed Goddard’s assertion that rockets could work in a space was absurd, because in space there is nothing to push against.

Goddard knew better. Quite apart from Goddard’s knowledge of physics, an area of expertise which was clearly in short supply in the offices of the New York Times, Goddard had already tested his rockets in a vacuum chamber, well before the NYT article was published.

My point is, even in 1920, Goddard knew his remarkable technological breakthrough provided a clear path to spaceflight.

No similar technological path to success exists for creating a renewable energy powered economy.

How do we store energy for months, or years, to stabilise an expensive, intermittent source of energy which collapses in Winter, just when we need it most? Nobody knows how to affordably stabilise renewable supplies. There isn’t even an affordable answer to time shifting renewable energy into the evening demand peak, without burning lots of fossil fuel in the “backup” generators.

Hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayer funds have been wasted by politicians who wanted to feel like JFK.

Is this desire to feel like JFK David Attenborough’s fault? I say this, because Attenborough has spent the last decade trying to convince people to back his renewable energy Apollo programme.

I don’t know for sure that it was Attenborough who put this idea of being like JFK into the minds of British politicians, but Attenborough’s influence in Britain cannot be overstated. I’m not sure how influential Attenborough is in the USA, but in Australia and Britain, anywhere within the BBC’s sphere of influence, watching Attenborough nature films was a staple of our childhood.

It has to be said Attenborough once had competition for our hearts. BBC presenter David Bellamy‘s nature films were also a staple of our childhood. I don’t know for sure what soured the BBC’s relationship with Bellamy, but Bellamy dropped out of sight after he publicly criticised the climate crisis narrative.

How will future historians make sense of this blunder?

I wish future historians luck, I can barely make sense of it. Trillions of taxpayer dollars and pounds have been committed to the green energy dead end. The politicians who committed that taxpayer cash are only now starting to wake up to the scale of their blunder.

Will British politicians have the courage to admit they made a mistake?

I hope British and other politicians find it in their hearts to do the right thing. These days it is easy to be cynical, but I believe this disastrous course of action was embraced by politicians who thought they were doing the right thing for Britain and the world. Keir Starmer’s sensible downgrade of climate action in his election manifesto is a glimmer of hope Starmer won’t be the socialist disaster many fear. One of the supporting pillars of the green economy push, the claim green investment would create a domestic manufacturing renaissance, is also in tatters. Green energy powered Britain cannot economically compete with the coal powered slave labour factories of Xinjiang, especially with China also controlling the supply and sale of critical minerals required for manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines and high efficiency electric motors and generators.

Another factor contributing to this softening of political climate commitment might be the claim we have already breached 1.5C. I believe the claim we have already cross a threshold may turn out to be a massive propaganda mistake for the climate movement. Where are the promised climate disasters? Perhaps 1.5C will turn out to be an opportunity after all, an opportunity for everyone to come to their senses, and relegate climate change to its rightful place – a mildly beneficial long term change in the weather.

For anyone interested, The Smithsonian has a great writeup of Robert Goddard’s life and achievements.

Originally published on WattsUpWithThat

St Ives Bay carbon capture trial ‘very low risk’ – report

Plans to add magnesium hydroxide to the sea at St Ives Bay in a bid to combat climate change are “very low risk”, according to an independent review.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

Plans to add magnesium hydroxide to the sea at St Ives Bay in a bid to combat climate change are “very low risk”, according to an independent review.

Planetary Technologies and South West Water want to carry out a carbon sequestration trial.

They want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it in the sea by adding the alkaline mineral.

The independent review of the plans was carried out by the Water Research Centre (WRc).

The Environment Agency (EA) is yet to decide whether the trial will go ahead.

It would involve magnesium hydroxide being added into the treated wastewater outlet pipe at Hayle Waste Water Treatment Works.

The wastewater pipe would transport the magnesium hydroxide 1.5 miles (2.4km) into the sea outside St Ives Bay.

Planetary said adding the alkaline compound to the sea would help counter ocean acidity caused by climate change.

‘Chemical dump’

In April 2023 protesters described the plan as a “chemical dump” and asked for a delay to allow time for results from a reported previous experiment to be “published and peer reviewed”.

The planned June 2023 start for the trial was postponed and while the WRc carried out a “detailed and independent review” of Planetary’s proposal.

The WRc report has now considered the proposed trial as “very low risk” but with recommended changes for resubmission.

The key recommendations include:

  • Additional sampling of the source material, the magnesium hydroxide
  • Additional monitoring to detect impacts and help confirm modelled dissolution rates
  • Planetary refining its calculations of the suitable concentration of magnesium hydroxide to use, using long-term data on multiple appropriate marine species

‘Trial is worrying’

Following the report, the Environment Agency (EA) said: “We will need to assess the changes before we can make a decision.”

The Seal Research Trust has called for a closed water test of magnesium hydroxide in St Ives Bay to get a definitive understanding of its impact, before open sea trials take place.

Charity founder Sue Sayer MBE said: “The conclusion that there is a low risk to marine organisms from magnesium hydroxide in this trial is worrying, as no testing has been done on St Ives Bay seawater and species such as brown crabs and lobsters, let alone the long term testing on ‘multiple appropriate marine species’ recommended by the EA.

“Of even greater concern to us is the WRc’s assessment, that the formation of calcium carbonate sediment is a medium risk, as this will cover sea bed species and be ingested by seabed feeders such as seals.”

‘Net carbon removal’

Planetary Technologies said: “We are extremely pleased that WRc recognises that our technology has the potential for ‘significant net carbon removal’.

“Our team is now working to update our trial proposal to take into account all substantive input from the EA and local community.”

A spokesperson for South West Water said: “We continue to work with the Environment Agency as it makes its decision on whether to allow Planetary to carry out the proposed trial.

“We will not support any initiative that presents a significant risk to our local environment and our priority is always to protect our natural environment.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-68277585

I’m no chemical expert, but the idea of chucking large volumes of chemicals into one small area of sea seems highly irresponsible.

But I have other issues with this:

  • The amount of carbon dioxide that could be captured in this way would surely be infinitesimally small, even if employed in bulk globally
  • Magnesium Hydroxide would be used in the form of a mineral called brucite. a relatively rare mineral found in rocks. This of course would require some sort of mining operation, along with crushing, both of which would involve fossil fuel emissions. I suspect those emissions would greatly outweigh any savings!

This has all the trappings of a scam to make money.

Farmers are in revolt and Europe’s climate policies are crumbling. Welcome to the age of ‘greenlash’

Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far right.

Brussels is ditching green measures as EU leaders panic over rural protests, upcoming elections and the threat of the far right.

Ursula von der Leyen surrendered to angry farmers last week faster than you could shake a pitchfork or dump a tractor-load of manure outside the European parliament.

The European Commission president, expected to announce her candidacy for a second term heading the EU executive next week, told lawmakers that the commission was withdrawing a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and would hold more consultations instead. The Guardian has the story.

The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission’s European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity.

Von der Leyen’s sudden U-turn on one of her signature policies was not just an attempt to defuse a spreading continent-wide rural revolt over rising fuel costs, burdensome environmental regulations, retailers’ price squeezes and cheap imports. It was also a sign of growing panic among the EU’s mainstream parties over the seemingly inexorable rise of far-right nationalists ahead of the June elections.

Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, is vying to lead the centre-right European People’s party’s campaign for the elections even though she is not herself seeking a European parliament seat. Her coronation at a party congress on 6-7 March as the EPP’s Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidate) to run the commission from 2024 to 2029 is a formality, since there is no other contender. But she has had to water down her green policies to placate a party so spooked by the “greenlash” against net zero legislation that it is rushing to reposition itself as the voice of gradual adaptation at a pace that citizens can accept and afford.

EU leaders tried to take another contentious issue off the table by agreeing in December on a long-stalled migration pact that includes stricter external border controls, faster procedures for processing asylum seekers and expelling those whose applications are rejected, and sharing the burden of the refugee crisis among EU countries. But populists such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, continue to rail against being forced to choose between admitting unwanted migrants and paying for other countries to take them in under the new system.

I have seen unpublished opinion polling conducted for the European parliament in January that showed Eurosceptic, sovereigntist or populist parties have taken the lead in eight of the 27 EU members, and are in second place in four more. Moreover, the countries where the far right is polling most strongly include those with the most seats in the legislature – Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.

This is getting scary, and events such as the farmers’ furore are playing into the hands of populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen, Germany’s Alice Weidel and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, who thrive on grassroots grumbling against the metropolitan elites.

“The (pesticides) proposal has become a symbol of polarisation,” von der Leyen admitted to parliament in Strasbourg. “To move forward, more dialogue and a different approach is needed.” She may have been slamming the stable gate after the horse has bolted.

Farmers have traditionally voted for mainstream conservative and Christian Democratic parties, while the socialists and social democrats had their bastions in industrial urban areas. Remember former president Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist farmers’ friend, jovially slapping the hindquarters of cows in his southwestern Corrèze constituency or at the annual Paris agricultural fair. Nowadays, those voters are more likely to vote for Le Pen’s National Rally, recent polls suggest.

In France, the centre-right Republicans, Chirac’s heirs, are polling at barely 8%, while the National Rally stands above 30% in latest surveys, and anti-Islam ideologue Éric Zemmour’s even further right Reconquest! bags another 6-8%. Le Pen’s list is led by the charismatic 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, already an MEP and party president, while Zemmour’s is topped by Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, 34, a favourite of US far-right political strategist Steve Bannon.

In the Netherlands, farmer discontent over curbs on nitrogen emissions led to the sudden rise of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a party that came from nowhere to win the most votes in regional elections last March. Many of those protest voters have since switched to Wilders’ Freedom party, which topped the poll in a general election in November and has gained more ground since then.

Appeasing rural revolt may stop farmers blockading motorways or burning bales of hay outside government offices, but it is unlikely to herd them back towards the mainstream centre-right, given the depth of their discontent.

Read the full story here.

Mr. Bean Was Right – and So Was Toyota

When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.

By Duggan Flanakin

When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.

Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.

Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.

Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technologic developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.

For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts.” Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”

How dare he?

Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.

Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune, in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.

Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”

[Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]

It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fire and burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy?  No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.

Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30  billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.

Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.

The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.

Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.

Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.

EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.

Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.

President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month, when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announced it was selling all 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy and EV, said “the larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”

The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and his total disregard for others while solving them, and for his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.

But they are not able to laugh without derision.

The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.

If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly was a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and ending the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).

What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues. 

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.