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.
Europe’s green taxes are driving away investment and risk destroying its €1 trillion (£860bn) chemicals industry, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned.
Brussels’ approach to cutting emissions is wrong, says Ineos founder.
Europe’s green taxes are driving away investment and risk destroying its €1 trillion (£860bn) chemicals industry, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned.
In an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, Sir Jim, the chairman and founder of Ineos, said Europe was “sleepwalking towards offshoring its industry, jobs, investments, and emissions”.
Sir Jim said the four key global regions for chemical manufacture were the US, Middle East, China and Europe. But soaring energy prices and net zero policies aimed at cutting emissions meant the Continent was “struggling” while the others flourished. The Telegraph has the story.
In a separate speech at the European Industry Summit on Tuesday, Sir Jim said: “The cost of gas in Europe is five times more expensive than in America. And electricity is still four times the price in Europe as in America. We in the chemicals world have to pay for that.
“Carbon taxes, … are a burden that manufacturers in Europe have to carry, but they don’t apply to imports. If you look at Ineos today, we’re paying about €150m, but by 2030 that would rise to €2bn. That’s just not sustainable.”
Sir Jim also warned that it had become almost impossible to get planning permission for new chemical plants.
He said: “Modern chemical technology is much much cleaner … Europe is still very large in chemicals – but the whole footprint [plants] are 30-50 years old. It’s impossible to renew them because the permitting legislation in Europe is so difficult.”
Brussels launched the first phase of its carbon border tax in October in an effort to protect European industries from cheap foreign imports. It will mean imports of carbon intensive goods such as steel and cement will be subject to a levy from 2026.
Economists speaking in front of the Lords Economic Affairs Committee on Tuesday warned that the cost of net zero will be far greater than the public is made to believe.
Olivier Blanchard, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said: “The public does not believe or has not been made to understand that is going to be costly for them. It is going to be costly and that message has to be sent out.”
Sir Dieter Helm, an economics professor at Oxford University and former adviser to Boris Johnson, said it was “delusory to think” that the net zero transition would pay for itself.
He added: “It’s much, much more expensive than people imagine.”
Sir Jim said that Europe’s approach to cutting emissions, by punishing companies with carbon taxes, was the wrong approach.
With the 3rd anniversary of the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021, it is worth remembering the second thoughts that architects of the centrally planned state grid (ISO/ERCOT) had at the time. But have the guilty feelings resulted in a fundamental rethink of government electricity?
Ed. Note: With the 3rd anniversary of the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021, it is worth remembering the second thoughts that architects of the centrally planned state grid (ISO/ERCOT) had at the time. But have the guilty feelings resulted in a fundamental rethink of government electricity? This post is reprinted from MasterResource (May 20, 2021)
“I have to admit, the ERCOT blackouts have shaken me. The amount of physical damage and human suffering they caused is astounding. Obviously, the ‘market’ failed to provide the service reliability that customers expected and deserved.”
– Robert L. Borlick, Independent energy consultant, here
It is tough when your belief system gets rattled by reality. Very few people can handle that well. The best prevention strategy is to keep an open mind, and understand other views about as well as your own. Be polite, and stay modest (‘the higher you fly, the harder you fall’).
One longtime electricity planner, Robert L. Borlick, is angry. His ideal regulatory/planning system, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT/ERCOT), crashed. He is in denial, having claimed:
The February Texas experience was akin to earlier experienced blackouts (“To be sure, the ERCOT blackout was bad but nowhere as widespread as the Northeast blackouts. Not even close.”)
Wind and solar power have not compromised the grid (“wind and solar had virtually no role in causing the Texas blackout.”)
Natural gas was the Blackout culprit, and criminally so (“The CEOs of those gas companies should be criminally charged.”)
PUCT/ERCOT planning is not regulation but the free market (“In ERCOT the free market determines reliability.”)
More regulation is needed, not less. (“Unintended consequences of government intervention?’ Are you f***in’ kidding me? What just happened is a direct consequence of insufficient government intervention!”)
Like other central planners, Borlick wants more government (coercion) to address the problems of earlier planning failures:
Cost benefit analysis (whether pure or impure) will reach the optimal solution if it is done right and includes all of the social costs and benefits. For example, the customers that were interrupted deserve to be paid $9 for each kWh they would have consumed if they had remained connected…. The Texas legislature should mandate that all REP contracts contain clauses requiring such compensation.
His worldview at risk, Borlick stubbornly believes that lost renewables during the Texas freeze was “a fly on the ass of an elephant.” (Evidently, renewables can be excused from their disappearing act because we know and expect it.) But every thousand megawatts of capacity counts, particularly at the peak. But perhaps more importantly, the government-forced renewables binge has prematurely retired reliable generation from gas and coal, and new capacity, chiefly powered by natural gas, has been shelved .
And low margins from wind’s negative pricing (which Borlick admitted: “I agree; negative prices are dysfunctional. I have never supported the production tax credit’) naturally leads to postponed or foregone expenses, such as weatherization.
But that’s no excuse. Economist not, Borlick states:
Obviously, the “market” failed to provide the service reliability that customers expected and deserved. It’s cold comfort that the major generation owners, NRG and Vistra lost about $1 billion – each. Their failure to weatherize assets cost consumers many multiples of $2 billion. This is also true regarding the unweatherized natural gas assets.
The market flaw appears to be that market participants optimized their positions based on the costs and profits they expected to incur while ignoring the costs and benefits of the retail customers. Today this is obvious. The question is how to fix this market flaw?
Not enough mandates. And who is to blame for the debacle?
Presumably, Efficient market behavior will result if property rights require the party that harms another to fully compensate the harmed party. Going forward, should generators be required to compensate the customers that lost service? Lastly, does anyone have the obligation to serve? The REPs?
So, government intervention distorts incentives, and dis-incited market participants get punished? And what does the ‘obligation to serve’ mean when reliability is outsourced to government rather than being the role of entrepreneurs in a free market?
Welcome to the road to serfdom.
Borlick’s insults sometimes catch up to him. On one occasion (not involving me) he got melancholy:
I apologize for the condescending tone of my reply. Not knowing all of the facts doesn’t mean someone is unworthy of respect.
I have to admit, the ERCOT blackouts have shaken me. The amount of physical damage and human suffering they caused is astounding. Obviously, the “market” failed to provide the service reliability that customers expected and deserved.
A little more humility and deep thinking about the direct and indirect role of renewables might just allow any troubled, “shaken” power expert/planner to sleep better at night. [And I forgive any harsh treatment of my (different) views in the heat of battle. Egos are behind intellectual for all of us….]
Monckton Announces A Sustainable-Energy Startup: Invest Now!
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
WUWT does not usually endorse commercial or investment opportunities, but this one is an exception. It’s simply too good to miss. At last, the global energy crisis has a credible, sustainable solution.
The radical new technology – an ingenious fusion of biochemistry and physics – has the capacity to provide zero-emission locomotive as well as static energy for the entire planet at only 0.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. I kid you not. It’s the real deal. You can trust me on this.
After almost a decade of intensive research at the gleaming laboratories of the Grand Academy of Lagardo, conducted in the greatest secrecy (we didn’t want the Chinese stealing the technology), we are at last ready to go public. Within less than a decade, when the first Small Modular Uplift Generator rolls off the production line at our Terafactory (formerly known as Texas) to the chink of decarbonized-champagne glasses, all existing forms of energy generation and supply will have become entirely redundant overnight.
Her Majesty’s Government, via the Sustainable-Transition Unlimited-Potential Industrial Development fund administered by the Department of Energy and Net Zero, provided the initial $4 billion in seed capital to get this radical and exciting new technology market-ready.
Inflation-Reduction-Act funding of £10-$100 billion a year has been guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury. The Bill Gates Foundation has chipped in $40 billion. Elon Musk has taken a 3% stake for $50 billion. But we don’t want this to be an exclusively big-bucks project. Here, then, is your chance to get some penny shares while they are still affordable.
Market cap of the We Intend ZerO corporation is already well above $1.5 trillion. We are now at last permitted to go public, for we have just been notified that we will be listed next week on NASDAQ under the tetragrammaton WIZO. Readers of WUWT are the first to know. We are letting you in on the ground floor. You’ll thank me, you really will.
Recently one of my noble friends, Lord Swift of Wetwang, sent his learned clerk, Mr Gulliver, to the Grand Academy to report on our research, conducted under the able direction of Professor Sir Gradely Champion, PhD (Oxon.), FRS:
“The first man I saw [the Professor] was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt and skin were all of the same colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in warm, inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt, in eight years more, that he should be able to supply the Governor’s gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was very low, and entreated me ‘to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers’. I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.”
Now, you may think this is all a joke. How can one get two sunshines’-worth of energy out of only one sunshine and a cucumber? Doesn’t that violate the laws of thermodynamics? Isn’t it a perpetual-motion machine? Doing the sums on the back of an envelope, it looks to me, Monckton, as though you’re saying you could get seeds from the first cucumber and plant them and then get two sunshines’-worth of energy out of each new cucumber. Surely that’s impossible?
We often hear this from investors at first. But, as the Professor explains in his peer-reviewed paper on the subject, the law of physics that you can’t get summat from nowt (or, as he colorfully puts it, “nowt for nowt and b*gger all for sixpence”) simply does not apply where one is using crossover tech between the radiative physics of sunlight and the physical biochemistry of chlorophyll fluorescence in photosynthesis. It’s all a matter of the metabolic pathways, as every schoolboy knows. I mean, try it for yourself.
As head of marketing for WIZO, I can assure you that our business model is identical to that of many previous startups that achieved major market caps. Take Arrival, an exciting British startup of 2021. The brilliant idea behind Arrival was that White Van Man, with his mullet, his fake gold chain, his baggy Chinese Levi knockoffs and his Converse All-Stars, had not yet joined the mass movement towards net zero, and ought to be brought into line.
So Arrival had what you can see was an idea almost as brilliant as ours. Its directors decided that it should use reliable, century-old technology for powering milk-floats with electricity, fitting white vans not with real engines but with enormous, heavy batteries whose sheer weight would help to improve the van’s grip on Britain’s slippery roads – an important health and safety improvement given White Van Man’s reputation for bad driving.
The first, crucial step in this field of research, of course, is to get AU to generate a shiny-looking image of what the finished product might look line. Arrival did this beautifully, as you can see, though perhaps they might have added a little color:
ARRIVAL has departed, in a very real sense
Next, the marketing team planted a series of stories in willing news media. Here are a few:
March 2021: “Federal policies, local production – Arrival is meeting the American moment”.
April 2021: “Mindful sustainability – for a clean, circular and equitable future”.
July 2021: “Making Safety Equitable”.
July 2021: “Anaheim PTO partners with Arrival to secure a $2 million Clean Vehicle Grant”.
August 2021: “Arrival’s autonomous driving technology achieves major AU advancement”.
August 2021: “Arrival co-developing its Automotive Open Data Platform with Microsoft”.
October 2021: “UPS and DP World delivering world-first Electric vehicles charged using off-grid solar power at Expo 2020 Dubai”.
October 2021: “Arrival hand-picked by UK Government to showcase at exclusive Global Investment Summit in London”.
November 2021: “Arrival aims to transform fleet servicing with Global Service Network Program”.
December 2021: “Arrival reveals its first Electric Car designed to transform the global ride-hailing industry.”
December 2021: “Arrival begins proving ground trials of its electric Bus”.
May 2022: “Arrival achieves EU bus certification milestone”.
June 2022: “Arrival produces first production verification van in Microfactory”.
What a roaring success! By this stage, Arrival’s market cap was $15 billion. It had not sold a single vehicle, but who needs to, these days? That business model is way out of date.
By January 2023, it became plain that, because Arrival had not yet adopted WIZO’s Small Modular Uplift Generators, it was not going to be able to compete in the ever-more-competitive market for electric buggies. From then on, the headlines were different in tone:
January 2023: “Arrival announces significant savings initiatives to reduce spend by half”.
February 2023: “Arrival announces a $50 million equity capital commitment and exchanges $121.9 million of debt for equity.
March 2023: “Arrival announces $300 million equity financing line and provides 2023 outlook”.
April 2023: “Arrival advances U.S. commercialization plans through business combination with Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp”.
May 2023: “Arrival reports first quarter 2023 business update”.
June 2023: “Arrival to exchange £40 million debt for equity with Antara”.
July 2023: “Arrival and Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp. agreed to terminate business combination agreement”.
July 2023: “Nasdaq grants Arrival required extension to file its annual report on Form 20-F”.
August 2023: “Arrival to report second-quarter 2023 business updates in early September 2023”.
September 2023: “Arrival’s secured bridge financing accelerated and terminated”.
September 2023: “Arrival reaches agreement with lender on exit fee”.
November 2023: “Notice of delisting or failure to satisfy a continued listing rule or standard”.
January 2024: “Arrival receives Nasdaq notification of non-compliance with listing rules 5250(c)(2) and 5620(a)”.
January 2024: “3.8 times around the Earth. Van trials 2023 results”.
January 2024: “Arrival receives notification of trading suspension and delisting from Nasdaq”.
February 2024: “Arrival announces appointment of administrators for Arrival UK Ltd. and Arrival Automotive UK Ltd”.
By this stage, you may well have deduced that Arrival was an invention, complete with its own bogus website: https://arrival.com/topic/news.
Unfortunately, like so many other gee-whiz startups in the Clean Green Circular Mindful Ongoing Sustainable Equitable Crossover Meeting-The-Moment Transformative Open-Data Modular Showcase Global Energy Transition Synergy Partnership Sector, Arrival was a genuine attempt at a corporation. Like far too many others of its kind, from Solyndra via Virgin Hyperloop One to Britishvolt, Arrival gobbled up billions and spat out nothing before disappearing up its own tailpipe. Just another example of Lomborg’s Law: green investment is neither green nor an investment.
But WIZO is different. It really is. Truly. Cross my fingers and hope to get away with it. Let me end with the statutory warning before you send me your very large check: “Investments can go up, and up, and up, as well as up.”
There are growing fears that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, is about to go extinct due to the growth of electric transmission lines in its home area of the Thar desert. Prioritising wind and solar power has led to a growth of transmission lines with the effect that the numbers of birds could have dropped to 150.
There are growing fears that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, is about to go extinct due to the growth of electric transmission lines in its home area of the Thar desert. Prioritising wind and solar power has led to a growth of transmission lines with the effect that the numbers of birds could have dropped to 150.
This is just the latest evidence that industrialising large areas of wildlife habitat is causing worrying losses to the population of large raptors and birds, bats and whales. Last October, the Daily Scepticreported that wind farms in Tasmania have reduced the population of the endangered local wedge-tailed eagle to around 1,000 individuals. Large numbers of whales have beached along the U.S. east coast in recent years as offshore wind farm industrialisation has disrupted the migration, mating and feeding habits of some of the most endangered whale species in the world.
In 2021, a paper produced by the Wildlife Institute of India warned that the great Indian bustard was at “imminent risk of extinction due to power line mortality”. Mortality was said to be “positively related” to the number of wires. Many other large birds were said to be at risk, and the researchers found that around 50 birds die annually per kilometre of power lines in the Thar desert due to collision and electrocution.
According to the Wildlife Institute of India, over 100,000 birds of diverse species are killed each year as a result of electrocution from transmission lines connecting wind and solar to the grid. In 2022, two Spanish ecologists confirmed that electrocution on power pylons was a major cause of bird mortality worldwide, including for some severely endangered species. They noted that power lines were “not bio-diversity-friendly”. Prerna Singh Bindra, a wildlife conservationist and former member of the National Board for Wildlife, comments:
In recent years, the death blow to the great Indian bustard has come from unexpected quarters – the expanse of wind farms and power transmission lines that criss-cross its last remaining habitats… The question that needs to be asked is, how green is renewable energy when it leads to the extinction of a critically endangered species?
Of course that last question is the one question that will not be asked. Indeed on past evidence it will be studiously avoided and helpful messengers in the mainstream media will be easily persuaded that deaths are due to other factors such as ‘climate change’.
Bird and bat protection societies around the world are invariably in favour of green ‘sustainable’ wind and solar power, and they turn an almost blind eye to the mass slaughter by making mealy-mouthed safety suggestions. But of course the fact is that large raptors such as eagles and bustards rely on wind currents, as do gigantic wind turbines, and the two meet far too often. Worldwide, bustards are at particular risk from power cables due to the birds’ heavy weight, large wing span and limited manoeuvring ability.
The New York Timesrecently reported that electrocution isn’t the main thing killing birds along power lines. It was relaying the findings of a paper that said bullet fragments had been found in a number of dead birds lying under lines in four western states. Four hundred whales have been washed up on the eastern U.S. coastline since 2016, including nearly two dozen in the three months to February 2023.There is “no evidence” to support claims that industrial noise has impeded the whales ability to navigate and communicate, notes the New Scientist. The bulk of the strandings may have been caused by “changing ocean currents related to climate change”. Deafening rock-concert-grade sonar noise bouncing around hundreds of miles of ocean, constant pile-driving, massive ocean building works and heavy shipping movements have, of course, nothing to do with it – move along please, nothing to see here.
Nothing it seems must get in the way of the green industrial revolution. In California, the Democrat state Government recently relaxed controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable energy and infrastructure projects.
Nothing is sacred and protected from the slaughter – even America’s national bird, the bald eagle. A typical green reaction came from the Audubon California Policy Director Mark Lynas who said we need renewable energy resources, and he did not want to see the eagle deaths “being used to push against clean energy”.
In addition to the large bird kill, wind turbines are estimated to chomp millions of bats around the world every year. Any concern for the depredation of wildlife, whether on or offshore has tended to focus on these huge blots on the land- and seascapes. But according to the International Energy Authority, achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity.
All these high voltage cables will be needed to benefit from the intermittent power produced by vast numbers of new wind turbines. To achieve Net Zero, the countryside will need to be blanketed with turbines and ubiquitous cables strung to bring the power to distant urban areas. Of course, as it becomes clearer by the day, Net Zero will not be achieved since the breezes and sunbeams are unreliable, so full stand-by gas turbines will have to be maintained.
It is possible that some other cheap and reliable back-up fuel will be discovered or invented in the next few years – and pigs might fly, although that would not be advisable across much of the future countryside.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Carl Zimmer over at the New York Times penned a misleading story of speciation, using the polar bear as an example. It explains polar bear evolution based on a genetic interpretation that ignores the fossil record, bear behaviour, and geological history.
Carl Zimmer over at the New York Times penned a misleading story of speciation, using the polar bear as an example. It explains polar bear evolution based on a genetic interpretation that ignores the fossil record, bear behaviour, and geological history. [h/t Kip Hanson].
In my opinion, this kind of ‘science communication’ is more misleading than enlightening because it fails to alert readers to the fact that the topic is actually more complicated and gives the impression that the author considers readers too stupid to understand a more accurate explanation.
Polar Bear Evolution does a better job for those who are really interested in the process: it doesn’t hide the complicated nature of speciation or polar bear evolution. It doesn’t pretend to present “the truth” but explains how a good scientist gets to a plausible explanation that best fits the evidence.
In the 1940s, Ernst Mayr, a German ornithologist, tried solving this problem with a new definition of species based on how animals breed.If two animals couldn’t breed with each other, Mayr argued, then they were separate species.
By “breed with each other,” he meant hybridize. But Mayr also acknowledged that occasional hybridization between species does not negate his concept that good species generally don’t interbreed, which Zimmer doesn’t bother to say or doesn’t know. The issue for polar bears and brown bears (as for many other good species pairs), is how often hybridization actually happens.
What we know through observation and genetic analysis is that hybridization between polar bears and brown bears is not only very rare but it only goes one way. In the wild, hybridization always involves a male brown bear (aka grizzly) and a female polar bear, even in second-generation hybrids (see image below) and this photo essay. In Polar Bear Evolution, I explain this in detail, which comes down to differenced in dominance behaviour between the two closely-related species. Similar “one-way” hybridization is common in many species pairs for the same reason: the less dominant species is virtually always the female partner when two otherwise good species come together at mating time.
Shared genes don’t always mean hybridization
The next part of Zimmer’s article gets into the genetic basis of speciation, which has been recently confounded by claims of widespread hybridization, which he begins with an example from polar bear evolution (my bold):
You don’t have to be a mammalogist to understand that polar bears and brown bears are different. Just one look at their white and brown coats will do.
The difference in their colors is the result of their ecological adaptations. White polar bears blend into their Arctic habitats, where they hunt for seals and other prey. Brown bears adapted for life on land further south. The differences are so distinct that paleontologists can distinguish fossils of the two species going back hundreds of thousands of years.
And yet the DNA inside those ancient bones is revealing an astonishing history of interbreeding between polar bears and brown bears. After the two lineages split about half a million years ago, they exchanged DNA for thousands of years. They then became more distinct, but about 120,000 years ago they underwent another extraordinary exchange of genes.
Between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago, the bears interbred in several parts of their range. The exchanges have left a significant imprint on bears today: About 10 percent of the DNA in brown bears comes from polar bears.”
Zimmer is citing the work of Ming-Shan Wang and colleagues (2022) as his sole reference to explaining polar bear evolution. As I explain in my book, Wang and colleagues should have admitted that the evidence of shared genes they found in polar bears and brown bears could mean that ancient hybridization events took place OR that both species retained some genes from a recent ancestor they both have in common (e.g. Cronin et al. 1991, 2014; Kutchera 2014; Kumar 2017). They preferred the hybridization interpretation because it makes a more interesting and dramatic story but that doesn’t make it true.
And as Zimmer’s additional examples show, this “hybridization” story is becoming the preferred explanation much more often, including for some groups of birds, which is creating a confusing situation. It appears more and more geneticists are conveniently forgetting or ignoring the fact that shared genes do not necessarily mean ancient hybridization.
When shared genes crop up, you need to look at more evidence to get the bigger picture, as I’ve done in for polar bears my book, summarized in this blog post. You need to look at dominance behaviour, as explained above, as well as the fossil record and geological history.
I show that polar bears could not have evolved 500 thousand years ago (kya) because at that time brown bears did not exist in most areas of Eurasia and it was also an interglacial period, so there were no continental ice sheets to push brown bears offshore onto sea ice. The fossil evidence of brown bears is excellent and we know it was not until about 200kya, after a long warm interglacial period, that brown bears were living across Eurasia from Britain to Kamchatka, which set up conditions during the next severe Ice Age for polar bears to split off as a new species when continental ice sheets moved down from the Arctic.
The evidence suggests the most plausible time for the rise of the polar bear as a new species was about 140kya at the height of the severe MIS 6 glacial period (see below, from Crockford 2023a).
The genetic evidence for timing precisely when polar bears arose varies greatly among more than a dozen distinct studies, and Zimmer cites only the most recent one (Wang et al. 2022) as if it must necessarily be the most accurate. He could at least have acknowledged that different studies existed. The chart below, from my book, summarizes the suggested timing of polar bear speciation from these studies (“T & S” is Talbot and Shields 1996):
Geneticists have recently made some very bold statements about polar bear evolution, see here and here, often to support an interpretation that implicates future predictions of catastrophic global warming. My research over more than 20 years shows that while genetics has been able to give us some critical insights into evolution, it still cannot provide any kind of plausible explanation for exactly how or why speciation actually happens (Crockford 2023b).
Distinguishing species from subspecies, as Zimmer explains, is a contentious issue but it isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
References
Bidon T., Janke, A., Fain, S. et al. 2014. Brown and polar bear Y chromosomes reveal extensive male-biased gene flow within brother lineages. Molecular Biology and Evolution 31(6):1353–1363.
Bidon, T., Schreck, N., Hailer, F., et al. 2015. Genome-wide search identifies 1.9MB from the polar bear Y chromosome for evolutionary analysis. Genome Biology and Evolution 7(7):2010-2011.
Cahill, J.A., Green, R.E., Fulton, T.L., et al. 2013. Genomic evidence for island population conversion resolves conflicting theories of polar bear evolution. PLoS Genetics 9(3): e1003345.
Crockford, S.J. 2023a. Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778038328
Cronin, M.A., Amstrup, S.C. and Garner, G.W. 1991. Interspecific and intraspecific mitochondrial DNA variation in North American bears (Ursus). Canadian Journal of Zoology69:2985-2992.
Cronin, M.A., Rincon, G., Meredith, R.W., et al. 2014. Molecular phylogeny and SNP variation of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), brown bears (U. arctos), and black bears (U. americanus) derived from genome sequences. Journal of Heredity 105(3):312–323.
Davison, J., Ho, S.Y.W., Brayk, S.C., et al. 2011. Late-Quaternary biogeographic scenarios for the brown bear (Ursus arctos), a wild mammal model species. Quaternary Science Review 30:418–430.
Edwards, C.J., Suchard, M.A., Lemey, P., et al. 2011. Ancient hybridization and an Irish origin for the modern polar bear matriline. Current Biology21:1251–1258.
Hailer, F. 2015. Introgressive hybridization: Brown bears as vectors for polar bear alleles. Molecular Ecology 24(6):1161–1163.
Hassanin, A. 2015. The role of Pleistocene glaciations in shaping the evolution of polar and brown bears. Evidence from a critical review of mitochondrial and nuclear genome analyses. Comptes Rendus Biologies 338:494-501.
Kumar, V., Lammers, F., Bidon, T., et al. 2017. The evolutionary history of bears is characterized by gene flow across species. Scientific Reports 7:46487
Kutschera, V.E., T. Bidon, F. Hailer, J.L. et al. 2014. Bears in a forest of gene trees: Phylogenetic inference is complicated by incomplete lineage sorting and gene flow. Molecular Biology and Evolution 31:2004–2017.
Kurtén, B. 1968.Pleistocene Mammals of Europe. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
Lan, T., Leppälä, K., Tomlin, C., et al., including Lindqvist, C. 2022. Insights into bear evolution from a Pleistocene polar bear genome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 119(24):e2200016119.
Lindqvist, C., Schuster, S.C., Sun, Y., et al. 2010. Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA107:5053-5057.
Liu, S., Lorenzen, E.D., and Fumagalli, M. 2014. Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears. Cell157:785-794.
Miller, W., Schuster, S.C., Welch, A.J., et al. 2012. Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(36):E2382–E2390.
Talbot, S.L. and Shields, G.F. 1996. Phylogeography of brown bears (Ursus arctos) of Alaska and paraphyly within the Ursidae. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 5:477–494.
Wang, M.-S., Murray, G.G.R., Mann, D., et al. 2022. A polar bear paleogenome reveals extensive ancient gene flow from polar bears into brown bears. Nature Ecology and Evolution 6:936–944.
Yu L., Li Y.-W., Ryder O.A. and Zhang Y. 2007. Analysis of complete mitochondrial genome sequences increases phylogenetic resolution of bears (Ursidae), a mammalian family that experienced rapid speciation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 7:198–209.
Some of these warnings have come from people who actually oversee the grid, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and various Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs). My fellow skeptics have also been vocal on this growing threat of disaster.
We are awash in urgent warnings that the electric power grid is increasingly prone to failure.
Some of these warnings have come from people who actually oversee the grid, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and various Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs). My fellow skeptics have also been vocal on this growing threat of disaster.
The reason is painfully clear. States and utilities are recklessly shutting down their reliable power plants, especially coal-fired and nuclear. They claim to be replacing these with wind and solar generators, but they only work intermittently, so they are completely unreliable.
Rather than complaining about this madness, or in addition to that, it is time to prepare for the inevitable result. We must plan for blackouts.
Everyone talks about blackouts, but I have not seen a detailed analysis of the various ways these might occur in any given region. I suspect there are several different basic ways, each calling for a different planning approach. So here are some starter thoughts.
First of all, there are deliberate rolling blackouts versus uncontrolled blackouts. RTOs and utilities may well have internal plans, or perhaps rules, for running rolling blackouts.
If so, it would be very helpful to know what these are. For example, emergency service groups at all levels of government could have rolling blackout warning systems and response plans.
Uncontrolled blackouts may be unpredictable, but they can still be planned for to some degree. I live way out in the country, and we get blackouts several times a year, so we have a well-prepared routine for dealing with them if they do not last too long. Towns, cities, and counties should do likewise.
Of special importance are the size and duration of blackouts, as both features deeply affect planning. Should we expect a lot more small blackouts or just a few more big ones? How about really big ones, a few of which have occurred in the past?
It also matters how hot or cold it is, especially for large, long-lived blackouts. Severe cold is really dangerous.
The 2021 Texas blackout disaster killed hundreds of people, and the East Coast almost went that way around Christmas 2022. It turns out extreme cold can mess up the natural gas supply system for gas-fired power plants, so this, too, needs to be planned for.
The first question is how much failure analysis can already be done using existing computer models. The RTOs and utilities do a lot of modeling. For example, they already can determine what system upgrades will be needed before a new large generating facility can be connected to the grid. The wind and solar people complain about this because it sometimes makes their remote projects very expensive.
If the utilities can do that kind of detailed analysis, they ought to be able to see where things are likely to break and what that might do to the system. I am reminded of The Wichita Lineman song line saying: “If it snows that stretch down south will never stand the strain”.
It may be that they are already doing this sort of failure analysis; they just don’t want to tell us about it, lest it worry us. But given all the warnings, we clearly need to worry and take steps to address that worry.
It also may be true that they cannot do the kinds of failure analysis I am describing. The growing threat is new, after all, so the software simply may not exist. If this is true, then given the huge amounts of potential damage, including deaths, we should be developing that software as fast as possible.
Not knowing the near-term impact of the so-called “energy transition” on reliability is a true public health emergency. We may be flying blind into the wall of impossibility.
Vague warnings are not good enough. It is time for all levels of Government to plan for blackouts.
Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the spring edition of Range Magazine.
The rule change stems from a 2022 request from the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin to allow the sale of gasoline with 15% ethanol year-round, known as E15 gasoline, lifting current seasonal restrictions that aim to reduce smog in the summer months, according to Reuters.
The Biden administration is expected to ease seasonal restrictions on ethanol-gasoline blends but has delayed the change until after the 2024 election to avoid a price spike, according to Reuters.
The rule change stems from a 2022 request from the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin to allow the sale of gasoline with 15% ethanol year-round, known as E15 gasoline, lifting current seasonal restrictions that aim to reduce smog in the summer months, according to Reuters. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had originally set an effective date of April 28, 2024, for the changes when the agency sent the proposal to the White House in December, but that is now expected to be pushed back to 2025. (RELATED: Biden Admin To Ease Electric Vehicle Goals In Bid For Union Support: REPORT)
Top oil refiners, including HF Sinclair Corp. and Philips 66, have warned against the change, saying that it would complicate fuel supply logistics and increase the risk of area shortages, possibly raising prices, according to Reuters. The ethanol industry has lobbied for the changes, saying that the environmental concerns are exaggerated.
Gas prices spiked nationally to an average of over $5 per gallon in June 2022 amid supply constraints from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Prices receded to nearly $3.10 per gallon in December 2022 before climbing up to just under $3.90 per gallon in August 2023.
The national average for a gallon of gas was $3.276 as of February 20, according to the AAA.
The new rule change would only affect midwestern states, with the ethanol industry calling for a country-wide expansion in addition to the regional change, according to Reuters. A country-wide fix would ease the risks of area shortages that refiners are concerned about.
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Former President Donald Trump flipped typical midwestern blue states Michigan and Wisconsin in the 2016 election and came very close to winning Minnesota. The new rule change could raise gas prices in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Minnesota due to their large corn industries, putting the president’s reelection bid at risk, according to Reuters.
The EPA granted an emergency waiver in April 2023 and in 2024 permitting E15 gasoline to be sold during the summer in an effort to keep gas prices down amid oil supply volatility from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The move was praised by the midwestern corn industry, which provides the products to produce the ethanol used in E15 gasoline.
The White House and the EPA did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Occasionally I listen to the consumer affairs programme, “You and Yours”, on BBC Radio 4. As well as the usual guff about clothes shopping, gambling and sundry other stuff that doesn’t interest me, there are some articles of general interest, such as various frauds to take note of and avoid. And then there’s the regular pushing of net zero and associated topics.
Occasionally I listen to the consumer affairs programme, “You and Yours”, on BBC Radio 4. As well as the usual guff about clothes shopping, gambling and sundry other stuff that doesn’t interest me, there are some articles of general interest, such as various frauds to take note of and avoid. And then there’s the regular pushing of net zero and associated topics. So it came as a surprise when the subject of heat pumps was discussed today in less than glowing terms, especially as I have listened to them being pushed enthusiastically on the same programme in the past. Perhaps the worm is turning here too.
About half-way through the programme, the host, Winifred Robinson, introduced the subject thus (with the rest also being transcribed by me below):
WR: If you’re coming through this winter knowing that your gas boiler will need replacing soon, then what should you do? There are Government grants on offer of up to £7,500 if you want to put a heat pump in. More than 30,000 people have applied for those grants so far, but that’s not anything like what the Government had hoped would apply. But even with these grants the heat pumps can be expensive, and they’re not suitable for every home. And it may be that the price of a gas boiler is about to cone down a little. I’ve been speaking to a couple of people who can give us the benefit of their experience. Mike Foster speaks for the big boiler manufacturers – he’s from their trade group, the Energy & Utilities Alliance. And Mark Jones has been working out what to do about a new boiler. Mark Jones told me about his home.
MJ: It’s a detached house in Bournemouth. It’s got five bedrooms, a fairly large detached house. I currently have a 30Kw boiler installed, so we’d probably need a couple of the largest heat pumps that are available for domestic properties to be able to do the job, and that’s what I’ve been quoted for.
WR: So you looked at putting in two heat pumps?
MJ: Well that’s what I was told I would need by a plumber that came to do the quotation. He said it would be two standard heat pump systems that would work together to generate enough heat to heat the house.
WR: And what did you decide to do?
MJ: Well, I er, the price for that work was about £20,000, so then I was told that because I have an electric car I would also need to upgrade the power supply to the house, and I subsequently found that that was going to cost another £5,500, so we’re looking almost £26,000 to replace my gas boiler with a heat pump system.
WR: So even if you knock off the £7,500, it’s still a lot more expensive than a gas boiler.
MJ: Yeah, it’s substantially more expensive than a gas boiler, and not only that, the actual running costs of the system still would be a bit more – not much more – but I’m led to believe it would be a bit more than running the existing gas boiler. So, as it stands, there’s no incentive at all to spend all that money.
WR: I’m guessing that you’re worried about the environment, or you wouldn’t even have bothered investigating this, would you? You won’t like the idea of just putting in another gas boiler?
MJ: Well, I’d prefer not to, no, I try to be conscious of my carbon footprint, and I have an electric car which I really enjoy, and you know, I’d like to move with the times and try to be a bit ahead of the curve in terms of selling the house on in the future. I’d like to be adequately prepared and, you know, try to do my bit for the environment.
WR: But you’re gonna get a gas boiler?
MJ: [Laughs]. Well, I’d prefer not to. I’m kind of, I feel, I’m probably going to bide my time.
WR: Mike Foster. The manufacturers were given targets, weren’t they, for heat pump installation, and told that they would be fined if those targets were not met. And it’s been reported that the Government has changed its mind about that. Does it mean that the price of a new gas boiler will come down a bit, and explain why it would.
MF: The scheme that you refer to was called the Clean Heat Market Mechanism, and it was designed to incentivise boiler manufacturers to install heat pumps into people’s properties. The problem with the scheme itself is that it really is about consumer demand. That’s what drives the number of heat pump sales in the UK. It’s not about whether a manufacturer can make a heat pump or not, it’s, you know, do people want to put them into their homes? And the experience that Mark has just described is fairly typical of what we’re finding out and about in the country. So that scheme is aimed at the wrong target. And what it does mean is that the boiler manufacturers have looked at their target sales of heat pumps, looked at their target sales of boilers, and concluded that they’re gonna end up paying a fine. And for every heat pump that they fail to sell, they get a fine of £3,000. So cumulatively, added up across the target that they’ve been set, and the boiler manufacturers’ only recourse to protect their own financial position and that of their workforce and the jobs in the local communities, is to put the price of boilers up. And they did that from the first of January. Now, if this speculation proves to be true, and the Government agree [sic] to scrap the fines associated with the scheme, firstly that will be great news for the boiler manufacturers, yes, but it will be super news too for the consumer, because they would see a boiler price fall by about £120.
WR: That’s not very much, is it, I mean it’s not that super news, is it? I don’t know, is that decisive, if you’re putting in a new boiler, £120, that wouldn’t be decisive would it, I mean a boiler lasts for years and years.
MF: And they absolutely last for years and years, and in terms of, you know, the price of a boiler, £120 on something like a £2,500 install might not be a lot of money to some people, but why should people who have a gas boiler, who perhaps can’t afford to make the switch to a heat pump, why should they be penalised because other consumers aren’t picking up the volume of the heat pumps that the Government target suggests? It just seems the wrong group of people to end up targetting with this so-called boiler tax.
WR: So people listening who know their gas boiler will need replacing soon – in your opinion, who should look at the possibility of having a heat pump?
MF: The first thing you would have to reflect on is that the average cost of a heat pump is considerably more than replacing your gas boiler. So the average home typically is about £13,400 to replace your gas boiler with a heat pump. And your running costs are likely to go up by about £120 a year, having a heat pump compared to a gas boiler. But you do save carbon…
WR: They cost more to run? They’ll cost more to run?
MF: Absolutely, on an average efficiency on a, so the Government-acknowledged minimum level of efficiency for a heat pump then, then, yes, they’ll cost about £120 a year more to run. And that doesn’t make it a great marketing offer. But you do save carbon. And in the right home, they might be suitable, so Winifred, you would look at say new-build homes would be the most obvious place for heat pumps to be rolled out in large numbers…
WR: But the Government’s going to make them do that, aren’t they? They’ve had a really early deadline, haven’t they, the house-builders, isn’t that 2028?
MF: Exactly, they’re gonna have to do it by regulation. And then, if you were doing a self-build, that might also be another appropriate time to make the switch to a low temperature heating system typical with a heat pump…
WR: What about a big renovation, then, if you’ve bought a property needs a big renovation, that’s got no heating system, would you go for a heat pump then?
MF: It depends on the type of house that you have, Winifred, and how much your renovation is going to be. If it’s a solid-wall construction home then immediately, you know, I would question whether a heat pump would be the right product for you. But if you’re going to spend money on external wall insulation, you might have under-floor heating put in, then maybe your property becomes suitable for a low temperature system. But you need to have the space, and obviously and importantly you need to have the finance to be able to afford to make the home suitable to run a heat pump.
WR: Mike, there are lots of companies, aren’t there at the moment, advertising electric boilers as replacements for gas boilers. But they’ll cost loads more to run, won’t they? There’ll be no harmful emissions from them, but they’ll cost a lot more to run.
MF: An electric boiler uses electricity from the Grid, and the Grid, you know, it’s not zero carbon yet. You have carbon emissions as the result of running anything that is electrical in your home, and an electric boiler would be no different. The problem with an electric boiler compared to a gas boiler is the running cost. An electric boiler is a ittle bit more efficient but it#s four times more expensive per Kilowatt hour to run.
WR: So what needs to happen? Because if you talk about changing the pricing for electricity as opposed to gas, then the people who are generating the green electricity from windmills and so on, they say that electricity needs to cost even more.
MF: This is what makes this whole debate round heating homes and decarbonisation an incredibly difficult topic. For the UK, with 85% of homes currently on the gas grid, converting the gas to a low-carbon or zero carbon gas might well be the least disruptive, least costly way to go forward, because you can still use a boiler, you can still use your existing radiators, and Winifred one of the things that most people don’t appreciate it is that the majority of homes in this country now have a combi boiler. They have got rid of their hot water tank. You can’t have a heat pump without having a hot water tank. So that adds to the cost and the disruption, and also to some extent, the behavioural change that, you know, individual consumers will have to live with the way in which perhaps you used to do in the old days with an immersion heater and filling up the tank, then waiting for it, you know, somebody to use all the hot water in their bath or their shower. Those are all problems associated with decarbonisation of heat, and there’s no easy answer, I’m afraid.
WR: That was Mike Foster from the Energy & Utilities Alliance and Mark Jones speaking to me a bit earlier.
Unfortunately, this Supreme Court decision denied scrutiny to the one regulation in the U.S. that is not only the single most economically significant, but also the single most scientifically flawed, of all of the regulations on the Federal books.
On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court refused to examine the numerous science-based arguments contained in a Petition for Reconsideration of EPA’s 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding. (See) This court ignored the eight quite specific, but easy to understand scientific arguments contained in the Petition and simply denied the Petition claiming the petitioners did not have Standing – a well-known tactic to avoid decisions in a highly politically-charged situation.
Unfortunately, this Supreme Court decision denied scrutiny to the one regulation in the U.S. that is not only the single most economically significant, but also the single most scientifically flawed, of all of the regulations on the Federal books.The ramifications of this Supreme Court Denial will be enormous if an EPA GHG Endangerment Finding Reconsideration is not initiated very quickly. This fact should have been clear to the Court by the arguments quoted verbatim below:
“In short, based on the sum total of the eight validated arguments {contained in the Petition}, the currently contemplated Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimates are not only worthless; they are extremely dangerous to put forward to current U.S. energy, economic and national security-related policymakers as credible input to their analyses.
As clearly demonstrated by this body of research findings, climate alarmism has no basis in science. This alarmism is all driven and supported by fabricated temperature data as well as mathematical climate modeling and analytical incompetence. Motives of key scientists and other key players will be left to others to sort out. Based on the easily reproducible, peer-reviewed and published research cited herein, climate science now finds that there is no mathematically valid proof that past increases in atmospheric GHG concentrations have caused the officially reported global warming over the last 50 years or so. Therefore, there is no proof of any social costs related to such GHG emissions. In fact, these GHG emissions are beneficial to society no matter what processes by which they might occur. Typically, if the efficiency of the particular process involved can be improved, such GHG emissions will automatically be reduced through action by a competitive marketplace. If not, there is no cost to society in any case.
Finally, on-going fact checks of the 13 most common climate alarmist claims have consistently validated that absolutely nothing unusual is going on with the Earth’s climate system. Moreover, in the considerable research cited, changes in the Earth’s temperature have been shown to be readily explained by natural factors involving changes in solar, volcanic and oceanic/atmospheric activity.
These findings strongly suggest that America and its allies have already made extremely severe climate policy errors, the negative impacts of which will only grow exponentially. By taking these erroneous climate and energy policy actions, America is rapidly destroying its energy security to the detriment of its economic and national security but to the great benefit of all three of its major enemies: China, Russia and Iran.
This must stop immediately and America must now reverse course quickly – taking the following actions:
* All efforts by state and federal governments to subsidize in any way the use of any renewable energy sources must be immediately terminated.
* All current state and federal as well as private (e.g., financial) sector efforts to inhibit the finding, production and use of all fossil fuels must be immediately terminated.
* All U.S. government action and funding at all levels to take steps to regulate the emissions of all GHGs must be immediately terminated – since they are all beneficial gases. Regulation of Criteria Pollutants under the CAA has been very successful and must be continued.
* America must stay out of the Paris Agreement and encourage its key allies to get out if they are in it.
* This new information on climate science must be widely publicized via every possible credible channel targeting today’s relevant audiences, including: key federal and state leadership, financial, fossil fuel and auto sector leadership as well as key media outlets.
The utter lunacy of America’s Federal Government leadership continuing to take the unsuspecting American people on this ride over a cliff would certainly seem to be outrageous behavior on the part of those who know, or should know, the facts. Many of these key facts, e.g., the Global Average Surface Temperature data fabrication, have been provided to high level officials years ago without result. For the sake of all Americans, we pray that recipients of this transmission will behave differently.”
AUTHOR COMMENTS
All research by the authors of this document cited herein was peer-reviewed, published and purposely set up so as to be easily reproducible. No rebuttals have been received by the lead author from any person or entity. The research effort, that began in 2009, is all still being carried out on a pro bono basis. PART II provides an easy to understand, corroborated proof that EPA’s 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding is fatally flawed. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court saw fit to Totally Ignore the Science Team’s arguments provided verbatim in Appendix II denying consideration thereof based on “standing issues”.
See the full document here with the 8 validated arguments in the petition and the 13 most common climate alarmist claim fact checks as well as the list of authors and reviewers.
Wales has some of the most expensive electricity in Britain, but the financial geniuses who run Wales have a plan which will push energy prices up even higher.
Climate change: Plan to capture, ship and bury power station’s CO2
By Steffan Messenger
BBC Wales environment correspondent
Plans have been proposed to lay new undersea pipes to carry carbon emissions from one of Europe’s largest gas power stations.
…
But it involves major building work across a protected marine habitat.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth called for the money to be spent on renewable energy rather than keeping a gas plant going.
…
Despite being one of Wales’ biggest emitters of CO2 it has an “essential role” in the country’s transition to a greener future, according to its operator RWE.
“This power station currently runs 80% of the time, in and around when there’s insufficient renewable power [such as wind or solar],” said Richard Little, who is leading the site’s transformation as director of the Pembroke Net Zero Centre.
“We need to build something that allows it to still operate at times when it’s needed without impacting the climate,” he said.
Even Friends of the Earth thinks this idea is dumb.
How could building CO2 storage facilities, building an undersea pipeline, and chartering ships to be on standby for when CO2 needs to be buried in the North Sea have anything other than a devastating impact on already sky high energy prices? And of course, let’s not forget the energy lost compressing the CO2 to the point it worth transporting, all of which will have to be paid for somehow.
I lived in Wales for a while. I met a lot of intelligent and talented people in Cardiff, people who run small businesses, who given a chance would transform Wales into an economic powerhouse. But the Welsh people keep electing politicians whose radical left economic incompetence sabotages the entrepreneurial efforts of Wales’ best and brightest.
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