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.
Doomsayers warn that Britain is returning to the bad old days of the 1970s – yet by one measure, we are already there.
Dwindling domestic consumption plunges the UK back into the dark years of the 1970s.
Doomsayers warn that Britain is returning to the bad old days of the 1970s – yet by one measure, we are already there.
The country’s energy usage has tumbled to its lowest level since the era of Edward Heath’s three day week, official figures show.
In 2022, excluding the 2020 Covid lockdown, the country used less energy than in any year since at least 1970. This figure includes energy generated from all sources including coal, gas and renewables.
The Government puts the decline down to “a variety of reasons, including unseasonably warm weather and continued improvements in energy efficiency”.
Officials add that energy usage is expected to decline because of net zero “as we transition to a more efficient use of energy through electrification”. The Telegraph has the story.
Yet experts argue the numbers tell a story of economic decline rather than energy efficiency improvements.
“Electricity consumption isn’t an independent variable. It is linked to the fact that we’re not equipping ourselves to maintain our living standards,” says Gordon Hughes, a former senior adviser to the World Bank.
Hughes, who is also a former professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, believes Britain’s economy is in a similar state to the dark years of the 1970s when dysfunction forced the country into an IMF bailout.
Domestic capacity is winnowing away and the country is increasingly reliant on infusions of foreign cash. Energy use is falling as factories and businesses close and as families become poorer, not because of efficiency benefits.
Britain used enough energy to power 155 million homes for a year in 2005. By 2022, the equivalent figure had fallen to 128 million – a slump of 17pc in less than 20 years.
Historically, there has been a strong correlation between higher energy consumption and faster economic growth, says Ben McWilliams, an affiliate fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank.
“That goes back to the industrial revolution,” says McWilliams. “Ever since then, you typically see there’s an association between high energy consumption and higher GDP.”
The link will eventually break as energy efficiency improves. But this is not what is happening now, he says.
There were some exceptional circumstances in 2022 that should be taken into account. Massive jumps in energy prices following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine reduced usage as people and businesses could simply not afford as much.
Warm weather also meant there was less demand for heating or electricity-sapping indoor entertainment activities such as watching TV.
However, the record forms part of a longer-term trend. Energy use peaked in the UK just before the financial crisis and has been in decline ever since.
Since then, falling energy consumption has mirrored snail-like productivity growth and economic growth. The UK’s GDP per capita has never recovered and is still 8pc below where it was in 2007, according to the World Bank.
“Declining energy consumption is definitely not on the back of efficiency,” says Jorge León, who leads oil market research at Rystad Energy. “Definitely not.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James today filed a lawsuit against JBS USA Food Company and JBS USA Food Company Holdings (JBS USA), the American subsidiary of the world’s largest producer of beef products, for misleading the public about its environmental impact.
NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today filed a lawsuit against JBS USA Food Company and JBS USA Food Company Holdings (JBS USA), the American subsidiary of the world’s largest producer of beef products, for misleading the public about its environmental impact. JBS USA has claimed that it will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, despite documented plans to increase production, and therefore increase its carbon footprint.
Beef production emits the most greenhouse gasses of any major food commodity, and animal agriculture accounts for 14.5 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, the JBS Group, JBS USA’s global parent company, reported total global greenhouse gas emissions of over 71 million tons, more than the total emissions of some countries. Attorney General James seeks to stop JBS USA from continuing these false and misleading marketing practices, pay disgorgement of all ill-gotten profits, and penalties.
This is the latest in an increasing series of Greenwashing suits around the world. Some notable examples.
Greenwashing in finance: Deutsche Bank
In 2022, Deutsche Bank came under investigation for investment fraud within DWS, which manages about €928 billion ($994 billion) in assets1. Allegations that investors were misled about its “green” investments led to police raids, where evidence was collected that ESG factors had not been taken into account at all in many of the investments.
Greenwashing in automotive: Volkswagen AG Clean Diesel
Automaker Volkswagen pleaded guilty to installing software designed with the intention to mislead regulators and consumers about their diesel vehicle emissions. Multiple class action suits were also filed against them for false advertising in their “Clean Diesel” advertising campaign, in which they claimed that these vehicles were “low-emission,” “environmentally friendly,” “met emissions standards,” and “would maintain a high resale value.”
Greenwashing in bioplastics: Danimer Scientific, Inc
Shareholders have filed a class action suit against biopolymer plastics manufacturer Danimer. The company claims its proprietary plastic substitute, Nodax, is 100% biodegradable, renewable and sustainable. However, an investigative article published in The Wall Street Journal and subsequent reports alleged that Danimer’s products were not able to completely biodegrade in oceans and landfills as claimed. This caused Danimer’s stock price to plummet, and their investors to incur serious losses.
There is not a cat in hell’s chance that Drax’s subsidy won’t be extended. The government has painted itself into a corner, and simply cannot do without the dispatchable power Drax brings.
A power company that has received £6bn in UK green subsidies has kept burning wood from some of the world’s most precious forests, the BBC has found.
Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were “no go areas”.
It comes as the government decides whether to give the firm’s Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers.
Drax says its wood pellets are “sustainable and legally harvested”.
The Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, is a converted coal plant which burns wood pellets. In 2023, it produced about 5% of the UK’s electricity. The site has become a key part of the government’s drive to meet its climate targets.
Its owner, Drax, receives money from energy bill payers because the electricity produced from burning pellets is classified as renewable and treated as emission-free.
In fact, the power station emits about 12 million tonnes of carbon a year, but under international rules the UK doesn’t have to count these emissions.
All of the 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets burned by Drax each year are produced overseas. Many come from Drax’s 17 pellet plants in the US and Canada.
In 2022, Panorama revealed the company had obtained logging licences in the Canadian province of British Columbia and filmed logs being taken from what the programme said was primary forest to a pellet plant owned by Drax.
Primary forests are natural forests that have not been significantly disturbed by human activity.
Panorama has found that Drax has taken whole logs from rare, “old-growth” forests that have been cut down by timber companies
Following the BBC investigation, Drax denied taking wood from primary forests but said it would not apply for further logging licences in the province.
However, the company still takes whole logs from forests that have been cut down by timber companies.
Panorama has obtained documents from British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests that show the company took more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from so-called “old-growth” forests in 2023.
Old-growth is some of the oldest forest which the provincial government says provides “unique habitats, structures and ecological functions”.
Satellite image showing an area of old-growth forest cut down in British Columbia
One example is an 87-hectare “cut block” called EM807M – located 180 miles west of the logging city of Prince George – which was all classified as old growth. Although a timber company held the licence to cut down the site, logging records show that Drax took 26% of all the harvested wood.
In total, Drax received 130 lorry-loads of whole logs from the site last winter. The wood was turned into pellets and some were burned at its Yorkshire power plant.
Ninety per cent of the cut block had the even higher classification of “priority deferral area”. This category is for old-growth forests that are “rare, at risk and irreplaceable”, according to an independent panel of experts in British Columbia.
The experts recommended that logging should be paused in priority deferral areas, but it’s still legal to cut them down. British Columbia’s provincial government says it is working to ensure more old growth is deferred and protected.
Forests ‘almost gone’
Drax’s use of timber from this “irreplaceable” forest was far from a one-off.
Forestry documents show that in the first nine months of last year the company took wood from 30 different timber marks in British Columbia where more than 25% of the forest had been designated as old growth. Twenty-six of those timber marks included the even rarer priority deferral areas.
Timber marks – codes beaten on to wood by specially made hammers – identify all of the wood cut under individual logging licences on one or more parcels of land. The timber mark paper trail meant Panorama could track logs to Drax’s pellet mills.
In total, Drax sourced about 55,000 cubic metres of whole logs – that’s more than 1,100 large truck loads – from timber marks containing old-growth forest.
Ecologist Michelle Connolly, from the British Columbia campaign group Conservation North, says making pellets from old forests can never be sustainable.
“Old-growth forests in British Columbia are almost gone because of 70 years of logging to feed sawmills and pulp mills, and Drax is helping push our remaining ones off the cliff, along with our native biodiversity,” she says.
In response to the latest findings by the BBC, Drax admitted it has taken wood from old-growth forests. But it told Panorama that 77% of the material for its Canadian wood pellets came from sawdust and sawmill residues, with the rest coming from forestry residues and low-grade logs.
A spokesman for the company says that it keeps its sourcing policy and practices under regular review so that they “take account of evolving forest dynamics, legislation, policy, and science”.
Drax says that it decided in October 2023 to stop sourcing wood from old-growth priority deferral areas, and that “work to implement this decision through the supply chain is ongoing”.
The company doesn’t dispute that it is still taking wood from old-growth sites that are not priority deferral areas.
The burning of wood from old-growth forests contradicts the company’s previous claims. In a 2017 report about sustainability, Drax stated it would not take wood from what it called “no-go areas”. It said: “We do not take from protected forests, old growth or primary forest, sites that have been classified as having a high biodiversity value.”
Drax has told BBC Panorama that the 2017 document is “now obsolete” and that its current policy and practices are “more sophisticated”.
Drax says the emissions released by burning wood are offset by the planting of new trees
The company’s latest sourcing policy, published in 2019, makes no mention of protecting old growth or primary forest, instead it talks about avoiding “damage or disturbance to high carbon forest”.
The UK subsidy scheme for Drax Power Station is due to end in 2027, but the government is consulting on plans to extend it to the end of the decade, which could cost bill-payers an additional £4bn.
The company says the emissions released by burning wood are offset by the planting of new trees. But critics say it takes decades for the new trees to grow and that the new forests may never be able to capture that much carbon.
Drax helps the UK government meet its climate targets because, on paper at least, the power station is treated as emission-free. This is because international carbon accounting rules state that greenhouse gas emissions from burning wood are counted in the country where the trees are felled as opposed to where they are burned.
Any additional subsidies would be to support Drax while it tries to install carbon capture technology to reduce emissions at its power station.
Previously, the government’s scientific advisors on the Climate Change Committee – an independent non-departmental public body – warned that subsidies for burning wood pellets should not be extended beyond 2027.
There is not a cat in hell’s chance that Drax’s subsidy won’t be extended. The government has painted itself into a corner, and simply cannot do without the dispatchable power Drax brings.
As for Drax’s protestations, they have lied before, so why should anybody believe them now?
A shouting match reportedly erupted after green entrepreneur Andrew “Twiggy” Forest allegedly suggested to rural MP Llew O’Brien that farmers pushed out by green energy development could find somewhere else to farm.
‘Gutless’: Nationals MP launches into expletive-filled tirade at mining magnate Andrew Forrest as pair become embroiled in fiery row over renewables
…
Andrew Clennell Political Editor February 28, 2024 – 11:00AM
Nationals MP Llew O’Brien has become embroiled in a shouting match with mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest in a meeting at Parliament House on Tuesday, where Mr O’Brien called Mr Forrest a “f***ing charlatan” and a “f***ing snake oil salesman” after the two got into a row over the impact of transmission lines on farms.
The argument over wind farms and transmission lines to create renewable projects descended into a stare-off between the men, according to multiple Nationals sources, including a witness to the stoush.
…
When Mr Forrest made comments about how farmers affected could be compensated and find other places to farm, Mr O’Brien blew up, according to sources.
This isn’t the first time greens have been accused of having a callous attitude to people who get in their way.
According to the BBC, in Africa disregard for the rights of people who get in the way of money making green projects has led to violence and allegations of war crimes.
I hope similar violence doesn’t occur in Australia. I am certainly not accusing Twiggy of wanting to kill anyone or commit war crimes. But seriously: What is the plan if thousands of Aussie farmers in the path of green energy transmission lines or other infrastructure projects simply refuse to move?
What would Aussie farmers do if the government responds to rural refusal to comply, with insensitivity, state backed violence, and mass expropriation? Do they think farmers would sit down and take it quietly?
I don’t know exactly what was said in that meeting. It is possible the whole situation has been wildly exaggerated, sometimes these tales grow in the telling. But you Twiggy had better issue a clarification, and fast. Because if you don’t, you might put a match to the powder keg of discontent which is building in rural Australia, over the Albanese Government’s aggressive disregard for farmers, during their rushed implementation of their poorly planned green energy policies.
Europe’s heat pump market has hit a slump, industry data shows, holding up the continent’s efforts to heat its homes without polluting the planet.
Sales fell 5% over 14 countries for which data exists, according to the European Heat Pump Association.
Europe’s heat pump market has hit a slump, industry data shows, holding up the continent’s efforts to heat its homes without polluting the planet.
Manufacturers in most markets sold fewer heat pumps in 2023 than they did the year before, according to the lobby group European Heat Pump Association (EHPA). Total sales fell 5% over the 14 countries for which data exists, bucking a trend of accelerating growth that peaked in 2022 when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices soaring. The Guardian has the story.
Thomas Nowak, head of the EHPA, called on the EU to put together a promised action plan to build more heat pumps and install more of them in buildings.
Heat pumps, which act like refrigerators in reverse, use electricity to move untapped energy indoors. Their sales last year dropped 36% in Italy, 42% in Finland and 46% in Poland as gas prices fell and interest rates rose. Governments in some member states also cut support.
Newly released figures from the UK, which were not included in the EHPA calculations, show sales of the device grew 4% last year.
Germany, which saw heat pump sales jump 59% in 2023, was also one of six EU countries in which the market grew. The EHPA said this was partly a hangover from high demand the previous year, when orders could not be filled and customers were left waiting months to have heat pumps installed. The effect had run its course by the second half of 2023, the EHPA said.
If storms are getting worse, how can fragile renewable energy infrastructure survive the superstorms of the future?
After a weird summer of floods and heatwaves, scientists explain why weather extremes are ‘on steroids’
By climate reporter Jess Davis
When winds as high as 260 kilometres per hour tore down transmission towers in South Australia in 2016 and plunged the state into an electricity void, it took people by surprise.
The sight of high-voltage transmission lines, crumpled on the ground was almost surreal.
Eight years later, as fierce storms broke over Victoria, images of wilted towers were again causing consternation.
…
Storms get more intense
What climate scientists do know is that with more energy in the atmosphere, storms are becoming more intense.
“When you have events like squall lines or cyclones, tornadoes, thunderstorms, they have more energy available to them,” director of the Monash Energy Institute Roger Dargaville said.
Dr Dargaville said he was surprised wind could knock over transmission towers back in 2016, but that’s no longer the case.
“It’s now a very real possibility and will probably occur many times in the future,” he said.
Professor Dargaville also recently argued for more renewables;
Monash expert: Wild weather aftermath – the security of Victoria’s energy grid and the need for renewables
Monash University 14/02/2024 Associate Professor Roger Dargaville, Director Monash Energy Institute, Resources Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Monash University experts are available to comment on the power blackout and related aftermath as a result of wild weather in Victoria yesterday, and how our energy grids could be made more resilient in the future.
…
The following can be attributed to Associate Professor Dargaville:
“On Tuesday afternoon, a severe storm belt with wind gusts over 100km/h, extreme lightning and torrential rain caused havoc across Melbourne. Amongst lots of localised power outages due to low voltage power lines being damaged was the destruction of several towers supporting the parallel 500kV lines between Melbourne and Geelong. The effect of losing that vital infrastructure was to ‘trip off’ the Loy Yang A power station.
…
“Distributed renewable energy systems offer both more vulnerability due to more infrastructure spread over wider areas, but also additional resilience as losses of individual power lines don’t have the same impact of losing large centralised power stations.
Even if we assume for a moment this super storm claim is true, Professor Dargaville’s position does not make sense.
Consider these alternatives propositions for future energy generation:
Build an energy system which depends on vast acreages of fragile sheets of glass and machines designed to catch the wind, along with vastly enlarged power grids to capture this dispersed energy, which you know will be massively vulnerable to the raging superstorms of the future.
Build a set of compact nuclear reactors encased in thick steel and concrete armour, located at a sufficient elevation to eliminate the risk of flooding, utterly invulnerable to any possible storm, located as close as possible to energy end users, to minimise the risk of supply disruption caused by storm damage to distribution networks.
Why is Professor Dargaville advocating for the option which he admits is will increase vulnerability to storm damage, and not even mentioning the nuclear option, which offers near total climate resilience and a steady supply of reliable and dispatchable zero carbon energy?
Fragile, weather dependent renewable energy systems are not fit for purpose, and will never be fit for purpose. They don’t make sense today, and they would make even less sense in a future filled with climate superstorms.
Don’t think for a moment I take the claim of future superstorms seriously, why should the current crop of alarmist climate predictions be any different to the previous 30 years+ of failed climate predictions? But Professor Dargaville’s advocacy of renewable energy does not make sense, even in the context of his own claimed position on future climate disruption.
It’s lucky the world has so many billionaires to save us from Democracy eh?
But instead of persuading us, or doing honest adverts to save the world (which they could obviously afford) they prefer the deceptive approach.
If you think Hollywood is boring these days, there’s a reason
Chris Morrison at the Daily Sceptic found the Go-To Guide for hiding climate propaganda in Hollywood Movies where children won’t even realize they are being spoon-fed political products:
Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate. With the support of Bloomberg, it recently published ‘Good Energy – A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change’. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”. As with almost all green campaigning groups, Good Energy would not exist without the support of billionaire funding. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency. Good Energy acknowledges it would not exist without this funding, adding, “as collaborators and champions, each has provided a unique contribution for which we are endlessly grateful”.
If action against climate change is woven into the cultural wallpaper, children may not even be able to imagine a world without FakeBurgers and windmills. The seas will endlessly rise while somehow staying in the same place, like living in an Escher puzzle. Every storm surge will be fossil fueled and every retreat will be invisible.
Have you run out of plotlines? Good Energy can help…
Rolling Stone puts the details on the climate movie wallpaper being fostered. Instead of boring statistics and depressing details, Hollywood “is playing its part”. It’s creating heroes that, ah, do what the billionaires want:
Take the Netflix show, Unstable, for example. In the new series, Rob Lowe stars as a genius biotech innovator, who’s created a slew of planet-saving solutions. The Hulu mystery, A Murder at the End of World, hones in on a tech billionaire who wants to save the world from climate change. Hulu’s Indigenous American comedy-drama, Reservation Dogs, features Dallas Goldtooth, an advocate for the Land Back Indigenous sovereignty movement. The CBS sitcom, Ghosts, rolled out an episode called “The Tree,” that dives into different ways a few of the central characters relate to nature and climate change.
And if you were a billionaire invested in EVs or batteries, you’d want heroes to help your investments grow too, right? (Especially, now).
Donations to Hollywood Propaganda Inc are a tax deductible advertising expense that’s not called advertising. It’s something you can brag about at Davos!
According to an analysis by the Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project and Good Energy, which supports TV and film creators in telling compelling and accurate climate stories, less than 3 percent of film and TV scripts from 2016 to 2020 mentioned climate-related terms.
For now, the organization is dedicated to ensuring that by 2027, 50 percent of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.
What this also guarantees is that it buys up some writers that might have mocked climate change. De facto it squeezes creativity out. That only works though, if some upstart production unit doesn’t cherry pick off the sacred cows of modern climate-moo, and have a riotously funny time doing it. That probably won’t happen in Hollywood, but it might on Twitter, which is why Elon is such a threat. It only takes one popular rebel to breach the whole cultural fake facade.
This goes deeper than just being a renewables advert
The Playbook notes that “indigenous people are the first climate scientists, and indigenous people are leading us through this climate crisis”.
If raindancing shaman were the original climate scientists, then science itself is just another religion, and it’s nothing special. The whole idea of hypothesis testing, pffft. The modern scientists are just an upgrade on the original voodoo, not a totally novel philosophy that transformed the world.
See what they did there? They’re not just selling windmills, they’re undermining a civilization.
It is a cultural war, whether you want one or not.
The sponsors behind the subliminal advertising program are groups like the Sierra Club, which is then funded by the Tides Foundation, among others, which was in turn funded by the usuals: the Rockefellers, the Soros, the Hewletts, and the Packards, and all the rest. There are a hundred other variations for the money to flow from the Uber Rich to protect their investments and keep the riff raff happy voting for absurd Presidents and Prime Ministers, and content to holiday at home with a heat pump.
The men with the most money in the world will craft our culture if we let them.
Seldom does the NY Times cover any story that I can physically fact-check. In this case today, the object of the story is “close enough” for me to visit and take photos.
Guest essay Brief by Kip Hansen, originally published on WUWT.
Seldom does the NY Times cover any story that I can physically fact-check. In this case today, the object of the story is “close enough” for me to visit and take photos.
The sad tale is recounted in this piece in the NY Times:
It deals with an animal refuge of the type known (officially) as a Farmed Animal Sanctuary [FAS]: “Farmed animal sanctuaries (FAS) provide care, shelter and advocacy of farmed animal species such as chickens, cows, goats, fish, horses, pig, turkeys, and sheep.” The specific FAS is called the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, though it is not in the Catskill Mountains but rather down in the valley closer to the Hudson River.
The claim is: “Climate Change is Driving Animal Sanctuaries to Relocate” – according to the official title of this article which is found in the meta-data for the webpage as “Climate Change Is Driving Animal Sanctuaries To Relocate – The New York Times” This claim is false in general and false in the specific instance of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Let’s see how the author of this NY Times piece makes this yet another “every story is a climate change story.” First, this article is “narrative journalism”. Narrative journalism:
It looks at intriguing people, human emotions, and real situations. It provides the private story behind the public story.
It reaches past the ordinary by blending the reportage of facts with the writing style of fiction.
But, in addition, it is meant to “contain accurate, well-researched information”.
Our NY Times journalist, Hilary Howard, seems to have understood the first two, but fails on the last requirements of “accurate” and “well-researched”.
Why do I say this? Let’s see what Howard had to say about the reason this animal sanctuary has to move:
CLAIM: “Increased rainfall …. has finally forced the sanctuary to search for a new home”
The Times says “Climate change has resulted in warmer and wetter weather across New York, where annual precipitation jumped 10 to 20 percent over the past century, according to a state report. The study projects that the largest precipitation increases in coming years will be in New York City, the Catskill Mountains region and the Lower Hudson Valley.” Similar to the error of applying Global Warming to every locality, the Times author apparently thinks that a state-wide statistic applies everywhere in the state and/or that future predicted weather can cause current-day problems.
This sanctuary property is located in the Glenerie area of Ulster County, NY, and was purchased in August of 2002. “We only had a small number of animals, it was August, the grass was lush, I didn’t ask about soil composition.” The Times quotes Kathy Stevens, the 150-acre sanctuary’s founder and executive director, as saying. Why does she say that last part? Keep reading, I’ll get to it.
Has Ulster County, NY, thus this sanctuary, see “increased rainfall”?
Here’s the graph:
The little box in the lower right points to 2002. The property was inspected and purchased in the drought year of 2002, after which local rainfall returned to a more normal range. There were two very wet years a decade ago, 2011 and 2012. Otherwise, rainfall amount are variable, but generally constrained to the range of 40 to 60 inches per year. Now, that a pretty wide range – 20 inches. At the top end we have a wet year and at the bottom end, a dry year.
So, let’s look at Monthly Rainfall. Has Ulster County seen very wet months?
The little box in the lower right points to 2002. The property was inspected and purchased in the drought year of 2002, after which local rainfall returned to a more normal range. There were two very wet years a decade ago, 2011 and 2012. Otherwise, rainfall amount are variable, but generally constrained to the range of 40 to 60 inches per year. Now, that a pretty wide range – 20 inches. At the top end we have a wet year and at the bottom end, a dry year.
So, let’s look at Monthly Rainfall. Has Ulster County seen very wet months?
I don’t really like illustrations of “difference from normal” but this shows “drier” and “wetter” month by month since 2002, the lifetime of this sanctuary.
There are not many “wettest” months (darkest green) and visible but not obvious is that 2021 had a wet summer (four greens stacked up).
And though 2017-2018 appear in the Total Precipitation graph as a wet year, we don’t see many very wet months that year.
There is one more way to look at this data provided by USAFacts, which attempts to make government produced data available and visible to the general public.
I don’t like using a graph of standard deviations, but that is what is available – they use this “We defined all monthly temperature and precipitation values to be average in comparison to the 20th century average if they fell within two standard deviations of the 20th century average. All values that fell below or above two standard deviations are defined as climatic anomalies”.
So, over the lifetime of this sanctuary, in the latest decade we see four or five anomalously wet months – but not as anomalous as those in the first decade of the sanctuary’s life. Further, the latest decade has been less variable than the first decade.
VERDICT: There has not been increased rainfall in Ulster County, NY where this sanctuary is located over the last two decades.
So, you may ask, if there has not been increased rainfall, why are their pastures and fields soggy?
“At the Catskill sanctuary, flooding and constant dampness have resulted in soil erosion and a loss of trees. Animals’ hoofs often sink into saturated ground while members of the sanctuary’s staff undertake flood mitigation efforts, installing culvert pipes and curtain drains, among other tactics, to no avail.” [ NY Times article ]
“Basically that property is in a bowl,” said Jake Wedemeyer, the executive director of the Ulster County Soil and Water Conservation District, a government agency that advises farmers on agricultural practices.
Another problem, Mr. Wedemeyer said, is that the valley’s clay soil retains water and drains poorly.”[ NY Times article ]
We see in this topographical map from USGS that the Catskill Animal Sanctuary is located between two ridges (of solid rock, by the way) with the only outlet for water being the tiny stream at the south end of the bowl, but the creek is not reliably downhill from the fields and pastures, it has negligible slope and is seasonal. (I confirmed by physical inspection).
The whole area between the foothills of the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River in this part of the Hudson Valley has so much clay that it is famous for the number of historic brick kilns which used the abundant clay to manufacture bricks which were loaded on barges and floated down the Hudson to build NY City.
When purchasing the property “Ms. Stevens remembers when she first bought the Catskill property in 2002. “We only had a small number of animals, it was August, the grass was lush,” she said. “I didn’t ask about soil composition.”” [NY Times article]
In the drought year of 2002, the property looked oh-so-nice with lush grass and dry fields, not boggy-wet fields. It hadn’t been used to pasture many animals.
VERDICT: Agricultural land purchased without any regards for soil type, soil composition, and without seeking any expert opinion on what purposes for which the property was suited and without considering the well-known effects of variable rainfall.
Viewed in the moment, the property looked great – but there was a failure to take into account long-term weather patterns and physical geography. Previous owners or neighbors could have told them the property was boggy in wet years, as is much of the agricultural land in the valley portion of Ulster County.
CLAIM: “A growing number of animal refuges are being forced to move in the face of extreme rainfall, droughts and hurricanes caused by the planet’s warming.”
Despite the use of the words “growing number”, the article only cites two instances of animal refuges moving at all, and BOTH moved to New York State’s Finger Lakes region.
Quoting the Times:
“Sweet Farm, an animal sanctuary that also grows produce and supports climate-related technology, moved 140 animals from Silicon Valley in California to New York’s Finger Lakes region in 2022 after a close call with a wildfire.” [I need not point out that wildfires are not climate change, especially in California, which wishes it was back to drier conditions after two very wet years.]
Note that Sweet Farms’ website makes no mention of being forced to relocate due to climate change, wildfire or anything other than simple personal choice of the owners.
and
“Happy Compromise Farm + Sanctuary, which moved from Oregon in 2021. …. Trading drought concerns in the Northwest for New York’s extreme rainfall presents its own set of challenges, the owners said. But it was a trade they were willing to make.”
“We do have to deal with an overabundance of water here in New York,” said Eryn Leavens, a founder of Happy Compromise. “But climate change affects every corner of the planet, and you really have to pick and choose your battles.”
The owner’s quote of “extreme rainfall” can not be verified – they are in Tioga County, which has been drier than normal since 2021.
Note that Happy Compromises’s website makes no mention of being forced to relocate due to climate change, drought, or anything not simply personal choice of the two co-owners.
“The exact number of relocations is hard to pinpoint. The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, an accrediting agency, does not track the reasons for such moves. But the nonprofit group did report an increase in sanctuaries strengthening their disaster preparedness plans from 2022 to 2023, said Valerie Taylor, the executive director.
“Sanctuaries which did not previously have to worry about wildfires, severe flooding or extreme heat and cold are now faced with these new challenges,” Ms. Taylor said. Last year, about a third of all sanctuaries seeking accreditation reinforced their disaster plans, a 4 percent increase from the previous year, according to the federation. (Some 186 animal refuges in the United States are accredited by the group.)”
Let’s be clear, there are two animal sanctuaries that are known to have moved, both moved to New York State, neither mentioning climate change as the reason for their moves, not even the one that labels itself as a “Climate Sanctuary”. According to Ms. Taylor, of The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, wildfires, floods, heat and cold are uniquely new weather phenomena.
VERDICT: The claim that “A growing number of animal refuges are being forced to move in the face of extreme rainfall, droughts and hurricanes caused by the planet’s warming.” is not supported by facts presented by the NY Times.
Bottom Lines:
1. The featured Catskill Animal Sanctuary has found that it made a poor choice in its property purchase in 2002 – failing to inquire about how long-term weather conditions might affect the land. If the owners had asked the local experts, advice is provided free by various levels of government, they would have known that land would be boggy in wet years.
2. The reason they have to move is not down to Climate Change – the local climate has not changed. They must move because of Geography and Geology – both of which they should have studied in school.
3. It is false that “increasing numbers of animal sanctuaries” have been forced to move because of climate change. That idea seems to have been entirely invented by the NY Times journalist.
4. This essay illustrates the ongoing trend, pushed by Climate Crisis News Cabals, to “make every story a climate change story” – even if they have to make things up.
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Author’s Comment:
A silly little story, blown out of proportion to sell the specious climate crisis.
I write about it to show something about journalism, the misapplication of, leads readers astray giving them seeming true stories that are not factual.
It is a fact that if the Catskill Animal Sanctuary wants to have many hooved animals, it will have to move. The property is not suited for that use and never was. Why? Geography and Geology. I am sympathetic that these well-meaning people who have worked so hard for 20 years are now realizing that their poor property choice is not “fixable”. I once put just five years into an ambitious project that I finally came to realize was not going to get done, a least by me. Luckily, I realized it before we sunk our life savings into it — and was able to unload at a handy profit.
I admit that I do not understand the whole “animal sanctuary movement” — at all.
Using large area statistical weather trends to explain local phenomena is a bad idea. National, state and county lines don’t apply to the natural processes that produce weather.
Ronald Stein is an engineer, Founder of PTS Advance, Author, Columnist, Energy Literacy Consultant, and Featured columnist on Energy Literacy atAmerica Out Loud NEWS. Ron is also Senior Policy Advisor for the Heartland Institute, the Center for a Constructive Tomorrow, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”.
The elites have bought EV’s, and elites may continue to buy EV’s, BUT we’re quickly running out of elites!
The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans. The common folks need a workhorse vehicle, not just a second car toy that sits in the garage to be used on short ventures!
Inflation has changed the way many Americans shop. Fed up with prices that remain about 19 percent on average, above where they were before the pandemic, consumers are fighting back. More Americans are buying used cars, but there has yet to be a used EV market!
Mandating a change to EV ownership and further financial austerity onto those that can least afford it, is facing a rebellion from those that need transportation. The problem is that manufacturers are loading up the “supply chain” with EV’s on dealer lots, but they’re not seeing the “demand” for EV’s coming from the public.
The current EV ownership profiles are reflected in the oligarchic elite owners are that they are:
Highly educated.
Highly compensated.
Multi-car families.
Low mileage requirements for the families’ second car, i.e., the EV.
Reside in a “temperate” climate like CA or FL. Almost 40% of EV’s are in CA and CA has 6 times as many EV’s as FL.
Unlike the profile of current EV owners, the owners of internal combustion engine vehicles are dramatically different from most potential EV vehicle owners.
Many are single-car owners,
Most of the potential car buyers are not as highly educated.
Nor as highly compensated as the elite EV owners.
Mandating a change to EV ownership and forced austerity, may face a rebellion from those that need affordable vehicle transportation.
EV sales are beginning to hit a speed bump.
Hertz, previously an eager early adopter of fleet electrification, announced a big sell-off of EVs.
Ford’s electric-vehicle business lost nearly $4.7 billion in 2023 and could lose another $5 billion in 2024, thus, Ford slashed EV production, having earlier pulled back on planned battery factories.
Unsold new EVs are piling up on dealer lots, spurring aggressive discounting.
“No one wants to buy used EVs”, as Fortune reports, leaving EV used-car values in free fall.
According to one industry executive, the situation “has the potential to destroy billions” of dollars in value for auto firms.
By law the credit in the Inflation Reduction Act is supposedly available only when purchasing vehicles built with materials sourced primarily in the U.S.
However, nearly all battery materials are currently foreign-made and will remain so for ages.
An Inflation Reduction Act exception allowing credit for leased vehicles built with foreign materials. Evidently, the pen is mightier than the miner.
Thus, leasing has soared to over half of all EV sales in America, as leasing is the only way to capture the federal $7,500 tax credit for most EVs.
The American government provides incentives and tax deductions to transition society to EV’s, but those incentives are financial incentives for the continuation of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction “Elsewhere”. Is it ethical and moral to provide financial support to the developing countries that are mining for exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries for Americans?
The putative EV revolution is stalling for three main reasons, and not because of “dead robots” or the other road bumps in recent news. What will happen is that.
We’ll run out of money to subsidize the common folk,
We’ll run out of copper and other foreign sourced special metals.
Car drivers will run out of patience in putting up with inconveniences.
International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global gasoline consumption in 2023 blew past the pre-lockdown 2019 peak, even with roughly 30 million EVs on the world’s roads, up from near zero a decade ago. The primary reason may be that EV’s are mainly 2nd vehicles with low mileage vs the high mileage workhorse vehicles that are internal combustion engines.
The CO2 emissions arising from building an EV before it gets driven revolve around a simple fact: a typical EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. That half-ton battery is made from a wide range of minerals, including copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite, and lithium. Accessing those minerals requires digging up and processing some 250 tons of earth per vehicle, mostly in poorer developing countries with minimal labor laws and environmental regulations.
The battery pack is a complex electrochemical system made from hundreds or thousands of parts, including sensors, safety systems, cooling or heating systems, and a boatload of power electronics.
The underlying material requirements from developing countries is the single constraint that will cause the EV stall-out before other factors kick in. All the world’s mines, both currently operating and planned, can supply only a small fraction of the 700 percent to 4,000 percent increase in various minerals like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other rare earth elements that are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing electricity technologies that will be needed to meet the wildly ambitious EV goals.
The rate of EV adoption is currently braking before there’s a battery-dominated future because, again, we’ll run out of money, copper, etc. and political tolerance for enriching other nations—especially China, where 50 percent to 90 percent of the critical materials are now controlled and produced and will be for years yet to come, no matter how lawmakers rewrite the sourcing regulations.
AGAIN, the elites have bought them and will continue to buy them, BUT we’re running out of elites to buy EV’s !
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
Aston Martin has delayed the launch of its first electric car as the luxury marque’s chairman admitted that drivers still want “the sports car smell, feel and noise” of a petrol engine.
Owner blames weak demand as luxury carmaker delays EV debut.
Aston Martin has delayed the launch of its first electric car as the luxury marque’s chairman admitted that drivers still want “the sports car smell, feel and noise” of a petrol engine.
The luxury car maker had originally aimed to launch an electric four-wheel drive grand tourer as soon as next year but will now hold off until 2026.
Lawrence Stroll, Aston’s executive chairman and biggest shareholder, blamed weak demand for higher-priced battery electric vehicles (BEVs) for the delay. The Telegraph has the story.
The Canadian billionaire said: “All our [BEV] technologies are in place… Everything is in place.
“The only thing that isn’t in place is the consumer demand at this early stage.”
Mr Stroll added that drivers outside of cities still wanted the experience of driving a petrol-powered sports car.
He said: “What we are feeling is there are people that still want some electrification to drive around the city for five, or 10, or 15 miles but still have the sports car smell and feel and noise when you get onto the auto routes.”
Aston Martin will use hybrid cars, which use both battery and internal combustion motors, as a “bridge” to fully-electric models for now, Mr Stroll said.
The company has already launched its first plug-in hybrid supercar, the Valhalla, and has announced plans to launch plug-in versions of the Vantage, DB12, DBS and DBX models as well.
Mr Stroll is the latest car executive to express caution about the speed of the switch to EVs amid a slowdown in sales.
Government rules mandate that 22pc of all new car sales this year must be fully electric, rising to 80pc by 2030. Manufacturers risk fines if they fail to hit the targets.
Mercedes has also insisted it will keep making internal combustion engine cars “well into [the] next decade” amid slow consumer uptake.
Aston Martin’s decision to delay the launch of its electric sports car came as Stellantis, the car giant behind Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroen, separately urged the UK Government to give more backing to BEVs.
Uwe Hochgeschurtz, the company’s boss of European operations, told the Financial Times: “There must be clear advice: If you buy a BEV, it’s good.”
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