Day: April 1, 2024

ORGANIZED THEFT IN THE NAME OF GOVERNMENT – Biden’s Executive Order 14008 locks away 30% of U.S. land by 2030, under the pretext of protecting the planet’

Most Americans today tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.

From Climate Depot

By Marc Morano

Organized Theft in the Name of Government

By Tom DeWeese

Most Americans today tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.

There was a time when property ownership was considered to be much more. Property, and the ability to own and control it, was life itself. The great economist John Locke, whose writings and ideas had a major influence on our nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”

John Locke advocated that if property rights did not exist, then the incentive for an industrious person to develop and improve property would be destroyed; that the industrious person would be deprived of the fruits of his labor; that marauding bands would confiscate by force the goods produced by others; and that mankind would be compelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand to mouth survival because the accumulation of anything of value would invite attack.

In short, human civilization would be reduced to the level of a pack of wolves and eventually cease to exist because a lack of control over your own actions would cause fear and insecurity. Private property ownership, Locke argued, brought stability and wealth to individuals, leading to a prosperous society of man.

From the very beginning, the United States was guided by the idea of private property ownership. It was written into our governing documents. Property and freedom – one cannot live without the other. James Madison said, “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.” John Adams argued, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

America, be aware, private property is quickly being destroyed across the nation, and note the growing lawlessness beginning to surround you. The fear of climate change has become the excuse for government to grow and dictate how every strip of land will be used.

Have you ever wondered why government now focuses so hard on the environment? That’s because the environment does not recognize political boundaries. The environment crosses rivers, fields, and mountains, all of which cross over national borders, state borders, county borders, city borders, and the boundary lines of your yard! That fact has given massive new power to those forces that seek to change our way of life and system of government. Who can stand in the way with a climate crisis at hand? So goes the argument.

As a result, the pack of wolves is quickly raiding every foot of this nation. Lawlessness controls our society as incentive, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship give way to fear of a government tyranny that drives for control, regardless of clear constitutional rights and the legal system that was designed to protect them.

Step by step, freedom dies, leaving shattered dreams, as tyranny grows.

The Biden cabal issued Executive Order 14008 at the beginning of its hold on America. The order, titled America the Beautiful, established a plan to lock away 30 percent of American land by 2030, under the pretext of protecting the planet. The federal government already has 270 million acres under its control, now under 30×30 it’s driving for another 680 million to be locked away from private use.

Eminent domain land grabs are turning millions of acres of vital farmland over to corporations like Blackrock and Vanguard – to feed their own vision of how human society must function. As more and more farmland disappears under wind turbines and solar panels, which produce next to nothing for our power grid, there’s little room to grow the food we need to survive. As a result, thousands of farmers are forced to just give up.

Other property owners in rural America are facing a new challenge – the elimination of vital dams that have controlled the flow of water, opening new land for productive use. But, says the climate change mantra, those dams aren’t natural, so they are a danger to the environment. They must go. Gone is more private property, a reliable water source, and the individual’s ability to thrive for their own goals.

In our once-vibrant cities, chaos is taking control. Private property ownership is under attack. In the name of Smart Growth your dream home could soon be banned as the space is being taken over by public housing projects.

Small businesses, the very foundation of our free market economy, are under attack. It’s bad enough that small retail businesses must now contend with the growing anarchy of thieves simply rushing in and grabbing any items they choose, as law enforcement is forced to stand by and do nothing. But what about the local restaurant that has always featured your favorite meal? Now, in the name of climate change, the government is moving to ban the stoves on which they cook the meals. And what would they be able to cook now that government is driving to ban beef and dairy? We used to have pesticides to get rid of bugs; now they are destined to be our next dinner!

However, as the federal government continues to rush ahead, state and local governments, designed by our Founders to be the first line of defense against tyranny, are now blindly falling in lockstep with the powermongers.

City councils across the nation are joining non-elected regional councils, which create a one-size-fits-all system of control, ignoring local differences. The regional councils delete the will of the local citizens by piling on federal grants and the federal regulations that come with them. Local elections become meaningless as their city council members surrender to the rule of the regional council and explain there is nothing they can do about it. So why elect them?

Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate NGO known as the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.” The goal of the group is “0” meat and dairy consumption by 2030. Also included in the goals are “0” private vehicles owned by citizens, only “1” short-haul air flight per person every 3 years, and “3” new clothing items per person per year. The group is funded mainly by Democrat billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and nearly 100 cities across the world are members. In the U.S., members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New Your City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Seattle. Now as the plan is exposed, the group denies these are “not policy recommendations,” but rather just “different emission-reduction alternatives and long-term urban visions.” But we’re watching them unfold daily. Own nothing and be happy!

In Belmont County, Ohio, the Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) established the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge. It encompasses over 28,000 acres of land that cannot be used for private enterprise or homes. As it was being put in place, the ODNR promised local citizens that tourism, lakes, trails, hunting, fishing, etc., would be developed to assist the local economy. None of those promises were fulfilled. And the ODNR pays no taxes or provides services. As a result, the county is in major financial difficulty. The average tax income loss for the county is $8,932,000 that would have gone to pay for schools, roads, law enforcement and public services. Citizens of the country suffer from a lack of local businesses, food services, and products.

In Pataskala, Ohio, a small rural community of about 17,000, a massive solar panel assembly plant is being built. It will employ over 800 people to assemble solar panels with material from China. Why is this a problem? Well, that’s in the details. You see, the lead company in the project, called Illuminate USA, isn’t really a company. It’s a shell designed to get around any future US regulations that would prevent a foreign company from owning property. 49% of Illuminate USA is owned by LONGI, a partner with Invenergy – a Chinese corporation. It’s all a shill designed to pretend these solar panels are “American Made.” Of course, the mayor and city council of Pataskala see dollar signs and are allowing this plant to move forward, in spite of the fact that a huge number of local citizens oppose the plan, fearing that it will drastically change the entire atmosphere of their rural community. The mayor is calling such citizen opponents “Radicals.”

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed HB271 into law as part of her drive to enforce ambitious climate change goals for the state. On the same day, she signed HB5120 to take power over green energy projects from the local community government and give it to the Michigan Public Service Commission. Essentially, these two bills have removed local control over land use. Again, state regulations are being used to eliminate local control.

Many parents are now beginning to understand that the public-school curriculum is little more than propaganda for climate change. Students have really become victims of this sinister plot to change society. As a result, all over the world, young people are being radicalized and encouraged to take drastic action against our entire way of life.

“STOP OIL” is a major nongovernmental organization (NGO) training students to lay on highways and block cars from passing. The goal, of course, is to make driving more difficult, resulting in people abandoning their gas-powered cars.

Even worse, in museums around the world, another NGO called “DECLARE EMERGENCY” is leading attacks on precious art, claiming we spend money worshipping the past rather than focusing on stopping climate change. In the past year, climate change radicals have defaced DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Degas’ “Little Dancer,” and Monet’s “Haystacks.” Hate of our society, free enterprise, and private property are at the root of the demonstrations.

Most recently, two activists of DECLARE EMERGENCY charged into the United States National Archives, where the original copies of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are on display. They smeared red powder on the glass covering the constitution and declared, “We are determined to foment a rebellion. We all deserve clean air, water, food and a livable climate.”

And finally, there is this situation. In a Washington, D.C. court a major case was heard and the decision could seriously affect anyone who would speak out in opposition to the climate propaganda that now surrounds us. Michael Mann, a climate scientist who is one of the major promoters of the questionable climate change fear tactics, filed suit against two scientists who had openly questioned Mann’s credibility. A jury awarded Mann a million dollars in damages. This is an absolute attack on free speech and the ability for anyone to question scientific findings.

Is it then a surprise that Senator Ted Cruz is probing ongoing efforts to quietly train federal judges on the Left’s climate change agenda? The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, funded by left-wing nonprofits, is quietly training judges nationwide on climate change litigation. So, don’t you dare question any of their policies, or it may be jail for you!

History has shown not a single success from top-down government control, whether socialist, communist, or today’s drive for a global Great Reset. All we’ve gained are a legacy of broken promises, poverty, misery, and the inevitable tyranny that follows. Yet, the Siren’s Song continues to draw its desperate believers. Today’s drive to eliminate free enterprise, individuality, and private property will not lead to an environmental paradise; rather, it will result in shattered American dreams.

Climate campaigners turn a blind eye to anything that cannot be explained by man-made activity

There have been a lot of unprecedented events going on in the Western Pacific. It’s amazing that no one in the major media outlets talks about this, given the source region this represents. It’s likely because there are blinders on as to anything that might be driving the weather besides man-made climate change, so such events that to those of us who watch this area are watching jaw-dropping events.

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

There have been a lot of unprecedented events going on in the Western Pacific. It’s amazing that no one in the major media outlets talks about this, given the source region this represents. It’s likely because there are blinders on as to anything that might be driving the weather besides man-made climate change, so such events that to those of us who watch this area are watching jaw-dropping events.

1st of all, the Honga Volcano above water inputs of unreal amounts of water vapor in the air likely led to the spike in global temperatures. It was the San Jacinto that caused the warming. There are many underwater vents, 10 MILLION of them, and we don’t know what the heck they are doing. But by observing rises in the Skin Surface temperatures ( SST) since the start of their increase around 1990, we can guess. After all, CO2 had been on the rise for 50 years. The bands that do the feedback were saturated from 1950. What changed? CO2 does not absorb incoming radiation but needs to be increased.  OUTGOING LONG WAVE RADIATION (OLR) warming of the surface is a way to do that. Or a decrease in cloud cover over the tropics is a nice way, which would be a by-product of distorted warming as it changes. Sea Level Pressure, Global Wind Oscillation, and Vertical Velocity patterns. But the volcano was the San Jacinto (pulling the opponent into the trap) of the man-made warming argument because, without it, there would not have been the warming.

Now consider this:

1) 3rd lowest typhoon total on record in a so-called El Nino season (there was no El Nino as far as the Southern Oscillation Index was concerned).  The years of El Ninos are when typhoons are supposed to run wild. The Accumulated Cyclonic Energy in the western Pacific got pretty close to average out there after 3 almost record-low years, which may be a record-low year. Given the West Pacific is responsible for 50% of the global ACE, this is a huge signal since the Atlantic has 1/3rd the ACE of the Western Pacific. So this year, if you double the Atlantic ACE but cut the West Pac by 50% the result between the two is below-average.

Have you heard anyone talk about this? I mean, aren’t we all globalists now? You hear if a typhoon goes wild (but like we see in the Atlantic they have tended to weaken if they are long-tracked as they approach the continents).  So we hear about the Atlantic, but its crickets in the Pacific.

2) The SOI never reached an El Nino status (-8) for a ninety-day period).    That the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) reached 2 makes it even freakier. The other ONI El Ninos that reached 2.0 in 1982,1997,2015 all had strong SOI responses for DJF. This year, it was -6 with an unprecedented POSITIVE IN JAN!

2015-16. -16

1997-1998  -18

1982-1983  WAS A -30

How is this not brought up?

The warmer the West Pac gets, the weaker the SOI response. This is a big deal. An obvious by-product of climate change except the reason for it can not be linked strongly to man, but other inputs. Which makes it something no one will touch.

The MEI ( multi variate enso index), up until they killed it, had a record difference from the ONI. That is huge. And the loss of the MEI as a data source, since it RELIES ON ACTUAL OBSERVATIONS NOT SOME REANALYSIS, is a blow to objectivity.

3) unprecedented warming in January around Australia

November

Jan

change

SERIOUSLY, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM, MAGIC?  IT IS OPPOSITE OF THE EL NINO ANALOG.

But now comes this. I can’t even believe this could happen.

But this would add to the string of events that appear to be unprecedented.

Look at SST temps now:

Here is the same day in 1989:

This is when the geothermal spreading started to increase.

Again, that it PRECEDED the rise means a likely contribution to the causation.

Now look at that above and try to imagine the change in Water Vapor input.  I say imagine because it seems, despite being a much more prominent GHG and one that actually can be a “heat-trapping gas”, it is not quantified like CO2. The fact is the rise of the CO2 monster started way before this, and the warming was almost nonexistent in the oceans.

It got shifted around, some places cooler, some warmer, but nothing like the change since the geothermal input started.

But now comes this from the CFSV2 ( Climate Forecast System version 2), and I have been watching this like a hawk: what would be a record drop in Indo pacific SST:

For you lovers of winter, that is not that bad a picture off the west coast. That ring has been associated with colder, stormier winters and also linked to increased hurricane activity for the US, which the model is likely seeing. Notice the cooling off of the southeast coast, a likely by-product of the model seeing plenty of hurricanes churning up water. And lots of rain. Certainly,  the precip chart says that.

This is very close to our analog years in the Dec 7, 2023 hurricane forecast we put out ( link below):

https://www.weatherbell.com/hurricane-season-from-hell-first-look

But now, getting back to that drop.

Now:

Forecast for November (remember this is after all the hurricanes went through. Notice the warm water still left in the typhoon areas where we are forecasting a season about 50% of average or a near-record low).

This is almost as cold in the INDO Pacific as in November of 1989. In fact, it is not as cold as in the Indian Ocean back then and the La Nina this year is stronger.

Now let me ask you this question, if the oceans had not warmed, do you think the air would have warmed? So it comes down to what warmed the oceans.  Why is the model seeing the drop, which would be unprecedented in that area of the world and the strongest El Nino to La Nina turnaround on record (there is another event that should be at least talked about)?

Why is the model seeing this?  Because — and we can not confirm this fully yet — there may have been a downturn in geothermal activity.

Remember, the warmer it gets the more it needs even more input to warm more. So, any downturn may start a response. But I DON’T KNOW. I  believe it, but I can’t know it because we do not have the data saturation. We only have one data point for every 112k square miles, and they only go to 6k. I suspect they are seeing cooling at that level. The average depth of the ocean floor is 14k. So, I have no proof. But people who just look at one thing — man-made climate change — have no proof it is not. SOMETHING IS GOING ON. Since the  CO2 rise has been constant in its up-down fashion, how can it be CO2? (Never mind that its back radiation relies on surface warming, fewer clouds, and more Outgoing Longwave radiation), inconvenient facts when blaming CO2 for warming the oceans when it only penetrates a mm or 2 of the surface.

You see we know a lot about the air and the sun, but of the oceans, laughably little.

But here is something as a weather nut or climate person, or someone who may be opened-minded enough to ask questions that you should be aware of: A lot is going on here that is way way beyond “this is the warmest ever”. There are indications to the opposite, and they are in the form of what should be raising the curiosity of every meteorologist, including those in media, the academics in the field, and the professional organizations.

I am excited about testing my idea in the coming years. The reason for the increased geothermal could be linked to the turning of the earth’s core in a natural cycle, which increases stress on the ocean floor, releasing more heat through the 10 million geothermal vents. But it’s not looked at and scoffed at when it is. It’s like a willingness to not look since it would upset so many applecarts. In the meantime, along with the highest global temperatures on record over the last year, which can be traced to WV increase as much as anything else, from a natural source, other events in a crucial area for weather and climate have been and are occurring.

But where the heck is the field of meteorology, and the Media outlets on all this? I have just listed these unprecedented events in the major climate source region for the planet (a couple of others are being forecasted). They should be having a field day with examinations into this rather than saying the same thing over and over again.

And sadly, the curiosity about them may be a victim of climate blinders, which are needed to just look at one thing, as well as the pressure to look the other way that is put on a lot of people who make a living at this.

That’s not a search for truth.

The Green Energy Mess That Nobody Will Admit to

Reports in newspapers this week revealed that Britain’s domestic production of energy has reached a new record low. The news comes from trade group, Offshore Energies U.K. (OEUK), whose analysis, far from unexpected, details the pressures on investment in conventional energy production, such as the windfall tax on oil and gas companies.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY BEN PILE

Reports in newspapers this week revealed that Britain’s domestic production of energy has reached a new record low. The news comes from trade group, Offshore Energies U.K. (OEUK), whose analysis, far from unexpected, details the pressures on investment in conventional energy production, such as the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Since the turn of the century, U.K. production of energy has fallen by two thirds, whereas consumption has fallen by a third. The difference has been met by an increased dependence on imports. Yet neither the report itself, which is at best agnostic about renewables, nor the stories that cover it, seem to have taken seriously the harm that Net Zero and adjacent agendas have done to our industries, businesses and economy – and are set to do worse. 

The U.K. ceased being a net energy exporter in 2004, amid a flurry of green policymaking, culminating in the Climate Change Act 2008, and its increased ‘Net Zero’ target adopted in 2019. Over the duration, coal-fired power stations were demolished, but not replaced with equivalent (i.e. reliable) generating capacity, shale gas exploration was abolished before it had even started. Energy investors in the U.K. and across the continent, lured to attractive guaranteed profits by subsidy regimes, and dissuaded from conventional energy by rising costs of capital, lost interest in oil and gas. Despite promises of ‘green jobs’, a ‘green industrial revolution’ and ‘green economic growth’ and lower prices being the constant chorus of energy ministers of all governments and their so-called ‘opposition’ counterparts, domestic energy prices tripled. So if these new data on Britain’s energy production do not prove the expensive and dangerous folly of more than two decades of U.K. climate policy, what could? 

It is as if the entire political establishment had at once decided to forget that there exists a relationship between scarcity and price. Yet, the effect of abolishing coal is just that: it creates scarcity. So too, do policies that either restrict the exploration of oil and gas, or increase the cost of capital, create scarcity. Politicians, lobbied by green billionaires’ ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations who pump false claims into the public sphere, then claim that the problem all along was ‘dependence’ on oil and gas. Green energy will lower prices and diminish the power of dictators, who turn energy into a ‘weapon’ that terrorises Europe, they claim. So successful are they in their policymaking that, since 2019, the Government has capped energy prices – a policy they stole from Ed Miliband in 2017, before taking us into Net Zero. If ‘green’ means anything at all, it means acute cognitive dissonance. 

At stake, argues the OEUK report, is immense value that could be unleashed from the North Sea. But investment is being held back by policies, “having big impacts on the profitability of U.K. offshore energy”’ worth one trillion pounds of exports and £450 billion domestically “within the next 15 years”. However, though the bulk of that potential lies in oil and gas, the report includes in its analysis, wind power, CCS and hydrogen. Even oil and gas executives, it seems, have swallowed the green Kool-Aid. And that is a missed opportunity to reflect on the failures of the green agenda, as well as a disappointing failure of an industry to properly stick up for itself, and to defend industry in principle.

And it needs defending. The fig leaf that has concealed Britain’s shameful industrial decline, and blinding politicians to reality in recent years has been the notion that green policies have successfully caused GDP growth to ‘decouple’ from fossil fuel use. However, this conceit requires us to believe, in turn, that the 79% increase in GDP that coincided with the halving of emissions over the same period was not driven by funny money, tricksy policies and analytical sleights of hand, and that the deindustrialisation underpinning it has left us better off. Does anybody, other than green energy hustlers, actually feel better off? Who? How?! What better position can we claim to be in, now that we know that we produce less and import more at a higher price? How much of that ‘growth’ is just higher prices? 

The embrace of green economics, at the expense of established economic orthodoxy, leads to regressive disdain for industry. It seems not to have bothered many that we are less capable of producing things and sustaining ourselves – an issue which would have once sent a modern government into a tailspin. It is as if using less energy was a ‘good thing’ in itself, not a reflection of rising prices and stagnant (or worse) productivity. As if to make my point for me, following OEUK’s report, the half-truthfully named Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the obedient press put a different spin on the matter. “The U.K. recorded the highest ever share of electricity generation by renewables last year”, declared the Standard. 

As greens rejoice our production of less for more, U.K. energy market regulator, Ofgem, announced its “discussion on the future of the price cap”, which is “so customers remain protected as the energy market evolves to a smarter, more flexible system”. Why would customers need ‘protection’ from a ‘smarter, more flexible system’? It is, of course, doublespeak. The ‘dynamic price cap’ is time-of-day pricing, more honestly known as rationing. And ‘flexibility’ means using prices to force customers to organise their lives around the ‘smarter’ system, rather than the energy market meeting people’s needs. And it is made necessary by the scarcity created by green energy policy and green ideology. 

It would be all for the better if regulators, industry associations and, of course, politicians simply admitted that they have made a catastrophic mess of the very industries that were pioneered in this country. Putting green political ambitions before any other practical consideration has made us poorer, and is going to create a problem far worse than climate change. 

Subscribe to Ben Pile’s The Net Zero Scandal Substack here.

2023 Climate Report: Earth’s Climate Is Fine

The observational data presented here reveal a vast number of natural variations, some of which appear in more than one series. The existence of such natural climatic variations is not always fully acknowledged, and therefore generally not considered in contemporary climate conversations.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Preface

This report is written for people wishing to form their own opinion on issues relating to climate. Its focus is on publicly available observational datasets, and not on the output of numerical models, although there are a few exceptions, such as Figure 42. References and data sources are listed at the end.

The observational data presented here reveal a vast number of natural variations, some of which appear in more than one series. The existence of such natural climatic variations is not always fully acknowledged, and therefore generally not considered in contemporary climate conversations. The drivers of most of these climatic variations are not yet fully understood, but should represent an important focus for climatic research in future.

In this report, meteorological and climatic observations are described according to the following overall structure: atmosphere, oceans, sea level, sea ice, snow cover, precipitation, and storms. Finally, in the last section (below), the observational evidence as at 2023 is briefly summarised.

Ten facts about the year 2023

1. Air temperatures in 2023 were the highest on record (since 1850/1880/1979, according to the particular data series). Recent warming is not symmetrical, but is mainly seen in the Northern Hemisphere (Figures 1 and 13).

Figure 1: 2023 surface air temperatures compared to the average for the previous 10 years. Green-yellow-red colours indicate areas with higher temperature than the average, while blue colours indicate lower than average temperatures. Data source: Remote Sensed Surface Temperature Anomaly, AIRS/Aqua L3 Monthly Standard Physical Retrieval 1-degree x 1-degree V006 (https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/), obtained from the GISS data portal (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/).
Figure 13: Zonal air temperatures. Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature since 1979 for the tropics and the northern and southern extratropics, according to University of Alabama at Huntsville, USA. Thin lines: monthly value; thick lines: 3-year running mean.

2. Arctic air temperatures have increased during the satellite era (since 1979), but Antarctic temperatures remain essentially stable (Figure 14).

Figure 14: Polar temperatures Global monthly average lower troposphere temperature since 1979 for the North and South Pole regions, according to University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), USA. Thick lines are the simple running 37-month average.

3. Since 2004, globally, the upper 1900m of the oceans has seen net warming of about 0.037°C. The greatest warming (of about 0.2°C) is in the uppermost 100m, and mainly in regions near the Equator, where the greatest amount of solar radiation is received (Figure 28).

Figure 28: Temperature changes 0–1900m Global ocean net temperature change since 2004 from surface to 1900m depth, using Argo-data. Source: Global Marine Argo Atlas.

4. Since 2004, the northern oceans (55–65°N) have, on average, experienced a marked cooling down to 1400m depth, and slight warming below that (Figure 29). Over the same period, the southern oceans (55–65°S) have, on average, seen some warming at most depths (above 1900m), but mainly near the surface.

Figure 29: Temperature changes 0–1900m Global ocean net temperature change since 2004 from surface to 1900m depth. Source: Global Marine Argo Atlas

5. Sea level globally is increasing at about 3.4 mm per year or more according to satellites, but only at 1-2 mm per year according to coastal tide gauges (Figures 39 and 41). Local and regional sea-level changes usually deviate significantly from such global averages.

Figure 39: Global sea level change since December 1992 The two lower panels show the annual sea level change, calculated for 1- and 10-year time windows, respectively. These values are plotted at the end of the interval considered. Source: Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at University of Colorado at Boulder. The blue dots are the individual observations (with calculated GIA e”ect removed), and the purple line represents the running 121-month (ca. 10-year) average.
Figure 41: Holgate-9 monthly tide gauge data from PSMSL Data Explorer The Holgate-9 are a series of tide gauges located in geologically stable sites. The two lower panels show the annual sea level change, calculated for 1- and 10-year time windows, respectively. These values are plotted at the end of the interval considered. Source: Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at University of Colorado at Boulder. The blue dots are the individual observations, and the purple line represents the running 121-month (ca. 10-year) average.

6. Global sea-ice extent remains well below the average for the satellite era (since 1979). Since 2018, however, it has remained quasistable, perhaps even exhibiting a small increase (Figure 43).

Figure 43: Global and hemispheric sea ice extent since 1979 12-month running means. The October 1979 value represents the monthly average of November 1978–October 1979, the November 1979 value represents the average of December 1978–November 1979, etc. The stippled lines represent a 61-month (ca. 5 years) average. The last month included in the 12-month calculations is shown to the right in the diagram. Data source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

7. Global snow cover has remained essentially stable throughout the satellite era (Figure 47), although with important regional and seasonal variations.

Figure 47: Northern hemisphere weekly snow cover since 2000 (a) Since January 2000 and (b) Since 1972. Source: Rutgers University Global Snow Laboratory. The thin blue line is the weekly data, and the thick blue line is the running 53-week average (approximately 1 year). The horizontal red line is the 1972–2022 average.

8. Global precipitation varies from more than 3000mm per year in humid regions to almost nothing in deserts. Global average precipitation exhibits variations from one year to the next, and from decade to decade, but since 1901 there has been no clear overall trend (Figure 50).

Figure 50: Global precipitation anomalies. Variation of annual anomalies in relation to the global average precipitation from 1901 to 2021 based on rainfall and snowfall measurements from land-based weather stations worldwide. Data source: United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

9. Storms and hurricanes display variable frequency over time, but without any clear global trend towards higher or lower values (Figure 51).

Figure 51: Annual global accumulated cyclone energy Source: Ryan Maue.

10. Observations confirm the continuing long-term variability of average meteorological and oceanographic conditions, but do not support the notion of an ongoing climate crisis.

Summing up

The global climate system is multifaceted, involving sun, planets, atmosphere, oceans, land, geological processes, biological life, and complex interactions between them. Many components and their mutual coupling are still not fully understood or perhaps not even recognised.

Believing that one minor constituent of the atmosphere (CO2) controls nearly all aspects of climate is naïve and entirely unrealistic.

The global climate has remained in a quasi-stable condition within certain limits for millions of years, although with important variations playing out over periods ranging from years to centuries or more, but the global climate has never been in a fully stable state without change.

Modern observations show that this behaviour continues today;
there is no evidence of a global climate crisis.

BBC’s Failed ‘Fact Check’ of Daily Sceptic Report on Arctic Sea Ice

The BBC More or Less radio programme recently ‘fact checked’ the Daily Sceptic’s report that sea ice in the Arctic had soared to its highest level for 21 years on January 8th this year. Alas, the report was confirmed to be true so the Beeb went down the ‘cherry pick’ line of attack.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

The BBC More or Less radio programme recently ‘fact checked’ the Daily Sceptic’s report that sea ice in the Arctic had soared to its highest level for 21 years on January 8th this year. Alas, the report was confirmed to be true so the Beeb went down the ‘cherry pick’ line of attack. Curiously missing from the programme was any mention that the article dealt mainly with long term trends in Arctic sea ice and concentrated on scientific evidence that showed at least a decade-long slow recovery.  The ‘fact check’ did little more than confirm the widely held suspicion that many BBC programmes are now infected with a need to crowbar a climate catastrophe narrative into broadcast messages.

Being accused of “cherry picking” by an organisation that routinely catastrophises bad weather events is of course risible. Taking lessons from a state-reliant operation that can publish a recent story from a “science correspondent” that starts, “Climate change threatens to ‘call time’ on the great British pint”, is also laughable. The 21-year high on January 8th was clearly identified as part of a number of short and long term trends, and in the third paragraph of the article it was noted that ”we must be careful not to follow alarmists down their chosen political path of cherry-picking and warning of climate collapse on the basis of individual events”.

It is evident that the BBC did little investigative work on the matter despite More or Less priding itself on checking statistics and data. Instead it relied on the usual ‘scientists say’, in this case Professor Julienne Stroeve. The UCL “Earth Scientist” attempted to muddy the Arctic sea ice waters by suggesting the ice extent is thinner, but presenter Tom Colls had to admit, “the data is not available yet”.

If you pick a particular day, you might just be talking about the weather, states Colls. There is no correlation between winter sea ice extent and how much the ice will melt in the summer, added Stroeve. What you see since 1979, continued Stroeve, is that the trend in Arctic sea ice is downwards for four decades. The overall decline in long term Arctic sea ice is very easy to see, adds Colls.

If you ‘cherry pick’ the date 1979, probably the high point for Arctic sea ice for almost a century, and draw a line to the present day, the cyclical trend is undoubtedly down. There was more ice around at the high point in 1979 than there is now, nobody disputes that. If you are just after a simple political message of climate collapse to promote the Net Zero fantasy, further examination of the data will be unwelcome. But a more detailed review of the statistics gives a more realistic interpretation. According to recent work published by the Arctic scientist Allan Astrup Jensen, the summer ice plateaued from 1979-97, fell for 10 years and then resumed a minimal downward trend from 2007. Jensen observes that either side of the 10 year fall after 1997, there have been minimal losses.

In fact using a four-year moving average, the trend has been slightly upwards over the last few years. The graph below is compiled by the investigative science writer Tony Heller and shows the recent stability of Arctic summer sea ice around the minimum recorded every September. A slight recovery from about 2012 can be clearly seen.

As we can see, More or Less has produced little more than a narrative-driven attempt to keep the Arctic sea ice poster scare going for as long as possible. Since the drop in the early part of the century, alarmists have been forecasting ice free summers in the Arctic in the near future. Sir David Attenborough told BBC viewers in 2022 that the Arctic could be ice free by 2035. Professor Stroeve claims to have briefed former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a man who has never lived down reporting that the ice could all be gone by 2014. In fact what has clearly been happening is noted by Tony Heller. They bury the old data going back to the 1950s, “and pretend they don’t notice sea ice is increasing again”. Nevertheless activists are starting to learn lessons about putting short timelines on their fanciful forecasts. For her part, Stroeve suggests ice free summers in the Arctic by the next 50 years.

Meanwhile, after the ‘hottest year ever’, the maximum winter sea ice for 2024 was recorded on March 14th at 15.01 million sq kms. Polar bear scientist Susan Crockford noted that the ‘U.S. headline writers’ at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said it was below the average for 1981-2010. Indeed it was, although this year’s total was within two standard deviations, states Crockford. But why compare the a 30-year average to 2010 when another decade of data to 2020 is available? Cynics might note that taking out the higher totals of 40 years ago and replacing them with the lower recent figures would produce – more or less –  an above average maximum in 2024.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

The disastrous economics of trying to power an electric grid with 100% intermittent “renewables”

These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of fuel for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and storage – things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based systems.

From CFACT

BY FRANCIS MENTON:

The effort to increase the percentage of electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably brings about large increases in the actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price increases grow and accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of fuel for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and storage – things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based systems.  And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases would be inevitable.  We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have attempted to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables.  This empirical experience proves the truth of the rising consumer price proposition.

In those jurisdictions that have succeeded in getting generation from renewables up to as high as about 30% of their total electricity supply, the result has been an approximate tripling in the price of electricity for their consumers. The few (basically experimental) jurisdictions that have gotten generation from renewables even higher than that have had even greater cost increases for relatively minor increases in generation from renewables. As the percentage of electricity coming from renewables increases, the consumer price increases accelerate.

No jurisdiction – even an experimental one – has yet succeeded in getting the percentage of its electricity generated from the intermittent renewables up much past 50% on an annualized basis.  To accomplish the feat of getting beyond 50% and closer to 100%, the grid operator must cease relying on fossil fuel backup power for times of dark and calm and move instead to some form of storage, most likely very large batteries. The cost of such batteries sufficient to power a jurisdiction of millions of people is enormous and quickly comes to be the dominant cost of the system.  Relatively simple calculations of the cost of batteries sufficient to get through a year for a modern industrialized area show that this cost would imply an increase in the price of electricity by a factor of some 15 or 20, or perhaps even more.

The burden of such increasing prices for electricity would fall most heavily on poor and low-income people.

The reason that increasing renewable generation leads to accelerating consumer prices is that an electrical grid must operate with one hundred percent reliability on a 24/7/365 basis. A reliable grid requires a very close match between power supplied and power demanded on a minute-by-minute, and even a fraction of a second, basis. But wind and solar sources experience large, unpredictable, and often sudden swings in the power that they supply.  Therefore, in a grid using large amounts of power from wind and solar sources, additional costly elements must be added to the system to even out the supply and always match it to the demand.  These additional elements are what bring about the increased costs and, thus increased consumer prices:

·   In the early stages of moving toward increasing generation from intermittent renewables – say, to get 10% of the generation from the renewables — a grid operator can start by simply adding some new wind turbines or solar panels to the system, and by then accepting that power onto the grid when it is available.  However, there will be substantial times when no such power is available (e.g., calm nights).  Therefore, all or nearly all pre-existing fossil fuel capacity must be maintained, even though some of it may be idle much of the time.  Although the fuel cost of the renewables is zero, the operator must pay the capital cost of two overlapping and duplicative systems to the extent of the renewable capacity.

·   To get the percentage of generation from renewables beyond about 10% and into the range of 20-30%, the operator can then attempt a massive expansion of the renewable sources, such that the renewable capacity becomes equal to, or even a multiple of peak usage.  (Jurisdictions, including Germany and Denmark, have followed this strategy.)  With such massive renewable capacity, the system may even work without backup at some times of relatively low wind or thick clouds. However, no amount of excess capacity can make a wind/solar-only system generate any electricity on a completely calm night, nor any meaningful amount on a heavily overcast and calm winter day. If the backup comes from fossil fuel facilities, very nearly the full fleet must still be maintained.  As wind/solar capacity goes to 100% and even 200% of peak usage, the capital cost of the system goes to double or even triple the capital cost of a fossil-fuel-only system.  But, since much of the time will be dark and/or calm, still the percentage of electricity coming from the renewables will only be around 30%, and the decrease in carbon emissions from the backup fossil fuel plants will be even less, since they must often be kept on “spinning reserve” to be ready to step in when the wind and sun die.

·     If the intent is to get the percentage of generation from wind and solar up above 30% and then to 50% and beyond, then by hypothesis, the fossil fuel backup must be gradually phased out to be replaced incrementally with some sort of storage as the percent of generation from renewables gets higher and higher. Batteries are the only feasible storage option in most locations.  The amount of battery capacity needed accelerates as the percentage of generation from renewables approaches 100%.  Due to seasonality of the availability of the wind and sun, most locations require a month or more of battery capacity to get a fully-wind/solar system through a year.  The cost of the batteries is enormous and quickly comes to dominate the cost of the system.  In jurisdictions where a calculation has been made, the cost of the batteries exceeds the full annual GDP of the jurisdiction and implies an increase in the price of electricity by a factor of 15, 20, or more.

In a post at the website Energy Matters on November 22, 2018, Roger Andrews set forth a detailed analysis of what it would take to get to an electricity grid powered 100% by wind and solar sources backed up by batteries. Mr. Andrews’s post is available at this link:  http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries-included/  Andrews’s study covers two cases, Germany and California.  His analysis is detailed but not complicated and can be replicated or challenged by anyone competent at basic arithmetic.

Andrews collects data for day-by-day power generation for a full year from existing wind and solar sources for both Germany and California. That data immediately reveals a fundamental issue, which is that the wind and sun are not only intermittent within a given day or week, but they also vary greatly from season to season. Thus, for example, in California, both the wind and the sun produce substantially more power in the summer and fall than in the winter and spring.  That means that to have a fully wind/solar system in California backed up with batteries, you need the batteries to store power from April to October, to be discharged from November to March.  The total amount of storage needed comes to some 25,000 GWh for a year, equal to more than a full month’s current rate of usage.  The batteries for such an effort – even assuming some substantial declines from current prices – will cost something in the range of $5 trillion, which is more than the full annual GDP of California.  And these batteries will need to be replaced regularly.

Andrews concludes:

The combined wind + solar LCOE [Levelized Cost of Energy] without storage was $50/MWh. . . 

I then estimated wind + solar LCOEs with battery storage capital costs included. This was a straightforward exercise because reducing baseload + load-following generation in direct proportion to the increase in wind + solar generation results in LCOEs that are the same regardless of the percentage of wind + solar in the generation mix. The NREL calculator showed:

·                 LCOE Case A [Germany]: $699/MWh

·               LCOE Case B [California]: $1,096/MWh

These ruinously expensive LCOEs are entirely a result of the added costs of storage batteries, which in the 100% wind + solar scenarios approach $5 trillion in both Case A [Germany] and Case B [California], compared to wind + solar capital costs of ~$300 billion in Case A and ~$160 billion in Case B.

   Assuming that these additional costs are passed on to consumers in electricity prices, this would represent price increases of a factor of about 14 for Germany and 22 for California.  (The difference derives from lesser seasonality in Germany than in California.)

Although no jurisdiction has yet tried to test Andrews’s calculations by pushing generation from renewables much beyond 50% and toward 100%, many have gone down the road of pushing generation from renewables to the range of 30%, and some experimental jurisdictions have gotten to 50% and a little beyond.  Substantial data exist to demonstrate the results on the cost of the resulting electrical system and thereby, what the effect would be on price to consumers assuming that the full cost is borne by the consumer.  (The experimental jurisdictions have thus far not imposed the bulk of the costs on the consumer, but that approach would likely not work for an entire country.)

The following chart, initially prepared by Willis Eschenbach of the website WattsUpWithThat, shows the near linear relationship between installed renewables capacity per capita (in watts/capita) on the x-axis and cost of electricity to the consumer (in cents per kilowatt hour) on the y-axis, where each point is a country. The chart is available at the following link:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/03/obama-may-finally-succeed

Germany is the leader in Europe in its power generation per capita from renewables through its so-called Energiewende, having gotten the percentage of its electricity from wind and solar all the way up to about 30%, and at times somewhat beyond. However, the consequence of that effort has been an approximate tripling of the cost of electricity to consumers to about 30 cents per kWh. (The average consumer price of electricity to the consumer in the U.S. is approximately 10 cents per kWh.)  Analyses of the soaring price of electricity in Germany place the blame squarely on excess costs that have been necessarily incurred to try to get to a stable, functioning, 24/7 system with so much input from intermittent renewables.

 First, massive “excess” wind and solar capacity has been installed to try to deal with days of light wind and heavy clouds. And for the completely calm nights and overcast winter days when the wind and solar sources produce nothing or next-to-nothing, nearly the entire fleet of fossil fuel plants has been maintained and ready to go, even though those sources end up being idle much of the time. (Actually, since Germany during this time has been shutting down all of its nuclear power plants, it has been building additional coal plants to back up its renewables.) And then, some means have had to be found to deal with the surges of available electricity when the wind and sun suddenly blow and shine together at full strength at the same time.

As noted by Benny Peiser at the Global Warming Policy Foundation on April 4, 2015 (http://www.thegwpf.com/benny-peiser-eus-green-energy-debacle-shows-the-futility-of-unilateral-climate-policies/):

Every 10 new units worth of wind power installation has to be backed up with some eight units worth of fossil fuel generation. This is because fossil fuel plants have to power up suddenly to meet the deficiencies of intermittent renewables. In short, renewables do not provide an escape route from fossil fuel use without which they are unsustainable. . . . To avoid blackouts, the government has to subsidize uneconomic gas and coal power plants. . . . Germany’s renewable energy levy, which subsidizes green energy production, rose from 14 billion euros to 20 billion euros in just one year as a result of the fierce expansion of wind and solar power projects. Since the introduction of the levy in 2000, the electricity bill of the typical German consumer has doubled.

To further illustrate the relationship between the percentage of electricity from renewables and the cost of electricity to the consumer, consider the case of California. California is a “leader” in the United States in generating power from wind and solar sources. According to the California Energy Commission, in 2016, California got 8.11% of its electricity supply from solar and 9.06% from wind, for a total of 17.17% from those two intermittent sources. See  http://www.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html.  For the U.S. as a whole the percentage of generation from wind and solar was 6.5%. See https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, California’s average electricity price that year was 14.91 cents per kWh, versus a U.S. average of 10.10 cents per kWh; that is, almost 50% higher. 

See https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a.

There are only a handful of small jurisdictions that have tried to get the percentage of their electricity generation from renewables up much beyond the 30% achieved by Germany. But those jurisdictions have not achieved levels much beyond that of Germany, and even those levels have been achieved only at high and accelerating costs. One such jurisdiction is Gapa Island, a small island of only 178 people (97 households) in South Korea. A report on the Gapa Island Project appeared on the Hankyoreh news site in July 2016 (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/752623.html).

With average electricity usage of 142 kw, and maximum usage of 230 kw, the islanders installed wind and solar capacity of 674 kw – about three timesmaximum usage, to deal with light wind and low sun. They also bought battery capacity for about eight hours of average usage. The cost of the wind and solar capacity plus batteries was approximately $12.5 million, or about $125,000 per household. And with all that investment the islanders were still only able to get about 42% of their electricity from the sun and wind when averaged over a full month. Even with the storage, they still needed the full fossil fuel backup capacity.

Applying a reasonable cost of capital to a system like that of Gapa Island, and considering additional elements of a system, like additional storage, that would be necessary to push the percent of total generation from renewables to higher levels, one can calculate that a system like the Gapa demonstration project for the full United states would lead to electricity prices of at least five timestheir current level, and more likely, far higher. And even then, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to achieve 50% of electricity from the intermittent renewables.

A somewhat larger demonstration project on the Spanish island of El Hierro (population about 10,000) has had similar results. The idea on El Hierro was to combine a massive wind farm with a large elevated reservoir to store water, which would then be released at times of low wind to balance the grid. El Hierro has the good fortune of a mountainous geography, so that a large reservoir could be placed at a relatively high elevation, in close proximity to the consumers of the electricity. The investment in the wind/water system was approximately 64.7 million euros, or about $80 million – which was on top of what was already a fully-functioning fossil fuel-based system, all of which still needed to be kept. Operations of the El Hierro project began in 2015 with high expectations for 100% renewable generation, but it has not come close.

An operations review of the El Hierro system from inception through 2017 by Roger Andrews can be found at http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-end-2017-performance-update/.

During 2017 the percent of generated electricity that came from renewables ranged from 62.4% in September down to only 24.7% in November, with the overall average for the year at about 40%. Based on the data from actual operations, Mr. Andrews calculates that, to achieve the goal of 100% generation from the wind/water project, El Hierro would need to increase its wind turbine capacity by some 50%, and the capacity of its reservoir by a factor of 40. Clearly, there is no place on the island to put such a massive reservoir; and if there were, the cost would be not in the millions, but in the billions. And that would be for a mere 10,000 people.

A further update of performance of the El Hierro system by Mr. Andrews covering the 2018 year appeared at the Energy Matters site on January 6, 2019, and can be found at http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-fourth-quarter-2018-performance-update/   

During 2018, the El Hierro system supplied 56.6% of the island’s electricity (which represented only 13.0% of its total energy usage).  However, the production from the system varied widely over the course of the year, producing as much as 74.2% of the island’s electricity in 3Q 2018, but only 27.7% in 4Q.  The 27.7% electricity generation in 4Q represented only 6.4% of the island’s total energy usage.

The geography of the United States does not permit a water storage system like that of El Hierro for most parts of the country. As discussed above, the alternative of storage by large batteries, such as the type used for Tesla automobiles, carries truly astounding potential costs, potentially multiplying the cost of electricity by well more than a factor of 10, and even by a factor of 20 and more.

Such an economic jolt would hit everyone in the country hard, with the possible exception of some of the very wealthiest people. Even middle and upper middle-income people would be forced to make major reductions in their energy consumption. But poor and low-income people would be hit by far the hardest. If electricity prices went to ten or twenty times current levels, most low-income people would be almost completely priced out of things they now take for granted, like light, refrigeration and computers. They would be forced into energy poverty. This is the route down which the Clean Power Plan, but for the Supreme Court’s stay, would surely have taken us – on the now thoroughly discredited assumption that CO2is a pollutant (SeeSection II above).

A new study by IHS Markit, titled Ensuring Resilient and Efficient Electricity Generation: The Value of the Current Diverse U.S. Power Supply Portfolio considered the economic effects of state and federal energy policies that are driving electric utilities away from coal, nuclear and hydroelectric and towards renewables and natural gas.Such policies are forecast by IHS Markit to lead to a tripling of the current 7% reliance on wind, solar and other intermittent resources, with natural gas-fired resources supplying the majority of generation.

The Study’s Findings are that current policy driven market distortions will lead to:

U.S. power grid becoming less cost-effective, less reliable and less resilient due to lack of harmonization between federal and state policies and wholesale electricity market operations, …

Id. at p. 4 (Emphasis added).

The study forecast that these policies will cause significant increases in the retail price of electricity. The following economic impacts of these price increases were forecast:

The 27% retail power price increaseassociated with the less efficient diversity case causes a decline of real US GDP of 0.8%, equal to $158 billion (2016 chain-weighted dollars).

Labor market impacts of the less efficient diversity case involve a reduction of 1 million jobs.

A less efficient diversity case reduces real disposable income per household by about $845 (2016 dollars) annually, equal to 0.76% of the 2016 average household disposable income.”

Id. at p. 5. (Emphasis added).

It should be noted that the projected 27% increase in average retail power prices is predicated on the wind and solar renewables share rising by three-fold from 7% to “only” about 21%. The case studies discussed above make very clear the enormous increases in power prices that would result as policy makers attempt to move the renewables share higher than that.

Moreover, the study found that current state and federal policy-driven market distortion will imply:

Increased variability of monthly consumer electricity bills by around 22 percent; and an additional $75 billion per hour cost associated with more frequent power supply outages.

Id. (Emphasis added).

The study’s lead author commented that“[d]iversity of supply is an essential bedrock for security and reliability for an electric power system that is as big and diverse—and as crucially important—as that of the United States.”

See http://news.ihsmarkit.com/print/node/23497

Moreover, policies that promote increased use of wind and solar would likely result in little to no reduction in the level of electric sector CO2 emissions:

Ironically, addressing climate change concerns with federal and state policies to subsidize and mandate wind and solar electric generation produced the unintended consequence of distorting wholesale electricity market clearing prices and driving the uneconomic closure of nuclear power plants—a zero-emitting source. The result has been some power system CO2 emissions remaining constant or increasing, …

Id.

This article originally appeared at The Manhattan Contrarian

No Country Powers Itself Entirely With Wind & Solar; No Country Ever Will

Language matters. Orwell knew it, so does your local Ministry of Truth. Wind and solar propagandists know it too. They use ‘energy’, when consumers only care about ‘power’. They talk about wind and solar output in terms of meaningless averages, when consumers only care about having power as and when they need it, around-the-clock, whatever the weather, not when the sun is up or the wind is blowing.

From STOP THESE THINGS

Language matters. Orwell knew it, so does your local Ministry of Truth. Wind and solar propagandists know it too. They use ‘energy’, when consumers only care about ‘power’. They talk about wind and solar output in terms of meaningless averages, when consumers only care about having power as and when they need it, around-the-clock, whatever the weather, not when the sun is up or the wind is blowing.

They use ‘renewable’ as a mantra, conflating wind and solar power generators (which are hardly renewable) with stored or run of the river hydro and geothermal. Biomass generation (clearfelling forests and burning the timber harvested for power) somehow sneaks into the ‘renewable’ camp, too.

Rational thinkers are quick to concede that even hydro has its limits; droughts leading to empty dams (see above) or low river flows mean no power generated until the dam fills again, or the river starts flowing.

Then there’s the difference between electrical power and energy employed for other purposes. Electrical power generation is a fraction of the total energy being consumed in Western nations, on any given day.

The difference matters, particularly if the protagonists are making wild claims about powering the entire world with wind and solar. As a number of the more unhinged of their acolytes most certainly do.

Australian entrepreneur, Dick Smith found himself embroiled in a battle with the Ministry of Truth recently. The brawl began and ended with semantics, as Nick Cater explains below.

Tassie’s rich power exports damned by hydro hypocrites
The Australian
Nick Cater
25 March 2024

Dick Smith brushed shoulders with the truth police last week after claiming that Chris Bowen is attempting the impossible.

Smith claimed in an interview on 2GB that no country has managed to power an electricity grid solely with renewable energy. That is misinformation, according to the ABC’s Fact Checkers, who summoned Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University to testify on their behalf.

Professor Jacobson identified four national grids that ran on renewable energy: the Albanian Power Corporation, the Nepal Electricity Authority, the Bhutan Power Corporation and the National Electricity Administration of Paraguay. This is hardly good news for those who fear that chasing net zero will shrink our economy, since Paraguay, Albania, Nepal and Bhutan sit in the bottom half of world GDP rankings, while Australia is near the top. In 2022, the gross domestic product of the four economies combined was $US2550. Australia’s, for the record, was $US65,100.

The renewable energy exemplars do somewhat better when it comes to rain. Bhutan receives 1679mm in the average year, Nepal 1600, Albania 1485 and Paraguay 1270. The average annual rainfall across Australia is 433mm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology website. All four countries are powered entirely by hydro-electricity. This renders the ABC’s comparison spurious, except in Tasmania, Australia’s dampest, hilliest and poorest state, where the average rainfall on the west coast is almost double that of Paraguay.

Last year, Hydro Tasmania generated enough electricity to meet four-fifths of the state’s demand. The marginal cost of production is low, which would make electricity in the island state cheaper if not for the interstate agreement that obliges Tasmanians to share it with the energy mendicants in Victoria.

That could change if the next Tasmanian government sticks by its election promises. All this remains to be seen, however, as Labor leader Rebecca White conceded defeat on Sunday afternoon, and now caretaker premier Jeremy Rockliff seeks to strike a deal with the crossbench to form government. Whatever the case, both major parties pledged to curb sales of hydro-electricity to the mainland to bring down household power bills.

A hydro-reservation policy would undermine Bowen’s plans to turn Tasmania into the nation’s battery. It would also weaken the highly speculative business case for a second undersea cable to the mainland. The bi-directional Marinus Link has joined Snowy Hydro’s giant pumped hydro scheme and the VNI-West transmission line on the infamous list of energy mega-projects with inflated costs and embarrassingly protracted timelines.

The goal of making Tasmania energy self-sufficient grows more attractive as the cost of Marinus escalates. If a new Bass Strait link must be built, it could be built to handle one-way traffic in anticipation of the day when Tasmania will be able to export surplus clean energy to Victoria.

Yet economist Saul Eslake condemned the Tasmania-first energy policy last week as reckless. It would lead Tasmania down the Venezuelan path towards socialist disaster, Eslake told the Australian Financial Review. “They have crude oil coming out their ears, and, because of that, they think they can sell petrol to Venezuelans at 3.5¢ per litre,” he said.

Eslake argues that the loss of hydro-electricity export revenue will harm Tasmania’s economy and accelerate the exodus of Tasmanians to the mainland.

Yet Eslake’s argument is perverse. Reducing Tasmanian retail power prices relative to other states would help an incoming government attract new investment, particularly in the power-hungry digital economy. The energy demand for data processing and storage is driving the industry away from Silicon Valley towards countries such as Paraguay, where retail electricity is currently 8c a kWh, less than a third of the price in California and a quarter of the price in Australia.

There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Nevertheless, the doomed Gordon Dam above Franklin Dam would have put Tasmania on the Paraguayan path, minus the rampant corruption, human rights abuses and succession of military coups that have kept the landlocked South American nation from reaching its full potential.

In the early 1980s, when the Greens were chaining themselves to bulldozers in the Tasmanian forests, Paraguay was constructing the Itaipu Dam, named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the seven modern wonders of the world.

It produces more than 40TWh of clean electricity annually, enough to meet the country’s demand four times over. Brazil, a joint partner in the project, takes the rest.

The Franklin Dam would have increased Tasmania’s hydro capacity to 4GW, comfortably more than the state’s current demand. Liberal premier Robin Grey won the 1982 Tasmanian election promising to build the dam, reduce electricity prices and attract jobs.

The Tasmanian government was overruled by the federal Labor government the following year in a decision later endorsed by the High Court. The rest is history: an effective moratorium on dam building has been in place for the past 40 years. Hydro-electricity’s role as the energy villain in the morality play of progressive politics is now played by coal. Hydro, along with solar, wind and biomass (or wood burning to the uninitiated) sits in the sacred ranks of renewable energy, an expression seldom heard outside of deep-green circles in the early 1980s.

The green movement, too, has shifted ground from its tree-hugging days. Its priority is no longer protecting the natural environment but saving the planet, which is an entirely different thing.

For example, new-wave eco-thought allows ministerial approval of Andrew Forrest’s Upper Burdekin wind turbine development in northern Queensland, despite an environmental report warning the development will have “unavoidable significant residual impact” on four endangered species: the Sharman’s rock-wallaby, the greater glider, the red goshawk and the koala. Even so, the chances of revisiting the Franklin project or any other hydro dam in Australia would probably be a step too far, even for a movement undisturbed by its own hypocrisy.

Which leaves a question hanging for the ABC’s Fact Checkers. Has anyone managed an emissions-free electricity grid in a developed economy without abundant hydro? Why, yes, claims the ABC’s expert witness. California, population 37 million, has been running entirely on WWS “for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day”, Professor Jacobson says.

By that logic, the ABC Fact Unit should be considered 100 per cent accurate, fair and balanced since, occasionally, it defies our expectations by getting something right. Last week it tested Bowen’s claim “that average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years”.

Not true, the ABC’s experts ruled. The average construction time for all reactors built since 1950 was 8.1 years. For those built since 1970, it was 8.8 years.

We await the minister’s correction with bated breath.
The Australian

On the subject of build times for nuclear power plants, Nick could have made express reference to the construction of Calder Hall. Construction started in 1953 and was completed in 1956. It was the world’s first full-scale commercial nuclear power station to enter operation. The video below tells the story:

Arctic Winter Sea Ice Continues Recovery Despite “Hottest Year Ever”

Arctic sea ice has continued its recent recovery despite 2023 being claimed as the hottest year on record globally, according to data recorded by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI).

From The Daily Sceptic

BY WILL JONES

Arctic sea ice has continued its recent recovery despite 2023 being claimed as the hottest year on record globally, according to data recorded by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). From the AWI website (hat tip: Pierre Gosselin):

The slight recovery trend since the Arctic minimum was reached is continuing at the beginning of 2024, with the sea ice extent at the beginning of the year below the average value for the years 1981-2010, but in the lower range of the extreme values (minimum/maximum) of this international climate normal period (Figure 1).

If we look at the new reference period 1991-2020 introduced by the World Meteorological Organisation in 2021, January 2024 is roughly in line with the mean value of this period (see interactive graphic). The average Arctic sea ice extent in January was 13.99 million square kilometers, around 400,000 square kilometers greater than the ice cover in January over the last 20 years (Figure 2). During the month, the extent increased by approximately 29,000 square kilometers per day, which was slower than the average increase from 1981 to 2010.

Gosselin notes that the chart shows “a stable trend over the past two decades” with the recent January maximum “higher than 15 of the past 20 years”.

Polar bear specialist Susan Crockford remarks: “It’s almost like Arctic sea ice extent in winter has almost no relationship with global temperatures!”

The Daily Sceptic‘s Chris Morrison reported on this “stonking recovery” in Arctic sea ice back in February. But with other agencies and commentators now catching up with the news, it never hurts to keep the counternarrative facts in front of the public.