Day: April 25, 2024

The Myth of “Net Zero”: Unmasking the Hollow Promises and Imposed Sacrifices on UK Citizens

The term “net zero” has devolved into nothing more than a convenient political slogan, says Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) according to a recent Guardian Article.

From Watts Up With That?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

The term “net zero” has devolved into nothing more than a convenient political slogan, says Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) according to a recent Guardian Article.

His comments expose a facade that many have long suspected: the grandiose plans for a “green” economy are not only impractical but laden with hidden sacrifices for the everyday citizen.

A Convenient Escape from Reality

Stark’s admission that the term “net zero” might be better dropped because it has sparked a “dangerous” culture war is an astounding revelation of backpedaling. It appears that the climate agenda, once touted as the salvation of our environmental woes, is now a political hot potato that even its staunchest proponents are ready to drop when the going gets tough.

The populist response to the net zero label, described by Stark as a blockade to sensible improvements, conveniently omits a critical analysis of why such opposition exists. Could it be that the public has grown weary of being fed idealistic visions that fail to materialize into practical solutions?

The High Cost of Green Dreams

The U-turns by prominent UK politicians, such as the delayed changeover to electric vehicles and the watering down of financial commitments to green initiatives, are indicative of a broader trend. These reversals highlight a stark disconnect between policy promises and the realities of their implementation. The supposed minor lifestyle changes Stark alludes to under the net zero initiatives—like adopting heat pumps and shifting to electric vehicles—mask the significant financial and social costs that disproportionately burden the average household.

Tackling the climate crisis has been presented as a massive change, but Stark was at pains to point out that it would not be. “The world that we’ll have in 2050 is extremely similar to the one we have now. We will still be flying, we’ll still be eating meat, we will still be warming our homes, just heating them differently,” he said. “The lifestyle change that goes with this is not enormous at all.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

Stark’s comments downplay the substantial lifestyle adjustments and economic sacrifices required from the public to meet these nebulous net zero targets. Suggesting that life in 2050 under net zero mandates will be “extremely similar” to today is either a gross underestimation of the changes being pushed or a deliberate attempt to pacify the populace with oversimplified and disingenuous assurances.

The Technology Trap

“It’s very strange that some see heat pumps as an enemy of the people,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian before leaving his post this Friday. “This is a remarkably sensible technology that we’ve known about for a long time, a straightforward technology to put in your house to keep it warm, or to keep it cool in the summer. But in this country, they’ve taken on a totally different totemic role, as a technology that is being somehow forced upon the populace. I think that’s very dangerous.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

The push for technologies like heat pumps, which Stark defends as a “remarkably sensible technology,” does not acknowledge the broad resistance stemming from legitimate concerns about cost, effectiveness, and the imposition of such technologies on people without proper consultation or alternatives. Labeling this resistance as dangerous is a patronizing dismissal of valid consumer and citizen concerns, suggesting a disconnect between those formulating policies and those affected by them.

The Unrealistic Portrayal of Economic Benefits

“We are talking about cleaning up the economy and making it more productive – you can call that anything you like,” Stark said.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

While Stark points to countries like China, the US, and the EU investing heavily in low-carbon technologies as models to emulate, he glosses over the complexities and challenges inherent in these transitions. The narrative that transitioning to a low-carbon economy will be largely beneficial and painless ignores the economic disruptions and job losses in industries reliant on fossil fuels.

Divisiveness and Policy Impositions

But it was not just those who were against climate action who were causing the problem, according to Stark. Climate activists were also alarming people, he warned, and creating “quite a serious barrier to large parts of the political spectrum to support climate action” by forceful protests, and presenting environmental policies as radical.

“It would be more helpful if they were less divisive,” he said. “I don’t think it is radical. It’s really important that we stop using words like that, as it is understandably frightening.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

It is ironic that Stark criticizes climate activists for being divisive, as the policies he supports have themselves been incredibly divisive. Moreover, his call for policies that are “fair” and do not disproportionately impact those on lower incomes rings hollow when the track record of such policies shows a tendency to do precisely that.

Conclusion: A Call for Realism and Transparency

The narrative surrounding “net zero” as propagated by figures like Chris Stark has been one of oversimplification and, at times, outright deception. The sacrifices imposed on UK citizens under the guise of environmental progress involve significant lifestyle changes, economic burdens, and a curtailment of personal choices. As we move forward, a more grounded, transparent approach to environmental policy is necessary—one that honestly addresses the costs and challenges, engages with public concerns genuinely, and fosters policies that do not just serve the elite or technocratic visions detached from reality.

H/T strativarius

False Energy Transition: The View from Australia (Nick Cater, Menzies Research Centre)

The political “energy transition” has predictably violated comparative energy physics and thus consumer preferences–and best industry practices. A re-look at the failing, impossible “energy transition” was penned by Nick Cater, senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre in Australia. [1] His analysis deserves wide attention, as does his other work at the energy-centric Reality Bites.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Previous energy transitions adopted energy sources of greater density and efficiency than those they replaced. Those advantages became a natural incentive for their adoption. In the current ‘transition’, the process is reversed unless we are prepared to countenance the mass use of nuclear technology.” – Nick Cater, below

The political “energy transition” has predictably violated comparative energy physics and thus consumer preferences–and best industry practices. A re-look at the failing, impossible “energy transition” was penned by Nick Cater, senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre in Australia. [1] His analysis deserves wide attention, as does his other work at the energy-centric Reality Bites.

As the First Fleet vessels, propelled by wind and muscle, made their way to Australia, the last energy transition was making headway in Europe and the United States. The first commercial steamboat completed a successful trial on the Delaware River in New Jersey on August 20, 1787, heralding the arrival of a more powerful and efficient source of energy.

The ability to turn energy-dense fossil fuel into usable energy would be the key to accelerating economic growth in Australia, which began with European settlement. By the time the colony of New South Wales marked a century of settlement in 1878, steam-powered ocean-going vessels were starting to be constructed from steel. Frederick Wolseley was demonstrating a prototype set of steam-driven mechanical shears. This Australian invention secured Australia’s dominance in the supply of wool to steam-powered woollen mills on the other side of the world.

Preparation was underway for the first export shipment of frozen lamb, a technological breakthrough that would measurably improve British diets and longevity. Australia was joined to Europe by electric telegraph, the first stage in developing electronic communications that would break the tyranny of distance. A massive infrastructure investment project that would supply homes, factories, and civic spaces with electricity on demand was beginning to be contemplated. Tamworth in 1888 would become the first town in Australia to be serviced by an electric grid.

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This potted history of Australia’s industrial and economic progress tells us much about the nature of energy transitions. They don’t happen overnight, nor do they respond to government command. They take place incrementally in fits and starts. Innovation is just the beginning. Engineering and economic viability take decades to accomplish, not days.

The most profound consequences of energy transition can be unexpected. Technological applications for steel, reinforced concrete, and electricity were emerging by the end of 19th century. Still, it is doubtful anyone at the time in low-rise Sydney would have imagined the futuristic streetscapes a century and a quarter later.

The magnitude of the transition to net-zero is seldom acknowledged in public and political debates. There is a scant appreciation of the technical difficulties of decarbonising our energy supply and limited discussion about the costs.

The last transition — from wind, water, biomass and muscle, both human and animal, to fossil fuels — took more than a century to complete. It required constant innovation and an incalculable amount of capital investment. Our current net-zero path requires us to abandon fossil fuels entirely in favour of so-called renewable energy sources, namely wind, solar, biomass and water, in just 26 years.

Previous energy transitions adopted energy sources of greater density and efficiency than those they replaced. Those advantages became a natural incentive for their adoption. In the new “transition,” the process is reversed unless we are prepared to countenance the mass use of nuclear technology.

The last transition gave us more dependable sources of energy independent of weather patterns. Transitioning to a net-zero economy based purely on renewable energy presents the seemingly insurmountable problem of overcoming weather- and solar-dependent variability.

The last transition considerably reduced land demand and lifted the pressure on biodiversity. Vast hectares of woodland ceased to be felled solely to produce energy. A transition to renewable energy will once again make heavy demands on land. One recent study estimated that a transition to net zero-2050 in Australia that only used land-based renewable generation would require 129,179 sq km of land, an area roughly the size of Victoria.

The last energy transition sought greater efficiency by centralising energy production in industrial-scale fossil fuel conversion plants located close to most consumers of energy in cities. The proposed transition to renewables decentralises energy production from a few dozen power stations to cottage-scale roof-top generators and hundreds of small, part-time generators often distant from population centres.

The engineering demands are matched in scale by the economic challenges. The transition from an economy powered by muscle, water, and wind to fossil fuel means the average human has nearly 700 times more useful energy at his or her disposal than their ancestors had at the beginning of the century, according to Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian scientist and energy policy analyst who writes: “An abundance of useful energy underlies and explains all the gains, from better eating to mass-scale travel; from the mechanisation of production and transport to instant electronic communication.”

According to physicist and economist Robert Ayres, economic growth and energy flow are intrinsically linked. “Nothing happens without a flow of energy. Not in the natural world and not in the human world. Thus, it is perfectly true that energy — not money — makes the world go round.”

Yet the economic consequences of pursuing ambitious renewable energy targets seldom enter the debate. Brian Fisher, Australia’s leading energy economist, is one of the few who have attempted to model the economic costs of a forced energy transition. In a 2019 study, he estimated that the cumulative GNP losses of pursuing Labor’s then 45 per cent 2030 target would be between $264 billion and $542 billion, depending on the chosen parameters. A rising energy price would lead to a minimum three per cent reduction in real wages and 167,000 fewer jobs in 2030.

The economic consequences of the government’s current policy are likely to be similar. Scant attention has been paid to the consequences of allocating vast amounts of capital to the net-zero energy transition. Australia’s Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, claims the capital cost of Australia’s energy transition will be $120 billion. Yet a new report commissioned by the Menzies Research Centre found that the Australian Energy Market Operator’s data put the capital cost at $320 billion in terms of net present value (NPV). The MRC’s report concludes that the price will be substantially higher, resulting in higher energy costs for consumers and businesses.

———————-

Australia has taken a leap into the unknown. The scale of investment required to achieve the 82 per cent renewables target is unprecedented. The engineering challenge of incorporating such a large amount of variable renewable energy (VRE) is immense. No country has achieved anything close to such a concentration without a considerable contribution from nuclear, geothermal, or hydro generation.

The sorry history of central planning inspires little confidence that the top-down, target-driven approach taken by AEMO’s roadmap (its Integrated Systems Plan) will work. The risk of failure is high. The timetable for construction is impossibly tight. The schedule for the withdrawal of base-load coal and gas is not synchronised with the timeline for expanding the capacity of renewables. The target will increase the risk of blackouts, as the National Energy Market (NEM) will only be able to meet reliability objectives with significant investment in storage and other forms of firming capacity.

Experience has taught us that the risk of escalating costs and overruns in renewable energy infrastructure projects is extremely high. A lack of expertise, the use of non-standard technology and design, rent-seeking behaviour, community resistance, and supply and labour shortages mean that projects of this size and complexity carry considerable risk. Bent Flyvbjerg’s Iron Law of Megaprojects applies: ‘Over time, the estimated costs of megaprojects tend to increase, while the benefits tend to decrease.’

The presence of these and other hurdles invite disturbing conclusions. The cost of transition to a net-zero emission economy by 2050 will be substantially higher than the $320 billion estimated by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

Capital formation on this scale will be a significant challenge. The opportunity cost of the allocation of capital to the cost of transition will be high. The retail price of energy will continue to rise in the short to medium term as capital costs are absorbed. Without rapid technological developments, costs in other heavy-emitting sectors, such as heavy manufacturing, agriculture and transport, will increase. In an intricately linked, dynamic economy, the effects on employment, taxation, and growth will be substantial.

There are no quick fixes. Nuclear power would be a far better replacement for coal than wind, water and solar. It is denser, cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable than renewables or fossil fuels. It is widely used as a source of affordable and dependable electricity worldwide. It could be used for industrial heating and some forms of transportation. Yet, it is hard to foresee the technological breakthroughs that would enable it to meet all the energy requirements of a modern economy.

The last energy transition occurred organically and took hundreds of years. It was driven by the natural attraction of abandoning old ways of doing things for new ways that were demonstrably better. The energy transition we are currently being asked to undertake is different. It is driven by central planners who expect it to be completed by the middle of this century, which is just 26 years away.

We are being asked to give up tried and tested ways of doing things for unproven technology or technology that does not yet exist. As Alex Epstein has written, it requires a radical departure from how any energy economy has ever worked. A calm assessment of our progress so far must conclude, as does Epstein, that abandoning fossil fuels in the timescale required is virtually impossible. The proposal to replace them with renewable energy alone is totally crackpot.

[1] The Menzies Research Centre is a Liberal think tank promoting the free, just and prosperous society in Australia. More information can be found here.

———————–

This post was published at Quadrant Online as “Leap into the Dark: The Energy-Transition Fantasy” (April 6, 2024). It also appeared at Nick Cater’s site Reality Bites. Full documentation (footnotes) can be found there.

Energy Prices 30% Higher Under Biden Admin

Energy prices in the United States are wreaking havoc on budget-sensitive households, making it harder for families to save money or get ahead financially.

From ClimateRealism

Guest Post by Andrew Terrell

Energy prices in the United States are wreaking havoc on budget-sensitive households, making it harder for families to save money or get ahead financially.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, Americans’ electricity bills have skyrocketed nearly 30%, or 13 times faster than in the previous seven years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest consumer price index data.

The data showed that the energy index rose by 1.1% in March following a 2.3% increase in February. The gasoline and electricity index also increased in March, climbing 1.7% and 0.9%, respectively. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the energy index jumped 2.1%, the gasoline index increased 1.3%, and the electricity index soared 5.0% annually.

Despite the Federal Reserve holding interest rates steady since July 2023, inflation continues to pose a problem for policymakers and households.

“There is no improvement here, we’re moving in the wrong direction,” said Bankrate chief financial analyst Greg McBride in an interview with Fox Business. “The usual trouble spots persist — shelter, motor vehicle insurance, maintenance, repairs, and service costs. Add electricity to that list, up 0.9% in March and 5% over the past year.”

Part of the reason for the surge in energy prices is due to the push to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power plants with renewable subsidies and green-energy mandates.

Despite the Biden administration passing the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the law has done little to lower energy prices. For example, the average cost of electricity has jumped from $0.136 per kilowatt hour in January 2021 to $0.174 per kilowatt hour in March 2024, a nearly 28% increase, BLS data shows.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects hotter summer temperatures this year, so the agency forecasts an annualized 4% rise in residential electricity consumption. This means the average household’s electricity bill will be much more expensive in 2024 than in 2023.

Originally written by the Dallas Express, republished with permission.

Backpedalling: Now “Net Zero” is an unhelpful slogan says UK Climate watchdog

It’s a win. The climate wars will rage on, but the Net Zero spell isn’t working any more, so they will have to find a newer one without such a smell. The sacred propaganda term that was going to save all life on Earth until five minutes ago is more than just a worn out advertising slogan, the skeptics campaign against it has made it a toxic term. Like ESG, it’s become a liability.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

The term “Net Zero” has become a dirty word

It’s a win. The climate wars will rage on, but the Net Zero spell isn’t working any more, so they will have to find a newer one without such a smell. The sacred propaganda term that was going to save all life on Earth until five minutes ago is more than just a worn out advertising slogan, the skeptics campaign against it has made it a toxic term. Like ESG, it’s become a liability.

The people know “Net Zero” is not just a fluffy footprint on a forest, but an attack on their wallet and their lifestyle. It’s a great credit to GWPF and NetZeroWatch in the UK for turning this phrase back against the infinitely well funded financial-house-and-government-alliance.

Net zero has become unhelpful slogan, says outgoing head of UK climate watchdog

The Guardian (of the ruling class)

The concept of “net zero” has become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK’s climate watchdog has warned.

“Net zero has definitely become a slogan that I feel occasionally is now unhelpful, because it’s so associated with the campaigns against it,” he said. “That wasn’t something I expected.”

Politicians on all sides are now wary of associating themselves with the term, he said, which was inhibiting progress.

The scare stories worked. Look at the backpedaling on meat and flying:

Tackling the climate crisis has been presented as a massive change, but Stark was at pains to point out that it would not be. “The world that we’ll have in 2050 is extremely similar to the one we have now. We will still be flying, we’ll still be eating meat, we will still be warming our homes, just heating them differently,” he said. “The lifestyle change that goes with this is not enormous at all.”

Now they are trying to tell us it will be easy to change the weather?

This is part of the big backdown we’ve seen in so many theatres. First ESG became a dirty word, now “Net Zero” is too. Money is fleeing from “sustainable investments”. EV’s are on the nose. It’s the end of an era that started (as best as I can tell) around 2015 and the Paris agreement and has been hammered for the last five years.

But make no mistake, the freeloading barnacles of bureaucracy and banking will transmogrify, and they will hide their intent a little more carefully. In Australia, after the Carbon Tax became a dirty term (when Tony Abbott won in a landslide) the tax returned under many guises, but it was never called a Carbon Tax again. Among many names, it became The SafeGuard Mechanism, where an emissions trading scheme was legislated unbenownst to nearly everyone. Now they want to impose a fossil fuel tax. They are barely hiding it.

After years of failure at UN junkets to set up international emission trading schemes, which also got themselves a bad name, the EU has set up a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. These carbon tariffs will take money from foreign countries to make their own emissions trading scheme workable.

And just like all the other taxes, the media sycophants tell us we will “prosper” with an international carbon price. (Just as soon as we figure out how to smelt steel with solar panels.)

Green on Green: Wilderness Protection Laws and Indigenous Rights are Derailing Renewable Energy Projects

Laws protecting Koalas and “the magnificent brood frog” have prevented a renewable energy company from clearing 500 acres 500 hectares of native vegetation in the Australian tropics.

 brood frog

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Laws protecting Koalas and “the magnificent brood frog” have prevented a renewable energy company from clearing 500 acres 500 hectares of native vegetation in the Australian tropics.

Federal environmental laws ‘single biggest challenge’ for delivering renewable energy projects in Australia

By national regional affairs reporter Jane Norman

In far north Queensland, traditional owners, clean energy developers and conservationists had spent three long years sweating on this decision.

Depending on which side you believed, this development would either supply 150,000 homes with clean, green energy or destroy the forest habitat of threatened native species.

Late on Friday, the wait was finally over.

An email from Ark Energy landed in inboxes, announcing the company had “withdrawn the Wooroora Station Wind Farm proposal from the federal environmental assessment process.”

In other words, the proposed project was dead.

The Korean-owned developer had planned to clear more than 500 hectares of native vegetation next to the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, home to animals including the koala and magnificent brood frog.

…Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-22/environmental-laws-biggest-challenge-for-clean-energy-developers/103750830

This isn’t the only wind farm in trouble in Australia’s far north, WUWT recently reported on the Aboriginal campaign to block the Chalumbin wind farm, which would have despoiled part of the beautiful Australian Atherton Tableland.

Aboriginals are also playing their in other places to derail the green revolution, by demanding fair compensation from any infrastructure which intrudes onto their sacred lands. All those empty looking deserts where entrepreneurs hoped to install vast solar arrays are actually full of protected Aboriginal sites and places of special cultural and spiritual significance.

And let’s not forget farmers and rural people, who have spooked renewable developers with their ferocious campaign to prevent power lines from crossing their land.

I think when the dust settles we’ll all owe a vote of thanks to all of these groups, for their determined effort to stop greens from ruining the landscape with their ugly mechanical monstrosities.

We have to stop these green developers from exploiting the wilderness. The lesson is, if you don’t want a beautiful part of your landscape to be despoiled by greens, and you can’t find a local indigenous group who are prepared to fight for their sacred claims, nesting boxes for rare and endangered species and perhaps a few livestream webcams are your next best line of defence.

Update (EW): Click here to see Ark Energy’s description of Wooroora Station, along with a map showing the location – right in the middle of one of the most beautiful sections of the Atherton Tablelands. Ark Energy claims to have the support of locals for their project.

Correction (EW): 500 hectares, not 500 acres (h/t Tombstone Gabby).

 “New Ice Age Has Begun,” Astrophysicist Warns…Due To Reduced Solar Activity

Due to changing solar activity, the Earth is heading into a new Little Ice Age, according to Northumbria University astrophysicist Prof. Valentina Zharkova, Newcastle, Great Britain.
“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

Due to changing solar activity, the Earth is heading into a new Little Ice Age, according to Northumbria University astrophysicist Prof. Valentina Zharkova, Newcastle, Great Britain.

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

This was reported by German online Report 24 here last week.

NASA image of a blizzard. Image soutce: NASA, public domain.

“This is due to the changing solar activity, she explains. Only uneducated people could call for a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” according to Report 24 here.

As the media is full of reports about record temperatures, the elevated readings likely have a lot to do with thermometers being placed increasingly in urban heat absorbing areas. The recent warming has very little to do with carbon dioxide.

“CO2 is not our enemy,” says Professor Zharkova, who was born and educated in Ukraine.

“We in fact have a CO2 deficiency in the world, and it is three to four times lower than the plants would like,” says Zharkova. On geological terms, over the last 140 million years, CO2 in the atmosphere is at really near record low levels.

“140 million years ago, it was estimated at 2,500 ppm, or about six times higher. And this also meant a greener and more biodiverse world, according to the professor,” writes Report 24.

“We don’t need to remove CO2 because we would actually need more of it. It’s food for plants to produce oxygen for us. The people who say CO2 is bad are obviously not very good at universities or wherever they studied. Only uneducated people can come up with such absurd talk that CO2 should be removed from the air,” Professor Zharkova tells Report 24.

Scharkova estimates the Earth’s average temperature will fall by one degree Celsius over the next 30 years and not rise. She says that the sun’s lower solar activity will lead to cooling.

Report 24 quotes Zharkova: “I only feel sympathy for the people who have invested in solar systems,” says the professor. “During the Maunder Minimum, there were years when there was no summer at all – there was a brief spring, then fall, then winter again. And if there’s snow on your solar panels or the sky is cloudy, they’re useless.”

“Whatever we do on Earth, we can’t change the orbit of the sun and the big planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus,” she explains. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Read entire article (German) at Report 24.

The War On Cars

In a fit of self-loathing, the European Union has begun to destroy the economic engine that pays its bills. Some of this is well known, but some is not, and it will astonish you.

Only nine of the EU’s 27 member states are net budget contributors, and Germany pays the most – around €25bn (£22bn) in 2021. Without the generosity of the Bundesrepublik, the European Commission would struggle to keep the lights on at the Berlaymont.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

As you know, I have been warning about this for years:

In a fit of self-loathing, the European Union has begun to destroy the economic engine that pays its bills. Some of this is well known, but some is not, and it will astonish you.

Only nine of the EU’s 27 member states are net budget contributors, and Germany pays the most – around €25bn (£22bn) in 2021. Without the generosity of the Bundesrepublik, the European Commission would struggle to keep the lights on at the Berlaymont.

In turn, that wealth comes from its manufacturing industry. Specifically, from strong global demand for the German vehicles which account for almost three-fifths of Europe’s car exports. As recently as a decade ago, the streets of Shanghai and Shenzhen teemed with German brand SUVs. 

So you would think that the regulators in Brussels would show some care to the delicate vase they’re carrying across the room. But not a bit of it.

French, German and Italian automakers are now caught in a pincer. In order to meet climate targets, vehicles powered by conventionally-refined hydrocarbons will be phased out, while much cheaper battery-powered (BEV) competition from China floods in.

The industry won’t be permitted to sell the product that European customers do want, but can’t compete on price with a product it appears to have enough of. So far, so (depressingly) obvious.

But what is little known is how specific and vindictive the EU has become in its attack on the car.

For this is not actually a war on the combustion engine, so much as a war on personal mobility. The EU has relaxed its dogmatic insistence on alternative hydrocarbons for maritime and aviation – but not for road vehicles.

To understand this, recall that the phrase “fossil fuel” is actually very misleading. Hydrocarbons are not only dug up and refined – they can also be made from scratch, using biology or chemistry.

The most “organic” method is to use algae. But you need a lot of it, and attempts to engineer them to produce higher yields have failed to scale.

Then there’s chemistry. The Fischer-Tropsch process converts carbon monoxide and hydrogen into a complex hydrocarbon – an e-fuel that can replace petrol.

You do need energy both to unlock the hydrogen, and then to create sufficient temperatures for the process itself to work. However, if these inputs are “zero carbon” then so is the e-fuel that emerges.

In December, I reported how Porsche is using wind power in Patagonia to produce petrol and diesel. Or, if we had lots of nuclear capacity, we’d use the off-peak electricity. By day the plants would keep us warm and at night they could create the petrol, diesel and oil we need.

In fact, Japan’s HTTR reactor design even produces the required hydrogen as a by-product.

In short, in fields where hydrocarbons are superior or simply irreplaceable, we can swap the ones we dig up with ones we make and still hit climate targets. And the infrastructure of pipelines and filling stations is already in place, which cannot be said for hydrogen or electric charging.

Industry is responding. Infinium, which is backed by both Amazon and Bill Gates, recently broke ground on a new plant that uses both carbon capture and renewables to create hydrogen. There are many more. But the EU is stubbornly refusing to allow cars and trucks to use them.

It’s baffling, because the Eurocrats at ‘DG-MOVE’ (the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport) have already conceded that synthetic hydrocarbons are green.

In July, the EU permitted the maritime sector to use “renewable fuels of non biological origin (RFNBO)”, as it calls e-fuels. In October, it allowed the aviation sector to use them too.

Perhaps it’s ignorance, or simply dogma. However opposition to the car has become one of the sustaining grievances of modern policy making.

Just look at how vehemently our councils, our planners and our architects detest four wheel freedom, too. A low-intensity civil war is breaking out over low traffic neighbourhoods, or zoning schemes as in Oxford.

Nicholas Boyes Smith, the design czar for whom the “Office of Place” was created, issues a stream of anti-car Tweets.

Fifteen minute cities are “a  timeless Scrutonian ideal” he argues. There is no garden city or new town movement today. In the 1960s, bureaucrats bulldozed neighbourhoods to ensure that cars were convenient. Now they destroy neighbourhoods by inhibiting their use – or stop them being built at all.

“Planning is now about the rationing of materials and resources and space, rather than their deployment. It’s subtractive, not additive,” says architect critic Tim Abrahams.

“Constraint is the watchword, not opportunity.”

The Malthusians want fewer of us, and ideally we’d be going nowhere, except by bike or on foot. Car companies are facing prejudices from all corners, but it’s the EU’s ban on green fuel that is the most urgent.

No wonder Renault chief executive Luca de Meo, in an open letter to the EU published last month, bemoaned the lack of joined up thinking or strategy.

In contrast to the US and China, the Commission passes rule after rule, an incoherent mess. EU rules alone have made passenger cars 60pc heavier on average, he wrote.

Switzerland, which is in the European Economic Area but not the EU, has blessed e-fuels.

Like the Swiss, we also have an outstanding chemicals industry. The lunacy of aligning ourselves with Brussels, now we have left, has never been more apparent.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/22/eu-war-on-cars-destroying-economic-foundations

Netflix movie highlights outdoor sports boosting disabled veterans

A recent essay noted that “movies have the potential to inspire social change by shedding light on important issues.”

When Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella “A River Runs Through It” became a 1992 movie hit, Americans learned that, for some, “there is no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

A recent essay noted that “movies have the potential to inspire social change by shedding light on important issues.”

When Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella “A River Runs Through It” became a 1992 movie hit, Americans learned that, for some, “there is no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”

Today, thanks to the Netflix release of a 2022 movie based on Stephen Camelio’s screenplay, “Mending the Line,” America is learning that fly fishing can play an important role in the physical and emotional healing of disabled veterans – true social change.

Upon its streaming release last month, “Mending the Line” was Netflix’s most watched movie. It has also become a major recruiting tool for Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Inc. (PHW), which helps disabled veterans cope with physical and emotional damage and builds camaraderie many had lost when they left the military.

Retired Navy Captain Ed Nicholson had no idea that the idea he birthed while recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2005 would grow to serve 65,000 veterans just since 2012, including women vets who have just formed a PHW offshoot called Women on the Fly.

Nicholson, visibly moved by seeing “so many young people with devastating injuries, people in their twenties with missing limbs, deep psychological problems, and other terrible wounds,” won permission to let recovering veterans join him in fly casting on a hospital lawn “perfect for a bit of fly fishing.”

That led to Nicholson taking patients on day trips to nearby lakes and streams. “It just sort of snowballed.” He incorporated PHW in 2007, and in eight short years six paid staff and over 2,500 volunteers were serving up to 6,000 disabled veterans.

Meanwhile, former Marine Steve Ramirez, unable to land a job in the fly-fishing paradise of Montana, had found relief for his PTSD in fly fishing in spring-fed streams and lakes in the Texas Hill Country. To share his joy, he penned Casting Forward and then Casting Onward, sharing stories of his fishing adventures.

Fly fishing, Ramirez mused, “forces you to be in the moment and stop thinking so your brain can have a break.” But Casting Onward “is about more than fish; it’s about people. It’s about how we find our tribe and cherish them every day.”

Ramirez, already tied in with Project Healing Waters, had quite a surprise when his books were prominently featured in “Mending the Line.” Camelio, tipped off to Ramirez by Joshua Caldwell, the movie’s director, says, “Where I had made up a story about the horrors of PTSD and the healing power of nature, Ramirez had lived it.”

Movie reviewer Sheila O’Malley praised “Mending the Line” as “the first film to explicitly address this new and innovative treatment, showing it as a potential therapy for those who suffer in silence”.

Thanks to supporters like Sight Line Provisions CEO Edgar Diaz, who hosted an early screening of the film (before Netflix), and a diverse group of sponsors (from Trout Unlimited to the Nature Conservancy), PHW now has nearly 200 highly successful programs in 48 states and works with Department of Defense hospitals, warrior transition units, and Veterans Affairs medical centers and clinics to recruit new members and volunteers.

PHW has a major focus on amputees, many of whom learned to tie flies with one arm. Fly tying and rod building help disabled vets recover motor skills, and the camaraderie and the fishing help with PTSD, anxiety, and depression – all vital to reducing the veteran suicide rate.

“Healing veterans and healing habitats go together,” says A. J. Gottschalk, PHW’s creative director. Volunteers combine great fishing with stream rehabilitation, mangrove removal, or trash pickup – all needed to preserve the vitality of fly-fishing streams.

Air Force veteran Kiley Poole partnered with PHW Board of Trustees member Kendyl Hanks to launch Women on the Fly. Poole and Coast Guard veteran Sue Kerver say female veterans need safe spaces to cope with issues, such as military sexual trauma, exposure to toxins, physical health, and chronic pain, difficult for women to address in mixed company.

Female-only outings at PHW-friendly Freedom Ranch for Heroes in Montana or Oak Heart Lodge in Michigan attract female veterans uncomfortable in otherwise all-male fly-fishing expeditions. Some come to these events just to be there with their fellow female veterans.

Poole says a fishing trip to Freedom Ranch with eight other female veterans “revitalized my soul.  I had shut off all things military,” then on one rainy day, “we just tied flies and talked about our families”.

Key pillars of Women on the Fly include representation, recognition, retention, recruiting, and a special focus on veterans in rural areas, for whom travel to any PHW outing can be a barrier. Travel costs are a major obstacle for partners eager to host all-female PHW fly-fishing outings, but Kerver says that there is also a need to properly outfit women veterans with waders and other gear that many cannot afford.

Today, PHW has fewer than a thousand women members, and some programs remain all male. That is something Kerver and Poole hope to change, and a major reason they kept Women on the Fly within the PHW framework. To augment their outreach, the women are sponsoring virtual fly-tying events that build bonds without added costs.

Building on the Netflix exposure, Project Healing Waters is finding other ways to expand its outreach. One is a sweepstakes where anyone can get a chance to win a 2024 Toyota Tundra truck, a Boulder Boat Works drift boat with a boat trailer and three oars, or any of 40 lesser prizes. While donations are not required, they are encouraged.

Fly fishing not only helps disabled veterans and volunteers get away from their daily stresses, the sport also increases their dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and concentration.

But most of all, the camaraderie experienced by these veterans helps them regain purpose in lives damaged by war and conflict in ways that mere physical therapy cannot penetrate.

Simply put, fly fishing restores their hope. 

This article originally appeared at Town Hall

DeSmog on IEA-UK: Guilty as Charged!

DeSmog’s enemies list has grown so long and distinguished that it refutes its “hit-piece” mission. Fact is, there is a vast scientifically literate middle that exposes the flawed case for climate catastrophism and forced energy transformation.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Great work, Institute for Economic Affairs! May the honor of being on DeSmog’s hit list raise awareness of your noble mission and attract new donors.”

DeSmog’s enemies list has grown so long and distinguished that it refutes its “hit-piece” mission. Fact is, there is a vast scientifically literate middle that exposes the flawed case for climate catastrophism and forced energy transformation.

My DeSmog’s 1,000: A Badge of Honor congratulated the army of truth-seekers, while noting that many deserving individuals and groups remain. (Our Mark Krebs and Kassie Andrews are just two–all can apply.) [1]

Here are some rebuttals that mostly reprint what DeSmog has to say about its enemies as correct–and even heroic against the termite aspirations of the governmental Climate Industrial Complex.

In alphabetical order:

Robert Bryce (April 28, 2020)

John Christy (February 5, 2019)

Derrick Hollie (February 13, 2019)

Steven Koonin (December 7, 2022)

Isaac Orr (October 21, 2019)

Vaclav Smil (April 28, 2022)

and myself: Robert L. Bradley Jr. (March 7, 2018)

The latest from DeSmog, IEA Think Tank Contributes to Climate Science Denial Documentary, by Sam Bright (April 5, 2024), mentions a lot of good analysis and conclusions from the Institute for Economic Affairs (London). The quotations below speak for themselves, leaving out the ad hominem and guilt-by-association paragraphs that assert rather than debate. [My reactions are in bold.]

In the documentary [Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth], [IEA’s Stephen] Davies claims that climate activists want to impose an “austere” life on ordinary people. “Behind all the talk about a climate emergency, climate crisis” is “an animus and hostility towards” working-class people, “their lifestyle, their beliefs and a desire to change it by force if necessary,” he says. [Correct] …

The film suggests that we shouldn’t be worried about greenhouse gas emissions, because plants need carbon dioxide. “We’re in a CO2 famine,” one interviewee claims. [True]

Climate The Movie producer Thomas Nelson told DeSmog that “I see the misguided fight against carbon dioxide as being as crazy as fighting against oxygen or water vapour, and I think scaring innocent children about this is deeply evil”. [True … and fantastic]

The IEA has extensive influence in politics and the media. It was pivotal to Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership as prime minister, and has boasted of its access to Conservative ministers and MPs. During the year ending March 2023, the IEA appeared in the media on 5,265 occasions, a figure 43 percent higher than its previous peak in 2019. [Bloody Good!]

The group has also received donations from a number of philanthropic trusts accused of channelling funds from the fossil fuel industry and helping to support climate science denial groups. The IEA is a member of the Atlas Network – an international collaboration of “extreme” free market groups that have been accused of promoting the interests of fossil fuel companies and other large corporations. [True … good going]

The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas would be “madness,” has criticised the windfall tax imposed on North Sea oil and gas firms, and said that the government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves is a “welcome step”. [Correct!]

“Clearly the IEA is now ramping up its climate culture war and the Conservative Party has been following suit. The cross-party consensus on climate action we used to have in Parliament is under strain like never before.” [True … great deliverable]

During the documentary, Davies suggests that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is being used to limit the freedom of individuals. He claims that climate activists want to impose “a much more austere simple kind of lifestyle” on people “in which the consumption choices of the great bulk of the population are controlled or even prohibited.” [True]

Davies adds that: “What you have here is a classic example of class hypocrisy and self-interest masquerading as public spirited concern. You could take these kinds of green socialists more seriously if they lived off grid, they cut their own consumption down to the minimum, they never flew. Instead you get constant talk about how human consumption is destroying the planet but the people making all this talk show absolutely no signs of reducing their own.” [True]

The documentary also features an interview with Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group. Peiser has previously claimed that it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis,” while the GWPF has expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet.” [Sound] …

The documentary also features Claire Fox, a member of the House of Lords who was nominated for a peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020. Fox used the documentary to claim that, by tackling climate change, people will be forced to pay more “to simply live the lives that they were leading.” She suggests that supporters of climate action are trying to “take away what we consider to be not luxuries but necessities.” [True]

The brochure also lists the IEA’s chief operating officer Andy Mayer, who has said that the government should “get rid of” its target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model.” [Correct]

Great work, Institute for Economic Affairs! May the honor of being on DeSmog’s hit list raise awareness of your noble mission and attract new donations.”

[1] To be considered for DeSmog’s “Climate Disinformation Database,” contact them here.

Profits of Doom

A mainstay of the green lobby in the face of its growing number of critics is that climate sceptics are funded by oil, gas and coal interests. By claiming that commentators such as yours truly are merely the PR front for Big Oil, green campaigners feel that they have excused themselves from the need to make rational arguments.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY BEN PILE

A mainstay of the green lobby in the face of its growing number of critics is that climate sceptics are funded by oil, gas and coal interests. By claiming that commentators such as yours truly are merely the PR front for Big Oil, green campaigners feel that they have excused themselves from the need to make rational arguments. Profit, not reason, they claim, drives scrutiny of the climate agenda. But not only do their accusations lack any evidence, they ignore the much greater flow of money between private interests and green lobbyists. So, what’s in it for them?

If only we were funded by Big Oil, perhaps I would be as wealthy as Britain’s top green officials, such as the outgoing Chief Executive of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC), Chris Stark. The civil servant’s total salary and benefits for the financial year 2020-21 amounted to a whopping £400,000. That’s more than the annual total income for the organisation at number one in the green demonology – the Global Warming Policy Foundation – for four out of the last five years. The CCC’s former Chairman, John Gummer, restyled as Lord Deben, was revealed to have made £600,000 from his business dealings with green companies, which he failed to declare in the register of interests – profits that helped him employ a butler, no less, at his Suffolk mansion. Gummer’s predecessor at the CCC, Lord Adair Turner, saves the planet by heating the swimming pool at his country retreat using solar power.

But as it happens, our alleged fossil fuel overlords are really quite mean. According to green activist sleuths InfluenceMap, the biggest oil companies in the world spend approximately $200 million per year on climate-related propaganda. That’s a lot of money, right? However, despite this being framed as ‘denial’ by InfluenceMap’s coreligionists, the group’s investigations expose no such thing. Rather than finding receipts, InfluenceMap’s analysis merely estimates the costs of its enemies’ advertising and lobbying campaigns – mere guesswork, in other words, forms the backbone of its research. And rather than finding ‘denial’, that analysis includes lobbying in support of Net Zero policies and global agreements. Using actual receipts, not merely estimates, I counted the total grants made by the organisations that fund InfluenceMap to green campaigning organisations. It amounted to over $1.2 billion per year – six times more than InfluenceMap guesses their enemies allegedly spend. And that is not even a remotely exhaustive survey of the green blob.

With so much money sloshing between billionaire philanthropists and ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations, the question must be, what is the quid pro quo? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, after all. And if one can peddle misinformation on behalf of oil barons, one can peddle great big fat lies for green billionaires too.

Real estate is one of the under-explored issues at the centre of green blob business plans. Despite green claims to prioritise ‘efficiency’, green policies massively decrease the productivity of land. And there is nothing that a rent-seeker values more than scarcity. Consider, for instance, the 1.5km2 physical footprint of Hinkley Point C, the 3.2 gigawatt nuclear power station being developed in Somerset. An onshore windfarm with the same output, albeit unreliable (since the wind is variable), would occupy an area a thousand times larger. Even the Guardian recognises the swindle, reporting that the Crown Estate made £443 million in 2022, thanks in large part to the seabed it rents out to offshore wind farms. In the 2010s it was pointed out that the then-Prime Minister’s father-in-law, Sir Reginal Sheffield, made £600,000 per year from rents charged to two wind farms on his land. The upper classes are so keen on green because the relics of feudalism profit from neo-feudalism.

Zealots gotta zealot. And society has always had to deal with ideological zealots of one kind or another, who service the interests of their masters by confecting ideological imperatives. As Joel Kotkin, Martin Durkin and Vivek Ramaswamy have all documented in their analyses of the emerging political order, a new clerisy has been established as society’s moral guardians, standing between the eco-billionaires and the rest of us to enforce adherence to green diktats and other elite ideologies. Occupying countless positions across the non-wealth-creating sectors in the Civil Service, civil society, the ‘third sector’, academia and the news media, these culture war front-liners are nonetheless extremely well paid.

Greenpeace is currently hiring a Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-racism Lead for its London HQ, and will pay up to £66,192 per annum. Climb the greasy green pole to become a director of the ‘charity’, and you can expect renumeration of £95,000. Last year, the Telegraph revealed that the Vice Chancellor of Imperial College – the source of all dodgy air pollution, Covid and climate modelling – was paid a basic salary of £365,000, but earned as much as £527,400 for overseeing the prestigious institution’s crystal ball-ocks factory. The wellspring of green ideological garbage, the Guardian, claims to be supported by its readers, “not billionaire backed”, and its favourite green godfather, George Monbiot, routinely rails against mega-wealthy conspiracies that threaten to slow our slide into eco-austerity. But the newspaper is supported by a host of philanthropists directly and through its own ‘foundation’. Bill Gates’s donations to the newspaper total an equivalent of $116 per reader of the print edition. And the BBC’s role in reproducing official orthodoxy needs no rehearsal here, nor do its staffers’ generous renumeration packages.

Suffice it to say that not only are there great rewards available in the public and third sectors in roles advancing the green agenda, there are also significant punishments for those who question it. Don’t expect academic freedom to extend to scepticism of ‘climate science’ or politics. And don’t expect career advancement in the Civil Service if you believe that democracy is of greater importance than Net Zero targets. Aspiring journalists who express heterodox views won’t get anywhere near the BBC or the legacy news broadcasters, whose commitments to the agenda are plainly stated. And of course, nearly all of civil society is committed to silencing the idea that today’s society is built on affordable energy.

Hegemony is a complex idea, but put simply, political elites need to seem to be about something other than power for the sake of power. There is no mistaking the fact that intergovernmental agencies and the institutions of globalism are all aligned with the green agenda. As an earnest and aspiring young globalist wonk explained to me once, “global problems need global solutions”. But the reverse of such glibness is also true: global solutions need global problems. The World Bank and the IMF, the United Nations and its constellation of agencies, the European Union and more have all championed the cause of saving the planet, more to bolster or rescue their authority than to deliver any actual benefits. Stories that serve that political agenda are required, lest the rhetorical phrases of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, like “global boiling” and “code red for humanity”, be made to look like extremely ridiculous unscientific hyperbole.

ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance – is the successor to the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that businesses should be about more than profit. But more than CSR, ESG has become a tradeable commodity in its own right, as well as a near quasi-religious movement. In its simplest form, ESG is about rehabilitating the public image of billionaires, corporations and hyper-accumulations of capital – hedge funds. To me, at least, billionaire virtue-signalling was always implausible. The Rockefellers, for example, are alleged to have funded both Nazi eugenics research programmes and the United Nations’ Third World population reduction programmes in the early days of the green agenda, but now claim to “promote the well-being of humanity”. Similarly, currency speculator George Soros bet against the pound in the 1990s, leading to recession and a wave of unemployment, but now his foundation claims to help solve the world’s problems, including by funding the ironically-titled Open Democracy media platform. In the same vein, British billionaire hedge funder Christopher Hohn, with the assistance of a young Rishi Sunak, helped to bring about the collapse of RBS, leaving Hohn and Sunak with a fortunes in their pockets, and the public with a £45 billion bail out bill. But just four year later, he was knighted for services to philanthropy.

Such billionaires, and Michael Bloomberg and Richard Branson too, have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into funding organisations that promote ESG. For the most part, this involves generating hype around the idea that ESG products, being perfectly in tune with ‘nature’, are likely to yield a better return than investments in dirty brown hydrocarbon energy. But it also involves generating fear both of climate change itself and of the consequences of failing to respond obediently to the encroachment of ESG into policymaking. As a result, ESG campaigning organisations corral sheep-like investors into acting as a force for activism, in turn making corporations the instruments of ESG lobbyists. The most notable victim of this mobilisation was Nigel Farage, who was debanked by Coutts/RBS (the same RBS bailed out by the U.K. taxpayer) – a problem which has seen reported incidences increase by 44% over the last year, according to the U.K. Financial Ombudsman. Individuals, small businesses and even corporations are thus policed by financial institutions, a new and unaccountable form of governance, which is in turn able to decide who may and who may not make money, and on what basis.

So there we have it – four key ways in which the unimpeachable cause of saving the planet is in fact driven by the same old lust for money, power and influence. The stories are much deeper and broader than can be covered here, of course – this article could be 100 times longer. But what I hope it shows is that whereas green mythology posits a somewhat 19th Century view of climate sceptics defending particular interests against progressive policymaking, those same arguments can be held against the bastions of green ideology, too. That includes their favoured news media channels, institutional science, public broadcasters, charities, NGOs and think tanks. For if an oil baron may not fund a public project, why should an eco-billionaire be free to turn civil society into a constellation of corporate lobbying outfits?

The balance of evidence, as measured by pounds and dollars, suggests that the green lobby has been doing precisely what it has accused the reliable energy sector of doing. Meanwhile, there exists little more than unfounded conspiracy theory to back up green claims that private interests drive scepticism. After all, even those infamous deniers, the Koch Brothers, were revealed to have billions of dollars invested in green tech by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs in Planet of the Humans. The world is not as simple as wacky green fear-mongers like Chris Packham would have BBC audiences believe.

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