Day: May 3, 2024

Breaking News: Dominion Energy Atlantic Coast Offshore Wind Project Delayed by Lawsuit Seeking to Protect Endangered Right Whale

Lawsuit seeks preliminary injunction to force comprehensive studies on the massive project’s effect on habitat of critically endangered North Atlantic right whale

Spike in whale deaths occurring at same time early stages of project got underway off Atlantic Coast

From Watts Up With That?

From The Heartland Institute.

Lawsuit seeks preliminary injunction to force comprehensive studies on the massive project’s effect on habitat of critically endangered North Atlantic right whale

Spike in whale deaths occurring at same time early stages of project got underway off Atlantic Coast

Judge’s ruling stops project that was slated to begin ‘pile driving’ this week; gives Dominion, Biden Administration May 6 deadline to respond to legal challenge

WASHINGTON, DC (May 1, 2024) — An order by a federal judge on Monday delayed the start of “pile driving” construction for a massive wind project off the Atlantic Coast by Dominion Energy. Judge Loren L. AliKhan convened an expedited status conference hearing in response to a coalition of three public interest groups—The Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC)—suing Dominion and the Biden administration, claiming they have not done the legally required research to determine the project won’t harm the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The coalition requested a preliminary injunction Monday to stop the project before pile driving began, allowing time to further study its environmental impact – specifically the cumulative risk this project and others along the Eastern Seaboard, pose to the North Atlantic right whale, of which only 350 remain, including an estimated 70 females capable of weaning a calf.

In Monday’s hearing, Judge AliKhan expressed concern that Dominion Energy did not yet gain approval by the federal government for its five mitigation plans, and she grilled the attorneys for Dominion Energy and the Justice Department (DOJ) about when they would gain approval. While Dominion and the DOJ were vague in their answers, the judge ordered them to file a status report on approval by this Friday, May 3. She also ordered Dominion and the Biden administration to file their response to the coalition’s lawsuit by May 6, and for the coalition to file its response by May 9. She is expected to rule on the preliminary injunction shortly thereafter.

See previous press releases about the efforts by the coalition of The Heartland Institute, CFACT, and NLPC at this link.

To speak to members of the coalition filing suit to protect the North Atlantic right whale, please contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or text/call 312-731-9364.

Along with the preliminary injunction, the coalition on April 2 filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel Dominion Energy to reveal the methods it intends to use to protect the critically endangered Right Whale from extinction. Dominion has hidden its species protection plan from public view.

Dominion Energy stated in documents filed with the Bureau of Energy Management (BOEM) that it intended to begin offshore construction activities no later than May 1. The project plans to erect 176 giant wind turbines—with each tower taller than the Washington Monument, and turbine blades longer than a football field—to be constructed in the open ocean 25 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia. If completed, the project would be the largest of its kind in the world.

This Dominion Energy project is but one of many massive offshore wind projects mandated by an executive order issued by President Biden on January 27, 2021 declaring that a “climate crisis” exists which “threatens mankind’s existence.” The Biden administration has given fast-track approval to dozens of wind projects off the East Coast with the goal of producing 30 gigawatts of electricity by 2030.

The amount of federal waters leased for these projects constitutes an area larger than the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. The North Atlantic right whales would be forced to navigate a gauntlet of 32 separate lease areas from Georgia to Maine twice each year.

In the midst of a spike in whales washing up on shore in East Coast states, a dead North Atlantic right whale was found near Virginia Beach on March 30. It was a female, named “Catalogue No. 1950” by the New England Aquarium. accompanied by a newborn calf. That marked the fourth documented North Atlantic Right Whale death in US waters this year. Experts do not expect the calf to survive without the support of its mother. According to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s aerial survey, the mother had successfully raised five prior calves.

2024 To Be the Hottest Ever? Hold On!

Remember: They want you to panic. Before doing so, check out what the data says in your neck of the woods. For example, NOAA declared that March 2024 was “Earth’s Warmest March on Record.”

From Science Matters

 By Ron Clutz

For sure you’ve seen the headlines declaring 2024 likely to be the Hottest year ever.  If you’re like me, your response is: That’s not the way it’s going down where I live.  Fortunately there is a website that allows anyone to check their personal experience with the weather station data nearby.  weatherspark.com provides data summaries for you to judge what’s going on in weather history where you live.  In my case a modern weather station is a few miles away  April 2024 Weather History at Montréal–Mirabel International Airport.  The story about April 2024 is evident below in charts and graphs from this site.  There’s a map that allows you to find your locale.

First, consider above the norms for April from the period 1980 to 2016.

Then, there’s April 2024 compared to the normal observations.

The graph shows April had some warm days, some cool days and overall was pretty normal.  But since climate is more than temperature, consider cloudiness.

Woah!  Most of the month was cloudy, which in spring means blocking the warming sun from hitting the surface.   And with all those clouds, let’s look at precipitation:

So, a major snowstorm April 3-4, 12 days when it rained, including heavy rain, and a couple of thunderstorms.  Given what we know about the hydrology cycles, that means a lot of heat removed upward from the surface.

So the implications for April temperatures in my locale.

There you have it before your eyes. Mostly Cool, Cold and
Very Cold, with freezing on numerous mornings.
Only five days with a few hours of comfortable temperatures.

Summary:

Claims of hottest this or that month or year are based on averages of averages of temperatures, which in principle is an intrinsic quality and distinctive to a locale.  The claim involves selecting some places and time periods where warming appears, while ignoring other places where it has been cooling.

Remember:  They want you to panic.  Before doing so, check out what the data says in your neck of the woods.  For example, NOAA declared that March 2024 was “Earth’s Warmest March on Record.”

Keeping It In Balance

A short post. I came into my obsession with the climate by a side door. Back around the turn of the century, I read that the global average surface temperature was in danger of going through the roof because of increasing CO2.

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [Note update at the end]

A short post. I came into my obsession with the climate by a side door. Back around the turn of the century, I read that the global average surface temperature was in danger of going through the roof because of increasing CO2.

But when I got to thinking about it, that seemed unlikely. What made it seem unlikely were the estimates at the time, which were that the global average surface temperature over the entire 20th century had increased by 0.6°C, which is the same as 0.6 kelvins (K).

Now, I’ve done a reasonable amount of work with heat engines. So I knew that if you want to analyze a heat engine, you need to do your calculations in the Kelvin temperature scale. You can’t use either Celsius or Fahrenheit. All of the thermal equations require that you use Kelvin (abbreviated “K”).

So I got to thinking … the earth is at an average temperature of something like 288K.

… so a change of 0.6K over a century is a 0.2% change in temperature.

The earth’s global average temperature has only undergone two tenths of one percent change in a hundred years. I had to scratch my head about that one.

So I first ventured into the climate science arena, not following mainstream scientists looking to find out why the temperature was changing so much, but instead looking to find out why it was changing so little.

I first thought it might be a result of the thermal mass … but then I realized that both the ocean and the land undergo far larger temperature swings on an hourly, daily, monthly, and annual basis. In addition, the temperature is not set by thermal mass, as the temperature is far above the temperature that would be expected purely on the basis of the earth’s thermal mass and distance from the sun.

The unavoidable conclusion for me was that some natural thermoregulatory processes were going on that kept the average temperature within that narrow range, a 0.2% change over a century.

So I was looking for some long-term, slow processes that kept the planetary temperature so stable over a century or more. I wasn’t interested in quick-acting processes. I wanted something that worked over long time spans. I followed lots of wrong trails until one day when I was sitting on the beach. I was living in Fiji at the time (hey, the waves won’t surf themselves), and each day there is much the same.

In the morning, it’s usually cooler and clear. As the day warms up, at some point usually around 11 AM an entire field of cumulus clouds quickly covers the entire sky. This cools the day by reflecting the solar energy back into space. And if the day continues to warm, some of the cumulus turn into cumulonimbus, aka thunderstorms. These further cool the day in a variety of ways, from an increased reflection of solar energy to increased evaporation, cold rain and wind, and other cooling mechanisms including a natural refrigeration cycle.

And what I saw sitting on the beach was that these phenomena are what keep the tropics from overheating every day … and more to the point, because they thermoregulate the temperature daily, they also regulate it weekly, annually, centennially, and millennially.

So I wrote up my hypothesis and got it published in Energy and Environment under the title “THE THUNDERSTORM THERMOSTAT HYPOTHESIS: HOW CLOUDS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTROL THE EARTH’S TEMPERATURE“, and kept studying the climate.

Since then I’ve uncovered and published a variety of evidence that clouds, thunderstorms, and other emergent climate phenomena keep the temperature from getting too warm or too cold. I’ve also shown that these phenomena mostly occur at sub-model-grid scales, so they are not included in the climate models.

Which brings me to today. I had the honor of being included in an email discussion of some climate issues with some very smart folks with far more education and publications than I have, and some comments got me to thinking about how much solar energy is absorbed at the earth’s surface. This absorbed solar energy is the source of all of the heating of the planet (except for a few tenths of a watt per square meter of geothermal energy). So I dug into the numbers a bit, and this is what I discovered.

Figure 1 (And Only). Percentage of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) incoming solar radiation that is absorbed by the surface, divided by hemisphere and by winter and summer.

The interesting part is that in both hemispheres, as a percentage of the available solar energy at the TOA, in the summer when it is warmer, the surface absorbs less solar energy … and in the winter when it is colder, the surface absorbs more solar energy.

And this is exactly what we’d expect in a thermoregulated system that is generally in a steady-state condition (remember, 0.2% change per century). The system responds to changing conditions by opposing the change and acting to restore the status quo ante. Le Chatelier had something to say on the subject, as I recall …

Told you it was a short post.

[UPDATE] In a comment below, Wim Rost pointed out an interesting additional insight. Per CERES, the northern hemisphere is about 2.3°C warmer than the southern hemisphere. And just as with the winter/summer split, in both winter and summer the warmer northern hemisphere is absorbing a smaller percentage of available solar energy than the cooler southern hemisphere.

Is this thermoregulation at work once again? Hard to tell. It may just be from different land/water amounts, but it’s interesting nonetheless … always more to learn.

And here in our home in the redwood forest, with a tiny triangle of the Pacific Ocean visible through a gap in the far hills, we were blessed by first one bobcat, and then a couple of days later a couple of bobcats wandering through our forest clearing. On the first visit, I captured a passable shot using my iPhone shooting through one side of my binoculars.

By the second visit I had gotten my real camera’s battery charged, and captured this photo …

The raw strength in their walk, the intensity in their gaze … what an inspiration! And the best part?

They remind me that at the end of the day, world politics or online disputes or campus protests or even this post, while important in one sense, also don’t matter that much because the earth abides.

And that, dear friends, is why I live in the forest and not in the city …

My best to everyone,

w.

PS: As usual, when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. And if you want to prove me wrong, here’s exactly how to do it.

Offshore wind is gearing up to bulldoze the ocean

The Biden Administration has recently produced a wave of plans and regulatory actions aimed at building a monstrous amount of destructive offshore wind. No environmental impact assessment is included.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The Biden Administration has recently produced a wave of plans and regulatory actions aimed at building a monstrous amount of destructive offshore wind. No environmental impact assessment is included.

Time scales range from tomorrow to 2050. Here is a quick look at some of it, starting with the Grand Plan.

“Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Offshore Wind” is the grandiose title of the Energy Department’s version of Biden’s vision. Their basic idea is that having successfully traversed the unexpected cost crisis, offshore wind is ready to take off.

They point out that even though costs quickly jumped an average of 65%, the boom market is unchanged. The coastal States are raring to go with huge offshore wind targets and laws. In short, it is a seller’s market. Cost is no object.

They note that State mandates and targets already exceed the Biden goal of 100,000 MW by 2050. But why stop there? They say that Net Zero requires an incredible 250,000 MW of offshore wind. At 15 MW a turbine, this is just under 17,000 monster towers.

The word “environmental” occurs frequently in this 62-page grand vision but it is always about environmental justice.  The cumulatively destructive environmental impacts of lining our coast with towers and cables are ignored apparently not worth mentioning. Neither is cost.

Next comes transmission, where we have “AN ACTION PLAN FOR OFFSHORE WIND TRANSMISSION DEVELOPMENT IN THE U.S. ATLANTIC REGION“. While the Pathways plan covers the US, this one is just about the Atlantic because that is where the big action is now.

This 110-pager is from the Energy Department and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is actually building the offshore wind monster.

The basic idea is simple. Instead of bringing the juice ashore individually from each giant wind facility, we will build a massive high-voltage grid in the ocean. This way, we can move the energy up and down the coast from wherever it is generated to where it is needed.

In the Plan, there are actually three backbone grids: northern, central, and southern, but this detail need not concern us. There is, of course, a huge network of feeder lines connecting the backbones to the legion of individual giant generation facilities.

Given the incredibly huge generation numbers in the Liftoff Plan, this is a very big grid indeed. It is a DC grid, so I guess the juice gets turned into AC onshore, where it then ties to the suitably beefed-up land grid. Beefing that up is another huge unknown cost.

There are many issues with this grand design, including legal and policy ones, and many of these are mentioned. How this ocean-going grid ties into State utility law is an interesting example.

Environmental impacts are only addressed as a research topic, not as a potential problem, except for floating wind, where some big problems are mentioned in passing. The feel-good idea of minimizing impact occurs frequently, but what those impacts might be is not said.

As is typical for BOEM, they talk about monitoring a good bit. Their approach to environmental impact is let’s build it and see what happens as though extinction of the North Atlantic Right Whale was reversible. The concept of cumulative impacts is not addressed.

Cost allocation is a major economic topic, but there is nothing whatever on what this underwater monstrosity might cost.

Returning to today, several things have happened. First, BOEM has announced a lot of new lease sales over the next five years (the Biden II years?). These run from Maine to Oregon, fixed and floating, with five scheduled for this year alone.

Some are in new places, while others are in already crowded areas like the New York Bight. As always, there is no cumulative environmental impact analysis. It’s like BOEM never heard of that, even though the law clearly calls for it when piling on the projects.

More ominously, there are new regulations governing the permitting of offshore wind projects. The developers love these new rules, which tells us they are not designed for environmental protection. This is from the BOEM press release:

“”The final modernization rule will streamline the permitting process and reduce regulatory barriers for developers. It will also lead to greater collaboration between federal, state, and local stakeholders, ensuring that offshore wind projects are developed in a sustainable and responsible manner,” said Anne Reynolds, the American Clean Power Association Vice President for Offshore Wind.”

The primary “regulatory barrier” is environmental impact analysis. The new rules require agencies to rush these, which means glossing over them with no time for serious analysis.

Today’s actions may seem small, but given the long-term Plans, they are anything but. It is all part of a huge rush to do something enormously expensive and environmentally destructive for which there is no need whatsoever.

This offshore bulldozer must be stopped before it is too late.

Conrad Black: Washing away the Climate Lunatics

The recent piece by Conrad Black titled “Washing away the climate lunatics: Canada at risk of turning into Europe” offers a poignant commentary on the current state and potential pitfalls of climate change policies, especially those aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions.

From Watts Up With That?

The recent piece by Conrad Black titled “Washing away the climate lunatics: Canada at risk of turning into Europe” offers a poignant commentary on the current state and potential pitfalls of climate change policies, especially those aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions. It provides a stark warning to Canada, drawing on the troubles Europe has experienced with similar policies. Black’s article, which references Dr. Benny Peiser’s address to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary, delves deep into the socio-economic and political upheavals triggered by these policies, particularly in Europe, and forecasts the implications for Canada if it follows suit.

The Illusion of Net Zero and the Reality of Economic Backlash

One of the central themes in Black’s argument is the critique of Europe’s aggressive climate policies, which, although initially wrapped in the guise of environmental stewardship, have rapidly led to significant public dissent and economic disruption. This is vividly illustrated by the farmer protests across Europe, a reaction to policies perceived as economically damaging and impractical. Governments, faced with mounting opposition, have begun to retreat from their ambitious climate goals, highlighting a crucial disconnect between political agendas and public acceptance.

“As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing,”https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-5

Black notes, shedding light on the initially obscured financial burdens that later became unbearable for the taxpayers.

Technological Transitions and Economic Consequences

The article also tackles the impact of forced technological shifts, such as the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs) in Germany, France, and Italy. This move, although aimed at reducing carbon emissions, has led to unintended economic consequences, including diminished auto sales and increased competition from cheaper Chinese EVs. This situation underscores the potential risks of rapid policy-driven economic transformations without considering global market dynamics and consumer behavior.

Black elaborates, emphasizing the unintended outcomes of these policy-driven market disruptions.

“Once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe,”https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-5

Judicial Overreach and the Misinterpretation of Climate Science

A particularly alarming development cited by Black is the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling against the Swiss government, which was found to have violated human rights by not adequately addressing climate change. This judicial decision exemplifies the overreach of legal frameworks into democratic processes and scientific domains, where the nuances of climate science are still under debate.

“The European Court of Human Rights crossed the jurisdictional Rubicon by overruling the voters of a democratic country,”https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-5

Highlighting the problematic encroachment of judicial bodies on national sovereignty and democratic decision-making.

The Role of CO2: A Misunderstood Element

The narrative that CO2 is solely a harmful greenhouse gas ignores its critical role in photosynthesis and its beneficial effects on agricultural productivity, especially in arid regions. The argument that increased CO2 levels could actually bolster food production is a facet often overlooked in mainstream climate debates. Furthermore, the assertion that net zero policies could lead to an increase in global starvation by reducing nitrogen fertilizer availability is a stark reminder of the complex trade-offs involved in climate policy decisions.

“CO2 as essential to food, and thus to life on earth, and that the more there is of CO2, the more food there will be, especially in drought-stricken areas,”https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-5

Thus presenting a contrarian view that challenges the prevailing narrative on CO2 emissions.

Conclusion: A Call for Rational Climate Policy

Black’s article serves as a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of hasty and ideologically driven climate policies. It calls for a more nuanced, scientifically grounded approach to environmental stewardship. The backlash in Europe provides a clear indication of the need for democratic engagement and economic pragmatism in policy formulation. As Canada faces its own environmental policy decisions, it would do well to heed the lessons from across the Atlantic, ensuring that policies are both scientifically sound and economically viable, thereby avoiding the socio-political turmoil experienced by its European counterparts.

In sum, the debate around climate change and the measures proposed to combat it is far from settled. A balanced approach that considers both environmental goals and economic realities is crucial. Policies must be based on rigorous scientific analysis and broad-based consensus to ensure that they are sustainable in the long term and are embraced rather than imposed on the populace. As the discourse evolves, it remains imperative that policy decisions are guided by pragmatic and scientifically validated insights rather than alarmist and economically detrimental prescriptions.

UAH Global Temperature Update for April, 2024: +1.05 deg. C

The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2024 was +1.05 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up from the March, 2024 anomaly of +0.95 deg. C, and setting a new high monthly anomaly record for the 1979-2024 satellite period.

From Roy Spencer, PhD

May 2nd, 2024 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for April, 2024 was +1.05 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up from the March, 2024 anomaly of +0.95 deg. C, and setting a new high monthly anomaly record for the 1979-2024 satellite period.

The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.15 C/decade (+0.13 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.20 C/decade over global-averaged land).

It should be noted that the CDAS surface temperature anomaly has been falling in recent months (+0.71, +0.60, +0.53, +0.52 deg. C over the last four months), while the satellite deep-layer atmospheric temperature has been rising. This is usually an indication of extra heat being lost by the surface to the deep-troposphere through convection, and is what is expected due to the waning El Nino event. I suspect next month’s tropospheric temperature will fall as a result.

The following table lists various regional LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 16 months (record highs are in red):

YEARMOGLOBENHEM.SHEM.TROPICUSA48ARCTICAUST
2023Jan-0.04+0.05-0.13-0.38+0.12-0.12-0.50
2023Feb+0.09+0.17+0.00-0.10+0.68-0.24-0.11
2023Mar+0.20+0.24+0.17-0.13-1.43+0.17+0.40
2023Apr+0.18+0.11+0.26-0.03-0.37+0.53+0.21
2023May+0.37+0.30+0.44+0.40+0.57+0.66-0.09
2023June+0.38+0.47+0.29+0.55-0.35+0.45+0.07
2023July+0.64+0.73+0.56+0.88+0.53+0.91+1.44
2023Aug+0.70+0.88+0.51+0.86+0.94+1.54+1.25
2023Sep+0.90+0.94+0.86+0.93+0.40+1.13+1.17
2023Oct+0.93+1.02+0.83+1.00+0.99+0.92+0.63
2023Nov+0.91+1.01+0.82+1.03+0.65+1.16+0.42
2023Dec+0.83+0.93+0.73+1.08+1.26+0.26+0.85
2024Jan+0.86+1.06+0.66+1.27-0.05+0.40+1.18
2024Feb+0.93+1.03+0.83+1.24+1.36+0.88+1.07
2024Mar+0.95+1.02+0.88+1.34+0.23+1.10+1.29
2024Apr+1.05+1.24+0.85+1.26+1.02+0.98+0.48

The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for April, 2024, and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.

The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days:

Lower Troposphere:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt

Mid-Troposphere:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tmt/uahncdc_mt_6.0.txt

Tropopause:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/ttp/uahncdc_tp_6.0.txt

Lower Stratosphere:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tls/uahncdc_ls_6.0.txt

The Used EV Timebomb

The situation is even worse than the Mail thinks.

This is not just a problem for eight year old cars, because it will cascade back up the supply chain.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Dave Ward

Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).

Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.

Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.

Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.

Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.

A five-year-old Renault Zoe costs £9,100 but a new battery will set you back £24,124

In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.

That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.

Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.

Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.

This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.

Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: ‘With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years.

Buyers will know that they’ll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.’

This problem is exacerbated by the fact all new cars coming onto the market by 2035 will be electric and motorists will have to get used to paying around £10,000 more than it’s petrol equivalent, for a vehicle which is not built to last as long.

Take a new petrol-driven Renault Clio — it costs around £20,000, while its all-electric opposite, the Renault Zoe, costs closer to £30,000.

While you can drive a traditional petrol or diesel car for around 200,000 miles over 14 years before the engine needs fixing or replacing, by comparison a new EV is typically guaranteed under a warranty for 100,000 miles over eight years.

Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000, but replace the battery on your EV outside warranty and you’re looking at an eye-watering £13,000 to £40,000, depending on the make of your car, if you fit a manufacturer’s new unit.

And there are external factors at play with battery degradation — including use of fast chargers and even a colder climate.

The high cost of EV batteries is a result of it being difficult to mine metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese that are used in the lithium-ion batteries.

They are also in demand for the production of other electronics, including mobile phones and laptops.

In the most extreme cases, such as with a 12-year-old Nissan Leaf that cost £2,000 to buy, you can pay as much as £24,000 for a brand-new replacement 24kWh battery.

However, most owners would upgrade to a newer 40kWh Nissan battery costing £12,780 before garage installation fees of around £2,000. This later battery has a bigger capacity but can still be fitted into older models.

These high costs to maintain an electric car do not bode well for a fledgling second-hand market believes Shahzad Sheikh, who points out: ‘Early adopters have already bought electric cars while the next wave of buyers are looking for value for money — and struggling to find it.

‘The second-hand market might seem a natural place to look for an EV but unfortunately it is fraught with danger as the batteries are worth more than the car. If the battery stops working, the vehicle becomes almost worthless.’

Vehicle trading website AA Cars agrees and says that nearly half of all potential second-hand EV buyers are put off because of concerns about battery life.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mailplus/article-13367571/The-used-electric-car-timebomb-Tens-thousands-EVs-soon-impossible-sell-batteries-wont-affected.html

The situation is even worse than the Mail thinks.

This is not just a problem for eight year old cars, because it will cascade back up the supply chain.

For instance, if you buy a 5 year old petrol car now, you can reasonably assume you will still get a couple of thousand back when you trade it in in three years time. Buy a 5 year old EV, and and you probably won’t get a penny back. That in turn therefore devalues that 5-year old EV, as buyers cannot afford to buy one otherwise. And so on up the chain.

Wash Post Editorial Board follows orders of megalomaniac billionaires: ‘Humans might need to re-engineer the climate’ – Tout injecting ‘100,000 tons of sulfur per year into lower stratosphere to block solar rays’

Washington Post Editorial Board: ‘Humans might need to re-engineer the climate’ –

“A conversation about the risks and potential benefits of re-engineering the climate is urgently needed.” … “Climate engineering scholars David Keith at the University of Chicago and Wake Smith at Yale think it would take no more than 15 souped-up Gulfstream jets to send up, say, 100,000 tons of sulfur per year into the lower stratosphere to block solar rays, at an annual cost of some $500 million. This could happen in as little as five years.”

From Climate Depot

By Marc Morano

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/27/climate-change-geoengineering

Washington Post Editorial Board: ‘Humans might need to re-engineer the climate’ –

“A conversation about the risks and potential benefits of re-engineering the climate is urgently needed.” … “Climate engineering scholars David Keith at the University of Chicago and Wake Smith at Yale think it would take no more than 15 souped-up Gulfstream jets to send up, say, 100,000 tons of sulfur per year into the lower stratosphere to block solar rays, at an annual cost of some $500 million. This could happen in as little as five years.”

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Flashback 2023: Washington Post: A ‘climate solution’ that spies worry could trigger war –

Solar geoengineering holds promise for reducing global temperatures. Absent international agreements, it could also spark conflict. -It sounds like something out of science fiction: A country suffering from heat, flooding or crop failures decides on its own to send out a fleet of aircraft to spray a fine, sun-blocking mist into the earth’s atmosphere, reducing temperatures and providing relief to parched populations. Other countries view it as a threat to their own citizens and ready a military response.

But members of the U.S. intelligence community and other national security officials were worried enough last year to plot how to avert a war triggered by this kind of climate engineering. In a role-playing exercise, they practiced managing the tensions that would be unleashed, according to people familiar with the exercise, a sign that they see it as a credible threat in need of a strategy.

The practice, known as solar geoengineering, is theoretically possible. And as the world’s most vulnerable populations suffer more sharply from rising temperatures, global decision-makers will likely come under heavy pressure to deploy the technology, scientists and policymakers say. Compared to other methods to combat the effects of climate change, it’s likely to be cheaper and faster.

Because the technique could weaken the sun’s power across the globe — not just above whichever country decided to deploy it — security officials are concerned about the potential to spark conflict, since a single capital could make decisions that shape the entire world’s fate.

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Biden: ‘The weather may be beyond our control — for now’ – Biden joins Bill Gates & China in seeking to control the weather – August 9, 2022

Bill Gates’ Savior Complex: Funds Sun-Dimming Plan To Save the Human Race

Watch: Morano on Fox and Friends rips efforts to block the sun with geoengineering to stop ‘global warming’ –

Marc Morano: This is Bill Gates funding this as well through Harvard University. This is retro 1970s. In the 1970s, they believed fossil fuels were creating aerosols blocking the sun, creating man-made global cooling. So they came up with the same kind of geo-engineering solutions back then. They wanted to put black soot on the Arctic to melt it. There was one proposal was to use nuclear energy to loosen the Arctic ice caps because they thought they were growing too much. John Holdren (Science Czar) in the Obama Administration supported geo-engineering, if you will, of the climate. This is radical, risky, unproven, with unknown effects but they are doing it as a sort of lever over us. The Biden Administration is saying ‘We know this is dangerous, we don’t know the effects, but darn it, people aren’t buying electric cars fast enough, or they aren’t embracing the Green New Deal policies, so we have to risk our entire planet with this research.’ It is basically weather modification. China has been doing it for years. Another form of what the government is been doing. ABC News meteorologists (Ginger Zee) talked about the cloud seeding to increase rain, snow or storms, They will — the government will control the weather, and you will be Happy. That seems to be the new motto.

Watch: World Economic Forum touts China’s efforts ‘to control the weather’ with ‘cloud seeding’ to create ’55 billion tons of artificial rain’ – ‘Weather Modification Department’

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Flashback: CBS News segment on ‘Controlling the weather’ – ‘How to change the weather on purpose’ by ‘firing trillion watt lasers into the sky’

August 26, 2023

Kaku: “Instead of doing a rain dance, we physicists are firing trillion watt lasers into the sky to actually precipitate rain clouds and actually bring down lightning bolts. This is potentially a game-changer.”

“It is experimental, however in the laboratory, so far it works when you have water vapor and you have dust particles or ice crystals. You can precipitate rain. It condenses around the seeds. These seeds can also be created by laser beams by firing trillion watt lasers you rip apart the electrons creating what I call ions and these ions act like seeds like dust particles bringing down rain and even lightning.”  

CBS News anchor Nora O’Donnell: “They were talking about climate change yesterday and now we’re learning that scientists and researchers are looking at how to change the weather on purpose. That’s right. Lasers now could one day manipulate rain and lightning.”

Background Info:

CNN in 2022: Scientists in the US are flying planes into clouds to make it snow more – CNN: “It’s called cloud seeding, and it’s nothing new. It’s been around since the 1940s and countries all over the world have been doing it for various reasons (most notably China), but it’s a growing practice in the US, especially in the drought-stricken West.”

Good Morning America meteorologist Ginger Zee on The View: Climate is now so ‘desperate’ that ‘cloud seeding is ramping up..it is huge & only getting bigger’ – ‘They send silver iodide into the clouds & it makes it snow more’ – Gives storms ‘a little boost’

https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1673924546477301763

Ginger Zee On Climate Change’s Impact On America’s Vulnerable River System | The View – Broadcast Apr 18, 2023 – Ginger Zee: “There are some solutions happening. Here’s where it’s always going to get controversial, perhaps. Cloud seeding is something that I studied in school for meteorology — weather modification. Back when I went to school, it was like pooh-poohed a little bit, too expensive; it’s not efficient enough. Well, guess what? When you get desperate, and then technology gets better. Twenty years later, here we are, cloud seeding is ramping up so big. You see me there, showing that flare on the plane. They send silver iodide into the clouds, and it then it makes it snow more. So they can’t make a cloud, right? But they’re taking storms already there and then giving it a little boost. That part is not new. What’s new is they have hundreds of these ground cloud seeders. so they are actually puffing the silver iodide with a flare into the air. That thing sits all over the Rocky Mountains, all over the American West. Ten states are doing this. My friend Russ (Schumacher) is the State Climatologist of Colorado, and he said, ‘You got to see with cloud seeding. It is huge, and it’s only getting better by next year.”

Bill Gates’ Savior Complex: Funds Sun-Dimming Plan To Save the Human Race

Watch: Morano on Fox and Friends rips efforts to block the sun with geoengineering to stop ‘global warming’

PLAYING GOD? Tens of millions spent on huge project to change the WEATHER – ‘Putting chemicals in the sky’

NYT: Dangerously Stupid Science: Solar Geoengineering: The National Academies said the United States must study technologies that would artificially cool the planet by reflecting away some sunlight, citing the lack of progress fighting global warming.

Dangerously Stupid Science: Solar Geoengineering

A Bill Gates Venture with Harvard University Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong?

A sun reflector for Earth? Scientists explore the potential risks and benefits

Bill Gates Is Thinking About Dimming the Sun

Claim: Bill Gates Is Funding a Chemical Cloud That Could Put an End to Global Warming

Sweden canceled Bill Gates’ controversial climate geoengineering project (SCoPEx) aiming to block the sun to stop global warming

Scientific American: Eight States Are Seeding Clouds to Overcome Megadrought – 2021: This is not a page from a science fiction novel. “Cloud seeding” is a real practice—in fact, it’s been around for decades. It’s used today to boost precipitation in at least eight states across the western U.S. and dozens of countries around the world. … Open flames burst from the throats of metal chimneys, mounted on squat towers nestled among the peaks. With a low hiss, puffs of particles belch from their mouths into the air, where the wind catches them and whisks them away. These aren’t ordinary particles. They’re tiny bits of crushed-up silver iodide, a crystal-like photosensitive substance once used in photography. But it’s not used to take pictures out in the mountains. It’s meant to make snow. … The crystalline silver iodide particles have a structure similar to ice—and inside a cloud, like attracts like. Water droplets begin to cluster around the particles, freezing solid as they gather together. These frozen clusters eventually grow too heavy to stay in the air. They fall from the cloud and drift gently toward the Earth, dusting the mountaintops with fresh snow.

https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1723347220831883619

Book excerpt on geoengineering the climate from “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse than You Think”

Green Fraud: Pages 113-114

Book excerpt:

We’re in luck! Geoengineering solves both global cooling AND global warming.

Newsweek noted that one of the “more spectacular solutions proposed” for the coming ice age was “melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers.” A similar “solution” was also suggested by Leonard Nimoy in a 1978 episode of In Search Of…. The man who played Spock presented other such “solutions” for global cooling, including using nuclear energy to “loosen polar ice caps” or blanketing the ice caps in soot to help melt them.

Fast forward to the modern climate change debate, and the same type of ideas are being offered. In 2018, the idea of geoengineering the Earth or its atmosphere was proposed to fight “global warming.” A 2018 headline in the UK Independent blared: “First Ever Sun-Dimming Experiment Will Mimic Volcanic Eruption in Attempt to Reverse Global Warming.”

The article explained, “Plans to geoengineer the atmosphere by blocking out sunlight have been floated before, but an experiment launched next year by Harvard researchers will be the first to test the theory in the stratosphere.” Research team member David Keith boasted, “If solar geoengineering is as good as what is shown in these models, it would be crazy not to take it seriously.” The experiment “has been partly funded by Bill Gates of Microsoft.”

In 2009, Obama White House science advisor John Holdren suggested that we inject pollutants into the atmosphere to cool the planet and cancel out the warming impacts of pollution. As Keith reported, “Holdren told the Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays….‘It’s got to be looked at,’ Holdren said. ‘We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.’”

End excerpt

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April 2024 Arctic Ice Seesaw

Seesaw accurately describes Arctic ice in another sense:  The ice we see now is not the same ice we saw previously.  

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

In April, most of the Arctic ocean basins are still frozen over, and so the melting of ice extent begins in the marginal regions.   According to MASIE, April on average loses 1.1M km2, and this month it was 1.4M. However, April 2024 started well above average, slipped into deficit and ended up above normal. The few basins where open water appears this time of year tend to fluctuate and alternate waxing and waning, which appears as a see saw pattern in these images.

On the left is the Pacific seesaw with Bering below and Okhotsk above.  This year Okhotsk melted out rapidly back and forth, and at the end held only 181k km2, 14% of its March maximum.  Meanwhile Bering waffled up and down and retained ~60% (444k km2) of its max ice at the end. The Atlantic seesaw is Barents top center and Baffin on the right below Greenland.  Barents also waffled but lost no ice extent until the last week, ending up with 666k km2 (76% of its max). Baffin fluctuated before ending down to 1.06M (72% of its. max.).

While the bulk of the Arctic is frozen solid, the melting has started with the seesaws tilting back and forth in the four regions noted above.  The graph below shows the April patterns for ice extents on average, this year and some other years of note.

The graph shows the 18-year average loss for April is 1.1M km2.  2024 started with 236k km2 surplus ice extent and ended 44k km2 above average.  SII showed lower extents the first half, and greater extents the latter half, ending with a small surplus to MASIE.  Other recent years have been nearly average, while 2006 ended with a large deficit.

Region2024121Day 121 Ave2024-Ave.20061212024-2006
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere13498263134543284393513037927460336
 (1) Beaufort_Sea10709831068053293110676093374
 (2) Chukchi_Sea9657849561029682965302483
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea10871371085711142610835913546
 (4) Laptev_Sea89784589045373928964551390
 (5) Kara_Sea9307449096602108491194118803
 (6) Barents_Sea666436539906126530366229300207
 (7) Greenland_Sea790758648904141854533678257079
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence10609351195567-134633103752423411
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago854860849541532084339511465
 (10) Hudson_Bay124238312365945789117851863865
 (11) Central_Arctic3232686323103616513098989133698
 (12) Bering_Sea49577145964436127639162-143391
 (13) Baltic_Sea1970344493-2479129017-9314
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk180662610735-430073381798-201136

The table shows regional ice extents in km2.  Note the huge deficit in Okhotsk and a smaller deficit in Baffin.  Everywhere else is in surplus, especially the seas of Barents, Greenland and Bering.  2006 had 460k km2 less ice extent (nearly half a Wadham) than 2024.

The polar bears had a Valentine Day’s wish for Arctic Ice.

And Arctic Ice loves them back, returning every year so the bears can roam and hunt for seals.

Footnote:

Seesaw accurately describes Arctic ice in another sense:  The ice we see now is not the same ice we saw previously.  It is better to think of the Arctic as an ice blender than as an ice cap, explained in the post The Great Arctic Ice Exchange.

Chris Packham’s BBC Series Warning of “Mass Extinction” by CO2 is Propaganda, Not Science

Last year, Chris Packham hosted a five-part series on the BBC called Earth, which compared a mass extinction event 252 million years ago to the small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide seen in the last 150 years. He said he hoped the “terror factor” generated by his programme would “spur us to do something about the environment crisis”.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Last year, Chris Packham hosted a five-part series on the BBC called Earth, which compared a mass extinction event 252 million years ago to the small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide seen in the last 150 years. He said he hoped the “terror factor” generated by his programme would “spur us to do something about the environment crisis”. But as we shall see, the only terror factor is having to sit through an hour-long film consisting of cherry-picked science data and unproven assertions in the hope of persuading us that the increase in global temperatures in the last 150 years or so is comparable to the rise in temperatures over a considerable swath of geological time. Great play was made of a 12°C rise in average global temperatures 252 million years ago as CO2 levels started to rise, although Packham fails to report that CO2 levels were already at least four times higher back then than in modern times. The ‘science’ that Packham cloaks himself with on every occasion is hardly served by terrorising the viewer with what is little more than a highly personal political message.

Think of all that suffering and wastage, he says about the fourth great mass extinction. I don’t think we want a comparable extinction to the one that happened 252 million years ago on our conscience, he adds. Of course, Packham is not the first person to politicise the end-Permian extinction when most plant and animal life disappeared to be replaced eventually with what became known as the age of the dinosaurs. As we can see from the graph below, even though that extinction event coincided with an uptick in CO2 levels, the general trend over a 600-million-year period was downwards ending in the near denudation currently experienced today. But scientists note that the rise started some time before the extinction event, with most of the Permian characterised by very low levels of CO2.

It is obvious why the three other great extinctions are of little interest to modern day climate alarmists. The Ordovician extinction 445 million years ago occurred when CO2 levels were 12 times higher than today, the Devonian wipe-out happen 372 millions ago when CO2 levels were falling, while the later Triassic/Jurassic event 201 million years ago occurred at a time of stable CO2. Hard to see a pattern there suggesting rising CO2 levels equals a mass extinction event. The disappearance of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is generally attributed to the impact of a giant meteorite, while the current sixth mass extinction exists only inside the head of the Swedish doom goblin, and need not detain us at this point.

Since Packham was essentially making a BBC political film promoting Net Zero, he inevitably started with the fixed view that all our current environmental problems are the fault of CO2. An intense period of volcanic eruptions that led to huge coal deposits catching fire increased CO2 levels and almost instantly sent temperatures soaring at the end of the Permian period. About 20 million years of rain subsequently followed, he observed, taking some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere and order it seems was restored. Certainly, CO2 resumed a small descent but levels remained almost as high, or for some periods higher, as those at the end of the Permian period for another 120 million years. Packham does not provide an explanation of what happened to the average global temperature at this time.

The graph above shows why he avoided the subject. Temperatures did rise at the end of the Permian period after a long decline, but only as far as previous highs recorded 200 million years earlier. They then stayed at those levels for most of the next 200 million years, throughout the age of the dinosaurs. Helped by the increased levels of CO2, this is considered one of the most verdant periods in Earth’s history.

Is it likely that volcanic eruptions triggered the substantial rise in temperature around 252 million years ago, as Packham claims? In a paper published in 2022, a group of European scientists said their data showed seawater temperature began to rise at least 300,000 years before the main volcanic eruptions. “Gradual warming by approximately 12°C was probably responsible for initial environmental degradation that eventually culminated in the global and Permian extinction,” they wrote. The scientists reviewed much of the published evidence and concluded “a temporal link between volcanic activity, environmental changes and biological impacts remains controversial”.

Carbon dioxide, of course, is the main cause of global warming in Packham’s world. Promoting his film to like-minded activists at the Guardian, he said it was the “urgency that makes me despair”. As we can see, this “despair” is the result of comparing events hundreds of millions of years ago with a small temperature rise in the past 150 years or so of around 1°C – and this after a short-term period of global cooling. You can of course argue about all this, but it is a bit rich to claim the science of recent global warming is ‘settled’ and refuse to debate anyone who disagrees with you.

From such a shaky base, Packham claims we’re all becoming far too complacent about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. “It’s an experiment we have been running for over 100 years,” he told the Guardian. “The more the CO2, the more the heat is locked in and the hotter our Earth becomes.” But if Packham really believes that, how does he explain those geological periods when temperatures fall as CO2 levels rise? And if a rise in temperatures and mass extinction is inevitable when CO2 rises, how does that work in the current period when CO2 levels are as low as they’ve ever been?

Could it be that the end-Permian extinction was actually caused by CO2 starvation? During the Permian, it was the first time in Earth’s history that CO2 concentrations fell below 1,000 parts per million, perhaps as dangerously low as 200 ppm at some points. This may well have started to stress plant life since 1,000 ppm is a concentration that supports maximum photosynthesis productivity. This is the view of Jim Steele, Director Emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus. In a recent paper, he noted that many researchers have pointed to competition between different plant species for declining CO2 during the Permian period. This was said to result in “severely reduced photosynthesis, the collapse of primary productivity and a significant malfunction of the global food webs”.

The truth is that the scientific jury is still out and the ‘science’, as with most climate science, is unsettled. Perhaps inadvertently, Packham has simply drawn attention to all the observational evidence that suggests CO2, the gas of life, ‘saturates’ at around 300-400 ppm, and its warming effect is greatly diminished beyond that concentration. But “fear is motivating” he claims, and in the BBC he seems to have a compliant megaphone for whatever green propaganda he cares to promote.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.