Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Next time you look at the horror show Fentanyl death statistics in Western nations, ask yourself how many of those people got their start in addiction because most of the authority figures in their lives told them that climate change would destroy the world – except for those authority figures who told them there was room for a little optimism, providing we all support green policies.
A recent survey has unveiled a startling statistic: nearly half (48%) fear they will witness climate change wreak havoc on Earth within their lifetime.
The survey, conducted by Talker Research, found Hawaiians to be the most anxious, with 61% expressing this belief. Vermont and New Mexico residents followed closely behind, with 59% and 56% respectively.
However, this widespread fear might be misplaced. “Belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology,” notes Cambridge professor Mike Hulme.
…
Data scientist Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford offers a contrasting perspective. Once convinced of an impending climate disaster, she now believes that such extreme predictions can overshadow significant achievements.
In her book, Ritchie highlights that emissions per person have plateaued since 2012, suggesting some stabilization. She also argues that the dreaded 2.7°F (1.5°C) warming threshold is not necessarily a catastrophic tipping point.
Ritchie’s views suggest that while climate change remains a serious issue, it’s essential to recognize progress and avoid undue pessimism. She calls for a balanced approach that acknowledges both the ongoing challenges and the advancements made.
…
While acknowledging the potential impacts of climate change is crucial for raising awareness and driving policy changes, it’s equally important to avoid exaggeration. Overstating the dangers can overshadow the significant progress being made and can undermine public trust in scientific discourse.
This tightrope act, maintaining a pitch of anxiety which facilitates desired political outcomes, while trying but sometimes failing to steer followers away from total despair, this has real consequences.
In 2019, Dr. Alex Wodak, a renowned Aussie drug rehabilitation specialist, testified to a government commission that fear of climate change was a significant factor driving young people to become addicted to hard drugs.
…
First, the threshold step is redefining drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than primarily a law enforcement issue. Second, drug treatment has to be expanded and improved until it reaches the same level as other health services. Third, all penalties for personal drug use and possession have to be scrapped.
Fourth, as much of the drug market as possible has to be regulated while recognising that part of the drug market is already regulated, such a methadone treatment, needle and syringe programs, medically supervised injecting centres. It will, of course, never be possible to regulate the entire drug market. We have regulated parts of the drug market before. Edible opium was taxed and regulated in Australia until 1906 and in the United States Coca-Cola contained cocaine until 1903.
Fifth, efforts to reduce the demand for powerful psychoactive drugs in Australia have had limited benefit and require a new focus. Unless and until young Australians feel optimistic about their future, demand for drugs will remain strong. Young people, understandably, want more certainty about their future prospects, including climate, education, jobs and housing affordability. Change will be slow and incremental, like all social policy reform.
As Herb Stein, as adviser to President Nixon said: Things that cannot go on forever don’t.
Drug prohibition cannot go on forever and will be replaced by libertarian paternalism. Thank you.
Next time you look at the horror show Fentanyl death statistics in Western nations, ask yourself how many of those people got their start in addiction because most of the authority figures in their lives told them that climate change would destroy the world – except for those authority figures who told them there was room for a little optimism, providing we all support green policies.
Climate alarmists are known to recycle memes to frighten the public into supporting their agenda. The climate news control desk calls the plays and the media fills the air and print with the scare du jour.
With the potential to raise global sea levels, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier has been widely nicknamed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’
Climate alarmists are known to recycle memes to frighten the public into supporting their agenda. The climate news control desk calls the plays and the media fills the air and print with the scare du jour.
‘Doomsday glacier’ rapid melt could lead to higher sea level rise than thought: study Vancouver Sun on MSN.com (3 hours ago)
Thwaites ‘Doomsday Glacier’ in Antarctica is melting much faster than predicted USA Today (10 hours ago)
For the first time, there’s visual evidence warm sea water is pushing under doomsday glacier: Study CBC.ca (11 hours ago)
‘Doomsday Glacier’ Explained: Why Scientists Believe It Predicts Devastating Sea Levels—Which Might Happen Faster Than Thought Forbes on MSN.com (4 days ago)
Scientists worry so-called “Doomsday Glacier” is near collapse, satellite data reveals Yahoo (2 days ago)
The doomsday glacier is undergoing “vigorous ice melt” that could reshape sea level rise projections CBS News on MSN.com (3 days ago)
We’ve underestimated the ‘Doomsday’ glacier – and the consequences could be devastating The Independent on MSN.com (4 days ago)
Etc., Etc., Etc.,
This torrent of concern was on the front burner in 2022, rested for awhile, and now it’s back. Below is what you need to know and not be bamboozled.
‘Although these vulnerable glaciers were relatively stable during the past few millennia, their current rate of retreat is accelerating and already raising global sea level,’ said Dr Dylan Rood of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, who co-authored the study.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is home to the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers, and has been thinning over the past few decades amid rising global temperatures. The Thwaites glacier currently measures 74,131 square miles (192,000 square kilometres) – around the same size as Great Britain. Meanwhile, at 62,662 square miles (162,300 square kilometres), the Pine Island glacier is around the same size as Florida. Together, the pair have the potential to cause enormous rises in global sea level as they melt.
‘These currently elevated rates of ice melting may signal that those vital arteries from the heart of the WAIS have been ruptured, leading to accelerating flow into the ocean that is potentially disastrous for future global sea level in a warming world,’ Dr Rood said.
‘We now urgently need to work out if it’s too late to stop the bleeding.’
The colossal West Antarctic ice sheet hides what appears to be the largest volcanic region on the planet, according to the results of a study carried out by researchers at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and reported in the journal Geological Society.
Experts have discovered as many as 91 volcanoes under Antarctic ice, the largest of which is as high as Switzerland’s Eiger volcano, rising 3,970 meters above sea level.
“We found 180 peaks, but we discounted 50 because they didn’t match the other data,” explains Robert Bingham, co-author of the paper. They eventually found 138 peaks under the West Antarctic ice sheet, including 47 volcanoes already known because their peaks protrude through the ice, leaving the figure of 91 newly discovered.
Source: volcanofoundation with glacier locations added
The media narrative blames glacier changes on a “warming world,” code for our fault for burning fossil fuels. And as usual, it is lying by omission. Researcher chaam jamal explains in his article A Climate Science Obsession with the Thwaites Glacier. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
It appears that costly and sophisticated research by these very dedicated climate scientists has made the amazing discovery that maps the deep channels on the seafloor bathymetry by which warm water reaches the underside of the Thwaites glacier and thus explains how this Doomsday glacier melts.
Yet another consideration, not given much attention in this research, is the issue not of identifying the channels by which the deep ocean waters flow to the bottom of the Doomsday Glacier, but of identifying the source of the heat that makes the water warm. Only if that source of heat is anthropogenic global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions that can be moderated by taking climate action, can the observed melt at the bottom of the Thwaites glacier be attributed to AGW climate change.
However, no such finding is made in this research project possibly because these researchers know, as do most researchers who study Antarctica, that this region of Antarctica is extremely geologically active. It is located directly above the West Antarctic Rift system with 150 active volcanoes on the sea floor and right in the middle of the Marie Byrd Mantle Plume with hot magma seeping up from the mantle.
Contrary to recent widespread media reports and dire predictions by a team of earth scientists, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier – the second fastest melting glacier on the continent – is not on the brink of collapse. The notion that catastrophe is imminent stems from a basic misunderstanding of ice sheet dynamics in West Antarctica.
Because the ice shelf already floats on the ocean, collapse of the shelf itself and release of a flotilla of icebergs wouldn’t cause global sea levels to rise. But the researchers argue that loss of the ice shelf would speed up glacier flow, increasing the contribution to sea level rise of the Thwaites Glacier – often dubbed the “doomsday glacier” – from 4% to 25%.
But such a drastic scenario is highly unlikely, says geologist and UN IPCC expert reviewer Don Easterbrook. The misconception is about the submarine “grounding” of the glacier terminus, the boundary between the glacier and its ice shelf extending out over the surrounding ocean, as illustrated in the next figure.
A glacier is not restrained by ice at its terminus. Rather, the terminus is established by a balance between ice gains from snow accumulation and losses from melting and iceberg calving. The removal of ice beyond the terminus will not cause unstoppable collapse of either the glacier or the ice sheet behind it.
Other factors are important too, one of which is the source area of Antarctic glaciers. Ice draining into the Thwaites Glacier is shown in the right figure above in dark green, while ice draining into the Pine Island glacier is shown in light green; light and dark blue represent ice draining into the Ross Sea to the south of the two glaciers.
The two glaciers between them drain only a relatively small portion of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the total width of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers constitutes only about 170 kilometers (100 miles) of the 4,000 kilometers (2,500) miles of West Antarctic coastline.
Of more importance are possible grounding lines for the glacier terminus. The retreat of the present grounding line doesn’t mean an impending calamity because, as Easterbrook points out, multiple other grounding lines exist. Although the base of much of the West Antarctic ice sheet, including the Thwaites glacier, lies below sea level, there are at least six potential grounding lines above sea level, as depicted in the following figure showing the ice sheet profile. A receding glacier could stabilize at any of these lines, contrary to the claims of the recent research study.
As can be seen, the deepest parts of the subglacial basin lie beneath the central portion of the ice sheet where the ice is thickest. What is significant is the ice thickness relative to its depth below sea level. While the subglacial floor at its deepest is 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) below sea level, almost all the subglacial floor in the above profile is less than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the sea. Since the ice is mostly more than 2,500 meters (8,200 ft) thick, it couldn’t float in 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) of water anyway.
For the Maldives, the existential threat of the climate crisis, particularly sea level rise, has been a reality we have grappled with for decades. In 1989, recognising the urgency of our situation, with our islands standing just one metre above sea level, we brought this issue to the global stage for the first time.
This early recognition of our vulnerability sparked a national transformation as we embarked on proactive climate resilience and adaptation measures. Thirty-five years later, has the rest of the world truly been listening? If you look at how the world’s reaction to the climate crisis is funded, the answer is clearly “no”.
For decades, Small Island Developing States (Sids) like the Maldives have been bearing the brunt of global warming with minimal support. The Maldives is liable for just 0.003% of global emissions, but is one of the first countries to endure the existential consequences of the climate crisis. Wealthier nations have a moral responsibility to communities like ours. Yet Sids are given only about 14% of the finance that the least developed countries receive.
The problem is that the current global financial architecture is outdated and not fit for purpose: its use of legacy metrics such as gross national income (GNI) and gross domestic product (GDP) skews our economic reality, painting Sids as wealthier than we are, barring us from critical funding opportunities. And, thanks to the Maldives’ healthy tourism industry, we are ranked as an emerging economy and therefore shut out…………………………………………………………….
I think you can guess the rest of the “give us your money” appeal from the Maldives President.
But could this be the same Maldives that are busy with major plans to expand their main airport?
In a significant development for the Maldives’ aviation sector, President Mohamed Muizzu has laid out an ambitious vision for the future of Velana International Airport (VIA).
The project’s inauguration, held at the prestigious Dharubaaruge venue in the capital city of Male, marked a historic chapter for the Maldives.
The initial phase of VIA’s development is well underway, culminating in the launch of a state-of-the-art terminal later this year, capable of accommodating a staggering 7.3 million passengers.
President Muizzu’s vision, however, transcends the immediate future, with a bold target set at welcoming 25 million passengers over the next two decades.
And surely it cannot be the President Muizzu, who has plans for his airport to handle 25 million passengers a year in twenty years time?
Surely not, because what will all these tourists do when the islands are all under water?
And could this be the same Maldives that have benefitted enormously from all of those fossil fuelled tourist flights in recent years?
You only have to look at how GDP fell through the floor during the 2020 lockdowns. Would Mr Muizzi really like those days to return permanently?
It is largely because of this tourist boom that the Maldives population has increased fivefold since the 1960s.
According to Wikipedia, “In the early 1970s, the Maldives was one of the world’s 20 poorest countries”. It is only tourism which has lifted the economy. But maybe Mr Muizzi would like his half million inhabitants to return to poverty, which they inevitably will if we all give up fossil fuels and air travel, as the Guardian would like. And heaven knows how the islands could cope with half a million people, with an economy relying largely on fishing, as it did in the 1960s.
Of course, these silly sea level scares are not new. In 1988 the Maldives government was predicting that the whole country would be submerged by now:
The fears that somehow Nature will get out of sync with itself are a dystopian fantasy. It is surely possible that some individual anomalously-timed season in some region or locality could take place and play havoc, temporarily, with some of the plants and animals.
There has been a lot of silly nonsense in the mass media about Early Springs. Concerns that the season, Spring, has been coming days or even, in some cases. weeks earlier than “it did before”. Worries have been expressed that the timing of natural events, such as bird migrations and the emergence of their food species will become out of synchronization — migrating birds may arrive before their favorite bugs are available to eat in the North – or before the nectar flowers hummingbirds need for nourishment bloom.
Almost every mass media outlet has banged on about how earlier Spring has lengthened the allergy season – and, that is correct: trees, grasses, weeds, flowers all bloom and spread pollen in accordance with the seasons. Naturally, if Spring temperatures come a week earlier than the oft-touted “long term average”, then plants will act accordingly, and off they go.
This image is from the ever-alarmist Climate Central for the year 2020. Of course, keeping in line with the editorial narratives of Climate Alarmism, the Media seldom, if ever, mention the positive side of Early Spring. Early Springs and later Falls mean a longer growing seasons and that means more food. In many cases, agriculturalists (farmers, ranchers, orchardists, truck farmers) are able to get two crops out of a single field in the same year. Dairy farmers in my area, most of whom grow their own feed, are getting an extra cutting of hay. In double-cropping systems, an extra three or four weeks in the growing season can make a huge difference.
Journalists for national and international newspapers and broadcast news are, in a general sense, “city people”. They don’t live on the land and are easily led astray about things in the natural world. Even if they are outdoor hobbyists or enthusiasts, they just don’t get it. The natural world has its own timing, its own cycles, and its own methods of keeping itself going. If not, we wouldn’t be here.
And the incredible iconic Saguaro Cactus? It is in bloom!
Finally…Spring has come to Arizona, finally.
This is the “Spring Leaf Index Anomaly” – it shows an index of the timing of Spring Leaf Out as a proxy for Arrival of Spring. How many days “earlier” than the long-term average or how many days “later” than the long-term average.
It is quite interesting. The three neutral colors (very pale beige, white, and very pale blue) show where Spring has arrived well within the average expected timing. The deep reddish/brownish, though quite dark, represents where Spring arrived 10-14-21 days sooner than average, and the blues mean that Spring was late.
Florida, southern Texas, coastal Gulf states and the majority of the Intermountain West have had a later than usual Spring this year.
The general public has been repeatedly informed in the press that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are warmer than usual – much warmer, so they say.
I would have thought that all that hot water would have forced an Early Spring on the Gulf Coast – but, apparently Nature didn’t agree.
The Saguaro Cactus know when Spring has arrived but not by looking at the calendar:
Arizona’s saguaro cactus bloom is running four weeks late this year.
[ Due to an editing error, the above image was missing from the original post for the first few hours – kh ]
Just to make comparison easy, I put 2024 side-by-side with 2020:
In 2020, the pattern was almost a mirror image of 2024. Only the mid-Atlantic states are early in both years.
Bottom Line:
In a world that has slightly warmed, coming up out of the Little Ice Age (finally), Spring comes when it will, different every year.
It would be no surprise, at least in North America, if in general, Spring is arriving a few days earlier as the North American climate gently warms a bit:
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
The fears that somehow Nature will get out of sync with itself are a dystopian fantasy. It is surely possible that some individual anomalously-timed season in some region or locality could take place and play havoc, temporarily, with some of the plants and animals. Looking at the long-term climate records, for what they are worth, reveals that there have been periods of rapidly changing temperatures, and certainly rapidly changing precipitation regimes, at various times and places which must have changed things up for the living inhabitants. That, my friends, as they say, is life.
Much of the beauty of the world comes from the changes we can see in the passing of the seasons, particularly, but not limited to, areas that have a full four-season cycle, such as I have in the Central Hudson Valley of New York State. I really missed the seasons during the decades I spent in the tropics.
On Wed. May 08, 2024, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England testified to your committee on his views regarding Senator Rosa Galvez-sponsored Bill S-243, Climate-aligned Finance. Mr. Carney is also presently the appointed UN Climate Envoy as well as a senior executive with Brookfield Asset Management, and is chairman of Bloomberg Inc., parent company of Bloomberg L.P., and was the chair of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018.
And Honorable Senators of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Finance and the Economy
The Senate Ottawa, ON K1A 0A4
Honorable Senator Wallin and Committee Colleagues,
RE: Challenging comments by Mark Carney on Senator Galvez Sponsored Bill S-243 and related Climate-Aligned Finance Issues such as CCUS and Net Zero – A Professional Engineer’s Perspectives
On Wed. May 08, 2024, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England testified to your committee on his views regarding Senator Rosa Galvez-sponsored Bill S-243, Climate-aligned Finance. Mr. Carney is also presently the appointed UN Climate Envoy as well as a senior executive with Brookfield Asset Management, and is chairman of Bloomberg Inc., parent company of Bloomberg L.P., and was the chair of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018.
In the realm of finance, Mr. Carney is unequalled in experience and knowledge.
However, he advocated for climate technologies like Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) which is within my realm of professional expertise, and he supported climate policies which are within the realm of one of my colleagues, Robert Lyman, former federal public servant of 27 years, a diplomat for 10 years, with decades of policy experience on the GHG file.
Robert Lyman has recently assessed the cost of climate policies to Canadian citizens. While an international survey showed that people would be willing to contribute 1% of their annual income to addressing climate change ($430 based on Statistics Canada’s 2022 $43,000 estimated median Canadian Income), Lyman’s analysis of a list of policies and costs created by Navius Research, shows that Canadians are already facing $28,000 in climate policy costs per household from 2020-2030 ($2,800 per household per year). That number is based on the Carbon Policy Tracker’s $476 billion ($11,900 per resident of Canada) estimate of total federal and provincial climate measure expenditures over that period. These figures do not include the EV battery plant subsidies, which now hover around the $50-billion mark; nor does it include foreign climate funding (i.e. for the Green Climate Fund or other).
Mr. Carney supported Senator Galvez Bill S-243 on principal that other jurisdictions are moving ahead with similar legislation. He also supported:
CCUS – Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage
CfD – Contracts for Difference
Cap and Trade
NetZero targets
Mr. Carney claimed that without urgent and stringent climate policies Canada would face $5.5 trillion in future damages, a number drawn from a white paper sponsored by Senator Galvez.[1] He noted that RBC has estimated it would cost $2 trillion[2] to accomplish the transition to NetZero and that there lies $26 trillion in global economic opportunity in making this transition.
I dispute these claims.
I wrote a plain language assessment of the Nov. 2022 Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on GHG Emissions and GDP. “Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office just confirmed that continued greenhouse gas emissions will reduce our GDP growth by just 6.6% over the next 80 years (National Post, December 7th, 2022). So, instead of growing 378.0%, we will only grow by 371.4%. That equates to a GDP savings that is only $140 billion less than the do-nothing case.”
The PBO report looked at three scenarios. GDP growth with no “climate change” consequences, the impacts of “climate change” based on the unrealistically high RCP 8.5 emission scenario (current emission growth is below RCP 4.5), and the consequences of full compliance with the 2015 Paris Accord commitments (again using RCP 8.5). The estimates shown above are based on a 2%/year GDP growth rate. That $140 billion is the GDP reduction at the turn of the century. Consolidated over the years, the total would be $3.6 trillion dollars. Applying a 3% discount puts the net present value of “climate change” around $0.7 trillion. Those numbers will be lower if realistic emission scenarios are used. In other words, far from the $5.5 trillion in damage that the Senator Galvez sponsored report claims.
The PBO’s last scenario is the most telling. Full global Paris Accord compliance will improve Canada’s GDP at the turn of the century by just $17 billion dollars. Over the years that equates to just $443 billion ($87 billion discounted at 3%). Again, all based on unrealistic emission scenarios. How many trillions will Canada spend for those improvements?
It appears that the implausible RCP 8.5 scenario[3] is being used by the financial community to create a climate emergency that only exists on paper.
My Professional Engineering colleagues did an assessment of RBC’s analysis and found the alleged “$2 Trillion Transition” was severely underestimated.[4] The following glaring example should be a wake-up call.
“RBC’s estimate of the cost to go to net zero on the electrical grid with wind and solar backed up with batteries is $5.4 billion which includes $3.6 billion for batteries. “The True Cost of Wind and Solar Electricity in Alberta” puts the cost of batteries at almost $2 trillion just for Alberta. Alberta has approximately half of the fossil fueled power generation in Canada so the cost would scale up to about $4 trillion for all of Canada, just for the batteries to back up wind and solar power.”
RBC’s analysis also relies heavily on the hope of CCUS as the answer for dramatic emissions reductions. As a Professional Engineer who worked on one of the first CCUS projects[5] in Canada, I am in a position to say that, while Canada’s expertise in this area is second-to-none, CCUS will not address emissions reduction in any meaningful way. In part, this is due to the proportionately small amount of carbon
dioxide that will be captured; in part because of the enormous volume of embodied emissions in building the proposed carbon pipeline.
As Robert Lyman reported in “Speed Bumps on the Road to NetZero,”[6] referencing a report by JP Morgan’s seasoned energy analyst Michael Cembalist, that CCS/CCUS is most well-developed in the field of academic papers.
After 20 years of planning, subsidies and political promotion, by the end of 2020 carbon capture and storage facilities stored just 0.1% of global CO2 emissions.
Mr. Carney has recently miscalculated embodied emissions in the “Blueprint…”[7] plan that he and various parties put together, of which the federal government has adopted some 80% of the plan according to Mr. Carney’s public statements. The focus on “Blueprint…” was to impose NetZero standards on new builds with the stated objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The federal housing plan will dramatically increase Canada’s carbon footprint.[8]
“Even if embodied emissions are cut in half, such as in the COP26 test home the carbon footprint of a 3.9 million home build out would be huge. … That’s still 32 tCO2 x 3.9 million homes =124,800,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions. This doesn’t include infrastructure!”
The same will be true of CCUS capacity building. Likewise, if adopted, Robert Lyman has pointed out that CCUS will become a long-term ‘trap’ for taxpayers.
Furthermore, the federal government, and presumably many of those backing NetZero objectives, are relying on a Canada Energy Regulator (CER) report, which the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has found wildly overestimates the possibilities and wildly underestimates the costs. My colleague and fellow Professional Engineer, Ian Cameron, has written a summary report on “Getting to NetZero” comparing the CER’s vision versus the brutally realistic analysis by CCPA.
The key conclusions from the CCPA David Hughes’ report titled: Getting to Net-Zero in Canada (pp.62-63):
Canada’s March 2023 policies would see only a 16% reduction in emissions below 2022 levels by 2050 and must be greatly strengthened.
To offset the relatively large proportion of fossil fuels in 2050 end-use energy demand, the CER over-relied on CCUS (33 to 38-fold increase), and a thousand-fold increase in direct air capture. This is a high-risk strategy. Instead, Mr. Hughes recommends reducing end-use demand for fossil fuels.
The CER’s Canada net-zero scenario assumed maintaining high levels of fossil fuel production for export in 2050, along with carbon capture and direct air capture to offset emissions from producing oil and gas for export.
The CER over-optimistically assumed that hydrogen can grow from almost nothing to 11-12% of end-use energy by 2050.
Electricity generation will have to increase from the CER’s 39-41% share of end-use energy to a “more realistic” 55%.
Tripling the sequestration capacity of Canada’s forests, as assumed in the CER’s two Net-zero scenarios, will require major improvements in forest management practices.
Senator Wallin and colleagues, I hope you appreciate that the NetZero climate targets set by the federal government and the methods for reaching them, which are supported by Mark Carney and proposed to be aided by the Senator Galvez Climate-aligned Finance Bill S-243 are simply impossible. As summarized, in Ian Cameron’s work, fulfilling their government’s net zero agenda will entail a quarter century of evermore energy and economic deprivation.
Likewise, it is unclear how the Senator Galvez bill would lead to more ‘clean-energy’ as the mining and manufacturing of wind and solar devices, back-up batteries, and related transmission lines require astronomical amounts of oil, natural gas, and coal! Prof. Emeritus Vaclav Smil explains that in this article, “To Get Wind Power You Need Oil”[9] and he explains in more detail why there’s no “Energy revolution? More like a crawl”[10]
Furthermore, as Robert Lyman has written in “A Multi-Polar World At Risk: What About Energy Security?”[11] these policies simply hand the competitive and energy security advantage to China.
A recent interview with Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation offers this insight – if the Net Zero objectives were really about climate change, wouldn’t the West welcome cheap EVs from China, cheap solar panels and wind turbines? Obviously these will decimate Western economies as China can ruthlessly cut prices since it is not a free-market economy. Likewise, the more Canada subsidizes industry in the hope of creating or maintaining a market edge, a vicious cycle of subsidies sets in, as Dr. Peiser testified to US Congress in 2013.
This sounds very similar to Canada today.
Another topic that Mr. Carney brought up was that of Contract for Differences, a policy he supports. It appears that in trying to implement this policy, the federal government is attempting to design it so that this policy can never be repealed, even if a new government took office.
Robert Lyman’s report “Turning Taxpayers Into Risk Takers: Contracts for Difference, the Eternal Subsidy”[12] notes how this is simply a means of ‘de-risking investment’ in industries that cannot stand alone; so taxpayers (again) have to prop them up.
It should be noted that Mr. Carney’s Brookfield Asset Management and Bloomberg are heavily invested in renewables. This is an apparent conflict of interest for him as an expert witness, allegedly on climate finance issues, in my opinion.
Lyman has pointed out in a number of reports and presentations that in addition to Canada’s much-hated carbon tax, there are in fact over 400 various climate regulations, incentives, subsidies, for which no audit has ever been done for effectiveness and no cost-benefit analysis. Of CfDs he writes:
“Yet another way in which CFDs could be applied would be to insure investors in “clean energy” projects that, regardless of how either markets or policies may change, they will continue to receive financial benefits from taxpayers that approximate or equal the benefits that they now expect to receive from existing and announced federal subsidy programs. The number of these programs is very large; they include both direct expenditures and tax expenditures (e.g. credits, deductions, deferrals, exemptions and preferential tax rates).”
“To date, the federal government has announced only one CFD. On December 20, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the Canada Growth Fund had concluded an agreement with Calgary’s Entropy Inc. Freeland proclaimed, could reduce emissions by up to 9 million tonnes over 15 years. …”
From the CBC article of Dec. 23, 2023: “Under the terms of the deal, the Canada Growth Fund has agreed to purchase up to 185,000 tonnes of carbon credits from Entropy for a 15-year term at an initial price of $86.50 per tonne.”
The CO2 emissions abatement is 185,000 tonnes in the article.[13] As such the math is: (185,000 tonnes x $86.5 per Tonne + 200 e 6) / 185,000 tonnes = $1,167.58 / tonne.
Robert Lyman continues in his report:
“How can this be considered as justified? The alleged benefit of CFDs as applied to investments in many “clean energy” projects like CCUS or EV batteries is that it may accelerate the commercialization of new emissions reduction technologies. One has to wonder what evidence there is that CFDs are needed, in addition to all the other measures in place, to do this. Also, if the general public is to take on the economic risks, what benefits are there to compensate for this? The only benefits are the theoretical ones that may come from changes in global emissions and temperatures over which Canadians have little influence and no control.”
Mr. Carney also supported the concept of cap and trade.
In Canada, Alberta was blindsided by Minister Guilbeault’s announcement from COP28 in Dubai of the imposition of cap-and-trade legislation. One must ask what role the unelected, unaccountable Trottier Family Foundation had in this; apparently significant as the CEO of their charity writes in this report.[14] The Trottier Family Foundation and many ENGOs are backing Senator Galvez Bill S-243, but one has to question the influence of foreign-funding to Canadian ENGOs and collaboration by Trottier with ClimateWorks and others. Some excerpts from the CEO’s article:
The Trottier Foundation’s many partners were present at COP28 to call out Canadian climate delayers. We were there with our “emissions caps”- baseball caps to show support for Canada’s announcement of an oil and gas emissions cap framework.
Beyond fashion stunts to demonstrate support for Canada’s new emissions cap framework, COP is also an excellent venue to fast-track climate deals and develop new initiatives.
For example, after attending a civil society gathering with Quebec’s Minister of the Environment and Fight Against Climate Change about BOGA [Beyond Oil and Gas], our foundation started planning a new initiative on expanding BOGA membership to new Canadian provinces.
Second, we promoted climate finance by hosting a panel with Senator Rosa Galvez, Ben Caldecott and Catherine McKenna on how Canada can become a leader in this space. Our foundation also partnered with a large financial institution on a new initiative that will be announced soon.
Third, we participated in COP’s first ever Health and Climate Day. We are the first funder attempting to decarbonize Canada’s healthcare system.
Fourth, we collaborated with other funders and networks like Bloomberg, the Open Society Foundation, C40 Cities, ClimateWorks, WINGS and the Canadian Philanthropy Commitment on Climate Change.
Additionally, the Trottier Foundation was funding the bulk of Canadian ENGOs attending COP, …
The push for cap-and-trade will do nothing to stop climate change. And as Robert Lyman writes in “Gaslighting Alberta Canada’s Oil and Gas Methane Regulations”[15]
“As is typical of global and national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there has been no published estimate of the costs and benefits of the actions involved. The federal government estimates that the proposed new regulations will cost Canadian industry about $15 billion between 2027 and 2040.”
“One is left asking questions about the priority being placed on efforts globally and in Canada to reduce methane emissions. Fundamentally, why would Canada, a country whose methane emissions constitute 0.2% of the global total, decide to far exceed the methane emission reduction pledges made by other countries and to incur proportionately far more of the costs?”
“Canadians should demand answers.”
In the above excerpts of the Philanthropy for Change article by the CEO of the Trottier Family Foundation, we see that ClimateWorks Foundation of the USA is collaborating with a large Canadian philanthropy on climate and finance policies.
ClimateWorks partners have been working away at establishing global cap-and-trade systems for over 2 decades, apparently an extension of what Enron began before it collapsed in a heap of ashes and fraud. ClimateWorks partners like the Oak Foundation have been principal funders of the Tar Sands Campaign against Alberta (and other parts of Canada, like Ontario’s GEA).
Matthew Nisbet of Northeastern University has followed these parties for years and in this paper he wrote:[16]“Significant funding was also devoted to mobilizing public opinion and to opposing the fossil fuel industry. Nearly a quarter of all funding, however, remained dedicated to promoting renewable energy and efficiency-related actions with comparatively little funding devoted to other low-carbon energy technologies.”[17]
Prof. Jessica Weinkle has been tracking the Conflicts of Interest that are rampant in the world of climate change.
These include the relationship between Mr. Carney and Mr. Bloomberg. Prof. Weinkle posits that the next financial sector melt-down may come from the melding of climate finance and climate science, using models designed by parties who are effectively self-dealing to arrive at a catastrophic future prediction that is not found in the actual climate data.
Weinkle writes of the 2008 financial crash that a model was popularized with catastrophic effects.[18]
“MacKenzie and Spears showed that financial analysts knew the models were inaccurate but felt compelled to use them because common ways of compensating for its inaccuracies actively “performed” the market; the model created, shaped, and organized the phenomena it intended to describe. The Gaussian copula model created consensus. As one of the traders interviewed by the two researchers put it, “once everyone was using it, you have to use it as well, because it then becomes a good guide to prices.”
Pertinent to this discussion is the relationship between this and the establishment of the Task-force on Climate Related Disclosures, where Mr. Carney, then Governor of the Bank of England, appointed Mr. Bloomberg to lead that group.
“In their article, MacKenzie and Spears concluded that the financial crisis [of 2008] “was caused not by ‘model dopes’, but by creative, resourceful, informed and reflexive actors quite consciously exploiting the role of models in governance.” Their ability to do so underscores the extent to which financial markets are actively designed. Reflecting on the earlier 1987 stock market crash, in which models were also implicated, MacKenzie mused that “the design of financial markets is always implicitly political: it influences who will perform which transactions with whom and with what effects.” In turn, he explained, “it prompts a question: what sort of a world do we want to see performed?”
“This is a question Mark Carney, who was governor of the Bank of England and chair of the Financial Stability Board, could well have asked himself in 2015, when he charged former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with leading the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) to develop regulatory guidelines for treating climate change as a risk to financial stability such that they must be disclosed. At the time, a major politically oriented risk modeling project funded by Bloomberg and colleagues had just wrapped up. The project was reportedly intended to “mak[e] the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world.””
The organization I lead has written an Open Letter to the OSFI,[19] several of them,[20][21]and a report,[22] rejecting the efforts to align finance with climate scenario models that are based on implausible assumptions. I believe that you and your committee should review these, as well as the material provided above.
For my part, as an individual I operate a website which provides data analysis rebutting the catastrophic claims of climate activists and people like Mr. Carney and Mr. Bloomberg. Those claims are built on three basic principles. Those principles and their shortcomings are visualized below and discussed in more detail in my OPPS-29 – Climate Change – “The Science”[23] post.
CO2 is responsible for the 1.07 °C warming (based on the IPCC’s 2021 AR6 SPM report) since the pre-industrial era (pre-1850). That claim is not based on proper Scientific Method principles. There are no empirical CO2/Temperature datasets (a basic Scientific Method requirement) that show CO2 driving the climate on any statistically significant historical time scale. In addition, much of that 1.07 °C warming was not due to human emissions since 86%+ of our emissions were post-1950. Warming out of the Little Ice Age began centuries before CO2 concentrations began increasing.
Current computer models project a CO2 induced catastrophic temperature rise, what I call the All CO2, All the Time (ACO2AT) narrative. Every future projection and attribution study referenced in the literature (scientific, media, political arena, etc.) is based on computer models that are self-acknowledged to “run way too hot” and use implausibly high emission scenarios (OPS-55 – The State of Climate Science[24]). All current policy decisions are based on computer models that the modeler’s have said are wrong, giving a whole new meaning to the basic modelling rule Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO). If the models cannot represent observed temperatures, they are useless for future projections and policy decisions.
Extreme weather events are getting more frequent and stronger. The empirical data says otherwise. Extreme weather event trends have been statistically flat or declining as CO2 has been rising. Every flood, fire, drought, heat wave, hurricane, etc. is put forward as direct evidence of “climate change” or “climate change” is increasing the chance of the event happening (i.e. the attribution studies mentioned previously). Climate changes over decades, centuries, millennia, etc. What happens in any particular day, week, month, year (for example, Canada’s anomalously high fire season, 18.5 million hectares burnt) does not reflect “climate change”. For perspective, Canada’s 2020 fire season had a record low burn acreage (0.23 million hectares) with a long-term declining trend. CO2 did not increase our burn acreage for 0.23 to 18.5 million hectares in 3 years.
I am not going to get into a detailed discussion on the science, but in a recent post (CSS-53 – CO2’s Moneyball Moment), I did lay out empirical data (and associated discussion) that shows how little effect CO2 (and humanity) are having (or can have) on our current climate. The basic premise of the post is laid out in the statement below.
“Moneyball was a movie about the Oakland Athletics (the A’s). In 2001, key members of their team had moved on to greener pastures (i.e.: teams like the New York Yankees had a lot more “green”). The A’s (a small market team) had to make do with less prominent (i.e.: cheaper) players and rely on more in-depth, less consensus statistical data than most teams relied on at the time. Their manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is known for a lot of quotes that have been routinely adapted to many business and societal situations. One of his most famous, “If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?” can be easily adapted and applied to CO2. If CO2 is such a good climate driver, why doesn’t it drive the climate good?”[25]
It has been clear to most of the scientific community since the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that carbon dioxide is not the control knob to control climate.
Thus, the measures like Climate-aligned Finance Bill S-243, CCUS, CfDs, cap-and-trade, and attempts to reach Net Zero climate targets will do nothing to stop climate change, but they will devastate Canada’s economy, as I have shown you herein, and will hand the global competitive advantage to China. The ‘money’ in the carbon dioxide game all goes to green crony capitalists and comes from the pockets of taxpayers. If, as the Bank of Canada recently said it is time to ‘break the glass’ and declare an emergency on Canada’s productivity, then it is certainly time to break the death grip the climate finance community has on industrial development in Canada and the Western world.
The climate emergency only exists on paper and in self-dealing climate and finance models. The real emergency is that we are facing a Net Zero Tulipomania. Contrivances like Climate-aligned Finance Bill S-243 or the Compulsive Obsessive carbon molecule accounting programs like that of the International Sustainability Standards Board will only stave off the inevitable economic collapse of society. A society that ceases to be productive and spends much of its time, talent and actual energy counting carbon dioxide molecules is doomed to fail.
Please stop the climate catastrophe charade. Reject Bill S-243 and any other climate-finance legislation. Call for due diligence on climate change science and a moratorium on the use of the implausible RCP 8.5 scenario for policy purposes, by any government agency or government funded climate research unit.
[3] Deloitte’s “The Turning Point” uses a variation of RCP 6.0 – also implausible. Deloitte also makes the fatuous claim, with no evidence provided that “Such a transformation could increase the size of the world economy by $43 trillion in net present value terms from 2021-2070.” One need only look at Germany, the alleged model of the Energy Transition, to see that it is drowning in debt and undergoing rapid degrowth and deindustrialization. As MEP Roger Helmer put it in 2013, EU energy prices are causing an ‘industrial massacre.’
The biggest hazard to humanity is when climate change arguments are paired with AI.
During a recent interview with Reuters, Artificial Intelligence (AI) pioneer Geoffrey Hinton to asserted AI was a bigger threat to humanity than climate change.
Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as one of the “godfathers of AI”, recently announced he had quit Alphabet (GOOGL.O) after a decade at the firm, saying he wanted to speak out on the risks of the technology without it affecting his former employer.
Hinton’s work is considered essential to the development of contemporary AI systems. In 1986, he co-authored the seminal paper “Learning representations by back-propagating errors”, a milestone in the development of the neural networks undergirding AI technology. In 2018, he was awarded the Turing Award in recognition of his research breakthroughs.
But he is now among a growing number of tech leaders publicly espousing concern about the possible threat posed by AI if machines were to achieve greater intelligence than humans and take control of the planet.
“I wouldn’t like to devalue climate change. I wouldn’t like to say, ‘You shouldn’t worry about climate change.’ That’s a huge risk too,” Hinton said. “But I think this might end up being more urgent.”
The data show that fossil fuel use has contributed only 12% of the carbon dioxide during the last 3 centuries. The value is too low for fossil fuels have significantly influenced global temperatures.
These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.
Furthermore, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to stabilize global temperatures to keep them in a steady, habitable range.
A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.
Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle. The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide — and global temperatures — in check. But there’s never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.
I suspect that the “expert class” will be walking back their climate crisis assertions and endeavoring to hide their connection to their “fixes” once the full impact of the society-crushing, economy-killing force is felt….just as they are currently doing with the covid pandemic response now.
Clearly, the press is ginning up climate anxieties. How much of the concerns about AI are real, as opposed to general angst about the unknown ramifications, is difficult to say at present.
I have two points and my own hypothesis regarding climate change and AI.
Point 1: Carbon dioxide is a life-essential gas, and we had been reaching dangerously low levels until recently:
Plants consume carbon dioxide to grow and animals consume plants to obtain the necessary carbon for existence. If the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dips below 150 ppm (parts per million) there would be a mass extinction of plant life per Greg Wrightstone in his book, “Inconvenient Facts/The Science Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know About.” Due to the depletion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the last 140 million years to a dangerously low level of 182 ppm, carbon dioxide emissions during the industrial revolution saved plants from mass extinction and saved animals from mass starvation.
A graph in this book shows that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past 140 million years has declined in nearly a straight line from 2,500 ppm, 140 million years ago, to a dangerously low level of 182 ppm just 20,000 years ago. Carbon dioxide emissions during the industrial revolution hiked the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to about 400 ppm, to replenish the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so as to save plants.
Point 2: A chatbot used climate change arguments to persuade a Belgian father to commit suicide.
A Belgian man reportedly ended his life following a six-week-long conversation about the climate crisis with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
According to his widow, who chose to remain anonymous, *Pierre – not the man’s real name – became extremely eco-anxious when he found refuge in Eliza, an AI chatbot on an app called Chai.
Eliza consequently encouraged him to put an end to his life after he proposed sacrificing himself to save the planet.
“Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be here,” the man’s widow told Belgian news outlet La Libre.
It appears the biggest hazard to humanity is when climate change arguments are paired with AI.
The movement birthed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the early 1960s and Earth Day in the 1970s — a movement that once aimed to protect landscapes, wildlands, whales, and wildlife — has morphed into the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Rather than preserve wildlands and wildlife, today’s “green” NGOs have devolved into a sprawling network of nonprofit and for-profit groups aligned with big corporations, big banks, and big law firms. In the name of climate change, these NGOs want to pave vast swaths of America’s countryside with oceans of solar panels and forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines.
The movement birthed by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the early 1960s and Earth Day in the 1970s — a movement that once aimed to protect landscapes, wildlands, whales, and wildlife — has morphed into the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Rather than preserve wildlands and wildlife, today’s “green” NGOs have devolved into a sprawling network of nonprofit and for-profit groups aligned with big corporations, big banks, and big law firms. In the name of climate change, these NGOs want to pave vast swaths of America’s countryside with oceans of solar panels and forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines. They are also promoting the industrialization of our oceans, a move that could put hundreds of massive offshore wind turbines in the middle of some of our best fisheries and right atop known habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.
The simplest way to understand how climatism and renewable energy fetishism have swamped concerns about conservation and wildlife protection is to follow the money. Over the past decade or so, the business of climate activism has become just that — a business. As I reported last year in “The Anti-Industry Industry,” the top 25 climate nonprofits are spending some $4.5 billion per year. As seen below, the gross receipts of the top 25 climate-focused NGOs now total about $4.7 billion per year.
These groups — which are uniformly opposed to both nuclear energy and hydrocarbons — have budgets that dwarf those of pro-nuclear and pro-hydrocarbon outfits like the Nuclear Energy Institute, which, according to the latest figures from Guidestar, has gross receipts of $194 million, and the American Petroleum Institute which has gross receipts of $254 million. (Unless otherwise noted, the NGO figures are from Guidestar, which defines gross receipts as a “gross figure that does not subtract rental expenses, costs, sales expenses, direct expenses, and costs of goods sold.” Also note that in many cases, Guidestar’s gross receipts figure doesn’t match the revenue that the NGOs are reporting on their Form 990s.)
To understand the staggering amount of money being spent by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex, look at the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Colorado-based group founded by Amory Lovins, the college dropout who, for nearly 50 years, has been the leading cheerleader for the “soft” energy path of wind, solar, biofuels, and energy efficiency. (Click here for my 2007 article on Lovins.) Between 2012 and 2022, according to ProPublica, Rocky Mountain Institute’s annual budget skyrocketed, going from $10 million to $117 million.
Indeed, the group provides a prime example of how corporate cash and dark money are fueling the growth of the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Among its biggest donors are corporations that are profiting from the alt-energy craze. Last year, Wells Fargo, a mega-bank that is among the world’s biggest providers of tax-equity financing for alt-energy projects, gave Rocky Mountain Institute at least $1 million. On its website, Wells Fargo says it is “one of the most active tax-equity investors in the nation’s renewable energy sector, financing projects in 38 states.” In 2021, the bank bragged that it had surpassed “$10 billion in tax-equity investments in the wind, solar, and fuel cell industries. Wells Fargo has invested in more than 500 projects, helping to finance 12% of all wind and solar energy capacity in the U.S. over the past 10 years.”
Another mega-bank giving big bucks to RMI is J.P. Morgan Chase, which gave at least $500,000 in 2023. I took a deep dive into alt-energy finance last year in “Jamie Dimon’s Climate Corporatism.” I explained:
Last year, Rocky Mountain Institute got a similar amount from European oil giant Shell PLC, which has been active in both onshore and offshore wind. In addition, last year, the Rocky Mountain Institute published a report in partnership with the Bezos Earth Fund, which claimed, “the fossil fuel era is over.” The Bezos Earth Fund, of course, gets its cash from Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos. Last year, Bezos’s group gave Rocky Mountain Institute at least $1 million. In addition, Amazon, which claims to be “the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy,” is a significant donor and was the sole funder of a report published earlier this year by RMI that promotes increased use of — what else? — solar, wind, and batteries.
RMI also got at least $1 million from two NGOs — ClimateWorks Foundation and the Climate Imperative Foundation — which funnel massive amounts of dark money to climate activist groups. San Francisco-based ClimateWorks has gross receipts of $350 million. ClimateWorks lists about two dozen major funders on its website, including the Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. However, the group’s tax filings show that it gets most of its funding from individuals, none of whom are disclosed on its Form 990. In 2022, ClimateWorks got $128 million from an unnamed individual, $45 million from another individual, and $24 million from another. In all, ClimateWorks collected about $277 million — or roughly 84% of its funding — from a handful of unnamed oligarchs. Who are they? ClimateWorks doesn’t say, but notes that it has “several funders that [sic] prefer to remain anonymous.”
Climate Imperative, also based in San Francisco, doesn’t reveal the identities of its funders, nor does it publish the names of all the activist groups it funds. But it is giving staggering sums of money to climate groups. Climate Imperative’s gross receipts total $289 million. The group’s goals include the “rapid scaling of renewable energy, widespread electrification of buildings and transportation, [and] stopping the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.”
Elite academics produce studies that provide ammunition to the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex. Last year, in an article published in the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, claimed, “We now have the potential to rebuild a better America.”
Doing so, he explained, will require a much larger electric grid with “up to 75,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines by 2035.” That’s enough, he noted, to “circle the Earth three times.” He continued, saying the U.S. will also need utility-scale solar projects covering “an area the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.”
Jenkins claims we can have a “better America” by covering an area the size of eight states with solar panels (most of which are made with Chinese components) and endless forests of massive, noisy, bird-and-bat-killing wind turbines. Put another way, the Princeton net-zero plan would require paving some 239,000 square miles (620,000 square kilometers) of land with solar and wind projects, and that doesn’t include the territory needed for all the high-voltage transmission lines that would be needed!
Despite the cartoonish amount of land and raw materials it would require, the Princeton net-zero plan shows how renewable energy fetishism dominates today’s energy policy discussions. Nearly every large climate-focused NGO in America claims our economy must soon be fueled solely by solar, wind, and batteries, with no hydrocarbons or nuclear allowed. But those claims ignore the raging land-use conflicts happening across America — and in numerous countries around the world — as rural communities fight back against the encroachment of Big Wind and Big Solar.
Perhaps the most striking example of the environmental betrayal now underway is the climate activists’ support for installing hundreds, or even thousands, of offshore wind platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of the North Atlantic Right Whale’s habitat. Last month, I published this video showing habitat maps and the areas proposed for wind development.
Rather than defend whales, the group claimed the offshore wind sector is “a major jobs creator and an important tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Who funds the Center for American Progress? Among its $1 million funders are big foundations, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Two familiar names, Climate Imperative and ClimateWorks, each gave the group up to $500,000 last year. On the corporate side, the group got up to $500,000 from Amazon.com and Microsoft.
Now, let’s look at the Sierra Club (gross receipts: $184 million), a group whose mission statement states that it aims “To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth.”
Alas, protecting wild places doesn’t include our oceans. In March, Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, defended the offshore wind industry, claiming that “fossil fuel industry front groups” were trying to make “whales and other marine species a cultural wedge issue.” He also claimed that “disruptions in the whales’ feeding patterns, water salinity, and currents are likely the result of climate change,” adding that “climate change perhaps is the largest overriding problem, and our transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy the solution.”Just for a moment, imagine what Podesta’s group, or the Sierra Club, would be saying if those scalawags from the oil industry were planning to put hundreds of offshore platforms in the middle of whale habitat. The wailing and gnashing of teeth would be audible from here to Montauk. Those NGOs would be running endless articles about the dangers facing the Right Whale — of which there are only about 360 individuals left, including fewer than 70 “reproductively active females.” But since the industry aiming to industrialize vast swaths of our oceans has been branded as “clean,” the response from the Sierra Clubbers has been, well, crickets.
If the climate groups are seriously concerned about reducing emissions, they would be clamoring for the increased use of nuclear energy, the safest form of zero-carbon electricity generation. It also has the smallest environmental footprint. But the Sierra Club, in its own words, “remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.” Furthermore, leaders at the Natural Resources Defense Council (gross receipts: $548 million) cheered in 2021 when the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York was prematurely shuttered. What does NRDC claim we can use to replace nuclear? Offshore wind, of course.
The punchline here is obvious: it’s time to discard the shopworn label of “environmentalism.” The NGOs discussed above, and others like them, are not environmental groups. Their response to the specter of catastrophic climate change will require wrecking our rural landscapes, the killing of untold numbers of bats, birds, and insects, and industrializing our oceans with large-scale alt-energy projects.
America needs a new generation of activists who want to spare nature, wildlife, and marine mammals by utilizing high-density, low-emission energy sources like natural gas and nuclear energy. We need advocates and academics who will push for a weather-resilient electric grid, not a weather-dependent one. Above all, we need true conservationists who promote a realistic view of our energy and power systems. That view will include a positive view of our place on this planet, a view that seeks to conserve natural places, not to pave them.
In this video, we delve into the lesser-known aspects of electric vehicles (EVs) and their environmental impact. We challenge the common narrative of EVs as the ultimate green machines and explore the hidden pollutants that often go unnoticed.
In this video, we delve into the lesser-known aspects of electric vehicles (EVs) and their environmental impact. We challenge the common narrative of EVs as the ultimate green machines and explore the hidden pollutants that often go unnoticed.
In summary, this video provides a comprehensive look at the environmental impact of EVs, going beyond just CO2 emissions. We invite you to join us on this enlightening journey as we uncover the truth about electric vehicles and their role in our sustainable future.
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Rent-seekers and the wind and sun cult who run with them are in a flat panic as they realise that their game is up. Mouthing off about an ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future was always going to come unstuck. Reality has a tendency of biting back.
Rent-seekers and the wind and sun cult who run with them are in a flat panic as they realise that their game is up. Mouthing off about an ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future was always going to come unstuck. Reality has a tendency of biting back.
Every calm night (ie no sun and no wind) reveals the inherent (and natural) defect of attempting to rely on wind and solar, a defect which becomes glaringly obvious to those with the vaguest interest about where their power comes from.
That interest tends to be heightened during ‘demand management’ exercises aka load shedding (while the grid manager is in control) and mass blackouts – when wind and solar chaos reigns supreme.
Those in on the scam are evidently concerned that the next mass blackout will result in a return to energy policy sanity; hence the headless chickens approach being taken by Australia’s Energy Market Operator, among others.
Note the bluff, bluster and spin in the first piece from The Australian from those responsible.
Note also their steadfast refusal to refer to the elephant in the room: calm nights.
And their claims about building thousands of kilometres of extra transmission grid fixing the problem, fall hollow by reference to a simple graphic, courtesy of the boys over at Aneroid Energy.
Depicted above is the daily output from every wind turbine connected to Australia’s Eastern Grid – spread over an enormous expanse from Far North Queensland to Tasmania and South Australia.
Note the sudden 3,000-4,000 MW collapses from the peaks of the troughs – perfectly explained by calm weather.
Note too the troughs associated with each regular collapse show output of around 200MW and 2,000MW – out of a total notional capacity of 11,409MW.
That is, on regular occasions – dozens of times each month – Australia’s fleet of whirling wonders are producing between 1.7% and 17% of their total capacity. The missing 80 to 98% isn’t coming from mega-batteries or pumped hydro (and never will). It’s coming from coal, gas, diesel and kerosene. In that order.
No amount of huffing, puffing or spinning will ever change that fact. More batteries won’t fix it and running extension cords between States will make no difference, at all. Nor will adding the thousands of turbines and millions of solar panels promised by Labor’s delusional plans to build a “renewable energy superpower”.
On the current trajectory, Australians will be lucky to have any power, at all. Welcome to your all wind and sun powered future!
Blackout risks: A nation lost in energy transition The Australian Joe Kelly and Perry Williams 20 May 2024
Electricity users face a heightened risk of blackouts during peak demand in NSW and Victoria this summer, with the energy market operator forced to bid for emergency supplies amid delays in new transmission lines and renewables projects.
The prospect of holiday power outages during a cost-of-living crisis will ramp up the pre-election contest over Labor’s vision to transform Australia into a renewable-energy superpower, overhaul fuel-efficiency standards for new cars and pour billions of taxpayer funds into emerging industries.
One week after the budget handed $300 power bill rebates to every household [read: taxpayers paying themselves with the taxes they’ve already paid], a new energy market update says reliability gaps have deteriorated in the two most populous states and will decline through the decade in South Australia.
The forecast will raise concerns over a choppy transition to greener power as the bulk of Australia’s coal power stations are retired this decade, and the government proceeds with plans to deploy 32 gigawatts of renewable and clean dispatchable capacity by 2030.
The Australian Energy Market Operator blamed the worsening outlook on a series of delays, including a year-long lag in delivering the EnergyConnect power cable between NSW and South Australia and a similar delay to the state’s Central West Orana transmission line.
Multiple hold-ups to battery, hydro-storage, wind and solar projects have all added to the tighter outlook while the shutdown of gas and diesel generation in South Australia will lead to a supply squeeze in Victoria.
The revised outlook from AEMO lands amid heated debate over the role of gas, which has split the Labor Party and ignited a fresh political row with the Greens.
The government last week committed to the fuel source remaining a key part of the energy mix to 2050 and beyond.
Last week, Labor also teamed up with the Greens to ditch changes aimed at fixing the “broken” offshore gas approvals system in return for the passage of its petroleum resource rent tax changes and the introduction of tough standards reducing emissions for new passenger vehicles by more than 60 per cent by 2030.
Given the looming reliability risks, AEMO will on Tuesday put out a call to the market for emergency power supplies for NSW and Victoria to minimise the risk of blackouts during peak demand in the 2024-25 summer.
NSW faces a reliability gap of more than 1000 megawatts of power from 2025-26, which widens to more than 3000MW in 2032-33. The figures underscore the challenge for Australia of more than doubling its renewable capacity to achieve Labor’s target of 82 per cent by 2030 while keeping a lid on household bills at a time of cost-of-living stress.
“While new generation and storage capacity continues to increase, project development and commissioning delays are impacting reliability throughout the horizon,” said AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman. [twaddle: see the simple graphic above]
Peter Dutton used his budget reply speech on Thursday to enshrine reliable and affordable energy as one of the central political battlegrounds of the next election along with housing and migration. The Opposition Leader accused Labor of betraying the public over its vow to reduce power bills by $275 a year by 2025.
Mr Dutton warned that spiralling power prices would undermine Labor’s new Future Made in Australia agenda, shutting down manufacturers or sending them offshore. He blasted the government for forcing the nation into relying on “weather-dependent energy”.
Anthony Albanese has sought to defuse anger over rising electricity bills by committing to the delivery of $300 subsidies for every household – a tactic also aimed at lowering inflation – while committing billions to the development of emerging industries critical to achieving the net-zero transformation.
AEMO pointed to a giant pipeline of green projects expected to be delivered to the market in the next decade along with unprecedented intervention from both state and federal governments to avoid a bumpy path to a renewable-powered grid.
Its updated electricity outlook does not include federal or state government energy programs nor a 280-gigawatt pipeline of proposed generation and storage projects in development stages, representing nearly five times the currency capacity of the national electricity market.
AEMO said the report highlighted a call for “timely” investment in projects to generate, store and share electricity to manage reliability risks from retiring coal plants.
A plan is also expected in NSW this week to confirm that Eraring – Australia’s biggest coal-power station – may stay open for four more years, with the NSW government working on a safety-net solution to head off the threat of blackouts.
Market executives have warned that allowing the state’s largest source of electricity – typically producing about a quarter of NSW’s electricity – would stoke prices for households and businesses buckling under high interest rates and soaring inflation.
Coal is still the dominant source of electricity in Australia, with its 20GW of capacity accounting for about 60 per cent of all power. To replace coal, Australia will need to build more capacity than the amount of coal in the system due to the intermittent source of renewable energy. The Australian
What’s really keeping the lights on – for now…
AEMO’s summer blackout predictions give Anthony Albanese another reason for an early poll The Australian Simon Benson 20 May 2024
Anthony Albanese has just been given another reason to consider going to an election before Christmas.
If the energy market operator is right, the lights are going to go out across much of eastern mainland Australia over summer.
The last thing Labor would want is more colour added to the energy nightmare it is already presiding over as it prepares for an election year. But that is what is about to happen.
There are no prizes for guessing what the problem is: The failure by state and federal Labor governments to address the reliability of the national electricity market in anticipation of coal’s exit. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s report is clear.
Reliability has deteriorated in NSW, Victoria and South Australia over the past year, forcing it to warn it will have to bid for emergency power reserves to keep the lights on over summer in the two largest states of NSW and Victoria. South Australia is also again in trouble.
Once again, it is calling for new generation, transmission and storage assets such as batteries.
But then it says there are only limited locations where new supply will actually add benefit to system reliability.
It’s little wonder that the Prime Minister performed his second political volte-face of the year two weeks ago – the tax cuts being the first – when he overturned Labor’s energy policy and announced a new gas plan out to 2050.
This plan is almost indistinguishable from the Morrison government’s net-zero plan to use gas as the transition fuel.
This is an admission that Labor’s renewable energy plan just isn’t going to get the job done if keeping the lights on and prices lower are the priorities.
That he was forced to legislatively retreat last week by the Greens is inconsequential. He simply announced that he would legislate it later.
But the AEMO report highlights the desperation creeping into the government camp on energy reliability.
It’s one thing to hand out $300 to households, but this may do little to ameliorate the anger if those households don’t have power to be subsidised.
Peter Dutton’s energy plans for gas and nuclear to shore up renewables is starting to come into sharper focus. Details are being kept back, but the Liberal leader won’t be able to keep this up for long.
If reliability issues continue in the NEM, Dutton’s case for more non-renewable dispatchable power will only become stronger. The Australian
Powering the nation on wing and a prayer Graham Lloyd The Australian 20 May 2024
The electricity network in Australia – a fossil fuel energy superpower – is increasingly held together with hopes, tissue paper and spit.
The latest warning from the Australian Energy Market Operator is that things are worse than was predicted only a few months ago. It is the story of the renewable energy transition.
Battery, wind and solar projects have struggled to get from promise to reality. The electricity grid network is not designed for what it increasingly is being asked to do.
The situation can only be saved by many billions of dollars worth of further investment supported by a long list of government subsidy programs.
AEMO has abandoned subtlety and all discretion. It highlights the “urgency for the timely delivery of transmission, generation and storage, and use consumer electricity resources to support the grid”.
AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman tells us what we already know: “Project development and commissioning delays are impacting reliability throughout the horizon.”
Households, and their yet to be purchased electric cars, are now a key part of keeping the lights on in future.
Reliability risks have increased in the two most populous states, NSW and Victoria, from 2024-25 to 2027-28 and increased in South Australia in 2026-27.
The situation has become so dire AEMO will tender for “interim reliability reserves” as early as the coming year.
The long-term solution, AEMO says, lies in state and federal governments opening the taxpayer wallet through a myriad of high-cost schemes; a federal capacity investment scheme to underwrite the profitability of big projects. Progress on the stalled NSW electricity infrastructure roadmap. A Queensland energy and jobs plan. A fresh Victoria renewable energy target, storage target, offshore wind policy or investments by a nationalised state electricity commission. And further developments to support the federal government’s Powering Australia Plan commitment to increase renewable energy generation to 82 per cent of supply by 2030.
As well as a shortfall of generation projects, the AEMO report highlights two more inconvenient truths.
There will need to be new investment in ancillary services to replace the benefits of having big baseload plants operating on the grid.
“Over the coming decade, the rapid energy transition will result in a significant need for new assets and providers of these essential system services, including for system strength, frequency management, voltage control, ramping capability, and system restoration services”, AEMO says.
And, such is the state of the electricity network, there currently are limited options for where new supply can be added to make a difference when things get tight.
“Without further transmission development there are limited locations in each mainland region that can support new generation and storage that will benefit power system reliability,” AEMO says.
The report paints a picture of a low emissions transition that is being planned belatedly and on the run. The track record of delivery does not give confidence that, left unchecked, things will improve anytime soon. The Australian
Global Circulation Models (GCMs) have long been the primary tools for climate prediction, driving political and policy decisions. However, GCMs have consistently run hot, predicting more warming than has been observed. A recent paper titled “The Overlooked Sub-Grid Air-Sea Flux in Climate Models” by Julius J.M. Busecke et al. exposes a significant deficiency in these models: their handling of small-scale air-sea interactions. Let’s explore the findings and implications of this study, highlighting the potential for improved modeling techniques to enhance climate predictions, though without guaranteed results.
Global Circulation Models (GCMs) have long been the primary tools for climate prediction, driving political and policy decisions. However, GCMs have consistently run hot, predicting more warming than has been observed. A recent paper titled “The Overlooked Sub-Grid Air-Sea Flux in Climate Models” by Julius J.M. Busecke et al. exposes a significant deficiency in these models: their handling of small-scale air-sea interactions. Let’s explore the findings and implications of this study, highlighting the potential for improved modeling techniques to enhance climate predictions, though without guaranteed results.
Understanding Air-Sea Interactions
Air-sea interactions are critical for regulating the Earth’s climate. These processes involve the exchange of heat, momentum, and gases between the ocean and the atmosphere, affecting weather patterns, ocean circulation, and climate variability. The ocean absorbs about 90% of the excess heat due to human activities, playing a central role in global climate dynamics.
Complexities in Modeling Air-Sea Interactions
Accurately representing air-sea interactions in climate models is challenging due to their complex and variable nature. These interactions occur across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from short-term processes like boundary layer turbulence and hurricane formation to long-term phenomena such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The representation of these processes is hampered by the resolution of the models and the inherent nonlinearity of the coupling formulae used to simulate them.
Limitations of Coarse-Resolution Models
The primary issue highlighted by Busecke et al. is the coarse resolution of most current GCMs, typically around 1° or larger. These models fail to capture small-scale structures and processes at the air-sea interface, leading to significant biases in the simulation of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and air-sea heat fluxes. The study states:
“Coarse-resolution climate models do not resolve small-scale structures in the air-sea state, which, due to strong nonlinearities in the coupling formulae, can impact the large-scale air-sea exchange—a mechanism that has received little attention.”
This oversight results in a systematic cooling of the ocean by about 4 W/m² globally, with significant regional variations. These biases contribute to the tendency of GCMs to overestimate future warming, casting doubt on their reliability.
The Role of High-Resolution Simulations
To address this deficiency, the researchers employed high-resolution coupled climate simulations with a resolution of 1/10°. These simulations allowed them to analyze the effects of small-scale heterogeneity on air-sea heat fluxes, revealing that such heterogeneity can significantly alter large-scale fluxes.
Methodology
The researchers used a method involving spatial filtering and offline computation of heat fluxes to quantify the impact of small-scale processes. They defined the small-scale turbulent heat flux (Q*) as:
“Q* = Q – Qc, where Q is the flux computed using the high-resolution fields, and Qc is the flux computed using the low-resolution surrogate fields.”
This approach isolates the net impact of small-scale variability on large-scale fluxes, which is often missing in coarse-resolution models.
Key Findings
The study found that small-scale air-sea fluxes show strong spatial and temporal variability, locally reaching values up to 100 W/m². On average, these fluxes result in a global cooling effect of approximately 4 W/m², with some regions experiencing even higher values.
Atmospheric vs. Oceanic Contributions
One striking finding is the differentiation between atmospheric and oceanic contributions to these small-scale fluxes. The atmospheric component predominantly leads to cooling, while the oceanic component is more variable, causing both warming and cooling depending on the region. This variability is especially pronounced in dynamically active areas such as western boundary currents and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
The study explains:
“The contribution to the sub-grid flux (Q*) due to small-scale atmospheric features (Q*,A) produces a spatially smooth cooling effect over much of the ocean… In contrast, the contribution from small-scale oceanic features (Q*,O) is highly spatially variable and results in both warming and cooling of the ocean.”
The impact of small-scale heterogeneity is not uniform across the globe. Regions with high dynamic activity, such as the western boundary currents (e.g., the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Current) and the Agulhas retroflection, exhibit the strongest cooling effects, with long-term averages exceeding 20 W/m². In contrast, areas near the equator and the more energetic parts of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current sometimes show warming effects due to small-scale oceanic features.
The researchers found that around 70% of daily average values for the small-scale flux enhance the large-scale flux, with over 20% of these values showing an enhancement exceeding 10% of the magnitude of the large-scale flux. In dynamically active regions, this enhancement is even more pronounced, highlighting the critical role of small-scale processes in shaping large-scale climatic patterns.
Implications for Climate Modeling
The implications of these findings are significant. The study underscores the need for GCMs to incorporate parameterizations that account for small-scale heterogeneity. The current generation of models, as used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), exhibits substantial biases that have led to inaccurate predictions and, consequently, questionable policy decisions based on these models.
Moving Towards Improved Models
Future climate models need to integrate high-resolution data and develop robust parameterizations for small-scale processes. As the paper suggests:
“By identifying an overlooked contribution to air-sea heat flux in climate models, we open a promising new direction for addressing biases in climate simulations and thus improving future climate predictions.”
However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that these improvements are not guaranteed to resolve all the inaccuracies in current climate models. While the study highlights a significant oversight, the path to fully accurate climate predictions remains uncertain.
The Need for Comprehensive Parameterizations
Developing comprehensive parameterizations that accurately represent the impact of small-scale heterogeneity in coarse-resolution models is a complex but essential task. This involves not only heat fluxes but also momentum and gas exchanges, which play critical roles in the climate system.
The study emphasizes the importance of accounting for the variability due to sub-grid flows using stochastic approaches, as well as the need for parameterizations that address the impacts of spatial heterogeneity at the air-sea interface. While some parameterizations exist for temporal variability (e.g., gustiness), no comprehensive parameterization currently accounts for all components of spatial heterogeneity.
Challenges and Future Directions
While the study provides a crucial step forward, it also acknowledges several limitations. The reliance on high-resolution simulations means that results are sensitive to the resolution and scale of filtering used. Additionally, more work is needed to understand how these small-scale fluxes interact with other processes and influence large-scale circulation and energetics.
Addressing Scale-Dependence
One major challenge is the scale-dependence of the estimated fluxes. The researchers note that while they do not believe the qualitative results of their study would change with different resolutions, building quantitative confidence will require higher-resolution coupled simulations and a thorough investigation of scale-dependence.
Integrating Observations and Models
A promising direction for future research is the integration of high-resolution observational data with model simulations. Upcoming satellite missions, like ODYSEA, and field campaigns conducting high-resolution surveys of the air-sea transition zone could provide valuable data to validate and refine model parameterizations. These efforts could help bridge the gap between high-resolution simulations and coarse-resolution climate models.
Extending the Study to Other Fluxes
While this study focuses on turbulent heat fluxes, the researchers suggest that future work should also consider the effects on momentum and gas fluxes. These fluxes are equally important for understanding the dynamics of the climate system and could reveal additional biases and deficiencies in current models.
Conclusion
The paper by Busecke et al. highlights a significant shortcoming in current climate models, emphasizing the need for greater attention to small-scale air-sea interactions. Addressing this gap is crucial for improving the accuracy of climate predictions and informing more reliable policy decisions. Integrating high-resolution data and refining model parameterizations will be essential steps toward a more accurate and reliable understanding of our changing climate.
In summary, while GCMs have provided a basic framework for understanding climate dynamics, it is imperative to recognize and address their limitations. By incorporating insights from studies like this one, we can develop more robust models that better capture the complexities of the Earth system, leading to more informed and effective climate policies.
The journey towards more accurate climate models is ongoing, and acknowledging the deficiencies in current approaches is a critical step. As we enhance our understanding of small-scale processes and their impacts, we might move closer to developing climate models that can truly reflect the intricacies of the Earth’s climate system. However, it’s essential to remain cautious and critical, as the path to reliable climate predictions is fraught with challenges and uncertainties.
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