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.
London must better prepare for severe floods and heatwaves, a report has warned.
The London Climate Resilience Review, published on Wednesday, called for a “reset moment” for the capital following the general election.
Emma Howard Boyd CBE, chairwoman of the review, said preparing London for more frequent and extreme climate risks was “non-negotiable”. The report highlighted opportunities for investment in London but warned that time was running out to act on climate resilience.
A government spokesperson said it welcomed the review and understood the “urgent need” to prepare for and adapt to changes posed by the climate emergency.
It recommended that an official heat plan be created for London to enable the city to better deal with severe floods and heatwaves.
The independent report was commissioned by the Mayor of London and looked at the capitalโs preparedness for heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, sea level rise and subsidence.
It also found that government and businesses had not adequately planned for the disruption caused when severe weather impacts “cascade” through critical systems such as healthcare, transport, energy and water.
There is only one objective in this report, and that is to scaremonger the public into accepting Net Zero whatever the cost.
Emma Howard Boyd has been a leading member of the Climate Establishment for a long time, so it would be wishful thinking to expect an honest, accurate and realistic assessment, given her background
They might just as well have picked John Gummer or Chris Skidmore!
Where is their evidence that any of the things they have highlighted are actually happening and getting worse? Floods, droughts, wildfires, storms or sea level rise? There is none offered because they are not getting worse. All they have is a handful of hot days to scaremonger about, but where is the Climate Plan for cold days- after all, ice and snow create far more problems for London than a spot of sunshine!
As for subsidence, what on earth does that have to do with climate? It may be that increasing water extraction is a problem, but that is down to demand.
Take a look at rainfall, for instance. Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford has a very long record and is representative of what is happening in the Thames Valley in terms of floods and droughts.
Rainfall in the summer-half year shows no long term trend at all. Droughts certainly used to be much worse in past years, and apart from the notorious summer of 2012, there have been no excessively wet ones for many years.
As for extreme rainfall, Oxfordโs wettest days occurred in the 20thC. the data clearly shows there is no evidence that rainfall is becoming more extreme, as the report pretends:
And monthly rainfall is not becoming more extreme either:
The Met Office have already admitted that wind storms were much worse in the 1980s and 90s, and sea levels on the East Coast have been rising at the same rate since the end of the Little Ice Age in the late 19thC. In the last 50 years, the rate of rise has been just 1.67mm a year:
When the grass is tall and unruly, it can be difficult to see where you are going and to know what lies beneath.
Then come the steady, gradual, crawling and crackling fires.
New growth follows. Suddenly the kangaroo and emu are back, for the tender shoots. What appeared to be destruction, was just the beginning of a new cycle.
That is how it is sometimes, where I grew-up at Coomalie of the stoney country in the Northern Territory of Australia. My country.
Fire can create a balance between trees and grasses in the savanna, not just at Coomalie, but around the world. We need to know this if we are to understand nature, and how natural environments can change. Not just on land, but also under the sea.
If we are to understand what can follow coral bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef; how there can suddenly be an abundance of juvenile barracuda, and juvenile bream shoaling, and schooling. They were at Barron Rock Reef the Sunday before last in the tens of thousands above all the dead coral from the bleaching.
Mid-view are the juvenile Yellow-tailed Barracuda (above) and wide-view are the juvenile Bream (below), both schooling in their tens of thousands above dead coral at Bald Rock Reef the Sunday before last.
Visit these environments and listen, sometimes in discomfort, to know how this change happens. And you might also hear the whales.
There are the annual cycles of whale migration corresponding with the duration of Earthโs orbit around the Sun and then there are the longer cycles including Saturn-return. Of course, there are other cycles, daily-cycles, monthly-cycles and even cycles that caused the 120-metre sea level rise. That was 16,000 years ago, and every few hundred thousand years before that.
To know the long and deep history of our Earth โ that is the story of climate change.
And yet they deny it. The elite are demanding that we deny it. To cancel those with a sceptical disposition who remember the cycles, not just from the left of politics, but now also from the right.
Did you know that Saturn can affect the Earthโs climate because it contributes to the ever-changing barycentre of our solar system. The thirty-year Saturn-return cycle is sometimes used as a metaphor for the three stages in the human lifecycle. But it is rare to hear about such things nowadays โ about natural lifecycles. There are those who repeat โthe arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justiceโ while denying the existence of the natural cycles within this same universe.
The gravitational impact of Saturn and even the Moon are real, but more usually ignored. They are denied as though the sea tides do not even exist and that everything must be improved.
More usually the chosen faux scientists want to just add a number to something claiming the trend is either decreasing or increasing โ apparently forever. It is rare to hear mention of natural cycles, even natural climate cycles.
Reference to a single number apparently makes it truer. That is his propaganda, the anointed one. Bjorn Lomborg mentions these types of single numbers in his latest YouTube being promoted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) and with 50,000 views after just four days.
On their behalf, he concludes that everything is getting better โ this is the โbetter storyโ. It is a line this side of politics is going to push very hard over the next few years. And I ask that you reject it. As I ask that you reject the idea that coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef can be reduced to a single number based on a perimeter survey while ignoring the schooling barracuda.
Oh so many fish shoaling and schooling one Sunday, as the coral collapsed beneath them.
While he claims that there is record coral cover. And they send me emails, endlessly promoting him. The most recent begins:
Bjorn Lomborg seeks to bring a balanced and thoughtful view to the climate conversation, where alarmist narratives have created policies that do more harm than good. Weโve been told emphatically by the New York Times that we live in a world on fire. The reality? The percentage of the global surface that wildfires burn each year has been steadily decreasing over the past century.
Why?
Human ingenuity.
I clicked across to the presentation and Lomborgโs first slide, on behalf of ARC, it declares:
Global Warming โ Real and Manmade.
In fact, climate change is real, and part of a natural cycle within a cycle, within a cycle and the arc of the moral universe demand that he begin with this truth.
****
The feature image (very top) is of Yellowback Puller (Chromis nitida) fishes schooling above dead coral at Bald Rock Reef the Sunday before last. And just above is me, in the Northern Territory of Australia beside a fire.
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his companyโs philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
During a high-profile conversation with moderator Peter Bryant at the recent RealClearEnergy Future Forum, Gill Pratt, chief scientist at Toyota, said that his companyโs philosophy focuses first on quality of life. From that perspective, he added, the automotive future must be a multi-pathway that respects human diversity and the diversity of uses for motorized vehicles (check the video above to see the Pratt section).
Toyota, he said, recognizes the difference between decarbonization โ which is the goal โ and electrification, which is one means of reaching that goal. Toyota therefore is building hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs), and internal combustion engines that use hydrogen rather than gasoline or diesel as a fuel. In the developing world where electricity is in short supply, he added, the best choice may be low-carbon liquid fuels.
Prior to being recruited by Toyota to lead its research institute, Pratt had worked on robotics and neuromorphic computing at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, making machines that could help in disasters and computers that worked more like the human brain. There, he says, he learned that technological predictions are often unreliable and that we must expect to be surprised.
Todayโs vehicles are so far advanced from those of just 20 years ago. Today, global positioning systems help guide drivers through both urban traffic and rural roads; we now have telephones and the internet in our vehicles; and todayโs vehicular onboard computers are sophisticated enough to drive themselves safely with or without passengers.
But we have also concluded that the products of combustion of fossil fuels exceed the limits of human tolerance and threaten our future. The โquick fixโ of electrifying everything has proven to be a stubborn challenge, if only for the sheer magnitude of battery-EVs needed to replace 300 million American vehicles and a billion and a half worldwide, most of which operate on gasoline or diesel fuel.
To achieve a safe self-driving vehicle, Toyota opted for a diverse approach with a focus on saving lives sooner. The companyโs approach to decarbonization has also focused on diverse solutions, including battery-EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell EVs. โWe want to give people around the world from all walks of life the best tools to solve the global problem of climate change,โ Pratt said in a 2021 Toyota Research Institute video.
โDifferent people,โ he said then, โhave different circumstances and different needs. Some live in areas with electric grids powered by renewables; others live in areas that will be powered by fossil fuels for some time. Some have convenient charging stations at home; others live in cities where that is more difficult. Some are wealthy; most are not.โ
One benefit of this strategy is the wiser use of available lithium, the critical element in todayโs EV batteries. Pratt explained that Toyotaโs strategy focuses on maximizing the carbon return on investment of every battery cell produced, which is defined as grams of carbon dioxide reduced divided by grams of lithium used.
With the average U.S. daily commute of 32 miles a day, hauling around a 320-mile-range electric battery yields a low carbon ROI. Allocating the same components of these large EV batteries into multiple hybrids multiplies the carbon ROI for these expensive battery components. One battery-EVs uses about 90 times the lithium as one hybrid. On the other hand, braking energy adds to the efficiency of battery-EVs in city traffic.
Toyota has found that hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles have similar lifetime carbon emissions as battery-EVs at a lower cost to the consumer. Fully EVs may still be the better option wherever there are ample fast-charging options and sufficient electricity capacity at affordable prices.
But this is hardly the case in the developing world, nor even across much of the U.S. landscape today. Thatโs one reason Toyota has a focus on hydrogen-powered vehicles, which also have zero carbon tailpipe emissions. While hydrogen is a gas that must be cooled to near absolute-zero or pressurized for use in motor vehicles, there are ample supplies. The petrochemical industry alone creates enough hydrogen to fuel millions of vehicles.
Hydrogen has been used in racecar internal combustion engines, but Toyota believes its โsweet spotโ may be in 18-wheeler trucks, tanks, cranes, and other large vehicles that would otherwise require huge electric batteries that add weight and reduce load capacity. While intensifying its European operations via Hydrogen Factory Europe, Toyota is applying fuel cell technology to buses and trucks, railways, ocean and river shipping, and even baseload electricity generation.
A recent article notes that Toyotaโs hydrogen combustion engines provide great performance while utilizing efficiency in engine features. These engines can provide up to 400 horsepower, equivalent to many piston Atkinson cycle gasoline engines, and can reach a thermal efficiency of up to 45%, equal to that of the best diesel engines. The only emissions from these engines are clean water vapor.
Another recent article explains that Toyotaโs hydrogen fuel cell system involves the chemical reaction of the hydrogen stored on the vehicle and the oxygen from the surrounding environment to produce electricity to the electric motor without the need for the heavy lithium-ion batteries utilized in battery-EVs.
Pratt compares the decision by Toyota to seek a multi-pathway approach to the automotive future to the old debate between VHS and Beta. Those who put all their eggs in the Beta basket ended up bankrupt as VHS proved more amenable to consumers than the technologically superior Beta. But, he says, in tomorrowโs automotive universe, battery-electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen powered vehicles may all play important roles.
The bottom line, though, is that the poor and middle class worldwide will continue to rely on gasoline- and diesel-powered internal combustion engines until these newer technologies can produce vehicles they can afford to buy and maintain and until fuel supplies (including ample electricity) are also conveniently available at affordable prices.
While the gasoline fuel hose and the electric charging cable area about the same size, the fuel hose today delivers ten times the power of the electric charger in a much shorter time frame. Multiply the charging time versus the liquid refueling time and you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge.
Texas-based Buc-eeโs just opened its largest station, with 120 pumps on a 75,000-square-foot lot. They would have to have 1,200 of todayโs best chargers, covering perhaps 750,000 square feet, to service the same number of EVs today
With 80% of the EV chargers in the U.S. today being slow chargers, the transition even in the developed world may be slower than politicians and bureaucrats demand.
Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
A recent article in Forbes, titled โClimate Changeโs Toll On Global Agriculture: A Looming Crisis,โ claims that climate change is โwreaking havocโ on cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans. This is false. Certain regions, like those the author Monica Sanders focuses on, are seeing bad seasons for these crops, but it is not indicative of long-term trends at those locations or globally. Thus it cannot be attributed to the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years, and certainly not due to human CO2 emissions.
A recent article in Forbes, titled โClimate Changeโs Toll On Global Agriculture: A Looming Crisis,โ claims that climate change is โwreaking havocโ on cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans. This is false. Certain regions, like those the author Monica Sanders focuses on, are seeing bad seasons for these crops, but it is not indicative of long-term trends at those locations or globally. Thus it cannot be attributed to the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years, and certainly not due to human CO2 emissions.
Sanders claims that important crops โsuch as cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans are particularly vulnerable, and their declining yields due to climate-induced stressors have far-reaching implications.โ
Beginning with cocoa, Sanders focuses on West Africa, which she says โhas been hit hard by dry weather conditions exacerbated by El Niรฑo,โ and quotes a climate scientist from Ghana who claims that the frequency and intensity of droughts are increasing and itโs making โcocoa cultivation increasingly untenable.โ
Agricultural data for the region suggest that this claim is false.
This year and 2023 have seen some reduced cocoa yields, but it is an outlier for the overall trend. If climate change was making cocoa production โuntenableโ one would not expect the record production to have occurred as recently as 2022. According to the latest data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) covering the last three decades of climate change:
West African cocoa production has increased 167 percent;
West African cocoa yields have fluctuated, but overall increased 8 percent. (See figure below)
Climate Realism has gone into greater depth about the alarm surrounding cocoa beans and climate change here, here, and here.
Next, regarding olive oil, we see a similar story, and again, Climate Realism has already debunked these claims here, here, and here. FAO data discussed in those posts show olives set production records 11 times between 1990 and 2022.
Rice is a particularly puzzling crop to become alarmed about. Saunders writes that it is โunder threat from climate change,โ citing Italy, which produces half of the European Unionโs rice, and India.
Italy is an interesting case, their rice production and yield has fallen off significantly since at least 2020, and their last yield record was set in 2017, production record in 2012. Though from the FAO data, production through 2020 was within normal Italian rice seasonal fluctuation ranges. 2022 represented the big drop off due to the yearโs drought. (See figure below)
There is no reason to believe the present drought is permanent and there is no long-term trend for increasing droughts in Italy, nor as the Earth has modestly warmed, has Italy displayed a consistent rice crop decline. Rather, rice farmers in Italy are experiencing what farmers around the globe have always experienced, seasonal crop declines and failures tied directly to short-term weather fluctuations. This is a temporary, though for the farmers painful, phenomenon.
As importantly, Saunders fails to acknowledge that part of the reason for the decline in rice has nothing to do with weather but rather reflects a nearly 12 percent decline in the land devoted to growing rice over the past 14 years.
That Sanders claims rice in India is likewise threatened is absurd. Rice production in India has broken records nearly every year since 2015, and since the 1990s has done nothing but trend upwards overall.
Since 1990, Indian rice has:
Seen production increases of 75 percent;
Seen yield increased of 61 percent. (See figure below)
Soybeans in both the United States and South America have likewise seen increasing production and yields over the past three decades of climate change, with no indication of stopping. Climate Realism discussed United States soybean production, here, and in South America, FAO data show that the most recent all-time soybean production record was set in 2021, the most recent record for yield was set in 2017. In short, production and yields have increased during the three decades that climate alarmists have claimed to be the warmest period on record.
Since 1990, South American yields have increased 47 percent, production has increased an incredible 424 percent. (See figure below)
Each section of the Forbes article also gives examples of weather resilience strategies which are worthwhile for farmers to undertake whether or not climate change impacting the weather. In any case, overall crop production is increasing across the board with no climate signal visible.
These facts took only a few minutes to verify using publicly available databases, which should be the minimum for good journalism, but apparently for Forbes, pushing the climate change crisis narrative is too important for facts to get in the way.
EPA Chief Insists His Agency Has Not Sent โOne Dimeโ To Hardline Left-Wing Org โ But Thereโs A $50 Million Problemhttps://t.co/BXjlAkuWupโ Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 11, 2024
โPresident Bidenโs Climate Pollution Reduction Grants put local governments in the driverโs seat to develop climate solutions that work for their communities,โ John Podesta, the senior advisor to the president for International Climate Policy, said of the funding. โThese grants will help state and local governments improve the air quality and health of their communities, while accelerating Americaโs progress toward our climate goals.โ
The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program was established by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Bidenโs massive climate law that passed through Congress without a single GOP vote. The 25 winning applications were selected from a pool of approximately 300 applications in a process โdesigned to be fair and impartial,โ according to the EPA.
Specific projects funded by the money announced Monday include an initiative to ramp up heap pump use in New England and Alaska, industrial decarbonization in Pennsylvania and a multi-state coalition that will look to enhance EV charging infrastructure along the I-95 corridor, according to the EPA.
โPresident Biden believes in the power of community-driven solutions to fight climate change, protect public health, and grow our economy. Thanks to his leadership, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program will deliver unprecedented resources to states, local governments, and Tribes to fund the solutions that work best in their communities,โ EPA Administrator Michael Regan said of the funding.โSelected recipients have put forward ambitious plans to advance sustainable agriculture, deploy clean industrial technologies, cut emissions and energy costs in homes and commercial buildings, and provide cost- and energy-efficient heating and cooling to communities, creating economic and workforce development opportunities along the way.โ
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporterโs byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
The Heritage Foundationโsย Project 2025ย covers federal energy policy in some detail. The agenda is largely free market, and the subtle politicization of means and ends under the Biden/Harris Administration is identified for reform.
The Heritage Foundationโs Project 2025 covers federal energy policy in some detail. The agenda is largely free market, and the subtle politicization of means and ends under the Biden/Harris Administration is identified for reform.
The energy sections of Project 2025 follow verbatim. I offer a final comment on some of the missing initiatives.
A conservative President must be committed to unleashing all of Americaโs energy resources and making the energy economy serve the American people, not special interests. This means that the next conservative Administration should:
Promote American energy security by ensuring access to abundant, reliable, and affordable energy.
Affirm an โall of the aboveโ energy policy through which the best attributes of every resource can be harnessed for the benefit of the American people.
Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests, and support the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.
Unleash private-sector energy innovation by ending government interference in energy decisions.
Stop the war on oil and natural gas.
Allow individuals, families, and business to use the energy resources they want to use and that will best serve their needs.
Secure and protect energy infrastructure from cyber and physical attacks.
Refocus the Department of Energy on energy security, accelerated remediation, and advanced science.
Promote U.S. energy resources as a means to assist our allies and diminish our strategic adversaries
Refocus FERC on ensuring that customers have affordable and reliable electricity, natural gas, and oil and no longer allow it to favor special interests and progressive causes.
Ensure that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission facilitates rather than hampers private-sector nuclear energy innovation and deployment.
Mission Statement for a Reformed Department of Energy
The Department of Energy should be renamed and refocused as the Department of Energy Security and Advanced Science (DESAS). DESAS would refocus on DOEโs five existing core missions: Providing leadership and coordination on energy security and related national security issues,
Promoting U.S. energy economic interests abroad,
Leading the nation and the world in cutting-edge fundamental advanced science,
Remediating former Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear material sites, and
Developing new nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors
Eliminate special-interest funding programs. Many DOE energy funding programs are not targeted on fundamental science and technology; instead, they focus more on commercialization and act as subsidies to the Department of Energy and Related Commissions private sector for government-favored resources. The DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED); Office of State and Community Energy Programs; ARPA-E; Office of Grid Deployment (OGD); and DOE Loan Program should be eliminated or reformed. If they continue to exist, FECM, NE, OE, and EERE should focus on fundamental science and technology issues, particularly in relation to cyber and physical threats to energy security, rather than subsidizing and commercializing energy resources.
Eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. In addition, Congress should reform the Natural Gas Act to expand required approvals from merely nations with free trade agreements to all of our allies, such as NATO countries.
Focus the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) on ensuring that government buildings and operations have reliable and cost-effective energy. FEMP should stop using taxpayer dollars to force the purchase of more expensive and less reliable energy resources in the name of combating climate change.
Ensure that information provided by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), a data and statistical organization, is data-neutral.
Focus FERC on its statutory obligation to ensure access to reliable energy at just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory rates. FERC is a five-member commission created under the DOE Organization Act that regulates the wholesale sales and transmission of electricity, promotes electric reliability through standards, permits natural gas pipelines and LNG export facilities, sets natural gas pipeline shipping rates, and sets oil pipeline shipping rates. It is an economic regulator and should not make itself a climate regulator.
Streamline the nuclear regulatory requirements and licensing process. Such changes would help to lower costs and accelerate the development and deployment of civilian nuclear, such as advanced nuclear reactors (including small modular nuclear reactors). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is commission tasked with the licensing of civilian nuclear reactors and power plants and regulating other uses of nuclear materials, such as nuclear medicine. Although it is not a DOE agency, its jurisdiction over nuclear reactor, fuel, safety, and trade issues often relates to or impinges on DOEโs jurisdiction.
Focus on energy and science issues, not politicized social programs.
The next Administration should stop using energy policy to advance politicized social agendas. Programs that sound innocuous, such as โenergy justice,โ Justice40, and DEI, can be transformed to promote politicized agendas. DOE should focus on providing all Americans with access to abundant, affordable, reliable, and secure energy, and DOE should manage its employees so that everyone is treated fairly based on his or her talent, skills, and hard work.
Analysis
A better, more thorough-going free market energy agenda would correct or add the following:
Replace โโall of the aboveโ energy policyโ withย consumer-driven, taxpayer-neutralย โenergy policy, through which the best attributes of every resource can be harnessed for the benefit of the American people.โ
Eliminate the civilian programs of the U.S. Department of Energy rather than โRefocus [DOE] โฆ on energy security, accelerated remediation, and advanced science.โ
End all government subsidies to nuclear power.
Abolish the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rather than reform it, which would require repealing enabling legislation such as the Federal Power Act of 1935 and Natural Gas Act of 1938.
Privatize the energy assets of the Department of Energy, the Department of Interior, and other energy agencies,
Numerous other federal laws should be repealed, including the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, Public Utility Regulatory Practices Act of 1978, and the Energy Policy Act (various years).
โโโโ
[1] The Cato Instituteโs Handbook for Policymakers does not include a chapter on energy, and it ducks the whole issue of climate change in the environmental chapter. Peter van Doren is the culprit here.
Forty year old German solar panel producers are closing factories they only opened three years ago.
The world now has the capacity to make 1,600 GW of solar panels annually, but demand has unexpectedly flat-lined โ staying at barely 500GW. In a world awash with solar panels that no one needs, prices have fallen dramatically, but that hasnโt solved the glut which is so bad, people are using solar panels for fencing in Europe.
Forty year old German solar panel producers are closing factories they only opened three years ago.
The world now has the capacity to make 1,600 GW of solar panels annually, but demand has unexpectedly flat-lined โ staying at barely 500GW. In a world awash with solar panels that no one needs, prices have fallen dramatically, but that hasnโt solved the glut which is so bad, people are using solar panels for fencing in Europe.
The CCP has bet big that the exponential growth curve in solar customers was going to keep being exponential. Instead, demand flattened off suddenly. Currently, 80% of the worldโs solar panels are pouring out of China.
With impeccable timing, just weeks ago the Australian Government threw a billion dollars at a program to help Australia become a solar panel superfactory just at the moment when China is practically giving them away.
โThere is overcapacity in every segment, starting with polysilicon and finishing with the module,โ said Yana Hryshko, head of global solar supply chain research at the consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
According to BloombergNEF, panel prices have plunged more than 60 percent since July 2022. The scale of the damage inflicted has sparked calls for Brussels to protect European companies from what the industry says are state-subsidized Chinese products.
Europeโs solar panel manufacturing capacity has collapsed by about half to 3 gigawatts since November as companies have failed, mothballed facilities, or shifted production abroad, the European Solar Manufacturing Council estimates.
The Salad Days of Solar Power are behind us
The sudden death of the solar boom is due to rising interest rates which take the fun out of getting a loan, but itโs also due to rising electricity costs, which increase the prices of everything, including solar panels themselves and the batteries they need to back them up.
But thereโs an argument to be made that the grid itself has reached the limit. The Duck Curve has been quacking on grids in California and Australia for years. Ponder that in towns like Alice Springs the microgrid is in danger of falling over when a cloud rolls in, and only 1 in 4 homes there have solar panels. Indeed, in the sunny centre of Australia, the limit for solar power appears to be just 13% โ meaning itโs hard to stabilize the grid when more than 13% of the annual supply is made from solar power.
When storms knocked over a high voltage line in South Australia the first thing the government did was to ask people to switch off their solar panels so they wouldnโt crash the grid.
Even on the big grids, thereโs already such a glut of solar panels on homes, that the midday surge of โgreenโ electrons is causing voltage surges which can damage other equipment. Solar โfeed inโ tariffs to homeowners are shrinking to nothing, or even going negative themselves. In Adelaide and Perth the government now insists people installing solar panels get smart meters so the grid managers can remotely switch off their panels. Worse, in Sydney solar home owners now have to pay to dump unwanted solar power on the grid at lunchtime.
Then thereโs the mayhem of negative prices on national markets which is driving baseload providers off the grid and out of business. Large industrial generators are restructuring their businesses to accommodate the crazy pricing.
Last word: China already controls 80% of the market, would it really want to dump so many solar panels it drove the last 20% out of business, or was this just one huge Big-Government mistake?
There were millennia during the past glacial (when CO2 levels were under 200 ppm) that were as warm or warmer than today.
Four central Europe reconstructions, using collected evidence from disparate biomarkers, indicate there were periods (for example, 54,000 to 51,000 years ago, the BรธllingโAllerรธd interstadial, 14,700 years ago) during the last glacial when temperatures were as warmer than (or similar to) today (Zander et al., 2024).
Temperatures throughout the Holocene (8,000 to 4,000 years ago), when CO2 hovered around 265 ppm, were 3.5ยฐC (and up to 5ยฐC) warmer than today. Modern temperatures are among the coldest of the last 10,000 years.
In Episode 450 of District of Conservation, Gabriella unpacks the fall-out and attempted cover-up of the Vineyard Wind 1 turbine disaster unfolding in Nantucket, MA. She taps Bonnie Brady and Meghan Lapp, two commercial fishing industry activists and Big Wind opponents, to deconstruct whatโs happening and why ocean industrialization is harmful to conservation efforts. Tune in to learn more!
โThe project is still under construction. Thatโs just kind of ironic. Itโs not even built yet. And itโs already breaking. The total project. Yes, it is for, like, 62 turbines and a substation. And I believe they have piled driven like they have to take a giant pole, essentially, and slam it into the ocean floor. And then they build the turbine. On top of that, they still have 15 left to pile drive. They have some of the towers and the blades up on the ones that theyโve already piled driven, but not all of them. I think, you know, a very small handful of them, quote-unquote, went into operation earlier this year, but the majority of them are still under construction or have not been built yet.โ โ Meghan Lapp
In Episode 450 of District of Conservation, Gabriella unpacks the fall-out and attempted cover-up of the Vineyard Wind 1 turbine disaster unfolding in Nantucket, MA. She taps Bonnie Brady and Meghan Lapp, two commercial fishing industry activists and Big Wind opponents, to deconstruct whatโs happening and why ocean industrialization is harmful to conservation efforts. Tune in to learn more!
In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
Residents of Nantucket, Massachusetts, spoke out on Wednesday at a town hall against a wind power company for a โturbine blade failure incidentโ that resulted in debris washing up along the beach.
Residents of Nantucket, Massachusetts, spoke out on Wednesday at a town hall against a wind power company for a โturbine blade failure incidentโ that resulted in debris washing up along the beach.
Officials of the small island town located 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod were forced to shut down beaches on the south shore on Tuesday due to โlarge floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards,โ according to a statement posted to Facebook by the Nantucket Harbormasterโs office. During the town hall, locals accused Vineyard Wind โ an offshore wind development company that operates near the island โ of taking too long to notify the community and clean up the site, according to videos of the event posted on X by the Nantucket Current.
โThis happened Saturday nightโฆ There was no notice to mariners until Monday; thatโs unacceptable. The town wasnโt informed until Monday,โ Nantucket charter boat captain Bobby DeCosta said during the town hall. โThereโs nobody in this room thatโs been to that sight. I guarantee it. Weโve got a bunch of suits here trying to cover their tracks,โ DeCosta continued, gesturing towards the Vineyard Wind representatives present at the meeting.
โAnyone with any kind of water knowledge knows that the tide out there around this wind farm goes northeast/southwest and the prevailing wind in the summer is southwest, and this stuff was going to end up on the beach,โ DeCosta said. โThey had to do a tide analysis before they even started this project, so this is a bunch of crap when they say, โOh, we had to do a [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] study to see where this stuff was going to goโโฆ They were hoping it wasnโt going to go on the beaches so they wouldnโt have to deal with it as much.โ
Nantucket charter boat captain Bobby DeCosta, owner of the Albacore, from the top rope:
Local lobsterman Dan Pronk lamented the effects the debris has had on his business and the environment during the town hall meeting while holding a piece of fiberglass that had washed up on the beach, while also addressing Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Moeller personally, according to another video posted on X by the Nantucket Current.
โI fish 800 lobster traps right where youโre putting these tombstones, which is also the end of my businessโฆ When you apply [fiberglass]โฆ you have to wear respirators. For what reason? Because itโs toxic. If you breathe those fumesโฆ youโll get higher than a rat,โ he continued. โSo, it is toxic. What do you have to say about that, Klaus?โ
Following the incident, Vineyard Windโs operations were โshut down until further notice,โ a spokesperson for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement told NBC Boston on Tuesday.
The town of Nantucket on Thursday referred to the turbine debris as a โcrisisโ and stated that โVineyard Wind vessels are collecting fiberglass pieces on the site; a very large piece of debris is below the surface, in the water column,โ according to a post from the Nantucket Current on X.
The Biden administration has pushed for greater construction and utilization of offshore wind farms as part of his broader green agenda in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Recent wind farm projects have been plagued with issues and delays due to high costs and component failures as the industry rapidly develops.
Vineyard Wind did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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