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.
NASA’s “crash test dummies” Helga and Zohar, along with an array of radiation instrumentation demonstrated that the Artemis spacecraft provides adequate shielding for short duration lunar missions. The results of these measurements were recently published in Nature.
Guest “We already knew this from the Apollo Program” by David Middleton
NASA’s “crash test dummies” Helga and Zohar, along with an array of radiation instrumentation demonstrated that the Artemis spacecraft provides adequate shielding for short duration lunar missions. The results of these measurements were recently published in Nature.
a, Radiation instrumentation and phantoms inside Orion. These consist of the NASA HERA system, the ESA EAD system, as well as the NASA CAD and DLR M-42 instruments. The HERA system and the EADs were hard-mounted at various distinctly shielded locations in Orion. CAD and M-42 were placed on the front and back surfaces (skin) and inside (organs) (M-42) of the MARE phantoms (Extended Data Figs. 1–4). b, Placement of the instrumentation and hardware inside the Orion spacecraft. c, The Orion flight profile with respect to radiation for the NASA Artemis I mission. After launch at 06:47 UTC on 16 November 2022, Orion passed the inner (proton-dominated) and outer (electron-dominated) Earth radiation belts. Orion then ventured into interplanetary space dominated by GCRs. It passed the Moon twice on 21 November (first lunar fly-by at a distance of 130 km) and on 5 December (second lunar fly-by at a distance of 128 km). During these fly-bys, the Moon acts as a shield against GCRs. Orion re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pole and landed in the Pacific Ocean close to San Diego, California on 11 December 2022 at 17:40 UTC. Nature ISSN 1476-4687
The paper is open access, with the full text freely available. Here’s the abstract:
Abstract
Space radiation is a notable hazard for long-duration human spaceflight1. Associated risks include cancer, cataracts, degenerative diseases2 and tissue reactions from large, acute exposures3. Space radiation originates from diverse sources, including galactic cosmic rays4, trapped-particle (Van Allen) belts5 and solar-particle events6. Previous radiation data are from the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle in low-Earth orbit protected by heavy shielding and Earth’s magnetic field7,8 and lightly shielded interplanetary robotic probes such as Mars Science Laboratory and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter9,10. Limited data from the Apollo missions11,12,13 and ground measurements with substantial caveats are also available14. Here we report radiation measurements from the heavily shielded Orion spacecraft on the uncrewed Artemis I lunar mission. At differing shielding locations inside the vehicle, a fourfold difference in dose rates was observed during proton-belt passes that are similar to large, reference solar-particle events. Interplanetary cosmic-ray dose equivalent rates in Orion were as much as 60% lower than previous observations9. Furthermore, a change in orientation of the spacecraft during the proton-belt transit resulted in a reduction of radiation dose rates of around 50%. These measurements validate the Orion for future crewed exploration and inform future human spaceflight mission design.
Artemis II could launch as early as September 2025. The 10-day mission to orbit the Moon will be the first manned mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Artemis II Map NASA Artemis II will be the first flight with crew aboard NASA’s deep space exploration system: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. During their mission, four astronauts will confirm all of the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with people aboard in the actual environment of deep space, over the course of about a 10-day mission. The Artemis II flight test will pave the way to land the first woman and next man on the Moon on Artemis III.
The Artemis II crew is shown inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in front of their Orion crew module on Aug. 8, 2023. From left are: Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; Reid Wiseman, commander; and Christina Hammock Koch, mission specialist. NASA/Kim Shiflett
The SLS rocket will blast off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis I mission is the first integrated flight test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and ground systems. SLS and Orion launched at 1:47 a.m. EST, from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
A recent post at The Daily Climate news website, titled “Op-ed: People need shelter from climate change — their health hangs in the balance,” claims that climate change is making it harder for people to stay safe from the elements and extreme weather, and that federal housing policy is how to fix that problem. This is false on multiple fronts. Climate change is not causing an increase in dangerous conditions for people, and federal policies that involve subsidized housing will not protect homeless people from weather threats.
A recent post at The Daily Climate news website, titled “Op-ed: People need shelter from climate change — their health hangs in the balance,” claims that climate change is making it harder for people to stay safe from the elements and extreme weather, and that federal housing policy is how to fix that problem. This is false on multiple fronts. Climate change is not causing an increase in dangerous conditions for people, and federal policies that involve subsidized housing will not protect homeless people from weather threats.
The authors assert that vice president Kamala Harris’ proposals to expand federal housing policies, including using federal funds to build housing and down payment assistance, “is actually a climate change adaptation policy” because people need shelter from extreme weather. The Daily Climate refers to this summer as the warmest on record and hypes an early start to the Atlantic hurricane season, asserting that “it is growing increasingly difficult to weather the many different catastrophes — a critical threat to health — that climate change is throwing at us.”
Continuing, they write that it is also becoming more difficult for Americans “to take refuge from climate threats at home, as the cost of housing keeps rising.”
They point out correctly that homeless people are more likely to become ill and die from exposure to extreme high temperatures because of a lack of shelter and air conditioning. This, however, is not because of climate change. In fact, none of the things this article asserts as threats to American families because of climate change are genuine.
Regarding the “hottest on record” claims, as always, it depends on what record you look at. As Climate Realism points out here, here, and here, these claims are at best speculative, even though alarmists present them as definite. Prior to satellites, there are almost no records outside of the U.S. and Europe. We are forced to rely on proxy data, which again are location-specific, but even so, many of them indicate that there were several periods in just the last 10,000 years that were warmer than today.
Regarding hurricanes, there was a single early powerful hurricane that came outside the normal window, but the rest of the season has been remarkably quiet. Fearmongering on hurricanes this year, as with many previous above average hurricane season predictions in the past, is falling extremely flat. Global tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is well within normal bounds this year, according to available data.
But the major point of the article is that extreme weather is posing an ever greater threat to an increasing number of people, and especially American families, than before, and this is simply not true.
While it is true that people who are homeless or who don’t have adequate housing and electricity are more susceptible to temperature related illnesses and death, heat and even more so cold, incidences of of people dying from those conditions has declined rapidly around the world over the past hundred plus years of modest warming. It is especially telling that the article focuses on heat, when it is cold that is the real killer. A 2021 Lancet study found that overall deaths due to extreme temperatures have declined in large part due to a massive drop in cold-related deaths. (See figure below)
Ironically, The Daily Climate post complains about the high costs of utility bills, and therefore air conditioning and heating, which are becoming increasingly expensive precisely because of the fossil fuel policies that these same alarmists promote.
Studies have found that Biden’s EPA rules and regulations targeting power plants are expected to cause instability in the electric grid and lead to massive blackouts, because the expectations of the policies are not technologically sound, or even possible, and will only lead to a reduction of power supply. Wind and solar are not dispatchable power, and battery technology is not anywhere near scalable for what is needed. This causes higher prices and less power reliability, which won’t help anyone trying to handle even natural weather extremes. Indeed, real world data suggests that Biden’s energy and climate policies have driven the recent large increases in energy costs across the board, impacting poorer households the most.
Additionally, the idea that federal subsidized housing will help decrease housing prices in general is economically illiterate at best. Policies like low-income housing tax credits have resulted in higher housing costs and fewer choices, and Obama’s Housing First programs have resulted in more homeless people, not fewer.
Handing even more power to government and more subsidized housing will not solve the problem of homelessness. It’s been done for decades and the issue has only become more severe, it has not improved. Fossil fuels for electricity and materials have made human civilizations far more resilient in the face of the fickle nature of the weather, and as long as markets for energy are not limited or constrained by government climate policy, they will continue to do so. All of this is true regardless of climate change, but even on that point, The Daily Climate missed the mark.
A tropical rainstorm has flooded parts of North Carolina near the coast, leaving homes and vehicles underwater.
Video shows one young man paddling through high waters.
The NOAA Atlas 14 shows that 12 inches of rain fell in 12 hours, which, on average, occurs every 200 years, according to the National Weather Service of Wilmington.
And the NOAA Atlas 14 referred to is clear that the 200 year frequency is based on a single location on the coast, not the region as a whole.
NOAA also state that the high rainfall totals only affected a 25-mile strip of coast:
The coast line from North Carolina to Florida, where these sort of storms can happen at any time, is hundreds of miles long. So the odds of such a storm occurring somewhere on the coast is not 1-in-200 years, probably more like once a decade.
And, of course, rainfall of 12 to 20 inches is nothing unusual in North Carolina. For instance Hurricane Dennis dropped 19.9 inches on Ocracoke in early September 1999, and falls of 10 inches were widespread in the State.
Just two weeks later, Hurricane Floyd arrived, with rainfall totals as high as 15 and 20 inches in eastern parts of North Carolina. 19 inches fell on Wilmington.
Certainly the floods this month were minor in comparison with the devastation wrought by Dennis and Floyd.
But the BBC would like you to believe that events like this latest one never used to happen before global warming.
University researchers have been branded “hypocrites” for condemning air travel as bad for the planet but then flying to conferences anyway. The Timeshas more.
A study found that about a third of the academics at a leading U.K. university had flown to at least one meeting in the previous year, despite a large majority expressing concerns about aviation emissions.
“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.”
Aviation is estimated to account for about 4% of global warming and almost all climate scientists agree that reductions in air travel would be needed to meet the 1.5ºC Paris target. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a shift to holding conferences and other events online.
However, in a study published in the journal Global Environmental Change, De Vos and his colleagues describe how flying remains “deeply embedded in how the global academic system functions”.
Aviation emissions are produced by a small minority of the global population, they add, which means they are often seen as “a particularly unjust” form of pollution. “Academics are one of the groups with privileged, yet highly unsustainable, lifestyles,” they write.
“Despite ever-increasing volumes of academic research and teaching on environmental sustainability… air transport remains a large contributor to academic carbon footprints, even among scholars researching environmental or climate topics.”
The new study provides one of the most detailed snapshots yet of the attitudes of researchers, lecturers and other university staff on flying, and how they ultimately end up travelling. More than 1,100 members of University College London filled in surveys. More than 80% of them said flying was detrimental for the planet.
He said researchers often feel pressured to travel, with presenting work at international conferences seen as necessary to win promotions and funding.
Three quarters of the academics agreed that international conferences should be organised in cities easily accessible by high-speed trains, and that trains should be cheaper and rail networks expanded. Online alternatives to traditional conferences were not seen as offering the same opportunities to network.
On the website NoFlyClimateSci.org, several climate scientists explain why they have decided to cut down on flying for work. They include Dr. Lennart de Nooijer of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who describes how he became uneasy with work travel when he realised many of his colleagues were planning to stay on for a personal holiday after a conference being held in Chile. “Isn’t part of the attraction of attending conferences and meetings the sheer pleasure of visiting other countries?” he said.
“Exxon Knew” is a political-lawyer campaign focusing on certain internal company documents to make a case that the oil major knew that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were a future threat to human betterment.
“The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool.”
“Exxon Knew” is a political-lawyer campaign focusing on certain internal company documents to make a case that the oil major knew that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were a future threat to human betterment.
Smoking gun? Hardly.
A half century later, the IPCC is still trying to update and figure out physical climate science. Exxon did not do a study on the benefits of CO2 or the offset of sulfur dioxide emissions. The concern way back then was Global Cooling, Peak Oil, and Peak Gas. And as the company knew, fossil fuels had no viable substitute, as in wind and solar.
This historical correction has been documented in many posts here at MasterResource, including:
To which I respond (expanded from my reply on social media):
To say that Exxon knew the truth back in the early 80s is a laughable fallacy. Effectively they built a primitive model that is characteristically similar to the erroneous modern climate models of today. Fundamentally their work is based on the poorly understood climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from radiative convective models and GCM models. To their credit, they actually acknowledged the high degree of uncertainty in these estimations. Today, even Hausfather (2022 vs 2019) is beginning to understand the climate sensitivity (ECS) is too high. CMIP6 is running still even hotter than CMIP5 and using ECS of 3 to 5° C rather than ~ 1.2° C as highlighted in Nick Lewis’s 2022 study.
CMIP6 should have been better because it incorporated solar particle forcing (Matthes et. al.) and as they incorporate more elements of natural forcing (an active area of research as we still do not have a predictive theory for climate), the effect is highlighting more underlying problems with the models.
However, Exxon investigators fell into the same trap that climate modelers of today where they build the models to history match temperatures and then wow, because they can create a model that appears to history match temperatures, they assume it is telling them something. Truth? Anyone can create a model to do this, but it would never mean the model is correct. While the models today are much more complex, they are based on a complex set of non-linear equations, and the understanding of the various sources of nonlineararity is poor. This opens up wide degrees of uncertainty yet wide opportunity for tuning. Furthermore, natural forcing is undercharacterized and deemed inconsequential.
The contrived sense of accomplishment in history matching is spurious correlation for an infinitesimally small period of time. Using Exxon’s internal analysis of CO2 climate forcing is little more than a propaganda tool. Current climate models, much more sophisticated, face the same problem of unknown, false causality.
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Randall Utech, former Advisor Geoscientist at Schlumberger, has researched climate science for nearly 30 years with emphasis on geology, paleoclimate, and the glacial cycles. An interview with him by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists can be found here. Utech is author of On the Benefits of CO2 (April 11, 2023)
It is one of the best wreck dives in the world, arguably one of the top ten dive sites in the world – and yet we know so little about it. Who did the last inventory of the megafauna at the Yongala?
It is one of the best wreck dives in the world, arguably one of the top ten dive sites in the world – and yet we know so little about it. Who did the last inventory of the megafauna at the Yongala?
When I was there earlier this year, on May 6th, 2024, I got to swim with a rare stingray, a Megatrygon microps. The largest stingray species in the world. Apparently.
A few months later, on September 3rd, 2024, as part of the inaugural Megafauna Expedition, there were no M. microps.
I was hoping that at least one of the photographers on the expedition would find and photograph perhaps the largest fish at the Great Barrier Reef, nicknamed VW.
VW is the nickname for the largest of the resident Queensland Groupers reportedly at the Yongala, with the scientific name Epinephelus lanceolatus. Reportedly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car – that would make this fish four metres long. Is that an exaggeration? I’ve never seen VW.
How big is VW really – and exactly, and when is he at the Yongala?
Fifteen of us got into the water the very first morning of the inaugural Megafauna Expedition. But not a VW in sight.
Which begs the question for me: when is that fish reliably at the Yongala shipwreck? Does VW move with the season, as well as the time of day?
One of our team photographs, Dave Baxter, photographed a very large Queensland Grouper, not VW. I estimate the fish that he photographed to be 2.3 metres.
The Queensland Grouper photographed by Dave Baxter at the Yongala on 3rd September, 2024. This is one of a series of photographs by Dave of this mega fish.
More about this fish soon – hopefully with some information about other Queensland Groupers photographed by Dave. Perhaps even some historical photographs taken by Dave of VW back 25 years. Has VW really been around that long? .There must have been a census of the fishes of the Yongala shipwreck. When was that – when was the last census? I know that the Australian government undertakes an annual census of the penguins at Antartica. And where is the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) on all of this, the census of the fishes of the Yongala?
Meanwhile, I am just wanting a turtle ID.
Rookie underwater photograph, Laura Boderke, trying out her rig for the first time on that first dive on the first morning at the Yongala – the very first morning of the inaugural Megafauna Expedition – Laura photographed, and also shot some video of her scuba buddy Sebastian Falk swimming with a turtle. A large turtle, but which species?
We just want a correct identification for the turtle. I am no turtle expert, and neither is Laura.
I put Laura’s turtle photograph, a winning entry in the Megafauna Photographic Competition, up at iNaturalist.
Sebastian Falk as yardstick for the largest turtle photograph submitted in the Megafauna Photographic Competition.
The provisional ID at iNaturalist is:
“The scales on the head align more with a Hawksbill [than Green Sea turtle]. The prefrontal scales are a good indicator for distinguishing the two. [end quote]
Dave Baxter took some photographs of perhaps this same turtle – with his scuba buddy Kate Armstrong.
Photographs by Dave Baxter of Kate Armstrong with a turtle, also at the Yongala shipwreck on 3rd September, 2024.
Is this the same turtle, and which species is it anyway?
The feature image at the top of this post is of Seb Falk with Laura, about ready to jump in for the night dive at Wheeler Reef, the next day.
Previous scribbles from me about this dive site, including some politics:
Never have I heard anyone mention in the same breath the fishes of the Yongala historic shipwreck and its proximity to the ‘highest exposure levels’ of nutrients and sediments attributed to agricultural runoff.
In the most recent ‘Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report’ (2019) there is a focus on the Burdekin River, and how the coral reefs in this region to the south of Townsville are suffering terribly because of agricultural runoff with specific mention of Stanley and Darley Reef. Even closer to the mouth of the Burdekin River, in fact in the direct path of river flood plumes, is the Yongala – regularly listed as one of the best dive sites in the world.
Megatrygon microps is the largest species of stingray in the world with a width of 2 metres and some. But I felt calm in its presence, and I also wanted to get closer.
The four of us, Thomas, Jessica and Alyson, had jumped in some 15 minutes earlier off the MV SeaEsta for a second dive that morning, on Monday 6th May. It can be difficult – diving the Yongala. There was a 2-metre swell forecast, but we jump into something less than that. ‘A bit rollie,’ was how first mate Kerrie described it.
My objective was to just get in and get down the 18 metres to the wreck and hopefully make it the entire length – to swim the entire top of the wreck, the entire length of the Yongala without running out of air. If I got to the other end with 120 bars, I would be happy.
We got there, to the stern and did an air check. My three buddies and I, we each still had at least 120 bars. Whoo hoo! And the current would take us back to the bow, from where we would make our ascent.
I was feeling happy. Relaxed. I could see a giant groper in the distance, purple soft corals and golden fish covered the top of the wreck.
Then it appeared.
It hovered and then swung around. Moved away and then returned. It swung its tail over my head, and I saw the barbs up close.
Summer was pretty quiet, thankfully, but time for a jolt to get reengaged. There’s no better way than getting yelled at, so today let’s talk about a surefire recipe – Electric Vehicles. Those that love EVs really love ‘em, and to speak ill of them in front of the fans is akin to asking questions about the size of their children’s ears.
Summer was pretty quiet, thankfully, but time for a jolt to get reengaged. There’s no better way than getting yelled at, so today let’s talk about a surefire recipe – Electric Vehicles. Those that love EVs really love ‘em, and to speak ill of them in front of the fans is akin to asking questions about the size of their children’s ears.
EVs have an outsized role in the current cultural and economic landscape, in an odd way. They are seen as the best hope to turn the tide of general consumer emissions. Governments threw their full weight behind them to an astonishing degree, legislating them into projected dominance at an unprecedented (and as it turns out, insane) pace.
What makes EVs such a flashpoint is that they intersect with a bunch of stuff that people hold dear. For some, EV ownership feels like a major personal contribution to the global emissions problem, if owning one entails a significant personal commitment. For many, EVs make total sense if only running around town, or if wealthy enough to keep one in the garage amongst the Astons and Ferraris so as to be well-positioned to make an environmental statement if required. Some love them for their simplicity, with few moving parts and lower maintenance requirements (lower, but not zero). Still others love them because they can fuel up at home, at night. And then there is the cohort that feels their rage against oil companies sated cathartically every time they drive past a gas station, those that believe hydrocarbons bring nothing but death, irrespective of the fact that to that point in their life they’ve brought them everything within their purview, including all the things that keep them alive. Have pity on those people, the neutron-level boxing matches going on between their ears are not to be wished on anyone.
On the flip side of the equation, and what brings it to the news, is the public’s general feeling of “meh” towards them, the 80 percent that constitutes the non-extreme middle. In sane times, that is not a problem; major change happens gradually for such big ticket items, and most get a sense that certain segments of the economy work extremely well as EVs – delivery fleet vehicles, forklifts, urban taxis, etc. Many would drift toward EVs as battery technology improves, as range increases, as price falls. But such a shift would be a multi-generational thing, particularly with the infrastructure changes required.
Most consumers can see that that Total And Rapid EV Domination is not a particularly wise vision, even if governments have declared that that must happen within their dog’s lifespan.
Consumers do know a good idea when they see one, and we can see that by the explosion in popularity of hybrid vehicles – those with internal combustion engines augmented by modest battery packs and electric motors that give a certain emissions-free range before switching to gasoline power.
There’s a reason for this growing popularity – it makes sense on many levels. A hybrid removes some of the major reasons people are reluctant to go full-battery EV (BEV) – range anxiety, cold weather performance, etc. – and, as Toyota has wisely pointed out, hybrids are actually better for the environment in general than mass consumer adoption of EVs.
How can that be, you might wonder. Here is Toyota’s calculation, in what they call the 1:6:90 rule. An excellent write up can be found here, and the gist of it is: Because of immense challenges in finding, developing, mining, and processing critical metals and minerals (hundreds of new mines required globally, with each new mine having weaker grades than before, and with many jurisdictions becoming more hostile towards new mines), it makes more sense to utilize a given BEV’s minerals requirements to construct 90 hybrids instead.
Because many trips are very short, a hybrid can run on electric power for most of them, which is how the spreading-out of these minerals to many vehicles makes emissions reduction sense. Toyota calculates that if the metals/minerals used to construct a single EV were instead used to build 90 hybrids, the overall carbon reduction from those hybrids over their lifetimes would be 37 times that of a single EV (and with that sentence, I don my helmet for the incoming shouts of “Fossil Fuel Shill” – the aforementioned yelling).
Customers are clamouring to acquire hybrids. According to a Car Dealership Guy article (excellent auto news site, from a dealer perspective), in August, 48 percent of Toyota sales were hybrids, Hyundai had an 81 percent increase in hybrids (albeit from a relatively smaller number than Toyota), and Ford saw hybrid sales increase by 50 percent.
Volvo, a company that had pledged to be completely EV by 2030 and thereby banishing the smell of gasoline forevermore from customers’ nostrils, recently backed down from that pledge to announced hybrids would remain part of the equation indefinitely. “Everybody made a lot of assumptions two, three, four, five years ago, and that’s changed,” said Volvo’s CEO.
And then there is the Chinese onslaught of affordable, high-quality EVs that somehow policy planners didn’t see coming. Western countries announced bans on ICE in favour of full-EV by the next decade, and lo and behold, China controls most elements of an EV’s composition, and they took full advantage of that supply chain dominance (plus massive government support) to undercut virtually every western EV maker. Hey, you can’t do that, said US, Canadian, and EU governments, slapping huge tariffs on Chinese made EVs because well, we want to save the environment but not that badly (ultra cheap EVs are one of the few catalysts that would accelerate wide spread and rapid EV adoption among the masses).
Not sure where this goes next. Consumers have spoken, auto makers are responding, and the odd man out are governments still paralyzed in 2019 when euphoric and nonsensical “environmental” policy danced on the supposed grave of last century’s fuel. How they backpedal out of this is anyone’s guess, although there are signs, such as this headline: “Italy leads revolt against Europe’s electrical vehicle transition”. If memory serves from Italian traffic, they seem fine with virtually any sort of vehicular madness, so a automotive revolt in that land is a pretty big deal.
As with so, so many aspects of an energy transition, if the whole process had not been hijacked by zealots, we would be farther down the road, we would have consumers on side, we would have entire industries functioning properly instead of the fiascos we in for example the auto industry, and we most likely would have far less emissions.
Greenpeace USA on the ropes
In the big scheme of things, seeing something that has the words “green” and “peace” in the name fail would be disheartening; no sane person is against either the environment or peace. But put those two words together and you have something else entirely.
In the US, Greenpeace is for once holding the crappy end of the stick that they are used to jabbing at everything they disagree with. US energy pipeline giant Energy Transfer is seeking $300 million in damages for Greenpeace’s role in delaying the Dakota Access Pipeline. An ET victory would and should send shockwaves through the massively well financed protest industry that so far employs every tactic in the book to achieve victory (and by ‘victory’ we generally means ‘obstruction’ or ‘vengeance’ as opposed to any sort of constructive advancement). The big ENGOs spend hundreds of millions on staff and lawyers who literally have nothing to do other than bend society to their will without the bothersome hassle of going through the democratic process. Robert Bryce’s excellent Substack column keeps track of the staggering sums that US ENGOs churn through; Greenpeace US is a pipsqueak ($33 million annual engorgement) compared to locust-lawyer Natural Resources Defense Council’s staggering $548 million. With all that money, these groups construct nothing.)
It is a surprise there haven’t been more of these lawsuits filed by thwarted companies and hydrocarbon producers dragged into court for the sin of providing the fuel that keeps us all alive. It’s really not a hard argument to make; the world as we know it will collapse without hydrocarbon production, so shouldn’t thwarting that production on sometimes very flimsy grounds count for something? Shouldn’t blocking fuel from consumers that desperately need it (countless pipeline battles) count for something?
Greenpeace’s defence is pretty funny; suddenly they are insignificant, claiming to have had only a supporting role in the protests, and that the lawsuit is, the funniest part, an “attack on free speech.” Chaining one’s self (or worse, sending some naive acolyte to chain their selves) to a bulldozer on a construction site is, apparently, ‘free speech’, as is law fare and endless slanderous comments about the people and businesses that bring them the fuel that keeps their unhappy lives going.
Maybe the resurrected body, of which you can be certain will appear if this one is bankrupted, should start off with a bit of soul searching. Maybe peace means everyone working together for a common goal, not dramatizing a villain as the means of motivating the troops. Maybe ‘green’ should mean concern for habitat, concern for air pollution, concern for more intelligent use of resources, concern for the most logical global approach to progress, as opposed to a singular war against the bedrock of our society that it is glaringly obvious we cannot and will not live without. 29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
What the world desperately needs – energy clarity. And a few laughs. Pick up The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
We know it’s coming. One day, sometime there will be a skyscraper inferno started by an EV or a scooter and made so much worse because there were other EV’s in the basement carpark.
At the moment companies are fined $100,000 in Australia for failing to include high fire danger warning labels on kids beach towels, but it’s no problem if children sleep in a tower above a carpark full of EVs.
But after a spate of fires in China, Hotels there are starting to ask customers with EVs to park in open areas outside the building.
We know it’s coming. One day, sometime there will be a skyscraper inferno started by an EV or a scooter and made so much worse because there were other EV’s in the basement carpark.
At the moment companies are fined $100,000 in Australia for failing to include high fire danger warning labels on kids beach towels, but it’s no problem if children sleep in a tower above a carpark full of EVs.
But after a spate of fires in China, Hotels there are starting to ask customers with EVs to park in open areas outside the building.
… Chinese hotels and property managers have begun to ban all electric vehicles – scooters, e-bikes, family cars or commercial vans – from their undercroft car parks.
“Hotels and other buildings in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiaoshan and other places in Zhejiang have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages for safety reasons, sparking heated discussions,” Chinese online dissident “Mr Li is not your teacher” reported in a post to X (which is banned in China) in September.
Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital, Hangzhou, in May of this year.
“Based on the characteristics of electric vehicle fires and our hotel’s firefighting capabilities, we think it safer not to allow them into the underground garage,” RFA quotes one five-star hotel owner as stating.
“A lot of basement parking lots are designed with low ceilings, meaning that fire trucks can’t get inside.”
Some will point to studies that claim gas powered cars catch fire 20 or 30 times as often, but old cars are riskier and these studies don’t appear to control for age. (Can anyone find one that does?) And if one EV sets fire to 1,200 cars, hypothetically, say, at an airport terminal, we have to wonder whether the incident adds more “fire deaths” to the petrol car scorecard rather than the EV tally at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Remember, we’re forcing EVs on people to save the world in a hundred years, but no one has the time to conduct a proper age-standardized study on the risks of storing EV’s in home garages or under apartment blocks now.
In related news, two weeks ago BMW recalled 140,000 Mini Coopers due to a battery fire threat:
The German carmaker said the recall of electric Mini Cooper SEs came after tests that revealed the potential for leaks from the battery housing.
“The high-voltage battery could also switch off and the vehicle could roll out slowly, even while driving,” BMW said. “A vehicle fire, even when the vehicle is parked, cannot be ruled out.”
Another Made-in-China EV suddenly caught fire and exploded.
This happened in Xinyue International Community, Section 2, Xihua Road, Shunqing District, Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, CCP China, on Aug. 3, 2024. pic.twitter.com/zta3Aoryn0
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) August 3, 2024
Germany has suffered a “spectacular” drop in electric car sales as the European Union faces growing calls to delay its net zero vehicle targets.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) said sales of new battery-powered electric vehicles (EV) in Germany plunged by nearly 70pc to 27,024 in August.
European carmakers call for delay in emissions restrictions as EV demand falters
Germany has suffered a “spectacular” drop in electric car sales as the European Union faces growing calls to delay its net zero vehicle targets.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) said sales of new battery-powered electric vehicles (EV) in Germany plunged by nearly 70pc to 27,024 in August. The Telegraph has the story.
In France, the EU’s second largest market for battery electric vehicles behind Germany, deliveries fell by 33pc to 13,143.
ACEA said “the spectacular drop” in both countries meant that only 92,627 battery electric vehicles were registered across Europe last month, a fall of 43.9pc compared to a year earlier. This drove a wider 18pc drop in new car sales across the EU.
The collapse in EV sales comes amid concerns about their range, high prices and the lack of charging infrastructure across the EU.
Felipe Munoz, a global automotive analyst at JATO Dynamics, said: “The reality is that whether you look at business or private, electric vehicles do not convince yet.”
There are concerns about demand for EVs among British drivers too. Separate data showed that the growth rate of EV sales in the UK had dramatically slowed.
Some 213,500 EVs were sold in the first eight months of 2024, up by 10.5pc compared to the previous year. That compared to annual growth of 40.5pc over the same period in 2023, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT).
Mike Hawes, head of the SMMT, said earlier this month: “Encouraging a mass market shift to EVs remains a challenge and urgent action must be taken to help buyers overcome affordability issues and concerns about chargepoint provision.”
Mr Munoz added that Germany’s EV slump was fuelled by economic uncertainty and the EU’s new tariffs on China-made electric cars, which has pushed up prices at the more affordable end of the market.
He predicted there will be “more problems” for Germany in the coming months amid waning enthusiasm for EVs among corporate fleets.
Mr Munoz said: “I don’t think we will see growth. I’m not saying that we will continue to see these big drops as we just saw in August because sooner or later measures will be taken by the government because of strong lobbying from carmarkers in Germany.”
Over the past 25 years, the world electricity demand doubled. All indications are that it will double again over the next 25 years. In fact, the time span is likely to be much shorter. The emergence of more electricity-intensive consuming technologies such as data centres is causing electricity demand to rise more steeply. Then one must add the rising demand of developing countries in which. People are moving from cooking dinner over an open fire outdoors to acquiring an electrical stove and fridge.
Over the past 25 years, the world electricity demand doubled. All indications are that it will double again over the next 25 years. In fact, the time span is likely to be much shorter. The emergence of more electricity-intensive consuming technologies such as data centres is causing electricity demand to rise more steeply. Then one must add the rising demand of developing countries in which. People are moving from cooking dinner over an open fire outdoors to acquiring an electrical stove and fridge.
The image of electricity demand is a large boulder rolling down a hill, it is not stopping or slowing. In fact it is rolling faster and faster.
Without doubt fossil fuels will continue to be the backbone of world electricity generation for decades to come. But equally certain is that nuclear power is making a rapid advance across the globe. That means not only for the traditional large, industrialised countries, but also for the less developed, or much smaller countries. Rapid development of Small Modular Reactor technology is also accelerating the options for the adoption of nuclear power on a large scale. South Africa was the first country in the world to start developing a commercial Small Modular Reactor, and has continued with the work for over 30 years.
Some years ago, South Africa announced its intention to add an additional 2500 MW of new nuclear to its existing nuclear base. Early in 2024, the energy minister confirmed the acceleration of this goal. The intention, from inception, was to build a new 2400 MW coastal nuclear plant, but also to dedicate 100 MW to the development of SMR’s for inland use. In September 2024, the energy minister gave a public address in which he stated that we must go ahead on the basis of science and facts, and not be ‘fighting in the mud’ with activists who rely more on emotion than reality.
South Africa is forging ahead with a new nuclear build. This is excellent news. The current initiative is for an additional 2500 MW of nuclear, composed of a 2400 MW new large nuclear power station on the coast, plus 100 MW dedicated to Small Modular Reactor (SMR) development.
The announcement of the continuation of the project was greeted with applause by many, but as always, the anti-nuclear lobby were frothing at the mouth about all the imagined problems associated with nuclear power.
But let us digress for a moment, to consider the macro-implications of this initiative.
Building a large nuclear plant is essentially following in the footsteps of the traditional route, that being; placing a large plant on the coastline at an ideal site. The resulting power is then transmitted over some distance to consumers.
But what of SMR’s? The crucial difference with a gas-cooled SMR, which does not need a large body of water for cooling purposes, is that you can take the reactor to the consumer. You can place the rector anywhere you like. This reality enables planners to embrace. Embark on a highly flexible. Nuclear solution across the entire country.
Think about it!
Let us now make a comparison with a cell phone system. Prior to the advent of cell phones, a telephone network consisted of major exchanges, interconnected by means of long-range connections. Then cell phones arrived. The cells are something like the honeycomb of a beehive, and each cell has its own main base station antenna. Each cell handles calls within the cell.
The emergence of Small Modular Reactor (SMR) systems onto the modern scene, essentially makes a nuclear cell system a reality. One can now place a gas-cooled SMR anywhere, and it can serve its own ‘cell.’ This ‘cell’ could be a mining complex, a municipality, a collection of factories, or an agricultural area encompassing the farm, proceeding to processing, packaging, and transport. Such a ‘cell’ does not even need to be connected to the National Grid, and can be owned by a Province, Municipality, or private company.
The SMR revolution effectively means that the fundamental planning options available for the distribution of electricity have changed significantly.
A gas-cooled SMR, such as the South African HTMR-100 is walk-away-safe. The fuel cannot suffer a meltdown under any circumstances. Such an SMR emits absolutely nothing during normal operations, no solids, no liquids, no gases. The fuel is in the form of balls, the size of a tennis ball, and each ball lasts between two and three years in the reactor. So, the amount of refuelling required is extremely small, in comparison to coal, gas, or oil plants. So no continuous refuelling structure is required, such as a conveyor belt, pipeline, or railway line.
What all this means is that small nuclear plants can be safely and effectively placed in industrial areas or agricultural areas, or near an idyllic town. One of the accusations of the extremist anti-nuclear lobby has always been that nuclear reactors are ugly industrial structures which spoil beautiful scenic coastlines
With modern SMR’s we can totally remove that accusation. Since then is a bomb, it’s nothing during operation. And what’s more? Is totally silent. It can be integrated into the Vista of any setting. With this in mind, the developers of the HTMR-100 range of reactors approached Johann Koch of Johann Koch Design Architects (JKDA) with a proposal to work together to develop SMRe complexes for a range of customers.
Stratek Global originally developed the HTMR-100 for a classic industrial setting in South Africa, such as a gold-mining complex, far inland, and far away from any large water body. However, Stratek Global has been approached by potential customers from around the world, including the Middle East, Australia, a number of African countries, and also island states.
Furthermore, site factors such as the altitude, have varied from sea level to high altitude. The prevailing weather conditions have varied from hot and dry, to cold and wet, including snow.
As a result, Stratek Global is in a position to offer any type of nuclear power complex which can be designed to fit, not only any site but which can also be skilfully designed to match the scenery or cultural nature of the people and area.
Since nuclear is completely clean and green, emitting no gasses, liquids, or anything else, during normal operations, there is no reason why nuclear power stations must be viewed as ugly industrial buildings. They can be made as attractive as a hotel complex or holiday resort.
Illustrated here or four of the designs developed as a result of customer requests. They are named; the Impala Design, Kudu Design, Oryx Design, and Sable Design.
The Kudu Design was developed for an African savanna setting. It is shown here with a single reactor of 100 MW thermal output, or 35 MW electrical output.
Kudu Design: For a temperate setting near a town or agricultural cluster
A most useful aspect of the. HTMR-100 is that an SMR complex can be designed to take up to ten reactors. All ten can be run from a single control room. Obviously, building more reactors per site reduces the unit cost, because you don’t have to duplicate the administration building, the workshops, or a variety of other facilities. Furthermore, if a site is designed for, say, ten reactors they do not all have to be constructed at the same time. An owner can add reactors, in later years, as the demand rises, or as finances become available, thereby allowing for immense planning flexibility.
The Oryx Design was developed as a result of a request from the Middle East. It also features a single reactor, but can easily be adapted for more reactors.
Oryx Design: A one reactor setup for a desert region
Computer graphic showing the interior arrangement of the reactor building. Approximately 60% of the reactor is underground. Ground-level is at the bottom of the ventilation stack.
The single reactor Impala Design is a workhorse design for an industrial setting such as a South African gold mining complex. This design was developed to fit into any existing industrial complex. It illustrates that other than the actual nuclear reactor itself, in the cylindrical concrete containment vessel, the rest of the power station consists of perfectly normal industrial buildings.
Impala Design: A basic one reactor design for an existing industrial setting
The Sable Design was developed as a result of a request from a country which experiences snow conditions. The request was for a ten-reactor complex. The reactors can be added, over a period of some years, as the customer sees fit.
Sable Design: Showing eight reactors, in a snow region
Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and is Past Chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa). He is currently Chairman of Stratek Global, a nuclear project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. The company carries out strategy development and project planning in a wide variety of fields for diverse clients. They are working towards building an HTMR-100 nuclear reactor in Pretoria. Kelvin.kemm@stratekglobal.com.
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