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.
Germany’s enviro-nannies may be getting even loonier. Not only is CO2 a threat to humanity, they claim, but so is wood-heating and the fine particulates that get emitted.
Germany’s enviro-nannies may be getting even loonier. Not only is CO2 a threat to humanity, they claim, but so is wood-heating and the fine particulates that get emitted.
Germany looking at woodstove-operating license for users. Image: P. Gosselin
According to Blackout News here, woodstove owners may soon need to get a “stove operating license” – in order “to learn how to use their fireplace properly.”
Granted what’s planned is not a new regulation, but will be a “voluntary training course” offered by local authorities – at least for the time being. But most of us know where this eventually leads: to more bureaucratic harassment.
According to Blackout News, the aim of a stove operating license is primarily to teach stove owners “how to operate their stoves more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly way” and to “reduce emissions, especially particulate matter”.
Strict regulations already in place
German wood-burning stoves are already subject to among the toughest standards in the world, where today only clean-efficiently burning units are allowed. Professional chimney sweepers regularly check stoves, chimneys and stove pipes to make sure only proper firewood is being burned and that the stove is up-to-date. Violators risk fines and having their stove shut down.
Moreover, firewood must be properly dried before burning in an approved proper woodstove. Moreover, citizens wishing to cut their own firewood must either do it by hand, or complete a chainsaw operating safety course, and don regulated protective gear like chainsaw-protective pants & workshoes, faceshield, hearing protection and helmet.
The up-front costs of a stove, chimney, installation, and equipment can easily run over 10,000 euros before burning your first log. Absolutely forget jerry-rigging your own system using an old drum on a cinder block with a stove pipe going through the wall!
Voluntary training for the time being
For now, as already mentioned, the stove operating license in a voluntary measure and no one is forced to take part in the training courses. However, Blackout News warns: “This voluntary nature is met with skepticism by some: Is there a subliminal pressure being built up here that chimney owners feel obliged to take part in such training in order to be on the ‘safe side’ socially?”
Others criticize that the measure is completely unnecessary as most stove owners already know how to operate their stove safely and have years of experience doing so.
Blackout News comments further: “While it is positive that the training courses are offered free of charge, the question arises as to whether all stove owners really need this help. Many local authorities want to reduce particulate emissions through education and at the same time increase safety in households. However, it remains to be seen whether the voluntary stove license will actually have the desired effect or whether it is just another symbol of excessive regulation.”
So, North Carolina had two “one-in-1000 years “ rainstorms in two weeks? Really?
Sorry but this must be called out for the absolute fraud it is.
Let’s start with Helene.
Officials called Hurricane Helene’s deadly rainfall and floods “biblical” and “generational.” But weather forecasters used another term: “once in 1,000 years.”
Helene was actually the second once-in-a-millennium storm to strike North Carolina in a matter of days. Less than two weeks before Helene made landfall, an unnamed tropical storm brought 1,000-year rains to communities on the opposite side of the state, inundating homes along the coast.
The idea of two such rainfall events occurring back-to-back might seem confusing. After all, it sounds like they should only occur every 1,000 years. But in reality, it’s all about probability. Understanding the odds — and how climate change is shifting them — is more important than ever for communities and infrastructure managers.
Researchers were able to definitively identify these two extremely rare deluges in North Carolina based on rainfall frequency estimates. Using years of precipitation measurements for a specific place, scientists extrapolate what constitutes a hundred-year storm, for example, for that location.
Add in the effects of climate change — which are not included in current estimates — and the likelihood of catastrophic rains increase, said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California Los Angeles. A hotter atmosphere can hold additional moisture, which is driving more frequent and intense downpours.
Take Helene’s rains. While they were a 1,000-year event using statistical estimates based on the historic record, a rapid analysis in the wake of the storm found that rains as severe as Helene’s now occur about once every 70 years due to global warming.
So, North Carolina had two “one-in-1000 years “ rainstorms in two weeks? Really?
Sorry but this must be called out for the absolute fraud it is.
Let’s start with Helene.
Storm rainfall in the worst affected part of North Carolina was for the most part below 20 inches, although a small handful of high altitude sites recorded slightly higher than that.
However in 1916, we know that 22 inches fell in exactly the same area in just 24-hours, still a record for the whole of the US.
Plainly the Helene floods were not unprecedented.
And what about that other storm:
This refers to the small rainstorm which dumped 10 inches of rain on a short length of coast around Southport, NC on 17th September. I covered the story here.
But again, ten inches in a day along the coast of the Carolinas is pretty much par for the course, when a tropical storm passes by.
The 24-hour record for South Carolina, for instance, stands at 14.8 inches during Hurricane Floyd in 1999:
But North Carolina was even more badly affected by Floyd, according to Wikipedia:
North Carolina received the brunt of the storm’s destruction. In all, Hurricane Floyd caused 51 fatalities in North Carolina, much of them from freshwater flooding, as well as billions in damage.
The storm surge from the large hurricane amounted to 9–10 ft (2.7–3.0 m) along the southeastern portion of the state. The hurricane also spawned numerous tornadoes, most of which caused only minor damage. Damage to power lines left over 500,000 customers without electricity at some point during the storm’s passage.[2]
Just weeks prior to Floyd hitting, Hurricane Dennis brought up to 15 in (380 mm) of rain to southeastern North Carolina. When Hurricane Floyd moved across the state in early September, it produced torrential rainfall, amounting to a maximum of 19.06 in (484 mm) in Wilmington. Though it moved quickly, the extreme rainfall was due to Floyd’s interaction with an approaching cold front across the area.[2]
Extensive flooding, especially along NC Hwy 91 and the White Oak Loop neighborhood, led to overflowing rivers; nearly every river basin in eastern North Carolina reached 500 year or greater flood levels.[33] Most localized flooding happened overnight; Floyd dropped nearly 17 in (430 mm) of rain during the hours of its passage and many residents were not aware of the flooding until the water came into their homes. The U. S. Navy, National Guard and the Coast Guard performed nearly 1700 fresh water rescues of people trapped on the roofs of their homes due to the rapid rise of the water. By contrast, many of the worst affected areas did not reach peak flood levels for several weeks after the storm, as the water accumulated in rivers and moved downstream (see flood graphic at right).
The passage of Hurricane Irene four weeks later contributed an additional 6 in (150 mm) of rain over the still-saturated area, causing further flooding.
The Tar River suffered the worst flooding, exceeding 500-year flood levels along its lower stretches; it crested 24 ft (7.3 m) above flood stage. Flooding began in Rocky Mount, as much as 30% of which was underwater for several days. In Tarboro, much of the downtown was under several feet of water.[34] Nearby, the town of Princeville was largely destroyed when the waters of the Tar poured over the town’s levee, covering the town with over 20 ft (6.1 m) of floodwater for ten days.[35] Further downstream, Greenville suffered very heavy flooding; damages in Pitt County alone were estimated at $1.6 billion (1999 USD, $2.81 billion 2022 USD).[13]Washington, where the peak flood level was observed, was likewise devastated. Some residents in Greenville had to swim six feet underwater to reach the front doors of their homes and apartments.[36] Due to the heavy flooding in downtown Greenville, the East Carolina Pirates were forced to relocate their football game against #9 Miami to N.C. State‘s Carter–Finley Stadium in Raleigh, where they beat the Hurricanes 27–23.[37]
The Neuse River, Roanoke River, Waccamaw River, and New River exceeded 500-year flood levels, although damage was lower in these areas (compared to the Tar River) because of lower population densities. Because most of the Cape Fear River basin was west of the peak rainfall areas, the city of Wilmington was spared the worst flooding despite having the highest localized rainfall; however, the Northeast Cape Fear River (a tributary) did exceed 500-year flood levels. Of the state’s eastern rivers, only the Lumber River escaped catastrophic flooding.[33]
Rainfall and strong winds affected many homes across the state, destroying 7,000, leaving 17,000 uninhabitable, and damaging 56,000. Ten thousand people resided in temporary shelters following the storm. The extensive flooding resulted in significant crop damage. As quoted by North Carolina Secretary of Health and Human Services H. David Bruton, “Nothing since the Civil War has been as destructive to families here. The recovery process will be much longer than the water-going-down process.”[13] Around 31,000 jobs were lost from over 60,000 businesses through the storm, causing nearly $4 billion (1999 USD, $7.02 billion 2022 USD) in lost business revenue.[38] In much of the affected area, officials urged people to either boil water or buy bottled water during Floyd’s aftermath.[39]
In contrast to the problems eastern North Carolina experienced, much of the western portion of the state remained under a severe drought.[13
Floyd dumped 19 inches on Wilmington, and this was not untypical of the wider area.
Note also the reference to Hurricane Dennis, which dropped 15 inches on the same region just weeks earlier. This certainly gives the lie to Bloomberg’s story that two such events are just not supposed to happen.
NOAA published the rainfall totals for the 33 days encompassing both storms. Wilmington, for example, received 28 inches:
Floyd and Dennis were both exceptional, but many other tropical storms have dropped as much rain as that seen in Southport last month.
So where do they get this “one in a thousand year” nonsense from?
Yes, I realise that it does not literally mean once every thousand years – it is merely a statement of probability. You can win the lottery, but that does not mean there is no chance of winning it again.
But nevertheless, there must be something fundamentally wrong with their models, if they are coming up with such results.
Indeed, even the scientists who came up with this crock of nonsense admit that the claims are based on “the historic record”. Plainly the “historic record” does not support their claims. They are no more than statistical jiggery-pokery, intended to mislead.
If it is based on the historical record, they can only tell us about the situation in the last hundred years or so. In other words, the once every 70 years they mention, which given that these are based on individual locations is probably accurate. It also implies that the US will likely see this sort of event somewhere every year.
But, based on the historic record, they have no way of knowing how frequent these events were before “global warming”. And this is where the models are twisted to provide whatever results the authors are looking for – that is, a 1000-year event.
The whole objective is to frighten the public into believing that weather is any worse than it has always been:
It is not just poor science, it is deliberate disinformation.
In Episode 462 of District of Conservation, Gabriella sits down with Anne Brande, a fourth-generation photographer and founder of Albany County Conservancy, to discuss Wyoming wind woes. Her organization is fighting upwards of 20+ onshore wind projects. Learn more about her efforts on the podcast today.
“I am aware of 21 approved industrial wind energy projects in my county. So the cumulative, contiguous impacts to my wildlife I actually experience every day, as do the families I photograph in my county.” — Albany County Conservancy founder Anne Brande
In Episode 462 of District of Conservation, Gabriella sits down with Anne Brande, a fourth-generation photographer and founder of Albany County Conservancy, to discuss Wyoming wind woes. Her organization is fighting upwards of 20+ onshore wind projects. Learn more about her efforts on the podcast today.
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
A radical new plan to reduce international air travel from Europe to minimal levels over the next few years has been proposed by a group of Net Zero fanatics led by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Massive charges under a ‘frequent flyer levy’ are proposed, the effect of which could quickly destroy large sections of the international air transportation industry.
A radical new plan to reduce international air travel from Europe to minimal levels over the next few years has been proposed by a group of Net Zero fanatics led by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Massive charges under a ‘frequent flyer levy’ are proposed, the effect of which could quickly destroy large sections of the international air transportation industry. Some of the money raised – or not as the case may be – will be sent abroad as ‘climate aid’ to less developed countries forced to stay poor by mandated restrictions on their use of hydrocarbons. Needless to say, the work is the product of what Ben Pile recently termed “bog-standard Green Blob fronts”. Writing and promoting the NEF publication involved a number of operations heavily funded by the usual suspects including the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and ClimateWorks.
The fantasy plan calls for large European surcharges to be added to ticket prices for multiple annual trips. Financial details are not provided in the press release but the report suggests €50 for a medium distance trip and additional levies of €100 for long and “comfort” classes. This would appear to suggest an extra €250 charge for long-distance business and first class travel. George Monbiot of the Guardian boasts of the report having been shared exclusively with his newspaper and writes that the €100 levy on both distance and class will rise with each trip. It is hoped the surcharges will raise €64 billion, a sum said to be equivalent to 30% of the entire EU annual budget. This would be spent, at least until the golden goose is killed stone dead, on accelerating Europe to a “fairer, greener economy”. More virtuous bungs can be sent to countries to stop them using hydrocarbons and recompense them for the non-existent climate crisis.
Although the report talks of reducing travel by around 25%, the blow will be much worse in financial terms. Many airlines rely on premium travel to keep economy tickets low and severe reductions would affect the economics of aviation, both in the air and on the ground. Reducing passenger traffic by a suggested 25% and very likely much more, would require massive restructuring across the board including air traffic control, baggage handling, security and border activities and airport management. Yet more lost jobs to be added to the increasing pile of Net Zero casualties.
Not that this is the end of the attack. Air travel has enabled countless millions to travel for pleasure, holidays, education, business and to connect with family over the last few decades. In pursuit of ther mad Net Zero policies, the eco-zealots tell us, further restrictions “would therefore be necessary”. These would include caps on the number of flights, airport slots, night flights, private jets and “limits on the more damaging comfort classes of travel”.
Want to know what is being planned by the Net Zero fanatics – look at what their Blob-funded puppets are writing. In this case, forget about flying within just a few short years.
The New Economics Foundation has been around for a few years pumping out Left wing propaganda. It is no surprise that the hard Left’s favourite money tree the Rowntree Trust has funnelled in cash, although much larger amounts have been supplied by the Laudes Foundation and the ECF. As Ben Pile noted recently in the Daily Sceptic, most of the organisations active in the climate domain in the U.K. are funded by the ECF directly, or by one of the half dozen or so of the ECF’s grantor philanthropic foundations. As Pile also observes, the “hapless consumer” is ensnared by the phantom institutions that represent the green-ideology-addled British Establishment.
The NEF report is co-written by the Stay Grounded Network which, perhaps to nobody’s surprise, is funded by the ECF. The aviation campaigner at this outfit, Magdalena Heuwieser, says that the single trip flyer is paying the same tax as a traveller making 10 trips. Except that the more frequent flyer is actually paying 10 times more tax. Designed to fit a political narrative, Left wing sums often diverge from reality. In his article, Monbiot notes that air travel, heavily taxed as most passengers are aware, is “heavily subsidised” since the fuel is exempt from duties. In Monbiot’s world, a lack of a specific tax is often seen as a ‘subsidy’, while an actual £12 billion annual subsidy loaded onto U.K. electricity consumers to pay for unreliable renewable power is passed off as an ‘investment’. One reason fuel duty is not levied on aviation is that mobile jet aircraft will ‘tanker up’ at cheaper locations.
Monbiot reports on the view of Marlene Engelhorn who states that the “mile-high club of private planet combustion, where wealthy people like me can ferment in our comfort zones, needs to close it doors”. Easy to say of course when you are a wealthy heiress who has inherited a fortune from the BASF chemical operation. Other people who work for a living and need holidays and some modest comfort as they travel to drum up business might take a different view.
According to Monbiot, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) reviewed an early draft of the NEF report. Another Green Blob-funded operation of course, mostly it seems through ClimateWorks. This large operation channels considerable flows of money from other billionaire foundations such as Hewlett and Packard. These two latter operations are also direct funders of ICCT. Flying less is obviously the most effective solution to cutting emissions, states Sola Zhang, described by Monbiot as an aviation “expert”. Another operation quoted by Monbiot, More in Common, found that rich people would be most affected by a frequent flyer levy because they fly more. Again such value, such insight – funders ECF, the George Soros Open Society Foundation and Hewlett must be very pleased.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
The archipelago nation of Indonesia represents just 1% of Earth’s land area, but it has set the stage for global geopolitics surrounding fossil fuels and climate policies.
The archipelago nation of Indonesia represents just 1% of Earth’s land area, but it has set the stage for global geopolitics surrounding fossil fuels and climate policies.
As a part of climate negotiations between G-7 nations, Indonesia was expected to be the first among developing countries to announce early closures of coal plants.
In the spotlight is the 660-megawatt Cirebon-1 plant in West Java province, which had been scheduled to shut down by 2035. However, it is understood that Jakarta will not follow that timeline but rather continue to operate the plant to its originally projected end of life in 2042. A stumbling block to the early closure is a price tag of more than $1 billion to replace the coal plant with so-called renewable energy.
In reaffirming its commitment to the unrestricted use of coal, Indonesia makes a bold and sensible decision to put energy security and economic priorities ahead of international climate politics. The move sets up Indonesia as a model for other developing countries to defy the western agenda to reduce emissions in favor of their own self-interest.
Coal in Indonesia
For developing nations like Indonesia, the path to prosperity is paved with affordable energy. Coal, abundant and cheap, has long been the fuel of choice for powering economic growth. The country sits atop vast coal reserves, estimated at 37 billion metric tons, which are primarily located in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
Jakarta has approved a coal production quota of 922 million metric tons for 2024, a significant increase from previous years. This move has sparked international criticism, but it’s a calculated step to ensure energy affordability.
Coal remains the backbone of Indonesia’s energy sector, accounting for over 60% of its electricity generation. Also, Indonesia relies on coal-fueled smelters for most of its nickel production.
Producing about half of the world’s nickel, Indonesia is the top producer of the metal, which is needed to make batteries that run electric vehicles and energy storage devices.
Economic Case for Fossil Fuels
In the late 1990s, nearly 50% of Indonesia’s population lived in poverty. Today, that number is closer to 10%, thanks to unabated use of coal during the past two decades. At 70%, Indonesia manages to maintain one of the highest employment rates among the G20 countries.
“Despite challenges in 2023, Indonesia has demonstrated resilience to global shocks and an ever more diversified economic base is expected to mitigate adverse impacts,” says a spokesman for financial services company PwC.
Much of this success is due to a stable and reliable energy supply of coal, oil, and natural gas for electricity and industries. Coal and petroleum, along with nickel and ferroalloys, are among Indonesia’s top exports.
Poverty, though declining, remains a pressing issue, with over 26 million Indonesians classified as poor. Rapid industrialization and economic growth are essential for improving living standards and creating opportunities for millions.
Western Hypocrisy
Many western leaders lecturing Indonesia on the evils of coal had their own economies built with that very fuel and continue to rely on oil and gas.
The United States, for instance, underwent an energy revolution through fracking, which unlocked vast reserves of natural gas and oil. In 2023, U.S. was the number one oil producer in the world.
Similarly, Norway, often lauded for its commitment to “sustainability,” continues to issue oil drilling permits in the North Sea. If Norway, a country with a superior economy and high standard of living, can still prioritize its economic self-interest by extracting its oil, why should Indonesia be criticized for utilizing its coal reserves?
The $1.4 trillion Indonesian economy is in no mood to compromise its future or the continuing upward trend in economic growth. Count on Jakarta to exploit its natural resources well into the future.
This commentary was first published at California Globe on October 14, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition in Arlington Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University (both in the U.K.), and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
There was an inspiring story in the magazine Tablet about Palmer Luckey, the founder of the first-person-viewer company bought out by Meta. As recounted in Tablet, Mr Luckey had an epiphany – instead of developing the next iteration in that technology, he should develop the ultimate technology. He did, made billions and went on to found a yet more successful company in defence technology.
There was an inspiring story in the magazine Tablet about Palmer Luckey, the founder of the first-person-viewer company bought out by Meta. As recounted in Tablet, Mr Luckey had an epiphany – instead of developing the next iteration in that technology, he should develop the ultimate technology. He did, made billions and went on to found a yet more successful company in defence technology.
So that begs the question: what is the ultimate technology in energy? What technology will our great grandchildren have settled on to keep the lights on, the wheels turning and the grain growing? No matter what we are doing in energy at the moment, we, as a civilisation, should prepare for adopting the ultimate technology. Preparation starting as soon as possible will reduce the pain and suffering in getting to that shining city on a hill.
That choice won’t be between wind and solar, on one hand, and fossil fuels on the other. The fossil fuels will largely be exhausted in three generations so they won’t be part of the solution. And believe it or not, wind and solar won’t be part of the solution either.
The reason for that is that you can’t make wind turbines and solar panels with power produced from wind turbines and solar panels. Those things are artefacts of currently cheap Chinese coal prices. In fact, polysilicon production in China for making solar panels has moved 3,000 km inland to the province of Xinjiang where the coal and the Uigher slave labour are cheapest.
Power in China at US$0.05/kWh makes solar panels which, under the most ideal conditions on the planet – supplying gold mines out the Australian desert, produces power at the price of power from diesel at US$0.20/kWh. So, if you used power from solar panels at US$0.20/kWh to make solar panels, what would the cost of power from that second generation of solar panels be? It is likely to be of the order of US$0.80/kWh and so on to infinity. That ignores the lubricating effect of oil as a high energy-density liquid fuel in keeping industry going.
Wind turbines and solar panels are neither renewable or sustainable. Solar panels only last 15 to 20 years. And then what? They are mostly glass and not worth more than empty beer bottles. Will the metals smeared on them as thinly as possible be worth recovering? Nobody has bothered to do so yet and likely never will. There goes the renewable label. What is worse is that the metals used to make solar panels include cadmium. Cadmium is more poisonous than lead. It is highly toxic when ingested or inhaled, primarily affecting the kidneys, bones, and lungs. Inhalation of cadmium dust or fumes is particularly dangerous and can lead to lung cancer. Cadmium can accumulate in the environment, especially in soil and water. It is taken up by plants, entering the food chain and potentially impacting human health through contaminated food. Cadmium loading is up to 10 grams per square metre of solar panel. To avoid environmental damage, solar panels will have to end up in engineered repositories. There is nothing renewable, sustainable, economical, rational or joyous about solar panels.
It is the same for wind. Wind turbines are engineered to last as long as the power contract they are to service. Why design for a 50 to 100 year life if your contract is for only 15 years? Blade failure is one thing and rotor fires are understandable but the fact that the towers of wind turbines buckle means that they are built on the slimmest of design margins. If we paid 20% more for our wind turbines, would they last five times as long? We are told to think of the children, but our grandchildren won’t inherit these things. What they will inherit is a lot of waste fibreglass to send to landfill.
Let’s cut to the chase. If wind turbines and solar panels are just self-indulgent artefacts of currently cheap Chinese coal power and the fossil fuels will fade due to depletion, what is the choice of energy systems for our great grandchildren? It is a choice of either nuclear energy or horse-drawn carts. Let’s assume that they make the better choice of nuclear power. That may seem to be the better choice but we now live in a world in which some politicians can’t define what a woman is and that inability seems to be no impediment to their re-election. So sensible choices can’t be taken for granted.
Figure 1: The energy transition from fossil fuels to nuclear was predicted 68 years ago From King Hubbert’s 1956 paper Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.
It won’t be nuclear power as it is commonly understood, which is U235-burning light water reactors. Apart from safety considerations of having water and zirconium in the same reactor vessel, and the enormous spent fuel legacy, that technology is dreadfully wasteful as it uses only about one percent of the energy contained in uranium as it is dug out of the ground. Why we have light water reactors as the dominant nuclear technology is a consequence of what came first. What came first was nuclear submarines with the launch of the USS Nautilus in 1954. The authorities in the US wanted to develop the nuclear power sector and the fastest way to do that was to repurpose the reactors from the US nuclear submarine fleet. Little has been done to switch to better technology in the last 70 years.
The big two things in nuclear power, which nobody on either side of the argument seems to talk about, are high level waste and delayed fission reactions. Current practice for all current commercial reactors in the US is for the used fuel rods to be put in pools of water for a few years to cool down, in a radioactivity sense, and then be placed in steel casks for decades. Recycling would cost about US$2,000 per kg of used fuel which is higher than the cost of mining and enriching uranium out of the ground.
It is a bad thing that our generation is not bearing the burden of recycling those used fuel rods to recover the energy that is inherent in them. In the US that is currently 90,000 tonnes and rising at 2,000 tonnes per annum. On the other hand, at some point the cost of mining uranium will rise above the cost of recycling and our descendants then will inherit a blessing of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of energy-dense fuel.
The other big thing about nuclear reactors to bear in mind is that at steady state, 7% of the energy is coming from delayed fission reactions. That is from atoms that have absorbed a neutron but have not split immediately. They will split and generate heat. And if that heat can’t be handled, bad things can happen. One of the worst things that could happen is if the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods heats up to1,250°C and then reacts with water to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen accumulates and then explodes. All three of the operating reactors of the Fukushima power plant had hydrogen explosions.
Figure 2: Fukushima reactor explosion timeline
Even worse is if the fuel rods melt together and then that mass melts through the reactor shielding to the concrete floor underneath and then keeps going. The big, hot, sticky, intensely radioactive mass is called corium. Some reactors have a special chamber to catch the corium. It would be better not to have the possibility of a meltdown in the first place.
All these problems – the squandering of 99% of the contained energy of mined uranium, the burden of high-level waste and the danger from delayed fission reactions – are all solved by adopting the best nuclear technology possible which is plutonium breeder reactors.
The Leaving of Oil
Before we discuss that best of all possible worlds, let’s go back to what made it achievable – fossil fuels as the bridge between burning wood and breeding plutonium. Fossil fuels allowed civilisation to develop to a high level and showed us what was possible. Fossil fuels allowed us to light the nuclear match that started the fire that will sustain civilisation at a high level for all of eternity. But, unlike nuclear, fossil fuels aren’t forever and to avoid pain and suffering, we have to leave fossil fuels faster than they leave us.
World oil and condensate production peaked in November 2018 at 84.6 million barrels per day with the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia each contributing a bit over 11 million barrels per day. Peak world oil production had been predicted for 2005 but the development of the US tight oil industry delayed that by 13 years. In fact, US oil production has continued to rise to 13.2 million barrels per day in late 2024 while non-US production fell by six million barrels per day. But new oil discoveries are only a fraction of what is produced annually. In 2023, oil discoveries amount to 2.6 billion barrels while annual production was 37 billion barrels – 14 times as much. Exhaustion is inevitable. It is just a question of what the decline profile will look like.
Figure 3: US tight oil production by year of well drilled
US oil tight oil production is a treadmill. If drilling stopped overnight, production would halve within 18 months. The rig count for drilling horizontal oil wells in the US is currently in downtrend which means that drilling for tight oil is breakeven at best at the current oil price. The combination of these factors means that the oil price is underwritten by the lack of highly profitable locations to drill. A further factor is that the quality of the remaining locations continues to fall as the best locations have been drilled first, meaning that a higher oil price will be required for them to be drilled.
Figure 4: Texas Railroad Commission District 8 Oil Production January 2021 – July 2024
Texas District 8 is in the core of the Permian Basin in which the most profitable well locations were drilled first. Production peaked in late 2023 and by July 2024 had fallen by 700,000 BOPD. This rapid decline in production in the core of the basin indicates that production has peaked. It also means that a higher oil price is necessary to slow the production decline.
Figure 5: Lea County Gas Oil Ratio relative to production
Oil production from tight oil wells falls once the reservoir pressure declines to the bubble point at which natural gas comes out of solution and starts moving towards the well bore. The more that reservoir pressure declines, the greater the rate of gas production and the faster the pressure decline, leaving oil in the formation and preferentially producing gas.
The fastest part of the decline will come from the US tight oil segment. In the unconstrained extraction of a resource, production declines, and costs go up, once half of the initial resource has been extracted. The increasing gas to oil ratio in the prime oil counties of the Permian Basin suggest that has now happened. So much gas is being produced now in parts of Texas that the natural gas price can be negative locally.
Figure 6: The major US tight oil basins production profile
What of natural gas? Currently it is much cheaper than oil on an energy content basis but when the oil price rises due to declining supply, methane is the next best alternative and will go to the oil price on an energy content basis. This has already happened on the international LNG market.
It is said that natural gas is essential to glue the solar and wind power grids together and that is true. Which in effect means that you are using a hydrocarbon priced at the oil price to provide power. If that power ends up being used in an electric vehicle, then 29% of the energy contained in the natural gas ends up as power to the wheels. Natural gas can be used directly in internal combustion engines in which case 40% of the contained energy ends up as power to the wheels. Iran and Pakistan have a high proportion of their vehicle fleets running on natural gas.
One of the more amusing political phenomena of recent times is the campaign against using natural gas for cooking. The globalists would rather we cooked our insect protein ration on a single plate induction cooktop. The transfer of the contained energy from natural gas to the food being cooked is 90% on a gas stove. Using an electric stove lowers that to 36% – less than half. If you wanted to lower domestic energy consumption, you wouldn’t discourage cooking using natural gas. Unfortunately the same people trying to ban gas stoves, and thus more than doubling energy consumption in the process, are also making rules and regulations on far more important matters.
If the haters amongst us despise natural gas because of the single carbon atom in the methane molecule, what do they think of coal in which the molecules can include thousands of carbon atoms? It doesn’t matter because all the coal that can be economically dug up and burnt will eventually be dug up and burnt. But not for power generation. The last research into coal liquefaction in Australia was conducted by a Japanese group in the Yallourn Valley in the early 1990s. They determined that the brown coals of Victoria were quite amenable to liquefaction by the Bergius process and that the oil price required for commerciality was then US$40 per barrel. US$40 per barrel then is now US$110 per barrel. As oil production tips over into decline, that price will be with us soon enough.
Figure 7: Bergius Process mass balance from Bergius’ 1931 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Our coal reserves shouldn’t be seen as something destined for power generation. Once the oil price goes through US$110 per barrel, coal will go to the price of oil less the capital and operating costs of the conversion process. In fact there is a role for nuclear in all this. All the Bergius plants operated to date, including the ones recently built in China, generate the hydrogen needed for the hydrogenation step by processing part of the product stream in a steam reformer. The step is 40% of the capital cost of the plant and consumes 20% of the energy in the coal feedstock. In a more perfect world, the requisite hydrogen would by produced by electrolysis using power produced by nuclear reactors. This would also make the plant much easier to operate by decoupling hydrogen production from the process stream.
Figure 8: Bergius Process Using Nuclear Power for Hydrogen generation
Synthetic liquid fuel production using coal as the feedstock and powered by nuclear energy will be the next big thing. Diesel molecules are 13% hydrogen by weight and 87% carbon. In energy content terms, they are 39% hydrogen and 61% carbon. Carbon is in effect the carrier allowing hydrogen gas to be liquified and made into something useful. For all the hydrogen enthusiasts, synthetic fuel production via the Bergius process will be the closest we will come to a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen enthusiasts they should reconcile themselves to this fact.
Figure 9: Diesel’s components by weight and energy contribution
Once the coal runs out, the Bergius plants will have to switch to consuming wood and other biomass as the carbon source. That is why the title of this paper is Conserve to Convert. If we were a sensible species, we would be replacing our coal-fired power stations with nuclear ones. Nuclear will always be with us but when the coal runs out, our standard of living will be dependent, to a large extent, on the cost of carbon from biomass.
Figure 10: Australian per capita carbon consumption by application
Energy Price Equivalence by Source
The fossil fuels no longer in overabundance on world markets are oil and natural gas (as LNG) and are now in price equivalence in energy content terms. To provide a guide to what will happen to the prices of the energy sources that can substitute for oil when they go to price equilibrium with oil, the following table was constructed:
Table 1: Price equivalence of energy sources with oil.
The early history of the oil industry was over-abundance. So much oil was found in Texas early last century that the Texas Railroad Commission was given the role of controlling oil production in the state in 1919. Then the US became a net oil importer in 1950 and the locus of production shifted to the giant oilfields of the Middle East. Control of the oil market shifted to OPEC after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Once again, OPEC’s role was to limit production to keep the price up. The world started consuming more oil than was discovered each year in the 1960s and so from there it was only a matter of time before production peaked and then tipped over into decline.
In 1956, Shell geologist King Hubbert had predicted that US oil production would peak in 1970, which it duly did. There was an expectation that world oil production would peak in 2005. That was also the time a number of LNG receiving terminals were proposed in the US as it was expected that the US would start running short of natural gas too. Then the US shale oil and shale gas phenomenon started. The US has provided all the growth in world oil production over the last 20 years. The US LNG import terminals were repurposed to be LNG export facilities.
World oil production peaked in November 2018. Oil will become scarcer year by year. As the oil price goes up, other energy sources will substitute for it. This has happened before in the US. In the second half of the 20th century, natural gas traded at the No 2 fuel oil price as there was a natural gas shortage, oil was cheap and manufacturers were indifferent to which energy source they used. At the moment there is such an abundance of natural gas in Texas as a byproduct of tight oil production that the wellhead price can be negative in places. The current Henry Hub price is US$2.72 per thousand cubic feet (close to a gigajoule (gj) in energy content). In terms of energy content, six thousand cubic feet of natural gas equates to one barrel of oil. So the Henry Hub price is equivalent to US$16.32 per barrel of oil in energy content terms. This is one fifth the oil price.
Figure 11: Relative energy price equivalence at current commodity prices
Natural gas can substitute for oil in a number of transport applications. Consider that a major use for natural gas now is to provide the glue that holds power grids together in the face of the inherent volatility of solar and wind as power sources.
There are signs that the heart of the sweet spot of tight oil production in the Permian Basin of Texas has tipped over into decline. The other major source of natural gas in the US, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, has now produced half of its initial resource and so should also tip over into decline concurrently with the Permian Basin. The period of cheap natural gas is about to end and natural gas, being the closest substitute for oil, will go to the oil price in energy equivalent terms. It follows that burning natural gas to keep the power grid stable will, for consumers, have the price effect of burning oil for that purpose.
Next on the substitution list for oil is coal. Oil’s price premium is due to the fact that it is a high energy-density liquid which is easy to store, transport and consume. Turning coal into synthetic liquid fuels isn’t difficult. Germany developed two processes to that end over a century ago – Fischer-Tropsch and the Bergius process. In the former, coal is burnt in pure oxygen to produce a synthesis gas with part of that being steam-reformed to produce hydrogen. The mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is then catalysed in an oil bath to make liquid hydrocarbons. In the Bergius process, hydrogen is forced into coal molecules at 250 atmospheres and 300°C. The hydrogen is produced by steam reforming the methane portion of the process stream. The South African synthetic fuel industry runs on the Fisher-Tropsch process while the Chinese synthetic liquid fuel industry uses the Bergius process.
Current world oil consumption is nearly equivalent to the world’s coal consumption in energy content terms. So as oil production declines to zero, coal consumption will double, all other things being equal. What will happen is that coal will become too expensive for power generation and will be replaced by nuclear. Beyond Australia’s black coal and lignite reserves, there is a lot of oil shale in the Toolebuc Formation of western Queensland. Current retort technology to produce oil from oil shale has a low yield from the contained kerogen. If, instead, the oil shale could be hydrogenated as per the Bergius process, perhaps twice as much might be produced.
The power price per kWh in the table is the cost of power as if oil was the energy source.
Next is uranium. This is the uranium price which you would pay to have power produced at the oil price equivalent. The prices calculated are well in excess of the current yellowcake price of about US$80/lb. Last decade yellowcake was less than half that price. In energy content terms, the current yellowcake price equates to an oil price of US$15/bbl. Most of the current cost of power from nuclear plants is depreciation – paying off the cost of building the plant. The cost of uranium is usually not mentioned as a factor and it hasn’t been a factor in the cost of running nuclear plants.
For completeness, the cost of hydrogen is included. Power at $0.05 per kWh will produce hydrogen at $7 per kg. In turn, hydrogen at $7 per kg equates to diesel at about $2.20 per litre. Which happens to be what a lot of people in Australia are paying at the pump now. The implication is that if we can keep the cost of power down to $0.05 per kWh, we can run our civilisation at a high level for all of eternity. That is the promise of nuclear.
When we have dug up all the fossil fuels and burnt them, we will still need a source of carbon. About 4% of oil production is used for making plastics, resins, pharmaceuticals and a myriad of other things. Carbon will be needed for smelting iron ore. The last hydrogen-based iron reduction plant, BHP’s Port Hedland hot briquetted iron plant, had an explosion in 2004 which killed one employee and injured two others. Hydrogen is so dangerous to handle that one of the companies making valves for hydrogen tests them by using helium rather than hydrogen. The only source of carbon will be biomass. So the table above includes the value of hardwood chips being put through a Bergius plant to produce synthetic diesel.
Wood is half carbon, 6% hydrogen and 44% oxygen. Under Bergius process conditions, wood decomposes to liberate a lot of carbon dioxide exothermically. What remains would yield three barrels of synthetic fuel per tonne of wood used. The calculated value of hardwood chips via the Bergius process at an oil price of US$100 per barrel is about the current woodchip price.
The Optimum Nuclear Technology
Apart from the considerations of safety and the disposal of high-level waste, the current dominant nuclear technology is also inherently wasteful. To power most of the world’s reactor fleet, uranium is enriched from 0.7% U235 to 3.5% U235 with the balance of 86% discarded. This discarded uranium is 99.8% U238 and 0.2% U235. Which means that 86% of the inherent energy in uranium is thrown away straight up. Current practice in most of the world is also to not reprocess the used fuel rods with the result that a further 13.75% is wasted. That is shown in the following figure:
Figure 12: Uranium light water reactor route
To produce one gigawatt of electric power requires the fission of one tonne of uranium or plutonium. Thorium is fertile, not fissile. It requires irradiation with neutrons to convert to U233 which is fissile. To fission one tonne of uranium in light water reactors, you start with 250 tonnes of uranium as dug out of the ground and concentrate the U235 portion to be made into fuel rods. The rods are operated down to 1.7% fissile material, equal parts U235 and plutonium. By the time the rods are pulled in a commercial reactor, the plutonium in them is 80% Pu239 and 20% Pu240 which makes it useless for nuclear weapons. Weapons grade plutonium has a maximum Pu240 content of 7%. Pu240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission which makes a nuclear weapon detonate too early and produce a fizzle. It also makes the cores of nuclear weapons hot, some as hot as 200°C which cooks the chemical explosives and electronics. To make weapons-grade plutonium requires more frequent reprocessing of the fuel rods.
President Carter banned the reprocessing of spent fuel rods in 1977 as a precaution against nuclear weapons proliferation. He needn’t have bothered. You can’t make nuclear weapons using plutonium you have extracted from spent fuel rods from commercial reactors.
Only one quarter of one percent of the energy inherent in as-mined uranium is used with the rest discarded. Beyond the world’s 17 million tonnes of uranium reserves, there is four times as much thorium which, like U238, is fertile, not fissile. So, in effect, the current dominant nuclear power generation technology of U235-burning light water reactors is only using 0.05% of humanity’s endowment of nuclear fuel. To access the balance requires the adoption of breeder reactors. These produces more fuel than they consume.
What the sequence would be for breeding from thorium is shown in the following figure:
Figure 13: Thorium Process Route
To breed thorium requires operating in the thermal neutron spectrum and has a maximum theoretical breeding margin of 8%. To breed U238 to plutonium requires operating in the fast neutron spectrum and therefore uses sodium as the coolant. It has a maximum breeding margin of 30%. Plutonium breeder reactors have been operating successfully for decades, mostly in Russia.
A thorium breeder reactor at commercial scale has yet to be developed. The neutron economy of a commercial design may be marginal due to things such as the neutron absorption characteristics of construction materials in the trade-off for long reactor life. This may mean that a commercial design would need help from excess neutrons produced by plutonium breeder reactors. This harks back to the fuel used for the first commercial nuclear reactor at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. That fuel included thorium to breed to U233. In our nuclear future, no neutron should be wasted if it could be used instead to breed thorium to fissile fuel.
That reactor, and nuclear fuel cycle, hasn’t been designed yet. But we can build stepping stones to that ideal future. The best available reactors are the ARC-100 designed by Advanced Reactor Concepts to produce 100 MWe and the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module) designed by GE-Hitachi to produce 311 Mwe.
The ARC-100 is a sodium-cooled reactor in the fast neutron spectrum. It is a modest five-times scale up of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) which operated at the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho from 1965 to 1994. As with EBR-II, the ARC-100 is a breeder-reactor power plant with on-site reprocessing of solid metallic fuel. In the event of a cooling pump failure, the EBR-II demonstrated the ability to elf-cool its fuel through natural convection of the sodium coolant during the decay heat period following shutdown. The fuel loading is 24 tonnes at up to 15.5% fissile material. The fuelling interval is 20 years with a plant life of 60 years.
Figure 14: ARC-100 cross section showing the hot and cold sodium pools
The ARC-100 has a capital cost of US$550 million and produces power at US$0.055 per kWh. It can be in production within three years of starting construction. The reactor vessel is 16.8 metres high with a diameter of 7.6 metres. As such it would easily be made in a South Korean factory, shipped down to Australia and then trucked to site.
GE-Hitachi’s PRISM reactor is also derived from the EBR-II, but possibly more flexible in fuel types and with a breeding margin of up to 20%. It can operate as a breeder or a burner depending on fuel choices and operational goals. Electrical output is 311 MWe per module with two modules in a power block for a total of 622 MWe. For a dual reactor configuration, the capital cost is likely to be of the order of US$2,000 million.
We know what is necessary to be done. The next question is can the nuclear transition happen as fast as it needs to happen?
Figure 15: Electricity production by source, France 1960 to 2015
Over a 10 year period starting in the mid-1970s, France was able to increase the nuclear share of its electric power production from by 70%. That was 50 years ago. With the advances in materials and electronics since, we should be able to do it faster.
With the price of coal rising towards the oil price, Australian industry will rapidly lose its competitiveness. And as our competitiveness shrinks, our standard of living will fall. As well as King Hubbert, there was another energy prophet in the 1950s. Hyman Rickover, the father of the US nuclear submarine fleet, in a 1957 address to the Minnesota State Medical Association:
“A reduction of per capita energy consumption has always in the past led to a decline in civilization and a reversion to a more primitive way of life.”
“When a low-energy society comes in contact with a high-energy society, the advantage always lies with the latter.”
“If we start to plan now, we may be able to achieve the requisite level of scientific and engineering knowledge before our fossil fuel reserves give out, but the margin of safety is not large.”
Which begs the question of what China, the major aggressor in the world, is doing in energy. China has boosted its domestic coal production to 4.7 billion tonnes per annum as well as importing another 500 million tonnes per annum. It is the world’s largest importer of oil. It produces synthetic petrol and diesel from Bergius plants in Inner Mongolia. Recently it announced the spending of US$24 billion to build synthetic fuel plants in the far western province of Xinjiang. As well as conducting a big buildout of its nuclear power reactor fleet, China is also building a couple of reactors to make weapons grade plutonium for a quintupling of its nuclear weapon stockpile from 300 warheads to at least 1,500. The purpose of the two new reactors is to make the weapons to coerce us into doing what they tell us to do, or killing us with them. Discussion of the morality of anything we might do in energy should take these facts into consideration.
Figure 16: Reactors for breeding weapons-grade plutonium under construction on Changbiao Island, Fujian Province in 2022
The Four Pillars of Civilisation
Figure 17: Australian per capita carbon consumption by application
Diesel is the first pillar of civilisation; the other three are plastics, cement, and steel.
Under optimum growing conditions in Brazil, eucalypt plantations produce 40 cubic metres/hectare per annum, which becomes 20 tonnes of dried wood. This in turn converts to 10 tonnes of lignin, which would yield 10,000 litres of liquid fuel. Assuming in Australian conditions that the yield per hectare is 25 cubic metres per hectare, one hectare would produce 39 barrels per annum of diesel per annum. To supply Australia’s requirement of one million barrels per day would require close to 10 million hectares of plantation forests — about 8% of Australia’s forested area.
In the world when fossil fuels have run out, plastics will be produced from the carbon and hydrogen in wood. Some four per cent of world oil production goes into making plastics. Assuming the same ratio holds in the post-fossil fuel world, this will be supplied by wood equivalent to four per cent of the wood used in making diesel. So for Australia this will be produced by an extra 4,000 sq km of plantation forest.
With respect to cement, Australia consumes nine million tonnes per annum. The making of a tonne of cement consumes 200 kg of coal. In the post-fossil fuel world, energy for cement making will come from charcoal produced from plantation eucalypts or power from nuclear reactors. If it is the charcoal route, the yield from wood to charcoal is 35%, so nine million tonnes of cement will be made using charcoal from 5.4 million tonnes of wood produced from 2,160 sq km of plantation eucalypts. The alternate route would involve plasma heating of an air stream up the cement kiln with the stream simply recirculated and reheated.
Smelting of iron ore to liquid iron takes about ten times as much energy as melting scrap steel in an electric arc furnace. Steel production may be two thirds from iron ore and one third from steel scrap to produce lower grades such as reinforcing bar. As such, energy consumption in the latter route is negligible. Australia consumes some 300 kg per capita of steel so let’s assume that includes 200 kg per capita from the blast furnace route. Coke consumption in a blast furnace is 500 kg per tonne of steel produced. To replace that with charcoal produced from wood would require 1.5 tonnes of wood from 0.06 hectares of plantation forestry. At the national level this will require 15,000 square kilometres of plantation forestry.
The blast furnace route is unlikey to work though, due to the fact that charcoal doesn’t have much compressive strength and so can’t support the weight of a big column of iron ore in a blast furnace. Smelting is likely to switch to electric arc furnaces with charcoal used as the reductant but with the energy to drive the smelting provided by the electric current.
Miriam Cates has hit out at Labour’s race to Net Zero with a map showing how the UK is effectively offshoring carbon emissions by importing ‘dirty steel’ from China.
Miriam Cates has hit out at Labour’s race to Net Zero with a map showing how the UK is effectively offshoring carbon emissions by importing ‘dirty steel’ from China.
The recent closures of Port Talbot’s steelworks and the UK’s last coal power station Ratcliffe-on-Soar means Britain must now import much of its steel and energy, often from countries with far less stringent environmental laws where carbon emissions remain high.
The map, compiled by Our World in Data, shows the UK’s energy consumption embedded in traded goods to be 25 per cent at the end of 2020, one of the highest rates in the world.
Net zero: concerns raised over the UK exporting carbon emissions
Our World In Data
Cates, a former Conservative MP, said: “Britain’s race to Net Zero has displaced UK carbon emissions to other countries & choked our energy-intensive industries.
“Now we have to import ‘dirty’ steel because we can’t make our own, thus increasing overall global emissions. There are no borders in the atmosphere.”
Claire Bullivant, editor of Conservative Post, wrote: “China, the largest polluter on the planet, is set to benefit from Labour’s shortsightedness.
“We’ll import steel from Chinese factories belching out carbon, then ship it halfway across the world to build our ‘green’ energy projects and then offset it on paper to hit our self-congratulatory carbon targets.
“Labour can wave around their emissions reduction certificates all they like, but if they’re just outsourcing our carbon footprint to China, who are they really fooling?”
Labour’s new state-run energy company, which has been promised £8.3billion in funding, will “make Britain a clean-energy superpower, with a fully decarbonised power system by 2030,” according to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
But voters have been quick to point out that importing products which have emitted vast carbon emissions makes something of a mockery of this claim.
Martin Edwards said: “Real net zero as opposed to ‘cheats’ net zero- considers the end-to-end supply chain from component material sourcing through to end-of-life management.
“Just shoving emissions elsewhere and/or not having end-of-life reuse/recycling is fooling no-one.”
The share of imported emissions has steadily risen as out domestic emissions have fallen, and accounted for 48% in 2021. However, following a rapid rise in the 1990s, the actual emissions have remained flat at around 150 million tonnes.
There is no reason why we should not import products. But it is clearly pointless to destroy the economy and impoverish its citizens in the pursuit of Net Zero, when we are simply importing emissions instead.
Early on, during the Oct. 1 vice-presidential candidate debate between Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, with flood waters still high in parts of the southeast from Hurricane Helene, CBS News anchor (and debate moderator) Norah O’Donnell said, “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”
Early on, during the Oct. 1 vice-presidential candidate debate between Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, with flood waters still high in parts of the southeast from Hurricane Helene, CBS News anchor (and debate moderator) Norah O’Donnell said, “Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall.”
A week later, Florida populations who were still reeling from Helene felt the full brunt of another meteorological intruder, and disaster, with Hurricane Milton.
The storm spread a swath of wreckage and death northward to the blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.
It also brought staggering damage to the formerly idyllic community of Asheville.
As reported in The New York Times, “the two hurricanes tell a tale of how storms, made more powerful by climate change, can devastate regions with distinct topography and varying levels of experience with hurricanes.”
No one should dispute that hurricanes and other severe weather can be enormously devastating. However, the tag line connecting them with “climate change,” suggesting this to be a recent phenomenon (presumably following a time before humans caused climate to change) defies undisputed records.
Let’s recognize that global temperatures were as warm or warmer 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period, 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, and even a smidgen in the comparatively recent 1930s.
That was followed by three decades of cooling which began in the mid-1940s despite World War II weapons industries having released massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and had leading scientific and news organizations predicting the onset of the next Ice Age by the late 1970s.
However, various scientists may wish to debate how much — if any — human activities influence climate changes beginning millions of years before the Industrial Revolution introduced smokestacks and SUVs.
Official records of extreme weather events, tropical storms and hurricanes included, tell a different story regarding changes in frequency and intensity.
On the global level, as tabulated by University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke Jr, “The data show that from 2000 to 2021, the number of global weather and climate disasters declined by about 10%, which is very good news and completely contrary to conventional wisdom.”
Pielke notes that “The period since 2000 is viewed as the most reliable for data reliability, but it is safe to say that even since 2000, coverage has improved. So, the 10% decline is possibly an underestimate.”
Specifically, regarding U.S. land-falling hurricanes, records dating back to 1850 indicate they have also been declining, whereas few dispute that temperatures have warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius since that time when a “Little Ice Age” mercifully ended.
That was soon after George Washington’s troops suffered a brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s endured a frigid retreat from Moscow in 1812.
With no intent to make light of the foreboding trauma hurricanes bring to those in their paths — after all, 80 mph July winds of Hurricane Beryl removed part of the roof above my University of Houston office — let’s nevertheless recognize that from a larger historical perspective, North Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane patterns fail to reveal any worsening trend over more than a century.
Category 3-4 Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey and Category 4 Hurricane Irma back in 2017 ended an almost 12-year drought of U.S. landfalling Category 3-5 hurricanes since Wilma in 2005, whereas 14 even stronger Category 4-5 monsters occurred between 1926 and 1969.
Many intense Atlantic storms formed between 1870 and 1899.
In the 1887 season alone, 19 such monsters formed, but then became infrequent again between 1900 and 1925.
The number of destructive hurricanes ramped up between 1926 and 1960, including many major New England events, inclusive of the 1938 hurricane which struck Rhode Island.
As for more recent hurricanes, the 2005 and 1961 seasons shared records for their seven major U.S. landfalls since 1946, whereas 1983 set the record for the least number, with only one.
Twenty-one Atlantic tropical storms formed in 1933 alone, a record only most recently exceeded in 2005, which saw 28 storms.
In terms of known human tragedy, the deadliest event was the Great Hurricane of the Antilles (1780) which struck Barbados. It caused 22,000 fatalities.
The deadliest to hit the continental U.S. was the Galveston Hurricane of Aug. 29, 1900, which may have killed up to 12,000 people.
The Okeechobee Hurricane, also known as the San Filipe Segundo (Category 4-5) hurricane, struck Florida in 1928 and resulted in 2,500 fatalities.
In any case, fewer or more, stronger or not there’s no factual basis for attributing patterns on climate change — much less on any human influence.
We can’t change the weather, it’s truly in our best interests to anticipate those bad-case circumstances and prepare our communities and households to mitigate against the outcomes.
Whether or not one such event gets hyped on the media as the “biggest ever,” “strongest ever,” “deadliest ever,” or “costliest ever,” it of course may qualify as the worst ever for you.
Consider this grim reality well in advance of every storm season, when there is still time to plan and take prudent preemptive actions.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to forget to do this on nice sunny days.
Analysts say that if the rule is implemented, more than 5 million
people could experience blackouts, some lasting for 41 hours.
The Supreme Court ruled against a bid to block the EPA’s power plant rule while legal challenges make their way through the courts, but West Virginia, which is leading the coalition of states challenging the rule, vows the fight isn’t over.
Analysts say that if the rule is implemented, more than 5 million people could experience blackouts, some lasting for 41 hours.
The Supreme Court ruled against a bid to block the EPA’s power plant rule while legal challenges make their way through the courts, but West Virginia, which is leading the coalition of states challenging the rule, vows the fight isn’t over.
In a brief order, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch said that the applicants “have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of the challenges to the” EPA’s rule.
However, the justices explained, the stay wasn’t needed because compliance requirements wouldn’t begin until June 2025, which means the applicants wouldn’t “suffer irreparable harm” before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decides the merits of the case. Injunctive relief, such as sought here, requires clear and convincing proof that the harm be immediate and irreparable.
The lower court is expediting the case, the justices noted, meaning it would be resolved in the court’s current term. Afterward, the case would still have time to return to the Supreme Court, if it’s warranted.
The EPA rule, which was finalized in April, requires that coal-fired power plants be fitted with carbon capture technology controlling 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2039, and new gas-fired power plants will need to do the same starting in 2035, depending on the amount of runtime they have.
Energy analysts Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling revealed that the EPA failed to do a proper analysis of the impacts of the rule, and if implemented, over 5 million people will experience blackouts, some lasting for 41 hours. While the EPA has defended the rule and argues that carbon capture is “well proven,” its own modeling showed it expected only one coal plant and no gas plants to be fitted with the technology as far out as 2055.
Two dozen states led by West Virginia filed a lawsuit against the EPA in May, arguing that the agency exceeded its authority with the rule. Utilities and industry groups also filed legal challenges to the rule. In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the parties’ requests to block the rules while the courts considered the challenges, and the court ruled the applicants wouldn’t succeed on the merits of their case.
In court filings, the EPA noted that the lower court ruled the applicants are unlikely to succeed in arguing the agency exceeded its authority, and it stood by the rule and its carbon capture requirements, arguing that the technology has been “adequately demonstrated.”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement on the high court’s ruling that the fight isn’t over.
“This is not the end of this case: we will continue to fight through the merits phase and prove this rule strips the states of important discretion while forcing plants to use technologies that don’t work in the real world,” Morrisey said.
In 2022, the Supreme Court had sided with West Virginia and other states in a challenge to the Obama-era “Clean Power Plan.” Morrisey said that the high court had made clear limits to what the EPA can do, and the Biden administration’s “green new deal agenda” is ignoring those limits.
“This rule is yet another attempt of unelected bureaucrats to push something the law doesn’t allow,” Morrisey said.
Indiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming joined the application to the Supreme Court.
Timera have a short analysis of whet happened during last week’s capacity warning:
On Monday 14th October, the newly formed NESO issued the first Capacity Market Notice (CMN) of winter 2024/25, almost 2 years after the last CMN in November 2022. CMNs are a signal to the market at least 4 hours ahead of time, that system margins are below the 500MW threshold set by the UK government. There are a few reasons why de-rated margins were low, including:
4GW of interconnector outages, including 3GW to France (IFA1, IFA2 and Eleclink) and 1.4GW to Norway (NSL)
Peak demand of ~37GW, the highest since last winter
Outages of other units such as Sizewell B (1.2GW Nuclear), Damhead Creek (812WM CCGT)
Recent closure of Ratcliffe (2GW Coal)
The CMN was eventually withdrawn as margins recovered due to trades taken by NESO to reverse interconnector flows from Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark. The price of these trades reached highs of 1030 £/MWh across 16:00-17:00 UTC. The impact of scarcity was also seen in wholesale markets where intraday weighted average prices peaked at ~677 £/MWh, and with intraday spreads reaching ~608 £/MWh. Retirement of firm nuclear capacity and CCGTs throughout the 2020s will make conditions like those seen on Monday become more frequent, heightening the chances of CMNs and driving increased price volatility in wholesale markets.
The stark reality however is that the NESO had to pay £1030/MWh for over 4000 MW during that critical period for imported electricity, without which the grid would have collapsed. The cost of that will end up on our bills.
As Timera point out, events like this will become all more common in future. And as EU reliance on wind and solar power increases, it will become harder still to import the power we need.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that the EU still gets a third of its power from fossil fuels:
BP Energy Review
There is, of course, a moral to this story.
When wind power is short, we pay the price.
But when wind power is abundant, we don’t get the benefit, because wind farms still get their guaranteed CfD price. Any benefit from a lower wholesale price is wiped out by increased subsidies.
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