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.
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano said, “President Trump’s 2nd term could become one of our lifetimes’ most consequential presidencies.” He added, “Trump is poised to once and [for] all put a stake through the heart of the UN globalist climate change scam. The Trump Effect is already derailing the UN climate summits, canceling EV mandates, disintegrating the Wall Street climate group, and Net Zero goals. Trump’s policies could have the effect of collapsing the entire climate house of cards.” Trump, in fact, bashed the “green new scam” in his speech at Davos 2025.
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano said, “President Trump’s 2nd term could become one of our lifetimes’ most consequential presidencies.”He added, “Trump is poised to once and [for] all put a stake through the heart of the UN globalist climate change scam. The Trump Effect is already derailing the UN climate summits, canceling EV mandates, disintegrating the Wall Street climate group, and Net Zero goals. Trump’s policies could have the effect of collapsing the entire climate house of cards.” Trump, in fact, bashed the “green new scam” in his speech at Davos 2025.
Energy experts are thrilled as Donald Trump has abandoned the horrible, unscientific, inflationary climate alarmism of the Biden administration on his first day in office.
From ditching the Paris Climate Accord to axing the Biden electric vehicle mandate to focusing on more oil drilling, Donald Trump has made it clear that he prioritizes reliable energy over climate alarmist ideology.
“This is the greatest first day in office of any president in history,” enthused Heartland Institute President James Taylor. “Donald Trump acted quickly and decisively on his first day in office. This is a welcome change from prior administrations. Nobody else would have been as bold and discerning in his first day in office, let alone an entire presidential term.”
Taylor isn’t alone in his excitement. Heartland’s Sterling Burnett stated, “Out of Paris, ending Chinese-controlled renewable energy technologies and opening up federal lands and waters to production are the best first steps he could take to make America great again.” American Lands Council’s Myron Ebell predicted “a long, hard fight” with climate cultists but also a “brighter future.”
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano said, “President Trump’s 2nd term could become one of our lifetimes’ most consequential presidencies.”
He added, “Trump is poised to once and [for] all put a stake through the heart of the UN globalist climate change scam. The Trump Effect is already derailing the UN climate summits, canceling EV mandates, disintegrating the Wall Street climate group, and Net Zero goals. Trump’s policies could have the effect of collapsing the entire climate house of cards.” Trump, in fact, bashed the “green new scam” in his speech at Davos 2025.
WEF – Trump on fire as he tells the Davos elites their time is over!
Here he is exposing the Paris Climate Agreement as a scam.
Remember in the UK no MP voted for it… it was simply passed by Royal Prerogative.
Gregory Wrightstone, the executive director of the CO2 Coalition, highlighted the restoration of “common sense to energy policy and environmental protection.” He also emphasized the fact that carbon is not a planet-killing pollutant but the building block of all life on Earth. Thus, of Trump’s policies, “none are more welcome than those that would reverse the treatment of carbon dioxide as a pollutant and a threat to humankind. CO2 is a beneficial gas critical to all life and should be treated as such.” Indeed, increased carbon is beneficial for humans and especially for plants, including food crops.
Since Communist China dominates the mining and manufacturing involved in falsely named, toxic “green” energy, the Biden-Harris green craze benefited the Chinese Communist Party. But no more.
“President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accords is a victory for American workers and families, rejecting policies that prioritize the Chinese Communist Party’s interests over our own,” stated American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac.
Isaac expanded on this point. “The Paris framework does nothing to mitigate a changing climate but drives up energy costs and burdens Americans with decarbonization mandates rooted in the climate hoax. By making American energy more affordable and accessible, President Trump is benefiting not only our nation but the world.” He hopes to see the Trump-Vance administration implement “a whole-of-government approach to eliminate the climate hoax at every level and push financial institutions, and the companies they invest in, to abandon their ESG-driven political agendas.”
Americans aren’t the only ones celebrating. Canadian Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, highlighted the hypocrisy of the Paris accord that “imposes no greenhouse gas emission limits on developing countries, now the world’s largest emitters, while expecting harsh and unachievable targets for the US and indeed all western nations.” Harris said that Trump was right to reject it.
Reformed climate alarmist, Tom Harris: “There is no climate crisis… [There is] no consistent correlation between CO2 and Earth’s temperature—at times CO2 was 1300% of today, and we were stuck in very cold conditions.”
No longer will our energy and electric grid be at the mercy of climate cultists at home and tyrants abroad. Trump has restored common sense to American energy policy.
Fanciful dreams of green hydrogen powering the future have met reality. The cost of producing this much-hyped fuel will remain prohibitively high for decades to come, crushing hopes of its rapid adoption across industries.
Fanciful dreams of green hydrogen powering the future have met reality. The cost of producing this much-hyped fuel will remain prohibitively high for decades to come, crushing hopes of its rapid adoption across industries.
Green hydrogen start-ups are shuttering operations, major projects are being shelved, and investors are retreating from what was once seen as the next frontier in “renewable” energy. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone whose attention to fundamentals has not been diverted by the extravagant claims of promoters.
I spent a year in Aberdeen, Scotland, a city that operates one of the world’s first hydrogen-powered double-decker bus fleets. The cost of a one-way ticket is among the highest in the country. It doesn’t take an economist to connect the exorbitant fares to the eye-popping energy costs of producing hydrogen, which priced out ordinary commuters. An Aberdeen family of four could travel cheaper in a cab than on the bus,
Welcome to the insane world of hydrogen.
Not-So-Green Hydrogen
Governments, corporations and activists painted a utopian vision. Entire industries – from steelmaking to aviation – would be revolutionized by green hydrogen power. The EU earmarked billions in subsidies, while India and Australia announced grand plans to become global hubs for green hydrogen.
However, this enthusiasm has been dampened by unyielding barriers of economics and safety.
So-called green hydrogen is the form favored by environmentalists promoting the gas. What makes it green in the eyes of enthusiasts is the manufacturing process: the electrolytic splitting of hydrogen atoms from water with wind- or solar-generated electricity. Never mind that there is nothing “green” about these expensive, unreliable energy sources.
The latest analyses predict that green hydrogen prices are likely to remain stubbornly high for decades. The goal of achieving production costs below $2 per kilogram – the threshold for competitiveness with fossil fuels – remains far out of reach. In most parts of the world, the economics simply do not add up.
The reasons are multifaceted. One of the fundamental flaws of green hydrogen is its reliance on wind and solar energy that is expensive, intermittent and unreliable.
The entire green hydrogen cycle is also inherently inefficient.
Electrolysis remains an energy-intensive process. In some cases, producing hydrogen from wind and solar electricity and then using the gas to generate electricity for consumers results in a loss of 50% to 80% of the energy value. Add to this the energy required for compression, storage and transportation, and you have a fuel requiring massive amounts of expensive electricity to process.
Moreover, hydrogen is dangerous. Being a tiny molecule with low viscosity, hydrogen is more susceptible to leakage than natural gas and cannot be detected by human senses. Capable of igniting over a wide range of concentrations in air – between 4% and 75% – hydrogen is more volatile than currently used gas fuels. “It is perplexing that we’ll have hydrogen in our homes, businesses, buses, trucks and airports. Indoors it can rapidly turn into an explosion hazard,” warns Michael Barnard from Clean Technica.
Bloomberg’s recent exposé on green hydrogen lays bare the financial toll of the misplaced optimism. Start-ups that once boasted billion-dollar valuations are now scaling back or shutting down altogether. Over a fifth of European clean hydrogen capacity is now either stalled or canceled.
In the UK, British Petroleum and Orsted have ditched green hydrogen plans and three hydrogen transportation firms have declared bankruptcy. Predicting a “bloodbath” this year for hydrogen transportation, Barnard said that “the reality sunk in that hydrogen would remain too expensive, fuel cell vehicles would remain unreliable, and actual greenhouse gas emissions were much higher than hyped.”
Investors are losing patience as promised cost reductions fail to materialize and companies struggle to deliver commercially viable projects.
The story of green hydrogen’s fall from grace is eerily reminiscent of past technological bubbles. We saw similar patterns with first-generation biofuels and concentrated solar power. Each time, the lesson is the same: we must be wary of silver-bullet solutions that promise to solve all our energy challenges without confronting the fundamentals of physics and economics.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, 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 UK, and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
I wrote Where Power Lies because I was shocked by the extent to which the UK’s energy infrastructure was owned by multinational companies and foreign investors. I fear that, if anything, the situation will only have deteriorated over the three years and more since I wrote it.
I wrote Where Power Lies because I was shocked by the extent to which the UK’s energy infrastructure was owned by multinational companies and foreign investors. I fear that, if anything, the situation will only have deteriorated over the three years and more since I wrote it.
I felt moved to return to the subject today when I read David Turver’s latest excellent piece about subsidies paid to renewables companies, with particular reference to Contracts for Difference (CfD). I was struck by the sheer scale of these payments in 2024, together with the fact that even were common sense to return to the DESNZ tomorrow (it won’t) so that the drive to renewables was slowed and future CfD rounds scrapped, we will be saddled with these payments for very many years to come. I have also written about the CfD regime before, but the situation seems to have deteriorated since then (for the taxpayers, but not for the – largely foreign – recipients). As David Turver says:
As well as 2024 being a record year overall, offshore wind received more subsidy than in any other year with £1.9bn paid out. Biomass conversion, a euphemism for burning trees, received £309m and biomass with combined heat and power (CHP) received a further £90m. Onshore wind received £73m and the two solar farms with active CfDs received just over £1m.
Incidentally, in December 2024, £260.3m was paid out in subsidies, the second highest month on record, with April 2024 being the highest at £269.8m.
Supporters of renewables often point out that when the market price of electricity is above the CfD strike price, then generators pay money back. This is true, but that was only significant in 2022 when a net £346m was repaid and compares to the net cost of the scheme of £9.6bn since inception.
The top thirteen CfD subsidy days all occurred in 2024, and a total of 16 days from the same year all appear in the Top-20. The day with the highest subsidy payments was 22 December 2024, with over £20m paid out in a single day. Offshore wind was the main recipient of this Government mandated largesse on that day, getting over £18.3m and biomass receiving over £1m.
The record subsidy days in December last year came despite elevated gas prices pushing up the reference price. The annual indexation of CfD strike prices with inflation means that as each year progresses, we are likely to see many more record subsidy days, especially if gas-prices fall back to more normal levels.
Let’s take a look at the recipients of the greatest sums of money.
WalneyOffshore Wind Farm
Overall, Walney is the biggest recipient of CfD largesse, at almost £1.76Bn. In 2024 it was in second place for the year, receiving over £355 million. I wrote about Walney in Where Power Lies, saying this:
Another increasingly large offshore wind farm is that at Walney, comprising Walney I, Walney II and the Walney Extension, based 12 miles off the south Cumbrian coast.
While the 659MW facility, Walney Extension is co-owned by Orsted and Danish pension funds PFA and PKA, Walney I and II are apparentlyowned by Orsted (50.1%), SSE (25.1%) and OPW (24.8%). Orsted and SSE we have already met. OPW appearto be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange Listed, Illinois based, Dover Corporation.
Ørsted, of course is a Danish company. Specifically (citing myself once more):
Ørsted has its origin in the Danish state-owned company Dansk Naturgas A/S. The company was founded in 1972 to manage gas and oil resources in the Danish sector of the North Sea. After some years, the company was renamed to Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S (DONG), meaning Danish Oil and Natural Gas. At the beginning of the decade of the 2000s, DONG started to expand itself into the electricity market by taking long positions in electricity companies. In 2005, DONG acquired and merged Danish electrical power producers Elsam and Energi E2 and public utility (electricity distribution) companies NESA, Københavns Energi and Frederiksberg Forsyning. The result of the merger was the creation of DONG Energy.
Hornsea 1Offshore Wind Farm
Hornsea 1 is part of a huge offshore wind farm. Over all time it lies in second place, behind Walney, having received almost £1.67Bn in total. However, it was the highest paid recipient of CfD largesse in 2024, receiving almost £540 million. When I wrote Where Power Lies, Hornsea 1 was, so far as I could tell, wholly-owned and operated by Ørsted. Since then it appears that the situation has changed. A visit to its website tells me that the offshore wind farm is owned by Ørsted (50%) as well as partners Greencoat, TRIG & Equitix, GLIL & Octopus Renewables. Greencoat, I assume is Greencoat Renewables PLC, whose website tells us is an owner and operator of renewable energy infrastructure assets in Europe. It is listed on the Euronext Growth Market of Euronext Dublin and the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Who the ultimate owners are at any one time therefore depends on day to day trading on those two Stock Exchanges. It is incorporated in the Republic of Ireland. According to its most recent Report & Accounts for the year ended 21st December 2023, its principal shareholders at that date were:
BlackRock Inc (10.1%); KBI Global Investors (8.9%); FIL Investment International (7.3%); Brewin Dolphin Wealth Management (5.3%); Abrdn plc (5.1%); Irish Life Investment Managers (4.8%); Newton Investment Management (4.5%); Cantor Fitzgerald (3.7%: M&G Investment Management (3.3%); Davy Stockbroker (3.3%); and CCLA (3.1%).
What its precise ownership of Hornsea 1 might be is difficult to say – I can’t find it in the Hornsea 1 website and Greencoat’s Annual Report & Accounts don’t mention it.
As for the other part-owners, I can find no confirmation of their share of Hornsea 1 either, though TRIG’s website does tell us that it is “a London-listed investment company whose purpose is to generate sustainable returns from a diversified portfolio of renewables infrastructure that contribute towards a net zero carbon future.” According to its most recent Annual Report & Accounts (also to 31st December 2023) its investment in Hornsea 1 accounts for approximately 10% of its portfolio, and TRIG is actually “a Guernsey-registered closed-ended investment company.” The Report & Accounts also disclose the following shareholders with more than 5% of TRIG’s shares:
Rathbones (11.70%); Quilter Cheviot (5.44%); and RBC Brewin Dolphin (5.02%).
Rathbones (11.70%); Quilter Cheviot (5.44%); and RBC Brewin Dolphin (5.02%).According to the website of Equitix, it is “a leading international investor, developer and fund manager in infrastructure”, whose majority shareholder is Tetragon Financial Group Limited, a Guernsey close-ended investment company, with non-voting shares listed on Euronext in Amsterdam and also traded on the Specialist Fund Segment of the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange. So the beneficiaries of its shareholding could be almost anyone, but I assume that wherever they live, they won’t be paying a lot of tax on the money they make out of it, given the fund’s Guernsey location. All voting shares of the Fund are held by Polygon Credit Holdings II Limited, which is described in its most recent Financial Statement as “a non-U.S. affiliate of the Investment Manager. The Investment Manager, Tetragon Financial Management LP, is registered as an investment adviser under the U.S. Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as is TFG Asset Management L.P., Tetragon’s diversified alternative asset management business. So that’s as clear as mud to anyone except investment experts.
GLIL is, I assume GLIL Infrastructure, whose website tells us that it “can offer investors exposure to high-quality, predictable and consistent cashflow generating assets in a range of sectors covering greenfield sites, regulated utilities and transport upgrades.” It is based in the UK and claims to be “an innovative collaboration between aligned and like-minded investors who are seeking investment into core infrastructure opportunities predominantly in the UK”. Make of that what you will.
I assume that Octopus Renewables is Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust plc, whose website tells us that it is “is an Impact Fund helping accelerate the transition to net zero. It is an investment company focused on providing investors with an attractive and sustainable level of income returns, with an element of capital growth, by investing in a diversified portfolio of Renewable Energy Assets across Europe, the UK and Australia”. It is is a London-listed closed-ended investment company incorporated in England and Wales. If its most recent interim report & accounts mentions its stake in Hornsea 1, I’m afraid I missed it. Quite telling is this from page 30 of the interim report:
The UK remains a favourable market for renewable energy investments, and even more so following the formation of the new Labour government in July 2024 and the policy measures that it has rapidly implemented…
…With a significant portion of its investments in the UK, including three developer investments focused on the UK market, ORIT is poised to benefit from the government’s strong support for renewable energy initiatives (the UK is ORIT’s largest single market, 40% of total value of all investments at 30 June 2024). The positive recent policy changes will support the industry and ORIT expects an acceleration in new projects coming to market over the coming years, as well as greater potential for CfD support for ready to build assets developed by Wind2 and BLCe.
Greater potential for CfD “support”, eh?
According to the most recent Annual Report & Accounts made up to 31st December 2023, the most significant shareholder are:
Sarasin & Partners LLP (9.94%); Rathbone Investment Management Ltd (7.40%); Brewin Dolphin Limited (5.24%); Schroders plc (5.01%); Baillie Gifford & Co (5.00%); EFG Private Bank Limited (4.99%); Quilter Plc (4.29%); and Newton Investment Management Limited (3.06%).
Drax
Drax figures third in overall receipts (just short of £1.6Bn), though it fell to sixth place in terms of 2024 recipients of largesse from the taxpayer, receiving just over £216 million. For once it’s a UK company. If you want a laugh, you could visit its website, or if you want to read a more realistic version, you could try Jit’s The Beast of Selby. According to its most recent Annual Report & Accounts, however, its major shareholders were:
Bank of American Corporation (10.69%); Invesco Limited (9.71%); Schroders plc (9.64%); and Orbis Holdings Limited (5.01%).
Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm
Beatrice is in fifth place overall for the receipt of CFD payments, having received a total of £1.045Bn. In 2024 it was in third place, with CfD receipts of just under £270 million. As its website tells us, it is a joint venture between SSE Renewables (40%); Red Rock Renewables (25%); Trig (17.5%); and Equitix (also 17.5%). We have looked at TRIG and Equitix above. SSE Renewables is a subsidiary of London Stock Exchange quoted SSE plc. It may be quoted on the London Stock Exchange, but according to its most recent Annual Report & Accounts (for the year 2023/24), its major shareholders – by voting rights – are multinational: Black Rock Inc (7.44%); Barclays Bank PLC (5.22%); JP Morgan Chase & Co (5.2%); The Capital Group Companies Inc (4.9%); Invesco Limited (4.69%); Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (3.98%); Bank of America Corporation (0.43%).
As for the other joint venture partner in Beatrice, its website tries to tell us that Red Rock Renewables is a Scotland-based investor, developer, owner and operator of renewable energy projects. Scotland-based, perhaps, but Chinese-owned. As its website tells us, it is in fact “the European subsidiary of SDIC Power, a global energy company based in Beijing….SDIC Power Holdings Co., Ltd, is a listed company in Shanghai Stock Exchange (SH.600886), with State Development and Investment Corporation (SDIC), a State-Controlled Enterprise, holding 51.32% of its shares as of 2022.”
Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm
Dudgeon features in fourth place in both the overall and 2024 CfD payments league tables, having received just under £234 million in 2024, and almost £1.22Bn overall. By the way, I recommend Jit’s piece, High Dudgeon to you, when you’re finished reading this. According to Dudgeon’s website:
Through the joint venture company Dudgeon Offshore Wind Limited, the wind farm is owned by Equinor, Masdar and China Resources (Holdings), and Equinor is its operator having developed the £1.4b power plant between 2012 and 2017.
Equinor is Norwegian-owned. According to its website:
In 1972, Statoil was formed by a decision of the Norwegian parliament and owned 100% by the Norwegian State. In 2001, Equinor was listed on the Oslo and New York stock exchanges with a 67% majority stake owned by the Norwegian State. In 2018 we changed our name to Equinor.
Well, you would change your name, wouldn’t you? Statoil isn’t likely to burnish your “green” credentials when you’re looking for UK “green” subsidies, is it?
Masdar is a United Arab Emirates Company. According to its website :
With three leading UAE energy champions as our shareholders – the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Mubadala Investment Company, and Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA) – Masdar is supporting the UAE’s transition toward a knowledge-based economy. A catalyst for renewable energy development in the Arab world over the past decade, Masdar is demonstrating how the business community can deliver on the global sustainability agenda.
I love this bit:
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is one of the world’s leading energy producers and a primary catalyst for the growth and diversification of the Abu Dhabi economy. With a production capacity of more than 4 million barrels of oil per day and 11.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day…
China Resources (Holdings) is a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, based in Hong Kong. Enough said.
EA1 Offshore Wind Farm
EA stands for East Anglia. Overall, it stands in 8th place, with total CfD payments of more than £650 million. In 2024, it featured in fifth place, with payments in the year of more than £230 million.
As its website tells us, it is “a joint venture between ScottishPower Renewables and Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG)”. Despite the name, Scottish Power is of course a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spanish Company Iberdrola, and indeed the website describes it as the largest wind farm in Iberdrola’s history. Who knows, perhaps it’s the one that makes it the most money in subsidies, too?
Macquarie, meanwhile, and its Green Investment Group, are Australian.
Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm
This is in 6th place overall, with total CfD payments over the years of more than £700 million. In 2024, it was in 7th place, with CfD payments of more than £124 million.
It is one of 12 operational wind farms in the UK or its offshore waters, owned by Ørsted, and is Danish.
Lynemouth Biomass
This (like Drax) is a former coal power station, converted to biomass. It’s in 7th place overall, with total CfD payments of almost £675 million. In 2024 it was in 9th place, with CfD payments in the year of more than £92 million. It is owned by Czech company, EPH (“We keep the remaining coal capacities operational solely to ensure security of supply in the near term, while we have a clear coal exit plan”). As for Lynemouth, it “uses sustainably-sourced, renewable wood pellets, primarily from the USA and Canada, which are transported to the UK by sea.” Right….
Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm
It doesn’t feature in the overall top ten, but its in 8th place in 2024, with CfD payments of more than £108 million. As its website tells us: “The project is owned by RWE (59%) and partners J-Power (25%) and Kansai Electric Power (16%), with RWE responsible for operating and maintaining the wind farm”. RWE is a German company, based in Essen. J-Power is a subsidiary of Sumitomo Electric Industries, in Japan. Kansai Electric Power is also Japanese.
Teesside Biomass Plant
This features in 9th place overall, with total CfD payments of more than £90 million. It’s in 10th place in 2024, but it looks as if it will be moving up the overall rankings, as it received almost £88 million in 2024. It is owned by MGT Teesside Limited, a company limited in England, but if you looked no further, you would be misled. Its ultimate owner is the Australian company, Macquarie.
Dorenell Onshore Wind Farm
Dorenell is the poor relation among this company. It’s not in the 2024 top ten, and scrapes into the overall top 10 in tenth place, with CfD receipts of just under £45 million. It’s owned by EDF Renewables, a French company.
Ongoing foolishness
Hot off the press (or the online equivalent) the Herald today reports that the Scottish government is considering handing £60 million to two Chinese companies (Minyang Smart Energy and Orient Cable) to build wind farm factories in Scotland. Except that I don’t believe in any “net zero transition”, I’m with Lord Alton, when he asks:
What are we thinking of, handing over such important capability in the net-zero transition to an entity that comes from an authoritarian and hostile state, and doing so as the European Union is launching its antitrust investigation into Chinese turbine manufacturers?
Conclusion
When considering all the above money that is leaching out of the country, bear in mind that these are just the CfD payments, an absurdly large, but only one part of the overall subsidy regime. And of course, subsidies represent only some of the vast amounts of money we are paying for renewable energy. It’s bad enough that we are over-paying for energy. In addition, to damage our already weak balance of payments in an ongoing and growing manner, while making us dependent on foreign companies whose overriding objective is to make money (except possibly the Chinese companies, for whom national security objectives might rank higher) is absurd. This not what national financial or energy security looks like.
Another mystery case of megafauna disappearing shortly after the arrival of humans with sharp sticks.
Demise of Australia’s large kangaroos likely not caused by climate change, study suggests
…
By Andrew Wulfeck Published January 22, 2025 11:49pm EST
ADELAIDE, Australia – A new study has shed light on the extinction of many of Australia’s prehistoric kangaroos, challenging beliefs that their demise was closely linked to climate change.
Wildlife biologists had assumed that climate change transformed ecosystems in ways the giant mammals couldn’t adapt to, but dental analysis now suggests these animals were actually able to adjust to the changing environment.
…
“Our study shows that most prehistoric kangaroos at Naracoorte had broad diets. This dietary flexibility likely played a key role in their resilience during past changes in climate,” Dr. Samuel Arman, one of the lead researchers on the project, told staff at Flinders University in Australia.
So, what caused many of the continent’s large kangaroos to go extinct?
Researchers suggested the arrival of humans played a more significant role than previously thought more than 40,000 years ago.
Hunters primarily used the animals for their meat, with their skins turned into leather and other materials.
Much can be said about what a species ate based on the form of their teeth. In Australia, it has been hypothesized that the extinction of many large marsupial species by about 40,000 years ago may have been due to a narrow diet in the face of a changing climate. Arman et al. looked at extant and extinct kangaroo species using a tooth microwear approach and concluded that most species were generalists, not specialist grazers or browsers, and thus were adapted to deal with climate-driven vegetation changes. Thus, their demise was likely not driven by climate change, leaving humans as the probable cause. —Sacha Vignieri
Abstract
Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we show that most members of Australia’s richest Pleistocene kangaroo assemblage had diets that were much more generalized than their craniodental anatomy implies. Mixed feeding across most kangaroos pinpoints dietary breadth as a key behavioral adaptation to climate-driven fluctuations in vegetation structure, dispelling the likelihood that late Pleistocene climatic variation was a primary driver of their disappearance. Read more:
The varied diet argument seems pretty conclusive – an animal which could adapt its diet to changed conditions would be resilient to changes in conditions.
Reading the Wikipedia description, Procoptodon was likely slow moving compared to modern kangaroos, more of a lumberer than a hopper. Easy prey for early humans with sharp sticks.
President Trump is determined to make America not just energy self-sufficient, but energy dominant. The USA already produces more oil and gas than any other nation, and he intends to unleash its full potential – for energy and for petrochemical feedstocks for 6,000+ pharmaceutical, plastic, paint, fabric, cosmetic and other products. As he puts it, “Drill, baby, drill!”
President Trump is determined to make America not just energy self-sufficient, but energy dominant. The USA already produces more oil and gas than any other nation, and he intends to unleash its full potential – for energy and for petrochemical feedstocks for 6,000+ pharmaceutical, plastic, paint, fabric, cosmetic and other products. As he puts it, “Drill, baby, drill!”
Abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the lifeblood of modern industrial societies. But they also need hundreds of metals and minerals, because nothing can be manufactured or grown, and no wells can be drilled, without them. That’s why the President has also launched similar initiatives for those treasure troves in Alaska and the Lower 48.
That call to action is “Mine, baby, mine!” and before that “Explore, baby, explore!”
The Stone Age didn’t end because our ancestors ran out of stones, nor the Bronze Age because they exhausted copper supplies. They ended because societies needed weapons and goods that were better, stronger, more durable – and innovators discovered iron substitutes, iron deposits and techniques for converting ores into finished products.
Indeed, every technological transformation throughout history required finding and mining previously unknown and unneeded metal and mineral deposits that suddenly became essential for progress.
Trump-47’s Executive Orders for drilling and mining – and ending offshore wind, Green New Deal and electric vehicle mandates, subsidies and programs – will dramatically reduce the need for millions of tons of copper, steel, cobalt, lithium, rare earths and other materials. However, they won’t end that need.
But now America can simply build more coal, gas and nuclear power plants – instead of 10,000 wind turbines and 10,000,000 solar panels, backed up by fossil-fuel generators … or huge battery warehouses like the one that recently became yet another conflagration in California.
However, today’s rapidly evolving server, artificial intelligence, aerospace, military and other technologies still mean we must find and produce materials that almost no one ever mined or even heard of until recently: rare earth elements, cobalt, lithium and scores of other critical strategic minerals.
China controls 60% of global rare earths production and processes 90% of it – including ores mined in the USA and other countries. It also controls cobalt and lithium production and processing, and almost all the processed graphite used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, EVs and grid-scale backup batteries.
That means the United States is dependent on this adversarial nation for numerous technologies; even Navy SEAL equipment requires 20+ minerals that are at least 50% imported, many from China.
This untenable situation was underscored last December, when China severely restricted exports of antimony, gallium and germanium, especially to the United States, because they are essential for both civilian and military technologies. The Middle Kingdom could block many more such exports, using exports as a weapon of diplomacy, extortion or war.
The situation makes no geologic sense either. The plate tectonic and geologic history of Alaska and the western states in particular have blessed America with countless, often enormous deposits of metals and minerals across the periodic table of elements. Some are well-known, while others have yet to be discovered, mapped or developed to serve changing, growing and increasingly strategic needs.
Even the 1964 Wilderness Act recognized this. Section 2 permits prospecting to gather information about mineral resources and requires “planned, recurring” mineral surveys, if those activities are conducted in a manner consistent with preserving “the wilderness environment.” There is no “end” date for this work.
Section 3 permitted mining claims and mineral leasing, exploration, drilling, roads, production, mechanized equipment, and other necessary operations and facilities, until midnight December 31, 1983. The only stipulation was that disturbed areas be reclaimed and restored “as near as practicable,” once mineral extraction had ceased.
However, federal bureaucrats ignored this clear language and stalled, stymied or prohibited all requests for permits to conduct such work, including recurring government mineral surveys and assessments.
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rupert Cutler’s comment to me in 1978 encapsulates their attitude, then and now. “I don’t think Congress should have enacted that provision,” he said. “But Congress did enact it, and you are obligated by your oath of office to follow the law the way it was written, not the way you think it should have been written,” I responded. Dr. Cutler simply walked away.
Successive generations of federal land managers – in consort with preservationists, courts, presidents and legislators – have banned or severely restricted even minimally intrusive exploration in huge wilderness, wilderness study, wildlife refuge, Antiquities Act, and even undesignated forests, deserts and grasslands – regardless of critical national needs or clear legislative language.
National parks should be off-limits. In most cases, these other lands should not.
By 1994, when I helped prepare perhaps the last detailed analysis, mineral exploration and development had been banned in federal land areas equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. That’s 420 million acres – 19% of the USA; 66% of all federal/public lands.
It’s gotten “progressively” worse, even though processes unleashed by plate tectonics, volcanism and other forces created some of the most highly mineralized deposits in North America, and the world.
State and local legislators, regulators, judges and activists have treated non-federal lands the same way. Even world-class deposits have been deep-sixed, often on questionable grounds.
This cannot continue. These areas must be surveyed and explored by government agencies and private companies. Vital and high-quality deposits must be made available for mining, under sound environmental principles, to meet the requirements of current and future generations.
Failure to do so violates the most fundamental principles of national defense, national security, responsible government and societal need.
Alaska’s Pebble Mine prospect has an estimated 55 million tons of copper ore, 3.3 billion tons of molybdenum, plus other metals needed for wind turbines, solar panels, EVs and other technologies; yet Biden’s EPA rejected permit applications even before mining plans were submitted. Other world-class Alaskan deposits of copper, cobalt, zinc, titanium, gold, silver, zinc and other metals also sit in limbo.
Biden officials also reversed mining permits for the world’s largest copper-nickel deposit, in Minnesota, and President Biden himself banned all mining in 225,000 acres of the state’s Iron Range.
The fate of the Kings Mountain lithium deposit (possibly 5,000,000 tons of Li) in North Carolina is likewise uncertain, as is that of many other excellent prospects, even though modern US laws and technologies would ensure far better environmental practices than elsewhere worldwide.
Some concerns are certainly valid, others exaggerated, still others reflective of a determination to block mining anywhere in the USA, or even de-develop and de-industrialize America and the West.
However, environmental and other considerations must always be balanced against needs for critical metals, minerals and energy to sustain modern societies and living standards. Making America Great Again – and responding to today’s national security threats and needs – requires changing federal and state perspectives, policies and laws to recognize this. It’s a simple matter of reality and common sense.
To the shame of the MSM, the reporting of Storm Eowyn has been disgracefully hysterical, untruthful and misleading.
There have been widespread claims that it was record breaking, once-in-a-generation storm. The Evening Standard even described “hurricane force winds battering the UK”.
The Met Office at least brought a hint of reality, when they said it was the strongest in ten years. But even that does no stand up to scrutiny, as Eunice brought stronger winds three years ago. This was when 122 mph winds were recorded on the Needles. On Friday, the highest gusts were 100 mph. Of course, as we know, the Needles is not a representative site, but the Met Office still think it appropriate to list it as a record for England!
If they really believe Eowyn was more powerful, they should drop the pretence that measurements on the Needles are meaningful. They cannot have it both ways.
But more to the point, Eunice itself was not unusually powerful, as the Met Office State of the Climate Report last year revealed:
Indeed, it is this relative absence of really strong storms lately which makes Eowyn seem “exceptional”.
We all know that those 1980s and 90s storms were at another level – not only the Great Storm of 1987, but also Burns Day in 1991 and the Boxing Day storm in 1998. To call Eowyn “once in a generation” is an insult to all those who suffered back then.
In fact you don’t even have to search to find storms every bit as strong as Eowyn. Eighty years ago to the month, for instance, an “exceptionally severe gale” brought winds of 113 mph to St Ann’s Head in Pembrokeshire, much stronger than anything Eowyn brought to the British Isles.
Winds elsewhere also exceeded Eowyn away from the new breed of cliff and hill top sites, which are now employed by the Met Office to give a false impression.
For example, winds of 88 mph at South Shields in 1945 were above anything in comparable locations this week.
The 1945 storm was the same one which brought record 113 mph winds to Limerick before the instrument pen went off the chart, as related by the Irish Times.
As for that “hurricane” nonsense, there was even one report, in the Mail I believe, which compared the 100 mph winds at Drumalbin with the Saffir Simpson scale, which lists 74 mph winds as Cat 1. The dopey reporter obviously had not understood that the Saffir Simpson scale works on average, sustained wind speeds, not gusts.
I have not found anywhere in the British Isles where sustained winds exceeded 74 mph.
At Armagh in N Ireland, for instance, sustained winds were only 42 mph:
And at Eskdalemuir, as another example, winds averaged 39 mph during the peak of the storm.
These are both places which were in the thick of the storm. Even coastal sites, such as Prestwick, barely got above 80 mph gusts – certainly not “hurricane strength”.
It is hardly surprising that the younger generation, who have no memory of the really devastating storms of the past, genuinely believe that storms like Eowyn really are unprecedented and the consequence of climate change. The media has done a good job of brainwashing them!
Maybe they never needed government money after all.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg to fund UN climate change body after US exits Paris Agreement
The core of the UNFCCC’s budget comes from its almost 200 member countries.
One of President Donald Trump’s first moves in office this week was to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, as he did the first time he was President.
Just three days later, billionaire Michael Bloomberg stepped in to help the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) remain fully funded despite the US ending its international climate contributions.
Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, a UN special envoy on climate change and, according to the Forbes’ global billionaires list, the 16th richest person in the world, announced his funding pledge on 23 January.
…
“From 2017 to 2020, during a period of federal inaction, cities, states, businesses, and the public rose to the challenge to uphold our nation’s commitments – and now, we are ready to do it again,” Bloomberg in a statement.
Bloomberg paid a few UN invoices last time President Trump stopped climate payments, which led to Bloomberg sharing the honor of being appointed UN climate envoy with a Hollywood personality and a cartoon character.
I personally think Bloomberg’s generous willingness to replace government expenditures with his own cash, and his push to make funding of UN climate programmes a voluntary act of philanthropy for the wealthy is a settlement we can all support – a brilliant way to defuse political disagreements over appropriate use of public money.
British households face costs of up to £3bn a year to pay windfarms and other electricity producers to stop generating when there is too much wind.
The Telegraph report:
British households face costs of up to £3bn a year to pay windfarms and other electricity producers to stop generating, according to the country’s grid operator.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) has warned of the looming bill as the power grid struggles to keep pace with the expansion of renewables.
This means that when the wind blows more strongly, the power generated can overwhelm transmission lines and force Neso to intervene.
To ease pressures, Neso hands wind farm operators “constraint payments” to stop generating, which are aimed at compensating for lost revenue.
Such payments already hit £1bn last year, although a report from Neso has warned that this bill is poised to rise to £3bn by 2030.
Other industry experts fear that the real cost could end up much higher.
Octopus Energy, the nation’s leading power supplier, estimates that by 2030 constraint payments could be adding £6bn a year to consumer bills – roughly equating to £200 a household.
The cost of curtailment and exporting surplus power at a loss add up to £10/MWh, which based on their anticipated generation of 354 TWh in 2030 gives a total cost of £3.5 billion. (NESO’s Workbook gives cost of £3.68 billion).
Note that this figure is on top of the costs in 2023, which were already significant.
But as Octopus say, the real cost could end up being much greater.
According to NESO, in their 2030 projection, 22 TWh of surplus power will ne paid to switch off, but another 61 TWh will, they say, be exported at an average price of £40.MWh. (Total wind generation will be 245 TWh, meaning a third of this is surplus to requirements).
If there is no demand abroad for this power, then this will also have to be constrained off, thus losing the potential export income of £2.4 billion.
According to the Telegraph, DESNZ argue that cheaper generation costs will more than offset constraint payments.
However this is a falsehood, based on NESO’s claim that generation costs will fall by £15/MWh. But this saving is not real, it is sleight of hand.
As NESO themselves explain, their “cost of gas power” includes a spurious carbon tax of £60/MWh:
In other words, DESNZ will increase gas power generation costs by raising taxes, and then argue that renewables are cheaper, even though wholesale costs will be higher than now.
According to NESO’s Workbook, this tax is adding £19/MWh to overall electricity wholesale costs.
In reality, Miliband’s expansion of renewables will increase generation costs, not decrease them.
Add that increase to the other extra costs tabled by NESO, ie constraint, storage and grid upgrades, and we are looking at a total increase of around £30/MWh. This equates to about £10 billion a year.
Finally, it is disappointing that previously reliable experts, Cornwall Insight, have also fallen for this con trick played on us by NESO and DESNZ, if the Telegraph article is accurate.
Climate crisis move aside, there is a new fake emergency in town.
At Davos, Guterres slams backsliding on climate commitments
22 January 2025
The world’s political and business elite present in Davos on Wednesday faced an uncompromising address from UN chief António Guterres as he rounded on a lack of multilateral collaboration in an “increasingly rudderless world” at risk from two existential dangers: climate change and unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI).
…
‘Fossil fuel addiction’
Likening fossil fuel addiction to Frankenstein’s monster – “sparing nothing and no one” – the Secretary-General noted the irony that 13 of the world’s biggest ports for oil supertankers are set to be overwhelmed by rising sea levels, a consequence of rising temperatures and sea ice melt, caused overwhelmingly by burning coal, crude oil and natural gas.
…
AI’s untold promise
The next existential threat, AI, is a double-edged sword, Mr. Guterres continued, as it is already revolutionizing learning, diagnosing illnesses, helping farmers to increase their yields and improving the targeting of aid.
But it comes with profound risks if it is left ungoverned: it can disrupt economies, undermine trust in institutions and deepen inequalities, the Secretary-General warned.
The fake AI crisis has long been an obvious replacement for the fake climate crisis, because of its potentially bipartisan appeal. Hollywood has prepped us with lots of scary movies about AI run amok.
So how do we know the AI crisis is fake?
The tell of course is the people pushing AI crisis narratives are the same people who pushed all the other fake crisis.
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero crusade is driving wedges within Labour and raising fears of power cuts that could leave the Government in the dark – literally and politically – says Dan Hodges in the Mail.
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero crusade is driving wedges within Labour and raising fears of power cuts that could leave the Government in the dark – literally and politically – says Dan Hodges in the Mail. Here’s an excerpt:
Miliband’s green zealotry was again on display last week after it was reported he was preparing to challenge Rachel Reeves’s – belated – growth strategy. The embattled Chancellor found herself ambushed as the Energy Secretary led the charge against her plan to give the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow.
Though he insisted he had no plans to resign over the issue, Eco Ed’s opposition is well documented. In 2018, he voted against the proposals, declaring: “We owe it to future generations not just to have good environmental principles but to act on them. That is why I will be voting against the third runway at Heathrow.”
His principles have obviously become a little more flexible since taking office. But several colleagues are becoming increasingly alarmed at the influence he is having within the Starmer administration.
“Before the Election, Keir basically did a deal with Ed,” another minister revealed to me. “He said, ‘Look, I don’t want you to have too much of a public profile because it’ll remind people too much of the past. But I’m going to give you Energy, and you can have free rein to do what needs to be done.’”
The problem is that Miliband is now exercising that freedom with a vengeance. And as he ploughs ahead with his cherished Net Zero agenda, some analysts are starting to question whether the National Grid can keep up.
Two weeks ago, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) – the body responsible for the operation of the electricity system – was forced to issue an Electricity Margin Notice, essentially warning that the U.K.’s demand for power was coming dangerously close to exceeding supply. Although NESO claimed there was never a serious risk of power cuts, respected energy consultant Kathryn Porter revealed the “near miss” represented the tightest day in the energy market since 2011. …
Last week, the Unite trade union announced it was ramping up its ‘No Ban Without A Plan’ oil and gas campaign. According to General Secretary Sharon Graham: “Labour needs to reverse its irresponsible policy banning all new oil and gas licences irrespective of the impact on jobs.” …
There is no doubt his passion for protecting the environment is real. But if his strategy fails – or can only be delivered by hammering the jobs and livelihoods of working people – Net Zero will become as politically toxic as the Poll Tax or university tuition fees.
I asked one of Miliband’s colleagues if he thought he understood how high the stakes were. He shrugged.
“You have to understand, there are two Eds. Actually, there are three. There’s Ed the former New Labour adviser, who is well aware of the necessity of public support. There’s Ed the former party leader, who thinks he now has the chance to reshape politics. And there’s Ed the minister, who sees himself as the new Greta Thunberg. The question is which one will come out on top.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.