Day: October 8, 2025

Claim: Politicians Don’t Know 2025 Must Be Peak Fossil Fuel

University of East Anglia academics: “We surveyed British MPs – most don’t know how urgent climate action is”

A dystopian landscape with three silhouetted figures standing in a desolate city, characterized by crumbling buildings and debris, under a giant, glowing sun in the background.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

University of East Anglia academics: “We surveyed British MPs – most don’t know how urgent climate action is”

We surveyed British MPs – most don’t know how urgent climate action is

Published: October 7, 2025 12.02am AEDT

John Kenny Research Fellow (Public Engagement with Climate Change), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

Lucas Geese Research Fellow, Tyndall Centre and School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

To keep global warming below 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions had to peak no later than 2025. That was a key finding of the IPCC’s most recent major report on the topic, published a few years ago. Yet when we surveyed UK MPs and members of the public in four countries, fewer than 15% could identify this deadline correctly. 

This matters. If politicians and voters underestimate how urgently we have to fight climate change, they are less likely to back the tough policies needed. Instead, they risk assuming we have more time, all while climate change targets slip further out of reach.

…

To close the gap between science and politics, communications must be sharper. Reports need to highlight timelines and consequences in ways that are impossible to ignore. Politicians and the public need to understand not just the scale of the climate crisis, but how immediate it is.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/we-surveyed-british-mps-most-dont-know-how-urgent-climate-action-is-266703

The cited study;

Publics and UK parliamentarians underestimate the urgency of peaking global greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports treat politicians as recipients of information, but not as foci of research efforts. Moreover, academic research on politicians’ knowledge concentrates on belief in climate change’s anthropogenic cause. Little is known of how aware national parliamentarians are of key findings and policy recommendations from assessment reports. Here, we address this through a survey of 100 Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom on their knowledge of the well-publicised statement from the 6th assessment report of when global greenhouse emissions need to peak for a global temperature increase limit of 1.5 °C to be possible. Parliamentarians overwhelmingly overestimate the time period humanity has left to bend the temperature curve although partisan differences apply. Public surveys in Britain as well as Canada, Chile and Germany show similarly low knowledge, yet being younger, worried about climate change, and having lower levels of conspiracy belief mentality increase accuracy significantly.

…Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02655-w

This is hilarious. I thought academics had already fully accepted their 1.5C global warming CO2 budget is dead as a dodo. Then along comes University of East Anglia, like they are caught in a 1990s timewarp, digging up yesterday’s embarrassingly unachievable CO2 emissions targets which most people have had the sense to quietly forget.

As for expecting politicians to understand climate claims, good luck with that.

A decade ago Martin Durkin made a documentary, “Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story”. Among other things, Durkin asked a bunch of politician’s questions about Britain’s finances.

The few politicians who had any idea about the numbers mostly confused the deficit and the debt – they thought Britain’s annual public deficit was actually the total national debt.

If British politicians can’t get fundamental information about the financial state of the nation right, information which actually matters, they are hardly going to pay close attention to the latest revised alarmist claims from the IPCC.

The Guardian Is Wrong: Cities Are Hotter Because of the UHI Effect, Not Increased CO₂

The Guardian published an article, “World’s major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s,” asserting that global warming has caused a sharp rise in the number of extremely hot days in cities worldwide, citing an International Institute for Environment and Development analysis that claims urban residents from London to Tokyo now experience 25 percent more hot days each year than they did in the 1990s. The claims are highly misleading if not outright false.

Graph illustrating the late afternoon temperature variations across different urban and rural areas, showing higher temperatures in downtown and urban residential areas compared to rural farmland.
Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A dry, cracked corn field in France, highlighting drought conditions. The word 'FALSE' is overlaid in bold red text.

The Guardian published an article, “World’s major cities hit by 25% leap in extremely hot days since the 1990s,” asserting that global warming has caused a sharp rise in the number of extremely hot days in cities worldwide, citing an International Institute for Environment and Development analysis that claims urban residents from London to Tokyo now experience 25 percent more hot days each year than they did in the 1990s. The claims are highly misleading if not outright false. While cities worldwide have in fact gotten warmer, carbon dioxide increases from the burning fossil fuels are not to blame, rather data strongly suggests that the significant rise in measured temperatures in and around major cities is Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in response to population growth and development.

The article quotes scientists as saying, “Global heating caused by fossil fuel burning is making every heatwave more intense and more likely. Extreme heat is likely to have caused the early death of millions of people over the past three decades, with elderly and poor people in fast-growing cities most deeply affected.”

One telling moment comes in The Guardian article itself, where researchers concede that “failing to adapt will condemn millions of city dwellers to increasingly uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions because of the urban heat island effect.” Precisely. It is the UHI effect, not CO₂, that drives the city heat trends.

The Guardian’s narrative collapses under scrutiny, because it ignores the UHI effect. Cities are not thermometers for the planet. They are microclimates dominated by concrete, asphalt, and glass which trap heat and bias local temperature readings upward. Peer-reviewed research by John Christy, Ph.D. and Roy Spencer, Ph.D., published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology shows that urbanization is a major driver of observed warming at city weather stations. Their research found that UHI contributed to 22 percent of the raw observed warming trend on average, and up to 65 percent at suburban and urban stations. When examining rural stations, the effect nearly vanishes. This demonstrates that much of the increase in urban temperatures is the UHI, not global climate change. This is vividly illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 below.

Comparison of Urban Heat Island effect on air temperature in the United States for June 1850 and June 2023, highlighting changes in temperature variation due to urbanization.
Figure 1: comparison of summer UHI effects for the United States in 1850 and 2023
Map comparing the Urban Heat Island effect on air temperature in Europe for May 1850 and May 2023, highlighting temperature changes with color coding.
Figure 2: comparison of summer UHI effects for Europe in 1850 and 2023

A second recent analysis from Spencer reinforces this point. He reviewed ~400 airport (WBAN) weather stations and over 2,000 cooperative observer sites across the U.S., finding that the hottest summer days have warmed by only about 1.2°F in the last 40 years. By contrast, the greatest warming has occurred in nighttime minimum temperatures, strongly linked to the growth of impervious surfaces such as roads and buildings. In other words, the data show that the warmest days—the very ones The Guardian insists are becoming intolerable—have barely changed at all. Spencer concludes that “contrary to what we have been told, there has been very little warming of the hottest summer days averaged across the U.S. in the last 40 years.”

This finding is critical. The Guardian claims that extreme heat is spiraling upward, but the observational record shows that the real shift is in overnight lows, driven by urbanization. The daytime extremes that matter most for heatwaves have barely budged. The paper’s entire thesis—that fossil fuels are making the world’s hottest days dramatically worse is undermined by empirical data.

The Guardian also ignores historical context. The United States endured far worse heat extremes during the 1930s Dust Bowl, when heatwaves set enduring records across the Plains. In Europe, the 1540 megadrought remains unmatched in severity. Today’s urban-centered warming is small in comparison, and largely a reflection of the spread of impervious infrastructure.

Even the health alarmism in The Guardian’s story is false. Research, like this Lancet study, uniformly confirms that cold weather kills more people than hot weather. As a result, as Climate at a Glance: Temperature Related Deaths shows the modest warming experienced over the past 150 years has on net reduced temperature-related mortality dramatically. The Guardian prefers to trumpet heat deaths – deaths which could be ameliorated with proper hydration, housing, and air-conditioning – while ignoring the larger, historically persistent, risk of death from cold and the decline in deaths from cold during this period of slight warming.

Urban warming is not a sign of a “global climate crisis,” despite The Guardian’s attempt to portray it as such. What people need is more accurate reporting about the causes of rising urban temperatures and for media outlets, like The Guardian, to highlight tangible, direct interventions to prevent both heat and cold related deaths.

Rather than fighting “climate change, cities need better design and reliable, affordable energy for cooling—not restrictions on hydrocarbon use, which won’t impact the outside temperature, but will make it harder to keep people warm and cool.

European Union Think They Can Regulate US O&G, LNG Standards

The European Union is moving forward with several climate regulations that reach across borders and penalize American energy companies, particularly LNG exporters. Chief among these incoming climate regulations is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, or “CS3D.”

The flag of the European Union fluttering against a blue sky.

From Energy in Energy Depth

By Nicole Jacobs

The Europeans have tried to regulate the U.S. oil and gas industry for more than a year (see Europeans Presume to Impose Their Regulations on American Gas). You probably know what we think of that. They are doing it again.

The European Union is moving forward with several climate regulations that reach across borders and penalize American energy companies, particularly LNG exporters. Chief among these incoming climate regulations is the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, or “CS3D.”

American policymakers ranging from state attorneys general to cabinet secretaries are ringing the alarm over CS3D’s threat to energy security, American sovereignty, and economic competitiveness.

Here are some key things to be aware of with respect to CS3D:

A Bureaucratic Behemoth

CS3D creates costly burdens for companies doing business in Europe by mandating adherence to the EU’s aggressive climate policies and stringent labor standards, including requiring companies to establish and implement Paris-aligned net zero goals across scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

Though it was adopted by bureaucrats in Brussels, CS3D will reach well beyond the EU’s borders and impose stringent due diligence requirements on nearly 17,000 businesses around the world. This includes roughly 3,000 large U.S. companies that meet headcount and revenue thresholds in Europe.

The law even goes as far as to require companies to vet the environmental and labor standards of their suppliers and subcontractors, who are oftentimes small and medium-sized businesses, no matter where they are located around the globe. As Reuters reports:

“The directive places new requirements on companies to fully audit ‘upstream’ partners in design or manufacture, and ‘downstream’ partners who transport, store and distribute products.”

This means that an American natural gas company exporting LNG to Europe would have to comply with CS3D. Even an American oilfield services company that has no presence in Europe but does business with a large multinational corporation may face ESG “due diligence” requests due to its position it the supply chain.

The President of the Council of the European Union estimated compliance would cost companies up to $2.7 million annually. Failure to comply could lead to fines of up to 5 percent of a company’s annual global revenue, or land American businesses in European courts, as the directive allows private parties (like ENGOs) to sue for suspected noncompliance.

International Impacts

CS3D deeply threatens the operations of the American energy industry, heavily impedes on the notion of sovereignty, and threatens to bring American businesses down with the ship as Europe faces widespread deindustrialization.

Countless American energy companies would be forced to comply with CS3D, as the United States is the leading exporter of energy to the EU. The United States has provided 55 percent of Europe’s LNG supply this year and provided 17 percent of all EU oil imports last year.

Some companies have threatened to withdraw from doing business in Europe altogether. Major LNG supplier Qatar Energy warned the European Union that it would cease exports to the EU rather than risk large penalties and lawsuits for suspected noncompliance, and with the clock ticking down on Europe’s planned 2027 Russian gas exit, it can’t afford to lose additional energy suppliers.

America’s Answer

Thankfully, leaders in Washington and across the country are standing up to Brussels’s incursion in American sovereignty. Just last week, over 20 Republican state attorneys general penned a letter to President Trump, urging him to push back on CS3D.

While President Trump has yet to comment on the CS3D, major officials in his cabinet have recently taken aim at the directive.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned that CS3D is “a significant burden on American corporations,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright labeled the directive a non-tariff barrier that is “problematic for growing energy into Europe,” and SEC Chair Paul Atkins argued in the Financial Times that CS3D and its partner regulations “risk imposing costs that fall on American investors and customers.”

On Capitol Hill, Banking and Finance Committee heads Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Rep. French Hill (R-AR) authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, taking aim at CS3D:

“European leaders may choose to self-immolate their economies on the altar of climate and social justice, but Americans shouldn’t be dragged along without a say.”

Earlier this year, Sen. Hagerty (R-TN) turned his words into action by introducing the PROTECT USA Act of 2025 (S. 985), which would prohibit American companies in critical industries, including energy, from being forced to comply with any foreign sustainability due diligence regulation.

Bottom line: Europe’s energy security and industrial base is already at risk as it fails to keep pace with other major economies. America’s economy is booming—we should not let the EU drag us down.

A fatal consequential mistake

We recently reported on the Extreme Weather Congress and the thesis put forward there that a warming of 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels can be achieved by 2050.

Four cartoon characters on a rocky outcrop, with one character excitedly urging another to jump into a body of water below, set against a scenic mountainous background.

From KlimaNachrichten

By KlimaNachrichten Editor

A silver car makes a left turn on a street with a no entry sign in the evening, surrounded by buildings and street lights.

We recently reported on the Extreme Weather Congress and the thesis put forward there that a warming of 3 degrees above pre-industrial levels can be achieved by 2050.

This news reached the IPCC author Zeke Hausfather as far away as the USA, who tried to describe this forecast as extremely unlikely on X. We reported.

Now it’s time for the next round. The FR about an appeal by the German Meteorological Society (DMG) and the German Physical Society (DPG), which advise on the basis of their own shaky forecast to give up parts of the low-lying areas on the coasts of the North Sea and Baltic Sea.

The two organisations, which together represent around 55,000 scientists, are calling on politicians to act. Among the ten measures demanded is a very drastic-sounding proposal: Germany should “discuss the withdrawal from lower-lying coastal regions on the North Sea and Baltic Sea.”

Again for the record, the two organizers publish a thesis that stands on very thin legs because it uses models that are already demonstrably wrong today, bluntly extrapolate it for 2050 and then seriously advise giving up landscapes.

It’s like a car driver who drives the wrong way into a one-way street and then turns back into the next one-way street against the direction of travel.

Thematically, an article from Die Zeit about the Arctic fits in with this.

According to scientific findings, the effects of global warming on Antarctica are more drastic than previously assumed. In a newly published article in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers warn that this could lead to a faster rise in sea levels than previously thought. According to the study, similar effects to those in the Arctic are increasingly being observed in the Antarctic.

“For a long time, Antarctica was considered more stable than the Arctic. But the situation has changed,” said Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). “The sea ice is disappearing. Temperatures are rising here as well. The ice streams accelerate, and the meltwater penetrates the crevasses of the glaciers, which slide faster into the ocean,” said the researcher. This is alarming, he said, because the ice masses in the south have dramatic potential in terms of rising sea levels in the north.

However, the article mixes commentary/review character with the characteristic style of “new findings”, exaggerates the 3-metre number without a time horizon, and does not provide any orientation to probabilities/IPCC ranges for 2100.
For readers, this can give the impression of a short-term, multi-metre acceleration – but this is not what the specialist literature says.

The ZEIT text is based on a commentary in Nature Geoscience (“The Greenlandification of Antarctica“) – not a new primary data paper, but a classification that processes in Antarctica are increasingly similar to those in Greenland (warmer water, ice flow acceleration, instabilities). This is technically relevant, but methodologically something different from new measurements/model runs.

Green Attacks on Energy Guzzling Artificial Intelligence Ramp Up

Greens have noticed AI is incompatible with their beloved renewable transition. And they don’t like it one bit.

An artistic depiction of a man looking at a smartphone displaying the Meta logo, with an abstract background.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A smartphone displaying the Meta logo with a close-up of a serious-looking man in a suit in the background.

Greens have noticed AI is incompatible with their beloved renewable transition. And they don’t like it one bit.

Inside Meta’s fight to change climate reality… all so it can frantically expand a risky AI program

Everyone is ignoring the science on what Meta’s generative AI investment really costs, even though there’s no evidence of a single, significant societal benefit.

KETAN JOSHI
OCT 3, 2025

…

Big tech is being pulled in a few directions at once. In the US, where most tech companies are headquartered, cosying up to a fascist, climate-denying government means making hollow, technosolutionist noises about carbon capture and nuclear fusion. But for the rest of the world, and particularly in Europe, climate change still exists. Now that these companies have become existentially dependent on data centre expansionism, required to power generative systems that require far more power to deliver worse results, they have to refresh their greenwashing techniques, and that means eroding measured reality from the ground up. 

It is not clear what any of this is meant to actually be for. It was recently revealed that Meta explicitly allows its chatbots to develop “sensual” relationships with children, and offer fabricated medical misinformation. Meta illegally downloaded a torrent of millions of books (including mine), to help train its models. Private chats with chatbots were inadvertently made public, revealing sensitive information. Meta’s chatbots are designed to present as real humans, resulting in the rapid spread of mental health crises and even some tragic deaths. 

I am trying to think of a single, substantiated and significant societal benefit of Meta’s generative AI investment, and I am pretty confident that it simply does not exist.

…

If there is a neat through-line in the history of climate activism, it is the ongoing fight to connect human society to physical reality. First, the messy struggle to nurture the acceptance of the basic science of the problem, and more recently, the struggle to get everyone who says they accept the science to at least fucking act like it. With big tech, that struggle continues in the new arena of how we measure and report on who’s committing the worst climate sins.

…Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/10/03/meta-climate-change-reality-artificial-intelligence/

You know when greens trotsky out phrases like “cosying up to a fascist, climate-denying government“, I don’t get the sense they feel like winners.

Declaring AI has no societal benefit because of tragic stories of kids mistaking their chatbot for their friend is like declaring automobiles have no societal benefit because sometimes there are automobile accidents which involve children.

I absolutely agree children need to be protected – but you don’t ban automobiles because a handful of children get hurt, you make automobiles safer, to reduce the risk of accidents. Which is what needs to happen to AI chatbots.

Because AI is most definitely worth keeping, despite the harm it sometimes causes. In my own field of software development, AI has created a substantial boost in productivity. Not by replacing programmers, but by providing souped up assistant tools which are actually starting to be useful.

In mathematics and research, AI is contributing significant breakthroughs, like a recent breakthrough in fluid dynamics, which could lead to advances ranging from better aircraft, cheaper sea freight, more efficient oil and gas pipelines, better drug delivery syringes and, yes, improved control of nuclear fusion plasmas.

In biology and genetics, the ability of AI to analyse enormous quantities of raw data is leading to more rapid mapping of how DNA and genetics works, better understanding of cancer and other diseases, new cures for previously intractable medical problems, and in the tantalisingly near future, treatments which could slow ageing and improve quality of life for older people.

Where does META fit into all this? I’m no fan of Zuckerberg, on a number of occasions I think Zuckerberg’s behaviour has been abominable, but META does have a legitimate place in the business ecosystem. A lot of people use META to win business, including a friend whose growing Canadian adventure business uses advanced META features to promote her business. META’s AI investment appears to focus on how users and businesses interact with META – better analysis of marketing and campaign effectiveness, better communication with customers and potential customers, and improved workflows.

Why is author Ketan Joshi so hostile towards Meta AI, and AI in general? Only Ketan knows what is happening in Ketan’s head. But the rant I quoted appears to follow an increasingly familiar playbook of greens who refuse to admit their renewable transition is dead, but who in their hearts know their cause has failed.

Energy guzzling AI is shaping up to be a prime target of green bitterness.

Boris Johnson: I went too far, too fast on net zero

Boris Johnson has admitted he went “far too fast” on net zero when he was prime minister, in his most outspoken comments against the policy he championed.

An image featuring wind turbines and solar panels in the background, with text overlay that reads 'I went too far, fast on net zero.'

Former prime minister believes he got ‘carried away’ by the idea of renewable energy sources

 Boris Johnson has admitted he went “far too fast” on net zero when he was prime minister, in his most outspoken comments against the policy he championed. The Telegraph has the story.

Mr Johnson said he got “carried away” by the idea that renewable energy sources could replace fossil fuels and, as a result, electricity is “too expensive for ordinary people”.

He warned against “junking net zero altogether” but said Labour’s target of making the UK carbon neutral by 2050 should be pushed back.

Mr Johnson makes the comments in a forthcoming book called Prosperity Through Growth, which has Tory peer Lord Elliott, founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and Dr Arthur Laffer, a celebrated US economist, among its co-authors.

Last week, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, announced plans to scrap the Climate Change Act if she becomes prime minister, which was described as a “catastrophic mistake” by Baroness May, Mr Johnson’s predecessor.

It was Mr Johnson who, as prime minister, set ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions and argued the business case for promoting wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy. He tried to get other countries to agree to legally binding reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, which even the green lobby argued was over-ambitious.

Mr Johnson said that as soon as the Ukraine war pushed up gas prices – which determine the wholesale price of all types of energy – it became clear that the net zero strategy had to change.

Despite Ed Miliband, the Net Zero Secretary, promising that energy bills would come down by £300 by 2030, household bills have continued to rise, partly because bill-payers are charged a levy for Mr Miliband’s green energy policies.

Read the full story here.

Will Kemi’s Promise Make Any Difference?

Is Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to abolish Net Zero all it seems?

A wind turbine stands beside rows of solar panels under a colorful sky during sunset.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

A promotional document titled 'Repeal the Climate Change Act' discussing the Conservative party's plans announced on October 2, 2025, addressing energy costs and climate policy.

Is Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to abolish Net Zero all it seems?

The strategy seems to be focussed around the fact that the Climate Change Act has increased our energy bills and will carry on making them even higher.

Their plan then is to replace binding emissions targets with an energy policy designed to bring down costs.

But there is little of real substance in their programme itself:

Text outlining a political strategy focused on repealing the Climate Change Act, emphasizing economic growth, and proposing an energy policy prioritizing cost reduction.

Indeed, there remains an intention to reduce emissions and remain in the Paris Agreement.

So is this merely window dressing, intended to fool the public? Will we just carry on as before, but just at a slightly slower pace?

What we need now is some meat putting on the bones. While details will remain to be sorted out, there are some fundamental questions that the public deserve answers to:

1) Will the 2030 ban on petrol/diesel cars be abolished, not just delayed? Will the Zero Emission Vehicle mandates be dropped?

2) Will the Tories promise never to ban gas boilers?

3) What action will be taken to cut existing subsidies for renewables?

4) Will subsidies be ended for all future renewable schemes?

5) What action will be taken to provide a reserve of dispatchable power capacity, vital if we are to avoid blackouts?

6) Will DESNZ be shut? Will Ed Miliband’s spending plans be cancelled?

7) Will all government spending on Net Zero be ended?

8) Will the UK Emissions Trading Scheme be abolished?

If Kemi Badenoch cannot commit to these perfectly reasonable requests, it is hard to see how we will be any better off.

The biggest problem that will face any new government in 2029 is that by then much of the damage done by Miliband will be nigh irreversible.

CfDs signed up in the next four years will add billions more to the subsidy bill. Grid upgrades costing £80 billion will be in progress or completed, all of which we will have to foot the bill for.

The motor industry will be wrecked by EV targets and Miliband’s crazy plan to spend £22 billion on carbon capture may well be cast in stone by then.

That is why there now needs top be a full accounting by the Conservatives of just how much we are paying for Net Zero. The figures are already out there, officially calculated by the OBR and OFGEM, so there is no need for any lengthy study.

As I and others, such as John Constable and Kathryn Porter, have shown, the cost is of the order of £20 billion a year or more. And this is just the cost added to our electricity bills because of Net Zero. There are other substantial costs coming our way via EVs, heat pumps, the deindustrialisation of the economy and hundreds of billions of government expenditure.

And as NESO have stated publicly, Labour’s 2030 Clean Power Plan will significantly increase the cost of electricity yet further.

These costs have been deliberately kept hidden from voters for years. But they are essential if we are to have a rational debate about climate policy.

These revelations will be hugely embarrassing for the Tories, as most of them are the direct consequence Conservative Government policy since the Cameron era.

Energy prices now the biggest single concern of business in Australia

It was always going to happen, as long as the Minister for Weather was determined to control Pacific Decadal Oscillations with windmills. Everyone would be happy-happy until the bill arrived.

A figure in a dark cloak stands with their back turned, facing a barren landscape with a city skyline in the background. The text overlay reads 'The Australian Energy Crisis' in bold, contrasting letters.

From CFACT

By Joanne Nova

It was always going to happen, as long as the Minister for Weather was determined to control Pacific Decadal Oscillations with windmills. Everyone would be happy-happy until the bill arrived.

In a survey of 500 Australian companies, the rapid rise of energy costs is now the single biggest concern. Any given business was three times as likely to worry about the price of energy rather than about Trump’s tariffs.

Yet in the election campaign, mere months ago, media coverage of U.S. tariffs was wall-to-wall.

Likewise, the billion-dollar ABC spends 100 times as long lecturing us on foreign wars as it does discussing the things Australians need — like lights, heat, air conditioning, and jobs. The national conversation about electricity grids is nothing more than renewable advertising slogans and fairy wish-spells. Everyone can subsidize everyone else to buy solar panels and batteries, and we’ll all have free electricity, yeah?

Is there a productivity crisis in Australia? Shh!

A survey of more than 500 Australian companies has found energy costs have become the top business challenge

Matthew Cranston, The Australian

Businesses now rank the cost of energy as the chief concern for their future, rating it almost three times more worrying than U.S. ­tariff and trade disruptions, ­according to new analysis.

Several corporate leaders, including those in the manufacturing sector, say the cost of energy is rising so fast that it’s now risking their competitiveness with importers…

BHP’s Mr. Henry told a shareholder forum last month: “The reality is … Australia has electricity costs that are two to three times higher than countries that we are competing with and 50 to 100 per cent higher than the U.S.”

The chief executive of data-centre owner NEXTDC, Craig Scroggie, said higher energy costs were crimping Australia’s competitiveness. “No one is happy with higher energy costs, especially when the government says they are going to be low.”

We’ve reached the point where we are thousands of miles away from most factories and smelters, but we still can’t make anything cheaper for ourselves than they can. Energy costs are rising so fast in Australia, it’s less expensive to dig up rocks, put them on ships, and send them 6,000 kilometers to China to smelt the steel with our own coal, and then ship the widgets right back to us. And if it’s made with slave labor and plenty of pollution, that’s OK.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Joanne Nova

A prize-winning science graduate in molecular biology. She has given keynotes about the medical revolution, gene technology and aging at conferences. She hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, and has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC. She was formerly an associate lecturer in Science Communication at the ANU. She’s author of The Skeptics Handbook which has been translated into 15 languages. Each day 5,000 people read joannenova.com.au