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.
Joëlle Gergis, who had an erroneous hockey stick climate paper spectacularly withdrawn in 2012, has accused Aussie politicians of using “trickery” to conceal climate policy failures.
Joëlle Gergis Exposing net zero’s climate delusions
Denial is a funny thing. We have to find slippery ways of trying to live with high levels of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when faced with the reality that our thoughts and actions are contradictory. We must somehow rationalise the ways in which we fool ourselves. In the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
…
The truth is Australia is still not on track to meet its legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Australian governments have a long history of relying heavily on the land sector to demonstrate progress towards reducing emissions while continuing to export enormous quantities of coal and gas to the rest of the world. The safeguard mechanism, Australia’s signature climate policy, allows the largest industrial polluters to buy carbon credits to balance out their impact on the environment, allowing them to achieve “net zero” emissions. Scientific and legal experts have criticised Australia’s carbon offset scheme as being very low integrity: people are receiving carbon credits for not clearing forests that were never going to be cleared, for growing trees that already exist and for growing forests in places that will never sustain them in the long term. Instead of requiring heavy polluters to actually reduce the huge volume of carbon they are dumping into the atmosphere for free, they can pay to offset their emissions by planting a few trees. Therein lies the fatal flaw in the net zero logic: no matter how the continued exploitation of fossil fuels is justified, real zero is the only way we can genuinely pull back from planetary disaster.
This trickery of using the land sector to mask the negligible reductions in total emissions has allowed the government to claim that Australia’s emissions have fallen 28.2 per cent per cent since 2005. Excluding land use from the latest data shows that total emissions, across industrial processes, transport, electricity and other sectors, have declined by just 1.8 per cent.
For once Gergis and I agree on something, at least about the land use trickery. There appear to be a number of questionable practices when it comes to using alleged enhancements to land’s ability to absorb CO2 to balance the books on emissions reduction claims, some of which have been exposed by WUWT.
Australia is especially prone to bushfires, so any attempt to accumulate carbon biomass in arid woodlands goes up in smoke whenever a fire sweeps the region. The apparent policy of allowing the accumulation of dry, flammable plant litter in poorly managed Aussie woodlands, instead of conducting regular low intensity burnoffs, makes the fires more ferocious when they do occur.
As for the rest of Gergis’ climate belief system, I believe a little healthy skepticism is in order. Just look at how she reacted when flaws were discovered in her scientific work.
Gergis’ 2012 paper (which eventually got withdrawn) got shredded pretty badly by Steve McIntyre. Instead of accepting she made a mistake by mis-describing and mishandling the data used in her analysis, she tried to argue it didn’t matter, and smeared people who objected to her methodological error as amateurs – “… Just to clarify, there was an error in the words describing the proxy selection method and not flaws in the entire analysis as suggested by amateur climate skeptic bloggers. …”.
It didn’t stop in 2012, Gergis returned with another paper in 2016, which was again eviscerated by Steve McIntyre, in McIntyre’s article Joelle Gergis, Data Torturer. McIntyre even suggests Gergis used a form of “Hide the decline”.
Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes big mistakes. The right thing to do in my opinion would have been to show a little grace and immediately accept she had stuffed up – this would have settled the matter quickly and cleanly. But to arrogantly dismiss people who pointed out the mistake as “amateurs”, to try to claim the “mistakes” were just an issue with wording, then to apparently make similar mistakes in a later paper, lets just say I’m not going to be losing any sleep over her climate warnings.
Guest Post by: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This summary serves as a fact check on the biggest false claims made in the media in August, 2024.
Guest Post by: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Editor’s note: This summary serves as a fact check on the biggest false claims made in the media in August, 2024.
As has been the case for the past year, NASA satellite data has its “average global temperature” running warmer:
Meanwhile, the average of real-time surface stations measurements as presented by Temperature.global still has the Earth in a cooling trend since January 2015.
Finally, we’ll close by noting that although the Washington Post bemoaned the US summer as “another brutally hot summer,” the average maximum temperature for the US in August 2024 was 2°F cooler than for August 1983. That’s 41 years of emission-driven warming down the drain.
Until next month, check out these and more fact checks at:
Many people are surprised by how little warming would be averted from adoption of net zero policies. For example, if the United States achieved net zero emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2050, only a few hundredths of a degree Celsius of warming would be averted. This could barely be detected by our best instruments. The fundamental reason is that warming by atmospheric carbon dioxide is heavily “saturated,” with each additional ton of atmospheric carbon dioxide producing less warming than the previous ton.
Many people are surprised by how little warming would be averted from adoption of net zero policies. For example, if the United States achieved net zero emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2050, only a few hundredths of a degree Celsius of warming would be averted. This could barely be detected by our best instruments. The fundamental reason is that warming by atmospheric carbon dioxide is heavily “saturated,” with each additional ton of atmospheric carbon dioxide producing less warming than the previous ton.
Abstract:
Using feedback-free estimates of the warming by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and observed rates of increase, we estimate that if the United States (U.S.) eliminated net CO2 emissions by the year 2050, this would avert a warming of 0.0084 ◦C (0.015 ◦F), which is below our ability to accurately measure. If the entire world forced net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only 0.070 ◦C (0.13 ◦F) would be averted. If one assumes that the warming is a factor of 4 larger because of positive feedbacks, as asserted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming averted by a net zero U.S. policy would still be very small, 0.034 ◦C (0.061 ◦F). For worldwide net zero emissions by 2050 and the 4-times larger IPCC climate sensitivity, the averted warming would be 0.28 ◦C (0.50 ◦F).
The turbulence that caused a Singapore Airlines flight to drop 6,000 feet in minutes was blamed on climate change by a hysterical media. Having killed a passenger and injured more than 70 others, the incident was one of the worst of its kind and indeed tragic. However, the connection to supposed man-made changes to the atmosphere is the fearmongering of opportunistic doomsayers.
The turbulence that caused a Singapore Airlines flight to drop 6,000 feet in minutes was blamed on climate change by a hysterical media. Having killed a passenger and injured more than 70 others, the incident was one of the worst of its kind and indeed tragic. However, the connection to supposed man-made changes to the atmosphere is the fearmongering of opportunistic doomsayers.
This irresponsible promotion of an absurd climate scare is more dangerous than falling airplanes because it affects the future of billions of people and is itself a threat to those lives. The global effort to limit the emission of greenhouse gases by restricting the use of fossil fuels causes people to pay more to power their homes and businesses and leads to rising commodity prices. Now, the climate obsession has managed to infiltrate even medical facilities.
To reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, hospitals in Europe and North America are implementing (or considering) measures that will alter or complicate operating room practices — and endanger patients.
A delicate dance between life and death takes place in operating rooms. Decisions and actions are meticulously calibrated to ensure the best possible outcome. Introducing unnecessary distractions or disruptions in this environment can have dire consequences.
Restrictions designed to limit use and emission of gases with global warming potential in operating rooms often involve monitoring systems that trigger alarms when gas levels exceed a threshold predetermined by hospital administrators. These alarms, justified in the name of fighting an imaginary climate crisis, can disrupt a surgeon’s focus and sound judgement. The stress associated with managing these alarms only adds to already high levels of mental and emotional strain of a medical staff.
Imagine a critical surgery in progress. Intent on a delicate procedure, a surgeon’s attention is suddenly directed to a blaring alarm that forces him to have equipment settings adjusted to save the planet from harmless gases whose effect pales in comparison to a medical misstep. Such disruptions are impositions on surgical precision, time management and patient safety.
Concerned about the so-called carbon footprint of anaesthetic gases such as nitrous oxide, isoflurane, sevoflurane and desflurane, an increasing number of hospitals have sought to limit their use even though operating rooms are not even mentioned in a catalog of emitters.
The National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland has been at the forefront of advancing the fake climate emergency. The official website says staff will be required to pander to it in three key areas: surgery, anaesthesia and respiratory medicine. The NHS proudly states that it has “assigned an ambitious target to be net-zero for anaesthetic gases by 2027.”
Among the draconian proposals for “environmentally sustainable healthcare” are measures that compromise on the type of inhalers prescribed to patients, the amount of anaesthetic gas released and overall energy used in surgical rooms. Mind you, all these proposals have no detailed analysis of climate science and merely harp on political pronouncements about climatic threats.
All these emission-reduction strategies are based on assumptions that planetary warming is detrimental. This notion stands in stark contrast to the real-life metrics showing that humanity has progressed at an exponential rate due to advancements made possible through use of fossil fuels, that civilizations thrive during periods of relative warmth and that elevated levels of the greenhouse gas CO2 significantly enhances plant growth.
It is a shame that medical professionals—like those in the NHS of Scotland—are now being asked to define safety standards of a surgery or a hospital’s functionality based on pseudo-scientific proposals emanating from political bodies like the United Nations.
It is ridiculous that these professionals presume themselves to be climate experts focused on a faux crisis that has nothing to do with the patients depending on them for their health.
The politics of the climate movement must never take precedence over patient safety!
This commentary was first published at Human Events on June 4, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past 20 years, dwarfing those of the U.S. But according to our progressive federal bureaucrats, America’s cumulative historical emissions are the problem and Beijing now deserves a free pass.
China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past 20 years, dwarfing those of the U.S. But according to our progressive federal bureaucrats, America’s cumulative historical emissions are the problem and Beijing now deserves a free pass.
The federal government’s climate.gov site ostensibly provides “timely and authoritative scientific data and information about climate science, adaptation, and mitigation.” This mandate apparently includes trying to guilt Americans out of questioning progressive policies while the world’s second-largest economy emits at an unparalleled level. In a blog post, federal climate comrades say that America’s historical emissions, coupled with higher emissions on a per-capita basis, mean that “the United States bears a greater share of the responsibility for current conditions—on both a national and per-person level.”
According to our taxpayer-funded emissions arbitrators, China emitted less in the past, so its gargantuan emissions today—2.61 times larger than the U.S.—shouldn’t really be the focus. America’s cumulative emissions dating back to 1750, they argue, are the original sin for which we must now atone. Unlike China, America has apparently emitted more than its fair share, so “any future U.S. emissions will undermine progress to stop global warming.” In case the message isn’t clear, the climate commissars add for good measure that China’s emissions are actually the American people’s fault because American consumers buy Chinese-made goods.
Unsurprisingly, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda mouthpieces agree. Xinhua, the CCP’s news agency, declared last year that the U.S. bears “major historical and global responsibility for climate change” and must, therefore, repay its “historical debts.” Not to be outdone, the state-run China Daily says that China’s per-capita emissions are lower than those of America, so the world’s largest emitter is actually doing the “hard yards on climate.”
This readiness of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats to cast off both the basic principles of justice and common sense should be a cause for concern. While socialist regimes have long embraced collective guilt and group punishment, individual responsibility is fundamental to the American tradition. This principle played a clear role in the fight for America’s freedom; colonial outrage ensued after Britain’s collective punishment of Massachusetts in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. With free will and personal accountability before the law, the American people today are not responsible for the actions of earlier generations. There is no criminal or climate “historical debt” to be socialized across generations.
Equally concerning is the willingness of our self-declared “authoritative” apparatchiks to distort emissions data to guilt Americans into conformity. China is far and away the single largest source of emissions today. While scientific knowledge should be perpetually debated and refined, portraying China’s emissions on a self-congratulatory per-capita basis is not an environmental breakthrough. The composition of the atmosphere is determined by absolute measurements, not on a per-capita basis, meaning that China’s actual emissions remain the same, regardless of how they are portrayed. In short, measuring per-capita emissions is as consequential as measuring the temperature in per-capita degrees Fahrenheit.
Rather than berating Americans for the actions of their ancestors, federal bureaucrats should turn their attention to America’s recent environmental track record as a potential model for reducing emissions. Recognizing America’s clean energy potential, the Trump Administration simultaneously prioritized domestic oil and gas production and the enforcement of well-calibrated environmental protection rules. The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency “assessed more in civil penalties, criminal fines, and restitution… than the agency collected in the first four years of the prior [Obama] administration.” This strategy doesn’t need warped justice or contorted data to justify its effectiveness; the economy grew, Americans got wealthier, air quality improved, and emissions fell. For progressive bureaucrats, however, these observations are inconvenient truths.
Oliver McPherson-Smith, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Big companies are increasingly setting voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that are derived from the 1.5 C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. As part of these science-based targets or longer-term net-zero targets, companies commit to rapidly reducing the emissions that come from their electricity consumption.
I would not bother reading the whole article. It’s s statement of the bloomin obvious, making an argument I have been arguing for years:
Big companies are increasingly setting voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that are derived from the 1.5 C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. As part of these science-based targets or longer-term net-zero targets, companies commit to rapidly reducing the emissions that come from their electricity consumption.
One approach is to purchase renewable energy certificates, which represent solar, wind and other green energies flowing into the electricity grid.
Our new study shows that companies largely rely on renewable energy certificates to report steep electricity emissions reductions and that this is unlikely to actually reduce emissions.
Put simply, whilst companies may buy these certificates, called REGOs, the renewable electricity they are created for would have been generated anyway.
The only possible way REGOs could incentivise more renewable generation is if they were of a much higher value. Unfortunately in themselves they have very little value at all. The only value for companies, and indeed customers signing up for green energy deals, lies in virtue signalling.
And that is not something any business is willing to pay more than a pittance for.
Politico: The health sector is responsible for 8.5 percent of U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and ozone — an outsized impact compared to the rest of the world. (Globally, health care systems contribute roughly 4.6 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.) Without huge new efforts, the U.S. will have trouble reaching its ambitious emissions reduction goals. … The drive to reimagine anesthesia is part of a broader if belated effort to decarbonize U.S. health care, from the operating room to the cafeteria to the gardens and grounds. It’s a push spurred on by both medical professionals and Washington policymakers, who feel increased pressure to act amid the dangers of climate change and who acknowledge health care has been slow to engage on sustainability. …
The Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service, which deliver health care to millions of people across the country, have been directed to reduce emissions and energy use as part of the Biden White House’s overall government climate policy.
For the rest of the health care system, HHS unveiled a Climate Pledge on Earth Day 2022 to spur more action. … About 116 health organizations, representing 872 hospitals as well as other health care sectors, have signed on. Along with the federal health systems, that represents about 15 percent of U.S. hospitals, HHS officials said.
#
‘Your Doctor will treat the climate first — & you will be happy’
Excerpts: Sometimes they’ll use more Earth-friendly drugs when appropriate. They’ve already stopped using another common anesthetic gas, called desflurane, which remains in the atmosphere for a decade or more, according to Shira Abeles, an infectious disease physician at UCSD, who recently became its medical director of sustainability.
She’s got plenty of science backing these shifts. The American Society of Anesthesiologists has identified alternatives that are better for the planet, just as safe for patients — and often cheaper.
“One hour of that volatile agent (desflurane) is equivalent to driving a car 250 miles, a gasoline car, I should say. And there’s very little we do in one hour,” said Joanne Donnelly, who, as director of the nurse anesthesia program at the University of Minnesota, has trained personnel in sustainable practices in hospitals across Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“Extrapolate that across an urban area, a region, a nation,” she said. “It’s an incredible impact.”
The drive to reimagine anesthesia is part of a broader if belated effort to decarbonize U.S. health care, from the operating room to the cafeteria to the gardens and grounds. It’s a push spurred on by both medical professionals and Washington policymakers, who feel increased pressure to act amid the dangers of climate change and who acknowledge health care has been slow to engage on sustainability.
The health sector is responsible for 8.5 percent of U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and ozone — an outsized impact compared to the rest of the world. (Globally, health care systems contribute roughly 4.6 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.) Without huge new efforts, the U.S. will have trouble reaching its ambitious emissions reduction goals.
Within American health care, hospitals are the biggest source of emissions, not to mention generators of enormous amounts of nonrecyclable trash from all the single-use, disposable devices and supplies that head swiftly into landfills and incinerators.
Not every hospital is on board with transformation. Change can be expensive, and it’s always hard to overcome the inertia of the status quo. But health leaders see progress, and the Biden administration is doing its own part to push hospitals to overhaul their practices — with some success. The question is, will it be enough?
…
Hospitals in Vermont and Boston are growing vegetables in rooftop gardens; Seattle Children’s Hospital is planting conifers in greenery-starved poor neighborhoods. In drought-prone Los Angeles, a UCLA plastic surgeon suggested timers for operating room sinks; everyone still scrubs in, of course, but without wasting water. Some hospitals offer more plant-based meal options; New York Mayor Eric Adams, who follows a mostly vegan diet, saw to that in the city’s 11 public hospitals. Meanwhile, recycling medical waste is neither easy nor inexpensive; it’s more complicated than tossing a tuna can or yesterday’s newspaper into a blue bin. But that’s slowly changing as more health systems turn to FDA-certified companies that can recycle, sanitize or reprocess such waste.
… It’s become harder to ignore how extreme climate events and pollution endanger human health, with poor people, minority groups and elderly people particularly vulnerable. Extreme weather exacerbates heart, lung and kidney disease; it makes asthma worse. Mental health deteriorates. Heat waves kill people — directly, or by aggravating chronic conditions. Power outages in patient homes mean no refrigeration for insulin or electricity to keep oxygen tanks flowing.
…
“What excites me is that health professionals are starting to connect the reason why they’re there in the first place, which is to take care of patients, with the health impacts that are happening because of climate [which] their health systems are contributing to,” said Shanda Demorest, a nurse who is associate director for climate engagement and education at Health Care Without Harm, which along with its Practice Greenhealth arm, is a major force in pushing for new health and climate work.
The Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service, which deliver health care to millions of people across the country, have been directed to reduce emissions and energy use as part of the Biden White House’s overall government climate policy.
For the rest of the health care system, HHS unveiled a Climate Pledge on Earth Day 2022 to spur more action. … About 116 health organizations, representing 872 hospitals as well as other health care sectors, have signed on. Along with the federal health systems, that represents about 15 percent of U.S. hospitals, HHS officials said.
…
The climate pledge is voluntary, but hospital sustainability experts insist it’s not the usual feel-good exercise. Signatories commit to specific actions and must publicly report progress toward cutting emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and cutting net emissions by 100 percent by 2050.
…
If hospital leaders start to perceive climate action as unavoidable — either because they anticipate it will be mandated or because they will face mounting pressure from within, particularly from younger doctors and nurses — they may start sooner rather than later.
HHS is aware that not all health systems are committed, and that even those that are may need help. McCannon said HHS is rolling out technical assistance and some grants.
…
But activists and sustainability teams want more. More tools. More metrics. More financial help.
…
Some advocates would like to see the federal government impose tough regulations and requirements to force change. Others suggest building incentives into Medicare payments to hospitals, which would give a government-imprimatur on health care greening without creating a new mandate. Climate benchmarks could be included in HHS’ “conditions for participation,” the practices that health providers must follow to be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid payments.
NY Post: Dr. Mohamed Fayed, a senior anesthetist at Detroit’s Henry Ford Health, made the suggestion during the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ annual conference last Friday in Orlando, Florida. “Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” he said. Dr. Fayed added, “No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas — without affecting patient care.”
Study press release:“Anesthesiologists can play a role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming by decreasing the amount of anesthetic gas provided during procedures without compromising patient care, suggests new research being presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ ADVANCE 2023, the Anesthesiology Business Event.” [Climate Depot Note: The American Society of Anesthesiologists’ website appears to have pulled the article. but it is available here. & here.]
Research notes that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, which are regarded as the primary driver of global climate change. An hour of surgery using an inhaled anesthetic is equivalent to driving as many as 470 miles, according to a 2010 study.
#
Flashback 2020 Study in American Cancer Society Journal in 2020 Fretted over ‘carbon footprint of cancer care’ – ACS Journal: “Climate change and cancer” – Excerpt: “To date, no studies have estimated the carbon footprint of cancer care…The energy expenditure associated with operating cancer treatment facilities and medical devices, as well as the manufacturing, packaging, and shipment of devices and pharmaceuticals, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions in cancer care…Some cancer treatment facilities have begun to consider their own carbon footprint and started a process to achieve carbon neutrality.”
Climate Depot’s Morano: “Here is a question for the American Cancer Society: If you need cancer treatment, would you go to a cancer treatment center that was worried about its carbon footprint? Or one that was worried about delivering the best possible modern care possible?”
Claim: Surgical General Anesthetic is Contributing to Climate Change– Switching from general to regional anaesthetics may help cut greenhouse emissions and ultimately help reduce global warming, a new study claims. While regional anaesthetics numb a certain part of the body, general anaesthetics make patients totally unconscious for what tend to be more serious procedures. But unlike regional anaesthetics, generals use volatile and environmentally-unfriendly halogenated agents, such as desflurane, or nitrous oxide. … ‘Green-gional’ anesthesia: the non-polluting benefits of regional anesthesia to decrease greenhouse gases and attenuate climate change
Claim: Surgical General Anesthetic is Contributing to Climate Change– Switching from general to regional anaesthetics may help cut greenhouse emissions and ultimately help reduce global warming, a new study claims. While regional anaesthetics numb a certain part of the body, general anaesthetics make patients totally unconscious for what tend to be more serious procedures. But unlike regional anaesthetics, generals use volatile and environmentally-unfriendly halogenated agents, such as desflurane, or nitrous oxide. … ‘Green-gional’ anesthesia: the non-polluting benefits of regional anesthesia to decrease greenhouse gases and attenuate climate change
Flashback 2019: Canadian Medical Association Journal: How health care contributes to climate change – Climate change is a growing health threat around the world — contributing to heat stroke, food insecurity, cardiorespiratory ailments and many other issues — and the health care industry is part of the problem. “It’s almost like the process of healing causes harm,” said Kent Waddington, cofounder of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care. Health care in Canada was responsible for 4.6% of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2009–2015, according to a recent study in PLOS Medicine. … The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has led projects to reduce the environmental impact of providing health care, such as promoting sustainable food in hospitals and reducing toxic chemicals used for cleaning.
2022: Operating rooms are the climate change contributor no one’s talking about – Two surgeons-in-training suggest some sustainable solutions for their energy-intensive discipline. ... Cancer care is an obvious target for greener efforts within surgery, Berlin notes, because it often involves intense levels of care over a short period of time. Plus, minimally invasive surgeries that require a lot of energy, including robotic-assisted operations, have become common treatments for cancers ranging from colorectal and uterine cancer to head and neck cancer. A robotic-assisted hysterectomy, for example, produces as much carbon as driving more than 2,200 miles in a car — the equivalent of a road trip from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Los Angeles. … Cancer care is an obvious target for greener efforts within surgery, Berlin notes, because it often involves intense levels of care over a short period of time. But perhaps the broadest way the oncology space could cut down on its greenhouse gas emissions is to change how surgical care is delivered, starting with permanently offering telemedicine.
2021 Royal College of Physicians: Study: Does telemedicine reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare? A systematic review – In the rapidly progressing field of telemedicine, there is a multitude of evidence assessing the effectiveness and financial costs of telemedicine projects; however, there is very little assessing the environmental impact despite the increasing threat of the climate emergency. … In the rapidly progressing field of telemedicine, there is a multitude of evidence assessing the effectiveness and financial costs of telemedicine projects; however, there is very little assessing the environmental impact despite the increasing threat of the climate emergency. This report provides a systematic review of the evidence on the carbon footprint of telemedicine. The identified papers unanimously report that telemedicine does reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare, primarily by reduction in transport-associated emissions.
Linnea Lueken: “Recommends that hospital staff mitigate this alleged danger, primarily by using less anesthesia, or opting for the use of less effective topical or more dangerous intravenous methods because “they have less of a negative environmental impact.” …. Doctors don’t use anesthesia for fun, they do it to reduce pain during medical procedures. These misanthropic M.D.s are advocating nothing more nor less than allowing people to suffer in the name of sustainability. …
We have protocols in place to limit medical tests on human subjects without their consent. Hospitals should be devoted to healing patients, not experimenting in loony sustainability projects on captive subjects.”
The most significant effects of adding wind and solar power to any grid are to destabilize it and greatly to increase the cost of electricity for homes and businesses everywhere.
Advocates of wind and solar power confidently assert that using it to replace a coal-fired power plant will abate all the CO2 formerly emitted by the coal station, because unreliables do not emit CO2.
Not quite.
To keep the lights on when we need them, wind and solar requires backup from flexible sources, such as natural gas, that can react quickly when the Sun rises or sets, or when the wind drops or blows a gale.
This thermal backup emits CO2. Worse, when thermal stations are on standby, known in the trade as rotating reserve, they burn fuel without feeding any power to the grid and, when needed, they must be suddenly ramped up to full load capacity, thus emitting far more in the process than when running permanently at full load. Their emissions must thus be subtracted from the reductions achieved by decommissioned coal-fired capacity.
Why would anyone bother with wind and solar power? The fastest way to reduce grid emissions is to switch from coal-fired to gas-fired generation without using unreliables at all. That coal-to-gas switch cuts CO2 emissions by the difference between the products of the CO2 output emission rates and outputs of coal – a far greater reduction than that which is achieved by replacing coal with renewables backed up by thermal sources.
For instance, in 2019 US grid emissions abated would have been almost 18% greater if all coal-fired power replaced thus far by gas-backed wind and solar had instead simply been directly replaced by gas-fired power.
However, the US also uses a fraction of oil and coal generation to backup renewables. Since these fuels emit almost three times as much CO2 as natural gas, grid emissions abated would have been more than 90% greater if coal had been directly replaced by natural gas generation instead of renewables backed up by the current thermal-reserve mix.
Reductions in grid CO2 emissions (even if they were desirable) have come not from adding wind and solar power to the grid but from replacing coal-fired power directly by natural gas generation. Wind and solar power actually hinder emissions abatement.
The next time you see a wind or solar farm being installed, while a coal-fired plant somewhere else is dismantled in the name of Saving The Planet, praise the gas-fired station hidden behind those renewables. Without it, they could not exist, and nearly all the modest emissions reduction currently but falsely attributed to unreliables would never have occurred.
The most significant effects of adding wind and solar power to any grid are to destabilize it and greatly to increase the cost of electricity for homes and businesses everywhere. In those countries where the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar – their output in ideal weather – exceeds the total mean hourly demand on the grid, adding more wind and solar will not reduce emissions at all, unless absurdly expensive battery backup is also installed. Wind and solar are a pointless, costly, environmentally-destructive dead end.
António Guterres lashed out at the fossil fuels industry following a meeting with civil society groups, the Associated Press reported. The industry, he said, is “trading the future” for money. Guterres urged them to move “away from a product incompatible with human survival.” “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions… It’s fossil fuels – period,” he said.
António Guterres lashed out at the fossil fuels industry following a meeting with civil society groups, the Associated Press reported. The industry, he said, is “trading the future” for money. Guterres urged them to move “away from a product incompatible with human survival.” “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions… It’s fossil fuels – period,” he said.
"The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels – period." UN SecGen @antonioguterres emphasizes that fossil fuels are “a product incompatible with human survival". pic.twitter.com/dedSfAmQEX
— Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative (@fossiltreaty) June 15, 2023
The United Nations secretary-general didn’t mince words when addressing how he feels about the oil and gas industry this week.
António Guterres lashed out at the fossil fuels industry following a meeting with civil society groups, the Associated Press reported. The industry, he said, is “trading the future” for money. Guterres urged them to move “away from a product incompatible with human survival.”
“The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions… It’s fossil fuels – period,” he continued said.
Despite Guterres’ passionate rebuke of fossil fuel usage, the United Nations reportedly owns an entire fleet of aircraft, and is known for hosting a lavish annual climate summit that draws as many as 400 private jets, according to Breitbart News.
UN chief says fossil fuels ‘incompatible with human survival,’ calls for credible exit strategy
BERLIN (AP) — The head of the United Nations launched a tirade against fossil fuel companies Thursday, accusing them of betraying future generations and undermining efforts to phase out a product he called “incompatible with human survival.” …
Guterres called on the industry to put forward a credible plan for shifting to clean energy “and away from a product incompatible with human survival.”
…
“The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions,” Guterres said, a nod to recent comments made by Sultan al-Jaber, the United Arab Emirates official who will lead the next U.N. climate summit. “It’s fossil fuels – period.”
There is nothing wrong with eating locally or home-grown produce, and no reason to stop doing it. To claim it as some kind of climate victory is factually incorrect, as The Guardian accurately notes despite being sponsored by the “11th Hour Project,” which gives grants to groups that share the goals of “challenging the development of fossil fuels and accelerating transformation towards a clean and equitable energy system” and “equitable” agriculture programs, along with other progressive causes.
A recent article in The Guardian, titled “Is eating local produce actually better for the planet?” correctly concludes that the “eating local” trend actually doesn’t necessarily decrease food related carbon dioxide emissions. In some cases, choosing local produce may increase emissions.
The article’s author, Cecilia Nowell, briefly describes the history of the “locavore” movement – people who advocate for eating food produced within a hundred miles of where you live. She then points out that while most Americans believe that eating local is more environmentally conscious, recently “a series of studies have shown that eating locally might not be as environmentally impactful – in and of itself – as advocates once hoped.”
Nowell explains that the amount of CO2 emissions involved in the transportation of food actually is the smallest share, that production itself makes up the bulk of emissions.
“In a 2018 paper, a team of researchers from the UK and Switzerland found that only 1% to 9% of food’s emissions come from packaging, transport, and retail,” wrote Nowell. “The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions – 61% – come during production, while food is still on the farm.”
In that post, Burnett explains that while there may be other benefits to eating local produce, stopping climate change is not one of them, writing “the distance food travels to get to peoples’ plates, from the perspective of having a climate impact, matters less than how the food is produced and how it was transported.”
Nowell points out that it is just not feasible for all people to eat only locally sourced food, but puzzlingly does go on to discourage the use of “fossil fuel-rich” pesticides and fertilizers—two innovations that have produced a more abundant, less expensive food supply, while reducing land devoted to agriculture.
Organic farms require more land to produce the same yields as conventional farms. Research from the Alliance for Science showed that if all agriculture were to be done using organic practices, it would lead to an increase of 8-15 percent in deforestation around the world. To banish nitrogen fertilizers would mean half the world’s population would starve.
Swedish researchers found that organic produce grown in the country actually has up to a 70 percent larger “climate impact” than conventional farming methods.
There is nothing wrong with eating locally or home-grown produce, and no reason to stop doing it. To claim it as some kind of climate victory is factually incorrect, as The Guardian accurately notes despite being sponsored by the “11th Hour Project,” which gives grants to groups that share the goals of “challenging the development of fossil fuels and accelerating transformation towards a clean and equitable energy system” and “equitable” agriculture programs, along with other progressive causes.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.
While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.