Tag: Netherlands

Amsterdam Ad Ban Typifies Climate Alarmism’s Farce

Amsterdam just became the world’s first capital to outlaw public ads for both meat and fossil fuels. Starting May 1, city officials scrubbed billboards, tram stops, and metro stations of promotions for gasoline cars, airlines, cruises, and distant vacations, along with beef, chicken, pork, and fish.

From CO2 Coalition

By Vijay Jayaraj

Amsterdam just became the world’s first capital to outlaw public ads for both meat and fossil fuels. Starting May 1, city officials scrubbed billboards, tram stops, and metro stations of promotions for gasoline cars, airlines, cruises, and distant vacations, along with beef, chicken, pork, and fish.

In place of the now illegal ads are posters for the Rijksmuseum and piano concerts, which apparently are included in the city’s vision of a carbon-neutral metropolis that consumes half as much meat.

Driving the ad ban through city council were two political parties, GreenLeft and Party for the Animals. Their claim of fighting impulse buying that locks in “high-carbon” habits poorly disguises an abuse of political power that denies people reasonable everyday choices in exchange for nothing benefiting the environment. Attacking ordinary human life, Amsterdam officials now treat essential fuels and basic nutrition as societal evils that must be hidden from public view.

City councillor Anneke Veenhoff likens the ban to helping people kick addictions by removing the temptation of a substance to force behavioral change.

Other Dutch cities have instituted ad bans, including Haarlem’s prohibition of meat promotion in 2024 and The Hague’s 2025 barring of fossil fuel advertising. Worldwide, more than 50 cities—from Stockholm and Edinburgh to Sydney and Florence—indulge the same folly.

France passed a national ban on fossil fuel ads in 2022, and Spain is considering one. U.N. boss Antonio Guterres cheered on such bans last year, calling for prohibitions on oil, gas, and coal ads while labeling humans the “meteor” smashing Earth. This “attitude-shifting” is presented as something akin to an anti-smoking campaign.

The ad bans are based on nothing more than climate pseudoscience, which draws on exaggerations of the effects of natural processes, fabrications of data, and speculative computer modeling. The apocalyptic predictions of anti-meat activists, for example, are easily refuted by empirical data. Methane emissions of ruminant animals purported to threaten dangerous atmospheric heating have an immeasurably small influence on the planet’s temperature.

An analysis published by the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, shows that even extreme mitigation measures produce negligible results. Eliminating all 1.6 billion cattle worldwide was calculated to avert warming by about 0.04 degrees Celsius. The effect of killing 1.3 billion sheep would be 10 times smaller.

These figures represent changes so small that they fall below the threshold of detection in real-world climate systems.

Policies crippling to agriculture produce massive economic destruction for no benefit. No sane leader would spend a single taxpayer dollar to chase such statistically irrelevant and ludicrous objectives. Activists pushing these agendas demand immense sacrifices from working families while offering no environmental improvement.

The campaign against fossil fuels mirrors this same detachment from reality. Energy abundance remains a requirement for prosperity. Fossil fuels have powered innovation, extended lifespans, and expanded opportunity everywhere. Hydrocarbons power transportation, generate electricity, and serve as feedstock for countless products. From fertilizers that sustain crop yields to materials used in medicine, fossil fuels underpin modern life.

European politicians banning advertisements for petroleum-powered vehicles signal a profound ignorance of history and economics and a deficit of common sense. Modern economies rely on affordable, abundant coal and natural gas to power factories, build infrastructure, and move essential goods. When international bodies stigmatize these fuels, they threaten the economic advancement of the world’s most vulnerable populations and the sustenance of all.

Advertising bans serve only to boost a feeling of moral superiority among urban elites while achieving nothing and jeopardizing much. They represent a rejection of human progress and a dangerous embrace of unscientific dogma.

Amsterdam’s performative stunt exposes climate dogma’s hollow core of grand gestures and zero results that must be rejected at every opportunity.

Originally published at PJ Media, May 22, 2026.

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 U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

Amsterdam Bans Meat And Fossil Fuel Ads But You Can Still Get Stoned

The tireless virtue-signallers of Amsterdam have found another route to saving the planet. Since May 1st advertising meat and fossil fuels has been banned in the familiar way the Left seeks to modify behaviour.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Sallust

The tireless virtue-signallers of Amsterdam have found another route to saving the planet. Since May 1st advertising meat and fossil fuels has been banned in the familiar way the Left seeks to modify behaviour. The BBC has the story:

Politicians in the city say the move is about bringing Amsterdam’s streetscape into line with the local government’s own environmental targets.

These aim for the Dutch capital to become carbon neutral by 2050, and for local people to halve their meat consumption over the same period.

“The climate crisis is very urgent,” says Anneke Veenhoff from the GreenLeft Party. “I mean, if you want to be leading in climate policies and you rent out your walls to exactly the opposite, then what are you doing?

“Most people don’t understand why the municipality should make money out of renting our public space with something that we are actively having policies against.”

Supporters of the policy argue that the initiative will help to make people freer, even though meat advertising only constituted 0.1% of advertising revenue:

This view is echoed by Anke Bakker, who is Amsterdam group leader for a Dutch political party that focuses on animal rights – Party for the Animals.

She instigated the new restrictions, and rejects accusations of them being nanny state.

“Everybody can just make their own decisions, but actually we are trying to get the big companies not to tell us all the time what we need to eat and buy,” says Bakker.

“In a way, we’re giving people more freedom because they can make their own choice, right?”

Removing that constant visual nudge, she says, both reduces impulse buying, and signals that cheap meat and fossil heavy travel are no longer aspirational lifestyle choices.

The idea it seems, is that by “grouping meat with flights, cruises and petrol and diesel cars reframes it from a purely private dietary choice to a climate issue.”

Others might call this a form of brainwashing. One wonders what might else be grouped with meat, flights and fossil-fuelled cars.

Unsurprisingly, the Dutch Meat Association, which represents the industry, is unhappy at the move, which it calls “an undesirable way to influence consumer behaviour”. It adds that meat “delivers essential nutrients and should remain visible and accessible to consumers”.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators says that the ban on advertising holidays that include air travel is a disproportionate curb on companies’ commercial freedom.

Of course, this doesn’t affect advertising online. So will it even work?

However, some researchers are cautiously optimistic, such as Professor Joreintje Mackenbach who is an epidemiologist – a medical professional who investigates health patterns within populations.

“If we see advertisements for fast food everywhere, it normalizes the consumption of behaviour of fast consumption,” says Mackenbach, who is from the Department of Epidemiology and Data Science at hospital Amsterdam University Medical Centre.

“So if we take away those types of cues in our public living environments, then that is also going to have an impact on those social norms.”

“Because like everything we love, festivals, nice cheese, a flower shop around the corner. All the stuff that we love, we don’t hear from through ads,” she says.

“I think and I hope that big polluting companies will be extra scared. And maybe will rethink the kind of products they are selling. I think you can really see that change is possible.”

A quick glance through Professor Mackenbach’s publications shows a strong interest in using nudge techniques to change people’s behaviour.

As the New York Times observed, in permissive Amsterdam ads for fossil fuels or meat are now verboden, but you can still get stoned:

Amsterdam is famously a place where anything goes. Prostitution is legal. Coffee shops sell marijuana and hashish. Truffles laced with the psychoactive compounds found in hallucinogenic mushrooms are available at ‘smart shops’.

But what is no longer allowed in the freewheeling city’s public spaces are advertisements for products that some city councillors consider to be true vices: Big Macs. Exotic vacations. Gas-powered cars.

Ads for airlines, cruises and faraway destinations are no longer allowed, because they implicitly promote the burning of fossil fuels. Ads for beef, chicken, pork and fish are also banned, because of the environmental harms caused by animal agriculture.

Interestingly, the City Council in The Hague passed the first such law in 2024. In 2025 a trade association and travel agencies sued, only for the judge to rule that the health of citizens and the climate were more important than commercial considerations. Getting stoned and substituting hallucinogenic tripping for going on foreign trips aside.

Never mind though, the abstemious and righteous Dutch can console themselves with festivals, nice cheese and flowershops. And by getting stoned.

Anyone fancy a Big Mac?

The BBC’s piece is worth reading in full.

The Data: Dutch Meteorological Institute Reinstates Early 20th Century Heat Waves It Had Erased Earlier

Victory for climate skeptics, science in the Netherlands…erased historical heat waves get reinstated

From The No Trick Zone

By P Gosselin

Victory for climate skeptics, science in the Netherlands…erased historical heat waves get reinstated

The Clintel (Climate Intelligence) reports that the KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) has reinstated seven historical heatwaves from the pre-1950 era that had previously been “erased” from official records due to statistical adjustments.

Tropical days at De Bilt, version 0, 1 and 2 (staves) with non-linear trendline (orange solid line).
The trendline was calculated by the LOESS-function with span=20 points. Source: Clintel

In 2016, he KNMI updated its historical temperature data for the De Bilt weather station (the national reference point). Using a process called homogenization, they had adjusted old temperature readings downward to account for changes in measurement methods and station relocation. This process effectively removed 16 out of 23 recorded heatwaves between 1901 and 1951, leading to the public narrative that heatwaves were much rarer in the past than they are today.

KNMI had overcorrected the data – cooling the past

A group of four researchers associated with Clintel, led by Marcel Crok, challenged these adjustments. They argued that the KNMI had over-corrected the data. Their primary criticisms were:

  1. The KNMI compared De Bilt with a station 150 km away (Eelde) using a method that was arguably unsuitable for such a distance, and
  2. The KNMI used short comparison periods, which skeptics claimed introduced bias.

After the KNMI initially dismissed a 2019 report by the skeptics, the group published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal (Theoretical and Applied Climatology) in 2021. They demonstrated that by using different, more robust parameters—such as comparing De Bilt to more than one station and using longer timeframes—the number of “tropical days” (above 30°C) was significantly higher than the KNMI’s adjusted figures.

Following years of pressure and the peer-reviewed publication, the KNMI updated its homogenization method. According to the article, the KNMI’s new analysis—which now uses multiple reference stations (Eelde and Maastricht) and longer 15-year comparison periods—has resulted in the reinstatement of seven of the lost heatwaves.

Significance: more nuanced view of warming

The is a major victory for climate skeptics and a “point of principle.” It restores several intense heatwaves (such as those in 1911, 1947, and 1948) to the official Dutch record.

Clintel proves that official climate “homogenization” can be prone to errors that exaggerate the warming trend by cooling the past.

The authors note that while the “disappearance” of these heatwaves was used to support claims of unprecedented modern warming, their reinstatement provides a more nuanced view of historical climate variability in the Netherlands.

The reinstatement of the heatwaves shows that the KNMI has admitted that its previous adjustments had been too aggressive.

Full Clintel article.

Shell abandons huge biofuel project in Netherlands

British oil giant Shell announced Wednesday it has abandoned construction of one of Europe’s largest biofuel plants in the Netherlands, as it focuses on its fossil fuels business.

A man dressed as a superhero, wearing glasses and a green recycling symbol shirt, stands confidently with a green cape billowing in the wind against a city skyline.

British oil giant Shell announced Wednesday it has abandoned construction of one of Europe’s largest biofuel plants in the Netherlands, as it focuses on its fossil fuels business. AFP has the story.

Faced with weak market conditions, the company last year suspended construction of the renewables biofuel factory in Rotterdam that was intended to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and diesel from waste.

“As we evaluated market dynamics and the cost of completion, it became clear that the project would be insufficiently competitive,” Machteld de Haan, Shell’s downstream, renewables and energy solutions president, said in a statement. 

Read the full story here.

Shell Nederland Raffinaderij B.V., a subsidiary of Shell plc, has decided not to restart construction of its planned biofuels facility at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park in Rotterdam, which began in 2022. Following an in-depth commercial and technical evaluation to reassess the project’s competitiveness, Shell will no longer proceed with the project. 

Machteld de Haan, Shell’s Downstream, Renewables and Energy Solutions President, said: “As we evaluated market dynamics and the cost of completion, it became clear that the project would be insufficiently competitive to meet our customers’ need for affordable, low carbon products. This was a difficult decision, but the right one, as we prioritise our capital towards those projects that deliver both the needs of our customers and value for our shareholders” Shell Global has the story.

“We continue to believe that low carbon molecules, including biofuels, will underpin the future energy system. Shell is at the forefront of this industry and its development as one of the world’s largest traders and suppliers of biofuels, including Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF),” said De Haan. 

Shell is taking action to be the investment case and partner of choice through the energy transition. Between 2023 and 2024, Shell has invested U.S.$8 billion in lower carbon options, including power, carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen and low-carbon fuels. In 2024, Shell traded over 10 billion litres of low carbon fuels and sold 10 times more than we produced. In the same year, Shell became one of the world’s leading suppliers of SAF.

The Netherlands remains a key location for Shell, where our businesses span the breadth of its energy system – from upstream production of oil and gas through to our network of retail sites. In recent years, Shell has invested €6.5 billion across a wide range of energy transition projects in the Netherlands. This includes enabling CO2 storage through the Porthos CCS project, developing renewable hydrogen at Holland Hydrogen 1, and installing new furnaces and the electrification of key manufacturing processes at Shell Chemicals Park Moerdijk.

Read the full story here.

Yet Another Misleading Report on “Low-Cost” Wind and Solar

In a just-released report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) claims that renewable energy is the most cost-competitive source of new electricity generation worldwide, The report further claims that “91% of new renewable power projects commissioned last year were more cost-effective than any new fossil fuel alternative” based on levelized costs, which can be thought of as the energy equivalent of a fixed mortgage.

A desolate landscape featuring rusted wind turbines and broken solar panels scattered across dried ground, emphasizing themes of renewable energy decay and abandonment.

From Watts Up With That?

By Jonathan Lesser

In a just-released report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) claims that renewable energy is the most cost-competitive source of new electricity generation worldwide, The report further claims that “91% of new renewable power projects commissioned last year were more cost-effective than any new fossil fuel alternative” based on levelized costs, which can be thought of as the energy equivalent of a fixed mortgage.

If those claims sound too good to be true, it’s because they are. IRENA’s boasts ignore a fundamental reality: the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar is fundamentally different than electricity generated by traditional generating resources that are not subject to the whims of the weather.

In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration (EIA) makes the same mistake. The EIA claims that wind and solar will account for the lion’s share of new generating capacity for the next decade and will provide electricity at a lower levelized cost than any traditional resource, including new natural gas generators.

But the episodic nature of wind and solar power has critical impacts on both supply adequacy and cost, which, while recognized by some, are nonetheless not incorporated into how bottom-line data. Traditional coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric generating plants can be scheduled to run when needed. Some of them, especially nuclear and most coal plants, are designed to operate continuously and are referred to as “baseload” facilities. Others, especially natural gas plants, can quickly be turned on or off (“dispatched”) to match changes in demand. Collectively, traditional generation can be both scheduled and dynamically managed, enabling the operators of electric grids to reliably meet demand at the lowest cost.

The inherent intermittency of wind and solar reduces the physical and economic value of their capacity relative to traditional generating resources, as sufficient reserves or storage must be maintained to meet demand when they are unavailable. Merely reporting total wind and solar capacity misleads because it does not account for the adequacy of the electrical energy generated to meet demand and the actual costs to do so.

Here’s an analogy. Imagine that a city and its citizens are offered two types of buses for commuting. One is with new buses and free fares. However, these run only one-third of the time, are often unpredictable, and are less likely to show up on bad-weather days. If you wait for one of these new free buses but it fails to show up, you must suffer the inconvenience of having to take a relatively expensive Uber ride, which can cost even more on busy or bad-weather days. Meanwhile, the other option is to pay a modest fare (say, one-tenth of an Uber ride) on a conventional bus—but one that’s reliable, regardless of weather. Over a year of commuting, the total costs for the “free” bus service are likely to be much higher and the value much lower than commuting on the conventional bus service.

In the context of electric grids, Uber rides represent the cost of either backup generating capacity or battery storage to compensate for wind and solar unavailability. Adding to these costs is the fact that, when electricity demand is greatest—typically, during the early morning and early evening hours—little, if any, solar power will be available. Similarly, meteorological records show that on the hottest and coldest days, there is often little wind. There can also be multiday periods, often lasting days and even a week, when there is little or no wind (a wind drought) and multiple cloudy days when little solar power is generated. Thus, wind and solar are often most available when the electricity they generate has the least value.

Fundamentally, cost and value are not the same thing. Comparing levelized costs, such as fixed mortgage payments for different homes, provides little insight into actual value. For example, a monthly mortgage payment of $2,000 for one house, versus one of, say, $2,500 for another, provides no information about either house’s value in terms of size, location, condition, and so forth. Similarly, the levelized cost doesn’t reveal power plant attributes, especially intermittency. The lowest levelized cost resources may not be the highest-value ones, or even the cheapest ones, when operated over time in the real world.

For electricity planners and regulators to identify the highest true value, they must compare costs and operational benefits. Just like the commuter bus that doesn’t arrive on a rainy morning, intermittent capacity that is unavailable when it is most needed has far lower economic value.

Promoting misleading claims about wind and solar power distorts policymaking and will only exacerbate the growing inadequacy of electric supplies to meet increased demand in the wake of continued electrification efforts. It will lead to more frequent electricity rationing, as the Netherlands has recently imposed.

That may appeal to hairshirt environmentalists, but it won’t appeal to the broader populace, who are likely to express their displeasure at the ballot box.

Jonathan Lesser is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics. This piece is adapted from his recent report, “The U.S. Energy Information Administration Needs to Fix How It Reports Renewable Power Capacity.”

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Tampering With Temperature Records in Netherlands

Temperature tampering in the Netherlands now!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Temperature tampering in the Netherlands now!

The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) routinely applies corrections to historical temperature data, allegedly to improve accuracy. One of the most intriguing weather stations I’ve analyzed is De Bilt in the Netherlands. With records dating back to 1706, it provides a rare glimpse into pre-industrial climate trends—essential for understanding long-term climate behavior.

The thermometers at this station are highly precise, measuring temperatures within ±0.1°C. Historical data archived in 2013 reveals key observations: The warmest recorded months were July 1852, July 1868, and July 2006. From 1706 to 2013, the average annual temperature trend shows a warming rate of 0.33°C per century, with an R² confidence level of 26%. Notably, a cooling period occurred from 1870 to 1960.

However, KNMI’s continuous “corrections” raise serious concerns: 2016 – KNMI homogenized the data, subtracting 0.33°C from all records before 1954, claiming the older pagoda-style thermometer screen provided less sun shielding than the modern Stevenson screen. This adjustment seems counterintuitive. 2020 – Data prior to 1900 was removed. KNMI stated they were “working on correcting the data.” 2023 – The data was re-released, but all records from 1845 to 1904 were “corrected” by subtracting 1°C. 2024 – Another adjustment was made, this time adding 0.5°C to all records before 1728. It also appears they forgot to correct data from 1736 to 1844.

Does anyone verify these changes? I reached out multiple times, requesting details and access to the original daily records, including scanned PDFs of historical logs. My requests were ignored. At this point, it’s difficult not to question the motivations behind these repeated adjustments. Is this about science—or about controlling the narrative?

Here are my slides https://lnkd.in/gcdEmdim

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eric-keyser-82861111_klimaatdesk-knmi-keeps-adjusting-temperatures-activity-7298774966169124864-uviC?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAGqxqUB7N7Kim99hm9239JHdFEhy3Csi_Y

Grand Energy ‘Transition’ Unravels: Power-Starved Dutch Ditch Renewables & Go For Gas

Europe’s wind and solar ‘transition’ continues to unravel, with the Dutch the latest to ditch the pitch to so-called ‘renewables’. Small (geographically) and industrious, the Dutch have always managed to punch well above their weight, dominating seafaring trade through history and, these days, producing a staggeringly large proportion of the foodstuffs that are consumed around the globe.

But, like most of their European neighbours, the Netherlands has squandered billions of subsidies on chaotically intermittent wind and solar, with little to show for it – other than ruined landscapes and unliveable homes.

From STOP THESE THINGS

Europe’s wind and solar ‘transition’ continues to unravel, with the Dutch the latest to ditch the pitch to so-called ‘renewables’. Small (geographically) and industrious, the Dutch have always managed to punch well above their weight, dominating seafaring trade through history and, these days, producing a staggeringly large proportion of the foodstuffs that are consumed around the globe.

But, like most of their European neighbours, the Netherlands has squandered billions of subsidies on chaotically intermittent wind and solar, with little to show for it – other than ruined landscapes and unliveable homes.

Now the hard cold reality of sunshine and/or weather-dependent power generation is starting to bite. Various provinces simply can’t keep the lights on, and have called timeout on the grand ‘transition’ to sunshine and breezes.

When the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in, it’ll be good old gas (an apparently not-so-evil fossil fuel) powering Dutch homes, businesses and industries around-the-clock, as Carl Deconinck explains below.

Dutch province of Utrecht returns to fossil fuel as power-grid faces meltdown
Brussels Signal
Carl Deconinck
25 April 2024

The Dutch province of Utrecht announced it will switch back to fossil fuel to relieve the overworked electricity grid, as the road to net-zero in the Netherlands hits some major obstacles.

The outgoing Dutch Climate Minister Rob Jetten, leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, along with local grid operators, announced a set of measures to fight the power-grid overload in Utrecht province. It is expected to be the first of many regions in the country that will have to take action to avoid future problems.

To maintain electricity provision to the public and businesses in Utrecht, there will be a switch back to gas. At moments of peak demand, the local Government will deploy gas generators.

Smart charging stations will be switched off during peak times but the regional authorities and grid operators are working on an exemption option for owners of electric vehicles to top-up their batteries if they need to.

Instead of fully-electric heat-pumps, hybrid heat-pumps are being promoted. These hybrid models can be connected to boiler-heating systems and are less demanding on the electricity grid.

The Dutch public service broadcaster nos reported that the projected shortage equals the needs of 125,000 homes in Utrecht.

Huib van Essen of the Utrecht Provincial Executive said the measures would “have a significant impact on reducing the overload on the power grid”, adding that the use of gas-plants was “unfortunately necessary” for this.

Without implementing appropriate measures, the province is forecast to experience frequent electricity blackouts, which would jeopardise the construction of new housing and industrial complexes, nos said.

Utrecht is the first province to opt to return to fossil fuels but other areas and provinces, in particular Flevopolder and Gelderland, are also said to be working on similar measures.

Without nationwide measures being implemented, nos reported that approximately 1.5 million people in the Netherlands could be subject to power outages until 2030.

Other issues would include the malfunction of electrical devices and lighting.

The problems for households and small consumers come on top of long-standing issues for the Dutch industrial sector, which is consuming electricity at much higher rates than previously.

Waiting times for new or upgraded connections, necessary for businesses to enhance their sustainability efforts, are also on the rise.

The shift back to fossil fuels in the Netherlands follows a decision by the Scottish Government to abandon its flagship target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030.

It said it had an “unwavering commitment” to achieve net zero by 2045 but on April 18 called the targets for 2030 “out of reach”.

Scotland’s leadership was one of the first in the world to declare a “climate emergency”, in 2019.
Brussels Signal

Keep Your Head, Others are Losing Theirs Over Climate

“Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

John Stossel’s interview with Bjorn Lomborg is featured in his article at Reason The Media’s Misleading Fearmongering Over Climate Change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry says it will take trillions of dollars to “solve” climate change. Then he says, “There is not enough money in any country in the world to actually solve this problem.”

Yes, they are projecting more than 100 Trillion US$.

Kerry has little understanding of money or how it’s created. He’s a multimillionaire because he married a rich woman. Now he wants to take more of your money to pretend to affect climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg points out that there are better things society should spend money on.

Lomberg acknowledges that a warmer climate brings problems. “As temperatures get higher, sea water, like everything else, expands. So we’re going to maybe see three feet of sea level rise. Then they say, ‘So everybody who lives within three feet of sea level, they’ll have to move!’ Well, no. If you actually look at what people do, they built dikes and so they don’t have to move.”

Rotterdam Adaptation Policy–Ninety years thriving behind dikes and dams.

People in Holland did that years ago. A third of the Netherlands is below sea level. In some areas, it’s 22 feet below. Yet the country thrives. That’s the way to deal with climate change: adjust to it.

“Fewer people are going to get flooded every year, despite the fact that you have much higher sea level rise. The total cost for Holland over the last half-century is about $10 billion,” says Lomberg. “Not nothing, but very little for an advanced economy over 50 years.”

For saying things like that, Lomberg is labeled “the devil.”

“The problem here is unmitigated scaremongering,” he replies. “A new survey shows that 60 percent of all people in rich countries now believe it’s likely or very likely that unmitigated climate change will lead to the end of mankind. This is what you get when you have constant fearmongering in the media.”

Some people now say they will not have children because they’re convinced that climate change will destroy the world. Lomborg points out how counterproductive that would be: “We need your kids to make sure the future is better.”

He acknowledges that climate warming will kill people.

“As temperatures go up, we’re likely to see more people die from heat. That’s absolutely true. You hear this all the time. But what is underreported is the fact that nine times as many people die from cold…. As temperatures go up, you’re going to see fewer people die from cold. Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat. Source: The Lancet

That’s rarely reported in the news.

When the media doesn’t fret over deaths from heat,
they grab at other possible threats.

CNN claims, “Climate Change is Fueling Extremism.”

The BBC says, “A Shifting Climate is Catalysing Infectious Disease.“

U.S. News and World Report says, “Climate Change will Harm Children’s Mental Health.”

Lomborg replies, “It’s very, very easy to make this argument that everything is caused by climate change if you don’t have the full picture.”

He points out that we rarely hear about positive effects of climate change, like global greening.

Spatial pattern of trends in Gross Primary Production (1982- 2015). Source: Sun et al. 2018.

“That’s good! We get more green stuff on the planet. My argument is not that climate change is great or overall positive. It’s simply that, just like every other thing, it has pluses and minuses…. Only reporting on the minuses, and only emphasizing worst-case outcomes, is not a good way to inform people.”

Synopsis of Lomborg’s Policy Recommendation (excerpted transcription)

If you’re a politician and you look at ten different problems, you’re natural inclination is to say, “Let’s give 1/10 to each one of them.” And economists would tend to say, “No, let’s give all of the money to the most efficient problem first and then to the second most efficient problem, and so on. I’m simply suggesting there’s a way that we could do much better with much less.

Of course if you feel very strongly about your particular area, when I come and say, “Actually, this is not a very efficient use of resources.” I get why people get upset. But for our collective good, for all the stuff that we do on the planet, we actually need to consider carefully where do we spend money well, compared to where do we just spend money and feel virtuous about ourselves.

If we spend way too much money ineffectively on climate, not only
are we not fixing climate, but we’re also wasting an enormous amount
of money that could have been spent on all these other things.

I’m simply trying to make that simple point, and I think most people kind of get that.  Remember, electricity is about a fifth of our total energy consumption. So, all everybody’s talking about is all the electricity, which is the easiest thing to switch over. But we don’t know anything about how we’re going to, know very, very little about how we’re going to deal with the other 4/5. This is energy that we use on things that are very, very hard to replace. So it’s a fertilizer that keeps 4 billion people alive. Making the fertilizer. It’s steel, cement, it’s industrial processes. Most of heating we use comes from fossil fuels, most transportation, that’s fossil fuels.

Know that if the U.S. went entirely net zero today and stayed that way for the rest of the century, consider how incredibly extreme this would be. First of all, you would not be able to feed everyone in the U.S. The whole economy would break down. You wouldn’t know how to get transportation. A lot of people would freeze. Some people would fry. There would be lots and lots of problems. But even if you did this and managed to do it, the net impact, if you run it through the U.N. climate model, is that you would reduce temperatures by the end of the century by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. We would almost not be able to measure it by the end of the century. It would have virtually no impact.

Look, again, we’re rich and so a lot of people feel like you can spend money on many different things. And that’s true. I’m making the argument that for fairly little money, we could do amazing good. If we spent $35 billion, not a trillion dollars, just $35 billion, which is not nothing. I don’t think, neither you or I have that amount of money. But, you know, in the big scheme of things, this is a rounding error. $35 billion could save 4.2 million lives in the poor part of the world, each and every year and make the poor world $1.1 trillion richer.

I think we have a moral responsibility to remember, that there are lots and lots of people, so mostly about 6 billion people out there, who don’t have this luxury of being able to think 100 years ahead and think about a little bit of a fraction of a degree, who wants to make sure that their kids are safe.
And so, the next money we spend should probably be on these very simple and cheap policies.

Why the Dutch election result spells trouble for Europe’s climate efforts

The Netherlands has in recent years emerged as one of the most ambitious EU countries on climate change. That’s likely to change under a coalition government involving the PVV.

With the campaign dominated by immigration issues, voters might not have backed the PVV because of its anti-green stance | Carl Court/Getty Images

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

 November 25, 2023 by oldbrew

Climate mythology on the back foot. Some people at least are not keen on being frogmarched into costly and disruptive ‘net zero’ energy policies for more pain than gain, while having their reliability of supply reduced and farmers demonised.
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The far-right party that surged to victory in Wednesday’s Dutch election wants to ditch all efforts to stop climate change, says Politico.

About a quarter of Dutch voters backed Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), whose platform includes exiting the Paris climate accord, dismantling domestic green legislation, and scrapping measures to reduce planet-warming emissions.

While right-wing politicians from Scandinavia to Italy have won big over the past year, this is the first time a party openly calling for an end to the green transition has won a national election in the European Union.

To govern, Wilders needs to convince several other parties to join the PVV in a coalition, and even if he succeeds, he may still not end up as prime minister.

But whether in government or as the loudest opposition block, Wilders and the PVV will have significant influence on setting climate policy in the Netherlands — a country that has prided itself on being among Europe’s most ambitious in tackling global warming. [Talkshop comment – ‘ambitious’ as in ‘big spending’?].

Coming just ahead of the EU elections next summer, the PVV’s victory also reflects a wider shift that may spell trouble for Europe’s climate efforts in the coming years.

Continued here.

The Green Energy Wall Gradually Coming Into Focus

From MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

It’s been obvious for many years that electricity generation from the intermittent wind and sun would never work to power a modern economy. But how would the infeasibility of the proposed energy transition finally manifest itself to put an end to the madness?

A couple of years ago I began writing about the the upcoming “Renewable Energy Wall,” for example in this piece from December 2021 titled “Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?” I called for readers to place their bets as to which among various jurisdictions would be the first to recognize that it could never achieve the net zero goal. But what would be the aspects of reality that would put an end to further renewable development? Would it be the soaring costs? Or perhaps the spreading blackouts? Or maybe the voters wising up? Or maybe other things that nobody had yet guessed?

Over the past few weeks and months, several parts of the coming Green Energy Wall have started to come into focus. The two factors that are emerging most significantly at this early stage are (1) voters starting to catch on, and (2) the inability of wind and solar developers to deliver projects at costs that are at all workable for consumers.

In the voter category, many places, particularly in Europe, have long had an all-party political consensus in favor of “climate action,” or some such nonsensical slogan, thus making it almost impossible for citizens to use their vote to push for any kind of sensible energy policies. But suddenly that is changing. First we had Argentina a week ago electing as President an avowed climate skeptic, Javier Milei. And then on Wednesday, the Netherlands followed suit, giving the biggest bloc of seats in its Parliament to the party of another avowed climate skeptic, Geert Wilders. Wilders’s Freedom Party delivered a drubbing to both the “center right” party of the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte, as well as to a Labor/Green coalition headed by Frans Timmermans, who is the European Commission’s Vice President and a face for the EU’s noxious climate agenda.

Euro News today has some quotes from the manifesto of the Freedom Party:

[T]he PVV manifesto . . . declares: “We have been made to fear climate change for decades… We must stop being afraid.” “The climate is always changing, for centuries,” the document goes on to say. “When conditions change we adapt. We do this through sensible water management, by raising dykes when necessary and by making room for the river. But we stop the hysterical reduction of CO2, with which, as a small country, we wrongly think we can “save” the climate.” The manifesto also calls for more oil and gas extraction from the North Sea and keeping coal and gas power stations open.

Further as to the Dutch election, here is a November 23 piece from Spiked by Fraser Myers, headlined “The Humiliation of the Dutch Establishment.” Myers makes the point that green hair-shirt energy policies have now finally made climate skepticism a winning electoral position in Europe. Excerpt:

The failure of Timmermans . . . shows that opposition to climate policy is now a significant driver of European populism. After all, as Commission vice-president, Timmermans was the face of Brussels’s stringent climate policies, including the so-called European Green Deal. The EU’s green austerity played a major role in stoking the farmers’ protests that have erupted in the Netherlands over the past few years. . . . And it’s not just agriculture that could be flattened by climate policy. As a Politicoprofile of Timmermans this week notes, the much-vaunted European Green Deal could be about to set off a wave of deindustrialisation – on a scale not seen for 50 years. Politicians who think they can get away with impoverishing their citizens, while hiding behind waffle about Net Zero, are in for a very rude awakening.

Neither Milei’s victory, nor Wilders’s, by itself means that anti-fossil fuel policies are going to disappear overnight in either country. Each of those men has far from a majority in the legislature, meaning that it will take the support of other parties to make great progress against the Green Blob. However, the process has begun.

And meanwhile the march to “green” energy, after years of uncontradicted hype, is now experiencing one reverse after another. It turns out that there are limits to how much governments can achieve by trying to hide the costs of wind and solar energy through various subsidies and tax credits. At some point, after pocketing all the subsidies and credits, the developers still must deliver power to the grid at an affordable cost; and if they can’t, they will go broke.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had a post titled “As The Transition To Green Energy Crumbles, Funding For The Climate Scare Soars.” That post had a round-up of data points in the ongoing failure of green energy to replace fossil fuels. The data points included: proposed massive off-shore wind farms off New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island suddenly canceled; stock prices of wind developers cratering as they can’t complete projects for agreed prices; major de-industrialization in Germany due to soaring energy prices. And the bad news for wind and solar energy, and for the “ESG” investing to fund it, only continues to get worse.

From the Wall Street Journal, November 19, “Wall Street’s ESG Craze Is Fading.” Excerpt:

Wall Street rushed to embrace sustainable investing just a few years ago. Now it is quietly closing funds or scrubbing their names after disappointing returns that have investors cashing out billions. . . . The third quarter was the first time more sustainable funds liquidated or removed ESG criteria from their investment practices than were added, according to Morningstar.

They provide this chart of the reversal of fortunes for these so-called “sustainable” funds:

Without private investors, the wind and solar future becomes 100% dependent on government handouts. At some point, those can’t continue either.

And from Canada’s Financial Post, November 17, by venture capital investor Henry Geraedts, “Net-zero policies colliding with economic reality.” Excerpt:

Renewables aren’t reliable and many companies are discovering they don’t pay for themselves even with unsustainably high subsidies. . . . The inconvenient truth is that the clean energy transition is not unfolding as foretold. Three decades and trillions of dollars in subsidies later, wind and solar still represent single-digit percentages of global energy demand, which continues to grow. . . . Our governments holding forth sanctimoniously about imagined climate-driven severe weather events while imposing large-scale use of wind and solar is insanity with serious consequences.

The best thing to end the wind/solar craziness will be to have one or two jurisdictions fail spectacularly as a lesson to everyone else. I wouldn’t have wanted my own New York to volunteer for that role, but that may be what’s happening.