Andy Shaw: A Guide to the Green Industrial Revolution

Guest post from our good friend Andy Shaw; taking a light hearted look at some pretty serious issues around Boris Johnson’s version of the Green New Deal. Andy is also the powerhouse behind London based Comedy Unleashed who are still running, despite the batflu restrictions. Book early and get along there to enjoy a pint, pizza and pisstake if you’re in the area. Give Andy a follow on twitter to keep up with the latest.

A Guide to the Green Industrial Revolution

The government has announced their Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. It will bring electricity to light homes, gas for cooking and cars to drive! You may think that we already have these things, but this is a Green revolution, everything that we have got used to will be re-invented. Boris Johnson’s 10 point plan includes heat pumps, hydrogen gas and batteries, but what is really going on? This is your 6 point guide.

1. Green is popular!

Boris Johnson’s dad and his current girlfriend have a favourite colour and it is .. green! This shows that green policies are popular across generations and that the government is right to revolutionise our entire economy.

Battered by virus and oil slump, biofuels fall out of favour

Another battering looms as electric cars are soon to be forced on many car buyers by legislation. Maybe agriculture will get some of its lost land back for food production.
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Hit by the coronavirus pandemic and a sharp drop in oil prices, biofuel demand has declined for the first time in two decades and may struggle to recover, according to experts.

“The collapse of oil prices has had a very negative impact on biofuels,” rendering them uncompetitive, Olivier Lemesle, director of studies at Xerfi, told AFP (via TechXplore.)

The production of biofuels for transport in 2020 is expected to decline 11.6 percent on 2019 levels, the first fall in 20 years, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual report, published in early November.

‘Economic emergency’ puts the brakes on Boris Johnson’s green agenda

Deluded climate miserablists discover the infinite money tree, which their doom-laden dogmas demand, doesn’t exist. The tidal wave of debt now coming in takes precedence over far-fetched assertions about human-caused weather events.
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Outraged climate activists are blaming Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, of eroding Boris Johnson’s plans for a ‘green industrial revolution’.

In his so-called Spending Review, Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, yesterday announced that Britain’s ‘economy emergency has only just begun’ and that it will negatively affect Britain’s finances for decades to come.

Obviously, Sunak hardly mentioned the climate issue at all.

Arctic Adds 3 Wadhams of Ice in November (so far)

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Recent Arctic sea ice alarm turns out to be yet another nothingburger.

Science Matters

After concerns over lackluster ice recovery in October, November is seeing ice roaring back.  The image above shows the last 3 weeks adding 3 M km2 of sea ice.  (The metric 1 Wadham = 1 M km2 comes from the professor’s predictions of an ice-free Arctic, meaning less than 1 M km2 extent) The Russian shelf seas on the left filled with ice early on.  On the CanAm side, Beaufort at the bottom center is iced over, Canadian Archipelago (center right) is frozen, and Baffin Bay is filling from the north down.  Hudson Bay (far right) first grew fast ice around the edges, and is now half iced over.  A background post is reprinted below, showing that in just 23 days, 2020 has added 3.1 M km2, 50% more than an average 30-day November.

The graph above shows November Arctic ice extents for the 13-year average and some other notable…

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Plug-in hybrids are “fake electrics cars”, say researchers

Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid [image credit: greencarreports.com]

We already knew the subsidies for these types of vehicle were a waste of money, but this makes it look even worse. Another case of climate ideology derailing sanity.
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New testing commissioned by clean transport group Transport & Environment (T&E) shows that plug-in hybrids (PHEV) emit considerably more CO2 than advertised, and the problem could be even worse as drivers charge up before entering low emissions zones, says The Driven.

The results of testing has led the influential European NGO to label plug-in hybrids as “fake electric cars” designed solely by car makers to pass lab tests and achieve more sales via tax breaks.

The Emissions Analytics research, which included PHEV versions of the BMW X5, Volvo XC60 and Mitsubishi Outlander, found that even when driving on a full battery, emissions were 28-89% higher than advertised by the car makers.

Stephen Moore: Paris climate treaty puts America last

Politicians may see votes in joining the current climate bandwagon. But what happens when the results of their extravagant policies hit home, power becomes less reliable and energy and travel costs soar, all for no discernible benefit?
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Here we are in the midst of the second wave of a once-in-a-half-century pandemic, with the economy flattened and millions of Americans unemployed and race riots in the streets of our major cities.

And Joe Biden says that one of his highest priorities as president will be to…re-enter the Paris Climate Accord.

Trump kept his America First promise and pulled America out of this Obama-era treaty. Biden wants us back in — immediately. Why?

Paris is an unmitigated failure. You don’t have to take my word for it.

STEVE’s Cannonballs: Little Green Spheres of Light

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Quote: ‘STEVE is a recently identified atmospheric phenomenon caused by supersonic plasma jets flowing at altitudes >100 km.’ Scientists continue to wrestle with its electromagnetic mysteries.

Spaceweather.com

Nov. 22, 2020: Just when you thought STEVE couldn’t get any weirder. A new paper published in the journal AGU Advances reveals that the luminous purple ribbon we call “STEVE” is often accompanied by green cannonballs of light that streak through the atmosphere at 1000 mph.

“Citizen scientists have been photographing these green streaks for years,” says Joshua Semeter of Boston University, lead author of the study. “Now we’re beginning to understand what they are.”

STEVE is a recent discovery. It looks like an aurora, but it is not. The purple glow is caused by hot (3000 °C) rivers of gas flowing through Earth’s magnetosphere faster than 13,000 mph. This distinguishes it from auroras, which are ignited by energetic particles raining down from space. Canadian aurora watchers first called attention to the phenomenon about 10 years ago, whimsically naming it STEVE; researchers have been studying it ever since.

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Covid pandemic has little impact on rise in CO2

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

This seems open to interpretation. Does it lead to the possibility that most CO2 rise is natural, and therefore all attempted reductions are an even bigger waste of time, money and resources than they were anyway? Here the BBC serves up another dollop of warmist assertions it can’t or won’t try to justify, presumably in an attempt to prevent any inconvenient notions about greenhouse gas theory from entering its audience’s heads.
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The global response to the Covid-19 crisis has had little impact on the continued rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

This year carbon [dioxide] emissions have fallen dramatically due to lockdowns that have cut transport and industry severely, says BBC News.

But this has only marginally slowed the overall rise in concentrations, the scientists say.

France plans to jail ‘ecocide’ offenders for up to 10 years under new laws

CO2 is not pollution

A selected handful of the citizens of France have spoken, so the die is cast. No-one wants pollution, but do they intend to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant (like the USA), or even as a ‘danger to the environment’? Tell it to the plants and vegetation that rely on CO2 from photosynthesis to produce glucose, essential to survival.
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Environmental offenders could be handed a fine of up to €4.5 million, or 10 years in prison. The law is meant to punish those who commit a “general crime of pollution” or “endanger the environment”, says DW.com.

France is set to make serious intentional damage to the environment punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of a planned “ecocide” law, government ministers said in remarks published on Sunday.

The law was proposed following a recommendation made by the Citizens’ Convention for the Climate, an environmental committee of 150 people, created by the government a year ago.

Bright Comet Erasmus

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Short video here.

Spaceweather.com

Nov. 21, 2020: Every 2000 years, Comet Erasmus (C/2020 S3) visits the inner Solar System. News Flash: It’s back. Discovered on Sept. 17, 2020, by South African astronomer Nicolas Erasmus, the dirty snowball is plunging toward the sun for a close encounter inside the orbit of Mercury on Dec. 12th. This is what it looks like:

Gerald Rhemann took the picture Friday morning, Nov. 20th, using a 12-inch telescope in Farm Tivoli, Namibia. “The tail is magnificent,” he says. “In fact, I couldn’t fit it in a single field of view. This two-panel composite shows the first 3 degrees–and it keeps going well past the edge of the photo.”

Comet Erasmus is brightening as it approaches the sun. Right now it is 7th magnitude–an easy target for backyard telescopes. Forecasters believe it will more than triple in brightness to 5th magnitude by the time it dips inside the orbit of Mercury…

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British PM touts NEOM city as model for ‘greener future’

At an estimated $500 billion it’s an expensive model, but ties in with the equally hyperbolic ‘Saudi Arabia of wind’ rhetoric. But neither bears much resemblance to reality.
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JEDDAH — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has touted Saudi Arabia’s NEOM city as a model for a “greener future,” warning G20 leaders that the world risks failing future generations if states do not take bold steps to reduce carbon emissions, reports the Saudi Gazette.

“And if we were in Saudi Arabia today … what I would have loved to have done was to visit the exciting new city of NEOM, whose origins I was able to inspect a couple of years ago,” he said in a pre-recorded address at Saudi Arabia’s virtual G20 summit on Saturday.

UK climate pledge on gas boilers for 2023 ‘vanishes’

Domestic gas central heating boiler

Now you see it — now you don’t. The claimed ‘climate emergency’ will just have to wait, until 2025 at least. A reprieve for new home buyers.
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The prime minister’s pledge to ban gas boilers from new homes by 2023 has been withdrawn, says BBC News.

The promise first appeared on the Downing Street website this week attached to Mr Johnson’s climate plan.

But the date was later amended, with the PM’s office claiming a “mix-up”.

The original statement from Number 10 announced this goal; “2023 – Implement a Future Homes Standard for new homes, with low carbon heating and world-leading levels of energy efficiency.”

Vladivostok snowstorm: Emergency declared amid chaos and power cuts

Narrow escape [image credit: BBC News]

This report features the scary video that the screen shot above was taken from. A local meteorologist said the last similar storm bringing such freezing rain occurred 30 years ago.
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A snowstorm has battered parts of the Russian Far-East, causing power cuts, transport chaos and school closures, reports BBC News.

The storm hit the Primorsky region on Thursday. In the port city of Vladivostok winds brought down frozen trees and ice-laden power lines.

A state of emergency has been declared across the region.

Rescue services and the army are scrambling to deal with the fallout. At least 150,000 homes have been left without electricity.

“The situation with the electricity supply remains very difficult – the destruction is widespread,” the deputy head of the region’s government, Elena Parkhamenko, said.

Scare of the day: Rising use of nitrogen fertilisers could jeopardise global climate goals

Image credit: wisegeek.com

That’s a large chunk of the global food supply in the dock then, according to IPCC-based ‘greenhouse’ climate theories that perform badly in climate models, leading to endless over-prediction of global warming.
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The growing use of nitrogen fertilisers in world food production could put ambitious climate targets out of reach, as it leads to rising levels of nitrous oxide (N2O) in the atmosphere, a new University of Oslo study shows.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a highly potent greenhouse gas, and its impact on global warming is 300 times larger than that of carbon dioxide (CO2). Once emitted, N2O remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. What’s more – it also depletes the ozone layer.

If left unabated, the emissions resulting from the growing use of nitrogen fertilisers will require bigger reductions in CO2 emissions to reach the goal of the Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, according to the study.

France’s top court gives government three months to honour climate commitments

It seems courts in some countries are now in effect regarding as proven something that is not proven, namely that rises in Earth’s meagre 0.04% atmospheric carbon dioxide content will necessarily cause serious problems requiring urgent governmental action – whatever that may be – to ‘tackle’ the situation. Not only is this not proven, but science was arguing against such theories in published papers as far back as 1900, and continues to do so in various quarters today. The upshot is that, in these countries at least, governments have lumbered themselves with the legal duty of trying to reduce Earth’s average temperature, on pain of being found in contempt of court (or some such charge) for not trying hard enough, or at all. Not what President Macron would have had in mind when he strutted the stage at his notorious 2015 Paris climate summit.

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France’s top administrative court has given the government a three-month deadline to show it is taking action to meet its commitments on global warming, reports Yahoo News with AFP.

The Council of State, which rules on disputes over public policies, said that “while France has committed itself to reducing its emissions by 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, it has, in recent years, regularly exceeded the ‘carbon budgets’ it had set itself.”

It also noted that President Emmanuel Macron’s government had, in an April decree, at the height of the first wave of Covid-19 infections, deferred much of the reduction effort beyond 2020.

Solar power stations in space – part 2

Credit: NASA

Re our recent article on the idea of space-based solar power stations, a new article at The Conversation tells us the European Space Agency is also looking at this. Another day, another distant green dream, as these extracts from the article suggest. But at least they’re openly admitting renewables alone will never cut the mustard, either in scale or reliability of supply.
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How solar power stations in orbit could become a reality in the coming decades.

Solar power stations in space could be the answer to our energy needs.
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Renewable energy technologies have developed drastically in recent years, with improved efficiency and lower cost. But one major barrier to their uptake is the fact that they don’t provide a constant supply of energy.

PM’s “green industrial revolution” plan hits the road — subsidies all round

Image credit: BBC

Of course the assumption behind most of this is that the climate needs ‘saving’ from the demonic trace gas CO2, according to failing climate models anyway. We’ll skip most of the BBC commentary and show the main points of the plan. The expressed aim is ‘to put the UK on track to meet its goal of net zero emissions by 2050’. No sign of the eye-watering costs, in this report at least.
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New cars and vans powered wholly by petrol and diesel will not be sold in the UK from 2030, Boris Johnson has said.

But some hybrids would still be allowed, he confirmed.

It is part of what the prime minister calls a “green industrial revolution” to tackle climate change and create jobs in industries such as nuclear.

Meet ‘The Centre for Climate Repair’

Fine summer weather [image credit: BBC]

This takes climate pretension to a new level. Bizarre.
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WHO WE ARE — The Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge is working in affiliation with Cambridge Zero at the University of Cambridge to safeguard our planet from the disastrous effects of global warming.

We are a cross-disciplinary research institution, aiming to develop and understand the solutions that will safeguard our planet from the disastrous consequences of global warming.
[Talkshop note: their repetition, not ours.]

UK: emission impossible?

Green dreamland

Futile obsession with the trace gas carbon dioxide looks likely to expose the UK government’s so-called climate policies as hopelessly unrealistic, soon enough. Net zero or not zero?
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The UK is on course to reduce its emissions by less than a fifth of what’s needed to meet interim climate change targets, according to data shared exclusively with Sky News.

The think tank Green Alliance says its analysis of current policies shows the longer-term goal of being net zero by 2050 is also in jeopardy.

The government is shortly expected to announce a ten point plan of action on climate change. But Green Alliance says even proposed policies including bringing forward the banning of sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars wouldn’t be enough to get the government to even half of its interim reduction target.

Sales of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars are currently due to end in 2040 though the government is considering bringing that forward to 2035 and green groups want them withdrawn by 2030.

Space-based solar power stations research launched by UK Space Agency and government

Credit: IEEE Spectrum

Does this by any chance suggest that wind and solar power may not quite be the wondrous energy future our leaders keep trying to hoodwink the public with? No word on costs so far.
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It is thought that energy could be beamed anywhere on the planet, save for the poles, according to the UK Space Agency.

From an idea first mooted in 1941, the UK has launched research into whether solar power in space could be beamed back to Earth as a sustainable energy source, reports Sky News.

The concept was first thought up by science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov; now the UK Space Agency and UK government are aiming to make the idea a reality.

Space-based solar power (SBSP) stations would capture the solar energy emitted by the sun that never makes it to Earth, and beam it back down using lasers to meet energy demands.