Back to black: coal demand to return to its peak this year

Ferrybridge ‘C’ Power Station (1966–2016)
[image credit: Lynne Kirton / Wikipedia]

The estimated global figure is 8 billion tonnes. Under UK ‘net zero’ climate policy, the coal option will soon disappear completely. Then what, when the electricity supply going gets tough? Electricity demand is rising, not falling, and global coal use is expected to do the same.
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As countries are juggling between skyrocketing energy prices and reduced gas flows, it seems that many of them could turn to coal to secure power to keep the lights on in winter, says Energy Live News.

The latest report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) paints a grim picture of the current situation the international energy systems find themselves in.

The IEA’s Coal Market Update report forecasts that global coal demand will return to its record highs this year.

The agency estimates that global coal consumption will rise by 0.8% in 2022 to eight billion tonnes.

UK heatwave: Weather forecasters report unprecedented trolling

Might be related to them trying a bit too hard to make a meal of it? They could have chosen to stick to the role their job title suggests.
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Weather forecasters faced unprecedented levels of trolling during this month’s extreme heat in the UK, according to leading figures in the industry – says BBC News.

The BBC’s team received hundreds of abusive tweets or emails questioning their reports and telling them to “get a grip”, as temperatures hit 40C.

BBC meteorologist Matt Taylor said he had never experienced anything like it in nearly 25 years working in weather.

The Royal Meteorological Society condemned the trolling.

Cosmic Rays are Decreasing

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The article notes: ‘Climate scientists are engaged in a lively debate about whether or not cosmic rays affect cloud cover.’

Spaceweather.com

July 26, 2022: Cosmic rays in the atmosphere are rapidly subsiding. In the past year alone, radiation levels in the air high above California have plummeted more than 15%, according to regular launches of cosmic ray balloons by Spaceweather.com and Earth to Sky Calculus. The latest measurement on July 23, 2022, registered a 6 year low:

This development, while sudden, is not unexpected. Cosmic rays from deep space are repelled by solar activity; when one goes up, the other goes down. Since 2021, Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The onset of the new solar cycle has naturally led to a decrease in cosmic radiation reaching Earth.

To many readers this may sound counterintuitive. After all, don’t solar flares produce radiation? Yes, but most high-energy radiation doesn’t come from the sun; it comes from deep space.Every day galactic cosmic rays from distant supernova explosions…

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Next Prime Minister warned not to wreck UK shale gas opportunity yet again

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

If the UK needs the gas, relying on imports no longer makes sense – if it ever did. It’s not a climate argument, it’s a necessity argument.
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London, 28 July – Press release: Net Zero Watch has warned that the next Prime Minister will have to radically break with 12 years of failure by Conservative-led governments to develop the UK’s massive shale gas reserves.
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The campaign group welcomed the pledges by Tory leadership contenders Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to overturn Boris Johnson’s fracking ban if they succeed him, but warned that despite similar pledges by previous ministers, conservative-led governments had completely failed to get any shale gas out of the ground for the last 12 years.

Net Zero Watch has repeatedly called for the UK to accelerate the development of Britain’s massive and potentially game-changing shale gas resources.

‘Greenwashing’ power station given £2.4m in daily subsidies must ‘justify environmental claims’

Biomass on the move [image credit: Drax]

These allegations have been ongoing for years. ‘Renewable’ trees during a supposed climate emergency – how does that work? Maybe the end game is approaching, or more likely some fudge will emerge.
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A power station accused of “greenwashing” which is handed £2.4 million in government subsidies every day must justify its environmental claims, the OECD has said.

Drax’s claim that it generates “carbon neutral” electricity by burning wood is being examined over allegations that it misleads consumers in breach of guidelines set down by governments across the world, reports The Telegraph.

Fake Climate Emergency on Horizon

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No emergency in temperature trends, so where is it?

Science Matters

The editors of IBD explain at Issues and Insights Climate Emergency?  What a Crock.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Joe Biden did not declare a climate emergency last week, as many in his party urged him to do. One Democratic senator claimed that the changing climate required “bold, intense executive action” from the president. Another said Biden needed to move because “the climate crisis is a threat to national security.” But there’s no emergency. It’s a wholly manufactured charade.

Though he put off an executive action, Biden said last Wednesday that he has “a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger. The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.”

His non-COVID fever continued:

“Climate change is…

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Is Western European drought linked to La Niña?

Drought in Europe

Amid talk of ‘renewed focus on climate change’ (see below), we note similar drought conditions have happened before at times of La Niña. Two articles discussing the French drought refer to 1976, 2011 and 2022 as the three worst in recent history (similar to England). These were also years of significant spells of La Niña:
— 1975–1976 La Niña event
— The 2010–2012 La Niña event was one of the strongest on record
— La Niña Climate Cycle Could Last Into 2023, According to UN
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‘France struggles with drought over punishing summer of heat’ says Phys.org.

From farmers to fishermen, boat owners to ordinary households, communities across France are struggling with a severe drought that has seen an unprecedented number of regions affected by water restrictions this summer.

Like much of western Europe, the country is going through a punishing hot season of record temperatures and forest fires that have led to renewed focus on climate change.

Keep Your Nose Out, Kerry

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We can rest assured that ‘Net Zero’ climate dogma will never lay a glove on this globetrotting finger wagger.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

John Kerry rebuked over intervention in Tory leadership election

Press Release

London, 25 July – John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, has been rebuked for interfering in the Conservative leadership election.
Asked by the BBC to comment on Liz Truss’s pledge to put a moratorium on the green levies on energy bills, Kerry warned the candidates not to touch the Net Zero plan.
While he claimed he did not want to interfere in the choice of the UK’s next prime minister, he said he would “pointedly and adamantly” advise against any move to water down the commitments to CO2 reductions that were confirmed at last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Benny Peiser, the director of Net Zero Watch, said:
“John Kerry’s intervention in the Conservative Party’s leadership election exposes the utter hypocrisy of the Biden administration. Only a year ago President Biden criticised Russia…

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Wind Turbine Collapses: ‘Leaking Oil Everywhere!’

Example of product type used by the wind industry

So much for ‘keeping it in the ground’, as climate obsessives like to intone to anyone who will listen to their anti-oil rants.
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On Sunday, puzzled Swedish journalist and political commentator Peter Imanuelsen tweeted the news: “A wind power turbine just collapsed in Sweden”, says CNS News.

“People are being warned to keep their distance because…it is now leaking oil everywhere! “Wait, these “green” wind turbines use oil???”

What millions of UK households could be told to do to avoid blackouts this winter

More to come? [image credit: thecount.com]

The fruits of climate-obsessed Government energy policies, including dismantling the power station system in favour of part-time renewables, are becoming ever clearer. Needless to say, it doesn’t look good.
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Households could be asked to turn down their thermostats and switch off their lights under Government plans to avoid winter blackouts.

Emergency contingency plans for a gas or electricity supply shortage include public appeals to use less energy, The Telegraph can reveal.

What You Need To Know About Biden’s Climate ‘Emergency’

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If the climate changes, people have to adapt. Pretending there’s a way to turn the clock back to some imagined better conditions isn’t going to work.

PA Pundits International

By Katie Tubb ~

In a speech Wednesday in Massachusetts, President Joe Biden announced that he would use yet more executive action in a bid to push his radical climate agenda, despite recent checks on unilateral presidential action by Congress and the Supreme Court.

The administration is aiming to overhaul the energy sector and the American economy to achieve the costly and unrealistic objectives of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reaching economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.

In remarks Wednesday at the site of a former power station in Somerset, Massachusetts, President Joe Biden preaches to a small gathering of the converted on the purported “clear and present danger” of climate change. His audience comprised Cabinet officials and Democratic members of the House and Senate. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Biden stopped short of invoking national emergency powers to achieve his climate agenda as rumored, while promising more regulatory…

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Net Zero Policy Already Costing UK Households Over £2,000 A Year

Offshore wind farm [image credit: Wikipedia]

UK governments are legally forced to follow the Climate Change Act and even then they’re coming up short, according to a High Court verdict this week. How long can this climate-induced madness go on?
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A new analysis by Net Zero Watch reveals that Net Zero policies are already costing every household over £2,000 ($2,400) per year, says Climate Change Dispatch.

Spending programs and the Emissions Trading Scheme together cost around £300 ($360), while green levies – mostly subsidies to renewables – are adding another £350 ($420).

Renewable energy also imposes a range of indirect costs as businesses pass on their costs to consumers, which may add up to another £600 ($719).

Finally, there is a significant cost due to the constraints put on fossil fuel extraction in the UK.

Climate models: Wildfire-smoke observations may help ‘fill gap’ in estimating soot’s role, researchers hope

California wildfire [image credit: NASA]

Another day, another topic of model uncertainty. ‘Refining’ an admitted high level of uncertainty is an odd concept, but researchers assert the issue will be ‘cleared up’. However, their belief in ‘potent climate-warming agents’ doesn’t inspire confidence.
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New research refining the amount of sunlight absorbed by black carbon in smoke from wildfires will help clear up a long-time weak spot in earth system models, enabling more accurate forecasting of global climate change, says Phys.org.

“Black carbon or soot is the next most potent climate-warming agent after CO2 and methane, despite a short lifetime of weeks, but its impact in climate models is still highly uncertain,” said James Lee, a climate researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and corresponding author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters on light absorption by wildfire smoke. “Our research will clear up that uncertainty.”

The Los Alamos research resolves a long-time disconnect between the observations of the amount of light absorbed by black carbon in smoke and the amount predicted by models, given how black carbon is mixed with other material such as condensed organic aerosols that are present in plumes.

Future temperature growth in Asia is being overestimated by between 3.4% and 11.6%, say researchers

Monsoon region

A familiar story of inaccurate climate models. The overestimates would undermine various predictions.
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Global climate tools being used to predict future temperature rises and rainfall across Asia are significantly overestimating their potential growth and impact, according to new research.

A study published in Nature Communications suggests predictions by the World Climate Research Program’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) are overestimating future temperature growth by between 3.4% and 11.6%, says Phys.org.

Based on revised calculations, an international team of researchers say this could result in the rate of snow cover loss in Asia, notably in the Himalayas, being between 10.5% and 40.2% lower than previously predicted.

As well as the physical effects on the landscape, this, they add, could have significant knock-on effects on both predicted future climate warming and water availability in Asia.

UK government grants consent for Sizewell C nuclear power station

Existing Sizewell B nuclear power station

The usual climate/energy malcontents don’t like it, but there’s not much they do like that anyone who values reliability of supply, i.e. most of the public, could or should have confidence in. The main question is: how many years will it be before any electricity is generated from it, assuming nobody pulls the rug away?
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Sizewell C has moved a step closer to starting construction after the Government today gave planning consent for the new power station in Suffolk, says Energy Live News.

Just a few days ago, the UK’s nuclear regulator said the licence application for the proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk met almost all requirements.

The Development Consent Order application was submitted in May 2020 and sets out the range of measures the project will take to mitigate the effects of construction and maximise the benefits for local communities.

COP26 president Alok Sharma threatens to quit if new PM ditches net zero commitment

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

COP26 is over, in case anyone hasn’t noticed. “Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously,” Alok Sharma says. The real issue is that Britain’s tiny contribution to the 0.04% portion of the atmosphere that is carbon dioxide amounts to much ado about nothing. The majority of that 0.04% is naturally caused anyway, and most so-called greenhouse gas is water vapour. What is all the fuss supposed to be about?
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Alok Sharma, who led last year’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, has threatened to quit if the new prime minister ditches the current commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, reports Sky News.

The cabinet minister said a failure to follow the policy backed by Boris Johnson would cause “incredible damage” to the UK’s international reputation.

Mr Sharma also accused some of the candidates in the Tory leadership contest of being “lukewarm” on net zero.

They’re Paneling Paradise To Put Up Solar – A Lot

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Governments insist that citizens should obsess about the harmless and beneficial trace gas carbon dioxide. What happens to the waste products when the vast new acreages of solar panels expire?

PA Pundits International

From the team at CFACT ~

By Steve Miller:

The pathway to a green future involves taking millions of acres of pristine wilderness and turning them into fields of windmills and hot expanses of glistening panels.

The Biden Administration’s goal of supplying 40% of the nation’s energy from the sun by 2035 means covering millions of acres of forest and desert habitat with vast solar panel installations fenced off like prisons. It would require 8,800 square miles of land, or 5.6 million acres, to generate that power (leaving out small installations on buildings and the like) — about the size of Rhode Island and Massachusetts combined.

But the push to convert that land from pastoral to energy-productive is galvanizing a new environmental movement, one led by citizen groups and small non-profits rather than the monied green interests arrayed against them — ones ironically accustomed to casting the fossil fuel…

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EMIT instrument will help researchers model climate effects of dust

Saharan dust storm [image credit: BBC]

As a recent paper noted: ‘a comprehensive understanding of the global dust cycle and its climatic and environmental impacts has significant scientific and practical implications. Our current knowledge about dust aerosols is still limited.’
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A new instrument headed to the International Space Station (ISS) will help researchers learn how dust storms heat or cool the planet, says Phys.org.

NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission, which launched today, will greatly broaden scientists’ view of areas affected by mineral dust.

“Currently, the dust impacts of climate change are based on about 5,000 samples of soil for the entire Earth. EMIT will collect more than 1 billion usable measurements for the arid regions of the world,” said Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Roger Clark, a Co-Investigator on the EMIT mission.

Climate mania: When will the UK heatwave peak and how hot will it get?

Warm day in London

People in many parts of the world must be wondering what all the fuss is about, but Brits like to discuss their ever-changeable weather now and again…and again. Of course there’s now the added element of wild panic-mongering (see below) from the usual climate-obsessed suspects like the Met Office, trying to blame humans for natural events plus all the rest of their tedious hype. We’ve had hot days before, and some like to pay to find hotter ones on their travels, so let’s dial back on the shrill alarmism.
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The Met Office has issued its first red warning for extreme heat, warning of a “potentially very serious situation” in parts of England, says ITV News.

The UK Health Security Agency has increased its heat health warning from level three to level four – a “national emergency.”

Level four is reached only when a heatwave is “so severe and/or prolonged that its effects extend outside the health and social care system”, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

Illness and death may occur even among the fit and healthy, and “not just in high-risk groups.”

Friends of Science: Germany Teeters on the Brink of Energy Disaster – Global Food Crisis Looms

CALGARY, ALBERTA (PRWEB) JULY 14, 2022

The Financial Post of July 09, 2022, reported that Canada will release a sanctioned, overhauled gas turbine to Germany, for use in Russia’s Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, hopefully preventing a further collapse of Germany’s economy, says Friends of Science. Critics denounced the move as conflicting with Canada’s “Stand with Ukraine” policy. According to Canada’s international trade website: “Germany, with the largest economy in the EU and the fourth largest in the world … Germany is Canada’s largest export market in the EU…with two-way merchandise trade totaling $25.8 billion in 2021.”

Germany is heavily reliant on natural gas from Russia. DW reported on July 11, 2022, that Germany was preparing for possible total Russian gas cut-off which would mean economic collapse and social strife due to rationing of low gas reserves and a cold winter ahead.

EChemi reported in April 2022, Germany chemical giant BASF warned that it may have to shut down production: “there is no substitute for natural gas as a raw material or energy source (in Germany), and a shortage of natural gas will result in it not having enough energy for chemical production and lack of key raw materials for manufacturing products.” Many BASF products are familiar and important to the daily life of millions of people worldwide. About 39,000 people work at BASF’s Ludwigschafen chemical processing complex in Germany.

EU energy geopolitics expert Samuel Furfari explains in his July 12, 2022, Atlantico article, “Towards a gas cut: the moment of truth on our dependence on hydrocarbons has come,” oil and gas provide the ‘horse-power’ to make large scale food production possible, but they are also the source of fertilizer. Skyrocketing fertilizer costs and blocked wheat exports from Ukraine will create food shortages and famine.