Fossil fuel groups ‘destroying’ climate talks, say NGOs

Climate conference transport

Where’s the logic? Nearly all these folk arrived in Madrid thanks to fossil fuels. They accepted sponsorship – without which there wouldn’t be a conference – from companies that deal in fossil fuels. But now they want to whine about who and what they’re depending on.

Oil and gas groups were accused Saturday of seeking to influence climate talks in Madrid by paying millions in sponsorship and sending dozens of lobbyists to delay what scientists say is a necessary and rapid cut in fossil fuel use.

A day after tens of thousands marched in the Spanish capital demanding climate action, seven environmental groups raised concerns to AFP over the role of fossil fuel representatives at the COP25 summit, reports Phys.org.

What exactly is this ‘action on climate change’ supposed to look like?

Image credit: consumerreports.org

Anyone can ‘demand action’ but what is being demanded? A quick look at some logistics: every wind turbine uses a lot of energy-intensive concrete and steel in its manufacture. Both turbines and solar panels require industrial-scale mining of rare earth materials, plus coal-burning for steel. Unthinkably vast quantities of both wind and solar at enormous expense would be needed to make even a modest dent in the dominance of coal, oil and gas in world energy consumption. The assumed benefit to the climate is debatable to say the least. Where is the sanity in all this?

For years, Black Friday has been sold as a holiday day for the consumer, says TIME (via Yahoo News).

In 2018, Black Friday resulted in $6.22 billion in online sales alone, per CNBC. This year, climate activists wants people to stop and reconsider such rampant consumption.

No Plan B for Planet A

.
.
Reality check for wide-eyed climate obsessives: the logistics of their so-called plan can never work.

PA Pundits - International

By Paul Driessen ~

Environmentalists and Green New Deal proponents like to say we must take care of the Earth, because “There is no Planet B.” Above all, they insist, we must eliminate fossil fuels, which they say are causing climate change worse than the all-natural ice ages, Medieval Warm Period or anything else in history.

Their Plan A is simple: No fossil fuels. Keep them in the ground. More than a few Democrat presidential aspirants have said they would begin implementing that diktat their very first day in the White House.

Their Plan B is more complex: Replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, biofuel and battery power – their supposedly renewable, sustainable alternatives to oil, gas and coal. Apparently by waving a magic wand.

We don’t have a Planet B. And they don’t really have a Plan B. They just assume and expect that this monumental transformation will simply

View original post 1,230 more words

Summer Blackouts Beckon: Australia’s Renewable Energy Debacle Won’t Be Fixed with Batteries

.
.
The greenblob will have to conjure up some other magic solution to their chronic power intermittency problems, if they hope to keep their ‘zero carbon’ myth going for a bit longer.

STOP THESE THINGS

Almost as soon as Joe Public worked out that wind and solar can never work, RE rent seekers started babbling about giant batteries saving the day.

STT will keep smashing the line about giant batteries overcoming the chaotic delivery of wind and solar, while RE zealots keep pushing it.

The pitch from RE zealots is that the solution to the chaos delivered by wind and solar is giant lithium-ion batteries, of the kind peddled by Elon Musk.

The reefer-smoking, Californian carpetbagger managed to offload one unit in wind power obsessed, South Australia, collecting $150 million for a battery that would power SA for all of 4 minutes.

Bill Gates has called the idea complete and utter nonsense: Bill Gates Slams Unreliable Wind & Solar: ‘Let’s Quit Jerking Around With Renewables & Batteries’

Apply a little maths, physics and economics and it’s pretty clear that the mega-battery myth is just…

View original post 1,311 more words

A Little Useful Basic Information from Real Scientists

.
.
The world should have had enough of tin-pot self-important climate botherers by now. Let’s move on!

American Elephants

This is an older video, but a very good one. Dr. Richard Lindzen is one of our most respected scientists, and this simple video does a good job of clarifying the situation.

Here’s another (also older) from”Conversations that Matter” with Dr. William Happer, from Princeton University.

Most of the warming, rise of the oceans, all the stuff you hear so much panic about is measured in millimeters. If you don’t have a ruler that includes millimeters look it up. And as to warming:

The world’s 76 best Tide gauges show a mean 0.34 mm per year rise. “negligible acceleration”. There is no sign of climate models predicting sharply warming acceleration or sea level rise.

There are now around 31 different climate computer programs (the serious ones). They put in what we know, and what we think maybe we know, and a bunch of intelligent guesses. And they especially don’t know…

View original post 174 more words

The Excommunication of Susan Crockford

.
.
The climate witch hunt against academics who don’t conform to the prescribed ideas continues.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t AC Osborn

Donna Laframboise brings shameful news from the University of Victoria:

Like geologist BobCarter before her, Susan Crockford has been stripped of her Adjunct Professor status by a university with which she has a long history. Why? Because she promotes facts and eschews climate activism.

In May, Canada’s University of Victoria (UVic) advised Crockford that an internal committee had voted to end her 15-year stint as an Adjunct Professor. Having undergone hip surgery in the interim, only now is she going public.

When the matter was last considered, the committee voted unanimously in her favour. What changed? Talks she was invited to give to schools apparently “generated concern among parents regarding balance.” That concern was “shared with various levels of the university,” according to an April 2017 e-mail from Ann Stahl, then chair of the Anthropology Department.

These vague accusations, leveled by an…

View original post 181 more words

The U.N. is running out of money to pay it’s 40,000 bureaucrats with.

Facing a massive hole in its budget, the United Nations is implementing “emergency measures” to avoid missing payroll and other obligations before the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, UN bosses are demanding that taxpayers in America and other nations hand over more money now or face global catastrophe. Even UN officials and apologists, though, have blasted the “bloated” organization for squandering massive amounts of money on everything from luxurious air travel and fancy hotels to globalist propaganda promoting its own agenda. Trump reacted to the whining by calling on the UN to go look for money elsewhere.

The Climate Cult

.
.
At least carbon dioxide can take comfort from its popularity in real greenhouses, as opposed to alarm-filled imaginary ones.

PA Pundits - International

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Burt Prelutsky ~

It is a phenomenon of modern life that as membership in the old established religions wane, cults continue to sprout up like toadstools. Most of them have a very limited number of adherents and unless 75 people are killed at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, or 900 are killed or commit suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, we don’t hear about cult leaders like David Koresh or Jim Jones.

Occasionally, a smaller cult manages to make the news when they commit mass suicide in order to board a spaceship that will take them to Cloud Cuckooland.

But when it comes to sheer numbers and influence, there’s nothing to match the doomsday cult that has sprung up in the wake of Al Gore’s warning us about the imminent threat of global extinction. What makes the longevity of…

View original post 645 more words

Green Scottish developments may no longer need planning permission

Image credit: BBC Scotland

Throwing out longstanding checks and balances that might stand in the way of the delusional goal of ‘tackling’ climate change, can hardly be called progress.

New developments that help reduce emissions and tackle climate change could no longer need planning permission under draft proposals considered by the Scottish Government, reports Energy Live News.

Projects that could automatically get the go-ahead in Scotland include local renewable energy and electric vehicle (EV) charging points.

More Buckets Of Icy Cold Energy Reality

.
.
When are climate alarmists going to get real about their preferred energy sources? Trying to scale up to replace all those they don’t like runs into severe resource problems quite quickly, as pointed out here.

PA Pundits - International

By Paul Driessen ~

The full-court press is on for climate chaos disaster and renewable energy salvation. CNN recently hosted a seven-hour climate event for Democrat presidential aspirants. Every day brings more gloom-and-doom stories about absurd, often taxpayer-funded pseudo-scientific reports on yet another natural event or supposed calamity that alarmists insist is due to fossil fuels that provide 80% of US and global energy.

MSNBC just hosted another two-day Democrat presidential candidates climate forum at Georgetown University – where I spoke at a contrarian program. Meanwhile, a big Climate March took place in New York City, while protesters tried to block Washington, DC streets. They were all kicking off the UN’s “Global Climate Week” in NYC, featuring a Youth Climate Summit and UN General Assembly event where world leaders will demand “global action” to supposedly stop the supposed climate crisis.

Their standard solution is biofuel, solar, wind…

View original post 1,219 more words

Green suicide: Climate hysteria is killing German car industry

VW ID. model

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Let’s see what slice of the German car market goes to electric cars in the next few years. If most people don’t want them due to cost, range, battery life or whatever, where would that leave the manufacturers – and the politicians, with their beloved so-called ‘climate protection’ policies and arbitrary ’emissions’ targets? In trouble, surely.

Frankfurt’s biennial International Auto Show (IAA) opens its doors to the public Thursday, but major foreign carmakers are staying away while climate demonstrators march outside — forming a microcosm of the industry’s woes, says AFP.

“There have never been so many cancellations by carmakers,” said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the Centre for Automotive Research (CAR).

Merkel’s Madness: €7,6 trillion For Germany’s climate project

German Chancellor Merkel surveys an offshore wind site [image credit: evwind.es]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

Germany looks set to win the title of biggest punter in the climate gambling game. Believing in failing climate models and alarmist propaganda can lead to some amazingly poor political decisions, but this one surely takes the cake for its extravagance.

Angela Merkel has called for a further tightening of Germany’s climate target – the nation should become CO2-neutral. By 2035, the costs will be twice of Germany’s economic output of a whole year.

For Angela Merkel, these are just a few words: “We want to be climate neutral by 2050”,
say Fritz Vahrenholt & Roland Tichy.

In the devotional mood at the Protestant Church Congress in Dortmund, where the Chancellor spoke these words, the faithful applauded her. No wonder: After all, the former investigative journalist Hans Leyendecker had announced ex cathedra – as president of the Kirchentag: “Anyone who does not acknowledge that climate change is man-made has no place at the Kirchentag.”

It is no longer a question of scientific debate and research, but of a new dogma of faith – who would dare to have any doubts if his name were not Galileo Galilei?

Australia facing energy reliability challenges says report

Power lines in Victoria, Australia [credit: Wikipedia]

The long-term consequences of exchanging on-demand for unpredictable power generation are not hard to figure out. But political leaders in some countries prefer to ignore such issues, in favour of a questionable ideology that guarantees problems in their increasingly unreliable electricity systems.

A report from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is a stark reminder of the reliability challenges facing the country’s National Electricity Market (NEM), says PEI.

The Andrews Labour government has been accused of failing to properly replace ageing infrastructure which has created unnecessary risk to the affordability and reliability of the NEM.

Former National Grid director says Britain should impose limits on new wind and solar farms to avoid blackouts

Image credit: thecount.com

H/T The GWPF / The Sunday Telegraph

Is this really the main problem? On a windless or low-wind winter evening shortly after dark, little output can be expected from wind – and none from solar – sources. This is where the power cuts seem most likely to happen due to demand exceeding supply, if too much ‘traditional’ power generation (coal, gas, nuclear) is closed down in favour of so-called renewables, which may need renewing every 15-20 years or so. Blind pursuit of misguided climate-related ideologies ignores, or tries to play down, these issues.

Ministers should impose limits on the construction of new wind and solar farms to help avoid a nationwide blackout, according to a former director of National Grid.

Colin Gibson, who was power network director of Britain’s electricity system, claimed that some existing turbines and solar panels may have to be disconnected, and new developments restricted, to “secure” the system after major power cuts earlier this month.

In an analysis co-written by Dr Capell Aris, a former grid engineer, Mr Gibson states that the system failure revealed several “serious problems” with the operation of the national electricity network, which require an “immediate, independent, expert review”.

Their intervention comes amid a government inquiry into the outage, which occurred after the Little Barford gas-fired power station in Cambridgeshire and a major wind farm off the Yorkshire coast both temporarily stopped producing electricity.

According to the Financial Times, a provisional report by National Grid suggested that the wind farm may have tripped offline seconds before the Little Barford power station.

The blackout affected a million people in London and the South East, the Midlands, the South West, Yorkshire, the North East, Cornwall and Wales.

National Grid, the firm that operates the country’s power network, has insisted that unpredictable wind power generation was not to blame.

Full article here.

Green Germany risks running out of power

Residential solar panels in Germany.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Sideka Solartechnik

The German energy crunch looms in the next few years, not unlike some other over-committed renewables enthusiasts, for example Britain. European countries don’t seem to see or admit the potential problem of relying on each other for imports. Somebody has to have an excess of power for that to work, but as more countries favour renewables over power stations the availability of on-demand electricity must inevitably decline.

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany, a poster child for renewable energy, is renouncing nuclear and coal.

The problem is, say many power producers and grid operators, it may struggle to keep the lights on.

The country, the biggest electricity market in the European Union, is abandoning nuclear power by 2022 due to safety concerns compounded by the Fukushima disaster and phasing out coal plants over the next 19 years to combat climate change.

In the next three years alone conventional energy capacity is expected to fall by a fifth, leaving it short of the country’s peak power demand.

UK commits to ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050

Spurious virtue signalling trumps economics and even sanity in UK politics it seems. Belief in the empty box that is man-made climate change will be a massive and futile financial burden to the public. Our leaders are so confused, or keen to confuse everyone else, that they even equate the vital trace gas carbon dioxide with pollution.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the UK will be cut to almost zero by 2050, under the terms of a new government plan to tackle climate change, reports BBC News.

Prime Minister Theresa May said reducing pollution would also benefit public health and cut NHS costs.

Britain is the first major nation to propose this target – and it has been widely praised by green groups.

But some say the phase-out is too late to protect the climate, and others fear that the task is impossible.

UK Says 100% Renewables Won’t Work

.
.
We already knew this, but UK public policy in energy matters tends to prefer ideology to reality.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

A lot of countries (as well as many U.S. states and utilities) are announcing so-called zero-carbon plans, typically with a target year around 2050. These are often reported as calling for 100% renewable energy, which is wrong.

There is a difference between zero-carbon and 100% renewables, but this is often hidden and unclear. In the new UK plan it is still hidden, but once found it is very clear. Renewables provide just 57% of the energy, which is a lot less than 100%. Perhaps most surprising is that nuclear might provide as much as 38% of the energy!

By way of introduction, the plan comes from the government’s own Committee on Climate Change (CCC), in a report titled “Net-Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming.” The CCC is the UK’s top climate action planning group.

The surprising numbers occur in…

View original post 574 more words

Climate change ‘may curb growth in UK flying’

Choking off demand by restricting supply of flights would not be exactly popular with either airlines or would-be passengers. So who is it supposed to be popular with, other than the usual climate-obsessed minority who gladly swallow all the propaganda fed to them? People who want to travel will probably find a way, whether the government or anyone else likes it or not.

Concerns over climate change might restrict the growth of flying in the UK, the government has admitted.

The advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recently said the UK’s planned increase in aviation would need to be curbed to restrict CO2, says BBC News.

Now a senior civil servant has told a green group that means ministers may have to review aviation strategy.

The Cult of Greta Thunberg

Image Credit: Anon twitter account

Partial reblog as Brendan O’Neill at Spiked Online gets stuck into the enviro-mentalists.

It actually makes sense that Ms Thunberg – a wildly celebrated 16-year-old Swede who founded the climate-strike movement for schoolkids – should sound cultish. Because climate-change alarmism is becoming ever stranger, borderline religious, obsessed with doomsday prophecies. Consider Extinction Rebellion, the latest manifestation of the upper-middle classes’ contempt for industrialisation and progress. It is at times indistinguishable from old fundamentalist movements that warned mankind of the coming End of Days. I followed Extinction Rebellion from Parliament Square to Marble Arch yesterday and what I witnessed was a public display of millenarian fear and bourgeois depression. People did dances of death and waved placards warning of the heat-death of the planet. It felt deeply unnerving.

Burning Trees Is a Multi-Billion £ Industry

.
.

No let-up in sight in the ongoing biomass disaster.

sunshine hours

Burning trees produces more CO2 than coal. So if you are in the UK and your energy bill makes you want to cry, just remember it’s green!

A surcharge on UK energy bills is funding subsidies for biomass electricity generation that is making climate change worse, polluting communities, destroying forests and harming wildlife.

In 2017, the UK Government granted around £1 billion in renewable subsidies to power stations – including Drax Power Station in Yorkshire – to burn millions of tonnes of wood for electricity.

Drax alone received £729 million – around £2 million per day – in subsidies to burn wood pellets and is now the world’s largest biomass burner.

Biodiversity hotspots

Despite claims by the biomass industry that they mostly burn “low-grade wood residues”, US conservation NGOs have proven that a significant proportion of wood pellets for Drax and other UK power stations comes from the clearcutting of whole trees…

View original post 298 more words