Europe asking Russia for more coal is set for disappointment

German coal: back to the future
[image credit: BBC]

What to do when you need reliable electricity generation *now*? Pay up, look big and burn fuel – if you can get it, and have something to burn it in. Renewables-obsessed governments are struggling to justify their blinkered ‘net zero’ policies now the energy chips are really down. All this with the COP26 climate talks looming.
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It’s not just extra natural gas that Europe’s struggling energy markets are finding tough to get from Russia, says Bloomberg (via MiningWeekly.com).

Power producers in the continent are being forced to ask Russia for more coal to ease an energy crunch with winter approaching and record-high gas prices denting profitability, according to officials at two Russian coal companies.

But they may be left stranded as any increase in exports from the country won’t be substantial, they said.

Finally a real crisis: shortage of carbon dioxide

The UK shut down cheap coal, refused to drill for its own gas, and failed to replace its old nuclear power stations then, when gas suddenly becomes expensive, is caught with its proverbial trousers down. So much for ‘world leading’ climate policies.
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As energy prices in Europe go through the roof, factories are beginning to shut down and food is disappearing from the shelves, say The Times & The GWPF.

Welcome to green Britain, offering a foretaste of what life will be like under Net Zero conditions – poorer, colder, hungrier – unless Government changes course.

Acute food shortages were feared last night after high gas prices forced most of Britain’s commercial production of carbon dioxide to shut down.

Emergency talks were being held between government officials and food producers, retailers and the energy industry with warnings of a “black swan event”, an extremely rare blow with unpredictable consequences.

The closure of two fertiliser plants in northern England and others in Europe has left the food and drink industry facing a shortage of carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of fertiliser manufacturing. The gas is critical to the production and transport of a range of products, from meat to bread, beer and fizzy drinks.

The meat industry estimates that businesses can carry on for less than two weeks before carbon dioxide stocks run out….

Full article here.

Germany’s flood disaster exposes folly of misbalanced Net Zero policies – The Global Warming Policy Forum

Credit: BBC

A meandering jet stream can lead to unusual weather conditions. Blaming ‘climate change’ (pick your own definition) is so vague as to be meaningless, but may serve to divert the spotlight away from political leaders.
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The Global Warming Policy Forum has called on the UK government to learn the key lesson from the German flood disaster and adopt policies that prioritise effective and relative low cost flood protection over massively expensive and ineffective renewable energy targets.

In recent days, meteorologists and extreme weather researchers have blamed a ‘monumental failure of Germany’s flood warning system’ for the death and devastation triggered by disastrous flooding.

Experts had warned the German government four days before the first floods about the high risk of flooding in the Rhine basin, but the government failed to implement flood protection measures that are, in any case historically underfunded and thus ineffective.

Dutch province unveils solar bicycle path, forgetting it’s not on the equator

Cycling is popular in the Netherlands [image credit: expatica.com]

There’s a reason why fixed solar panels should be, and usually are, angled at about 35-40 degrees in northern Europe. It’s called the optimal tilt angle. This cycle path with panels flat on the ground is so simple-minded it’s embarrassing, or ought to be.
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Authorities in a central Dutch province opened what they are billing as the world’s longest solar bicycle path Wednesday, mixing sustainable energy with emission-free travel, says TechXplore.

Boris Johnson’s ‘Green Revolution’ in chaos

Green dud [credit: Green Deal guide]

Bureaucracy is often slow and inefficient, maybe even more so where handing out public money – subsidies in this case – is involved. Who knew?
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England’s much-hyped £2bn green homes grant is in chaos, renewable energy installers say, with some owed tens of thousands of pounds and struggling to stay in business, reports The Guardian (via The GWPF).

Members of the public have been left waiting nearly four months, in some cases, to take advantage of the scheme to fit low carbon heating systems.

Some installers say customers are pulling out after losing faith in the green grants.

Boris Johnson touted the grants as one of the key programmes in his ten 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution.

Ten climate predictions for 2020 that went horribly wrong

Arctic sea ice [image credit: Geoscience Daily]

H/T The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

As ever, too much reliance on climate models is liable to lead to embarrassment and failure. But there’s always a supply of new or recycled scares to fall back on, preferably those with distant expiry dates to avoid loss of face.
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It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical, says PJ Media.

Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize.

Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020.

Wrong Again: 2020’s Failed Climate Doomsaying

Credit: nationalreview.com

We confidently predict more doom-laden claims, and more failures. Josh cartoon: GRETA THE DOOMSAYER here.
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2020 has been the wildest and most unpredictable year in the memory of most people.

But did the climate doom that was predicted to occur in or by 2020 materialize? — asks Steve Milloy @ JunkScience.com.

What follows are 10 predictions made for 2020 and what really happened.

As it turns out, climate doomsayers weren’t seeing so 20-20 when it came to 2020.

Link to JunkScience.com.

China has no intention to reduce fossil fuel use. Just the opposite.

New pipelines under construction between Russia and China.

A damning new report from GWPF outlines massive new energy projects being undertaken by the CCP which dwarf its figleaf ‘green energy’ enterprises, here’s a short excerpt, but everyone should download and read the full document.

China today relies on fossil fuels for 86% of its total primary energy consumption (58% from coal, 20% from petroleum and other liquids, and 8% from natural gas).28 Rather than curbing its appetite for fossil fuels, Beijing is voraciously seeking more. In the case of coal, China has aggressively relaxed regulations that restricted domestic coal production, seeking to rapidly raise production capacity. ‘In the first half of 2020 China approved 23 gigawatts-worth of new coal power projects, more than the previous two years combined,’ reported
AFP, citing Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based environmental NGO. The CCP approved 141 million tons of new annual coal mining capacity in the first half of 2019. In all of 2018, it approved 25 million tons.

A guessing game for climate data experienced sceptics.

I’m not writing anything in this post which will get it automatically flagged up to our blog hosts or anyone else. Look at the images and see what you think.

Figure 1. Incomplete teaser from the ONS, and my inductive reasoning.

Council ‘sorry’ as energy company collapses

This scheme trumpeted: “Since July 2018 all of the electricity we supply to our customers is 100% green*. Whichever tariff you take from us all of the electricity we provide is certified as being sourced from UK based wind and solar generators.”
But now comes the real cost – a loss of many millions of pounds incurred by local ratepayers as it all goes pear-shaped. If anyone is surprised, they shouldn’t be.
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The council leader admits selling the customer base will not make back the millions it invested, reports BBC News.

Robin Hood Energy (RHE) is shutting with the loss of 230 jobs despite millions poured into it by Nottingham City Council.

British Gas will take on its customer base of thousands of homes in England.

The council said the sale will not make up all its losses, which leaked documents suggest are £38.1 million.

California’s Blackout Warning

Solar power complex in California [USA. Gov – BLM – Bureau of Land Management]

How does it feel to be the canaries in the coal mine of the renewables stampede now being promoted far and wide by climate obsessives with a failing atmospheric theory?

H/T The GWPF
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Anti-fossil fuel mandates are leading to electricity shortages.

Electricity blackouts are awful at any time, but especially during an extreme heat wave and for reasons that are man-made, says The Wall Street Journal.

That’s what millions in California have been enduring in recent days, and their plight is a warning to the rest of America about the risks of Green New Deal policies.

The California Independent System Operator (Caiso), which manages the state’s power grid, declared a high-level emergency Friday and Saturday evenings and ordered utilities to reduce power usage.

California and most of the southwestern U.S. are experiencing a severe heat wave. But other states are managing to keep power flowing. Why can’t California?

Energy minister declares UK fracking dead.

Utterly misguided and spineless UK Govt. decision.

Britain’s electric car strategy is ‘doomed to failure’

Making the insanity obvious is one thing, but getting UK political leaders to take any notice is another matter altogether. Most of them won’t be in office anyway when their climate/energy policies run into the roadblock of reality. Renewables are totally inadequate for projected electricity demands, but nobody in power understands that, or they pretend they don’t.
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The UK Government’s push to electrify road transport is based on naivety, the undue influence of the Committee on Climate Change, and a lack of engineering expertise within Government, an academic has said. 

Professor Michael Kelly, the former chief scientific adviser to the Department for Communities and Local Government, issues the warning in a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

He warns the Government’s ambitions for EVs and electric heating in buildings will end in damaging failure.

Boris goes full speed ahead for Britain’s economic suicide

Apologies to Josh

Today, the UK government will commit to destroying the nation’s economy. It published this suicide note on its website.

The Prime Minister will today, Tuesday 4 February, launch the next UN climate conference COP26, joined by Sir David Attenborough and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at an event in central London.

At the event, he will set out the UK’s position as a world leader in the response to climate change, having made a legal commitment to achieve net zero emissions, and call all nations to strive towards this goal.

Biofuel sparks hundreds of farmer machinery repair complaints

What happened to testing, prior to making what looks like a disastrous change to working machinery in the name of climate ideology? Looks like the farmers are the testers.

The use of biofuel has sparked hundreds of complaints from farmers who claim it is forcing them into “unacceptable” costly machinery repairs, reports BBC News.

Adding biofuel – which is made from organic materials rather than fossil fuels – to diesel supplies is seen as one way of reducing carbon emissions from vehicles such as tractors.

But farmers say it has been clogging up filters and causing breakdowns.

NFU Scotland said more than 400 complaints have been made.

New Science Scandal: ‘Fatally Flawed Hurricane Paper Should Be Retracted’

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Looks like Pielke Jr. opened the trapdoor on that one. Who’s next for the slaughter of climate alarmist claptrap masquerading as science?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

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Earlier this week a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a team of authors led by Aslak Grinsted, a scientist who studies ice sheets at the University of Copenhagen, claimed that “the frequency of the very most damaging hurricanes has increased at a rate of 330% per century.”

The press release accompanying the paper announced that United States mainland “hurricanes are becoming bigger, stronger and more dangerous” and with the new study, “doubt has been eradicated.”

If true, the paper (which I’ll call G19, using its lead author’s initial and year of publication) would overturn decades of research and observations that have indicated over the past century or more, there are no upwards trends in U.S. hurricane landfalls and no upwards trends in the strongest storms at landfall. These conclusions has been reinforced by the assessments of…

View original post 1,072 more words

Ocasio-Cortez’s Tornado Tweet Versus Scientific Facts

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Another own goal by would-be climate crusaders.

PA Pundits - International

From the team at CFACT ~

During a recent tornado warning for Washington DC, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) issued a tweet claiming the tornado warning illustrated that “climate change is real y’all.” Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet revealed just how little she knows about climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez wrote in her tweet, “we DO know that tornadoes HAVE been changing. They are no longer being limited to the Great Plains, and are shifting to other regions of the country.”

If Ocasio-Cortez knew American history, she would know that tornadoes have never been “limited to the Great Plains.” If she knew her American history, she would have known that a tornado that touched down as part of an intense storm in 1814 prevented the British from doing worse damage to our Washington DC when the redcoats sacked our nation’s capital during the War of 1812. An excellent historical narrative published by The Vintage News observes…

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#Brexit blackmail: EU extorts UK taxpayers by withholding carbon creds from UK industry

Brussels strikes again. The EU commission has decided to withhold the free carbon credits it gives to member states’ industries from the UK ‘until a Brexit withdrawal agreement is ratified’.

A UK government which had any capable negotiators would respond in kind by withholding the much bigger amount in membership fees we are still paying to Brussels every month, despite taxpayers having voted to leave the EU almost three years ago.

Taxpaying voters will get an opportunity on May 23 to let our incompetent government and the Brussels mafia know that they now support the Brexit Party which seeks a mandate to take over negotiations with the EU and leave on WTO terms in the meantime.

‘My smart meter is driving me mad’

‘Smart’ meter [image credit: heartland.org]

The UK ‘smart’ meter roll-out fiasco rumbles on in its usual amateurish fashion. Pretending it has something to do with the climate is just window dressing.

Energy customers are under pressure to install smart meters, but many just don’t function properly, says BBC News.

There are government adverts on TV suggesting they are a small but important step to tackling climate change.

Meanwhile, companies are calling customers to ask them to switch, or telling them that the best deals are only available with a smart meter.

USGS: California wildfires emitted as much CO2 as an entire year’s worth of electricity for the state

California wildfire [image credit: NASA]

Buying electric cars, solar panels and the like isn’t going to make much of a dent in the ’emissions’ California likes to fret about, as long as current forestry practices – or lack of them – are allowed to continue.

According to data analyzed by the US Geological Survey (USGS), the 2018 wildfire season in California is estimated to have released emissions equivalent to roughly 68 million tons of carbon dioxide, reports Green Car Congress.

This number equates to about 15% of all California emissions, and it is on par with the annual emissions produced by generating enough electricity to power the entire state for a year.