Europe’s missing climate marches – replaced by tractor convoys?

Climate alarmists complain their manufactured hysteria pot is cooling down, as protest focus has switched to other issues and/or boredom set in as the novelty wore off. Instead the victims of dogmatic net zero diktats, such as farmers, drive onto the streets of EU capitals to air their grievances. Is a return to political reality anywhere in sight?
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Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, Europe was rocked by massive climate marches, says Euractiv.

But as the 2024 elections approach, the streets remain silent.

As a series of climate marches swept across Europe in spring 2019, Brussels was no exception. At the movement’s peak, 70,000 people massed in the EU quarter to loudly demand greater climate action.

Global AI Data Centers Will Consume Huge Amounts of Fresh Water — JPMorgan report

Modern technology is once again in the dock as a resource monster, going totally against the grain for net-zero obsessed climate worriers who look to choke off energy demand at every turn. Data centre issues over local water and power supplies have been widely reported e.g. here at the Talkshop, and here.
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Summary:
— While energy consumption of data centers steal the headlines, the water-intensive nature of their operations is overlooked.

— Bluefield research: water consumption by global data centers (including on-site cooling and off-site power generation) has grown 6% annually from 2017 to 2022.

— Immense water demand from data centers in areas where water resources are scarce could spark “increased competition can strain water availability, even causing data center closures.”
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Wall Street banks are in a frenzy over “The Next AI Trade,” piling into the ‘Powering up America’ investment themes, whether that’s power grid companies, commodities, such as copper, gold, silver, and uranium, and artificial intelligence chipmakers, to accommodate the explosion of generative artificial intelligence data centers anticipated nationwide through the end of the decade and beyond, says ZeroHedge (via OilPrice.com).

Electric cars ‘twice as lethal for pedestrians as petrol or diesel’ – UK study

It seems electric cars just aren’t loud enough for public safety, compared to combustion-engined models. Predictably, EV drivers must expect later pedestrian reaction to their approach.
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Electric cars kill pedestrians at double the rate of petrol or diesel vehicles, a study in a BMJ journal has found.

Experts said that electric or hybrid cars were twice as likely to be involved in a road accident with a bystander than a petrol or diesel car over the same distance, reports The Telegraph.

The researchers suggested the vehicles’ quieter engines were a significant factor in higher fatality rates and called on the Government to mitigate the risks as it phases out petrol and diesel cars in pursuit of net zero.

China develops revolutionary electric car battery that can charge in 10 minutes

If true, the rest of the EV scene looks obsolete already. Will other countries find themselves rolling out the red carpet for Chinese cars as their own motor industries struggle to survive?
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China has developed a revolutionary car battery that can charge in just 10 minutes and power a car for hundreds of miles before it needs to be plugged in, reports The Telegraph.

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) has hailed “remarkable” developments in chemistry that have allowed China to develop new batteries that pack far more energy than existing technologies.

The IEA highlighted EV batteries capable of travelling 250 miles without a recharge. Newer versions announced since the report was written can manage 600 miles.

Russia finds vast oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory – what happens next?

Report: ‘Junior minister David Rutley last week told the EAC that his department had decided to trust Russian assurances it was just conducting scientific research.’ However, ‘reserves 10 times the North Sea’s output’ could be tempting – but not to most UK politicians, who prefer to import anyone else’s oil and gas in order to pose as climate friendly or something, while the government loses another court battle over its self-imposed net zero targets.
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Russia has found vast oil and gas reserves in the Antarctic, much of it in areas claimed by the UK, reports The Telegraph.

The surveys are a prelude to bringing in drilling rigs to exploit the pristine region for fossil fuels, MPs have warned.

Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.

Blow for climate worriers as banks consider renewable energy to be a riskier investment than fossil fuels

The article here takes the climate alarm view, as usual with this source, and concludes that ‘risk assessments used by lenders are a boon for the oil and gas industry’. Oh dear! Maybe the fact that oil and gas are still in huge demand and tend to generate large profits, while renewables are expensive and require large subsidies, has something to do with it?
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The financial sector is among the world’s most heavily regulated industries – and for good reason, says The Conversation.

Financial rules, which force banks to hold capital in reserve when making riskier investments, are designed to prevent financial crises. Other financial regulations, such as accounting rules, aim to provide investors with a credible valuation of their financial assets.

However, new research I conducted with my colleagues shows that some of these rules may have unintended consequences for the low-carbon transition.

Battle of the skies as airlines fight over impact of contrails on the climate

This report summary says ‘Vapour trails conundrum resurfaces’. Cloud formation plays an uncertain part in the debate, for example. An experiment using AI found that real time route selection could play a part in reducing the supposed ’emissions’ problem. Proposed financial penalties for airlines are inevitably resisted, but they’re up against net zero climate obsession.
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Airlines are usually rather good at presenting a united face to the world, particularly when it comes to lobbying global policymakers, says The Telegraph.

But a recent move by the EU to clampdown on so-called contrails, the vapour that spews from an aircraft’s jet engines in a thin cloud-like formation, has set carriers at each other’s throats.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which counts most of the world’s flag-carriers among its members, has lobbied Brussels to limit the mandatory monitoring of contrails to only flights within the bloc, in an effort to ease the burden of data collection.

But it has stoked the ire of low-cost operators including EasyJet and Ryanair.

UK wind power constraint payments cost £920 million in 2023 – and rising

Analysts from an energy storage specialist say £920 million annual cost of ‘curtailment’ could be cut 80% by using existing technologies like battery storage more effectively. But that would obviously require a lot of expensive batteries, and gas power stations could easily do the job on a much more extensive scale. Such is the state of the UK electricity grid thanks to net zero climate obsessions and intermittent wind power dotted all over the place, especially in areas remote from population centres – i.e. the opposite of where that power is most needed.
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Grid capacity constraints added nearly £1 billion of ‘curtailment’ costs to electricity bills for homes and businesses in 2023 as abundant energy from wind farms was unable to be transmitted to areas of demand, says Field Energy.

The majority of this cost was down to a single pinch point in the UK’s electricity grid on the Scottish/English border called the B6 boundary.

Analysis by energy storage developer and operator Field estimates this boundary alone could cause up to £2.2 billion of curtailment costs by 2030 as the UK’s curtailment problem escalates. Overall UK curtailment costs could reach £3.5 billion by that date.

Power-hungry AI problem for climate policymakers

How AI Is Outsmarting Green Energy, Zero Carbon Fantasies

– – – Closing thermal power stations, and insisting on renewables instead in the name of climate obsessions, leads to reductions in reliable electricity supply. But the rise of data centres and AI increases the need for that reliable supply. Somebody has to lose out.

Is Net Zero a poisoned chalice for governments?

The American title of the article here is ‘Europeans Ditch Net Zero, While Biden Clings To It’. Maybe an exaggeration as nobody has tried to ditch it entirely, even if some policy targets have been watered down, re-scheduled or even dropped (possibly). But the unreality of it all is at least beginning to make itself felt, as governments try desperately to pretend it’s all a great idea that just needs a few tweaks here and there, while ever more of their citizens feel the pain of it all.
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You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than Americans do, says the Wall Street Journal (via Climate Change Dispatch.

Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.

The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister.

That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy.

Electricity barrier: net zero climate policy means the UK housing crisis is getting worse

If there isn’t enough power for the new homes, where’s the power for all the soon-to-be mandatory electric vehicles supposed to come from? Net zero policy by climate obsessives is busy degrading the entire power grid to an increasingly part-time system. This is just one of the knock-on effects.
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Our inadequate electricity network is stopping the building of thousands of new homes. And the necessary move to low-carbon heating and cars is only increasing demand, says The Guardian.

Oxford has a severe housing problem. With house prices 12 times the average salary, it has become one of the least affordable cities in the country. Its council house waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 households, with many having to live in temporary accommodation.

An obvious solution is to build more homes, but those trying to do this face a big barrier: electricity.

UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans – as usual

Time for yet another revised ‘net zero emissions’ plan. Whether any country that used to depend largely on fuel-burning power stations for electricity can meet the demands of its own time-limited climate plans/targets is open to question. The BBC report once again wheels out the old climate propaganda con trick of pretending that sunset shadow effects are scary pollution clouds in its report image.
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The government has been defeated in court – for a second time – for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, reports BBC News.

Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government’s climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.

The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.

In response the government defended its record on climate action.

Britain must spend £30bn to strip CO2 from atmosphere and hit net zero, experts warn

This ‘essential’ expense would likely go the way of HS2 and double or triple in real cost, with at least some costs continuing well after the target date. Absurd is too weak a word to describe this fear of a harmless trace gas essential to nature. CO2 is not pollution.
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Britain must invest [sic] £30bn in a network of massive air cleansing systems designed to strip CO2 from the atmosphere if it is to reach net zero, a government-funded report has warned.

The “direct air carbon capture systems” would remove up to 48 million tonnes of CO2 from the air each year and then pump it into disused oil and gas reservoirs under the North Sea or Irish Sea, says The Telegraph.

Without such a scheme the UK will never reach its target of net zero emissions by 2050, according to the report by Energy Systems Catapult, a government-funded body that promotes innovation.

The UK’s Climate Change Act ‘faces a stress test’

So says an ardent fan of the idea of human-caused weather variations, who thinks UK climate laws were ‘once the envy of the world’. But unwelcome reality strikes in due course, because those in charge ‘underestimate just how far-reaching the necessary changes are’. The article tries to make out that a bit more belt tightening will do the trick, which almost certainly underplays the pain ahead if the current over-the-top net zero policies are persisted with.
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The Scottish government’s decision to row back on its 2030 climate pledge illustrates the crux of any target: it’s easy to set one with a big political flourish, but harder to follow through with a careful plan to achieve it, says The Conversation (via Phys.org).

Does that mean that targets for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gas driving climate change are worthless? Not necessarily.

There are two types of climate target: the empty promise and the calculated ambition. Only one of these works.

Net zero CO2 emissions: A damaging and totally unnecessary goal – Roy Spencer explains why

We may not believe CO2 plays a big part in global atmospherics anyway, but even if it somehow does, the full story is not being told according to this information. Quote: ‘Even though the CO2 emissions continue, atmospheric CO2 levels start to fall around 2060.’
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The goal of reaching “net zero” global anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide sounds overwhelmingly difficult.

But that’s not true, because nature doesn’t work that way, says Dr.Roy Spencer (via Climate Change Dispatch).

While humanity continues producing CO2 at increasing rates (with a temporary pause during COVID), how can we ever reach the point where these emissions start to fall, let alone reach zero by 2050 or 2060?

What isn’t being discussed (as far as I can tell) is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels (which we will assume for the sake of discussion causes global warming) will start to fall even while humanity is producing lots of CO2.

Climate policy fiasco: Scot Nats mocked for replacing flagship green target with ‘accelerated’ plan

Humza Yousaf is just another in a long list of politicians in various countries forced to backtrack on extravagant and disruptive so-called climate change plans. Attempts to reinvent their national electricity systems, along with numerous other energy-related interventions like mandatory electric car target dates, are proving a lot tougher to achieve than imagined when breezily announced. They all ignore the fact that nature relies on carbon dioxide to survive and grow. To paraphrase Groucho Marx: “If you don’t like our climate targets, we have others.”
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Humza Yousaf and his Green coalition partners have been mocked after insisting they were pursuing an “accelerated response to the climate emergency” by abandoning a flagship greenhouse gas target, says The Telegraph.

The First Minister admitted that his government was scrapping Nicola Sturgeon’s promise to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 after experts warned it was unachievable.

He said it would be replaced by “an accelerated climate change proposal and plan”, including a controversial measure to impose a new carbon tax on large country estates.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said during First Minister’s Questions: “Only Humza Yousaf could believe that slamming on the brakes – because that is exactly what the SNP is doing this afternoon – is an acceleration.”

Europe is revolting against the tyranny of electric cars

As Scotland makes an embarrassing climbdown on its much touted ‘net zero’ targets, widespread problems with the big EV push due to public resistance are highlighted. Bad news for climate worriers and the EV industry, a glimmer of hope for nearly everyone else.
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The rest of Europe, Remainers like to tell us, is forging ahead into a glorious green future while Brexit Britain is stalling, the government backsliding one by one on its net zero commitments, says Ross Clark @ The Telegraph.

It is hard to square that narrative with what’s really going on across the channel. In March, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, registrations of new electric vehicles plummeted by 11.3 per cent.

In Germany – the grown-up country that’s supposed to show childish Britain how it’s done – the drop was even more precipitous at 28.9 per cent.

Swiss climate policy – a case of failing to do the impossible?

Phrases like ‘action against climate change’ and ‘climate protection’ are uttered without any clear idea of what, if anything, they might mean. Natural variation at all timescales is an ongoing process, but difficult to measure or predict with any accuracy. Warming has followed the lengthy Little Ice Age, but now some countries – even those with glaciers and ‘snow-capped’ peaks like Switzerland – are being saddled with a legal obligation to attempt to put the brakes on that, by swallowing the argument that a trace gas in the atmosphere is the main source of a supposedly solvable problem of slightly rising temperatures.
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Switzerland, known for pristine countryside and snow-capped [sic] peaks, is facing scrutiny of its environmental policies after becoming the first country faulted by an international court for failing to do enough against climate change, says Phys.org.

The European Court of Human Rights’s ruling last week highlighted a number of failings in Swiss policies, but experts stressed that the wealthy Alpine country was not necessarily doing much worse than its peers.

“The judgment made it really clear that there are critical gaps in the Swiss domestic regulatory framework,” said Tiffanie Chan, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics and Political Science specializing in climate change laws.

“But it’s definitely not a Switzerland-only case,” she told AFP.

Net zero mania update: German transport minister warns of weekend driving ban

Unsurprisingly he gets accused of ‘scaremongering through absurd proposals’. But isn’t the real issue a blind insistence on the unworkable ideology of so-called climate policy that lies behind the proposals? Muttering about pollution is just a means of confusing people into accepting the argument that CO2 is a problem.
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Germany’s transport minister has warned that driving will have to be banned at the weekends unless the country’s net zero laws are changed, says The Telegraph.

Volker Wissing’s FDP party wants the law amended so the polluting transport sector can miss carbon emissions reduction targets, as long as Germany as a whole reaches them. [Talkshop comment – carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant].

But the change is opposed by the Greens, who are part of the three-way coalition with the pro-business FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), led by Olaf Scholz, the chancellor.

Negotiations over the law have dragged on since September last year.

UK faces ‘blackouts’ without new gas-fired power stations, ministers claim

That’s more a statement of fact than a claim, but climate obsessives often ignore inconvenient truths. The proposal is for ‘peaker’ type plants (like this) to replace some of the UK’s ageing baseload ones.
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The UK will face “blackouts” without building new gas power stations, ministers have claimed.

The government has said that while it will continue to move forward with its net zero targets and a focus on renewables, gas was needed as a “back-up” – with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying climate goals must be reached “in a sustainable way that doesn’t leave people without energy on a cloudy, windless day”, reports Sky News.

Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho will outline the plans for new stations in a speech later today, which include a full review of the electricity market and changes to the law to make the plants ready convert to low-carbon alternatives.