Biden will use bureaucracy to advance green energy boondoggles

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Would anyone serious bet against it?

PA Pundits - International

By Larry Bell ~

Remember Solyndra?

In case you’ve forgotten, it was a California solar panel developer that defaulted on a $535 million Obama-Biden administration Department of Energy stimulus loan guarantee that, along with four other bankrupted companies, collectively left U.S. taxpayers on the hook for more than $2.2 billion.

According to documents obtained by The Washington Post, the White House had pressed the Office of Management and Budget to greenlight the loan in a hurry.

In response, OMB officials reportedly expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers.

Energy Department and OMB analysts had reportedly questioned the wisdom of the loan which analysts determined, based upon Solyndra’s own numbers, would rapidly run out of cash.

Another of those bankruptcies involved a 2019 DOE $528.7 million loan it gifted to Fisker Automotive, a start-up company promoted…

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Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, say scientists – but industrial-scale wood burning is OK?

Drax power station, generating 7% of Britain’s needs, is partly converted to burning imported woodchips.

More climate doublethink here. While supporting the burning of wood pellets to generate electricity, thereby creating massive carbon dioxide emissions that may reside in the atmosphere for a number of years, some climate obsessives insist that removing such emissions from the atmosphere is ‘desperately needed’. The illogicality of this has been largely ignored, but now Friends of the Earth Scotland and others have complained that CCS has a “history of over-promising and under-delivering”. Will CCS ever be viable either in terms of cost or practicality? If anything, current evidence points in the other direction.
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Supporters insist that storage technology is not a costly mistake but the best way for UK to cut emissions from heavy industry, says The Guardian.

Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.

Climate stats show no significant warming trend in the last 5 years, says The GWPF

But every squillionth of a degree counts for those trying to promote a human-caused climate crisis that never lives up to the hype of the computer models. In contrast with dire predictions, the change since the 1998 El Niño is nothing to write home about.
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There has been no significant warming trend for 5 years, reports The Global Warming Policy Forum.

Every year in the middle of January various organisations, The UK Met Office, NASA, NOAA, etc. release their estimates of the annual average global temperature of our planet.

This year the conclusion is that 2020 is statistically identical to 2016. Some have placed it the second whereas the Japanese Meteorological Agency has it as the third warmest of the modern era.

The overall conclusion to be drawn however is the misunderstanding of statistics used to support a predetermined opinion.

Biden Should Help Clean Up The Developing World’s Exotic Mining Tragedy

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Cobalt was declared as ‘reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen’ in 2016.

PA Pundits - International

By Ronald Stein ~

Reducing America’s emissions (if that’s your thing) is a major goal of President Elect Biden’s platform, but it should not be implemented by “leaking” environmental degradation and human atrocities to foreign countries that are supplying the exotic minerals and metals to support green electricity. Biden has an opportunity to follow the lead of the United Nations and Amnesty International as the efforts to achieve net zero emissions must not be built on human rights abuses or on non-existent environmental regulations in foreign countries.

Biden’s “war on pollution”, will require worldwide transparency of supply chains, and environmental and labor protection laws and standards to control the environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring around the world from the mining in the foreign countries that dominate the supply chain of the exotic minerals and metals to support wind turbines, solar panels and EV battery construction.

The dark side of…

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U.S. Solar Industry Itching To Import Chinese Panels

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There may be a place for some use of solar panels, but replacing all fuel-burning power stations isn’t it.

PA Pundits - International

By Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. ~

The chief beneficiary of the incoming Biden administration’s climate agenda will be none other than the People’s Republic of China, the same outfit that brought the world COVID-19.

Purveyors of renewable energy are eager to take advantage of Biden’s pledge to move the U.S. from fossil fuels to renewable energy and are already taking legal action to smooth the transition. On December 29, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and solar-power developers, including NextEra Energy Inc. and Invenergy Renewables LLC, asked the U.S. Court of International Trade to issue an injunction prohibiting an October proclamation by President Trump that raised tariffs on imported solar equipment.

The Trump proclamation removed a tariff exemption on two-sided, or bifacial, solar panels, almost all of which are manufactured in China. As reported by Bloomberg (Dec. 29), the lawsuit contends the Trump administration “failed to follow the required procedures” before…

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Massachusetts city to post climate change warning stickers at gas stations

Vancouver, Canada’s fuel pump notice

Festivities over – back to pointless miserablism for believers in a human-caused ‘climate crisis’ due to minor trace gases. A similar tobacco health-warning style move has been made in Vancouver, Canada. Once again theoretical ideas are presented as facts, or likely facts. This new campaign was voted through last January. The promoter say “The gas pump stickers will remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options.” Forgetting to mention that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that pollution has nothing to do with climate change anyway.
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Cambridge, Massachusetts, has become the first US city to mandate the placing of stickers on fuel pumps to warn drivers of the resulting dangers posed by the climate crisis, reports The Guardian.

The final design of the bright yellow stickers, shared with the Guardian, includes text that warns drivers the burning of gasoline, diesel and ethanol has “major consequences on human health and the environment including contributing to climate change”.

The Geothermal Energy Revolution

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Geothermal energy may sound tempting, but care is needed as South Korea found out.

PA Pundits - International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

There is a revolution coming in geothermal energy. How big it will be and how fast it can grow remains to be seen, but the revolutionary technology is here now.

We already know about the new technology by name — fracking. But that is fracking for oil and gas, the energy revolution we are already living on, that the greens hate. The geothermal revolution is fracking for heat.

Here is the technical bit. The Earth’s crust we live on is just a thin film wrapped around an 8,000 mile diameter molten ball. In some places under the deep ocean this crust is estimated to be just 3 miles or so thick. It is somewhat thicker under the continents but the point remains; it gets hot fast as you drill down into the crust. That heat is geothermal energy.

We have used geothermal energy to make…

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Economically Unhinged: Bonkers Boris Johnson’s Green Fantasy Guaranteed to Bankrupt Britain

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Let’s see what happens when there isn’t enough electricity to meet demand, due to ongoing removal of alternatives to unreliable wind power.

STOP THESE THINGS

Boris ‘Bonkers’ Johnson’s plan to ‘power’ Britain on wishes, sunshine and breezes is more like Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. Intriguing and fascinating, yes. But also a complete and utter fantasy.

The concept smacks of delusion, at every level. Neil Collins tackles the topic from the economic perspective.

This green fantasy will bankrupt us
Investment lite
Neil Collins
20 November 2020

It’s 2050. You wake in your cosy, insulated house, turn on the windfarm-powered lights, cook up a breakfast and coffee on the hydrogen stove before jumping into your electric car. You whizz silently along roads with air as fresh as a mountain stream past happy e-bikers and carbon-neutral schools to your heat-pump powered office.

So, viewed from Britain in 2020, can you spot the odd one out? Here’s a clue: the e-bikers get no subsidy. Everything else on this list loses money, and needs state support on a…

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Ex-UN climate leaders make “road to hell” claim

It seems the alleged experts will only be satisfied when everyone is on their own personal ‘road to hell’ resulting from futile so-called climate policies. Quasi-religious terminology (hell, salvation) is presumably supposed to stir the ‘believers’ into greater fervour as they try to coerce their imaginary climate machine, known to the rest of us as Earth, into behaving the way their models say it should.
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Justifiable pride can be taken in the incremental accomplishments of international climate change cooperation, but it is “unthinkable” to continue at the current pace. Phys.org reporting.

The global response to climate change is completely insufficient and leaves the world on a “road to hell”.

That’s according to four former senior members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, who have published an exclusive critical insider insight piece –today published in the peer-reviewed journal, Climate Policy.

In reviewing 30 years since the launch of international negotiations on climate change, the team state that while countries have successfully agreed three significant UN treaties over the three decades, global implementation of the ensuing commitments is failing, and ramped up action is required urgently “to avoid dangerous climate change” and to stay within agreed temperature increase thresholds.

The former UNFCCC leaders plea, first and foremost, for effective and ambitious implementation by governments of their agreed commitments, supported by business and other levels of government and society.

They also call for the setting of realistic new targets backed up by concrete strategies and action; suggest the development of “creative and even controversial” new international agreements; and urge richer countries and multilateral financial institutions to strengthen support to developing nations.

Recommendations, among many by the team, which has 40 years of collective experience in the UNFCCC, include:

— Governments to raise significantly the ambition of their commitments and act domestically with all means at their disposal—with the largest emitters and wealthiest countries bearing the most responsibility

— Simultaneous action by the business and finance sectors, local and regional governments, and other civil society actors

— Taxes and eco-tariffs

— “Real action rather than lip service” on removal of fossil fuel subsidies and phasing out coal

— Sector specific strategies and coalitions

The establishment of a 2030 interim target, in order to have a good chance of not exceeding the 1.5ºC temperature increase threshold
For business, the finance sector and major economic actors to change the trajectory of development to a sustainable path, accelerating existing technological trends

“Before we can seriously contemplate climate change ‘heaven’, we need to get off the current road to ‘hell’, even if it is paved with good intentions! Concrete and full implementation of already agreed commitments is the essential prerequisite for climate ‘salvation’,” states lead author Richard Kinley, UNFCCC Deputy Executive Secretary 2007-2017.

Full article here.

‘Net zero’ climate targets? Read the fine print

Well, exactly. Only quoting short parts of the article here, as it’s laced with the inevitable nods to questionable (to say the least) ‘greenhouse gas’ theory that seems to create havoc in climate models, constantly pushing them out of alignment with observations. Instead a few points of interest are selected. [Talkshop comments are in italics].
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The worldwide effort to prevent Earth from becoming an unlivable hothouse [according to climate models] is in the grips of “net zero” fever, says Phys.org.

“In many cases, net-zero pledges are an improvement, but in others the ‘net’ provision is a black box that can conceal all sorts of problems,” Duncan McLaren, a professor at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre, told AFP.
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“The devil is in the details,” said Kelly Levin, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) global climate program.

There are several keys to evaluating the worth of carbon neutral promises, Levin and other experts said.

The first is whether they apply to all greenhouse gases, or just carbon dioxide.
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New Zealand for instance cemented it’s net-zero-by-2050 vows into law in November 2019, but with a woolly caveat: it only applies to CO2.

Ben Pile on the cosy compact of Govt, Business and Civil Society

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Hands up if you remember voting in favour of the UK’s ‘net zero’ energy policies. Or even being offered the chance to vote on them at all. Oh…

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Ben Pile has a new video out, which needs to be widely spread:

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Everyone’s a climate expert: ‘UK climate targets too low, economists say’

The futile ’emissions’ obsession will lead nowhere good as far as the economy is concerned. Here a group of supposed experts say the numbers tell them the UK economy will not be degraded fast enough for their liking.
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The UK prime minister’s recent 10-point climate plan won’t do enough to achieve his goal of curbing the country’s greenhouse emissions, a report says.

A consultancy has calculated that the UK will need to go further and faster to achieve its commitment of net zero emissions by mid-century,
says BBC News.

UN scientists say massive emissions cuts are needed immediately to stop CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere.

So, the year 2030 is a key date for avoiding dangerous climate change.

‘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.

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.

Wind farms creating ‘new Clearances’ for residents in Scotland

Windfarm objection in Galloway

The suspicion may exist that the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party never seems to win in this sparsely populated region, so is not inclined to much sympathy for its residents when making decisions on the many windfarm applications.
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Residents are moving away from parts of south-west Scotland because they are losing much of the local landscape to wind farm developments, it has been claimed.

Now Trevor and Elaine Procter, who live at Knockvennie, near Dumfries, are urging people to contact local councillors to object to the “tsunami” of planning applications for such developments, reports The National (via Wind Watch).

They have lived in their current home for 12-years, and Trevor said the effect on locals was comparable to the Highland Clearances.

Reliable Electricity? Bah Humbug!

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Green energy means: pay more, get less. But you already knew that, or if not, where have you been?

PA Pundits - International

By Kenneth Green~

In a refreshingly honest article in the Boston Review, David McDermott Hughes confirms something that we energy evangelists have been saying for some time: Environmentalists do not simply want people to transition to “green energy,” they want humanity put on energy rationing, for the good of the planet. Now, apparently, they’ve also decided that we need to add intermittent fasting to our energy diet because, gosh darnit, electricity in developed countries like the United States is just too darn reliable for our own good! It needs to go out once in a while, or, well, the planet is doomed.

According to Hughes, “For those seriously concerned about climate change, the inverse—the demand for electrical continuity—may be the real problem.” Yes, you read that right, the desire to have electricity available 24/7 is the cause of our global climate catastrophe, and we need to learn to live…

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Climate change: Technology no silver bullet, experts tell PM

Ever tighter control of human lifestyles seems to be the latest battle cry of climate propagandists. Meanwhile, wind and solar power always seem to need vast subsidies despite supposedly ‘plummeting costs’. Where’s the affordability, even if any of the advocated ideas made sense in terms of the climate, which they don’t? Millions of tons of toxic and other industrial waste will be produced in vain attempts to change the weather.
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Boris Johnson’s techno-optimism ignores the need for big societal changes, experts warn.

Can we fix climate change with the “silver bullet” of technology? asks BBC News.

The prime minister seems to think so.

Blowing in the wind: are Boris’s renewable ambitions realistic?

Boris Johnson wants us to set our gaze beyond the coronavirus pandemic to contemplate a future when our homes are powered by wind alone.

Is he tilting at windmills like Don Quixote? Victor Hill @ Master Investor is asking.

The vision thing

Right now, the British prime minister’s in-tray is full – but one of the items requiring his keen attention is the UK’s commitment to transition to a net carbon neutral economy by 2050, as decreed by his predecessor, Mrs May.

During his digital address to the virtual reality Conservative Party Conference 2020, beamed through cyberspace on 06 October, one of the key themes was to build back better by harnessing a valuable resource which Britain possesses in abundance: wind.

Delingpole: Doom Pixie Greta Thunberg spurned AGAIN by Nobel Prize

The world has something far more pressing to be miserable about, this time for good reasons, and attention-hungry climate doomsters hate that.
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For a second year running Greta Thunberg has failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize, notes James Delingpole @ Breitbart.

This year she was beaten by the UN World Food Program.

In 2019 she was beaten by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as his reward for securing peace with neighbouring Eritrea.

Perhaps the Nobel prize committee has noticed something increasingly apparent to the rest of us: that the world has long since reached Peak Greta; the Doom Pixie has delighted us all quite enough.

Part of Thunberg’s problem may be that her cause has been superseded by that of Chinese coronavirus.

Earlier in the pandemic, Thunberg made a bid for ongoing relevance by co-authoring an angry letter to European Union leaders, demanding that climate be taken seriously as coronavirus.

It screeched:

The last few months the world has watched with horror how the COVID-19 pandemic has hit people all over the globe. During this tragedy, we are seeing how many – not all – world leaders and people around the world stepped up and acted for the greater good of society.

It is now clearer than ever that the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, neither from the politicians, media, business, nor finance.

The letter’s petulant tone is an indication of the growing frustration among climate activists that their thunder has been stolen by COVID-19.

Full article here.

Ecologist journal: The unsustainability of the electric car

The only viable option for carbophobes is significant degrowth (their term) according to this article. With present delusional plans to control global warming the numbers just don’t add up for ‘greenhouse gas’ obsessives, so even greater futile sacrifices are demanded.
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Shifting to electric vehicles while maintaining current travelling habits will not deliver emissions reductions required by the European Green Deal and Paris Agreement.

The European Green Deal sets ambitious targets for decarbonising the European economy.

This includes a European Commission proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, with the European Parliament’s Environment Committee demanding a more ambitious 60 percent cut.

The EGD also calls for the EU to become carbon-neutral by 2050.