Category: AGW is a Cult

AGW Plan: Plunging into Poverty, Destitution or Starvation

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The AGW Cult has a plan.

In his peer-reviewed article, Lessons from technology development for energy and sustainability, Kelly considers the lessons from global decarbonization projects, and concludes that all combined actions to reduce carbon emissions so far will not achieve a serious reduction. In some cases, these efforts will actually make matters worse.

Central to his thesis, which is supported by examples, is that rapid decarbonization will simply not be possible without a significant reduction in standards of living. The growing call to decarbonize the global economy by 80% by 2050 could only foreseeably happen alongside large parts of the population plunging into poverty, destitution or starvation, as low-carbon energy sources do not produce enough energy to sustain society. According to Kelly, “It is clear to me that every further step along the current pathway of deploying first-generation renewable energy is locking in immature and uneconomic systems at net loss to the world standard of living.”

As Kelly notes, it has been 40 years since the modern renewable energy developments began, and yet the fraction of world energy supplied by renewables (wind, solar and cultivated biomass sources combined) has hardly increased. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 reports 3 % for wind, solar and cultivated biomass sources combined, for 2014.

Kelly’s argument is that weaning off fossil fuels will take much longer than postulated by some experts. He suggests that a more viable option is to employ another generation of fossil fuels—during which economic conditions of humankind can be improved and alternate solutions can be explored and developed.

 

 

Ontario Plans to Deindustrialize Its Economy (They Just Call It Decarbonize)

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Ontario plans to decarbonize deindustrialize.

The latest news out of Queen’s Park is that Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals plan to deindustrialize Ontario. Of course they don’t call it that; they prefer the term “decarbonize.” But for an industrial economy, the government’s new climate action plan, leaked to reporters this week, amounts to the same thing.

The proposed scheme beggars belief. Having phased out coal-fired power, the province now plans to phase out natural gas, the only reliable alternative for non-baseload generation. Despite electric cars being extremely costly and unpopular, more than one in 10 new car sales will need to be electric, and every two-car household will have to own at least one electric car. All homes listed for sale will require a costly energy audit. Home renovations will have to be geared around energy efficiency as the government defines it, not what the homeowner wants.

Around the time that today’s high-school students are readying to buy their first home, it will be illegal for builders to install heating systems that use fossil fuels, in particular natural gas. Having already tripled the price of power, Queen’s Park will make it all but mandatory to rely on electricity for heating.

There will be new mandates and subsidies for biofuels, electric buses for schools, extensive new bike lanes to accommodate all those bicycles Ontario commuters will be riding all winter, mandatory electric recharging stations on all new buildings, and many other Soviet-style command-and-control directives.

Read more here.

The climate file has pushed deranged extremism into mainstream policy planning. Perhaps the would-be opponents in cabinet of this disastrous proposal self-censor out of fear of being labeled — gasp! — deniers. But realism is the opposite of denialism, and what is needed now is a huge, cold blast of realism.

China’s Cheap Coal Slows Switch To Natural Gas

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Fracking has really dropped the price of natural gas in the USA leading to major switch from coal to natural gas in power plants.

But China is resisting this change because of costs.

China’s effort to promote natural gas over coal to cut pollution is facing resistance from buyers who prefer cheaper to cleaner. The world’s largest energy consumer seeks to raise the share of less-polluting natural gas to 10 percent of its energy mix by 2020 from 6 percent last year. Yet even with the government cutting the cost of gas, it remains almost three times more expensive than coal when used to generate electricity. That’s putting a damper on the switch from a fuel that now accounts for more than 60 percent of demand.

Electricity generated from gas costs almost three times that from coal — about 0.6 yuan a kilowatt-hour in eastern China, while coal-fired output costs 0.22 yuan.

The Shanghai city-gate price — a wholesale cost of gas delivered to distributors — was cut in November to 2.18 yuan a cubic meter. That’s about $9 per million British thermal units, compared with $2.039 for U.S. benchmark prices and $4.24 in the U.K. as of Thursday. 

Of course, you can’t kill all of the bacteria, or the cow would die

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There is always a catch with AGW “solutions”

Most attempts to tackle climate change focus on cutting greenhouse gases from cars and factories, but a small group of scientists think the key may lie in cutting emissions of a different kind.

Methane produced by livestock farming accounts for around 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions in the form of flatulence and belching, according to official estimates.

But researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark believe they may be able to reduce this by feeding cos oregano to alter the balance of bacteria in their digestive systems.

Methane produced from cows is 21 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. With the demand for milk and steak showing no sign of slowing, this problem can only get worse.

They think the essential oils from the herb, and its potent antimicrobial properties, will kill off the bacteria growing in cows stomachs that emit methane.

Dr Kai Grevsen, a senior researcher involved in the project, told NPR: ‘Oregano has essential oils with a mild antimicrobial called carvacrol, which can kill some of the bacteria in the cow’s rumen that produce methane.

‘Of course, you can’t kill all of the bacteria, or the cow would die.’

I wonder if you make spaghetti sauce with ground beef from cows who have eaten a lot of oregano  … can you skip adding oregano?

 

Fracking Causes Green unCivil War

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It appears that fracking is causing a split in the green movement. Its about time.

If you are sane and you read the studies you know that fracking and cheap natural gas has actually lowered CO2 emissions in the USA by a significant amount by replacing coal.

“In 2015, U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were 12% below the 2005 levels, mostly because of changes in the electric power sector.

Energy-related CO2 emissions can be reduced by consuming less petroleum, coal, and natural gas, or by switching from more carbon-intensive fuels to less carbon-intensive fuels. Many of the changes in energy-related CO2 emissions in recent history have occurred in the electric power sector because of the decreased use of coal and the increased use of natural gas for electricity generation.”

Back to the green war …

Anti-fracking environmentalists, led by 350.org, Greenpeace and The Sierra Club, claim that natural gas is actually accelerating global warming more than coal due to methane emissions, even if it does cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These activists heavily doubt the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures on methane leaks, largely because of an article published by Bill McKibben, the leader of 350.org.

Pro-fracking environmentalists, led by The Breakthrough Institute, point out that McKibben misrepresented the scientific research on methane emissions to attack fracking. These environmentalists point out that a study published in the journal Science in March blames agricultural practices, not oil and natural gas, for increasing methane emissions. The same study points out that the American greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming are declining largely due to fracking.

The split in the environmental movement has led to a green civil war over proposed EPA regulations intended to lower methane emissions from fracking. These regulations, however, would only lower the temperature by 0.0047 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, according to the EPA’s own data.

The anti-fracking zealots have done so much harm in most of Europe. In Canada and the USA fracking took off before the anti-frackers could get organized. The UK may (if it is lucky) win its fracking war (many years late).

 

 

UK Electricity Grid is a Mess

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A month ago I blogged about the big risk for blackouts in the UK.

Yesterday the grid got into trouble :

A series of power plant breakdowns and the partial failure of a key electricity import cable forced National Grid to issue an urgent call for more power to keep the lights on on Monday night.

One power plant was paid more than 30 times the usual price of power after the Grid issued the “Notification of Inadequate System Margin” (Nism) requesting more electricity be generated.

A Nism alert has not been issued in summer months since 2008 as the warm weather means power demand is normally lower.

But the combination of a large number of power plants being shut down for maintenance, the series of unplanned shutdowns and wind power being lower than expected together forced Grid to take the unusual step.

Experts said the multiple breakdowns – believed to be primarily old coal and gas plants – showed the urgent need for more investment in reliable new power plants.

National Grid said about  1,700 megawatts of capacity was unexpectedly taken off the system yesterday.

In addition, a problem forced the part closure of a National Grid-owned interconnector cable importing power from France, with the loss of another 500 megawatts.

At the same time, Britain’s wind farms generated about 500 megawatts less power than expected.

National Grid issued an alert at 7pm calling for 1,500 megawatts of power plant capacity to start generating between 7pm and 9.30pm.

National Grid said the highest price it paid to a plant to help it through the crunch was £1,250 per megawatt-hour of power. It is understood this was to E.On’s  Connah’s Quay power plant.

Nism alerts used to be relatively common but had barely been used in the last few years due to a healthy surplus of power plants on the electricity grid. However, that surplus is being eroded as old coal plants are mothballed and shut.

In November, National Grid issued its first Nism since February 2012 and was forced to use “last resort” measures to keep the lights on by paying businesses to use less power.

 

 

Starfish Return – Warmer Temperatures To Blame?

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Remember this headline:

Warming Temperatures Are Killing Millions of Starfish

Well …. now there is a new one … and it all happened during an El Nino when ocean temperatures were really high.

Starfish babies return in droves to Oregon and California after massive die-off

Droves of baby starfish are returning to Oregon and Northern California’s shores after a wasting disease decimated whole populations of the creatures over the past two years along the West Coast.

Data collected by Oregon State University researchers shows an unprecedented number of baby starfish, or sea stars, survived the summer and winter of 2015, the Eureka Times Standard reported Saturday.

“When we looked at the settlement of the larval sea stars on rocks in 2014 during the epidemic, it was the same or maybe even a bit lower than previous years,” Oregon State University marine biology professor Bruce Menge said in a statement.

“But a few months later, the number of juveniles was off the charts — higher than we’d ever seen — as much as 300 times normal.”

The cause of the massive outbreak remains unclear. Some have hypothesized it to be abnormally warm waters in the Pacific Ocean, which have wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems for the past two years.

Humboldt State University Marine Lab Director Brian Tissot disagrees with that hypothesis since the virus spread during colder months and didn’t expand as much during the abnormally warm 2015.

“There is no clear environmental cue,”

 

Benefits Of Global Warming

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A good article by Bjorn Lomborg.

If our climate conversation managed to include the good along with the bad, we would have a much better understanding of our options. Last week, a study in the prestigious journal Nature revealed just how much CO₂ increases have greened the Earth over the past three decades. Because CO₂ acts as a fertilizer, as much as half of all vegetated land is persistently greener today. This ought to be a cause for great joy.

The biggest study on heat and cold deaths, published last year in Lancet, examined more than 74 million deaths from 384 locations in 13 countries from cold Sweden to hot Thailand. The researchers found that heat causes almost one-half of one percent of all deaths, while more than 7 percent are caused by cold.

Indeed, climate-related deaths have droppedfrom half a million per year in the 1920s to less than 25,000 per year in the 2010s. A recent Nature studyexpecting more severe hurricanes from global warming still found that damages would halve from 0.04 per cent to 0.02 per cent of global GDP, because the increased ferocity would be more than made up by increased prosperity and resilience.

Read the rest.

UK Supermarket Builds Own Power Plants In Fear of Blackouts

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Wow. Isn’t one of the signs of a first world economy a stable reliable electrical grid?

Not anymore. Green stupidity is amazing.

Sainsbury’s has cast doubt on the UK’s ability to keep the lights on, revealing it has built a string of new power plants for its supermarkets in part due to fears of a looming energy crunch.

Paul Crewe, a senior executive at the supermarket giant, said he had sleepless nights over energy security and feared UK electricity demand could soon outstrip supply.

The new gas-fired power generators – already supplying electricity for 10 supermarkets, and due to be built at a further six this year – would enable the stores to keep trading even in the event of a blackout, he said.

“It gives us energy security,” Mr Crewe said. “Energy security is extremely important, it keeps me awake at night if I’m honest thinking about it – especially as we use just under one per cent of power in the UK. We know UK grid infrastructure is at an extremely stretching period of time.”

He raised concerns about the UK being “reliant on interconnectors from Europe and gas from the Baltic and Russia”.

“Having the ability to generate our own power at a local level gives us surety of supply at these locations as the availability of electricity becomes more stretched across the national grid infrastructure, with demand potentially outstripping supply in the near future,” he said.

– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/sainsburys-builds-its-own-power-plants-amid-energy-shortage-fears