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GREENIE WATCH

Time 2021-11-16 15:06:16

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GREENIE WATCH

The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

Monday, November 15, 2021

Toyota Forms Team Japan To Help Keep Combustion Engine Alive

Toyota has assembled a team consisting of themselves and four other Japanese marques in an effort to keep ICE vehicles relevant.

Toyotas continued resistance to BEVs is becoming more and more prevalent. Just days after refusing to sign a climate pledge aiming to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040, Toyota has organized a team to promote the combustion engine in the electric age. Team Japan consists of Toyota, Subaru, Mazda, Kawasaki and Yamaha. The group will work together on the development of greener fueling options as well as hydrogen tech.

The coalition will see the five companies develop carbon-neutral fuels for racing, meanwhile Toyota and Mazda will together to develop a 1.5-liter Skyactiv-D engine powered by biodiesel. Subaru will work with Toyota for 2022s Super Taikyu Series endurance season, with both companies collaborating to make a biomass-derived synthetic fuel. Furthermore, Yamaha and Kawasaki are considering working on a hydrogen engine for motorcycles.

Toyota clearly believes other solutions such as hydrogen will play their part in a sustainable future, an idea Tesla CEO Elon Musk has labelled mind-bogglingly stupid in the past. Despite all this, Toyota still intends to compete in the BEV space through the bz4x crossover which will arrive in mid-2022.

Toyota released the following statement after the announcement of the coalition:

By promoting further collaboration in producing, transporting and using fuel in combination with internal combustion engines, the five companies aim to provide customers with greater choice.

Greater choice? Perhaps, although only time will tell if the proposed alternatives are viable solutions. Toyota has seen limited success with the hydrogen-powered Mirai, with a lack of infrastructure and high running costs being key obstacles for consumers.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/toyota-forms-team-japan-to-help-keep-combustion-engine-alive/ar-AAQHpmw?ocid=chromentpnews

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U.S. court voids emissions rules for heavy-duty truck trailers

A U.S. appeals court on Friday tossed out greenhouse gas emissions rules for heavy-duty truck trailers, ruling two government agencies had exceeded their authority.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2016 set rules for the first time requiring trailer manufacturers to adopt fuel-saving technologies like side skirts and automatic tire pressure systems. An industry group challenged the rule, which was put on hold by the court pending the review.

The administration of then-President Barack Obama said it was important to regulate the fuel efficiency of the trailer portion of commercial tractor-trailers because large tractor-trailers account for 60% of the fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from heavy-duty vehicles.

The court ruled that if it allowed the trailer regulations, then NHTSA could regulate bike racks, rooftop cargo carriers, or anything similar that would impact the fuel efficiency of a vehicle. The court added: NHTSA can regulate tractors based on the trailers they pull, as can the EPA. But neither NHTSA nor the EPA can regulate trailers themselves.

The EPA said in 2016 as much as one-third of potential reductions in tractor-trailer emissions could be achieved through regulation of the trailers equipment and design alone.

The EPA and NHTSA did not immediately comment.

The Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA), which had sued to block the rules, said it was still reading the ruling and did not immediately comment. The group had argued that the rules were improper because trailers do not consume fuel, as they are not self-propelled.

TTMA said earlier its members, which manufacture 90% of U.S. truck trailers, would incur unrecoverable compliance costs, including from reconfiguring assembly lines.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/us/us-court-voids-emissions-rules-for-heavy-duty-truck-trailers/ar-AAQDEIW

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Africa has sights set on hydrocarbon haul despite global shift

Several African countries plan to exploit their oil and gas reserves to tackle poverty and energy shortages, representatives gathered in Dubai said this week in the face of pressure to end fossil fuel extraction to curb global warming.

Officials and industry executives stressed that Africa as a whole has a relatively small carbon footprint, which Statista estimated accounted for 3.7% of global CO2 emissions in 2020.

We want to develop our resources as Africa, just as our brothers in the West have done, John Munyes, Kenyas minister of petroleum and mining, told the Africa Oil Week conference in Dubai, which coincided with the second week of the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Much of Kenya is renewables, we just want to tap into what God has given us: hydrocarbons, he added.

Across the African continent, where some 600 million people lack electricity, both well-established and emerging producers are seeking to accelerate hydrocarbon extraction.

We understand that we have to mitigate the damage to the planet. Thats why we have signed up to the energy transition, Thomas Camara, Ivory Coasts minister of mines, petroleum and energy, said.

But for our African nations, we have to ensure that our populations have access to energy We will not turn our back to oil and energy companies so we can ensure the happiness - and even the existence - of our populations.

Some two dozen African countries pitched their energy sectors to investors during the event in Dubai.

OPEC member Angola, where production peaked in 2008 and has been steadily declining for the past half-decade, plans to develop more fields including through licensing rounds for onshore blocks in 2023 and offshore blocks in 2025.

Output in 2031 is projected to slightly exceed last years roughly 1.3 million barrels a day.

Ghana, which discovered oil in 2007 and began extraction at the end of 2010, will channel investments to oil and gas development to then use the proceeds to invest in infrastructure and social welfare such as healthcare and education, its deputy energy minister, Andrew Egyapa Mercer, said.

We believe strongly in oil and gas, and in particular gas to ensure reliable energy baseloads, he added.

Western oil and gas companies looking to develop deposits in Africa face growing pressure over environmental concerns, which are leading them to accelerate plans as the world transitions to renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind.

We have to come up with processes that enable us to convert a discovery into production as quickly as we can, because the clock is ticking. The clock is ticking in terms of the energy transition, said Paul McCafferty, senior vice president Africa at Norwegian energy major Equinor.

Industry executives said among the challenges they now face was securing sufficient capital for hydrocarbon projects.

Top oil exporters Angola, and to a lesser extent Nigeria, are facing crude production declines due to lack of investment in expensive deepwater oil fields, partly because oil companies are allotting less funding to fossil fuels.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/us/africa-has-sights-set-on-hydrocarbon-haul-despite-global-shift/ar-AAQCXm7

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Northern hemisphere energy crisis hits Australian fertilizer supply

With so many coal-based generators shut down for Greenie reasons, Europe is grabbing natural gas supplies for electricity generation. And that is causing gas prices to soar worldwide

With global prices soaring, it seemed odd timing this week for Incitec Pivot to announce plans to close one of Australias largest fertiliser plants.

The rising cost of another commodity natural gas appears to have sealed the fate for Incitecs Gibson Island facility in Brisbane.

Despite extensive efforts, [we have] been unable to secure an economically viable long-term gas supply, the company said in a statement to the ASX.

The decision to close the Gibson Island manufacturing facility after more than 50 years of operation is expected to impact up to 170 employees.

The company said it would cease manufacturing with natural gas at the end of 2022 but was looking into the potential of green ammonia.

The facility has spent decades converting gas into fertiliser products. According to its website, it has the capacity each year to manufacture 300,000 tonnes of ammonia, 280,000 tonnes of urea and 200,000 tonnes of ammonium.

China has enforced a ban on some ports exporting fertilisers, and more recently Russia invoked a six-month quota on its fertiliser exports.

Incitecs [announcement] is not ideal in light of the other dynamics going on ... and we need to get our product from somewhere, so its going to be a challenge, GrainGrowers chair Brett Hosking said.

So to hear reports [about Incitec] has thrown another spanner into the works and that little bit of extra complexity in a growers mind around how do I make sure Im covered and how do I make sure Ive got product?

According to Thomas Elders Markets analyst Andrew Whitelaw, the announcement by Russia was another death by a thousand cuts for Australian farmers.

The China ban is worse for us, he said. Russias quota will mean hundreds or thousands of tonnes, not millions of tonnes lost to the global market, but it comes at a time when we need every tonne available.

So its another weight against the fertiliser price, which is a really big challenge for Australia.

Research by Mr Whitelaw shows Australian wheat farmers need 2.8 tonnes of wheat sold to buy a tonne of diammonium phosphate (DAP).

The biggest risk for a grain farmer in the coming year is buying high-priced inputs but not having high-priced grain, he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-11-13/incitec-pivot-shut-brisbane-plant-amidst-fertiliser-price-boom/100610750

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10194951/Teslas-Musk-sells-639-737-shares-Twitter-poll.html

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Climate summit stalls

Update: In the final COP26 pact, countries failed to agree to phase out coal. An intervention by India ensured agreement to phase down fossil fuels. India was insistent right to the very end on the need to retain fossil fuels. Indian Environment and Climate Minister Bhupender Yadav said: The world needs to awaken to this reality. Fossil fuels and their use have enabled parts of the world to attain high levels of wealth and wellbeing. Yadav said targeting any particular industry is uncalled-for and stressed developing countries were entitled to use fossil fuels given developed nations had used them for decades and were responsible for historic emissions.

Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, India and Brazil were privately blamed for frustrating progress on phasing out coal, while a collection of nearly 140 developing nations known as the G77 dug its heels in over demands for wealthy nations to hand over billions of dollars to address loss and damage already caused by climate change. The bloc has the support of China, the worlds largest emitter and a key player in the talks.

Forcing nations such as Australia to take more action this decade is seen as essential to avoiding temperature rises of above 1.5 degrees.

The push to make Australia and other countries that failed to update their 2030 targets at Glasgow instead update their climate plans within the next 12 months is a central part of the proposed declaration.

A draft released earlier this week said countries would be urged to update their pledges in 2022 but the latest iteration changed that word to requested - something lawyers argued was stronger.

The previous draft also called for the accelerated phase-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels, but the latest version only calls for the elimination of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.

Negotiators argued the term inefficient had to be inserted because some developing countries offer legitimate financial support for people to access basic energy needs. But they also conceded the change would give major emitters cover to continue propping up highly polluting industries.

John Kerry, the US climate envoy, revealed the US would not support any further softening of the summits position on fossil fuels over the next 24 hours.

That language [on] unabated coal must stay, he said. Were not talking about all coal. Were not talking about eliminating [coal].

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/we-bleed-and-we-cry-high-hopes-replaced-by-despair-at-climate-summit-20211112-p598i5.html

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Toyota Refuses To Commit To Climate Pledge

A bit of refreshing realism

Toyota has avoided signing a zero-emissions pledge that promises to phase out fossil-fuel cars by 2040. Six other major automakers agreed to the the Glasgow Declaration on Zero Emission Cars and Vans including Ford, General Motors, Daimler and Volvo. Interestingly, Volkswagen also refused to commit to the pledge despite their continued heavy investment in EVs.

A Toyota spokesperson told Reuters that concerns over customer readiness, energy availability and charging infrastructure in Asia, Africa and the Middle East all lead to their decision not to sign the deal. However, in other regions such as Europe and North America Toyota is ready to accelerate and help support with appropriate zero-emission vehicles.

In many areas of the world such as Asia, Africa, Middle East ... an environment suitable for promoting full zero emission transport has not yet been established. We think it will take more time to make progress ... thus, it is difficult for us to commit to the joint statement at this stage.

Toyota plans to launch their first mass-produced, globally available EV next year the bz4x. Powered by a 71.4 kWh battery pack, Toyota claims the bz4x will be good for around 280 miles of WLTP range.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/toyota-refuses-to-commit-to-climate-pledge/ar-AAQDBbH?ocid=chromentpnews

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Australias only working carbon capture and storage project fails to meet target

Australias only working carbon capture and storage project in Western Australia has failed to meet its target to lock away greenhouse gases from a major gas processing plant.

Chevron, an America-based multinational oil and gas company, was given a target by the WA government to capture at least 80% of the CO2 that would otherwise be released at its Gorgon LNG project.

But the company has said it fell short of the target by 5.23Mt and will buy the equivalent amount in carbon credits while also investing $40m in unspecified low carbon energy projects in the state.

Based on todays prices for carbon offsets which analysts say are rising Chevron would have to pay between $78m and $194m.

Chevron announced last month it made more than $8bn profit in the most recent financial quarter.

The Morrison government is prioritising CCS technology as a way to lower emissions, even though its impact after decades of promises and about $4bn in Australian taxpayer cash has been marginal.

Environmental campaigners said the shortfall in emissions reductions at Gorgon showed CCS should not be relied on as justification for allowing fossil fuel production to increase.

Chevron has not said what kind of accredited carbon offsets it will buy, but analysts told the Guardian the cost to Chevron could range from $15 per tonne for some overseas credits to as high as $37 per tonne for Australian credits.

Calculated over a five-year average with the clock starting in July 2016, Chevron said it had missed the 80% target because of technical problems that delayed the CO2 injection into geological formations under Barrow Island.

Since injection started in August 2019, the company says it had captured and stored 5.5Mt of CO2.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australias-only-working-carbon-capture-and-storage-project-fails-to-meet-target/ar-AAQBU9n

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Posted byJRat6:07 PM0comments Saturday, November 13, 2021

Biden nominee wants oil s nominee to lead a branch of the Treasury Department, Saule Omarova, said in a recently resurfaced video that she supports the idea of energy industries going bankrupt to combat climate change.

The Cornell University law professor, who has been nominated to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, first made the remarks during a February Social Wealth Seminar event hosted by the Jain Family Institute, a nonprofit research organization. The nonprofit group American Accountability Foundation (AAF) recently dug up the clip from her discussion at the event and posted it to social media.

Naming the coal, oil and gas industries, specifically, Omarova said a lot of the small players in those industries are going to probably go bankrupt in short order, adding: At least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?

Omarova during her presentation was making the case for a U.S. National Investment Authority a proposed federal agency that would work with the Treasury and the Fed to allocate public and private capital to green infrastructure companies, according to Data for Progress.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treasury-saule-omarova-energy-industries-bankrupt

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UK: Drivers reveal why they dont want to switch to electric cars

A flurry of new reports have laid bare a reasons why swathes of drivers are still unwilling to switch to electric cars, with concerns on the Governments ability to deliver suitable infrastructure, range anxiety and cars being quickly outdated.

The studies were published during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where a rapid transition to EVs is being highlighted as a key factor to help nations meet net zero targets.

But despite the reservations, the UKs automotive trade body says pure-electric cars will outsell diesels next year, as the recent boom in EV demand takes its first internal-combustion victim ahead of the ban on sales of new petrols and oil-burners from 2030.

A new study by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has found that many drivers are deterred from making a complete switch to fully electric vehicles as they have little faith in the Governments ability to deliver the necessary infrastructure.

It comes after local authorities voiced their concerns about a lack of coherent strategic direction at a national level, including no articulation of the vision for the future and lack of clarity over the role authorities were expected to play in delivering EV charging infrastructure.

A survey of 3,404 UK licence holders found that almost two thirds (63 per cent) are not confident that the politicians will able to create a sufficient infrastructure for there to be a smooth transition to fully electric vehicles by the governments own deadline at the end of the decade.

The report was revealed the same day that a British firm announced its plans to install 190,000 public charging points across the country before 2030, with most of the new devices funded by government-issued subsidies.

RSCs survey there is enough public hesitancy about the transition to electric motoring that it could potentially derail MPs efforts to reduce air pollution levels, with over a third (34 per cent) of the panel said they do not intend to purchase a fully electric vehicle in the next decade.

Crucially, however, almost half (46 per cent) did not feel they had enough information to make an informed decision about whether their next car or van should be a fully electric vehicle or not.

Professor Tom Welton, president at the RSC, said: After we heard that the Government is delaying its Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy, this research shows there is much work to be done to fully convince the public at large of the merits of switching to fully electric vehicles but more pressingly, that efforts to deliver critical infrastructure for both charging and recycling EV batteries should be a government priority.

We must improve the flow of information around the governments plans for transitioning to an entirely electric vehicle network, the ecosystem to support this and electric vehicles capabilities, all of which can help drivers to make informed purchasing decisions.

Well over a third (40 per cent) of drivers polled by the RSC expressed concerns that EVs might have a negative impact on the environment, with over half of them (57 per cent) worrying there may be a lack of recycling options for electric vehicle batteries.

Another 55 per cent are concerned by a shortage of the natural resources used to produce the batteries for EVs.

A third of all respondents said they were unlikely to buy an EV until their batteries contain less increasingly scarce and precious elements.

Range anxiety still a concern despite latest EVs covering over 300 miles on a single charge

Almost all UK drivers overestimate the number of breakdowns as a result of problems with EV charging infrastructure and vehicle range, according to a new report by the AA.

In 2020, its patrols attended around 13,000 electric vehicle breakdowns, of which just under 4 per cent were for vehicles running out of charge. This figure has halved in the last few years.

However, only 1 per cent of 14,500 drivers polled could correctly estimate the frequency of this issue, with the average guess being two thirds (65 per cent) of all EV breakdowns were due to the main driving battery running out.

The reality is that the top two breakdowns for combustion engine vehicles and EVs are the same, with tyres and the smaller 12-volt battery being the main causes of faults.

Drivers were also asked what they believed to be the average distance an EV could travel on a single charge, with only a quarter (25 per cent) correctly identifying a range of up to 200 miles.

Some 6 per cent believed the latest models are providing less than 100 miles from a single charge.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/news/drivers-reveal-why-they-don-t-want-to-switch-to-electric-cars/ar-AAQv4N9

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Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors

Rolls-Royce has been backed by a consortium of private investors and the UK government to develop small nuclear reactors to generate cleaner energy.

The creation of the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business was announced following a 195m cash injection from private firms and a 210m grant from the government.

It is hoped the new company could create up to 40,000 jobs by 2050.

However, critics say the focus should be on renewable power, not new nuclear. Currently, about 16% of UK electricity generation comes from nuclear power.

Small modular reactors are nuclear fission reactors but are smaller than conventional ones.

The investment by Rolls-Royce Group, BNF Resources, Exelon Generation and the government will go towards developing Rolls-Royces SMR design and take it through regulatory processes to assess whether it is suitable to be deployed in the UK.

It will also identify sites which will manufacture the reactors parts and most of the ventures investment is expected to be focused in the north of the UK, where there is existing nuclear expertise.

Rolls-Royces share price jumped by 4.2% to 147.85p each following the announcement.

Rolls-Royce SMR said one of its power stations would occupy about one tenth of the size of a conventional nuclear plant - the equivalent footprint of two football pitches - and power approximately one million homes.

The firm said a plant would have the capacity to generate 470MW of power, which it added would be the same produced by more than 150 onshore wind turbines.

Warren East, Rolls-Royce chief executive, said the companys SMR technology offered a clean energy solution which help tackle climate change.

Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said SMRs offered opportunities to cut costs and build more quickly, ensuring we can bring clean electricity to peoples homes and cut our already-dwindling use of volatile fossil fuels even further.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the UK to deploy more low carbon energy than ever before and ensure greater energy independence, he added.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59212983

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Last homes in asbestos-riddled Australian town to be demolished, but some want to stay

Nobody seems to be taking into account what it means that there are elderly people still living there. So if asbestos is so bad for you how come? Shouldnt they all be dead?

What it shows is that the toxicity of asbestos is very low. You only get ill if you have been breathing in a lot of it for many years. So the hysteria about it is greatly exaggerated. Asbestos products in peoples homes (fibro) are no threat to health at all

The former asbestos mining town of Wittenoom has claimed many lives, but it is not enough to deter some who proudly call it home.

After years of compensation offers, the WA government will turn to forcibly removing the remaining properties, under a bill expected to pass Parliament.

It is hoped the clearing of the former town site will reduce the attraction for visitors, who ignore significant health warnings of asbestos fibres on the ground and in the air at Wittenoom. Just 12km away lies three million tonnes of asbestos tailings.

Peter Heyward moved to the area in the 90s and said he knew of the dangers but enjoyed the lifestyle. This is just beautiful living here, he said.

Looking at the mountains, you get the view of the savanna and youre right beside a gorge thats got water all year round.

Long-term resident Lorraine Thomas said she had options if she was forced to leave, but she hoped to live out her life in Wittenoom. This is home, and I havent got anywhere else that Ive found in this state or in this country that Id like to call home, she said.

They cant move the hills, the whole area I love the weather. No person can take that from me.

The WA governments planned eviction and demolition would come with an undisclosed amount of compensation.

Mario Hartmann is one of the residents who recently took up an offer to hand over his property, but it has not kept him away. Its too cold down south so I come in winter to enjoy the warm weather, he said.

Tourists warned to stay away

With more West Australians exploring their own state during the pandemics travel restrictions, Mr Hartmann noticed a surge in visitors.

This year Ive never seen that many people come here, some days you would have 50, 60 cars going out [to the gorge and the asbestos tailings], he said.

It is an alarming figure for Curtin University Associate Professor Alison Reid, who has examined the health impact of the mine.

People [who visit Wittenoom] are putting themselves unnecessarily at risk, she said. We know that the risk of mesothelioma [a rare cancer] can occur with low exposure, so I think in that case it should be closed.

At least 1,200 former Wittenoom residents and workers have died from lung cancer and mesothelioma, according to a database maintained by UWAs Occupational Respiratory Epidemiology Group.

The Flying Doctors used to hone in on the town of Wittenoom from the blue haze on the horizon and that was the dustthats how the workers and the people in the town got exposed, through that dust. It has made Western Australia have the highest rates of mesothelioma in the world.

The area is no longer on official maps, it was declared a contaminated site and the state government have repeatedly warned the public against visiting.

Lands Minister Tony Buti said visitors posed a risk to the wider public because cars could spread particles beyond the area.

There is no question that this area is one of the saddest chapters in WA history, he said. However, we must be realistic, and the fact is its unlikely Wittenoom will ever again be a safe place to live or visit.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-12/wittenoom-closure/100599722

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/mother-of-five-killed-in-tesla-fire-in-ohio/ar-AAQwITK?ocid=chromentpnews

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Six major carmakers agree to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040

A great opportunity for China. China supplies whatever the market wants. And they already make lots of good conventional cars. It looks like they will be getting a lot more orders for them

Six major automakers on Wednesday will commit to phasing out the production of fossil-fuel vehicles around the world by 2040, as part of global efforts to cut carbon emissions, the British government said in a statement.

But sources familiar with the pledges contents said some big carmakers including the worlds top two, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, and crucial car markets China, the United States and Germany have not signed up. That highlighted the challenges that remain in shifting to a zero-emission future.

Cars, trucks, ships, buses and planes account for about a quarter of all global carbon emissions, data from the International Energy Agency showed, of which the bulk comes from road vehicles.

Swedens Volvo, U.S. automakers Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co , Daimler AGs Mercedes-Benz, Chinas BYD Co Ltd and Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of Indias Tata Motors Ltd , were set to sign the pledge at climate talks in Glasgow, the latest initiative to help cap global warming by mid-century.

Volvo has already committed to going fully electric by 2030.

Britain, which is hosting the COP26 summit, said four new countries including New Zealand and Poland were joining other nations already committed to ensuring all new cars and vans are zero emission by 2040 or earlier.

The statement comes on a day dedicated to transport at the conference.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/companies/six-major-carmakers-agree-to-phase-out-fossil-fuel-vehicles-by-2040-uk-says/ar-AAQvMmi

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United States and China stun COP26 with joint climate change pact

China and the United States have unveiled a shock new pact at the Glasgow climate talks, declaring global warming an existential crisis which demands co-operation between the superpowers.

In a boost to the flagging COP26 talks and sign of a possible thawing in the fractured relationship between both countries, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and his US counterpart John Kerry stunned observers by unveiling the joint declaration pledging tougher action this decade.

The agreement between the worlds two largest emitters was negotiated in secret for months during about 30 virtual meetings and negotiation sessions in Shanghai, London and Washington before final terms were settled in Glasgow on Wednesday night local-time.

Co-operation is the only choice for both China and the United States, Xie told reporters via a translator.

By working together, our two countries can achieve many important things that are beneficial not only to our two countries, but to the world as a whole. As two major powers in the world, China and the US shoulder special international responsibilities and obligations.

We need to think big and feel responsible. We need to work hard to promote world peace and development. We need to actively address climate change through cooperation, bringing benefits to both our two peoples and peoples around the world.

The announcement appeared to take Britain, the host of the COP26 summit, by surprise given Prime Minister Boris Johnson had only hours earlier warned momentum at the talks was slowing.

The Glasgow declaration was released just a week after US President Joe Biden attacked Chinese President Xi Jinping for not attending the summit in person, describing it as a big mistake.

The rest of the world is going to look to China and say, what value added are they providing?, Biden said last week. Theyve lost the ability to influence the people around the world and all the people here at COP.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/existential-crisis-united-states-and-china-stun-cop26-with-joint-climate-change-pact-20211111-p597wq.html

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Australian PM says can-do capitalism will solve climate change

Scott Morrison says the Glasgow climate summit had marked a passing of the baton from government-imposed targets and timetables to private enterprise and consumer-led solutions as the worlds leading economies seek to become carbon neutral by mid-century.

Launching a new fund for fledging companies aiming to develop emerging low-emission technologies, Mr Morrison said the biggest change since the Paris agreement was struck in 2015 had been $100 trillion of private capital which was pouring like a waterfall into climate technology solutions.

He said he believed climate change would ultimately be solved by can-do capitalism; not dont-do governments who were seeking to control peoples lives and tell them what to do with interventionist regulation and taxes that would force up the cost of living and force businesses to close.

The world does not need to be punished for climate change, we just need to fix it. And it will be fixed painstakingly, step-by-step, by the entrepreneurs, by scientists, by technologists, by innovators, by industrialists, by financiers, by risk-takers, he told the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast in Melbourne.

Thats the Australian way. Thats the way Ive been championing on the world stage. And, you know, like-minded capitalist market-based economics should be doing the same.

Sharpening his attack lines on the opposition ahead of the election, Mr Morrison said after two years of the pandemic he believed Australians were now over governments telling them what to do.

He said he had imposed restrictions on Australians along with state governments was necessary at the time, but it was important to let those who drive the economy be able to do that again as soon as possible.

Mr Morrison told hundreds of people who gathered for the annual business breakfast that Australia was now entering a new energy economy, with countries with net zero commitments covering more than 80 per cent of worlds GDP.

And 90 per cent of Australias exports are to countries with net zero commitments. That of course is going to have an impact here in Australia. These are decisions being taken in other countries, he said.

We cant ignore the reality of this. We cannot just sort of wish it away.

He defended criticism from other world leaders and his domestic opponents by refusing to sign up for hard deadlines to phase out coal-fired power, saying the summit reinforced his view that Australia must chart its own unique path for achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Mr Morrison said Australias geography, demography, resources and export profile all meant the nations pathway would be quite different from relatively small, densely populated, services-based advanced economies in Europe.

Just because it works in the North Atlantic doesnt mean its going to work in the Indo-Pacific, in countries in the same way like Australia and certainly not in the developing countries of our region who we do business with every day, he said.

This is why we will continue to join others in opposing prescriptive deadlines for phasing out particular fuels or gutting our agricultural sector demands that are disconnected from realities, our industries, and our people, particularly in rural and regional Australia.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-says-can-do-capitalism-will-solve-climate-change-20211110-p597pb.html

Macron is a surprisingly sensible guy at times. French pragmatism?

France will construct a series of large nuclear power plants for the first time in decades, as the nuclear powerhouse seeks to neutralise carbon emissions by 2050 and reduce its reliance on unreliable gas imports.

The announcement, made by French President Emmanuel Macron in a televised address to the nation just five months out from national elections, will revive debate in Europe over the role of nuclear technology in combating climate change but also carries the risk of huge cost blowouts and construction delays.

More than 70 per cent of the countrys electricity generation comes from its 56 reactors, although Macron had promised early in his term to lower nuclear contribution to 50 per cent by 2035.

But in a shift, the French President on Tuesday night, Paris time (Wednesday morning AEDT) said the country would rededicate itself to atomic power.

To guarantee Frances energy independence, to guarantee our countrys electricity supply, and to reach our goals - notably carbon neutrality in 2050 - we will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors in our country, and continue to develop renewable energy, Macron said.

He did not give details but the comments were seen as a reference to the expected green-lighting of as many as 14 next-generation nuclear plants proposed by grid operator RTE.

Macron made the announcement against the background of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where new forms of electricity generation have been identified as a key issue in the fight against climate change, and an energy crisis in Europe triggered by falling gas supplies and an unusually calm summer and autumn which has affected the output of wind turbines.

While confidence in nuclear took a hit in France following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, it is still a relatively uncontroversial technology compared to other countries such as Australia, where some Coalition MPs are pushing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to explore its feasibility.

Macron sought to tie the new nuclear push to French innovation and national pride - key themes for the President as he enters a tough presidential election campaign in 2022.

The vast majority of Frances nuclear facilities were built in the 1970s and 1980s. A third reactor is being added to a plant in Flamanville, in the Normandy region, but the project which started in 2007 has been plagued by cost overruns and huge delays.

Greenpeace France energy transition campaigner Nicolas Nace condemned Macrons latest announcement and pointed to the Flamanville project to claim nuclear power was too expensive, too slow and too dangerous.

A new nuclear facility being constructed in Somerset, England, has also been hit by delays and cost blowouts.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/macron-backs-nuclear-power-to-meet-france-s-net-zero-ambitions-20211110-p597kk.html

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Fossil fuels form the basis of our medical and food supply chains

Under President Joe Bidens plan to rid America of fossil fuels, such a plan would eliminate the medical industry that is completely reliant on the products made from petroleum derivatives, and eliminate oil-based fertilizers to grow the crops that feed the 8 billion people on planet earth. Surprisingly, Biden must be oblivious to the consequences of his plan, as efforts to cease the use of oil could be the greatest threat to civilizationnot climate change.

Biden supports the end of fracking, oil exploration, and oil importing which cuts off the supply chain of crude oil to refineries. Without any crude oil to manufacture, elimination of the supply chain to the 131 operating refineries in the U.S. would eliminate that manufacturing sector.

Without refineries, there will be none of the oil derivatives that are manufactured from crude oilthe basis of more than 6,000 products in our economy and lifestyles.

Without the supply chain of crude oil, not only is the refining industry history, but the domino effects of the destructive impacts will be taken upon the medical, food supply, electronics, and communications industries, as they are all totally dependent on the products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. Any grade-school-educated kid can understand that breezes and sunshine, can only make weather-dependent intermittent electricity.

The medical industry is reliant on the products derived from the derivatives manufactured from oil that produce all the critical medical equipment such as: ultrasound systems, defibrillators, exhalation valves, inhalation valves, CT systems, X-ray, medicines, masks, gloves, soap, hand sanitizers for hospitals, protective gowns, gloves, and face shields for doctors and nurses.

Is Biden oblivious to the fact that all of those medical products begin from crude oil, or as the Wall Street Journal statesBig Oil to the Coronavirus Rescue? Vaccines need refrigeration, and refrigeration needs electricity, especially in the hospital sector where redundant generation capacity for continuous, uninterruptable electricity, is a mandate.

While Biden attempts to lower emissions at any cost, in favor of some weather-dependent electricity from breezes and sunshine that can only survive with massive subsidies, coal imports and exports continue to increase internationally to meet the electricity generation needs of developing countries, as reflected in the Merrill Lynch Global Energy Weekly report.

At least 80 percent of humanity, or more than 6 billion in this world cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag as they are living on less than $10 a day. To reduce emissions in the developing countries that control most emissions, the wealthy countries would need to step up and subsidize electricity generation from breezes and sunshine, to then replace more than 3,000 coal fired power plants in developing countries like China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Africa, and Vietnamwith billions of people seeking affordable electricity.

The oil that reduced infant mortality, extended longevity to more than 80 years of age, and allowed the world to populate from 1 to 8 billion in less than 200 short years, is now required to provide the food, medical, communications, and transportation infrastructures to maintain and grow that population.

A key question for President Biden before America attends the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC/COP26) Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in November:

How dare pro-humanity individuals and governments support banishment of fossil fuels, when their banishment would be the greatest threat to civilization resulting in billions dying from starvation, diseases, and weather-related deaths?

Eliminating the use of fossil fuels would reverse most of the progress humanity has made over the last few centuries. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900s led us into the Industrial Revolution, and victories in World War I and II. The healthier and wealthier countries of today now have more than 6,000 products that did not exist a few hundred years ago, all manufactured from fossil fuelsthe same fossil fuels that Biden wants to eliminate.

Under Bidens plan to rid American lifestyles and economies of fossil fuels, such a plan would ground the military, the space program, and Air Force One. It would also mothball the huge energy demands of airlines, cruise ships, merchant ships, and eliminate the medical, electronics, and the communications industry that are totally reliant on the 6,000 products made from petroleum derivatives.

The first use of oil-based fertilizers took place in 1946, and today our food supply is dependent on hydrocarbons. The worlds population of 8 billion souls depends on oil-based fertilizers in order to grow the crops, and feed the animals that are consumed each year. Any cessation of hydrocarbons will immediately result in the annihilation of billions of souls, returning the globe to a 1950 population count of approximately 2.5 billion souls.

How can a pro-humanity President Biden support COVID vaccines to save thousands of lives, and simultaneously support ridding the world of fossil fuels that would be the greatest threat to civilization, resulting in billions dying from starvation, diseases, and weather-related deaths?

https://www.cfact.org/2021/10/19/pharmaceutical-production-isometric-multistore-composition/

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U.S. Coal Industry Says Almost Sold-Out For 2022

U.S. coal miners are enjoying the surge in demand for the fossil fuel, with almost all of their production through the end of next yearand some into 2023 evenalready sold, according to a Bloomberg report.

Prices are higher, too. According to the report, Arch Resources, the second-largest coal miner in the United States, has sold its 2022 output at prices 20 percent above current spot market rates. This suggests that this years surge in coal demand may not be just a short-lived hiccup in the energy transition.

Share prices of coal miners are also rising amid the demand surge. Peabody Energy Corp., Americas largest coal miner, saw its stock gain 17 percent within a day earlier this month.

U.S. coal-fired electricity generation is expected to increase this year for the first time since 2014, after years of decline, according to information published by the Energy Information Administration. The increase from 2020 is seen at a hefty 21 percent. Yet this will be a short-lived trend as the EIA also noted that as much as 30 percent of coal-fired power plants have been retired since 2010 and no new plants have been built since 2013 as the country shifts towards low-carbon energy generation.

Yet demand for coal from other parts of the world, namely Asia, is likely to remain strong in the coming years, opening up export opportunities. China is building new coal plants at a fast rate, and India continues to rely on coal for 70 percent of its electricity generation.

Meanwhile, however, coal stocks in the United States are shrinking. Down by 13.2 percent in August from a month earlier, coal stockpiles stood at 84 million tons, according to the Energy Information Administration. This is the lowest August total since 2001 when records of this nature began

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Coal-Industry-Says-Almost-Sold-Out-For-2022.html

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Well done! Australia has been ranked last for its climate policies behind Russia and Brazil

Like most conservatives wordwide, Australian conservativs dont think global warming is a serious threat. So our conservative PM just puts out flim-flam policies about it, with minimal damage to the economy

But Australia is not alone in walking on both sides of the street. Germany claims great climate virtue but is busily building coal-fired power stations -- including brown coal, the most polluting coal of all. Everybody else is supposed to be phasing out coal. I wonder why Australias coal exports are at a record high?

Australias climate policies have been ranked last out of 64 countries and the nation is among the worst offenders for emissions, renewables and energy use.

The country slipped four spots to 58th overall place in the latest Climate Change Performance Index unveiled at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Australia ranked last among 64 countries behind the likes of Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Brazil in terms of climate policy.

The countrys highest ranking was 52 for renewables, followed by a score of 54 for energy use and 56 for greenhouse gas emissions.

The index criticised Australia for bringing to Glasgow a 2050 target of net zero emissions that involved no new policies or plans.

Its technology investment roadmap was deemed insufficient to decarbonise the economy, cut fossil fuel use and promote renewables.

This failure to promote renewables ... is exacerbated by inadequate infrastructure investment despite subsidies for fossil fuel production and promotion of a gas-led economic recovery following COVID-19, the ranking said.

The countrys international standing has been damaged by climate denialism by politicians, refusal to increase ambition and refusal to recommit to international green finance mechanisms.

The annual ranking designed by German environmentalists has compared the performance of countries responsible for 90 per cent of global emissions since 2005 across four key categories.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has emphasised Australias technology not taxes approach to climate change led by private investment over government leavers.

The latest policy is a $250million future fuels plan aimed at getting up to 1.7 million electric and hybrid vehicles on Australian roads by 2030.

Its the private sector that now is responding to consumers, theyre responding to what people want, Mr Morrison said.

Governments dont have to step in and tell everybody what to do anymore when it comes to this, if they ever did.

The plan was criticised by the electric vehicle industry for leaving out tax incentives or fuel efficiency standards.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10181887/Australia-ranked-climate-policies-likes-Saudi-Arabia-Russia-Brazil.html

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/us/saving-nuclear-plant-could-help-california-hit-climate-goals-report/ar-AAQsK50

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The uses and abuses of green finance

Why the net-zero pledges of financial firms wont save the world

Alas, the cop26 summit in Glasgow is shaping up to be a disappointment. The hope that emerging markets, which belch out much of the worlds greenhouse gases, would announce ambitious proposals is being dashed. The plans of China, India and Brazil all underwhelm. There is no sign this will be the cop that kills coal, as Britain, the host, wanted. World leaders have still not agreed to stop subsidising fossil fuels.

But one area where enthusiasm is growing is climate finance. Financial institutions representing nearly $9trn in assets pledged to uproot deforestation from their investment portfolios. The most striking announcement has come from the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (gfanz), a coalition co-chaired by Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England. Its members, which include asset owners, asset managers, banks and insurers, hold about $130trn of assets. They will try to cut the emissions from their lending and investing to net zero by 2050. Can the financial industry really save the world?

In principle, it has a huge role to play. Shifting the economy from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy requires a vast reallocation of capital. By 2030, around $4trn of investment in clean energy will be needed each year, a tripling of current levels. Spending on fossil fuels must decline. In an ideal world the profit incentive of institutional investors would be aligned with reducing emissions, and these owners and financiers would control the global assets that create emissions. Asset owners would have both the motive and the means to reinvent the economy.

The reality of green investing falls short of this ideal. The first problem is coverage. The Economist estimates that listed firms which are not state-controlled account for only 14-32% of the worlds emissions. State-controlled companies, such as Coal India or Saudi Aramco, the worlds biggest oil producer, are a big part of the problem and they do not operate under the sway of institutional fund managers and private-sector bankers.

A second issue is measurement. There is as yet no way to accurately assess the carbon footprint of a portfolio without double counting. Emissions from a barrel of oil could appear in the carbon accounts of the firms that are drilling, refining and burning the stuff. Methodologies behind attributing emissions to financial flows are even sketchier. How should shareholders, lenders and insurers divvy up the emissions from a coal-fired power plant, for instance?

The third problem is incentives. Private financial firms aim to maximise risk-adjusted profits for their clients and owners. This is not well-aligned with cutting carbon. The easiest way to cut the carbon footprint of a diversified portfolio is to sell the part of it invested in dirty assets and put the proceeds in firms that never emitted much, such as, say, Facebook. Together, the five biggest American tech firms have a carbon intensity (emissions per unit of sales) of about 3% of the sin this case pollution. As shareholders urge oil majors to clean up, the oilfields they sell are being bought by private-equity firms and hedge funds, away from the public eye. Pledges alone do not alter the fact that firms have little reason to invest trillions in green technologies that still have mediocre risk-adjusted returns.

What should be done? Fine-tuning can help. Measurement should be improved. The eu is rolling out mandatory carbon reporting for businesses; America is considering it. Some accounting bodies want to standardise how climate measures are disclosed. Asset owners, such as pension funds, should hold on to their investments in polluting firms and use them to help bring about change. Institutional investors also need to build up their venture-capital arms to finance new technologies, such as green cement.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/the-uses-and-abuses-of-green-finance/21806111

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New Study Finds Electric Cars Cost More To Refuel Than Gasoline Powered Cars

Anderson Economic Group EV Transition Series: Report

The Anderson study noted that Electronic Vehicles (EVs) are, often presumed to be less expensive to fuel than their ICE counterparts. There is a rationale in physics for this: due to greater thermal efficiency, electric motors convert energy more efficiently than combustion engines. However, this cost is only one of five.

For a complete picture, Anderson notes that we consumers must consider:

Commercial and residential electric power/fuel costs.

Registration taxes.

Equipment (e.g., chargers) and installation costs.

Deadhead miles incurred driving to a charger or fueling station.

The cost of time spent refueling

The study found:

There are four additional costs to powering EVs beyond electricity: cost of a home charger, commercial charging, the EV tax and deadhead miles.

For now, EVs cost more to power than gasoline costs to fuel an internal combustion car that gets reasonable gas mileage.
Charging costs vary more widely than gasoline prices.
There are significant time costs to finding reliable public chargers even then a charger could take 30 minutes to go from 20% to an 80% charge.

In the Anderson Economic Groups October 21, 2021 column Real-World Electric Vehicle Fueling Costs May Surprise New EV Drivers they wrote:

6 months of independent research finds fueling costs for electric vehicles (EV) are often higher than for internal combustion engines (ICE)

East Lansing, MIOctober 21, 2021: Anderson Economic Group released today the first in a series of analyses examining the transition from ICE vehicles to EVs.

This initial 36-page study is the culmination of comprehensive research comparing the apples-to-apples costs involved in fueling both EVs and ICE vehicles. AEG undertook this study after noting that many commonly cited figures did not account for the true costs associated with EV charging.

AEG calculated the cost of chargers, additional road taxes, commercial charging fees, and deadhead miles for three different EV driving scenarios and compared these with 3 analogous ICE vehicle scenarios. The research found that fueling an EV is often more expensive than fueling an ICE vehicle.

It further found that fueling costs are far more variable for EVs. The authors go on to note the significant time costs imposed on EV drivers as a result of both inadequate infrastructure and wait times associated with fueling, which can be five to ten times the cost for ICE drivers.

According to study author Patrick Anderson, These numbers may be surprising to those who havent relied upon an electric vehicle, but its important we safeguard the public from charger shock. Before consumers can feel comfortable buying EVs in large numbers, they need to understand the true costs involved.

https://drrichswier.com/2021/10/24/new-study-finds-electric-cars-cost-more-to-refuel-than-gasoline-powered-cars/

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Australian government commits to expanding electric vehicle charging stations but no subsidies to increase uptake

The Prime Minister says he will not do anything to force Australians into electric cars, as the government announces its new strategy for zero emissions vehicles.

Instead, the federal government will partner with the private sector to fund 50,000 charging stations in Australian homes, in a bid to encourage more people to buy electric vehicles.

The long-awaited Future Fuels strategy does not include subsidies, tax incentives, sales targets or minimum fuel emission standards that would make electric vehicles more affordable though, according to industry groups.

However, it is a pivot from the governments 2019 assertion that Labors electric vehicle policy was a war on the weekend.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had no problem with electric vehicles, but he opposed governments telling people what to do.

Mr Morrison said customers should be able to lead the pace of change to electric vehicles, but his government would make sure the infrastructure was there to support them.

Reducing the total cost of ownership through subsidies would not represent value for the taxpayer, particularly as industry is rapidly working through technological developments to make battery electric vehicles cheaper, the governments strategy said.

It instead aligns with the technology not taxes mantra that underpins the governments broader approach to emissions reductions.

The strategy includes expanding the Future Fuels Fund to a total of $250 million of taxpayers funds, which the government estimates will create 2,600 jobs over three years.

It does not say exactly how or where those jobs will be created but does point to employment opportunities through supply chains and manufacturing needed to sustain an electric vehicle market.

The government argues its investment will help ensure companies do not concentrate charging stations in inner-city areas, which may dissuade people in outer suburban or rural areas from purchasing an electric vehicle.

We will not be forcing Australians out of the car they want to drive or penalising those who can least afford it through bans or taxes, Mr Morrison said.

Instead, the strategy will work to drive down the cost of low and zero-emission vehicles and enhance consumer choice.

The federal government will ask state and territory energy ministers to incentivise the use of smart chargers in homes and work with energy regulators to ensure the electricity grid can handle more batteries

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-08/electric-vehicle-charging-stations-no-subsidies-government-plan/100604122

https://www.timescolonist.com/bc-news/bc-doctor-clinically-diagnoses-patient-as-suffering-from-climate-change-4723540

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Climate concerns deleted from infrastructure bill

Late Friday night the House, with the help of 13 Republicans, passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. As it turns out, though, its missing a key provision when it comes to climate.

As Tanya Snyder wrote for POLITICO on Saturday, the final version falls far short of Bidens original vision, which promised to dramatically reduce the climate impacts of transportation, the single largest source of pollution. In the end, the final product was the victim of the bipartisan focus it took to get the bill done and is an example of the razor thin governing majority Democrats must navigate.

She went on the write that even with whats in the infrastructure and reconciliation spending bills do not approach how Biden promised to move the nation toward carbon neutrality and zero emission vehicles soon after he took office.

Snyder also addresses Amtrak, which was trending over Twitter on Saturday. In a subheading of Amtrak supercharged, she quotes an expert who warns not to get too excited:

But Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president for the Rail Passengers Association, a passenger rail advocacy group, said while welcome, it wont be enough to create a true transformation in the countrys passenger rail system.

The bill could enable Amtrak to boost its frequency and reliability across its network, but Jeans-Gail said it wont be enough to start launching something from nothing, like new service corridors. He noted that much of the money could be eaten up with basic maintenance needs like track upgrades, upholstery of train cars and station ventilation. It will also fund studies and corridor identification exercises that will then need even more funding to carry out, he said.

I think a lot of what were going to fund [with the infrastructure package] is environmental review, route analysis, coming up with a national concrete plan and doing design work and start constructing the corridors, Jeans-Gail said. And there needs to be that next package to bring home a lot of that planning work, a lot of that environmental work, a lot of that design work.

He noted that given these goals that we still have to decarbonize the transportation sector and to get as many people on to mass transit as possible ... wed hoped for more.

Typical big government bureaucracy is also perhaps best summed up in this one paragraph:
Despite the large figures, it could take months or even years to start seeing shovels in the ground, as regulators eager to avoid comparisons to former President Barack Obamas stimulus program focus on good projects rather than immediate projects. The current labor shortage, compounding longtime workforce issues in the construction trades, could also slow down the pace of building and make projects more expensive, experts warn.

This is an administration that is laser focused on addressing what it calls the climate crisis. It is so inherently devoted to climate and climate only that Climate Czar John Kerry has admittedly dismissed addressing Chinas human rights abuses and acts of genocide so that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be more open to a discussion where theyll pretend theyre going to try harder to reduce emissions.

During a meeting with Chinese counterparts in April, Kerry had said it was very important for the two countries to try to keep those other things away.

He make even worse remarks more recently during an interview with Bloomberg in September. When asked why theres a priority for climate change over addressing the human rights abuses caused by the slave labor inflicted on Uyghurs, Kerry casually responded that life is always full of tough choices.

For how preoccupied each and every part of the administration is with climate, Biden hasnt been able to secure many successes on this issue as of late. Sure, Xi Jinping attended Bidens virtual climate summit in April.

When it comes to the recent climate action summit in Glasgow, during which Biden apologized for how former President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Accords, Chinas the Global Times, published an opinion piece by Ai Jun, who wrote that Bidens apology in Glasgow shows hypocrisy, powerlessness of US politicians.

More recently, and closer to home, a climate provision was reported to be likely to be taken out of the Build Back Better reconciliation spending bill due to Sen. Joe Manchins (D-WV) opposition.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/11/06/majority-of-democrats-and-13-republicans-just-voted-for-an-infrastructure-bill-that-doesnt-address-bidens-main-issue-climate-n2598695

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Biden admin considering shutting down another pipeline, drawing criticism and dire warnings as winter nears

The Biden administration is reportedly weighing the potential market consequences of shutting down an oil pipeline in Michigan, drawing criticism from opponents. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Bidens energy secretary, predicted Sunday that heating prices will rise this winter regardless of the Biden administrations decision on the pipeline. Yeah, this is going to happen. It will be more expensive this year than last year, Granholm told CNN.

The administration has yet to decide on what to do with Line 5 and officials were gathering information only to present a clear picture of the situation, according to sources who spoke to Politico.

Line 5 is part of a network that moves crude oil and other petroleum products from western Canada, transporting about 540,000 barrels per day. Petroleum is taken from the pipeline in Escanaba, Michigan.

Jason Hayes, the director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, blasted the Biden administration for its energy policies, telling Fox News that their work on Line 5 is just one more example of being divorced from reality.

Theyre planning to power an industrial nation like the United States on solar panels and wind turbines, Hayes said, while noting that even the solar panels and wind turbines require oil, natural gas, nuclear and even coal to be produced.

Hayes presented a dire picture of what shutting Line 5 could mean if people are unable to get natural gas or the electricity it provides as the nation heads into winter.

I hope it doesnt end like this, but where I see it going is unfortunately the same thing that happened in February in Texas: People freezing in their homes, he said, adding, Most of the time when its extremely cold or theres a real bad polar vortex situation, typically its pretty cloudy and theres not a lot of wind.

Explaining he has trouble understanding why some Western leaders seem unable to grasp the importance of reliable, affordable energy and electricity for everyday citizens, Hayes said, It seems like the only nations that understand that we require reliable, affordable dispatchable energy is China and Russia. And theyre the only ones that are producing energy and theyre more than happy to hold that energy hostage for the rest of the world.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-considering-shutting-down-michigan-pipeline

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Cyclones Downs, Corals Up Except in Glasgow

Written by Jennifer Marohasy in Australia

It is impossible to reconcile the official statistics and what is under-the-water with the media reporting including the reporting from Glasgow. There are meant to be more cyclones and less coral, but we have quite the reverse according to the official statistics. It is also making no sense that those who purport to care so much about the Great Barrier Reef still havent visited it. Then there are those who have visited it once, and then there are those who have visited it but never actually got in the water. Some of them are in Glasgow.

It was not for nothing that former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull he apparently visited Magnetic Island some years ago but never got in the water approved a A$443 million grant to the tiny Great Barrier Reef Foundation. As far as I can tell it is paid out in little bits to all those in proximity who are prepared to lament how the corals are dying. Ive meet so many who have received something, and so the useful idiots are paid off by the special people now in Glasgow.

On the eve of Glasgow, the same foundation put out comment:

Insufficient global action on climate change is taking a serious toll on the health of our Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs around the world. The facts are clear coral reefs and their communities are on the front line. We know current climate change commitments dont go far enough to protect them and we know this is the critical decade in which to act with urgency. Next months UN Climate Change Conference COP26 will be a pivotal moment in the global response to climate change.

On Tuesday 13th October 2020, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology put out a media release Tropical Cyclone seasonal outlook for The Coral Sea in which it was acknowledged that, and I quote: Recent decades have seen a decline in the number of tropical cyclones in our region.

Bureau climatologist, Greg Browning, went on to explain that this summer is likely to buck that trend, and that: On average Australia sees 9 to 11 tropical cyclones each year, with 4 crossing the coast.

Cyclones can be devastating to coral reefs. Huge waves pound relentlessly smashing branching and fan corals. Sponges and squirts are upended. Massive Porites can be lifted and thrown metres sometimes beyond the reef proper and onto the beach.

Given the Great Barrier Reef, as one ecosystem comprising nearly 3,000 individual reefs stretching for more than 2,000 kilometres, cyclone damaged areas can almost always be found somewhere. A coral reef that is mature and spectacular today, may be smashed by a cyclone tomorrow. So, Im always in a hurry to visit my next reef particularly given all the modelling suggesting an inevitable increase in the number of cyclones and an inevitable decline in coral cover.

Yet!

The 202021 Australian region cyclone season was another below average season, producing a total of just 8 tropical cyclones with just 3 of these categorised as severe. So since records began it is a case of less cyclones and less severe cyclones which must be good for the corals.

The Bureau has not updated this chart since the 2016/2017 season. The trend continues a downward trajectory with just 8 tropical cyclones last season (2020/2021) with 3 categorised as severe.

http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml

Perhaps not surprisingly we are also seeing an increase in coral cover, and this is exactly what the latest report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science concludes. According to their Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) based on surveys of 127 reefs conducted between August 2020 and April 2021, and I quote: In 2021, widespread recovery was underway, largely due to increases in fast growing Acropora corals.

Survey reefs experienced low levels of acute stressors over the past 12 months with no prolonged high temperatures or major cyclones. Numbers of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish on survey reefs have generally decreased; however, there remain ongoing outbreaks on some reefs in the Southern GBR.

On the Northern GBR, region-wide hard coral cover was moderate and had continued to increase to 27% from the most recent low point in 2017.

On the Central GBR region-wide hard coral cover was moderate and had increased to 26% in 2021.

Region-wide hard coral cover on reefs in the Southern GBR was high and had increased to 39% in 2021.

More information at https://www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/gbr-condition-summary-2020-2021

Meanwhile former US President Barack Obama who has never ever actually visited the Great Barrier Reef confirmed he will attend the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow. He is apparently meeting young climate change activists and highlighting their work around the world. Im wondering when he will bring them to see the corals. The closest he has got, so far, is to Brisbane back in November 2014. He gave a speech at my old university lamenting the parlous state of the corals and claiming he wanted to take his daughters to see the corals before they were all gone.

But. We are still waiting. As far as I can tell, like Malcolm Turnbull, Barack Obama frightens the children about that which they have never actually seen or experienced with his own eyes and with opinion that often does not even accord with the available statistics.

Former US President Bill Clinton hasnt made it to Glasgow, but he did visit the Great Barrier Reef back in November 1996. He apparently spent a short hour snorkelling at a reef off Port Douglas.

If I didnt know something about the scientific method, greenhouse gases, the Great Barrier Reef, and that foundation, I would be inclined to believe there was a crisis and that there really was something I should do about it. As it is, I know that coral bleaching occurs as part of a natural cycle that will repeat irrespective of any agreements made in Glasgow. I also know as fact that there has been no increase in the incidence of cyclones and that coral cover is good and improving. It is also fact that coral reefs would benefit if there was rising sea levels because they could keep growing-up and also that they grow faster as sea temperatures increase.

Did you know that there are arguably more colourful corals and even better coral cover in waters just a few degrees warmers? The warmer waters are just to the north of Australia around New Guinea and Indonesia.

https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/cyclones-downs-corals-up-except-in-glasgow

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here. It shows that we actually live in an era of remarkable temperature stability.

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didnt have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldnt have noticed it at all.

The chart above demonstrates in dramatic fashion that there is absolutely no connection between steadily rising CO2levels and nearly stable to slightly higher average global temperatures over the past four decades.

Temperature measurements from NASA satellites show warming of merely at a pace of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade during the past 40 years, suggesting that unless something changes, we can expect merely 1.0 degrees warming as the most likely scenario during the next 80 years. And an increase of only one degree is surely trivial and of no concern to anyone

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

If conservatives deny the "science" of climate change, the Green/Left denies the math

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be challenged, no sacred truths.

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded in the graph above: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

"Thinking" molecules?? Terrestrial temperatures have gone up by less than one degree over the last 150 years and CO2 has gone up long term too. But that proves nothing. It is not a proven causal relationship. One of the first things you learn in statistics is that correlation is not causation. And there is none of the smooth relationship that you would expect of a causal relationship. Both temperatures and CO2 went up in fits and starts but they were not the same fits and starts. The precise effects on temperature that CO2 levels are supposed to produce were not produced. CO2 molecules don't have a little brain in them that says "I will stop reflecting heat down for a few years and then start up again". Their action (if any) is entirely passive. Theoretically, the effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere should be instant. It allegedly works by bouncing electromagnetic radiation around and electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. But there has been no instant effect. Temperature can stay plateaued for many years (e.g. 1945 to 1975) while CO2 levels climb. So there is clearly no causal link between the two. One could argue that there are one or two things -- mainly volcanoes and the Ninos -- that upset the relationship but there are not exceptions ALL the time. Most of the time a precise 1 to 1 connection should be visible. It isn't, far from it. You should be able to read one from the other. You can't.

Antarctica is GAINING mass

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, were all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

The plight of the bumblebee -- an egregious example of crooked "science"

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

Dioxin has long been one of the great Greenie swear-words. All sorts of health disasters have been blamed on it and anything that produces dioxin is supposed to bring us all a slow and painful death -- and deform our babies too, of course. But it has been discovered that the peat fires that the Scots and Irish have used for millennia to keep themselves warm in winter also give off lots of dioxin! How awful for those poor Scots and Irish! They must not realize how ill and deformed they are.

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance. The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and speak it loud! human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

The Rowland and Molina theory about CFRCs and ozone was disproved before the Montreal Protocol was signed. It is simply a weather related event. The protocol was a dress rehearsal for the climate scam.

Warmists claim that the "hiatus" in global warming that began around 1998 was caused by the oceans suddenly gobbling up all the heat coming from above. Changes in the heat content of the oceans are barely measurable but the ARGO bathythermographs seem to show the oceans warming not from above but from below

WISDOM:

Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. (Men gladly believe that which they wish for) -- Julius Caesar

I would rather have questions that cant be answered, than answers that cant be questioned. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, Physicist

It doesnt matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesnt matter how smart you are. If it doesnt agree with experiment, its wrong. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" Richard Feynman

UNRELIABLE SCIENCE:

(1). The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of significance pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-taleJournals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, Offline: What is medicines 5 sigma?)

(2). It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, Drug Companies indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement" -- Karl Popper

"I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem -- Christopher Hitchens

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others. -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

Weve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy. Timothy Wirth,President of the UN Foundation

Isnt the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isnt it our responsibility to bring that about? Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

The frequency of hurricanes has markedly DECLINED in recent years

Here's how that "97% consensus" figure was arrived at

97% of scientists want to get another research grant

Another 97%: Following the death of an older brother in a car crash in 1994, Bashar Al Assad became heir apparent; and after his father died in June 2000, he took office as President of Syria with a startling 97 per cent of the vote.

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

To Greenies, Genghis Khan was a good guy, believe it or not. They love that he killed so many people.

Greenie antisemitism

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Global warming has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

Comparing climate alarmist Hansen to Cassandra is WRONG. Cassandra's (Greek mythology) dire prophecies were never believed but were always right. Hansen's dire prophecies are usually believed but are always wrong (Prof. Laurence Gould, U of Hartford, CT)

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

UPDATE to the above: It seems that I am a true prophet

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!

Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.

The inconvenient truth about biological effects of "Ocean Acidification"

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere ismaximum 4%.

Cook the crook who cooks the books

The great and fraudulent scare about lead

How 'GREEN' is the FOOTPRINT of a WIND TURBINE? 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of concrete

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the worlds oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

If you doubt the arrogance [of the global warming crowd, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The "precautionary principle" is a favourite Greenie idea -- but isn't that what George Bush was doing when he invaded Iraq? Wasn't that a precaution against Saddam getting or having any WMDs? So Greenies all agree with the Iraq intervention? If not, why not?

A classic example of how the sensationalist media distort science to create climate panic is here.

There is a very readable summary of the "Hockey Stick" fraud here

The Lockwood s yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at 0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Rapers data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Relying on the popular wisdom can even hurt you personally: "The scientific consensus of a quarter-century ago turned into the arthritic nightmare of today."

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
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