Climate Change > Von Der Leyen's absurd prediction; Rush to EVs may be big mistake

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European Commission president says it will slash greenhouse gases

by 55% in next 8 years

She said while her home country, Germany, is scrambling to replace windmills with dirty coal mines.

By Clyde Hughes

   

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during the 2022 United Nations Climate Change 

Conference (COP27), in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Tuesday. Photo by Khaled Elfiqi/EPA-EFE

Nov. 8 (UPI) -- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the COP 27 summit in Egypt on Tuesday called for member nations to jointly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by the end of the decade to avoid climate change's "highway to hell."

In an effort to quicken the rollout renewals, which she called REPowerEU, she said the effort would not only cut its reliance of Russian fossil fuels but can take advantage of already available resources.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the day earlier that the world was "on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator."

"Let us not take the highway to hell; let us earn the clean ticket to heaven," Leyen said. "The European Union's additional renewable capacity is set to more than double this year, up to 50 gigawatts.

"And if we accelerate and if we scale up -- and that is our plan -- we can, in the next year, meet a new all-time record of over 100 gigawatts of additional renewable capacity. Because we know that every kilowatt-hour of electricity that we generate from renewable sources -- like solar and wind, and green hydrogen -- is not only good for our climate but also good for our independence and our security of supply."

Maria Niera, the World Health Organization's director of public health and environment said the connection between climate change and health is already noticeable.

"The price of not taking decisions to fight climate change is paid by our lungs when you breathe polluted air, and many other organ," Niera said. "I think health will be the final motivation that has been missing from the 26 previous COPS. I don't see what else can be.

"If they take the right decisions, our health will gain. If they take the wrong decisions, our health will lose."

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame echoed the sentiments of many poor African countries on Tuesday, pointing out they contribute the least to global warming but continued to pay the high price for its results.

"The most valuable contribution that developed countries can make is to reduce their emissions faster while investing in Africa to build sustainable, green power," Kagame said. "Questioning whether Africa is ready to make use of climate finance should not be used as an excuse to justify inaction."

Rush to electric vehicles may be an expensive mistake, say climate strategists

Move to replace fossil fuel fleet with EVs is essential, but there are things to do first

Don Pittis · CBC News · 

Posted: Dec 12, 2022 1:30 AM ET | 

An electric Canoo LV (Lifestyle Vehicle) at a factory in Livonia, Mich., last month. Quirky new designs can make EVs

attractive items of conspicuous consumption for those who can afford them. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

With their futuristic designs and new technology, electric vehicles are the seductive consumer-friendly face of the energy transition.

As first incarnated by Tesla, the EV is increasingly seen as sleeker, slicker, faster and more stylish than traditional internal combustion engine cars and trucks that burn those dirty fossil fuels blamed for disrupting weather patterns and killing off species. 

For people with money and a conscience, EVs are doubly satisfying. They allow the affluent to indulge in the time-honoured pleasures of conspicuous consumption while at the same time saving the planet.

Not so fast

But for those who have looked more deeply at how the world can escape its dependence on oil and gas, the rush to replace existing gas guzzlers with a new fleet of clean, silent battery-powered personal transport leaves them uneasy.

Many, including John Lorinc, last month's winner of the 2022 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy for his book Dream States, worry that the dash to go electric has not been well thought out. 

The potential result? Unsustainable costs and unnecessary damage to the environment.

"It's a really important evolution of technology to get away from internal combustion engines, so that part is necessary," said Lorinc in a recent phone interview. But he said the change comes with many caveats, including the fact that a lot of the world's electricity is still made using fossil fuels. 

Even though they are electric, larger trucks and SUVs like this Rivian R1T mean they are not environmentally

friendly to manufacture, and their large batteries make them heavier and harder on roads, say urban planners.

(Nathan Frandino/Reuters)

"Electric vehicles are large engineered objects that require a lot of metal, they require a lot of components that are shipped all over the place," he said. "There's a lot of mining and processing of minerals required to make the components, so it's not an environmental panacea by any stretch of the imagination."

Ottawa's critical mineral strategy calls for faster project approvals

People who study what they call the energy transition — the move away from releasing hundreds of millions of years worth of carbon trapped deep underground into the atmosphere and, instead, move toward renewable energy sources — insist it must be done strategically. Like Lorinc, they say that while getting all fossil fuel vehicles off the road is essential, it is far from the first step to saving the planet.

Lorinc's new book, a study of the complexity of attempts to building green "smart cities," is stuffed with information and written in an accessible, sometimes humorous style — "What city wouldn't want to be 'smart'?" —  and delves into the thorny problem of urban transportation.

'Horrendously inefficient'

Illustrated with real examples, the chapter "The Quagmire of Mobility Tech," relates how cities have struggled with uncontrolled market forces competing for limited urban space and limited funding. 

Lorinc describes how innovations such as early, inexpensive ride-hailing apps like Uber drove people away from public transit, helping to plug up downtown streets. In one case, he describes how Innisfil, Ont., a small town north of Toronto, experimented with switching away from costly bus services to ride-hailing apps — and how the idea became so popular it blew the municipal budget.

And there's research on how electric self-driving cars could one day transform cities, Lorinc writes, but in a way that just might be flawed. 

"EVs are here to save the car industry, not the planet, that is crystal clear," said outspoken urban planning advocate Jason Slaughter in a recent email conversation. "Electric cars use batteries instead of gasoline, but they are still a horrendously inefficient way to move people around, especially in crowded cities."

Canada’s first full-scale auto plant for electric vehicles has gone into production, bringing promise of new jobs to an industry that’s slipped in dominance in recent years.

A strong advocate of public transportation on his YouTube channel Not Just Bikes, Slaughter insists that in order to make cities people-friendly instead of being dominated by cars, public transportation has to be both comfortable and easy to use.

Slaughter's adopted home, the Netherlands, is one of the most advanced in making its cities walkable and bikeable, thus discouraging the domination of cars. Lorinc, too, describes Dutch urban centres as among those closest to becoming true smart cities.

And there are signs the trend toward fewer urban cars is growing. Last week San Jose, Calif., became the largest U.S. city to abandon parking minimums — the traditional requirement that urban development had to have a certain number of parking spaces. Also last week Paris announced it was paying car drivers to switch to electric bikes.

Outside of financial incentives, there are other ways to entice people to get out from behind the wheel — make the alternatives the easiest option. 

One person and a yogurt

"Using a vehicle to move a person and a quart of yogurt is energy inefficient," said Kate Daley, a climate and energy specialist who works in Waterloo region, referring to the drive many suburban Canadians must make just to pick up an essential ingredient from the nearest shop.

Her community's climate strategy has been to make walking, biking and public transit convenient enough that residents don't have to drive, whether in a fossil fuel burner or an EV. She notes that the move toward large SUVs has already been hard on road surfaces, and the additional load caused by batteries makes the damage worse.

But most important, said Daley, is that a successful energy transition must be done strategically. As those working on fuel switching for heating Canadian homes have noted in the past, one of the advantages of fossil fuels and why we remain addicted to them is that they remain an incredible bargain.

Switching from gas to electric for high-use vehicles including taxis, delivery trucks and car-share vehicles

would have a bigger impact on the climate than trading in a car that is seldom used. (Don Pittis/CBC News)

"The reason we want to use less energy first is because if we don't reduce our energy use, [fossil fuel energy is] really expensive to replace," said Daley.

As a Vancouver green building planner has told me in the past, insulating and sealing up homes can cut energy use by 90 per cent, meaning the cost of alternative energy sources becomes less important. 

Daley said the three stages of energy transition, which applies equally to EVs is that "we need to use less energy, we need to use clean energy and we need to generate local clean energy."

Who goes first?
Recently, Canada celebrated the opening of a General Motors factory in Ingersoll, Ont., to build electric delivery vehicles, and according to Colleen Kaiser, low carbon transportation expert with the Ottawa-based Smart Prosperity Institute, they may be on the right track.

"We really want the oldest [fossil fuel] cars off the road ... and we want the ones that drive the most," said Kaiser. "So we can think about taxi kind of vehicles, whether it's an Uber or a traditional taxi, any kind of fleet vehicles."

Effectively, she said, any car or truck that is on the road many hours a day, including buses, delivery vehicles, travelling sales reps, long-distance commuters, car shares such as Communauto or Zipcars, should be the ones to electrify first. 

She agrees that changing the "built urban form of our communities" may be the most important way to reduce total car use, but she said that takes a long time. "That is why we have to start now."

Electric rickshaws are a constant on the streets of New Delhi, often fighting for space outside busy areas, 

but they are a vast improvement on the previous generation of motors that created choking fumes.

(Salimah Shivji/CBC)

"We definitely don't want to replace all the gasoline cars one-for-one with electric vehicles," said Kaiser. "We have an opportunity with the transition to not just repeat the same patterns of the past with a different energy source." 

Kaiser said she thinks that may come with a generational change. Already, young people are more likely to live downtown, take transit more often and are less likely to drive a car. But for the many Canadians who live in rural or suburban areas that may not be possible.

"We're going to have to have electric vehicles because not everyone is going to use some alternative mode of transport," she said.

As Lorinc has noted, the consumer-friendly side of buying and driving a flashy electric car needs to be backed up by many more expensive steps. Those included developing green power sources, transforming our ability to get electricity to where it is needed with "smart grids," building systems for storage and the business of finding, extracting and processing essential battery minerals. That's a lot less sexy and a lot more complicated than picking out a new car.

But as Lorinc observes in Dream States, "Anyone who fails to acknowledge that everything is complicated, simply isn't paying attention."

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Climate Change > Nottinghamshire to get World's First Commercial Fusion Generator

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U.K. selects site for world's first fusion power plant

Fusion is touted as a near-limitless source of energy.

By Daniel J. Graeber

   

Nuclear plants such as the Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in northern Germany could yield

substantial forms of new energy should research on fusion yield positive results.

File Photo by Focke Strangmann/EPA-EFE

Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The British government said it selected the location for what could become the world's first commercial-scale prototype for a nuclear reactor run by fusion, a near-limitless source of energy.

The government on Monday selected the West Burton A plant in Nottinghamshire, southeast of Leeds, as the site for its prototype fusion energy plant, which could be completed by 2040.

Fission, which is used in standard nuclear-power reactors, works by breaking atoms apart. Fusion is a type of nuclear energy derived from the collision of atoms. It is considered a near-limitless and clean source of energy, but it's only been tested so far in non-commercial experiments.

"Fusion power creates nearly 4 million times more energy for every kilogram of fuel than burning coal, oil or gas," the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority explained.

Ben Bradley, a council leader in Nottinghamshire County, welcomed the decision to eventually power the country from his constituency.

"It's new technology, we've proven that it works and north Nottinghamshire is going to be the hub of research, innovation, commercializing that and selling it to the world," he told the BBC.

EUROfusion scientists and engineers at the Joint European Torus facility in Oxford set a record for fusion energy early this year with the generation of 59 megajoules of sustained energy. 

Dr Robert Sansom, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Energy Policy Panel, said:

“It’s an important step but the energy output specified is confusing. The 59 MJ is described as sustained but it was over 5 seconds with an average output of 11MW.  If this energy could be captured and used to power a steam turbine, then the power station output would be about 4MW, which is not much.

In other words, it would cost a genuine fortune!

“I would describe it as a proof of concept, but there is a lot further to go. The next stage would be to demonstrate that the energy can be captured and used to drive a generator. From this, we would be able to assess its potential for a reliable source of baseload power and its associated costs and other factors, including environmental impact. It’s a step forward but there are many more steps to overcome before this technology can be commercialised in time to have much impact on net zero. The best we can hope for is that this technology offers a viable low carbon energy source for the second half of this century and an alternative to nuclear fission.”

Researchers said the results more than double the old energy record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 at the same facility.

Not extremely impressive after 25 years of research. They will have to do exponentially better in the next 25 years if it's to be worthwhile.

The concept design for the facility in Nottinghamshire is expected a good two decades before the planned start of the prototype and will draw on at least $245 million in initial government funding.

Climate Change > Sacrificing health and wealth for immeasurably little difference in Climate Change - Haarlem Ad Ban, EV cars

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For an agricultural country, this is equivalent to Canada refusing to export its oil and gas - Spectacular stupidity!

Dutch city 1st in world to ban meat advertisements

as climate change measure

By Clyde Hughes

   

The ban, which is believed to be a first for any city, was driven by studies that say meat production and consumption

are a significant contributor to climate change. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- A Dutch city has become the first in the world to ban advertisements for meat as part of a plan to reduce greenhouse gases and fight climate change.

The city, Haarlem, banned the advertisements in public spaces in an effort to drive down meat consumption, and thereby reduce carbon emissions.

The Amsterdam suburb, which has a population of 160,000 people, said the ban will start in 2024.

The move is a response to recent studies that suggest global food production and consumption, particularly meat, accounts for about one-third of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

"We are not about what people are baking and roasting in their own kitchen; if people wanted to continue eating meat, fine," Ziggy Klazes, a councilor of the Groen Links Party and author of the legislation, said according to The Guardian.

"We can't tell people there's a climate crisis and encourage them to buy products that are part of the cause. Of course, there are a lot of people who find the decision outrageous and patronizing, but there are also a lot of people who think it's fine."

Klazes said she would love to see similar bans across the Netherlands, including possibly a national prohibition on the advertisements.

The ban was supported by the Christian Democrats Party, despite party leader Wopke Hoekstra's siding with some farmers who are against the measure.

The legislation could face immediate legal challenges. Herman Broring, a Dutch law professor, said the ban could infringe on free speech laws.

Of course, this will make virtually no difference in the global temperature. It is liable to lower the quality of protein ingested by Haarlemites, and affect the agricultural industry in the Netherlands.

Haarlem, NL

“We constantly hear that electric cars are the future—cleaner, cheaper and better.

But if they’re so good, why does California need to ban gasoline-powered cars?

Why does the world spend $30 billion a year subsidizing electric ones?

In reality, electric cars are only sometimes and somewhat better than the alternatives, they’re often much costlier, and they aren’t necessarily all that much cleaner. Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is generated. Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one.

EV fleet - still functional vehicles except the batteries are dead and are not worth replacing.

The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

Electric cars’ impact on air pollution isn’t as straightforward as you might think. The vehicles themselves pollute only slightly less than a gasoline car because their massive batteries and consequent weight leads to more particulate pollution from greater wear on brakes, tires and roads. On top of that, the additional electricity they require can throw up large amounts of air pollution depending on how it’s generated. One recent study found that electric cars put out more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars in 70% of U.S. states. An American Economic Association study found that rather than lowering air pollution, on average each additional electric car in the U.S. causes additional air-pollution damage worth $1,100 over its lifetime.

The minerals required for those batteries also present an ethical problem, as many are mined in areas with dismal human-rights records. Most cobalt, for instance, is dug out in Congo, where child labor is not uncommon, specifically in mining. There are security risks too, given that mineral processing is concentrated in China.

Increased demand for already-prized minerals is likely to drive up the price of electric cars significantly. The International Energy Agency projects that if electric cars became as prevalent as they would have to be for the world to reach net zero by 2050, the annual total demand for lithium for automobile batteries alone that year would be almost 28 times as much as current annual global lithium production. The material prices for batteries this year are more than three times what they were in 2021, and electricity isn’t getting cheaper either.

Even if rising costs weren’t an issue, electric cars wouldn’t be much of a bargain. Proponents argue that though they’re more expensive to purchase, electric cars are cheaper to drive. But a new report from a U.S. Energy Department laboratory found that even in 2025 the agency’s default electric car’s total lifetime cost will be 9% higher than a gasoline car’s, and the study relied on the very generous assumption that electric cars are driven as much as regular ones. In reality, electric cars are driven less than half as much, which means they’re much costlier per mile.

In part, this is because electric cars are often a luxury item. Two-thirds of the households in the U.S. that own one have incomes exceeding $100,000 a year. For 9 in 10 of electric-vehicle-owning households, it’s only a second car. They also have a gasoline-powered car—usually a bigger one, such as an SUV, pickup truck or minivan—that they use for long trips, given its longer range. And it takes additional costs to make electric cars convenient—such as installing a charger in your garage. Those who can’t afford it, or who don’t have a garage, will have to spend a lot more time at commercial chargers than it takes to fill up a car with gasoline.

This is all why electric cars still require such massive subsidies to sell. Norway is the only country where most new cars are electric, and that took wiping the sales and registration tax on these vehicles—worth $25,160 a car—on top of other tax breaks such as reduced tolls. Even so, only 12.6% of all Norwegian cars on the road are electric. The country has the wealth to pay for them partly because of its oil revenue, and the trade is dubious: To cut one ton of CO2 emissions through the subsidization of electric cars, Norway has to sell 100 barrels of oil, which emit 40 tons of CO2.

Needless to say, other countries’ car stocks aren’t likely to be anywhere close to 100% electric anytime soon. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that barring new legislation only about 17% of all new U.S. cars will be electric by 2050, which translates to 13% of the total American car stock. As consumers continue to vote with their wallets against electric cars, it is hard to imagine places like California continuing to demand that they can purchase only electric ones.

Electric vehicles will take over the market only if innovation makes them actually better and cheaper than gasoline-powered cars. Politicians are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and keeping consumers from the cars they want for virtually no climate benefit.” 

—Bjorn Lomborg

—Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”

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Climate Change > Toyota - America not ready to go full-on EV; 2021 - 5th Hottest Year; Sun-dimming cautioned by scientists

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Toyota Warns We’re Nowhere Near Ready To Jettison

Gas-Powered Vehicles

It is one of the world’s two largest auto and truck manufacturers

— twice the size of General Motors (GM), our biggest.

Climate Change Dispatch

Toyota warns the world is far from ready to jettison gasoline and diesel engines and require batteries to run our replacements.

For Toyota, it is not just about finding enough critical battery material such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. It is about having enough electricity in our power grid to recharge them.

Specifically, Toyota not only worries about our grid capacity today but in the future, when at least 30 times more electricity-powered cars and trucks are projected to be on the road.

Robert Wimmer, Toyota’s head of energy and environmental research, testified last spring before the U.S. Senate warning of electricity supply problems.

“If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability,” PJMedia.com’s Bryan Preston reported.

Wimmer’s remarks came on the heels of GM’s announcement that it will phase out all gas internal combustion engines by 2035. Other manufacturers, including Mini, have followed suit with similar announcements.

Based on a 2017 U.S. government study, Toyota calculates electricity supply and infrastructure are woefully inadequate. It found the need for 8,500 strategically-placed charging stations to support a fleet of seven million electric cars (EVs).

That’s about six times the current number of electric cars. But no one is talking about supporting just seven million cars, Wimmer added. “We should be talking about powering about 300 million within the next 20 years.”

Toyota isn’t alone in serving up the reality check. Tesla’s Elon Musk, who built his empire on EVs, agrees.

In December, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee released his latest climate proposal calling for a carbon-neutral electrical grid by 2030 and one to be powered by 100 percent clean electricity by 2045.

It augments his building codes, which include a phase-out of natural gas for space and water heating by forbidding the use of fossil fuels for heating and hot water in new buildings by 2030.

The codes add pressure on the electric grid to replace natural gas.

Rep. Mary Dye (R-Pomeroy) adds Inslee’s natural gas ban is significant:

“It’s a big industry because it provides warmth for about 1.2 million residences, there’s 107,000 commercial buildings and 3,500 industrial buildings that are working under clean, efficient, reliable natural gas. Plus, it fires about 11 percent of our electricity grid.”

Washington may be in a better position than most places to increase electricity supplies because of our plentiful hydropower system, which provides two-thirds of our electricity.

Today, our state has an adequate electricity supply, but if proposals banning natural gas in new homes and buildings and demands for EV recharging skyrocket, our state could face the same brownouts as California and China.

China currently has the most EVs on the road while California leads the U.S. China and California, which have large wind and solar farms, have grid overload and increasingly, people are losing electricity. It is likely to be far worse in the future.

China, by far the largest greenhouse gas emitter, claims it will be at least 2060 before it may be carbon neutral. Meanwhile, rather than replacing fossil fuel electrical generation, it is adding grid capacity to meet the projected load.

They have even opened several new coal mines last month to support the post-covid growth.

Toyota’s alarm is a good thing. Addressing the electricity shortfalls now, before our backs are against the wall, is even better.

Read more at Seattle Weekly

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2021 was Earth's 5th-hottest year on record,

according to European Union scientists

As greenhouse gas emissions change the planet's climate,

the long-term warming trend has continued

Thomson Reuters · 

Posted: Jan 10, 2022 12:04 PM ET 

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report Monday that the last seven years were the world's warmest 'by a clear margin,' and the average global temperature in 2021 was 1.1-1.2 C above 1850–1900 levels. (Shutterstock/Edmund O'Connor)

Last year was the world's fifth hottest on record, while levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere hit new highs in 2021, European Union scientists said.

The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report on Monday that the last seven years were the world's warmest "by a clear margin" in records dating back to 1850, and the average global temperature in 2021 was 1.1-1.2 C above 1850-1900 levels.

The hottest years on record were 2020 and 2016.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries committed to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 C, the level scientists say would avoid the worst impacts of climate change. That would require emissions to roughly halve by 2030, but so far they have charged higher.

There are many assumptions in this statement, none of which have been proven. There is little doubt that humans contribute to global warming, but to blame it all on anthropogenic causes is absurd. Global warming is extremely complex and there are many other things at play than human factors. There is a lot politics behind the global warming hysteria, more politics than science.

As greenhouse gas emissions change the planet's climate, the long-term warming trend has continued. Climate change exacerbated many of the extreme weather events sweeping the world in 2021, from floods in Europe, China and South Sudan, to wildfires in Siberia and the United States.

"These events are a stark reminder of the need to change our ways, take decisive and effective steps toward a sustainable society and work toward reducing net carbon emissions," C3S director Carlo Buontempo said.

Global levels of CO2 and methane, the main greenhouse gases, continued to climb, and both hit record highs in 2021. Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 414.3 parts per million (ppm) in 2021, up by around 2.4 ppm from 2020, the scientists said.

C3S said levels of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, have jumped in the last two years, but the reasons why are not fully understood. Emissions of methane range from oil and gas production and farming, to natural sources like wetlands.

After a temporary dip in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, provisional data suggest global CO2 emissions rebounded by 4.9 per cent in 2021.

This is hard to understand considering the dramatic reduction in travel - by air, sea, and land. One would expect a significant reduction.

Records and disasters

Last summer was Europe's hottest on record, CS3 said, following a warm March and unusually cold April that had decimated fruit crops in countries including France and Hungary.

In July and August, a Mediterranean heat wave stoked intense wildfires in countries including Turkey and Greece. Sicily set a new European temperature high of 48.8 C, a record awaiting official confirmation.

In July, more than 200 people died when torrential rain triggered deadly flooding in western Europe. Scientists concluded that climate change had made the floods at least 20 per cent more likely.

Also that month, floods in China's Henan province killed more than 300 people. In California, a record-smashing heat wave was followed by the second-biggest wildfire in the state's history, decimating land and belching out air pollution.

In Canada, the town of Lytton, B.C., was wiped out that month after a wildfire engulfed it. Parts of the province also shattered heat records last summer during an intense and persistent heat wave.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release their climate findings on Wednesday.

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Scientists want global ban on ‘sun-dimming’

Researchers rally against solar geoengineering as a method of fighting climate change

© Ricardo Esquivel/Pexels

An international group of scientists and experts wants all nations to sign a pact banning public funding and deployment of solar geoengineering, as well as outdoor experiments revolving around ways to ‘dim the sun.’ 

“Solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system,” the researchers wrote in an open letter published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change journal this week. 

The concept of solar geoengineering aims to lower temperatures on Earth by using modern technology to reduce the incoming sunlight. The proposals include the spraying of aerosols into the stratosphere to stop (reduce) the spread of solar energy. Some see this as a potential response to global warming. 

But the authors of the letter warned about “uncertainties” surrounding the effects of such technologies on weather, agriculture, and the supply of food and water. 

We should be concerned anytime we attempt to improve upon God.

The letter argued that the world’s poorest nations will be left highly vulnerable unless powerful countries place the technology of such planetary scale under international control. 

Is this another movement toward One World Government?

The current world order seems unfit to reach such far-reaching agreements on fair and effective political control over solar geoengineering deployment.

Proposals to study solar geoengineering were most recently floated by the media amid COP26, a major UN climate change summit in Scotland in November of last year.

In March, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report recommending an investment of $100-$200 million in solar geoengineering research over five years as part of crafting “a robust portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation policies.” NASEM argued that outdoor experiments that involve releasing substances into the atmosphere must be limited and subjected to strict regulation. 

NASEM emphasized that solar geoengineering should not be a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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Climate Change > Russia Vetoes Climate Change Resolution at UN - Why? Global Oil Production to Plunge; Record Temps in Arctic Siberia; France Shuts Down 2 Nuclear Plants

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Russia explains why it vetoed climate change resolution at UN

13 Dec, 2021 19:11

FILE PHOTO. The UN Security Council holds a meeting. © AFP / John Minchillo

Russia has vetoed a draft UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, linking climate change to security threats. Russia's ambassador to the body claimed the document would have set a dangerously one-sided approach to future conflicts.

The UNSC voted on the draft resolution, tabled by temporary members Ireland and Niger, on Monday. The proposal, co-sponsored by over 100 nations, called upon the UN secretary-general to make climate-related risks “a central component” of conflict prevention, while “incorporating information on the security implications of climate change” to make the council “pay due regard to any root causes of conflict or risk multipliers.”

While the draft was supported by the majority of UNSC members, it was vetoed by Russia, with another permanent member, China, abstaining. Among the temporary invitees, India was the only country to vote against the draft. Between them, the three countries are home to close to 40% of the world's population. 

Explaining the decision to sink the resolution, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said the document would have imposed an extremely one-sided perspective to deal with conflicts, while potentially enabling the UNSC to put any country on its agenda under the guise of climate-related issues.

“We object to the creation of a new branch in the council’s work that asserts a generic and an automatic link between climate change and international security, turning a scientific and socio-economic issue into a political issue,” Nebenzia said during the meeting.

The proposed document was effectively “coercing the council to take a one-dimensional approach to conflicts and threats to international peace and security, i.e. through the climate lens,” Russia’s mission said in a separate statement.

We recognize the range of complex and intertwined challenges, including the impact of climate change, natural disasters, poverty, poor local governance that is mostly rooted in the colonial past, and terrorism threats that are an intolerable burden for some countries and regions. All those situations have their own specific characteristics.

The mission also noted that the draft was not actually as universally supported as its sponsors tried to present it, stating that the “penholders of the document were pushing it through without readiness to discuss the root causes of challenges” that the “vulnerable countries” are facing.

“As a responsible member of the United Nations and its Security Council, the Russian Federation along with India and China does not share such an approach imposed by the Western nations that have already made a significant number of countries expecting assistance believe in it,” the mission stressed.

Ireland has already voiced its displeasure over the demise of the draft resolution, with the country’s mission at the UN blasting the veto powers of permanent UNSC members as “an outdated tool, for what we think is an outdated perspective.”

“A historic opportunity to recognize climate change as contributing to conflict has been vetoed for now, but the consensus of international opinion is more than clear,” Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.

Politics has always been what the climate change hysteria is all about. 

One-World Government if Harper Loses Election - Margaret Thatcher Advisor

Millions in Foreign Funds Spent in 2015 Fed Election to Defeat Harper, Report

Energy crisis coming as global oil production set to plunge by a third

15 Dec, 2021 13:40

© Unsplash / Robin Sommer

Global crude production is expected to drop 30% by the end of the current decade due to underinvestment in oil and gas, according to Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.

“We’re heading toward a phase that could be dangerous if there’s not enough spending on energy,” Abdulaziz bin Salman said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

He warned that falling investment in fossil fuels could result in an “energy crisis.” 

According to the official, oil output may decline by as much as 30 million barrels per day by 2030.

He urged energy corporations and investors to ignore “scary messages” about oil and gas. A similar warning was voiced by Saudi finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan. 

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is currently trying to raise its production capacity to 13 million barrels a day from 12 million by 2027. The push is out of tune with the latest call from the International Energy Agency for the cessation of new investment in fossil fuel, that comes as part of the plan to neutralize carbon emissions by 2050.

According to data tracked by the International Energy Forum, a Riyadh-based think tank, global spending on energy projects plummeted by 30% to $309 billion during pandemic-hit 2020, recovering just slightly this year.

It would be nice to see a global plan as to how they will replace that much energy. If the drop in fossil fuels can't be addressed by other forms of energy, then we are headed for a disaster. Oil prices will go through the roof and that will result in 3rd world-type inflation.

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Record temperature reported in Russian Arctic – UN

15 Dec, 2021 19:17

By Layla Guest

Northern lights seen from the shore of the Barents Sea near the village of Teriberka, Kolsky District,

Murmansk Region. © Sputnik / Yuliy Ahromeev

An exceptional heatwave that hit a town in Russia’s far north last summer has been confirmed by the United Nations’ weather agency as setting a record for the Arctic Circle, in a year which saw wildfires rip across the country.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that readings of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) were logged in Verkhoyansk, home to 1,000 people, on June 20 last year. The temperatures occurred “during an exceptional and prolonged” heatwave.

The conditions were described by the WMO as “more befitting the Mediterranean,” and came as “average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10 degrees Celsius above normal” for much of the summer season. This resulted in massive fires and sea ice loss, which contributed to 2020 ranking among the three warmest years on record.

Verkhoyansk, which often dips to lows of -50 Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit), is situated 115km north of the Arctic Circle in Yakutia. The region is home to the village of Oymyakon – the world’s coldest permanently inhabited settlement – which regularly sees temperatures plunge to below -40 Celsius in winter.

Yakutia, however, has been hit by rising temperatures and devastating wildfires in recent years. The region is referred to by some as ‘the lungs of Russia’ because of its 265.1 million hectares of land covered by trees. This summer alone, fires destroyed 1.5 million hectares of forest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sounded the alarm in August, warning that the average annual temperature for the past 44 years has been growing 2.8 times faster in his country than the global average. He said that this, “if not entirely, then at least to a large extent, is due to global climate change in our nation.”

Verkhoyansk already held the record for the place with the greatest temperature range on Earth. Temperatures in the small town had ranged between -68 and +37 degrees Celsius – a 105-degree difference. In Fahrenheit, that’s between -90 and +98.

A 188 degree spread in temperatures is astonishing! However, knowing how cold Russia, and particularly Siberia is, one would think that warming is a good thing.

IEA gives world reality check on ‘dirty’ coal use

18 Dec, 2021 12:53

© Getty Images / John W Banagan

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday that rising consumption in China, India and the US could bring the demand for global coal-fired power to a new high this year, despite efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the report, global power generation from coal is expected to grow by 9%, reaching 10,350 terawatt-hours. The growth will be driven by a rapid economic recovery that has “pushed up electricity demand much faster than low-carbon supplies can keep up.”

The IEA highlighted that overall coal demand, including for industries such as cement and steel, could rise by 6% this year. It will not exceed the record consumption levels of 2013 and 2014, but could hit a new all-time high next year, the IEA warned.

The increase is “a worrying sign of how far off track the world is in its efforts to put emissions into decline towards net zero,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

China, which consumes more than half of the world’s coal, is expected to see a 9% year-on-year increase in global coal-fired power generation in 2021. India’s generation is forecast to rise by 12% this year.

As part of the climate talks in Glasgow last month, countries finally agreed to “phase down” coal consumption to keep global temperature rises as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. China has also pledged to start reducing coal consumption, but will do so only after 2025.

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Europe’s energy crisis just got worse

18 Dec, 2021 11:52

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

© Getty Images / cirano83

On top of an ongoing natural gas crunch, Europe faces the winter season with reduced nuclear output in France, exacerbating the energy crisis and leaving large parts of the continent praying for a milder winter.

France’s EDF stopped on Thursday two nuclear power plants after finding a fault at one during routine maintenance. This brings the total number of nuclear plants out of operation currently at four, which account for 13% of the current power availability in France.

Nuclear power generates most of France’s electricity. France gets more than 70% of its total electricity from nuclear power generation and is a major exporter of electricity, including to the UK.

The outage at the French nuclear plants comes just as temperatures in Europe started to fall and amid the ongoing natural gas crunch with gas in storage sites at the lowest levels in a decade.

Without part of the French electricity exports, some countries in northwest Europe could see their own power supply constrained.

If winter weather is colder than usual, this would mean no relief in the skyrocketing power prices and energy bills for consumers. This could also raise the possibility of rolling blackouts, Bloomberg notes. 

“Now it would only take 2-3 degrees Celsius below the seasonal normal to get into trouble,” Emeric de Vigan, CEO of energy analysis firm COR-e, told Bloomberg.

Following the French halt to some of its nuclear plants, European power prices surged to record on Thursday.

The outages at the nuclear power plants in France come at the worst possible moment for Europe’s energy supply, considering that a cold winter could deplete its natural gas inventories and that the German network regulator which is reviewing the certification of the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline said on Thursday that it would not make a decision before July 2022.

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Climate Change > Jordan Peterson Criticizes Climate Campaign; Shift to EVs will Cost Many Jobs; Earth's Black Box

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Jordan Peterson says what’s wrong with Western climate campaign

19 Nov, 2021 15:14

Jordan Peterson at the 2018 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA in Dallas, Texas. June 15, 2018. © Flickr / Gage Skidmore

Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.

During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.

“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.

The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”

I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.

He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.

In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”

The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.

Peterson is not the first to make this observation, but the idea hasn't really caught on yet, probably because nobody has figured out a way to make money from it.

Another observation Peterson could have made was the relentless, hyperbolic messaging of governments and media about climate change that is causing extraordinary levels of anxiety among teenagers. This will result in horrendous damage to a whole generation, far worse than climate change itself ever could.

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Wind power becoming too cheap to support itself

27 Nov, 2021 15:29

© Global Look Press / Christian Charisius

Major efforts to bring down the cost of generating wind power should be restrained, the head of a turbine-making major has warned, citing the industry’s limited ability to continue investing in new technologies and enterprises.

The cost of wind power has recently dropped to levels that allow a challenge to such fossil fuels as coal and natural gas, thanks to an enormous investment boom in green energy.

“What we’ve clearly achieved is that wind power is now cheaper than anything else. But I believe we shouldn’t make it too cheap,” Siemens Gamesa’s Chief Executive Andreas Nauen said as quoted by Reuters.

In Europe, wind and solar are reportedly significantly cheaper than coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Driven by the green transition aimed at addressing climate change, demand for wind turbines is at a record high. However, lower prices and increased competition have seen producers’ margins squeezed.

“We have probably driven it too far,” Nauen said, stressing that the sector wouldn’t be able to invest in innovations if the drive to cut the cost wind power continues at the same rate.

Rising costs stemming from the global supply crunch and high prices for such raw material as steel are also eroding the operating margins of turbine makers.

Earlier, Siemens Gamesa, one of the world’s largest suppliers of wind energy technology, as well as its major rival Vestas, warned they have been able to pass on to customers a part of these higher costs, which is likely to be reflected in higher auction prices and power purchase agreements over time.

Governments around the world have been phasing out generous wind subsidies, opting for more competitive contract tenders, and favoring project developers that submit the lowest bids.

“We need to change auction systems in the future,” the top manager said, suggesting that criteria such as local job creation should be considered instead of focusing only on price.

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Shift to EVs could cost half a million European jobs

6 Dec, 2021 15:33

Robots work on an electric car ID.3 body at the assembly line at the plant of the German manufacturer Volkswagen AG (VW) in Zwickau, Germany © AP / Jens Meyer

A new study by the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) has found that half a million jobs could be lost in the EU by 2040 with the ban on combustion-engine cars and transition to electric vehicles.

The survey, which was conducted by PwC, showed that more than two-thirds of those jobs could disappear in the period of 2030-2035, making it difficult to mitigate the “social and economic impacts” caused by mass unemployment.

The report, however, also said that 226,000 new jobs would be created in the manufacturing of electric parts, reducing the net number of job losses to approximately 275,000 over the next couple of decades.

According to data by the industry trade group, the automotive manufacturing sector is responsible for more than 5% of the overall manufacturing employment in 13 EU Member States, with more than 60% of those workers employed by automotive suppliers.

“Society’s needs are far too diverse for a one-fits-all approach,” said CLEPA’s Secretary General, Sigrid de Vries. He added that “the use of hybrid technologies, green hydrogen and renewable sustainable fuels will enable innovation as we redefine mobility in the coming decades.”

CLEPA’s report comes as earlier this year the European Commission announced plans to eliminate 100% of CO2 emissions from new cars by 2035. The policy effectively bans the sale of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles after that date.

Even trucks, trains and ships? Seriously?

Scientists reveal purpose of giant monolith in Australia, and it’s grim

6 Dec, 2021 15:15

©  www.earthsblackbox.com

Researchers are constructing a ‘black box’ in Australia, a device that they say is meant to survive climate change disasters and warn future survivors about humanity’s mistakes.

Described as a “tool,” the monolith is being “built to outlive us all” and will be constructed in a remote location on the island of Tasmania, Australian scientists told ABC News.

The box, being constructed by the University of Tasmania researchers and other collaborators, will not actually be ready until the middle of next year, but it’s already begun collecting data. The box’s storage drives, powered by solar panels with backup battery power, wirelessly collect specific measurements, such as land and sea temperatures, CO2 levels, and human energy consumption. Its hard drives also collect and contextualize headlines around major world events, such as the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow. The 10-by-4-meter steel monolith will be placed between the towns of Strahan and Queenstown.

According to a website set up for the black box, the creators expect human civilization to “crash” without dramatic changes introduced, and this box will “record every step we take towards this catastrophe.” The website also gives people a glimpse at some of the raw climate-related data being recorded by the device. 

At the moment, researchers say the hard drives can store data for 30 to 50 years, but they are working on a compression system that would allow it to collect information for much longer. At the moment, however, some believe the box’s promise of collecting climate-related data with the intent of documenting our destruction could make a difference in the present. 

“When people know they’re being recorded, it does have an influence on what they do and say,” Jonathan Kneebone, another collaborator on the project, told ABC. 

As the project’s website informs us, the box ensures one thing is true in the climate crisis: “Your actions, inactions, and interactions are now being recorded.”

Interesting project! One major problem is that is doesn't, in any way, account for God. As I believe Jesus will return in about 10 years, the box will completely miss this event. But then, God gave us a black box 1600 years ago when the Bible was canonized. It accounts for the distant past, the present, and the future, both near and distant.

Climate Change > Delhi's Diwali Air Getting Worse; US Gas Prices 'Biden's Work'? California's Record High Gas Prices

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Toxic smog in New Delhi way worse than previously thought

13 Nov, 2021 09:10

Air pollution in New Delhi, India, November 5, 2021. © Reuters/Anushree Fadnavis

The Indian Supreme Court has demanded urgent measures to tackle the thick toxic smog that has been covering New Delhi for over a week. It even suggested imposing a brief lockdown. 

“Do you know how bad the situation is? People have to wear masks even at home,” Chief Justice N.V. Ramana said, grilling government officials.  

The court said central and state officials must make “an emergency decision” and present plans to fight the smog on Monday. Ramana suggested that authorities should consider “a two-day lockdown,” among other measures.

You have to look at this issue beyond politics and government. Something must happen so that in two to three days we feel better.

One official acknowledged in court that breathing the air in the capital was “like smoking 20 cigarettes a day.”

The country’s federal pollution board ordered state and local authorities on Friday to be prepared for emergency measures. 

Air quality in New Delhi worsened last week due to several factors, including crop stubble burning and emissions from transport. Indian media noted that the decline also took place after the Diwali festival, when many people violated a ban on fireworks. 

Trudeau is doing his bast to raise oil prices to critical levels so as to reduce vehicle emissions.  In Canada, where there are hundreds of kilometers between cities, and goods often have to be shipped thousands of kms, our asinine government thinks it's a good thing to make gas more expensive. Of course, it makes everything that moves more expensive which increases poverty. The increase in gas prices in Canada may reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from 2% to 1.95% of global emissions, in a few years if the economy goes full-stop!

GOP senator claims Biden ‘intended’ record gas prices hike

15 Nov, 2021 14:08

FILE PHOTO. ©REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Joe Biden’s administration wants Americans to switch from pickup trucks to electric compacts and is letting gas prices run rampant to coerce fans of gallon-guzzlers, Senator Tom Cotton has claimed.

Speaking to conservative outlet Breitbart News, the Republican senator alleged that rising gasoline prices in the US are “the intended effect of Joe Biden’s energy policy,” rather than “some accident.”

“They want gas to cost $4 a gallon because they want all of us to get out of pickup trucks and SUVs and get into small electric compacts or bicycles or scooters or whatever else Pete Buttigieg takes to work,” Cotton claimed, without offering evidence.

President Joe Biden admitted last week that fuel prices in particular and inflation in general were a cause for serious concern, and said his administration had a plan to bring the prices down. Inflation has surged in the US, partially due to the pressure caused by global supply chain disruptions.

But, as in Canada, it is partly due to the increase in gasoline prices.

Previously, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm exposed herself to much criticism over her seemingly callous attitude to the perils of Americans struggling to fill their tanks. When asked during an interview about a plan to tackle prices at the pump, she burst into laughter, calling the idea that she had power over the situation “hilarious” and blaming the OPEC oil cartel for the rising fuel prices.

Some have called for the White House to take drastic measures to control the situation, like reinstating a ban on the export of crude or at least unsealing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It remains unclear if Biden would be willing to tap into the emergency fuel reserve – as suggested by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Biden’s Republican critics predict inflation will only worsen as the White House begins implementing its ambitious infrastructure spending agenda, with a $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework expected to be signed into law on Monday.

Thirteen House Republicans who broke party ranks to help pass the bill have been ostracized by many other GOP legislators. The bill was passed in the Senate in an uncommonly bipartisan 69-30 vote in August.

“You cannot print trillions of dollars in money on the one hand and also pay people not to work and not to produce the stuff that we need to buy, and on the other hand not expect the price to increase as fast as it has in 30 years,” Cotton told Breitbart.

The Biden administration says the infrastructure spending and the yet-to-be-finalized $1.75 trillion social and climate spending bill will help alleviate inflation, rather than boost it.

Not when you print that money out of thin air!

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California gas prices hit another record

15 Nov, 2021 18:18

Gas prices are seen in Beverly Hills, California ©  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

California gas prices have hit a new record high, averaging $4.68 a gallon, as Americans continue to suffer the effects of inflation coupled with ongoing supply chain issues.

Monday marked the second day in a row that America’s most populated state broke its own record on gas prices, according to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA). On Sunday, gas prices were averaging $4.67, besting a previous record set in October 2002.

The national average for gas per gallon stands at $3.41 as of Monday – a figure that continues to rise as Americans face the effects of inflation and supply chain issues in numerous industries. 

President Joe Biden has chalked up inflation issues to a rise in demand, as well as Covid-19 pandemic disruptions. In a Sunday tweet, he claimed prices are too high for Americans, but also added without elaborating that the country is also in the middle of a “historic economic recovery.” Biden claimed that his massive spending package, Build Back Better, will help address inflation issues. 

Critics have pointed to the administration’s economic shutdowns and moves to limit drilling as factors driving the staggering prices Americans are paying at the pump, like a recent plan to reportedly block drilling in New Mexico near the Chaco Canyon National Historical Park.

AAA has also noted that heavy rainstorms in Northern California have slowed the production capacity of refineries and helped in the recent spikes in prices at the pump. However, spokesperson for AAA Doug Shupe told CNN that the dramatic price hikes are far steeper than people have seen in recent memory.

“The person who has the typical midsize sedan with a 14 gallon size fuel tank, they're paying $21 more to fill up that tank today than last year,” Shupe said, noting that Americans are paying about $1.50 more per gallon, compared to last year before Biden took office. 

At a recent press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed higher gas prices are due to “fluctuations” in the industry, as well as companies’ inability to meet consumer demand. This, she added, is all the more reason to “double down” on investments in “clean energy options.”

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