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 > Australia's Coal Mines Booming; Russia to Supply India With More Coal; EV Fire Risks Not Being Addressed

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Australia is making the most out of the COAL BOOM

16 Oct, 2021 06:49

©  Kelly Lacy / Pexels

Australia continues to back its coal industry as many Western nations have turned their back on the dirtiest fossil fuel, approving a third coal mine extension in a month and bolstering partnerships for long-term coal exports.

We already know the demand is there, with China requiring increasing coal to bridge its fuel demand gap, but Australia is one of the few remaining nations outside of Asia to continue to back coal as a major energy source. 

Earlier this month, Australia approved its third coal mine extension within a month. In September, Environment Minister Sussan Ley approved extensions for the Whitehaven Coal and Wollonggong Coal mines. The latest extension approval was for the Glencore Mangoola thermal coal mine in New South Wales, allowing it to continue production for eight more years, mining approximately 52 million tons of coal.

But it’s not just other countries that are putting pressure on Australia to join them in curbing its coal production. In May, a ruling from Australia’s high court encouraged the country’s environment minister to reconsider coal mine expansions due to the obligation the ministry has to the Australian childrens’ future, as well as the general impact of coal production and use on climate change. 

While environmental activists and international energy organizations are less than happy with Australia’s ongoing support for coal, many Australians back the decision to expand mines because of their contribution to the country’s employment. Around 400 workers are currently employed at Glencore, and the expansion will add 100 construction jobs.

Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal, with strong links to the Asian market. To date, Australia has made no pledge to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, unlike many of its Western counterparts. Many countries across Europe and North America have vowed to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, an aim that is expected to be reinforced in the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this month, which Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison will attend. 

However, shortly after the announcement of the third expansion project, Australia’s resources minister proposed the establishment of a state-run $180-billion lending option for the coal industry, with the stipulation that borrowers support a net-zero carbon emissions target. This strategy comes as banks and insurers become less willing to lend to the dying coal sector. 

Australia’s dependence on coal is not surprising considering its close proximity to the Asian market, where coal demand remains high. Several Asian countries, most notably China and India with their ever-expanding populations, continue to rely on coal, as well as oil and gas, to meet their national energy demand. 

“While China unambiguously needs as much coal as it can get its hands on to avert a [fourth-quarter] slowdown due to the tyranny of rolling power shortages, geopolitical tensions with Australia have waylaid the most convenient source of high-calorific coal from Down Under,” Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy for Asia and Oceania treasury department at Mizuho, stated of China’s reliance on coal imports.

However, in late 2020, China ended its coal imports from Australia following difficult trade relations, namely Australia’s support for an international inquiry into China’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Coal is Australia’s third-largest export to China, a country that accounts for 32.6% of all Australian exports, with Australia exporting more to China than it imports. 

After reportedly telling utilities and steel mills to stop all Australian coal imports, China began to import its coal from regional exporters Indonesia, Mongolia, and Russia. India has apparently been buying discounted coal that was left stranded in Chinese customs following the falling out between China and Australia. In recent months, Indian cement makers and sponge iron plants have sought to boost supplies with this low-cost option. 

The Chinese stockpile of Australian coal, and its willingness to sell the supply at a discount, suggests the dedication it had to cutting trade ties with Australia. However, the energy crisis experienced in recent months has finally proved too much for China to continue holding a grudge. Fuel shortages and high energy costs have led the Chinese government to resume Australian coal imports. This month, China released Australian coal from bonded warehouses in addition to receiving 450,000 tons of Australian coal cargoes at the beginning of the month.

During the time that China refused imports, Australia did not just simply wait for China to come running back, rather it fostered its relationship with India. Australia held its first joint working group meeting on coal and mines with India this September to encourage greater participation in Australia’s ongoing coal production. Australia identifies India as a key market for some of its lower-grade coal, with prices significantly undercutting those of the premium coal products imported by China.

With little commitment to net-zero aims, ongoing support for coal plant expansion projects despite a high court interjection, and ongoing trade links with high-demand countries across Asia, it seems unlikely that Australia will curb its coal production or make it more carbon-friendly any time soon, despite international pressure to do so.  

Russia to boost coal supplies to India amid global power crunch

17 Oct, 2021 13:33

© Sputnik / Aleksandr Kryazhev

Russia’s Energy Ministry signed an agreement this week with India’s Steel Industry Ministry aimed at increasing Russian coking coal supply to India to 40 million tons per year.

The deal was inked at the Russian Energy Week Forum, held from October 13-15 in Moscow.

According to Russian Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov, Russia currently supplies around eight million tons of all types of coal to the South Asian country.

The agreement is also meant to stimulate enterprises in Russia and India in the development of coal deposits, the development of coal logistics and infrastructure, the promotion of R&D in production, as well as education and training for the coal industry.

The world’s third-largest coal importer, India, is currently struggling with coal shortages. Coal accounts for around 70% of the nation’s electricity generation. Most of India’s coal-fired power plants have critically low levels of inventory amid growing electricity demand.

A widening gap between soaring international and domestic coal prices has also seen imports decline sharply in recent months.

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Moving to a green economy at the pace of some countries is absurdly reckless. 

‘Naive is an understatement’: German safety official tells RT

that risk of electric vehicle fires is ‘completely unaddressed’

24 Oct, 2021 17:33

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a bus depot in Stuttgart, Germany, September 30, 2021 © AFP / Andreas Rosar

It's hard to see how this is improving air quality

A series of fires involving electric buses is calling into question Germany’s reliance on these zero-emissions vehicles. “The risk of these fires,” safety regulator Heinrich Duepmann told RT, “is completely unaddressed.”

Europe is experiencing a green transport boom. Sales have quadrupled since 2018, and one in every ten new vehicles sold on the continent is now fully electric, a share that rises to four in ten when hybrid vehicles are taken into account. In Germany, where the Greens are in talks about joining a coalition government, the number of electric buses doubled last year compared to 2019.

The switchover from diesel to electricity has not been entirely smooth. Three bus depots were gutted by fire this year alone, with the most recent in Stuttgart last month destroying 25 buses and sending a column of smoke towering over the city.

The fires prompted the cities of Munich and Stuttgart to suspend use of these battery-powered buses, and Heinrich Duepmann of Germany’s Electricity Consumer Protection Association told RT that he shares their concerns ​​– not just about buses, but electric vehicles in general.

“The risk of these fires, including in other locations such as bicycle basements or large apartment blocks, is completely unaddressed,” he said. “Also, insurance companies are not yet tackling the issue.”

The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles can catch fire if damaged, or in some cases during charging or spontaneously. Lithium burns ferociously on contact with air, and once ablaze, these fires can be extremely difficult to put out. While burning, lithium-ion batteries have been shown to emit toxic quantities of fluoride gas.

Aside from the fire risk, Deupmann is also concerned that as private electric vehicles become more popular, the country’s electricity infrastructure is “completely undeveloped” to facilitate widespread fast charging.

“People have been too naive about this,” he said, adding that “naive is an understatement.”

Why the Kyoto/Paris Agreement is Not Working - Diane Francis Nails It

Trudeau’s ridiculous, holier-than-thou climate policies

are making emissions much worse

For every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada,

the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal

Bloomberg Best of the Year 2019: A man tends to vegetables in a field as emissions rise from nearby cooling towers of a

coal-fired power station in Tongling, Anhui province, China, on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg files

Diane Francis

The inconvenient truth about the Kyoto-Paris Agreement on climate change is that the 1997 deal has been a major flop because it was flawed from the beginning. It should be scrapped and completely overhauled and Canada’s Liberals should have realized this before they embarked on their ruinous attack against the country’s resource base.

The failure of the agreement, evidenced by emissions that are climbing alarmingly fast, reveal how the Trudeau government’s holier-than-thou approach on climate change is naive and completely misguided. The facts are that Ottawa should have been building lots of pipelines, approving many LNG export projects, and leading an international movement to scrap and try to redo the Paris agreement.

The agreement has been dramatically counter-productive because targets were not applied equally and globally. Of the 192 countries that signed on in 1997, only the 37 developed countries had to agree to reduce emissions. The undeveloped nations — notably China and India — had no restrictions placed on them. They argued that restrictions on emissions would hold back their economic development.

That’s fine, but targets should have been phased in and applied to all countries. This benefit should not have been permanently baked in.

Energy intensive companies help developed countries

approach their Kyoto targets by moving to countries

that have no targets. How crazy is that?

The result was predictable and noted by the Americans, Canadians and Australians at the time. Today, the developing countries’ emissions have soared, which has allowed them to keep their costs low based on the burning of cheap local coal as their principal energy source.

Naturally, this patchwork quilt of regulation has resulted in a gigantic global arbitrage — companies from countries with restrictions — have moved plants or outsourced energy-intensive products such as steel and cement to environmentally dirty nations. For instance, Canada’s imports of steel jumped between 2018 and 2019 alone by 87 per cent, bought, directly or indirectly, from countries not bound by the Kyoto-Paris Agreement. Germany and the United States have done the same.

“Since 1997, the 37 developed countries have reduced CO2 emissions by about 7 per cent, while exempted country emissions rose 130 per cent. And overall global emissions hit a new record in 2018, up two per cent year over year and up 49 per cent since 1997,” according to official figures contained in a report by former Canadian investment bankers who are now investors, Steve Larke and Adam Le Dain. “Driven by good intentions and accelerating energy demand, the world is facing an unintended energy crisis.”

And that wasn't predictable?

Counterintuitively, Canada must prioritize the building of pipelines to export its oil, with relatively low emissions, and to build natural gas pipelines and dozens of LNG projects on both coasts. This is because every single energy molecule that is exported from Canada to Asia or elsewhere replaces their need to burn dirty coal, or to fuel their vehicles with electricity generated by coal. (This was a platform in the Tory energy policy this election, plus conservation subsidies for consumers.)

Perhaps, but it certainly was never articulated like this.

Canada’s foolish belief in an international treaty that doesn’t work has left us badly behind. The Americans have dozens of LNG export projects completed or under construction and Canada, with one of the biggest natural gas endowments on the planet, has been unable to get one built — thanks to the usual suspects in Ottawa, British Columbia and Quebec. The country could be a major player in LNG exports but time is running out as Australia and Qatar also move aggressively to compete.

Not to mention Russia's superport LNG in the Arctic, and the pipeline to China.

Instead, Trudeau cripples Alberta, subsidizes profitable Loblaw to buy lower-emission refrigerators and campaigns across the country about climate change in two fuel-guzzling aircraft and does nothing to curb demand at home by consumers.

The inconvenient truth is that for every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada, the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal.

The Liberals and greens in Canada are not the solution. They are the problem. 

They are committing economic suicide, and rather than saving the planet, they will make it impossible for our next generations to be able to respond, because they will be so heavily in debt, our debt.

Financial Post

China Ramps up Coal-Fired Energy Production Nullifying Efforts to Reduce CO2

INNER MONGOLIA, CHINA - NOVEMBER 04: Smoke billows from a large steel plant as a Chinese labourer works

at an unauthorized steel factory, foreground, on November 4, 2016 in Inner Mongolia, China. To meet China's targets

to slash emissions of carbon dioxide, authorities are pushing to shut down privately owned …Kevin Frayer/Getty

JAMES DELINGPOLE

China is planning massively to ramp up its coal-fired energy production. This makes a nonsense of claims by gullible Western politicians and dishonest environmental activists that China is as keen as anyone to do its bit to ‘combat climate change.’

Bloomberg reports that China now has enough coal-fired power plants in the pipeline to match the entire capacity of the European Union, ‘driving the expansion in global coal power and confounding the movement against the polluting fossil fuel.’

It says:

The nation has almost 148 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity under active construction or likely to be resumed after being suspended, Global Energy Monitor, a non-profit group that tracks coal stations, said in the report Thursday based on plant-by-plant data. That’s almost equivalent to 150 gigawatts of existing coal fleet capacity in the EU and more than the combined 105 gigawatts under construction in the rest of the world, it said.

In contrast to many other countries, including the U.K.’s pledge to shut all coal plants by 2025, Beijing remains committed to coal as its biggest source of power, representing a major challenge to global emissions reduction targets. Its additions in the 18 months to June dwarf declines elsewhere in the world, according to the report.

None of this will come as the slightest surprise to climate realists. One of their main arguments against concerted government action by the West to decarbonise its economies is that it takes no account of emerging economies like India’s and, especially, China’s. Any attempts to cut carbon dioxide production in Western economies are more than offset by the growth in China’s CO2 output.

This was predicted in a report published last year by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

As the report’s author, Patricia Adams explained:

“The Chinese have spent a lot of money on renewables without results on anything like the scale required. So despite their continuing outward support for the green agenda, China is actually going all out for fossil fuels. The Communist Party’s grip on power depends on it.”

In his foreword to the paper, former U.S. Ambassador and U.S. special envoy to the UNFCCC Dr Harland Watson said:

“Many in the environmental community look to China to assume the role of global climate leader. But Patricia Adams questions China’s interest in assuming this role as the need for continued economic growth means securing new energy supplies will take priority over climate change concerns.”

The report was, of course, largely ignored by the mainstream media which prefers to listen to ‘experts’ like Nicholas Stern.

Only three years ago Nicholas Stern – amusingly billed by the Guardian as ‘an eminent climate economist’, even though his infamous ‘Stern Report’ has been widely discredited for its poor understanding of climate science and economics – was hailing China’s ‘Coal Peak’ as a ‘Turning point in the history of the world’.

The Guardian‘s July 2016 report began with a flourish:

The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China’s huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists.

They say the moment may well be a significant milestone in the course of the Anthropocene, the current era in which human activity dominates the world’s environment.

China is the world’s biggest polluter and more than tripled its coal burning from 2000 to 2013, emitting billions of tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide. But its coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling.

According to ’eminent’ economist Stern, this was a key moment in the war on climate change:

“I think it is a real turning point,” said Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, who wrote the analysis with colleagues from Tsinghua University in Beijing. “I think historians really will see [the coal peak of] 2014 as a very important event in the history of the climate and economy of the world.”

Except, of course, that it wasn’t and it isn’t. China wants economic growth and feels under no obligation to kowtow to the green sky fairy invented by activists in the West to justify their fixation with renewable energy.

This tension between green aspirations and economic reality is only likely to intensify.

According to a separate report, produced by the Stockholm Environment Institute, growing fossil fuel output is likely to ‘swamp’ any attempts agreed by the Paris Climate Accord to limit global CO2 output.

 Oil, gas and coal output already planned or in the pipeline will overwhelm efforts to cap global warming at levels consistent with a liveable planet, the UN and leading research groups warned Wednesday […]

[…] “We show for the first time just how big the disconnect is between Paris temperature goals and countries’ plans and policies for coal, oil and gas production,” said lead author Michael Lazarus, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center.

This “production gap”—between output in the pipeline and the Paris climate goals—is largest for coal, according the report, a joint project by the UN Environment Programme and four climate change research centres.

Countries plan to produce 150 percent more coal by 2030 than would be consistent with a 2C world, and 280 percent more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C.

Greta Thunberg can wag her little index finger all she likes. The global economy just isn’t listening.

Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds in Climate Change Circles

CHRIS NELSON, FOR THE CALGARY HERALD

Port Metro Vancouver is the largest coal shipper in North America. Columnist Chris Nelson ponders

whether India could charge the B.C. city for its environmental impact. POSTMEDIA

Wonder if I can pick up a fat finder’s fee from some on-the-ball environmental law firm based in Mumbai, looking to pull in a cool billion bucks from the deep pockets of Vancouver city council? One per cent seems fair.

Because that same B.C. outfit just voted to go after various oil companies — mostly based in Alberta, of course — for a hefty share of expected costs due to predicted climate change. They reckon a billion dollars would be reasonable compensation for future damages.

So they can’t complain when cities across India return that favour and request similar big payouts, considering Vancouver is North America’s largest coal exporting port and the latest lucrative market for that environmentally nasty black stuff is — yep, you guessed it — India.

Is it any wonder the saintly David Suzuki feels so at home in B.C., with his handful of fancy homes? That province ranks first, second and third in the hypocrisy Olympics, combining an endless bleating about the dangers of oil pipelines with a grubby cash grab from exporting coal.

Because Vancouver didn’t get atop the exporting coal heap simply by flogging the megatonnes mined in B.C. and Alberta. Oh no, that wasn’t enough for them. Instead, they’re merrily, if somewhat sheepishly, importing massive amounts of this major carbon-emitting fuel from the United States.

It seems mines in landlocked Montana and Wyoming have similar issues to Alberta in getting their product to overseas markets: they need co-operation from the two neighbouring states that have coastlines.

But the environmental lobby in Oregon and Washington has blocked that route to potential Asian riches, thereby providing a golden opportunity for the Port of Vancouver to step in and offer a suitable export solution, one to be rewarded with sizable moolah.

What a crazy world we live in when protesters and 3 levels of government fight tooth and nail to prevent Alberta from getting its oil to tide-water, but quietly goes around Washington and Oregon environmental laws to get Montana and Wyoming coal to port. This is utterly astonishing in its hypocrisy.

The nerve of these folk is absolutely stunning. It would make Justin Trudeau’s eyes water if they weren’t already in a state of perpetual liquidity.

Vancouver was already exporting 36 million tonnes of coal a year — both the metallurgic and thermal kind — with China the major market. But they’ve landed India as well because the Aussies, once a major supplier, have reliability supply issues.

So while we are intent on destroying our own energy industry in a move that won’t matter a jot to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, we’ll simultaneously provide the coking coal allowing India to double its current steel production to 300 million tonnes by 2030. Imagine the extra global emissions arising from that.

Oh, and how does this coal get to India? Is some Lotusland version of Star Trek’s Scotty beaming it there? Nope, it will go by big tanker ship — strange, as an increase in that type of vessel when carrying oil is deemed a destructive noise threat to the region’s orcas.

Heck, I knew orcas were smart critters but never imagined they could see through tanker hulls so to reassure their collective pods there’s no need to worry about any racket from that one over there. No, kiddy killer whales, that ship’s only carrying coal.

Anyhow the good people of India have every right to clean air and a stable climate as us lot so it seems only fair Vancouver shell out big time for sending dirty coal — both the Yanks’ and ours — enabling the subcontinent’s future CO2 emissions to explode.

And India’s a big country with many cities. Maybe I’ll retire in style on all those future legal finders’ fees. Heck, with the proceeds, I could buy four luxury homes next door to David Suzuki’s various abodes.

Nah, I prefer the clean smell of an 1,100-square-foot Calgary bungalow and the knowledge our household’s carbon footprint is tiny. Actions rather than words — wasn’t there once a popular saying along those lines? Maybe it never made it across the Rockies.

Chris Nelson is a regular columnist for the Calgary Herald.

China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of climate change and CO2,

this is an interesting and informative read.

Robert Rapier, Forbes

Over the past decade, the U.S. has decreased annual carbon dioxide emissions

by nearly 800 million tons.

In this Dec. 30, 2016 photo, a truck leaves with metal products from the sprawling complex that is a part of the Jiujiang steel and rolling mills in Qianan in northern China's Hebei province. Faced with choking smog in the Chinese capital, Chinese media and policy circles often point to a list of culprits: the central government's inability to shut down polluting steel mills, the middle class's insatiable demand for cars, poorer segments of society's insistence on burning coal. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

In a previous article, I discussed the relentless upward march of global carbon dioxide emissions. According to data from the 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the world reached a new all-time high for global carbon dioxide emissions in 2017.

Today, I want to discuss trends and relative contributions from the world's most significant carbon dioxide emitters.

Since 1965, no country has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States. The 264 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the U.S. has emitted to the atmosphere represented 22.5% of global emissions during that time, and was well ahead of the cumulative 216 billion metric tons from the European Union (EU). In second place among countries was the 188 billion metric tons emitted by China.

But as China has industrialized -- with a heavy reliance on coal-fired power -- Chinese emissions have rocketed past both those of the U.S. and the EU:

Carbon dioxide emissions from 1965 to 2017. ROBERT RAPIER

China's emissions passed those of the U.S. in 2005, and by 2012 had surpassed the combined contribution of both the U.S. and the EU. Should recent trends continue, China will be responsible for the most atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 20 years.

China has lots of regional company, too. The Asia Pacific region is home to both China and India -- the world's two most populous countries and two of the largest carbon dioxide emitters. It is also home to other fast-growing and/or populous countries, like Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Japan. Over the past decade, this region's carbon dioxide emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 3.1%, which was nearly triple the global average. As a result, Asia Pacific is now responsible for nearly 50% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Thus, Asia Pacific as a whole continues to drive global carbon dioxide emissions higher:

Asia Pacific carbon dioxide emissions continue to climb. ROBERT RAPIER

There are some positives in the data. Over the past decade, the U.S. has decreased annual carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 800 million tons. This is by far the most of any country in the world, and is primarily a result of shifting coal-fired power to natural gas and renewables. The EU has also made significant strides, reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 681 million tons.

These reductions paled in comparison to China's two billion ton per year increase in emissions, but China's emissions have been relatively flat since 2013. This, combined with the decreases in the U.S. and EU, have helped slow the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade versus the previous decade:

Global carbon dioxide emissions. ROBERT RAPIER

It is true that the U.S. has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, and that U.S. per capita emissions are among the highest in the world. But it is also true that the U.S. won't solve this problem alone (even if we weren't dropping out of global climate treaties).

Regardless of the actions taken by developed countries, the primary driver of carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades will be areas of the world with huge populations, but with low, and growing per capita emissions. A small increase in those per capita emissions can result in a huge increase in overall emissions -- amply demonstrated by Asia Pacific's skyrocketing emissions.

Thus, the most pressing need in the world today is to ensure that countries can develop without a heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, because this is the reason for the status quo.

"The most pressing need in the world today", is typical climate change hysteria. I can think of plenty of needs that are far more pressing. Check out my blog on child sex abuse - the worst atrocity mankind has ever inflicted upon itself. Climate change doesn't come close and is no more than a distraction from the real evil going on in the world today.

Robert Rapier has over 25 years of experience in the energy industry as an engineer and an investor. Follow him on Twitter @rrapier or at Investing Daily.