Fossil Fuels

Greens Promote Child Slave Labor and Ecological Destruction

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Why don’t African black lives and ecological values matter? or impacts in and beyond Virginia?

The US Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 to reverse a lower court ruling that had invalidated a permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will bring West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and North Carolina, for home heating, factory power, electricity generation and manufacturing petrochemical feedstocks.

Environmentalists had claimed the US Forest Service had no authority to issue the permit, because a 0.1-mile (530-foot) segment would cross 600 feet below the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail, which is administered by the National Park Service. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion scuttled that assertion.

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French Banking Regulator Urges Greater Risk Weightings for Fossil Fuel

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Another attempt to starve fossil fuel projects of banking services.

Threat from climate change to financial stability bigger than Covid-19

Report urges capital requirement rules for banks lending to fossil fuel groups to be tightened

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Why the Current Economic Slowdown Won’t Show Up in the Atmospheric CO2 Record

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By Dr. Roy Spencer – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Summary: Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) continue to increase with no sign of the global economic slowdown in response to the spread of COVID-19. This is because the estimated reductions in CO2 emissions (around -11% globally during 2020) is too small a reduction to be noticed against a background of large natural variability. The reduction in economic activity would have to be 4 times larger than 11% to halt the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Changes in the atmospheric reservoir of CO2 occur when there is an imbalance between surface sources and sinks of CO2. While the global land and ocean areas emit approximately 30 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as humans produce from burning of fossil fuels, they also absorb about an equal amount of CO2. This is the global carbon cycle, driven mostly by biological activity.

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Studies Show Fracking Ban Would Wreak Havoc on U.S. Economy

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By Tim Benson – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A new study from the American Petroleum Institute (API), with modeling data provided by the consulting firm OnLocation, details how a nationwide ban on hydraulic fracturing (colloquially known as “fracking”) could trigger a recession, would seriously damage U.S. economic and industrial output, considerably increase household energy costs, and make life much harder and costlier for American farmers.

In America’s Progress at Risk: An Economic Analysis of a Ban on Fracking and Federal Leasing for Natural Gas and Oil Development, API argues that a fracking ban would lead to a cumulative loss in gross domestic product (GDP) of $7.1 trillion by 2030, including $1.2 trillion in 2022 alone. Per capita GDP would also decline by $3,500 in 2022, with an annual average decline of $1,950 through 2030. Annual household income would also decline by $5,040.

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Virginia’s Clean Economy Act

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

850-foot-tall turbines, 3.5 times DC covered with solar panels, mining, child labor, pricey power

Largely with party-line, urban-vs-rural votes, Virginia’s legislature is poised to enact a Clean Economy Act that would eliminate coal-based electricity generation, prevent construction of new gas-fired power plants – and replace reliable, affordable fossil energy with wind, solar and battery-backup power. The bill offers important cautionary lessons for voters, workers and consumers in Virginia and across the United States.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw has said Virginia has “a climate problem, and you can’t fix it for free.” However, the climate crisis is mostly exaggerated, imaginary or based on faulty computer models. Worse, the “fix” will be pricey on many levels, but won’t make an iota of difference to the global climate.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #411

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The Week That Was: February 29, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” – Benjamin Franklin

Number of the Week: $61,937

Green Dreams: Many political leaders and political factions have little or no understanding of the importance of reliable, predictable electricity to modern civilization and economic wellbeing. Without thoroughly demonstrated examples of success, a number of local and national governments have passed laws phasing out electricity generated by fossil fuels based on the belief that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels. This “green dream” may become a nightmare.

In the UK, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has produced a set of studies estimating that removing fossil fuels from:

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Do ‘Green’ Buses Pass the Performance Test?

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By Duggan Flanakin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Do they even pass basic energy, environmental, economic and human rights tests?

Should Americans follow China in a massive commitment to supposedly eco-friendly battery-electric buses (BEBs)? California has mandated a “carbon-free” bus system by 2040 and will buy only battery or fuel cell-powered buses after 2029. Other states and cities are following suit.

Vehicle decisions are typically based on cost and performance. Cost includes selling price plus maintenance, while performance now includes perceived environmental impacts – which for some is the only issue that matters. But that perception ignores some huge ecological (and human rights) issues.

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Americans Reluctant to Join the EV Train

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By Ronald Stein – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California

We’re constantly being bombarded with the EV movement, but Americans must have a multitude of subconscious reasons for not buying into one of the major movements to save the world from itself as they are showing their lack of enthusiasm by avoiding the dealerships.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, citing Edmunds data, The number of battery-electric models available more than doubled from 2018 to 2019, but EV sales budged in the wrong direction. In response to the major efforts by manufacturers, the horrific EV sales data shows that only 325,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2019, down from 349,000 in 2018.

Those dismal numbers represent an embarrassing dismal 2% of the 17 million vehicles of all types sold in the United States in 2019. Are EV carmakers driving off a cliff?”

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Brief Details How The ‘Green New Deal’ Would Be An Environmental Disaster

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By Tim Benson – Re-Blogged From  WUWT

Massive Plan Would Cause Serious Environmental And Ecological Harm

A new Heartland Institute Policy Brief warns that the implementation of the “Green New Deal” (GND), introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and championed by other leading members of the Democratic Party, would cause serious environmental and ecological harm. This is primarily due to the massive land use of “renewable” energy sources such as wind and solar power and the amount of rare earth minerals that would need to be mined to manufacture these energy sources.

The Brief, authored by Paul Driessen, a policy advisor to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, notes that the GND has already been “roundly criticized for the astronomical costs it would impose upon factories, businesses, households, hospitals, and virtually every other sector of the U.S. economy, as well as for the economic devastation it would inflict.”

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On the Climate Road to Serfdom

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By Robert J Bradley – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The political world is saying “no” to policies that make energy less available, more expensive, less reliable, and more intrusive. Hyperbole of peak demand is going the way of Peak Oil as the hydrocarbon production boom creates its own demand.

Little wonder that compared to 1988 when global warming became a political issue, U.S. fossil-fuel consumption has grown 13 percent despite generous government subsidies to ethanol, wind power, and solar power.

In fact, growth in carbon-based energies in the last 30 years almost matches the total production of these three subsidized renewables, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Medieval illustration of men harvesting wheat with reaping-hooks, on a calendar page for August. Queen Mary’s Psalter – Source: Wikimedia

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Ireland Fast-Tracks Law Banning Gas Vehicles Within A Decade

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Chris White ,From The Daily Caller– Re-Blogged From WUWT

Ireland is fast-tracking legislation that will effectively ban all gas-powered vehicles within a decade, leaving customers who are buying cars in January confused about what to do next, local reports show.

The country’s Climate Action Minister Richard Bruton plans to publish the Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 enforcing such a ban, the Independent.ie reported Monday. The ban was officially announced in June, according to the report. One of Ireland’s political parties is pushing back.

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Is Wind Cleaner?

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By Duggan Flanakin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Inconvenient facts show why wind energy is not renewable, sustainable or climate-friendly

Wind turbines continue to be the most controversial of so-called “renewable” energy sources worldwide. But, you say, wind is surely renewable. It blows intermittently, but it’s natural, free, renewable and climate-friendly.

That’s certainly what we hear, almost constantly. However, while the wind itself may be “renewable,” the turbines, the raw materials that go into making them, and the lands they impact certainly are not. And a new report says harnessing wind to generate electricity actually contributes to global warming!

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Dumber than Schist

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

WARNING

This post is extremely political. If you are offended by hardball politics, stop reading here. Comments to the effect that you don’t like political posts or are offended political incorrectness and moderately insensitive language will be mercilessly ridiculed.

Fauxcahontas is truly a “stupid and futile gesture”…

A climate denier-in-chief sits in the White House today. But not for long

Elizabeth Warren

The next president must rejoin the Paris agreement and show the world that the United States is ready to lead on the international stage again

President Trump has now fulfilled his disastrous promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement represents decades of work by both Democratic and Republican administrations to achieve a common goal: bringing every country of the world together to tackle the climate crisis, the existential threat of our time.

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No More Cooking With Gas

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By Erin Mundahl – Re-Blogged From Western Wire

Consumers are getting caught in the crossfire of environmental activists’ war against natural gas and the new battlefield is in the kitchen.

Environmentalists began collaborating with state government officials from across the United States at a closed-door gathering in New York this summer to lay out the plans for policies that would prevent consumers from using natural gas to cook their food or heat their homes.

The conference included representatives from the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Energy Foundation, and the World Research Institute among others, according to open records recently obtained by free market group Energy Policy Advocates and reviewed by the Washington Times.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #380

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The Week That Was: October 12, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Projec

Quote of the Week – “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”— George Bernard Shaw [William Readdy]

Number of the Week: Up 4850% in 20 Years

Solar-Climate Variability – Svensmark Hypothesis: It its review of recent papers, CO2 Science discusses a study in Nature, Scientific Reports, of a linkage between multi-decade variability in rainfall in the Western Mediterranean and solar activity over the last thousand years. The authors use high-resolution speleothem records (stalagmites) from two caves in Morocco to create a statistical basis for measuring changing precipitation. The paper illustrates how messy observational data can be and how exceptional the data presented in the 2008 report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) from a cave in Oman is. (pp 11-13)

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Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In the first part of a new video series, I give an outline of Chapter One of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, which covers environmental economics. I explain the role of economics in protecting the environment. In a nutshell, it’s this: economic prosperity gives humans the time to care about the environment. Otherwise it’s just a day-to-day battle for survival. As Dr. John Christy put it:

“We are not morally bad people for taking carbon and turning it into the energy that offers life to humanity in a world that would otherwise be brutal,”

“On the contrary, we are good people for doing so.”

“Without energy, life is brutal and short.”

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150703181333/http:/www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/06/uah_climate_scientist_question.html

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COST OF U.S. TRANSITION TO 100% RENEWABLES – $4.5 TRILLION

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By Tim Benson – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A June 2019 analysis from Scottish consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates the cost of transitioning the United States to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, as recommended by the “Green New Deal” and other overzealous climate change plans, would cost at least $4.5 trillion over that time period.

“For any country to embrace a nationwide transition to 100 percent renewable energy … or zero carbon … emissions constitutes a massive disruption with far-flung economic and social repercussions,” the analysis states. In the United States, that means a $35,000 cost to each household, around $1,750 per year for 20 years.

“The total price of transition,” the analysis states, “includes everything needed to reliably produce and deliver clean energy to consumers. This price includes building and operating generation facilities, making capacity payments, investing in transmission and distribution infrastructure, delivering customer-facing grid edge technology and more.”

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Inherent Unreliable Renewables Dictate GND “100% Renewable Electricity” Mandate Yields Unavoidable GHG Emissions

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blrogged From WUWT

The Green New Deal (GND) and California’s SB 100 are both draconian and completely unrealistic pipe dreams that politically mandate “100% renewable electricity” for the U.S. and California respectively.

A new 117 page study from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has determined that these politically contrived schemes of “100% renewable energy” are self defeating because of the inherent unreliability of renewables which results in significant GHG emissions occurring from the unavoidable need for backup dispatchable and reliable fossil generation. This backup fossil generation is required to provide grid stability functions including frequency, voltage and synchronization control, daily system load ramping and to prevent power shortages and blackouts.

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Renewables are Not Taking Over the World

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By Bjørn Lomborg – Re-Blogged From WUWT

We’re constantly being told how renewables are close to taking over the world.

We’re told they are so cheap they’ll undercut fossil fuels and reign supreme pretty soon.

That would be nice. If they were cheaper, they could cut our soaring electricity bills. With cheap and abundant power, they would push development for the world’s poorest. And it would, of course, fix climate change.

Unfortunately, it is also mostly an illusion. Renewables are not likely to take over the world anytime soon.

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The Crisis of Europe’s Green Energy Agenda

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By Benny Peiser, GWPF – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Presentation at the De-Greening Day, Amsterdam 7 March 2019

The EU’s green energy policies have

* increased energy prices significantly

* reduced competitiveness of European industries

* failed to solve the technological Achilles’ heel of intermittent renewables

* increased energy insecurity and dependence on Russian energy imports

* increased division between Western Europe and Central & Eastern Europe

* given rise to widespread public discontent and the rise of populist parties opposed to the green energy agenda

Here is a link to the complete presentation.   Worth a read and spreading around~ctm

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Approve the PCCS!

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By John Droz – Re-Blogged From WUWT

America absolutely needs outside expert review of climate claims used to oppose fossil fuels

Should the United States conduct a full, independent, expert scientific investigation into models and studies that say we face serious risks of manmade climate change and extreme weather disasters?

As incredible as it may seem, US government climate science has never been subjected to any such examination. Instead, it has been conducted by government agencies and assorted climate, environmental, history, psychology and other “experts” paid by the same government agencies – to the tune of literally billions of dollars per year.

Moreover, all that time, effort and money has been spent on studies that claim carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” are causing unprecedented climate and weather cataclysms, requiring the immediate and total elimination of fossil fuels that supply 82% of all US energy. Virtually none of it has been spent on studies of the powerful natural forces that have driven global warming and cooling, other climate changes and innumerable extreme weather events throughout Earth and human history.

Replacing all that energy – under the Green New Deal we hear so much about lately, or some similar schemes – would cost this country up to $93 trillion by 2030! That’s $65,000 per family per year!

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Singapore’s Highly Successful Economic Evolution

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Singapore is an independent city/state republic located on the coast of the Straights of Singapore between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea at the southern most tip of the Malay Peninsula.

The Republic was created in 1965 and since then has undergone at times a tumultuous but more recently a significant and spectacular economic, land development, educational, residential, commercial and industrial business evolution.

This evolution has been made possible by the massive and successful efforts to increase its available land by reclaiming these lands from the sea and powered by increased fossil fuel energy driven economic development.

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How Perception of Fossil Fuel Futures Have Evolved

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By Ronald Voisin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

An Engineer’s Perspective

A couple decades ago an international team of volcanologists arranged for the tag-on launch of a first generation orbiting gravimeter in order to study volcanism (the legitimate auspicious being pure scientific endeavor). While that intended function was successful, a much more important capability unexpectantly came to pass. Subsequent generations of these devices showed exactly where and to what extent natural gas, oil and coal were located as they have revealed progressively higher resolution images of Earth’s deep interior. Several more generations of these devices are possible and this explains the recent substantial increases in estimated recoverable oil and gas and coal for that matter. Meanwhile, fracking and horizontal drilling have enormously reduced the costs and surface-area-impact of fossil fuel recovery.

In the 1920’s we believed, quite honestly, that there were only 5, maybe 10 more years of recoverable oil. The simplistic plan was to make hay while the Sun shined…the economy was rocking.

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Children’s Climate Court Case Pushing an Injunction Against Fossil Fuel Extraction

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The Ninth Circuit is currently hearing an attempt by the Juliana v. United States plaintiffs to halt all fossil fuel extraction in the United States.

The kids suing the government over climate change want to halt fossil fuel extraction

The plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States say they’ve been denied their right to a safe and stable climate.

If the injunction is granted, it would lead to a nationwide moratorium on new fossil fuel permitting and leasing on federal lands and waters until the lawsuit is resolved. No small matter. However, existing mining and drilling projects would still proceed.

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The World Bank and its Defunct Energy Policy

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By Tilak Doshi, – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The shock resignation of World Bank President Dr Jim Yong Kim, announced in early January, more than three years before his term would have ended, and the nomination of David Malpass, one of the institution’s sharpest critics in the current US administration, has been seen as yet another disruptive change to the global order under President Trump’s watch.

While disruptive change has become a regular affair under this most impetuous of US presidents, the changing of the guard at the World Bank is potentially of great consequence to the world’s poor. That is, assuming the Malpass nomination is not seriously challenged by the EU which jealously guards its say in the appointment of IMF Managing Director as part of the quid pro quo over the twin Bretton Woods institutions that served the post-World War order.

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Cold Outbreaks are Not Caused by Global Warming

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By Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Global cooling – and global totalitarian socialism – are the catastrophes we should fear most

What do heat waves, floods, droughts, rising sea levels, forest fires, hurricanes, African wars, mass extinctions, disease outbreaks, and human and animal migrations from South America and the Middle East have in common?

According to climate activists, they are all caused by dangerous man-made global warming. And this, in turn, is supposedly caused by rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels resulting from our use of fossil fuels.

They might as well add alien invasions to the list, because it is all nonsense. Indeed, the climate scare industry has achieved such a level of absurdity that, on February 1, journalist Andrew Revkin reported in a National Geographic article that, “Many stories in recent days highlighted studies concluding that global warming is boosting the odds of cold [weather] outbreaks.”

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Why the Green New Deal is a Bad Deal for America

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Dr. Martin Capages has written an excellent new book entitled Why the Green New Deal is a Bad Deal for America. He very effectively deconstructs the “Green New Deal.” He kindly asked me to write the Foreward for the book, so I am posting a slightly revised version here.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is only the latest, in a long line of politicians, to use climate change as an excuse for world government and global control of production, distribution and exchange of goods and services, aka socialism. The global warming (or climate change, if you prefer) scare has been inexorably tied to socialism since it was conceived in the late 1980s by Maurice Strong (see the details of what Strong did in Christopher Booker’s article on him in the 5 December 2015 issue of The Telegraph, link). In short, he became the founding director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) and later, in 1992, he created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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2018 Wind Power

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Wind Power Stats Reveal 2018 Was a Huge Year, and There’s More to Come

It’s off to a flying start.

By Mike Brown on February 5, 2019
Filed Under Clean Energy, Power & Sustainable Energy

The amount of wind power capacity in North, Central and South America jumped 12 percent in the past year, a report revealed Tuesday. The Global Wind Energy Council found 11.9 gigawatts of capacity was added to the region, with the United States and Brazil among the biggest contributors.

The report bodes well for plans to transition more energy usage onto sustainable means, dropping the fossil fuels of yesteryear.

[…]

Inverse (of logic, reason and the real world)

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Saved by Pseudo-Renewable Energy?

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By Paul Driessen – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Climate alarmists must prove expensive, weather-dependent energy is green and sustainable

The IPCC says it’s still possible to limit planetary warming to an additional 0.5 degrees C (0.9 F) “above pre-industrial levels” – but only if global CO2 emissions are halved by 2030 and zeroed out by 2050.

So climate alarmists intend to carbon-tax, legislate and regulate our energy, factories, livelihoods, living standards, liberties and lives to the max. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would eliminate and replace US fossil fuels by 2030. It’s an unprecedented economic and political power grab.

We went to war with King George over far less serious abuses and usurpations. And yet today we seem to have few Patrick Henrys or other stalwart, principled leaders willing to defy this insanity.

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Of Discount Rates and Candy-Canes

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By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley -Re-Blogged From WUWT

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax,

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings.”

Lewis Carroll, Aliciae per speculum transitus

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New York’s Green New Deal

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Re-Blogged From WUWT

I can’t vouch for the provenance of this, but it seems real, ~ctm

On January 15, 2019 New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo did his State of the State Address. His 2019 Justice Agenda included 12 proposals under part 4 “Launching the Green New Deal”:

· Mandate 100 Percent Clean Power by 2040 – This will mandate that all electricity will be “carbon free by 2040.

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Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest utility, committed to going 100 percent carbon-free by 2050

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By Deepan Dutta – Re-Blogged From Summit Daily

As the world turns its back on promises to curb carbon emissions, one of America’s largest utility companies has stepped up and promised to eventually eliminate its own. Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electric utility, announced Tuesday that it intends to go 100 percent carbon-free in all eight states it serves by 2050, while reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent of its 2005 emission levels by 2030. Xcel is the first major U.S. utility to make such a commitment.

The announcement was made at the same time a new report revealed that global carbon emissions increased in 2017 by 1.6 percent after staying relatively flat for the three years prior. Emissions are expected to have increased by 2.7 percent in 2018, dashing hopes that the world had finally turned a corner on carbon dioxide production.

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Brown-to-Green Report: “G20 Nations Still Led by Fossil Fuel Industry”… Because Fossil Fuels Are Good for People

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By David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT

G20 nations still led by fossil fuel industry, climate report finds

Coal, oil and gas subsidies risking rise in global temperatures to 3.2C, well beyond agreed Paris goal

Jonathan Watts, Wed 14 Nov 2018

Climate action is way off course in all but one of the world’s 20 biggest economies, according to a report that shows politicians are paying more heed to the fossil fuel industry than to advice from scientists.

Among the G20 nations 15 reported a rise in emissions last year, according to the most comprehensive stock-take to date of progress towards the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

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The Deutch Energy Tax

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

At the suggestion of a commenter on my last post, I’m taking a look at a very destructive and pointless piece of proposed legislation. This is the “Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act“, which is subtitled “The Market-Based Climate Solution”. It’s proposed by Reps. Deutch (D), Rooney (R), Delaney (D), Fitzpatrick (R), and Crist (D).

The text of the proposed legislation is here, and the Press Release is here. 

Their plan, from above:

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Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The fifth volume in the Climate Change Reconsidered series, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, produced by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), is undergoing final peer review. It was publicly presented on December 4, 2018 in Katowice, Poland — the host city of the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 24) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

From the press release:

“Each year the verdict becomes stronger and clearer that the scientific evidence debunks global warming alarmism. While the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties frantically searches for reasons to justify its continued existence, The Heartland Institute is proud to present the science that debunks U.N. alarmism.

“We will also be presenting examples of real-world evidence contradicting important U.N. climate claims. We will be delivering the truth that the only thing ‘settled’ about the global warming debate is that U.N. climate reports have little credibility. Skeptics present a far better scientific case.”

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We Can Eliminate Fossil Fuels, No Problem!

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By Andy May – Re-Blogged From WUWT

French President Macron has implemented a new fuel tax to discourage drivers from burning fossil fuels in their cars. The resulting higher fuel prices have caused more than 250,000 people to protest, with some rioting. Polls indicate that 62 percent of the population think that prioritizing man-made climate change over fuel prices is wrong. The rioting has led to two deaths and over 600 injured. Almost 100 police officers have been hurt.

Macron’s popularity has sunk to 21 percent in a warning to other leaders who try to fight climate change with higher fossil fuel taxes. While Macron is unpopular for many reasons, the increase in gasoline taxes was the spark that ignited the protests and rioting.

Figure 1. Riot police facing the “yellow jacket” demonstrators in front of a burning barricade in Paris on November 24, 2018. Source: News.com.au.

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Frightful Cost of Virginia Offshore Wind

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By Steve Goreham -Re-Blogged From WUWT

On November 6, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) regulatory agency approved a project to construct wind turbines near Virginia Beach. The plan calls for construction of turbines 27 miles off the coast, to begin operation by the end of 2020. Virginia electricity rate-payers will pay the exorbitant costs of this project.

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Nitrogen Dioxide Sense and Nonsense

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

According to the National Center for Biotechnology information, we have:

“Nitrogen dioxide (NO2). A highly poisonous gas. Exposure produces inflammation of lungs that may only cause slight pain or pass unnoticed, but resulting edema several days later may cause death. (From Merck, 11th ed) Nitrogen dioxide is a major atmospheric pollutant that is able to absorb UV light that does not reach the earth’s surface.

And the US Environmental Protection Agency says:

Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) is one of a group of highly reactive gases known as oxides of nitrogen or nitrogen oxides (NOx). Other nitrogen oxides include nitrous acid and nitric acid. NO2 is used as the indicator for the larger group of nitrogen oxides. NO2 primarily gets in the air from the burning of fuel.

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Warming Up The Poor and Vulnerable

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By Willis Eschenbach – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Well, the new report is out from the IPCC, the Indefatigable Predictors of Climate Catastrophe. It’s our last-chance must act now warning of upcoming Thermageddon … I think we’re up to Last Chance Warning Number Thirty-Seven or something like that.

And the UNFCCC, the United Nations Foundation for Collecting Climate Cash, point out that the IPCC report is full of all kinds of dire warnings like the following:

The IPCC’s special report clearly states that the world has already warmed by 1ºC due to human activity. As a result, climate change is already affecting people, ecosystems and livelihoods across the globe, with impacts such as floods or droughts disproportionately affecting the poorest and most vulnerable. Some of the most affected areas are small islands, megacities, coastal regions and high mountain ranges.

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International Panel Calls for End to Global War on Fossil Fuels

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From WUWT

More than 100 leading scholars from 12 countries have issued a report contending “the global war on fossil fuels … was never founded on sound science or economics” and urging the world’s policymakers to “acknowledge this truth and end that war.”

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an independent organization founded in 2003 to fact-check the work of the United Nations on the issue of climate change, today released the Summary for Policymakers of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels. The 27-page Summary provides an early look at a 1,000-page report expected to be released on December 4 at a climate science symposium during the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-24) in Katowice, Poland. 

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Caught Lying: NYC Climate Lawsuit Really IS About Restraining Industry, Not Saving the Planet

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From Energy In Depth, by Lea Giotto – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A top environmental lawyer for New York City says that the goal of the City’s climate litigation efforts is to restrain industry activity, an apparent contradiction to what the City has stated in recent legal filings in federal court. This admission could have a significant impact on the case moving forward.

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Voters Rebelling Against Trudeau Carbon Taxes

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From WUWT

The Economist worries that Canadians are electing powerful state politicians opposed to Trudeau climate policies.

Can Ontario’s new leader wreck Canada’s climate-change plan?

If Alberta supports him, he might do

The Economist explains
Jun 27th 2018 by M.D. | OTTAWA

DOUG FORD says his first official act as leader of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, will be to kill the cap-and-trade programme put in place by the Liberal government that his Progressive Conservatives defeated earlier this month. As of June 29th, the date of the handover, Mr Ford promises that what he describes as “the cap-and-trade carbon tax” will be gone. The climate-change programme is provincial policy, but it also forms part of Canada’s national plan, which crucially depends on each of the 10 provinces and three territories reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. In withdrawing Ontario, the second-largest emitter after energy-rich Alberta, will Mr Ford wreck the national climate-change plan?

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Speculative Climate Chaos v. Indisputable Fossil Fuel Benefits

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By Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Federal judge tells climate litigants to tally the numerous blessings from fossil fuels since 1859

Judge William Alsup has a BS in engineering, has written computer programs for his ham radio hobby, delves deeply into the technical aspects of numerous cases before him, and even studied other programming languages for a complex Oracle v. Google lawsuit.

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Fund Managers Predict the Decline of Oil, But We’ve Heard This Before

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By Steve Goreham – Re-Blogged From Washington Examiner

World fund managers predict a fall in the value of oil companies. According to a survey published last month in the United Kingdom, climate change risks will force a lower valuation of oil company stock prices within the next five years. But despite many predictions of demise over the last 50 years, global consumption of hydrocarbon energy continues to grow.
The sun begins to rise behind a pump jack and oil storage tanks near Williston, N.D.
The sun begins to rise behind a pump jack and oil storage tanks near Williston, N.D.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

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Appeasement in the Bizarre World of Climate, Politics, and Big Oil

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By Dr. Tim Ball – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

I know a great deal about this bizarre world because I have incorrectly been accused of being in the pay of Big Oil. In the early days, I did try to get their money in order to show them why they could ignore the great deception of global warming. I wanted to show them how pseudoscience was being used by ideologists to push a political agenda.

The charge by environmentalists that Exxon knew about the CO2 and global warming issue is correct because I, among others, told them directly. The charge that they did nothing is incorrect. They chose to ignore scientific evidence and follow a policy of appeasement, apparently, in the naïve belief they could placate the ideologues and win a PR battle. Right now, I am enjoying watching them squirm and wriggle as they fight lawsuits from those they thought they appeased. They now know Churchill’s definition is correct.

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Court Case to Force Shell to “Reinvest” More in Renewables

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By Eric Worrall – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Shell’s long term policy of cultivating green friends seems to have come unstuck, with a “Friends of the Earth” lawsuit which insists that Shell re-investing 5% of their profits in renewables simply isn’t good enough.

Shell threatened with legal action over climate change contributions

Shell Oil

Shell Oil. By Catherine Hammond (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Earth Hour is Tonight – Instead of Turning Off Your Lights, Turn Them On to Celebrate What Electricity Has Done For Mankind

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Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

This excellent essay on the Earth Hour event, to be held tonight at 8:30PM in every local time zone, is an eye-opener.  Earth Hour is a testament to stupidity, in my opinion, and deserves to be mocked. North Korea reminds us what it is like to like in darkness, both politically, and in energy poverty.

satellite image of the korean penninsula at night, showing city lighting

Every hour is Earth Hour in North Korea – satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night, showing city lighting.

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The Failure of the Climate Movement

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

People like Bill McKibben of 350.org make a big deal out of the “successes” of carbon divestment, where the 350.org organization bullies convinces some hapless organization to divest from coal and petroleum stocks in investment portfolios. Besides the fact that this has no real impact, since when one person or group “divests”, another one buys the shares up, this graph shows why 350.org, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, NRDC, and the whole lot of climate campaigners are just practicing an exercise in futility.

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