The tragedy is that we're traumatizing our young people and doing things that actually make environmental problems worse," said author Michael Shellenberger. //

Although only a few have ventured to face the cancel culture mob of today by expressing truth outside of the mainstream leftist consensus, environmentalist Michael Shellenberger recently chose to promote truth by exposing lies within his field of climate change research, putting his professional popularity at risk.

After a lifetime spent researching and advocating for the institution of climate change policy and fostering climate change awareness that the left supports, Shellenberger released an article Sunday titled, “On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare.” This formal apology preceded the release of his book, “Apocalypse Never,” which debunks the myths surrounding climate change that have evoked a global scare known as climate alarmism.

Shellenberger is the co-founder and president of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization dedicated to fighting for clean power and energy justice, and he serves as an expert reviewer at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He’s considered himself an environmentalist for the past 30 years, but he only recently spoke out against the climate change alarmism. //

After publishing his “apology” article with Forbes, where Shellenberger has been a long-time contributor, they took it down. A spokesperson from Forbes said the piece didn’t adhere to their “strict editorial guidelines.” It has since been printed at Quillette. Although he will continue to contribute to Forbes on energy issues in the third person, Shellenberger said he is disappointed in their decision and disagrees with their censorship. [https://quillette.com/2020/06/30/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/]

Climate change is just one manifestation of the cultural shift to the left that is universally accepted, meaning any dissenting opinions aren’t considered. Shellenberger himself was drawn in by the left’s alarmism and is now acting to ensure people have the truth to rid themselves of such impending fear.

His commitment to environmentalism speaks for itself; Shellenberger is no climate change denier. In light of his recent change in attitude, however, some woke leftists have been quick to label him one. That alone is telling, he said in the article, as to just how powerful the alarmism is.

“The real story is just that it’s not the end of the world and that it’s been used to advance a radical left agenda…I think that most people that are alarmist or apocalyptic out there in some ways are victims of this discourse. It’s like they’ve been invaded by a mental virus,” he said.

New data published by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a record monthly high of 417 parts per million (ppm). //

Lower emissions haven't affected what’s already up there. //

New data published by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a record monthly high of 417 parts per million (ppm). This two ppm change since last May’s reading is in line with the average annual increase. While many predictions strongly suggested that behavior changes due to COVID-19 would affect the atmosphere, temporary shutdowns and slowdowns haven’t been enough to meaningfully decrease the amount of greenhouse gas still present in the atmosphere.

Scientists Who Didn't Predict A Single Thing Accurately For Last Two Months Confident They Know What The Weather Is Going To Be Like In 100 Years

It turns out the Earth is also subject to gravity, which was a problem. //

Zharkova engaged in a spirited back-and-forth with Rice that generated more heat than light. Both agreed that the Sun is known to wobble around the precise gravitational balance point of the Solar System, pulled slightly off its mark by the attraction of the larger planets like Jupiter and Saturn. But the study seemed to ignore the fact that the Earth’s orbit also shifts in response to those giant planets, causing it to maintain a constant distance from the Sun. The paper instead assumed that Earth’s orbit was unaffected so that any motion of the Sun would alter its distance from the Earth. If that’s not true, then there has been no change in the strength of sunlight reaching the Earth, and there is no mechanism for their centuries-long warming trend.

As several people tried in vain to point out that this constant Earth-Sun relationship is well-known, Zharkova posted, “Oh dear, You suggest that the Earth does follow in its orbit this solar inertial motion? And its orbit is not stable? You have to have a very vivid imagination assuming that the Earth moves like a drunken men...[sic]”

At one point, after Rice provided a simple orbital simulation calculating the gravitational interactions in the Solar System, Zharkova replied, “Your simulations are extremely biased by the idea you believe in.” //

On Wednesday, Scientific Reports—for which Zharkova is listed as an editor, by the way—formally retracted the paper. The retraction note states that “concerns were raised regarding the interpretation of how the Earth-Sun distance changes over time and that some of the assumptions on which analyses presented in the Article are based are incorrect.” One of the paper’s four authors apparently agreed to retract the paper, while the other three (Zharkova among them) objected.

Japan is pushing ahead with a fuel source that’s exacerbating climate change. //

The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant automatically shut down in response to the earthquake, but the tsunami overtopped the plant’s seawall, stalling the backup generators that were providing vital cooling to the idled reactors. The lost coolant led to meltdowns and explosions at the plant, releasing dangerous radioactive material.

In response, more than 150,000 people were evacuated from the region. While there were some increases in ambient radiation exposure, the main harms from the disaster stemmed from relocating so many people, ranging from worsened illnesses from loss of access to health care to mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, Japan’s entire nuclear power fleet, providing one-third of the country’s electricity, was taken offline for safety inspections and updates. Before the disaster, Japan was looking to ramp up its share of nuclear energy to 53 percent.

The impacts of the disaster rippled out other countries too. Germany was also preparing to build more nuclear power plants before the 2011 earthquake. After the Fukushima disaster, Germany pulled a 180 and decided to embark on ending its use of nuclear power entirely.

Nine years later, the impacts of the earthquake continue to rock Japan. The country has or will decommission 24 reactors, 40 percent of its total. Of the remaining reactors, fewer than half have been restarted. Nuclear’s share of electricity generation has now fallen to 3 percent, with fossil fuels largely filling the void. //

The Japanese government is more worried about the economy than the environment //

But across Japan as a whole, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower generation provide just 17 percent of the country’s electricity. As a densely populated island country, Japan has run into land use constraints around deploying large-scale wind and solar plants. //

That pretty much leaves nuclear as Japan’s remaining option for carbon-free electricity. But the public is resolutely against it. “Nuclear has a pretty bad reputation in Japan,” said Scott Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. //

The rise of China threatens Japan, and so it wants to use coal to solidify and expand its influence
Behind India and China, Japan is the world’s third-largest coal importer. About two-thirds of Japan’s coal is from Australia, a country that is also facing climate-linked disasters and is struggling to curb its economic reliance on coal.

But Japan is also a major exporter of coal technology, and its government has used these power plants as a means to exert soft power. Through government institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the government has financed new coal power plants in countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

The Green New Deal is anything but 'clean' or 'green.' Even the relatively modest numbers of solar and wind installations in the United States today are causing serious environmental damage. //

A few minutes of serious thought from self-described environmentalists would prompt a realization that if the Green New Deal, a program championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were implemented, it would create an environmental disaster.

In recent decades, policymakers have forced public utilities to generate increasingly more electricity from fashionable “renewable energy” sources, especially wind and solar, and pushed automakers to manufacture more electric vehicles. Their chief goal is to eliminate reliable, affordable, generally clean fossil fuels, including natural gas, even though they generate most of America’s electricity and power most U.S. transportation.

Environmentalists claim to worry that carbon dioxide from these fuels will cause devastating global warming. Many would also eliminate nuclear power, which they say is inherently unsafe. //

environmentalists have paid too little attention to the serious harm Green New Deal policies would inflict on the environment — including scenic lands, wildlife habitats, and threatened and endangered species. Implementing the Green New Deal would undermine the very values environmentalists have espoused for decades.

America faces a dilemma. Will it focus on real environmental problems that do measurable harm to human and ecological wellbeing, or will it mandate policies to head off climate disasters that are based on warming predictions have been repeatedly proven wrong by real-world empirical observations? Will it recognize that harnessing intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar energy requires enormous amounts of raw materials and mining, resulting in massive land-use impacts and human rights abuses, and is anything but clean, green, renewable, and sustainable? Or will it ignore all this? //

Solar farms generate only 1.5 percent of the nation’s electricity and would be an inefficient way to generate the more than 8 billion megawatt-hours of power that fossil fuels and nuclear provide each year to meet industrial, commercial, residential, and automotive transportation needs and charge backup-power batteries. Using cutting-edge Nellis Air Force Base solar panels to generate that electricity would require completely blanketing 57,000 square miles of land — equivalent to the land area of New York and Vermont — with 19 billion photovoltaic solar panels. //

Turbines ruin scenic views, kill countless birds and bats, and harm marine mammals, which is why environmentalists — and even the late leftist icon Sen. Ted Kennedy — have long opposed the planned Vineyard Wind facility off the Massachusetts coast. To provide enough power for the country, Green New Deal advocates would have to build hundreds of thousands of truly gigantic offshore turbines. //

Solar panels require many toxic materials, and wind turbines require enormous amounts of steel, concrete, copper, and rare earth elements. Storing a week’s worth of power for periods when the sun is not shining or the wind isn’t blowing would require some 2 billion half-ton Tesla car battery packs. Meeting these needs would require a massive expansion of mining for lithium, cobalt, and other substances in the United States or in Asia, Africa, and South America. Operations in the latter countries involve extensive child labor, create environmental disasters, and even lead to premature death.

What’s more, disposing of obsolescent solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries is already causing problems in the United States and in countries such as Germany. Green New Deal advocates ignore this problem, which would multiply substantially under their plan.

The best way to inoculate the public against climate disinformation campaigns is to tell them what's coming.

Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "doomsday glacier", is reported to be melting quicker than previously thought - scientists are now trying to find out why.

As usual, the science does NOT seem settled, but the news is always bad. //

Tropospheric aerosol radiative forcing has persisted for many years as one of the major causes of uncertainty in global climate model simulations. To sample the range of plausible aerosol and atmospheric states and perform robust statistical analyses of the radiative forcing, it is important to account for the combined effects of many sources of model uncertainty. //

To explain what is being said here, the ‘’Tropospheric aerosol radiative forcing’’ is an overly complex way of saying that the greenhouse gasses currently in the atmosphere are actually reflecting sunlight and are contributing to reducing the harmful heating effect.

You have to be at least a little bit surprised to read this. They repeatedly mention ‘’uncertainty’’ in the climate modeling, despite the constant barrage of talk we are served that the science is settled, and we have to move forward to radical solutions. Yet, here we are told models are completely uncertain, and that they may have discovered that the reflective effects by aerosols are actually beneficial. //

We need to clean our emissions because it causes warming, and doing so will clear away aerosols which protect us from warming. As usual, no matter what takes place environmentally, we are in a no-win scenario — but we are fully to blame, of course. I cover this type of contradictory data-point summation in my annual Earth Day piece, where I collected numerous modeling and predictions that were contradicting themselves. //

Pollution is causing warming, and removing pollution is causing warming. For once I believe that I can use the phrase ”I can’t even…’’, because I am dismayed as to what the solution can possibly be for this unsettled scientific conclusion. //

”We must act’’, all the while being completely unable to formulate a cogent solution to the problem. I now understand better than ever why politicians love the climate hysteria so much.

How green is nuclear power and what are the other options? //

Nuclear is good for the environment. Nuclear is bad for the environment. Both statements are true.

Why is it good? Nuclear power is planned to be a key part of the UK's energy mix.

The key benefit is that it helps keep the lights on while producing hardly any of the CO2 emissions that are heating the climate.

CO2 emissions come from traditional ways of creating electricity such as burning gas and coal.

It’s so strange to see otherwise caring environmentalists ignore climate scientists when it comes to climate change. The world’s top climate scientists, including Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel, have all urged world leaders and environmental campaigners to stop their unscientific and ideological attacks on nuclear energy and support its expansion.

Climate scientists have warned that the anti-nuclear position of environmental leaders is causing unnecessary and severe harm to the environment and to our planet’s future by prolonging carbon emissions. Even the Union of Concerned Scientists, admits we need nuclear to address global warming.

U.S. carbon emissions rose in 2018 by over 60 million tons of CO2. Closing six nuclear plants over the last few years, building new gas plants, increasing manufacturing and construction, and increasing gasoline/diesel/jet fuel demand are the reasons for this rise. //

Over the next 20 to 40 years, the Levelized Cost of Energy for an existing nuclear plant is only 3¢/kWh. For an existing gas plant the LCOE is 5¢/kWh, and for an existing coal plant it’s 4¢/kWh. The LCOE for a new gas plant is 7¢/kWh, for a new nuclear plant is 9¢/kWh, for a new coal plant is 10¢/kWh, and for new wind is 11¢/kWh. So prematurely closing any nuclear plant to be replaced by new anything makes no sense economically.

Operating an existing nuclear plant is much more cost-effective than even existing coal and gas plants, and much cheaper than installing any new power plant, even natural gas.

Global Climate Change Collection | Journals | Oxford Academic

Global Climate Change Collection

Global Climate Change Week is October 14th – 20th and its purpose is to inspire people to engage with each other, their communities, and policymakers on climate change action and solutions. This year we are joining the mission by collating climate change research published in Oxford University Press journals that highlight a variety of climate change topics.

I enjoyed the running joke of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in the great Dickens novel Bleak House, back when I first read it.

Little did I know that one day I and the magazine that I love would effectively be caught up in a version of that interminable case, courtesy of a litigious climate scientist with zero regard for the First Amendment. //

Jarndyce v. Jarndyce was a lawsuit over an inheritance that ran on for generations, eventually accumulating so many legal fees that it wiped out the estate in question, making all the litigation pointless. //

This is a little like Mann v. National Review, which has droned on for seven years with little or no action, except the litigation emphatically has a point. Michael Mann is the climate scientist famous for his “hockey stick” graph of climate change over the ages, whose purpose in suing us is clear enough — to bleed us of time and, most importantly, resources, in order to punish us for having the temerity to harshly criticize his work.

The two plants deactivated in 2018 and 2019 generated more than 1,400 megawatts, enough power for more than 1 million homes. //

More nuclear power plant retirements may be on the horizon: PJM, the Pennsylvania-based coordinator of wholesale electricity in 13 states plus the District of Columbia, has already begun planning for the planned retirements of the dual-reactor, 1,813-megawatt Beaver Valley Power Station in Pennsylvania and the Davis–Besse and Perry nuclear power plants that together generate 2,143 megawatts in Ohio.

PJM’s grid, which covers Pennsylvania and New Jersey, had 183,454 megawatts of installed generating capacity available as of May 2019. The company puts the total capacity of the recently retired nuclear plants and the three planned for retirement at 5,387 megawatts, or about 3% of overall capacity. (PJM says its all-time highest power use was 165,563 megawatts in the summer of 2006.) //

The grid counts 11,415 megawatts of new natural gas-fired electricity generation coming online in 2018 and 2019 and an additional 10,514 megawatts from gas expected to go in-service in 2020 through 2023. Operators of those future plants have signed what are called interconnection service agreements with PJM.

"That's sort of a stage at which the projects are likely to get built," Shields said of the agreements.

All told, new gas, wind and solar plants are projected to add 29,097 megawatts to the grid, as 19,037 megawatts of capacity are lost from retired coal, gas and nuclear plants, PJM says. That's a net increase of more than 10,000 megawatts. //

PJM projections show that if all three nuclear plants planned for retirement in Pennsylvania and Ohio go offline, carbon dioxide emissions would rise by about 3.7% above 2019 levels. Other emissions, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, would drop, thanks to older fossil fuel plants shutting down. If those nuclear plants remain online and all or even half of the new gas plants open, all three pollutants would drop across PJM’s territory.

Mark Bailey
a month ago
As an engineer with over 40 years in electrical generation and distribution, including 7+ years actually working in a nuclear power station in the United States, I believe nuclear generation is absolutely essential for renewable energy to be viable. Of the technologies currently available, only nuclear and hydro power are dispatchable, i.e. predictable well in advance of need and not subject to unavoidable interruption. Until renewables solve the storage problem, any source that is not dispatchable requires back up or the willingness to tolerate outages over significant areas of the country. There is also the transport issue. Power lines are harder to get approved and cause more political heartburn than power plants. The move to non polluting sources will also require much more electrical energy to displace fossil fuel home and building heating, industrial thermal processes, and motor driven transportation. Nuclear plants produce more power per unit area occupied and do not cause large numbers of deaths to common and protected bird species.

Our president is a global warming denier, is anti-vaccine, and is a conspiracy theorist. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, being anti-science is never a good thing. When those in positions of power are ignorant of science and hostile to the institutions of science and the methods that those institutions espouse, that is a recipe for disaster. But even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. And even though there appears to be a significant asymmetry in the degree to which our two major political parties take anti-scientific positions, on some issues the political left has it wrong for their own ideological reasons. The two big anti-science issues popular on the left are anti-GMO stances and anti-nuclear energy. The latter was recently brought into sharp relief when Trump signed a, "Memorandum on the Effect of Uranium Imports on the National Security and Establishment of the United States Nuclear Fuel Working Group." //

Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced.

Nuclear waste can be dealt with, and the newer reactors produce less waste, and can even theoretically burn reprocessed waste from older plants…

This is also the option most likely to succeed. We do have examples from other countries. Germany tried to go completely renewable and closed their nuclear plants, and now have to build coal-fired plants to meet their energy needs. Meanwhile, the countries that are doing the best with low carbon energy are France and Sweden, who invested heavily in nuclear. This is why Bernie’s plan would be a disaster, it would exactly follow the failed strategy of Germany, but on a larger scale.

The journal Nature retracted a study published last year that found oceans were warming at an alarming rate due to climate change.

From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.

An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.

Strikers assert that “marginalized communities,” including the impoverished, disabled, LGBT and minorities, and the economically displaced should be foremost on the minds of policymakers.

The game is further given up when the strikers endorse progressive reforms that relate to climate change only as a result of a stretch of the imagination. Among them, the creation of state-owned banks, affordable housing, “local living-wage jobs” and “fully paid quality health care” for affected populations. //

All this fits with the organizer’s prime directive: the “implementation of a Green New Deal,” the bulk of which is only tangentially related to environmentalism. //

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” confesses Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “We really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” He wasn’t kidding. //

Unfortunately for students, the movement is not about education but indoctrination. One of the final demands, “comprehensive climate change education,” is to be aimed at children ages 5 through 14 because “impressionability is high during that developmental stage.”

If the climate threat eventually leads to radical national action, it will only be because the concept is drilled into youngsters “from the beginning.” Of course, it’s unclear why such a long-term strategy is necessary, given that we have only “11 years” left to avert disaster.

Did you know that the Three Mile Island nuclear plant only shut down last Friday? Just like the coming closure of New York’s Indian Point plant, it’s bad news in the drive to reduce carbon emissions. //

What prompted the Pennsylvania plant’s early shutdown? Abundant, cheap natural gas — thanks to fracking, which has been a huge boon to the Keystone State’s economy. So cheap that the nuclear power wasn’t cost-competitive without a subsidy from the state.

It’s operators wanted a penny per kilowatt hour — less than half of what Pennsylvania offers wind and solar plants, which can’t deliver the reliable power to make them a viable large-scale alternative to oil, coal or gas facilities. //

Nuclear power should be the centerpiece of any sane, practical plan for combatting climate change. That the Green New Deal and Climate Strike crews are firmly anti-nuclear is proof that they don’t really see climate change as a truly overriding threat.