5333 private links
Green pursuit of a low-carbon future absent the introduction of more nuclear power on existing grids is nothing but a fantasy. Today nuclear power generates nearly 20 percent of U.S. electricity and more than half the nation’s carbon-free energy from 93 reactors, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). In contrast, the Department of Energy reports wind and solar produce 12 percent. While nuclear reactors maintain the ability to produce stable output, solar panels and wind turbines are dependent on weather.
Over-reliance on unreliable wind and solar has triggered short-term energy crises in Europe and California. Europe’s dependence on Russian fuel to generate instantaneous power when weather-dependent sources failed while shutting down nuclear plants has further constrained the West’s diplomacy with President Vladimir Putin waging war in Ukraine. The U.S. runs the risk of a similar dependency on Russian resources without diversifying its uranium supply to fuel the nation’s nuclear reactors. Forty-six percent of U.S. uranium comes from Russian-backed states.
Embracing nuclear, however, remains the only environmentally sustainable solution to a lower-carbon future, with plants requiring 300 to 400 times less land than that required to mass-produce from wind and solar, according to an analysis from Environmental Progress’s Michael Shellenberger.
Two weeks ago, I posted a video to TikTok reporting on the globalist push to restrict freedom of movement in the name of “climate change.” //
How do I know these globalist “environmentalists” are scam artists using climate hysteria to consolidate power? To start, each of their goals, from eliminating jet fuel to doing away with privately owned vehicles, slowly prices the masses out of various modes of transportation, therefore restricting freedom of movement. //
But if regular people are priced out of air and vehicle transportation, the 15-minute cities won’t be a convenient neighborhood — they’ll effectively be prisons. //
Arguably, the best evidence that climate fanatics are using fear to “consolidate power” is revealed by the climate cultists themselves. French media and environmentalists admit that the country’s ban on short-haul flights will have close to no impact on the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, all the climate activists that head organizations like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum galavant across the globe on private jets in spite of the “climate crisis.” These same individuals also reject real climate solutions, such as environmentally friendly nuclear energy, which is safe and more reliable than other green energy alternatives.
The United Nations openly admits to partnering with Big Tech companies, particularly TikTok and Google, to manipulate search results and censor or promote content related to topics like Covid-19 or “climate information.” According to the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming, “We [the UN] own the science, and we think that the world should know it.”
“We own the science” is like saying, “We own the truth.” But no person or group of people can “own” the truth. What Fleming means is that the UN owns the narrative surrounding climate change. My video, no matter how factual, deviated from their narrative, and it was erased from TikTok. //
The pressure to stay silent on the climate change scam is enormous, but the stakes could never be higher. The freedom to seamlessly travel when and where you want is basic and essential. Without it, people are easily traced and controlled.
Climate-related deaths are down 99 percent worldwide over the past 100 years — thanks largely to fossil fuels, capitalism, and human innovation. //
- Wildfire Rates Have Declined Since 2001
- Hurricanes Are Becoming Less Frequent
- Climate-Related Deaths Are Down
Justin Hart
@justin_hart
There is NO statistically significant increase for the number or strength or viciousness of hurricanes making landfall over time since the 1850s
Decade after decade:
- 19 hurricanes on average
- Average category 2 when they make landfall
- Avg central pressure: 965
- 89 mph avg wind
A coalition of more than 1,600 scientists critical of their peers’ hyperbolic claims about climate change drew a prominent recruit to sign their 2019 declaration that the climate “emergency” is a myth.
John Clauser, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, became the second Nobel laureate last month to sign the document with 1,607 other scientists rebuking the idea of a climate crisis.
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration organized by the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) reads. “Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”
Last year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) debuted a roadmap to net-zero emissions that became the model for corporate bishops of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. A June report from the Energy Policy Research Foundation criticized the initiatives outlined as a “green mirage.” The IEA roadmap, researchers wrote, “will dramatically increase energy costs, devastate Western economies, and increase human suffering.”
“The aim of global policy should be ‘prosperity for all’ by providing reliable and affordable energy at all times,” reads CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration. “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.”
Biden’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration quietly published new proposed fuel economy standards for passenger cars and light trucks. If the new rule were implemented as written, new cars and light trucks would be forced to meet a 66-mile-per-gallon and 54-mile-per-gallon standard, respectively, by 2032.
This rule, along with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed de facto electric vehicle mandate to require nearly 70% of all new car sales to be electric vehicles by 2032, is being implemented to further the Biden regime’s climate agenda.
Of particular interest is the rationale for the rule. The NHTSA repeatedly claims that by instituting these nearly impossible fuel economy standards, America will become more energy secure, thereby increasing national security. The central planners argue that by forcing new cars to use less gas, America would be less dependent on imports. //
However, America is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and natural gas. If energy security were truly important to Biden, he would be promoting policies that increase gas and oil production instead of reducing the production of two of the nation’s most valuable commodities. //
Regulating gas-powered cars out of existence while subsidizing electric vehicles is a boon to China, since it controls 80% of global EV battery production and holds much influence over nations awash with the rare earth minerals to produce those batteries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the event of a forced EV transition, as Biden has planned for 2032, America would become further dependent on China and would enrich the Chinese Communist Party.
Furthermore, by restricting oil and gas leasing on public lands, as the Bureau of Land Management seeks to do in Colorado, for instance, Biden is cutting the amount of domestic energy production and the amount of electricity that Americans can use to power their homes, businesses, and lives (because a certain share of power plants generate electricity using natural gas). //
According to Heritage Foundation chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna, even if America were to stop all conventional fuel use, global temperatures would be reduced by a mere 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. At the same time, China has abandoned the Paris Agreement on climate and is expected to increase carbon emissions from its coal-fired power plants.
If a nuclear overnight CAPEX of $2000/kW is possible, as the South Koreans, the Chinese, and the GKG claim, why in the world would you run $4000/kW, let alone anything higher?
The answer is we've seen nuclear CAPEXes of $8000/kW and higher. Vogtle 3/4 is above $10,000/kW. Flamanville 3 is in the same range. This cannot happen in a properly functioning, competitive market. In such a market, there is only one price, the best price. If nuclear cost is as critically important to the planet as Figure 6 claims, we must figure out what turns a $2000/kW plant into a $10,000/kW plant and eliminate it. The GKG publication Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop attempts to do just that. //
Only truly cheap nuclear offers humanity what it must have: both cheap electricity and low CO2 emissions. Expensive nuclear offers humanity the choice of impoverishment or global warming.
Millard Fillmore White House Library @FillmoreWhite
No, it's flowing faster and shrinking.
"Petermann is generally thinning, retreating, and its flow is accelerating. The acceleration stretches and thins the glacier, which makes it more prone to fractures, or rifts, that can break and form an iceberg."
earthobservatory.nasa.gov https://t.co/3sytzszdeF
Retreat at Petermann Glacier
Decades of retreat are visible from above, but harder-to-see changes below the waterline could also affect this iconic glacier’s future.
Tony Heller @TonyClimate
Greenland's Petermann Glacier has been growing about three meters per day for the past eleven years. This will not be reported by the
@nytimes
@NPR
or
@BBCNews
NASA Data Show Volcanic Eruption, Not Man-Made Climate Change, Likely Cause of Record Heat Wave
Agency says that water vapor injected into the atmosphere from a recent volcanic eruption was enough to increase Earth's global average temperature //
“It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have,” Thomas Lifson, founder of American Thinker, wrote in a July 31 op-ed.
“So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption last year that I — probably along with you — had never heard of,” he added. “The mass media ignored it because it took place 490 feet underwater in the South Pacific.”
According to NASA, when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted last year, along with producing a sonic boom that circled the globe twice and a tsunami, it “blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere — enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere
NASA cited a study published in Geophysical Research Letters showing that an estimated 146 teragrams (one teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor was sent into the atmosphere, which is equal to 10 percent of the water already present in that atmospheric later. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL099381
Other data published in the journal Nature estimate the rise in global stratospheric water mass following the volcanic event at 13 percent. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00652-x
As the space agency, which also tracks global temperatures, readily admitted on its own webpage, “The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.”
Steve Milloy @JunkScience
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14,000 panel, 5.2 MW community solar array in Nebraska destroyed by hail storm last night.
This doesn't happen to baseload power plants.
https://notrickszone.com/2023/06/28/huge-nebraska-solar-park-completely-smashed-to-pieces-by-one-single-hail-storm/
9:42 PM · Jun 28, 2023
Shanghai @thinking_panda
·
In China, in the Shanxi province, there is a huge solar energy farm right on the mountain. Solar panels stretch for 80 kilometers. It looks as if the mountain was covered with a blanket.
(Shanxi is on the Loess Plateau which has nothing but silt and dust. Nothing grows there.)
4:23 AM · May 31, 2023 //
A professor of Geochemistry explained that solar isn’t all that “green.” Solar releases nitrogen trifluoride. What’s NF3’s impact on the environment? It is 17,000 times worse for the atmosphere than the dreaded CO2.
https://www.chemservice.com/news/learn-which-chemicals-make-solar-power-possible/
American Deplorable ™
7 hours ago
Working in Texas I saw a solar array that covered hundreds of acres that was located on the edge of the desert.
The dust storms there are legendary and have been for millennia.
I was told that the dust reduces the panels ability to create power by as much as 70% at times so the utility decided to hire a full time cleaning crew to keep the panels working.
A dozen two man crews equipped with a side by side vehicle, squeegees and spray bottles spend 12 hours a day, seven days a week cleaning the panels.
Absolutely insane. //
bintexas
6 hours ago
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Climate change hail takes out a field of solar power panels
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Double the number of fields to combat climate change
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Climate change hail (aka springtime in the midwest) busts up two fields of panels.
I am detecting the makings of a perfect grift
First, the paper concludes that “The percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.”
The premise of this argument is incorrect and indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the causal link between anthropogenic emissions and rising atmospheric CO2. The fact that atmospheric CO2 has been rising at only about half the rate of anthropogenic emissions establishes that the natural environment is a net carbon sink and has been actively opposing the rise for at least the last 60 y. Hence, we know that anthropogenic emissions, predominantly from fossil fuel combustion and land use change, involve more than sufficient carbon to entirely explain the post-industrial rise (Canadell et al. 2021). //
Hence, even though individual CO2 molecules coming from fossil fuel emissions will cycle out of the atmosphere on a timescale of a few years, anthropogenic emissions have led to an enhancement in atmospheric CO2 that will have an adjustment timescale of a century or more. As many detailed carbon cycle studies have shown, anthropogenic emissions certainly are the cause of the increase in atmospheric CO2, and there are multiple lines of evidence that support this conclusion1 (Prentice et al. 2001). Also, the adjustment timescale is a century or longer, meaning that this enhancement in atmospheric CO2 will persist for a very long time (Ciais et al. 2013). //
Second, throughout the paper the authors have (1) failed to cite numerous related and relevant earlier publications in this field and (2) demonstrated a lack of fundamental understanding of biogeochemical carbon cycle processes. For example: ///
Thus, what has already been emitted will take centuries to stabilize, therefore it is too late to repair the damage and the best we can do is be prepared to mitigate the effects, notably by securing inexpensive inexhaustible energy sources.
Health Physics 122(2):p 291-305, February 2022. | DOI: 10.1097/HP.0000000000001485
These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.
[...]
After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO2 concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO2 from burning fossil fuel.” Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO2 emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper.
So why is a journal on radiation safety publishing a work on climate change? Because an examination of the ratios in radioactive carbon isotopes can reveal a lot about the sources of atmospheric carbon. C14 is useful in radiometric dating of organic matter; biologists, paleontologists, and archeologists have known this for decades. But it turns out that C-14, along with the other isotopes, C12 and C13, are useful in distinguishing anthropogenic carbon from naturally occurring carbon. Health Physics has published the research of University of Massachusetts Lowell physicists Kenneth Skrabel, George Chabot, and Clayton French on the topic, and their results are… interesting. But the study is heavy and takes a bit of unpacking.
Here’s the interesting bit from the abstract:
These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming. //
In other words, the narrative that human-created carbon is driving climate change is not supported by the evidence; the sun, as one might guess, has much more influence, and drastic action in the form of “very costly remedial actions” are not necessary.
I encourage everyone who reads this to go read the entire journal article. It’s long, it’s a bit tedious, as these kinds of journal articles tend to be, and there is a lot of number-crunching and explaining how the observations drive through to the conclusions. But it’s important to understand that this is how actual science is done. This is the kind of science you never see discussed much outside of the journals in which it’s presented, not only because it’s tedious and difficult for lay people to get through, but because it doesn’t fit the Left’s climate change narrative.
France has passed a law banning some domestic flights and encouraging travelers to take the train instead. Under the new law, flights that can be replaced by a train journey of under two-and-a-half hours should be scrapped.
The ban on short-hop flights became law on Tuesday. However, France’s national airline had already canceled three routes that were deemed too high on carbon emissions. All three went from Paris’ second airport, Orly, serving Bordeaux, Lyon and Nantes. Those three cities are all on the country’s extensive high-speed rail network, and taking the train is also far faster than flying there.
Air France agreed to drop those direct routes in return for coronavirus financial assistance from the government in 2020.
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In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dispatchable (i.e., baseload, almost always available) coal, gas, and nuclear power? In other words, if our weather is becoming less predictable, how is it that a consuming economy like ours can, or should even try, predictably rely on weather-dependent resources? //
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Climate change is a global issue, so how is it that we can claim climate benefits for unilateral climate policy. For example, U.S. gasoline cars constitute just 3% of global CO2 emissions, so how will getting rid of them impact climate change? //
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How on Earth could anybody expect those in Africa and the other horrifically poor nations to “get off fossil fuels” when the rich countries haven’t come close to doing it.
[…]
- But, perhaps I’m most confused about the whole air quality thing. The obsession over it gets attached to all energy policies. But there’s clearly a strawman to the “we need cleaner air now” demand. First, the air quality conversation in the U.S. reminds me of Voltaire’s “the perfect is the enemy of good.” Americans seem completely unaware how drastically our air quality has improved. Check data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our criteria pollutants have been plummeting over the past many decades. //
Clyde Spencer
Reply to
KevinM
May 23, 2023 7:45 pm
… statisticians should be fined for associating life expectancy gains with any factor at all.
There is general agreement that the availability of soap (better hygiene) was an important factor in increasing longevity. Also, the control of bacterial infections with antibiotics, and the dramatic reduction of fatal childhood diseases, resulting from vaccinations, played an important role. Additionally, the availability of affordable, effective insect screening, along with programs to reduce mosquito breeding areas did a lot to reduce malaria in the US. There were many factors, most correlated with economy of scale made possible by inexpensive energy.
The New Pause has lengthened by a further two months to 8 years 11 months. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the UAH monthly satellite global-temperature dataset for the lower troposphere shows no global warming at all from June 2014 to April 2023. //
NOAA thinks there is a 62% chance of an el Niño developing. If it does develop, it will probably bring the latest Pause to an end. Nevertheless, these long Pauses are a visual demonstration of the now-undeniable fact that the rate of global warming predicted by IPCC in 1990 has proven to be greatly in excess of the subsequent outturn. //
In fact, IPCC’s midrange prediction in 1990 of 0.3 K/decade business-as-usual warming since that year exceeds the 0.136 K/decade real-world global warming rate observed since then by a startling 120%. Indeed, even the 0.2 K/decade lower bound of IPCC’s 1990 prediction exceeds observed reality by close to half. Yet policy is being made by scientifically-illiterate governments on the basis of the 0.5 K/decade upper-bound prediction, which exceeds observed reality by a shocking 268%.
In his continuing war on fossil fuels, President Biden and the Environmental Protection Agency are planning to announce a severe new proposal forcing the nation’s power plants to dramatically cut their emissions by 2040. Similar efforts by Biden and President Obama before him were struck down by the Supreme Court.
If the liberal Washington Post is calling the proposal “drastic,” you know it’s going to be contentious. Their headline? “EPA plan would impose drastic cuts on power plant emissions by 2040.” //
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that an Obama-era regulation curbing power plant emissions was unconstitutional since the EPA did not have explicit power to make such rules. Unfortunately, Biden’s behemoth, inflation-causing “Inflation Reduction Act” passed in August 2022, and it has a provision allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
For all leftists, climate alarmists, and other dwellers in fantasy land, happy Earth Day! Unfortunately for “climate change” true believers, not only have climate predictions been consistently and wildly wrong for 50 years now, but “clean” or “green” energy is toxic for the environment, inefficient, and unprofitable. //
First, it’s literally impossible to produce the amount of energy and electricity society currently uses with “green” energy. That’s why climate propagandists like World Economic Forum tell people to get used to being poorer. But also, much of that “green” energy is actually terrible for the environment. Solar panels and wind turbines have killed billions of birds, and offshore wind turbines can be deadly for whales. //
EV batteries, which have to be replaced every few years, are very toxic to dispose of. The “mining, manufacturing, and disposal of [EV] batteries threatens to be a major environmental concern in the coming years.” Solar panels and wind turbines also generate lots of toxic waste. //
Any reasonable person who has seen wind or solar farms has to notice they take up massive amounts of land. In other words, to put up wind turbines or solar panels, huge swathes of natural scenery and farmland must be ruined. This includes killing literally millions of trees.
Back in 2016, a planned solar panel farm in New Jersey required cutting down 15,000 trees. 200-year-old rainforest trees were axed in Tasmania in 2019 to clear land for a wind farm. In Scotland, as of 2020, almost 14 million trees had been cut down to make way for wind turbines. By 2021, Scotland was reportedly still cutting down an estimated 1,600 trees a day to make way for wind turbines. In 2022, Germany was planning to clear a large swathe of the thousand-year-old forest known as the “treasure house of European forests” to make way for a wind power plant.
A new report finds that last year China permitted the equivalent of two coal plants per week.