Nah, its just really boring fact checking your posts here.
And other than you, boob and larue, nobody else is on your team.
Only Three Months Left For Planet Earth( and other false doomsday predictions)
- Thread starter canada-man
- Start date
And other than you, boob and larue, nobody else is on your team.
Global Warming alarmists have a habit of blaming everything on global warming. They even pivoted to the term “climate change” so they weren’t hemmed in by catastrophes that might be the result of global cooling.
So, naturally, global warming is the reason for both the existence of wildfires (primarily but not entirely in California) as well as their number, frequency, and severity.
The “argument,” such as it is, goes something like this: global warming makes the air warmer, which more efficiently dries out flammable vegetation, making it easier to set ablaze.
Like most nonsense arguments, it fails to account for all the other factors that are involved in wildfires. The oversimplification and lack of intellectual and scientific rigor is a hallmark of Leftist “thought,” and this scenario is no different.
We can dispense with the claim that the number of fires has been increasing. The National Interagency Fire Center shows that there is no obvious trend whatsoever, with an average of 41,617 fires per year and a standard deviation of 5,283 – meaning there’s a wide variance, as well.
There’s more. The area of forest land that has been burned in the US – even in years where consumption was greatest — is far below both the average and peak years from 1926 to 1950.
Remember, the peak period of fires occurred prior to the years of alleged man-made global warming. The reduction in fire isn’t because of deforestation, either.
The USDA Forest Service reports that forest area “has been relatively stable since 1910.” Yes, dry fuel feeds and maintains fires. Northeasterly winds kick up and spread the fires.
Some spark, such as lightning strikes or arson or public utility incompetence, lights the proverbial match.
Yet none of this is the result of global warming. California is dry in the summer because the Pacific Ocean doesn’t throw off thunderstorms. It’s cooler than the Atlantic.
The jet stream also shifts further north in summer. Thus, by the time “fire season” rolls around, all the fuel lying around for fires is going to be naturally dried out. Even if they weren’t dried out, the winds that kick up during fires would dry them out anyway.
All of this is to say that “global warming” doesn’t matter. California is dry, period. Fuel is added to the inevitable fire during the winter rains, as more grass and plant life grows. When summer rolls around, all of this life still dries out, adding to the undergrowth.
Does global warming contribute to higher rainfall in California, thereby contributing to more vegetation growth, and therefore more fuel? Nope.
The National Climate Assessment demonstrates that rainfall from December to March has no discernible pattern.
This leaves the question of the winds. Almost every wildfire in California is accompanied by the famous Santa Ana winds.
These winds are generated in the intermountain west by high pressure at the surface that builds up. Once it crests at the level of the terrain, known as “ridging,” the winds start to blow.
Is global warming responsible for increased ridging? The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories suggest that there is not.
There are other factors that contribute to the wildfire situation. If one insists on attaching human involvement in wildfires, it isn’t global warming that’s the culprit.
A major contributor to wildfires is fire suppression itself. While there is an obvious need to protect homes and property, there is a natural inclination to just knock down fires wherever they spring up. Yet doing so creates thick underlayers of growth that merely provide more fuel for the next fire.
Nature has a purpose, and fire serves a purpose. We refer to wildfires as “devastating” but any biologist will tell you that fires burn overgrowth, effectively “re-booting” nature in any given area.
When chaparral and other growth become thick and prevalent, most wildlife moves on and is replaced by scavengers and bottom-feeders. New life emerges when areas burn naturally and burn out naturally.
Fire suppression forestalls this process. Fire suppression is unnatural, and we’ve been doing it since 1905.
Then there’s the environmental movement itself, in which preservation of land seems to be almost sacred in comparison to permitting timber activity of any kind. That creates more fuel. Almost half of California is federal land and political battles have restricted the timber industry, as well as livestock grazing.
Not only that, but the importance of controlled burns – “prescribed fires” to reduce fuel – is also undisputed. The National Forest Service says:
The lunacy of permitting high-risk wildfire areas to be zoned for residential housing can be laid at the feet of the state and federal governments.
While multiple parties stand to benefit from the creation of housing – home builders, the construction lobby, large businesses seeking new population zones to open stores – it is the state and local government that stands to benefit the most. Property taxes aren’t as lucrative on undeveloped land, after all.
New neighborhoods bring people, which bring families, which bring children, who need to go to school. Schools require teachers and unions, and more government services and regulations, and of course, more income taxes. The wealthier the community, the higher the taxes that get collected.
Insurance companies are hip to these poor decisions, however. They have become increasingly restrictive in writing and maintaining policies in wildland-urban fire zones.
Naturally, the California state government tried but failed (this time) to force them to insure those zones where homeowners engaged in mitigation, known as “home hardening.”
The bottom line is that global warming does not cause or contribute to wildfires in California. Foolish and short-sighted policies are to blame.
Read more at The Pipeline
So, naturally, global warming is the reason for both the existence of wildfires (primarily but not entirely in California) as well as their number, frequency, and severity.
The “argument,” such as it is, goes something like this: global warming makes the air warmer, which more efficiently dries out flammable vegetation, making it easier to set ablaze.
Like most nonsense arguments, it fails to account for all the other factors that are involved in wildfires. The oversimplification and lack of intellectual and scientific rigor is a hallmark of Leftist “thought,” and this scenario is no different.
We can dispense with the claim that the number of fires has been increasing. The National Interagency Fire Center shows that there is no obvious trend whatsoever, with an average of 41,617 fires per year and a standard deviation of 5,283 – meaning there’s a wide variance, as well.
There’s more. The area of forest land that has been burned in the US – even in years where consumption was greatest — is far below both the average and peak years from 1926 to 1950.
Remember, the peak period of fires occurred prior to the years of alleged man-made global warming. The reduction in fire isn’t because of deforestation, either.
The USDA Forest Service reports that forest area “has been relatively stable since 1910.” Yes, dry fuel feeds and maintains fires. Northeasterly winds kick up and spread the fires.
Some spark, such as lightning strikes or arson or public utility incompetence, lights the proverbial match.
Yet none of this is the result of global warming. California is dry in the summer because the Pacific Ocean doesn’t throw off thunderstorms. It’s cooler than the Atlantic.
The jet stream also shifts further north in summer. Thus, by the time “fire season” rolls around, all the fuel lying around for fires is going to be naturally dried out. Even if they weren’t dried out, the winds that kick up during fires would dry them out anyway.
All of this is to say that “global warming” doesn’t matter. California is dry, period. Fuel is added to the inevitable fire during the winter rains, as more grass and plant life grows. When summer rolls around, all of this life still dries out, adding to the undergrowth.
Does global warming contribute to higher rainfall in California, thereby contributing to more vegetation growth, and therefore more fuel? Nope.
The National Climate Assessment demonstrates that rainfall from December to March has no discernible pattern.
This leaves the question of the winds. Almost every wildfire in California is accompanied by the famous Santa Ana winds.
These winds are generated in the intermountain west by high pressure at the surface that builds up. Once it crests at the level of the terrain, known as “ridging,” the winds start to blow.
Is global warming responsible for increased ridging? The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories suggest that there is not.
There are other factors that contribute to the wildfire situation. If one insists on attaching human involvement in wildfires, it isn’t global warming that’s the culprit.
A major contributor to wildfires is fire suppression itself. While there is an obvious need to protect homes and property, there is a natural inclination to just knock down fires wherever they spring up. Yet doing so creates thick underlayers of growth that merely provide more fuel for the next fire.
Nature has a purpose, and fire serves a purpose. We refer to wildfires as “devastating” but any biologist will tell you that fires burn overgrowth, effectively “re-booting” nature in any given area.
When chaparral and other growth become thick and prevalent, most wildlife moves on and is replaced by scavengers and bottom-feeders. New life emerges when areas burn naturally and burn out naturally.
Fire suppression forestalls this process. Fire suppression is unnatural, and we’ve been doing it since 1905.
Then there’s the environmental movement itself, in which preservation of land seems to be almost sacred in comparison to permitting timber activity of any kind. That creates more fuel. Almost half of California is federal land and political battles have restricted the timber industry, as well as livestock grazing.
Not only that, but the importance of controlled burns – “prescribed fires” to reduce fuel – is also undisputed. The National Forest Service says:
However, a host of problems have kept this tool in check in California. The sad state of affairs in California is that global warming isn’t the problem.
There are several other problematic policies that set communities up for wildfires. Almost one in twelve homes in California are located in wildfire zones.
The lunacy of permitting high-risk wildfire areas to be zoned for residential housing can be laid at the feet of the state and federal governments.
While multiple parties stand to benefit from the creation of housing – home builders, the construction lobby, large businesses seeking new population zones to open stores – it is the state and local government that stands to benefit the most. Property taxes aren’t as lucrative on undeveloped land, after all.
New neighborhoods bring people, which bring families, which bring children, who need to go to school. Schools require teachers and unions, and more government services and regulations, and of course, more income taxes. The wealthier the community, the higher the taxes that get collected.
Insurance companies are hip to these poor decisions, however. They have become increasingly restrictive in writing and maintaining policies in wildland-urban fire zones.
Naturally, the California state government tried but failed (this time) to force them to insure those zones where homeowners engaged in mitigation, known as “home hardening.”
The bottom line is that global warming does not cause or contribute to wildfires in California. Foolish and short-sighted policies are to blame.
Read more at The Pipeline
That post is filled with cherry picking, starting from a stat that lists only 10 years of fires and followed by a 3 month cherry picked sample for rainfall.
Typical denier tactics and not very well done.
First chart is refuted by this one:
The Connection Between Climate Change and Wildfires
Wildfire activity in the US is changing dangerously, as conditions become hotter and drier due to climate change.
Its boring fact checking your posts, CM
What Really Led To California’s Incessant Blackouts: A Timeline
Journalist H. L. Mencken described the unintended consequences of governance like this: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
In energy and environmental policy, California’s gotten it “good and hard” in recent years. Record wildfires. Rolling blackouts.
Politicians like Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom blame global warming and President Donald Trump for California’s woes.
Yet Newsom has cautiously moved to mitigate some of his state’s past policy missteps by increasing efforts to clear forests of fuel and allowing some natural gas power plants to remain open for a few more years to reduce the threat of blackouts caused by an overreliance on unreliable wind and solar power.
Giving policymakers the benefit of the doubt—that they didn’t intend to promote policies that resulted in burned towns, scores of deaths, and widespread power outages—how did they arrive at this point?
A brief timeline of key events illuminates how policy is made and how it can go terribly wrong.
The History Of California’s Energy Mismanagement
Prehistoric: California’s climate, shaped by cool Pacific currents and mountains, is Mediterranean, with generally low humidity and an average annual rainfall of 18 inches (falling mostly in the winter), leaving much of the state very dry by the late fall. Mountains and cool ocean waters combine to create inversion layers in many of the state’s basins, trapping smoke and dust.
Before the 1840s: Spanish explorers and then Mexican migrants totaling fewer than 10,000 people settle around a string of 21 Catholic missions along the coast from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. Imperial Russia establishes Fort Ross in 1812, about 80 miles up the coast from San Francisco.
Most of California’s interior remains the domain of Native American tribes who frequently burn the pine forests to create grassland, which produces more food and game animals.
1849 to 1970: With the discovery of gold in 1849, Americans—and others as far away as Europe and China—rush into California, rapidly increasing the population by 300,000.
The fires Native Americans purposefully set are discouraged, as they threaten permanent structures and destroy valuable timber. Fire suppression and timber harvesting gradually become more organized. Through 1990, approximately as much timber is harvested as grows naturally every year.
1959: California’s first air quality law is passed as growing postwar urbanization, combined with persistent inversion layers primarily in the Los Angeles basin, causes frequent smog.
1968: The first major high-voltage line connects California to the Pacific Northwest’s abundant hydroelectric resources. California imports power from the Northwest during the summer and exports power during the winter.
In time, California will become the nation’s largest importer of electricity, partly driven by air-quality regulations that discourage the construction of new fossil-fueled power plants in the state.
1976: California enacts a ban on the construction of “new nuclear fission power plants until the California Energy Commission (CEC) has determined that technologies exist for the reprocessing of nuclear fuel rods and the disposal of high-level nuclear waste.”
1994: Due to concerns over the Northern Spotted Owl population, whose habitat ranges from Northern California to Washington, a federal judge ruled that President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan will stand, dealing a blow to the Western timber industry, from which it never recovers. Forests begin accumulating more fuel than is harvested or burned.
1996: California partially deregulates its electric market, allowing consumer choice and wholesale competition, but regulating retail prices.
2001: California’s partial electric deregulation builds to a crisis with widespread blackouts caused by capped retail prices, delays in the construction of new power plants, and market manipulation by suppliers and energy traders.
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the state’s largest utility, declares bankruptcy, a fate narrowly avoided by Southern California Edison.
2002: California adopts its Renewable Portfolio Standard Program, requiring the state to increase its use of renewable generation for electricity to 20 percent by 2017.
2003: The electric crisis and tax increases needed to address a large budget shortfall led to the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in November 2003.
2005: California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports five government reform ballot measures during a November special election. Labor unions and other interests spend more than $150 million to defeat the measures, often deploying harsh personal attacks on the governor.
All five are defeated. Political pundits widely assume that Schwarzenegger’s improbable political career will end in defeat after the 2006 election.
2006: Moving to the left, Schwarzenegger signs a series of environmental energy bills: SB 1, the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, to incentivize mostly upper-class homeowners to install 3,000 megawatts of rooftop solar panels; AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then reduce them by another 30 percent—leading to 10,000 megawatts of renewable power generation in work by 2010; SB 107, accelerating the Renewable Portfolio Standard by at least 1 percent of retail sales annually to reach 20 percent by 2010 (the Great Recession allowed the target to be met by greatly reducing electrical demand); and SB 1368, banning the renewal of electricity contracts from mostly out-of-state coal power plants.
One argument used in urging the shift away from natural gas power was that North America was running out of natural gas, with the expectation that nine large liquified natural gas import terminals would have to be built along the West Coast from Canada to Mexico to meet demand.
Wellhead natural gas prices in California had moved from $1.50 per thousand cubic feet in 1994 to $7.45 in 2005, a 397 percent increase. Modern hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques soon upended those projections, reducing the cost of natural gas by 70 percent and unexpectedly reducing the cost to California consumers of the transition to renewable energy.
2006: On July 24, California hits its largest peak demand for electricity, 50,270 megawatts.
Unnecessarily Pitting Energy Against The Environment
2007: A bill (sponsored by this article’s author) to lift California’s ban on new nuclear power plants to meet the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction law fails in committee.
2008: Schwarzenegger signs Executive Order S-14-08, increasing California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard to 33 percent by 2020 and further accelerating the renewable goal from 20 percent by 2017 to 20 percent by 2010.
Meanwhile, the deep recession reduces electrical demand, allowing politicians to claim credit for the increased percentage of renewable power even as the total amount of renewable power produced declined.
2012: San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station closes, removing 20 percent of Southern California’s power supply and leaving one remaining nuclear-generating station in California—Diablo Canyon Power Plant (pictured), which provides about 8 percent of the in-state generation and is due to close in 2024-25.
2012: PG&E, California’s largest electric utility, requests a $4.84 billion rate increase for powerline safety upgrades and maintenance. The request is denied as environmental groups fret that the higher energy costs would undermine public support for renewable energy. The decision leads to the deaths of 85 people six years later in a preventable wildfire.
2015: SB 350, by state Sen. Kevin de León, the leader of the California Senate, passes. The law further increases California’s renewable electricity procurement goal from 33 percent by 2020 to 50 percent by 2030.
De León uses the bill in his unsuccessful campaign to unseat California Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2018, even winning the endorsement of the California Democratic Party.
2018: California again increases its renewable electricity goals with SB 100, hiking them to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent zero-carbon by 2045.
2018: In November, the powerline-sparked Camp Fire becomes California’s deadliest wildfire, killing 85 people. Politicians widely blame climate change and PG&E for the conflagration.
But years of not harvesting and cleaning the forests have led to a dangerous fuel build-up while PG&E, ordered to heavily invest in renewables by politicians and regulators, had little money for powerline safety upgrades.
2019: PG&E cuts power to wide swaths of its Northern California service area to prevent aging powerlines from sparking fires during a high-wind event.
2019: The Navajo Generating Station in Northern Arizona near Page, the West’s largest coal-fired power plant, goes offline in November after reliably providing 2,250 MW of electricity for more than 40 years.
Originally intended to be part of a larger system of hydroelectric power plants on the Colorado River, environmentalists briefly pressured for a nuclear power plant to be built instead—the coal plant was a compromise.
With a large source of cleaner-burning coal on the nearby Navajo Nation, the two sites provided about 1,000 high-paying jobs, mostly to Native Americans.
Before its decommissioning as a result of California’s policies (cheap solar), the Obama administration’s war on coal, and inexpensive natural gas due to fracking, it provided almost two percent of the entire Western Interconnection’s power.
2020: California experiences rolling blackouts due to insufficient electricity supplies for the first time since 2001.
Newsom suggests that four aging natural gas powerplants will have to stay operational beyond 2020 to prevent blackouts, saying, “We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition… We failed to predict and plan [for] these shortages…”
Some of us have been predicting these electrical shortages for some time now. Unfortunately for California’s electric ratepayers, something must give.
Physics and economics—not policy and good intentions—dictate that some combination of three things will happen: more blackouts; far higher electric rates to build $300 billion in battery farms and billions more for upgraded power lines to meet the 60 percent by 2030 renewable goal; or the acceptance that reliable power from fossil fuels and nuclear must be in the mix.
Read more at The Federalist
Journalist H. L. Mencken described the unintended consequences of governance like this: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
In energy and environmental policy, California’s gotten it “good and hard” in recent years. Record wildfires. Rolling blackouts.
Politicians like Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom blame global warming and President Donald Trump for California’s woes.
Yet Newsom has cautiously moved to mitigate some of his state’s past policy missteps by increasing efforts to clear forests of fuel and allowing some natural gas power plants to remain open for a few more years to reduce the threat of blackouts caused by an overreliance on unreliable wind and solar power.
Giving policymakers the benefit of the doubt—that they didn’t intend to promote policies that resulted in burned towns, scores of deaths, and widespread power outages—how did they arrive at this point?
A brief timeline of key events illuminates how policy is made and how it can go terribly wrong.
The History Of California’s Energy Mismanagement
Prehistoric: California’s climate, shaped by cool Pacific currents and mountains, is Mediterranean, with generally low humidity and an average annual rainfall of 18 inches (falling mostly in the winter), leaving much of the state very dry by the late fall. Mountains and cool ocean waters combine to create inversion layers in many of the state’s basins, trapping smoke and dust.
Before the 1840s: Spanish explorers and then Mexican migrants totaling fewer than 10,000 people settle around a string of 21 Catholic missions along the coast from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. Imperial Russia establishes Fort Ross in 1812, about 80 miles up the coast from San Francisco.
Most of California’s interior remains the domain of Native American tribes who frequently burn the pine forests to create grassland, which produces more food and game animals.
1849 to 1970: With the discovery of gold in 1849, Americans—and others as far away as Europe and China—rush into California, rapidly increasing the population by 300,000.
The fires Native Americans purposefully set are discouraged, as they threaten permanent structures and destroy valuable timber. Fire suppression and timber harvesting gradually become more organized. Through 1990, approximately as much timber is harvested as grows naturally every year.
1959: California’s first air quality law is passed as growing postwar urbanization, combined with persistent inversion layers primarily in the Los Angeles basin, causes frequent smog.
1968: The first major high-voltage line connects California to the Pacific Northwest’s abundant hydroelectric resources. California imports power from the Northwest during the summer and exports power during the winter.
In time, California will become the nation’s largest importer of electricity, partly driven by air-quality regulations that discourage the construction of new fossil-fueled power plants in the state.
1976: California enacts a ban on the construction of “new nuclear fission power plants until the California Energy Commission (CEC) has determined that technologies exist for the reprocessing of nuclear fuel rods and the disposal of high-level nuclear waste.”
1994: Due to concerns over the Northern Spotted Owl population, whose habitat ranges from Northern California to Washington, a federal judge ruled that President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan will stand, dealing a blow to the Western timber industry, from which it never recovers. Forests begin accumulating more fuel than is harvested or burned.
1996: California partially deregulates its electric market, allowing consumer choice and wholesale competition, but regulating retail prices.
2001: California’s partial electric deregulation builds to a crisis with widespread blackouts caused by capped retail prices, delays in the construction of new power plants, and market manipulation by suppliers and energy traders.
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the state’s largest utility, declares bankruptcy, a fate narrowly avoided by Southern California Edison.
2002: California adopts its Renewable Portfolio Standard Program, requiring the state to increase its use of renewable generation for electricity to 20 percent by 2017.
2003: The electric crisis and tax increases needed to address a large budget shortfall led to the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in November 2003.
2005: California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports five government reform ballot measures during a November special election. Labor unions and other interests spend more than $150 million to defeat the measures, often deploying harsh personal attacks on the governor.
All five are defeated. Political pundits widely assume that Schwarzenegger’s improbable political career will end in defeat after the 2006 election.
2006: Moving to the left, Schwarzenegger signs a series of environmental energy bills: SB 1, the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, to incentivize mostly upper-class homeowners to install 3,000 megawatts of rooftop solar panels; AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then reduce them by another 30 percent—leading to 10,000 megawatts of renewable power generation in work by 2010; SB 107, accelerating the Renewable Portfolio Standard by at least 1 percent of retail sales annually to reach 20 percent by 2010 (the Great Recession allowed the target to be met by greatly reducing electrical demand); and SB 1368, banning the renewal of electricity contracts from mostly out-of-state coal power plants.
One argument used in urging the shift away from natural gas power was that North America was running out of natural gas, with the expectation that nine large liquified natural gas import terminals would have to be built along the West Coast from Canada to Mexico to meet demand.
Wellhead natural gas prices in California had moved from $1.50 per thousand cubic feet in 1994 to $7.45 in 2005, a 397 percent increase. Modern hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques soon upended those projections, reducing the cost of natural gas by 70 percent and unexpectedly reducing the cost to California consumers of the transition to renewable energy.
2006: On July 24, California hits its largest peak demand for electricity, 50,270 megawatts.
Unnecessarily Pitting Energy Against The Environment
2007: A bill (sponsored by this article’s author) to lift California’s ban on new nuclear power plants to meet the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction law fails in committee.
2008: Schwarzenegger signs Executive Order S-14-08, increasing California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard to 33 percent by 2020 and further accelerating the renewable goal from 20 percent by 2017 to 20 percent by 2010.
Meanwhile, the deep recession reduces electrical demand, allowing politicians to claim credit for the increased percentage of renewable power even as the total amount of renewable power produced declined.
2012: San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station closes, removing 20 percent of Southern California’s power supply and leaving one remaining nuclear-generating station in California—Diablo Canyon Power Plant (pictured), which provides about 8 percent of the in-state generation and is due to close in 2024-25.
2012: PG&E, California’s largest electric utility, requests a $4.84 billion rate increase for powerline safety upgrades and maintenance. The request is denied as environmental groups fret that the higher energy costs would undermine public support for renewable energy. The decision leads to the deaths of 85 people six years later in a preventable wildfire.
2015: SB 350, by state Sen. Kevin de León, the leader of the California Senate, passes. The law further increases California’s renewable electricity procurement goal from 33 percent by 2020 to 50 percent by 2030.
De León uses the bill in his unsuccessful campaign to unseat California Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2018, even winning the endorsement of the California Democratic Party.
2018: California again increases its renewable electricity goals with SB 100, hiking them to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent zero-carbon by 2045.
2018: In November, the powerline-sparked Camp Fire becomes California’s deadliest wildfire, killing 85 people. Politicians widely blame climate change and PG&E for the conflagration.
But years of not harvesting and cleaning the forests have led to a dangerous fuel build-up while PG&E, ordered to heavily invest in renewables by politicians and regulators, had little money for powerline safety upgrades.
2019: PG&E cuts power to wide swaths of its Northern California service area to prevent aging powerlines from sparking fires during a high-wind event.
2019: The Navajo Generating Station in Northern Arizona near Page, the West’s largest coal-fired power plant, goes offline in November after reliably providing 2,250 MW of electricity for more than 40 years.
Originally intended to be part of a larger system of hydroelectric power plants on the Colorado River, environmentalists briefly pressured for a nuclear power plant to be built instead—the coal plant was a compromise.
With a large source of cleaner-burning coal on the nearby Navajo Nation, the two sites provided about 1,000 high-paying jobs, mostly to Native Americans.
Before its decommissioning as a result of California’s policies (cheap solar), the Obama administration’s war on coal, and inexpensive natural gas due to fracking, it provided almost two percent of the entire Western Interconnection’s power.
2020: California experiences rolling blackouts due to insufficient electricity supplies for the first time since 2001.
Newsom suggests that four aging natural gas powerplants will have to stay operational beyond 2020 to prevent blackouts, saying, “We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition… We failed to predict and plan [for] these shortages…”
Some of us have been predicting these electrical shortages for some time now. Unfortunately for California’s electric ratepayers, something must give.
Physics and economics—not policy and good intentions—dictate that some combination of three things will happen: more blackouts; far higher electric rates to build $300 billion in battery farms and billions more for upgraded power lines to meet the 60 percent by 2030 renewable goal; or the acceptance that reliable power from fossil fuels and nuclear must be in the mix.
Read more at The Federalist
Give up your use of oil and it's products give up driving cars, give up your use of plastics and other petroleum products don't be a climate hypocriteThat post is filled with cherry picking, starting from a stat that lists only 10 years of fires and followed by a 3 month cherry picked sample for rainfall.
Typical denier tactics and not very well done.
First chart is refuted by this one:
The Connection Between Climate Change and Wildfires
Wildfire activity in the US is changing dangerously, as conditions become hotter and drier due to climate change.www.ucsusa.org
Its boring fact checking your posts, CM
Not until you give up exhaling CO2.
I can't believe you're still pushing this crap.
New record temps in Cal, record wildfires, massive storms globally, global temp is about to break another record....
But still you're here denying what 90% of Canadians know is real.
Weird.
What California Can Learn From Texas On Fixing Rolling Blackouts
The news that people living in California are being subjected to rolling blackouts has the rest of the country shaking its collective heads.
That a state once known as the center of technological innovation cannot provide enough power for its citizens when the weather gets too warm seems incredible. How did this happen? And, more importantly, how can it be fixed?
By all accounts, California has embarked on its own version of the Green New Deal, the scheme cooked up by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that seeks to eliminate fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
As a result, many fossil-fuel-fired power plants have been taken offline, as the CO2 they emit is considered to cause climate change.
The fossil fuel plants are being replaced by solar and wind power since these forms of electricity production do not emit CO2 and therefore do not cause climate change.
However, it looks like California has little extra power supply, which means that if a heatwave happens, those in charge of the power grid must turn off the electricity for homes and businesses.
The blackouts are causing hardships for people who rely on air conditioning to keep cool. They are a threat to people who rely on medical devices, such as respirators, to keep alive.
How, then, can the power blackout problem in California be fixed and at the same time allow its political class to continue to fight climate change?
One idea is to start building nuclear power plants. Nuclear does not cause any amount of greenhouse gasses. Modern nuclear power plants are far safer than the ones that melted down at Three Mile Island more than 40 years ago.
It would therefore seem that building some nuclear power plants, away from California’s geological fault lines, would be a solution to the problem of power blackouts.
However, the task of getting California’s political class to approve of nuclear power may be something akin to establishing peace in the Middle East. Opposition to nuclear power has become a religion to the people who now rule California.
Building plants outfitted with carbon capture technology could provide more power to California while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, these power plants capture the greenhouse gas and store it. The CO2 can then be sold to businesses as raw material for carbon fiber tubes, concrete, biofuel, and even food.
A company called Net Power is testing such a power plant in La Porte, Texas, with considerable success. Net Power is planning to build utility-scale carbon capture power plants by 2022.
The company would surely be pleased to sell to California’s power providers all the electrical power plants they can buy.
But then we run into another tenet of the environmentally woke who run California. If nuclear power is bad, the oil and gas companies are far worse.
The officeholders in Sacramento would view dealing with oil and gas companies in the same way that a devout Christian might feel about dealing with Satan and his demonic minions.
The self-destructive attitude exhibited in California is puzzling, especially from Texas. Despite the image of the Lone Star State as the center of the fossil fuel industry, it has not ignored renewable energy.
Texas, not California, is the biggest generator of wind power. Wind farms dot the plains of northern and western Texas, providing energy to the cities of Dallas and San Antonio to the east. Texas utility companies have started to dabble in solar energy.
The difference is that the people in charge of providing electricity to Texas residents are not environmental zealots. They are hardheaded businesspeople who know that the way to avoid rolling blackouts is not to admonish people to turn up their thermostats.
Texas avoids rolling backouts by having enough power, even on hot, summer days, by and large from plants burning relatively clean natural gas as well as renewables.
Texas gets hot in the summer, yet its citizens enjoy adequate power to keep the lights and air conditioners on. California could learn a thing or two from Texas.
Read more at Washington Times
The news that people living in California are being subjected to rolling blackouts has the rest of the country shaking its collective heads.
That a state once known as the center of technological innovation cannot provide enough power for its citizens when the weather gets too warm seems incredible. How did this happen? And, more importantly, how can it be fixed?
By all accounts, California has embarked on its own version of the Green New Deal, the scheme cooked up by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that seeks to eliminate fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
As a result, many fossil-fuel-fired power plants have been taken offline, as the CO2 they emit is considered to cause climate change.
The fossil fuel plants are being replaced by solar and wind power since these forms of electricity production do not emit CO2 and therefore do not cause climate change.
However, it looks like California has little extra power supply, which means that if a heatwave happens, those in charge of the power grid must turn off the electricity for homes and businesses.
The blackouts are causing hardships for people who rely on air conditioning to keep cool. They are a threat to people who rely on medical devices, such as respirators, to keep alive.
How, then, can the power blackout problem in California be fixed and at the same time allow its political class to continue to fight climate change?
One idea is to start building nuclear power plants. Nuclear does not cause any amount of greenhouse gasses. Modern nuclear power plants are far safer than the ones that melted down at Three Mile Island more than 40 years ago.
It would therefore seem that building some nuclear power plants, away from California’s geological fault lines, would be a solution to the problem of power blackouts.
However, the task of getting California’s political class to approve of nuclear power may be something akin to establishing peace in the Middle East. Opposition to nuclear power has become a religion to the people who now rule California.
Building plants outfitted with carbon capture technology could provide more power to California while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of spewing CO2 into the atmosphere, these power plants capture the greenhouse gas and store it. The CO2 can then be sold to businesses as raw material for carbon fiber tubes, concrete, biofuel, and even food.
A company called Net Power is testing such a power plant in La Porte, Texas, with considerable success. Net Power is planning to build utility-scale carbon capture power plants by 2022.
The company would surely be pleased to sell to California’s power providers all the electrical power plants they can buy.
But then we run into another tenet of the environmentally woke who run California. If nuclear power is bad, the oil and gas companies are far worse.
The officeholders in Sacramento would view dealing with oil and gas companies in the same way that a devout Christian might feel about dealing with Satan and his demonic minions.
The self-destructive attitude exhibited in California is puzzling, especially from Texas. Despite the image of the Lone Star State as the center of the fossil fuel industry, it has not ignored renewable energy.
Texas, not California, is the biggest generator of wind power. Wind farms dot the plains of northern and western Texas, providing energy to the cities of Dallas and San Antonio to the east. Texas utility companies have started to dabble in solar energy.
The difference is that the people in charge of providing electricity to Texas residents are not environmental zealots. They are hardheaded businesspeople who know that the way to avoid rolling blackouts is not to admonish people to turn up their thermostats.
Texas avoids rolling backouts by having enough power, even on hot, summer days, by and large from plants burning relatively clean natural gas as well as renewables.
Texas gets hot in the summer, yet its citizens enjoy adequate power to keep the lights and air conditioners on. California could learn a thing or two from Texas.
Read more at Washington Times
Meanwhile, while you keep pushing the fossil fuel funded propaganda....
Earth may temporarily pass dangerous 1.5°C warming limit by 2024, major new report says
The report by the World Meteorological Organisation shows that with large and rapid emissions cuts, we can still avoid the most severe climate change. But worryingly, we also have time to make it far worse.
theconversation.com
Ooops!!!!!!!
https://kion546.com/news/2020/09/07...nally-starting-fires-on-highway-101-arrested/
Woman accused of intentionally starting fires on Highway 101 arrested
The California Highway Patrol confirms that a woman has been arrested after being accused of intentionally starting fires.
They said it happened on Highway 101 near Boronda Road, and it was first reported just after 9 a.m. The number of fires was not released.
The suspect, identified as 37-year-old Anita Esquivel, is booked into the Monterey County Jail arson
California wildfires moving, growing at record speeds due to climate change, experts say
Social Sharing
Extreme fire behaviour leaves less time for warnings, evacuations
Yes, climate change is almost certainly fueling California’s massive fires
Thousands of lightning strikes have sparked hundreds of fires across California, forcing thousands to evacuate.
The High Cost Of The Green-Energy Delusion
The march of ‘green energy’ continues, but it is not green at all.
Solar energy is very dilute, so solar collectors cover huge areas of flat arable land, stealing farmland, starving wild herbs and grasses of sunlight, and creating ‘solar deserts’.
Wind turbines steal energy from winds which often bring moisture from the ocean. These walls of turbines create rain shadows, producing more rain near the turbines and more droughts down-wind.
Turbines work best along ridgelines where soaring birds such as eagles seek thermals. The birds are chopped up by the whirling scythes, and so are bats.
Turbines annoy neighbors with noise and they increase bushfire risk. If they are offshore, less moisture-bearing wind and less rain reach the land.
Now the green dreamers want to use Australia’s precious water to manufacture hydrogen for export to Asia in a round-robin electrolytic process that consumes far more energy than it can ever produce.
Electrolysis consumes nine tons of water plus heaps of electricity to make one ton of hydrogen. This processed water is not recovered until the hydrogen is burned (unlike water in steam turbines where most water is reused and some escapes to the atmosphere via cooling towers).
Hydrogen is a low-energy explosive gas. Collecting, storing, and exporting it will be a hazardous business, and producing it will consume masses of Australian water and electricity to generate trendy ‘green’ fuel for Asia.
Burning this fuel will release pure Australian water into polluted Asian skies. But the Australian Government is funding hydrogen speculation with $70million.
Green energy isn’t green. It has a huge cost in rare metals; it creates toxic waste problems; solar panels create solar deserts; turbines chop birds and steal wind and rain from inland areas; and now they want to steal freshwater and energy to export low-energy explosive hydrogen.
In contrast, coal is fossil sunshine. Burning it releases new energy for industry and its combustion products bring great benefits for the green world – water vapor, carbon dioxide plant food, and valuable plant micro-nutrients.
Why export our sunshine, wind and freshwater via hydrogen while leaving our abundant fossil sunshine locked underground as ‘politically stranded assets’?
This article, with illustrations, can be downloaded here.
The march of ‘green energy’ continues, but it is not green at all.
Solar energy is very dilute, so solar collectors cover huge areas of flat arable land, stealing farmland, starving wild herbs and grasses of sunlight, and creating ‘solar deserts’.
Wind turbines steal energy from winds which often bring moisture from the ocean. These walls of turbines create rain shadows, producing more rain near the turbines and more droughts down-wind.
Turbines work best along ridgelines where soaring birds such as eagles seek thermals. The birds are chopped up by the whirling scythes, and so are bats.
Turbines annoy neighbors with noise and they increase bushfire risk. If they are offshore, less moisture-bearing wind and less rain reach the land.
Now the green dreamers want to use Australia’s precious water to manufacture hydrogen for export to Asia in a round-robin electrolytic process that consumes far more energy than it can ever produce.
Electrolysis consumes nine tons of water plus heaps of electricity to make one ton of hydrogen. This processed water is not recovered until the hydrogen is burned (unlike water in steam turbines where most water is reused and some escapes to the atmosphere via cooling towers).
Hydrogen is a low-energy explosive gas. Collecting, storing, and exporting it will be a hazardous business, and producing it will consume masses of Australian water and electricity to generate trendy ‘green’ fuel for Asia.
Burning this fuel will release pure Australian water into polluted Asian skies. But the Australian Government is funding hydrogen speculation with $70million.
Green energy isn’t green. It has a huge cost in rare metals; it creates toxic waste problems; solar panels create solar deserts; turbines chop birds and steal wind and rain from inland areas; and now they want to steal freshwater and energy to export low-energy explosive hydrogen.
In contrast, coal is fossil sunshine. Burning it releases new energy for industry and its combustion products bring great benefits for the green world – water vapor, carbon dioxide plant food, and valuable plant micro-nutrients.
Why export our sunshine, wind and freshwater via hydrogen while leaving our abundant fossil sunshine locked underground as ‘politically stranded assets’?
This article, with illustrations, can be downloaded here.
How much do you think the damages from the west coasts fires will be this year alone?
How much from the Derecho in Iowa?
Hurricanes?
Oh Phil, what a lovely human being you are that you have to make fun of teenagers who are smarter, better liked and more successful than you'll ever be.
While she tries to make things better all you can do is a pathetic attack about her looks.
Earth may pass the dangerous 1.5ºC warming limit in four years, a major new report warns
Ontario’s Green-Energy Disaster Doubled Power Prices, Fueled Backlash
A transition to renewables sent energy prices soaring, pushed thousands into poverty, and fueled a populist backlash.
In February 2009, Ontario passed its Green Energy Act (GEA). It was signed a week after Obama’s Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the US, following several months of slow and arduous negotiations.
It also had grand plans to start a ‘green’ recovery following the financial crash – although on a more modest scale.
This was the plan: increased integration of wind and solar energy into Ontario’s electricity grid would shut down coal plants and create 50,000 green jobs in the first three years alone.
Additionally, First Nations communities would manage their own electricity supply and distribution – what observers would later call the ‘decolonization’ of energy – empowering Canada’s indigenous communities who had been disenfranchised by historical trauma.
Lawmakers promised that clean and sustainable energy provided by renewables would also reduce costs for poorer citizens.
This won an endorsement from Ontario’s Low Income Energy Network – a group that campaigns for universal access to affordable energy.
George Smitherman, Ontario’s energy minister in 2009, when contacted for comment, remarked that ‘drafting and passing the GEA were not the greatest challenges’ compared to its implementation.
He was ‘proud’ that the ‘GEA passed on economic benefits to First Nations populations’. It’s hardly surprising that Smitherman passed the GEA relatively easily.
Who wouldn’t support a program promising to kickstart the economy after a financial crisis, with social and environmental benefits to boot?
But on 1 January 2019, Ontario repealed the GEA, one month before its 10th anniversary. The 50,000 guaranteed jobs never materialized. The ‘decolonization’ of energy didn’t work out, either.
A third of indigenous Ontarians now live in energy poverty. Ontarians watched in dismay as their electricity bills more than doubled during the life of the GEA. Their electricity costs are now among the highest in North America.
Energy officials I spoke to cited one apparent success of the GEA: the 2014 shutdown of coal plants. This may be commendable.
But in actual fact, the regulation to phase out the coal plants came into effect in 2007 – two years before the GEA. Between 2007 and 2009, Ontario’s greenhouse-gas emissions from coal had already dropped by 55 percent.
In truth, the GEA had a devastatingly negative impact. And the need to disentangle it will burden Ontarians – especially poorer ones – for at least a decade to come.
To understand how the GEA went irreparably wrong, we must look at Ontario’s contracts with its green-energy suppliers.
Today, Ontario’s contracts guarantee to electricity suppliers that they ‘will be paid for each kWh of electricity generated from the renewable energy project’, regardless of whether this electricity is consumed.
As preposterous as this may seem, it’s actually an improvement on many of the original contracts the Ontario government locked itself into.
Earlier contracts guaranteed payments that benchmarked close to 100 percent of the supplier’s capacity, rather than the electricity generated.
So if a participating producer supplied only 33 percent of its capacity in a given year, the state would still pay it as if it had produced 100 percent.
This was especially alarming in context, as 97 percent of the applicants to the GEA program were using wind or solar energy. These are both intermittent forms of energy.
In an hour, day, or month with little wind or sun, wind, and solar farms can’t supply the grid with electricity, and other sources are needed for back-up. As a result, wind and solar electricity providers can only supplement the grid but cannot replace consistently reliable power plants like gas or nuclear.
Many governments, including other Canadian provinces, have used subsidies of all hues to incentivize renewables.
But Ontario put this strategy on steroids. For example, the Council for Clean and Reliable Energy found that ‘in 2015, Ontario’s wind farms operated at less than one-third capacity more than half (58 percent) the time’.
Regardless, Ontarians paid multiple contracts as if wind farms had operated at full capacity all year round. To add insult to injury, Ontario’s GEA contracts guaranteed exorbitant prices for renewable energy – often at up to 40 times the cost of conventional power for 20 years.
By 2015, Ontario’s auditor general, Bonnie Lysyk, concluded that citizens had paid ‘a total of $37 billion’ above the market rate for energy.
They were even ‘expected to pay another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032’, again, ‘on top of market valuations’. (One steelmaker has taken the Ontarian government to court for these exorbitant energy costs.)
Today, this problem persists.
In April this year, the market value for all wind-generated electricity in Ontario was only $4.3 million. Yet Ontario paid out $184.5million in wind contracts.
Extraordinarily, if this trend were to continue throughout the whole of 2020, it would still result in a lower payout than under the former contracting system.
Ontario corralled taxpayers into long-term electricity contracts at eye-watering prices for electricity that suppliers did not even produce.
Furthermore, electricity demand from ratepayers declined between 2011 and 2015 and has continued to fall. Ontarians were forced to pay higher prices for new electricity capacity, even as their consumption was going down.
Despite the mounting costs, the GEA still has its defenders. But even if we were to attribute declining emissions to GEA-backed renewables, was it worth the cost?
Ontario’s auditor general in 2015 stated that: ‘The implied cost of using non-hydro renewables to reduce carbon emissions in the electricity sector was quite high: approximately $257 million [£150million] for each megatonne of emissions reduced.’
Per tonne of carbon reduced, the Ontario scheme has cost 48 percent more than Sweden’s carbon tax – the most expensive carbon tax in the world.
Clearly, bad policy has led to exorbitant waste. This wasn’t the result of corruption or conspiracy – it was sheer incompetence. It’s a meandering story of confusion and gross policy blunders that will fuel energy poverty in Ontario for at least another decade.
As democracies across the West respond to the coronavirus crisis with hastily prepared financial packages for a ‘green recovery’, they should consider the cautionary tale of Ontario.
The disaster of the GEA has had political consequences, too. Unsurprisingly, in the 2018 elections, the Liberal Party, which had drafted the GEA when in power, suffered the worst election results in its 161-year history, falling from first to third place – a defeat so terrible it lost is status as an official party.
Disdain for renewable energy is now a key indicator of voting intention.
Ontario is now governed by a populist leader who has since taken a ruthless and costly approach to cancel renewable-energy contracts. But this is understandably well-supported by the public.
The GEA’s stubborn defenders refuse to recognize that poor policy, even with the best intentions, discredits future efforts at cutting emissions.
‘Green New Deals’ for the post-pandemic recovery in the US and Europe should learn from the GEA. Clean energy at any cost will be rightfully short-lived and repealed, and its supporters will be unceremoniously booted out of power.
Read more at Spiked Online
A transition to renewables sent energy prices soaring, pushed thousands into poverty, and fueled a populist backlash.
In February 2009, Ontario passed its Green Energy Act (GEA). It was signed a week after Obama’s Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the US, following several months of slow and arduous negotiations.
It also had grand plans to start a ‘green’ recovery following the financial crash – although on a more modest scale.
This was the plan: increased integration of wind and solar energy into Ontario’s electricity grid would shut down coal plants and create 50,000 green jobs in the first three years alone.
Additionally, First Nations communities would manage their own electricity supply and distribution – what observers would later call the ‘decolonization’ of energy – empowering Canada’s indigenous communities who had been disenfranchised by historical trauma.
Lawmakers promised that clean and sustainable energy provided by renewables would also reduce costs for poorer citizens.
This won an endorsement from Ontario’s Low Income Energy Network – a group that campaigns for universal access to affordable energy.
George Smitherman, Ontario’s energy minister in 2009, when contacted for comment, remarked that ‘drafting and passing the GEA were not the greatest challenges’ compared to its implementation.
He was ‘proud’ that the ‘GEA passed on economic benefits to First Nations populations’. It’s hardly surprising that Smitherman passed the GEA relatively easily.
Who wouldn’t support a program promising to kickstart the economy after a financial crisis, with social and environmental benefits to boot?
But on 1 January 2019, Ontario repealed the GEA, one month before its 10th anniversary. The 50,000 guaranteed jobs never materialized. The ‘decolonization’ of energy didn’t work out, either.
A third of indigenous Ontarians now live in energy poverty. Ontarians watched in dismay as their electricity bills more than doubled during the life of the GEA. Their electricity costs are now among the highest in North America.
Energy officials I spoke to cited one apparent success of the GEA: the 2014 shutdown of coal plants. This may be commendable.
But in actual fact, the regulation to phase out the coal plants came into effect in 2007 – two years before the GEA. Between 2007 and 2009, Ontario’s greenhouse-gas emissions from coal had already dropped by 55 percent.
In truth, the GEA had a devastatingly negative impact. And the need to disentangle it will burden Ontarians – especially poorer ones – for at least a decade to come.
To understand how the GEA went irreparably wrong, we must look at Ontario’s contracts with its green-energy suppliers.
Today, Ontario’s contracts guarantee to electricity suppliers that they ‘will be paid for each kWh of electricity generated from the renewable energy project’, regardless of whether this electricity is consumed.
As preposterous as this may seem, it’s actually an improvement on many of the original contracts the Ontario government locked itself into.
Earlier contracts guaranteed payments that benchmarked close to 100 percent of the supplier’s capacity, rather than the electricity generated.
So if a participating producer supplied only 33 percent of its capacity in a given year, the state would still pay it as if it had produced 100 percent.
This was especially alarming in context, as 97 percent of the applicants to the GEA program were using wind or solar energy. These are both intermittent forms of energy.
In an hour, day, or month with little wind or sun, wind, and solar farms can’t supply the grid with electricity, and other sources are needed for back-up. As a result, wind and solar electricity providers can only supplement the grid but cannot replace consistently reliable power plants like gas or nuclear.
Many governments, including other Canadian provinces, have used subsidies of all hues to incentivize renewables.
But Ontario put this strategy on steroids. For example, the Council for Clean and Reliable Energy found that ‘in 2015, Ontario’s wind farms operated at less than one-third capacity more than half (58 percent) the time’.
Regardless, Ontarians paid multiple contracts as if wind farms had operated at full capacity all year round. To add insult to injury, Ontario’s GEA contracts guaranteed exorbitant prices for renewable energy – often at up to 40 times the cost of conventional power for 20 years.
By 2015, Ontario’s auditor general, Bonnie Lysyk, concluded that citizens had paid ‘a total of $37 billion’ above the market rate for energy.
They were even ‘expected to pay another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032’, again, ‘on top of market valuations’. (One steelmaker has taken the Ontarian government to court for these exorbitant energy costs.)
Today, this problem persists.
In April this year, the market value for all wind-generated electricity in Ontario was only $4.3 million. Yet Ontario paid out $184.5million in wind contracts.
Extraordinarily, if this trend were to continue throughout the whole of 2020, it would still result in a lower payout than under the former contracting system.
Ontario corralled taxpayers into long-term electricity contracts at eye-watering prices for electricity that suppliers did not even produce.
Furthermore, electricity demand from ratepayers declined between 2011 and 2015 and has continued to fall. Ontarians were forced to pay higher prices for new electricity capacity, even as their consumption was going down.
Despite the mounting costs, the GEA still has its defenders. But even if we were to attribute declining emissions to GEA-backed renewables, was it worth the cost?
Ontario’s auditor general in 2015 stated that: ‘The implied cost of using non-hydro renewables to reduce carbon emissions in the electricity sector was quite high: approximately $257 million [£150million] for each megatonne of emissions reduced.’
Per tonne of carbon reduced, the Ontario scheme has cost 48 percent more than Sweden’s carbon tax – the most expensive carbon tax in the world.
Clearly, bad policy has led to exorbitant waste. This wasn’t the result of corruption or conspiracy – it was sheer incompetence. It’s a meandering story of confusion and gross policy blunders that will fuel energy poverty in Ontario for at least another decade.
As democracies across the West respond to the coronavirus crisis with hastily prepared financial packages for a ‘green recovery’, they should consider the cautionary tale of Ontario.
The disaster of the GEA has had political consequences, too. Unsurprisingly, in the 2018 elections, the Liberal Party, which had drafted the GEA when in power, suffered the worst election results in its 161-year history, falling from first to third place – a defeat so terrible it lost is status as an official party.
Disdain for renewable energy is now a key indicator of voting intention.
Ontario is now governed by a populist leader who has since taken a ruthless and costly approach to cancel renewable-energy contracts. But this is understandably well-supported by the public.
The GEA’s stubborn defenders refuse to recognize that poor policy, even with the best intentions, discredits future efforts at cutting emissions.
‘Green New Deals’ for the post-pandemic recovery in the US and Europe should learn from the GEA. Clean energy at any cost will be rightfully short-lived and repealed, and its supporters will be unceremoniously booted out of power.
Read more at Spiked Online
Blah, blah, blah.
Same old whining about old policies.
Read the news about what's really happening for once, instead of living in the past.
BP drops a cluster bomb on Big Oil
Bernard Looney's decision to reinvent BP as a green energy giant will save the FTSE 100 firm from a death spiral
New study suggests RCP 8.5 might be conservative.
Earth approaching Hothouse state not seen in 50 million years, study finds
Earth approaching Hothouse state not seen in 50 million years, study finds
GHCN V4 Data Show That ONLY 277 Stations Have Temperature Data Since 1880
Hi, everyone.
Almost certainly you’ve seen the temperature charts put out by government agencies like NASA and NOAA going back to about 1880 and often shown by our mainstream media.
However, as some climate realists include Tony, Mr. Joseph D’Aleo and Mr. Anthony Watts have already explained, humans don’t have enough thermometer data to truly estimate the Earth’s temperature change since 1880.
I tweeted about this, and again let me show you the map from NASA’s website.
I bet anyone who hasn’t been indoctrinated seeing the animation would feel the same way.
In addition, climatologist/former NASA researcher Dr. Mototaka Nakamura wrote that over the last 100 years “only 5 percent of the Earth’s area is able show the mean surface temperature with any certain degree of confidence.”
I’m sure that 5 percent area data cannot offset the 95 percent remaining area with no data. If climate alarmists noticed that, what percent of them would continue to believe the AGW hypothesis, I wonder.
Hi, everyone.
Almost certainly you’ve seen the temperature charts put out by government agencies like NASA and NOAA going back to about 1880 and often shown by our mainstream media.
However, as some climate realists include Tony, Mr. Joseph D’Aleo and Mr. Anthony Watts have already explained, humans don’t have enough thermometer data to truly estimate the Earth’s temperature change since 1880.
I tweeted about this, and again let me show you the map from NASA’s website.
I bet anyone who hasn’t been indoctrinated seeing the animation would feel the same way.
In addition, climatologist/former NASA researcher Dr. Mototaka Nakamura wrote that over the last 100 years “only 5 percent of the Earth’s area is able show the mean surface temperature with any certain degree of confidence.”
I’m sure that 5 percent area data cannot offset the 95 percent remaining area with no data. If climate alarmists noticed that, what percent of them would continue to believe the AGW hypothesis, I wonder.
You think this is news?
Its on NASA's site and how they deal with this.
Really.
As is this:
Nineteen of the 20 warmest years all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record (source: NASA/GISS). This research is broadly consistent with similar constructions prepared by the Climatic Research Unit and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Enjoying the latest fires?
Australia
Siberia
Brazil
California
