| Alan Moran 1 September 2022 |
| A review and commentary on topical matters concerning the science, economics, and governance associated with climate change developments. |
Developments in the politics of climate change
India says it plans to be net zero by 2070 and has introduced legislation that includes seeking 45 per cent of electricity from non-fossil fuels and a form of carbon trading. For its part, China has scrapped all cooperation to reach “net neutral” following Pelosi’s Taiwan visit. This formalises a position under which only the EU, UK, Japan, Korea and North America, collectively representing just a third of global CO2 emissions, have real action plans.
| EU energy prices were up 41 per cent in June 2022. |
All over Europe, energy intensive aluminium and zinc smelters are closing and factory output in general is declining. Poland has shut its gas dependent fertilizer production.
Nicola Sturgeon celebrates Scotland’s “definitive end of coal power in a transition that the rest of the world needs to accelerate for the sake of the planet and future generations”. Not unrelated, the UK price cap (the annual price for the average household) was £1000 in winter 2020/21 will rise to £4,650 in January 2023 and is forecast to be £6,552 next April. Here’s the reason why
These prices make the fuel costs of EV’s more expensive than those of petrol/diesel models. They have prompted likely UK PM, Liz Truss to announce a change of mind – she will now accelerate the release of new gas and oil exploration leases and will overturn the ban on fracking.
German gas costs have risen from one per cent to 8.4 per cent of GDP. Italian bars and restaurant are displaying their energy bills to explain cost increases saying, “With increases in energy costs of 300 percent, we are working with a gun to our heads.”
Having created an energy crisis, climate activists are moving to the next stage of controls. German greens are calling for requiring air conditioned temperatures not to be set below 27°C and a 19°C maximum heating temperature, provisions that are already in place in Spain.
Meanwhile, reprising Nero-Fiddles-While Rome-Burns, the EU is calling on members to intensify the emission control measures that have caused the energy price crisis.
In Australia, the market manager, recognising that energy policies are forcing closure of reliable coal supplies and threaten blackouts, is calling for accelerated building of renewables and more transmission. In other words, the failed UK solution! The cost of batteries to firm up renewables in the absence of coal would be $500-$700 billion a year, or over one-quarter of GDP each year. Then there is the cost of the additional transmission and the wind/solar units themselves!
But, noting that Australia’s greenhouse emissions have reduced by 21.6 per cent since 2005, about half of the government’s 2030 target, Climate Change Minister, Chris Bowen, said the nation needs more ambitious climate change policies.
Japan is re-opening its nuclear plants, bringing back 17 out of a total 33 operable units, and planning new ones. Germany’s (Greens Party) Economy Minister Robert Habeck still wants to close the last three nuclear plants, which supply 6 per cent of national output but coal plants continue to reopen. What date will Germany commit to building new nuclear or coal?
In the US, Congress passed the deceptively titled Inflation Reduction Act. It allocates $740 billion for subsidies to wind/solar and electric vehicles plus a vast increase in tax collectors; in a triumph of hope over experience this is claimed to bring lower costs. It involved less funding than the $3.5 trillion originally proposed (and which 17 Noble Prize winners said would not be inflationary!)
Included is some $3.2 billion in tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that, after 15 years, has no commercially successful projects. Back in 2018, Al Gore blasted CCS, calling it an “extremely improbable solution.” Robert Bryce estimates that, aside from the extraction costs, to eliminate one half of US CO2 emissions by CCS would require underground locations equal to the contents of 41 oil supertankers each day, 365 days a year.
For Sterling Burnett, “As implausible as the inflation reduction staging of the Democrats’ pork-filled bill of special-interest fodder is, the claims being made about its effect on greenhouse gas emissions are pure fantasy.” According to Anthony Watts, based on Lomborg’s estimates, we get between 0.028 and 0.0009°F reduction in temperature by 2100 for about 400 billion dollars in the US Climate Act. To achieve the 1.5°C reduction in temperature would cost half the global annual economy.
Roger Pielke shows the Biden administration’s proposed massive decarbonisation increase.
Juliet Samuel writes, oil exploration is halved as governments and corporate governance busybodies around 2014-16, decided that the trashing “big oil” (and so on) was costless, popular and green. The upshot is that, “the market is broken and it is governments and do-gooders who broke it. They broke it wantonly, recklessly, touting their saintly intentions,”
In fighting back against “Environment Social Governance” (ESG) diktats, West Virginia has boycotted U.S. Bancorp, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo from doing government business because of their role in pushing ESG anti-coal agendas. Texas already has bans and Florida plans a similar move. Sustainable funds took in $8.9 billion during the first seven months of the year, a sharp drop from the $45.1 billion they attracted during the same period in 2021.
Richard Lindzen, William Happer and the CO2 Coalition submitted comments to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on climate-related financial risk, saying real science demonstrates there is no climate emergency and there are no climate-related financial or other risks caused by fossil fuels and CO2.
To assist in ESG credibility, ANZ bank and the Australian government’s Clean Energy Financing Commission have teamed up to offer $200 million of discounted financing to business customers to invest in activities designed to cut their carbon emissions.
| Developments in the economics of climate changeFrancis Menton destroys the fraudulent claims, like those below put out by the UN International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. |
IRENA’S renewables costs equate the output to the capacity, which is available only a quarter of the time. Renewables also require lots more transmission. Their true costs are 5-10-fold those stated.
With respect to transmission, Thunder Said Energy estimates the global power grid will require four times the costs of present systems even to accommodate a 25 per cent share of renewables.
Developments in the science of climate change
Alarmists seek to portray the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as being in danger from human activity, farm and mining run-off and above all from “global warming”. Peter Ridd called out many of these studies and has written extensively about the “replication crisis” regarding verification of sensational, spurious findings, often associated with “climate change”. The GBR science establishment has reluctantly endorsed his view that the GBR is in good health with this data.
Having fired Professor Peter Ridd for whistleblowing about colleagues’ alarmist conclusions on the health of the GBR, James Cook University (JCU) faces other such scandals. An investigative panel has found that marine ecologist Danielle Dixson committed fabrication and falsification in work that sought to demonstrate climate change affected coral reefs’ fish behaviour. Her collaborators include her PhD supervisor Philip Munday of JCU (now retired).
Matt Canavan contrasts the scientific approach to Einstein, where his theory of relativity was accepted only after empirical tests, with the mainstream science regarding the Reef that proclaims its demise in spite of contrary proof. And he draws attention to costs imposed on farmers ($60,000 per farm) to reduce nitrogen run-off to “save the reef”.
Contra to Al Gore’s 2007 prediction of an ice free Arctic by 2013, we are at a 12 year high. Also, since 2005, a great many “experts” (including James Hanson, Al Gore, the Sierra Club, the BBC) predicted an ice-free Arctic well before this year. Here is the outcome.
| Pitman et al find estimates of aggregate global temperature change cannot offer guidance about changes in the annual extremes of temperature and rainfall and hence on how acute risks likely material to the financial sector will change at a city-scale. |
| Celebs’ hypocrisy and other whimsey So far this year, Taylor Swift’s personal jet has emitted 8200 tonnes of emissions. The average person’s annual emissions is seven tonnes. Her songs have included climate change themes. She, along with the Kardashians, Drake and Jay-Z, are among jet-about entertainers named and shamed as “climate criminals”. Steven Spielberg criticised Americans who ‘go blithely through life’ without worrying about their carbon footprint but in just two months his private jet alone produced 11 times the average American’s carbon footprint. The National Center for Biotechnology Information has presented “research” suggesting climate change is a cause of increased child obesity – apparently it is too hot to exercise! |
| Articles related to climate change – August 2022 Transition teething problem or permanent disaster? The Spectator, 27 August 2022 A mild case of split portfolio disorder The Spectator, 18 August 2022 Labor’s Climate Bill is an economic precipice The Spectator, 8 August 2022 |