If Greens cared about CO2 they would dump renewable targets

via JoNovahttp://joannenova.com.au

Those who say they want a “free market” in carbon still don’t understand what a free market is.

RET’s or Renewable Energy Targets are screwed (in the head): If Tony Abbotts Direct Action plan was useless, RETS are five times more useless.

In Australia the Renewable Energy Target (RET) in theory, helps wind and solar,  so we lower CO2 emissions and cool the world, slow storms, things like that. But Tom Quirk calculates it costs $57 a ton (at best) for those “savings”. Since the Direct Action plan cost $11 a ton,  we could reduce five times as much CO2 if we blew up the RET scheme.

The secret is that the Abbott plan tackled CO2 directly rather than picking winners (see “competition”, “free markets” that sort of thing).  Predictably, the Greens hated it — who needs CO2 reduction if you can support big-government-loving industries instead? (Especially the kind who lobby for the side of politics that wants more bureaucrats, more handouts, and less independent competition?)

Those who say they want a “free market” in carbon still don’t understand what a free market is. It’s pretty simple, if they want a reduction in CO2, they need to pay for a […]

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February 20, 2017 at 04:10AM

Anti-Trump Science Rally is Epic Fail

via Current News – Principia Scientific Internationalhttp://principia-scientific.org

Organizers of a science rally to protest President Donald Trump in Boston Sunday expected to draw more 10,000 people, but only a few hundred actually showed up.
More than 10,000 people were interested in or signed up to attend the “Rally to Stand Up for Science,” according to the rally’s Facebook page, but The Boston Globe’s estimates of crowd size put the number of attendees in the hundreds.

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via Current News – Principia Scientific International http://ift.tt/1kjWLPW

February 20, 2017 at 03:50AM

Short Selling Skeptic Cashing In On Solar Company Collapses

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

Gordon Johnson of Axiom Capital Management Inc. is the short selling financial analyst solar energy companies are learning to hate. His business is making money from the the failure of unsustainable renewable business models.

The Most-Hated Bear in Solar Isn’t Backing Down

by Brian Eckhouse
16 February 2017, 20:00 GMT+10 17 February 2017, 15:01 GMT+10

When Elon Musk’s SolarCity hosted stock analysts about a year ago to gush about its prospects in the solar industry, Gordon Johnson was nowhere to be found.

It seems that Johnson, a 36-year-old analyst at boutique advisory shop Axiom Capital Management Inc., wasn’t invited. This may not have been an oversight; it happens to him a lot.

“Everybody hates me,” says the New York-based analyst in jest, acknowledging his reputation as solar’s notorious bear, a soundbite-ready contrarian among a group of analysts generally bullish on the industry’s long-term prospects. “Companies don’t like me because I have sell ratings on their stocks.”…

These days, Johnson has a sell rating on every stock he follows (including some steel companies), and he has a fresh reason — Donald Trump. Johnson figures the president, a renewables critic during the campaign, may attempt to revoke federal subsidies for solar — a minority opinion, to be sure. “It would be a big negative for renewables, particularly solar,” Johnson says. Tax reform would also hurt.…

A solar skeptic since his tenure at Lehman Brothers a decade ago, Johnson isn’t beloved among the companies he covers, not to mention other Wall Street solar analysts. Some observers view him merely as an ally of the hedge funds and other short-sellers that are his clients, and sometimes just lucky in playing what they call the solar-coaster.…

Johnson’s contrarian view derives from a simple thesis: solar, he says, can’t compete with, or replace, natural gas because it can’t provide around-the-clock power and because it has needed subsidies to be competitive…

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

February 20, 2017 at 02:44AM

BeeGate: How Green Campaigners Subverted Science

via Climate Change Dispatchhttp://climatechangedispatch.com

Almost ten years ago, when there were indications of stresses on honeybee populations (known as colony collapse disorder – CCD), different activists were jockeying for the right to claim this crisis for their campaigns. Climate activists wanted to show bees were suffering because of warmer weather; biodiversity campaigners saw land-use issues as the source for the […]

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

February 20, 2017 at 02:12AM