Demand and jobs ‘outweighs’ global warming concerns, Lib Dem committee chair says

A new £165m coal mine has been unanimously approved by councillors in Cumbria, sparking protests by environmental campaigners. 

Cumbria County Council said it was putting jobs above climate change concerns after its development committee approved the plan on Tuesday afternoon.

West Cumbria Mining, which filed the application, wants to extract coking coal along the coastline between Whitehaven and St Bees in Copeland and process the fossil fuel at a plant nearby.

Last week, Copeland’s Conservative MP Trudy Harrison “wholeheartedly” endorsed the proposed undersea mine, touting new jobs and the “huge” investment it would bring to the area. 

International trade secretary Liam Fox has also given his backing to the project.

But critics accused the council of ignoring the current climate crisis, which is increasingly causing extreme and dangerous weather events across the globe.  […]

Geoff Cook, Liberal Democrat councillor and chair of Cumbria County Council’s development committee, said: “It wasn’t an easy decision. All of us would prefer to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and we recognise that during construction there will be disruption to many local residents. 

“However we felt that the need for coking coal, the number of jobs on offer and the chance to remove contamination outweighed concerns about climate change and local amenity.”

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March 20, 2019 at 06:12AM

Skeptics of man-made climate change hope the Trump administration’s “adversarial” science review revives the “red-team, blue-team” debate once embraced by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Pruitt’s effort, which proposed a military-style debate of research showing greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, was scuttled by former presidential chief of staff John Kelly.

But with a catalog of new faces in the White House, skeptics might have better luck with the “adversarial” review, to be led by Princeton University physics professor William Happer, who is not trained in climate science but questions the mainstream consensus.

Mick Mulvaney has replaced Kelly. Mike Pompeo has replaced Rex Tillerson — formerly one of the administration’s few climate science believers — as secretary of State. John Bolton has stepped in for H.R. McMaster as national security adviser.

All of that churn has made for “a much more favorable environment” for skeptics, said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the former head of President Trump’s EPA transition team.

Their position is also bolstered by a series of Trump tweets in recent weeks advocating false and skeptical views of climate science.

“The committee that Will Happer is putting together will provide an analysis and a critical review — an adversarial review — but that won’t be the end of it,” Ebell said. “Obviously, that will be the beginning of a dialogue between the adversarial reviewers and the climate consensus, or the official science body.”

The White House is weighing a review of the science behind the National Climate Assessment, focused on security risks from climate change.

The report, which found climate change is already affecting the U.S. economy and national security, draws on the work of hundreds of scientists and went through an extensive peer review and public comment process.

‘Distinguished experts’

Dozens of military leaders have come out against the White House plans, calling them a political attempt to undermine science and a widespread consensus in the national security community that climate change multiplies threats around the world (E&E News PM, March 5).

But Ebell and a long list of administration backers sent a letter to the White House yesterday supporting the review.

They suggest a continued debate of climate science once Happer’s review is over, mirroring the proposed “red-team, blue-team” debate, much maligned by scientists and various Trump administration critics.

“Although an independent commission of distinguished scientists would have high credibility, we do not mean to imply that its report should be the end of the matter,” they wrote. “We therefore suggest that the National Academies of Science and Engineering would be appropriate bodies to conduct an initial review of the commission’s report.”

They also suggest that Happer’s panel would be populated by “distinguished experts” and subject to transparency requirements under the Federal Advisory Committees Act, but it’s not entirely clear yet how the group would be constituted.

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March 20, 2019 at 05:37AM

MUNICH, Germany (ICIS)–The increasing operational costs arising from Germany’s transition away from nuclear and coal energy could lead to upheavals in German industry “that no one can or want to imagine”, according to Wacker Chemie CEO Rudolf Staudigl said on Tuesday.

The Germany-headquartered specialty chemicals producer reported a year-on-year fall in net income for 2018 and projected significantly weaker profits in 2019, driven in part by higher domestic energy costs.

“The electricity costs borne by energy-intensive industries in this country must not climb any further,” he said, speaking at the company’s headquarters in Munich, Germany.

“Otherwise it will be impossible to produce anything in Germany at an internationally-competitive level,” he added.

Germany has been a vocal advocate for improved environmental standards and a focus on clean energy and emissions-reduction in Europe as part of a bid to limit the impact of climate change.

Staudigl described the measures taken as part of the country’s Energiewende strategy as “over-zealous”, claiming that Germany’s desire to be a global emblem for responsible energy policy, coupled with the move to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima tragedy, is weighing on industry.

“A false notion of being a trailblazer will lead us astray,” he said.

“In Germany we had a committee for switching off nuclear power and for shutting down coal-fired plants but no committee on how this lack of energy can be replaced,” he added.

Not as much attention has been paid for how the energy loss from the shutdowns will be managed and energy saving measures are continually eroded by the increases in costs, he added, noting that energy and raw materials costs rose €160m in 2018.

“We have done so much already to save energy – the chemicals industry produces 70% more with 14% less energy … We will save ourselves to death if we are not able to make up for this [shortfall] of energy,” he added.

If industry does decline in Germany, the resources for climate change mitigation and energy reduction will also fall, he added.

“Germany’s strong industrial base is the key to ensuring our prosperity and jobs, and without prosperity and jobs, we cannot finance energy transition and climate protection,” Staudigl said.

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March 20, 2019 at 04:23AM

Earlier this year, a research article triggered a media frenzy by predicting that as a result of an ongoing rapid decline, nearly half of the world’s insects will be no more pretty soon Pensoft Publishers Amidst worldwide publicity and talks about ‘Insectageddon’: the extinction of 40% of the world’s insects, as estimated in a recent…

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March 20, 2019 at 04:04AM