Yesterday’s Observer has a long extract from the book written jointly by the Thunberg family about their famous daughter. The extract is by Greta’s mother, opera singer Malena Ernman, and I found it extraordinarily interesting and moving. She discusses the family’s struggle to deal with Greta’s psychological problems with apparently admirable honesty, and much that […]
via Climate Scepticism
February 24, 2020 at 03:44AM
The numbers above may all look big, but keep in mind that green ambitions don’t come cheap. Globally, spending on emissions reduction runs now at about $US1.5 trillion, i.e. $US1,500,000,000,000 per year.
All but a trifle of this is being spent by the West. China, India and Africa are going hell-bent for cheap, reliable coal-fired electricity and their emissions growth will continue to swamp utterly whatever cuts are made, at such fearsome costs, by Europe and its fellow travellers like us.
So the West’s anti-emission crusade, let alone Australia’s, will make not a jot of difference to the climate, even assuming that CO2 is the climate’s control-knob, which is kindergarten science given the unknowns and complexities of the climate system and solar forces.
There’s another way to come at Albanese’s zero-by-2050 target, based on technologies required.
Simply put, to get to the net zero by 2050 would involve phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with emissions-free nuclear power. Obviously wind and solar power can’t do the job alone or at all.
Albanese’s target would require the deployment of a new nuclear-power plant each 65 days until January 2051, each of about the scale of the US Turkey Point nuclear plant (1400MW) or Victoria’s Hazelwood coal-fired plant (1600MW). That’s five and half new nukes per year. This equation can be simply calculated from data from the International Energy Agency (see formulae below).
Keep in mind that one nuclear plant could cost at least $13 billion, based on overseas best-practice. Just imagine how the CFMMEU and State Premiers like Dan Andrews could amplify that cost. (Premier Dan in 2015 incurred a net $640m costs to taxpayers just to break the contract for Melbourne’s desperately-needed East-West tunnel because he needed some green-electorate NIMBY votes). But to be conservative, in a perfect world the cost of Australia’s required wholesale transition to nuclear power plants would be about $2 trillion, compared with our annual GDP of $1.4 trillion.[4]
The maths are also exciting for those with faith in wind power. For the same output of a Turkey Point US nuclear plant (1400MW) substitute 1500 state-of-the-art 2.5MW wind turbines, each 130 metres tall.
Albanese’s plan would require 23 of these wind turbines per day coming on-line, or 161 a week or 250,000 in total to January 2051. A giant farm of 1500 turbines needs close to 800 square kilometres of ground, so pity help the bats and birds. Wind turbines installed in penny packets would squander even more land. Conservatively, Australia’s quarter of a million turbines would need about 130,000 square kilometres — twice the area of Tasmania. Not in my backyard? If we assume 80 backyards per street, that would mean two 130-metre wind towers for every street in Australia.[5]
Albanese’s plan must involve a giant leap in our engineering and technology sectors. To get real, the Opposition leader ought to demand that every Arts student at universities, including those writing PhD theses on LGBTI Dance Theory, must transfer to science and technology faculties. Greenies also need to suck up that their transition to renewables will require a vast increase in the mining and processing sectors to acquire the resources needed. (If we shut down coal and gas exports, as Greenies demand, the impact on the Australian dollar exchange rate will make imported resource materials pricey indeed).
Albanese is flat-out deluded: “The private sector has taken up the challenge which is there, because they recognise that action on climate change isn’t just a challenge, it’s an opportunity.” Some opportunity, mate.
The formulae:
I’ve provided the Australian maths courtesy of a template from Dr Roger J. Pielke Jr, writing in Forbes and published on September 30, 2019. He’s a long-term IPCC author on weather disasters and his degrees include one in maths. Incidentally, he’s also a research expert on cheating in world elite sports.
Pielke’s simple formulae go like this:
Global fossil-fuel consumption, 2018 – 11,743 MTOE (million tonnes of oil equivalent)[6]. Output of Florida’s Turkey Point 1400MW nuclear plant, 1 MTOE. Days left till end-2050 – 11,037. Global deployment of nuclear power required by 2050 in Turkey Point units, more than one per day. To include forecast energy growth of 5800 MTOE (1.25% a year to 2040), add half a Turkey Point per day. One Turkey Point nuclear output equals 1500 wind turbines of 2.5MW each.
The recent BP Statistical Review of World Energy has fossil fuel energy use for US and Australia. BP put Australia in 2018 at 133 MTOE. With assumed 20 years growth of usage at 1.25 per cent p.a., the task by 2050 is to get rid of 170 MTOE. Divide 11,000 days by 170 = one nuclear plant per 65 days. Concurrently, we’d also need to be decommissioning the equivalent in fossil-fuel power sources.
It’s not as though any meaningful global switch from fossil fuels is already underway. As I mentioned here, each day humanity is moving in the other direction: more fossil fuels. In 2018 the world added more than 280 million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE) of fossil fuel consumption compared with 106 MTOE of carbon-free consumption, says Pielke, citing BP. To move towards net-zero, all of those 400 MTOE additions ought to be carbon-free, while replacing and retiring 400 MTOE of existing fossil fuel consumption. “In a round number,” he remarks., “the deployment rate of carbon-free energy would need to increase by about 800 per cent.”
It’s symptomatic of the madness besetting Australia that the States (Labor and conservative-led) have all subscribed to the net-zero-2050 mantra. So has the clueless Australian Academy of Science. So have scores of nations. Where will it all end?
Tony Thomas new book of essays, Come to think of it – essays to tickle the brain, can be pre-ordered here for March publication. All welcome to the launch in Carlton Vic on March 10, rsvp here
[1] Moreover, the UN climate zealots are unlikely to agree to unrestricted emissions trading, as Fisher concedes.
[2] Fisher was not doing a cost-benefit analysis as he said he didn’t know what the benefits of emissions reductions would bring. Since Australia’s impact on global emissions is effectively zero vis a vis emissions growth by China, India and the sensible Third World, our impact on the climate would also be zero. Further, the climate impact of all the Paris pledges would also be in significant or effectively zero, according to Bjorn Lomberg’s estimates based on IPCC formulae. In any event, some mild further warming could be beneficial rather than detrimental. And no-one knows if global climate trends might revert to natural cooling.
[3] ABC didn’t show the quote directly
[4] I’ll cite this just for fun, but Extinction Rebellion’s local demands for zero-net emissions by 2025 would require a new Australian nuclear plant every 11 days, or 33 nukes per year.
[5] Calculation based on 9 million Australian households
via Climate Scepticism
February 24, 2020 at 01:39AM
via climate science
February 24, 2020 at 01:30AM
I think [Chevron] is trying to give its employees a reason to come to work every day,” [Danielle] Fugere said. “I’m sure it’s not easy to work at an oil and gas company when those companies are contributing potentially to the downfall of civilization.” (Emily Atkin, below)
Emily Atkin, formerly at The New Republic, has a blog site, Heated, “a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.” How pleasant!
One of her posts caught my eye: a hit piece on Chevron and, indirectly, Alex Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
In Chevron pushes “the moral case for fossil fuels”, she states:
Earlier this week, a tipster sent me a picture of a pamphlet. They said it was given to them by a friend who works at Chevron. The Chevron employee was apparently given this pamphlet because employees are increasingly being confronted by friends, family, and strangers about the climate crisis. So, the tipster said, “Chevron made talking points for employees getting into arguments about climate change and fossil fuels.”
What’s wrong with that? Better yet, have a debate for employees during a sack lunch period. May the best ideas win!
Atkin continues:
… I was curious about the contents of the pamphlet—because as the tipster correctly noted, “the majority of it seems to be from ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,’” a controversial book by Alex Epstein that severely downplays the risks of climate change and promotes the use of fossil fuels as a force for humanitarianism and social justice.
The fact that Chevron is promoting ideas popularized by Epstein is significant, said Danielle Fugere, the president of As You Sow, a non-profit that works on corporate sustainability through shareholder action. “It signifies the immense pressure these companies are under due to climate change,” she said. “Fossil fuel companies have never had to justify their existence before. Now, they have to justify it not only to the world, but to their own employees.”
Epstein then comes in for criticism:
Epstein currently runs the Center for Industrial Progress, a “for-profit think tank” that provides, among other things, consulting services for energy companies. To advertise said services, Epstein warns fossil fuel companies
that their industry is under attack “by so-called environmentalists that
can put a halt to your projects and sabotage your bottom line.”
“The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” is Epstein’s 2014 book. It falsely
downplays the risks of climate change. Epstein doesn’t deny that global warming
exists; rather, he regularly mischaracterizes the state of climate science,
saying things like “fossil-fuel use has only a mild warming impact,” which is
false. This softer, gentler form of climate denial is paired with arguments
about the benefits fossil fuels have provided society in the past.
The benefits Epstein regularly speaks about are echoed in Chevron’s talking points. The pamphlet—which you can read in full on Chevron’s corporate responsibility document page—argues that “What we do is good” and “What we do is essential.” It says that protecting the planet is “dependent” on fossil fuel use; that fossil fuels lift people out of poverty; that 45 percent of the world’s population would go hungry if not for the use of natural gas-derived nitrogen-based fertilizers; and that Chevron contributes to economic growth by purchasing billions in goods and services.
Yes, Emily Atkin, and Epstein will debate you or any other person you designate on energy and climate policy. He just might brighten your day by demonstrating that the world is doing just fine, all things considered.
These talking points represent a stark departure from the increasingly
anti-fossil fuel rhetoric coming from the scientific community. On Tuesday, for
example, more than 10,000 scientists from across the world and from many
disciplines released a report warning
that the planet “clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency.”
To address this emergency, the world must “cut out fossil fuels in favor of renewable sources of energy, a trend it notes is not happening fast enough,” the Washington Post reported. “It also calls for remaining fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, to remain in the ground, never to be burned to generate energy, a key goal for many climate activists.”
That’s one side of the argument. Bummed? How about considering the other side?
On the Center for Industrial Progress website, Epstein says one of his “major goals is to teach millions of employees in the fossil fuel industry to understand the value of what they do and how to communicate it.” This would line up with our tipster’s claim that Chevron’s pamphlet is for its employees.
And with the 2nd edition of Epstein’s book due out this summer, be ready to debate and even change your mind.
But Chevron did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was
working with the Center for Industrial Progress on its messaging, or whether
the material was for employees—and Epstein wouldn’t say whether he worked with
the company or not.
“Our client relationships are confidential, so I won’t comment on our
influence or non-influence on any particular company or content piece,” he told
HEATED in an email. The Center for Industrial Progress does, however, work with “numerous
organizations,” Epstein added.
The Center for Industrial Progress works with numerous organizations that share our goal of promoting pro-human, pro-freedom positions. Our aim is to help them develop messaging that persuades stakeholders by providing the full context of fossil fuels’ impacts on human flourishing–both their negative and their positive impacts.
It is our commitment to looking at the full context that has persuaded us and allowed us to persuade others that fossil fuels make an overwhelmingly positive contribution to human flourishing, and that side effects such as the warming impact of CO2 do not justify the widely-proposed radical restrictions on fossil fuel use.
Emily Akin then substitutes her science (from Carbon Brief, which “extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to show how global warming is projected to affect the world and its regions”):
Under an optimistic scenario of 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the “side effects” of CO2 include, by the end of this century: a 22-inch increase in sea level, a 29 percent increase in ocean acidity, a 343 percent increase in frequency of heat extremes over land, a 36 percent increase in the frequency of rainfall extremes over land, a 4 month increase in the average drought length, a 388 million-person increase in the number of people exposed to water scarcity, and a 72 million-person increase in the number of people exposed to coastal flooding, and a 13 percent loss in global per capita GDP, among other things.
All of these effects will result in an untold amount of human and animal
deaths; ecosystem collapse; and global conflict.
It’s understandable why Chevron and other fossil fuel companies might find
Epstein’s arguments appealing, Fugere said. (Fugere’s organization, As You Sow,
works regularly with Chevron investors to promote climate-related shareholder
proposals, and meets with Chevron employees).
“I think the company is trying to give its employees a reason to come to work every day,” Fugere said. “I’m sure it’s not easy to work at an oil and gas company when those companies are contributing potentially to the downfall of civilization. And I don’t say that flippantly, but with true meaning: They are contributing to a world that will be inhospitable to human and other life. So they very much have to convince employees that they’re doing something important.”
A confession of sorts follows:
It’s true that the use of fossil fuels to create low-cost, reliable power
has contributed to human prosperity across the world. But the argument made by
Chevron and Epstein implies that fossil fuels are the only way to achieve
low-cost, reliable power, Fugere said. And that’s just not true.
“Yes, the world needs power. But it doesn’t need fossil fuel-based power,” she said. “It reminds me of Monsanto’s insistence that they are polluting the world with pesticides because they want to feed the world. And of course, you can feed the world without pesticides.”
Can the world do without dense, mineral energies? Replace oil, gas, and coal with wood, wind turbines, and solar panels? For the answer, check out other posts on energy density at MasterResource.
The post ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ Alarms the Alarmists appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
February 24, 2020 at 01:01AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 