Credit: Coal India Limited

In some countries ’emissions’ obsessed leaders stumble around looking for non-existent net-zero pathways to their imaginary climate heaven. But India’s recent approach towards fossil utilization can be summed up in three words: “No Holds Barred”, says the author.
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India is on the way to becoming a fossil fuel-based energy powerhouse of the 21st century, says Vijay Jayaraj @ The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

India’s developmental goals for the future are quite ambitious. They ought to be: From tackling the surging poverty rates to providing affordable utilities, the country faces a steep challenge.

The key to achieving any of its developmental goals is a strong energy sector.

India is the third largest energy consuming nation and is following the fossil fuel pathway (like the West did during the 20th century) to achieve energy independence in the near future.

Relationship to Paris Agreement

The transformation of the energy sector in 21st century India is a remarkable story and it can be singularly credited to fossil fuels, especially coal and oil. The predominantly fossil-based energy sector has grown by leaps and bounds in recent decades.

But ever since the country’s membership in the Paris agreement, and its decision to pursue billions of dollars’ worth Renewable projects (like the Asia’s largest Solar Plant that was inaugurated this week), there were doubts and uncertainty surrounding how the country would move ahead with its fossil fuel sector.

Green crusaders believed that India’s inclusion in the agreement and their proclivity to large renewable projects would make them a major player in the global effort to offset fossil fuel dependency.

However, that has not been the case. Anti-fossil fuel lobbyists and international bodies like the UN have had zero success in limiting India’s coal use.

This is because the country’s “Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)”—a set of promises that were pledged as a part of Paris agreement—clearly states that the country has sovereign rights to excavate, import, export, and use fossil fuels, and that it will not be determined by non-binding treaties made with UN or other developed countries.

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July 13, 2020 at 07:57AM

Scientists should excel by doubting, not by being dogmatic. But already in the climate debate some of them have become ideologists. This disaster is now threatening epidemiology too. A warning call

One of the most valuable achievements of secular societies is the separation of church and state. One of the most disturbing developments of highly technological societies is the desire that science and state should be as close as possible. In recent years, the challenges posed by climate change have already led to a growing number of voices demanding that policy-makers simply listen to “the science” and implement its recommendations without further ado. 

In the course of the corona pandemic, this trend has become even more pronounced: The longing for a technocracy led by a scientific clergy that dictates science and also politics seems to be growing in parts of society.

“Belief in Science is playing the role of the dominant religion of our time.” This sentence is not from a conspiracy fanatic, but from Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. It is found at the beginning of a series of lectures the physicist, philosopher and pacifist gave between 1959 and 1961 on “The scope of science”. Today – even more than sixty years later – it is important to understand in which respect science has successfully inherited religious beliefs and in which respects science should be careful not to take on the heritage of religion.

Anyone who, as a member of a highly technological societies, denies that  modern sciences are superior to all known religions in terms of knowledge and mastery of nature, is making himself ridiculous. Anyone who insists with a smartphone in his hand that the Bible explains the origin of mankind more correctly than the theory of evolution is an irrational dogmatist. But there is a world of difference between an irrational dogmatist and a reasonable skeptic. It is therefore not acceptable to immediately defame anyone who expresses doubts about the reliability of epidemiological or climate models as a “climate” or “corona denier”.

In contrast to religion, modern science owes its success to its openness to doubt, criticism and self-correction; its claim to make sober and objectively verifiable statements. Only if it is strictly rational in this sense, can it accomplish achievements in the field of the control of nature and thus of fate, for which our ancestors could think of no other term than “miracle”.

This stupendous power of science must not, however, lead to the mistaken belief that it has the miraculous  gift of mastering the future. Anyone who wants to sell science as an instrument with which man can gain absolute certainty and control over his destiny is leaving the ground of serious science and making himself a preacher of damnation and salvation.
 
In the climate debate we have already seen the change from prominent scientists to high priests. It would be fatal if, under the pressure of a frightened public, helpless politics and headline-loving media, this change were to take place in the field of virology and epidemiology.

In the summer of 2019, an essay by the renowned climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf about the coral dieback appeared in Der Spiegel under the pointed headline “Mankind is losing control over the state of the Earth”. It read: “Simply allowing this ecosystem to collapse would not only be completely unacceptable. It would be the beginning of a loss of control, the falling of a first domino in a closely interwoven living earth system in which everything is interconnected and interdependent”.

Even in the more differentiated wording, this view is based on an absurd and highly questionable assumption. On the one hand, Rahmstorf pretends that man has already had control over the “earth system”: for how can I lose something if I have never possessed it? On the other hand, he reduces all life forms on our planet, which are partly predictable and partly chaotic, into a bleak and mechanistic image of a domino sequence: knock over one domino and you can reliably predict the complete chain of consequences.

The pressure on virologists and epidemiologists

The advantage of this sleight of hand is that the fear of a hyper-complex system – such as our earth’s climate – is transformed into the fear of human beings who ruin this system. Thanks to the self-accusing shift in fear, the prospect of control can be held out – if only man, for his part, will behave as a domino in a mechanistic system, which must not wobble, sway or even step out of line. Human action is treated as a quasi-physical quantity whose consequences can then supposedly be calculated and reliably predicted just as precisely as the orbits of planets.

In mid-April, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber presented a double presumption of knowledge in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The physics professor, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and long-standing advisor to the German government on climate policy, is among the pandemic experts. He reinterprets the spread of the novel coronavirus as a strictly predictable phenomenon, with which he can declare the course of the pandemic to be controllable – on condition that people unconditionally believe in ‘the science’ and submit to its orders of behaviour. 

Schellnhuber writes:
 
“The epidemiological model calculations of the leading research institutes are crystal balls with which every country can look into its corona future for weeks, months, even years. […] Citizens, experts, entrepreneurs and politicians now stare together at the colourful diagrams that reveal which country is currently in which epidemic stage and who has allowed precious intervention time to pass where. Mercilessly, the tiny pathogen punishes the anti-scientific fools among the rulers and confirms the rationalists among them”.

If one thinks, for example, of the current president of the USA and his Jack with a Lanthorn approach to the Coronavirus, one may spontaneously agree with this remark. But the approval gets stuck in your throat when you read what the epidemiologists from the Centre for Infection Research at the University of Minnesota explain in the foreword to their statement they published at the end of April on the subject of Covid-19:
 
“The virus has caught the world community unprepared, the course it will take is still extremely unpredictable; there is no crystal ball that lets us look into the future and tells us what the ‘endgame’ for controlling this pandemic will look like”.

Should we brand these researchers as “anti-scientific fools”, too?

On the contrary: we can be thankful that there are still enough scientists who reject the magic of the crystal ball view and the delusion of complete control. For the pressure on virologists and epidemiologists to become soothsayers and uncritical advocates is growing.

When the virologist Hendrik Streeck remarked on a German talk show that if only “one factor” is misjudged in epidemiological model calculations, “then  all collapses like a house of cards”, he provoked strong protest from the chemist and science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim. 
 
On her YouTube channel “maiLab”, she accused Streeck of being guilty of “foreshortening” with this remark, which “can shake the confidence of laypersons in the important work of epidemiologists and their model calculations”. […]
 
Irrationalism is on the rise

[…] Democracies depend on the rational, realistic handling of problems. To do this, politicians need scientific advisors, including those who warn of the dangers for humanity. However, scientists have to stay out of the immediate political decision-making process – as Christian Drosten has repeatedly stated in his podcast.The concept of the activist scientist or “Conscience-ist” – which what Hans Joachim Schellnhuber calls himself – represents a relapse into pre-enlightened thinking. With a slogan like “Unite behind the Science!” crusaders may sway an oath of allegiance to a sacred mission. If you want to do a service to science, you have to fight for credibility of those scientists who, despite all hostility, stand firmly for critical rationalism and organised skepticism.

If you look at the conspiracy craze that is raging on the internet these days, you can only come to the conclusion that irrationalism is on the rise. But this terrifying advance cannot be stopped by science driving itself into an ideological tunnel. No matter how convinced you are of your cause: As an activist in a democracy, you have to be ready to fight for your conviction in the field of intellectual dissent. You can’t just carry a standard-flag around with the flawed concept of ‘follow the science’ like a magic spear that brands all opponents as “anti-science deniers” and which aims at silencing them by shame. This only blurs the boundaries between science and ideology, between reason and unreason.
 
All those who today project their expectations of salvation into science, who hang on the lips of researchers because they hope for redemptive sentences should note that No serious scientist can offer real peace of mind, or the belief that “everything” will be fine. Modern science comes from physics, not from metaphysics. Therefore, it cannot provide answers to how man should deal with his fear of the unknown, his fear of death, how he can make his peace with the fact that he is not only the master of his fate, but also subjected to his own mortality.

One of the most tragic acts a person can commit is suicide for fear of death. One of the most tragic acts a democracy can commit is self-submission to the rigid rules of action of a clerical science for fear of accepting the power of nature.

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July 13, 2020 at 06:47AM

Plastics saved sea turtles, when tortoiseshell luxury goods became mass market items.

If you type sea turtles + plastic into an Internet search engine, the result is a long list of hideously bad news. SeeTurtles.org declares:

Sea turtles are affected by plastic during every stage of their life. They crawl through plastic on the way to the ocean as hatchlings, swim through it while migrating, confuse it for jellyfish (one of their favorite foods), and then crawl back through it as adults. 

The Australian wing of the WWF tells us:

Human activities have tipped the scales against the survival of these ancient mariners. Nearly all species of sea turtle are classified as Endangered, and plastic is doing more than its share of damage.

The BBC reports that ‘A single piece of plastic’ can kill sea turtles, says study. Newsweek declares: We Are Destroying Sea Turtles With All Our Plastic Waste. And CNN reports: A baby turtle was found with 104 pieces of plastic in its belly.

Meanwhile, a United Nations webpage bears a large headline: Fatal attraction: Turtles and plastic. There we read about “a ban on single-use plastic straws, bottles and bags,” and are invited to watch a gruesome viral video in which a straw is extracted from a turtle’s nostril.

That video, which appears at the top of this blog post, has been viewed 39 million times. Please note its full title: Sea Turtle with Straw up its Nostril – “NO” TO PLASTIC STRAWS. This video doesn’t simply document a freak event. It demands a particular response. Chris Figgener, the biologist who posted it, plays judge, jury, and executioner. In the text that accompanies it, she repudiates single-use plastics – rather than calling for adequate trash disposal systems in countries that currently lack such infrastructure. She says the “turtle suffers from an item that is human-made.”

None of the sources that appear in that long list of Internet search results – whether they be outright activists, activist organizations, or mainstream news outlets – provide any historical context. For that, you need to read Michael Shellengberger’s new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. There he explains that plastic, made from petroleum products, almost certainly saved sea turtles from being harvested to extinction:

For thousands of years, humans around the world made exquisite jewelry and other luxury items from the shells of hawksbill sea turtles, like the kind [in the viral video]…Craftsmen heated the turtles over a fire, sometimes alive, so they could peal the misnamed ‘tortoiseshell’ away from their skeletons…artisans used heat to flatten and mold tortoiseshell into various luxury items…What was special about the shell of sea turtles wasn’t just that it was smooth and beautiful but also that it was so plastic, which originally referred to things that were easily molded or shaped. [original italics]

Here’s a tortoiseshell hair comb from the 1920s:

click for source

The person asking $3,500 for these genuine tortoiseshell eyeglasses notes that they’re handmade and were “worn by the elite and famous” during the 1950s and ’60s.

click for source

To this day, faux tortoiseshell remains wildly popular with consumers of eyeglasses, hair accessories, and guitar picks.

As the world’s population increased, as many people’s standard of living improved, a burgeoning middle class aspired to luxuries once only available to the rich. At a time when there simply weren’t enough sea turtles to satisfy the demand for tortoiseshell, plastics rode to the rescue.

In other words, the world is a complicated place. There’s more to the relationship between sea turtles and humans than most of us imagine.

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July 13, 2020 at 06:03AM

Spend £25 billion to save £20 a year. That sounds like a bargain!!

The energy watchdog has announced new plans to transform the UK’s gas power network, upgrading it to be more “green” and potentially saving Brits an average of £20 a year on their energy bills.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, on Thursday published plans to invest £25bn ($32bn) over five years to develop more “clean” gas energy network the UK. The investment will go into the infrastructure that transports energy around the UK.

The plan would be paid for by energy companies themselves. The regulator has proposed doubling a cap on how much money energy firms can return to their investors and reducing firm’s spending plans to ensure costs do not rise for consumers.

Ofgem estimates the average gas bill would in fact fall by £20 per year at the start of its transformation plan.

“Ofgem is working to deliver a greener, fairer energy system for consumers,” chief executive Jonathan Brearley said in a statement.

“This is why we are striking a fair deal for consumers, cutting returns to the network companies to an unprecedented low level while making room for around £25bn of investment needed to drive a clean, green and resilient recovery.

“Now more than ever, we need to make sure that every pound on consumers’ bills goes further. Less of your money will go towards company shareholders, and more into improving the network to power the economy and to fight climate change.” https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ofgem-green-energy-plan-25bn-bills-national-grid-sse-gas-082131746.html

If you read the small print however,  the £20 a year saving only applies at the start of its transformation plan.

By the time the plan is completed, households will have paid out about £1000 each to fight climate change. As the plan covers five years, that works out at £200 a year.

We are not told exactly what this will cover, but we know it only covers power transmission and gas distribution. Plans for electricity distribution will be announced later, and will doubtless cost billions more.

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July 13, 2020 at 05:29AM