The press says California is flooding and having the worst drought in 1,200 years.
via Real Climate Science
January 6, 2023 at 10:31AM
Month: January 2023
By Paul Homewood
The speed limit on motorways should be reduced to 64mph. Restrictions could be imposed on going from one part of your city to another. Short-haul flights might be banned, and rings of cameras built around every major town to levy charges on anyone moving in and out. Almost every day brings calls for some kind of curb on travel. And yet, underneath them all is one simple force: a movement by green extremists to take us back to the dark ages. It is effectively a plot to reinvent feudalism, a time when people rarely left their own villages and were taxed if they dared do so.
That’s why, for all the temptation to ridicule the Great Unwashed, we have to take their politics seriously. It wasn’t some Extinction Rebellion activists but a Commons committee that suggested reducing the speed limit to 64mph (and what is to stop them from taking it to 60mph or 58.32mph?) In London, it is the mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is championing the expansion of the Ulez charge, which will kill road traffic into the capital. Other cities with congestion or pollution charges, like Birmingham, will likely follow suit. Leaders in Oxford and Canterbury, meanwhile, have proposed what many fear will turn out effectively to be restrictions on driving from one zone of their cities to another, unless you have a permit or are willing to pay a hefty fine.
Then there is France, which is banning short-haul flights between cities that are connected by train in under 2.5 hours – which would not be of much use here in Britain, where the rail unions are always striking. The sci-fi writers of the 1950s and 1960s imagined a world where we zipped around effortlessly in robot-driven flying vehicles by the 2030s. Instead, it looks as if we will all be forced to stay at home, venturing out of our local areas once or twice a year when we have a permit to do so, hoping the cameras don’t flash when we pass the one-mile mark.
The environment should be protected. Carbon emissions need to be brought down and air quality improved. It might even be sensible to encourage people to travel at different times to ease congestion, or to create more pedestrian zones to make urban areas more livable. But that isn’t what this is about. Instead, climate change is being used as cover to wage war on the very concept of travel.
Those wanting to restrict it forget that the economy, science, culture and health all depend on people and goods getting from one place to another. There are few forms of economic activity that don’t rely on the movement of these things. Science would make fewer breakthroughs without experts meeting at conferences. Music would be unimaginably duller without the cross-pollination of rhythms, melodies and beats between continents. Our language would be poorer, too.
It is surely not a coincidence that we began to emerge from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance and then into modernity when travellers started linking up Asia, Europe and America, carrying plants, technologies and, most of all, ideas. We risk shutting down that infinite channel of progress with foolish green virtue-signalling.
Working from home won’t save us, and nor can the internet replace real communication. The world of green extremism is closed and neo-medieval, offering about as much opportunity to people as that enjoyed by a 12th-century serf. Even the Great Unwashed couldn’t survive that.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 6, 2023 at 09:18AM
By Paul Homewood
China reiterated its focus on energy security on Wednesday, vowing to ensure the supply of energy and electricity, coordinate resources and accelerate approval of new coal projects, while asking coal enterprises to expand production as peak season approaches.
Power generation companies should store more high-quality coal to ensure power generation during peak times, and leading groups should coordinate resources to support affiliated power plants in Southwest and Northeast China to make full use of their capacity, and help fill the gap in local power supply and heating, according to a report from the China Securities Journal on Wednesday, citing information from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
The commission has recently implemented dynamic monitoring at 195 coal mines, 572 coal power plants, 727 hydropower plants, and 96 gas-fired power plants affiliated to state-owned enterprises, and has increased policy support, the report said.
China has been deploying both domestic and overseas energy resources to ensure stable supplies for winter heating, while further optimizing the country’s energy mix to enhance supply security amid a complex international energy situation.
Since the beginning of the winter heating season, the country’s supply of coal for power generation has remained at a high level, with the coal inventory at a record high of around 175 million tons, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on November 30.
According to data from the Inner Mongolia Energy Bureau, the region’s coal output reached 970 million tons in the first 10 months of this year, up 13.6 percent year-on-year, of which 600 million tons were sent out of the region to meet the coal demand in 29 provincial-level regions across China.
In August, the State Council announced that measures would be taken to support electricity producers by issuing 200 billion yuan ($28.22 billion) of special-purpose bonds to help with energy supply.
In the meantime, China has been strengthening energy cooperation with countries including Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
Observers said that the overall energy supply in China is sound, with the output of coal, petroleum and natural gas on the rise, while market demand is relatively stable.
Moreover, a series of energy cooperation deals, especially a long-term deal with Qatar, will further diversify the nation’s sources of energy and greatly contribute to China’s energy supply security, as well as the country’s goals of achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, they said.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202301/1283225.shtml
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 6, 2023 at 08:57AM
England and Wales are having record numbers of excess deaths. The Sky News presenter can’t figure out what is causing it.
via Real Climate Science
January 6, 2023 at 08:38AM
