We keep being told that fossil fuel companies will be left with billions of dollars worth of stranded assets. But that could only happen if the whole world goes over to renewable energy, which does not look likely in China, India and Russia for a start. On the other hand supposing there is not a mass transfer to battery electric vehicles (BEVs)? Read more here:
Stranded Assets – Donn Dears LLC (ddears.com)
via climate science
January 19, 2023 at 03:06AM
“Cruise ship alarmists: check your premises and update your facts. Take a week long cruise. Bring some books to beat ‘climate anxiety.’ Epstein, Koonin, Bryce, Lomborg, Smil, Morano …. all affordable and best sellers.”
I am leaving the country on a cruise ship next week. It’s a rather amazing, affordable get-away. A week at sea with multiple international destinations is for the masses–the middle class and some lower-to-middle upper class. (Cunard from New York City to Liverpool will have to wait for some of us.)
There will be around 5,400 passengers and 2,200 crew on board (Allure of the Seas). The reformulated diesel that powers the ship (electricity too) represents the work of hundreds of thousands of “energy slaves.” All to have the experience that Kings and Queens of yore could only dream about.
Cruise ships are little cities at sea. They are monuments to freedom, joining the Supermarket and, of course, the ultimate capitalist institution, the Stock Market. There is virtually no government, just “simple rules for a complex world.”
All of the great food one can eat and a reflective look at the open ocean. Destination excursions to see eco-treasures. Again, all made possible by dense, reliable mineral energies.
Complaint! (Stephen Fern, Ark2030)
Bah, humbug–the climate busy-bodies do not like such conspicuous consumption, fueled by dense mineral energy. Here is a recent post from Stephen Fern, founder of Ark2030., in response to a next-generation mega-cruise ship, The Icon of the Seas (Royal Caribbean).
I suppose this is the perfect illustration of where the world has gone wrong. A glorious celebration of greed, consumption and avarice; packaged as ‘entertainment’. All on one boat.
It presents the perfect contrast to what ‘Ark Lovers’ are seeking.
A world where our happinness is based upon a mutual respect for people, planet and prosperity.
Where our fulfillment comes from our connection with nature, positive relationships with family and friends, belonging to communities that care about each other and the environment around them.
Looking after our physical and mental well-being, eating healthy local seasonal food and enjoying every aspect of a life that is on offer for free.
Not just taking what we want just because we can … and always making sure we give back more than we take.
More Complaint! (Angry Assaad)
Enter Assaad Razzouk, the “angry clean energy guy,” and head of Gurīn Energy in Singapore (renewables), and author of “Saving the Planet without the Bullshit.” The chapter “Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit”: A Luxury Cruise Liner is a Stinking Floating Dumpster,” states:
Luxury cruises are punctured garbage bins on water. 47 cruise ships emit 10 times more sulphur dioxide in European waters (2017 data) than all of Europe’s 260m cars combined. That’s just 1 of 3 air pollutants discharged from the ships’ smokestacks.
And it gets worse … Many in the industry also use the dirtiest possible fuel to power their ships, one that is 100 times more polluting than road diesel
– Bunker fuel is waste from the oil refining process and it is an environmental nightmare. Pitch black, thick, heavy and toxic, it doesn’t evaporate and it emits more poison than other fuels because it’s loaded with sulphur, which when burned releases gases harmful to human health and to the environment. These gases are poisonous to fish and seabirds and aren’t much good for humans living near ports, because they travel hundreds of kms: 70% of shipping emissions occur within 400kms of land.
Industry emits a staggering amount of poison, much of which makes it into our lungs. Ship engine oil pollution increases incidences of childhood asthma and cancer, contributing to an estimated 1,300 premature deaths a year around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and 60,000 a year globally
By using this fuel, the industry is also subsidizing the oil and gas sector. If shipping lines weren’t buying it, oil and gas companies would have to dispose of it safely, an expensive proposition – and a subsidy in the order of $450 billion
The shipping industry dumps its plastic in the oceans. It dumps its trash. It dumps its excess oil. It also dumps its foul wastewater
Ships are required to treat waste using equipment referred to as ‘Marine Sanitation Devices’ – except this can mean literally any equipment designed to treat sewage, often leaving behind toxic contaminants, bacteria and heavy metals that harm marine ecosystems
The shipping industry is also responsible for a billion tons of carbon a year. If it were a country, it would be the 6th largest polluter in the world. Its emissions are growing to such an extent that they are currently expected to be anywhere from 50% to 250% higher by 2050
Price they paid for all that poison: Zero
Friends of the Earth
Check your premises and facts, Angry Assaad. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and the real pollutants named have been going down and down. Check the websites of the major cruise lines and learn about the amazing technology that leaves the ocean waters as clean as they are found. And ditch the emotions and take a cruise yourself to see how you like it. (But please, not floating wind turbines or solar buoys to interfere with operations.)
Friends of the Earth
In Cruise Ships’ Environmental Impact (March 14, 2022), the eco-group Friends of the Earth states:
Cruise ships are a catastrophe for the environment — and that’s not an overstatement. They dump toxic waste into our waters, fill the planet with carbon dioxide, and kill marine wildlife. Cruise ships’ environmental impact is never ending, and they continue to get bigger. They once were small ships, around 30,000 tons. Now, corporations are building billion-dollar cruise ships to hold more than 9,000 people. They’re doing everything they can to pack these floating cities full of tourists while polluting everything in their path.
Worse:
… everything that cruise ships come in contact with are likely to be harmed along their journey. The air, water, fragile habitats, coastal communities, and wildlife are all affected. But most governments have refused to take actions to actually regulate the cruise industry and buried their heads in the sand to ignore the ongoing damage to the environment and communities.
Cruise ship alarmists: check your premises and update your facts. Take a week long cruise. Bring some books to beat ‘climate anxiety.’ Epstein, Koonin, Bryce, Lomborg, Smil …. all affordable and best sellers.
The post Ark2030: No Pleasure Cruise Ships Please (elitism in action) appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
January 19, 2023 at 01:20AM
Opinion by Kip Hansen — 19 January 2023
No, they do not. As true as that it, it does not make for a very informative OpEd.
I know, I know…. ”There’s a Study!” There is always a study when the press and government power-seekers propose doing something as nutty as banning natural gas cooking stoves and home heating equipment. There have been other pieces here (and all over the press) as to whether or not “The Government is coming for your gas stoves!”. They are, but that is not what I’m writing about today.
What kicked off the press frenzy, besides the faux pas by Richard Trumka Jr., a US Consumer Product Safety commissioner, was a study that was interpreted in a New York Times OpEd by Farhad Manjoo as this:
“About 13 percent of cases of childhood asthma in the United States may be attributable to gas cooktops, a recent study found — a population-level effect similar to that of exposure to secondhand smoke.”
The recent study is: “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States” by Talor Gruenwald, Brady A. Seals, Luke D. Knibbs and H. Dean Hosgood III, which was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which is an ”open access journal published semimonthly online with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.” Some would interpret this to mean a “pay-to-play online journal”.
And who are the authors? The lead author is Talor Gruenwald – who’s listed institution is “RMI, Carbon-Free Buildings” – and who is RMI? The Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins’ was the founder. Talor Gruenwald is touted at Energy Central as providing “quantitative analysis and policy research in support of eliminating fossil fuel use in buildings at the Rocky Mountain Institute.” Co-author Brady A. Seals is also at RMI. The other two co-authors are real epidemiological researchers: Luke D. Knibbs and H. Dean Hosgood III, both studying air pollution and other issues.
So, this is an activist-driven study.
Did this study actually measure children’s exposure to gas stoves, water heaters and furnaces (or any pollution that they might have caused) in the homes in which children suffered from asthma? No, of course not. Did this study actually measure any homes for NO2 levels and connect this to children’s asthma? No, of course not.
This was a “meta-analysis” study. This means that this study tried to combine the findings of previous studies, some dating back many years, that seemed to study the issue at hand.
Did those studies actually measure the real-world exposure of any children to pollution caused by the us of gas appliances in homes of children who suffered from asthma? Not that I can find. In fact, there is no Supplemental Information available for this study and thus no list of the “The title review identified 27 manuscripts as potentially pertinent. Full manuscripts (n = 27) were independently reviewed by co-authors; none reported new associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma specifically in North America or Europe.”
Say what? None of the studies covered specifically North America or Europe?
Here’s the thing:
“As a result, effect sizes previously reported for current asthma in North America and Europe combined (weighted by inverse variance; Nstudies = 10; Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.34, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.12–1.57) were utilized in the PAF estimations.”
They don’t actually seem to have done a new study on effects of gas stove use and asthma at all – they used “effect sizes” from a 2013 study which itself was a meta-analysis, in which the 2013 authors re-analyzed (tortured) each of the original studies’ data until it admitted that gas stoves were bad.
The 2013 study uses data from a number of even earlier studies, such as a 1978 study that did actually measured NO2 levels and found that NO2 levels in homes that had gas cooking or heating in children’s bedroom to average 0.03 ppm while ambient outdoor air in the neighborhood had NO2 levels of 0.02 ppm. We have to wonder at the tremendous power of that extra 1/100th of a part per million to damage children’s health.
In another examined study, the finding was: “In the 1977 cross-sectional study, only the prevalence of day or night cough in boys (p « 0.02) and colds going to chest in girls (p < 0.05) were found to be significantly higher in children from homes where gas was used for cooking compared with children from homes where electricity was used.” (NB: Not asthma.] Yes, gas cooking causes boys to cough and girls to get colds in their chests.
Many of the studies found no effect from gas cooking stoves on children’s respiratory health, with findings such as this: “No relation was found between the type of fuel used for cooking in the home and the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and diseases recalled by the mother after allowing for the effects of gender, social class, and parental smoking.”
Almost every contemporary study on gas appliances and asthma in children start with some version of: ”Gas stoves emit pollutants that are respiratory irritants. U.S. children under age 6 who live in homes where gas stoves are used for cooking or heating have an increased risk of asthma, wheeze and reduced lung function.”
Bottom Lines:
1. Gas cooking stoves are blamed for children’s respiratory illnesses, like asthma, widely in the literature. Almost none of the studies actually measure the exposure of the child to the putative cause: hours exposed to how much gas stove use; measure NO2 levels in the home, whether there are multiple gas appliances in the home (water heaters, clothes dryer, heating appliance), or ambient NO2 in the child’s outdoor environment or school. Many of the studies failed to note or take into account parental smoking in the home.
2. In the UK studies, it was found that poorer homes used the cook stove or oven to heat the house – vastly increasing byproducts of combustion in the home. Homes that use the oven to heat the home are unlikely to leave the windows open for proper ventilation.
3. This topic exposes the often seen “everybody knows” aspect of health sciences in particular. The Health Sciences have already decided that gas cooking stoves are bad – on the thinnest of evidence. Thus, every new study relies on older studies, which themselves rely on even older studies, going back decades, that “sort-of say it is so”. Thus we have the Salt Wars, the Sugar Wars, the Obesity Wars, the Med Diet War, the PM2.5 Wars – all of which are based on the same sort of iffy science. What we need in these areas of study are “start from scratch” proper more-or-less randomized, controlled designs (RCD). And some just plain Good Science.
4. I have a niggling suspicion that there is a concerted effort coming from the anti-fossil-fuels advocacy camp to produce lots of “science” that condemns home gas appliances (stoves, ovens, water heaters and furnaces) as “harmful to the health of children” towards the end of instituting bans on natural gas use in homes. They have had some successes with states and cities. With enough “evidence” (no matter how thin and ephemeral) advocacy groups can petition or sue (as in sue-and-settle) the EPA for “relief”.
Sequence of Events:
1) Trumka [US Consumer Product Safety commissioner ] recommended in October (2022) that the CPSC seek public comment on the hazards associated with gas stoves.
2) Rocky Mountain Institutes submits a meta-analysis paper based on decade old studies to a journal on 4 November 2022, which is published just before Christmas 2022.
3) Armed with the “new study” Trumka blabs out on 9 January 2023 that gas stoves are harmful and Bloomberg had this: “The US Consumer Product Safety Commission will move to regulate gas stoves as new research links them to childhood asthma.” ““This is a hidden hazard,” Trumka Jr. said. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” [ source ]
4) Chaos ensues with wild backpedaling and denials from all quarters in the U.S. administration.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Before anyone accuses me of conspiracy thinking, let me be perfectly clear. The intention of Rocky Mountain Institute’s study authors, Talor Gruenwald and Brady A. Seals, state clearly, as a policy, that their purpose is to produce research in support of eliminating fossil fuel use in buildings.
And they did. Personally, I think they (RMI) alerted the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in advance of their intention to do the study and what they would find, thus the initiating the call for public comment, to which RMI submitted the paper (maybe a pre-print) in support of a finding of harm.
The anti-fossil fuels groups have way too much funding and very clever public relations professionals planning these campaigns – and they are very successful. To the detriment of the public good.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
via Watts Up With That?
January 19, 2023 at 12:36AM
Some of America’s biggest planned offshore wind projects have recently been axed, with more to follow. Deemed ‘uneconomic’, potential investors and financiers are running a mile from what portend to be enormous white elephants.
Where the true cost of onshore wind power is phenomenal, the cost of the offshore stuff is astronomical.
Going offshore brings with it exorbitant maintenance costs (think operating any metal-based machinery in a salt-laden marine environment), as well as the repair and maintenance of hundreds of kilometres of undersea cable, the cost of which often runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars for each operating project, over time.
Let’s face it, apart from the subsidies it attracts, there is no economic basis for wind power, anytime, anywhere, ever.
As Warren Buffet put it: “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Buffett might have continued, that it’s the only reason anyone invests in them.
In the piece below, James Freeman raises the point that proponents of the grand wind scam run a mile from any type of cost/benefit analysis – for fairly obvious reasons – and goes on to detail the collapse of two mega projects off the Atlantic coast.
The Cold, Windy Voyage to Alternative Energy or What does a giant spinning turbine sound like to a right whale?
Wall Street Journal
James Freeman
19 December 2022
This column has been making the case that replacing efficient forms of reliable energy with politically favored intermittent power sources is not as easy as it looks. Some jurisdictions seeking to replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear plants with wind power may not have adequately considered the costs and benefits.
Perhaps no political class outside of California has been as hostile to cost/benefit analysis as the elected officials of Massachusetts. Now Jon Chesto reports for the Boston Globe:
The state’s nascent offshore wind industry suffered a big setback on Friday when Avangrid told state regulators it wants to end its contracts with three major utilities to build a massive wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard…
In September, chief executive Pedro Azagra said Avangrid would postpone construction of Commonwealth Wind, which could eventually provide enough power for up to 750,000 homes [only when the wind is blowing between 5 and 25 m/s], by pushing its completion date out to 2028, and would need to rewrite the contracts because of a sharp increase in commodity costs. With Friday’s move, Avangrid has given up on those renegotiation efforts.
Some readers may feel like they’ve been hearing about how close wind power is to commercial viability for virtually their entire lives. Regardless, this seems to be another reminder that the desires of politicians cannot change the underlying physics and economics. The Boston Globe report continues:
This move just adds to the pressure on policy makers. Offshore wind power is considered crucial for Massachusetts to meet its ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 from 1990 levels. Representatives for the Baker administration and Governor-elect Maura Healey expressed disappointment with Avangrid’s decision.
This broad spectrum of disappointment brings us to another lesson: the fact that an idea is bipartisan does not mean it will work.
Another lesson that must constantly be taught to policy makers is that every method of producing energy brings with it some kind of environmental footprint, some costs along with the alleged benefits. There is no free lunch.
Even before the team behind Commonwealth Wind acknowledged their problem with economics, some of the locals were focusing on the footprint. Heather McCarron reported last month for the Cape Cod Times:
To the residents of Osterville, Dowses Beach is perfect: A place of refuge for people, a sanctuary to a variety of wildlife and a delicate landscape that needs to be handled with extra special care. The beach, with its sweeping view of Nantucket Sound, is also perfect for offshore wind developer Avangrid Renewables… Avangrid is eyeing the beach to land three power cables – that will transmit a total of 1,200 megawatts of electricity – from its Commonwealth Wind project, one of several commercial-scale, offshore wind projects with a lease to harness the winds south of Martha’s Vineyard.
… Meanwhile, a number of the residents are circling their wagons, worried about the impacts the project could have on Dowses Beach – an estuarine environment they think is too fragile to carry such a large project… The group pointed out that the Dowses Beach estuarine system shelters at least two species of vulnerable birds – plovers and the least tern.
As for the economics, Commonwealth is not the only wind project under scrutiny. Alex Kuffner reported last month for the Providence Journal:
Rhode Island utilities regulators are considering suspending Mayflower Wind’s application for transmission cables that would run up the Sakonnet River to the former site of the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset after the developer raised questions about the financial viability of the first phases of the $5 billion offshore wind project it has proposed off Massachusetts.
The state Energy Facility Siting Board has ordered the company to demonstrate why the proceedings shouldn’t be stayed until the questions surrounding financing of the first 1,200 megawatts of the project are resolved.
It’s beginning to seem like replacing cheap and reliable energy production is complicated and costly. But politicians have made promises and of course not just in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The Garden State’s liberal electorate has been choosing politicians promoting allegedly green policies for years. Therefore purveyors of alternative energy might have expected nothing but warm greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
Yet down the shore many residents aren’t eager to have massive metal virtue signals rising out of the water, even if they are 15 miles offshore. Amanda Oglesby recently reported for the Asbury Park Press on local opposition, including among residents of Long Beach Island:
… Save LBI, a group that opposes offshore wind farms close to shore, said wind turbines off New Jersey would harm endangered North Atlantic right whales. Ocean surveying, installation of wind turbines and the noise created by the operations would create unacceptable levels of noise for the whales, according to a Save LBI news release issued Monday.
The population of North Atlantic right whales has declined to fewer than 350 members, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The whales are vulnerable to ocean noise pollution, vessel strikes, shifts in prey locations, and habitat degradation, according to NOAA.
In October, NOAA released a draft strategy aimed at reducing harm to North Atlantic right whales from offshore wind development, while advancing the Biden Administration’s goals of expanding ocean wind development. The draft calls for species observers and acoustic monitoring to try and build the projects quietly and avoid noisy work when endangered species are nearby.
Speaking of acoustics, as New Jersey’s most celebrated lyricist might have sung:
Sandy, the aurora is rising behind us. But what‘s that stuff on the horizon?
There is no Right place for these things.
via STOP THESE THINGS
January 19, 2023 at 12:33AM
