Month: January 2023

Daily News

They Touched Greta! Climate Activists Vow Huge Street Protests

Essay by Eric Worrall

In the wake of Greta being forcibly removed from a coal mine expansion protest in Germany, young activists have vowed to protest in the streets “in huge numbers”.

Climate activists vow to take to streets to stop fossil fuel extraction

‘Cease and desist’ letter signed by over 650,000 people sent to oil and gas CEOs follows removal of Greta Thunberg from coal protest

Damian Carrington and Damien Gayle
Tue 17 Jan 2023 05.05 AEDT

Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels, a day after Greta Thunberg was removed by German police from a condemned village atop a massive coal deposit.

In a cease-and-desist letter to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies, youth campaigners accuse them of a “direct violation of our human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, your duties of care, as well as the rights of Indigenous people”.

“This cease-and-desist notice is to demand that you immediately stop opening any new oil, gas or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need,” the letter says.

…

Read more: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/climate-activists-vow-to-take-to-the-streets-to-stop-fossil-fuel-extraction

It gets funnier – the Greta arrest was actually staged (h/t ctm);

I doubt a few angry hippies and their kids will deter Germany from their coal mine expansion. Despite their green pretensions, the German nation is in a desperate situation, they really need that coal.

Germany’s Energy Crisis Sends It Tumbling Down Investment Rankings

By Irina Slav – Jan 16, 2023, 2:48 AM CST

The energy shortages plaguing Europe’s largest economy since 2021 have affected its attractiveness as an investment destination.

According to a report in the German daily Augsburger Allgemeine, Germany now ranks 18th out of 21 countries, falling four places in the ranking produced by the German economic research institute ZEW, Reuters reported.

The institute cited higher energy costs and a labor shortage for the revision of Germany’s place in the ranking, along with the slow pace of innovation and a complicated bureaucratic environment.

Soaring gas prices have shaken the German industry and prompted the government to spend billions of euros on helping businesses, as well as households, survive. Even with the state aid, however, many German businesses are curbing their activities or moving them to lower-cost energy locations such as the United States and Asia.

…

Read more: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germanys-Energy-Crisis-Sends-It-Tumbling-Down-Investment-Rankings.html

Personally I’m not expecting “huge numbers” to protest, maybe one or two protest marches if they are lucky. Europeans withering under skyrocketing energy prices have too many other problems on their plate, to worry about whether Greta got manhandled, or whether more coal gets mined.

In any case, it is way too cold for a proper street party.

via Watts Up With That?

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January 18, 2023 at 08:42AM

Daily News

The Gift of the Gabbard

By Paul Homewood

 image

With market prices for electricity so high, I’ve been keen to see what effect it has had on the bottom lines of windfarms, particularly the ones who are in the Renewables Obligation scheme, and therefore get a generous subsidy on top of the money extracted from hard-up consumers. The December 2022 year ends will be the first to show the effect of a full year of the energy crisis, but a recent set of accounts, covering the year to March 2022 allows us to see what half a year of sky high prices has done for the bottom line.

At 500MW, Greater Gabbard is a mid-sized offshore unit. Commissioned in 2012, it has been entirely uneconomic, making an underlying loss averaging £70 million each year. However, thanks to generous subsidies, of an average of £170 million per year, it has been able to hand back a handsome profit to its shareholders. They would have been looking for cumulative operating profits to surpass the billion pound mark this year.

However, thanks to the surge in electricity prices, the financial performance of the windfarm has been transformed. The underlying losses have been turned around to a profit of £74 million, so with the subsidy on top, the shareholders are a quarter of a billion pounds to the good. Next year’s results could therefore easily be a profit of £350 million.

I’m sure the owners are very grateful to consumers of electricity across the country.

https://www.netzerowatch.com/the-gift-of-the-gabbard/

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January 18, 2023 at 06:02AM

Daily News

No more WEF backroom deals for Sir David Attenborough?

On the first anniversary of Fallen Icon, I wonder if Sir David has made his last backroom deal? His years of relentless messaging anti-capitalist climate doom seemed like a concerted plan to build a legacy based on something other than smooth talking: I am convinced Attenborough saw the shocking film footage of walrus falling to their deaths presented in the Netflix/WWF extravaganza Our Planet as the leverage he needed to kick-start an aggressive campaign to promote action on climate change and curb capitalism. But it all collapsed at COP26 in 2021 with his failure to make any difference at all.

Attenborough made an on-camera plea in early November 2022 to promote yet another film but he hasn’t been seen in public in ages. After being oddly MIA at the Queen’s funeral last September, he’s apparently not attending the 2023 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this week either, after making a huge splash there in 2019.

In January 2019, Attenborough made several high-profile public statements at the WEF meeting, including a much-publicized interview with Prince William. No doubt with his influence, the producers of his blockbuster Netflix documentary Our Planet arranged an exclusive screening for the rich and powerful in attendance at Davos that included the infamous ‘falling walrus’ scene that months later would shock the world.

In a CBC News article (21 June 2019) about “how documentaries seek to bring climate change stories to life,” Our Planet director Keith Scholey revealed that the special preview version of the eight-hour series Our Planet (which we know from other sources included the falling walrus scenes) was meant to influence WEF audiences three months ahead of the film’s official premiere:

In addition to reaching a global audience via Netflix, the Our Planet team’s strategy also involves speaking directly to government policy-makers and industry leaders.

…the filmmakers weren’t sure anyone would show up for screenings they scheduled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said Scholey. But demand was so high, they added extra showings.

I couldn’t find any mention on the WEF website for the 2019 meeting agenda of scheduled, pre-release special screenings of Our Planet: I call that a secret backroom deal. Attenborough and others involved in the documentary (including the WWF) wanted those rich and powerful people to have the same visceral reaction to the falling walrus that the public later did–all blamed on global warming, of course–but they of course wouldn’t want to spoil the international shock value they also desired in April for the public release.

Attenborough’s collusion in this peddling of animal tragedy porn was his part in a grander scheme of things that people with even more power and influence had in mind. ‘Climate change’ was a means to an end and Attenborough assisted by telling children like Greta Thunberg that polar bears were dying because of human-caused fossil fuel use–even though there was no evidence it was true. He allowed himself to be used by the WWF and activist scientists, passing lies and misinformation along without question.

Statements made by Attenborough in 2021 were barely distinguishable from those made by the-then Duke of Edinburgh (now King Charles III) in his support of the WEF’s plan for a total revamping of society. While some have dismissed The Great Reset as a conspiracy theory, the concept (and the book by the same name) is very real: madness, but quite real.

Like polar bear predictive models, the WEF ‘Great Reset’ manifesto is based on several false premises that invalidate its message and the ‘solutions’ it proposes. It’s ideological drivel I reject outright.

Who would have thought that the soft-spoken narrator would be on-board with such bizarre ideas? Certainly not I–not until I wrote the book. Now it all makes sense.

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January 18, 2023 at 05:32AM

Daily News

Parliamentary Inquiry – UK Green Jobs Narrative Unravelling

Essay by Eric Worrall

Politicians have moved to sure up public faith in their green investment / jobs narrative, by launching a parliamentary inquiry into why British electric vehicle manufacturing companies are faltering.

Business Committee opens UK electric vehicle battery production inquiry

17 January 2023

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee launcheds new inquiry into the supply of batteries for electric vehicle manufacture in the UK, and the viability of battery manufacturing for electric vehicles in the UK.

The new inquiry launches after the industry suffered a series of setbacks, including today’s announcement that Government-championed battery start-up Britishvolt entered administration laying off 300 employees.

In October, BMW announced it will end production of the electric Mini in Oxford.

It leaves Chinese-backed Envision’s site in Sunderland that supplies Nissan as Britain’s only manufacturer ahead of the looming ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030.

Chair’s comments

Committee Chair Darren Jones said:

“The future of car manufacturing in the UK is dependent on our ability to make electric vehicles, and to be able to export them into the EU.

That means we need local supplies of electric vehicle batteries – something we’re falling significantly behind on compared to other parts of the world.

This inquiry will look at what’s holding back the development of electric car batteries in the UK and what needs to be done to protect the thousands of jobs across the country in this important sector.”

Terms of reference

The Committee is calling for evidence to be submitted to the Committee’s website by 14 February from people with knowledge or experience of the industry answering any of the following questions:

  • Is there enough UK vehicle manufacturing demand in the UK to support gigafactories?
  • Will the UK have sufficient battery production supplies by 2025 and 2030 respectively to meet the government phase-out plans for petrol and diesel vehicles?
  • Is UK-based battery production necessary to support the manufacture of electric vehicles in the UK?
  • What are the risks to the UK automotive industry of not establishing sufficient battery manufacturing capacity in the UK?
  • What other domestic end uses for batteries would provide a market for UK battery production?
  • Does the UK have a sufficient supply of critical materials to support vehicle battery production?
  • How ready are UK vehicle producers for the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) rules of origin (ROO) phasing in from 2024?
  • What can the UK learn from investment in other countries in the establishment of gigafactories?
  • Do we have the skills in the workforce required for the production of batteries? If not, what needs to be done?
  • Will the cost of UK batteries be competitive compared with batteries produced elsewhere?
  • What impact will the European Union’s proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism have on UK production?

Further information

Image: CC Argonne National Laboratory

Source: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/365/business-energy-and-industrial-strategy-committee/news/175490/business-committee-opens-uk-electric-vehicle-battery-production-inquiry/

The problem is obvious, except perhaps to Westminster politicians.

China is the global centre of renewable and battery manufacturing, because China has kept their costs low. China uses cheap coal energy and slave labour to manufacture renewable energy, battery and green vehicle components. China then exports their cheap, blood drenched product to Western countries run by economic illiterates.

Energy intensive manufacturing has no future in Britain, so long as Britain’s energy prices remain uncompetitively high. Unless Britain changes course, in the long term Britain will be relegated to assembling energy intensive components manufactured by others, and contributing the occasional high value component which leverages Britain’s precision engineering excellence.

Wasting taxpayer subsidies and political capital on supporting green national champions like British Volt, without addressing the underlying issues, just delays the inevitable.

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January 18, 2023 at 04:41AM