“Shrimp’s Carbon Footprint Is 10 Times Greater Than Beef’s” Shrimp’s Carbon Footprint Is 10 Times Greater Than Beef’s – Mother Jones
via Real Climate Science
May 13, 2024 at 03:17PM
Month: May 2024
In Seek and Ye Shall Find I discussed the Guardian’s opening article (about fire risk) in a series discussing “the myths and realities surrounding EVs” (with comments below the article over time, as the Guardian published further pieces discussing other supposed myths relating to EVs). Now it seems they are going to do it all over again, this time with respect to heat pumps. Today the first article appeared in a new series “exploring the myths and realities surrounding heat pumps”. It kicks off with an analysis of the question “Are heat pumps more expensive to run than gas boilers?”. You know where it’s coming from straight away, with the caption to the picture illustrating the article saying “Some households are confused about the potential benefits of heat pumps”. Then they call in aid Dr Jan Rosenow to discuss the costs. To some extent this is fair enough, as he has lots of expertise relating to this subject. On the other hand, he is an unabashed heat pump enthusiast, so he is perhaps not the best person to go to for an “independent” fact-check in this regard. My reservations are heightened by the fact that the Guardian enthusiastically tells its readers that “[i]n a recent paper for Carbon Brief, he explained that heat pumps have similar running costs to a gas boiler, even though electricity is more expensive than gas, because they produce heat at a more efficient rate.” It’s the reference to Carbon Brief that bothers me, given their claim that offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas (it isn’t, and in any meaningful sense, wasn’t when they made the claim). Thus I fear that anything that appears at Carbon Brief has to serve the agenda, and I wonder as to its objectivity.
Still, that’s a preliminary quibble, and possibly an unfair one so far as Dr Rosenow is concerned. Let’s see what the Guardian has to say. In setting the scene, it tells us that “[t]here are those who believe heat pumps could play a vital role in climate action, and sceptics who claim their benefits are a lot of hot air.” Also, that in terms of replacing gas boilers, “[f]or most European homes, the answer is likely to be an electric air source heat pump, as governments try to clean up carbon emissions. But not all households are convinced.” So far, so reasonable, though I regret that the next sentence invokes the culture wars that often seem to exist only in the minds of Guardian journalists – “the plans to replace millions of gas boilers across the country with the little-known devices has fed into culture wars.”
Having said that, I find myself pleasantly surprised by the realistic and reasonably objective nature of the article. Having set the scene, it gets down to business with a very fair opening paragraph dealing with the central claim:
It is true that heat pumps are expensive. In the UK, the majority of homes are expected to opt for an air source heat pump, which costs on average just more than £12,500 to buy and install, according to industry accreditors at MCS. This is four to five times the cost of a gas boiler, which usually falls between £1,600 and £3,000 depending on the size needed.
There then follows a discussion of subsidies – in Poland households are paid up to €14,420 (£12,403) to fit green energy solutions, including heat pumps. In Italy a short-lived scheme effectively allowed households to make money out of installing a heat pump, by paying them 110% of the cost. And as we know, in the UK the government has upped the offer of subsidies to households installing a heat pump: it now stands at £7,500. Of course, the sharp-eyed will see that still leaves the average household well out of pocket with regard to installation costs of a (subsidised) heat pump compared to the (unsubsidised) cost of installing a gas boiler. Then we are told:
However, the gulf in upfront costs is narrowing all the time, with some heat pump installations getting close to cost parity with gas boilers once grants are included.
The problem I have with such a claim is that the bottom line is that heat pumps are still more expensive to install, even after the subsidy is taken into account. Secondly, the £7,500 subsidy is a lot of money, and at the end of the day it’s a real cost, since we all pay taxes, so we are effectively simply subsidising ourselves. If all households were to install an air source heat pump (they won’t, because they aren’t suitable for all houses and apartments), then we would be looking at a cost of (around 27 million households multiplied by an average cost of £12,500 =) £337.5 billion. I think that’s a pretty big elephant in the room, and an extraordinary cost to ask the country to bear.
It’s going to be worth seeing how the series develops. I will deal with later articles in the series by offering comments below this article in due course. They will, we are told, cover issues such as possible expensive upgrades to accommodate heat pumps, which may involve “eye-watering costs to upgrade their radiators or improve their home insulation to ensure their heat pump is effective.”
However, the Guardian’s opening article looks at the ongoing running costs of a heat pump, once installed, versus a gas boiler. Acknowledging that in the UK electricity currently costs around four times as much as gas, the claim is that running costs work out roughly the same for both, because heat pumps use about three to five times less energy compared with a gas boiler”. The technical term for this is “seasonal co-efficient of performance” (ScoP).
I find myself pleasantly surprised by the analysis (and should, in fairness, withdraw my reservations about Dr Rosenow). We are told:
A recent study of 750 households by the Energy Systems Catapult, an independent government-backed researcher, found that heat pumps typically have a SCoP of 2.9. This implies a small extra cost to running a heat pump compared with a gas boiler.
That seems a fair conclusion, given that we are also told:
Rosenow’s analysis has shown that a heat pump with a SCoP of more than 3 will match the running costs of an 85% efficient gas boiler, while a SCoP of 3.2 will match the costs of a 90% efficient A-rated gas boiler.
Then we are told that new tariffs from Octopus Energy, specifically aimed at heat pump users, could render them even cheaper to run than gas boilers. That may be true, but it bothers me that it means that non-heat pump users must be subsidising heat pump users. What happens if and when we have all been forced to install heat pumps? Presumably the tariff will be withdrawn, since there won’t be anyone left to subsidise that tariff by paying the higher tariff.
Next we are advised as to the caveats, and again the presentation is pretty fair:
Each country will be different. The economics of a heat pump compared with a gas boiler rely on the government grants used to lower the upfront cost of installation, and the fluctuating costs of electricity and gas.
Within each country the benefits of a heat pump hinge on its installation. A poorly installed heat pump would fall short of the average SCoP of 2.9 identified in field studies as a key point at which heat pumps reach parity with gas boilers, and this could quickly erode any expected savings – even when using a good value energy tariff.
Then we are told that the other side of that coin is that some installers have reported ScoPs of 4, implying that the heat pumps in question would be cheaper to run than gas boilers.
The article concludes with the verdict, which I found to be exceptionally interesting. That is because it acknowledges that savings can be achieved compared to gas boilers only if they run at good efficiency and because of the grants available. Sadly, at this point, the net zero agenda takes over. Dr Rosenow says:
“In the future, governments need to rebalance the taxes and levies on electricity to make heat pumps the lowest-cost heating option.”
And the Guardian reports:
The UK government is already considering options to lower electricity costs by moving the green levies usually paid through power bills into general taxation or on to gas bills. This would make the savings from choosing a heat pump even greater.
That’s as may be, but since we all pay general taxation, we all end up paying for it. And once all the gas boiler uses tire of being a mulct cow, and install their own heat pumps, that source of subsidy will cease. The only truly objective assessment would compare like with like, without relying on specific tariffs subsidised by other energy users, without relying on subsidies paid for out of general taxation, and without expecting gas boiler users to pay “green levies” to make the cost of heat pumps comparable.
The coda to all this is disappointing. The Guardian falls back on a survey, by the innovation charity Nesta, which heard the views of more than 2,500 domestic heat pump owners and more than 1,000 domestic gas boiler owners in England, Scotland and Wales over the last winter, from which it claims that two-thirds (67%) of households with a heat pump said they were satisfied with their running costs compared with 59% of gas boiler owners – even without extensive energy efficiency upgrades. Unfortunately for the Guardian I de-bunked those claims here. It’s always important to fact-check the fact-checkers.
via Climate Scepticism
May 13, 2024 at 02:59PM
By Paul Homewood
Brendan O’Neill: Queen Greta has exposed the truth about the green movement
The Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2024
There is a reason, beyond bandwagon-jumping, why climate zealots are raging against Israel. They feel revulsion at capitalism and modernity
So, Greta Thunberg has a new cause. She’s found a new crusade to throw her weight behind. Forget saving the planet – now she wants to save Palestine.
Yes, the pint-sized prophetess of doom has swapped raging against industrialism for raging against Israel. Mother Nature will just have to wait – her erstwhile valiant defender is busy fixing the Middle East now.
Yesterday, Greta was snapped at the protest in Malmo, Sweden against Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest.
She looked the part. She had a keffiyeh draped over her shoulders and a smug look on her face: the two must-haves of every puffed-up bourgeois activist who gets off on fuming against Israel.
The keffiyeh really has become the uniform of the self-righteous. Go into a hip coffee shop or overpriced Soho burger joint and I guarantee you’ll see a Gen Z’er decked out in the Palestinian scarf.
Whatever happened to the sin of “cultural appropriation”? Not long ago, the right-on raged against white dudes who wear their hair in dreadlocks and white women who don kominos. “Stop stealing other people’s culture!”, they’d yell. Yet now they themselves spend their days in Arab attire.
That image of Greta in Malmo, looking very satisfied with herself, summed up the role the keffiyeh plays in the life of the 21st-century activist. Keffiyeh-wearing is less about drawing attention to the plight of the Palestinians than drawing attention to you. Look at me in my Arab garb, aren’t I good and hyper socially aware – that’s the needy cry of these hipster appropriators.
Yet beneath their radical chic, darker sentiments lurk. Their boilerplate hatred for Israel can have horrible consequences. So while young Greta was signalling her virtue on the streets of Malmo, another young woman was holed up in her hotel room for fear of mob assault.
It was Eden Golan, the Israeli-Russian 20-year-old who sang for Israel in the Eurovision finals in Malmo.
Golan’s inclusion in Eurovision sickened the anti-Israel protesters. Israel, they said, must be given the boot over its “genocide in Gaza” – their juvenile and historically illiterate term for Israel’s war against Hamas.
A mob even swarmed around the hotel Ms Golan was staying in. She received death threats. Things were so bad that she was warned not to leave her room. She was given a 24-hour security detail.
Is this really “progressive activism”? It looks more like bullying to me. The bullying of a young woman by a baying mob of Israel-bashers.
How galling that Greta should have been in the thick of such a regressive protest. This is someone who has spoken out about her own experiences of bullying. Who has said that women in the public eye get too much flak.
Yet now she preens at a protest that has had the consequence, intentional or otherwise, of filling a young woman with such dread that she has essentially become a prisoner in her own hotel.
We might call this woke privilege. Because Greta subscribes to chattering-class correct-think on every issue – climate change, transgenderism, Israel – she is granted the freedom to go about her business as she sees fit.
Ms Golan, on the other hand, is denied such basic liberty. Her national heritage, her devotion to her homeland, marks her out as morally suspect. And thus she must hide. “Shame!”, protesters shouted, as if she were a modern-day witch deserving of a dunking.
It is tempting to see Greta’s conversion from the climate-change cult to the anti-Israel religion as just bandwagon-jumping.
Perhaps her saviour complex, her burning sense of virtue, just needs a new outlet. So, like others of her generation, she ditches climate and trans and all the rest and moves on to “Palestine solidarity”. That’s the issue on which you can really make moral waves these days.
But I think there’s something else going on, too. The truth is that climate activism and anti-Israel agitation are very comfy bedfellows. There are even some creepy commonalities between green agitation and Israel’s greatest ideological foe: radical Islam.
Both, at root, represent a disgust with modernity. Both the privileged Western weepers over industrial society and the Islamist haters of Israel share an aversion to the modern world, to progress, to Enlightenment itself.
Hence we can even have a situation where Muslim activists who yell “Allahu Akbar” can be elected as councillors for the Green Party.
The upper-middle class recycling obsessive in Hampstead might seem a million miles from the bearded radical who publicly sings the praises of Allah – but they share an instinctive revulsion for capitalist society. One sees it as a crime against Mother Nature, the other as an affront to Muhammad.
To both sides, Israel is the pinnacle of the modernity they hate. A young, confident, entrepreneurial nation that rendered the desert a land of plenty? Boo. Hiss. Cast its people from our social circles.
So it makes sense that Greta has temporarily ditched Gaia for Gaza. For this crisis, too, furnishes her with an opportunity to advertise her pious rejection of the modern world.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 13, 2024 at 02:16PM
H/T maxyhoge
Robert Bryce explains the basics at his substack blog Build It, And The Wind Won’t Come. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Weather-dependent generation sources are…weather dependent:
Last year, despite adding 6.2 GW of new capacity,
U.S. wind production dropped by 2.1%.
Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and their many allies in the media made sure not to blame wind energy for the Texas blackouts. The American Clean Power Association (2021 revenue: $32.1 million) declared frozen wind turbines “did not cause the Texas power outages” because they were “not the primary cause of the blackouts. Most of the power that went offline was powered by gas or coal.”
Damaged wind turbines at the Punta Lima wind project, Naguabo, Puerto Rico, 2018. Photo: Wikipedia.
NPR parroted that line, claiming, “Blaming wind and solar is a political move.” The Texas Tribune said it was wrong to blame alt-energy after Winter Storm Uri because “wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.” The outlet also quoted one academic who said that natural gas was “failing in the most spectacular fashion right now.” Texas Tribune went on to explain, “Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.”
In other words, there was no reason to expect the 33 GW of wind capacity that Texas had to deliver because, you know, no one expected wind energy to produce much power. Expectations? Mr. October? Playoff Jamal? Who needs them?
But what happens when you build massive amounts of
wind energy capacity and it doesn’t deliver —
not for a day or a week, but for six months, or even an entire year?
That question is germane because, on Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration published a report showing that U.S. wind energy production declined by 2.1% last year. Even more shocking: that decline occurred even though the wind sector added 6.2 GW of new capacity!
A hat tip to fellow Substack writer Roger Pielke Jr., who pithily noted on Twitter yesterday, “Imagine if the U.S. built 6.2 GW new capacity in nuclear power plants and after starting them up, overall U.S. electricity generation went down. That’d be a problem, right?”
Um, yes. It would. And the EIA made that point in its usual dry language. “Generation from wind turbines decreased for the first time since the mid-1990s in 2023 despite the addition of 6.2 GW of new wind capacity last year,” the agency reported. The EIA also explained that the capacity factor for America’s wind energy fleet, also known as the average utilization rate, “fell to an eight-year low of 33.5%.” That compares to 35.9% capacity factor in 2022 which was the all-time high. The report continued, “Lower wind speeds than normal affected wind generation in 2023, especially during the first half of the year when wind generation dropped by 14% compared with the same period in 2022.”
Read that again. For half of last year, wind generation was down by a whopping 14% due to lower wind speeds. Imagine if that wind drought continued for an entire year. That’s certainly possible. Recall that last summer, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that U.S. generation capacity “is increasingly characterized as one that is sensitive to extreme, widespread, and long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts.”
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, corporate investment in wind energy between 2004 and 2022 totaled some $278 billion. In addition, according to data from the Treasury Department, the U.S. government spent more than $30 billion on the production tax credit over that same period. Thus, over the last two decades, the U.S. has spent more than $300 billion building 150 GW of wind capacity that has gobbled up massive amounts of land, garnered enormous (and bitter) opposition from rural Americans, and hasn’t gotten more efficient over time.
Wednesday’s EIA report is a stark reminder that all of that generation capacity is subject to the vagaries of the wind. Imagine if the U.S. had spent that same $300 billion on a weather-resilient form of generation, like, say, nuclear power. That’s relevant because Unit 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia came online on Monday. With that same $300 billion, the U.S. could have built 20, 30, or maybe even 40 GW of new nuclear reactors with a 92% capacity factor that wouldn’t rely on the whims of the wind. In addition, those dozens of reactors would have required a tiny fraction of the land now covered by thousands of viewshed-destroying, bat-and-bird-killing wind turbines.
If climate change means we will face more extreme weather in the years ahead — hotter, colder, and/or more severe temperatures for extended periods — it’s Total Bonkers CrazytownTM to make our electric grid dependent on the weather. But by lavishing staggering amounts of money on wind and solar energy, and in many cases, mandating wind and solar, that’s precisely what we are doing.
via Science Matters
May 13, 2024 at 01:36PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 