A letter has just been written to the UK government showing how they have made massive errors in calculating the cost of reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. In the short video, linked below Paul Burgess looks at the contents of the letter and explains what each point refers to. The department DESNZ is mentioned in the letter and this stands for Department of Energy Security and Net Zero.
The Letter NET ZERO – THE END? (youtube.com)
via climate science
September 24, 2024 at 01:46AM
Related links: Washington Post op-ed | Lancet study on global blood lead levels | Lancet global health burden of lead | Flint study | Needleman controversy
via JunkScience.com
September 24, 2024 at 01:32AM
“An America First energy agenda … focuses on creating a transparent and fair regulatory environment that creates a level playing field for all energy sources to compete, eliminating harmful regulations and barriers to growth across industries, allowing for investment in crucial infrastructure and jobs, reducing dependence on unstable foreign energy sources, and protecting the environment.”
Previous posts at MasterResource have examined the energy positions of the Jill Stein/Green Party, Kamala Harris, GOP Platform, American Petroleum Institute, and Heritage Foundation/Agenda 25. This post reproduces the energy positions of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank in the Trump fold.
Pillar VII of AFPI’s “Make American Energy Independent” begins:
Our American energy sector achieved something else as well: in attaining new heights of innovation and development, the U.S. now provides the world with opportunity and security through its energy and energy technology exports. A policy environment that fosters American industry and innovation is the critical foundation to powering a cleaner, more prosperous future for the U.S. and the world.
Unfortunately, Americans producers and innovators face mounting policy barriers that make it harder for them to provide the resources needed. We must act to safeguard a legacy of prosperity and security for future generations, not a legacy of stagnation, uncertainty, and crippling energy inflation.
An America First approach that elevates energy independence to the center of American policy is essential to achieving these goals. An America First energy agenda is grounded in sound principles of free-market economics and transparent governance. This approach focuses on creating a transparent and fair regulatory environment that creates a level playing field for all energy sources to compete, eliminating harmful regulations and barriers to growth across industries, allowing for investment in crucial infrastructure and jobs, reducing dependence on unstable foreign energy sources, and protecting the environment.
America First policies will reduce our reliance on foreign fuel and strengthen our position on the world stage, lower consumer energy and fuel costs, advance environmental protection, and promote and power a growing and prosperous economy for all Americans.
After stressing the importance of domestic energy in a political world, the energy agenda continues:
Unfortunately, this new era of energy independence is under threat from the anti-energy agenda and regulatory overreach of our government today. The current administration’s decision to halt federal leasing and deprive industry access to critical resources on federal lands undermines market certainty, leading to underdeveloped resources. This decision and others demonstrate its failure to recognize that the U.S. has the resources to safeguard energy independence.
America First policies emphasize securing energy independence across a broad range of energy sources.
Such an approach recognizes the importance of diversification and having redundancies in America’s
energy ecosystem, especially in light of the unpredictability of future economic and geopolitical conditions.
While fossil fuels will remain a core part of America’s energy backbone, our Nation’s ability to secure 21st century energy independence through world- leading technological innovation depends on several factors. These include having the industrial capacity to mine, extract, refine, and transport natural resources such as fossil fuels, critical minerals, rare earth elements, and uranium.
In contrast to the Left’s vision of putting all of America’s energy eggs into one government-centric “green” energy basket—exposing our Nation to dangerous levels of foreign dependence—the America First approach relies on removing undue regulatory constraints. These constraints hamstring the private
sector’s ability to take the lead in making critical investments that ensure America’s energy independence
regardless of which technologies end up prevailing in the energy marketplace. To facilitate such a robust marketplace, policymakers should also enhance access to federal lands for responsible resource development.
Just a few years ago, America defied the doubters by becoming energy independent for the first time in more than half a century. With sound policy, America can once again achieve this milestone and take energy security into its own hands, ensuring that it will never again be dependent on untrustworthy foreign governments for its energy needs.
Comment
The primacy of energy, as well as the dominant position of the U.S. in consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral energy, is evident in the above statements. The key is “sound principles of free-market economics and … transparent and fair regulatory environment that creates a level playing field,” which comports with AFPI’s “guiding principles” of liberty, free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities in all we do.”
Yes, oil, gas, and coal should not be penalized as under the current regime. But neither should fossil fuels or any form of energy should be subsidized by special tax treatment or government grants. The same goes for wind, solar, biomass, and civilian nuclear. Electricity, too, should be a a free-market sector unlike today.
Finally (but not least!), tariffs on imported goods, a Trump campaign promise, should be energy-neutral as a “second best” policy within a policy. Trump tariffs should not play into “border adjustment” policy (or PROVE IT Act policy) as part of a domestic CO2 (“carbon”) tax program. Better yet, it should not be implemented as a protectionist (vs. revenue) program for reasons explained by economic Donald Boudreaux.
The economic objection to tariffs – the economic case for free trade – is rooted exclusively in the recognition that artificially raising the prices of imported goods and services does not, contrary to protectionist myth, improve the living standards of people in the home country. Tariffs meant for revenue purposes are a categorically different animal. Revenue tariffs, quite unlike protective tariffs, achieve their goal only insofar as they do not obstruct imports.
The post America First, Energy First (AFPI on energy) appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
September 24, 2024 at 01:07AM
Many renewable energy stocks are dog shares to be avoided at all costs by investors seeking a reasonable rate of investment return. Perhaps not the advice you would receive in the advertising-compromised financial pages of mainstream media, and certainly not a message that resonates with promoters of the Net Zero fantasy. The Renewable Energy Industrial Index (RENIXX) is a widely-consulted global stock capitalisation index of the 30 largest renewable energy industrial companies in the world and it has shown near zero growth since it was started in 2006, along with a reverse projection back to 2002. Over the last three years alone it has lost almost half its value.
The retail exchange traded fund iShares Global Clean Energy aims to “target access to clean energy stocks around the world”. Last year its value fell by 26.1% and from its inception in 2008 it has more or less halved an initial investment of £10,000. Greencoat Renewable PLC is a U.K.-quoted investment trust and the owner and operator of renewable energy infrastructure assets in Europe. It is said to provide “attractive risk adjusted returns with a compelling growth opportunity; supported by a robust regulator regime and managed by a proven investment manager” – which is one imaginative way of explaining a loss in share value of 18.6% over the last five years.
Out in the real world where serious money talks, it is becoming obvious that the conclusion has been drawn that many green technologies, unless subsidised by the state, provide profit-free, second-rate solutions to problems invented around a politicised climate crisis.
This is the graph showing the real world performance of RENIXX. Consider also that an investment made over the same period in the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Index would have quadrupled.
The RENIXX covers a broad spectrum of activities including wind power manufacture and supplies, along with producers of solar PV cells. Current members of the Index include Orsted, Tesla and Vestas Wind Systems. The stock of this latter company has risen only 7% over the last 16 years and it has fallen 58% from a high in 2021. Typical of the RENIXX dogs is the U.S. operation First Solar which has risen since 2021 but is below its all-time high price reached in 2008.
In fact many of the indexes such as RENIXX would look even worse if the performance of Tesla was removed from the charts. Over its lifetime, Elon Musk’s Tesla share price has risen an astonishing 18,000%, although in common with almost all green shares it has suffered in recent years. But Tesla is the value exception with Real Clear Energy noting that its worth by 2021 soared to over $1 trillion, making it more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford, BMW and Honda combined. Its stellar rise helps deflect from the dreadful performance of other green stocks including EV manufactures. Real Clear Energy notes that since 2020, 31 EV companies have gone public on U.S. stock exchanges, but only one, the Chinese Li Auto, has seen its price rise since an initial public offering. Most were real bow-wows, but standout disasters were recorded by Fisker (-99%), Nikola (-94%), NIO (-50%), Lucid group (-75%) and Rivian (-88%). Six other companies are already bankrupt.
One EV company, Plug Power, supplies hydrogen energy systems, and in its 27 years of existence has never turned a profit. In 2024 it lost $1.45 billion, up from a deficit in 2018 of $43.8 million. Even the big boys find renewable equipment a challenge. In 2023, Ford lost $4.7 billion on sales of 116,000 electric vehicles, or over $40,000 per vehicle. General Electric’s wind turbine business lost $1.1 billion in 2023.
Of course the excuses come rolling in. Same thing happened with the early dot.com revolution, it is argued. But the green revolution is not a free market gold rush. It peddles second-rate solutions and produces equipment such as cars that the market does not want to buy in bulk. Collecting the breezes and the beams is only viable with huge amounts of subsidies taken from trapped consumers. Nobody would build a windmill to supply power to the electric grid if their mouths were not first stuffed with taxpayer gold. In Britain, electricity prices are soaring and wind and solar power, which supplies barely 6% of total energy needs, requires an annual bung of £12 billion. In the U.S., the Biden Administration has thrown vast amounts of money around in a desperate attempt to boost a green economy that few people would be willing to start and support with their own hard-earned.
The supplicant nature of many green businesses perhaps explains their bombed-out share prices, along with the end of cheap interest rates and higher inflation. But provide a heady mixture of free money and subsidies designed to guarantee a profit and the chancers will initially beat a path to your door with any number of whacky schemes to save the planet. At the U.K. Energy department, Mad Ed Miliband and his band of weird wonks are currently entertaining any number of financial black holes including carbon capture, hydrogen manufacture and battery storage.
But the money – and borrowing capacity – is running out for luxury pet projects across Europe and the seemingly unlimited government spending will have to end in the near future. And fears are rising about the heavy environmental damage inflicted by EVs, the lack of national green jobs created, the further de-industrialisation of western economies and the horrific, mostly unreported, toll on wildlife caused by the countryside-blighting growth of monster wind turbines and overhead power cables.
It is said that if you want to predict how people will vote in an election, the prices offered by bookmakers are a more reliable guide than opinion polls, which are often distorted for the benefit of the paying customer. Next time someone is punting green stories, ask to see what their value is in the real commercial world where hard-won cash is not necessarily God, but it is a deeply religious experience. In these cases, past results are probably a very good guide to future performance.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
via Watts Up With That?
September 24, 2024 at 12:02AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 