Category: Uncategorized

“Arctic ice loss driven by natural swings, not just mankind: study”

“Arctic ice loss driven by natural swings, not just mankind: study”

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Guest post by David Middleton From the No Schist, Sherlock files… The “record low wintertime maximum extent” still looks pretty icy. By Alister Doyle | OSLO Natural swings in the Arctic climate have caused up to half the precipitous losses of sea ice around the North Pole in recent decades, with the rest driven by […]

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March 14, 2017 at 01:11AM

Hail Shale: OPEC Is Losing The Global Oil Game

Hail Shale: OPEC Is Losing The Global Oil Game

via Climate Change Dispatch
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The prospect of rising US shale production threatens to undermine the efforts of OPEC, which now looks at risk of having ceded market share for no substantial price gain. –Jesse Snyder, Financial Post, 11 March 2017 Oil settles at the lowest level since November as record U.S. crude inventories and a boost in drilling activity […]

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March 14, 2017 at 01:04AM

Gas power shortage sees Australia face blackout threat

Gas power shortage sees Australia face blackout threat

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By Paul Homewood

 

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A shortage of gas-fired power generation and gas supply has seen the Australian gas market operator issue a blackout warning.
The country faces a gas crunch from 2019, as a string of outages and electricity price spikes in
Australia‘s eastern states over the past year highlighted the need for gas-fired generation to shore up power supplies.

Mike Cleary
"We’re going to see security of both systems, gas and electricity, become more challenging," Mike Cleary, chief operating officer of the Australian

Energy Market Operator (AEMO), told Reuters.

Reuters reports that according to the AEMO annual gas outlook, more gas power plants will be needed as they can raise and lower output more quickly than coal-fired plants as a back-up for intermittent wind and solar.
The need has become more acute after three new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants opened in the northeast, tripling gas demand and drawing supply out of the domestic market

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March 14, 2017 at 12:24AM

Shock News! Govt Report Says Govt Is Right.

Shock News! Govt Report Says Govt Is Right.

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By Paul Homewood

 

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Shock news. UK government commissioned report gives it the results it wanted!

 

From PEI:

 

A report commissioned by the UK Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has found that using biomass instead of coal is playing a positive part in decarbonizing the power sector.
The findings, by Ricardo Energy & Environment, come in a week where the biomass power sector has had to defend the technology’s reputation as a positive replacement for coal-fired power.

The study titled “Use of North American woody biomass in UK electricity generation”, reaffirms the positive impact of US biomass industry on US forests and carbon emissions.

 

No surprise there then!

 

According to PEI, the report shows that using wood pellets for energy generation supports healthy forests and generates significant carbon savings at a lower cost. Thanks to a strong forest market, to which woody biomass contributes,  forest inventory in southern US forests has continued to increase year over year for the last several decades.”

 

So the fact that forests have grown for several decades has something to do with the fact that we are now burning them. You could not make it up.

Did anybody seriously expect that the report would come to any other conclusions? If it had, a large plank of the government’s decarbonisation strategy would have gone up in smoke.

After all, plant biomass is now producing 6% of the UK’s electricity.

 

Not everybody is convinced though, as PEI report:

 

However biomass’s doubters remain undeterred. RSPB website pointed out the introduction to the report, stating it “openly admits that ‘bioenergy is not carbon neutral’ because of direct and indirect land use changes. And it goes on to admit that its own emissions calculation methodology is the reason that high-carbon bioenergy is being classified as low carbon and as eligible for subsidy. This is an astonishing admission in a Government-produced report, and suggests the need for urgent action to fix a broken bioenergy policy that could be failing to deliver emissions savings.

The report’s findings are centred around a questionnaire sent to 56 stakeholders. As the Table below shows, the respondents are heavily skewed to those involved in the pellet supply chain –  forest owners, pellet producers and users.

Even Drax were involved!

 

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The idea that this study is in any way objective is frankly ludicrous.

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March 14, 2017 at 12:24AM