Woman Killed By Bear Because Of Climate Change!

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By Paul Homewood

            

h/t Rupert Wyndham

             

From the ever more hysterical Telegraph:

              

A woman has been killed in an apparent bear attack while picking wild bamboo shoots in the mountains of northern Japan.

The body of Masako Oishi, 61, a nursing assistant, was reportedly found with gashes to the back of her head in a mountainous forest in Akita prefecture, which is known to be populated by bears.

The incident comes just weeks after local police issued warnings to residents living in remote mountainous areas of northern Japan to look out for bears.

Leaflets were reportedly circulated to warn locals of bear attacks in rural areas of both Akita and neighbouring Aomori Prefecture, advising residents not to enter forests where bears have been spotted foraging for mountain vegetables.

The number of bear attacks in Japan has risen sharply in recent years, with four people killed in the space of three weeks last year in forested areas of Akita, around 31 miles from the most recent attack. Before then, there had been only eight bear-related deaths in the region since 1979.

Bamboo shoots have long been a popular seasonal staple in Japanese cuisine at this time of year, with a number of residents living in northern mountains earning a living by selling them.

However, they are also a springtime staple in the diet of local bears, resulting in growing calls for caution among locals who go out to pick them in the wild.

Climate change has also been attributed to the surge in bear attacks in Japan in the past, as a growing number of the creatures reportedly leave their natural habitat in search of food.

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So a woman enters a forest where there are lots of bears, with the aim of picking food that’s also eaten by bears, and gets killed.

But they blame it on climate change. Pathetic!

 

Even the WWF have not stooped so low. This is what they have to say:

The Japanese (Asiatic) black bear is the largest mammal of Japan’s 3 major islands (Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku). After World War II, a large portion of their habitat in the mountains was converted from indigenous deciduous or mixed forests to afforested coniferous forests for timber production. This course of action drastically reduced the availability of food, forcing the bears to come down to human residential or farm areas. Various public works such as dams and roads separate their habitats, which interferes with their movements and isolates them from neighboring populations.

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But it’s too much to expect accurate reporting from the hacks at the Telegraph these days.

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May 29, 2017 at 09:51PM

$7.5bn worth of coal-fired power plants planned for Vietnam

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May 29, 2017 at 09:21PM

Producers not Consumers Now Control the UK Electricity System

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By Paul Homewood

From GWPF:

 

A recent press statement by the United Kingdom’s Transmission System Operator (TSO) shows that the consumer interest is no longer in the driving seat. The system is now run for the convenience and benefit of electricity producers.

On Friday afternoon last week National Grid issued a widely reported statement to the effect that at lunchtime on that day the instantaneous output from the United Kingdom’s nearly 12 GW of solar photovoltaic generation was 8.7 GW, which just over 24% of the load at that time and a new record.

National Grid developed its theme thus:

An increase in renewable generation poses an exciting challenge for National Grid, whose role as system operator is to balance the national transmission network, by ensuring supply and demand is matched second by second.

Duncan Burt, who’s responsible for control room operations said: “We now have significant volumes of renewable energy on the system and as this trend continues, our ability to forecast these patterns is becoming more and more important.

“We have an expert team of forecasters who monitor a range of data, to forecast just how much electricity will be needed over a set period.”

Duncan added: “We have planned for these changes to the energy landscape and have the tools available to ensure we can balance supply and demand. It really is the beginning of a new era, which we are prepared for and excited to play our part”.

Clearly written in haste so as not to miss the moment (“who’s responsible”), this incoherent statement reveals that National Grid is still coming to terms with a genuinely novel situation, one that they can hardly believe, so extraordinary and so favourable is it to their company’s future. It is certainly “exciting” for them, commercially exciting.

Hitherto, forecasters have indeed been concerned with predicting “just how much electricity will be needed”, but as the previous paragraphs show with the advent of a renewables dominated grid they are now engaged on forecasting what is about to be produced. The significance of this change cannot be overstated. The consumer has become a secondary consideration; and the producer interest is now the main focus of National Grid’s attention. Of course, though it has a regulated income and asset base, National Grid is itself part of that producer interest. The grid management “tools” to which Mr Burt refers, software, personnel, and hardware are expensively purchased with consumer funds, but without consumer consent. National Grid will balance the system brilliantly, of course, but very expensively.

If the United Kingdom is to flourish, this mistaken inversion of priorities must be addressed by the next government. The Conservative Party Manifesto remarked that:

A successful industrial strategy requires competitive and affordable energy costs. We want to make sure that the cost of energy in Britain is internationally competitive, both for businesses and households. (p. 22)

One can hardly imagine that sensible people in the other political parties hold any other views. This is motherhood and apple pie. However, as National Grid’s release shows, policies have in fact over the last decade or so, forced the consumer into a subordinate and powerless position, one where it is very unlikely that energy costs will be either competitive or affordable.

The implications for inward investment and the reindustrialisation that many now seem to desire are obvious. Where will an investor prefer to place capital in the hope of generating a return? An economy where electricity demand drives supply, or one where the System Operator forecasts supply and then adjusts demand accordingly? Even if there are rewards on offer for flexible consumers, the truth is that most businesses would prefer complete freedom of operation rather than a compromised liberty and the occasional lollipop.

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May 29, 2017 at 09:21PM

East European States Mount Revolt Against Paris Agreement

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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East European EU states are mounting a behind-the-scenes revolt against the Paris Agreement, blocking key measures needed to deliver the pledge that they signed up to 18 months ago.

Under the climate accord, Europe promised to shave 40% off its emissions by 2030, mostly by revising existing climate laws on renewables, energy efficiency and its flagship Emissions Trading System (ETS).

But documents seen by Climate Home show that Visegrad countries are trying to gut, block or water down all of these efforts, in a rearguard manoeuvre that mirrors president Donald Trump’s rollback of climate policy in Washington.

Energy efficiency is supposed to make up around half of Europe’s emissions reductions by 2030, but a Czech proposal could cut energy saving obligations from a headline 1.5% a year figure to just 0.35% in practice.

Below the radar, Poland has also launched a manoeuvre that may block the EU’s winter package in its entirety – particularly a planned limit on power plant emissions – if it is signed up to by a third of EU parliaments, or 10-13 states.

The EU’s various wings will eventually thrash out a compromise between the commission’s original proposal – which was calibrated to meet the Paris pledge – and the counter-proposals designed to weaken this.

The effect this could have on the EU’s overall emissions has raised concerns among those in Brussels who wish to see the EU maintain its leadership on climate.

Full post

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May 29, 2017 at 08:58PM