Fewer or more, stronger or not there’s no factual basis for attributing patterns on climate change — much less on any human influence.
via CFACT
October 19, 2024 at 08:13AM
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“There are signs that we may be reaching peak madness as opposition to cowboy renewable-energy development grows in regional and rural Australia…. Anger about the rampant spread of solar, wind and transmission development proposals has galvanized communities into action.”
“I’m dismayed by the indifference of Green activists to the fate of the Greater Glider and other native wildlife that is losing its natural habitat in the rush for renewables,” Nick Cater recently posted. He continued with the specifics:
The vast hectares of native forest being destroyed to install wind turbines along the Great Dividing range is well documented in environmental impact statements for projects like the Upper Burdekin (Gawara Baya) Wind Farm in Far North Queensland.
Here’s an extract from the approval for the project given by Tanya Plibersek in April:
“To avoid and mitigate harm to protected matters, the Approval Holder must not clear more than:
“a) 605.3 ha of Sharman’s Rock Wallaby Habitat,
“b) 581 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Habitat, including:
“i) no more than 331 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Denning Habitat, and
“ii) no more than 250 ha of Greater Glider (northern) Foraging Habitat,
“c) 581 ha of Masked Owl (northern) Habitat,
“d) 614 ha of Koala habitat,
“e) 616 ha of Red Goshawk Habitat, including:
“i) no more than 331 ha of Red Goshawk Breeding Habitat, and
“ii) no more than 285 ha of Red Goshawk Foraging Habitat,
“f) 614 ha of Grey-headed Flying-Fox Foraging Habitat,
“g) 614 ha of Spectacled Flying-Fox Foraging Habitat
“h) 546 ha of Greater Large-eared Horseshoe Bat Roosting Habitat,
“i) 545 ha of Bare-rumped Sheathtail Bat Habitat,
“j) 614 ha of White-throated Needletail Habitat,
“k) 614 ha of Fork-tailed Swift Habitat, and
“l) 0 ha of occupied Magnificent Brood Frog Habitat”These are vulnerable and endangered native species. Should the developers be allowed to destroy a single hectare of their precious habitat?
Cater added in “Collateral Damage” at his Substack site, Reality Bites with the subtitle “Destroying Greater Glider habitat is ok if you’re trying to save the planet”
The greater glider is in pole position to win the Marsupial of the Year contest. Australia’s largest gliding possum has pushed the much-fancied koala into second place in the latest rankings. Fittingly, the winner of the battle between creatures struggling for survival will be announced next week on Channel Ten’s The Project, a show that has been hovering on the brink of extinction for some time.
The Australian Conservation Foundation has been drumming up support for the panda-eyed eucalypt munchers with their teddy bear ears. “If smooth gliding, extra fluffy fur and smelly conversations are your thing, vote for the Greater Glider!” It urges on its website. It claims the Greater Glider population has halved in the last 20 years because of bushfires and logging.
This makes it odd, to say the least, that ACF is not raising a stink about Lotus Creek, where 310 hectares of old-growth forest are about to be bulldozed to make room for wind turbines.
The Lotus Creek Wind Farm is 100 per cent funded by the Queensland Government and is supported by the Commonwealth. The environmental cost of the project in the Connors Range adjacent to the Glencoe State Forest is well documented. Researchers counted 138 greater gliders during their environmental assessment. The old-growth trees provide hollow dens for the creatures to rest during the day. The area offers a rich habitat for Koalas and Squatter pigeons and is a refuge for the Powerful Owl and White-Throated Needletail, all classified as vulnerable.
The culpability is at the top of government.
An ecological assessment report listing five Matters of National Environmental Significance under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was placed on Tanya Plibersek’s desk shortly after she became Environment Minister in 2022. It gave Plibersek strong grounds to block the project as her Coalition predecessor, Sussan Ley, had done. Yet Plibersek overturned Ley’s decision and sanctioned the destruction of remnant bushland on the Great Dividing Range that was virtually untouched by farming.
The ACF has not raised an eyebrow about the Lotus Creek atrocity. Neither has it lodged an objection to Twiggy Forrest’s Upper Burdekin (Gawara Baya ) wind turbine development that received Plibersek’s rubber stamp in June. Ditto the French giant Neoen’s plans for Mount Hopeful 65 km west of Gladstone, approved by Plibersek in April, and the Boulder Creek Wind Farm she approved in June 2022, in which the Queensland State Government has a 50 per cent stake.
Cater continues:
Wind turbine developments also threaten to destroy greater glider and koala habitat at Mount Fox north of Ingham, Moah Creek and Boulder Creek to the west of Rockhampton. The Queensland government has approved all three, and Plibersek’s signature is regarded as little more than a formality.
The gulf between Plibersek’s actions and words is wide enough to be viewed from outer space. On Friday, Plibersek announced the Government would co-host the Global Nature Positive Summit next month in Gadigal Country, or Sydney as it was once known. “Australia can be a global leader in protecting and restoring nature and stopping biodiversity loss,” she said.
The “environmentalist” movement is at fault.
Yet our nature-positive Environment Minster has sanctioned the destruction of at least 1260 hectares of Greater Glider habit in old-growth forests in Queensland while supine environmental bodies like the ACF, Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society urge the Government to roll out renewables faster.
The three activist organisations, with a combined income of more than $58 million at their disposal last year, are staunch advocates of renewable energy and are strongly opposed to nuclear. None has been prepared to question the cumulative environmental damage of land-hungry wind, solar and pumped hydro schemes. They have shown little compassion for scores of rural communities with uglification forced upon them by pious city-based bureaucrats drawing lines on maps.
Continuing,
A decree by the European Union to ban imports of beef contaminated by de-forestation has gifted the laptop activists another chance to beat up on regional Australia.
The ACF is running a slippery campaign of moral equivalence to portray tightly regulated rotational clearance of woody growth on well-managed Australian farms with illegal tree-felling by cattle ranchers in the Amazon Basin.
The activists want to change the definition of “old-growth” to anything older than 15 years. If beef farmers become collateral damage in the EU’s virtue-signalling campaign, so be it. To them, anything that hastens the glorious vegan revolution must be good.
The Save Our Big Backyard campaign raises the green left to new level of unsteady, bare-faced hypocrisy. There is ample evidence to show that the biggest threat to the sanctity of our native vegetation and wildlife comes from wind and solar farmers, not the cattle industry. Vast hectares of land that have survived more than 200 years of settlement farming are being sacrificed for the sake of the planet.
Cater asks, what will Australia’s future citizens and government officials think about the anti-CO2 crusade in light of its collateral damage?
Future generations will look back at these people with disdain. They will gaze at scarred hillsides where dynamite was used to build access roads and clear the ground for vast concrete pads as big as a football field to erect giant wind turbines which will have long-since been removed. They will wonder how on earth an affluent, sophisticated and environmentally conscious nation could sanction such things.
Future anthropologists will write textbooks about the religious fervour that led early-21st-century humans to believe they could harvest energy directly from the wind and the sun. They will be puzzled as to why they didn’t adopt nuclear technology, just as cultural historians of Mesoamerica are curious why the Aztecs never discovered the wheel.
There are signs that we may be reaching peak madness as opposition to cowboy renewable energy developers grows in regional and rural Australia, and people in the city begin to latch on. The backlash is particularly noticeable in Queensland, where the Labor government appears to have given up hope of retaining any seat north of Sandgate. Anger about the rampant spread of solar, wind and transmission development proposals has galvanised communities into action. Anti-renewable billboards funded by small donations have begun to appear along the Bruce Highway south of Gympie….
Final Comment
Nick Cater speaks truth to wind power on ecological grounds. His persistence documents the “it’s hard being green” quandary of the modern environmental movement, which has made a pact with the devil in its one-dimensional crusade. Will real environmentalists please stand up?
via Watts Up With That?
October 19, 2024 at 08:04AM
51. 76126 -1.26401 Met Office assessed CIMO Class 4S Records exist from 1767
“Oxford University’s Radcliffe Meteorological Station is the longest running weather station in the UK. On 15 May, the Met Office will present an award to the University ‘in recognition of 200 years of continuous climate observations at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford’.
Whilst I accept this site has a long standing record, I do not equate longevity with accuracy nor wish to treat the site with the same sort of reverence that the Met Office does. It is assessed as Class 4 indicating inaccuracy up to 2°C plus suffering effects of shading rendering some data effectively unreliable. Surely such a venerable site should be well cared for …. but how does regularly parking a long term marquee with full catering equipment alongside it improve the quality of readings?
Several things are evident from the above image. To address each in turn…..
SHADING. The site regularly falls into deep shadow from the large adjacent Observatory Dome as is obvious from this 2014 aerial imagery. The contrast from deep shade to bright sun indicates daytime effects and not just low sun times of early morning/late evening. And of course that recurring marquee.
WALLED GARDEN. As is common for many Met office stations, Oxford Radcliffe is located in an environment deliberately constructed to artificially elevate temperatures and create a micro climate. Simply rotating the street view around from the headline image reveals the garden walls as below. Clearly an unnatural environment
Urban Heat Island. Oxford is a large city now of over 165,000 but when this site was originally established the population of Oxford was under 12,000. In recent times the entire south to west quadrant of the site around the Observatory has been heavily re-developed completely changing the character of the area. The addition of AirCon to new construction mirrors the development around the Cambridge Botanic Gardens site. UHI is acknowledged to elevate area local temperatures by several degrees.
Extraneous Heat sources. The Marquee is a long term annual visitor to the site – long enough to cause an effect on the grass visible several months after the Marquee has gone. The majority of the many historic aerial images on Google Earth Pro either show the Marquee or its after effects on the grass. It is inconceivable that Met Office inspectors are unaware of this siting regularity. It is not only the presence of such a structure that compromises the site but also what it is used for. Many images clearly show catering equipment which can only contribute artificial heat to the surroundings. Subjectively, I would suggest that, as screen site security is minimal, the screen is liable to “high jinx” effects at times.
In conclusion the Met office class this station as Class 4, I find that implausible given all the elements compromising the temperature readings representation of a wider area. In the same way as Cambridge Botanic Gardens I feel this site is more properly assessed as Class 5 and its readings worthless for the historic climate record. Probably time to retire this old station.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
October 19, 2024 at 07:20AM
By Paul Homewood
Miriam Cates has hit out at Labour’s race to Net Zero with a map showing how the UK is effectively offshoring carbon emissions by importing ‘dirty steel’ from China.
The recent closures of Port Talbot’s steelworks and the UK’s last coal power station Ratcliffe-on-Soar means Britain must now import much of its steel and energy, often from countries with far less stringent environmental laws where carbon emissions remain high.
The map, compiled by Our World in Data, shows the UK’s energy consumption embedded in traded goods to be 25 per cent at the end of 2020, one of the highest rates in the world.
Net zero: concerns raised over the UK exporting carbon emissions
Our World In Data
Cates, a former Conservative MP, said: “Britain’s race to Net Zero has displaced UK carbon emissions to other countries & choked our energy-intensive industries.
“Now we have to import ‘dirty’ steel because we can’t make our own, thus increasing overall global emissions. There are no borders in the atmosphere.”
Claire Bullivant, editor of Conservative Post, wrote: “China, the largest polluter on the planet, is set to benefit from Labour’s shortsightedness.
“We’ll import steel from Chinese factories belching out carbon, then ship it halfway across the world to build our ‘green’ energy projects and then offset it on paper to hit our self-congratulatory carbon targets.
“Labour can wave around their emissions reduction certificates all they like, but if they’re just outsourcing our carbon footprint to China, who are they really fooling?”
Labour’s new state-run energy company, which has been promised £8.3billion in funding, will “make Britain a clean-energy superpower, with a fully decarbonised power system by 2030,” according to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
But voters have been quick to point out that importing products which have emitted vast carbon emissions makes something of a mockery of this claim.
Martin Edwards said: “Real net zero as opposed to ‘cheats’ net zero- considers the end-to-end supply chain from component material sourcing through to end-of-life management.
“Just shoving emissions elsewhere and/or not having end-of-life reuse/recycling is fooling no-one.”
https://www.gbnews.com/membership/net-zero-gbenergy-carbon-emissions-miriam-cates-climate-change
The share of imported emissions has steadily risen as out domestic emissions have fallen, and accounted for 48% in 2021. However, following a rapid rise in the 1990s, the actual emissions have remained flat at around 150 million tonnes.
![co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade[4]](https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade4.png "co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade[4]")
.
There is no reason why we should not import products. But it is clearly pointless to destroy the economy and impoverish its citizens in the pursuit of Net Zero, when we are simply importing emissions instead.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 19, 2024 at 06:44AM
