The recent typhoon in China shows exactly what can happen in the American northeast with wind turbines. The amount of damage turbines may are already be causing to marine life ( you only see what is washing up on shore; what do you think is going on with the natural habitat below?) shows total disregard […]
via CFACT
September 17, 2024 at 12:19AM
The Associated Press (AP) posted a story describing a study by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which claims climate change is costing Africa as much as 5 percent of its GDP. Data show this is false. Extreme weather has not become more frequent or severe in Africa, and GDP in the different African regions and particular countries cited by the WMO and discussed in the AP story has grown substantially during recent period of climate change.
Monika Pronczuk, the writer of the AP story, “African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP per year with climate change, a new report says,” uncritically parrots the WMO’s claims that “African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP every year as they bear a heavier burden than the rest of the world from climate change.”
“‘Over the past 60 years, Africa has observed a warming trend that has become more rapid than the global average,’ said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, warning that it is affecting everything from food security to public health to peace,” wrote Pronczuck.
She should have checked the data.
As Climate Realism has discussed repeatedly, hard data from the United Nations and other government and international agencies refute any claims that climate change is making Africa’s weather worse or causing food insecurity. The latter claim has been debunked in repeated Climate Realism articles, here, here, and here, for example, which show that crop yields and production across the continent, except in areas of civil and cross border strife driven by religious and political conflicts, have regularly set records amid modest climate change.
Climate Realism has also shown that recent extreme weather events have not, in fact, been unusual in Africa’s history nor have they been more severe in recent decades, here, here, and here, for instance. In the few countries where food production has been hampered and economic growth has declined across multiple years in Africa, research shows it is consistently due to political strife, from civil wars, cross border conflicts, or political corruption. Climate change has not been a factor.
The main thrust of the WMO report is that because climate change has caused increasingly severe weather, it has also resulted in a GDP decline with African countries having to spend a disproportionate percentage of their incomes mitigating climate change. But since the former is false, the latter is as well. And, indeed, data consistently show substantial GDP growth across the period of recent climate change in the regions and countries discussed in the AP story, and one would presume the WMO report. In fact, the growth rate there has been at or above the world’s average GDP growth rate as a whole. For instance:
The AP mentioned Mali and Zambia in particular as countries suffering economic hardship due to climate change, but the data tells a different story. Over the past decade, Mali has seen its GDP grow every year but 2020, with growth topping 5 percent five of the past 10 years (spiking to 7.1 percent in 2014), and topping three percent every other year.
Zambia’s GDP history tells a similar story. Zambia’s growth in 2023 was 5.8 percent, the highest single year during the past decade, and except for the pandemic year of 2020, Zambia’s annual GDP increased, topping 3 percent growth in all but two growth years.
The WMO is a specialized agency of the United Nations whose mandate covers weather, climate, and water resources. It is staffed with meteorologists and other scientists who specialize in weather, not economists, and as such it is not known for its incisive economic acumen or analysis. No one goes to the WMO to analyze economic trends or for its forecasts of economic growth. Based on its uninformed, deeply flawed analysis climate change’s purported threat to Africa’s GDP, it might be a good idea for the WMO to stay in its lane and leave economic forecasting to economists.
Also, it might behoove the AP to do some simple fact checking (it takes just a few minutes through the magic of the internet), looking at existing hard data on trends before promoting economic analyses from organizations without apparent economic expertise. In fact, even when economists pronounce something, its would still be a good idea for the AP to check the data before uncritically parroting a claim as if it were the gospel truth.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
via Watts Up With That?
September 17, 2024 at 12:03AM
By Steve Goreham
Originally published in RealClear Energy.
Headlines promote renewable energy equipment companies as part of efforts to transition to Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Wind and solar system providers, electric vehicle manufacturers, green hydrogen producers, and other green equipment firms form a growing share of world industry. But renewable equipment firms suffer poor market returns, so investors should beware.
The Renewable Energy Industrial Index (RENIXX) is a global stock index of the 30 largest renewable energy industrial companies in the world by stock market capitalization. Current RENIXX companies include Enphase Energy, First Solar, Orsted, Plug Power, Tesla, and Vestas.
IWR of Germany established the RENIXX on May 1, 2006, with an initial value of 1,000 points. This month, the RENIXX stood at 1,013 points, essentially zero value growth over the last 18 years. In comparison, the S&P 500 Index more than quadrupled over the same period. The RENIXX is down three years in a row from 2021, losing about half its value.
Wind turbine manufacturers faced serious financial challenges over the last three years, even with rising sales. Rising costs, high interest rates, and project delays continue to impact the profitability of wind projects and equipment suppliers. The stock of Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest supplier, rose only 7% over the last 16 years, and its stock price has fallen 58% from a high in 2021. Vestas struggled to make a profit in 2022 and 2023 and suspended dividends to shareholders.
Other major wind suppliers have also been poor investments for shareholders. The stock of Siemens Gamesa, the number two turbine maker, is down 65 percent since a peak in 2021. Gamesa reported a loss of €4.4 billion in 2023 and received a €7.5 billion bailout from the German government that same year. Other top wind suppliers suffered major stock price declines since 2021, including Goldwind of China (down 77%) and Nordex of Germany (-36%).
Eighty percent of the world’s solar panels are manufactured in China and the top six suppliers reside in China. The solar panel industry is beset by overcapacity and severe competition. Stock prices of the top seven suppliers have all declined by more than 50 percent since 2021. The stock of US firm First Solar has risen since 2021 but remains below its all-time high price reached in 2008.
Tesla, which was founded in 2003, remained the only pure-play, publicly traded EV stock until 2018. By the end of 2021, Tesla’s value had soared to over $1 Trillion, boasting a market value more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Ford, BMW, and Honda combined. But Tesla is the exception.
But in most cases, electric vehicle (EV) companies have been very poor investments. Between 2020 and 2024, 31 EV companies went public on US stock exchanges. Only one of these 31 companies, the Chinese firm Li Auto, saw its price rise since the initial public offering (IPO). Thirty EV firms saw their stock prices fall, most precipitously.
EV company price declines from the IPO price include Fisker (-99%), Nikola (-94%), NIO (-50%), Lucid Group (-75%), and Rivian (-88%). Six others of the 31 companies went bankrupt. Tesla and Chinese firms BYD and Li Auto are the only EV firms profitable today.
ChargePoint is the world’s largest dedicated EV charger company (behind EV manufacturer Tesla), with over 25,000 charging stations in the US and Canada. ChargePoint went public in 2021 by merging with Switchback Energy Acquisition Corporation, valued at $2.4 billion. The firm’s value today is about $585 million, down 76% since 2021. For fiscal year 2024, ChargePoint lost $458 million on revenue of $507 million.
It’s not clear that any charging company can make money. High-speed, 50-kilowatt EV chargers cost about five times as much as traditional gasoline pumps. Eighty percent of EV charging is done at home, reducing the demand for public charging. ChargePoint, EVgo, Wallbox, Allego, and Blink Charging are all valued today at small fractions of their original IPO price. No EV charger firm is profitable, even after continuing to receive large government subsidies.
Plug Power is a leading supplier of hydrogen energy systems, including battery-cells for hydrogen vehicles and electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen fuel. Founded in 1997, the company went public in October 1999 at a split-adjusted price of about $160 per share.
But during its 27-year history, Plug Power has never turned a profit. According to financial reports, the firm lost $1.45 billion in 2024, up from a loss of $43.8 million in 2018. Its current stock price is under two dollars per share.
Traditional established firms are finding that renewable equipment can be poor business. 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.
The US federal government provided subsidies to renewable equipment companies of between $7 billion and $16 billion per year between 2010 and 2022. But the Cato Institute estimates that because of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, subsidies will skyrocket to about $80 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Without the fear of human-caused climate change and a rising level of government subsidies and mandates, many of these green companies would not exist. It’s doubtful that carbon dioxide pipelines, heavy electric trucks, offshore wind systems, green hydrogen fuel equipment, and EV charging stations would be viable businesses in unsubsidized capital markets.
During this last year, leading financial firms pulled back on their climate change pledges. Bank of America, JP Morgan, State Street, and Pimco withdrew from Climate Action 100+, which seeks to force companies and investment funds to address climate issues and adopt environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies. But it’s difficult to invest in renewable equipment companies when they are losing money.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
via Watts Up With That?
September 16, 2024 at 08:03PM
Kip Hansen gives the game away in his Climate Realism article Illogically Facts —’Fact-Checking’ by Innuendo. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The latest fad in all kinds of activism to attack one’s ideological opponents via “fact checking”. We see this in politics and all the modern controversies, including, of course, Climate Science.
Almost none of the “fact checking sites” and “fact checking organizations” actually check facts. And, if they accidentally find themselves checking what we would all agree is a fact, and not just an opinion or point of view, invariably it is checked against an contrary opinion, a different point of view or an alternative fact.
The resulting fact check report depends on the purposes of the fact check. Some are done to confirm that “our guy” or “our team” is proved to be correct, or that the opposition is proved to be wrong, lying or misinformation. When a fact is found to be different in any way from the desired fact, even the tiniest way, the original being checked is labelled a falsehood, or worse, an intentional lie. (or conversely, other people are lying about our fact!). Nobody likes a liar, so this sort of fake fact checking accomplishes two goals – it casts doubt on the not-favored fact supposedly being checked and smears an ideological opponent as a liar. One stone – two birds.
While not entirely new on the fact-checking scene, an AI-enhanced effort has popped to the surface of the roiling seas of controversy: Logically Facts. “Logically Facts is part of Meta’s Third Party Fact-Checking Program (3PFC) and works with TikTok in Europe. We have been a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) since 2020 and are a member of the Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA) in India and the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) in Europe.” [ source ] Meta? “Meta Platforms…is the undisputed leader in social media. The technology company owns three of the four biggest platforms by monthly active users (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram).” “Meta’s social networks are known as its Family of Apps (FoA). As of the fourth quarter of 2023, they attracted almost four billion users per month.” And TikTok? It has over a billion users.
I’m doubting that one can add up the 4 billion and the 1 billion to make 5 billion users of META and TikTok combined, but in any case, that’s a huge percentage of humanity any way one looks at it.
And who is providing fact-checking to those billion of people? Logically Facts [LF].
And what kind of fact-checking does LF do? Let’s look at an example that will deal with something very familiar with readers here: Climate Science Denial.
The definition put forward by the Wiki is:
“Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change.”
Other popular definitions of climate change denial include: attacks on solutions, questioning official climate change science and/or the climate movement itself.
If I had all the time left to me in this world, I could do a deep, deep dive into the Fact-Checking Industry. But, being limited, let’s look, together, at one single “analysis” article from Logically Facts:
‘Pseudoscience, no crisis’: How fake experts are fueling climate change denial
This article is a fascinating study in “fake-fact-checking by innuendo”.
As we go through the article, sampling its claims, I’ll alert you to any check of an actual fact – don’t hold your breath. If you wish to be pro-active, read the LF piece first, and you’ll have a better handle on what they are doing.
The lede in their piece is this:
“Would you seek dental advice from an ophthalmologist? The answer is obvious. Yet, on social media, self-proclaimed ‘experts’ with little to no relevant knowledge of climate science are influencing public opinion.”
The two editors of this “analysis” are listed as Shreyashi Roy [MA in Mass Communications and a BA in English Literature] and Nitish Rampal [ … based out of New Delhi and has …. a keen interest in sports, politics, and tech.] The author is said to be [more on “said to be” in a minute…] Anurag Baruah [MA in English Language and a certificate in Environmental Journalism: Storytelling earned online from the Thompson Founation.]
Why do you say “said to be”, Mr. Hansen? If you had read the LF piece, as I suggested, you would see that it reads as if it was “written” by an AI Large Language Model, followed by editing for sense and sensibility by a human, probably, Mr. Baruah, followed by further editing by Roy and Rampal.
The lede is itself an illogic. First it speaks of medical/dental advice, pointing out, quite rightly, that they are different specializations. But then complains that unnamed so-called self-proclaimed experts who LF claims “have little to no relevant knowledge of climate science” are influencing public opinion. Since these persons are so-far unnamed, LF’s AI, author and subsequent editors could not possibly know what their level of knowledge about climate science might be.
Who exactly are they smearing here?
The first is:
“One such ‘expert,’ Steve Milloy, a prominent voice on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), described a NASA Climate post (archive) about the impact of climate change on our seas as a “lie” on June 26, 2024.”
It is absolutely true that Milloy, who is well-known to be an “in-your-face” and “slightly over the-top” critic of all things science that he considers poorly done, being over-hyped, or otherwise falling into his category of “Junk Science”, posted on X the item claimed.
LF , its AI, author and editors make no effort to check what fact/facts
Milloy was calling a lie, or to check NASA’s facts in any way whatever.
You see, Milloy calling any claim from NASA “a lie” would be an a priori case of Climate Denial: he is refuting or refusing to accept some point of official climate science.
Who is Steve Milloy?
Steve Milloy is a Board Member & Senior Policy Fellow of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, author of seven books and over 600 articles/columns published in major newspapers, magazines and internet outlets. He has testified by request before the U.S. Congress many times, including on risk assessment and Superfund issues. He is an Adjunct Fellow of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
“He holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences, Johns Hopkins University; Master of Health Sciences (Biostatistics), Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health; Juris Doctorate, University of Baltimore; and Master of Laws (Securities regulation) from the Georgetown University Law Center.”
It seems that many consider Mr. Milloy to be an expert in many things.
And the evidence for LF’s dismissal of Milloy as a “self-proclaimed expert” having “little to no relevant knowledge of climate science”? The Guardian, co-founder of the climate crisis propaganda outfit Covering Climate Now, said “JunkScience.com, has been called “the main entrepôt for almost every kind of climate-change denial”” and after a link listing Milloy’s degrees, pooh-poohed him for “lacking formal training in climate science.” Well, a BA in Natural Sciences might count for something. And a law degree is not nothing. The last link which gives clear evidence that Milloy is a well-recognized expert and it is obvious that the LF AI, author, and editors either did not read the contents of the link or simply chose to ignore it.
Incredibly, LF’s next target is “… John Clauser, a 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that no climate crisis exists and that climate science is “pseudoscience.” Clauser’s Nobel Prize lent weight to his statements, but he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change.“
LF’s evidence against Clauser is The Washington Post in an article attacking not just Clauser, but a long list of major physicists who do not support the IPCC consensus on climate change: Willie Soon (including the lie that Soon’s work was financed by fossil fuel companies) , Steve Koonin, Dick Lindzen and Will Happer. The Post article fails to discuss any of the reasons these esteemed, world-class physicists are not consensus-supporting club members.
Their non-conforming is their crime. No facts are checked.
LF reinforces the attack on world-renown physicists with a quote from Professor Bill McGuire: “Such fake experts are dangerous and, in my opinion, incredibly irresponsible—Nobel Prize or not. A physicist denying anthropogenic climate change is actually denying the well-established physical properties of carbon dioxide, which is simply absurd.”
McGuire, is not a physicist and is not a climate scientist, but has a PhD in Geology and is a volcanologist and an IPCC contributor. He also could be seen as “lacking formal training in climate science.”
But, McGuire has a point, which LF, its AI and its human editors seem to miss, the very basis of the CO2 Global Warming hypothesis is based on physics, not based on what is today called “climate science”. Thus, the physicists are the true experts . (and not the volcanologists….)
LF then launches into the gratuitous comparison of “fake experts” in the anti-tobacco fight, alludes to oil industry ties, and then snaps right to John Cook.
John Cook, a world leader in attacking Climate Change Denial, is not a climate scientist. He is not a geologist, not an atmospheric scientist, not an oceanic scientist, not a physicist, not even a volcanologist. He “earned his PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Western Australia in 2016”.
The rest of the Logically Facts fake-analysis is basically a re-writing of some of Cook’s anti-Climate Denialists screeds. Maybe/probably resulting from an AI large language model trained on pro-consensus climate materials. Logically Facts is specifically and openly an AI-based effort.
LF proceeds to attack a series of persons, not their ideas, one after another: Tony Heller, Dr. Judith Curry, Patrick Moore and Bjørn Lomborg.
The expertise of these individuals in their respective fields
are either ignored or brushed over.
Curry is a world renowned climate scientist, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Curry is the author the book on Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, another book on Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Microphysics of Clouds, and the marvelous groundbreaking Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response. Google scholar returns over 10,000 references to a search of “Dr. Judith Curry climate”.
Lomborg is a socio-economist with an impressive record, a best selling author and a leading expert on issues of energy dependence, value for money spent on international anti-poverty and public health efforts, etc. Richard Tol, is mention negatively for daring to doubt the “97% consensus”, with no mention of his qualifications as a Professor of Economics and a Professor of the Economics of Climate Change.
Bottom Line:
Logically Facts is a Large Language Model-type AI, supplemented by writers and editors meant to clean-up the mess returned by this chat-bot type AI. Thus, it is entirely incapable to making any value judgements between repeated slander, enforced consensus views, the prevailing biases of scientific fields and actual facts. Further, any LLM-based AI is incapable of Critical Thinking and drawing logical conclusions.
In short, Logically Facts is Illogical.
Defence offered by Facebook in Stossal defamation lawsuit.
via Science Matters
September 16, 2024 at 07:23PM
