Green Utopia
We’re trying to control the weather by limiting a universal molecule intrinsic to life on Earth. What could possibly go wrong? Loopholes, for starters. Only this isn’t a loophole — it’s an obvious outcome of “carbon neutrality”. The only thing that could have stopped wood from replacing coal is if the tidal-windy-solar idea had been competitive, reliable and batteries were really cheap. Or, if we all went nuclear.
So carbon neutral means conserving black coal deposits underground and mowing down thousands of square kilometers of forests. Don’t think Greenpeace saw that coming.
Carbon Loophole: Why is wood burning counted as green energy?
The forests of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi — as well as those in Europe — are being destroyed to sustain a European fantasy about renewable energy…
Wood burning is booming from Britain to Romania. Much of the timber is sourced locally…
But Drax’s giant wood-burning boilers are fueled almost entirely by 6.5 million tons of wood pellets shipped annually across the Atlantic.
Drax Power, UK emits 23 million tons of “good” neutral carbon which used to be trees:
About 23 million tons of carbon dioxide goes up its stacks each year. But because new trees will be planted in the cut forests, the company says the Drax plant is carbon-neutral.
The Drax plant IS carbon neutral. It just destroys forests too
Evidently being carbon neutral is not always enough.
Peter Sabo of Wolf, an NGO … estimates from Slovakian government data that 10 million cubic meters of wood is logged in the country each year, against a sustainable yield of 6 million cubic meters. The difference is almost entirely accounted for by the 3.5 million cubic metres burned for Slovakia’s energy and heating. Yet nowhere do the carbon emissions from this burning turn up in the carbon accounts of Slovakia or the EU.
Neodymium turbines are “renewable” but forests are not:
Theoretically, the clean green plan wasn’t meant to raze trees a meter across, it was only supposed to burn the woodchip offcuts. But, given enough incentive the free market found a way to define whole trees as a woodchip.
Some EU officials estimate that while forests are increasing in Europe overall (thanks partly to CO2) about a third of the new forest will be fed to power furnaces.
Too bad about the homeless squirrels and nestless birdies. Nevermind.
Dang unintended consequences.
We can’t have a free market in a ubiquitous molecule central to all life on Earth.
h/t GWPF
It is difficult to compose a pithy comment to this. The utter stupidity of this practice is just so difficult to wrap my head around.
430
Dave – completely agree. I also tried to find some humourous comment ….. but all I have is a huge anger for those whose absurd ideology has resulted in these tragic and totally predictable consequences.
360
Do the chips come with tree huggers?
210
I was going to say ‘Do the chips come with greens’, but some may have missed the pun. 🙂
170
I think we need to keep in mind this is a RELIGIOUS WAR against most of humanity by the occult Gaia worshippers ( the Establishment, basically ).
As such, humanity is seen as a “parasite” on this planet, so they feel “pious” in reducing human numbers through fuel poverty or power cuts or wars….
Mind you, who died and made them king? No one….
110
You should see the lunacy that has been going on in our township over VicForests’ plans to log two timber copses that form part of the extensive logging areas that are integral to the area’s history (reason for being in fact).
Letters to the local paper make out as if the entire area will be razed to the ground, no tourist will ever come through here again, the planet will be destroyed and the township will perish. I kid you not, the melodrama is that intense.
The whole issue has been so overblown by a small group of tree huggers, spreading misinformation about the entire proposed activity. It’s ironic that one person whose livelihood depends on making furniture out of local trees is an avid protestor.
100
Do the chips come with burgers?
40
Why aren’t US “environmentalists” complaining about this practice? As I understand it, the forests being destroyed are established forests, not plantations.
170
David. Don’t try to understand all the crazy things the leftist/greens do. People have joked for years that liberalism (leftism) is a mental disease and we smiled and chuckled. We were foolish to do so. They were right in saying that and we in our smug judgment were so very wrong. And the “Jokers” were far ahead of us in understanding the depths of mental illness these poor souls had fallen. Prophets (jokers in this case) are never honored in their own land and we have lost time, money, opportunity, and in some cases our countries, for being so smug and ignorant as to disregard their prophesies.
110
David,
I live in SE US (Virginia), and I only know about Drax, the wood pellets, etc. by reading this blog and others (WUWT, etc.) that cover stories outside of the US. Apparently, one of the facilities that stores and transports the pellets to Drax is located right here on a river in Norfolk, VA. To answer your question,US “environmentalists” and others are not complaining because they’re not even aware of it.
120
Why, oh why, did they shut down the nut houses?
110
All Western countries shut down mental asylums in the 1970’s. People who were mentally ill were put into mainstream society where they could advocate their destructive Left wing beliefs or otherwise reak havoc. Being a Leftist/ US Liberal is symptomatic of a fault in information processing.
170
A wood chip plant near me st Lyons Falls NY is about to shut down. The subsidies have run out. The conversion to wood pellets at the power plant at Fort Drum has been less than successful. It has suffered man6 breakdowns. They may go back to burning coal!
120
Interesting.
Maybe there is so much ugly residue that maintenance expenses are way over the top. A lesson from Fort Drum.
KK
30
OT –
Jo, with the publication of Henrik Svensmark’s new cosmic ray/climate paper, is it time to give an update on Dr. Evans’ solar theory?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/19/new-svensmark-paper-the-missing-link-between-cosmic-rays-clouds-and-climate-on-earth/
131
Hear, hear – it is taking too long to get this into print – now is the time – strike while the iron is hot – the devil take the hindmost – what else can I say?
81
And to add to the stupid, while wasting all that expensive wood for energy we are making one-off disposable items out of non-destructable plastic, when many disposables could be made out of wood and would rot away pollution free after use.
220
Back to the brown paper bags of my youth.
80
These people are totally clueless, they are basically replacing one factor of the carbon cycle with another to appease an ideology that doesn’t make sense, if you applied this logic to a business you simply couldn’t compete with another that made the decision to use the more efficient approach.
Their reasoning is like,
– Not wanting to reuse archery arrows so you use more arrows and targets.
– Not wanting to replace tyres on a car so you buy a another car.
– Not wanting to wash dishes so you buy another set and bin the dirty ones.
Etc………..
Anyone that can’t see this rabid environmentalism is a cult is either a member or being initiated.
242
Yes, it’s beyond absurd that the green blob has gained so much traction given how wrong they are about so much.
Some of the other reasoning behind the absurdity:
– not wanting to oppose their political ideology
– wanting to feel good about themselves by ‘saving the world’
– it’s acceptable to ignore facts that undermine a political position
– the climate isn’t supposed to change
– mankind is more powerful at affecting the climate than the Sun
– correlation IS causation
– anything that the political right supports must be wrong
251
” Not wanting to wash dishes so you buy another set and bin the dirty ones.” I used to have flatmates like that.
You have to support this. The fuel is as cheap as chips.
Make Wood-Power Great Again 🙂
40
Ladiees and Gentle men, I give you: the stupendous; the wonderous; the totally fantastic; … peak stupid!
71
I know people who have justified buying a new car on the basis of worn tires. I also know people who only use paper plates. Too lazy to do dishes!
40
All based on non science, that CO2 variation is ‘obviously’ man made. This is the fundamental premise of the entire carbon neutral idea. It is demonstrably wrong, anti science and never discussed. It is climate faith, a tenet of the climate religion.
What is stated endlessly that the extra CO2 heats the planet significantly even without assistance from water vapour. While essential it is also demonstrably not true.
However even Graham Lloyd in the Australian yesterday while reporting the understated effect of solar variation through cosmic rays had to state the authors do not deny the essential role of CO2. It is the absolute truth, the second essential science statement which underpins man made Global warming. It is also not true.
Science climatology is now to devastate forests. Then how on earth are we going to make steel and concrete and stay carbon neutral? Or as Australian Greens leader Richard di Natale said, Whyalla could continue to make steel as long as they did not use coal. Science ignorance in Australian political leaders is a failure of our education system. E Pluribus Nihil.
161
Actually Tdef, the demonization of Carbon Dioxide, is man-made. Nobody thought it evil until the Greens figured out a way to monetize it.
31
Jo, correction needed
its Neodymium, not Niodymium.
—
Ta! – J
71
Picky, picky. I never restrict myself to only having one spelling for any word. Otherwise life would be so terribly boring.
50
Picky, pickey…..
30
😉
30
Rereke, all you need is two dictionaries:
Dictionary One: The Oxford English Dictionary (or the Collins which is a licensed copy).
Dictionary Two: Any American Dictionary. (Merriam-Webster et al)
Between those two, you will have plenty of official alternative spellings and you may never have to stoop to any deliberate (or accidental) misspellings of your own.
🙂
00
Trump needs to protect USA forests from the rape by Drax power station.
Exporting woodchip to burn in UK power station is absurdity at its best.
221
Wasn’t Drax the super villain in James Bond’s Moonraker? Now he’s running woodchipping.
40
Yes he was. Not only did he try to destroy London with a nuclear missile but he Cheated at Cards!
20
The bounder!
20
Cheated at cards? The rotten cad.
20
Worse still for those who buy electricity in the UK, burning wood pellets attracts a subsidy of around £44 Mwh on top the of wholesale price of around £50 Mwh. The plant might not make any more money as (a) there is a drop in plant efficiency, (b) wood is more expensive (c) it is less dense, so more volume to transport (d) required new investments in port facilities, pelletizing plants in USA, and on plant conversions.
However, under UK policy if Drax B did not convert it would have to close within a few years.
220
Another, short-lived example of converting a coal-fired power station to wood pellets was at Ironbridge, Shropshire in 2012, when one of the twin 500MW was converted. The power plant stopped generating electricity in November 2015.
The irony is that the power station was a couple of miles from the location where in 1709 Abraham Darby I built the world’s first blast furnace fuelled by coke. This enabled a continuous process to be used for the production of iron, enabling much greater quantities to be produced. The traditional method using charcoal was only possible in small batches. What is more, expansion of iron production was being curtailed by a rapidly-diminishing supply of wood.
More details are here.
220
The Cedars of Lebanon disappeared into the refining of copper during the Bronze Age along with most of the forests in the Middle East. History repeats.
The only lesson mankind learns from history is that mankind never learns.
00
… from history.
00
Renewables fanatics always get a confused look on their faces when I point out that coal is just dead trees and when it is burned we are returning it to the environment it has been leached from.
191
The best and cheapest solar battery is actually a lump of coal. I remember my science teacher telling us more than 50 years ago that coal was stored up sunshine.
141
So is oil in all its varieties.
00
My thoughts as well…
Did any of these so called “educated” people learn how coal was formed.??
Obviously NOT.
Plant matter ie trees included……being laid down in swampy areas over thousands of years and compressed into layers…then soil built up and covered them.
I see NO difference between coal …a “compressed” tree/plant …compared to a wood chip from a living tree…!!!
Are WE missing something ??….yep !! Fortunately we are not ALL useful idiots.!
61
The difference is that, in the carboniferous period, trees, as we know them today, were more fern like, than wooded trees we have now.
New Zealand still has tree ferns, which show the evolution. They are neither fern nor tree, but both. Somewhere in a box in my garage, I have a lump of coal that shows the impression of a fern frond. I have always intended to get it out and seal it to protect the fossil image. Finding it will be a challenge.
50
Yes, I have a garage like that….
40
My mind is a garage just like that…. a man cave of thoughts. We are all hoarders of thoughts aren’t we. All we have to do is think and they lose innit!!
On a lighter note have you all heard about the woman who just gave birth to a baby which was a frozen embryo a year older than her. Now that is real science. Making people happy.
10
It’s worth contemplating that the actions and priorities of these people’s forebears one hundred years ago. In South Australia the Labor Government sent a recruiting train around the state and supported conscription for overseas service. Their successors now have no time for forest plantations. The federal Labor government in 1916 and 1917 pursued two plebiscites—not referenda—with a view to imposing conscription. They had already given the country the War Precautions Act making a criminal offence any criticism that might discourage recruitment. Their successors in the federal government want water to roll uphill.
92
And these
“I’m just reading “The Codebreakers” by David Kahn. There is an interesting chapter called “Crisis of the Union” about Democrat vote buying in the Garfield / Tilden run-off.
The last sentence is
“But perhaps the most lasting value of the Hassard- Grovenor cryptanalysis and its dramatic disclosure by the Tribune was noted by Reid’s biographer: “It had pilloried once and for all the single manifestation in our annals of the idea that the Presidency was a purchasable honour”.
He might have to rephrase that in an update!
And I guess that Democrats don’t do history.
60
Quite right.
That is why they do not realise that the slave owners were Democrats, that the KKK was created by Democrats, that the Jim Crow segregation laws were championed by Democrats and that Hillary Clinton’s “friend and mentor” was Robert C Byrd – a KKK Grand Cyclops.
Neither do they know that Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery, joined the Republican party.
60
A couple of American friends of mine – both Democrats – are spending a lot of their time in trying to figure out how Trump “bought” the Presidential election.
It seems that Democrats go on witch-hunts quite frequently. It is becoming a participatory sport.
61
Oh that echo
-ivory tower,
air/conned-
double/glazed,
…Plato’s cave
in reversal,in
-mates think the
shadows are real,
but plebs outside
upon the slopes,
know they’re not.
30
That is really very good. I am impressed. Not bad for a serf.
10
Rereke,I
would ‘ve
shaped it
like the
leaning
tower ov
Pisa if
I could
‘ve man-
iged it.
40
what?
some
thing
like so
leaning
away
from
the vertical?
01
@ Rereke #11.1.2 In a democracy all leftists buy elections with other peoples money. I guess all they are doing is assuming that everyone else is as base and grafting as they are.
I’m sure you’ll agree this is why Jacinda finds herself in a biblical maelstrom of promises to fulfil sweating like a housebreaker given she never dreamed of being prime minister. Words are wonderful and free but can be lethal when used carelessly…
30
O/T
There will be an announcement of the Government’s next big energy disaster today, the Snowy Hydro 2.0 Big Battery.
I am willing to bet that it will be found to be “viable”. After all, the same people doing the feasibility study are the same ones who will be given many billions of dollars to build it.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-20/malcolm-turnbull-argues-snowy-hydro-2.0-is-good-to-go/9277368?pfmredir=sm
100
More information here. It WILL go ahead now but at massively higher cost than first estimated. No surprise there!
https://amp.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/snowy-20-will-go-ahead-but-cost-increases-50-per-cent-20171219-h07onp.html
100
The first cost increase is always the smallest. I notice that even the SMH notes that the transmission lines will need up-grading. We would be lucky to get this scheme finished under $A6,000,000,000.
Vanity, vanity, all is Turnbull.
100
It will be another NBN-style disaster and as with the NBN a lot of the true costs will not appear on the public accounts as they will be hidden within a government-owned corporation.
I’m expecting the final cost to be at least $20 billion and the project will never pay for itself.
Hopefully by the time the project is finished sanity will have prevailed and “renewables” will have been completely dumped and this Big Battery will be uneeded anyway.
90
How will this thing even work?
To start with only about 80% of the energy used to pump the water will be recovered at discharge.
Then where is the “surplus” power to charge it meant to come from? Will it be from windmills? Wouldn’t the operators prefer to sell their power into the grid at vastly inflated prices? Or will they get the same price for pumping water?
How much will power cost from this water battery.
I expect that it will be coal power that is used to pump the water but since the grid is now running close to the limit there will not be much surplus power to charge this hydro-battery.
This is why politicians should not be allowed to make engineering or economic decisions.
111
80%? Try 50%
Incoming Transmission Loss 10%
Pumping loss 20%
Evaporation in storage 10%
Generation loss at least 30%
Outgoing transmission loss 10%
(Re generation losses: you cant take all the energy out of flowing water because then it would be stopped at the back of the turbine, it has to be able flow away as fast as the water is coming in (but at a lower velocity).
so 90% x 80% x 90% x 70% x 90%= 40.8% of the power that was generated by the coal fired power station used to pump the water uphill is available for consumers after all losses are accounted for. Since the initial generation is no more than 40% efficient the overall efficiency is around 0.4 x 0.4 = 16% efficient.
20
Aluminum is a more efficient way to store electricity. It’s safe and highly stable (unless stored as a powder), doesn’t evaporate, the stored energy is easily released by reacting it with Fe2O3 and is recyclable since the resulting Al2O3 can be converted back to Al using electricity. As a bonus, the electrolytic cells that produce Al also produce CO2 to help green the planet.
21
Simply grows back where you took it. My, that wood is just like our modern fiat currencies, only crunchy.
110
I wonder how long it takes to grow 6.2 million tons to maturity. If it takes 30 years, for the sake of argument, do they have 30 years worth of acreage to power Drax indefinitely? And lets not forget the minerals being removed from the soil; are they shipping the ash back to replenish the soil?
70
Somewhat o/t
“The Case for Seizing Liddell”
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2017/12/78965/
60
Equally O/T but I note that there has been a biggish volcanic eruption in Kamchatna. (see NoTricksZone for videos etc).
Dismissed by David Appell as having liitle effect on the climate because it is at 55degrees North. Remind me, what latitude was Laki in Iceland in 1783 which caused a cold year or two in Europe? Given the cool start to this winter across Europe they don’t need any extra cooling.
111
An interesting comment from that article, copied in full:-
– John Gardner
– December 20, 2017 at 3:52 pm
David, a thought provoking article, but I think the main point about Liddell’s demise has been missed – that the government’s LRET legislation has been the direct cause of base load generation becoming increasingly unprofitable, by simultaneously (a) forcing network operators to take all the ‘renewable’ power that becomes available on the wholesale market at the expense of existing base load power, thereby reducing the amount of their full output that base load generators can sell and consequently making them less profitable for their owners, and (b) ensuring the building of ever-larger amounts of ‘renewable’ generation capacity by means of the gradually rising (currently about $80+ per MWH – i.e. between 50 and 80% of the wholesale price) subsidy achieved by gifting them LREC certificates for every MWH put into the grid. Imagine for a moment if a similar subsidy scheme were applied to free range eggs vs cage eggs. Such a huge subsidy (and its resultant huge windfall profits) would soon drive all cage egg producers bankrupt, and guarantee that only ‘free range’ eggs were produced, regardless of the public’s preference for either.
Unlike eggs however, the power generated by ‘renewables’ is not a perfect substitute for base load power, as is becoming clear. The ‘spikiness’ of supply as you call it requires active intervention by generators and/or load shedding, and the asynchronous nature of ‘renewables’ further de-stabilises the electricity network, requiring massive costs to be expended by synchronous generators and network operators to re-engineer the network and manage it on a second-by-second basis.
Yes, the market has changed from a few large generators making large, well-planned investments over decades, to a free-for-all funded by the combination of the LRET subsidy and the ‘progressive’ government agencies CEFC and ARENA, and yes, the ‘spikiness’ of ‘renewables’ power cause the NEM to make corresponding increases in the wholesale price of ‘fill-in’ power such as gas and even diesel generators, but these changes were IMHO driven almost solely by the pernicious effect of the massive LRET subsidy driving uneconomic investment for the past decade or more in intermittent, non-synchronous ‘renewables’ generation (more than $2 billion per annum now and rising), paid largely in ignorance by all Australian electricity consumers.
To answer the implied question of whether the government should seize Liddell as a solution, I would say it would make little or no difference unless the government also scraps the LRET. Unfortunately in either case the poor taxpayer would be saddled with $billions in reparations to the private electricity sector for breach of faith (or whatever the lawyers call it). What a shambles.
110
And you can bet that the owners of Liddell are thinking (probably even thinking out loud too) “Please, oh please, seize Liddell.”
That would get them out of the cost for cleaning it up, and that would save them a shirtload of money.
Tony.
100
Snowy 2 Feasibility Study released :
http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/snowy-2-0-feasibility-study/
A few red flags – Business Analysis, & Modelling, Commercial & Cost Estimate are missing.
40
An article on news.com.au yesterday praised the South Australia Musk battery. Engineers were ‘amazed’ when it helped cope with the loss of power from Victoria’s Loy Yang. It turned on in milliseconds.
The day before they wrote about how Loy Yang, the ‘most polluting’ power in the country now might also close in 2020. SA will need a much bigger battery.
Then burning really old dead trees is industrial pollution where burning new trees is not. You have to wonder how many dead old trees were burned to make the tons of Lithium batteries. It is all high farce but religion is like that. Facts are irrelevant, even offensive to true believers.
171
In other amazing South Australian news, it turns out that back-up (gas&) diesel generators have cost them half a $360 million:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/cost-of-sa-state-owned-power-station-finally-revealed/9279852
Backing up renewables doesn’t come cheap.
40
According to The Australian, the figure of 338m doesn’t include 72.8m contingency, including relocation costs, and doesn’t include 20.4m operating costs. If these are included, the total is 431.9m.
10
If only there was an actual free market in electricity generation, we might be able to better afford the best means of power generation to suit each need and niche.
Seperately, Western Australian Government had tried to get a eucalyptus industry happening on the back of Natural Heritage Trust funding. It’s saviour was almost to be renewable energy subsidies. I think some small relic might still remain of the scheme spawned from subsidies. A critical constraint turned out to be the cost of suitable land to upscale the project. Same goes for sequestration of carbon by tree planting. The land is valuable for food.
41
People are put behind bars for length periods for less destructive actions than those perpetrated and supported by the so called Greenies.
71
A Bonfire of the Sanities… that’s what yer get when Greenies rule. 🙁
51
I suspect it wouldnt get as far in the USA, as they have the 2nd Amendment…..
The Leftists cant stand the idea that people might be armed, after all, you cant molest a population, if it can defend itself from the predator….
I say let them try it in the USA….they will be finding the bodies of foolish Leftists in rivers for months…
Here in Oz we may not fare so well. We have after all, the Socialist dream of gun control, which ties the populations hands behinds its back so it *can* be molested, without restraint, and without any form of self defence. History has many lessons….
11
Coal seams which were mostly wood,
Can be cleaned before burning and should,
Spreading carbon dioxide,
Through the world far and wide,
Making more forests grow, which is good.
130
That burning of
treeswoodchips for Drax always made me shake my head.They said it was (somehow) renewable because for every tree they chopped down for chips, they planted a new tree.
Please don’t try and tell me that a new little tiddler tree can suck up as much CO2 out of the air as the huge tree they just cut down, and then multiply that out to the forest they have to cut down, and then wait for it to grow back to the size those trees were before they hacked them down, trucked them to the plant, processed them into chips, put them on a train to the Port, transported them across the Ocean, and put them onto a train to Drax, and there’s no CO2 emitted during that process I’ll bet.
And to top it all off Drax releases more CO2 from the woodchips than the coal it once burned.
I thought that the problem actually WAS the emission of CO2 that they needed to stop.
Leave the tree in the ground and it sucks up CO2, and there would be no emissions from Drax other than from the coal being burned. Swapping Peter for a bigger Paul.
I’m astounded by the Greens attitude here that you cannot chop down trees on a farm to grow crops or graze cattle, but it’s okay to chop down vast swathes of them for a plant like Drax.
Tony.
171
Carbon neutral my foot.
After all the destruction they have to
load the timber onto transport,
carry it to the wood chip plant,
Chip it,
reload it onto land transport,
carry it to the harbour,
transfer it to ships,
cross an ocean,
off load in a UK port,
transfer to land transport
& offload at the power plant.
All requiring much more intensive hydrocarbon fuel usage due to the low energy to volume of wood.
Meanwhile back home they have to prepare heavily stumped land for planting, plant the new trees, & protect them from weed competition, & animal predation for some years. If they expect us to fall for this garbage they must believe we only came down from the trees, just before they cut them down.
100
Maine producers’ eyes watered on learning that other US regions, mainly the South East, had earned in excess of $684 million in 2015 exporting wood fuel to the European Union. All sorts of railroaders, shippers and phyto-treaters (don’t mention the diesel!) are very happy with plans for Maine to start shipping 600,000 metric tons per year.
A forestry revival would be just the thing after so many mill closures and the decline of newsprint. But this is all for burning.
US forests are now for burning. On the other side of the Atlantic. Chips can go from truck to rail to ship to rail to truck…and it’s all for burning. Sometimes right next to coal deposits.
Staggering waste. Conservation is dead. Long live Big Green.
40
Gives a whole new meaning to Python’s …..
Sorry, I couldn’t help it!
Tony
60
This…is an ex-parrot!!!!!
Now youve done it…..
20
Hasbeen,
With respect, you missed at least one. between “Chip it” and “reload it” they have to pelletize it. Ihave no idea what he process is or how much energy it takes, but it’s still another step in the process.
40
Complete ‘cognitive dissonance’/Doublethink/hypocrisy by the so called ‘Greens.’ The forests they are clearing in the SE US are indeed important and already limited habitat for some rare birds; less habitat, less birds. And this impacts many species that are not already being chopped by wind farms, fried over solar concentrators or which lost habitat due to ethanol or other biofuel production.
So I predict – because it is so completely predictable – that when these bird population declines become evident the Watermelon Gang will blame Evil Capitalism-caused Climate Change.
71
One last thought. Most houses in the US are 2 X 4 construction. That could be a huge source of wood pellets. Give people an idea of what this is doing to the birds and other wildlife.
What Good Green could complain about sacrificing their house to Save The Planet.
P.S. As a lifelong birdwatcher this really p*sses me off. Even worse, many birders I know are so totally CAGW brainwashed that they make excuses for this. More importantly, many so called environmental organizations have been bought off by the Green Blob and they’re now beyond useless.
121
In Australia the wood size is called 4 by 2. (Inches). Rhyming language for Jew.
10
Let them…….
I suspect if they try it and go on a rampage, a steady red dot on their chest might force a rapid rethink….
10
From Alabama plenty of wood chips for EU we can burn natural gas coal laughing all the way to the bank
20
Great keeping up with all of your work for which very many thanks.Please enjoy a Merry Christmas and look forward to a very much better New Year.
Sincerely,
Douglas Stewart
20
Who ordered a stake in chips?
30
Normal people understand that the planet would be one big Easter Island if coal hadn’t replaced timber. Those that ignore history are destined to repeat it.
30
In Australia there are at least 3 power stations based on wood (and bagasse) for power generation.
They use predominantly wood waste from sawmills that would otherwise be burnt in the open.
The current RECs allow haulage from about 200km and harvest and haul uses <10 % of the embodied energy.
There is one plant in Australia that makes wood pellets and exports to Europe. It uses sawdust and other mill offcuts.
It is unlikely Oz native forest will be cut just for fuel although if it allowed some judicial thinning this would be of benefit to the forest.
50
Am I the only one who has noticed there are two types of Greenies? There is the international type that goes around and make all sorts of allegations but by and large is ignored, and life goes on. Then there is the Australian type that has both major parties well and truly locked in a path of economic destruction. The difference is huge and the evidence is clear. Everywhere new generation coal fired power stations and nuclear ones are being built in spite of the international type of Greens, except here in Australia where the other type is very powerful. That’s the key. Are we stupid or are we stupid?
41
yes
33
I agree, Gee Aye. There are a lot more that two types. When it comes to Green politics, the more unrelated, and non-costed, alternatives there are, the better.
41
The “greenies” arent actually greenies – rather they are globalists who use the green thing to conceal their communist agenda.
The environment movement has been supercharged and engineered into prominence globally, so it could be used as a cover for evil things. I feel sorry for the real greenies, the Communists who only want globalist foolishness and unhappiness for everyone, give the real greenies a bad name…..
62
Adapting that joke. Like lawyers only more so – “97% of the fraternity give the rest a bad name”
20
So Gee Aye, if you believe there is only one type then what type are they? If more than two then I suppose I would have to agree as Rereke Whakaaro makes a valid point.
20
you are the one with the categorisation fetish. Tell us how many types there are of surfers, brickies, authors, hedonists, widows, architects… I’m fascinated by your remarkable willingness to display your abilities.
10
‘That’s the key. Are we stupid or are we stupid?’
Not stupid, just ignorant on the science, we need to come up with a different paradigm to sway the masses.
20
Regardless of what other term you come up with, stupid is still as stupid does.
20
The propaganda is very sophisticated, but we can overwhelm it with a new scientific paradigm.
Do you have a theory?
10
It is bizarre to have wood burned in place of coal for environmental benefits.
Wood is not pure. It has oils and resins that don’t burn well.
KK
53
Come here to see how a forest looks if you don’t log it. Just walk through and I’ll give you price.
00
And Australia gets dumber and dumber.
“The total cost of Snowy 2.0 could be as high as $6.5 billion including the new transmission lines”.
“The expansion could generate 2000 megawatts for the national electricity market.”
It can only generate that 2000 MW by taking 2,500 MW from the grid to pump the water up hill.
“But it’s only viable if there is no new coal fired power plants and the rise of renewable energy continues.”
“Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said if the project did not go ahead, the cost to Australian families would be greater because more expensive diesel and gas-fired generators would be needed to stabilise the system.”
In other words, this project depends on the introduction of even more intermittent “renewables” and even higher electricity prices as more coal-fired generators are forced to close, with backup diesel and gas-fired generators required. Of course we are not allowed to search for any new gas, and the diesel must be imported.
And this from a so-called liberal government whose beliefs include:
– we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives
– in government that nurtures and encourages its citizens through incentive, rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes and the stifling structures of Labor’s corporate state and bureaucratic red tape
– government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals – not government – are the true creators of wealth and employment
50
Good outline. I heard or read that yesterday. Politicians are treating us like garbage.
In a real democracy any minister taking such actions as condoning renewables and stating that they are cheaper than coal in the production of electricity would be dismissed from office, having failed in their duty to the public.
How do they get away with this?
In a real democracy, someone would have been held to account over the desalination plant disgrace. The desal thing is very upsetting. All we got was unworkable piles of concrete and steel and a huge bill while they ensured votes from the beneficiaries who took home wages that would be welcomed by any 2 or 3 of the rest of us.
The green monster has a very ugly rotten core.
This can’t continue.
KK
10
Meant to say that wages were two or three times higher than normal. Mates rates.
10
“Green vision protects coal deposits, razes forests instead: Europe goes back to wood power”
The Green B.L.O.B has realised that leaving wood around is source material for “future coal”.
So this is a two-pronged strategy
!. Leave coal in the ground
2. Prevent “future coal”
21
as this thread is about sham CAGW policies, this should fit in well:
on jo’s “Map of Climate Shame…” thread in November, I posted a comment re:
16 Nov: CarbonPulse: Just a game: China ETS to kick off with two years of simulated trade, no compliance obligations
China’s national emissions trading scheme is set to be a “game” when it starts in the coming months, with no real trades or compliance obligations during its first two years of operation, two sources close to the market’s design process said Wednesday.
nonetheless, FakeNewsMSM continued to shill for China’s ETS:
19 Dec: Guardian: Fiona Harvey: China aims to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions through trading scheme
Heavily polluting power plants across China will now have to choose between paying for their emissions or cleaning up their act
The Guardian-19 Dec. 2017
The world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China, has launched the world’s biggest ever mechanism to reduce carbon, in the form of an emissions trading system.
China’s top governmental bodies on Tuesday gave their approval to plans for a carbon trading system that will initially cover the country’s heavily polluting power generation plants, then expand to take in most of the economy.
“This is a game-changer,” said Nathaniel Keohane, vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based environmental group. “This shows global leadership on the part of the Chinese government.”
China has already set out a target of ensuring its still-growing emissions peak by 2030, a target experts say should be met…
19 Dec Updated 20 Dec: Bloomberg: China Sets Out Scaled-Back Vision for Biggest Carbon Market
With assistance by Feifei Shen, and Mathew Carr
Even a smaller carbon market in China would mark a significant advance for involving markets in limiting pollution, an idea that gained currency two decades ago with the Kyoto Protocol…
The European Union endorsed China’s move, saying it showed the world is moving toward tighter restrictions on fossil-fuel pollution even as President Donald Trump works to stimulate coal use in the U.S…
“As the U.S. government turns its back on the fight against climate change, China, the EU and many others are forging ahead,” EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said in a statement from Brussels. “With both the EU and China committed to emissions trading, two major international players are championing carbon markets.”…
HOWEVER, THE INSIDERS/STAKEHOLDERS AT CARBON PULSE HAVE THE FOLLOWING UP TODAY:
20 Dec: CarbonPulse: ***Real trading in China ETS unlikely before 2020, government plan shows
Actual allowance trading between power generators in China’s national emissions trading scheme is unlikely to start before 2020, while other sectors could be brought into the market even later than that, according to the government’s scheme design plan published Wednesday.
LOL.
11
***it’s a MOCKERY of an ETS:
21 Dec: SouthChinaMorningPost: China flicks on the carbon market switch but trading still a long way off – with or without Trump
Beijing still has to explain how carbon credits will be allocated and what rules will govern the system
by Nectar Gan
China has met a self-imposed deadline to launch a much-awaited national carbon trading scheme but there is still a long way to go until the market is up and running to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, according to analysts…
Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to launch a national carbon market by the end of 2017 when he met Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, two years ago. But the scheme launched this week is only the very first step towards a functional market.
“It will take two more years before any real money will be spent in the market, probably not until 2020 – that’s my judgment,” said Tsinghua University professor Zhang Xiliang, who has advised the government on the scheme…
It also lacks concrete plans on how the market will be run, such as how the emission permits will be allocated to the industry.
It will take about a year to complete the building of “infrastructure”, including national systems for reporting data, registration and trading. Then there will be another year of ***mock trading in the power generation industry where no actual payment will take place…
Chinese companies and lower-level authorities have repeatedly made headlines for doctoring emissions and air pollution data…
Then there is the question of the regulatory framework around the market.
Zhang said the government had drafted regulations for the carbon market – including the obligations of companies to monitor and report emissions and penalties for non-compliance – but the State Council had still to give its approval.
Dimitri de Boer, vice-chairman of the Beijing-based China Carbon Forum, said the regulations could be a short-term solution for the next couple of years, but a law was necessary in the long run…
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2125138/china-flicks-carbon-market-switch-trading-still-long
11
too funny:
19 Dec: EnvironmentalDefenseFund: EDF Applauds China’s Launch of Market-Based System to Cut Climate Pollution
Statement by Fred Krupp, EDF President
China announced today that it would begin phasing in an ambitious new program to stabilize and eventually reduce carbon pollution, a program that will become the world’s largest emissions trading system (ETS)…
The initial phase of the ETS will cover the power sector, and is expected to include 3.5 billion metric tons of carbon emissions from some 1,700 stationary sources; this represents roughly 39% of the nation’s total emissions, and is dramatically larger than the current largest program, the European Union’s ETS…
“The world has never before seen a climate program on this scale,” said Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) President Fred Krupp. “It is important that the world’s largest emitter should lead on climate, and that is precisely what China is doing by launching its national emissions trading system. China has stepped up its climate leadership dramatically in recent years, and is now increasingly seen as filling the leadership void left by the U.S.
“This new carbon market will position China not only to achieve its Paris Agreement pledge to peak carbon emissions by around 2030, but to take on a more ambitious target that puts China’s emissions on a downward trajectory well before then”…
And I’m proud that EDF has been able to provide technical assistance to the Chinese government on areas such as system design, data quality, third-party verification, compliance and enforcement,” Krupp said…
EDF has been working in China for more than 25 years, helping to gradually build the capacity and ambition needed for an undertaking of this magnitude. In recent years, EDF trained more than 39,000 Chinese environmental enforcement officers, and provided technical assistance as China launched seven regional and municipal carbon trading pilot programs. Their success inspired Beijing to move ahead with the program announced today…
https://www.edf.org/media/edf-applauds-chinas-launch-market-based-system-cut-climate-pollution
12
“how to succeed” when you don’t have credible emissions data and there’s no trading? “great move” though:
2 pages: 19 Dec: Forbes: The China Carbon Market Just Launched, And It’s The World’s Largest. Here’s How It Can Succeed.
by Hal Harvey and Hu Min
On Tuesday, December 19, China formally launched its national carbon market. By setting a carbon price on the country’s largest greenhouse-gas emitters, China has launched a new, crucial endeavor in its efforts to tackle pollution and climate change…
If designed correctly, a carbon cap-and-trade system is a powerful policy to cost-effectively cut carbon pollution. This early phase is a promising start, but there is room for improvement…
Electricity generation from wind and solar electricity, while growing at an astounding rate, is still marginal (4% from wind and 1% from solar in 2016) and, renewable power generators face the world’s worst curtailment rates, at 17% for wind and 10% for solar in 2016. Thus, a carbon market starting with China’s power sector should help both reduce coal burn and boost the growing clean energy industry…
Carbon markets can reduce carbon emissions and create an opportunity to transform entire economies so that they are cleaner and more efficient. China’s step, today, is a great move in that direction.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2017/12/19/the-china-carbon-market-just-launched-and-its-the-worlds-largest-heres-how-it-can-succeed/#79d57e217ce6
12
20 Dec: Moody’s: Announcement: Moody’s: China’s national carbon trading platform poses a challenge to coal-dependent power producers with high emission rates
However, the platform will likely improve the profitability of renewable energy producers and coal-dependent power producers with low emission rates in the long run driven by higher power generation and carbon credit revenue.
The new platform will have no immediate impact on the ratings and outlooks of power producers rated by Moody’s because any meaningful effects will likely come in 2020 or after when the platform becomes fully functional…
Based on the plan and the press conference hosted by the NDRC:
(1) The national carbon emission trading platform will be set up in Shanghai and Hubei Province.
(2) The NDRC has set a three-stage plan to develop the emission market, comprising: (a) Fundamental Development Stage (to take a year) for building up the infrastructure on emission trading, (b) Pilot Run Stage (to take a year) for conducting trial emission trading, and ***(c) Perfection Stage (no specified timing) for elevating the platform to the required standards…
https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-Chinas-national-carbon-trading-platform-poses-a-challenge-to–PR_377406
if only Donald Trump could enjoy such media enthusiasm for getting his tax reform bill passed!
Donald Trump’s tax bill pitched at middle class but rich will take most of the meal
ABC Online-12 hours ago
Tricks That Made a Terrible Tax Bill Look Palatable
Bloomberg· 11h ago
The GOP tax plan has a nasty surprise for upper-middle-class parents with kids in college
Chicago Tribune· 13h ago
In another country, we would call this ‘corruption’
Opinion-Washington Post-13 hours ago
The Rose Garden celebrations of Trump (and some tax thing), ranked
In Depth· Washington Post· 7h ago
Trump’s misbegotten tax bill, the gift that keeps on taking
Opinion-New York Daily News-10 hours ago
Trump Can’t Believe No One’s Thrown a Parade in His Honor
Vanity Fair· 8h ago
12
20 Dec: CNBC: Patti Domm: This is just the start of companies handing out bonuses, raising wages and increasing spending
•Expect a stampede of companies handing out bonuses, raising pay, spending on capital projects and giving to charities, with the windfall from the newly passed corporate tax cuts.
•AT&T, Comcast and a handful of companies said they would use tax reform to give money to their employees and increase capital spending.
•Wells Fargo and Fifth Third said they would raise their minimum wage. Analysts expect other banks to follow, as well as other companies that will get a boost from the tax law changes.
Boeing was first out of the gate, followed by AT&T, which said it would give more than 200,000 unionized employees a special bonus of $1,000 once the tax bill is signed. The company also said it would increase its capital expenditures by $1 billion.
Both Fifth Third Bancorp and Wells Fargo followed, saying they would raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Fifth Third said it would also give workers a bonus, and Wells Fargo said it would give $400 million to community and nonprofit organizations next year.
Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, said it would pay 100,000 frontline and non-executive employees special $1,000 bonuses. The company also said it is making the move because of the FCC’s recent change in broadband rules and tax reform. It also said it plans to spend well in excess of $50 billion over the next five years on infrastructure improvements.
“This is exciting stuff. This is good. This is not just a whole bunch of guys saying I can buy back a lot of stock here and jazz up my numbers through financial engineering. This is a bunch of business leaders saying we can use this tax benefit to grow our company, keep our loyal employees and assist the community,” said Dick Bove, banking analyst at Vertical Group…
Boeing also announced $300 million in employee-related spending and charitable donations. FedEx, when it announced earnings, said it expects U.S. GDP could increase materially next year as a result of tax reform. It said it would likely then increase its capital expenditures and hire to accommodate the additional volumes triggered by higher growth…
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/this-is-just-the-start-of-companies-increasing-spending.html
16 Dec: Reuters: N.Y. Fed raises U.S. fourth-quarter GDP growth view to near 4 percent
by Richard Leong
The New York Federal Reserve on Friday raised its estimate of U.S. gross domestic product growth for the fourth quarter of 2017 closer to 4 percent, based on revisions of prior data that suggested stronger economic activities…
The regional central bank’s “Nowcast” model calculated the economy was expanding at an annualized pace of 3.98 percent in the fourth quarter, quicker than the 3.92 percent rate calculated a week ago…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-nyfed/n-y-fed-raises-u-s-fourth-quarter-gdp-growth-view-to-near-4-percent-idUSKBN1E9292?il=0
22
ABC’s ***”experts” are? just one, namely “Howard Gleckman from the Tax Policy Institute”
21 Dec: ABC: Donald Trump’s tax bill pitched at middle class but rich will take most of the meal
By North America correspondent Conor Duffy and Roscoe Whalan
US President Donald Trump’s first public outing after his seismic election win last year was at New York’s swanky 21 Club.
The President-to-be was cheered by the wealthy crowd as he reportedly tucked into a $36 burger and promised them a tax cut.
“We will get your taxes down, don’t you worry,” he said…
Republicans are pitching it as a win for families but ***experts have a problem with that.
They say the rich will get the burger and most of the rest will be left with the salad and fries…
“Now a lot of that is because high income people own most of the shares of US companies and because the corporate tax cut is so generous so that means that the owners of those corporations also get the tax cut and they’re high income people for the most part,” says Howard Gleckman from the Tax Policy Institute…
Again ***experts say the assumptions underpinning that trickle down economics theory are flawed and, to stretch the analogy, only crumbs are passed on.
“For some reason we don’t really understand very well, over the last 30 years, the link between corporate profits and workers wages has been broken in the US and that means that the corporations and their shareholders keep more of their profits, including their after tax profits and workers get less,” Mr Gleckman says…
We know most of the $36 burger club are certainly onside.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-21/trump-tax-bill-pitched-at-middle-class-but-rich-will-take-most/9278070
***Howard Gleckman is a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which is funded by individuals, corporations, trade groups, and foundations including the Ford Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, according to their website.
and just in case that means nothing to you:
2012: Breitbart: Washington Post Cites ‘Nonpartisan’ Brookings Institution in Tax Policy Piece
by William Bigelow
Of course, those tax experts come from “the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.” And the Tax Policy Center is an arm of the – drum roll, please…
Brookings Institution.
The Brookings Institution? That Brookings Institution? The leftist institution that even Politico acknowledges is clearly liberal?
How liberal is Brookings? Ask Discover the Networks… ETC ETC
But wait; the Tax Policy Center is also identified as being supported by another entity. Perhaps that’s why WaPo identifies them as non-partisan.
And that entity is — drum roll, please…
The Urban Institute.
The Urban Institute? That Urban Institute? How liberal are they?
Let’s return to Discover the Networks… ETC ETC
Does anyone truly trust the Washington Post to be non-partisan? Only about as non-partisan as Brookings, the Urban Institute, and the Tax Policy Center
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2012/06/21/wapo-cites-nonpartisan-brookings-institute/
does anyone trust the ABC?
22
Pat
Just tossing this in here
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/12/20/super-maga-winning-for-christmas-u-s-companies-announce-massive-employee-financial-benefits-with-trump-tax-bill-passing/
10
two of ABC’s RN summer repeats of “Big Ideas” programs this week:
intro: Paul Barclay: sorting fact from fiction has long been the responsibility of news organisations like, say, the ABC…but social media affected the outcome of the US elections.
sound grab: Facebook won election for Trump.
21mins40secs: ABC’s Paul Barclay to NYT’s Malachy Browne: does brand stil matter when it comes to news credibility online? do people still tend to see NYT, BBC, ABC etc as providers of views they can trust, moreso than the other content on social media platforms.
AUDIO: 53mins52secs: 18 Dec: ABC Big Ideas: Trust and truth in the digital age
We are in the midst of an ‘information war’. Social media news feeds are awash with misinformation and, worse, deliberately disseminated disinformation. The Macquarie dictionary recently named ‘fake news’ as it’s word of the year. Sorting fact from fiction is the responsibility of the news media: if we can’t rely on news organisations to provide us with the facts, why should we trust them? Paul Barclay speaks to a panel of esteemed journalists about how we combat the ‘fake news’ phenomenon.
Recorded at UTS on 21 March, 2017. Originally broadcast on 27 March 2017
Guests:
Malachy Browne, journalist, New York Times; pioneer international investigative reporting via eyewitness media and community engagement.
Andy Carvinex NPR; former head of reported.ly; Senior Editor-at-large, NowThis news.
Kim Bui, Editor-at-large, NowThis news; former deputy managing editor at reported.ly
Claire Wardle, Director of Research and Strategy, First Draft news.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/trust-and-truth-in-the-digital-age/9228602
above is so out-of-date, it should never have been repeated, and it takes no account of NYT/WaPo/CNN/ABC etc all being called out for Fake News throughout the year.
—-
second, a whole program mocking pro-Brexit Brits, Trump voters &, of course, climate deniers, who can’t accept the scientific facts etc. Fairfax Spinks: Brexit supporters, Trump supporters, climate deniers are enemies.
yet, from around 44mins, Fairfax’s Spinks says altho he’s said climate deniers can’t accept facts, facts in science change, & what is fact today may well turn out to be a fiction tomorrow. also says science can’t prove anything, science is only in the business of disproof.
AUDIO: 20 Dec: ABC Big Ideas: How to talk about science
Do science communicators have to do a better job in getting their message across? Science provides crucial information – about climate change ETC…
Science and Story: The Semantics of Science presented by BBC World Science Festival Brisbane. 25 March 2017
Original broadcast was on 8 June 2017.
Guests
Ashley Hay – author
Professor of Philosophy A C Grayling – author and Master of the New College of the Humanities, London
Nick Payne – British playwright and screenwriter
Peter Spinks – science-writer and broadcaster
Chair: Jonathan Webb – head ABC Radio National Science unit
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/summer-science-communication/8702312
JUVENILE IS THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE MUCH OF WHAT PASSES FOR MEDIA ON ABC.
22
changed ***forever…so we may as well forget about destroying our economies with CAGW policies and get used to the ***new climate:
20 Dec: UN News Centre: Arctic ***forever changed by rapidly warming climate – UN weather agency
“While 2017 saw fewer records shattered than in 2016, the Arctic shows no sign of returning to the reliably frozen region it was decades ago,” said the Arctic Report Card, a peer-reviewed study that brings together the work of 85 scientists from 12 nations.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday that the Arctic Report Card shows that the warming trend is continuing to drive dramatic transformation in the Arctic region.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that the first 11 months of the year were the third warmest on record, behind 2016 and 2015, with much-warmer-than-average conditions engulfing much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces.
This means that the 2017 global land and ocean temperature will likely end among the three warmest years on record, and is expected to be the warmest year without a warming El Niño.
“What is more important than the ranking of an individual year is the overall, long-term trend of warming since the late 1970s, and especially this century,” said WMO senior scientist Omar Baddour.
“Along with rising temperatures, we are seeing more extreme weather with huge socio-economic impacts,” he said.
A separate report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), said that last year’s record global average temperatures, extreme heat over Asia, and unusually warm waters in the Bering Sea would not have been possible without human-caused climate change.
“This report marks a fundamental change,” says Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of BAMS. “For years scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes. But finding multiple extreme events that weren’t even possible without human influence makes clear that we’re experiencing new weather, because we’ve made a ***new climate.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=58322#.WjsYm-RrzIV
too cute:
20 Dec: NYT: Beavers Emerge as Agents of Arctic Destruction
By KENDRA PIERRE-LOUIS
Even as climate change shrinks some populations of arctic animals like polar bears and caribou, beavers may be taking advantage of warming temperatures to expand their range. But as the beavers head north, their very presence may worsen the effects of climate change. The issue isn’t just that the beavers are moving into a new environment — it’s that they’re ***gentrifying it…
Researchers cannot yet say definitively that beavers are moving north because of climate change. It is possible the beavers are reclaiming territory they lost when widespread trapping nearly wiped out their numbers in the 18th and 19th centuries. But Dr. Ayres said their movement was in keeping with patterns that ecologists are seeing globally, as plants and animals migrate toward the warming polar regions…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/climate/arctic-beavers-alaska.html
12
NYT is behind paywall for me at present, but here is their gush over the phony ETS.
btw NYT/ABC, who will/would make money out of this, if it were genuine? certainly none of those workers getting bonuses, higher minimum wages, etc from Trump’s tax reform bill:
19 Dec: San Francisco Chronicle: China unveils an ambitious plan to curb climate change emissions
By Keith Bradsher and Lisa Friedman, New York Times
On Tuesday, the country set out to claim another title reflecting its ambitions to change all that: keeper of the world’s largest financial market devoted to cleaning up the air.
China released plans to start a giant market to trade credits for the right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases…
If it works as intended, an emissions market will give Chinese power companies a financial incentive to operate more cleanly…
The long-awaited announcement could bolster global efforts to combat climate change after President Trump signaled that the United States would back away from Obama-era promises to curb emissions…
“China’s move to create the world’s largest carbon market is yet another powerful sign that a global sustainability revolution is under way,” Al Gore, the former vice president and a prominent voice on the environment, said in a statement…
Nathaniel Keohane, vice president for global climate at the Environmental Defense Fund: “This is like the Mount Everest of climate policy,” Keohane said. “It’s an incredibly ambitious undertaking.”…
China is reacting to pressure at home and abroad to clean up its act. Rising sea levels could devastate its heavily populated coast. The Chinese public is increasingly worried about broader environmental issues like urban smog, water quality and soil pollution…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/climate/china-carbon-market-climate-change-emissions.html?mtrref=feedly.com&gwh=37D3042C9D2E4B37881AC352A0B20761&gwt=pay
12
Drax will not be carbon neutral with coal for about 34 years, more if you include damage to the soil. It takes approx 30 years for the trees to grow, with transport costs etc accounting for the 4 years.
If Drax stops using trees at any point before 34 years are up then it will have net added co2 to the atmosphere over and above any co2 they would have added from coal. Until such time as the clearcut forests are replanted and fully grown which itself may not happen. Some of the land may be turned to other uses instead.
Drax imports two thirds of it’s pellets from the USA, meanwhile a power station in North America will be importing it’s wood pellets from Scandinavia. So obviously neither government nor any greenies have any braincells between them.
10
“We’re trying to control the weather by limiting a universal molecule intrinsic to life on Earth.”
When I compare climate change deniers to Radical Environmentalists, the climate change deniers always win when it comes to talking nonsense.
[Oh dear, don’t you know what the word, “intrinsic”, means, Harry? You should look it up. It will be under “I” in the dictionary] Fly
31
Rudder U/S
20
It’s intrinsic to Harry, which is why he’s so funny.
Do you really think he knows how to use a dictionary, Fly? Or are you generously giving him the benefit of the doubt?
Consider that if he did know, he wouldn’t give us so much entertainment…. there’s no work involved for him; it all just comes naturally 🙂
02
Well I would reply to McFly if I knew what he was on about. Perhaps he replied to my comment by mistake.
10
Intrisic.. defn… belonging naturally; essential.
CO2 is one of the two FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS of ALL LIFE ON EARTH , twotter.
With do you HATE life so much you think the TINY amount now in the atmosphere should be limited.
It really is pure idiocy !!
Its current only just plant subsistence level.
1000ppm + would be preferable .. the world would flourish.
And as you well know, there is absolutely ZERP EMPIRICAL evidence that CO2 causes any warming of our convectively controlled atmosphere, or has any detrimental effect whatsoever.
02
correction…. missed word.
Its currently only just above plant subsistence level.
02
I don’t know if another reader has made the same remark (too many comments to read all), but one can trace some ‘logic’ related to anti-carbon hysteria that is blamed for all evil:
Tree-burning is a kind of recycling the same amount of carbon that is continuously transformed from CO2 to tree, then CO2 again, etc.
On the other hand, by burning coal (or oil for that matter), we release to the atmosphere carbon trapped from ancient trees that otherwise would keep resting underground without affecting the atmosphere.
11
Yes, a sort of logic as in burn down 10,000 sq. kilometres of tropical rain forest to plant oil palms so the oil produced will be biofuel which can be burnt because the CO2 will be recycled….until the fad for palm oil dies down and the oil palm plantations are left to rot. Or the new ‘power station’ in Europe which will burn old clothing – presumably the CO2 will be recycled into cotton plants.
01
I am afraid you are talking about something else than the article’s topic…
10
I come from a place an Englishman would consider scary as there is so many trees around. I look with sadness when you attack wood industry.
I need that industry, and while it has been running here for over 100 years and there have been occasional trouble with it, I give it full pass for its work.
You don’t always damage the environment by logging. Please stop spreading panic. Everything depends.
Forests grow faster and faster due to increasing CO2. Please don’t conserve me. I don’t want to drown in forest.
01
We are definitely heading in the direction of an ice age, not a warmer world as the global warmers predict.
I enclose a copy of a letter that all the newspapers without exception refused to print. Heard of the Milanokovich cycle? Look it up. Its cooling effect is stronger than the greenhouse warming effect.
Sir,
It may interest the readers to know that the world average temperature is actually cooling, not warming as the global warmers claim. This is because of the so called Milanokovich Effect. The combined effect of the Earth’s precession, changes in the axial tilt, and increasing orbital eccentricity is reducing the amount of the sun’s radiation striking the northern continents. Over the past 8000 years we have been moving towards an ice age! Yes, greenhouse gases have mitigated this effect, but not overcome them.
Below is a chart I have obtained of the the average rural temperatures over the past two hundred years. These are seasonally adjusted average temperatures obtained from 624 ground stations, mainly in the northern hemisphere. As you can see these temperatures are currently at the lowest point compared to the lowest temperatures in the Twentieth Century. Claims of record temperatures are fake news, as those statistics include city temperatures. Since the effect of precession on declining radiation striking the earth’s northern surface is accelerating, falling temperatures should accelerate regardless of the greenhouse effect. The high temperatures in the early Twentieth Century were more a ‘Maunder Maximum’ caused by a high incidence of sun spots, than a marked greenhouse effect. The present greenhouse policies stem from panic and ignorance.
Sorry your system won’t print the chart. But it definitely shows cooling.
01
“Its cooling effect is stronger than the greenhouse warming effect.”
Well perhaps, over many thousands of years. But unfortunately none of us will be around to see if the Milanokovich Cycles overpower AGW in the long run.
“Claims of record temperatures are fake news”
Dream on. The long-term surface records and the satellite records say otherwise. Not to mention the shrinking alpine glaciers and other lines of evidence.
11
No twotter,
It is still colder than the MWP, RWP and all of the first 8000+ years of the Holocene,
The ONLY time it has been colder than now is during the LIA,
We are fortunate enough to have had some SMALL AMOUNT of warming since then.
In the satellite data there is absolutely ZERO EVIDENCE of any anthropogenic forcing, All warming has come from ocean cycles and events.
The radiative greenhouse effect has never been measured ANYWHERE on the planet, or any other planet
The gravity/thermal gradient is proven for every planet with atmospheric pressure greater than 0.1mb.
As for records, Most REAL records for Australia are from the late 1930s and late 1800s, and because of BOM’s refusal to apply proper WMO methodology to the AWS, basically all records from the last 20 or so years are meaningless anyway.
Warm records are generally fractional degrees. The COLD records now being set in the USA are in MULTIPLE DEGREES !!
Glacier have been shrinking since well before any possible human effect, in fact many glaciers did not exist before the LIA, and trees and other remnants are being found under glaciers now that the world is RECOVERING from that COLDEST of times.
You seem to live in a tiny little bubble of brain-washed ANTI-KNOWLEDGE, twotter.
Remove those stupid AGW blinkers and start to look at REALITY for a change.
02
Twotter, did you know…..
A radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, on Earth, or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction.
If you think that the radiative greenhouse warming effect has been observed…. please say where and when.
02
This might be a slightly stupid question but here it goes:
How can the use of the wood chips be carbon neutral if the trees have to be harvested (assume hydrocarbon burning saws, trucks, trains, etc.) and then processed using some sort of plant that likely needs electricity and then shipped using more hydrocarbon.
Am I missing something here or are these people insane?
10
Maybe not insane, just a/ bad with numbers or b/ good with numbers but greedy.
10
Eric.
Do you have a reference for the claim that producing wood pellets fuel is “carbon neutral”? If someone is claiming that, I would be interested to know.
20
Best I have found is
“The European Union’s 2020 climate and energy program classifies wood pellets as a carbon-neutral form of renewable energy, ….”
Still hunting.. I suggest you do to.
03
ps. The sooner Trump, or someone, stops the idiocy of chopping down US forests, and chipping and pelletising, then shipping them to be burnt in UK power stations under the pretence of “carbon neutrality” the better.
Don’t you agree, Twotter. !!
03
I haven’t read all this article, but it seems to agree,
http://grist.org/article/e-u-loophole-counts-wood-energy-as-carbon-neutral-its-not/
03
And of course, none it would be possible without climate SUBSIDIES.
What a waste of money, that could be used for so many better things, like actually helping third world countries develop regular, reliable electricity systems such as coal or gas.
03
https://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/savethecoal.jpg
03
Harry
Matthew Rivers, Director of Corporate Affairs, Drax Group
“As long as you fell and replant one tree every year on a 30-year cycle the atmosphere will see no extra CO2”
He says they are achieving 80% Carbon savings compared to coal!
Yet he gives ZERO DATA backing this up! And how old is DRAX?
Think about this?
https://www.drax.com/sustainability/biomass-carbon-story/
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I do not see him using the term “carbon neutral”, he is not making that claim. He is actually saying the wood is a renewable resource with around 80% less CO2 emissions compared to coal.
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Dave, burning wood pellets cannot and doesnot reduce CO2 output per kWh.
Can you imagine the joy that must be felt by the owners of the trees in North Carolina that were specially selected for use as pellets. Like winning the lottery and being part of the green revolution.
Wood is so impure compared to coal that it is scientifically unjustified to say that wood is clean fuel.
Deceit, pure and simple.
11