Kenneth Richard at NoTricksZone reports on yet another paper that shows things were much hotter back in the early Holocene when there were hardly any coal fired power plants, and cars were just molecules spread across hematite deposits, emitting nothing.
Awkwardly, carbon dioxide levels were very low during this five thousand year Monster Heatwave, so climate modelers are forever trying to erase the hot Holocene, it’s just that the dang evidence keeps turning up in the damnedest of places.
In 2002 construction workers in Taipei dug up a giant oyster shell, and a whole oyster reef, rather improbably in the metropolitan area. This was 20 kilometers from the ocean where oysters are not supposed to grow.
One particular oyster shell was especially hard to ignore because it was a 42cm across. When it was carbon-14 dated, it clocked in as 7,500 years old. This particular kind of oyster is not found around Taipei any more (even in the ocean), but is found in colder waters around Japan and Korea. So the researchers wondered if this meant the oceans were somehow improbably higher but cooler at the time. They also wanted to find out if these oysters died out in Taipei because of global warming. Instead it turns out the ocean there was much warmer and quite a lot higher.
So they sampled the heck out of this shell. They took so many data points they could figure out the seasonal swings from four years in a row in what was somewhere around 5,500 BC. Somehow even when CO2 levels were perfect, the water temperature swings around quite a lot. Neolithic people probably prayed for better weather, rolled some runes or read some tea leaves. These were early climate models and five thousand years later, seasonal models have not improved much.
Given that these oysters like to live 1 to 3m below the surface, the seas then must have been 1 to 3 meters above where they are now. Which gives us that awkward truth, yet again, that everywhere we look 7,000 years ago the seas were 1 – 2 meters higher than where they are today. Our seas are only rising at 1mm a year, (or 3mm if you believe the adjusted satellites). How could that be unless the natural world was much hotter, frying and expanding the oceans and melting the ice caps to some degree?
And indeed, current winter water temperatures around Taipei on our Catastrophe-Earth are 14–16oC but back 7,500 years ago researchers suggest the water in winter ranged from 15 to a shocking 23oC.
And if you’re wondering, the big oyster shell was not just carried there by some fisherman long ago — it was found in a muddy black silt clay layer that was more than 5-m thick and filled with other marine remnants above and below that. The researchers dated other things in that stack going back to about 10,000 years ago.
The researchers concluded as drily as possible “The disappearance of this type of oyster in Taiwan during the late Holocene should not be due to a warming trend.”
Indeed.
So yet again, we find something made the Earth a lot hotter 7,000 years ago, and yet the corals survived, the koalas managed and the extinction apocalypse never came. Sensible people would stop throwing money at the wind to control these natural swings that we can’t predict.
REFERENCE
Li H-C, Mii H-S, Liu T-K, et al. (2024) AMS 14C Dating and Stable Isotope Analysis on an 8 kyr Oyster Shell from Tapei Basin: Sea level and SST changes. Radiocarbon. Published online 2024:1-15. doi:10.1017/RDC.2023.117
Remember you are a planet-wrecker, but China just has growing pains
China burns four times as much coal as the second largest coal burner in the world. Everyone else is an also-ran in the coal stakes. For every ton the US consumes, China fries 12 times as much. And poor patsy Australia, for every ton we apologetically ignite, China burns 50. More coal was burned on Earth in 2023 than ever before in human history, and more than half of it was burned in China. Moreover, despite all the Sino nodding to sacred targets, China shows no intention of putting the brakes on the coal train. Around the world, 95% of all new coal power plants built in 2023 were built in China.
Where is the apoplexy?
The UN has met every year for twenty-eight years to badger everyone to stop using coal to appease the Goddess of Trace Gases and Weird Weather — all while China became the coal furnace of the world.
Or perhaps The UN met every year, so China could do exactly that? Lord above, imagine if the bureaucratic starlets of the West could be bought off so easily by trophies, trinkets and photo-opportunities — as a trade strategy, it would be a bargain. And it surely was.
Somehow life on Earth depends on Just-Stop-Oil protestors, but they can’t seem to find the Chinese Embassy. Banker cartels threaten higher interest rates for naughty nations, but no one suggests so much as a boycott of solar panels made with coal.
We’re all in this together, eh?
Supposedly, the developed world caused all the bad weather we have today — leaving the developing world to wallow in the suffering of the coal plants and cars the West invented. But, the developing world just landed a rocket on the moon and bought back some moon-rocks.
The last time NASA did that it was 1972.
A fork in the road for civilization
In a sense, the diverging lines of coal consumption mark the rise and fall of civilizations. They don’t have to — not if the West had upscaled to some better industrial power. But the West upscaled to witchcraft and corruption instead, arrogantly trying to control the weather itself with our power plants in a teenage fashion contest. China took our mistake and smiled and egged us on. They would be crazy if they didn’t support the Greens, and pay off our politicians to cripple our grid.
As CO2 Lover says in comments, it is the Sun Tzu Art of War. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Yet another survey shows most people know what to say when asked banal questions of climate dogma — “Yes they are “very worried”. But more than half the population don’t believe climate change is going to harm them and they have “no intention” of giving up meat, or their cars or their pets. And for people who only fly once a year, the idea of flying less was very unappealing. Worse, the under 35s like taking a series of flights each year is so normal now it’s “part of their identity”.
After years of this tedious preachy non-debate the report authors even had to acknowledge that “virtue signaling” was a thing, and it was turning off middle and lower class people. Rather than being seen as heroes, those who did a lot to prevent climate change were seen as boring and earnest, and either miserable martyrs or people who are “intentionally vocal” about their actions, partly as a way to show off. The working poor didn’t like being talked down to, and it reinforced the idea that “climate action” was something for people who could afford it. It’s a rich girls game…
POST NOTE: This survey is not as stupid as most of their surveys. Usually they just ask how worried people are. This survey gives us (and them) an idea of just how superficial that “worry” is. Apparently the world is going to end, but 6 out of 10 people are not going to give up their cars, their favorite food or their pets. That means they are not that worried. More than half don’t believe it’s harming them. It doesn’t get more basic than this. Four thousand experts have told the people for 30 years that climate change is their fault and a catastrophe — and more than half the audience doesn’t think the experts are right.
Their team is swimming in so much grant money they accidentally did a survey showing 60% of the population don’t believe them.
A study on Irish attitudes toward climate change has found more than half of respondents did not believe it is harming people in Ireland, and that a significant gap exists between people’s climate-related intentions and actions.
Older homeowners, particularly those in rural locations, often believe their way of life is “under threat” as a result of climate initiatives and the report recommends the impact of this change on the “identity of people” be further considered.
The report found many people, males in particular, had no intention of reducing their meat consumption and following a diet seen as more climate friendly.
It’s biology: 54% of people said they have no intention to be vegetarian, and when asked about being vegan, 73% said “No”.
People think they’re already taking enough climate action (like recycling and catching more buses) while the report writers said this was a misunderstanding and people actually needed to “do a lot more”.
Indeed, nearly 60% of the population says they are already walking and cycling more frequently instead of driving and they’re flying less too. Yet there are obviously just as many cars on the road and planes in the sky as ever before, proving researchers need to ask better questions.
If I catch a bus one time this year that’s more frequent than last year, right?
Click to enlarge the graph.
Likewise, are 82% of people really choosing foods with less packaging?
Click to enlarge the graph.
The report authors admit that the unwashed masses are not buying the “fly less” message while celebrities and politicians were flying more:
Across the workshops, individuals didn’t routinely make the connection between the numerous holidays they had booked abroad and the damage to the climate. Numerous arguments were made to justify this travel which point to challenges in communicating the benefits of flying less. Arguments included the fact that the flights were departing whether they were on-board or not and that their impact was minimal when compared with people in the public eye travelling on private jets. These responses point to a sensitivity to people in the public eye (particularly international celebrities) continually flying in private jets frequently whilst the broader population is being asked to not take a holiday and city break abroad.
And finally, there is the realization that “virtue signaling” is its own liability:
They are perceived to be potentially quite boring and earnest as they sacrifice activities such as foreign travel to align with their values. At an extreme, they are viewed as miserable martyrs. They are intentionally vocal about their actions. It was believed that this was intended as an attempt to promote positive actions in others but also to demonstrate their virtuous behaviour. Unfortunately, this active promotion to others less well-placed to act risked being viewed as an attempt to talk down to others, further reinforcing the view of climate action being for those who can afford it.
In Ireland we’re not to burn peat,
For the climate and we’re not to eat meat,
Nor travel too far,
In a petrol run car,
Explains why more greens lose a seat.
Conservatives-in-name-only have suffered the biggest wipe-out in 200 years. Reform UK has won four seats so far, with only about 11 seats not finalized. They’ve done this in a mere matter of weeks, with no funding, no branch structure and in a snap election. From nowhere they won 60% as many votes as the Conservative Party that was the UK government. That is really extraordinary. They are running second in “hundreds of seats” which means that in a first-past-the-post system, they could pick up as many as 6 million votes but only convert that into a small number of seats. But by polling so well across the UK, they represent a large political force. Both older establishment parties will be wary of losing more voters. As the third biggest force in British politics they will change the behaviour of the two major parties in a way that is not reflected in the seat tally.
Ponder that Reform UK won more votes than the Lib-Dems, but at the moment the Lib-Dems look like winning 70 seats, compared to the Reform tally of 4 seats. There is a huge unmet desire in British politics for a party that will represent the people instead of the Establishment — and that includes “establishment science” which has failed the people so appallingly in climate, energy and health. Congratulations to Nigel Farage who finally wins a seat himself.
Looking at the Reuters page — the Labor Party have only picked up an extra 2% of the votes (to 34%) but shifted from 34% of the seats to 63% of the seats in Parliament. The Conservatives have lost 20% of the voting public (from 43% down to 23%), and fall from controlling 56% of the seats to only 18%. The generational shift here is that the “other vote” has reached a record 27% as voters search for anything but the Uniparty corruption. The real story of our times is that politics is not so much right versus left, as The Establishment versus The People. Or Corruption versus honesty.
The need for energy in India is so dire, the Modi government just leaned on the power companies to get their act together. Instead of adding the usual 1 – 2 gigawatts of new coal power, which they have for a lot of the last decade, last year they ordered enough gear to build 10 gigawatts. And this year Modi wants them to aim for 31 gigawatts. Which is about the same capacity as the entire coal generation of the Australian National Grid (and our gas plants too).
Somewhat miraculously, they are talking of building them “in the next 5 or 6 years”:
India is rushing to add fresh coal-fired plants as it is barely able to meet power demand with the existing fleet in non-solar hours.
Post pandemic, the country’s power demand scaled new records on the back of the fastest rate of economic growth among major economies and increased instances of heatwaves.
India saw its biggest power shortfall in 14 years in June, and had to race to avoid night time outages by deferring planned plant maintenance, and invoking an emergency clause to mandate companies to run plants based on imported coal and power.
— Asia Financial
And they are discussing numbers like $33 billion instead of $3.3 trillion. When President Modi wants electrical generation fast, he didn’t say “quick, build 50,000 wind mills, with batteries, gas plants, high voltage lines and pumped hydro.”
Meanwhile the Western advisors sit around at frequent-flyer lounges on the way to UN junkets and tell themselves how the world is transitioning away from coal. And when the UN patsy declares coal is a “stranded asset” they nod obediently and sip more champagne.
When our inept and traitorous scientific agencies calculate energy costs, they won’t even put coal on the map unless they add up the cost of every cyclone in the next hundred years and park it in the “coal” column. Witchdoctors, every one of them.
Source: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Pablo Rosado at OWID.
The World must act, The Science is clear say Google, but Armageddon will have to wait while they make money from AI
Saint Google’s climate piousness vanished the moment they had to give up something they cared about. The unwashed masses need to take cold showers, eat bugs and fly less often, but if those same people want artificial intelligence, who cares about the heat waves or the hurricanes? Do carbon emissions matter, or don’t they?
For three decades Saint Google strove to save the world from CO2 (and from skeptical opinions). Google were the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007, the first to commit to operating 24/7 on carbon-free energy. They boast they’re helping 550 cities to reduce a gigaton of carbon emissions. Then opportunity knocked and set fire to those plans.
In 2020 they boldly set the goal of being 100% carbon-free by 2030, now three years later, their emissions are up 50% on what they were in 2019.
In September 2020, it was Google’s “Most Ambitious Decade” because the fires of climate change were already upon them:
“We have until 2030 to chart a sustainable cause for our planet or face the worst consequences of climate change,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a video released today. “We are already feeling those impacts today from historic wildfires in the US to devastating flooding in many parts of the world.”
Once Google’s data centers are powered completely by carbon-free energy, “this will mean every email you send through Gmail, every question you ask Google Search, every YouTube video you watch, and every route you take using Google Maps, is supplied by clean energy every hour of every day,” Pichai wrote in a blog post ….
Google’s emissions surged nearly 50% compared to 2019, the company said Tuesday in its 2024 environmental report, marking a notable setback in its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. The company attributed the emissions spike to an increase in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions driven by rapid advancements in and demand for artificial intelligence. The report noted that the company’s total data center electricity consumption grew 17% in 2023.
Way back in prehistoric times of 2020 the only mention of AI in these ambitious plans was “to optimize their electricity demand and forecasting.” which suggests AI was pretty useless, given that it didn’t tell them their 2024 electricity demand would be up 50%.
Most of Googles emissions are “Scope 3” which makes them just like the fossil fuel giants they despise
It’s not the oil and gas extraction that creates most of the emissions, it’s what Exxon’s customers do with the oil and gas that does. So it is with Google — it’s not creating the AI program that burns through the electricity, it’s the customers who keep asking it to make things like deep-fake porn movies. I mean, “Scope 3” is just plain silly — that any company should be accountable for what their customers do, but if you are going to apply silly rules, at least do it equally.
Our total Scope 3 emissions were approximately 10.8 million tCO2e in 2023, representing 75% of our total carbon footprint. Our Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions from sources in our value chain. The majority of these emissions come from the production of goods and services purchased for our operations, including the upstream manufacturing and assembly of servers and networking equipment used in our technical infrastructure.
So is the world at stake or not? If emissions will wash the coast away and melt the polar ice caps, why is it OK to demand people live in cold homes and give up their family holiday to Bali, but frivolously expand artificial intelligence use?
Do carbon emissions really matter or not?
“The science is clear: The world must act now if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
Imagine building and maintaining a perfectly good gas plant and then having it sit around for five whole years “just in case”?
There’s been a wind drought in the last three months in Australia, which meant hydro power had been used more than expected to fill the gap. But wouldn’t you know it, it’s been dry spell for most of the last year in Tasmania too and the dams were getting low. So on June 6th, the Combined Cycle Gas plant at Tamar Valley was set up to run for the first time since 2019.
Back in 2016 the maintenance costs of the keeping the CCGT at Tamar Valley on “30 day” standby was $12 to $24 million a year, depending on who you asked. So the five year cost of gas backup is in the order of $100 million, but those costs will be slapped on the gas plant bill, when really they’re a weather dependent renewables cost. What we need is reliable energy, not random electricity. If energy companies were only paid for reliable dispatchable power, the wind and solar plants would have to build their own “back up gas plants” that sit around idle for years, and juggle their own generators. So they’d all go out of business by breakfast. Why build a perfectly good gas plant with vast wind and hydro complex, when you could just build the gas plant and get what you need? Fossil fuels are essential, renewables are superfluous weather-changing talismen.
From WattClarity: This confirms that it’s the first time in just over 5 years that the combined cycle unit has seen a run!
…
Naturally Hydro Tasmania blame the drought, not the failing wind farms. But when the wind doesn’t blow, hydro likes to make profits from the price spikes, and there have been plenty of those lately.
In 2009 the whole gas plant was built for $230 million dollars. But the 2016 power debacle where the Basslink cable broke during a drought, cost the state $560 million dollars.
The only thing worse than the cost of back up power, is the cost of blackouts.
The Tamar Valley Power Station has four units, three are peaking gas units (adding up to 178MW), and one more efficient baseload turbine (CCGT) of 210MW.
[UPDATE: CCGT corrected to “Combined Cycle”. Apologies. – Jo]
After long neglecting environmental issues, the far-right party has made the denunciation of allegedly ‘punitive’ environmental policies into its new electoral weapon.
The former presidential candidate railed against “Brussels,” which “forces you, almost overnight, to change your boiler for €15,000,” against the “authoritarian reductions to agricultural land” and against the “heartless European Commission.”
“Don’t they have as their objective the reduction of human activity as a whole?” she asked, before connecting the issue to her obsession with French people’s daily lives, a strategy that has brought the RN to the threshold of coming to power. “It’s always the same logic of degrowth, which leads them to ban the sale of internal combustion engines in 2035, and thus deliberately program the sacking of our automotive industry and dependence on China,” she continued.
Long downplayed or mocked, environmental issues are now a core part of the RN’s political strategy.
Pierre Haski, in the Guardian: “This is a real tragedy”
… I always had the naive idea that “reasonable” people, from the right as well as from the left, would never let them win. …I woke up this morning to a different country, one in which the Le Pen clan is at the gates of power.
We can also wonder why this country, with its many assets, has generated enough anger and resentment among its citizens to produce an election result that is more likely to damage its economy and social cohesion than solve real problems. We can also question a French political elite that was so blind it let the far right prosper in large corners of a society that felt forgotten and despised.
Reasonable people live in the cities of course, and delusional people farm the land.
All of this is true, and is being discussed everywhere now in France, among friends, colleagues and in our family circles. Everyone is looking in the mirror and wondering what to do next Sunday in the second round. At the very least, we’ll have to learn to live in a divided land where the National Rally controls small towns and vast areas of rural France, while the “reasonable” people have the upper hand in major cities including Paris. This is a real tragedy.
Imagine learning to live in a “land divided”?
Indeed, according to CarbonBrief this is Marine Le Pens tragic manifesto — something about protecting the standard of living:
PS: Forgive me, I forgot to mention the obvious, but it needs to be said: “Far Right” and “Extreme Right”, as applied to a third of the population, are just the fake labels of the word-smithing liars on the left. Sleepy voters in-the-middle may be fooled by this cheap name-calling tactic, scared of voting for something “extreme”. But liars are vulnerable — every time we point out the lie, they pay the price.
The Democrats needed a reason to dump their placeholder candidate for 2024, and that convention is coming soon. Obviously they want to drop in a new candidate at the last minute with just enough time to ride home on the honeymoon glow. Debates are not usually held before the conventions.
They were always going to throw Biden under the bus, but this way they stop him being the lame duck for as long as possible while they protect their real candidate from scrutiny. Republicans counting chickens at this point are far too relaxed.
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POST NOTE: This survey is not as stupid as most of their surveys. Usually they just ask how worried people are. This survey gives us (and them) an idea of just how superficial that “worry” is. Apparently the world is going to end, but 6 out of 10 people are not going to give up their cars, their favorite food or their pets. That means they are not that worried. More than half don’t believe it’s harming them. It doesn’t get more basic than this. Four thousand experts have told the people for 30 years that climate change is their fault and a catastrophe — and more than half the audience doesn’t think the experts are right.
Their team is swimming in so much grant money they accidentally did a survey showing 60% of the population don’t believe them.