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By Jo Nova And then the climate pledges evaporatedThe Tech-Giants are backing away. Microsoft and Google have given up — they’re not bragging about their carbon neutrality anymore. Not now that their emissions have increased 29% and 50% respectively in the last four or five years. Over 500 companies pledged to get to net zero by 2040, but 96% of them are failing to stay on track. To distract us from talking about how the Climate Bubble has popped, some are blaming “AI”. The world is facing mass death and boiling oceans, and wind and solar are still as cheap as they never were, but Big Tech are sneaking away from saving the world, wait, because Artificial Intelligence uses a lot of electricity? It’s like, these CEOs were saviors of Mother Earth not long ago, but the ice-caps be damned, there’s a race on to capture the AI market? Apparently, the planetary heroes just turned back into robber barons doing business. Dr Jemma Green, who sells software for renewables markets, is trying to sell us a bad-luck story, as if it makes any sense. The truth is that if net zero technologies were cheap and useful, and the CEO’s ever cared about the planet, they wouldn’t be abandoning them. But they are… Why Big Corporations Are Quietly Abandoning Their Climate Commitments?Jemma Green, Forbes AI’s energy hunger and corporate climate hypocrisy …corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Shell once positioned themselves as leaders in sustainability, setting ambitious net-zero goals to align with global environmental efforts. However, the rapid rise of energy-hungry artificial intelligence is forcing these companies to reconsider—or even abandon—these commitments… Corporate climate pledges surged recently, with over 500 companies globally committing to net-zero emissions by 2040. This momentum continued between June 2022 and October 2023, with a 40% increase in new net-zero targets. Yet, as the AI revolution gains traction, cracks in these promises are beginning to show. Recent analysis reveals that only 4% of these companies are on track to meet their goals, highlighting a disconnect between corporate rhetoric and reality. Despite the headline, Jemma Green isn’t even trying to explain “Why” the end is here. After a few paragraphs blaming AI she laments how other giants like Shell, or Gucci, or EasyJet are stepping away too from their goals too, poking a hole in her thesis that it was only due to AI. It’s not like Gucci want to sell you AI programs to wear. What she’s documenting is the corporate world quietly erasing their mistakes: Shell, for instance, has abandoned its 2035 target of a 45% reduction in net carbon intensity, citing “uncertainty in the pace of change in the energy transition.” This target was a key milestone towards Shell’s broader goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The same goes for luxury fashion house Gucci, which once committed to carbon neutrality through verified carbon offsets and in May 2023, quietly removed its claim of being “entirely carbon neutral” from its website. The truth is that if the Earth was in danger, smart CEO’s and billionaires, who have to live on the planet too, would be pushing nuclear power like their children’s lives depended on it. Instead it was all an intellectual fashion contest and a quick subsidy buck, and maybe a few even believed wind and solar power did something useful, but they don’t anymore.
By Jo Nova And where was the ABC, the BBC, the CBC…This week UN was scaring the kiddies again in order to increase the river of funds that it feeds from. Harder to understand, science journalists were rushing to sell-out their homelands and repeat their incantations. We’re worrying about a 3mm annual rise (at most) but while Grok was inventing the wheel circa 5,000 BC, oceans were 2,000 millimeters higher. That surging water left clues like piles of giant oyster shells that are still 20 kilometers inland at Taiwan. In the frozen depths of the last ice age, the water piled up at the poles in the ice caps and the oceans shrank 125 unthinkable meters below where they are today. We’re getting precious about losing a sand dune, but Mesolithic people lost entire continental shelves. Only a poorly educated high schooler, or a UN Secretary-General, might be silly enough to think that the oceans had stayed the same for a million years and just jumped up 20 centimeters… Science communication is a train-wreck. When will the “journos” discover the Pleistocene.  Axios https://www.axios.com/2024/08/27/un-sea-level-rise-antonio-guterres The prophesy reads like a new Bible: UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned Tuesday that rising sea levels will “soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale with no lifeboat to take us back to safety,” highlighting the dire threat the crisis poses to Pacific Island nations. The UN wants to be your God and they need your money: A coalition of NGOs used the forum’s backdrop on Tuesday to release a report claiming at least $US1 trillion in climate finance is needed to support low-income countries. While seas have risen in Tonga they have barely shifted in places like Kiribati, Fiji or Tuvalu. Does the money follow “the tide gauges”? Will the BBC or ABC ever ask Guterres a single hard question.  http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70060/IDO70060SLI.shtml According to 1000 tide gauges,spread all over the globe, sea levels are rising slowly at around 1mm a year. The rise started long before human CO2 output increased, and there is no sign of acceleration with rapidly increasing human emissions of CO2. Careful analysis of 60 beaches in Northern Europe to find one of the most stable gauges in the world agrees. The Topex/Poseidon satellite sea-level data set also showed similar rates until they were adjusted up to fit climate models (or one sinking gauge in Hong Kong). Likewise the Envisat sea-level satellite data was also adjusted up. Vincent Gray graphed sea level around many South Pacific Islands. There is no CO2 induced disaster.  [Based on data from Jevrejura et al] Keep reading → By Jo Nova In Great Achievements of Government mismanagement, there is a $1 trillion dollar boom in LNG infrastructure around the world, and Australia is one of the top three exporters of LNG, far ahead of the rest, yet we’re about to run out of gas to keep the lights on. It’s so bad we probably have to import gas. As if anyone needed another example of how small-minded-dictocrat-decrees can screw up a free market and achieve the exact opposite to what they tried to arrange, feast your eyes on Australia. It takes real planning to start this far ahead and still bollix this up:Australia was literally the worlds largest LNG exporter in 2020
One of our large energy companies APA Group says a vital Queensland gas pipeline was already running at capacity this winter, and things are so bad, gas power stations here may have to run off diesel, which is stupid on many levels at once. Not only does it lose triple points in Climate-Scrabble, being a dirty high emissions fuel, it’s one of the only fossil fuels we aren’t swimming in. We have 300 years in proven reserves of coal and if we’re lucky, just 32 days of diesel. Gas shortfall imminent, APA modeling showsThe Australian Australian households could be hit with “cold showers” due to energy shortages, with the nation’s largest gas pipeline operator warning expensive gas will have to be imported into the country to fill the gap if pending projects are not approved. New modelling by APA Group shows Australia’s east coast is facing a prolonged period of gas shortfalls, with a vital Queensland pipeline running at capacity over this winter amid ongoing renewable droughts and production disruptions in Victoria. Officials this winter said the country’s fleet of gas power stations could be forced to run off diesel next year as traditional supplies run dry. APA Group was all set to start a major expansion of its gas pipeline in 2024 when one of the octopus arms of the government decided it might change the rules. The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) is suddenly saying it might shift from the current light regulation market to a full price management scheme, upon which all the investor-wallets at APA solidified with permafrost. The boss at APA, Adam Watson, said no one could figure out what the return on investment would be, so they suspended the expansion in May. For some reason, the Labor Party couldn’t see this coming. The Labor government aimed to reduce emissions, cut coal, and make electricity cheaper, instead as Watson says, we’re headed for a market that is less reliable, less affordable and has higher emissions. “Put another way – cold showers, higher energy bills and coal generating our electricity for longer.” Australia’s biggest gas deposits are 5,000 km (3,000 miles) from most of the people, and only connected by a small pipe or no pipe at all. The Bass Basin deposit is expected to run out around 2027 just when things get hairy on the electricity grid.  Click to enlarge. Geoscience Australia There is gas to spare underground, but Victoria banned Fracking “Forever” in 2017, and even put it in the State Constitution, just in case the stupid voters changed their minds. Though apparently this was largely a marketing ploy in Green fashion stakes, and legal eagles argued this was probably meaningless. Victoria did quietly allow some gas exploration a few years later, after they had scared all the investors off. Poetically, just a few months ago NSW banned offshore mining and exploration for gas and oil. Even though exploration is harmless, you never know what people might find. If the punters knew there was cheap gas nearby they might want to use it. Meanwhile Snowy Hydro has built a whole new peaking gas plant which was supposed to run on 30% Green Hydrogen (that was the only reason the Labor Government supported it). The gas pipeline is not finished yet either, so when it starts, for the first two months it will run on pure diesel. Another green win for Australia!
August 29th, 2024 | Tags: Big-Government, Gas | Category: Australia, Big-Government, Global Warming |  Print This Post | |  The clean green future doesn’t have much room for wilderness By Jo Nova John Constable puts some numbers on The terrifying scale of the green revolution in The Spectator this week. Ponder just the scale of the Sophia Offshore industrial wind plant being built off the UK. The wind is free, but to collect enough of it to power 2% of the country, the UK will have to build 100 wind turbines, some 200 kilometers out in the North Sea. Each blade is 108m long and weighs 65 tons, or about as much as a semi-trailer. When the wind blows hard enough, about 200 tons of matter will rotate above the ocean. The box holding all the spinning parts together weighs another 500 tons and needs to be suspended 140 meters up in the air over the waves and during storms.
To make sure the whole thing doesn’t fall in the drink with the first stiff breeze, the turbines need to be weighed down with more than a thousand tons of concrete embedded in the sea floor. The blades will be “recyclable” they say, but who will clean all that concrete out of the wilderness 30 years from now I wonder? Let’s ask Greenpeace! All up, each windmill weighs around 3,000 tons, and the entire farm-that-grows-nothing will consume 300,000 tons of industrial material and cover 600 square kilometers. All this to make just a random 2% of the UK’s electricity, not necessarily when it’s needed, either, so even if the UK built 50 plants just like it, they’d still need to build an entire functioning generation network as back up. The Sophia plant will cost about £3 billion, and won’t last very long (compared to a normal power plant). But it will kill some whales and eagles, confuse Air Force and shipping radars and hypnotize some crabs. It may deafen a few porpoises too, not that they will complain. (Where are the Greens?) Two whole converter stations will also be built — one at sea and one onshore — to collect and convert the green electrons so they can be squeezed through the 200 kilometer long subsea cable. These decks (in yellow below) were made in Indonesia, where they still have affordable electricity.  The Sleipnir semi-submersible crane vessel and installed jacket for the offshore converter platform ahead of the top side being installed. Sofia offshore wind farm, North Sea, August 12th 2024 If President Xi wanted to knock out the entire power station, by the way, he wouldn’t need to fire any missiles or send in a SWAT team. A Chinese cargo ship could just accidentally drag its anchor across the 200 kilometer cable somewhere. It’s been known to happen.  Vessel Aeolus arriving at Port of Tyne (May 2024) As John Constable says, the 30 year old Sizewell B nuclear plant uses half a square kilometer and still makes 10TWh of reliable electricity. The Sophia wind plant uses 600 square kilometers to make 6 TWh of random power. The wind plant effectively afflicts 3,000 times as much of the surface of Earth as a nuclear plant does for the amount of energy made, yet the Greens cheer it on. What have they become… Read it all at The Spectator. hat tip Tonyb Photos from the Sophia gallery. August 28th, 2024 | Tags: Nuclear Energy, Wind Power | Category: Global Warming, UK, Wind Power | Print This Post | | By Jo Nova If anyone made a game shooting lasers at parasitic flying climate believers they would be arrested for hate-speech. But if a government agency promotes a game that dehumanizes, mocks and kills critics of the government “Green program”, they’ll probably get another grant. A bit like the 10:10 “blow up deniers children” video, this game accidentally reveals the intellectual and moral vacuum that Big-Government funding inevitably flows to, unless there is a true Free Media to embarrass and mock it. And unfunded blogs like this are that free media. The State pays these Groomers of Hate: German state media broadcaster develops virtual reality game in which players shoot lasers at flying climate denialists, in perhaps the most eccentric effort to propagandise teenagers known to manBy Eugyppius Climatists at the German state media broadcaster Südwestrundfunk (SWR) have used the mandatory license fees they collect from all German households to produce an astounding virtual reality video game called GreenGuardiansVR. In this game, players shoot lasers at flying climate denialists to defeat disinformation and save the planet (h/t RatSays). This is literally true, this thing really exists. It will be released to the public sometime in the autumn; the Steam page is here. In the meantime, they’ve set up a whole stand to debut this lunacy at Apparently there is a fossil fueled villain from the E.V.I.L. corporation (just to make it easy for children to know who to hate). It seems he has oil running through his veins. Hypothetically, if there was a country trying to destroy Germany, to poison its youth, to teach them to hate the energy that gives them their wealth and freedom, they could not do a better job than the German government.
The arcade game in the train is called “Fossil Fuels” and players are invited to “milk the Earth” via the udders under Antarctica. Dr Evil says that fossil fuels are the future, and they are working to keep people “dependent” on them, as if the need for cheap kilojoules is just a propaganda meme, not a core need of any civilization.
Next, a freedom fighter girl-power eco warrior (of course) turns up to save the day (and emasculate German XY teenagers). She hacks into the fossil fuel game with the message “Don’t get sucked in. Join the Green Guardians.” For some reason the train has laser guns in the carriage (like this makes any sense). According to Eugyppius students are invited to break them out and shoot at things to “defeat disinformation”. Blasting away the side of the train is somehow good, and then, of course, blowing up Mr E.V.I.L. in his flying machine is a win.
In the press release, the producers say they are targeting “youth” aged 14 -25 — so they include all the university airheads who still haven’t grown up. Producers say this target market “wants to have something to do” and are put off by bad news, but they must think “youth” are childish babies if this sort of thing is supposed to appeal to them. This is the perfect example of why State Broadcasters need to be shut down in any democracy. The government already has vast funds to defend itself, and explain its actions. The only purpose of “State Broadcasters” is to defend the State from critics. Eugyppius translated the original and has all the info. Readers who haven’t seen the 10:10 “No pressure” video from 2010, follow that link. You will not believe the graphic violence that Youtube and others thought was funny, but now try to hide. The true face of evil. h/t David E, and Tonyb.
August 26th, 2024 | Tags: Big-Government, Propaganda | Category: Big-Government, Europe, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Mark the turning point: Climate activists know they have to hide “the climate” to win the electionNow that Trump is ready to make climate change an issue, the last thing the Democrats want is to put this debate out on the table. So their strategy is to say nothing about it, in case they offend the voters in the middle. As Marc Morano says “‘No one is buying their ‘climate emergency’ claptrap anymore’“. In an extraordinary headline the New York Times is letting everyone know that the new “green” thing to do is to sit back quietly and wait for her to win. They don’t want activists to complain she’s gone soft on climate change and accidentally trick her into making public commitments which Donald Trump will use against her. We’re at the point where the Climate die-hards openly admit that it will cost them votes if she talks about the climate. They know the voters don’t want it, and the only way keep the Green Gravy flowing is to hide it. And these are the same people saying Trump is destroying democracy. They don’t want a mandate for action anymore, they just want to win. They’ll claim the mandate later anyway.
Make no mistake she and Tim Walz are as deep green as any fungus. Climate groups were happy to send $55 million to the Democrats silent campaign. They know what they’re getting. Party strategists are happy to explain that lying-by-omission to voters is all for the cause. In The New York Times, the Democratic Governor of Washington openly says he “is not concerned” about Kamala’s silence on the climate: “I am totally confident that when she is in a position to effect positive change, she will,” Gov. Inslee said. Who cares what the voters want, she’ll do it anyway. Kevin Book, a manager of a Washington based research firm, pretty much explained voters don’t want what Joe Biden delivered: ““This doesn’t look accidental, it looks like a deliberate choice,” …they are worried if she takes a strong position on climate, even it fits the same position that Biden took, it will make her look too progressive,” Mr. Book said, adding, “It’s a divisive issue and they need both sides as much as possible to win Pennsylvania.” — New York Times The $55 million dollar ad campaign doesn’t mention climate change or global warming either. It sells Kamala by saying she will “strengthen the middle class” with “advanced manufacturing and clean energy”. Democrats apparently are nothing more than cliches, namecalling and a bucket of other-peoples-money to pour on the right keywords. And of course if the Green Blob doesn’t want us to talk about climate change, it’s our duty to raise hell with it (in the nicest possible way, of course). Not just with far left politicians, but with the media. Make them explain why it’s OK for Kamala to hide what she is planning to do to. Isn’t the planet at stake? Doesn’t Democracy matter?
August 24th, 2024 | Tags: US Politics | Category: Global Warming, Politics, USA | Print This Post | | The Northern Territory is a test case for renewable energy and it’s a bonfireIn 2016, the new Labor Government waved a magic wand and commanded they would be 50% renewable by 2030. The experts said it was doable and would save $30 million a year. They gave out the permits for large solar installations, which began construction in 2019, but then suddenly changed the rules in 2020, and wouldn’t let the solar plants connect to the main Darwin-Katherine grid. Unbelievably, 64 megawatts of solar panels that cost $40 million dollars have sat, doing nothing, for four long years. “It’s just reflecting back into space, not being used to power the grid and to substitute for diesel and gas turbine production,” said local vet Peter Trembath, who leased his land to energy company Eni Australia for the solar project. “It’ll be some technical issue, but you’d reckon they would have sorted that out before Eni spent $40 million to erect it.” — Max Rowley, ABC News June 2022 It’s always the Grids fault…The reason they couldn’t be connected was that the Territory government suddenly rewrote the rules in February 2020 and insisted the solar generators had to operate like fully scheduled generators, not semi-scheduled ones. Cruelly, they would have to make accurate predictions of what they could supply 30 minutes ahead on a rolling 5 minute basis. This meant they would need their own battery backup with the equivalent of 80% of their capacity and storage that lasted 30 minutes. They’d also need “weather forecasting” ability to predict cloud cover. The solar owners, Eni, protested that this would cost them $20 million (at least!) making the project unviable. And to make things even worse, the government was saying they had to build the battery at the solar plant, and reserve it to back up their own panels, so they wouldn’t be able to build the battery in Darwin, and use it to help the grid at other times, which would defray the costs. It all seems quite bizarre. (Who would want to run a business in the Northern Territory?) Why didn’t the renewables industry protest these belated draconian conditions louder? Probably because they didn’t want to highlight the reason for the Territory government’s sudden flip. It suddenly makes sense when we look at the timing. The panic-attack about connecting solar power came just after the Alice Springs black startThe NT government didn’t appear to realize that there were risks in adding 64MW of solar power to a grid that was roughly 250MW in size until 13th October 2019 when the whole Alice Springs network serving 29,000 people collapsed due to a cloud. It was the third blackout in four years, and it must have terrified the management in Darwin, because Alice Springs didn’t have much solar, yet the system was so unstable. Only 13% of the town’s total electricity comes from solar panels, but one cloud was enough to knock that little grid over and it took over nine hours to get it restored. By December 2019, an inquiry was set up and both CEO’s of the Power and Water Corp and the Territory Generation lost their jobs. Presumably the new CEO’s were not going to risk the collapse of the larger Darwin-Katherine Grid, hence the sudden rule change in February 2020 which left the solar operators high and dry. The ABC and others insist the blackout had nothing to do with solar power, and was just due to incompetence, but all the new grid managers grabbed their electrical garlic and acted exactly like solar power was the vampire. How else do we explain that these perfect solar plants have been sitting there doing nothing for four years? So 64MW is too much for Darwin, but lets build 4,000?Clearly grids need their armour before anything so risky as a large solar plant can be connected, which is all the more poignant considering the Australian government just approved (again) the humongous SunCable plant, what will be the “largest plant in the world”, at 4GW, and it’s going to be in the Northern Territory. It’s 60 times bigger than the 4 Eni plants, but is supposedly going to send most of the green electrons to Singapore, a mere 5,000 kilometers away, which is lucky, because the whole Darwin-Katherine grid only uses 250MW at peak, so SunCable would eat it alive. The people will pay for the solar debacleThe new NT Generator Performance Standards were trying to make sure that the Territory’s consumers wouldn’t end up footing the bill for the backup and wouldn’t suffer a blackout. But the Territory Government has paid $45 million to build a battery in Darwin anyway, and looks like it will try to buy out the four idle solar plants from Eni. So the citizens will be whacked for the cost one way or the other for the magical wish-fairy thinking that renewables would be easy and cheap. As it happens the people of the NT get to vote tomorrow in the Territory elections. Lets hope there is some salvation. Though on the media apparently the major issue is not about keeping the lights on, or whether the NT is a basketcase for investors, but whether people can keep crocodiles as pets. No, seriously. (And they’re talking about the Saltwater kind which eat people, and grow to 6m and 1,000kg.)
There are only about 250,000 people living in the Northern Territory. There are two separate grids and several microgrids. All of these are perfect test cases to showcase renewable energy, as I keep saying, and none of them are managing to do it. When will we get the message? If a town of 30,000 can’t live off the sun and wind, why would anyone bet the whole nation on it? h/t CO2 Lover
August 23rd, 2024 | Tags: Big-Government, Electricity Grids, Microgrid, NT (Northern Territory), Renewable Energy, Solar Energy (PV) | Category: Australia, Big-Government, Global Warming, Renewable, Solar Power | Print This Post | |
By Jo Nova No one saw this car crash coming?EV’s represent just 0.9% of all cars on the road in Australia but plans to install fast chargers are already grinding to a crawl. Last year, Ampol was planning to build 180 EV charging bays by the end of the year. Instead it’s proved difficult to even reach half that target. Eight months after they were supposed to have 180 in action they’ve reached 92. Just throw money…A mere 3 weeks ago Ampol announced that thanks to a $100 million dollar grant from the Australian government they would install more than 200 new fast chargers at Ampol’s national network of petrol stations this year. But presumably after making a few phone calls they’ve realized it’s not going to happen. (You’d think they might have made the calls before putting out the press release? Or the Minister might have phoned a friend before tossing $100 million to the wind?) Power grid foils Ampol’s big EV charger plansBen Potter and Simon Evans, Australian Financial Review Ampol, one of the country’s largest petrol retailers, has dialled back plans to triple the number of electric vehicle chargers because of power grid limitations in a blow to government hopes of pushing motorists towards cleaner cars in big numbers by 2030. The company’s chief executive, Matt Halliday, said it would not be possible to expand the number of charging bays from 92 to 300 by the end of this year because of difficulties connecting chargers to the grid which is already struggling to cope with an influx of renewable energy generation. In March, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the government would spend $60 million helping car dealerships install chargers on sales lots. [As] much as we spend a lot of time talking about generation, firming and transmission infrastructure, the last mile distribution grid is not really built for large-scale electrification, despite the best will that the players have to try and make it happen,” Mr Halliday added. “There are a lot of constraints that need to be worked through.” These people are not good with numbers. A fast charger needs 300 kilowatts, and if there are three car charging spaces in a row, that’s a major load that our low voltage lines simply can’t bear. In order to get the local distribution networks upgraded the wait times to connect these fast chargers can be as long as two years. Not to mention that we’re supposedly aiming to make all new cars electric in a mere five years or so, while we also try to shut down our largest coal plant. At the moment most EVs charging overnight are probably burning more fossil fuels than petrol cars do. The EV revolution in Australia (should it happen) would rampantly increase our carbon dioxide emissions. But who cares, right? It was never about CO2. It’s not like engineers haven’t been warning us this was going to happen for ten years. h/t Dave of Cooyal in Oz, and CO2 Lover
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