Pope Francis uses first ever US TV interview to slam climate change deniers as 'fools' and insists 'climate change exists'

He does generally seem to prefer Green/Left doctrine to Roman doctrine

Pope Francis spoke out against climate change deniers, calling them 'fools' in his first ever interview on American television.

The often 'progressive' pontiff spoke with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell at the Vatican this week to give his thoughts on violence in Ukraine and Gaza and other important subjects.

However, he made a pointed effort to express his displeasure with those who deny climate change when asked what he says to those who deny it by O'Donnell.

'There are people who are foolish, and even foolish if they show you them research. they don't believe it,' he said through an interpreter.

'They don't understand the situation or because of their interest, but climate change exists,' he added.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13347387/Pope-Francis-uses-TV-interview-slam-climate-change-deniers.html

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Geoengineering Test Quietly Launches Salt Crystals into Atmosphere

The nation's first outdoor test to limit global warming by increasing cloud cover launched Tuesday from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay.

The experiment, which organizers didn't widely announce to avoid public backlash, marks the acceleration of a contentious field of research known as solar radiation modification. The concept involves shooting substances such as aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

The move led by researchers at the University of Washington has renewed questions about how to effectively and ethically study promising climate technologies that could also harm communities and ecosystems in unexpected ways. The experiment is spraying microscopic salt particles into the air, and the secrecy surrounding its timing caught even some experts off guard.

"Since this experiment was kept under wraps until the test started, we are eager to see how public engagement is being planned and who will be involved," said Shuchi Talati, the executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, a nonprofit that seeks to include developing countries in decisions about solar modification, also known as geoengineering. She is not involved in the experiment and only learned about it after being contacted by a reporter.

"While it complies with all current regulatory requirements, there is a clear need to reexamine what a strong regulatory framework must look like in a world where [solar radiation modification] experimentation is happening," Talati added.

The Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement, or CAARE, project is using specially built sprayers to shoot trillions of sea salt particles into the sky in an effort to increase the density — and reflective capacity — of marine clouds. The experiment is taking place, when conditions permit, atop the USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum in Alameda, California, and will run through the end of May, according to a weather modification form the team filed with federal regulators.

The project comes as global heat continues to obliterate monthly and yearly temperature records and amid growing interest in solar radiation modification from Silicon Valley funders and some environmental groups. It also follows the termination of a Harvard University experiment last month that planned to inject reflective aerosols into the stratosphere near Sweden before it was canceled after encountering opposition from Indigenous groups.

Solar radiation modification is controversial because widespread use of technologies like marine cloud brightening could alter weather patterns in unclear ways and potentially limit the productivity of fisheries and farms. It also wouldn't address the main cause of climate change — the use of fossil fuels — and could lead to a catastrophic spike in global temperatures if major geoengineering activities were discontinued before greenhouse gases decrease to manageable levels.

The University of Washington and SilverLining, a geoengineering research advocacy group involved in the CAARE project, declined interview requests. The mayor of Alameda, where the experiment is being conducted, didn't respond to emailed questions about the project.

The secrecy surrounding the landmark experiment seems to have been by design, according to The New York Times, which, along with a local newspaper, was granted exclusive access to cover the initial firing of the spray cannons.

"The idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," the Times reported. The White House also distanced itself from the experiment, which is being conducted with the cooperation of a Smithsonian-affiliated museum.

The project team has touted its transparency, noting that visitors to the USS Hornet, which now serves as a floating museum, will be able to view the experiment.

"The world needs to rapidly advance its understanding of the effects of aerosol particles on climate,” Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, said in a press release. "With a deep commitment to open science and a culture of humility, the University of Washington has developed an approach that integrates science with societal engagement, and can help society in essential steps toward advancing science, developing regulations, promoting equitable and effective decision-making, and building shared understanding in these areas."

The CAARE project is part of a larger coastal study that the University of Washington consortium is planning to pursue. The second phase of that effort would take place on a pier around a mile offshore in a coastal environment, according to a study description the school released Monday.

While a peer review of that proposal was generally positive, the scientists also flagged some transparency shortcomings.

"One reviewer noted that it would help to have more information on the site location," said a Washington-University-commissioned report. "Is there local resistance or concerns (whether founded or unfounded) around issues like local air quality, etc.? How many options exist, and how do different options affect the field study plan?"

The study plan also made no mention of its potential ecological impacts, a key consideration recommended by a 2022 Biden administration marine cloud brightening workshop. That's a significant oversight, according to Greg Goldsmith, the associate dean for research and development at Chapman University.

"History has shown us that when we insert ourselves into modification of nature, there are always very serious unintended consequences," said Goldsmith, who studies the implications of climate change for plant structure and function. "And therefore, it would be prudent to listen to what history has shown and look for consequences."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-test-quietly-launches-salt-crystals-into-atmosphere/

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Hertz To Sell Off Even More EVs As Depreciation Losses Mount

The whole plan, it must be said, had the best of intentions.

American rental car giant Hertz saw the way the car market was going and decided to invest in building the largest electric vehicle rental fleet in North America back in 2021. That meant hundreds of thousands of EVs from Tesla, General Motors, Kia, Polestar, Volvo and more. It even got Tom Brady involved in the whole thing.

Unfortunately, a complicated confluence of events—including rapid-fire EV price cuts in 2023 that led to massive depreciation and higher repair costs—have led to nothing but headaches for Hertz. The company has endured massive losses, said goodbye to the CEO behind the move and has since spent the past few months offloading those EVs at fire-sale prices.
This week, the company announced that it's not even done. Hertz's first-quarter financial statement reveals that the company is increasing the amount of EVs it plans to sell privately this year by 10,000 units, aiming for a goal of 30,000 EVs sold in 2024. And it also admitted how much it's been stung by depreciation.

"The company incurred a $195 million charge to vehicle depreciation to write down the EVs held for sale which were remaining in inventory at quarter-end to fair value and recognize the disposition losses on EVs sold in the period," Hertz officials said. It added that depreciation costs are up $339 per vehicle now, and that "of the $339 per unit increase, $119 was related to EVs held for sale."

When you look at the situation on paper, Hertz's retreat from its aggressive EV makes financial sense. Post-pandemic travel is still going strong and so is the rental car business, even with increased competition from rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft or even Turo. Hertz's own Q1 revenue was $2.1 billion, up 2% from 2023. But thanks in large part to huge depreciation costs—almost a third of which it blames on EVs—Hertz's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization still amounted to $567 million in quarterly losses. In other words, ouch.

First and foremost, last year's round of constant EV price cuts and discounts, led by Tesla, have had a profound impact on the value of cars. That includes private owners, but for companies like Hertz that drive significant revenue from a constant churn of cars in and out of the fleets, it was a major roadblock. And then you had other problems, like higher repair costs after mishaps from customers not used to electric acceleration and trouble sourcing parts from companies like Tesla and Polestar.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/news/hertz-to-sell-off-even-more-evs-as-depreciation-losses-mount/ar-AA1nIUCP?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=d3cfd36854004c48af37ea9dbe0b3288&ei=16

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Biden’s Latest Power Plant Power Grab

Almost two years after a similar rule was rejected by the Supreme Court, the Biden administration on Thursday released another final rule for regulating America’s power plants.

Under the rule, coal-fired power plants and most new natural gas-fired power plants would have to eliminate 90% of their carbon emissions by 2039 or close down in 2040.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule would raise electricity costs for Americans, kill manufacturing jobs, and disproportionately affect the poor, farmers, and small business.

EPA’s rule, if it overcomes legal challenges, would result in the closure of coal-fired power plants that now produce 16% of Americans’ electricity. It would make natural gas power generation, which produces 43% of electricity, more costly and increase the incidence of blackouts.

Under the rule, America would become a less attractive location for energy-intensive manufacturing and Americans’ electricity bills would rise.

This is the latest in a series of government attempts to reduce emissions—and power—from the nation’s energy-generating sector.

EPA’s Clean Power Plan, proposed in 2015 under President Barack Obama, stated that if emissions exceeded the agency’s requirements, a state or group of states would be required to shut down power plants or install renewable energy sources.

But although the Clean Air Act allows EPA to set maximum levels of new and existing emissions sources, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the law does not allow EPA to shut down power plants.

Specifically, EPA can’t move from regulating individual power plants to regulating regional emissions, as it did in the rejected Clean Power Plan. The high court’s opinion cited the major questions doctrine, according to which Congress must “speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance.”

That’s why President Joe Biden’s EPA is trying another tactic to regulate emissions with this latest rule.

Rather than shutting down power plants by regulating regional emissions, as in 2015, the power plants would either have to comply with an unproven technology to sequester, or bury, 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions, or they would have to close down.

Obama issued his Clean Power Plan as a regulation because, despite sizable Democratic majorities in both chambers, Congress didn’t pass legislation to reduce emissions from power plants.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (introduced in 2009 by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass.) and the American Power Act (introduced the next year by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.) would have accomplished this, but neither proposal became law.

In the same way, Biden’s plan to close power plants would not pass Congress, so he is trying to bring out a regulation to achieve the same goal.

However, this term the Supreme Court is reconsidering the so-called Chevron doctrine, which now gives government agencies wide leeway to interpret laws. That decision is due in May or June.

If the high court overturns the Chevron doctrine, as predicted, EPA’s new power plant rule will be on weaker grounds, because it relies on an ambiguous interpretation.

In 2022, the Supreme Court found the first Clean Power Plan to be an example of “agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts argued that “EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute designed as a gap filler. That discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined to enact itself.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred, saying: “The framers [of the Constitution] believed that the power to make new laws regulating private conduct was a grave one that could, if not properly checked, pose a serious threat to individual liberty.”

Severe, government-imposed cuts in carbon emissions raise the cost of electricity and American-made goods. Under EPA’s new rule, power plants would have to invest in more costly equipment or close down.

Cleaner air and efficient power generation are worthwhile goals. But so is the security that comes from a healthy economy and the rule of law.

The Supreme Court, which struck down Obama’s power plant rule in 2022, could well strike down Biden’s version in the future.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/25/bidens-latest-power-plant-power-grab/

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Climate Change is Class Warfare

The climate is up the spout and we’re to blame. The planet is boiling like a pan of porridge. We face the possible extinction of all life on earth. ‘Science’ says so. Anyone who questions it is a demonic scoundrel. The climate catastrophe is a 100% solid-gold, slam-dunk irrefutable fact.

Hmm. And yet, it is clear to anyone who has paid the slightest attention, that the tired, hysterical predictions of the climate alarmists (made repeatedly over four decades and based on their hypothetical computer-models) have proved to be spectacularly wrong, again and again and again. It does not take much digging (we have the internet these days) to discover that the outlandish claims of climate alarmists are flatly contradicted by lots and lots of perfectly good scientific evidence and data. We’re not talking here about fringe science put about by whackos. We’re talking about official data – mainstream science, published in respected journals. (Some of it is featured in my ‘climate-denier’ film, Climate: The Movie, available for free online).

The world is not boiling. We are, as any geologist will tell you, in an ice age – one of the coldest periods in the last 500 million years. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is not unnaturally or frighteningly high. Compared to the last half billion years of earth’s history it is extremely low. And there is no evidence that changing levels of atmospheric CO2 (it has changed radically many times in the past) has ever ‘driven climate change’. If there had been, Al Gore would have said so in his silly film, but he didn’t. Hurricane activity is not increasing, nor are the number of wildfires, nor are the number of droughts, and so on and so on. This is what the official data say. You can look it up.

Of course this is all a bit embarrassing for the science establishment. The climate alarm is worth billions to them in climate-related funding. A lot of jobs depend on it. A lot of reputations are at stake. And it’s deeply awkward for the renewables industry, which turns over around a trillion dollars a year.

The climate alarm is not supported by scientific evidence. It is supported by bullying, intimidation and the censorship of anyone who dares to question it. Climate catastrophism is politics, shamelessly dressed up as science.

The climate scare was the invention of the environmentalist movement, which stands opposed to vulgar, dirty, free-market capitalism. They say there are too many people, consuming too much. We must be restrained and contained, for the sake of Gaia. The solution to the global, existential climate problem is higher taxes and more regulation.

At any social gathering, you can pretty confidently predict who will think what about climate, by asking them about taxes and regulation. People who love the Big State can’t get enough of climate chaos. People who want lower taxes and less regulation will roll their eyes and say rude things about little Greta.

Across the Western world, the state has grown enormously over the last century, vastly increasing the number of people whose livelihoods depend on state-spending, and whose jobs are related, directly or indirectly, to government control. In the U.K. and U.S. both, more than twice as many people now work in government as work in manufacturing. And this does not include all those (in the third sector etc.) who rely indirectly on government largesse.

These people depend on government. They are paid for out of taxation. In such circles to proclaim the joys of a small state, lower taxes and less government is a breach of social etiquette. You have crossed a moral line. You will be suspected of liking Donald Trump, of voting Brexit, of hating lockdown and compulsory vaccination, of defending the Second Amendment, of being a climate denier.

And indeed all this may well be true. These views tend to hang together. As do the views of those on the other side. To repeat, the climate alarm is in fact politics dressed up as science. We are, as more people are beginning to realise, engaged in a class war. On one side, the tax-consuming regulating class that feeds from taxation and bosses us about. On the other, the rest of us in the private sector, who rather resent paying taxes and being told what to do and how to live our lives.

This is the real basis for the consensus on climate change. The consensus exists among our sprawling, tax-consuming establishment. This is not a small group of people. It is an entire class. It is, if you will, the ruling class. It controls our civil service, our schools and universities, large parts of our arts and science establishments and much of the media. It is an intolerant class, deeply aware of its own interests. The taboo that surrounds climate scepticism is a reflection of its power.

It would be nice to think that politely pointing to the actual scientific data might put an end to all the climate chaos nonsense. Sadly it won’t. Because this ain’t about science.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/18/climate-change-is-class-warfare/

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The Federal Phase-Out of Gasoline Cars Has Begun

If these nutcases remain in charge -- unlikely -- there will one day be a vigorous trade in used ICE cars. Your old car will be a valuable asset

The Biden administration last week rolled out new emissions regulations that the New York Times said will “transform the American automobile market.”

In what the paper called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that a majority of new passenger vehicles sold in America be hybrids or EVs by 2032.

The Biden administration and defenders of the policy argue that the EPA’s regulation is “not a ban” on gas-powered cars, since carmakers are not prohibited from producing gas-powered vehicles. Instead, automakers are required to meet a government-mandated “average emissions limit” across their entire vehicle line, to force them to produce more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars.

It’s a clever ruse in that it allows the Biden administration to use regulatory power to force automobile manufactures off of gas-powered vehicles while denying that they are banning them.

Whatever one chooses to call the regulation, its purpose is clear.

“Make no mistake,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “This is a coerced phase-out of gas-powered cars.”

This might be music to the ears of those who see fossil fuels as evil, but economics and history suggest the White House’s plan to force Americans off of gas-powered cars could be a disaster.

What’s Holding Up EV Adoption?

A major reason why the White House is forcing this “transformation of the American automobile market” is that Americans aren’t voluntarily adopting EVs quickly enough to satisfy the White House.

Though Americans purchased more than a million EVs last year, that still represents less than 8 percent of total vehicle sales in the US. The government’s current target is 56 percent. (If the White House was serious about speeding up this transition, it might consider eliminating the 25 percent tariff on cars built in China — which accounts for some 60 percent of global EV sales — but that would be too easy.)

Despite massive subsidies encouraging consumers to purchase EVs, Americans didn’t buy them as rapidly as predicted, causing auto companies to pump the brakes. Ford recently announced it was halving production of its most popular EV, the F-150 Lightning. General Motors, the largest US automaker, and Toyota, the second-largest US automaker, followed suit, announcing significant reductions in EV production.

The weak demand for electric vehicles no doubt has several sources, but the BBC identified a few primary reasons, two of which appear over and over in consumer surveys: price and charging reliability.

Ford’s F-150 Lightning starts at $50,000. Its popular Mach-e starts at $40,000, and that’s after a recent $8,100 mark-down. GM’s top-selling EV, the LYRIQ, starts at $59,000. On average, EVs sell for about $5,000 more than similar gas-powered cars. And EV prices are going up, not down, researchers point out.

“In 2011, the inflation-adjusted price of a new EV was near $44,000. By 2022, that price had risen to over $66,000,” said Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, in her testimony to Congress in 2023.

The second problem is that Americans have serious concerns about how they’ll charge their EVs. A 2023 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that 77 percent of respondents cited concerns about charging stations as a reason for not purchasing an EV.

This is not an irrational concern.

When Americans drive their gas-powered cars, they are not worried about where they’ll fill up when their fuel runs low. Gas stations are plentiful in the US and easy to find. Charging stations are another matter.

Bloomberg reported last year that, despite steady growth in recent years of EV charging stations, there is just one quick-turn electrical vehicle charge station in the US for every 16 gasoline stations.

Federal efforts to expand charging infrastructure, including $7.5 billion in new spending to build half a million stations, have been embarrassingly slow.

‘Subsidizing EVs With Profits From Gas-Powered Cars’
Since Americans are not voluntarily adopting EVs as quickly as the government would like, the EPA is trying to hasten the transition. This could be a disastrous move.

As the Journal noted, Ford last year lost nearly $5 billion on its EV business. Yet the company still managed to generate a $4.3 billion profit in 2023. It doesn’t take a math genius to deduce how this happened.

“[Automobile] companies are heavily subsidizing EVs with profits from gas-powered cars,” the Journal notes.

Forcing automobile companies to expand production of their least-profitable product lines at the expense of their best-performing ones is economic madness. It calls to mind collectivized agricultural policies in the Soviet Union, where central planners embraced the worst farming methods.

While Stalin’s collectivization of farms in 1929 was a massive failure that led to the deaths of millions, agriculture in the USSR of course continued during and after his lifetime. But two distinct sectors emerged: a tiny private sector that produced a bumper crop of food, and a massive collectivized sector that produced very little.

The late economist James D. Gwartney (1940–2024) explained that families living on collectives in the USSR were allowed to farm on small private plots (no more than one acre) and sell their produce in a mostly free market.

Historians point out that in the 1960s these tiny private farms, which accounted for just 3 percent of the sown land in the USSR, produced 66 percent of its eggs, 64 percent of the potatoes, 43 percent of its vegetables, 40 percent of meat, and 39 percent of its milk.

Gwartney and economist Richard Lyndell Stroup note that by 1980, private farms accounted for just one percent of sown land in the USSR, but a quarter of its agricultural output.

“The productivity per acre on the private plots was approximately 33 times higher than that on the collectively farmed land!” they wrote.

In a free-market economy, farmers within the Soviet Union would have been allowed to shift toward private production — just like US automakers today would be allowed to shift away from EVs until the industry becomes more profitable.

But… the Environment?

Supporters of the Biden policy are likely to respond that we have no choice but to transition to EVs because of climate change. There are several problems with this argument.

For starters, EVs are not the green panacea they seem to be. Electrical vehicles actually require a massive amount of energy and strip mining. Half a million pounds of rock and minerals have to be mined to build just one battery, on average. EVs require far more energy and cause far more pollution when they are manufactured than gas-powered automobiles.

“[I]t’s true that the production of a BEV (battery electric vehicle) causes more pollution than a gasoline-powered counterpart,” the New York Times admitted in a 2022 article headlined “EVs Start With a Bigger Carbon Footprint. But That Doesn’t Last.”

If you weren’t aware that EVs cause more pollution on the production side than gas-powered cars, don’t be embarrassed; few do. It’s one of the dirty secrets of EVs: they start with an enormous carbon footprint. At a climate summit a few years ago, Volvo noted its C40 Recharge had to be driven about 70,000 miles before its total carbon footprint was smaller than the gas-powered version.

As the Times says, the footprint of EVs shrinks over time. But not as fast as many think. One big reason for this is that the bulk of the electricity produced in the US is produced by… you guessed it… fossil fuels. As the Energy Information Administration points out, fossil fuels generate about 60 percent of the electricity in the US, which means that most people charging their EVs are using electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Reducing that carbon footprint is also exacerbated by the fact that people tend to rack up fewer miles with EVs than gas-powered vehicles, which makes it more difficult to offset the large carbon footprint on the production side.

“[Our] data show that electric vehicles are driven considerably less on average than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles,” researchers at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley noted in a 2019 study. “In the complete sample, electric vehicles are driven an average of 7,000 miles per year, compared to 10,200 for gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.”

All of this helps explain why a 2023 Wall Street Journal analysis found that shifting all personal US vehicles to electric power would barely make a dent in global CO2 emissions, reducing them by less than 0.2 percent.

Who Chooses?
Forcing US automakers to expand their least-profitable autolines is backward economics. It puts automakers at risk, not to mention their workers and shareholders.

The higher profits automakers are reaping from gas-powered vehicles isn’t an accident. It’s a signal that consumers prefer them at the prices being offered, and heeding consumers is what separates capitalism from the failed collectivist systems of the past.

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained that in a free-market economy, it’s the consumers who ultimately call the shots, not the state or even the corporations. This idea is known as consumer sovereignty.

“The real bosses [under capitalism] are the consumers,” Mises wrote in Bureaucracy. “They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.”

The real question here isn’t about which is better, gas-powered cars or EVs. It’s about who gets to choose.

By allowing unelected regulators to decide what kind of cars are built instead of consumers, the US is crossing an ominous line.

This kind of central planning failed miserably in the 20th century. Don’t expect it to be any different this time around.

This piece was originally posted on AIER.org, you can find it here.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/23/federal-phase-out-gasoline-cars/?omhide=true

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Climate Change Is Normal And Natural, And Can’t Be Controlled

NASA claimed that “Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate” and “human activity is the principal cause.”

Others proposed spending trillions of dollars to control the climate. But are we humans responsible for climate change? And what can we do about it?

“The climate of planet Earth has never stopped changing since the Earth’s genesis, sometimes relatively rapidly, sometimes very slowly, but always surely,” says Patrick Moore in Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. “Hoping for a ‘perfect stable climate’ is as futile as hoping the weather will be the same and pleasant, every day of the year, forever.”

In other words, climate change is normal and natural, and you can forget about controlling it.

For instance, a major influence of weather and climate are solar cycles driven by the Sun’s magnetic field over periods of eight to 14 years. They release varying amounts of energy and produce dark sunspots on the Sun’s surface. The effects of solar cycles on Earth vary, with some regions warming more than 1°C and others cooling.

Climatic changes occur as a result of variations in the interaction of solar energy with Earth’s ozone layer, which influences ozone levels and stratospheric temperatures. These, in turn, affect the speed of west-to-east wind flows and the stability of the polar vortex.

Whether the polar vortex remains stable and close to the Arctic or dips southward determines whether winters in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are severe or mild.

In addition to solar cycles, there are three Milankovitch cycles that range in length from 26,000 to 100,000 years. They include the eccentricity, or shape, of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun. Small fluctuations in the orbit’s shape influence the length of seasons. For example, when the orbit is more like an oval than a circle, Northern Hemisphere summers are longer than winters and springs are longer than autumns.

The Milankovitch cycles also involve obliquity, or the angle that Earth’s axis is tilted. The tilt is why there are seasons, and the greater the Earth’s tilt, the more extreme the seasons. Larger tilt angles can cause the melting and retreat of glaciers and ice sheets, as each hemisphere receives more solar radiation during summer and less during winter.

Finally, the rotating Earth, like a toy top, wobbles slightly on its axis. Known as precession, this third Milankovitch cycle causes seasonal contrasts to be more extreme in one hemisphere and less extreme in the other.

Moving from outer space to Earth, ocean and wind currents also affect the climate.

For instance, during normal conditions in the Pacific Ocean, trade winds blow from east to west along the Equator, pushing warm surface waters from South America towards Asia. During El Niño, the trade winds weaken and the warm water reverses direction, moving eastward to the American West Coast.

Other times, during La Niña, the trade winds become stronger than usual, and more warm water is blown towards Asia. In the United States and Canada, these phenomena cause some regions to become warmer, colder, wetter, or drier than usual.

In addition to El Niño and La Niña, there is also the North Atlantic Oscillation, which is driven by low air pressure in the North Atlantic Ocean, near Greenland and Iceland (known as the sub-polar low or Icelandic low), and high air pressure in the central North Atlantic Ocean (known as the subtropical high or Azores High).

The relative strength of these regions of low and high atmospheric pressures affects the climate in the Eastern United States and Canada and in Europe, affecting both temperatures and precipitation.

Similarly, Hadley cells are the reason Earth has equatorial rainforests that are bounded by deserts to the north and south. Because the Sun warms Earth the most at the Equator, air on either side of the Equator is cooler and denser.

As a result, cool air blows towards the Equator as the warm, less dense equatorial air rises and cools, releasing moisture as rain and creating lush vegetation. The rising, drier air reaches the stratosphere blowing north and south to settle in regions made arid by lack of atmospheric moisture.

These and other phenomena influencing our climate are well beyond the control of humans.

https://principia-scientific.com/climate-change-is-normal-and-natural-and-cant-be-controlled/

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Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Is Running on Eastern Coal

When your cell phone gets hot, that means its processors are computing faster or you have a lot of apps open. The same is true for “server farms,” which Gigabyte.com explains are “a large number—up to thousands—of servers grouped together to provide better functionality and accessibility.”

It takes a lot of energy to run those hot servers and air-conditioning to keep them cool. Artificial intelligence (AI) requires even more servers and energy. As The Real Deal reported, “Silicon Valley vies with SF as ‘AI capital of the world.’” So far, California remains ahead of everyone else, including Communist China, in the race for AI dominance.

So where would San Francisco and Silicon Valley AI companies, conscious of the need for energy from such renewable sources as wind and solar power, get the energy for their AI servers? Surely from California energy companies, especially Northern California’s PG&E?

Actually, there’s another, unexpected, source:

“Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal,” headlined the Washington Post on April 17. Datelined Charles Town, W.Va., it reported surveyors are “eyeing space for yet another power line next to the property—a line that will take electricity generated from coal plants in the state to address a drain on power driven by the world’s internet hub in Northern Virginia 35 miles away.

“There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.”

Note the number: 70 percent of global digital traffic. This is being processed in Northern Virginia, the center of the U.S. government and a major location for these server farms.

Silicon Valley Hypocrisy

This affirms what I have written several times in The Epoch Times: The world isn’t following California’s obsession with ending all reliance on carbon-based energy. Communist China certainly isn’t, as I detailed recently in, “‘Green Innovation’ Study Shows California CO2 Policies Mainly Help China.”

Now it’s obvious our own globe-leading computer, internet, and AI industries are not following that anti-progress development, either. That’s despite almost all of Silicon Valley and San Francisco backing Gov. Gavin Newsom and his mandate to achieve 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

In his 2022 reelection, Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, received 59.2 percent statewide to 40.8 percent for Republican opponent Brian Dahle. But Mr. Newsom garnered 85.4 percent in San Francisco. And for Silicon Valley, it was 75 percent in San Mateo County and 70 percent in Santa Clara County.

In the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden grabbed 63.5 percent statewide to 34.3 percent for former President Donald Trump. But President Biden got 85.3 percent in San Francisco, 77.9 percent in San Mateo County, and 72.7 percent in Santa Clara County.

By contrast, in West Virginia, President Biden won just 29.7 percent to former President Trump’s 68.6 percent.

Silicon Valley might back green energy, but its business benefits from coal. The reason it can advance this hypocrisy is because of the vast network of fiberoptic cables crisscrossing the country. They hook up everything from computer companies to all kinds of businesses, and probably the computer network in your home. I’m writing this using Google Fiber.

TechTarget explains, “Fiber optics, or optical fiber, refers to the technology that transmits information as light pulses along a glass or plastic fiber.” And light, of course, travels at the speed of light: 299,792,458 meters, or 186,000 miles, per second.

The whole world also is entwined in fiberoptic cables, as well as signals from satellites. So computer servers are all around the world. But it makes sense for Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies to plant their servers in the United States, because our country is well-defended by the U.S. military. Since the cables between California and West Virginia traverse our vast continent, they can’t be cut by a foreign sea power like undersea cables.

Computer Money Talks

As the Washington Post reported, coal use to generate power continues, even in Virginia, despite the state “fully embracing” clean energy. The server farms bring in massive revenues to local governments from the state’s property tax, which applies to land and equipment. “With Amazon Web Services pursuing a $35 billion data center expansion in Virginia, rural portions of the state are the industry’s newest target for development.

“The growth means big revenue for the localities that host the football-field-size buildings. Loudoun collects $600 million in annual taxes on the computer equipment inside the buildings, making it easier to fund schools and other services. Prince William, the second-largest market, collects $100 million per year.”

President Biden won Virginia 54.4 percent to 44.2 percent for former President Trump. But President Biden won Loudon County with 61.9 percent and Prince William County with 62.8 percent.
Northern Virginia might be liberal Democratic now. But as in California, green activists walk, but AI money talks.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/silicon-valley-artificial-intelligence-is-running-on-eastern-coal-5635789

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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A Long-Running ‘Paradox’: Evaporation Is Declining Even As Temperatures Rise

Evaporation is supposed to increase with warming. But, per a new study (Jin et al., 2024), “observation results around the world have shown that evaporation has been steadily declining since the 1950s.”

This is referred to as the anthropogenic global warming “evaporation paradox” problem, where models and assumptions are contradicted by observations.

According to the IPCC (AR6) and the most seminal paper on the subject (Trenberth, 2011, with 3800 citations), “anthropogenic forcings will drive an increase in global mean evaporation over most oceanic areas (high confidence),” as “increased heating leads to greater evaporation.”

However, the new paper once again points out that observations conflict with the anthropogenic global warming narrative.

“Paradoxically, against the backdrop of rising global temperatures, terrestrial observation results around the world have shown that Epan has been steadily declining since the 1950s…”

“The ‘evaporation paradox’ phenomenon has been reported in many studies on regional or global scales.”

The authors acknowledge it is “widely proposed” that there will be “increased evaporation in open water bodies” with warming. So their results, which show declining evaporation since the 1950s, may “seem surprising.”

“At first glance, these results may seem surprising, since the near-surface air temperature has been rising, and it is widely proposed that warming climate will make the air drier and promote the hydrological cycle, which will lead to increased evaporation in open water bodies, including pan evaporators.”

If it can indeed be established that evaporation increases with warming, and simultaneously, evaporation trends can be shown to be declining, at what point do we question if there has indeed been sufficiently significant warming in the regions where evaporation is declining?

Why is referring to these trends as a surprising “paradox” that can perhaps be explained away with more assumptions the better option?

https://principia-scientific.com/a-long-running-paradox-evaporation-is-declining-even-as-temperatures-rise/

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Wrong, BBC and Reuters, No Evidence Proves West African Heatwave Is Unprecedented

Multiple media outlets, including the BBC and Reuters, claim that a recent West African heatwave would be “impossible” without global warming. This is claim is misleading and not supported by real-world data. The study cited in both articles is merely an attribution modelling study, which is not proof of the influence of climate change.

In their article on a recent heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel, Reuters reports “[t]emperatures soared so high in Mali and Burkina Faso they equated to a once in 200-year event, according to the report on the Sahel region by World Weather Attribution (WWA).”

Reuters continues: “The severity of the heatwave led WWA’s team of climate scientists to conduct a rapid analysis, which concluded the temperatures would not have been reached if industry had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and other activities.”

One of World Weather Attribution’s statisticians even went so far as to say that heat waves of that intensity wouldn’t happen at all in the region in a “pre-industrial climate.” This claim is utterly unfounded, as those parts of Africa are known for being at least semi-arid, subtropical, and prone to drought and heatwaves. While temperature records are not very lengthy or complete for many parts of Africa, April is known to be the hottest month of the year for Burkina Faso in particular, and many parts of the Sahel region in general, where temperature maximums on average are above 40°C – which is what the recent heatwave brought, meaning there is not justification for claiming the recent heatwave is historically unprecedented.

Climate Realism has frequently noted that WWA’s “rapid attribution” studies are more in the realm of fantasy than fact, as they depend on virtual models of climate conditions that do not actually exist in real life. The model of the climate that an event like the recent Sahel heatwave is compared against is one which represents how the scientists guess things would have been had it not been for the burning of fossil fuels. All of their modelling begins with the unscientific assumption that any given weather event WAS influenced in a dangerous direction by climate change. It proves absolutely nothing, because the “control group” is entirely fictional.

The BBC produced a slightly more balanced story, acknowledging that other climate experts say that El Niño is mostly to blame for at least some of the bad weather in Africa this year. Despite spending the vast majority of the article linking the heat wave to climate change, as Reuters does, the BBC at least acknowledged, “[a] separate study on drought in Southern Africa said El Niño was to blame, rather than climate change.”

So, as the Daily Sceptic pointed out in reporting on the BBC’s coverage, “… the headline could have read: Southern African drought “impossible” without El Niño. But it didn’t.”

El Niño has a wide range of effects that are often delayed in hitting Africa, lately it has been causing heatwaves and rainfall in cocoa producing countries like Ghana, which is acknowledged in other articles having to do with cocoa bean production.

In another Climate Realism post about cocoa production, H. Sterling Burnett also points out that this kind of weather is normal for the region, writing “across the region making up West Africa, it is common, not rare, for it to have heatwaves and heavy rains, interspersed with periods of drought.” He points out that “wet heatwaves” are not uncommon.

Once again, attribution science is hardly science and proves nothing about climate change. It certainly can’t determine whether human activities caused or even contributed to any given weather event. All of this is speculative at best. Frankly the enthusiasm with which supposed journalists and prominent media outlets embrace attribution modelling studies with no questions or skepticism whatsoever is an embarrassment to the profession. The BBC and Reuters ought to know better, and they should brush up on the facts before hyping scare-stories.
Wrong, BBC and Reuters, No Evidence Proves West African Heatwave Is Unprecedented

Multiple media outlets, including the BBC and Reuters, claim that a recent West African heatwave would be “impossible” without global warming. This is claim is misleading and not supported by real-world data. The study cited in both articles is merely an attribution modelling study, which is not proof of the influence of climate change.

In their article on a recent heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel, Reuters reports “[t]emperatures soared so high in Mali and Burkina Faso they equated to a once in 200-year event, according to the report on the Sahel region by World Weather Attribution (WWA).”

Reuters continues: “The severity of the heatwave led WWA’s team of climate scientists to conduct a rapid analysis, which concluded the temperatures would not have been reached if industry had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and other activities.”

One of World Weather Attribution’s statisticians even went so far as to say that heat waves of that intensity wouldn’t happen at all in the region in a “pre-industrial climate.” This claim is utterly unfounded, as those parts of Africa are known for being at least semi-arid, subtropical, and prone to drought and heatwaves. While temperature records are not very lengthy or complete for many parts of Africa, April is known to be the hottest month of the year for Burkina Faso in particular, and many parts of the Sahel region in general, where temperature maximums on average are above 40°C – which is what the recent heatwave brought, meaning there is not justification for claiming the recent heatwave is historically unprecedented.

Climate Realism has frequently noted that WWA’s “rapid attribution” studies are more in the realm of fantasy than fact, as they depend on virtual models of climate conditions that do not actually exist in real life. The model of the climate that an event like the recent Sahel heatwave is compared against is one which represents how the scientists guess things would have been had it not been for the burning of fossil fuels. All of their modelling begins with the unscientific assumption that any given weather event WAS influenced in a dangerous direction by climate change. It proves absolutely nothing, because the “control group” is entirely fictional.

The BBC produced a slightly more balanced story, acknowledging that other climate experts say that El Niño is mostly to blame for at least some of the bad weather in Africa this year. Despite spending the vast majority of the article linking the heat wave to climate change, as Reuters does, the BBC at least acknowledged, “[a] separate study on drought in Southern Africa said El Niño was to blame, rather than climate change.”

So, as the Daily Sceptic pointed out in reporting on the BBC’s coverage, “… the headline could have read: Southern African drought “impossible” without El Niño. But it didn’t.”

El Niño has a wide range of effects that are often delayed in hitting Africa, lately it has been causing heatwaves and rainfall in cocoa producing countries like Ghana, which is acknowledged in other articles having to do with cocoa bean production.

In another Climate Realism post about cocoa production, H. Sterling Burnett also points out that this kind of weather is normal for the region, writing “across the region making up West Africa, it is common, not rare, for it to have heatwaves and heavy rains, interspersed with periods of drought.” He points out that “wet heatwaves” are not uncommon.

Once again, attribution science is hardly science and proves nothing about climate change. It certainly can’t determine whether human activities caused or even contributed to any given weather event. All of this is speculative at best. Frankly the enthusiasm with which supposed journalists and prominent media outlets embrace attribution modelling studies with no questions or skepticism whatsoever is an embarrassment to the profession. The BBC and Reuters ought to know better, and they should brush up on the facts before hyping scare-stories.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/04/wrong-bbc-and-reuters-no-evidence-proves-west-african-heatwave-is-unprecedented/

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New Jersey's 3 nuclear power plants seek to extend licenses for another 20 years

The company that owns New Jersey's three nuclear power plants said Wednesday it will seek federal approval to operate them for another 20 years.

The move comes as New Jersey makes a strong push to become the East Coast leader in offshore wind. But the three power plants run by PSEG Nuclear LLC provide nearly half of New Jersey's electricity, and a licensing extension represents a potential hedge against not enough wind projects being available to meet the state's needs.

An extension would enable the plants to run beyond 2050.

The company said it has notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intent to seek renewed licenses for the Salem Generating Station Units 1 and 2, and the Hope Creek Generating Station. All are located on one site on Artificial Island in Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County.

It plans to file the extension request in the second quarter of 2027 but needed to alert the commission far in advance to allow it to prepare for the review. If approved by the NRC, the licenses for Salem Units 1 and 2 would be extended from 2036 and 2040 to 2056 and 2060, respectively, and Hope Creek station would be extended from the current 2046 expiration to 2066, the company said.

“For more than five decades, the nuclear generating stations in south Jersey have safely generated reliable, always-on carbon-free energy," Charles McFeaters, president and chief nuclear officer of PSEG Nuclear, said in a statement. “Seeking to renew our licenses signifies our commitment to continuing to contribute to New Jersey’s clean energy future and serving as a vital economic engine for the local community."

Beginning this year, a nuclear production tax credit included in the federal Inflation Reduction Act will provide nuclear generators with nine years of financial support through 2032.

And New Jersey officials also approved a $300 million customer-funded subsidy for the state's nuclear industry in 2019 despite its utilities board determining that the industry was “viable” and not in need of a subsidy.

Both incentives were designed in part to support clean energy sources as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change.

The company's move to extend its operating licenses drew bipartisan support Wednesday from New Jersey lawmakers.

"Nuclear power is a clean resource that provides reliability and diversity to the state’s supply of energy,” said state Sen. John Burzichelli, a Democrat.

“South Jersey’s nuclear plants consistently, reliably and affordably deliver power for our state, day and night, regardless of the weather,” added Sen. Michael Testa, a Republican.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jerseys-3-nuclear-power-plants-181340811.html

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Sims: don’t saddle Australia with high cost solar panels, wind farms

Former competition tsar Rod Sims has warned that embracing an ad hoc “Made in Australia” approach to the net zero transition by 2050 could “destroy” the chances of Australia becoming a clean energy superpower.

In an address to the Melbourne Economic Forum, the former chair of the ACCC warned against the nation embracing flawed approaches to achieving net zero and took aim at those who belonged to the “Made in Australia” camp as well as those whom he regarded as “market fundamentalists.”

Mr Sims, the chair of the Superpower Institute – a body dedicated to helping the nation capitalise on the opportunities of the green energy transition – used the address to warn against saddling the nation with high cost solar panels and wind farms.

But he also made clear there was a role for government in helping the nation make the most of the coming green revolution. However, he said any government support needed to be finely geared towards areas where Australia had a comparative advantage – such as in green iron.

He also listed a series of conditions that would be needed to govern any taxpayer support for industry.

First, he said assistance should be aimed at the so-called “superpower industries” where Australia “has or will have a comparative advantage due to the net zero transition.”

READ MORE: ‘Made in Australia’ sets new, dangerous course for Labor | What’s the point of PM’s flagship policy? | Future budget deficits to be Made in Australia | PM ‘betraying Hawke reforms’ |
Second, the purpose of any assistance needed to be clearly defined to address well-understood problems.

Third, there should be clear “qualification rules” for assistance and, fourth, support needed to be fully funded to ensure the nation maintained a strong budget position.

Mr Sims used the address to take aim at the proponents of the Made in Australia philosophy, arguing it was unclear – at this stage – what the policy was about or how it would work.

“We have the ‘Made in Australia’ group. The problem here is that it is unclear what this group seeks. Make everything we need, import nothing? What is the framework in this slogan for deciding what Australia does, and does not, make in Australia?”

He expressed grave concerns that simply throwing money at any green energy project would “destroy the Superpower opportunity.”

“Should government support be provided to ensure we make our own computers, cars, clothing?” he asked. “Without a clear framework Australia will take a series of ad hoc measures that invite rent seeking by businesses, raise Australia’s cost structure and lower our productivity.”

“The government’s current rhetoric around “Made in Australia” suggests there is a focus on projects relevant to the net zero transition. But again, what does this suggest we do? Is it ‘any green project deserves taxpayer support?’”

Mr Sims asked how the nation could achieve “low cost renewable energy if we are saddled with high cost solar panels, wind farms and electrolysers through a ‘buy local’ imperative?”

“Under this form of “Made in Australia” approach, Australia will not achieve the lowest cost inputs to the supply of such goods, so Australia will not be cost competitive in their supply, and the green traded products will not be as cost competitive with existing fossil fuel-made products.”

Mr Sims said such an approach would be damaging for three reasons – it would remove Australia’s ability to make the most of its comparative advantage in making green energy-intensive exports, it would displace budget dollars that could be better allocated and force labour into unproductive areas of the economy during a worker shortage.

His preferred approach to making the transition to net zero would only allow for goods to be made in Australia “where the economics have ‘flipped’.”

For example, Mr Sims said Australia was a leading exporter of iron ore, coal and gas.

“The “Made in Australia” camp, as some are expressing it, would have us use all these Australian ingredients and make iron metal in Australia now,” he said.

“There is no logic to government intervening in the choices the market has made; it seems best for Australia in the fossil carbon world to do as we are.

“We would undermine the advantages of other industries and see lower wages by having workers in always struggling industries who would be constantly lobbying government for help.”

But Mr Sims said it was sensible to make green iron in Australia, because this was an area where the nation had a comparative advantage.

“Green iron will very likely need green hydrogen as the reductant that gets the iron ore into iron metal,” he said. “Green iron should be made in Australia because the economics flip.”

“All overseas studies that I am aware of suggest that Australia is likely the cheapest place in the world to make green iron. And those seeking to make green iron by importing hydrogen, those studies say, will be uncompetitive.”

Mr Sims concluded that the world needed Australia to make many green products because the nation had more low cost renewable energy resources than its needed. By contrast, Japan, Korea, most of Europe and China did not have sufficient renewable energy resources to make all the electricity they needed.

“They will need to either import renewable energy, ammonia as a derivative of hydrogen and/or use nuclear energy – all at great cost – to meet their domestic electricity needs,” he said.

He concluded by arguing the government had not clarified what it meant by its “Made in Australia” agenda.

If it amounted simply to a suite of ad hoc measures that invited rent seeking by businesses and raised Australia’s cost structure while lowering productivity, the Made in Australia vision would only “kill the superpower ambition.”

“Australia cannot afford to follow this lead. Nor will it suit the world for this to happen,” he said.

“If the government is ... targeting producing goods in which Australia now has a comparative advantage in the net zero world, through clear qualification mechanisms that address well defined market externalities, the government must be applauded.”

“We will wait and see on May 14, budget night, which group they are in.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/sims-dont-saddle-nation-with-high-cost-solar-panels-wind-farms/news-story/84ddad9996ca55e2b5dc150455fbe4bb

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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How we became 'Plastic People': Startling new documentary tracks global spread of toxic microplastics from the bottom of oceans to inside the human brain

"Toxic"? More scaremongering that totally misrepresents the fact that these particles are inert. They have to be in order to be used as freely as they are. So evidence that they can do anything is what is needed but is very unlikely to be found. Many of the things that we routinely eat -- such as most meat -- have greater potential for harm

A new film, called 'Plastic People,' has tracked the particle problem to the 1950s when the plastic industry convinced the public to abandon their thrift and frugality in favor of disposable products more beneficial to their bottom line.

The documentary team zeroed in on a 1955 LIFE magazine feature with the oddly euphoric title 'Throwaway Living' that celebrated a 'modern lifestyle' of single-use paper and plastic goods.

The article came with a photo spread of a happy family tossing all their single-use plates, cups and silverware up into the air like confetti.

The LIFE article positioned the plastic revolution as easing the burden on housewives by letting them toss dishes, cups and utensils in the trash and forgo hours of scrubbing and rinsing.

By the 1960’s, plastic had replaced other materials in the home like wood, metal, and glass.

Families began stocking cupboards with plastic tableware as companies produced them in an array of colors and at an affordable price.

The societal shift also saw people begin to furnish their homes with plastic-finished items like tables and couches.

Advertisements began to fill newspapers and magazines proclaiming plastic as the material of future that lets consumers create any shape with ease.

Then in the 1970s and 1980s, the world was introduced to bottled water, which was touted as a healthier solution to tap water.

Humans have continued to path of plastics to today - producing over 440 million tons of plastic waste each year.

And as the waste sits in landfills, it breaks down into microplastics, which are smaller than five millimeters in length.

'The first fact about microplastics is that they're everywhere,' said Addelman. 'You're breathing them in right now. There's nowhere on Earth you can avoid them.'

Microplastics enter our bodies through plastic packaging, certain food, tap water and even the air we breathe.

From there they enter our bloodstream and cause untold harm. In just recent years the tiny particles have been found in semen, the heart, breast milk, placentas, kidneys, livers and lungs.

The particles have been linked to the development of cancer, heart disease and dementia, as well as fertility problems.

Addelman noted that making Plastic People posed a unique challenge: how to illustrate a microscopic but pervasive problem.

'As far as a film goes, it's a tough subject,' Addelman said. 'It's an invisible and kind of literally 'hard to grasp' subject.'

Studies have estimated microplastics exposure cost the US healthcare system $289 billion in 2018 alone, in part because plastics do not decay back into natural organic molecules, instead retaining their synthetic chemical make-up as they get smaller.

And worse, thousands of hazardous chemical additives and precursors, including many of the now infamous cancer-causing 'forever chemicals,' come embedded in these microplastics as they seep deeper into humans and other living things.

Co-director Ziya Tong, Addelman and their film team traveled across the world — from Adana, Turkey to Portland, Texas; from Rome in Italy to Rochester, New York — interviewing scientists who investigate microplastics and shadowing their field work.

One researcher, Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu at Cukurova University in Turkey, walked filmmakers across beaches were fine grains of microplastics intermingle with Mediterranean sand and farmland where plastics absorb into crops as they grow.

Dr. Gündoğdu, whose work as a marine ecologist studying fisheries got him into tracking microplastics, showed Tong some of the first-ever evidence of microplastics crossing the blood-brain barrier in humans.

Tiny blue pigment from PVC piping had gotten past the barrier, a membrane that ordinarily helps keep any toxins in the blood from entering or harming the brain.

'If plastic can transfer from blood to brain, it can transfer from everywhere to everywhere,' Dr. Gündoğdu told Tong. 'It's really scary, but it's not surprising.'

While animal studies have previously shown that microplastics have been able to migrate into the brains of mice, the 15 samples obtained by Dr. Gündoğdu and his colleague, neurosurgeon Dr. Emrah Çeltikçi, appear to be the first in humans.

Tong said that more micoplastics were actually found in the brain samples than scientists could identify. 'It's one of the things that we don't talk about in the film,' Tong said.

'Because of the lack of transparency [from the plastics industry], there's a whole bunch where we don't know what the chemical cocktail actually is.'

'So he [Dr. Gündoğdu] was able to find these particles, but he's not able to identify them,' she explained, 'because they're not in the database.'

This week, the international Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty will attempt to persuade UN member states convening in Ottawa, Canada to compel the plastics industry into reporting on what they produce for these public databases.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13329269/How-Plastic-People-Startling-new-documentary-tracks-global-spread-toxic-microplastics-bottom-oceans-inside-human-brain-started-1950s-throwaway-living-idea.html

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NY environmentalists’ next target? Individually wrapped cheese slices face ban under far-reaching bill

Hey! I use these. They prevent my cheese from becoming inedible if I don't eat it straight away. They REDUCE waste

Individually wrapped cheese would be largely banned under a far-reaching bill getting pushed by New York environmentalists and politicians to reduce the use of plastics, The Post has learned.

The state bill — called Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act — would require companies with net incomes over $1 million who sell or distribute food or products to reduce plastics and other packaging that ends in landfills or waterways by 50% over the next 12 years.

It would also impose a fee on companies that use plastic packages, with money going toward recycling programs and infrastructure.

“This legislation shifts the onus of recycling from municipalities and ensures that producers of products are serving our interests by establishing solutions to sustainable packaging,” Sen. Peter Harckham (D-Peekskill) said in a memo promoting the bill.

The typical New Yorker creates nearly 5 pounds of trash every day, which means the state produces approximately 15 million tons of waste each year, according to Harckham, who introduced the measure along with Assemblywoman Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan).

“This waste primarily goes to landfills and incinerators, but can often end up in our water, natural habitats, and municipal spaces,” the memo said.

Four states have implemented similar programs — Maine, Oregon, Colorado and California.

One leading environmentalist backing the bill confirmed that the goal is to eliminate single slices of cheese packaged in non-reusable plastic, as well as other wasteful packaging.

“We have to do something about the plastic crisis,” said Judith Enck, president of the group Beyond Plastics.

Enck, who previously served as the federal regional administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency under then-President Barack Obama, said mico-plastic wrapping for cheese slices could be replaced with alternatives.

“There was a time in America when we didn’t put a piece of plastic between every slice of cheese. They can substitute plastic with paper,” she said.

She noted it costs New York City $420 million a year to transport and dispose of its trash to landfills and incinerators — and manufacturers should be doing their part.

“These companies have to take responsibility for producing the waste. They’re getting a free ride right now,” Enck said.

Other companies — such as Starbucks — are voluntarily reducing the amount of plastic used.

But the war on plastic cheese wrap and similar packaging is provoking a ferocious backlash from food manufacturers, supermarkets and the toy industry that package food and products in vacuum-sealed wrapping for protection.

“Under this bill, New Yorkers can expect a future where they’re grabbing unwrapped products – from cereals, to cheeses, to hot dogs – from grocery store bins before buying them and carrying them home,” said Nelson Eusebio, a representative with the National Association of Supermarkets.

“There’s no question such a drastic change in shopping habits will reduce the flow of packaging waste to our landfills, but it does so at the risk of ignoring all we’ve gained in food preservation and health benefits with sanitary, air-tight, plastic packaging.”

The law could mean higher grocery bills, he warned.

“For grocers, this structural change in how we sell goods will mean more of the food we’ve purchased landing in the dumpster rather than consumers’ grocery bags, only adding to the 25% increase we’ve seen in grocery store bills since 2019 – a faster price increase than housing, medical care, and most other categories,” he said. “Worse, so many of the products impacted are the household staples available through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), hitting low-income earners the hardest.”

Owen Caine, vice president of the Toy Association, said plastic packaging keeps toys and popular dolls from breaking during transit and carries the appropriate labeling to insure safety.

“If we remove the current packaging tools without an existing, viable replacement, we’ll simply raise costs and put New Yorkers at risk of receiving faulty products that they cannot verify is legitimate and/or tested to ensure it is safe,” Caine said.

Anti-plastic packaging bills have been voted out of the environmental committees in the Senate and Assembly. It will now being reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee and Assembly Codes Committee.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/21/us-news/ny-environmentalists-next-target-individually-wrapped-cheese-slices-face-ban-under-far-reaching-bill/

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In California, Newsom’s Energy Experiment Goes Awry

This Earth Day, which falls on Monday, California residents must be glad that their state accounts for less than 1% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 50 countries. Yet Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, still wants to achieve 100% net-zero carbon electricity by 2045.

With the highest effective poverty rate in America and some of the nation’s highest electricity costs, Newsom’s top priority should be to shift to energy affordability.

dailycallerlogo
The intermittency of renewables such as solar and wind is one reality plaguing the Golden State. Another is the fact that the state’s transmission lines are sparking many wildfires, exacerbating problems with an increasingly strained and poorly maintained electrical grid.

In October 2017, Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s equipment caused 16 fires in California. By 2021, California experienced roughly 7,000 wildfires, some still resulting from trees and other flammable detritus hanging on transmission lines, which are PG&E’s responsibility to remove.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has estimated that “average annual losses” resulting from wildfires from 2017 through 2021 totaled over $117.4 billion. These incidents have led to numerous lawsuits against the utility and repeated bankruptcy restructurings.

As part of the bankruptcy reorganization plan, PG&E was forced to adopt an Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process to manage vegetation. Despite missing every fire-risk-reduction target of its bankruptcy reform, the utility claimed that it couldn’t afford to keep its 5,500 tree trimmers on payroll. Instead, it wanted to distribute over $187 million in stock bonuses to the top 400 executives and employees—almost half a million dollars per recipient.

Facing financial strain and pressure to transition to renewables, the utility raised rates and saw profits increase by 25% in 2023. Over the past 10 years, PG&E customers have seen rates increase 127%, disproportionately affecting the poor, small businesses, and farmers.

Additionally, the Californian Public Utility Commission adopted new guidelines on net energy metering, which drastically reduced payouts for rooftop photovoltaic solar panels. Due to these needed reforms, rooftop solar sales have declined by about three-quarters since 2022. Currently, 75% of solar installers are considered “high risk,” with over 100 companies already filing for bankruptcy.

Despite these regular curtailments of solar panels, a joint report from the California Air Resources Board and other state agencies anticipates that electricity generation capacity will need to triple by 2045 to meet the state’s net-zero carbon goal.

Since solar and wind output vary with weather and time of day, California’s power grid will rely more on carbon-intensive natural gas “peaker” plants rather than on low-carbon, combined-cycle natural gas plants and carbon-free nuclear plants.

State law now requires zero-emission vehicle sales to be 35% of total sales by 2026 and 100% by 2035. Some have equated these energy policies to a new “Green Jim Crow,” as the policy disproportionately will impoverish the most disadvantaged Californian communities. The Public Policy Institute of California found that nearly a third of Californians live in or near poverty, and this policy will only exacerbate this situation.

If Newsom’s vehicle regulations are fully implemented, California would require drastically more electricity.

The California Energy Commission projects that transitioning to electric vehicles would require an additional 1.2 million charging stations by 2030 to accommodate the mandated 7.5 million EVs.

With a deficit of 54,000 installations in 2021, the goal of 250,000 chargers by 2025 is already out of reach, even with the $63 million federal grant approved in January.

This policy malfeasance of requiring massive electrification without drastically increasing grid capacity already has been felt. In August 2022, shortly after Newsom’s electric vehicle rule became state law, California faced a 10-day power shutdown. Subsequently, the governor announced that citizens should refrain from charging their electric cars—a few days after Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praised Newsom for pursuing his green energy agenda.

Newsom’s green energy policy experiments, such as the 2022 comprehensive energy bill, could result in an additional electricity cost of $830 a year per person to California residents. Only reality stands in the way of his plan for a net-zero power grid and automobile fleet by 2045.

Newsom’s policies have cost state residents almost a million jobs over the past five years. Millions of Californians have left for other states, with almost two-thirds of Californians considering following them.

Despite the increase in energy and transportation costs that will result if similar policies are pursued nationally, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken Newsom’s lead with its new tailpipe rule, which would mandate that 70% of new vehicles sold will be electric plug-in capable by 2032.

As we observe Earth Day on April 22, we should hope that any emulation of the failed Californian experiment will be stopped before such bad policy experiments further reduce economic growth.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/22/in-california-newsoms-energy-experiment-goes-awry/

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Australia: Zombies cast fear across renewables dreamland

NICK CATER

Last Thursday, the Queensland parliament passed a law committing the state to reduce carbon emissions by 75 per cent by 2035. Debate resumed at 11.44am, and the Energy (Renewable Transformation and Jobs) Bill was done and dusted in time for lunch. Back-slaps all round.

At 4.32pm on Friday, Ark Energy announced it was withdrawing its application to install 42 wind turbines at Chalumbin in far north Queensland following advice that the federal Department of Climate Change and Energy was about to reject it.

The meagre odds that Queensland can meet its legislated emissions target using renewable energy are now too small to be visible under a microscope.

For the wind industry, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s rejection of Chalumbin is its Franklin Dam moment. It was a test case of the federal government’s willingness to weigh the environmental cost of installing turbines against the assumed benefits of low-carbon electricity.

Last July, when I drew national attention to the Chalumbin proposal in The Australian, I opened my column by noting that it would destroy 1000 of the remaining 8000 hectares of wet sclerophyll forest, the buffer zone between the rainforests and the open plains to the south.

Nine months later, the minister reached the same conclusion, telling The Guardian at the weekend the forest “provides a vital habitat for many birds, plants and animals, including the spectacled flying fox and the northern greater glider”.

Her decision measures how far the wind industry’s fortunes have sunk since June 2022, when the Queensland government approved the Chalumbin proposal under the corner-cutting assessment process. It applies to anything with the word “renewable” attached.

Bulldozers were ripping swathes through hundreds of hectares of remnant native forest at nearby Kaban, blasting 330,000 tonnes of rock and dirt from the sides of hills to build access roads and turbine pads bigger than football fields.

All of this was occurring without a squeak from environmental groups, every one of which appeared to have swallowed the renewable energy Kool-Aid and, in some cases, its cash.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen set a target of installing a giant 7MW wind turbine every 18 hours until 2030. He boasted of the number of projects in the pipeline, the implication being they were just a short step away from approval.

Today, the renewable energy industry has a name for projects that slip off the back of the pipeline: zombie projects. Last year was the worst year for the financial approval of renewable energy projects since 2016 and the worst for wind since 2015. The latest Green Energy and Investment Markets Review reports the window is closing fast on the government’s 2030 target.

Assuming an average of two years for construction, 8GW of new projects must receive financial approval every year from 2024 until 2027. That is almost five times higher than the amount approved in 2023.

Bowen could ill-afford the 400MW Chalumbin project to fall into the zombie zone, particularly since it was backed by Korean Zinc, a cashed-up corporation keen to get a slice of Australia’s renewable energy action.

Chalumbin signals to renewable energy speculators that the Dirty Harry days are over. The environmental costs of wind, solar, hydro and transmission will no longer be overlooked because of their assumed noble goal.

Now Plibersek has knocked back Chalumbin, it is impossible to see how she can approve the Upper Burdekin project in an equally sensitive area 4.8km from the boundary of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area.Global tech giant Apple read the writing on the wall a year ago when it walked away from an agreement to buy power from the proposed plant. Andrew Forrest, whose WindLab company is behind the project, might as well throw the towel in today.

The odds must be rapidly closing against Mt Fox, a 350MW wind turbine project in mountainous remnant forest on the edge of the wet tropical Girringun National Park, 50km southwest of Ingham. From there, the ruler must be run through cascading proposals hugging the Great Dividing Range to the Darling Downs. Few, if any, will be situated in already degraded environments since developers seek ridge lines that are unprofitable and, in many cases, impossible to farm. The remnant bush line has provided sanctuary for enough vulnerable and endangered creatures to fill Noah’s ark.

The Chalumbin precedent subjects every proposal to potential trade-offs. How many hectares of bulldozed koala habitat are too many? Which species are so unlovely, small or insignificant that we are prepared to sacrifice them in order to save the planet? If the same rules that apply to mining were applied to wind, solar and pumped hydro, the jig would be up.

Plibersek will be aware of her decision’s taming effect on the animal spirits of renewable energy speculators. On Saturday, she issued a keep-calm-and-carry-on press release announcing she had approved 63 wind turbines at the aptly named Mt Hopeful in central Queensland. “I’ve now ticked off 46 renewable energy projects … and we have a record 130 renewables projects in the approval pipeline.”

Yet the minister’s tick does not make Mt Hopeful immune from zombification. The developer, Neoen, still struggles to make the numbers stack up. Costs are ballooning as it discovers that making a project work on a spreadsheet is very different from making it work on planet Earth.

Even the environmental movement is waking up to the realisation that wind turbines might not be the answer to their prayers. Bob Brown, the father of the green movement, led the campaign to stop turbines chewing up birds in his home state of Tasmania. In Victoria, wetland conservation groups opposed the proposed terminal for offshore wind construction at the Port of Hastings, which Plibersek blocked in January.

The Chalumbin decision brought Queensland conservationists scurrying out of the woodwork to make out as if they had opposed the proposal all along. A year ago, all the Queensland Conservation Council was prepared to say publicly was that the issue was “complicated”. On Friday, the Council declared the Chalumbin decision as “welcome”.

“Today, our community breathes a sigh of relief as those important bits of nature remain intact,” said Lucy Graham, director of the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre.

It is too early to declare that the renewable craze has peaked, but that moment is a step nearer in Queensland, where expectations rise of an LNP victory at the state election in October. LNP leader David Crisafulli’s decision not to oppose Labor’s legislated target invites an intriguing question.

Since the LNP has pledged to pull back Labor’s renewable excesses, might Crisafulli be the first Coalition leader to seek an electoral mandate for lifting the ban on nuclear?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/zombies-cast-fear-across-renewables-dreamland/news-story/ed8c116efa37dbce76cb6e0d4bf7dab6

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Net Zero Watch applauds Humza Yousaf’s climate leadership

Campaign group Net Zero Watch has welcomed the Scottish Government’s decision to abandon its decarbonisation targets.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

The SNP and their Green partners are the first administration to face up to reality, but they won’t be the last. The era of virtue-signalling climate targets is coming to an end. Humza Yousaf is showing himself a real climate leader.”

Net Zero Watch head of policy Harry Wilkinson said:

Most politicians across Europe still have their heads in the sand. They will have to change course eventually, but until they do their decarbonisation dogma will continue to wreak havoc in their economies.”
UK policy

https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/nzw-welcomes-yousaf-climate-leadership

"Incorrect" comment by JR: It is surprising enough that someone of Pakistani heritage is Prime Minister of Scotland but the fact that he is an SNP Prime Minister of Scotland is even more surprising. He must be a man of unusual talent. I won't mention what he would have been called a generation or two ago

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No, Wall Street Journal, Climate Change Is Not Threatening Coffee and Cocoa Production

We seem to get an alarm about this every year

An article from the Wall Street Journal, “Cocoa and Coffee Prices Have Surged. Climate Change Will Only Take Them Higher,” claims that climate change is driving recent spikes in the price of cocoa and coffee, and that things will likely get worse as warming continues. This is false. Cocoa and coffee have both set production records multiple times during the recent period of slight warming. A single bad season, or even a few bad seasons, for certain crops in certain regions of the world is not indicative of long-term change, significant shift, or trend.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that prices for coffee and cocoa are “surging as severe weather events hamper production in key regions, raising questions from farm to table over the long-term damage climate change could have on soft commodities.”

The WSJ adds that “more frequent heat waves, heavy rainfalls and droughts are damaging harvests and crippling supplies amid ever growing demand from customers worldwide.”

As discussed in multiple Climate Realism posts, data refutes claims that heat waves, droughts, or heavy rainfall are becoming more severe or more frequent. Also both coffee and cocoa bean production has enjoyed a steady climb over the decades, even amid modest warming.

Heat waves, heavy rain, and drought are all weather events that certainly can, and often do, impact crop production for a wide range of produce, not just cocoa and coffee, but evidence that these events are becoming a bigger threat to production is lacking.

The WSJ themselves point to a natural cause of the most recent heat waves and rainfall in West Africa, home of 70% of cocoa production: “powerhouses Ivory Coast and Ghana are facing catastrophic harvests this season as El Niño—the pattern of above-average sea surface temperatures—led to unseasonal heavy rainfalls followed by strong heat waves.”

This year’s heat and rain in both Africa and other parts of the world have been driven largely by El Niño, as discussed by Climate Realism here, for example, but that phenomenon is temporary, natural, and likely has already ended.

If it were true that climate change was leading to an increase in these kinds of events, that trend should be reflected in production data of coffee and cocoa over time, but the opposite appears in the data. Instead of a long-term trend of struggle and collapse, production has never been better for either coffee or cocoa.

According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization covering the last three decades of climate change:

Cocoa bean production just set its latest record high as recently as 2022;

World cocoa bean production has increased 132 percent;

West African cocoa bean production has increased 167 percent;

World coffee production set its latest record high in 2020;

World coffee production has increased 77 percent

Climate Realism has previously discussed region-specific coffee and cocoa trends in posts here, here, and here, among others.

Neither coffee nor chocolate, which both thrive in warmer climates, are threatened by climate change. The data show as much. The WSJ and the analysts quoted in the story cage their claims in language like “climate change is set to play a major role” and “could” impact future crops. All of these projections are for a future that does not appear to be approaching any time soon, based on the data and trends. They should stick to reporting the facts.

Throughout history agriculture has suffered during bad weather years; there is nothing new about that. There is no justification for blaming climate change for short-term weather events or their impact on crops.

https://climaterealism.com/2024/04/no-wall-street-journal-climate-change-is-not-threatening-coffee-and-cocoa-production/

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Conservative states sue US EPA over vehicle emissions regulations – report

According to a report from news outlet Reuters, half of the 50 US states have joined forces in an effort to stop new regulations designed to reduce tailpipe emissions from new cars.

The new rules have the US EPA aiming to cut tailpipe emissions by almost 50 per cent between 2026 and 2032.

After pushback from the automotive industry, The White House relaxed the rules from the 56 per cent originally proposed.

Russell Coleman, the attorney general for Kentucky – one of the two states leading the lawsuit – claims the changes will increase the price of cars, put pressure on the electricity grid, threaten local jobs, and harm the country's economy.

Patrick Morrisey, attorney general for West Virginia – the other state pushing the action – claimed the regulations were "legally flawed and unrealistic, to say the least".

The 25 attorneys general – all of which are from so-called 'red states', held by the conservative Republican party – previously said the proposed laws went beyond the remit of the EPA, and were effectively a "top-to-bottom attempt to restructure the automobile industry".

According to the report, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming have also backed the legal action by Kentucky and West Virginia.

With the United States gearing up for another presidential election in November 2024, the possible re-election of former President Donald Trump could result in the regulations being repealed.

https://www.drive.com.au/news/conservative-states-sue-us-epa-over-emissions-regulations

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Australian State Introduces Bill to Set 75 Percent Emissions Reduction Target Into Law

Silly dream

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has introduced legislation into the state’s Parliament to cut climate change emissions by 75 percent.

The bill sets out emissions reduction targets in Queensland and also commits the minister to making 2040 and 2045 targets in the future.

The premier said he first became interested in climate change in 2007 when his wife Kim was expecting their son, Sam.

“Now, as the state’s premier, I think it is important to protect not just my children’s future but the future of all Queenslanders,” he said.

“Queensland is already the most disaster-affected state. We have experienced more than 100 disasters since 2011. They are the kinds of disasters that we know will be more regular and more intense as average temperatures increase.”

An explanatory note on the bill states the legislation aims to “support jobs and secure Queensland’s economic future by enshrining the state’s emission reduction commitments into law.”

The bill (pdf) sets out emissions reduction targets for Queensland of 75 percent below 2005 levels by June 30, 2035, as well as 30 percent below 2005 levels by June 30, 2030. In 2050, the law sets an emissions reduction target of zero.
“The Clean Economy Jobs Bill 2024 sets a clear emissions reduction target of 75 percent on 2005 levels by 2035—a responsible, credible, and critical target on the path to net zero emissions by 2050,” Mr. Miles said.

“The 75 by 35 emissions reduction target positions Queensland as a world leader on the pathway to net zero—a target that continues Queensland’s record of having reduced more tonnes of emissions than any other state or territory.”

In addition, the bill states that the minister must decide a target for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions in Queensland for 2040, along with a target for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions in Queensland for 2045.

“The minister must decide the 2040 interim target by Dec. 31, 2030, and the 2045 interim target by Dec. 31, 2035,” the bill says.

Reaction from Political Opponents

The Queensland opposition Liberal National Party has yet to announce an official position on the legislation, according to media reports, as leader David Crisafulli continues focussing on youth crime issues.

In response to the announcement, One Nation Australia, however, raised concerns the policy would drive up electricity prices.

“Don’t look now but Queensland Labor has just announced their new policy to drive up electricity prices, drive away industry, destroy jobs, and make the cost of living crisis worse,” the party said in a post to X.

James Ashby, One Nation’s candidate for Keppel at the state election, said, “Be upfront Miles, are you planning on ruining our beaches and reefs, our farmers, or both?”

Mr. Ashby drew on a Victorian Legislative Council report that said meeting net zero targets with renewables could result in 70 percent of Victoria’s agricultural land being repurposed for wind turbines and solar farms.

“So why don’t you tell the people how much of Queensland’s land and sea you are planning to deface for your climate alarmist agenda,” Mr. Ashby said on X.

A Queensland state election is due to be held on Oct. 26, 2024. By-elections will also be held in the seats of Ipswich West and Inala on March 16, 2024.

Demonstrating ‘Queensland’s environmental, social and governance credentials’: government

Explanatory notes on the Clean Economy jobs Bill 2024 state the legislation will help attract investment to Queensland and decarbonise the state’s existing industries.

The Queensland government said achieving the 75 percent emissions target is dependent on the state and federal governments working together.

The government said (pdf) legislating the state’s credible targets would “send an important signal to investors and demonstrate Queensland’s environmental, social and governance credentials.”

“Policy certainty will enable businesses and communities to make effective plans to secure their economic futures.

“It will enable industry to invest in innovation and new technologies in sectors like agriculture, resources, and manufacturing as well as leveraging Queensland’s world-leading solar and wind resources, new economy minerals, and proven workforce capability.”

The government said the bill will “protect Queensland communities” and “mitigate the impacts of climate change,” including for “Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

“Coordinated and early climate action will support the creation of more job opportunities in Queensland’s emerging clean economy industries like hydrogen, critical metals and minerals, and advanced manufacturing, especially in Queensland’s regions. It will help to support jobs in existing industries by ensuring they remain competitive and meet market expectations in a decarbonising world.”

Australian Institute for Progress executive director, Graham Young, said, “As Anthony Albanese has just demonstrated, it’s easy to legislate, and it’s almost as easy to repeal. Which is just as well as they will never meet these targets in this time frame,” in a post to X.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/queensland-introduces-bill-to-set-75-percent-emissions-target-into-law-5587733

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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