Month: October 2022

Taming the climate is far harder and much more expensive than getting people to the moon

Decarbonization is a project with no clear beginning or end and the costs will be stupendous

By Vaclav Smil, Sept. 29, 2022, IEEE Spectrum

IN HIS 1949 book The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle, an English philosopher, introduced the term “category mistake.” He gave the example of a visitor to the University of Oxford who sees colleges and a splendid library and then asks, “But where is the university?” The category mistake is obvious: A university is an institution, not a collection of buildings.

Today, no category mistake is perhaps more consequential than the all-too-common view of the global energy transition.… Read more

Only 13% of Canadians support Trudeau anti-oil and gas policies

A Leger poll of 1,535 Canadians found 72 per cent of respondents either “somewhat” or “strongly” supported “developing and exporting more oil and natural gas resources”. Needless to say, Canada’s Prime Minister is opposed

By Colin Craig, National Post, Oct. 26, 2022

Over the past decade, many European nations grew dependent on Russia for their oil and natural gas needs. The folly of this policy was revealed by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That is why, since February, many of those same European nations have been knocking desperately on Canada’s door seeking to purchase some of our enormous supplies of oil and gas resources.… Read more

After spending $3.8-trillion on renewables, U.S. use of fossil fuels down one percent

From a CNBC interview on Oct. 2, 2022, with Jeff Currie of investment firm Goldman Sachs

How much has green investment given us? Here’s a stat for you. At the end of last year [2021], overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption [in the United States]. Ten years ago, they were at 82.

So after all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8-trillion, let me repeat that, $3.8-trillion of investment in renewables, fossil fuel consumption fell from 82 to 81 percent of [the U.S.’s] overall energy consumption. The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.… Read more

California is leading the way in creating a ‘green’ economy. It’s a disaster

Governor Gavin Newsom doubles down on green projects while state’s energy bills soar

Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 21, 2022

California can barely keep the lights on as its climate policies bite the electric grid, but Gov. Gavin Newsom is undaunted. On Friday he signed no fewer than 40—count ’em 40—new climate bills to amp up California’s green-energy shock experiment.

Even as gasoline prices nationwide have fallen to an average $3.68 a gallon, Californians are still paying $5.45 a gallon. California’s electric rates are already more than double those in neighboring states. This is what happens when politicians try to eliminate fossil fuels with a Molotov cocktail of regulation, taxes, and renewable mandates and subsidies.… Read more

Don’t believe the hype about Antarctica’s melting glaciers

While the Antarctic ice losses seem stupendously large, the recent annual losses amount to 0.001% of the total ice and, if they continued at that rate, would raise sea level by only 3 inches over 100 years

By Steven Koonin, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 2022

Alarming reports that the Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking misrepresent the science under way to understand a very complex situation. Antarctica has been ice-covered for at least 30 million years. The ice sheet holds about 26.5 million gigatons of water (a gigaton is a billion metric tons, or about 2.2 trillion pounds). If it were to melt completely, sea levels would rise 190 feet.… Read more

Climate moralists’ fake virtue is creating misery for millions

From a column by Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 2022

The left has always deemed itself morally superior—peace, love and understanding and all that. Conservative ideas and solutions are characterized as the product of self-interest, bigotry and greed. They might be grudgingly tolerated, but morally defensible in their own right? Never.

Take climate change. The obligation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions has been established firmly as the ultimate moral imperative. If you oppose it you are condemning us literally to a future of hellfire—and doing so out of your own selfish desire to drive a big car or fly somewhere for a vacation.… Read more

Net Zero 2030 conference report: Too far, too fast!

In the video below, Michelle Sterling, communications manager of Friends of Science, shows how the claims and premises of the Net Zero 2030 conference are built on faulty and even false energy and climate assumptions.
Click on the image to see the YouTube video

A recent day-long conference hosted by the Canadian Climate Institute and the Net Zero Advisory Board proposed to offer Net Zero 2030 plans and programs “In Focus.”

In this video, Friends of Science Communications Manager, Michelle Stirling, who watched the day’s events, offers her insights and rebuttals to many claims made in the day-long presentation. In essence, the Canadian federal government is trying to go…”too far…too fast.”… Read more

Ottawa’s climate-change evangelism a threat to Canada’s energy security

The Canadian and U.S. governments continue to stifle production of oil and gas for domestic markets, never mind for increasingly desperate allies, at the cost of our national interest

By Derek H. Bur­ney, National Post, Oct. 19, 2022

Derek H. Bur­ney is a for­mer 30-year ca­reer diplo­mat who served as the Am­bas­sador to the United States of Amer­ica from 1989-1993

Shortly after sabotage operations blew ruptures in the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany, OPEC announced plans to reduce oil production by two million barrels per day. Both actions increased pressure around energy shortages, notably in Europe, where prices are already substantially higher than last year and are likely to get worse as winter nears.… Read more

IPCC’s future-climate scenarios are increasingly outdated, but scientists won’t rethink their assumptions

Science has momentum and that momentum can be hard to change, even when obvious and significant flaws are identified

By Roger Pielke, Jr., The Honest Broker, Nov. 30, 2020

A 2015 literature review found almost 900 peer-reviewed studies published on breast cancer using a cell line derived from a breast cancer patient in Texas in 1976. But in 2007 it was confirmed that the cell line that had long been the focus of this research was actually not a breast cancer line, but was instead a skin cancer line. Whoops. 

Even worse, from 2008 to 2014 — after the mistaken cell line was conclusively identified — the review identified 247 peer-reviewed articles putatively on breast cancer that were published using the misidentified skin cancer cell line.… Read more

Electric vehicles create more problems than they solve—and effect on climate is minimal

If every country met its 2030 targets for EVs, the effect on climate would be a reduction of .0002°F by the end of the century

By Bjorn Lom­borg, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10, 2022

We constantly hear that electric cars are the future— cleaner, cheaper and better. But if they’re so good, why does California need to ban gasoline-powered cars? Why does the world spend $30-billion a year subsidizing electric ones?

In reality, electric cars are only sometimes and somewhat better than the alternatives, they’re often much costlier, and they aren’t necessarily all that much cleaner. Over its lifetime, an electric car does emit less CO2 than a gasoline car, but the difference can range considerably depending on how the electricity is generated.… Read more