January 2023 - Climate Realists of Victoria, B.C.

False urgency of the ‘climate crisis’ gives no time or space to build a secure energy future

Thinking that we can minimize severe weather through using atmospheric carbon dioxide as a control knob is a fairy tale

By Judith Curry, Dec. 27, 2022, Climate Etc.

There is a growing realization that emissions and temperature targets are now detached from the issues of human well-being and the development of our 21st-century world.

For the past two centuries, fossil fuels have fueled humanity’s progress, improving standards of living and increasing the life span for billions of people. In the 21st century, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels has become an international imperative for climate-change mitigation, under the auspices of the UN Paris Agreement.

As a result, the 21^st-century energy transition is dominated by stringent targets to rapidly eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. However, the recent COP27 meeting in Egypt highlighted that very few of the world’s countries are on track to meet their emissions-reductions commitment.

The desire for cleaner, more abundant, more reliable and less expensive sources of energy is universal. However, the goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is at odds with the urgency of providing grid electricity to developing countries.

‘Net Zero’ goals completely unrealistic: electric industry report

How a net-zero grid could be built and function would be an issue worth studying if it were possible in the first place. But it simply isn’t.

By Steve Milloy, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 29, 2022

‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.

“Net zero” was mentioned in more than 6,000 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 and countless other times by publicly traded corporations and investor groups in statements and on their websites. The SEC says its proposed climate disclosure rule will help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero commitments and assessing any associated risks.”

“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders. But two new reports from the utility industry should put an end to such loose talk.

Trudeau’s ‘Just transition’ program for millions of ‘green’ jobs? It doesn’t exist says auditor-general

Ottawa itself believes there will be ‘significant labour market disruptions’ in sectors of the economy employing 2.7 million Canadian workers — 13.5% of the nation’s workforce

By Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, Jan. 21, 2023

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised it in the 2019 federal election and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said recently he hopes to unveil it early this year.

But when the federal environment commissioner, part of the auditor general’s office, reported on the progress of the government’s “just transition” program in April 2022, presumably after three years of planning, he concluded there wasn’t a program.

“We found that as Canada shifts its focus to low-carbon alternatives, the government is not prepared to provide appropriate support to more than 50 communities and 170,000 workers in the fossil fuels sector,” Jerry DeMarco said.

Confronting the illusory truth about oil

The environmentalists can fool the public about a ‘clean,’ ‘sustainable’ future, but the numbers don’t lie: Oil and gas consumption is going up and will continue to go up

By John Feldsted, Jan. 19, 2023

What psychologists refer to as “illusory truth” is the tendency of people to believe anything, regardless of how false it is, if they hear it repeated often enough. Proponents of climate alarm endlessly repeat that the people of the world are using less and less oil and that this trend is relentless and inevitable. As their logic goes, reducing and ending the production of oil is, therefore a means to facilitate a trend that is happening anyway. Despite its constant repetition, it is not true.

The 2022 edition of the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy provides the data on demand, by country, region and world, for crude oil and for the broader category of “crude oil and liquids”. Crude oil and liquids includes both crude oil and certain natural gas liquids such as condensate that can serve as substitutes for crude oil for some purposes.

According to the review:

• From 2011 to 2019, total demand rose by 11.2 million barrels per day, from 89.3 million barrels per day to 100.6 million barrels per day, or just over one million barrels per day per year. This is the fastest growth in oil and liquids demand over a comparable period in history.

Move to Net Zero is way more than ‘just a transition’

Memo shows the federal plan won’t just cause upheaval in oil and gas provinces but will eliminate or reduce whole sectors of the Canadian economy

By Don Braid, National Post, Jan. 17, 2023

The federal plan to “transition” jobs and regional economies in the fight against climate change is even more vast and all-embracing than suspected by the most suspicious sovereignty fan in Premier Danielle Smith’s office.

“When I saw the memo, I felt a pit in my stomach,” Smith said Monday. “It’s worse than I feared.” She’s talking about a memo made public by Blacklock’s Reporter, a diligent subscription news service based in Ottawa.

This document is national dynamite packaged as question-and-answer notes for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, the Liberals’ lead minister on “just transition.”

If nothing else, it should convince people across the country that the federal plan won’t just cause upheaval in oil and gas provinces, but nearly everywhere.

IPCC vs. The Facts: The Case for Climate Realism—pdf download

By Ken Wilson, P.Eng. (ret), Jan. 10, 2023

This essay, available as a PDF download, examines the science underlying the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from a climate-realist perspective.

This science is supposed to be “settled,” “certain,” and beyond question, based on a reported “consensus” of more than 2,000 scientists who contribute to the IPCC’s reports. The IPCC’s findings are, we’re often told, “The Science,” and non-scientists—politicians, the media and the public—are supposed to accept “the Science” without question.

However, if we do begin to question “the Science,” serious problems emerge, including many claims by the IPCC that do not stand up to scrutiny, including accelerating sea levels (there has been no alarming change in the rate of global sea level rise since 1860), increased frequency of “extreme” weather events such as hurricanes (not happening), and many others.

Above all, the scientific evidence does not support the IPCC’s key claim: that increased levels of carbon dioxide are causing corresponding increased warming. If this isn’t true, then the entire IPCC case collapses.

The article is about 2 mb and can be downloaded by clicking on this link.

If accurate data don’t fit the ‘green’ narrative, then hide the data

BP considers scrapping its annual energy review because report’s numbers undermine company’s rhetoric about its pursuit of alternative energy

By Robert Bryce, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 7, 2022

Reuters recently reported that energy giant BP is “considering ending the publication of its Statistical Review of World Energy, over 70 years after it first published the benchmark report.” The reason? The report’s numbers are supposedly undermining the company’s rhetoric about its pursuit of alternative energy. To give in to such claims and cancel the Statistical Review— one of the most reliable energy resources in the world— would be an egregious mistake.

The review is a benchmark report. No other entity, corporate or public, publishes such a wide variety of data. Because the Statistical Review is published in spreadsheet form, its data can be easily used to detect and illustrate trends in everything from coal use in Vietnam (it’s soaring) to the electricity generated annually by America’s nuclear reactors (it’s falling).

I look at the review almost daily, as do many people in the media, energy and government sectors. That BP would even consider halting publication—the cost of which amounts to decimal dust amid the company’s 2021 revenue of $164 billion—shows how a huge company can be cowed by fashion and fleeting political considerations.

CBS promotes scientist who predicted billions would die from global cooling and hunger

Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich continues to spread pseudoscience about climate change and overpopulation

By Michael Shellenberger, Jan. 3, 2023

On Sunday night, CBS’s flagship news program, “60 Minutes,” highlighted warnings from a Stanford University biologist named Paul Ehrlich. In the broadcast, Ehrlich claimed, “humanity is not sustainable… for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths.”

But that claim was debunked in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Plos Biology, by leading scientists, including the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, nearly a decade ago.

And newly available archival footage shows Ehrlich claiming that global cooling, not global warming, would result in global famine. “As you know, we’re already cooling the planet,” he said in a 1970 speech (click on this link).

Ontario plans for ‘green’ energy completely unrealistic

New power plants and transmission equipment will occupy about 14 times as much land as Toronto, report says

By Randall Denley, National Post, Jan. 6, 2023

The Ontario government’s spending on inducements for the electric car industry has been something to behold. The most recent was a $259-million gift to GM Canada, to help it retool an Ingersoll plant to make electric commercial vans.

That was preceded by $513 million in provincial money to further electric car development at Stellantis plants in Windsor and Brampton, and to develop a battery research centre. Earlier, Ford Motor Co. got $295 million to make electric cars in Oakville.

The province is also putting “hundreds of millions” into a $4-billion battery plant being built by Stellantis in Windsor. The government wouldn’t cite an exact figure so as not to prejudice negotiations with other corporations lined up for handouts. A Belgian battery maker is building a $1.5-billion plant near Belleville with substantial, but again, unspecified provincial support.

You can’t get there (Net Zero) from here (there’s not nearly enough battery power)

This is the Executive Summary of a PDF document, “Lack of energy storage makes renewables-only grids a pipe dream,” that exposes the unrealistic assumption that there will be enough battery power to back up ‘green’ energy sources

By Francis Menton, Global Warming Policy Foundation, Dec. 1, 2022

Advanced economies – including most of Europe, much of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others – have embarked upon a quest to ‘decarbonize’ their economies and achieve ‘Net Zero’ emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The Net Zero plans turn almost entirely on building large numbers of wind turbines and solar panels to replace generation facilities that use fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) to produce electricity. The idea is that, as enough wind turbines and solar panels are built, the former coal, oil, and gas-burning central stations can gradually be closed, leaving an emissions-free electricity system.

But wind and solar facilities provide only intermittent power, which must be fully backed up by something – fossil fuel generators, nuclear plants, batteries, or some other form of energy storage – so that customer demand can be matched at times of low wind and sun, thus keeping the grid from failing.

The governments in question have, then, mostly or entirely ruled out fossil fuels and nuclear as the backup, leaving some form of storage as the main or only remaining option. They have then simply assumed that storage in some form will become available. Their consideration of how much storage will be needed, how it will work, and how much it will cost has been entirely inadequate.