Posts

To replace fossil fuel energy worldwide would require the equivalent of 22,000 Site C dams and severely damage our living standards, says Fraser Institute study

By Fraser Institute, June 12, 2024

Canada and other developed countries have committed to achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

… but is there any chance we’re actually going to hit that target?

Right now, in 2024, we are at the halfway point between the Kyoto Protocol (the first international treaty to set binding targets for cutting emissions) and that 2050 target.… Read more

Today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies are being abandoned, making room for a more informed approach to meeting the world’s energy needs

By Steven E. Koonin, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2024

The 2015 Paris Agreement aspired to “reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the latter half of this century. The centerpiece of the strategy was a global transition to low-emission energy systems.

After nearly a decade, it’s timely to ask how that energy transition is progressing and how it might fare in the future. … Read more

Study shows operating expenses of low-emissions rigs are far higher than those for diesel trucks—’the economics just don’t work for most companies’

By Paul Berger, Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2024

Executives at truck leasing company Ryder System spent years listening to some of their biggest customers say they wanted to switch to battery-electric big rigs. 

“The economics just don’t work for most companies,” said Robert Sanchez, the chief executive of Ryder, which manages 250,000 trucks and vans for tens of thousands of retailers and manufacturers.… Read more

Global fossil fuel consumption is increasing, not decreasing, and this growth can only continue

By Vaclav Smil and Elmira Aliakbari, National Post, May 29, 2024

Canada and other developed countries have committed to achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Yet here at the midway point between the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty to set binding targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and the looming deadline of 2050, there is good reason to doubt the feasibility of this ambitious transition.

Our new study for the Fraser Institute demonstrates how the world’s dependence on fossil fuels has in fact steadily and significantly increased over the past three decades — this despite international agreements, significant government spending and regulation and some technological progress pushing in the opposite direction.… Read more

A rapid transition away from fossil fuels to all ‘renewable energy’ is, quite simply, naive

By Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2024

Rich countries, global institutions and the private-jet set haven’t always been obsessed with climate change. Their preoccupation began in the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War. That wasn’t a coincidence. The Soviet Union fell, communism was vanquished, and peace prevailed among major powers. As Francis Fukuyama brashly claimed, history had ended. All that remained was fixing climate change.… Read more

French scientist summarizes the findings of physicist William Happer in a single figure

By Prof. Jean N., Faculty of Sciences, European University, June 2022

Originally published in French on Science, Climat, Energie.

When we talk about the greenhouse effect and the level of atmospheric CO2 there are three categories of scientists: 

(i) those who accept this greenhouse effect and who think that the increasing rate of CO2 will have major effects on the temperature of the lower troposphere; they are generally the partisans of the theses of the IPCC; 

(ii) those who accept the idea of ​​a greenhouse effect but who believe that the warming will be modest or even non-existent; they are scientists qualified as climato-realists or climato-skeptics; we can, for example, place in this category physicists and climatologists such as William Happer , Herman Harde , Roy W.… Read more