“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of UNEP
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. – James Hansen (Former NASA-climate chief)
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‘Green’ Germany is considering support for at least 10 foreign ‘dirty’ fossil fuel projects worth over €1 billion ($1.5B AUD), despite its pledge to end international funding for coal, oil and gas.
Nothing like an energy crisis to change sentiment!
Germany is considering support for at least 10 foreign fossil fuel projects worth over €1 billion ($1bn), despite its pledge to end international funding for coal, oil and gas.
In response to a parliamentary question from a left-wing German lawmaker, the state secretary at the ministry of economic affairs and climate action Udo Philipp said the government is considering 10 applications for export credit guarantees for fossil energy projects in Brazil, Iraq, Uzbekistan, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
A breakdown of the projects accompanying the response shows that €419 million ($442m) or around 40% of the funding, could go to a single project in Brazil. Three of the projects totalling €340m ($359m) are located in Iraq and four are in Cuba.
Other fossil fuel projects could be under consideration by the German state-owned investment and development bank KfW. The bank does not disclose projects it hasn’t decided to support.
Germany was among 16 countries to sign a pledge at Cop26 in Glasgow last year to end international funding for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.
Ten have published policies showing how they will restrict funding to coal, oil and gas. But Germany has not adopted a policy because of internal divisions over exemptions for gas.
The severe weather forecast Europe says we are likely to have a cold early winter. The blog authored by Renato R Colucci, makes these forecasts: (click to enlarge charts)
“Snow Extent in the Northern Hemisphere now Among the Highest in 56 years Increases the Likelihood of Cold Early Winter Forecast both in North America and Europe.”
“Snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of November represents an important parameter for the early winter forecast. This year snow extent is running much higher than average and according to existing global estimates, it is now beyond the highest ever observed so far. Winter forecast, especially in its early phase and in Europe, might be strongly influenced by such a large snow extent, although many other factors need attention.” (My emphasis on sentence,)
The posting also shows that fall snow extent is increasing lately. The following charts show the trend.
“Truth always comes out. It’s one of the fundamental rules. And when it does it can set you free or it can end everything you’ve fought for.” – Chris Holliday
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.“ – Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
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The one benefit of having a dementia-ridden puppet residing in the Whitehouse is that it will often say the quiet things out loud.
Snowfall will become “A very rare and exciting event… Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” Dr David Viner – Senior scientist, climatic research unit (CRU)
“Resorts could lose up to 40% of snow by 2020” – @CSIRO (2003)
“Winters with strong frosts and lots of snow like we had 20 years ago will no longer exist at our latitudes.” – Professor Mojib Latif (2000)
This is how WeatherZone.com–unlikely sceptics of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) religion–opened their article reporting on extremely rare, if not unheard of, avalanches in Victoria in November.
Their overt surprise not out of context.
Climate models from the 1970s have consistently predicted that CO2-induced global warming climate change should be causing a significant decline in total snow cover. However, global snow cover has actually increased since at least the start of the record (Connolly et al., 2019), leading to some scepticism within the scientific community about the validity of UN IPCC climate models that directly drive costly global warming climate change catastrophism.
Perhaps that same healthy scepticism may well increase, amongst academics and mainstream media institutions, thanks to global warming climate change narrative-contradictions like ‘Avalanches in Victoria in November!’
Though, don’t hold your breath. The ClimateChange™️ eco-scare is strong and will not die quickly. Too many jobs, reputations, taxpayer trillions, and egos are now at stake.
We’ve seen snow fall in late spring and even in summer on the Australian mainland. We’ve also seen Aussie winter snow so heavy that it caused avalanches – a hazard more commonly associated with much more mountainous countries, but which does happen here. There have even been fatalities over the years.
But we’ve never seen an out-of-season snowfall with heavy enough accumulation to cause a significant snow slide. Until now.
Snowy Mountains local Steve Smith (not a great cricketer but definitely a better skier than his famous namesake) got up early on Wednesday morning to take advantage of the unseasonable snowfalls, which you can read about here and here.
No ski lifts are open at this time of year, so he drove up towards the Charlotte Pass ski resort, where he hiked up the slopes of Mt Guthrie to earn a few turns on about 30 to 40 cm of fresh November snow.
Image: Avalanches were definitely not on our weather bingo card for Novrmber. Source: Steve Smith.
That’s when trouble struck. As he started skiing down, the snowpack broke away from itself and started sliding in large chunks, triggered by his skis. Look carefully and you can see his tracks to the right of the slide in the image above.
Below is a shot of the same slide from a different angle.
Image: Stay safe out there, folks, this can happen to you. Source: Steve Smith.
Frighteningly, Steve was caught in the slide but as he told Weatherzone, “I just relaxed and rode it out for a few seconds. No big deal. Pretty gentle terrain in there.”
For the record, Steve is an experienced back country skier who has had avalanche training. He skis with a full safety kit, and so should you if you ever venture out to the back country in any season.
But it was still a lucky escape, as avalanches can bury you even on gentle terrain like the terrain in the images above.
“Take care out there,” Steve warned his fellow back country adventurers who will doubtlessly be heading out in flocks in coming days before this November snow melts.
“Out on the higher alpine terrain, I reckon the avalanche risk is real for a few days till it settles down.”
Image: Same avvy, from a slightly different angle. Source: Steve Smith.
If you do happen to be heading to the high country of Victoria and NSW this weekend for any reason, the forecast is for cool, partly cloudy weather with the chance of a light shower or two (of rain, not snow), especially on Sunday.
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. – James Hansen (Former NASA-climate chief)
“It is so easy to be wrong —and to persist in being wrong— when the costs of being wrong are paid by others. – Thomas Sowell
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If there was ever a better (scientific) advertisement for the uselessness of UNreliables (wind and solar) then it is this.
According to economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs, over the past decade, nearly four-thousand-billion-dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on windmills and mirrors to reduce fossil fuel energy consumptionby 1 percent from 82 to 81 percent of overall global energy consumption.
How many more pristine landscapes, wildlife, and taxpayer bank accounts need to be decimated to realise the fanciful “NetZero2050” target, or even a 10% “transition” toward industrial wind and solar?
The mind boggles.
CNBC Squawk Box:
"At the end of last year, overall fossil fuels represented 81% of energy consumption. 10 years ago, they were at 82%," says Jeff Currie. "$3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuels from 82% to 81% of the overall energy consumption." pic.twitter.com/VhQN0S9oo9
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division):
“Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”
It is hard to get your head around the fact that $3.8 trillion has been spent with so little results. A lot of that money has been going to Crony Capitalists through subsidies and tax forgiveness.
That they have not made any progress replacing fossil fuels is understandable and that it is unlikely that wind and solar ever will. Their lack of dispatchability will forever prevent wind and solar from being the main source of power. Long term, nuclear power will have to be the main source of power with wind and solar playing second fiddle.
An HTMR-100 cannot melt down. If the worst possible event were to occur, the reactor will just shut itself down. If all cooling stops, the reactor will heat up a bit for 24 hours and then over the next 4 to 5 days will just cool down with no incident. That is ‘walk away safe’.
Nuclear power is the future of mankind. The world’s electricity insecurity experienced since 2020 has shown the way forward with great clarity.
Furthermore, nuclear is the only known efficient, reliable, safe, continuous and truly ‘green’ energy technology:
Why is the great news that the Barrier Reef is in top condition, with record coral cover, being ignored by the MainstreamMedia™️?
With the daily and constant lecturing and hectoring about the supposed “climate catastrophe/crisis/emergency”, shouldn’t they be ringing the bells and dancing in the street?
The fact that they are not, and remain largely silent about Reef health, stands as more conclusive proof that ClimateChange™️ has absolutely nothing to do with the environment or “saving the planet” rather a wicked tool to justify complete power and control over every aspect of your life and lifestyle. Aka, global-communism.
Great Barrier Reef, Australia [image credit: BBC] Dr. Peter Ridd writes: ‘The three or four bleaching events since 2016, which have been widely reported in the media, could not have killed much coral, otherwise the 2022 statistics would not be so good.’
Time to dial down the tedious climate alarmism on this.
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Official data released today reveals that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in excellent health, with coral cover reaching record levels for the second consecutive year, says Climate Change Dispatch.
The increase will be surprising to members of the public, who are regularly hit with scary stories about coral bleaching and false tales about a reef in long-term decline.
A new note, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, explains that the data shows clearly how a handful of coral bleaching events that have affected the reef since 2016 have had a very limited…
“An HTMR-100 cannot melt down. If the worst possible event were to occur, the reactor will just shut itself down. If all cooling stops, the reactor will heat up a bit for 24 hours and then over the next 4 to 5 days will just cool down with no incident. That is ‘walk away safe’.”
“Nuclear power is the future of mankind. The world’s electricity insecurity experienced since 2020 has shown the way forward with great clarity.”
Hear, hear.
Furthermore, nuclear is the only known efficient, reliable, continuous and truly ‘green’ energy technology:
• Zero CO2 emissions, if you believe that invisible trace gas and plant food CO2 is destroying the planet.
• Zero particulate (smog) pollution.
• The least land-intensive energy technology for both plant exposure and the mining required for key resource uranium.
• ~60 year lifespan.
A win, win for both the environment and for humanity.
The first two decades of the 21st Century will go down in history as a time of amazing world confusion about energy supplies, particularly electricity.
This is all due to electricity planning being done too much at a political policy level, and not by engineers and scientists. This in turn was linked to an inordinate fear of supposed man-induced climate change linked to fossil fuels, primarily driven by extreme green activist groups. Sadly, much scientific logic was trampled under the feet of street demonstrators, clamoring for Mother Nature’s natural energy: wind and solar.
The result has been soaring electricity prices in many countries, and power shortages leading to blackouts, resulting in major economic and social upheaval.
There has also been significant interference from European countries in the affairs of African and other countries around the world, insisting that developing countries adapt their energy usage…
Like the entire #UkraineRussiaWar (real-energy War) isn’t a result of the indolent West’s capitulation to UNreliable ‘green’ energy ideology and it’s, subsequent, TOTAL dependence on Russian fossil-fuels!
Cognitive dissonance on steroids.
Though, completely unsurprising. And, completely by design.
Coal-hungry China [image credit: democraticunderground.com] More doom-laden propaganda, pretending climate theories are facts and so on.
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The UN Secretary General says the rush to use fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine is “madness” and threatens global climate targets.
The invasion of Ukraine has seen rapid rises in the prices of coal, oil and gas as countries scramble to replace Russian sources, says BBC News.
But Antonio Guterres warns that these short-term measures might “close the window” on the Paris climate goals.
“Switching one’s energy dependence from oil supplies to China-controlled electrical energy equipment is foolish, bordering on insane, in strategic terms. Where are the senior security analysts in the US Department of Defense willing to point this out?”
Where are they? They are purposefully and actively weakening America, by design, by authority.
“Build Back Better” isn’t merely a slogan. They mean it.
The problem is, what does “better” actually mean? They haven’t told us yet, just as Marx (to his credit) warned that he had no idea what his theory of Marxism would portend for the future.
We all (now) know how Marxist doctrine has played out since — misery and death for all.
The United States Army has just published its climate strategy. In the foreword, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Williams College and a former civilian employee of the Department of Defense, proudly stated that:
“The army must adapt across our entire enterprise and purposefully pursue greenhouse gas mitigation strategies to reduce climate risks. If we do not take action now, across our installations, acquisition and logistics, and training, our options to mitigate these risks will become more constrained with each passing year.”
One might wonder why, as Russian troops invade the Ukraine and China ceaselessly builds up its air, surface and naval forces, the United States Army is turning its mighty attention to the goal of defeating carbon dioxide emissions. The Army’s former recruiting slogan, “Be…
While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.
How has Vladimir Putin—a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of France—managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?
There is a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that question: He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it to be free. He is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and treasure to get it. There are serious limits to how much the U.S. and Europe are willing to do militarily. And Putin knows it.
Missing from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe.
Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Putin knows that Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters. He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that.
The former KGB agent knows Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day but only uses 3.4 million. He knows Russia now produces over 700 billion cubic meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800 million tons of coal each year but uses 300.
That’s how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal.
The math is simple. A child could do it.
The reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is that it needs Putin’s oil and gas.
The question is why.
How is it possible that European countries, Germany especially, allowed themselves to become so dependent on an authoritarian country over the 30 years since the end of the Cold War?
Here’s how: These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production. Green ideology insists we don’t need nuclear and that we don’t need fracking. It insists that it’s just a matter of will and money to switch to all-renewables—and fast. It insists that we need“degrowth” of the economy, and that we face looming human “extinction.” (I would know. I myself was once a true believer.)
John Kerry, the United States’ climate envoy, perfectly captured the myopia of this view when he said, in the days before the war, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine “could have a profound negative impact on the climate, obviously. You have a war, and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus.”
But it was the West’s focus on healing the planet with “soft energy” renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.
As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves.
While Putin expanded Russia’s oil production, expanded natural gas production, and then doubled nuclear energy production to allow more exports of its precious gas, Europe, led by Germany, shut down its nuclear power plants, closed gas fields, and refused to develop more through advanced methods like fracking.
The numbers tell the story best. In 2016, 30 percent of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia. In 2018, that figure jumped to 40 percent. By 2020, it was nearly 44 percent, and by early 2021, it was nearly 47 percent.
For all his fawning over Putin, Donald Trump, back in 2018, defied diplomatic protocol to call out Germany publicly for its dependence on Moscow. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said. This prompted Germany’s then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had been widely praised in polite circles for being the last serious leader in the West, to say that her country “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”
The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured.
Europeans—led by figures like Greta Thunberg and European Green Party leaders, and supported by Americans like John Kerry—believed that a healthy relationship with the Earth requires making energy scarce. By turning to renewables, they would show the world how to live without harming the planet. But this was a pipe dream. You can’t power a whole grid with solar and wind, because the sun and the wind are inconstant, and currently existing batteries aren’t even cheap enough to store large quantities of electricity overnight, much less across whole seasons.
In service to green ideology, they made the perfect the enemy of the good—and of Ukraine.
Take Germany.
Green campaigns have succeeded in destroying German energy independence—they call it Energiewende, or “energy turnaround”—by successfully selling policymakers on a peculiar version of environmentalism. It calls climate change a near-term apocalyptic threat to human survival while turning up its nose at the technologies that can help address climate change most and soonest: nuclear and natural gas.
At the turn of the millennium, Germany’s electricity was around 30 percent nuclear-powered. But Germany has been sacking its reliable, inexpensive nuclear plants. (Thunberg called nuclear power “extremely dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming” despite the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change deeming it necessary and every major scientific review deeming nuclear the safest way to make reliable power.)
By 2020, Germany had reduced its nuclear share from 30 percent to 11 percent. Then, on the last day of 2021, Germany shut down half of its remaining six nuclear reactors. The other three are slated for shutdown at the end of this year. (Compare this to nextdoor France, which fulfills 70 percent of its electricity needs with carbon-free nuclear plants.)
Germany has also spent lavishly on weather-dependent renewables—to the tune of $36 billion a year—mainly solar panels and industrial wind turbines. But those have their problems. Solar panels have to go somewhere, and a solar plant in Europe needs 400 to 800 times more land than natural gas or nuclear plants to make the same amount of power. Farmland has to be cut apart to host solar. And solar energy is getting cheaper these days mainly because Europe’s supply of solar panels is produced by slave labor in concentration camps as part of China’s genocide against Uighur Muslims.
The upshot here is that you can’t spend enough on climate initiatives to fix things if you ignore nuclear and gas. Between 2015 and 2025, Germany’s efforts to green its energy production will have cost $580 billion. Yet despite this enormous investment, German electricity still costs 50 percent more than nuclear-friendly France’s, and generating it produces eight times more carbon emissions per unit. Plus, Germany is getting over a third of its energy from Russia.
Germany has trapped itself. It could burn more coal and undermine its commitment to reducing carbon emissions. Or it could use more natural gas, which generates half the carbon emissions of coal, but at the cost of dependence on imported Russian gas. Berlin was faced with a choice between unleashing the wrath of Putin on neighboring countries or inviting the wrath of Greta Thunberg. They chose Putin.
Because of these policy choices, Vladimir Putin could turn off the gas flows to Germany, and quickly threaten Germans’ ability to cook or stay warm. He or his successor will hold this power for every foreseeable winter barring big changes. It’s as if you knew that hackers had stolen your banking details, but you won’t change your password.
This is why Germany successfully begged the incoming Biden administration not to oppose a contentious new gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2. This cut against the priorities of green-minded governance: On day one of Biden’s presidency, one of the new administration’’s first acts was to shut down the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. in service to climate ideology. But Russia’s pipeline was too important to get the same treatment given how dependent Germany is on Russian imports. (Once Russia invaded, Germany was finally dragged into nixing Nord Stream 2, for now.)
Naturally, when American sanctions on Russia’s biggest banks were finally announced in concert with European allies last week, they specifically exempted energy productsso Russia and Europe can keep doing that dirty business. A few voices called for what would really hit Russia where it hurts: cutting off energy imports. But what actually happened was that European energy utilities jumped to buy more contracts for the Russian oil and gas that flows through Ukraine. That’s because they have no other good options right now, after green activism’s attacks on nuclear and importing fracked gas from America. There’s no current plan for powering Europe that doesn’t involve buying from Putin.
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We should take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call. Standing up for Western civilization this time requires cheap, abundant, and reliable energy supplies produced at home or in allied nations. National security, economic growth, and sustainability requires greater reliance on nuclear and natural gas, and less on solar panels and wind turbines, which make electricity too expensive.
The first and most obvious thing that should be done is for President Biden to call on German Chancellor Scholz to restart the three nuclear reactors that Germany closed in December. A key step in the right direction came on Sunday when Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, the economy and climate minister, announced that Germany would at least consider stopping its phaseout of nuclear. If Germany turns these three on and cancels plans to turn off the three others, those six should produce enough electricity to replace 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year—an eighth of Germany’s current needs.
Second, we need concerted action led by Biden, Congress, and their Canadian counterparts to significantly expand oil and natural gas output from North America to ensure the energy security of our allies in Europe and Asia. North America is more energy-rich than anyone dreamed. Yes, it will be more expensive than Russian gas sent by pipeline. But it would mean Europe could address Putin’s war on Ukraine, rather than financing it.
Exporting gas by ship requires special terminals at ports to liquify (by cooling) natural gas; environmentalists oppose these terminals because of their ideological objection to any combustible fuel. So it’s a good sign that Chancellor Sholz announced plans on Sunday to build two of these terminals to receive North American gas, along with announcing major new military spending to counter Russia.
Third, the U.S. must stop shutting down nuclear plants and start building them. Every country should invest in next-generation nuclear fuel technology while recognizing that the current generation of light-water reactors are our best tool for creating energy at home, with no emissions, right now. What you’ve heard about waste is mostly pseudoscience. Storing used fuel rods is a trivial problem, already solved around the world by keeping them in steel and concrete cans. The more nuclear power we generate, the less oil and gas we have to burn. And the less the West will have to buy from Russia.
Putin’s relentless focus on energy reality has left him in a stronger position than he should ever have been allowed to find himself. It’s not too late for the rest of the West to save the world from tyrannical regimes that have been empowered by our own energy superstitions.
Michael Shellenberger
Best-selling author of “San Fransicko” (HarperCollins, 2021) “Apocalypse Never” (HarperCollins 2020) :: Time Magazine “Hero of Environment” :: Green Book Award winner :: Founder and President of Environmental Progress
Great Barrier Reef, Australia [image credit: BBC]
By Dr. Kelvin Kemm ~
The result has been soaring electricity prices in many countries, and power shortages leading to blackouts, resulting in major economic and social upheaval.
Coal-hungry China [image credit: democraticunderground.com]
By Dr. Jay Lehr and Robert Lyman~
One might wonder why, as Russian troops invade the Ukraine and China ceaselessly builds up its air, surface and naval forces, the United States Army is turning its mighty attention to the goal of defeating carbon dioxide emissions. The Army’s former recruiting slogan, “Be…
Climatism 
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