Category Archives: climate

The Climate King

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King Charles III, who ascended the British throne in the aftermath of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II’s, unfortunate death, is a zealous climate activist.

He said less than a year ago in a speech in front of the UN COP26,

The scale and scope of the threat we face call for a global systems level solution based on radically transforming our current fossil fuel based economy to one that is genuinely renewable and sustainable[.]

Global systems level.

I have a couple questions.

When was the last time Prince Charles traveled to India or to the People’s Republic of China to…encourage…them to join this global system of his?

What was Prince Charles’ plan for helping the Third World to transition to this genuinely renewable and sustainable energy-based economy? Besides throwing other nation’s money at them, I mean.

What’s the schedule for King Charles’ trips to India and to the People’s Republic of China to encourage them to join this global system of his?

What is King Charles’ plan for helping the Third World to transition to this genuinely renewable and sustainable energy-based economy? Besides throwing other nation’s money at them, I mean.

And: is the scale and scope of the threat we face sufficiently dire that he will break with British royal tradition of being studiously apolitical and continue to espouse his climate activism?

This against the backdrop of the day-to-day, seasonal, and weather-driven extreme variability of the availability of solar- and wind-based energy, especially compared with the steady-state availability of fossil-fuel-based energy as new oil and natural gas wells come on line to replace depleting wells (which take years to deplete) and as new coal mines come on line to replace playing out mines (which take years to play out).

Never mind the larger backdrop of why we should care about atmospheric CO2, given the several epochs in our planetary history when temperatures were much higher than today, and life was lush, and the several epochs in our planetary history when atmospheric CO2 was much higher than today, and life was lush, and the fact that those two sets of epochs do not at all correlate with each other.

Never mind, either, that today, 11,000+ years after the last Ice Age, we’re still cooler than the geologic trend line of planetary warming, a trend driven by the fact that the sun is warming, and has been since it first fired up.

YGTBSM

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Another installment, this one from Canada—Vancouver, BC.

That city has a brand new fire engine. It’s all electric: not a drop of evil hydrocarbon in it for fuel or any other power. Never mind that it can’t function as a fire engine. It’s ALL ELECTRIC. Yay.

[T]he new e-truck will cost $300,000 more than a comparable diesel model, pump 40 per cent less water and have such a short range (30 km) because of its enormous weight that it will have to have backup diesel power in case it runs out of juice on the way to a blaze.
But, the city points out, it won’t give off diesel fumes and will be much quieter than existing diesel fire trucks.

Jayjuz.

They’d have done better with a horse-drawn, hand-powered pumper.

More here.

H/t Ralph Schwarz

States Aim to be Zero-Emissions in their Cars by 2035

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California has decided to ban all ICE car sales in the State by 2035—in the name of only zero-emission cars being allowed to be sold.

Never mind that it’s an impossible task, or that California, Washington, and Massachusetts are deceiving all of us and themselves with their claim of and demand for zero-emissions in cars sold in those States. This is, to use the technical term, a crock. Zero-emission cars are an impossibility, and it will be an impossibility for the foreseeable future of human history.

Mining for the raw materials for the batteries for these cars, and mining for the metals and other minerals that go into making any car, is not zero-emission: it takes energy to do all of that, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Shipping those raw materials to processing plants takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Processing that raw material into the components—batteries, car parts, wiring for the cars—takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Shipping those finished components to the final assembly plants takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Delivering those finished cars to their dealers for sale takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

The energy for charging and recharging the batteries in those “zero-emission” cars takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

Expanding the electric grid and building out a national network—or even just a city-wide network—of charging stations takes energy, and that energy comes from burning fuel—coal, oil, natural gas.

And getting the raw materials, components, assembly, shipping along the way to get the components for the grid build-out and to get those recharging stations—see above.

And that’s just a high-level view of the energy requirements for producing electric cars. Electric cars are not at all zero-emission vehicles.

That’s Huge

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The Progressive-Democratic Party’s just passed Climate Correction Act/Inflation Reduction Act—Party can’t decide which it is—as doing wonders for Earth’s climate.

The Biden administration claims the law will enable the US to reduce carbon emissions in 2030 by around 40% below 2005 levels.

Environmentalist and Copenhagen Consensus President Bjorn Lomborg offered some actual data on the matter.

If you plug the predicted emissions decline into the climate model used for all major United Nations climate reports, it turns out the global temperature will be cut by only 0.0009 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century. This is assuming the law’s emission reductions end when its funding does after 2030. But even if you charitably assume they’ll somehow be sustained through 2100 without any interruption, the impact on global temperature will still be almost unnoticeable, at 0.028 degree Fahrenheit.

That’s noise, not signal. Day-to-day—year-to-year—temperature varies, up and down, by that much.

But the Biden administration is perfectly willing to trash our economy and damage the lives of hundreds of millions of us Americans through that economic damage so it can virtue-signal and, especially, protect its political standing with the extreme Left.

That’s huge.

Climate and Party

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Here is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s goal with the Build Reduced Back Act just passed unilaterally by Party in the Senate and about to be passed unilaterally by Party in the House, in a nutshell as summarized by the Wall Street Journal:

[It] won’t reduce inflation, won’t reduce the budget deficit, and it won’t reduce the world’s temperature. What it will do is transfer some $369 billion from taxpayers and drug companies to the pockets of green energy businesses and investors.

Notice that. The Act isn’t about correcting the planetary climate. Never mind the arrogance of claiming the US can impact the planet’s climate when the People’s Republic of China and India are rapidly expanding their use of/dependence on fossil fuels and the associated alleged pollution output of CO2, or that Africa cannot switch to “renewable” energy. It’s strictly about passing billions of American taxpayer dollars to the Climate Funding Industry in return for (Party hopes) Climate Funding Industry campaign funding, votes, and political power maintenance/enhancement.