Climate News | April 8

News about the Science

February, having been billed as the hottest month on record, was followed by a cooler March as the el nino effect subsides.  If temperatures have been rising since the eighteenth/early nineteenth century’s Little Ice Age, the data for the lower troposphere, uncontaminated by urban heat islands and the surface temperature casts doubt on the extent of the trend over recent years.

We have also seen a return of Arctic ice after a 2008 low. 

A major new paper published in Nature directly challenges the IPCC conclusions that a warmer climate will mean increased drought and flooding. The work uses tree rings (real evidence unlike alarmist Michael Mann’s confected data using cones) and finds there was, “considerably larger variations in rainfall and drought patterns during the past twelve centuries than in the twentieth century."

Dangerous anthropogenic warming questioned in another study by Francois Gervais which delved into the natural 60–year cyclic component of temperature and concluded that human induced warming could be, at most, 0.6 °C and argued for a change of paradigm.  The study highlights a benefit for mankind related to the increase of plant feeding and crop yields by enhanced CO2 photosynthesis.  

This renders redundant the fear-stoking claims that estimate limiting warming to 2°C (3.6°F) by 2100 would significantly reduce the ‘Climate Value at Risk’, the researchers found. The average value of global financial assets at risk would be US$1.7 trillion, with 1 per cent chance of US$13.2 trillion being at risk. In any event the cost estimates of such claims are absurd since they assume that if it is getting warmer people don't notice and don't adjust their behaviour in response!

Political response

All these doubts on the science are unlikely to halt the policy locomotive whereby the developed world reduce their emissions and cripple their economies while the developing nations do as they please. Here Tom Quirk summarises the December 2015 Paris pledges

South Korea, though, with the ink barely dry on the Paris accord has been the first nation to renege with a 65 per cent increase in coal fired electricity now planned.

These policies are significant contributors to the plight of the UK steel industry. Hammered by Chinese competition and carrying the baggage of renewables carbon tax of £18 per tCO2 (in Australia that would be rather more than the total wholesale price of electricity) the UK steel industry continues its demise – an overseas relocation with no net global carbon savings!

Minister Javid has proposed a cut in the renewables carbon tax.  But are politicians so stupid that they really did not think placing a massive impost on domestic industries which is not present on competitors' will not lead firms to depart?  Apparently they are. The UK renewables policy which raised costs by 26 per cent in 2014 will add 59 per cent to the energy costs in 2020. 

As The Sun says, "The (UK) PM’s problem is that he personally signed the industry’s death warrant by imposing a punitive carbon tax, which makes the energy to produce our steel twice as costly as Germany’s. It began as a barking mad idea from Ed Miliband when he was Labour’s Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary."  Energy costs are 5-10 per cent of total costs of electricity but this post  argues only one percentage point is due to energy specific taxes.. The pusillanimousEngineering Employers Federation (EEF) says ($) “EEF is not suggesting we should dismantle climate policy or stop investing in renewables.  

The shrinking Australian industry is facing the same problem with steel producer Arrium facing bankruptcy having production costs far in excess of prices. Predictably, politicians are resorting to calls for protectionism.

All these renewable subsidies are not helping some of the renewable businesses.  Here are the outcomes for two of the biggest in Europe, suffering from the reduction in demand in Germany that is not compensated by the massive subsidies they receive.

And in the US, SunEdison, which bills itself as the world’s largest green energy company, may soon file for bankruptcy.  It lost 95% of its value this last year.

SunEdison has received $650M in subsidies since 2000, while the Spanish firm Abengoa is also close to bankruptcy in spite of getting subsidies of $605 million, and the most notorious, Solyandra, got $535 millions from the munificent Obama administration before going belly-up in 2011.

Canada is moving down the same road.  Ontario ratepayers are set to be slugged $2.5 billion this year in prices caused by renewables. 

Torquemada’s children

Following last month’s reporting on the US AG Loretta Lynch ’s  seeking advice from the FBI to prosecute climate skeptics, Al Gore has gathered together 18 Democratic State inquisitors to undertake the persecutions.  Maybe Janice was right “Freedom’s just another word for nothing less to lose”.

Ari Halperin would be an early candidate for the rack by demonstrating that, “Climate alarmism had already lost all its scientific ground before 2001", (when the IPCC redefined human induced climate change to any climate change). He goes on to say, “Since then, it has been fighting exclusively in the power structures and in the media, using semantic trickery, lies, bribery, threats and abuse of power.” An unlikely co-tormented would be IPCC insider Professor Myles Allen who says there is no point in the developed world consigning itself to poverty in suppressing emissions if the developing world does not follow suit. 

Earth Day

Remember to turn your lights on to celebrate Earth Day on April 22!  The day has been chosen for governments to “plant a tree” and formally sign the Paris agreement. 

This man will surely be doing his bit, though campaigning in Wisconsin this month his bus ran out of fuel. Must’ve been the malfunctioning solar panels.

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