Green Party Manifesto To Return Britain To The Middle Ages
By Paul Homewood h/t Joe Public https://greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/green-party-environment-manifesto.pdf Election time! From the hints we’ve seen, all parties’ manifestos are pretty depressing when it comes to climate change, with the honourable exception of UKIP.
Source: Green Party Manifesto To Return Britain To The Middle Ages…
Climate Movement Falters As German Greens/Socialists Take Historic Election Trouncing
Last Sunday voters in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine Wesphalia (NRW), sent a loud message: voters are much more concerned about problems other than climate protection and green energies. The state’s ruling SPD Socialists/Green Party coalition government led by Hannelore Kraft took an historic beating, getting tossed out as the state swung far – from the left to the right.
Source: Climate Movement Falters As German Greens/Socialists Take Historic Election Trouncing…
India meets climate goals early by doubling coal, and keeping it as main energy source for next 30 years
In the last day in the media, India is going to use coal as its backbone energy for the next thirty years, is buying coal mines all around the world, and will double production by 2020 to a massive 1,500 billion tons per annum. At the same time India is meetings its climate goals early, and is likely to reduce emissions by 2 – 3 billion tons by 2030.
TrumpPlans Massive Cuts For Federal Green Energy Programs
A 70 percent cut
Source: TrumpPlans Massive Cuts For Federal Green Energy Programs…
NY Times: Steel Industry Is On The Rebound Under Trump
‘A perfect administration from the perspective of the steel industry’
Source: NY Times: Steel Industry Is On The Rebound Under Trump…
More solar jobs is a curse, not a blessing – ‘Underscores how wasteful, inefficient & unproductive solar power is’
Citing U.S. Department of Energy data, the New York Times recently reported that the solar industry employs far more Americans than wind or coal: 374,000 in solar versus 100,000 in wind and 160,000 in coal mining and coal-fired power generation. Only the natural gas sector employs more people: 398,000 workers in gas production, electricity generation, home heating and petrochemicals.
This is supposed to be a good thing, according to the Times. It shows how important solar power has become in taking people out of unemployment lines and giving them productive jobs, the paper suggests.
Indeed, the article notes, California had the highest rate of solar power jobs per capita in 2016, thanks to its “robust renewable energy standards and installation incentives” (ie, mandates and subsidies).
In reality, it’s not a good thing at all, and certainly not a positive trend. In fact, as Climate Depot and the Washington Examiner point out – citing an American Enterprise Institute study – the job numbers actually underscore how wasteful, inefficient and unproductive solar power actually is.
That is glaringly obvious when you look at the amounts of energy produced per sector. (This tally does not include electricity generated by nuclear, hydroelectric and geothermal power plants.)
* 398,000 natural gas workers = 33.8% of all electricity generated in the United States in 2016
* 160,000 coal employees = 30.4 % of total electricity
* 100,000 wind employees = 5.6% of total electricity
* 374,000 solar workers = 0.9% of total electricity
It’s even more glaring when you look at the amount of electricity generated per worker. Coal generated an incredible 7,745 megawatt-hours of electricity per worker; natural gas 3,812 MWH per worker; wind a measly 836 MWH for every employee; and solar an abysmal 98 MWH per worker.
In other words, producing the same amount of electricity requires one coal worker, two natural gas workers – 12 wind industry employees or 79 solar workers.
Even worse, whereas coal and gas electricity is cheap, affordable, and available virtually 100% of the time – wind and solar are expensive, intermittent, unreliable, and available only 15-30% of the time, on an annual basis. Wind and solar electricity is there when it’s there, not necessarily when you need it.
In truth, about the only thing solar and wind companies do well is collect billions of dollars in subsidies from taxpayers and billions of dollars
‘Outside the Green Box’: New book unmasks ‘sustainable development’ fallacies
By Robert Bradley Jr. — May 8, 2017
“Energy consumption is not a villain. Nations that consume the most energy per person discharge the lowest level of air and water pollutants per person. Low-cost energy provides economic growth and generates capital for pollution control.”
Editor note: Steve Goreham has written another primer of note. The author of Climatism!: Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic (2010) and The Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change (2012), Goreham has just published a fun, readable book with great political timing.
The audience for Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development is not only any classroom studying energy choices and related public policies. Goreham is targeting the green consultant. The back cover explains:
Your firm spends millions to be environmentally sustainable. Carbon credits, renewable energy, ethanol fuel, and electric vehicles demonstate your company’s commitment. Fluorescent light bulbs, organic foods, and a hybrid car may be part of your personal commitement. But contrary to what your green consultant tells you, these and other sustainable measures provide little positive benefit to Earth’s environment.
But more so. When it comes to energy, the eco-benefits of renewables are illusory and have distinctive environmental costs.
MasterResource is pleased to publish an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Outside the Green Box, available from Amazon or at stevegoreham.com.
——————-
Much of government policy, academic thought, and public opinion stands on fears created and promulgated by environmental sustainable development. The philosophy that humans are too many, too polluting, climate destroying, and profligate wasters of natural resources holds today’s society in a powerful psychological grip. Thousands of energy and environmental laws are justified on these misconceptions. Let’s briefly review why these ideas are incorrect.
Why India and Pakistan Are Renewing Their Love Affair with Coal
One nation is shirking emissions targets and the other is investing in more coal plants—but with America as a role model, that’s hardly surprising.
Much of the world agrees: burning coal is bad, and we ought to do less of it.
But not everyone sings from that sheet, including Pakistan’s Water and Power Ministry. As part of a large infrastructure investment project with China, it’s committed to spending $15 billion on as many as 12 new coal power plants over the next 15 years. Reuters reports that the figure is almost half of the $33 billion being invested into energy projects as part of the initiative, and that around 75 percent of the extra generation capacity will come from new coal plants.
The government insists that the new plants will use technology to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But the nation’s minister for planning, development and reform, Ahsan Iqbal, sounds downright Trumpian in his view of the nation’s future energy policy: “Pakistan must tap [its] vast underground reserves of 175 billion tonnes of coal, adequate to meet the country’s energy needs for several decades, for powering the country’s economic wheel, creating new jobs, and fighting spiking unemployment and poverty.”
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports (paywall) that India will fail to meet its own targets to reduce emissions from its coal power plants. India’s struggle to clean up its energy act is well-known. But it’s currently unable to meet its own power demands, so it’s not really that practical to shut down plants—and given that no penalties will be imposed for failing to reduce emissions, there’s little incentive to do so.
To anyone who would criticize the move, Piyush Goyal, India’s power minister, had this to say: “India is not a polluter,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s America and the western world that has to first stop polluting.” There’s a grain of truth to that: America and Europe did a lot of coal burning during their development, and now have strong economies to leverage in order to clean up their acts. Developing countries aren’t so lucky. And developed countries still emit far more greenhouse gases per citizen than India and Pakistan. As of 2013 the annual per capita CO2 emissions of India and Pakistan were 1.59 and 0.85 metric tons respectively. In the U.S., the figure is 16.39 metric tons.
The
Europe’s Biggest Solar Company Goes Up In Smoke
Germany’s SolarWorld, once Europe’s biggest solar power equipment group, said on Wednesday it would file for insolvency, overwhelmed by Chinese rivals who had long been a thorn in the side of founder and CEO Frank Asbeck, once known as “the Sun King”. A renewed wave of cheap Chinese exports, caused by reduced ambitions in China to expand solar power generation, was too much to bear for the group, which made its last net profit in 2014. —Reuters, 11 May 2017
The company once hailed as Europe’s largest solar panel producer filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, blaming cheap Chinese panels for flooding the market. SolarWorld is only the latest bankrupt solar company to blame the Chinese. U.S.-based Suniva Inc. filed for bankruptcy in April, also citing stiff competition from Chinese solar panel makers. The solar industry’s biggest problem is likely the very mechanism that led to its rise: lucrative subsidies. European subsidies, mostly in Germany, led to a massive expansion of the companies green energy industry, but eventually subsidies became their undoing as cheaper solar panels from China began to win out. –Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 11 May 2017
More than 100 coal power plants are in various stages of planning or development in 11 African countries outside of South Africa — more than eight times the region’s existing coal capacity. Africa’s embrace of coal is in part the result of its acute shortage of power. –Jonathan W. Rosen, National Geographic, 10 May 2017
1) Europe’s Biggest Solar Company Goes Up In Smoke
Reuters, 11 May 2017
2) Largest US Solar Panel Maker Files For Bankruptcy After Receiving $206 Million In Subsidies
The Daily Caller, 11 May 2017
3) African Nations To Build More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants
National Geographic, 10 May 2017
4) Why India And Pakistan Are Renewing Their Love Affair With Coal
MIT Technology Review, 3 May 2017
5) Al Gore Personally Pleads With Trump to Stay in the Paris Climate Agreement
Daily Caller, 10 May 2017
6) ‘Apple Of Oil’ Says New Permian Shale Wells ‘Shattered’ Records
Investor’s Business Daily, 8 May 2017
7) Matt Ridley: Wind Turbines Are Neither Clean Nor Green
The Spectator, 11 May 2017 …
African Nations Plan More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants
More than 100 coal power plants are in various stages of planning or development in 11 African countries outside of South Africa — more than eight times the region’s existing coal capacity. Africa’s embrace of coal is in part the result of its acute shortage of power.
Source: African Nations Plan More Than 100 New Coal Power Plants…