Man confronts climate activists blocking traffic in London, shoving them and ripping banners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nsltRTtKQI
Street housekeeping keeps SF Mayor Breed – and everyone else – hopping
Street housekeeping keeps SF Mayor Breed – and everyone else – hopping
By Matier & Ross
Aug 22, 2018
Mayor London Breed, who won her election largely on a promise to clean up the city, is stepping up efforts to scrub San Francisco’s streets, including playing a bit of cat and mouse with her own city department heads.
Breed has taken to making unannounced walks through hard-hit neighborhoods — at times with reporters in tow — but without giving the police or Public Works officials the usual heads-up that in the past allowed for the cleanups that usually precede a mayoral visit.
“I don’t want the areas to be clean if it’s not clean on a regular basis. I want to see what everybody else is seeing,” Breed tells us.
And when Breed spots a problem, she texts the department head.
The sight of human waste, discarded hypodermic needles, trash and general grime is nothing new to anyone walking in downtown, in the Mission District or in any of a number of other San Francisco neighborhoods these days.
And, as Breed notes, “We’re spending a lot of money to address this problem.”
No kidding.
San Francisco Public Works has a $72.5 million-a-year street cleaning budget — including spending $12 million a year on what essentially have become housekeeping services for homeless encampments.
The costs include $2.8 million for a Hot Spots crew to wash down the camps and remove any biohazards, $2.3 million for street steam cleaners, $3.1 million for the Pit Stop portable toilets, plus the new $830,977-a-year Poop Patrol to actively hunt down and clean up human waste.
(By the way, the poop patrolers earn $71,760 a year, which swells to $184,678 with mandated benefits.)
At the same time, the Department of Public Health has an additional $700,000 set aside for a 10-member, needle cleanup squad, complete with it’s own minivan. The $19-an-hour needle cleanup jobs were approved as part of the latest budget crafted largely by former Mayor Mark Farrell.
The new needle crew is on top of the $364,000 that the health department already was spending on a four-member needle team.
Breed is also leaning on Chief William Scott for more foot patrols.
“I’ve definitely had discussions with the chief and asked that beat officers be out there,” Breed said.
City officials say foot beats have nearly doubled in the past year, from 76 to 140 officers.
The problem, however, is that every time the cops arrest someone for a low-level, quality-of-life or petty street crime, the beat cops have to write up an incident report and transport the suspect to jail for booking, all of which takes them off the street.
Breed said she and the police are now looking into the possibility of using sheriff’s deputies to help transport prisoners, in turn allowing beat cops to stay on patrol.
The mayor, however, makes clear that the burden of solving all the city’s street problems doesn’t rest solely on City Hall.
“The responsibility is with everyone,” Breed said. “People shouldn’t be comfortable throwing their trash on the ground, and if people have recommendations on where they want trash cans, they can call 311.”
San Francisco published this study on feces on public sidewalks. This is from page 11.
https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/CY22_Street_Sidewalk_Standards_Report_05222023.pdf
About 30% of evaluated streets and sidewalks report feces.
Observations of human and animal feces were less common in the Core Citywide sample, with about 30% of evaluations observing feces on the street or sidewalk.
In contrast, almost half (47%) of evaluations in all Key Commercial Areas observed feces. At the neighborhood-level:
▪ Feces on streets and sidewalks were least likely to be found in Noe Valley and Glen Park.
▪ Feces were most common in the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, the Mission, and South of Market.
Images Show Mars Has Extreme Global Warming
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98168&page=1
Images Show Mars Has Extreme Global Warming
By Amanda Onion
Dec. 7, 2001 — It might seem like the weather’s getting warmer here on Earth, but Mars appears to have an even bigger global warming problem.
High-resolution images snapped by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red Planet’s poles have dwindled dramatically — by more than 10 feet — over a single Martian year (equivalent to 687 days or about two Earth years).
The increased coal pollution from Germany shutting down its nuclear power plants may have already killed more people than the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters combined
In May 2023, the Washington Post wrote:
“Had Germany kept its nuclear plants running from 2010, it could have slashed its use of coal for electricity to 13 percent by now. Today’s figure is 31 percent… Already more lives might have been lost just in Germany because of air pollution from coal power than from all of the world’s nuclear accidents to date, Fukushima and Chernobyl included.”
Wow.
The idiocy of these so-called “environmentalists” never ceases to amaze me.
New York has been closing some of its nuclear reactors, and replacing them with fossil fuel
NY’s fossil fuel use soared after Indian Point plant closure. Officials sound the alarm.
By Thomas C. Zambito
July 22, 2022
The 2021 shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant led to near-total dependence on fossil fuels to produce electricity in New York’s energy-hungry downstate region, and surging amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air.
A report issued last month by the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electric grid, shows that in 2021, 89% of downstate energy came from natural gas and oil, up from 77% the previous year when both of Indian Point’s two reactors were still running.
The newly released figures demonstrate in stark detail just how much work the state will need to do in the coming years if it’s to achieve its ambitious climate-related goals − reducing carbon-producing emissions to zero while clearing the way for renewables like wind and solar power to make a larger contribution to the electric grid.
And they have pro-nuclear advocates urging the state to clear a path to allow nuclear power play a larger role in the state’s energy future.
“If we’re serious about dealing with climate change, then we’re going to need all the tools in the toolbox, which includes nuclear, not just now but in the future,” said Keith Schue, an electrical engineer and a leader of Nuclear New York, a pro-nuclear group allied with James Hansen, a leading climate scientist. “We do believe that closing Indian Point was a mistake. But are we going to continue making mistakes or can we learn from them?”
The shift to greater fossil fuel reliance comes as little surprise.
A 2017 NYISO study predicted the 2,000 megawatts of power lost when Indian Point closed would be picked up by three new natural gas plants – in Dover Plains, Wawayanda and Bayonne, N.J. One megawatt powers between 800 and 1,000 homes.
And Indian Point’s former owner, Louisiana-based Entergy, noted that the year after its Vermont Yankee plant shut down in 2014, natural gas-fired generation jumped 12 percent, just as it has since the Buchanan plant closed. The first of Indian Point’s two working reactors shut down in April 2020, followed by the second in April 2021.
With Indian Point eliminated from the energy mix, it has become even harder to wean a downstate region that includes New York City off fossil fuels.
Why did the plant close?
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration brokered the 2017 deal with Entergy that led to Indian Point’s shutdown, with Cuomo citing fears of a nuclear mishap at a power plant located some 35 miles from New York City. He chose to keep open three upstate nuclear plants – two on Lake Ontario and another near Rochester − by arranging for some $7.6 billion in subsidies over 12 years.
But the agreement that shuttered Indian Point came when natural gas was cheap. Entergy cited competition from natural gas in the energy market as the prime mover behind its decision to close a plant that had generated electricity for Westchester County and New York City for six decades.
Today, with natural gas prices surging, electricity is not so cheap.
“We got used to having historically cheap natural gas in the United States,” said Madison Hilly, the founder and executive director of the Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal in Chicago. “So places that shut down their nuclear plants, even if they were replaced with gas, consumers really didn’t feel that in their pocketbooks. Now the era of nonprofit natural gas − as I call it − seems to be over. It’s really expensive.”
In 2021, the average wholesale price of electricity in New York was $47.59 per megawatt hour last year, nearly double what it was the previous year. NYISO’s independent monitor credited the increase in wholesale electric prices to the Indian Point shutdown, the NYISO report said.
California, which is pursuing a slate of clean energy goals like New York’s, appears to be rethinking its decision to do away with nuclear power.
In May, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would support keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open beyond its planned 2025 closure to ensure the reliability of the state’s electric grid. Researchers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have concluded keeping the plant open for another ten years could limit carbon emissions and save the state $2.6 billion in power costs.
Hilly has teamed with Nuclear New York, a coalition of scientists, engineers and labor and management from the nuclear industry, to urge the state to give nuclear power a larger role in the state’s energy mix. In April, Hansen, a former NASA scientist who was among the first to identify the consequences from climate change, appeared at an Albany press conference to urge the state to include nuclear in a plan being drafted for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
“We’re trying to prevent the situation from getting that bad – that reality that forces politicians to eat crow,” Hilly said. “Eventually, if we keep going down this path, ratepayers and voters are not going to tolerate it and politicians will quickly have to get on board or get out.”
A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state is forging ahead with its twin goals of having 70% of the state’s electric demand met by renewables by 2030 and 100% zero emissions by 2040.
“These goals, which are being met through solar, wind, and hydroelectricity along with the continued use of the state’s three existing upstate nuclear plants, were developed to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, combat the dangerous impacts of climate change and benefit New Yorkers by reducing volatility in electricity pricing,” spokesman Leo Rosales said. “Planning for these goals took into account the necessary closure of Indian Point following dozens of safety and operational hazards and in no way jeopardizes New York’s clean energy goals or the reliability of the state’s electric grid.”
Transmission:Power lines will bring wind and solar energy from upstate but will it be enough to help NY achieve green energy goals?
NY’s electric grid under siege
Increased energy costs are only part of the problem.
NYISO’s June “Power Trends” report offers a sobering assessment of grid reliability in the years ahead.
The amount of energy resources the state can access each day is decreasing, and that trend is expected to worsen in the years to come as the demand for electricity surges. Electricity needed to charge cars and heat buildings will shift peak usage to the winter instead of summer, which typically sees the highest energy usage as air conditioners run around the clock.
Adding to the problem are environmental regulations that will impact the output of the state’s peaker plants, fossil-fuel generated plants that take their name from delivering energy at times of peak demand. Roughly half of the 3,300 megawatts these plants generate in the lower Hudson Valley, Long Island and New York City will be unavailable during the summer of 2025, NYISO notes.
“The margins that we see on our system are shrinking,” NYISO president and chief executive officer Rich Dewey told reporters at a media briefing last month.
The grid is in perhaps the most transformative moment in its history.
Older generating plants are being shut down while the state introduces a slate of renewable energy projects – offshore wind on Long Island, wind power upstate, batteries to store solar energy.
A network of transmission lines stretching from western New York to New York City is currently under construction, part of an effort to remove a bottleneck that kept clean energy stuck north of Albany. Upstate’s energy mix is decidedly cleaner than downstate’s. Upstate, three nuclear power plants and hydropower from the Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station contribute to a 91% carbon-free energy grid.
There are also plans to deliver hydropower to New York City from Canada by way of 340 miles of underground cable that will run in the Hudson River. Another 174-mile transmission line will bring upstate wind down to Queens along upstate rights-of-way.
But it will be years before these projects are up and running.
The NYISO report anticipates a 10% gap in the amount of renewable power that will be available on an as-needed basis in the winter of 2040.
“We’ve identified there is a need for dispatchable, emissions-free resources,” Dewey said. “That technology does not yet exist and there’s a gap that needs to be closed. We’re only going to get so far with wind, solar and storage, due to the intermittent nature of those resources.”
And by next year, a heatwave with an average temperate of 95 degrees may result in thin margins and “significant deficiencies,” NYISO says.
A 98-degree heatwave would test the system’s limits today and exceed grid capabilities next year, the report adds.
“We’re taking on a little bit more risk in our ability to manage unplanned, unforeseen events on the power system, or potentially severe weather events,” Dewey added.
NYISO isn’t alone in its concerns about grid reliability. The state’s utilities have been raising their concerns.
A group representing most of the state’s major utilities recently studied energy production for the month of January, an especially cold month and the first winter when Indian Point wasn’t producing power. The plant’s Unit 2 shut down in 2020 and Unit 3 the following year.
Wind and other renewables contributed 5% of total generation. There was less wind and less solar generation due to shorter daylight hours and heavy cloud cover.
“Today’s renewable resources are emissions-free, but their output is weather-dependent,” the Utility Consultation Group analysis says. “This intermittency and the need for electric supply to meet customer energy demand every hour of the day may result in reliability issues if not proactively addressed.”
The group represents Central Hudson, ConEdison, Rochester, Niagara Mohawk, NYSEG and Orange and Rockland utilities.
‘Closing Indian Point was a mistake’
Critics of the deal that led to Indian Point’s closure question why the plant couldn’t remain open while the state pursued a renewable buildout.
“Maybe someday renewables could be a big factor in the energy market,” said Theresa Knickerbocker, the mayor of the lower Hudson Valley village of Buchanan, home to Indian Point. “But, right now, two gas plants were opened up to compensate for the loss of Indian Point, which has zero carbon emissions. It’s kind of hypocritical, right?”
Buchanan faces the loss of some $3.5 million in property taxes that Entergy paid the village while the reactors were still operating.
Business groups fear the thinner energy surplus could impact a factory’s ability to deliver goods on time, while driving away companies that are considering relocating.
“The renewable buildout is a multi-decade process,” said Ken Pokalsky, the vice president of the Business Council of New York. “It’s probably going slower than we would like. Every one of these project is complicated…It would be safe to say it’s moving forward. But fast enough is a subjective evaluation.”
Nuclear New York wants the state to work with the federal government to encourage and develop new nuclear reactors, which don’t produce the nuclear waste that older generation reactors do.
This week, Entergy announced it was partnering with Holtec, the New Jersey company that is tearing down Indian Point, in a deal to build small nuclear reactors. Their plan envisions building one of the first reactors at Oyster Creek, a shutdown nuclear power plant in New Jersey.
And the nuclear group wants New York to continue the subsidies that have allowed the three upstate nuclear power plants to continue beyond 2029.
Schue said other nations have been adopting the next generation of nuclear energy generation into the mix. “We’d like to change that,” Schue said. “We’d like to see New York step up to the plate. We’ve got the skills. We’ve got the spirit of innovation, we have the manpower.”
A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-eagles
A wind energy company has pleaded guilty after killing at least 150 eagles
April 6, 2022
BILLINGS, Mont. — A wind energy company was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed over the past decade at its wind farms in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during a Tuesday court appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was charged in the deaths of eagles at three of its wind farms in Wyoming and New Mexico.
In addition to those deaths, golden and bald eagles were killed at wind farms affiliated with ESI and NextEra since 2012 in eight states, prosecutors said: Wyoming, California, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona and Illinois. The birds are killed when they fly into the blades of wind turbines. Some ESI turbines killed multiple eagles, prosecutors said.
It’s illegal to kill or harm eagles under federal law.
The bald eagle — the U.S. national symbol — was removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2007, following a dramatic recovery from its widespread decimation due to harmful pesticides and other problems. Golden eagles have not fared as well, with populations considered stable but under pressure including from wind farms, collisions with vehicles, illegal shootings and poisoning from lead ammunition.
The case comes amid a push by President Joe Biden for more renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources to help reduce climate changing emissions. It also follows a renewed commitment by federal wildlife officials under Biden to enforce protections for eagles and other birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, after criminal prosecutions were halted under former President Donald Trump.
Companies historically have been able to avoid prosecution if they take steps to avoid bird deaths and seek permits for those that occur. ESI did not seek such a permit, authorities said.
The company was warned prior to building the wind farms in New Mexico and Wyoming that they would kill birds, but it proceeded anyway and at times ignored advice from federal wildlife officials about how to minimize the deaths, according to court documents.
“For more than a decade, ESI has violated (wildlife) laws, taking eagles without obtaining or even seeking the necessary permit,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement.
ESI agreed under a plea agreement to spend up to $27 million during its five-year probationary period on measures to prevent future eagle deaths. That includes shutting down turbines at times when eagles are more likely to be present.
Despite those measures, wildlife officials anticipate that some eagles still could die. When that happens, the company will pay $29,623 per dead eagle, under the agreement.
NextEra President Rebecca Kujawa said collisions of birds with wind turbines are unavoidable accidents that should not be criminalized. She said the company is committed to reducing damage to wildlife from its projects.
“We disagree with the government’s underlying enforcement activity,” Kujawa said in a statement. “Building any structure, driving any vehicle, or flying any airplane carries with it a possibility that accidental eagle and other bird collisions may occur.”
Anyone who works in the U.S. Capitol Building, but is afraid of radiation from nuclear power, is very ignorant of science and math
PBS wrote the following:
The US Capitol Building in Washington DC:
This building is so radioactive, due to the high uranium content in its granite walls, it could never be licensed as a nuclear power reactor site.
Original: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html
Therefore, anyone who works in the U.S. Capitol Building, but is afraid of radiation from nuclear power, is very ignorant of science and math.
New Study: Nuclear Power Is Humanity’s Greenest Energy Option
https://reason.com/2023/05/10/new-study-nuclear-power-is-humanitys-greenest-energy-option/
New Study: Nuclear Power Is Humanity’s Greenest Energy Option
Land-hungry biomass, wind, and solar power are set to occupy an area equivalent of the size of the European Union by 2050.
By Ronald Bailey
May 10, 2023
Germany idiotically shut down its last three nuclear power plants last month. Until 2011, the country obtained one-quarter of its electricity from 17 nuclear power plants. As a December 2022 study in Scientific Reports shows, turning off this carbon-free energy source is incredibly short-sighted for combatting climate change and protecting natural landscapes.
The European researchers behind the new study do an in-depth analysis of how much land and sea area it would take to implement the Net Zero by 2050 roadmap devised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021. The IEA outlines an energy transition trajectory to cut global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels to zero by 2050. The Net Zero goal is to keep the increase of global average temperature below the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the late 19th-century baseline. “This calls for nothing less than a complete transformation of how we produce, transport and consume energy,” notes the IEA.
The Scientific Reports study finds that implementing the IEA’s roadmap requires that much of the world’s agricultural and wild lands be sacrificed to produce energy. Biofuels, both liquid and solid, are especially egregious destroyers of the landscape. On the other hand, the energy source that spares the most land is nuclear power. In addition, electricity produced by fission reactors is not intermittent the way that vastly more land-hungry solar and wind power are.
Let’s go to the figures. The European researchers illustrated the vast differences in the amount of energy that can be produced per unit of land by calculating what percentage of land would be needed to meet 100 percent of emissions-free primary energy demand in 2050. Primary energy refers to raw fuels before they have been converted into other forms of energy like electricity, heat, or transport fuels. They calculate that nuclear power generation could supply all the energy demand in 2050 while occupying just 0.016 percent of the world’s land area. On the other hand, using biomass to generate the same amount of energy would take up more than 96 percent of the world’s land area.
Turning to the IEA’s Net Zero roadmap, the team calculates that the amount of land occupied by the stunted trajectory of nuclear power plants in the IEA scenario will expand from 403 square kilometers (156 square miles)today to 820 square km (317 square miles) in 2050. The area devoted to growing biomass for energy production (liquid and solid fuels) expands from 653,000 square km (252,000 square miles) to 2,981,000 square km (1,151,000 square miles). It is worth noting that 208,000 square km (80,300 square miles) is now annually plowed up for biofuel production in the U.S. The amount of land covered by onshore wind turbines would rise from 79,000 square km (30,500 square miles) to 995,000 square km (384,000 square miles), and the area covered by solar photovoltaic would increase from 9,400 square km (3,630 square miles) to 270,000 square km (104,000 square miles).
“A sixfold increase will occur in the spatial extent of power generation, from approximately 0.5% of land areas used for electric generation in 2020 to nearly 3.0% of land areas in 2050 (i.e., 430 million hectares of land),” report the researchers. “The world will be electrified by requiring an area roughly equal to the entire European Union (EU), which is one and a half times the size of India. The major contributor to increasing land use will be related to power generation from biomass.”
As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, wind and solar projects occupying massive amounts of land increasingly get NIMBY pushback from disgruntled neighbors. Energy analyst Robert Bryce, author of A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations (2020), has compiled a database showing that nearly 500 renewable energy projects have been rejected or restricted over the past decade.
The European researchers calculated that nuclear power plants sited on just 20,800 square km (8,000 square miles) of land could supply all of the carbon-free electricity demanded in 2050. That’s less land than is occupied by the state of Vermont.
Over at Tech Xplore, study co-author and energy conversion researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology Jonas Kristiansen Nøland points out that “the spatial extent of nuclear power is 99.7% less than onshore wind power—in other words, 350 times less use of land area.” He adds, “An energy transition based on nuclear power alone would save 99.75% of environmental encroachments in 2050. We could even remove most of the current environmental footprint we have already caused.”
Nuclear power massively spares land for nature while producing 24-7 emissions-free electricity. That’s why closing down 17 perfectly good nuclear power plants is environmentally stupid.
Extinction Rebellion leader Gail Bradbrook exposed as eco-hypocrite who has diesel car and buys imported food in non-recyclable packaging
Extinction Rebellion leader exposed as eco-hypocrite who has diesel car & buys imported food in non-recyclable packaging
By Nick Parker
April 20, 2023
A leader of climate protesters Extinction Rebellion was last night exposed as a diesel-driving eco-hypocrite who buys imported food.
Gail Bradbrook was shopped by a member of the public who saw her stocking up on Waitrose goods that had travelled thousands of air miles.
Gail Bradbrook was exposed as a diesel-driving eco-hypocrite who buys imported food.
The hypocrite was spotted by a member of the public who saw her stocking up on Waitrose goods that had travelled thousands of air miles.
The shopper who spotted her told The Sun: ‘She was doing everything Extinction Rebellion tells us not to do.’
Guardian: “The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.”
Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows
Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating
Patrick Greenfield
January 18, 2023
The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.
The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.
The analysis raises questions over the credits bought by a number of internationally renowned companies – some of them have labelled their products “carbon neutral”, or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.
But doubts have been raised repeatedly over whether they are really effective.
The nine-month investigation has been undertaken by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organisation. It is based on new analysis of scientific studies of Verra’s rainforest schemes.
It has also drawn on dozens of interviews and on-the-ground reporting with scientists, industry insiders and Indigenous communities. The findings – which have been strongly disputed by Verra – are likely to pose serious questions for companies that are depending on offsets as part of their net zero strategies.
Verra, which is based in Washington DC, operates a number of leading environmental standards for climate action and sustainable development, including its verified carbon standard (VCS) that has issued more than 1bn carbon credits. It approves three-quarters of all voluntary offsets. Its rainforest protection programme makes up 40% of the credits it approves and was launched before the Paris agreement with the aim of generating revenue for protecting ecosystems.
Verra argues that the conclusions reached by the studies are incorrect, and questions their methodology. And they point out that their work since 2009 has allowed billions of dollars to be channelled to the vital work of preserving forests.
The investigation found that:
Only a handful of Verra’s rainforest projects showed evidence of deforestation reductions, according to two studies, with further analysis indicating that 94% of the credits had no benefit to the climate.
The threat to forests had been overstated by about 400% on average for Verra projects, according to analysis of a 2022 University of Cambridge study.
Gucci, Salesforce, BHP, Shell, easyJet, Leon and the band Pearl Jam were among dozens of companies and organisations that have bought rainforest offsets approved by Verra for environmental claims.
Human rights issues are a serious concern in at least one of the offsetting projects. The Guardian visited a flagship project in Peru, and was shown videos that residents said showed their homes being cut down with chainsaws and ropes by park guards and police. They spoke of forced evictions and tensions with park authorities.
The analysis: “It’s disappointing and scary”
To assess the credits, a team of journalists analysed the findings of three scientific studies that used satellite images to check the results of a number of forest offsetting projects, known as Redd+ schemes. Although a number of studies have looked at offsets, these are the only three known to have attempted to apply rigorous scientific methods to measuring avoided deforestation.
The organisations that set up and run these projects produce their own forecasts of how much deforestation they will stop, using Verra’s rules. The predictions are assessed by a Verra-approved third party, and if accepted are then used to generate the credits that companies can buy and use to offset their own carbon emissions.
For example, if an organisation estimates its project will stop 100 hectares (247 acres) of deforestation, it can use a Verra-approved formula to convert that into 40,000 CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) of saved carbon emissions in a dense tropical forest if no deforestation takes place, although the formula varies according to habitat and other factors. Those saved emissions can then be bought by a company and applied to its own carbon reduction targets.
Two different groups of scientists – one internationally based, the other from Cambridge in the UK – looked at a total of about two-thirds of 87 Verra-approved active projects. A number were left out by the researchers when they felt there was not enough information available to fairly assess them.
The two studies from the international group of researchers found just eight out of 29 Verra-approved projects where further analysis was possible showed evidence of meaningful deforestation reductions.
The journalists were able to do further analysis on those projects, comparing the estimates made by the offsetting projects with the results obtained by the scientists. The analysis indicated about 94% of the credits the projects produced should not have been approved.
Credits from 21 projects had no climate benefit, seven had between 98% and 52% fewer than claimed using Verra’s system, and one had 80% more impact, the investigation found.
Separately, the study by the University of Cambridge team of 40 Verra projects found that while a number had stopped some deforestation, the areas were extremely small. Just four projects were responsible for three-quarters of the total forest that was protected.
The journalists again analysed these results more closely and found that, in 32 projects where it was possible to compare Verra’s claims with the study finding, baseline scenarios of forest loss appeared to be overstated by about 400%. Three projects in Madagascar have achieved excellent results and have a significant impact on the figures. If those projects are not included, the average inflation is about 950%.
The studies used different methods and time periods, looked at different ranges of projects, and the researchers said no modelling approach is ever perfect, acknowledging limitations in each study. However, the data showed broad agreement on the lack of effectiveness of the projects compared with the Verra-approved predictions.
Two of the studies have passed the peer review process and another has been released as a preprint.
However, Verra strongly disputed the studies’ conclusions about its rainforest projects and said the methods the scientists used cannot capture the true impact on the ground, which explains the difference between the credits it approves and the emission reductions estimated by scientists.
The carbon standard said its projects faced unique local threats that a standardised approach cannot measure, and it works with leading experts to continuously update its methodologies and make sure they reflect scientific consensus. It has shortened the time period in which projects must update the threats they face to better capture unforeseen drivers, such as the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Verra said it already used some of the methods deployed by the researchers in its own standards, but does not believe they are appropriate for this project type.
Verra was specifically concerned with the use of “synthetic controls”, where the international group picked comparable areas and used them as a basis for deforestation measurements. Verra felt this was problematic because the controls might not reflect pre-project conditions, and also would compare the project with a hypothetical scenario rather than a “real area, as Verra does”. But the study authors argue that this mischaracterises their work: the comparison areas used in both cases are real areas, with deforestation levels based on rates that are local to the projects. The Cambridge group does not use synthetic controls.
“I have worked as an auditor on these projects in the Brazilian Amazon and when I started this analysis, I wanted to know if we could trust their predictions about deforestation. The evidence from the analysis – not just the synthetic controls – suggests we cannot. I want this system to work to protect rainforests. For that to happen, we need to acknowledge the scale of problems with the current system,” said Thales West, a lead author on the studies by the international group.
Erin Sills, a co-author in the international group and a professor at North Carolina State University, said the findings were “disappointing and scary”. She was one of several researchers who said urgent changes were needed to finance rainforest conservation.
“I’d like to find that conserving forests, which conserves biodiversity, and conserves local ecosystem services, also has a real effective impact on reducing climate change. If it doesn’t, it’s scary, because it’s a little bit less hope for reducing climate change.”
David Coomes, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Cambridge who was a senior author on a study looking at avoided deforestation in the first five years of 40 Verra schemes, was part of the Cambridge group of researchers. He reviewed the Guardian’s findings and said there was a big gap between the amount of deforestation his team estimated the projects were avoiding and what the carbon standard was approving.
“It’s safe to say there are strong discrepancies between what we’re calculating and what exists in their databases, and that is a matter for concern and further investigation. I think in the longer term, what we want is a consensus set of methods which are applied across all sites,” he said.
Julia Jones, a co-author and professor at Bangor University, said the world was at a crossroads when it came to protecting tropical forests and must urgently correct the system for measuring emission reductions if carbon markets are to be scaled up.
“It’s really not rocket science,” she said. “We are at an absolutely critical place for the future of tropical forests. If we don’t learn from the failures of the last decade or so, then there’s a very large risk that investors, private individuals and others will move away from any kind of willingness to pay to avoid tropical deforestation and that would be a disaster.
“As someone who sits outside of the kind of cut and thrust of the wild west that is the carbon markets, I need to believe it can be made to work because money is needed to fund the emissions reductions from forest conservation.”
Yadvinder Singh Malhi, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford and a Jackson senior research fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, who was not involved in the study, said two of his PhD students had gone through the analysis without spotting any errors.
“This work highlights the main challenge with realising climate change mitigation benefits from Redd+. The challenge isn’t around measuring carbon stocks; it’s about reliably forecasting the future, what would have happened in the absence of the Redd+ activity. And peering into the future is a dark and messy art in a world of complex societies, politics and economics. The report shows that these future forecasts have been overly pessimistic in terms of baseline deforestation rates, and hence have vastly overstated their Redd+ climate benefits. Many of these projects may have brought lots of benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation capacity and local communities, but the impacts on climate change on which they are premised are regrettably much weaker than hoped. I wish it were otherwise, but this report is pretty compelling.”
Shell told the Guardian that using credits was “in line with our philosophy of avoid, reduce and only then mitigate emissions”. Gucci, Pearl Jam, BHP and Salesforce did not comment, while Lavazza said it bought credits that were certified by Verra, “a world’s leading certification organisation”, as part of the coffee products company’s “serious, concrete and diligent commitment to reduce” its carbon footprint. It plans to look more closely into the project.
The fast food chain Leon no longer buys carbon offsets from one of the projects in the studies, as part of its mission to maximise its positive impact. EasyJet has moved away from carbon offsetting to focus its net zero work on projects such as “funding for the development of new zero-carbon emission aircraft technology”.
Barbara Haya, the director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, has been researching carbon credits for 20 years, hoping to find a way to make the system function. She said: “The implications of this analysis are huge. Companies are using credits to make claims of reducing emissions when most of these credits don’t represent emissions reductions at all.
“Rainforest protection credits are the most common type on the market at the moment. And it’s exploding, so these findings really matter. But these problems are not just limited to this credit type. These problems exist with nearly every kind of credit.
“One strategy to improve the market is to show what the problems are and really force the registries to tighten up their rules so that the market could be trusted. But I’m starting to give up on that. I started studying carbon offsets 20 years ago studying problems with protocols and programs. Here I am, 20 years later having the same conversation. We need an alternative process. The offset market is broken.”
‘No way to charge this battery’: Tesla owner was left stranded when his Model S died in the cold.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-way-charge-battery-tesla-140000238.html
‘No way to charge this battery’: Tesla owner was left stranded when his Model S died in the cold.
As EV popularity skyrockets, here’s why some enthusiasts might get cold feet
By Jing Pan
March 16, 2023
Original video: “Tesla S will not charge in the cold. Stranded on Christmas Eve!”
https://www.tiktok.com/@domnatishow/video/7180839253562199338
“UPDATE: I received several calls today from @Tesla Motors . They have been very accommodating so far, and are towing my car 2 hours away to Richmond to the service center at their own expense. Also, they delivered a loaner in the meantime.”
https://www.tiktok.com/@domnatishow/video/7181594117112122666
“UPDATE: Shocking interaction with Tesla service! They sent an estimate of nearly $2,000 and said my battery heater is broken. The notification on my screen said the battery is heating which was not true and their response regarding this false notification was very disappointing.”
https://www.tiktok.com/@domnatishow/video/7182837104857140522
Domenick Nati from Virginia, for instance, tried to charge his Tesla Model S ahead of Christmas but encountered some problems.
“I tried to charge it at my house, it won’t let me. So there’s no way to charge this battery or let it warm up in the cold,” Nati said in a TikTok video.
He then took the car to a Tesla Supercharger station and plugged it in but it failed to charge again.
The vehicle showed a message that the battery was heating and the car had a range of 19 miles at 1:11 pm.
“3:03, almost two hours later — battery is heating, 19 miles,” Nati read from the vehicle display with frustration later that day.
The temperature was reportedly around 19°F, or -7°C, at the time.
Nati’s video — titled “Tesla S will not charge in the cold. Stranded on Christmas Eve!” — has now amassed roughly 113,000 likes on TikTok.
The global warming of today is far preferable to the upcoming ice age that was being predicted by every mainstream news source in the 1970s
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 13, 2023
When I was a child in the 1970s, we were constantly being scared by mainstream news sources about the upcoming ice age that was being predicted.
It was absolutely terrifying.
Fortunately, the predicted ice age never came.
The global warming that we are experiencing today is far preferable to the upcoming ice age that was being predicted by every mainstream news source in the 1970s.
I am so, so very glad that those predictions did not come true.
Here are some examples of those predictions:
New York Times, February 23, 1969: “Worrying About a New Ice Age”
Washington Post, January 11, 1970: “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age: Scientists See Ice Age In the Future”
Boston Globe, April 16, 1970: “Scientist predicts a new ice age by 21st century”
https://web.archive.org/web/20191005160403/https://cei.org/sites/default/files/3_2.png
Washington Post, July 9, 1971: “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming”
https://web.archive.org/web/20191012132108/https://cei.org/sites/default/files/5_0.png
New York Times Jan. 27, 1972: “Climate Experts Assay Ice Age Clues”
The Guardian, January 29, 1974: “Space satellites show new ice age coming fast”
https://web.archive.org/web/20191005160403/https://cei.org/sites/default/files/8.png
Time, June 24, 1974: “Another Ice Age”
Newsweek, April 28, 1975: “The Cooling World”
New York Times, January 5, 1978: “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30‐Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere”
In Search of… The Coming Ice Age (originally broadcast in 1978):
I don’t blame Greta Thunberg for the fact that her prediction from 5 years ago turned out to be wrong. What I do blame her for is that she has not displayed enough intellectual curiosity to try to find out why her prediction was wrong.
It’s OK to be wrong about something. It’s OK to make predictions that turn out to be false.
But a good scientist will try to learn why they made the mistake. A good scientist will try to learn why their prediction was wrong.
This is a dead link to a tweet that Greta Thunberg made 5 years ago. The reason the link is dead is because she deleted it:
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1009757391515156480
Fortunately, the Internet Archive has an archive of the tweet at this link:
Her tweet from 5 years ago says:
“A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.”
This is a screenshot of how the archived version of her tweet appears on my computer screen:
Like I said, it’s OK to be wrong about something, and it’s OK to make predictions that turn out to be false.
However, by deleting her tweet, instead of trying to learn why her prediction was wrong, she is showing a complete lack of scientific curiosity.
And that is wrong.
Science is all about learning from past mistakes.
NPR admits that most “recycled” plastic ends up in landfills
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 19, 2023
NPR recently published this article, which is titled, “Recycling plastic is practically impossible – and the problem is getting worse.”
The article states:
“The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.”
“The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.”
“Greenpeace found that no plastic – not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins – meets the threshold to be called ‘recyclable’ according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate.”
None of that surprises me. Below are two videos, which I’ve posted here before.
The first video shows that much of the recycled garbage from rich countries (the U.K. in this case) gets sent to poor countries, where it just sits there on the ground without any covering or protection, getting blown around, and often ending up in rivers and ultimately the ocean.
The second video shows a landfill in a rich country (the U.S. in this case). The landfill is well sealed and covered, and is now a park with grass, trees, plants, and animals.
Recycling is a scam. It makes people feel good, but it actually hurts the environment instead of helping it. The environment would be a lot better off if we stopped recycling, and put our garbage into landfills. The proof is in the videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zcMfDbxmgU
Here’s the NPR article:
Recycling plastic is practically impossible – and the problem is getting worse
By Laura Sullivan
October 24, 2022
The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.
The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.
Greenpeace found that no plastic – not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins – meets the threshold to be called “recyclable” according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate.
“More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of it is being recycled,” says Lisa Ramsden, senior plastic campaigner for Greenpeace USA. “The crisis just gets worse and worse, and without drastic change will continue to worsen as the industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050.”
Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together. Plastic also degrades after one or two uses. Greenpeace found the more plastic is reused the more toxic it becomes.
New plastic, on the other hand, is cheap and easy to produce. The result is that plastic trash has few markets – a reality the public has not wanted to hear.
Trent Carpenter, the general manager of Southern Oregon Sanitation, says when they told customers a couple years ago that they could no longer take any plastic trash other than soda bottles and jugs – like milk containers and detergent bottles – people were upset. They wanted to put their strawberry containers, bags, yogurt cups and all manner of plastic trash in their recycling bin.
“We had to re-educate individuals that a great deal of that material is ending up in a landfill,” Carpenter said. “It’s not going to a recycling facility and being recycled. It’s going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can’t do anything with that material.”
That message has been difficult for the public to absorb with so many different bins in public spaces, and their own communities telling them to put their plastic in recycling containers.
Carpenter says they wanted to be transparent with their customers and tell them the truth, unlike companies that continue to tell customers that plastic, such as bags and containers, is being turned into new things.
“Politically it’s easier to just say ‘Gosh, we’re going to take everything and we think we can get it recycled,’ and then look the other way,” Carpenter said of the other companies. “That’s greenwashing at its best.”
Greenpeace found a couple facilities are trying to reprocess cups and containers – sometimes called “number 5s” because of the markings on the containers. But the numbers are low. While 52% of recycling facilities in the U.S. accept that kind of plastic, the report found less than 5% of it is actually repurposed – and the rest is put into a landfill.
Similarly, the National Association for PET Container Resources, an industry trade group, found in 2017 that only 21 percent of the plastic bottles collected for recycling were turned into new things.
The low reprocessing rates are at odds with plans from the oil and gas industry. Industry lobbyists say they plan to recycle every piece of plastic they make into something new by 2040. In interviews with NPR, industry officials were unable to explain how they planned to reach a 100 percent recycling rate.
An NPR investigative report found in 2020 that industry officials misled the public about the recyclability of plastic even though their own reports showed they knew as early as the 1970s and 1980s that plastic could not be economically recycled.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry lobby group, initially did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on the Greenpeace report. After publication, Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics for the group, sent an email to NPR calling Greenpeace’s views “misleading, out of touch and misguided.”
He said the industry believes it is “on the cusp of a circularity revolution” when it comes to recycling plastic by “scaling up sortation, advanced recycling, and new partnerships that enable used plastic to be remade again and again.”
Environmentalists and lawmakers in some states are now pushing for legislation that bans single use plastics, and for “bottle bills” which pay customers to bring back their plastic bottles. The bills have led to successful recycling rates for plastic bottles in places like Oregon and Michigan, but have faced steep resistance from plastic and oil industry lobbyists.
“The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill,” Ramsden said. “We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap.”
After years of embracing plastic recycling, many environmental groups say they hope the public will finally see plastic for what they say it is – trash – and that people will ask themselves if there is something else they could be using instead.
Germany is replacing nuclear power with coal and candles. They’re gonna party like it’s 1899!
Germany is replacing nuclear power with coal and candles. They’re gonna party like it’s 1899!
Sources:
I agree with these drivers and police who dragged the protestors out of the street
Videos: Climate ‘Protesters’ Thrown Around Like Rag Dolls By Angry French Motorists
And the police aren’t pissing around with them either
By Steve Watson
December 1, 2022
Everyday French people have had it with climate ‘protesters’ sitting in the road and blocking traffic, as the following footage shows.
Just like in Britain, people trying to drive to work are sick and tired of their daily commute being continually disrupted by people in orange vests crowing about the world ending in 800 days and gluing themselves to the road.
https://twitter.com/CatchUpNetwork/status/1598106691496972288
https://twitter.com/hushsupply_/status/1586395731845210113
https://twitter.com/gchahal/status/1591392916895051780
The ‘protesters,’ reportedly with the group ‘Derniere Renovation’ which translates as ‘Last renovation’ (what?) have been blocking traffic near Paris and in other French cities.
“The only way that we everyday people have left to put pressure on the government is to literally go and sit on the road,” says Victor, 25.
Who are the everyday people? If you have time to sit in the middle of a highway sulking, it ‘aint you mon cheri.
Wind farm in Germany being demolished to make room for coal mine
https://www.theblaze.com/news/wind-farm-germany-coal-mine
Wind farm in Germany being demolished to make room for coal mine
By Paul Sacca
October 30, 2022
A wind farm in Germany is being demolished to make room for a coal mine expansion.
German energy giant RWE is tearing down wind turbines to expand a neighboring coal mine in an effort to deal with the country’s energy crisis. The area of the wind farm near the small town of Lützerath will be used to expand the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The wind farm features eight wind turbines. One wind turbine was dismantled last week, two more are scheduled to be deconstructed some time next year, and the final five will be taken down by the end of 2023.
RWE officials admit that the move appears to be “paradoxical.”
“We realize this comes across as paradoxical, but that is as matters stand,” RWE spokesperson Guido Steffen said in a statement.
The Ministry of Economy of North Rhine-Westphalia added, “If Lützerath were to be preserved, the production volume required to maintain the security of supply over the next eight years could not be achieved, the stability of the opencast mine could not be guaranteed and the necessary recultivation could not be carried out.”
In addition, RWE will reactivate three lignite-fired coal units that were previously on standby.
“The three lignite units each have a capacity of 300 megawatts (MW). With their deployment, they contribute to strengthening the security of supply in Germany during the energy crisis and to saving natural gas in electricity generation,” RWE said in September. “Originally, it was planned that the three reserve power plant units affected would be permanently shut down on September 30, 2022, and September 30, 2023, respectively.”
Germany’s cabinet approved the decision to revive the unused coal units after energy prices skyrocketed because of the sanctions issued due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
North Rhine-Westphalia and RWE had previously declared they would stop using fossil fuels by 2030.
Climate change activists are furious about the transition from wind power to fossil fuels.
Last week, there were thousands of demonstrators who participated in protests against high energy prices in six German cities: Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hanover, and Dresden.
As of September 2021, 60% of Germany’s gas came from Russia, but last month it was down to zero.
Reuters reported, “Germany imported 37.6% of gas from Norway in September compared with 19.2% in the same month last year, while Dutch deliveries climbed to 29.6% of imports from 13.7%, data from utility industry group BDEW showed.”
Last week, BASF – the world’s largest chemicals group by revenue – announced that the company will “permanently” downsize in Europe because high energy costs have made the region increasingly uncompetitive.
“The European chemical market has been growing only weakly for about a decade [and] the significant increase in natural gas and power prices over the course of this year is putting pressure on chemical value chains,” BASF chief executive Martin Brudermüller said on Wednesday.
Environmentalists finally admit that the plastic “recycling” that they have been telling us to do for decades is a scam: “people are sending these off to be recycled and then they are sitting in recycling facilities across the country not being recycled or they’re being incinerated or sent to landfills instead”
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/greenpeace-report-finds-plastics-recycling-152120883.html
Greenpeace report finds plastics recycling is a dead-end street
October 27, 2027
A new report by the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace released on Monday finds that the vast majority of plastic waste produced by U.S. households is not recycled.
Lisa Ramsden, a senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace USA and one of the authors of the report, spoke with host Brad Mielke on ABC News’ “Start Here” podcast about the biggest takeaways from the report, the state of the recycling industry in the U.S. at large and what consumers should know about recycling.
START HERE: Can you describe this new report you guys have because it freaked me out. Like, am I not…should I not be…I can’t recycle anything? What’s going on?
LISA RAMSDEN: So, most plastic is not being recycled in the United States. American households produced about 51 million tons of plastic last year, and only 2.4 million of those tons were actually recycled.
START HERE: As in people are sending them to a recycling center and they’re just not getting recycled?
RAMSDEN: Exactly. So there are many difficulties that come along with plastics recycling and people are sending these off to be recycled and then they are sitting in recycling facilities across the country not being recycled or they’re being incinerated or sent to landfills instead.
Footage shows moment Insulate Britain protester was pushed by wheels of car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAiWVq-HKwM
Video description:
Guardian News
Footage shows moment Insulate Britain protester was pushed by wheels of car
October 19, 2021
Footage has emerged of the moment an Insulate Britain protester was pushed by a Range Rover by a woman driving her son to school.
When the protesters refuse to move the driver gets back into her car and inches it forward on to them.
Asked if she was hurt, during the incident which took place last Wednesday during the group’s protest on the A1090 in Thurrock, Essex, one activist said: “I think so, but I feel quite a lot of adrenalin pumping.”
The video was shared by Insulate Britain. A spokesperson for the group said this was the first time they had published any footage of the reactions they have provoked.
Sri Lanka recently chose to ban fertilizers made from fossil fuel. Anyone who’s not an idiot could have predicted the results.
Pretty much every country that participates in the modern, global economy is far better off today than in the recent past. More people have been lifted out of third world poverty in the past 70 years than in the all of the thousands of previous years combined. The only countries that remain in third world poverty are the luddites who choose to reject the modern world. I support using modern technology to give a first world standard of living to every person on earth. Nuclear power, desalination, modern agriculture, thermal depolymerization for recycling all of our trash.
Sri Lanka recently chose to ban fertilizers made from fossil fuel. Anyone who’s not an idiot could have predicted the results.
People make choices. Choices have consequences.
Third wold poverty is a choice. Here’s one real world example:
Fertiliser ban decimates Sri Lankan crops as government popularity ebbs
March 3, 2022
“Last year, we got 60 bags from these two acres. But this time it was just 10,” he added.
The dramatic fall in yields follows a decision last April by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to ban all chemical fertilisers in Sri Lanka
After shutting down its nuclear power plants, Germany is rationing its electricity and hot water
In recent years, Germany has been shutting down its nuclear power plants, and is planning to close its last ones by the end of this year. You can read about it in this piece from the Washington Post.
And now, as reported in this new piece from Fortune, Germany is setting limits on people’s use of electricity and hot water. Fortune writes:
‘The situation is more than dramatic’: Germany is rationing hot water and turning off the lights to reduce natural gas consumption
For months, Germany has feared having to ration energy amid Russia’s increasing willingness to turn off the tap. Now those fears are becoming a reality as Germany prepares for a return to 1970s-style energy rationing, when the OPEC oil embargo forced governments to mandate measures like dimmer lights and car-free Sundays.
Only, the energy crisis of 2022 isn’t limited to oil.
Last year, Germany relied on Russia for 55% of its natural gas imports. Germany has since been able to reduce that number to 35%, but with Russia seemingly prepared to further cut gas shipments to Europe, German officials are having to make some difficult choices.
This week, a city official in Hamburg—Germany’s second-largest city—warned that “warm water could only be made available at certain times of the day in an emergency,” forecasting the possibility of a severe natural gas shortage. And on Friday, residents in the eastern German state of Saxony were told by their housing association that they could take hot showers only between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. each day, the Financial Times reported.
“The situation is more than dramatic,” Axel Gedaschko, a German politician and president of GdW, the federal association of German housing, told the FT.
It isn’t just hot water that’s being rationed. In addition to shorter shower times, officials are asking city councils nationwide to turn off traffic lights at night, stop illuminating historic buildings, and go easy on using air conditioners in a bid to conserve electricity, according to the FT.
In California, the leftists who see “racism” everywhere are now claiming that their own rooftop solar program creates “racist” “inequities.” Their contradictory “solution” is to create a new tax on the very same solar power that they are subsidizing.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
January 30, 2022
For more than 20 years, California has been giving homeowners financial incentives to install rooftop solar panels on their homes. The goal here is to encourage the use of solar power.
Because whatever you subsidize you get more of, the program has more than achieved its goal of one million solar rooftop installations.
That should be a cause for celebration.
Except that we’re talking about leftists here. And leftists always find something to complain about.
In this particular case, they are claiming that their own very successful program, which they have been supporting for more than two decades, has created “racism” and “inequities.”
And their proposed “solution” to this “racism” and “inequity” is to create a new tax on the very rooftop solar installations that they have been subsidizing for more than two decades.
Just as subsidies lead to an increase in whatever is being subsidized, taxes lead to a reduction in whatever is being taxed.
So instead of celebrating the success of their own solar rooftop program, the left is now trying to discourage the very same thing that it had been encouraging for more than 20 years.
Maine voters vote against transmission line that would have provided enough green electricity for one million homes
https://apnews.com/article/election-2021-maine-hydropower-line-54dea1a948e9fc57a667280707cddeb7
Mainers vote to halt $1B electric transmission line
By David Sharp
November 3, 2021
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Mainers voiced their disapproval Tuesday for a 145-mile (233-kilometer) conduit for Canadian hydropower that was billed as either a bold step in battling climate change or unnecessary destruction of woodlands.
Utilities have poured more than $90 million into the battle over the $1 billion project ahead of the referendum on Tuesday, making it the most expensive referendum in Maine history.
However, the statewide vote won’t be the final word. Litigation over the project will continue long after the votes are counted.
Sandi Howard, director of the of No CMP Corridor, called on Central Maine Power to respect the people’s will and to halt the project.
“The vote sends a message to CMP that Mainers want to reject this corridor. They want to preserve the integrity of western Maine,” she said. “Mainers clearly don’t trust CMP to develop a project of this magnitude.”
Clean Energy Matters, which supports the project, vowed to continue the effort to move forward with the project.
“We believe this referendum, funded by fossil fuel interests, is unconstitutional. With over 400 Maine jobs and our ability to meet our climate goals on the line, this fight will continue,” Jon Breed, executive director, said in a statement.
Funded by Massachusetts ratepayers, the New England Clean Energy Connect would supply up to 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the New England power grid. That’s enough electricity for 1 million homes.
Supporters said the project would remove carbon from the atmosphere and stabilize electricity rates across the entire region while helping Massachusetts reach its clean energy goals.
Critics contended the environmental benefits are overstated, and that it would forever change the forestland.
Some Mainers were frustrated that the referendum took place at all, saying it was bad public policy to retroactively vote down a project that already was approved by multiple state and federal agencies.
Three-quarters of trees already have been removed for the project, which calls for a transmission line that mostly follows existing utility corridors. But a new section needed to be cut through 53 miles (85 kilometers) of woods to reach the Canadian border.
The project divided the environmental community and made for strange political bedfellows, with some owners of fossil fuel-powered plants aligning themselves with environmental opponents.
The parties were also divided, with some Republicans and Democrats opposing it, while current Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and former Republican Gov. Paul LePage both supported the project.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
