Day: 16 June 2020

Der leitende Politikberater bei CFACT Paul Driessen erklärt: Den ehemaligen Wissenschaftsberater von Präsident Obama John Holdren nachplappernd wollen sie, dass sich die USA und andere moderne Gesellschaften rückentwickeln und deindustrialisieren, und dass sich die Menschen eine Lebensweise mit geringem Verbrauch angewöhnen, um eine „gerechtere Verteilung von Wohlstand“ sicherzustellen und armen Ländern nahe zu bringen, welche…

Klimaille will den Shutdown verewigen — EIKE – Europäisches Institut für Klima & Energie

Der leitende Politikberater bei CFACT Paul Driessen erklärt:

Den ehemaligen Wissenschaftsberater von Präsident Obama John Holdren nachplappernd wollen sie, dass sich die USA und andere moderne Gesellschaften rückentwickeln und deindustrialisieren, und dass sich die Menschen eine Lebensweise mit geringem Verbrauch angewöhnen, um eine „gerechtere Verteilung von Wohlstand“ sicherzustellen und armen Ländern nahe zu bringen, welche „ökologisch machbare“ Entwicklung ihnen gestattet wird.

Marc Morano von CFACT zitiert auf seiner Website Climate Depot diese königliche Perle der Weisheit von Prince Charles, der vor dem Weltwirtschaftsgipfel ausführte:

„Wir haben ein einzigartiges, aber immer kleiner werdendes Fenster der Gelegenheit, Lektionen zu lernen und uns selbst auf einen nachhaltigeren Weg zu begeben … Wir haben eine goldene Gelegenheit, aus dieser Krise etwas Gutes herauszuziehen. Deren beispiellose Schockwellen können durchaus die Menschen empfänglicher machen für große Visionen der Änderung“.

Erinnert sich noch irgendjemand an Yvo die Boer?

CFACT erinnert sich.

CFACT war in enger Tuchfühlung mit dem Klimawandel-Verfahren der UN seit dessen Amtseinführung. Yvo leitete es, bis er zurücktrat, um gutes Geld als professioneller Kohlenstoff-Händler zu verdienen.

„Die einzige Möglichkeit, dass ein Abkommen im Jahre 2015 ein 2-Grad-Ziel erreichen kann, besteht darin, die gesamte globale Ökonomie zu schließen“. Das sagte er im Jahre 2013.

Sowohl der Terror, der zum COVID-19-Lockdown führte als auch die ängstigenden Klimaszenarien, welche Interessengruppen in nur allzu willfährigen Medien lostreten, wurzeln nicht in der Realität, sondern in extremen Szenarien in Computermodellen. Sie sind noch niemals auch nur ansatzweise in die Nähe der Realität gerückt.

CFACT erklärte schon ganz zu Anfang, als der Shutdown noch in den Kinderschuhen steckte: jeder ausgegebene Dollar, egal für was, hat einen ökonomischen Verstärkungseffekt. In einer freien Marktwirtschaft ist diese Macht ungeheuer. Wenn wir uns aus dem Markt zurückziehen, kommt es zum umgekehrten Verstärkungseffekt, nämlich einem strangulierenden Griff.

Freiheit ist das Recht eines jeden einzelnen Menschen auf der Erde. Wie die Gründungsväter Amerikas halten wir bei CFACT dieses Recht hoch.

Freiheit ernährt die Welt. Sozialismus und Kontrolle lässt sie hungern.

Vor welcher Herausforderung auch immer wir stehen, es ist die ökonomische Freiheit, welche die Mittel bereitstellt, dieser Herausforderung zu begegnen.

Autor: Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

Link: https://www.cfact.org/2020/06/09/climate-campaigners-want-to-make-the-shutdown-permanent/

Übersetzt von Chris Frey EIKE

UD researchers show Canada Basin’s diminished capacity to absorb carbon dioxide University of Delaware Melting ice in the Arctic Ocean is a bellwether for climate change, an apt illustration of environmental changes in a warming world. view more Credit: Photo courtesy of Zhangxian Ouyang New research by University of Delaware doctoral student Zhangxian Ouyang and […]

A carbon sink shrinks in the arctic — Iowa Climate Science Education

New research by University of Delaware doctoral student Zhangxian Ouyang and oceanographer Wei-Jun Cai, and an international team of researchers, demonstrates that rapid warming and sea-ice loss have induced major changes in the western Arctic Ocean.

The research team’s findings — published Monday, June 15 in Nature Climate Change — show that the Arctic Ocean’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can vary greatly depending on location.

Arctic Ocean sea-ice loss is a critical consequence of climate change. As sea ice continues to melt in the western Arctic Ocean, more fresh water is entering the upper portion of the water in the Canada Basin, which sits off the coast of Alaska and Canada, south of the Chukchi Shelf.

This summertime melt cycle is exacerbating seasonal changes and increasing the amount of carbon dioxide present in the water’s topmost layer, which comprises the upper 70 feet of the water column. This is reducing the basin’s capacity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Prevailing thought, based on data measurements from under the ice and in newly melted ocean margin areas in the 1990s and early 2000s, had suggested that when the ice melted it would allow the Arctic Ocean to draw large amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, acting as a carbon sink and helping to mitigate greenhouse gases. However, this may not be the case in all places, particularly in the Canada Basin where summer ice retreat has advanced into the deep basin since 2007.

The research team’s latest findings are based on an analysis of over 20 years of global data sets collected between 1994-2017 by researchers across the United States, China, Japan and Canada. They provide a more accurate depiction of what is happening in this region and build on Cai’s previous work from 2010, which indicated that carbon dioxide levels at the sea surface increase rapidly and unexpectedly toward levels found in the atmosphere in newly ice-free Arctic Ocean basins.

For example, the research team’s work showed that as the ice breaks up and melts in the Canada Basin, this meltwater lays on top of the sea surface, creating a “blanket” of sorts that inhibits the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the deep ocean and store it there. Cai’s team refers to this phenomenon as a “new normal” that is created by extreme seasonal warming and meltwater in the region.

“As carbon dioxide accumulates in the surface layer of the water from melting ice, the amount of carbon dioxide this area of the Arctic Ocean can take from the atmosphere will continue to shrink,” said Cai, the Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. “We predict by 2030, the Canada Basin’s ability to serve as a carbon sink will be really minimal.”

Additionally, this rapid increase of carbon dioxide content in the basin may have rapidly acidified the surface water, a process that can endanger marine calcifying organisms and disrupt ecosystem functioning there.

In stark contrast, farther south in the shallow Chukchi Sea, the amount of carbon dioxide in the water’s topmost layer remains very low, much lower than what is present in the atmosphere. This means that as air passes over the water’s surface, the sea can more quickly absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

The researchers suggest that this difference is the result of high biological production in the Chukchi Sea due to rich nutrients being transported there on currents coming from the Pacific Ocean since the Bering Strait has opened up due to earlier ice loss. These nutrients enable abundant growth of phytoplankton and other marine organisms that form the base of the marine food web and feed the broader ecosystem. Phytoplankton also consume carbon dioxide dissolved in the water during photosynthesis, allowing more carbon dioxide to be taken from the surrounding atmosphere.

The research team suspects that the Chukchi Sea will become a larger carbon sink in the future and impact the deep ocean carbon cycle and ecosystem, while the Canada Basin likely will remain less so as sea ice in the region continues to melt and change the water chemistry.

According to Lisa Robbins, a retired senior scientist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and a co-author on the paper, these changes could have important implications for organisms in the Arctic. For instance, Arctic cod is an important fishery in the western Arctic that contributes to the region’s overall economy and serves an important role in the marine food web as a food source for other organisms, such as Beluga whales and ringed seals. Biologists have noted that as temperature and sea ice melt have increased, Atlantic cod are responding by moving farther north. Changing water chemistry also may be playing a role, said Robbins, who led three expeditions to study the region’s water chemistry in the Arctic aboard the United States Icebreaker R/V Healy while with the USGS.

Long-term data sets, such as those used in this study, are key to understanding and predicting future changes in the Arctic.

“The amount of insight we get from these data sets into how our earth-ocean works is tremendous. If scientists hadn’t collected data in 1994, we wouldn’t have a place to start and compare with,” said Robbins, now a courtesy professor in the College of Marine Science at University of South Florida.

A 2019 article in Wired magazine found that in northern Canada near Greenland, glacial meltwater seems to be aiding watersheds in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While alone it cannot counterbalance the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to carbon emissions, it is an important illustration that the changes aren’t uniform and the subsequent effects — positive and negative — are the result of a complex combination of multiple different drivers. Further research and more international collaborative efforts can help to answer challenging unanswered questions.

As sea-ice loss accelerates, the researchers expect these seasonal variations will cause the ocean water in the Canada Basin to have high levels of carbon dioxide and become increasingly acidic. This will further reduce the basin’s capacity to take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and potentially reduce its capacity to mitigate climate change.

While this problem might seem very far away from Delaware, it’s important to remember that the ocean is one global system with circulation currents that transport water around the world, even to the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast. And greenhouse gases are a global issue.

Understanding how fundamentally important ice melt is to driving carbonate chemistry and seasonal changes in carbon dioxide in this region of the Arctic Ocean will help advance the science in this area, maybe not immediately but over the long-run, said Cai.

“We are trying to understand the processes at work and if the Arctic Ocean will continue to be a large carbon sink, while providing data that can help Earth systems modelers to predict global changes to the carbon cycle, and the ocean’s biology and water chemistry,” Cai said.

###

This work is funded by multiple nations, including Cai’s work which is supported through the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Natural Science Program.

Co-authors on the paper include researchers at The Third Institution of Oceanography (China), Columbia University, University of Montana, Ocean University of China, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, University of South Florida and the International Arctic Research Center.

From EurekAlert!

By Paul Homewood By popular demand, Dummies Guide to Renewable Subsidies – Part II Last week I looked at the mechanics of how renewable subsidies are paid, now I will look at just how much they are costing us all. First of all we need to check out the wholesale market price of electricity in […]

Dummies Guide To Renewable Subsidies–Part II — Iowa Climate Science Education

By popular demand, Dummies Guide to Renewable Subsidies – Part II

Last week I looked at the mechanics of how renewable subsidies are paid, now I will look at just how much they are costing us all.

First of all we need to check out the wholesale market price of electricity in the UK, as this is integral to the calculation.

Prices are £/MWh, and the graph is interactive, if you click on the link:

https://www.energybrokers.co.uk/electricity/historic-price-data-graph

As a rule of thumb, wholesale prices in the last few years has hovered around £50/MWh, but prices began dropping last year to under £40/MWh, even before COVID. With falling oil and gas prices and low demand this year, prices are now around £20/MWh.

Government projections of fossil fuel and power prices have for many years assumed a trend rising above inflation. In turn this has given them an excuse for baking in higher renewable costs. The reality has been the opposite.

Now let’s look at the subsidy costs by sector:

Offshore Wind

Older offshore installations, up to 2015, are funded by the Renewable Obligation system. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, there is 6.6GW of capacity under RO. On average they receive 1.9 RO certificates (ROC) for each MWh. One ROC is currently worth £50.05, so in addition to the market price of electricity which they sell offshore wind farms under RO receive a subsidy of £95.09/MWh. Based on a current market price of £20/MWh, they will receive total revenue of £115.09/MWh.

Since 2015, new offshore projects are subsidised via Contracts for Difference (CfDs). These guarantee a strike price for each unit of output, regardless of the market price. There is a range of CfD prices, depending on which year the auction was held, but they range from £139.35 to £173.96/MWh.

The table below shows a weighted average strike price of £162.10, in other words a subsidy of £142.10/MWh, based on a current market price of £20/MWh.

Onshore Wind

Apart from a tiny amount of capacity under CfD, most onshore wind is covered by RO. (Note – this does not include small scale wind farms, which receive payments via Feed in Tariffs (FITs), for which there are no detailed figures available).

On average, onshore wind farms receive 1 ROC per MWh, making a subsidy of £50.05/MWh.

Plant Biomass

Two biomass units are covered by CfDs. Drax 3 has capacity of 645MW and a strike price of £116.49. Lynemouth’s capacity is 420MW at a price of £122.23/MWh.

The weighted average is £118.75/MWh, meaning the subsidy is £98.75.

There is a further 3.6GW of biomass capacity operating mainly under RO, receiving 1.7 ROCs per unit, worth £65.06/MWh.

Solar Power

About two thirds of solar power is covered by ROCs, with the rest falling under FITs. These earn 1.4 ROCs per unit, worth £70.07/MWh.

Others

ROCs are also given to other miscellaneous renewable sources, such as hydro, anaerobic digestion and landfill gas. The cost of these was £454 million last year.

Feed in Tariffs

As noted earlier, small renewable installations are subsidised by FITs. No breakdown is available, but the OBR estimate the total annual cost of the subsidy at £1.6bn.

Summary

If we try to knock this lot together, we get:

Note, that I have included the £1000 million cost of the Renewable Heat Incentive, which is funded from general taxation.

Remember as well that these costs don’t include the cost of providing standby capacity via the Capacity Market, which amounts to another £1.1bn.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

https://ift.tt/37zzdTD

June 16, 2020 at 11:48AM

By Paul Homewood h/t Joe Public https://gridwatch.co.uk/ [Thanks to Joe for the appropriate tag!] And what do we get for £10bn worth of renewable subsidies? A load of capacity which often is next to useless, and a grid which still relies on gas and nuclear for 82% of demand, and a further […]

No Wind, No Sun–But Plenty Of Gas & Nuclear! — Iowa Climate Science Education

https://gridwatch.co.uk

[Thanks to Joe for the appropriate tag!]

And what do we get for £10bn worth of renewable subsidies?

A load of capacity which often is next to useless, and a grid which still relies on gas and nuclear for 82% of demand, and a further 9% from biomass which could have been obtained at half the price from burning coal instead!

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

https://ift.tt/37ybEKO

June 16, 2020 at 12:12PM

By Paul Homewood A wave of new coal power plants are under construction or in development after the country lifted curbs on new builds, according to a study published Tuesday by Greenpeace. About 46 gigawatts worth of new plants were under construction as of May, the study said. Another 48 gigawatts […]

China Adds New Wave Of Coal Plants After Lifting Curbs — NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

A wave of new coal power plants are under construction or in development after the country lifted curbs on new builds, according to a study published Tuesday by Greenpeace.

About 46 gigawatts worth of new plants were under construction as of May, the study said. Another 48 gigawatts were under various stages of development, Greenpeace estimated.

About 29.9 gigawatts of new coal power capacity was added last year, making a total of about 1,040 gigawatts, according to China Electricity Council data.

China remains coal’s stronghold even as consumption of the dirtiest fossil fuel wanes elsewhere in the world. The nation mines and burns about half the world’s coal and views it as an important source of cheap power and mass employment.

A spate of coal plant constructions in the early part of the decade led to overcapacity, and by 2016 the National Energy Administration ordered 28 of the country’s 33 regional governments to suspend or delay new plants. Those restrictions have been lifted in recent years, with only six regions expected to have excessive capacity by 2023.

China Adds New Wave Of Coal Plants After Lifting Curbs