A search of Google News for the term “climate change” today turns up a number of articles falsely claiming human climate change is causing increasingly extreme weather and more frequent power failures.

This is false. Data from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show extreme weather over the past century’s modest warming has not become more frequent or severe, and in some cases it has declined in frequency and severity. And any decrease in the reliability of the power grid is due to climate policies, not climate change.

The story titled, “Americans likely to experience more power outages due to climate change,” posted by KXAN (Austin, Texas’s NBC affiliate) is typical of the false claims made by myriad news outlets over the past week.

“If last week showed us anything, it is that climate change is real and we are not ready for it,” says KXAN. This is false.

As shown in Climate at a Glance: Heatwaves, data from NOAA demonstrates heatwaves have become far less frequent and severe in recent decades than they were in the early part of the 20^th century.

Similarly, objective data destroy assertions that climate change is to blame for the extreme cold that struck Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere this past week.  NOAA data show the number days each year with below-freezing temperatures in Texas is neither unusually high nor unusually low so far this century.

Similarly, NOAA data for neighboring Oklahoma show a decline in the frequency of very cold weather events in recent decades.

Data from NOAA and the IPCC make it equally clear other extreme weather events that might be thought to cause power failures, like cold spells, drought, floods, hurricanes, or tornados, have not increased in number or in severity as the earth has modestly warmed. You can see the evidence for yourself via the links in this paragraph.

Whether one it discussing instances of drought or flood, heatwaves or polar vortexes, science refutes any assertion that climate change makes weather extremes more frequent or severe.

While weather extremes aren’t increasing, policies enacted to prevent climate change are making the grid less reliable and flexible in response to peaks in power demand. In particular, state mandates to incorporate ever-greater amounts of intermittent wind and solar power, and federal and state subsidies for the same purpose, have resulted in the premature retirements of tens of thousands of megawatts of baseload coal power plants over the past decade. These power plants have been replaced by wind and solar industrial facilities which cannot be relied upon to provide a consistent flow of power to the grid because they are dependent on weather conditions. Nor can they be relied upon to provide on-demand power or peaking power during emergencies.

KXAN should not be trying to capitalize on a severe, but not historically unique, winter freeze in Texas to promote climate alarmism. The facts show weather extremes are declining. The main threat facing the nation’s electric power grid is not climate change, but rather government mandates to incorporate increasing amounts of intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar power into the power system.

Replacing reliable sources of electric power, like coal, natural gas, and nuclear with ever more intermittent green power schemes makes power failures more likely, whatever the weather. That’s what KXAN should be reporting.

The post Austin’s NBC Affiliate Is Wrong to Claim Climate Change Is Causing More Weather Extremes appeared first on Climate Realism.

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By H. Sterling Burnett -February 25, 2021

Austin’s NBC Affiliate Is Wrong to Claim Climate Change Is Causing More Weather Extremes

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Much of the observed warming this past century is artificial, either caused by the urban heat island effect or by dubious adjustments to the actual data reported by surface temperature stations. Christopher Monckton has just uncovered the latest example of temperatures gatekeepers adjusting the data to fit an alarmist narrative. Monckton writes:

They’re at it again. The old lady of temperature datasets – HadCRUT, the only global dataset to reach back to 1850 – has released its revised monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies for 1850-2020. The earlier dataset (HadCRUT4) showed a least-squares linear-regression trend of 0.91 K on the monthly anomalies from 1850-2020 – only just over half a degree per century equivalent.

HadCRUT5 shows a 1.04° C trend from 1850-2020, or three-fifths of a degree per century equivalent, up 14% from the 0.91° C trend on the HadCRUT4 data:

ABOVE: Before and after adjustments to the HadCRUT surface temperature record.

This was not enough. Like the endlessly-adjusted GISS, RSS and NCEI datasets, HadCRUT5 hikes the trend – and does so by a startling 14%. The usual method is adopted: depress the earlier temperatures (we know so much better what the temperature was a century and a half ago than the incompetents who actually took the measurements), and elevate the later temperatures with the effect of steepening the trend and increasing the apparent warming.

Of course, elaborate justifications for the alterations are provided. It is beyond my pay-grade to evaluate them. However, it is fascinating that the much-manipulated GISS, HadCRUT, RSS and NCEI datasets are managed by climate fanatics, while the UAH dataset – the only one of the big five to have gone the other way – is managed by climate skeptics.

Monckton goes on to compare these inflated temperature trends to climate models and says:

This is the most straightforward way of showing that the models’ global-warming predictions are without a shred of legitimacy or credibility. They are elaborate fictions. They suffer from two defects: they are grossly excessive, and they are accordingly ill-constrained.

You can read the full analysis here.

Indeed, warming adjustments to the temperature record seem to be happening faster than “global warming” itself. Where is the accountability in climate science?

The post Climate Activists Change the Temperature Data – Again – to Fit Alarmist Narrative appeared first on Climate Realism.

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By Anthony Watts -February 23, 2021

Climate Activists Change the Temperature Data – Again – to Fit Alarmist Narrative

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“Even though it was once embraced by some environmentalists, ethanol has turned out to be much better at providing common ground for wildly disparate presidents than cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”

“From a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, the renewable fuel standard has been a bust.”

“In 2022, the current renewable fuel standard will lapse, and Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency will have to decide whether to maintain federal support for this hangover of the oil-soaked Bush era.”

– Tom Philpott, “Why Won’t Joe Biden Let Ethanol Die Already?” Mother Jones, February 16, 2021.

Progressives and D.C. environmentalists are very confused about energy. They don’t like nuclear, the only scalable alternative to fossil fuels. They dislike hydro power too, choosing some other priorities for dams other than CO2 reduction.

And on the transportation side, they don’t like the “renewable” alternative to gasoline and diesel, farm crop ethanol.

Ethanol has a niche as an oxygenate to combat traditional air pollution, carbon dioxide (CO2) aside. The mandate increases the quantity beyond its environmental purpose, a pure subsidy to the farm lobby.

Left Angst

For many years, mainstream environmentalists have questioned whether ethanol is a net reducer of CO2. While there is no one answer given the different production circumstances, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency generally concludes that ethanol is “atmospheric carbon neutral.” 

Still, ethanol requires a whole lot of farming corn and sugarcane–increasing the surface imprint and machinery usage of humankind. Add some cronyism, and the Progressive Left is more negative than neutral.

———————————–

“Why Won’t Joe Biden Let Ethanol Die Already?“, asked Tom Philpott recently at Mother Jones (and redistributed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). Excerpts are provided below as a ‘current’ into the Progressive Left’s thinking on the subject.

President Joe Biden campaigned on an ambitious plan to tackle climate change with a “clean energy revolution,” including incentives to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric ones. The growing consensus among climate experts is that to slash carbon emissions quickly enough, we need to eliminate as much air-fouling combustion as possible while expanding wind and solar energy to power the grid.

But a key aspect of Biden’s agenda contradicts this push: He’s vowed to “promote ethanol and the next generation of biofuels,” declaring them “vital to the future of rural America—and the climate.” Biden tapped longtime ethanol champion Tom Vilsack—former governor of Iowa, the fuel’s Saudi Arabia—to run the Department of Agriculture, a post he held under Obama. Biden is doubling down on a bad idea that has flourished since the days of President George W. Bush.

In doing so, Biden is doubling down on a bad idea that has flourished since the days of President George W. Bush. Shortly before declaring the nation “addicted to oil” in 2006, Bush pushed through a bipartisan law with a “renewable fuel standard” that effectively mandated a dramatic ramp-up in corn ethanol production. As a result, the portion of the massive US corn crop devoted to the fuel rose from 11 percent in 2004 to 30 percent in 2015, where it has held steady. Barack Obama and Donald Trump both joined the pro-ethanol presidential chorus.

Today, corn-based ethanol has replaced about 10 percent of “climate change causing petroleum” at the gas station, boasts the website of the American Coalition for Ethanol, the industry’s main lobbying group, adding that ethanol production “supports 360,000 jobs in rural communities.” 

Even though it was once embraced by some environmentalists, ethanol has turned out to be much better at providing common ground for wildly disparate presidents than cutting greenhouse gas emissions….

But Bush’s federal ethanol mandate tied us to internal combustion engines, which spew a range of disease-causing toxins along with heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Electric engines not only avoid tailgate fumes, they’re also much more efficient. According to the Department of Energy, conventional vehicles convert at most 30 percent of the energy stored in liquid fuel to horsepower; the rest leaks out, mostly as heat. Electric-powered vehicles, meanwhile, convert at least 60 percent of energy expended to locomotion.

Meanwhile, EV battery technology is improving rapidly, meaning cheaper electric cars with longer ranges between plug-ins—solving two problems that have held back electric car sales for years. From 2010 to 2020, battery prices plunged 89 percent. By 2023, according to a projection by Car and Driver, electric vehicles will be no more expensive than their fuel-burning competitors.

In short, maintaining ethanol production at current levels means propping up a wildly energy-wasting technology. For that to make sense as climate policy—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that we need to cut global carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 to avert catastrophe—ethanol would have to be magical stuff indeed. From a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, the renewable fuel standard has been a bust.

Spoiler: It’s not. From a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, the renewable fuel standard has been a bust, says Jason Hill, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering….

The environmental footprint of industrial-scale corn farming is another stain on ethanol’s claim to be a green fuel. Corn typically covers about 90 million acres of farmland—an area nearly the size of California. Fertilizing the crop emits nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon,  as well as nitrate pollution that fouls water from the upper Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, where it generates a low-oxygen dead zone larger than Connecticut. Hill and his colleagues have found that nitrogen fertilizer applied to corn also results in emissions of ammonia, a powerful pollutant, that have been associated with a staggering 4,300 premature deaths yearly in the United States.

But what about the 360,000 jobs in rural communities supposedly supported by the ethanol industry? According to David Swenson, a researcher at Iowa State University’s Department of Economics, that’s more industry spin. To reach that number, ethanol boosters include a portion of all corn farmers and their employees in their calculations. But corn was a wildly overproduced crop when ethanol took off in the early 2000s. The ethanol boom mostly created a market for surplus corn, not new jobs. Swenson estimates the ethanol industry is directly responsible for only about 47,000 jobs, a tiny fraction of rural employment, even in corn-heavy states like Iowa. Meanwhile, the Energy Department reported in 2017 that solar energy alone employs more Americans than oil, coal, and gas combined.

With the rise of cheap electric car batteries and the expansion of renewable electricity, ethanol looks like yesterday’s fuel. In 2022, the current renewable fuel standard will lapse, and Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency will have to decide whether to maintain federal support for this hangover of the oil-soaked Bush era.

Ethanol is just a political tool as a “renewable” and an oil displacer (remember the energy security rationale a few decades back?). Perhaps some eco-Progressives regret their once support. But if so, can the same take Planet of the Humans to heart and rethink industrial wind turbines and solar “farms.”

The post Progressives vs. Ethanol (criticizing Biden) appeared first on Master Resource.

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February 25, 2021 at 01:08PM

By Paul Homewood

This news sums up everything that is wrong about UK energy policy:

Drax has dropped plans to develop any new gas plants, including its plans to build Europe’s biggest CCGT plant as it moves to turn its back on fossil fuels.

In the company’s full year results for 2020, it set out its plans for carbon neutrality, committing to no new gas generation and the end of commercial coal in March 2021.

“Our focus is on renewable power,” said Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax Group. “Our carbon intensity is one of the lowest of all European power generators. We aim to be carbon negative by 2030 and are continuing to make progress. We are announcing today that we will not develop new gas fired power at Drax. This builds on our decision to end commercial coal generation and the recent sale of our existing gas power stations.”

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/drax-drops-plan-for-europes-largest-new-gas-plant-as-it-turns-its-back-on-fossil-fuels

For all the fancy talk about renewable energy, the decision to abandon the new CCGT plant, which Drax themselves have been praising for the last few years, is purely economic. The stark reality is that cannot make money under current policy, even with the help of Capacity Market support.

Because of obscene, market wrecking subsidies paid to renewables, gas power plants cannot compete on level terms, and consequently run well below viable capacity levels.

The UK is, of course, desperate for new gas power capacity, to fill the gaps when the wind stops blowing.

Meanwhile, Drax’s Annual Accounts show just how much they are raking in subsidies for biomass.

CfD subsidies totted up to £342 million last year, with ROCs bringing in an other whopping £495 million, a total of £837 million. With biomass generation of 14.1 TWh, this works out at an average of £48/MWh:

And government hand outs don’t stop there, as Drax also earned £118 million for system support services, now so essential because of unreliable renewable generation:

Without all of these subsidies, Drax would of course be bankrupt. Their strategy now is to continue to build the biomass side of the business, and hope to get more government money to subsidise carbon capture.

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February 25, 2021 at 12:54PM