Today’s media are filled with concerns about air pollution. But few people know which energy source has produced the greatest modern reduction in air pollution. The answer isn’t wind or solar energy.
During the 1950s, my grandfather had a coal furnace in his basement, like many homes in Chicago. Five days after a winter snowfall, the snow was covered with a visible black film of dust from coal furnaces. Our younger generation does not know the original reason for “spring cleaning.” Every spring, homeowners would wash their inside walls to remove coal dust.
It was the rising use of gas fuel, primarily natural gas along with propane, that produced the greatest reduction in air pollution in the United States and across the world. Gas furnaces and stoves have replaced wood in businesses and homes in developed nations. And natural gas power plants have replaced coal-fired plants to generate electricity, with gas becoming the leading fuel for industry.
Natural gas and propane are clean-burning fuels that emit no harmful pollutants when burned. When gas heating is substituted for coal or wood heating, indoor particulate pollution is reduced by 1,000 times.
Today, 70% of US homes use natural gas or propane, a percentage that has been rising for decades. Gas fuels have also become the leading heating and cooking source in Europe, providing 83% of heat energy in the Netherlands and 78% in the United Kingdom. But there are still 70 million wood stoves in Europe.
The World Health Organization estimates that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass (wood, charcoal, animal dung, or crop waste), and coal. These fuels generate harmful indoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution is estimated to cause more than 3 million deaths annually in poor nations. Emerging nations need gas fuels to boost health and well-being.
The great news is that gas fuels are increasingly used in developing nations, reducing illness and death from cooking. For example, in 2016 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a program to provide liquid petroleum gas (LPG) to 200 million people, making India the second largest LPG importer. About 70 percent of US propane production is exported as the key component of LPG, mostly to Eastern Asia.
Gas became the primary fuel for generating electricity in developed nations over the last three decades. Natural gas rose from 12.6% of US electricity generation in 1990 to 43.1% in 2023. By 2022, gas had become the leading fuel for electric power in Italy (48%), Netherlands (59%), and the UK (36%).
The combination of rising gas use to generate electricity, the use of scrubbers on coal plants, and the reduction in vehicle pollution has produced vastly improved air quality in recent decades. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that US ambient air pollution declined by 78% from 1970 to 2020.
Despite the benefits of reduced indoor and outdoor pollution from rising gas use, gas fuels are under attack. Driven by the ideology of Climatism, the fear of human-caused climate change, advocates for net-zero energy policies demand the elimination of gas to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
But carbon dioxide is an odorless, harmless, invisible gas. It doesn’t cause smoke or smog. Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 boost plant growth. Carbon dioxide should not be called a pollutant.
Nevertheless, US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and other leaders have called for a net-zero electric grid by 2035. Twenty-three US states now have net-zero electricity targets by 2050. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland, totaling about half of Europe’s electricity, have pledged to eliminate CO2-emitting power plants by 2035.
A war rages in Europe over the elimination of gas appliances. The governments of Germany, Netherlands, and the UK seek to force homeowners to spend thousands of euros or pounds to switch from gas appliances to electric heat pumps to reduce CO2 emissions. Amsterdam recently announced that it would become “aardgasvrij,” or gas-free, by 2040. But conservative gains in European Union elections this month reflect a popular backlash against efforts to eliminate gas fuels and force acceptance of net-zero policies.
In the US, cities and counties in six states, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and Washington, along with Washington D.C., enacted statutes banning natural gas in new construction. New York passed the All-Electric Buildings Act in 2023, a state-wide ban prohibiting gas appliances in new one- to six-story buildings by 2026. But 20 other US states have passed laws preventing local governments from passing ordinances that ban gas fuels.
Despite misguided government efforts to eliminate gas, consumption of natural gas and other gas fuels continues to rise. World natural gas consumption has doubled since 1995.
Green energy advocates have it exactly wrong. Adoption of gas fuels did more to reduce air pollution over the last 60 years than any other energy source. Gas consumption will continue to rise for decades to come.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the bestselling bookGreen Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
The purveyors of climate doom will not tolerate the good news of our planet thriving because of modest warming and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, a recent scientific paper concludes that an optimistic vision for Earth and its inhabitants is nonetheless justified.
Widely accepted data show an overall greening of Earth resulting from a cycle of natural warming that began more than 300 years ago and from industrialization’s additions of CO2 that started in the 19th century and accelerated with vigorous economic activity following World War II.
Also attributed to these and other factors is record crop production, which now sustains 8 billion people—ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution. The boost in atmospheric CO2 since 1940 alone is linked to yield increases for corn, soybeans and wheat of 10%, 30% and 40%, respectively.
The positive contribution of carbon dioxide to the human condition should be cause for celebration, but this is more than demonizers of the gas can abide. Right on cue, narrators of a planet supposedly overheating from carbon dioxide began sensationalizing research findings that increased plant volume results in lower concentrations of nutrients in food.
“The potential health consequences are large, given that there are already billions of people around the world who don’t get enough protein, vitamins or other nutrients in their daily diet,” concluded the The New York Times, a reliable promoter of apocalypse forever. Among others chiming in have been The Lancet, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health.
Of course, such yellow journalism lacks context and countervailing facts —elements provided in “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations,” published by the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.
Any deficiency of nutrients from the enhancement of plant growth by elevated carbon dioxide “are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation and even aging of crops,” says the paper.
And while there is evidence of marginal decreases in some nutrients, data also show that higher levels of CO2 “may enhance certain groups of health-promoting phytochemicals in food crops” that serve as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, says the paper, which lists seven authors and more than 100 references. The lead author is Albrecht Glatzle, a member of the Rural Association of Paraguay and a former international researcher of plant and animal nutrition.
Among other points made by the paper are the following: Throughout a majority of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been several times higher than today’s, which are less than optimum for most plants; atmospheric warming from even a quadrupling of CO2 concentrations would be small compared to natural temperature fluctuations since the last glacial advance more than 10,000 years ago.
Having virtually no scientific basis, the “green” movement’s hostility to carbon dioxide seemingly ignores the gas’s critical role as a plant food. As the paper notes, “CO2 is the only source of the chemical element carbon for all life on Earth, be it for plants, animals or fungi and bacteria — through photosynthesis and food chains.”
The so-called greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide— perversely exaggerated to support climate fearmongering— is a life-saving temperature moderator that keeps Earth from freezing over.
The obvious benefits of CO2 is “an embarrassment to the large and profitable movement to ‘save the planet’ from ‘carbon pollution,’” write the authors. “If CO2 greatly benefits agriculture and forestry and has a small, benign effect on climate, it is not a pollutant at all.
AUTHOR OF INCONVENIENT FACTS: THE SCIENCE THAT AL GORE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Most Americans today tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.
There was a time when property ownership was considered to be much more. Property, and the ability to own and control it, was life itself. The great economist John Locke, whose writings and ideas had a major influence on our nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”
John Locke advocated that if property rights did not exist, then the incentive for an industrious person to develop and improve property would be destroyed; that the industrious person would be deprived of the fruits of his labor; that marauding bands would confiscate by force the goods produced by others; and that mankind would be compelled to remain on a bare-subsistence level of hand to mouth survival because the accumulation of anything of value would invite attack.
In short, human civilization would be reduced to the level of a pack of wolves and eventually cease to exist because a lack of control over your own actions would cause fear and insecurity. Private property ownership, Locke argued, brought stability and wealth to individuals, leading to a prosperous society of man.
From the very beginning, the United States was guided by the idea of private property ownership. It was written into our governing documents. Property and freedom – one cannot live without the other. James Madison said, “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.” John Adams argued, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
America, be aware, private property is quickly being destroyed across the nation, and note the growing lawlessness beginning to surround you. The fear of climate change has become the excuse for government to grow and dictate how every strip of land will be used.
Have you ever wondered why government now focuses so hard on the environment? That’s because the environment does not recognize political boundaries. The environment crosses rivers, fields, and mountains, all of which cross over national borders, state borders, county borders, city borders, and the boundary lines of your yard! That fact has given massive new power to those forces that seek to change our way of life and system of government. Who can stand in the way with a climate crisis at hand? So goes the argument.
As a result, the pack of wolves is quickly raiding every foot of this nation. Lawlessness controls our society as incentive, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship give way to fear of a government tyranny that drives for control, regardless of clear constitutional rights and the legal system that was designed to protect them.
Step by step, freedom dies, leaving shattered dreams, as tyranny grows.
The Biden cabal issued Executive Order 14008 at the beginning of its hold on America. The order, titled America the Beautiful, established a plan to lock away 30 percent of American land by 2030, under the pretext of protecting the planet. The federal government already has 270 million acres under its control, now under 30×30 it’s driving for another 680 million to be locked away from private use.
Eminent domain land grabs are turning millions of acres of vital farmland over to corporations like Blackrock and Vanguard – to feed their own vision of how human society must function. As more and more farmland disappears under wind turbines and solar panels, which produce next to nothing for our power grid, there’s little room to grow the food we need to survive. As a result, thousands of farmers are forced to just give up.
Other property owners in rural America are facing a new challenge – the elimination of vital dams that have controlled the flow of water, opening new land for productive use. But, says the climate change mantra, those dams aren’t natural, so they are a danger to the environment. They must go. Gone is more private property, a reliable water source, and the individual’s ability to thrive for their own goals.
In our once-vibrant cities, chaos is taking control. Private property ownership is under attack. In the name of Smart Growth your dream home could soon be banned as the space is being taken over by public housing projects.
Small businesses, the very foundation of our free market economy, are under attack. It’s bad enough that small retail businesses must now contend with the growing anarchy of thieves simply rushing in and grabbing any items they choose, as law enforcement is forced to stand by and do nothing. But what about the local restaurant that has always featured your favorite meal? Now, in the name of climate change, the government is moving to ban the stoves on which they cook the meals. And what would they be able to cook now that government is driving to ban beef and dairy? We used to have pesticides to get rid of bugs; now they are destined to be our next dinner!
However, as the federal government continues to rush ahead, state and local governments, designed by our Founders to be the first line of defense against tyranny, are now blindly falling in lockstep with the powermongers.
City councils across the nation are joining non-elected regional councils, which create a one-size-fits-all system of control, ignoring local differences. The regional councils delete the will of the local citizens by piling on federal grants and the federal regulations that come with them. Local elections become meaningless as their city council members surrender to the rule of the regional council and explain there is nothing they can do about it. So why elect them?
Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate NGO known as the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.” The goal of the group is “0” meat and dairy consumption by 2030. Also included in the goals are “0” private vehicles owned by citizens, only “1” short-haul air flight per person every 3 years, and “3” new clothing items per person per year. The group is funded mainly by Democrat billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and nearly 100 cities across the world are members. In the U.S., members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New Your City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Seattle. Now as the plan is exposed, the group denies these are “not policy recommendations,” but rather just “different emission-reduction alternatives and long-term urban visions.” But we’re watching them unfold daily. Own nothing and be happy!
In Belmont County, Ohio, the Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) established the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge. It encompasses over 28,000 acres of land that cannot be used for private enterprise or homes. As it was being put in place, the ODNR promised local citizens that tourism, lakes, trails, hunting, fishing, etc., would be developed to assist the local economy. None of those promises were fulfilled. And the ODNR pays no taxes or provides services. As a result, the county is in major financial difficulty. The average tax income loss for the county is $8,932,000 that would have gone to pay for schools, roads, law enforcement and public services. Citizens of the country suffer from a lack of local businesses, food services, and products.
In Pataskala, Ohio, a small rural community of about 17,000, a massive solar panel assembly plant is being built. It will employ over 800 people to assemble solar panels with material from China. Why is this a problem? Well, that’s in the details. You see, the lead company in the project, called Illuminate USA, isn’t really a company. It’s a shell designed to get around any future US regulations that would prevent a foreign company from owning property. 49% of Illuminate USA is owned by LONGI, a partner with Invenergy – a Chinese corporation. It’s all a shill designed to pretend these solar panels are “American Made.” Of course, the mayor and city council of Pataskala see dollar signs and are allowing this plant to move forward, in spite of the fact that a huge number of local citizens oppose the plan, fearing that it will drastically change the entire atmosphere of their rural community. The mayor is calling such citizen opponents “Radicals.”
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed HB271 into law as part of her drive to enforce ambitious climate change goals for the state. On the same day, she signed HB5120 to take power over green energy projects from the local community government and give it to the Michigan Public Service Commission. Essentially, these two bills have removed local control over land use. Again, state regulations are being used to eliminate local control.
Many parents are now beginning to understand that the public-school curriculum is little more than propaganda for climate change. Students have really become victims of this sinister plot to change society. As a result, all over the world, young people are being radicalized and encouraged to take drastic action against our entire way of life.
“STOP OIL” is a major nongovernmental organization (NGO) training students to lay on highways and block cars from passing. The goal, of course, is to make driving more difficult, resulting in people abandoning their gas-powered cars.
Even worse, in museums around the world, another NGO called “DECLARE EMERGENCY” is leading attacks on precious art, claiming we spend money worshipping the past rather than focusing on stopping climate change. In the past year, climate change radicals have defaced DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Degas’ “Little Dancer,” and Monet’s “Haystacks.” Hate of our society, free enterprise, and private property are at the root of the demonstrations.
Most recently, two activists of DECLARE EMERGENCY charged into the United States National Archives, where the original copies of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are on display. They smeared red powder on the glass covering the constitution and declared, “We are determined to foment a rebellion. We all deserve clean air, water, food and a livable climate.”
And finally, there is this situation. In a Washington, D.C. court a major case was heard and the decision could seriously affect anyone who would speak out in opposition to the climate propaganda that now surrounds us. Michael Mann, a climate scientist who is one of the major promoters of the questionable climate change fear tactics, filed suit against two scientists who had openly questioned Mann’s credibility. A jury awarded Mann a million dollars in damages. This is an absolute attack on free speech and the ability for anyone to question scientific findings.
Is it then a surprise that Senator Ted Cruz is probing ongoing efforts to quietly train federal judges on the Left’s climate change agenda? The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, funded by left-wing nonprofits, is quietly training judges nationwide on climate change litigation. So, don’t you dare question any of their policies, or it may be jail for you!
History has shown not a single success from top-down government control, whether socialist, communist, or today’s drive for a global Great Reset. All we’ve gained are a legacy of broken promises, poverty, misery, and the inevitable tyranny that follows. Yet, the Siren’s Song continues to draw its desperate believers. Today’s drive to eliminate free enterprise, individuality, and private property will not lead to an environmental paradise; rather, it will result in shattered American dreams.
The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, and Chris Talgo present episode 439 of the In The Tank Podcast. The electric vehicle industry can not catch a break. There have been a number of stories coming out highlighting the “sluggish” sales of electric vehicles over the past few months. But now, a recent study is challenging the very idea that electric cars are better for the environment. Additionally, a massive Tesla plant in Germany was apparently the target of ecoterrorism.
It seems like yet another climate doomsday prediction has failed to materialize.
In August of 2005, the ever-alarmed Guardian posted this scare story:
Warming hits ‘tipping point’
Siberia feels the heat It’s a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting. … “If we don’t take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide,” he said. “There’s still time to take action, but not much.
The article continues with:
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres – the size of France and Germany combined – has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
…
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying “tipping points” – delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
…
The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.
The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming”. He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.
Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
“When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it’s unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply,” said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Three things in the article are important to note:
As indicated by this PowerPoint presentation, the researcher Kirpotin visited in the summer, not the winter We have no weather records back to 11,000 years ago, we don’t know if such an event occurred in the summers of past millennia. But, it is reasonable to assume that given the propensity for that region to have large temperature swings, some melting in the summer is regular event every few years or decades. From Wikipedia, bold mine:
Verkhoyansk, a town further north and further inland, recorded a temperature of −69.8 °C (−93.6 °F) for three consecutive nights: 5, 6 and 7 February 1933. Each town is alternately considered the Northern Hemisphere’s Pole of Cold – the coldest inhabited point in the Northern hemisphere. Each town also frequently reaches 30 °C (86 °F) in the summer, giving them, and much of the rest of Russian Siberia, the world’s greatest temperature variation between summer’s highs and winter’s lows, often well over 94–100+ °C (169–180+ °F) between the seasons.
They say “…the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.” This indicates they don’t actually know, but are speculating. Speculation is not science, it is opinion. Further, three or four years is not long enough to establish any sort or climate pattern, which is defined by the World Meteorological Organization as being 30 years:
Climate is the average weather conditions for a particular location over a long period of time, ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. WMO uses a 30-year period to determine the average climate.
If we believe The Guardian story and those climate scientists in 2005, the whole area in Siberia must be a warm soupy mess by now, right?
Wrong.
That extended warming and melting just isn’t happening. While the researchers sounded alarm over a warm summer in Siberia in 2005, this past year has been completely the opposite. For example, this Washington Post Story from Jan 10, 2023: Siberia sees coldest air in two decades as temperature dips to minus-80
It must be tough to keep that permafrost at a melting tipping point with winter temperatures like that. Here is the view of the region today, note the widespread below zero temperatures:
You can be certain that any permafrost that “melted” during the summer is now refrozen and the tipping point aka “methane monster” is still in slumber.
Permafrost peatlands approach a climate tipping point Permafrost peatlands in Europe and Western Siberia are much closer to a climatic tipping point than previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Leeds. Scientists estimate that, even with the strongest efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions and therefore limit climate change, by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost.
If I’m still alive in 2040, I’ll write about it then. But my guess (or speculation if you like) based on the history so far is that the permafrost will still be there in Siberia, no catastrophic tipping point will have occurred, and the doomsday goalposts will have been pushed to 2060 and beyond.
CFACT student chapters are thriving on college campuses from coast to coast. Our bright young collegians are speaking out on issues of energy, environment, and individual liberty at public and government forums alike — and making their voices heard.
Maggie Immen, one of our Driessen Fellows at the University of Wyoming, recently presented hard-hitting facts on how wind turbines are a threat to birds before her state’s Public Service Commission. She did it dressed as an eagle.
The media loved it! She got a full write-up in the Cowboy State Daily showcasing her stunt.
At stake in Wyoming is a proposed 30 percent hike in electricity prices being sought by the utility called Rocky Mountain Power (RMP). The rate increase, according to RMP, is necessary to pay for the escalating costs attributed to new wind power being deployed throughout the state. Wyoming, rich in fossil fuels, used to get 97% of its power from coal and gas, but that has dropped to 70% in recent years. It was this rate hike to fund more wind power that Maggie was protesting. We now await the Commission’s final decision.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, CFACT students in Maryland and Virginia weighed in with public testimony opposing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) stamp of approval for two proposed wind farms 10 miles offshore of Ocean City, Maryland. Jamahl Evans, a CFACT Driessen Fellow from Old Dominion, took the lead in offering testimony. He stated during the online hearing, “Despite substantial subsidies, inflation has driven up the cost of building these steel wind towers to such a degree that companies have abandoned projects mid-build. To bail out these failing companies would require major electricity rate increases. This places an undue burden on the average and lower-income families in America, who are already struggling with rising costs of living.”
Of course, our student interns weren’t the only ones at CFACT taking aim at Big Wind over the past couple of weeks. I, too, had the honor of offering my testimony to BOEM against a ridiculous offshore wind proposal in Oregon. That proposal called for employing flimsy “floating wind” turbine technology to provide a pitiful amount of unreliable electricity generation to that state. You can read the full story about this and also find my comments HERE at cfact.org.
Biden Administration officials are beginning to discover that tremendous numbers of citizens are now emboldened to stand up in opposition to their irresponsible push for renewable energy expansion.
Best of all, the numbers keep growing, and they’re from diverse political affiliations.
For our part, CFACT is dedicated to providing the policy expertise and grassroots creativity needed to help the public not just push back but, one by one, score important energy victories that count.
Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.
“Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side, and the utility was going out for bid with all these big renewable-energy projects. But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.”
Opportunity cost is a central concept in economics. Economics is about the unseen versus the seen. Resources spent in one direction are not spent in another. The same goes for corporations as politically correct, economically incorrect priorities crowd out good. Climate change policy is a premier example.
Government-forced substitution of dilute, intermittent energies for reliable incumbents has not only cost taxpayers and ratepayers. It has also cost the environment–dearly. The recent saga of Hawaii Electric’s preoccupation with “the energy transition” at the expense of grid safety and reliability is the latest example of this.
As documented in the Wall Street Journal (and highlighted on the editorial page), the Maui tragedy is a cost of climate policy. And it is a reason why climate policy unintendedly promotes CO2 emissions that it otherwise is desperately trying to mitigate, a story for another day.
Here is my (unpublished) letter-to-the-editor at the Wall Street Journal: that goes over some other examples of government bringing out the worst in the business of energy.
The prioritization of “green” energy has brought black results [WSJ Editorial, “Maui’s Fires and the Electric Grid” (August 19-20, 2023) A12]. But the problem of climate and business imprudence is wider.
BP’s “beyond petroleum” focus was a factor behind the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy. And right before its collapse in 2001, solar developer and windpower leader Enron trumpeted how “incorporating environmental and social considerations into the way we manage risk, govern our projects, and develop products and services will help us maintain our competitive advantage.”
Rent-seeking by corporations and political correctness tend to crowd out the economically sound.
Wall Street Journal
Regarding Maui, here are some quotations from “Utility Knew Wildfires Were Threat, but Waited (Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2023, p. 1) by Katherine Blunt, Dan Frosch and Jim Carlton
During the 2019 wildfire season, one of the worst Maui had ever seen, Hawaiian Electric concluded that it needed to do far more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks…. Nearly four years later, the company has completed little such work…. In filings over the next two years with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which is tasked with approving utility projects and spending, the company made only passing reference to wildfire mitigation.
Former regulators and energy company officials said the utility was focused at that time on procuring renewable energy…. In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S. The company dove into reaching the goals….
“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.” The drive to reach the renewable goals also preoccupied private energy companies working with Hawaiian Electric and state energy officials, said Doug McLeod, a consultant who served for several years as the Maui county energy commissioner. “Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side, and the utility was going out for bid with all these big renewable-energy projects,” he said. “But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.” …
In June 2022, Hawaiian Electric sought regulatory permission to raise rates to fund a more comprehensive plan to prepare the grid for new climate change-related stresses, including elevated risk of wildfire. It said it planned to spend about $190 million on removing potentially hazardous trees, replacing and upgrading power lines, and other protective measures, many of which have been undertaken by other utilities throughout the West. As in many regulatory proceedings, the proposal has taken months to advance…. Hawaiian Electric said it believed there was an urgent need to complete the upgrades, but that it wouldn’t start on the work until it has state approval to recoup costs from customers—a common occurrence when utilities seek to make large investments….
PG&E, the Northern California utility giant, sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 after its power lines ignited a series of major fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 84 people and destroyed the town of Paradise Calif. That had been the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history until the Maui fire….
Since PG&E’s bankruptcy, Hawaiian Electric has made reference in regulatory filings to the risks of power-line fires, but it waited years to take significant action, documents and interviews show. During that period, the company was undertaking a state-mandated shift to renewable energy….
Appendix: WSJ Editorial
WSJ Editorial, “Maui’s Fires and the Electric Grid” (August 19-20, 2023) A12
The deadly fires in Maui last week are still being investigated, and there may have been more than one contributor. But one culprit that seems to be emerging is the trade off the local utility had to navigate between power grid safety and the government-mandated green energy transition. Video footage points to fallen power lines as a possible cause of the deadly fires….
If Hawaiian Electric’s lines did ignite the fires, it would echo the problems of PG&E, the California utility that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 after getting sued for tens of billions of dollars for damages from fires caused by its equipment. The 2018 Camp Fire killed 84 people and razed the town of Paradise.
What both utilities have in common is that they prioritized growing renewable power to meet government mandates over hardening their systems and reducing fire risk. In 2015 Hawaii lawmakers required that 100% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2045. California and some other states followed with similar mandates.
Hawaii’s mandate was an especially tall order since only about 20% of its power in 2015 came from renewables. The islands lack large amounts of empty land to build solar and wind. They also lack natural-gas power that can ramp up quickly to back them up.
Most of Hawaii’s power was derived from oil and coal. To meet the government mandate, Hawaiian Electric embarked on a rapid renewable build-out, which involved heavily subsidizing rooftop solar and batteries and contracting for large-scale renewables at elevated prices.
Oil can be an expensive fuel source, but decommissioning fossil-fuel plants prematurely wastes sunk capital. Every dollar the utility spent on subsidizing solar and connecting renewables to the grid was one less dollar available for strengthening equipment and removing combustible brush.
Despite rising fire risk from non-native grass, Hawaiian Electric spent less than $245,000 on wildfire projects on the island of Maui between 2019 and 2022. Not until last year did the utility seek state approval to raise rates for wildfire-safety improvements, which it still hasn’t received…. Hawaiian Electric now generates about 40% of power from renewables and at times produces more solar power than the grid can handle.
Grid upgrades required to connect renewables and balance their intermittent flows can divert scarce capital from system improvements needed to withstand physical stress, such as from heavy winds. A fraying electric grid is a nationwide problem. Consultants at Marsh McLennan estimate that more than $700 billion will need to be spent to replace aging transmission lines and maintain grid reliability. Sixty percent of U.S. distribution lines have surpassed their 50-year life expectancy….
Who’s the most important educator of Australian schoolkids? The learned amongst us might nominate my fellow-(ex)journo Derek Scott, CEO of Melbourne’s Haileybury College and current chair of ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority). Nah, not him.
My nomination is Jason Kimberley, whose dad, Craig Kimberley, sold the Just Jeans empire for $64 million in 2001. Jason’s 2008 brainchild, Cool Australia, is all about teaching kids to love the environment [1] and get with the anti-emissions program. But Jason’s own entertainments seem to have a giant carbon footprint – his Cool biography skites about travelling “throughout the globe”, climbing Mt Aconcagua (23,000ft), man-hauling sledges in Antarctica, walking Denali and kayaking Prince William Sound in Alaska for a month, trekking up Mt Everest and dogsledding in the Yukon.
Whatever, here’s Cool Australia’s impact on your kids and grandkids.
♦ 3.3 million kids last year engaged with the materials. Cool claims that since it started in 2008, it’s helped educate 16 million kids (2022 annual report, p2)
♦ Cool claims 205,000 “members” – i.e. teachers, but with a sprinkling of 20,000 parents/home-schoolers.
♦ The teachers downloaded and taught Cool’s lessons 340,000 times last year. Two million lessons have been downloaded since inception.
♦ Cool claims that each lesson teachers download is shared with two other teachers and used in more than two classes.
♦ Teachers love Cool’s pre-fabricated lessons because nearly half the teachers are teaching outside their expertise and three-quarters complain of unmanageable workloads.
♦ Cool’s ambition is for 1 million members (teachers, basically) enrolled by 2025, and 100 million kids educated by 2030. No, I haven’t added too many zeros. (Annual Report, p12)
So it’s clear that state education departments and private-sector schools have farmed out a good deal of education to Jason’s little team. Cool’s lessons cover the whole spectrum of school topics, and Cool’s design team ensure that every lesson they create is mapped to the official curricula. In other words, teachers can download the written and video material, set up the lesson and tick the box for teaching-job-accomplished.
Cool has partnered with green-left film-maker Damon Gameau to promote his films 2040 (92mins) and Regenerating Australia (17mins) with their absurd plot-lines based in the year 2040 and 2030 respectively. In those years all green policies are implemented and all are an unalloyed success in saving the planet from CO2 hell. The movie closes with rapturous music and vision of youngsters of all colors and creeds dancing through a forest to celebrate low CO2 levels. One 20-something gal in a white frock grows from her shoulder-blades giant butterfly wings that actually flap. This might well be the cheesiest movie clip ever made or even imaginable.
A teacher who screens or takes kids to see a screening of 2040 loses at least half a day’s serious teaching. Far from the leftist education authorities being concerned about indoctrination, we can safely assume they would see that as a bonus. After all, “Sustainability” is one of those three cross-curricula priorities, thanks to Labor’s then-education minister Julia Gillard and the “Melbourne Declaration” of December 2008. The “progressive” politicians and teachers’ unions, of course, endorse and promote Cool. Conservative politicians have never – to my knowledge – pushed back against it. They become their own pall-bearers as new cohorts of kids are brainwashed through the 13-year school system to voting age.
The half of all parents who lean conservative don’t enter the equation. Their kids come home spouting mantras about human-caused catastrophic global warming and how society can be transformed to net-zero emissions. Parents probably retain a vague idea that teachers are looking after their darlings’ best interest. They have no idea how the teachers have stepped back from the coalface (sorry, front-line) to let Cool’s zealots take over with their prefabricated lessons.
I’ve tracked Cool over the years, for example see here and here and here. I took a further look last week when preparing a short speech for the Carlton launch of Dr Mark Lopez’s new book, School Sucks(Connor Court). The talk gathers material on half a dozen leftist third-party institutions enjoying unfettered on-line rights to kids in the classrooms – access a transcript of the talk here. The fresh material from Cool rather threw me, with its naked green slant and palpable errors. Moreover Cool seems never to prune its old, stale material. Masses of it date from more than a decade ago – tired stuff then and trebly so when accessed by teachers today.
To take a random example, there’s a lesson for eight-year-olds about the Arctic and Antarctic. Apart from the supplied text, there’s a video of know-nothing teachers coaching the kids to regurgitate Cool’s messages. The cited data stops at 2008. The text says an increase of 0.5degC at the equator “would mean an increase of as much as 4-6 degrees at the poles [plural]”. Whatever might be happening in the Arctic, the Antarctic is making monkeys out of the global warming brigade’s theorising – it hasn’t warmed in 70 years despite a steady rise in atmospheric CO2, and that’s not even a controversial statement. Kids aren’t told about that, of course. Instead, Cool implies that “changing these patterns will affect our economy, people, crops, water supplies and pretty much everything we do.” Jason Kimberley himself stars in the video, claiming that “our continued burning of coil oil and gas is now having a direct effect on these frozen worlds.”
The film cuts to a teacher showing loss of Arctic sea ice for the decade to 2008 – which happened to be a low point followed by stability for the past decade. Eight-year-olds absorb the message, with a boy repeating back to the teacher that fossil fuel emissions and belching cows are hurting the poles, and a girl grieving that “if we lose the sea ice the animals will lose their homes and what they live on.”
Cool’s aim is not just to indoctrinate but to turn kids into horrid little activists. The video shows these eight-year-olds writing complaints to state and federal energy and resources ministers about emissions, and preparing two-minute-hates against fossil fuels for student radio. The kids say they want adults to cut down of fuels and driving cars around — an idea not entirely without merit, as last week I was cursing the parental traffic jams at the local school gates.
To complete the Soviet-style brainwashing, girls clap along to a song they created for the class:
[inaudible] melting ice, I wonder how they sleep at night. Global warming is so sad, Ice is melting really bad. People want to mine the ice: Oil and gas has a price.
To the strains of triumphant music, Jason Kimberley re-appears to harangue kids,
“We are mucking around with our planet’s thermostat by changing the balance of nature [cut to picture of power station belching steam]…Will we continue to destroy or can we learn to change? The choice is ours!”
Cool’s “Fact Sheets” present loaded and dubious material. One example is,
Fact Sheet:Angry Summer: Extreme Rainfall. All-time daily rainfall records for January. This presents the information that, in 2013 (note the staleness), a dozen east-coast hamlets such as Mundubbera (pop 1200), Monto (1100), Moogerah (250), and Old Koreelah (pop 800) had experienced record rain (weather “records” always pop up somewhere about something.) Cool’s intent is to demonstrate global warming’s ill effects. But the BoM report from which Cool takes the records, merely says the record rains stemmed from “the former tropical cyclone Oswald tracking southwards along a track just inland from the Queensland coast.” In a map in the same May 2013 document, the BoM clearly shows equivalent areas further inland at the same time suffering record or near-record low rainfall. (p7). This one-way “Fact Sheet” is an amateurish attempt by Cool to give schoolkids climate evidence based on one tropical cyclone’s unusual path.
Another stale “Fact Sheet” boosts China for its renewable energy expansion. It lauds China’s 7GW of installed solar and 63GW of installed windpower capacity as at 2012, without mentioning renewables (including hydro) represented only 8.5 per cent of China’s primary energy sources that year. A decade later (2021) fossil fuels were still providing 85 per cent of China’s energy. Cool is certainly not going to tell our schoolkids that the coal power capacity China began building in 2022 was six times as much as the rest of the world combined.
What really dropped my jaw, though, was Cool’s “Fact Sheet” on renewables. Its claims include
♦ Coal power plants are not very energy efficient and on average only 30-40% of the chemical energy in coal is converted to useful energy. The rest is lost as heat in the conversion process.
This is bizarre. Engineering has taken the thermal efficiency of modern coal plants close to the theoretical maximum. It’s an argument for coal power, not against it.
♦The alternative is renewable energy sources. These produce energy using natural resources that are constantly replaced and never run out.
♦ The amount of energy received from the sun in one hour could power the entire world for a year.
So what? That doesn’t make solar-panel energy cheap, clean or reliable 24/7.
♦ The best part about solar energy is that it creates almost no pollution — some pollution may be generated in building and transporting the solar panels.
Note that Cool makes no mention of horrific and polluting third-world mineral extraction for panels, the Chinese manufacturing near-monopoly, or future problems disposing of millions of toxic panels.
♦Every 24 hours, wind generates enough energy to produce roughly 35x more electricity than humanity uses each day. However, only 8 per cent of Australia’s electricity generation in 2019-20 came from wind power.
For the good reasons that wind power is intermittent, requires vast tracts of land for its low-density energy, and is only viable after massive taxpayer and consumer subsidies. Further, the material pretends that wind’s intermittency is no problem
♦ Wind is not constant and doesn’t blow in the same place all the time (although there will always be wind somewhere and it will never run out, making it a truly renewable source of energy). If the wind turbines are spread far enough they can be always capturing the wind energy and putting it into the grid.
Real fact: wind droughts are normal across the Eastern States grid and can last several days – way beyond any offset from any conceivable battery storage. It is hard to know if the Cool writers are knowingly misleading kids or merely believe their own nonsense.[4]
♦The trouble with wind energy has nothing to do with energy creation itself, but everything to do with the look of wind turbines.
What childish nonsense!
♦ Some people have a problem with them, and this has prevented a number of wind farms being constructed in Australia and other parts of the world.
Weirdly, Cool disparages emission-free hydro power because the power availability varies with rain levels. But Cool has no problem with solar power varying to zero at night, or wind power varying every ten minutes.
♦ Also, constructing the dams and diverting the rivers … can lead to environmental damage, both through the construction of the dam and also through reduced water flows to the natural environment.
So let’s litter the environment with wind turbines instead!
Nuclear: Cool tells kids to rule it out, despite zero-emissions, because it’s costly to build [so what, that’s for the market to decide], creates a nuclear waste problem [which the French and Western world have dealt with for more than half a century], and is a nuclear weapon risk [ditto]. It also lamely cites accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979, (with no fatalities and only ambiguous evidence of any radioactivity harms) and the outdated, Soviet-era, graphite moderated Chernobyl (1986).
Further fact-checking Cool material that teachers stuff down the throats of kids from age of five is just too depressing. In a democracy those with power are supposed to be accountable. But to whom are these leftist institutions intruding into our classrooms accountable?
_________________________
[1] “Jason identified the need to provide our current and future generations with relevant and engaging information about the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental. Our education system was identified as the most important and effective medium for connecting real-world education with kids.”
[2] “Step 2. Now explain to students that they will be watching a clip featuring Bruce Pascoe. Bruce Pascoe is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man … In 2014 he published a book called Dark Emu which documents and argues “for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag” (source: Dark Emu, 2018).
[4]Rafe Champion, Spectator, Nov 9, 2022: “The [AEMO] records can be interrogated to the depth and duration of all the wind droughts from 2010 to the latest serious episode which lasted over 40 hours through the 7th, 8th, and 9th of August.”
The national park will now be officially referred to as the “Bannau Brycheiniog” National Park, granting the landscape a Welsh name, and steering clear of any associations with historical signal fires.
Officials said the symbol of a flaming beacon emitting carbon “does not fit with the ethos” of the national park as an eco-friendly organisation.
However, on Sunday night, a senior Conservative source attacked the decision as “pure virtue signalling” that would “do nothing to actually help the environment”.
Catherine Mealing-Jones, the chief executive of Brecon Beacons National Park, said: “We’re an environmental organisation. We’re trying to cut carbon and push to net zero. So, having a carbon burning beacon just isn’t a good look.
“We’ve had awful wildfires over the last few years. So anything that kind of promotes that idea that fire in the landscape is a good thing made us feel that it probably wasn’t the look we’re going for.”
The name change is in “direct response to the climate and biodiversity emergency”, and is part of a broader new vision for the park that includes onshore wind turbines and reduced sheep numbers. The park aims to reach net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
The linguistic reasoning behind the name change has sparked fears in Westminster that a precedent may be set for changing names if they happen to inflame the sensitivities of environmentalists.
‘Is it April Fools day?’
Sir Robert Goodwill, the Tory chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee, told The Telegraph: “Next thing they’ll be renaming Burns’ Night.”
He said that place names like “Coalville” or “Blackburn” might be equally at risk under the logic of avoiding links to carbon-emissions, adding: “I have to say that I have never made the association between the Beacons and fire.
“I think it is more important to retain historical names as part of our heritage. I had to recheck my diary when I heard this ludicrous suggestion just to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ day.”
There is no definitive historical evidence of warning beacons ever being lit on the peaks.
FILE – Dairy cows graze on a farm near Oxford, New Zealand, on Oct. 8, 2018. New Zealand scientists are coming up with some surprising solutions for how to reduce methane emissions from farm animals. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)
Earth Day started 50 years ago, and if you judge the event by society’s environmental conscientiousness, it’s been a success. Today, people are increasingly considering the environmental impact of products they buy. That’s true not just of cars and clothing, but also what we eat.
A survey last year found that 37% of consumers look for sustainability claims on food. Food marketers have taken note, increasing the number of food products with eco claims.
But buyers should beware: Not all food sustainability claims are true.
Where is the Beef?
Perhaps the single most common claim you’ll hear today about food is that meat is bad for the environment. Ads for plant-based fake meat commonly assert this. These claims are parroted by animal rights activists who–naturally–don’t like people eating meat. You can even find a few documentaries that try to paint meat as eco-unfriendly.
But is eating meat actually bad for the environment? No.
A frequently cited statistic is that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from animal agriculture. But what you may not know is that this figure doesn’t apply to the US, where we have the most advanced modern agricultural technology in the world.
American agriculture has become economically and environmentally more efficient over time. For instance, we need 60% fewer cows yet produce twice as much milk as we did in the 1930s.
The EPA tracks greenhouse gas emissions and reports them by sector. According to the EPA, all of our agriculture only accounts for about 9% of total US greenhouse gas emissions, while animal agriculture accounts for only about 4%. That’s why researchers estimate that if the entire U.S. population went vegan tomorrow, it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 3%. That also means, as an individual, giving up meat will have zero impact on curbing climate change.
Fake Meat Doesn’t Lower Emissions
It turns out that producing plant-based fake meats actually produces the same amount of emissions as producing chicken. And cell-cultured meat–that is, grown from cells in a lab setting–has five times the emissions of regular chicken.
Why? Because while making fake meat may use less land than raising chickens, it uses much more electricity to power all those factories that make fake meat.
“Organic” Feels Good
“Organic” is another term that many consumers look for, thinking organic food is better for the environment and their health. Once again, reality is different from perception.
A recent study of organic vs. modern agriculture on different factors such as land use, climate, over-fertilization, and energy use. Modern farming was superior on land use while organic farming was better on chemicals.Overall, the two compared equally on most factors.
(Most consumers also believe that organic food is more nutritious. But once again, scientific research has found there’s no real difference.)
Food Waste Is Important
The biggest environmental impact associated with food isn’t about the food we eat. It is actually about food we don’t eat.
The USDA estimates that up to one-third of food produced in the country is thrown away. Whether that’s meat or fake meat, or organic produce or non-organic produce, that food took resources to grow and fuel to transport. And all of those resources go to waste when you don’t finish your meal or throw out the leftovers.
What’s the lesson?
Eat what you want and ignore the marketing claims. In the big picture, anyone’s diet has a small footprint. But whatever you choose to eat, make sure you don’t let it go to waste.
Share this:
Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. View more
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookies list
Cookie name
Active
Wer wir sind
Textvorschlag: Die Adresse unserer Website ist: https://climate-science.press.
Kommentare
Textvorschlag: Wenn Besucher Kommentare auf der Website schreiben, sammeln wir die Daten, die im Kommentar-Formular angezeigt werden, außerdem die IP-Adresse des Besuchers und den User-Agent-String (damit wird der Browser identifiziert), um die Erkennung von Spam zu unterstützen.
Aus deiner E-Mail-Adresse kann eine anonymisierte Zeichenfolge erstellt (auch Hash genannt) und dem Gravatar-Dienst übergeben werden, um zu prüfen, ob du diesen benutzt. Die Datenschutzerklärung des Gravatar-Dienstes findest du hier: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Nachdem dein Kommentar freigegeben wurde, ist dein Profilbild öffentlich im Kontext deines Kommentars sichtbar.
Medien
Textvorschlag: Wenn du ein registrierter Benutzer bist und Fotos auf diese Website lädst, solltest du vermeiden, Fotos mit einem EXIF-GPS-Standort hochzuladen. Besucher dieser Website könnten Fotos, die auf dieser Website gespeichert sind, herunterladen und deren Standort-Informationen extrahieren.
Cookies
Textvorschlag: Wenn du einen Kommentar auf unserer Website schreibst, kann das eine Einwilligung sein, deinen Namen, E-Mail-Adresse und Website in Cookies zu speichern. Dies ist eine Komfortfunktion, damit du nicht, wenn du einen weiteren Kommentar schreibst, all diese Daten erneut eingeben musst. Diese Cookies werden ein Jahr lang gespeichert.
Falls du ein Konto hast und dich auf dieser Website anmeldest, werden wir ein temporäres Cookie setzen, um festzustellen, ob dein Browser Cookies akzeptiert. Dieses Cookie enthält keine personenbezogenen Daten und wird verworfen, wenn du deinen Browser schließt.
Wenn du dich anmeldest, werden wir einige Cookies einrichten, um deine Anmeldeinformationen und Anzeigeoptionen zu speichern. Anmelde-Cookies verfallen nach zwei Tagen und Cookies für die Anzeigeoptionen nach einem Jahr. Falls du bei der Anmeldung „Angemeldet bleiben“ auswählst, wird deine Anmeldung zwei Wochen lang aufrechterhalten. Mit der Abmeldung aus deinem Konto werden die Anmelde-Cookies gelöscht.
Wenn du einen Artikel bearbeitest oder veröffentlichst, wird ein zusätzlicher Cookie in deinem Browser gespeichert. Dieser Cookie enthält keine personenbezogenen Daten und verweist nur auf die Beitrags-ID des Artikels, den du gerade bearbeitet hast. Der Cookie verfällt nach einem Tag.
Eingebettete Inhalte von anderen Websites
Textvorschlag: Beiträge auf dieser Website können eingebettete Inhalte beinhalten (z. B. Videos, Bilder, Beiträge etc.). Eingebettete Inhalte von anderen Websites verhalten sich exakt so, als ob der Besucher die andere Website besucht hätte.
Diese Websites können Daten über dich sammeln, Cookies benutzen, zusätzliche Tracking-Dienste von Dritten einbetten und deine Interaktion mit diesem eingebetteten Inhalt aufzeichnen, inklusive deiner Interaktion mit dem eingebetteten Inhalt, falls du ein Konto hast und auf dieser Website angemeldet bist.
Mit wem wir deine Daten teilen
Textvorschlag: Wenn du eine Zurücksetzung des Passworts beantragst, wird deine IP-Adresse in der E-Mail zur Zurücksetzung enthalten sein.
Wie lange wir deine Daten speichern
Textvorschlag: Wenn du einen Kommentar schreibst, wird dieser inklusive Metadaten zeitlich unbegrenzt gespeichert. Auf diese Art können wir Folgekommentare automatisch erkennen und freigeben, anstatt sie in einer Moderations-Warteschlange festzuhalten.
Für Benutzer, die sich auf unserer Website registrieren, speichern wir zusätzlich die persönlichen Informationen, die sie in ihren Benutzerprofilen angeben. Alle Benutzer können jederzeit ihre persönlichen Informationen einsehen, verändern oder löschen (der Benutzername kann nicht verändert werden). Administratoren der Website können diese Informationen ebenfalls einsehen und verändern.
Welche Rechte du an deinen Daten hast
Textvorschlag: Wenn du ein Konto auf dieser Website besitzt oder Kommentare geschrieben hast, kannst du einen Export deiner personenbezogenen Daten bei uns anfordern, inklusive aller Daten, die du uns mitgeteilt hast. Darüber hinaus kannst du die Löschung aller personenbezogenen Daten, die wir von dir gespeichert haben, anfordern. Dies umfasst nicht die Daten, die wir aufgrund administrativer, rechtlicher oder sicherheitsrelevanter Notwendigkeiten aufbewahren müssen.
Wohin deine Daten gesendet werden
Textvorschlag: Besucher-Kommentare könnten von einem automatisierten Dienst zur Spam-Erkennung untersucht werden.
