Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Tom Cheshire, Sky Technology Correspondent, has claimed that President-elect Donald Trump is a “climate denier” because of his legal battle to prevent offshore wind turbines messing up sea views at his Aberdeenshire Golf Course.
Sky Views: Why Trump denies climate change
Tom Cheshire, Technology Correspondent
When the oceans rise and the world ends, do remember to thank the RSPB for their small part in armageddon.
I’ll get round to the twitchers’ role in our doom shortly, but that doom feels closer than ever.
Mr Trump’s incoming administration will likely be the most anti-scientific and anti-technological in a while.
The President-elect is a climate change denier, one of his few consistent positions.
…
Trump denies climate change because he hates wind turbines. Can’t stand them.
Trump didn’t care about global warming until a renewable-energy company proposed building 33 wind turbines off the coast of Aberdeenshire. Right next to where Trump wanted to build a golf course.
For more than a decade, Trump has been fighting those turbines.
He was still lodging objections on the presidential campaign trail, after Scottish judges threw out an appeal against the development.
The golf course has been built. The wind farms still have not.
It was in 2006 that RSPB Scotland came to Trump’s aid, also opposing the wind turbines, saying they were “extremely concerned” about their effect on avian life.
Trump seized on the orniphile argument, a step on his journey to climate change sceptic.
…
Read more: http://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-why-trump-denies-climate-change-10677570
Is support for wind turbines and support for climate action the same thing? Sky correspondent Tom Cheshire is not alone in conflating opposition to wind turbines with climate “denial”.
Former NASA Chairman James Hansen, the granddaddy of the climate movement, whose pivotal testimony in 1988 kicked off the entire global climate scare – can you think of anyone with a stronger, more consistent track record of climate activism? Yet Hansen’s decades of crusading against fossil fuels wasn’t enough for some greens. Naomi Oreskes in 2015 accused Hansen of practicing a “strange new form of denial”, because Hansen supports nuclear power – he thinks renewables aren’t up to the job of rapidly decarbonising the economy.
Like Trump, in 2006 prominent eco-activist Robert F. Kennedy Jnr. vigorously opposed a planned offshore turbine installation which would have messed up the view.
RFK Jr. and other prominent enviros face off over Cape Cod wind farm
By Amanda Little on Jan 13, 2006
A long-simmering disagreement within the environmental community over a plan to build a massive wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., is now boiling over into a highly public quarrel.
The four-year-old battle started heating up last summer when Greenpeace USA staged a demonstration against well-known eco-activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s been an outspoken opponent of the proposal for a 130-turbine wind-power project in Horseshoe Shoal, a shallow portion of Nantucket Sound south of Cape Cod. Kennedy — a senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council and a pioneer in the waterway-protection movement — was on a sailboat for an event with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which opposes the wind project. A Greenpeace vessel cruised up alongside with a banner that read, “Bobby, you’re on the wrong boat” — a stunt that was part of a larger Greenpeace campaign pressuring Kennedy to change his mind on the development. (Hear audio from the Greenpeace/Kennedy confrontation.)
…
Read more: http://grist.org/article/capecod/
Does RFK Jr.’s opposition to offshore wind turbines in a place of scenic beauty make him a “denier”?
What does President-elect Trump think of wind turbines?
…
Trump: Our energy companies are a disaster right now. Coal. The coal business is – you know, there is such a thing as clean coal. Our miners are out of work – now they’re just attacking energy companies like I’ve never seen them attack anything before.
They want everything to be wind and solar. Unfortunately, it’s not working on large-scale. It’s just not working. Solar is very, very expensive. Wind is very, very expensive, and it only works when it’s windy.
Cain: Right.
Trump: Someone might need a little electricity – a lot of times, it’s the opposite season, actually. When they have it, that’s when you don’t need it. So wind is very problematic and – I’m not saying I’m against those things. I’m for everything. I’m for everything.
Cain: Right.
Trump: But they are destroying our energy companies with regulation. They’re absolutely destroying them.
Cain: But their viability has to be demonstrated before you shove it down the throats of the American people. That’s what you’re saying.
Trump: In all fairness, wind is fine. Sometimes you go – I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Palm Springs, California — it looks like a junkyard. They have all these different –
Cain: I have.
Trump: They have all these different companies and each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way – not from here. And you look at all these windmills. Half of them are broken. They’re rusting and rotting. You know, you’re driving into Palm Springs, California, and it looks like a poor man’s version of Disneyland. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen.
And it kills all the birds. I don’t know if you know that…Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California – they’ve killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds.
…
Read more: http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/10/25/herman-cain-and-donald-trump-tilt-at-west-coast-windmills/
Why to skeptics oppose climate action?
The reason in my opinion, quite simply, is the green movement stuffed up – they couldn’t bring themselves to present a compelling, consistent position.
If greens had embraced nuclear power from the start, like James Hansen, I and many other skeptics would probably never have questioned predictions of imminent climate catastrophe – I would likely have been out there on the streets, joining in with the mass demonstrations, demanding an end to fossil fuels for the sake of our children’s future.
By insisting that the solution had to be renewables, which clearly aren’t up to the job, and demanding more government control of the economy, greens raised legitimate concerns that there was something very wrong with what they were advocating.
Think about it – even if you believe nuclear power is really dangerous, what harm are a few nuclear meltdowns every year, compared to the risk that carbon emissions will irreversibly destroy the entire world? The majority green position simply doesn’t make sense.
Climate skeptics do not oppose action on climate change because we hate wind turbines. Skeptics oppose climate action because green insistence on ridiculously implausible responses, to a problem which greens claim is an existential crisis, forced us to ask questions, to dig deeper, to examine and reject their utterly inadequate supporting evidence.
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The reasons Trump gives for opposing wind are all reasonable, and ones I share–uneconomic, intermittent, ugly, bird killers. The green blob seems to like only those things that do not really work. As Ehrlich wrote many years ago, letting society have an cheap, unlimited source of power is like giving an idiot child a machine gun.
Allowing the green mob access to serious political power and money has been the real world example of giving deranged children machine guns. And have you read what the poster boy of green mob derangement, Mr. Obama, has been saying lately? He has devolved into a an anti-freedom, pro-censorship thug regarding because of his climate extremism.
“And have you read what the poster boy of green mob derangement, Mr. Obama, has been saying lately? He has devolved into a an anti-freedom, pro-censorship thug regarding because of his climate extremism.”
Yeah, and Obama, the worst president evah!, looks like he is going to try for the title of “Worst Ex-President Evah!”, when he leaves Office.
I think it is certain we will hear him speaking out on all the issues he holds dear (no George W here), and we may even see him marching in the street demonstrations. Yep, “worst president evah!” and possibly “worst ex-president evah!”
Carter is trying to one-up Obama. He wants Obama to recognize Palestine as a state, before he leaves Office.
I recall one poster saying a while back: “Obama is a lame duck, what harm can he do?” The poster has to realize Obama is very creative when it comes to Leftwing lunacy. And Carter is egging him on.
Carter used to be the “worst president evah!” but Obama has surpassed him many times over, and now it’s not even close.
I’ve said before I thought Obama’s activism after he leaves Office will be in vain, that noone would listen to him, but I think I have to qualify that a little, since the Democrat party has NO leader other than Obama, so the Democrat party *will* listen to him and will need him to push their agenda, so they will strongly support him in whatever he does. That doesn’t mean the Amerian people will support him, though.
The American people have already proven that they reject all of Obama’s major ideas, despite his having an approval rating over 50 percent. He got that rating because the MSM *never* criticizes him. They treat him like an innocent bystander when anything controversial comes up.
But the proof is in the polls: The American people reject Obama’s agenda, and they rejected Hillary Clinton, who would have continued that agenda.
So we may have to listen to Obama for a while longer, even after the handover, but I don’t think it is going to change the new course we are on with Trump. Obama and the Left are going to be in the rear-view mirror.
Obama has always been anti-freedom pro-censorship, etc. It’s just that now that the election is over, he has no reason to hide his true feelings anymore.
..Some liberal colleges and cites in the U.S.A. have banned the American flag, but fly the U.N. flag instead ?
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/11/30/jesse-watters-world-confronts-hampshire-college-president-flag-removal
Freedom of expression still exists, despite everything the socialists have tried to do.
However, such colleges have no right to expect federal or state dollars either.
However, those who oppose them do not do so because they are climate skeptics, but because they hate them.
For good reasons, including
1. They emit an unbelievably high level of low frequency (~1 Hz) industrial noise, which can never be attenuated by any means and is completely unregulated, can’t even be measured by standard noise control equipment.
2. Therefore Wind Turbines can be Hazardous to Human Health
3. Their land use footprint is inherently enormous due to the low power flux density of their source.
4. Their power output is intermittent, its average is not even close to their name plate capacity and needs huge backup generators or insanely expensive storage.
5. For these reasons electricity coming from wind turbines is expensive.
6. Large swaths of countryside have to be paved over to make installation &. maintenance possible. It is an order of magnitude more expensive over sea.
7. They destroy scenic views.
8. Decommissioning is not regulated, its cost is not included in installation &. operational costs, so abandoned machines are regularly left rotting in place.
9. They kill birds &. bats en masse. Velocity of blade tips is close to the speed of sound.
Except all studies have shown no health impacts from wind turbines/low frequency etc sound from them
Like this one:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-16/windfarm-results/4959556
None of your other points are valid either, except the subjective one they ruin views.
How about reading some actual information about infrasound.
https://neuroresearchproject.com/2013/02/19/1289/
Sorry, Griff, but that item #8 above is a deal killer for wind farms (and your silly argument, too).
I used to work in the mining industry and ALL mining/milling facilities now require a reclamation plan and bond before construction turns one shovel-full. Before that policy was implemented, operations were left abandoned and nothing was worse for the environment.
Since there is no reclamation or bonding requirements for wind farms, they too will become an eyesore, health hazard, and burden to communities. Indeed, many already have since they aren’t economically viable and are left as some of the most obtrusive “bone yards” imaginable.
One additional note: I detect a constant unethical theme to all your arguments, Griff–like you’re not willing to address the issue in a professional manner. What’s the reason? Are you paid to be so contrary that everybody is laughing at your excuses? You come off as completely ignorant regarding the subject.
Where do wind turbines come from? Do you plant a whirlygig and water it so it will grow? Or is it manufactured? Seems you gloss over the pollution from that process! LOL
One can say that. But only because there are no LFN &. infrasound zoning regulations, so accepted limits can be considered arbitrarily large, while any noise from real physical sources has finite amplitude.
Otherwise I would rather not open a debate over health effects of low frequency noise, because I happen to know a lot about the workings of the inner ear, including the vestibular system, while you — apparently nothing.
http://oto2.wustl.edu/cochlea/windmills/windspectra.gif
The dB scale is logarithmic. Sound energy is a million times higher at 100 dB, than at 40 dB.
Wow, Griff, when you decide to ignore reality, you go whole hog.
They don’t have an enormous footprint?
Their power isn’t intermittent?
The output from them isn’t expensive?
They haven’t created lots of roads to first build and now service these things?
Decommissioning is regulated? Please point out where.
The fact that they kill birds and bats is well documented.
Griff: “Except all studies have shown no health impacts from wind turbines/low frequency etc sound from them”
Yet another bunch of porkie pies!
You just can’t help making stuff up, can you, Griffie?
And you didn’t even mention SEA LIFE. there absolutely no reports or findings on what they do to fish and other sea live when you talk of their impact.
First of all, when I want to know what someone thinks, says, or does, I will go to the source. I never trust what anybody tries to tell me about what another person thinks, says, or does because the rumor-mongers always have their own agendas.
That said, I think any dislike Trump harbors for wind turbines pales in comparison to that held by raptors, bats, migratory fowl, and humans who live within hollering range of one.
Well said. I live 8 miles from a group of said ecodestroyers. I see them out my south window daily. More can be seen from 1/2 mile up my road—about 40 or more in the distance. Blinking red lights all night long. A constant reminder of what happens when you convince people there’s a tooth fairy (no rational person can actually think these things work for any thing other than enriching huge companies and landowners with the turbines on their land.) Trump cannot hate them more than I do.
We have a line of them 28 miles long, from Wildorado past Vega to Wimberly Place (north of Adrian), all which I can see from the door to my office 38 miles from the western end. One of the things I like about Amarillo is the view, but even Don Quixote would find this file of ogres daunting.
tadchem: Yeah, these things are visible for miles and miles and miles. It’s depressing.
Note that SKY News is not located where wind turbines whine. Ted Kennedy opposed offshore wind turbines as well. As for nuclear power meltdowns – in the Western world there have been
almost too few to mention, none of which harmed anyone in over 60 years of operation. Todays traditionally light water reactors are Generation 3 and an estimated 1000 times less likely to suffer a melt down. We also now have rapid response emergency centers that can, for example, airllift
equipment to any reactor, and reactors these days also have more backup devices than before.
Anyone worrying about meltdowns is wasting their time, and voicing their fears displays more about themselves than about the nuclear technology. As we see over and over, extreme environmentalists are obscenely ignorant of power technologies. They mentally manufacture disasters that have almost no likelihood of ever happening, and if they did, would not be anywhere near the severity they prophesize. Extreme environmentalists are bizarre, anal types.
“Anyone worrying about meltdowns is wasting their time, and voicing their fears displays more about themselves than about the nuclear technology. ”
Exactly. It is not that difficult to insure that you have cooling water flowing through the reactor. The only reason the Fukushima reactor lost cooling was because the engineers didn’t supply sufficent backup options and put the electrical generators in a vulnerable position where flood waters could knock them out. Poor design can be fixed.
The reactor that melted down in Fukushima, was already scheduled to be shutdown and mothballed.
Sky was doing a public service, trying to make sure that the public has a great example of “fake news’. Climate skeptics are made up of the growing number of people people who see that “fake news” and “climate change news” are synonymous.
Apparently Obama gave an interview to “Mother Jones” where went on and on whining about fake news and how it impacted the election.
For those who don’t remember, a court recently found against “Mother Jones” because a story they wrote about a college rape turned out to have never happened.
I tried to find some details on this case, but surprise, surprise, google seems to have bit bucketed all stories on it.
…the Russians did it
Are you confusing Mother Jones with The Rolling Stone ? The Rolling Stone is being sued by, IRRC, the dean at U. of Virginia for allegations she failed to react properly to the rape report, but I do not believe there is a court decision.
Yes there has been. The plaintiff won $7 million from Rolling Stone and the Author. It will be appealed. And it is just the first case (this one was from a Dean of Students who claimed defamation. The Fraternity is also suing, as is the University itself).
Apparently I missed the news. The suit by Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo was decided for the plaintiff on Nov 4th:
I bet Mark Steyn wishes the DC courts were as prompt!
Sorry Alan for my duplicate post of yours. And yes, I bet Steyn would love to get his case before this court!
MarkW, you have confused Mother Jones and Rolling Stone. While their politics are much the same, they are different operations.
WOW! So now they are calling Trump a Kennedy! LOL
You gotta love the disingenuous arguments of the Warmunists. The truth is, that without the anti-carbon, faux “climate change” issue propelling them, there would be no wind industry, and solar would be just a blip – certainly not remotely considered an option for grid-scale electricity. All of the other reasons for disliking wind and solar are just icing on the cake.
Where are they now ALL those lefties who were losing their minds over the possibility Eagles becoming extinct.
They didn’t care if eagles became extinct. They care nothing about wildlife. It’s just a means to an end. They’d line up all the polar bears and exterminate them if it furthered their agenda.
I agree that had the push been toward more nuclear power, CO2 could have been dramatically reduced with little or no problem. However, reducing CO2 was never the goal, as is obvious to anyone who thinks at all. Hatred of humans was the motivation and killing off as many as humans as possible was the goal. Apparently all that pollution from coal and oil was too effectively cleaned up, so a different track had to be taken. Not “clean coal” but rather “no coal”. No heat, no lights, no food all to follow.
To coin a phrase, “What difference does it make?” Especially since industrial wind turbines are ‘Climate Change Scarecrows’.
I hate Windmills too.
Oh, Elmer. I had to stop it at 18 seconds. So sad.
And all for — NOTHING.
They slaughtered those magnificent birds for nothing.
Only a sick person would think that was okay.
(and thanks for posting it even though I couldn’t bear to watch most of it)
Janice
If there is any single thing that exposes the total hypocrisy of the so-called “Greens” and their utterly false pretence to care about nature and the environment, it is that film.
Utter hateful vermin the lot of them.
Agreed, cat.
Thanks for the warning I declined (for now) watching it , I just ate dinner) Dinner btw way was great as I watched Trump’s speech in Ohio tonight, it was a masterpiece!!
‘doom feels closer than ever’
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! IT’S SCIENCE!
Cheshire is clownish.
Green activists like Oreskes live in a bubble universe of lefty discourse. They only read and talk to lefty writers. She personally hasn’t a clue about energy systems. When challenged on twitter she had to recruit buddy Mark Z Jacobson (MZJ) to defend her view on renewable energy. She’s so confident in renewables she’ll call someone a climate change denier for not supporting it 100%. Yet she knows very little about those renewables; and probably less about climate science. That was MZJ, the 100%-renewable energy hypothesist who is funded by natural gas interests: Precourt. They even call it the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. It’s wildly amusing to see Oreskes standing shoulder to shoulder with natural gas funded Jacobson to denounce Hansen for not supporting 100%-renewable energy when she, herself, can’t defend renewable power against 2 or 3 twitter nuclear power advocates who don’t even have degrees in science or engineering. They just had the right numbers: real ones rather than fantasy renewable energy numbers which we see paraded around at places like ClimateProgress, SkepticalScience and other left sites.
@MarkW December 1, 2016 at 10:00 am
You wrote: “I don’t know anyone who has proposed building power plants of any type without cooling towers.”
Mark, cooling towers are needed only if there isn’t adequate cooling water available elsewhere, We have a plant on the Bay of Fundy where the water is cold enough that a cooling tower is unnecessary, and I suspect that other nuclear plants located similarly also have no need of cooling towers. (My apologies if this has already been covered in the many letters that I have not yet read.)
Ian M
Practical productive people in general aren’t much for the constant cultured collective angst against getting real things done or insisting on elaborate solutions to non problems. I had a research project being done at the Ecole Polytechnique (Engineering) at the U of Montreal a few years ago when the worst demonstration crippled the U for months causing most students to lose their year. I went to Mtl to find Polytechnique hard at work. They said science, engineering and medicine didn’t join the protest! Guess what groups made up the demo?
Trump is too busy and productive to get excited by Kumbaya crises. Thankfully there are still enough unbrainwashed pragmatic folk to keep this crazy boat afloat. You get an immediate picture of the critic when you see his outrage against someone trying to protect his property and investment. Such critics don’t know that their own A55e5 are being saved by pragmatic hard workers. Like trying to save the Nile crocodile, expect the croc to be snapping at the backside of its savior.
science, engineering and medicine didn’t join the protest
And that’s why criminal defense attorneys try to excuse them during jury selection. Can’t have facts and logic determining the verdict. Can’t have a keenly logical, bright, mind influencing all the “I just felt like Casey Anthony (or whatever that monster’s name is — yes, “monster” — this is a logical conclusion from the evidence known to the public, and from the lack of ANY rational reason given by any of her jurors for their verdict truly or ANY”reasonable” doubt possible given the evidence admitted) couldn’t do that to her little girl” (BARF!) jurors. Her defense attorney picked an “I just feel that human CO2 must do something enduringly significant to the climate of the earth as a whole” jury.
“I just feel …” people get a LOT of undeserved respect and deference paid them, as if feelings, per se, are meritorious.
Time to TRUMPet the fact (as Dean from Ohio got us started emphasizing recently) that THINKING people are the most truly caring people!
And, personally, I think engineers are the best (3 in particular… one, especially…)! 🙂
“Mr Trump’s incoming administration will likely be the most anti-scientific and anti-technological in a while.”
Oh I don’t know about that. Coaxing such large molecules to behave so well at so many different things
http://www.chemistryland.com/ElementarySchool/BuildingBlocks/hydrocarbonsMore.jpg
seems like a bit of a technical success to me.
+1!
+++Janice, t.y.–from one great fan of transportation to another (:
“Mr Trump’s incoming administration will likely be the most anti-scientific and anti-technological in a while.”
One little spanner for the works. How else but by chemistry and applied science are you going to derive all of these useful products from one rock:
http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/image/tree1.gif
*cement should be on the “coke” limb
http://omrudra.net/images/coal.png
In reality it is the environmentalists who are suffering from some sort of extreme manic disorder or phobic response to chemistry and physics. I am serious. I am trying to help here.
“Climate skeptics do not oppose action on climate change because we hate wind turbines.”
Climate skeptics don’t even exist, it seems obvious to me . . but hey, why actually BE skeptical, when you can just unskeptically repeat a senseless label? I pray the general public is smarter than you geniuses, and manage to figure out that you can’t possibly be what you claim you are . . I sure a hell plan on helping them if you won’t, for all out sake . .
The following post is from The Global Warming Policy Foundation in London, December 1, 2016.
More green energy nonsense, and the gradual awakening of the Europeans to the folly of wind and solar power. This is how all popular delusions end – first the true believers start to question the obvious folly of their ways, ever so slowly, and with extreme difficulty.
This is because global warming hysteria is NOT a scientific reality – it is a false religious belief cherished by fanatics who have no scientific competence. I say this because their predictive track record is perfectly negative – every one of their scary predictions has failed to materialize.
There is NO scientific evidence that the sensitivity of climate to increasing atmospheric CO2 will cause dangerous global warming. Some theoretical physics analyses suggest increasing CO2 may cause some warming, but that warming will probably be insignificant, This is unfortunate, because a somewhat warmer would be a better world, for both humanity AND the environment.
The only clear consequence of increased atmospheric CO2 is that plant growth has been enhanced and the planet has greened significantly. This is clearly beneficial to humanity and the environment.
Regrettably, I think Earth is about to get colder due to natural causes, and humanity and the environment both suffer in a colder world. The greater threat is that in a few thousand years (at most) we will re-enter a real Ice Age, and the most prosperous parts of our planet, virtually all Western Europe, Russia, Canada and the northern USA will be covered by continental glaciers a mile thick, just as they were about 10,000 years ago – and this Ice Age will last about 100,000 years. This will be the fourth such Ice Age cycle in the last ~400,000 years
It may be that we can prevent this Ice Age disaster by controlling the albedo of the advancing ice sheet, but maybe we cannot. This is the real threat of (natural) climate change, and the global warming fanatics could not have gotten it more wrong.
It is apparent that, in the main, we are governed by scoundrels and imbeciles.
Regards, Allan
________________________________________________________________
See my above post re:
TOLD YOU SO, 14 YEARS AGO.
THE CRACKS ARE BEGINNING TO SHOW
Source: http://www.thegwpf.com/
December 1, 2016 Newsletter
4) Despite Climate Change Vow, China Pushes to Dig More Coal
The New York Times, 29 November 2016
5) Fake News: China’s Coal Peak Hail As Turning Point In Climate Change Battle
The Guardian 25 July 2016
6) Germany’s Conservative Party Considers Abolishing Renewable Energy Subsidies
Der Spiegel, 29 November 2016
7) Renewables Should No Longer Have Grid Priority, Says E.U. Energy Commissioner
Handelsblatt Global, 30 November 2016
8) Dutch Parties Ditch Paris Agreement Targets
NL Times, 29 November 2016
America’s uncertain stance toward global warming under the coming administration of Donald J. Trump has given China a leading role (sic!) in the fight against climate change. But there is a problem: Even as it does so, China is scrambling to mine and burn more coal. A lack of stockpiles and worries about electricity blackouts are spurring Chinese officials to reverse curbs that once helped reduce coal production. Mines are reopening. Miners are being lured back with fatter paychecks. “I get a kick out of people in the West who think China is decarbonizing, because I see no sign of it whatsoever,” said Brock Silvers, a Shanghai banker who has previously served on the boards of two Chinese coal companies.
-Keith Bradshernov, The New York Times, 29 November 2016
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=4cd3f5ea10&e=da89067c4f
The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China’s huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists. China is the world’s biggest polluter and more than tripled its coal burning from 2000 to 2013, emitting billions of tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide. But its coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling. “I think it is a real turning point,” said Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, who wrote the analysis with colleagues from Tsinghua University in Beijing. “I think historians really will see [the coal peak of] 2014 as a very important event in the history of the climate and economy of the world.” –Damian Carrington, The Guardian 25 July 2016
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=e9537ff628&e=da89067c4f
In the run-up to next year’s general elections, Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) are considering a rapid end to subsides for renewable energies. Wind, solar and biogas plants would in future have to financially “stand on their own feet,” according to a draft discussion paper by the Federal Committee for Finance, Economy and Energy, seen by the German magazine Der SPIEGEL.
–Stefan Schultz, Der Spiegel, 29 November 2016
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=551aad1496&e=da89067c4f
Renewable energy should no longer have top priority in Europe’s electricity grid, the E.U. energy commissioner told Handelsblatt in an exclusive interview. Miguel Arias Canete said renewable energy should have the right of way over other forms of energy only when the electricity grid is maxed out. “But when it comes to simply feeding in electricity under normal market conditions, energy from already existing plants and small projects, such as solar panels and private homes, should have priority,” Mr. Canete said. E.U. member states should also be allowed to build energy reserves from coal and gas plants under certain conditions, Mr. Canete said.
–Handelsblatt Global, 30 November 2016
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=65862b93ce&e=da89067c4f
Not a single political party in the Netherlands managed to go far enough in their election promises on the environment to reach the climate target set in the Paris Agreement, the Volkskrant reports based on its own analysis of the election campaigns of the Dutch parties. Even where programs embrace the Paris targets, their intentions fall short, according to the newspaper.
–Janene Pieters, NL Times, 29 November 2016
http://thegwpf.us4.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=a3111c27a6&e=da89067c4f
As an undergrad physics student the University thought it a good thing for science students to take at least one module which wasn’t science in order to prevent people from becoming too one-dimensional. Fair enough and I took a management course which wasn’t quite as horrific as I’d originally thought. In it they taught us about groupthink and what a damaging thing that can be. The two things they brought up as classic examples of the disastrous consequences of groupthink were the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle.
In a decade of so from now when people look out over the devastated economies and cultures of the West, presided over by the endless marching tombstone ranks of silenced rotting windmills there will come to mind a new standard classical definition of disastrous groupthink which will make all others – even I expect unto the ends of history itself – pale into utter insignificance.
Eric, this is one man to keep an eye on and I pray and implore that the president elect does too….
http://www.centralmaine.com/2016/12/01/sen-king-russian-involvement-in-u-s-election-an-arrow-aimed-at-the-heart-of-democracy/
He used his office as Governor of Maine to kill the competition along with Enron and get into the wind business himself and his wind efforts did receive stimulus funding which was investigated by an Obama congress…. He was also on the board of a bank in Bermuda and his son was a VP at the now “somewhat” defunct Boston based First Wind (Larry Summers had a stake in that too)… Lots more to say on this but I will leave it at that for now.
http://www.themainewire.com/2012/03/developing-king-wind-project-cited-c…
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/08/25/on-fact-finding-trip-to-greenland-…
The offshore things I will save for later on.
Hope that Ivanka’s overture to Prince Albert is just part of the charm offensive:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-05/ivanka-trump-gore-discuss-topic-her-father-calls-bunk-climate
Also posted in Tips and Notes.