Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Los Angeles City Council is disgusted at the California State Government’s failure to limit the supply of fossil fuel. But they haven’t taken any steps to ban the sale of gasoline or other fossil fuel products in Greater Los Angeles.
Op-Ed: Treat fossil fuels like nukes. Endorse a new nonproliferation treaty
By JACQUES LESLIEJAN. 4, 20213 AM
The Los Angeles City Council is poised to endorse a call for a global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Approval could make Los Angeles the first U.S. city — New York is also in the running — to sign on to the treaty resolution. Introduced in November by Councilman Paul Koretz, it won unanimous support in committee and awaits likely passage by the full council in the new year.
The treaty would do just what its name says: Signatory governments would agree to stop further expansion of the fossil fuel industry within their boundaries. A U.N. report released Dec. 2 indicates just how imperative that step is: To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal set in the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, global emissions would have to drop 6% a year between now and 2030; alarmingly, nations instead project an average annual increase of 2% a year.
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California’s failure to limit supply makes state leaders’ claims to global climate leadership questionable. The state’s most recent two governors, Jerry Brown and now Gavin Newsom, have acknowledged the gravity of the climate crisis, but their administrations have both issued new oil well permits at a rate of 1,000 to 3,000 a year, according to FracTracker Alliance. In fact, new drilling permits in the first nine months of 2020 jumped to 1,646, an increase of 137% over the same period in 2019. The governors’ disinterest in stopping new permits is attributable to the continuing power of the oil industry’s lobbying and campaign contributions, which exert a strong influence on both parties.
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Read more: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-04/fossil-fuel-nonproliferation-treaty-los-angeles-city-council-climate-change-paris-agreement
Frankly I’m shocked at the climate hypocrisy of the Los Angeles City Council.
Instead of wasting time complaining about Newsom or signing empty treaties, they should make the first move, and ban the sale of gasoline and fossil fuel products in the city of Los Angeles.
By showing us how well Los Angeles can function without gasoline or the evil products of fossil fuel, LA will surely inspire others with their climate leadership.
The United States of America, the largest economy in the history of mankind, representing 4 percent of the world’s population (330 million vs 7.8 billion) could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what you have been told and believe will take place. Simply put, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth; or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of China, India, and Africa.
All the more absolute proof it never was about climate was it?
Saw this online, and thought it had to be fake news, but NO. Look it up on Amazon:
“As Big Tech muffles conservative voices, dystopian novel ‘1984’ is top-selling book on AmazonThe classic novel, published in 1949, depicts how government Thought Police silence all dissent.”
Not #1 in some sub-category, NUMBER ONE IN BOOKS, period !
Oh, and #2? On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century“#1 New York Times Bestseller • A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism.”
I know how we feel right now, but we are not alone…..
Get your copy of Nineteen Eighty-four in P-book. AmaZon has already removed e-book versions once. That fact has been removed from Wikipedia, but not from memory.
I wonder what percentage of those sales are to people who consider 1984 a script rather than a warning.
Great news for the biosphere 🙂
FEED ME, Seymour
It’s appearing that something is destabilizing grids all over the world. I wonder if combating climate change could be contributing to this.
Just last night in Pakistan, a system wide blackout occurred, the cause of which was reported as thus, “The blackout was triggered by a sudden drop in the frequency of the power transmission system from 50 to 0 in less than a second.” Zero frequency is obviously not good.
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-what-led-to-the-nationwide-power-outage-in-pakistan-7140969/
Would not a drop from 50 to 49 produce the same result?
Jan 8 in Europe
I guess I’m developing severe cataracts . . . or else just simply going blind.
I found a better one
“According to the Austrian Power Grid (APG), there was a fault in the synchronized European high-voltage power grid, which on Friday afternoon led to an underfrequency in Europe with a short-term frequency deviation of around 260 mHz. Experts say that Europe just barely missed a blackout.“
Disturbance in the power grid: Europe misses the blackout
Dropping to 0Hz means your grid is down. There is no power being produced.
That’s a result of the collapse, not the cause of it.
I thought their explanation was funny (in a morbid way); kind of like the patient’s pulse was zero.
Flat Lined – turn off the alarm.
Reading the article, the cascading blackout cause was a failure at a single power plant. The discussion indicates that near-nationwide cascading blackouts occur every few years from single point failures (transmission or generation). The solution? More FF and nuclear generation and beefing up the transmission and distribution systems. International financing organizations, however, are backing away from needed funding for political (CAGW) reasons.
And please, Trolls, don’t come on this Thread touting unreliables. I’ve spent a career in planning, designing, financing, constructing and operating electric utility generation, transmission and distribution systems. You can’t afford what the Greens and Crony Capitalists have in mind for you.
Dave, could I ask you for an opinion as to when California’s grid reliability problems will reach such a point that a majority of the citizens of the state will no longer believe the false explanations for these problems that state government officials and the utility executives are giving them?
My own guess is that the truly serious problems — e.g., people start dying in COVID-scale numbers because of a lack of reliable power — those kinds of problems will begin to emerge in about the year 2028. But it will be 2035 before a previously complacent California citizenry finally wakes up and smells the coffee.
I agree BB. We have too many “just missed” blackouts. What we need is some major blackouts to make the herd wake up.
My opinion is that the herd will never wake up. When the power fails, they’ll be told that it’s because of the evil fossil fuels and they’ll lap it up every time.
Grid separation in Europe.
https://notrickszone.com/2021/01/10/european-power-grid-narrowly-misses-widespread-blackout-as-frequency-drops-suddenly/
Just another example of hypocritical stupidity
Try to prevent others from using it
You first.
Besides tyranny to install their fetishes, the left’s repulsive legacy is destroying things that work and replacing them with things that just sound good. The self-proclaimed elitists are among the most ignorant things on God’s earth.
CD: Or, it’s part of their plan to bankrupt the nation so they can start stealing from those that have to support their ideology. Until there are not more ‘haves’ and universal poverty takes over …. except for them.
It’s never good to create a myth and then try to function on the basis that the myth is real.
What an excellent suggestion, but why not just take the easy route? Surely the oil companies should be encouraged to cease all deliveries to those who use fossil fuels in any way. Within about 3 days, the alarmists would be awakened by the shrill cries from those who expect to use any form of transport, or home heating / air conditioning, food processing, and almost all manufacturing. Even the homeless would complain when they are no longer able to purchase plastic weather-shelters, although they be less inconvenienced than those who find their domestic drainage and sewerage systems have ceased to operate. Perhaps it will take realism on this scale to permanently shut down those ignorant alarmists!
I have often said that about Canada. All fossil fuel transmission pipelines should be shut down (for “maintenance”, you understand) for two weeks in say late January. People need an introduction into their dependence on fossil fuels. I have thought that farmers should do the same thing for a couple of weeks.
Notice the weasel language: ” Signatory governments would agree to stop further expansion of the fossil fuel industry within their boundaries” (my bold)
So, they can continue using the amount they do now, as long as they do not expand the usage. Nothing changes but they do get to feel good and pat themselves on the back.
Fight Climate Fear. Warmer is Better.
New bumper sticker: Support OPEC; stop producing FF domestically.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
Maybe members of the Los Angeles City Council could work on fixing obvious problems. I’ll suggest that colorful tents meant for wilderness hikers are not the best living conditions for concrete sidewalks.
Check to see if the YNE Corp. is still active {not using those doors!), and move the folks inside.
Next tackle safe and good care for elderly and ill.
If they get those issues solved, have them call me for a few more ideas.
I would just like to see our fine elected officials who belileve that fossil fuels are such a problem, and that electricity is the answer, place a moratorium on generating electricity from fossil fuels.
Tzeporah Berman is a long time Greenpeace activist, and carbon tax supporter.
Biographyhttp://www.tzeporahberman.com/biography.html
She is an absolute nutcase…..and she is one of the “experts” that the accidental NDP government in Alberta hired as a “consultant”.
Her airfares to Edmonton while “consulting” were many 10’s of Kilo$. That’s a lot of jet fuel.
And those airfares at a time telecommuting was an option. There is no limit to slime green hypocrisy.
Could not LA city council, unanimously or individually, take pledges not to buy or use anything produced from or transported by fossil fuels? If that would be too much for them to swallow, then at least they could limit their carbon breathprint by ceasing to exhale.
The Hypocrites Creed: “What is good for me is bad for you.”
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why 1.0C of warming is alright, and 1.5C of warming means death and destruction.
Mark, they aren’t stupid….they know what China is doing
..and they know what they are doing to us
A logical answer Mark would be –
“it depends . . . ”
See, “warming” is a numeric construct that isn’t based on absolute data of recorded temps in any particular locale or spans of time, but rather on what the ‘constructors’ determined should be derived by adjustment / merging / averaging etc of selections of already dubious extracts from groupings of ill-sited met stations.
Further, similar past climate conditions that produced no such “death & destruction” are to be totally ignored when making the case for future climate catastrophes.
Such projections are stupid enough to drive any rational person to drink.
Pass me that bottle, Mark.
I’ll drink to that!
Interpolating imaginary numbers from dubiously derived measurements and then averaging those, grid-wise, is an exercise in numeric fantasy that serves politics well. It doesn’t serve science well, however.
Stop the climate! Stop it now!.
It’s snowing in Madrid, Spain. This has not happened in 100 years!!
2021 is already the coldest year on record!
See, if the climate-downies can do it, anybody can do it.
How large is that pile of imbecilic drivel where these people keep digging up their stories?
Must be the result of decreased emissions caused by the Wuhan virus lockdowns!
No No No…. The warming is causing the cooling! Can you not see it!
It is extremely cold across Asia. Northern Pakistan (Kashmir) recorded one of their biggest snow dumps, number of cities in China recorded their lowest temperatures ever, as did a number of weather stations in South Korea.
They could begin by refusing to use fossil fuel energy
That’s true, but likely they have other ideas of who should give up using fossil fuel energy.
About a decade ago, LAPD bought around a hundred BMW i3 electric vehicles for civilian administrative staff to use for local business transportation. The EVs sat virtually unused most of that decade, no one in LAPD offices trusted to drive them around in wonderful LA traffic. They were all sold off in 2019-20 after the city decided it was worthless to maintain them all parked in a garage in the downtown LA police garage. Nearly all the cars had an average of 5 miles on the odometer.
I say give them what they want, and do it as fast as possible. Shut down any and all fossil-fuelled generation ASAP.
Tell anyone who cares to listen that we’re in the middle of a climate emergency (as declared by our glorious leaders, no less), and generating even one more kWh of electricity using evil fossil fuels can’t be justified. Tell everybody that the only way they could restart generation would be by receiving an instruction from our glorious leaders that the situation isn’t actually all that bad.
Those that think that the use of fossil fuels is bad should stop making use of all goods and services that are anyway linked to the use of fossil fuels. But it is obvious that they are not doing that. So it is their money that is keeping the fossil fuel companies in business.
The reality is that based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. But even if we could somehow stop the Earths climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of the current climate. We do not even know what the optimum climate is let alone how to obtain it. The entire human race could die off and the Earth’s climate would continue to change as it has been doing for eons. This is all a matter of science.
And I demand that the LA Times be shut down.
Never mind the Times….what do the LA Lakers have to say?….I get all my environmental – social – government positions from sports teams….sports teams are the best….and the Lakers say leave China alone because they love China. Lakers will soon….real soon…… travel in electric vehicles only….oh yeah….coming soon.
Sports teams, sheesh.
If you want real world expertise on every subject under the sun, the only people you should be talking to are singers and actors.
I left LA in 1974 and never looked back. Spent 3 years working for the LA Department of Water and Power. I wonder what they are up to these days – going out of business?
LADWP is a government entity. They will continue with their current costly insane political decisionmaking until the revolution.
Back when LADWP represented actual consumers of water and power, LADWP invested in hydroelectric in-state and coal-fired generation and transmission facilities from out of state providers. The result of the historical focus of LADWP on the needs of its ultimate consumers, LADWP ratepayers paid some of the lowest bills in all of CA. The political profiteers are now, however, in charge and LADWP rates are unnecessarily high.
Since when is the LA Times to be taken seriously when they “demand” anything?
And since when has any form of hypocrisy from the LA City Council shocked anyone?
I have an absolutely brilliant inspiration!
Every now and then I pick a new energy technology to follow. Right now it’s ammonia. Once a month I do a web search for new stories on ammonia fuel. Recently there have been many stories about using ammonia as a fuel for deep sea shipping. Today I stumbled over a story about a large ammonia plant aiming to fuel agriculture.
My brilliant idea is this … Los Angeles should mandate the use of ammonia for all fuel starting in 2021. As far as I can tell, that would be a win-win situation.
Reminds me of a mini fridge I inherited from a previous incumbent in my lab. Came in one day and it was leaking ammonia – enough to smell it but not to burn eyes. I put it on a trolley and wheeled it out to the parking lot. Turns out I should have called an emergency, got the building evacuated and waited for the hazmat suits to take it out to the parking lot. You can get in trouble for a lot of things in a university. When I first got the lab, there was a 200ml bottle of pure liquid nicotine sitting on the front of an open shelf. I did get the hazardous waste lot to dispose of it – wonder what they did?
Do what they did with waste oil at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant near Boulder, CO: Dump it out the back door into Woman Creek. Political bureaucracy at its finest! It was personally fun and very profitable until the FBI showed up with weapons and the Department of Energy had to shut everything down. I moved to Alaska and made an honest, less profitable living.
commieBob, ammonia has been proposed for decades for theoretically being a good alternative to fossil fuels . . . but then the smart people considering this start talking to practicing engineers, and reality sets in. To wit:
The HHV of ammonia combusted with oxygen is 22.5 MJ/kg compared to the HHV of diesel combusted with oxygen of 44.8 MJ/kg. So, it will take twice the mass of ammonia fuel to provide the same combustion energy of a given mass of diesel (or Bunker C or kerosene or jet fuel).
Furthermore, the density of liquified, non-refrigerated ammonia (which must be pressurized to 350 psia or higher to remain liquid at use temperatures up to, say, 130 deg-F) is about 34 lb/ft^3 versus diesel at about 52 lb/ft^3, so ambient-temperature ammonia fuel tanks will be about 3 times the volume of diesel fuel tanks to hold the same amount of useable energy.
Combine that extra-large storage tank volume with the tremendous increase in storage tank weight to contain a MEOP of 350 psia (and considering a human-safety factor of 4:1 on commercial pressurized tank wall design) and one quickly and easily concludes that ammonia fuel will not be practical for ocean-going ships, let alone agricultural equipment or road vehicles or aircraft.
Bottom line: it’s a loser.
… and yet I continue to be enthusiastic about the idea that Los Angeles should try it.
haha but you sir are evil 🙂
🙂
commieBob, ammonia is too volatile, and its a greenhouse gas. Should use hydrazine instead.
Ah, hydrazine … wonderful stuff, caustic, toxic, carcinogenic and dangerously flammable. Didn’t the Nazis use that to fuel the V-2s. It had a very deadening effect on all those who worked with it.
Great idea! No carbon footprint and tends to reduce population … a win-win.
Extra bonus points if we use in large built up cities of lefties.
Most of the remaining oil wells are near the end of their productive life, and few new ones are being drilled within the Los Angeles city limits. So “to stop further expansion of the fossil fuel industry within their boundaries” is just silly virtue-signaling.
I want to see the scientific evidence that says reducing human emission of CO2 from the current 4% of the total atmospheric concentration to a little less than 2% by 2030 will cause the global mean surface temperature of the world to limit itself to a 1.5 degree rise in 9 years.
I don’t think that evidence exists anywhere, so any global policy undertaken to accomplish the feat is done purely with hope and magical thinking.
4% of total atmosphere concentration???? Have CO2 concentrations been anywhere near that high at any time in the last 200 million years?
If what they meant was .04% down to less than .02%, then they are saying they want CO2 levels down near plant starvation levels of around 150ppm.
What exactly would the Klimate movement look like of you actually removed the hypocrisy and they were required to be truthful and honest- interesting question I think, although there would be a lot less talk for sure.
So my real question is why on earth is the scientific community so silent on the absolute BS being fed to the public day after day? Where are the engineers and scientists with integrity and backbone? I know there are some, but many many more need to speak up NOW or the world is going in a disastrous direction really quickly.
Shut down LA oil production, but LA continues to use oil. OPEC celebrates.
This is what passes for leadership these days. It’s a relict of past wealth and glory.
Virtue signalling with no real pain or discomfort to themselves never impressed me very much. As you say, why don’t they just show the world how it’s done and go back to pre-industrial times?
Speaking of “Climate Hypocrisy” 🙂
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9128203/Bill-Gates-bids-private-jet-operator-one-month-releases-climate-change-book.html
One rule for the “elite”…
One rule for the “commoners”.
So glad that Los Angeles has finally solved all of their real problems that exists on every street corner and freeway underpass in town and now has the time and resources to be laser-focused on an imaginary crisis like this that only exists in hypothetical computer models.
L.A. will this year be proposing all shelters among homeless encampments inside the city exclusively use non-fossil fuel origin roofs & floors. In light of the fact L.A. has minimal rain cadres of grass mat weavers will be formed to produce the required products. Since California has no Ugyhurs & only a small remaining pool of Republicans additional workers will be pressed into service from among those who had at least 1 grandparent born in the continental U.S.A. based on SiliconValley’s new & improved binary scale 2021 social media credit score.
Will Uncle Joe wreck the recovery for the LAT?
All green energy solutions are workable, provided one is truly stupid and innumerate.
Most leftist politicians and their supporters fit that description.
Fossil fuels comprise fully 85% of global primary energy – eliminate fossil fuels tomorrow and ~everybody will be dead in a month or two. That means you and your family..
Imagine that you have no electricity, no light and no heat for your home. Now imagine everyone else has the same huge problem. It won’t be pretty around that shrinking waterhole.
In the resulting Mad Max world, only the truly brutal and vicious will survive, and only a few of them. That appears to be the true intention of the radical greens. Look up Club of Rome.
It’s called a reality check and we encourage Cali to try it so we can thin out some of the eco idiots.
Times owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong is investing in battery and energy management systems so will profit from denying us fossil fuels.
LA is one of the most spread out mega cities in the world: it can only survive with cars. NYC is a bit better off having much more density due to high rise. Who in LA can afford electric cars?
Any LA anti oil talk is just that: empty media sound bytes to feed the Left brain dead.
If you read “Secret Empires”, I believe you will find that the Brown family is heavily into fossil fuel, as in, megamilions. Newsom is of course connected to the Getty family.
And, yes,Europeans don’t meant squat on the big scheme of things.
England, with all its bragging about reducing fossil fuels, is a rounding error compared to the use of energy by China.
These people are pathetic, and they rule us.
Democracy was seen as a very poor form of govt by our Founding Fathers. They knew their stuff.
The irony is that all this fuss about CO2 (use of fossil fuels) is a humungous mistake.
The only greenhouse gas that has a significant effect on climate is water vapor. Whatever the WV increase is which results from temperature increase, human activity adds more.
Global WV trend has been increasing 1.5% per decade which is faster than is possible from temperature increase (feedback). A comparison of measured WV increase and a calculation of what it would be if from temperature increase alone demonstrates that WV increase is not caused by planet warming from CO2 increase. CO2 does not now, never has and never will have a significant effect on climate.
Graph using UAH temperatures
Leftists now want “non-proliferation agreements” on fossil fuels? Really?…
It will be interesting to see when Americans will finally realize Leftists have completely lost their minds…
For some, try not to confuse 240 mHz, Milly hertz, with 240 MHz Mega hertz, as I initially wondered, what the hell are they talking about.
Millionaires and billionaires of California should take one homeless person or family into the mansions and provide them with clothes, food, health care/drug rehab/psychological help, job training and give them jobs in their companies. Once they are fully trained, given a free home or nice apartment, they can start with homeless person/family. Lead by example!