Greens hate hydrocarbons but open warfare is breaking out in their ranks as the world outside their luxury millenarian cult realises it is impossible to run a modern industrial society without hydrocarbons. In the U.K., the penny is finally dropping that gas is the only realistic backup to an electricity system powered by unreliable breezes and sunbeams. But at the same time the mad Miliband crew is closing down local oil and gas exploration, and step forward Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell University who claims transportable American liquified natural gas (LNG) has a bigger ‘carbon’ footprint than coal. The Guardian was all over an early draft of Cornell’s work which helped support last year’s pause by the Biden Administration of pending LNG export permits. LNG was described as a carbon “mega bomb”. Cornell’s work was funded by the billionaire Park Foundation which supports ‘progressive’ causes and divestment from oil and gas extraction. By a happy coincidence – such coincidences, of course, being common in the complex webs of the Green Blob – Park has given $650,000 to the Guardian over the last three years.
Pennies dropping over gas backup lie behind the recent decision by the U.K. Government to waste £22 billion capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground. The sheer futility of this exercise is obvious to many since it will require enormous amounts of energy to capture and compress a gas that is likely to eventually seep out of any nearby cavernous hole in the ground. The whole exercise bears some similarity to the old lag Fletcher telling Prison Officer MacKay in the 1970 sitcom Porridge that the prisoners had hidden the earth from an escape tunnel by digging another hole to put it in.
In geological terms, pumping massive quantities of pressurised gas into the substrata may come with some risks. On August 21st 1986 there was a sudden release of 1.6 million tons of magmatic CO2 from the bed of Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Heavier than air CO2 fell on the surrounding villages and suffocated 1,746 people. The gas had accumulated under high pressure and could have been released by volcanic activity or a minor earth tremor. One of the first sites for U.K. CO2 storage is Liverpool Bay, while other locations around the country have been identified. No doubt strict geological guidelines will be observed to ensure CO2 does not escape in bulk, but over time conditions might change. The suggested threat from earthquakes was enough to ban onshore fracking in the U.K. and it will be interesting to see if similar concerns arise when many millions of tonnes of pressurised CO2 are being buried.
As we have seen, so-called climate ‘solutions’ such as carbon capture are hated by true green cult believers. The green billionaire activist unit Oil Change International (OCI) has described carbon capture as a “colossal waste of money”. In a recent detailed report, OCI noted past expenditure of $83 billion with a failure rate of over 80% in the U.S. “Carbon capture projects consistently fail, overspend or underperform,” states OCI.
The hatred arises because carbon capture is seen as legitimising the continued use of hydrocarbons. The less insane greens are finally realising that they cannot ban hydrocarbons altogether. This is due to the fact that half the world’s population would die without hydrocarbon-based medicine, fertiliser, waste disposal etc. But of course the true believers are right in that carbon capture is a colossal waste of money providing little more than a fig leaf to cover the continued use of oil and gas.
Then let us consider hydrogen, an explosive, expensive waste of money but favoured by many greens as a scalable alternative to oil and gas. The U.K.’s Royal Society said as much last year in a major report written by over 40 leading scientists. The Environmental Defence Fund, an influential Green Blob-funded activist and campaigning operation, thinks otherwise. In a recent paper, it noted that the higher combustion temperature of hydrogen produced more polluting nitrogen dioxide. In addition the gas is very light and easily escapes into the atmosphere. Chemical changes then produce pound for pound 37 times the warming of CO2. Inconvenient for alarmists, who haven’t yet worked out that the various warming gases in the atmosphere ‘saturate’ past certain levels, a suggestion backed up by 500 million years of climate observations.
In understanding these civil war battles that are breaking out in the green movement, the general public is hamstrung by a news blackout long imposed on all sceptical consideration of Net Zero and climate science. The BBC can broadcast a 40 minute antisemitic rant by the Iranian leader justifying the rape and slaughter of women and children in Israel, but it will not consider a single second of sceptical comment around the ‘settled’ science of climate change. It justifies the former with a free speech, need-to-inform argument, but withholds such an indulgence over Net Zero. As a result, a Potemkin village of fake science, fudged weather figures, ridiculous computer model attributions and predictions and Jim Dale/Dale Vince pronouncements are allowed to flourish with little or no push back permitted. Largely unreported are the increasingly vicious battles breaking out in the green movement as it continues on its handcart-to-hell journey.
If there is a pressing need to understand these internal green battles it is important to disclose the links that bind many of the participants together. Professor Howarth’s work is intent on demonising LNG for political purposes. Who is funding and publicising it is important information since it may well affect the future supply of LNG to a gas-starved Britain under a Harris Administration. Mainstream media are incapable of covering these issues since they are bound to a set reporting narrative with scepticism barred as ‘misinformation’. But who is saying what, why they are saying it and who is paying for them to say it are all important items of information in navigating the increasingly treacherous waters of green and Net Zero politics.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Will Sir John Houghton’s Global Warming Potential (GWP) numbers, a 2+2=5 mathematical trick, ever be exposed for what it is?
John Houghton was an arch conman.
He laced it up with bible-speak dressed up in stuff like “(western) man must be the guardian and conserver of creation”, ..
…despite the fact the earth doesn’t need man to exist and does quite fine with ancient tribal customs and peoples from antiquity, doing a nicer job.
I suspect he was the British equivalent of the Stasi, like Merckel must have been to appease Putin for decades.
Houghton’s dad the S.M. Houghton was a school teacher in Wales and spent his time in (religious) academia,
All a perfect background for telling others how to run their lives.
“Don’t do what I do, do what I say” country.
John Houghton – I don’t use the pompous “SIR” anything…from the Queen…..grew up in Wales. and died there.
What he didn’t get, and was blind to, was that industrial revolution helped with the rape of natural resources inc the 20th century north sea oil sold at a tiny fraction of its current value + confining generations of the same Welsh to horrible mining accidents, silicosis, et al
+
the same crony capitalism from Thatcher who sponsored his work, scrapped those coal mines to buy the stuff from much more dangerous mines in Ukraine etc… and was rampant with waste and corruption.
Teflon Tony completed the work, sold off British Nuclear expertise, the gold at rock bottom prices and now in de-industrial Britain we can’t do any of it, and don’t have any gold, gas, or oil left, can’t make ships, planes, cars or trains…and are fobidden to extract coal or gas, while the stinky rebellion goons run amok.
They just shut the last blast furnaces, and the last coal fired power station all on the back of Houghton’s EVIL CO2 molecules.
What could possibly go wrong?
In the quote you cited:
Hmmm . . . molecular weight of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) = 46.
In comparison, the molecular/atomic weights of the three primary non-condensible gases comprising 99.9% of Earth’s atmosphere:
— N2 = 28
— O2 = 32
— Ar = 40 (as atomic weight, does not exist in molecular form)
And I’ll just throw in this condensible atmospheric gas molecular weight for comparison, since it typically exists in much higher atmospheric concentrations than argon:
— H2O (as vapor) = 18
Bottom line, in comparison to the major non-condensible constituents of Earth’s atmosphere (all of which are lighter than NO2), the above quoted extract is completely falsified.
I thought he referred to hydrogen then, rather than NOX
Please read the quote. And the reference is specifically to NO2, not NOX.
Oooops . . . my mistake and apologies . . . upon MY reread of the cited quote, I can see that it is indeed possible that the reference to a “very light” gas was meant to apply to hydrogen, not to NO2. That makes a lot more sense in context.
However, hydrogen (H2) is not easily photo-dissociated in the stratosphere due to its strong molecular bond, requiring high-energy ultraviolet radiation to break apart, which is not readily available in that part of the atmosphere.
Hence, I then have to question the quoted claim
“Chemical changes then produce pound for pound 37 times the warming of CO2” if this is meant to apply to H2 rather than NO2.
I put that quote up because it contained the “… pound for pound 37 times the warming of CO2.” Global Warming Potential nonsense. We are never told how much warming these lesser greenhouse gases are likely to cause in the coming decades. I’m rather sure that the warming from CH4, N2O CFC & SF6 will cause less than 0.1K of warming by the end of the century. Their GWP numbers of 86, 273, 8,000 & 17,500 are a textbook example of bullshit.
Thanks, Steve. I couldn’t agree with you more!
Neither H2 nor NO2 are recognized as significant greenhouse gases, unlike water vapor, CO2 and methane . . . independent of whether or not increases in any such gases are currently contributing to increasing global warming or not.
As you state, the claim from others of “pound for pound XX times the warming of CO2” is a really meaningless claim (i.e., BS) if the subject gas is on the order of 1/1000 the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Again, my sincere apologies to you and steveastrouk2017 for jumping the gun with my curt remark, without a careful reread on MY part.
— s/ TYS
“greenhouse gases… unlike water vapor, CO2 and methane”
No-one uses methane in a greenhouse !
Enhanced CO2, and misted WV.. yes..
Methane… No
All three are “radiatively active” gases, though.
How should I reply to someone who in today’s world actually believes—especially in posting on a website devoted to understanding worldwide climate and factors that affect it— that the term “greenhouse gases” just means gases residing inside ground-based greenhouse structures???
. . . I’ve thought the matter over and conclude there’s just no way to do it civilly, other than to point out that in fact greenhouse growers that commonly use organic amendments in fertilizers, such as farm yard manure (FYM) and vermicompost, do so knowing that they produce methane as they decay inside the greenhouse.
So called “greenhouse gases” act nothing remotely like a greenhouse.
How do I reply reply to someone that uses erroneous anti-science terminology. ?
I have thought it over and concluded that they are actually AGW cultists pretending to be realists.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”
— Oscar Wilde
With proper soil aeration, not much methane is produce..
And just how many operating greenhouses bear the complexity and expense of aerating their plant soils? Any such aeration will quickly dehydrate the soil unless copious amounts of water are used to maintain the necessary soil humidity.
Of course, only considering those greenhouses that use soils for planting as compared to using hydroponics (i.e., direct liquid supply of nutrients).
I’m not sure what your point is, but I agree that it is important to understand the “hard” science, the physical laws supported by mathematics and empiricism.
For instance, the Beer Lambert Law states that the greenhouse effect is logarithmic, meaning that the effect diminishes with increasing concentration. You do understand this, don’t you?
And on the topic of understanding the “hard science” :
Story tip:
https://www.campusreform.org/article/ucsd-officially-launches-new-climate-change-education-requirement/26465
Courses include “‘Climate Justice,’ ‘The Astronomy of Climate Change,’ ‘Gender and Climate Justice,’ and ‘Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change’.
Do you think somewhere in the midst of this soft stuff they learn the first and second laws of thermodynamics?
All the evidence that I see suggests the proponents of climate change™ are adverse to investing the time and effort needed to understand the physics (including fundamental thermodynamics) and chemistry and geology and astronomy (ref. Milankovitch cycles and >30-year-period solar cycles) that govern climate, and that have governed it for the last several billion years.
Heck, most such proponents don’t even know that the scientific definition of “climate” as used by NOAA and NASA and many other organizations is “weather over a specified geographical area averaged over a continuous interval of 30 years or longer“.
Oh, come now. Physics (including thermodynamics) is considered a “hard” science because it is hard (compared to arts and humanities).
Oh,come now. It’s hard to glue yourself, especially your hands, to a concrete or asphalt roadway to “prevent” climate change. Likewise, it’s hard to go to jail for throwing soup on a famous painting in a famous public gallery so as to stop climate change from wiping humanity off the face of Earth.
Finally, think how hard it must be—after spending all the time, effort and money to earn a PhD—to then knowingly throw away your career supporting the false claims of AGW/CAGW alarmists just to retain that job with it’s comfortable salary.
Biology seems to be a subject also ignored.
Is that in the School of Science and Engineering, or in the School of Journalism?
Yes, I understand the Beer Lambert Law as it relates to optical absorption of a given liquid or gas over a given distance at a defined frequency being a function of the concentration of the absorbing gas or liquid in a mixed medium.
I further understand the resulting implication that for a given column height in the atmosphere, absorption of, say LWIR off Earth’s surface by CO2 in the atmosphere, can become asymptotically “saturated” to the point that no additional CO2 will significantly increase the total absorption of LWIR by CO2.
The scientific evidence on many fronts (especially that presented by Profs. Happer and Wijngaarden) is that we’ve passed the atmospheric saturation “limit” for any increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration causing any additional global warming.
I would wager that 97% of bona fide scientists have no idea what you are talking about.
Point taken, but in the general defense of true scientists everywhere I suspect that 97% of them are heavily involved (i.e., have careers) in fields other than climatology, and hence pay it little attention.
I was a professional aerospace engineer and never paid much attention to climatology until about 40 years ago when the then-developing meme of climate change™ as a threat—let alone as an existential threat—piqued my curiosity (because it sounded so implausible) and I began a “remainder-of-my-life-long” quest to determine the truth or falsehood of such claims.
You might image where I’m currently positioned on that subject.
From one aerospace engineer to another, exactly right. (And there is that darn 97% number, again). But we did, in fact, paid a fair amount of attention to the atmosphere, and to various waves and particles that could scramble the ever-precious avionics.
“Point taken, but in the general defense of true scientists everywhere I suspect that 97% of them are heavily involved (i.e., have careers) in fields other than climatology, and hence pay it little attention.”
Everyone is heavily involved in in fields other than climatology, too busy see what’s happening.
From EV mandates, to carbon taxes, ethanol in gasoline, wind and solar farms; the costs of mitigation affect everyone, to no effect! (Keeling curve attached) .
Yet few understand the basic physics. This isn’t aerospace engineering, it’s elementary school science.
Ignorance can be fixed. Stupid is forever.
I, like others, have an understanding of the basic physics of many aspects/drivers of climate change.
At the same time I admit I have no real comprehension, let alone understanding, of all of the “forcing factors” and interactions of the “coupled, non-linear, chaotic system” (IPCC words) we call climate, which has interdependencies in the disciplines of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, fluid dynamics, radiation physics, air and ocean chemistries, geology (including plate tectonic movements), oceanography, celestial mechanics, and dynamics of complex non-linear temporal and 3-D spatial variances in a system with poorly characterized non-linear feedback and feed-forward loops, ill-defined capacitances, integral asymptotic limits and distinct possibilities of “tipping points” of instability (e.g., the causes of past, irregular, multi-million-year Ice Ages).
Whew! And then there are the so-called unknown “unknowns”, as in:
“I don’t even know what I don’t know” (about climate).
In such context, maybe I’m ignorant . . . maybe I’m stupid.
WUWT and friends – Do please bear in mind that today is a very difficult day for the BBC as its pets and their awful atrocity one year ago is firmly under the spotlight… They did, however, manage to field a marine biologist this morning who informed us that the planet has, er, some problems – mainly discarded [plastic] fishing tackle at sea. Yes, hundreds of thousand of years worth, apparently.
Any one wanting to discuss ‘business’ matters with ministers should have their chequebook at the ready. Maybe £30k can get a meeting with the mad monk Miliband?
LABOUR is facing a fresh row after offering companies breakfast with the Business Secretary in return for £30,000.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30854449/labour-companies-breakfast-cash-business-secretary/
Eric Worrall expressed shock at this news, and me? I was surprised it wasn’t £60k or more.
This is the [completely inept and useless] government to expose all the lunacies associated with net zero.
Cry havoc and let slip the gender neutral dogs of the culture wars
Just 4 years and 9 months left of this madness. If you think it will end earlier then think again.
Labour find it hard to get rid of unpopular leaders (Blair and Brown in sequence) unlike the Tories who will change them based on tealeaf readings.
When presented with failing policies they blame the audience not the cast and double down instead of reversing.
Tories and LibDems are signed up to the same policies.
“”Labour find it hard to get rid of unpopular leaders (Blair and Brown in sequence)””
There is a difference. Former Tory PMs tend to disappear into the [lucrative] woodwork. The media has sought out John Major, for obvious reasons. But his voice is hollow and shrill now as an arch remainer.
Blair is a very different proposition. He has political capital from 1997 even now. And he uses it wherever he can. No autocrat is too grisly or extreme for his foundation to advise. Starmer is clearly in awe of the man. When quizzed on what a woman is – Blair had said a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis – the best answer Starmer could manage was “I agree with Tony”.
Brown won’t go away either. He’s regularly featured in the Grauniad with grandiose global schemes and what I would describe as utter delusion.
Parliament is very much like a public school. The houses are parties. Their allegiances are to Parliament, to Party and then family.
Only Reform offers any semblance of a real alternative.
Love the Shakespeare paraphrase – may we use it?
I feel so very badly for the BBC.
Please do
You have to wear a hairshirt but it must be made from the finest CO2 free hair.
Muppets.
This is one way of the USA declaring war on Europe, you know.
First they blow up Nordstream II to stop regular gas deliveries from Russia.
Then they charge Europe 500% more for LNG, bankrupting German heavy industry and forcing it to relocate to the USA.
Now they say that even LNG exports must be banned.
So what on earth do they expect Europe to do, other than leave NATO, break off diplomatic relations with the USA, kick out all US citizens, including the military, from the continent of Europe??
Seriously, these US green nutters have no concept of what an alliance means.
An alliance has partners of equal standing, it does not have a monarch and servile courtiers.
This is something that has been beyond the brain power of US intellectuals, anti-intellectuals and salivating genocidal warmongers since at least 1990.
There is that meme about the US blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline. I’ve seen it mentioned many times, but without any substantiation, Please provide proof (objective, replicatable variety).
Carbon capture is just the latest scam to separate idiots from their money … so of course the government’s clown Prince (Ed Miliband) is going to embrace it.
More £££billions being flushed down the toilet by the clueless jerks currently in charge … no surprise there then.
More likely that they will waste 75% of the £22bn proving that it can’t be done then offer 1p off income tax in penance . 🙂
Miliband is a Climate Change con-man’s dream target. Wind turbines, solar PV, batteries, carbon capture and storage, pumped storage and flywheels. A fool is soon parted with our money.
flywheels for energy storage….. roflmao.. the Mini-brain in action.
Is there a better case of ignorance at the most extreme level !!
Paul Burgess looks at the numbers.
https://youtu.be/UIH5NUkJ-TA
Many (most?) of those pound notes are not being flushed down the toilet.
The money is going into the pockets of those pushing the Climate Change “Narratives”.
“The hatred arises because carbon capture is seen as legitimising the continued use of hydrocarbons. The less insane greens are finally realising that they cannot ban hydrocarbons altogether.”
The continued use of hydrocarbons was and is already legitimate because cost-effective energy-dense fuels provide for modern mobility, productivity, and protection from the elements.
There is no need to beg for social permission to continue emitting CO2 as a result. Incremental concentrations of CO2 are not capable of driving any climate metric to a bad outcome. And the attribution of any of the reported warming to rising CO2 has been unsound all along.
How so? 1) Energy conversion in the general circulation, and 2) The overwhelming dominance of cloud formation and dissipation in controlling longwave emission to space, which implies dynamic self-regulation in respect to the minor radiative effect of non-condensing GHGs.
Please see the short videos and their text descriptions here for more explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8vhRIT-3uaLhuaIZq2FuQ
The related quote:
That’s what the insane greens want.
It’s much worse than that. Many Greens have a target population for the world’s population of one billon. As far as they are concerned, Thanos didn’t go far enough.
Professor Howarth and his ilk make life so very depressing. Enough!
Loqui ad manus.
I’m hopeful that some Greens are slowly beginning to realize there’s no such thing as “Clean Energy “.
Every form of energy comes with trade-offs regarding cost, density, and pollution.
I like the idea of requiring that any transition to renewable clean energy sources be done without the use of fossil fuels, Just Stop Oil!!🤔
“”I like the idea of requiring that any transition to renewable clean energy sources be done without the use of fossil fuels, Just Stop Oil””
Have you a message for freezing pensioners this coming winter?
I believe he/she/it means that no fossil fuels should be used in making renewable equipment (wind turbines, PV panels, etc.), not that we should stop using it for everything else. That’s my read, anyway.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Existence, as you know it, is over.
— The Climate Borg
But first must come Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, John Kerry, AOC, Michael Mann, Harvard University, UN Secretary António Guterres and Greta Thunberg (among many, many others) prophesying that climate change™ is an existential threat.
ROTFL!
It is. There is a clear need to eliminate the carbon units infesting Earth.
Just ask Vger.
It should be fairly obvious that those mentioned have already been assimilated by the Climate Borg, as they are of one mind.
59 shades of Green. Who knew?
[story tip]
Meanwhile the self-appointed WEF diktators are doubling-down on the “carbon footprint” insanity, claiming that individual and community food gardens have 6x the “global warming potential” and must be banned:
https://slaynews.com/news/wef-demands-ban-home-grown-food-stop-global-warming/
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
Well, not nothing. You’ll have your gov’t approved clothing, bicycle, and insect snack box.
Ah. The solution to over population and food…. Soylent Green!
Don’t forget the idiots pushing ammonia engines. That’s the most stupid idea I’ve seen yet.
An ammonia engine should able to be made to run, though I’ve never seen one, though have worked on many ammonia refrigeration systems. But could anyone tolerate the odor of the exhaust?…which people find unpleasant at only 5 ppm and nose detectable at 1/10 of that level…at 50 ppm people PANIC to exit the location of the source of the pressurized ammonia leak….
This is a much different safety situation than say a diesel fuel or gasoline leak…which people will just decide to clean up before it becomes a fire hazard.
“The suggested threat from earthquakes was enough to ban onshore fracking in the U.K. and it will be interesting to see if similar concerns arise when many millions of tonnes of pressurised CO2 are being buried.”
The difference is “to frak a formation” has the purpose of harvesting hydrocarbons (& ultimately CO2) = BAD, while to force pressurised CO2 into a formation is to save the World by keeping the temperature from rising 0.000013 degrees by 2070 = GOOD!
Simple, really. 🤣
If earthquakes were a leakage problem, the methane that was in those (now depleted) natural gas formations that would be used for sequestration…would have leaked out millions of years ago already…..
Carbon Capture and Storage is better referred to as oceans, trees, and vegetation.
The 1986 Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon that killed over 1700 people should be a cautionary tale about the danger of an eruption of carbon dioxide escaping to the surface from underground. Build your house on a hill if it’s near a captured carbon reservoir.
Recently, WUWT had an article about supercritical technology in coal fired plants where combustion
takes place in pure oxygen in order to reduce nitrogen oxide production. This could also be used for the combustion of hydrogen. Due to the yields, storage and transport problems and dangers involved, I’m against the use of hydrogen as energy carrier. By far, the best hydrogen carrier is hydrocarbons. If CO2 capture is to take place, then it’s much more efficient to capture it where it is produced in high concentrations, such as at a coal-fired facility, than extracting it from the air, unless one plants a lot of forests.