Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs

https://financialpost.com/

All-in costs too high once you count fossil fuel and battery backups, land requirements and damage their equipment does

We are constantly being told that solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of electricity. Yet governments around the world felt they had to spend US$1.8 trillion on the green transition last year.

Wind and solar only produce power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. When they are not, electricity from these sources is infinitely expensive and back-ups are needed. This is why fossil fuels still account for two-thirds of global electricity and why, on current trends, we are a century away from eliminating their use in electricity generation.

Read more

https://edmontonjournal.com/

Had enough of advocates for green energy technology who promise the sun and the moon in terms of efficiency and cost savings only to have this new tech crap out the moment it’s needed most?

Fed up with an armada of state-of-the-art electric buses where none of the buses work nearly as well as promised and at least half of them are broken down in the garage at any given time?

Read more

https://financialpost.com/

Rich countries shouldn’t force unreliable wind and solar power on poor nations where alleviating poverty is the priority

Too many rich-world politicians and climate campaigners seem to forget that much of the world remains mired in poverty and hunger. Yet rich countries are increasingly replacing their development aid with climate spending.

The World Bank, whose primary goal is to help people out of poverty, has now announced it will divert no less than 45 per cent of its funding toward climate change, shifting some US$40 billion annually away from poverty and hunger.

Read more

https://www.cochranetimespost.ca/

Phasing out fossil fuels is going to cost way more than ordinary people will accept. Delegates to COP28 clearly didn’t understand that

It’s tempting to dismiss the outcome of COP28, the recent United Nations climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates, as mere verbiage, especially the “historic” UAE Consensus about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

After all, this is the 28th such conference and the previous ones all pretty much came to nothing. On a chart showing the steady rise in global CO2emissions since 1950 you cannot spot when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol entered into force (2002), with its supposedly historic language binding developed countries to cap their CO2 emissions at five per cent below 1990 levels by 2012, which they didn’t do.

Read more

https://nationalpost.com/

Global climate summit will almost certainly be another failure

The spectacle of another annual climate conference is getting underway in the United Arab Emirates (Nov 30 – Dec 12). Like Kabuki theater, performative set pieces lead from one to the other: politicians and celebrities arrive by private jets; speakers predict imminent doom; hectoring NGOs cast blame; political negotiations become fraught and inevitably go overtime; and finally: the signing of a new agreement that participants hope and pretend will make a difference.

This circus has repeated since the 1990s. Despite 27 previous conferences with iterations of ominous speeches and bold promises, global emissions have inexorably increased, punctuated just once, by the economic shutdown of COVID-19. This year is likely to see higher emissions than ever before.

Read more