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Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs

Opinion: The Liberals are becoming a climate cult – by Dan McTeague (Financial Post – October 7, 2020)

https://financialpost.com/

Proposed Clean Fuel Standard is a second carbon tax that will lead to as many as 30,000 job losses nationally

The conversation around climate change arguably has been irrational since it began decades ago, but the irrationality has only become more and more deeply imbedded — perhaps nowhere more than here in Canada, with the current Liberal government and its latest initiative, the Clean Fuel Standard.

Full disclosure: for 18 years I was a Liberal member of Parliament, and a very active one. But the Liberal party I knew was a very different party from the one running the country today.

Today’s Liberals are seized with an irrational obsession on the climate file. Climate change trumps any other concern, excluding the pandemic.

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Washington State blows away wind fantasies – by Ronald Stein (Cfact.org – October 12, 2020)

https://www.cfact.org/

The Northwest has spoken loudly as the Benton Public Utility District (BPUD) has documented their actual battleground experiences with intermittent electricity from wind farms that should be a wake-up call to our policy makers. Their message is “no more wind”.

The Washington state utility 16-page report titled “Wind Power and Clean Energy Policy Perspectives” of July 14, 2020 provides a devastating counter attack to the wind lobbyists that they question the efficacy of wind farms for power generation and resulted in the utility’s commissioners saying they “do not support further wind power development in the Northwest.”

Kudos to this Washington state public utility for speaking up after seeing the costs and dangers of California’s experience with an overreliance on intermittent electricity from wind and solar.

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Anglo, Glencore among firms in study said to be meeting Paris Agreement targets – by David McKay (MiningMx.com – October 7, 2020)

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ANGLO American and Glencore were two of only seven companies that a study said were doing enough to meet Paris Agreement targets on climate control.

Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) assessed 59 resources and energy companies finding the fossil fuel industry was failing on its environmental scorecard.

The TPI is a global program based at the London School of Economics, which assesses climate risks and companies’ preparedness for a low-carbon economy, said Bloomberg News which reported on the study.

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OPINION: The Green Revolution is coming but is overly hyped – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – October 3, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

When Goldman Sachs published a landmark study this summer on clean energy, the greenies cheered. The Wall Street giant didn’t really say anything new, but its conclusions reinforced the notion that the oil era is winding down and that renewable energy would soak up the bulk of the entire energy industry’s investment dollars.

Specifically, the report, “Carbonomics: The green engine of economic recovery,” said that renewable power will emerge as the No. 1 area of energy spending in 2021, usurping oil and gas spending for the first time, and that the green transition will drive US$1-trillion to US$2-trillion per year – per year! – in infrastructure investments, while generating as many as 20 million new jobs worldwide.

All encouraging news, if true, and even better news for the planet. The United Nations has predicted all sorts of life-threatening calamities if carbon emissions push average global temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

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Poland’s coal-phaseout plans: Fact or fiction? – by Jo Harper (Deutsche Welle – September 30, 2020)

https://www.dw.com/en/

After updating its 2040 energy plan in early September, Warsaw moved last week towards ending its dependence on coal after the Polish government, miners’ unions and the state-owned coal firm, Polish Mining Group (PGG), agreed a plan to phase out mines by 2049.

It was the first time Poland has put a timeline on ending coal and puts the country in line to meet the EU’s climate targets of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which had previously been rejected by Warsaw as unrealistic. But some industry observers doubt the plan will survive the harsh rigors of hardening EU climate policy, alongside financial constraints.

“There is a general agreement between experts on energy and coal mines that the plan of coal mine phaseout is a fiction,” Ilona Jedrasik, energy team lead at ClientEarth Poland, told DW.

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EDITORIAL: We can’t afford more green energy failures (Toronto Sun – September 17, 2020)

https://torontosun.com/

We don’t know how much Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is going to earmark for so-called “green” energy when Parliament resumes on Sept. 23.

It’s unlikely the amount will be in the Throne Speech because typically that’s when governments announce their “big ideas” for the coming parliamentary session.

We do know many of the people Trudeau listens to are advocating spending tens of billions of dollars we don’t have to finance a so-called green and resilient economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession.

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The carbon vault: Industrial waste can combat climate change by turning carbon dioxide into stone – by Robert F. Service (Science Magazine – September 4, 2020)

https://science.sciencemag.org/

In July 2019, Gregory Dipple, a geologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, hopped on a 119-seat charter flight in Yellowknife, Canada, and flew 280 kilometers northeast to the Gahcho Kué diamond mine, just south of the Arctic Circle.

Gahcho Kué, which means “place of the big rabbits” in the Dënësu̧łinë language of the region’s native Dené or Chipewyan people, is an expansive open pit mine ringed by sky-blue lakes. There, the mining company De Beers unearths some 4 million carats’ worth of diamonds annually.

But Dipple and two students weren’t there for gems. Rather, they were looking to use the mine’s crushed rock waste as a vault to lock up carbon dioxide (CO2) for eternity.

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Conservative government would aim to erase deficit in a decade, Erin O’Toole says – by Bill Curry and Janice Dickson (Globe and Mail – September 4, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

New Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says the Liberal government’s recovery plan is too narrowly focused on a green economy and will leave out major employers in sectors such as energy, manufacturing and Canada’s small businesses.

In his first interview with a newspaper since winning the party leadership late last month, Mr. O’Toole outlined his economic priorities to The Globe and Mail in his Ottawa office, as he prepares for Parliament’s return and a possible fall election.

He said he wants to erase Canada’s deficit in about a decade if his party forms government, a timeline he said can be accomplished without giving credence to Liberal characterizations of a Conservative “bogeyman” who imposes deep spending cuts.

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Trudeau’s ‘brutal’ attempt to use COVID to push his green agenda – by Rex Murphy (National Post – August 27, 2020)

https://nationalpost.com/

The only settled and unchanging characteristic of the global warmist brigade is their overt, continuous and super-hyped hostility toward the oil and gas industry. And in no country is that hostility more manifest than in Canada.

Global Warming Inc., and all its fronts and allies, have made protesting against Canadian oil and gas its full-time occupation. They protest, blockade, clog the courts, propagandize and fundraise against Alberta oil and gas, in particular, and have done so now for three decades.

They have effectively choked the industry’s growth and have hindered the export of our great resource by halting the construction of pipelines that are needed to bring the product to markets outside Canada and the United States.

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Blackouts Expose Perils And Costs Of California’s ‘Electrify Everything’ Push – by Robert Bryce (Forbes Magazine – August 18, 2020)

https://www.forbes.com/

The blackouts that hit California over the past few days exposed the fragility of one of the most-expensive and least-reliable electric grids in North America.

They also show that California’s grid can’t handle the load it has now, much less accommodate the enormous amount of new demand that would have to be met if the state attempts to “electrify everything.”

The push to electrify everything would prohibit the use of natural gas in buildings, electrify transportation, and require the grid to run solely on renewables (and maybe, a dash of nuclear).

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GOLDSTEIN: Freeland touts the myths of green energy – by Lorrie Goldstein (Toronto Sun – August 19, 2020)

https://torontosun.com/

Canada’s new finance minister is smart, which means Chrystia Freeland must know the first words out of her mouth about green energy following her appointment by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were nonsense.

Asked about the future of green energy, she said: “To (the) question about decarbonization as part of our economic plan going forward: Of course it has to be part of it.

“I think all Canadians understand that the restart of our economy needs to be green. It also needs to be equitable. It needs to be inclusive. And we need to focus very much on jobs and growth.”

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California Reveals That the Transition to Renewable Energy Isn’t So Simple – by Alex Trembath and Zeke Hausfather (Slate.com – August 19, 2020)

https://slate.com/

The recent “heat storm” in California has pushed grid operators to impose rolling blackouts for the first time since 2001.

A combination of heavy air conditioning usage, the unplanned unavailability of some power plants, limited options for importing power from neighboring states, and insufficient solar and wind generation have led to an imbalance of electricity generation and consumption.

As Stephen Berberich, president of the California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, which oversees operation of the state’s electric grid, told Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times, “We thought there would be adequate power to supply the demand. … We were wrong.”

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Why California’s Climate Policies Are Causing Electricity Blackouts – by Michael Shellenberger (Forbes Magazine – August 15, 2020)

https://www.forbes.com/

Millions of Californians were denied electrical power and thus air conditioning during a heatwave, raising the risk of heatstroke and death, particularly among the elderly and sick.

The blackouts come at a time when people, particularly the elderly, are forced to remain indoors due to Covid-19.

At first, the state’s electrical grid operator last night asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use. But after power reserves fell to dangerous levels it declared a “Stage 3 emergency” cutting off power to people across the state at 6:30 pm.

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New Documentary Film, ‘Juice,’ Challenges Elitism Of Anti-Growth Environmentalism – by Micheal Shellenberger (Forbes Magazine – August 7, 2020)

https://www.forbes.com/

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Harper Collins, June 30, 2020).

The root cause of climate change, say many activist leaders, is economic growth. “How dare you!” Greta Thunberg told the United Nations last September “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth!”

And yet it was economic growth that lifted Thunberg’s ancestors out of agrarian poverty, raised life expectancy from 40 to 70 years, and liberated women and girls from feudal patriarchy.

Without Sweden’s economic growth, and the fossil fuels upon which it depended, the person who is Greta Thunberg would not exist.

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Opinion: Canada needs to go nuclear to reach our emissions targets – by Kim Rudd and Sean Willy (Financial Post – August 7, 2020)

https://financialpost.com/

Kim Rudd, an entrepreneur, was parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources from 2015-2018. Sean Willy is CEO of Des Nedhe Development in Saskatchewan.

To fight climate change, Canada needs clean energy from a source that delivers carbon-free, reliable power 24/7. If we are to reach our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets, nuclear power simply must be in the energy mix.

Nuclear power already displaces over 80 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually in Canada. That’s equivalent to taking 15 million cars off the road each and every year.

Though Canada has a world-class nuclear industry, we’ve only scratched the surface of its potential.

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