Environmentally Destructive Electric Cars

If Only the Sahara Desert Turned Green . . . 

We had a sneaking suspicion that this would be the case: electric vehicles would turn out to be fundamentally more destructive/dangerous to the environment.  But dangerous in what way?  The levels of  production and release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, of course.

A study by the IFO think tank in Munich found that electric vehicles in Germany emit 11 percent to 28 percent more carbon dioxide than their diesel counterparts. The study considered the production of batteries as well as the German electricity mix in making this determination. Germany spent thousands of euros on electric car subsidies per vehicle to put a million electric vehicles on the road, but those subsidies have done nothing to reach the country’s greenhouse gas emission targets. This is just the latest example of government programs expecting one outcome and getting quite another, instead. To some it is ironic; to others it is funny. At IER, we believe it to be sad, as it is a waste of time and money that could be better put to use solving real problems.

In one sense this is all a storm in a teacup.

Destructive Ignorance

Oil and Gas Exploration Ban is a Mistake

Jonathan Young MP
Stuff

 I'm not disappointed – I'm angry!

A kick in the guts, a wrecking ball for the region, killing the golden goose. All these phrases express the emotional response to the Ardern-Peters Government's announcement to end new offshore oil and gas exploration. Without doubt more bad news is still to come as the Green Party and Greenpeace make onshore exploration their next target.

This decision was made with zero consultation with the petroleum industry and there lies the problem.  The Ardern-Peters' government's announcement to end new offshore oil and gas exploration is a wrecking ball for the Taranakli region, writes New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young.

Not only is it incredibly disrespectful to an industry that has supplied billions of dollars of revenue to the Government and the people of New Zealand, but it has meant that the Government has made a decision regarding the industry with little understanding of how it works.

The opportunity for a positive way forward gets lost in the disruption and destruction of business confidence they have created. The Government may think they have attacked the problem, but unfortunately, they have attacked the solution.

As National's Energy and Resources spokesperson I would support a transfer of knowledge, skills and investment into the greening of the petroleum industry rather than ending it.  Apart from 50 per cent of all oil produced being for environmentally benign purposes, we should continue to pursue the goal of utilising hydrocarbons as feedstock for ultra-low or zero emission fuels.

Research is already underway for this, such as methanol, and hydrogen. There is a tremendous amount of research taking place on improving engine and fuel efficiency. The petroleum sector has some of the smartest people in the country when it comes to understanding carbon and molecules. Utilising their knowledge and skills here and collaborating with other industry-based research is the smart thing to do.

The Ardern-Peters Government has made a significant misstep in their approach.

Greenist Alchemy Exposed and Rejected

The István Markó Interview

Possibly the Best Thing You Will Ever Read on Global Warming

James Delingpole
BreitbartLondon

Maybe the biggest of all the lies put out by the global warming scaremongers is that the science is on their side. No it isn’t. And if you’re in any doubt at all you should read this interview with the brilliant scientist István Markó. It tells you all you need to know about the science of global warming.

Dr. Markó, who sadly died earlier this year aged only 61, was a professor and researcher in organic chemistry at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium’s largest French-speaking university. More importantly for the purposes of this interview, he was one of the world’s most outspoken and well-informed climate skeptics, who contributed to several articles on the subject for Breitbart News.

Before he died, he gave an extensive interview to the French journalist Grégoire Canlorbe. Here are highlights of the English translation. As you’ll see, he doesn’t pull his punches.

CO2 is not – and has never been a poison

Each of our exhalations, each of our breaths, emits an astronomical quantity of CO2 proportionate to that in the atmosphere (some >40,000 ppm); and it is very clear that the air we expire does not kill anyone standing in front of us. What must be understood, besides, is that CO2 is the elementary food of plants. Without CO2 there would be no plants, and without plants there would be no oxygen and therefore no humans.

Plants love CO2. That’s why the planet is greening

Plants need CO2, water, and daylight.

Climbdown

Global Warming: We Were Wrong

James Delingpole
BreitbartNews

Climate alarmists have finally admitted that they’ve got it wrong on global warming.

This is the inescapable conclusion of a landmark paper, published in Nature Geoscience, which finally admits that the computer models have overstated the impact of carbon dioxide on climate and that the planet is warming more slowly than predicted.

The paper – titled Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C –  concedes that it is now almost impossible that the doomsday predictions made in the last IPCC Assessment Report of 1.5 degrees C warming above pre-industrial levels by 2022 will come true.  In order for that to happen, temperatures would have to rise by a massive 0.5 degrees C in five years.

Since global mean temperatures rarely rise by even as much as 0.25 degrees C in a decade, that would mean the planet would have to do 20 years’ worth of extreme warming in the space of the next five years.

This, the scientists admit, is next to impossible.

Green is the New Bad

Global Warmists are Anti-Green

Carbon Dioxide Greens The Planet
All Bad, Say Global Warming Doomsters

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

Alarmist scientists are trying to cover up the good news that rising CO2 levels are making the planet turn greener. And that even includes one of the scientists who made the discovery in the first place.
The discovery was first announced in 2012 in a lecture by Professor Ryanga Myneni of the University of Boston.

Rising CO2 levels are causing the planet to get greener, Myneni revealed. In the last 30 years, he estimated, the planet’s greenery has increased by 14 per cent. About half of this, he calculated, was a direct result of increased carbon dioxide levels, rather than of other factors like warmth, irrigation or fertilisers. And the area covered is vast:  as Myneni’s co-author Zaichun Zhu, of Beijing University, puts it, it’s equivalent to adding a green continent twice the size of mainland USA.

What’s more, Myneni showed, this greening is taking place across the board, in all manner of vegetation: tropical rain forests, subarctic taiga, grasslands, semi-deserts, farmland, the lot.

Letter From the UK (About How Good CO2 Is)

Carbon Dioxide Good For The Environment Says UN Scientist

by Nick Hallett
Breitbart London

Carbon dioxide emissions are making the Earth greener and more fertile, a United Nations (UN) climate scientist has said.

In a paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Dr Indur Goklany, who has previously represented the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that the rising level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere “is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally”. 

The benefits are real, whereas the costs of warming are uncertain,” he adds.  “Carbon dioxide fertilises plants, and emissions from fossil fuels have already had a hugely beneficial effect on crops, increasing yields by at least 10-15 per cent,” Dr Golkany argues.  “This has not only been good for humankind but for the natural world too, because an acre of land that is not used for crops is an acre of land that is left for nature.”
Increasing crops yields has helped reduce hunger and improved human well being, as well as generating around $140 billion a year.

As well as crops, the “wild places of the Earth” have seen an improvement, becoming greener in recent decades.

Massive Political Obstacles

CO₂ Is Not the Problem

Miranda Devine believes that an electrical engineer's discovery will change the climate debate.  We have our doubts.  There is such a thing as invincible ignorance.  Nonetheless, she profiles an interesting development.

Perth electrical engineer’s discovery will change climate change debate

Miranda Devine

PerthNow

A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month.  A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.  He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

An Honest Man

Why I Am a Climate Change Skeptic

Patrick Moore

March 20, 2015

Dr. Patrick Moore is the co-founder, chair, and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies.

[Editor’s Note: Patrick Moore, Ph.D., has been a leader in international environmentalism for more than 40 years. He cofounded Greenpeace and currently serves as chair of Allow Golden Rice. Moore received the 2014 Speaks Truth to Power Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, July 8, in Las Vegas.]

I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.”

My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.  In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels.

Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.  The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.

By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years.

Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced for the umpteenth time we are doomed unless we reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to zero. Effectively this means either reducing the population to zero, or going back 10,000 years before humans began clearing forests for agriculture. This proposed cure is far worse than adapting to a warmer world, if it actually comes about.

Catastrophism and Greenmail

The Great Irony of our Day

When C0₂ is released into the atmosphere, wonderful things happen.  These things are so basic and obvious that a ten year old middle schooler can grasp them (provided they attend a reactionary institute that still teaches science).  But adults long ago gave up on science and replaced it with ideological catastrophism.  There is a certain attraction to believing the world is on the verge of destruction.  It relieves the general ennui.  It makes one feel alive.  Much like the endorphin laden thrill anticipating a bungy-jump. 

Carbon dioxide, we are told, is going to destroy the planet by heating the atmosphere and baking us all to death.  Except for a couple of realities.  The first is that C0₂ is a "heavy" gas and one would expect that it would naturally slurp around the surface of the earth, rather than head off into the upper atmosphere.  This is good news because of another reality: large amounts of carbon dioxide are absorbed by the oceans and green growing things.  It is the latter which interests us.

The reality is that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide greens the earth.  It is the greenest gas there is.  Ideological Greenists stupidly oppose the cutting down of the world's forests and the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The latter is critical to the preservation and growth of forests.  What the left hand gives, the right hand would snatch away.  Despite the best efforts from the luddite Greenists, it turns out that the world's forests are growing much faster thanks to all the wonderful food they are getting from increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The Greening of the Earth

90 Percent of CO2 Emissions Go Towards Fuelling Rapid Forest Growth Rate

by Donna Rachel Edmunds