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By Jo Nova Remember how the war with Ukraine was going to accelerate the green energy revolution?
The Flakpanzer Gepard needs more ammo, not solar panels. Photo By Hans-Hermann Bühling
For some reason, unreliable wind and solar power are not helping German industry build more tank ammunition. Instead, the federal government is allegedly talking to the state governments about taking green subsidies and spending the money on factories to build shells instead. And they are building those factories near the coal plants.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the chief of Germany’s army warned that sending weapons and arms to Ukraine has left military stockpiles “bare”.
Germany led the way in the great Green Energiewende transformation spending in the order of €32 billion a year, every year, in a quest for green electrons. Instead of creating peace on Earth and better weather, it just made the legendary economic powerhouse of Europe weak and vulnerable.
Tell the world, if the Germans can’t run a nation efficiently on “renewable” power, who can?
It’s perhaps not the Reset Klaus had in mind:
Great Reset Fail? Germany Mulls Diverting Green Agenda Cash Aimed at Killing Coal to Arms Industry
Kurt […]
By Jo Nova
Two days in a row, this blog has been quoted in the Daily Telegraph.
Congratulations to Clarissa Bye for shining a torch on the BoM
Craig Kelly found the wandering solar panel leaning on a bush near Sydney’s official thermometer, and I wrote about what a strange spot that was to leave a solar panel. Then Clarissa Bye of the Daily Telegraph picked up the story and on Jan 25th asked the BoM why the panel was there. After a whole week of missed deadlines, with pleas for extra time, The Daily Telegraph gave up waiting and published the story Wednesday:
Questions raised over mystery solar panel at Sydney Observatory
Science blogger Jo Nova has also queried the solar panel’s location, describing the BOM as “lackadaisical” at best in maintaining weather sites. “The solar panel is exactly due south of the Stevenson screen where the thermometer is kept,” she said. “If, hypothetically, someone wanted to leave a reflective object pointed at the box at midday, that’d be the place to do it.”
““There’s only been one day above 30 degrees since February 21st last year in Sydney, and that was a day […]
By Jo Nova The environmental fashion parade suddenly has a smell…
This is a notable shift: Twenty years ago BP called itself “Beyond Petroleum”, and only one year ago the CEO said BP was “accelerating” its green investments. But now the CEO is reassuring investors that BP is not going to be distracted by environmental goals, and are focused on maximizing profits. Furthermore those profits would be found where it has a competitive advantage, including it’s “legacy oil and gas operations”.
Just like that: it’s OK to talk about profits and energy security. Key words here are “dialing back”, “disappointed”, “narrower” and “less emphasis” and they are all used in relation to environmental investments.
After years of sunshine and unicorns on the forced transition to unreliable energy, the mood appears to be changing.
h/t Paul Homewood at Notalotofpeopleknowthat
BP’s CEO Plays Down Renewables Push as Returns Lag
Bernard Looney seeks to sharpen strategic focus, with less emphasis on environmental goals
Jenny Strasberg, Wall Street Journal
Chief Executive Bernard Looney plans to dial back elements of the oil giant’s high-profile push into renewable energy, according to people familiar with recent discussions.
By Jo Nova
A new paper estimates that if we increased our tree canopy in cities to 30% we could cool our cities by nearly half a degree. Works better than a windmill…
Photo by Maria Orlova
The trillion dollar global warming camp obsesses over 1.5°C of heat, but the urban heat island has already made our cities 1.5°C hotter than the countryside around them, and nobody gives a toss. Cities are where the lived human experience is for most of us, and despite the threat of that extreme heat made “worse by climate change”, no government does the obvious and sets a tree cover target. There are no Ministers of Regreening, and no carbon credits for suburbia. All we’re getting is concrete bollards and fifteen-minute-cities of pain.
In the green revolution instead of growing gum trees, people are cutting them down because they shade their solar panels. In our capital city they razed a majestic avenue of trees in order to add light rail. A true Green hates cars more than they like trees.
Urban flora not only cleans the air, it also reduces suicides, improves cardiac health, and reduces particulate pollution. One Canadian study estimated that […]
By Jo Nova
The science is settled except we only just realized that the benzene and toluene gas over the vast Southern Ocean were not man-made pollutants after all, but were made by industrious phytoplankton. For the first time someone went and measured the benzene and toluene in the water and discovered that instead of being a sink for human pollutants in the air above, the ocean was the source.
This matters because these two gases increased the amount of organic aerosols by, wait for it, between 8% and up to 80% in bursts. And all that extra aerosol matters, of course, because aerosols seed clouds, which change the weather.
And the expert climate models, upon which a $1.5 Trillion dollar industry depends on for its’ very existence, did not know this. If hypothetically there has been less phytoplankton in the worlds oceans in the last few decades, there may also have been less cloud cover, and thus more warming. But who knows?
The modelers are always saying climate change can’t be natural because they can’t think of anything else that could have could have caused the warming, then people keep finding another factor they forgot to put in the […]
By Jo Nova
Remember the nomadic solar panel that appeared a few meters due south of the Sydney Observatory thermometer at the same week as the city ended it’s coldest streak in 140 years? Well Craig Kelly, who took the original photos, went back and now its gone.
Today there is just grass and shrubs to reflect the midday sun towards the back of the thermometer box.
Photo by Craig Kelly 27th January 2023
As Craig Kelly said: “The fact that it’s disappeared shows that it was never installed – someone at the BOM just happened to grab a random solar panel and place it at such an unexplained position…”
So much for expert rigorous science accurate to a tenth of a degree.
Kelly explains that this site is nearly invisible: “The only way you can see it is by holding a camera above your head – it’s not visible to the eye – even if you were 6’6” and standing on your toes you can’t see over the fence – and the Observatory is closed to the public for some unknown reason.”
Perhaps the BOM just thought no one would notice, and “it’s for a good cause, […]
8.4 out of 10 based on 16 ratings
By Jo Nova
The headline is a PsyOp all on its own. You didn’t know you were not allowed to eat crickets and powdered mealworm larvae before. Rejoice in a freedom won:
Europeans now also allowed to eat cricket powder and small mealworms
Retail Detail
The European Commission declares new insect products safe for consumption. So from Tuesday, powdered house crickets and the small mealworm will also be allowed in food.
Back in February last year, the European Union announced that three species of insects would henceforth be allowed for human consumption: the migratory spider cricket, the yellow mealworm and the house cricket. Now the European Commission is adding several more insect products to the authorised list…
Insects, they tell us, are “highly nutritious” in a vague non-specific way that does not list a single nutrient which we can’t get enough of at the moment. Instead the main, “unique” selling point is that if we eat crickets we might slow storms eighty years from now:
Insects are also seen as part of the transition to a more environmentally friendly and plant-based food system. The creatures emit less greenhouse gases, have a lot […]
By Jo Nova Good news: The vaccine narrative is unraveling
There’s been a string of stories about the downside of vaccines; how they might be fueling new variants, how the harms have been suppressed, how doctors have been silenced, and now how the advertising is “deceptive”. Personal stories are flowing forth.
Last weekend a whole new conversation has broken out online — Rassmussen reports found 57% of US voters want an inquiry into the CDC’s handling of vaccine safety. They also reported that some 7% of vaccinees told Rasmussen they suffered serious adverse effects. This meant there are something like 12 million Americans who felt they had suffered something quite bad from vaccination.
This sparked an admission that Elon Musk was in that club:
Musk had taken the vaccines so he could visit his factory in Germany. The next day Scott Adams of Dilbert cartoon fame declared “the anti-vaccers clearly won. I lost.” And he wasn’t joking.
Rassmussen’s survey has reached 29 million views and they credit Scott Adams and Elon Musk.
Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash
As far as I can tell, the big media breach started in early January with the Wall Street […]
By Jo Nova
Golly but, that’s a strange spot to leave a solar panel…
Sydney reached the longest cold streak for 140 years, and it looked like it might become the longest ever. But then a few days ago, after 331 days of cool weather, temperatures reached the magic 30.2C* at Observatory Hill Sydney ending the newsworthy cold run.
Back in 1883 Sydney had 339 days in-a-row where the thermometer didn’t make it up to 30C (86F). Since then, five million people arrived, along with the Cahill Expressway, skyscrapers, and 100,000 cars a day, but even that, apparently, wasn’t enough artificial urban warming to reach temperatures of 140 years ago.
But Craig Kelly (former MP) has some footage from that famous site and asks “What’s going on here?”
Climate change causes roaming solar panels?
That’s a strange spot to leave a panel… | CraigKelly
It’s even more suspicious when looked at from above. The solar panel position (marked in red) is exactly due south of the Stevenson screen where the thermometer is kept (marked with an arrow). If, hypothetically, someone wanted to leave a reflective object pointed at the box at midday, that’d be the place to do […]
By Jo Nova
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. | Bloomberg
Two wins. BlackRock has agreed to Ron DeSantis’ demands that Florida’s state pension funds can’t be used for eco-activism fantasy quests (like ESG*). Now they have to be used to make profits for the people those funds belong to. That’s not much of a win you might think, since that’s just a return to “the world we thought we were living in”, but in the World of Absurd it’s popping a very important bubble. Possibly “the” most important bubble — the loose money driving the trainwreck of stupid investments and sabotage-like-boycotts.
Secondly — Larry Fink feels hurt. The glitter-wheels are falling off the climate fund-wagon. The CEO of BlackRock was running around the world acting like the third largest nation on Earth. He was waving ten trillion dollars of other people’s money and bossing people into joining his cult. That party is coming undone.
BlackRock are the financial Climate Police disguised as a Monster Investment Fund but the anti-woke movement is gaining ground:
BlackRock’s Fink says climate and ESG-investing attacks getting ugly, personal
By Rachel Koning Beals, MorningStar
By Jo Nova What would it look like if a doomsday cult had a billion dollars to spend on a skiing holiday?
Maybe like the World Economic Forum: Here are people who think they are the select few, saviours of the world. They’re touched, they say by something (like an extra terrestrial maybe?) It’s an apocalypse, you know, like 600,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs says Al Gore. They’re boiling the oceans.
They might be powerful and rich, but the good news is they are utterly absurd.
The modern prophets are here to rescue you
Especially US climate envoy John Kerry:
“When you start to think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we – a select group of human beings, because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives – are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet,” Kerry told a WEF panel on Tuesday.
“It’s so… almost extra-terrestrial to think about, saving the planet. If you say that to most people most people, they think you’re just a crazy tree hugging and lefty liberal, you know, do-gooder, whatever,” he added.
From somewhere above Earth in […]
By Jo Nova
Modern science is just a competition to see who can cry the most. It’s national policy by agony aunt analysis. The terror and tears are right there in the national policy news at The Guardian. Six months after the UK experienced a hypothetical 40 degree minute the media are still dining out on the psychoanalysis of it.
Outlook? Terrifying: TV weather presenters on the hell and horror of the climate crisis
Guardian
What is it like to have a front row seat for the worst show in the world? Four meteorologists describe how they are explaining the reality to viewers – and coping with it themselves
Long gone is the British stiff upper lip as the Luftwaffe bomb London, now beach weather brings tears:
Switching channels, the ITV meteorologist Laura Tobin, who does the weather bulletins on Good Morning Britain, was also on duty that day. Like Rich, she had been watching the models with a mixture of incredulity and dread. “I remember when I did my first bulletin on that Tuesday morning I forecast that we would break 40C. Then when I sat down and chatted to my producer, I […]
By Jo Nova
Surprise: Government fixes price, and gas supply gets paralyzed
Now that the Australian government has played the Command Economy Joker Card, the gas industry has accidentally frozen. The old rules that set prices competitively have been set on fire, and the new rules are written in government jello. No one wants to set up new long term contracts when the government could change their mind any day, and the industry may either miss out on huge profits a year from now, or be in breach of “goodwill” and “reasonable price” provisions that are the legal equivalent of Ebola.
For some reason ordering people to have goodwill “or else”, just means everyone hires more lawyers, no one knows what they can “reasonably” charge, investors run for the hills, and production shrinks. It’s almost as if the free market turned into a Soviet economy… if the government decides the price, it’s almost like the government owns the industry, yeah?
h/t to Eric Worrall, via RicDre
Australian energy users call gas industry ‘a bunch of bullies’ amid claims of supply shortages
Peter Hannam, The Guardian
Samantha McCulloch, the chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production […]
Someone who knows what life in a poor country and what having children means explains why Woke Culture has gone too far to young people at the Oxford Union.
The only thing Wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright minds like you that you are victims and to complain, to protest, to throw soup on paintings.
Konstantine Kisin is a British satirist, author, and commentator who was born and raised in Moscow.
9.7 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
The UK set to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, but awkwardly, the average cost of charging an electric car has jumped by 58 per cent since last May, so sales are falling, not rising. The UK can’t afford to make them either, with BMW sending their UK electric mini factory to China. President Xi will be happy. The West thought the Glasgow commitments was a climate plan, but really it was trade deal.
h/t Notalotofpeopleknowthat
Electric car makers put the brakes on UK production because many drivers think the vehicles are too expensive
Calum Muirhead, Daily Mail
It is now expected that the UK will produce 280,000 fully electric cars and vans in 2025, down from previous estimates of 360,000.
The forecast means only a quarter of car output will be electric within the next two years, lower than prior forecasts of more than a third.
The command-economy of gas meets the command-economy of cars and pretty soon we’ll be riding horses:
In its latest report, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which provides taxpayer funding to makers of zero-emissions vehicles, said the ‘uncertain economy’ was expected […]
The Larcum Kendall K1 Watch — The most important watch you probably never heard of.
By Jo Nova
Oldbrew at Tallbloke’s Talkshop found a study showing that icebergs around Antarctica apparently haven’t changed much in the last few centuries despite an extra 2,000 Gt of CO2, and all that global warming. Remember climate change is going to hit Antarctica twice as hard as anywhere else.
As Oldbrew said: Probably not the result that was expected from this study.
Given the world warmed in the last three hundred years, it seems surprising that icebergs don’t seem to have changed. But if they had declined, this study would be a star of the news tonight. Instead I doubt many stations will report that if Captain James Cook returned today he might not see much difference.
Fascinatingly, Cook had a watch worth £450 so he could estimate longitude. To give some idea of just how fantastically valuable that watch was, ponder that the whole ship he commanded cost £1,800. The Larcum Kendall K1 watch was so prized Cook made sure “the commander, first lieutenant and astronomer were all present when it was used”.
It was modeled on the H4 clock, […]
By Jo Nova (and UPDATED)
Across all branches of science, new ideas that reset the paradigms have quietly vanished
The spark never started in the star-ideas that should have shone, and we find ourselves suddenly under a dark sky, looking up at a galaxy of burnt gravy, thinking something is missing. As dominant paradigms became entrenched in every field of science, the great new replacement ideas starved.
Nature might as well have labeled this “A graph of Original Thought at University”
It’s like some sole giant entity infected every area of science and crushed original thinkers.
‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why
Disruptive science sounds like something impossible to measure, but the researchers found way to test for the arrival of new papers that replace past paradigms. Genius discoveries may still have happened, but no one picked them up.
The authors reasoned that if a study was highly disruptive, subsequent research would be less likely to cite the study’s references, and instead would cite the study itself. Using the citation data from 45 million manuscripts and 3.9 million patents, the researchers calculated a measure of disruptiveness, called the CD index, in which […]
By Jo Nova
This was the glorious green future that just collapsed today.
But it’s a win for the rare Typhonium plant, and possibly also for millions of crabs around Indonesia who might have been hypnotized by undersea cables like the ones near the UK are. And who knows what that cable would have done electromagnetically for turtles, dugongs, whales and dolphins? Where are the Greens when giant experimental industrial parks span 5,000km of wilderness?
Today the massive Sun Cable project collapsed into voluntary administration four years after promising to build the world’s largest solar power plant in the Northern Territory. Sun Cable was a $35 billion project supposedly to collect those sacred green electrons on a 12,000 hectare “farm” in Australia (120 square kilometers) and send them to Singapore via an 800 km land cable and then a 4,200km undersea cable. It was theoretically going to be nine times bigger than the largest solar plant in the world, and use a cable 6 times longer than the longest one ever built.
So this was ambition-on-steroids, and had economies of scale up the kazoo, and possibly as much sunlight as any place on Earth, but it was still obscenely […]
Sydney Observatory in the centre of the city in 1864. (Courtesy of the State Library of NSW.)
By Jo Nova
For the first time in 163 years of records at Sydney Observatory the temperature didn’t even crack 32 degrees C (or 90F) for the whole year of 2022. Despite CO2 being at higher levels than ever, Sydney has never had temperatures that were so un-extreme.
The hottest day all year at this historic site was just 31.9 C. When researcher Chris Gillham first mentioned this, I assumed he must have meant “for the month of December”. I could not believe Sydney would go a whole year without a single hot day, but here it is. Gillham graphed the hottest day of the year at Sydney Observatory every year since 1859 and it really is unprecedented.
So far the total media attention on this point is one tweet by a weatherzone meteorologist and a paragraph in The Sydney Morning Herald. (h/t b.nice and RealClimateScience). Has the BoM even said a word? If it was the hottest year in 163 years, we’d know all about it. The BoM is an advertising agency for government policies.
And this is despite many […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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