Meet The Fossil Fuelled Electric Car
In this newsletter:
1) For Most Of The Last 10,000 Years, Greenland Ice Sheet Was Smaller Than Today
Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, 5 August 2019
2) Let Them Eat Cake: Germany Plans To Make Eating Meat Expensive To ‘Protect The Climate’
Deutsche Welle, 7 August 2019
3) Kathy Gyngell: Coffee Crisis? No, A Global Warming Storm In A Teacup
The Conservative Woman, 6 August 2019
4) Benny Peiser: Incredible Shrinking Europe — Between Climate Utopia & Green Energy Crisis
The Heartland Institute
5) Forget Paris: China’s New Coal Boom
Reuters, 6 August 2019
6) Beijing’s Subsidy Cut Is Starting To Hurt China’s Largest Electric Car Company
Quartz, 7 August 2019
7) And Finally: Meet The Fossil Fuelled Electric Car
Jo Nova, 7 August 2019
Full details:
1) For Most Of The Last 10,000 Years, Greenland Ice Sheet Was Smaller Than Today
Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, 5 August 2019
Most of the ice currently melting on Greenland only formed during the last few hundred years.
Image Source: Mikkelson et al., 2018
A new paper (Axford et al., 2019) reveals NW Greenland’s “outlet glaciers were smaller than today from ~9.4 to 0.2 ka BP” (9,400 to 200 years before 1950), and that “most of the land-based margin reached its maximum Holocene extent in the last millennium and likely the last few hundred years.”
The authors conclude:
“We infer based upon lake sediment organic and biogenic content that in response to declining temperatures, North Ice Cap reached its present-day size ~1850 AD, having been smaller than present through most of the preceding Holocene.”
Furthermore, the authors assert Greenland was 2.5°C to 3°C warmer than modern on average during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, and peak temperatures were 4°C to 7°C warmer.
Another new paper ( Schweinsberg et al., 2019) indicates the most pronounced glacier expansion in West Greenland has occurred during the last 2,000 years.
“Our records reveal asynchronous regrowth of GIC between ~4.3 and 2 ka emphasizing the variable responses of individual glaciers to late Holocene climate changes on Nuussuaq. The subsequent millennia were characterized by gradually increasing glacier size in accordance with gradual declining summer insolation. Superimposed on the progressive increase in glacier growth are frequent, high-amplitude GIC fluctuations throughout the late Holocene; the most significant periods of GIC expansion occurred at ~3.7 and 2.8 ka, and throughout the past ~2 ka.”
Image Source: Schweinsberg et al., 2019
The authors cite a Greenland Ice Sheet temperature reconstruction showing modern temperatures (extending through 2015) are not unusual in the context of the last 10,000 years.
Image Source: Schweinsberg et al., 2019
The source for the Schweinsberg et al. (2019) Greenland temperature reconstruction is Kobashi et al., 2017, who concluded a) Greenland was about 2.9°C warmer than today during the Early Holocene, b) there has been no obvious net warming since the 1930s, and a c) slight cooling trend since 2005 (in accord with North Atlantic cooling).
Full post
2) Let Them Eat Cake: Germany Plans To Make Eating Meat Expensive To ‘Protect The Climate’
Deutsche Welle, 7 August 2019
Meat is relatively cheap for consumers in Germany. But that could all be about to change as lawmakers from across the political spectrum back proposals aimed at climate protection and animal welfare.
German politicians from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens on Wednesday proposed raising the value added tax (VAT) on meat to the standard rate of 19%. Currently, meat is taxed at a reduced rate of 7%.
“I am in favor of abolishing the VAT reduction for meat and earmarking it for more animal welfare,” said Friedrich Ostendorf, agricultural policy spokesperson for the Greens.
His SPD counterpart Rainer Spieging added that: “a meat tax, such as increasing the VAT to 19%, could be a way forward.”
The lawmakers proposed using the additional funds raised by the tax increase to support animal welfare in the country at a time when the meat industry is coming under increased scrutiny for how it treats livestock.
The agriculture spokesperson from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) was open to the plans. Under one condition:
“Such a tax can be a constructive proposal,” said Albert Stegemann. “However, the additional tax revenue should be used to support livestock farmers to help them restructure.”
Meat consumption has come under increased scrutiny over the past decade, with meatless diets, such as vegetarianism and veganism, gaining traction across the globe.
Scientists have labeled the meat industry one of the highest emitters of CO2, a key contributor to climate change. They have called for bold measures to decrease meat consumption as part of a holistic approach to combating climate change.
Full story
3) Kathy Gyngell: Coffee Crisis? No, A Global Warming Storm In A Teacup
The Conservative Woman, 6 August 2019
IN CASE you missed July’s good news for coffee drinkers, it was this – they are not likely to be deprived of their daily fix any time soon.
The bad news perhaps was for the coffee producers. An oversupply of beans has sent global prices tumbling as record seasonal surpluses of beans pushed down coffee futures to their lowest levels in more than a decade.
So? What of it? you might be forgiven for asking.
It so happens that this coffee-bean glut was not predicted. Au contraire. It came despite previous claims of a looming coffee apocalypse. Three years ago, in September 2016, the New York Times reported research purporting to show how global warming was threatening the world’s coffee supply.
The NYT said: ‘Though it contains little new research, it has made waves by collating an array of available literature indicating that climate change will have a stark effect on the world’s coffee supply.’ The report itself emphasised the threat warming temperatures posed to farmland, citing a study from the March 2015 issue of the journal Climatic Changewhich found that climate change ‘will reduce the global area suitable for coffee by about 50 per cent across emission scenarios’.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation pointed out at the time that this was pretty much a load of alarmist claptrap. Global grain production has also defied climate hysteria. It has not been damaged by climate change, in fact it is set to reach record levels this year.
And farmers in France, the European Union’s largest grain producer, no doubt to the alarmists’ chagrin, will harvest their second largest soft wheat crop in history this year at 39.17million tonnes as the summer’s continental heatwave failed to hurt yields.
For an insight into just how flawed the Fair Trade-inspired coffee report was you can do no better than view the GWPF’s original Briefing film, Roasting the Coffee Apocalypse. I rather think they, rather than the Climatic Change journal, have been proved right.
You can see the film here.
4) Benny Peiser: Incredible Shrinking Europe — Between Climate Utopia & Green Energy Crisis
The Heartland Institute
Presentation at the 13th International Conference on Climate Change, Washington DC, 25 July 2019
Click on image above to watch the video
5) Forget Paris: China’s New Coal Boom
Reuters, 6 August 2019
SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Approvals for new coal mine construction in China have surged in 2019, government documents showed, with Beijing expecting consumption of the commodity to rise in the coming years even as it steps up its fight against smog and greenhouse gas emissions.
Long-term cuts in coal consumption are a key part of China’s energy, environment and climate goals, but the fivefold increase in new mine approvals in the first-half of 2019 suggests China’s targets still provide ample room for shorter-term growth.
China’s energy regulator gave the go-ahead to build 141 million tonnes of new annual coal production capacity from January to June, compared to 25 million tonnes over the whole of last year, Reuters analysis of approval documents showed.
The projects included new mines in the regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Shanxi and Shaanxi that are part of a national strategy to consolidate output at dedicated coal production “bases”, as well as expansions of existing collieries, the National Energy Administration (NEA) documents showed. […] Chinese coal output rose 2.6% in the first-half of 2019 to 1.76 billion tonnes.
MORE TO COME?
Industry groups still expect coal-fired power capacity to increase over the next few years, with investments in nuclear and renewables still insufficient to cover rising energy demand.
The research unit of the China State Grid Corporation last month forecast that total coal-fired capacity would peak at 1,230-1,350 gigawatts (GW), which would mean an increase of about 200-300 GW.
A study published earlier this year also suggested China’s targets would allow the construction of another 290 GW of coal-fired capacity in the coming years.
Full story
see also The Road From Paris: China’s Climate U-Turn
6) Beijing’s Subsidy Cut Is Starting To Hurt China’s Largest Electric Car Company
Quartz, 7 August 2019
China’s latest electric-car subsidy policy is intended to strengthen the industry by “eliminating the inferior.” But when it comes to “selecting the superior,” things aren’t exactly going to plan.
Since late June, when Beijing began cutting subsidies for electric vehicles by half, on average, the market has slowed. Monthly sales at the country’s largest EV maker, BYD, are perhaps the most telling sign of what to expect when nationwide July sales are released later this week or next.
The Shenzhen-based carmaker announced today that it sold 16,567 units in July (pdf), including pure electric and plug-in hybrids. That’s down 38% on the month before and 12% lower than the same period last year.
BYD’s sales of pure electric passenger car have slumped in particular, falling by half in July from the month before. Electric passenger cars have often been three times larger than sales of plug-in hybrids, but in July the gap narrowed. BYD sold 9,515 pure electric cars last month, only around 1.5 times larger than plug-in hybrid sales. That could be directly related to Beijing’s subsidy cuts, which hit cars with ranges above 300 kilometers the hardest. Some of BYD’s most popular models, including E5 and Yuan EV, fall into that category.
Whether BYD can adapt smoothly without Beijing’s help is a test case for Beijing’s nearly decade-long subsidy policy. The company’s revenue from EVs took off in 2015, reaching nearly $800 million in 2016 on sales of some 96,000 EVs. BYD never reveals how much subsidy it receives, but government data show it got as much as $1 billion at the federal level for cars sold that year. (Local government subsidies are separate.)
Full story
7) And Finally: Meet The Fossil Fuelled Electric Car
Jo Nova, 7 August 2019
It’s a diesel powered electric car point:
The fossil fuelled electric car…
It’s becoming a joke all around the world — the EVs in Australia powered by dirty diesel. But what’s the difference? Most EV’s in Australia are running on fossil fuel — the generators are just hidden behind longer extension cords. (Ones that carry 240,000V). EV’s on our grid are running on 80% fossil fuels every day.
The sign on the charger above says “Nullarbor” — the vast treeless and grid-free centre of Australia — but this is actually a test site in Perth (the trees were the giveaway).
The 3,000 kilometer trip across the Nullarbor from Perth to Adelaide is such an achievement for an EV that it’s practically a news story each time one makes it. Electric Car owners carry a chip about not being able to drive across the country like any real car owner could. So Jon Edwards, a retired engineer from Perth, set up this test site in his backyard. He wanted to know if it could be a realistic stop-gap for our far remote roads.
To me, this looks like a chain of efficiency losses going from diesel to mechanical to electrical to battery to mechanical, but Edwards tested it with ten friend’s cars last December and estimates it works out slightly better on fuel use than just driving a diesel. Readers can check out all his calculations and tables on his page — at a glance it’s a respectable effort. He is an engineer. The charger is a Tritium Veefil 50kW DC (a big fast one) and took 9 hours to charge all 10 cars and used 108L of fuel. Good for fuel. Bad for time.
(The 6,600km return trip across the Nullabor took 13 days in case you were wondering, though they were not in a race).
There’s a good reason EV’s are only 0.2% of all new Australian car purchases — with vast distances, a fragile grid, expensive electricity and heavy towing loads. Plus these fast chargers are like adding “20 houses” to our grid, so will cripple the system or require billions of dollars of infrastructure costs. The dumbest thing is that as long as they run off fossil fuels, they’ll probably increase our CO2 emissions, doing the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing, but yet perversely helping plants grow. Their big environmental benefit being mainly achieved by failing to do what they are intended to do.
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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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