Category: Y2Kyoto

Insane Predictions

Climate Cult Insufferable Twits Y2Kyoto 24 Comments

So a warming climate will diminish crop yields? I guess that’s why corn yields in Manitoba are currently so much higher than corn yields in Iowa….oh, wait….

And if carbon pollution worsens, the loss of calories across the same six staples — corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, sorghum and cassava — rises to nearly a quarter by century’s end, the researchers reported in Nature.

More generally, every additional degree Celsius of warming reduces the world’s ability to produce food from these crops by 120 calories per person per day, or nearly five percent of current daily consumption, they calculated.

Y2Kyoto: The Government Giveth

Democrats Y2Kyoto 7 Comments

The government taketh away.

More than $14 billion in green energy projects have been delayed or canceled so far in 2025 as the Trump administration and its allies move to roll back former President Joe Biden’s sprawling climate agenda, according to new analysis released Thursday.

Congressional Republicans are looking to restrict Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies for green projects while the Trump administration slashes big-budget climate grants, leading companies that once had big ambitions to postpone or cancel their green energy developments outright. Although many investments spurred by the IRA were canceled before 2025, $14 billion worth of projects have been canceled or delayed so far this year, with $4.5 billion nixed or pushed back in April alone, according to an analysis on projects tracked by the nonpartisan group E2 in partnership with the Clean Economy Tracker.

The Art of Distraction

Climate Cult Green Police Y2Kyoto 11 Comments

Having previously changed the consumer carbon tax rate to zero, the Carney government appears to be moving to eliminate it altogether. But don’t get out the champagne just yet. The industrial carbon tax remains, and Carney’s being cagey about what might happen to it.

In March Carney used a regulation to set the price of the consumer carbon price to zero. However the government is now moving to repeal the law which enabled the policy, effectively ending it for good — along with the rebate Canadians received from it.

The pricing system for industry accounted for about 80 per cent of total emissions cuts from carbon pricing overall.

Carney has promised to strengthen the industrial policy but has not said how or when that will happen.

Narrative Contradictions

Climate Cult nannystate Y2Kyoto 6 Comments

Who would have thought that a warmer climate could create more frequent spring frosts? It’s not as if you can expect fewer frosts in a cooler climate. But maybe that’s just my bourgeois logic at fault. If you find that people aren’t buying that argument anyway, you can always just blame Trump.

Traditionally, the plants’ buds break out in spring, emerging with colorful grapes that range from the cabernet franc’s deep blues to the soft greens of the region’s most popular grape, riesling. However, a warming world is making that happen earlier, adding to uncertainty and potential risks for farmers. If a frost comes after the buds have broken, growers can lose much of the harvest.

Political tensions, such as tariffs amid President Donald Trump’s trade wars and the administration’s rollback of environmental policies, are also looming problems.

Hindenburg: the Sequel

Alternative Subsidy Climate Cult Y2Kyoto 27 Comments

Grounded.

At Monday’s Airbus Summit 2025 in Toulouse on the sustainability of the aviation sector, the company’s CEO provided several details about the nature of its hydrogen aircraft project. Originally slated to enter service in 2035, the aircraft was postponed with no specific timeline in mind.

This is expected to represent at least a five to ten year delay. The delay enables Airbus to establish whether the project itself is still feasible while allowing time for new technology to develop to facilitate the aircraft’s construction.[…]

The project was initially launched in 2020. The aircraft, named ZEROe, is part of Airbus’ plan to “bring a hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft to market.” The hydrogen fuel cell technology was selected in 2025 as the preferred means for the future plane.

Airbus’ official statement at the time read that it remained “committed to the goal of bringing a commercially viable, hydrogen-powered aircraft to market” but noted that “development a hydrogen ecosystem – including infrastructure, production, distribution and regulatory frameworks – is a huge challenge requiring global collaboration and investment.”

Related: The “colossal fail” label came because it turns out that when [Toronto] city hall made the decision in 2019 to go electric with the purchase of two new ferries — urgently needed partial replacements for the current fleet of four ancient, often-broken boats — they, well, forgot something kind of important.

Net Zero: Sooner Or Later, You Run Out Of Other Peoples’ Energy

Alternative Subsidy Climate Cult Y2Kyoto 25 Comments

At WUWT;

After decades of quietly footing the bill for Europe’s grand energy experiments, it appears Norway has finally decided to walk off the stage — or at the very least, slam the door shut on a few cross-border power cables on the way out.

The political crisis rocking Oslo isn’t just about domestic squabbles or ideological posturing. It’s about energy — more specifically, the growing realization that Norway, with its hydro-rich grid, has become the unwilling battery pack for Germany’s failed energy transition. Or as the Germans call it, Energiewende.

And like all grand social experiments conducted with other people’s money, the Norwegians are understandably losing patience. […]

With baseload capacity gutted and dispatchable plants (i.e., fossil fuels) scorned, Germany has become a dangerously energy-dependent neighbor. When the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, Berlin plugs into the north — namely Norway — and expects the lights to stay on.

And for years, they have. At Norway’s expense.

The Libranos: Bedfellas

Chinada The Libranos Y2Kyoto 18 Comments

Thread by @SNewmanPodcast;

Two powerful men secretly orchestrated Canada’s financial destiny for over a decade.

One was caught in a MASSIVE money laundering scandal.

The other just became Prime Minister.

No one’s talking about their connection. Until now…

Frank McKenna: TD Bank’s Deputy Chair since 2006.

Mark Carney: Former Bank of England Governor.

One stayed in boardrooms. The other now controls Canada’s government.

But they intersected at one crucial place that changed everything: Brookfield Asset Management.

Fly The Net Zero Skies

Alternative Subsidy Roadkill Y2Kyoto 27 Comments

CNN:

• Heathrow closed: London’s Heathrow Airport is completely shut down because of a power outage due to a large fire nearby, causing massive disruption at one of the world’s busiest travel hubs. The fire is now under control, but Heathrow’s backup power supply was also affected.

• Thousands impacted: Heathrow’s closure is expected to affect more than 1,300 flights. An airline analytics firm estimated that “upwards of 145,000” passengers could be impacted, and Heathrow is warning of significant disruption in the coming days. Trains around Heathrow have also been disrupted.

Of course: Heathrow had diesel generators for emergency back-up if the grid went down. Sadly they removed the back-up a few weeks ago in order to meet Green Energy targets.

Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa

More Pavilions At Folkfest Y2Kyoto 24 Comments

Achieving Net Zero may be easier than we thought: Kelowna’s Development Future In Jeopardy Due To Insufficient Electrical Capacity

In what can only be described as a shocking letter, the Urban Development Institute said this week that development in Kelowna may come to a standstill as a result of insufficient electrical infrastructure.

“Kelowna’s real estate development industry is facing significant uncertainty as FortisBC has indicated it cannot guarantee power availability for new projects over the next several years,” the Okanagan chapter of the UDI, which represents the development industry, said in the letter. “In recent weeks, several developers have been informed that power cannot be assured for projects until 2027 to 2029.”

FortisBC serves as the regional electricity provider for the Southern Interior region of British Columbia. In Fall 2024, FortisBC said that it plans to spend $157 million towards electrical infrastructure in the region over the next three years, but that is still pending approval from the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC), the Province’s regulatory agency for utilities, and UDI Okanagan said the investment was “neither sufficient nor timely to accommodate Kelowna’s rapid population growth.”

“Without a reliable electricity supply, development in the region is at risk of stalling, with some projects potentially being abandoned altogether,” they said. “This has the potential to disrupt the City of Kelowna’s ability to meet its provincial housing targets.”

That which cannot go on forever will stop.

Y2Kyoto: Schadenfrozen

Alternative Subsidy Y2Kyoto 6 Comments

Bloomberg (Feb 3): Nordic countries increasingly feel they are paying the cost of a failed German energy policy — one they weren’t consulted on, though it affects them.

Energiewende is the German version of the energy transition championed by former Chancellor Angela Merkel: shutting down nuclear power stations and embracing wind and solar electricity. All were supported by successive right- and left-wing governments with generous subsidies. Dunkelflaute is a period of windless and cloudy weather that reduces renewable production.

The combination of both words means the German electricity grid is today more weather dependent than ever. Without sufficient baseload generation running 24/7 and dispatchable plants, which can be activated on demand, Berlin relies on imports from neighboring countries to fill the gap during long stretches of winter when it’s dark and windless.

In Norway, energiewende and dunkelflaute have collided, pushing up local electricity prices as the country exports a growing amount of power via cross-border cables. Average wholesale power prices in 2023-2024 were more than 50% higher in southern Norway than in the 2010-2020 period. The problem reached its zenith last week when Oslo debated whether to adopt new EU rules, known as the fourth clean-energy package, key to advancing the rollout of renewables.

On Thursday, the euro-skeptic Center Party denied its support to the measures and abandoned the coalition government that’s ruled the country for three-and-a-half years, setting off the leadership spiral. The center-left Labour Party will now go it alone, in the party’s first minority government in 25 years, ahead of elections set for Sept. 8. […]

The collapse of the Norwegian government came months after a spat between Sweden and Germany after Stockholm rejected Berlin’s request to build another cross-border connection. In 2023, Norway rejected a British request for a submarine cable to Scotland. Crucially, whoever wins the next Norwegian election, they are likely to scrap a 50-year-old pair of cables connecting Norway with Denmark. If that happens, it would indicate that other cross-border interconnectors may be in danger when they reach their end of life, and that new projects to replace them — and also expand capacity beyond the current design — may never be built.

Y2Kyoto: The Planet Has An Actuary

Y2Kyoto 6 Comments

California’s Insurance Crisis;

A long-term change in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events would indeed alter the risk of loss. But insurance is about the management of risk. Without risk, insurance could not exist. As Cuthbert Heath, an early innovator in catastrophe insurance, explained more than a century ago: “Any risk is insurable at the right price.”

Changing risk does not lead to uninsurability. However, changing risk while restricting the ability to price appropriately in response, could lead to uninsurability. It is pricing, not risk, that underlies California’s insurance crisis. Let’s take a closer look.

Back in 1998, soon after Chris Landsea and I published our first paper estimating what damage past hurricanes would do under contemporary levels of population and wealth, we were contacted by someone in Florida’s government involved with insurance regulation. We were asked if we could apply our normalization just to hurricanes that affected Florida. We performed the requested analysis and shared our findings with Florida officials — Normalized hurricane losses for Florida under our methods implied much greater risk of loss than other contemporary methods of loss estimation, and thus implied a need for higher insurance rates for Florida homeowners. We did not hear back.

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