Y2Kyoto: South Africa Waves Hello
There’s an old joke about weaning the dog off food by reducing his ration by a kibble each day, until one day, he didn’t need food at all.
As summer heat strikes, the US grid increasingly relies on a kind of invisible weapon — the “virtual power plant” — to prevent blackouts.
Each VPP brings together large numbers of homes and businesses whose owners have agreed to use less electricity when needed — or even send some of their own back to the grid — in exchange for a financial incentive.
Participants just have to let the operators take control of their usage to balance supply and demand when the system’s under stress, usually by setting the thermostat a few degrees higher or tapping electric vehicles and on-site batteries.
Pool enough customers, and it makes a big difference. Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce.
Y2Kyoto: Californicated
California is looking to rapidly shift away from fossil fuels and make its grid more resilient, but these efforts show the other side of the greening of the grid—power generation costs may be plunging, but transmission and distribution costs are rising, leading to higher spending from utilities.
These increased expenditures are passed on to consumers by the investor-owned utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric. As a result, electricity bills in California have risen so much in recent years that in some places, the power bill exceeds the cost of rent, The Wall Street Journal reports in a featured article.
The surge in bills has been “untenable,” according to the consumer advocate’s office at California’s utilities regulator.
In its latest 2024 Q2 Electric Rates Report last month, the Public Advocates Office tracked residential electric rate changes across Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Southern California Edison (SCE) service territories through July 1, 2024.
The report found that over the last few years, California’s electric bills are generally rising due to higher electricity use from things such as air conditioning, and higher overall electricity prices.
Since January 2014, residential average rates for the PG&E service area have jumped by 110%, those of SCE have surged by 90%, and SDG&E rates have soared by 82%.
Y2Kyoto: I’ll Miss The Polar Ice Caps
Per a new study, more than 2200 historical aerial photos of a 2000 km stretch of ice in East Antarctica have been recently uncovered. The rare images reveal what the glaciers in this region looked like in 1937.
Interestingly, the photos show all these East Antarctic glaciers have remained stable, thickened, gained mass, and/or increased in elevation over the last 85 years, with much of the growth and mass gains occurring since 1985.
There has been no warming in this region since the 1950s. This suggests that “global warming” plays a minimal role in ice thickness changes.
Y2Kyoto: Billion Dollar Directory
Shortly after my paper Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters” was accepted for publication, I was tipped off to a public but unnamed and well-hidden directory on the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that contained 17 (now 18) of the most recent versions of the “billion dollar disaster” (BDD) tabulation, dating to March 2020.
Today, I reveal the archive and what it tells us about the problematic methods underlying NOAA’s billion dollar disaster tabulation. […]
In the absence of methodological transparency, the hidden archive of the most recent 18 versions of NOAA’s “billion dollar disasters” allows an unprecedented opportunity to reverse-engineer NOAA’s methods that the agency employs for creating and updating its widely cited and highly influential tabulation.1 As you will see below, what the 18 versions reveal is highly concerning.
Y2Kyoto: There Goes The Consensus
This is perhaps the most glorious chart you will ever see. Green energy scammers are losing the support of the youth more than any other age demographic, the very demographic of people they appeal to the most since it requires their investment to continue the grift.
A recent Monmouth University poll found that the percentage of young Americans ages 18-34 who view climate change as a “serious problem” dropped from 67% in both their 2018 and 2021 poll to 50% in the latest poll. Support for government action dropped a whopping 18 percentage points, from 80% in 2021 to 62% in 2024. There was also a notable drop among those ages 35-54, but those 55+ remain unchanged.
Y2Kyoto: March Of The Killer Trees
Trees are feasting on decades of carbon dioxide emissions and growing bigger as a result, according to a new study of U.S. forests.
Scientists tracked wood volume in 10 different tree groups from 1997 to 2017, finding that all except aspen-birch grew larger. Over that same period, carbon dioxide levels went from 363 parts per million to 405 parts per million, owing largely to the burning of fossil fuels. More abundant CO2 accelerates photosynthesis, causing plants to grow faster, a phenomenon known as “carbon fertilization.” The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
I mean, everything about this has to be bad.
Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa
Public opinion is beginning to shift. Maybe it’s the blackouts.
A year ago I noted that the discourse around climate policy had changed, prompted by the security of supply and affordability concerns emerging in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that sadly continues. The trilemma was back with a vengeance and has not gone away – recently the UK Government announced a renewed desire to see the delivery of more gas power station this decade, despite the lack of available abatement technology. […]
But probably the most seismic change in past year came in July when the Labour Party failed to win the Uxbridge by-election as voters rebelled against the expansion of London’s emissions charging scheme known as “Ulez” (Ultra-low emissions zone). As a result, councils up and down the country abandoned plans for similar schemes, and the unpopular incumbent Conservative Party saw an electoral opportunity, shortly afterwards watering down the electric car mandate and plans for heat pumps. The Labour Party is not immune to climate u-turns having recently abandoned its green-spending pledge.
However, it hasn’t all been good news. In February I took part in IE Week, speaking on the final day of the conference in a session devoted to electricity. Too many of the speakers spouted out-of-date mantras about renewables being “cheap” and painting a naïve picture of a green utopia with green energy, green jobs, sunshine and flowers. I likened it to a child’s picture of a house – ask any child to draw such a picture and you get something along the lines of the image shown – charming, but hardly realistic.
When asked about people sitting in the cold and dark in order to save a few pennies under the Demand Flexibility Scheme, one speaker hailed the “social media buzz” they were generating, failing to recognise that they were driven by poverty and not a desire to be “down with the kidz”. However on a more positive note these remarks did not go down well with the audience, many of whom thanked me for being the “voice of reason” in the room. Still, we need to do more to avoid designing energy markets with the affluent in mind, while ignoring the reality of the majority.
Earth Day In India
Go big or go home: Massive fire in New Delhi, India at the Ghazipur landfill spewing toxic fumes into the air. Ghazipur is one of the largest landfills in the world.
Y2Kyoto: This Is Getting Old
IT’S EARTH DAY. AGAIN. CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT.
Y2Kyoto: Risky Business
The “Amazing Tale” of How Three Billionaires Plunged the World into Climate Catastrophism
It is a tale of how three wealthy men bankrolled a project to promote an extreme scenario to guarantee that the economic impact of climate change they projected into the future would be “eye-poppingly large”.
It will also not be a surprise to learn that the billionaire green activist Michael Bloomberg has played a key role over the last decade in lifting this implausible pathway to underserved prominence. Notes Pielke: “It’s a story of privilege and conceit – the privilege in American democracy that accompanies being mindbogglingly wealthy, and the conceit that climate policies can best be pursued by corrupting the scientific literature on climate change.”
In 2012, three wealthy men, Bloomberg, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson chipped in $500,000 each to fund a project “making the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world”. An early funded report was part-titled ‘Risky Business’ and it focused on RCP8.5 “as the pathway closest to a business-as-usual trajectory”. The pathway was said to be “closest to a future without concerted action to reduce future warming”.
Climate, The Movie
You can also watch on X, or download from Tom Nelson’s Substack.
Y2Kyoto: “This is the hypocrisy that exists in the world”
Y2Kyoto: Xi See What You Did There
More Chinese Communism can Save Us from Climate Change
Anyone who is curious why China is building wind and solar AND coal, the answer is they are building wind turbines because Xi Jinping told them to build wind turbines.
In 2021, Xi wanted to pimp China’s emissions record in time for the next COP conference, so he issued strict district level energy quotas, demanded more wind turbines and solar, and ordered a transition to renewables.
The order for quotas was obeyed, but Xi forgot to tell everyone to reduce their energy use, to ensure the quotas lasted until the end of the year. As a result, China burned through their quotas and ran out of energy by July 2021, and much of the Chinese economy shut down for a few weeks while people waited for new orders from the Communist Central Committee.
The central committee did the only thing possible, but it took time for news of the crisis to filter through the communist bureaucracy and for a decision to be made – they relaxed the coal quotas.
h/t PaulHarveyPageTwo
Y2Kyoto: That Word
Remember when the word “denier” specifically referenced the Holocaust but was appropriated by the left as a slur, until they decided to pull a 180 on the whole Jew extermination thing to support Hamas and kind of took the sting out of it?
Y2Kyoto: I Miss The Great Barrier Reef
Y2Kyoto: MAID By Any Other Name
Patrick Christys: ‘The NHS cares more about net zero than saving lives. People will die, quite literally, sacrificed on the alter of the big green agenda’
Update: The link is gone, but you can watch the segment on Youtube
Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa
Using crops to make diesel involves an inherent trade-off between the fuel’s climate-friendly benefits and preserving enough supplies to keep food prices in check.
Finding the balance can be tricky. That’s the challenge facing California as it debates a potential revamp of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
The frenzy to cash in on credits for lower emissions has triggered a surge in renewable diesel, with state supplies reaching records every quarter since 2020.
The escalation has led environmentalists to call for a limit on crop-based fuels, arguing it’s necessary to ensure the program doesn’t worsen hunger. The biofuel is often made from soybean oil, a staple for cooking.
“California is diverting soybean oil from food markets into its fuel market, and that’s surprising and troubling,” said Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists who studies the impacts of fuel policy.
And there’s a weird domino effect of using soy oil to make renewable diesel, which some critics say blunts the climate benefits.
As more soy oil goes into diesel, demand climbs for palm oil, a controversial commodity. The European Union wants to phase out its use in fuel production to curb deforestation.
California’s regulatory board recently postponed a March 21 hearing on the fuel standard.
Y2Kyoto: Climate Of Fear
Y2Kyoto: The Texas Blackout
In February 2021, millions of Texans lost power, and the state’s grid came within four or five minutes of a total failure that would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.