China’s Coal-Fired Power Boom Is Soaring To New Levels

by WJS Editorial Board, Sep 13, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


An unspoken truth of the climate-change crusade is this: Anything the U.S. does to reduce emissions won’t matter much to global temperatures.

U.S. cuts will be swamped by the increases in India, Africa, and especially China. Look no further than China’s boom in new coal-fired electricity.

Under the nonbinding 2015 Paris climate agreement, China can increase its emissions until 2030. And is it ever. [bold, links added]

Between 2015 and 2021, China’s emissions increased by some 11%, according to the Climate Action Tracker, which evaluates nationally determined contributions under the Paris agreement.

The U.S. has reduced its emissions by some 6% between 2015 and 2021. Beijing made minimal new commitments at last year’s Glasgow confab on climate, despite world pressure.

S&P Global Commodity Insights recently estimated that China is planning or building coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of at least 100 gigawatts. Those are merely the projects whose development status is confirmed, so the real number is almost certainly higher.

The total U.S. power capacity is some 1,147 gigawatts. One gigawatt is enough energy to power as many as 770,000 homes.

The nonprofit Global Energy Monitor tracks coal-fired power projects worldwide of 30 megawatts or more, including those planned for the long-term.

It estimates that, as of July 2022, China had some 258 coal-fired power stations—or some 515 individual units—proposed, permitted, or under construction. If completed, they would generate some 290 gigawatts, more than 60% of the world’s total coal capacity under development.

Global Energy Monitor also reports that as of July China had 174 new coal mines or coal-mine expansions proposed, permitted, or under construction that when complete would produce 596 million metric tonnes per year.

Attenborough’s Arctic Sea-Ice Fearmongering Bordering On Misinformation

by C. Morrison, Sep 13, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The Arctic has been a happy hunting ground for the climate scaremonger Sir David Attenborough. Two years ago he made the fanciful claim that polar bears could die out in the 2030s.

It is now generally accepted that polar bears have been thriving and increasing in numbers, and in his latest BBC documentary Frozen Planet II, Attenborough makes no mention of his previous claim. [bold, links added]

But he does make the astonishing suggestion that all the summer sea ice in the Arctic could be gone within 12 years.

Unfortunately, such predictions are now out of date. Summer sea ice hit a low in 2012 and has been steadily recovering ever since.

According to the latest data from the US-based National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) for the end of August, “Sea ice extent is likely to remain higher than in recent years.

The evidence is shown in the graph below.

….

As can be clearly seen, the 2022 blue line is well above the 2012 low point. According to the NSIDC, the average sea ice extent for August ranked 13th lowest in the recent satellite record.

The growth of Arctic sea ice has been confirmed by a number of sources. The EU weather service Copernicus reported that the coverage of Arctic sea ice is now very close to the 1991-2020 average.

Climate Scaremongers Take Note: It Was Hotter In 1976!

by P. Homewood, Sep 13, 022 in ClimateChange Dispatch


For weeks we have been told that this year’s warm summer is due to climate change.

The BBC’s Justin Rowlatt was quite clear: ‘We know what is behind this – greenhouse gas emissions caused by our burning of fossil fuels like coal and gas,’ a message amplified across the media and stoked by the Met Office, who delighted in their red warnings and public health alerts. [bold, links added]

It was not only the heat. The Met Office claimed that this summer’s drought is a harbinger of the future we could expect, ably assisted by fraudulently misleading images of ‘dried up reservoirs’ on BBC News.

As many of us suspected all along, the summer of 2022 was not a record breaker at all, as it was much hotter in 1976, as the Central England Temperature Series makes clear:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/meantemp_seasonal_totals.txt

 

Indeed it was hotter in 1826 and 2018, and this summer was no hotter than in 1995 and 2006.