Cont: Global warming discussion V

[Puppycow]

 

[dann]

Very sensible guy, and yet his warnings will be dismissed as alarmist and his proposals as unrealistic by many of the posters in this thread!
(However, his video could have donne with some graphics and illustrations! As it is, it might as well have been a podcast. it serves no purpose to stare at his face for 15 minutes!)

 

[dann]

The darker agenda behind Trump's obsession with wind turbines (Boston Globe, Sep 10, 2025)
Trump's assault on wind is a quid pro quo to the fossil-fuel interests, plutocrats and petrostate actors who helped return him to power.
(...)
That agenda was evident months before Trump won the 2024 election. It was enshrined in the plutocrat-funded manifesto known as Project 2025. The fossil fuel industry-friendly plan advocates for ending taxpayer support for wind and solar energy, dismissing them as “unreliable” (a myth perpetuated by fossil fuel interest groups) and overly dependent on subsidies (the reality is that fossil fuels receive far more subsidies).

 

[dann]

Denmark to tax cows, according to CNBC.

Gassy cows and pigs will face a carbon tax in Denmark — a world first (NBC News, June 2026, 2024)
Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country in the world to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming.
The aim is to reduce Danish greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, said Taxation Minister Jeppe Bruus.

I don't remember reading about this. Maybe it wasn't a big thing in the news because it won't be implemented until 2030.
I only know about it because I saw this today:

What Is the Cost of a Cow Fart? Grace Kuhlenschmidt on the Climate’s Fart Problem (The Daily Show on YouTube, Sep 12, 2025 - 5:19 min.)
Why are governments around the world so concerned with bovine blasts? Grace Kuhlenschmidt dives into the science of livestock emissions by speaking with Washington state Rep. Lisa Parshley, who is hoping to start a tax on cow farts, farmer Jake Yancey, who doesn’t give a fart, and the OG experts on burps: children.

A similar proposal in California, apparently, but it's a fairly old article:
Dairy farmers in California say anti-flatulence law stinks (CNBC, Oct 17, 2016)

It makes sense that it's a problem that should be solved somehow.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Good to know that in the next 5 years things will get so bad that people will finally get serious about it!

In the next 5 years we should see a dramatic shift to renewable energy sources, development of new technologies that could reduce our carbon footprint even more, and the resolution of several major political crises. Also in 5 years I expect that rates and insurance on my small property will suck up 1/3 of my income (its already 24%), as we bear the increasing cost of global warming.

In 5 years time people will be howling about the crippling cost of living in an overheated world. Many of them will be the same ones that previously called global warming a hoax or argued that it wasn't a big deal and trying to fix it would just damage the economy. OTOH some will still insist that it's a conspiracy by liberals to take away their freedoms. If this sounds familiar it's because it is - we saw the same behavior with Covid.

 

[dann]

... and if he's still alive (probably not), Trump will no doubt blame global warming on windmills.
In the meantime, he's got other problems (or his voters have the problems while he's cashing in):

Trump Con COLLAPSES After Power Prices Skyrocket As Energy Nightmare Revealed (The Damage Report on YouTube, Sep 13, 2025 - 5:54 min.)
Donald Trump's massive failures surge into spotlight as power prices skyrocket at a rate twice as fast as the already high inflation, with Trump's policies on specific energy sources and boundless AI creating huge bills for the public. John Iadarola and Sharon Reed break it down on The Damage Report.
(...)
CNN's Matt Egan explains why electricity prices are soaring - https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/cnns...
"On the September 7 edition of CNN This Morning Weekend, business reporter Matt Egan outlined some of the reasons energy prices are rising twice as fast as inflation.
According to The Guardian, a recent report from Climate Power found that “household electricity bills have increased by 10% since Donald Trump re-entered the White House.” Right-wing media and the Trump administration are attempting to blame Democrats and renewable energy, even though a greater supply of renewable power would bring costs down. Moreover, as Time reported, “a recent analysis by Heatmap found that, in states with higher adoption of renewables, prices have risen more modestly than average — or even fallen."
Egan notes that the biggest driver contributing to cost increases from the demand side is “artificial intelligence and the data centers that power the AI boom. … By some estimates, data center energy demand has tripled over the past decade and is expected to double or triple again by 2028.”
On the supply side, Trump’s policies — including keeping aging fossil fuel plants online while rolling back and canceling renewable energy projects — are also driving rates up. For example, one such project is Revolution Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was expected to power “more than 350,000 homes” before the nearly finished project was halted on August 22 by the Trump administration."

 

[dann]

Trump gets RUDE AWAKENING as WINDMILLS STRIKE BACK!!! (MeidasTouch on YouTube, Sep 12, 2025 - 12:53 min.)
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s attack on the American economy delivering instant karma as the impact is now being felt and Meiselas interviews Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont about the effects he is seeing in his state.

Trump, 1:52 --> So, all of these big factories that are being built are building their own electric plants, fired by oil and gas. They're not fired by wind, by the way, because wind doesn't work. But we won't say that. It destroys everything. It looks terrible. It's it's a very expensive form of energy. And we're not doing wind. We're going back to fossil fuel. I hope not too many of you people are going to be upset, but we have to go back to what works. We can't be foolish.
(...)
Ben Meiselas, 2:21--> And then you have the US Department of Energy posting things like this:
"Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it's dark outside and the wind is not blowing."
There had to be a community note that said: "Batteries" - something called batteries, Donald - "allow electricity to be stored and used at different times than when it is generated."

 

[dann]

Trusts me on climate change! I had the bestselling hat!

Trump tells UN that climate change change is 'greatest con job' globally (Reuters, Sep 23, 2025)
President Donald Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” in the world during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, doubling down on his skepticism of global environmental initiatives and multilateral institutions.
Scientists say climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. They point to rising temperatures, stronger storms, and melting ice as clear signs. Groups like the UN have warned that waiting too long to act could cause serious damage to the planet and people.

Trump Blasts UN over Immigration, Climate in Combative Speech (YouTube short, Sep 23, 2025 - 2:58 min.)
This climate change, it's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their contries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.
And I'm really good at predicting things. You know, they actually said during the campaign that I had the bestselling hat, "Trump was right about everything." And I don't say that in a braggadocios way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. And I'm telling you that if you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. And if you don't stop people that you've never seen before, that you have noting in common with, your country is going to fail.

Global equivalent of a 'stand-up comedy show': Capehart on Trump's U.N. speech (MSNBC on YouTube, Sep 23, 2025 - 12:17 min.)
President Trump lectured world leaders during a nearly hour-long address to the U.N. General Assembly. NBC News White House Correspondent Vaughn Hillyard reports more. MSNBC Co-Host of “The Weekend” Jonathan Capehart and former Senior State Deputy and CIA Official Ned Price join Chris Jansing to share their reactions.

 

[dann]

Jostein Hauge on X, Sep 22, 2025
China manufactures about 80% of the world’s solar panels, 60% of the world’s wind turbines, 70% of the world’s EVs, and 75% of the world’s batteries — all at a lower cost than the West.

Source: China Road Trip Exposes List of Uninvestable Assets in the West (Bloomberg, Sep 22, 2025)

 

[dann]

More banned words:

Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to banned words list (Politico, Sep 28, 2025)
The Energy Department has added “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” to its growing “list of words to avoid” at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, according to an email issued Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

Trump’s Energy Department forbids staff from saying ‘climate change’ or ‘green’ (TechCrunch, Sep 29, 2025)
The oil stooge running the Energy Dept. just banned the words 'climate change' (electric, Sep 29, 2025)

Trump energy secretary to return billions set aside for green projects (The Guardian, Sep 24, 2025)
Chris Wright attacks Joe Biden’s ‘Green New Scam agenda’ and says climate accords have not lowered emissions

Of course, they haven't! How could they?!

Trump's Energy Department disbands group that sowed doubt about climate change (Climate Deception Network on YouTube, Sep 26,2025 - 3:22 min.)
Based on text from NPR.

 

[dann]

Big Oil still up to its old tricks - and a couple of new ones:

The INSANE Carbon Capture SCAM continues. (Just Have a Think on YouTube, Sep 28, 2025 - (14:39 min)
Fossil Fuel Carbon Capture and Storage yet again under-delivered in 2025 when the Norwegian state oil company, Equinor, was forced to admit the Sleipner CCS facility was capturing only about 10% of it's claimed 1 million tonnes per year. Similar missed CCS targets are happening all over the world. And now new research has found that the amount of realistically available global storage capacity is also roughly only just over a tenth of the amount claimed by big oil and gas.

Carbon capture – the get-out-of-jail-free card that does not actually work (TheGuardian, Sep 12, 2025)
Britain is committed to spending £30bn on this technology, which is a get-out-of-jail-free card for heavy industry and a magic way of getting to net zero without having to actually cut emissions.
(...)
A new report says that worldwide, the maximum reduction that carbon capture and storage could manage for the atmosphere would be 0.7C, far short of the 5C to 6C industry and governments claim.
The conclusion: if we want to save ourselves from ever more dangerous weather there is no alternative to halting the production of carbon dioxide in the first place.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Big Oil still up to its old tricks - and a couple of new ones:

"Equinor, was forced to admit the Sleipner CCS facility was capturing only about 10% of it's claimed 1 million tonnes per year. Similar missed CCS targets are happening all over the world. And now new research has found that the amount of realistically available global storage capacity is also roughly only just over a tenth of the amount claimed"

This is not surprising. When I researched CCS to find out how efficient it was nobody could give me an answer, or any data at all - just unverified claims with no numbers to support it.

That's not to say it's a scam, just that without numbers we can't ascertain whether it's worth it or not. Of course industries that need a way to offset their emissions would be keen on an engineering solution, and not keen on critically examining its efficacy. This is no less than what we would expect them to do, or indeed what they are legally required to do for their shareholders. If they had to pay what was actually required to capture those emissions they would quickly go bankrupt.

CCS seems like a neat solution, but thinking about it at all raises many questions The whole point of fossil fuels is to extract energy from combining carbon with oxygen. Separating them again would take more energy than you got out it, so unless you have a cheap green energy source it's inherently uneconomic. But even if you do there's still the question of whether it would be better to just use that green energy directly. Extracting CO ₂ from the air is very inefficient due to the low concentration. Pumping it directly underground avoids the need to separate the elements, but who knows how long it will stay there?

CCS is a case of the fossil fuel industry not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Now someone has and it turns out the poor thing has no teeth.

 

[dann]

It is actually worse than not looking a gift horse in the mouth. All along, the fossil fuel industry knew what it was getting and took advantage of it to deflect attention away from what it had been doing the whole time and continued to do. It was just another tool in Big Oil's greenwashing scam.

Polluters’ latest greenwashing scam exposed
the lobby around the Low Carbon Hydrogen Delegated Act (Corporate Europe Observatory, Mar 20, 2025)
Under the EU Clean Industrial Deal, the Commission has fast-tracked the release of the Low Carbon Hydrogen Delegated Act, now expected to be published next week. Our new investigation reveals how fossil fuel giants have been lobbying to skew emission accounting models, allowing hydrogen made from fossil gas to be misleadingly labelled as 'clean’. This could pave the way towards billions in new subsidies for fossil fuel projects that exacerbate the climate crisis.

 

[dann]

This one surprised me even even though I'm a Dane:
Wind Power per Capita - 1978 to 2024 (All World Stats on YouTube, Sep 22, 2025 - 6:28 min.)

 

[dann]

Canada - another one of those Liberals and their empty promises ...

Mark Carney's Shift from Climate-Change Warrior to Fossil-Fuel Cheerleader (WSJ, Oct 2, 2025)
TORONTO—As an executive and central banker, Mark Carney was a leading voice urging the business world to fight against climate change. As Canada’s prime minister, he is doing everything he can to pump more oil and gas.
Since taking office in March, Carney dismantled many green policies introduced by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He scrapped an unpopular consumer carbon tax, paused a 2035 electric-vehicle mandate and enacted a law giving his cabinet authority to override environmental rules for infrastructure projects like oil pipelines.

Archived

 

[Andy_Ross]

Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity

Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation.

China remains way ahead in clean energy growth, adding more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined

Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity

Developing countries lead the historic clean energy charge but the US and EU rely more on fossil fuels than before, a think tank study shows.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[dann]

I wonder why China isn't even among the Top-20 countries in the YouTube video of wind power per capita in post 2,094.
It appears for a few years only to disappear again.
I think it's true that China is leading in "clean energy growth."

There is another graph here (see figure 1):

Leading countries per capita solar and wind generation capacity (Green Building Africa, April 16, 2025)
The leading countries for per capita solar and wind generation capacity (W/person) are Sweden, Australia, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, according to the latest IRENA data. Apart from Australia, all the leading countries are in Europe.

There is an obvious difference between northern and southern countries: In & , wind generates more power than solar. In & , it's the other way around.

I think it's true that China is leading in "clean energy growth," but per capita, & are the three leading countries (see figure 2).

This (from the BBC article) comes as no surprise:

The IEA analysis represents the most thorough assessment to date of the impact the Trump administration's policies are having on global efforts to transition to cleaner energy sources and underscores the dramatically different approach of the US and China.
As China's clean tech exports surge, the US is focusing on encouraging the world buy more of its oil and gas.

And is with Trump on this one, as mentioned in post 2,095.

 

[arthwollipot]

Please can you just type the names of the countries?

 

[dann]

You get the names of the countries if you place the cursor on them.
It's a habit I got on Twitter: Flags lower the number of characters used.
New Zealand: 11; : 2.

 

[arthwollipot]

Character count doesn't matter here.