Civil battle is breaking out within the Inexperienced Blob, however don't count on the BBC to cowl it – are you okay with that?
From DAILY SKEPTIC
by Chris Morrison
The Greens hate hydrocarbons, but open war is breaking out within their ranks as the world outside their millennial cult of luxury realizes that it is impossible to run a modern industrial society without hydrocarbons. In the UK it is finally becoming clear that gas is the only realistic complement to an electricity system powered by unreliable breezes and sunshine. But at the same time, the mad Miliband crew is shutting down local oil and gas exploration and stepping up to Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell University, who claims transportable American liquefied natural gas (LNG) has a larger “carbon footprint” than coal. The Guardian was full of an early draft of Cornell's work, which helped support the Biden administration's pause last year on pending LNG export permits. LNG has been described as a carbon “megabomb”. Cornell's work was funded by the multibillion-dollar Park Foundation, which supports “progressive” causes and the phase-out of oil and gas development. By a stroke of luck – such coincidences are, of course, common in the Green Blob's complex networks – Park has donated $650,000 to the Guardian over the last three years.
Behind the British government's recent decision to waste £22 billion capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground are pennies lost to gas support. The sheer futility of this exercise is obvious to many, as it requires enormous amounts of energy to capture and compress a gas that will likely eventually leak from a nearby cave-like hole in the ground. The whole exercise bears some resemblance to the old story Fletcher told prison officer MacKay in the 1970 sitcom Porridge, that the prisoners had hidden the dirt from an escape tunnel by digging another hole to put them in .
From a geological perspective, pumping large quantities of compressed gas underground can involve certain risks. On August 21, 1986, there was a sudden release of 1.6 million tons of magmatic CO2 from the bottom of Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Heavier-than-air CO2 fell on surrounding villages, suffocating 1,746 people. The gas had accumulated under high pressure and could have been released by volcanic activity or a mild earthquake. One of the first sites for carbon storage in the UK is Liverpool Bay, while other sites have been identified across the country. There is no doubt that strict geological guidelines are followed to ensure that CO2 does not escape in large quantities, but over time conditions can change. The perceived threat of earthquakes was enough to ban onshore fracking in the UK, and it will be interesting to see whether similar concerns arise when many millions of tonnes of pressurized CO2 are buried.
As we have seen, so-called climate “solutions” like carbon capture are hated by true believers in green cults. Green billionaire activist organization Oil Change International (OCI) has called carbon capture a “colossal waste of money.” In a recent detailed report, OCI found $83 billion in past spending with a default rate of over 80% in the US. “Carbon capture projects consistently fail, overspend, or underperform,” OCI explains.
The hate arises because carbon capture is seen as legitimizing the continued use of hydrocarbons. The less crazy Greens are finally realizing that they can't ban hydrocarbons entirely. This is due to the fact that without hydrocarbon-based medicines, fertilizers, waste disposal, etc., half of the world's population would die. But the true believers are, of course, right when they say that carbon capture is a colossal waste of money that amounts to little more than a fig leaf to cover continued use of oil and gas.
Then we consider hydrogen, an explosive, expensive waste of money but favored by many greens as a scalable alternative to oil and gas. That's what Britain's Royal Society said last year in a major report written by more than 40 leading scientists. The Environmental Defense Fund, an influential activist and campaign organization funded by the Green Blob, disagrees. A recent article found that hydrogen's higher combustion temperature produces more environmentally harmful nitrogen dioxide. In addition, the gas is very light and easily escapes into the atmosphere. Chemical changes then produce, pound for pound, 37 times the warming of CO2. Inconvenient for alarmists who have not yet discovered that the various warming gases in the atmosphere “saturate” above certain levels, an assumption supported by 500 million years of climate observations.
In understanding these civil war battles erupting in the green movement, the general public is paralyzed by a news blackout that has long been imposed on all skeptical considerations of net zero and climate science. The BBC can broadcast a 40-minute anti-Semitic rant from the Iranian leader justifying the rape and murder of women and children in Israel, but will not consider a single second of skeptical commentary on the “established” science of climate change. The former justifies it with the argument of freedom of expression and the need for information, but denies such leniency towards Net Zero. The result is that a Potemkin Village of false science, manipulated weather numbers, ridiculous computer model attributions and predictions, and Jim Dale/Dale Vince pronouncements can thrive with little to no resistance. The increasingly violent battles that are breaking out in the green movement as it moves from handcart to hell go largely unreported.
If there is an urgent need to understand these internal green struggles, it is important to reveal the connections that bind many of the participants together. Professor Howarth's work aims to demonize LNG for political purposes. Who is funding it and publicizing it is important information, as it could well have implications for gas-starved Britain's future supply of LNG under the Harris administration. The mainstream media is unable to report on these issues because they are bound to a set reporting pattern and skepticism is considered “misinformation.” But who says what, why they say it and who pays to say it is all important information for navigating the increasingly treacherous waters of green and net zero politics.
Chris Morrison is the environmental editor of the Daily Sceptic.
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