“Net-Zero Tyranny”

Designed by engineers, our electricity grids are remarkable, but finely balanced affairs, being wrecked by the chaotic delivery of wind and solar power.

There are 3 electricity essentials – that the power source and its delivery to homes and businesses be: 1) reliable; 2) secure; and 3) affordable. Wind and solar score NIL on all three counts. Wind is wholly weather-dependent and solar is both weather and sunshine dependent, despite the hype the occasional power they generate can’t be economically stored at any scale. And, adding the staggering cost of the subsidies they attract, cost multitudes more than coal, gas or nuclear power.

h/t DS

He wanted to get away from it all. The splendid solitude of the tiny North Sea island of Hooge was a momentary refuge from the waves of political tumult buffeting his country. But when Germany’s vice chancellor Robert Habeck returned from his holiday on Thursday, a group of furious farmers prevented his ferry from docking on the mainland. Germany’s 2024 began as 2023 ended: with public confidence in the government at a low ebb.

Dutch farmers at the border are ready to support their German colleagues this week. This is what true solidarity looks like. 🇳🇱🤝🇩🇪 https://t.co/FzZ9DO5ot7

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) January 7, 2024

Where do the mountains of broken solar panels and wind turbine blades end up?

The amount of waste piling up from solar panels and wind turbine blades can be measured in tons. And the industry is just getting started.

Almost all spent solar panels in the United States end up in landfills, and many first- and second-generation panels are already tapping out, well ahead of their anticipated 30-year lifespan.

Added to that will be an estimated 9.8 million metric tons of dead panels to deal with between 2030 and 2060, according to a study published in Science Direct.

The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80 percent decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100 percent—or “net zero”—in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.

A consultant hired in 2022 to assess production problems at a wind farm owned by the P.E.I. government found severe damage, with turbine units possibly constituting a safety hazard and turbine blades at “high risk of imminent failure.”

Last month, high winds ripped two 56-metre blades off one of the turbines at the facility in Hermanville, near the northeastern tip of Prince Edward Island. For comparison, the province’s tallest building is only 39 metres tall; it’s the 10-storey Holman Grand Hotel in Charlottetown.

h/t VK

OTTAWA — The federal environment minister admits Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have controlled the narrative on carbon pricing, but promises the Liberals will step up their communications game in 2024.

“The Conservatives have been very good at convincing some Canadians that carbon pricing is responsible for everything that’s going wrong in their lives,” Steven Guilbeault told the Star in an interview.

Guilbeault’s admission comes after a year in which debate over Ottawa’s carbon pricing program has featured prominently in Parliament, and the Tories have routinely blamed the levy for Canadians’ troubles with affordability.

I will be glad to see the back of this commie.

The federal government is looking into creating a national plastics registry that would track the lifecycle of plastic items in the economy.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced Tuesday that Ottawa has launched public consultations to gather input on how such a registry could work.

“Canadians are demanding action to tackle the plastic waste and pollution crisis, and the federal government will continue to act. The federal plastics registry is an important tool that will help track and manage plastics across the economy,” Guilbeault said in a press release.

In many ways, it is incredible they got away with it for so long. For the past decade or so, mainstream politicians across Europe have stopped promising to improve their voters’ living standards. Instead, they have boasted about their plans to limit them. They have extolled the virtues of a higher cost of living, deindustrialisation and restrictions on personal freedoms. And they expected most people wouldn’t mind or perhaps even notice – because all this was to be done in the name of ‘saving the planet’ from climate change. But in 2023, that elite green consensus came crashing down to Earth.

Canada’s price on pollution is supposed to help battle global warming, but as it nears its fifth anniversary, nothing in Canadian politics is hotter.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has so successfully convinced Canadians the carbon price is to blame for inflation that he even earned begrudging respect for his “axe the tax” campaign from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Of course, Trudeau doesn’t agree with Poilievre’s sentiment.