OCTOBER 5, 2018 – More than 100 leading scholars from 12 countries have issued a report contending “the global war on fossil fuels … was never founded on sound science or economics” and urging the world’s policymakers to “acknowledge this truth and end that war.”
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), an independent organization founded in 2003 to fact-check the work of the United Nations on the issue of climate change, today released the Summary for Policymakers [PDF] of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels. The 27-page Summary provides an early look at a 1,000-page report expected to be released on December 4 at a climate science symposium during the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP-24) in Katowice, Poland.
In the new NIPCC report, 117 scientists, economists, and other experts address and refute the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assertions that the impacts of climate change on human well-being and the natural environment justify dramatic reductions in the use of fossil fuels. The Summary provides more than 100 references to peer-reviewed literature, while the full report provides nearly 3,000 such references.
Click here to read the Summary for Policymakers report in digital form (PDF).
For more information about the Summary for Policymakers, NIPCC, and The Heartland Institute – and to talk to authors or editors of this report – contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/731-9364 (cell).
Among the findings reported in the Summary for Policymakers:
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Fossil fuels deliver affordable, plentiful, and reliable energy that is closely associated with key measures of human development and human welfare. There is a strong positive relationship between low energy prices and economic prosperity. Economic prosperity in turn is crucial to human health and welfare. Wind and solar power are incapable of delivering the affordable, plentiful, and reliable energy that is delivered by fossil fuels.
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Fossil fuels require the development of substantially less surface area than renewable energy sources, rescuing precious wildlife habitat from development. The power density of fossil fuels enables humanity to meet its need for energy, food, and natural resources while using less surface space, rescuing precious wildlife habitat from development. In 2010, fossil fuels utilized roughly the same surface area as devoted to renewable energy sources yet delivered 110 times as much power.
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The environmental and human welfare impacts of fossil fuels are overwhelmingly positive. Sixteen of 25 identified impacts of fossil fuels are net positive. Eight are uncertain, only one is net negative. Some of the identified impacts include agriculture, air quality, extreme weather events, human health, and human mortality.
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Reducing fossil fuel use to achieve dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would inflict tremendous economic hardship. Reducing greenhouse gases to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would require a 96% reduction in world GDP, reducing per-capita GDP to $1,200 from $30,600 now forecast. Per-capita income would be at about the level it was in the United States and Western Europe in about 1820 or 1830, before the Industrial Revolution.
Scientists and experts will be in Katowice, Poland the week of December 4 to publicly release the full volume of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels. Credentialed media are invited to attend the December 4 symposium to learn more about the report and question some of the scientists who agree with its findings. Details on where and when that symposium will be held are coming soon.
Reducing carbon dioxide, water vapour, methane or any of the “Greenhouse Gases” is irrelevant.
What escapes many people is that the Greenhouse Gas Effect (GHE) is supposedly able to increase the temperature of the Earth’s surface using inert processes.
And that’s the reason it is so difficult to reproduce – it is impossible.
There are only two methods of increasing the temperature of a source (highest temperature local object – in this case the Earth’s surface) and they are:
1. Introduce an object at a higher (not lower) temperature
2. Do some work by friction, compressing gas etc.
There are no known exceptions to these long understood rules – NONE.
The GHE does not claim to incorporate either – so if true, must be a completely new branch of physics.
How scientists can keep a straight face and collect research grants for something many know is impossible is a disgrace.
On the same issue, Tony Abbott apparently commissioned the CSIRO to prove or disprove the GHE – but that was of course dropped when he fell from office. Funny that.
I ,Graham George Baumber wish to become a member of the Saltbush Club, please advise how ican become a member & whatsubcription is requiered. A couple of years ago i took the Directors of NAB & WBC to task on their attitude on the matter to no avail. I have read Ian Plimmers book from cover to cover and gifted copies to members of my family as i it y being destroyed for no good reason.I am a member of the Australian Conservatives. Keep up the good fight. The trouble is the people peddaling the Carbon Dioxide story dont understand or want to understand that manmade CO2 is so miniscule it couldnt possibly make any change.
I looked after a co-gen plant run by a large Canadian private utility. It heated and air conditioned four large hospitals, using a 727 gas turbine, (jet engine). 90 MW of electricity was fed into the grid. In cold weather, (of which we have a lot) a con trail was issued from the stack. The local populace and the press thought the water vapour was pollution. This reminds me of the condensate towers featured in most green movement propaganda.
A heater was added to the stack, dropping the efficiency of the plant by 12%.
That was a few years ago and the plant is now closed down due to unprofitability. The gas turbine is run for one week per year to satisfy some legality. Boilers using natural gas and oil now heat the hospitals, AC is by chillers using huge amounts of electricity. Millions wasted because of a misconception reinforced by misleading propaganda and stark fear of the Climate Change Religeon on the part of the utility.
Canada continues to build wind turbines. Around Wolf Island near Kingston, there are 83 of them. Residents on the island can tell when a gearbox is about to go; they can feel the vibration in their houses. Several turbines have to be down before it is worth taking a 300ft crane over on the ferry.
The latest problem is that the blades are becoming delaminated. All three have to be replaced when one fails because of balance concerns. The average cost in $1 mil. Insurance companies will underwrite situations where a risk has a known exposure but the blade manufacturers keep changing the laminate composition of the blades, making their serviceability an unknown. There is only one industrial insurer left in Canada who will extend coverage to wind turbines. They are a dead loss.
I once surveyed the small hydro generating stations on the Rideau Canal system. Most were built around 1920 and used Yorkshire Dynamo open wound generators and francis wheel simple turbines. The penstock turbine shaft bearings were of lignumvitae wood and were original. Ontario Hydro sold off these stations and many have been bought and modernized but many must still remain. I often think about their cost effectiveness compared to our useless wind turbines and solar arrays.
The Energy East pipeline is in the ground but can’t be used. Our refineries bring in oil from Venezuela and the Saudis. The world price is around $50 per barrel and we are selling ours at $15 per barrel. We can’t get it to tidal waters. In our small town, 36 trains a day go through each carrying in excess of 2 million gallons. Hundreds of tankers using th Gulf of St Lawrence carry 100,000 tons each. Road tankers have been increased alarmingly. The anti-pipeline faction say that tankers shipping out oil will harm Beluga whales in the Gulf. The tankers already exist bringing oil in.
They say that a plpelines holds huge pollution risks. The steel used in construction is checked by ultrasound for quality assurance. Each weld is radiographed. Line degradation is easily checked and is ongoing. Any leakage is found by constant monitoring of minute flow differences and pressure drop at hundreds of stations. A section is automatically isolated in the event of a leak. The line has no air in it, and you can’t compress a liquid. A bypass pump evacuates a problem section causing a negative pressure and any leak will be minor. Not so for 1000 ton tanker which takes seven miles to stop, or a train traveling at 80 mph.
No mention is ever made of the Lac Galantic or Valdez disasters. It’s only a matter of time until we have another one. As I write this, millions of litres of raw sewage from Montreal and other locations are being spewed ito the St Lawrence. Who’d want to be a Beluga but no mention made.
I’m about as pissed with the above as a Beluga swimming through raw sewage waiting for a tanker disaster.
John Halley – Now retired. Marine engineer, boiler and pressure vessel inspector, authorized nuclear inspector, ex-submariner RN.
Touché John. I wholeheartedly agree. It amazes me how easily people or suckered into this climate change stuff and don’t realize it’s just a hoax for big corporations to make money or Socialists socialists to redistribute to poor countries. Also the residential solar panels is a big fiasco has people don’t understand that you still must maintain a connection to the grid and still pay for the infrastructure of the grid by virtue of being connected. They also don’t understand that you must have a high capacity battery to store it is energy from your solar panels to use. That must be replaced every so often and is extremely expensive Even after 15 or 20 years or sooner the solar panels must be re-manufactured or totally replaced. There is no ROI that I have seen that side with solar panel energy for residential use Thank you