Let's do heat pump subsidies next

We can finally put to bed the notion that heat pumps do not work in cold weather conditions and that they are inefficient to run. We’ve observed the exact opposite. They are three times more efficient than gas boilers and work in cold weather conditions.

[...]

Because they transfer heat from outside, rather than just converting electricity into heat, heat pumps can technically produce more energy than the electricity that is put into them.

[...]

[I]n Nordic countries [...] heat pumps are commonplace – up to 60% of Norwegian homes are heated by heat pumps.

[...]

“That’s the magic of heat pumps: you’ve extracted this heat from the environment. [It] could be air source, could be ground source, could be water source, from the sea, even sewage.”

  Guardian

As if

They're all congratulating themselves, but how many of them will actually seriously work on it?  

I'd quote from the article, but I have no faith at all in this "show".  You can read it yourself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I guess we'll just give up

A recent UN analysis of country’s actions to reduce planet-heating emissions show the world is well off track to avoid breaching agreed temperature limits, unleashing worsening heatwaves, droughts and floods.

[...]

The climate ambition summit, convened by António Guterres, the UN’s secretary general, will feature more than 100 national governments who have traveled to New York to outline renewed plans to curb global heating and help people adapt to its impacts. The UN has said the event will “showcase first movers and doers” among countries most willing to act on the climate crisis.

But the summit has failed to attract the leaders of the two biggest carbon emitters, with neither Joe Biden, the US president, nor Xi Jinping, president of China, attending. Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, are also missing the gathering.

  Guardian

Fuck it. We can't do anything about it. Too late.

“This is the biggest challenge civilization has ever faced and yet we can’t get the response we need. I can’t tell you how I feel about them just not showing up. It’s difficult to be optimistic, we are in a terrible place.” [Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser]

[...]

“It’s an embarrassing gap. National leaders are just pointing fingers at each other over the lack of progress. Given the events of this summer, where things have just spiraled out of control, you’d think that would concentrate minds.” [Alden Meyer, an expert in international climate negotiations at E3G]

I don't know why you'd think that. We've known about this issue for decades. There was a time we might have been able to do something about it, but powerful people were getting too rich off NOT doing something about it.

Biden did address the climate crisis in his own speech to the UN on Tuesday, in which he lamented a year of heatwaves, wildfires and drought. “Taken together these snapshots tell an urgent story of what awaits us if we fail to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and begin to climate-proof our world,” said Biden. “From day one of my administration the United States has treated this crisis as the existential threat that it is, not only to us, but to all of humanity.”

And to show how urgent and important this issue is, he won't be attending the UN summit.

While the Biden administration has implemented the Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to radically scale up renewable energy, it has also allowed a number of major new oil and gas projects. Biden has also been criticized for not declaring a climate emergency, despite claiming that he has done so in practice.

[...]

It emerged on Tuesday that [Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak is planning to row back on some of his government’s net-zero policies before the UK’s next general election such as delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:03 am:

Let's see it happen, be funded, and well-advertised.

Who needs government regulation?

How many times have we heard this story...

Four decades ago, the gas industry and appliance manufacturers developed a partial solution for [combusted air pollution]. They created a cleaner and more efficient burner. But you can't buy ranges with those burners because the industry never manufactured those appliances for sale.

Appliance manufacturers and gas industry allies say there are reasons for that: these burners cost more, are less durable, harder to clean, and they didn't see consumer demand for them.

  NPR

Perhaps because consumers didn't know about them?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is investigating whether gas stoves need tighter regulations to protect human health. One commissioner even left open the possibility of banning sales of new gas stoves.

And MAGA lost its mind.

This week, the Department of Energy (DOE) proposed rules that would require all stoves to be more energy efficient. If approved, more than half the gas cooktop market today wouldn't qualify under the new requirements, according to the DOE. The proposed regulations would take effect for sales of new stoves in 2027.

The article goes on to explain the infrared burner developers created in the 80s to address the pollution problem and the lack of knowledge and understanding by consumers of exposure dangers.

Continue reading.

.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Republicans don't care about the climate crisis

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, which is expected to be dissolved by a Republican House majority next year, said in a report Wednesday that nearly half of its policy recommendations have become law.

In the committee’s final report, members said that of 715 policy recommendations made in 2020, more than 300 now have force of law.

[...]

The new GOP majority in the chamber is expected to dismantle the panel in January. The office of Rep. Garret Graves (La.), the top Republican on the panel, told The Hill in November, “We don’t see a scenario where the ‘Climate Crisis Committee,’ a creature of Pelosi, will continue to exist.”

The Republican “Commitment to America” plan released ahead of the midterm election called for increased fossil fuel production and hydropower.

  The Hill

Increased fossil fuel. JFC. Making America Great Again.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We'll never heal the planet

Big polluting industries have been given almost €100bn (£86bn) in free carbon permits by the EU in the last nine years, according to an analysis by the WWF.

  Guardian

Rather defeats the purpose.

Free pollution permits worth €98.5bn were given to energy-intensive sectors including steel, cement, chemicals and aviation from 2013-21.

[...]

Furthermore, the WWF said, the free permits did not come with climate conditions attached, such as increasing energy efficiency and some polluters were also able to make billions in windfall profits by selling the permits they did not use.

[...]

The analysis also found that at least a third of the revenue raised from the [emissions trading scheme] was not spent on climate action, rising to almost half if projects to increase the efficiency of burning fossil fuels were excluded.

[...]

The free allowances were originally justified to tackle the potential risk that industrial companies might move production outside the EU to avoid carbon taxes, but the WWF said there had been no evidence for this.

[...]

Potential dates for the end of free allowances range from 2032 to 2036.

Seriously?

Something tells me this is not happening in only the EU.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What you get with your Republican vote

“The climate crisis committee will not exist,” Louisiana Representative Garret Graves, the top GOP member of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, said in an interview. “I don’t think that’s really consistent with what we are going to be focused on.”

  Yahoo

No. They'll be focused on Hunter Biden's laptop.  And retaliating against Democrats for opposing Trump.

The committee was resurrected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019 when Democrats took back control of Congress. It’s served as a platform for the party to highlight the consequences of climate change and potential solutions to reduce emissions and increase clean energy. It held dozens of hearings and produced an action plan that called for limiting fossil fuel production, though the body lacks the power to advance legislation.

Graves said that he and fellow House Republicans will instead focus on a strategy they previewed over the summer that called for boosting domestic fossil fuel production and increasing liquefied natural gas exports, but that didn’t specify emission reduction targets.

I hope Republicans' children and grandchildren have a future.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We've failed miserably

People think Musk and Besos are engaged in rivaling vanity projects building rocket ships. I have another belief: they're planning their escapes from the planet.

There is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”, the UN’s environment agency has said, and the failure to reduce carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded.

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said.

[...]

New reports from the International Energy Agency and the UN’s climate body reached similarly stark conclusions, with the latter finding that the national pledges barely cut projected emissions in 2030 at all, compared with 2019 levels.

[...]

The UNEP report said about a third of climate-heating emissions came from the global food system and these were set to double by 2050. But the sector could be transformed if governments changed farm subsidies – which are overwhelmingly harmful to the environment – and food taxes, cut food waste and helped develop new low-carbon foods.

[...]

The UNEP report said the required societal transformation could be achieved through government action, including on regulation and taxes, redirecting the international financial system, and changes to consumer behaviour.

  The Guardian

Well, that's not going to happen. 

Those reports are just further confirmation of the elite class belief that it's too late to save the planet and therefore they should keep on partying like there's no tomorrow. Because, in this sense, there isn't. Politics is the distracting game we play while we kill ourselves and everything around us.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.