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Worries About ‘Existential Threat’ From Climate Change Suddenly Put On Hold For Paris Olympics

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6 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

 

The U.S. Olympic team will be supplied with room air conditioning units, joining other countries like Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy.

Organizers of the Summer Olympics Games to be held in Paris next month were hoping to force the games to be held sans air conditioning — what a wonderful virtue signal that would send to the climate-alarmed public!

The plan, as USA Today reported, was to force all event venues and athlete housing units to rely on a geothermal cooling system devised by the French. But, you know, it can get hot in Paris in the summer, and participating athletes and countries had some concerns about it.

So, despite the grand, centrally planned net-zero initiatives financed by trillions of debt-funded dollars and euros and pounds, many countries are planning to keep their athletes calm, collected and properly cooled with electricity-hogging room a/c units.

Note that the list of countries above includes some that are led by the world’s most aggressive and notorious climate scolds.

German leaders in this century have succeeded in largely destroying what had been the industrial powerhouse of Europe at the altar of climate alarmism, investing billions of debt-funded euros in a Quixotic attempt to power their society with windmills. That plan has been so successful to date that last winter, in a desperate attempt to avoid power blackouts, the government there resorted to reactivating mothballed coal plants and tore down a wind development to expand a domestic coal mining operation.

In the UK, the Tories — ostensibly the “conservatives” in Britain — now face an electoral wipeout of unprecedented proportions due in part to their buying whole hog into climate alarmist dogma.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose public approval rating would make President Joe Biden blush, faces a similar fate for similar reasons in national elections that will take place in 2025.

The governments of Australia and New Zealand, in nominally “conservative” or “liberal” regimes alike, have also embarked well down the net-zero path to deindustrialization.

Yet every one of these countries will be shipping out hundreds of energy consuming, greenhouse-gas-emitting air conditioners to Paris.

No national government has invested more time and more debt-funded dollars in virtue signaling and lecturing the public about climate change in recent years than the Biden regime. To hear President Joe Biden Biden, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Climate Envoy John Podesta, former Climate Envoy John Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris tell it, a 1.5-degree rise in temperature is in fact an “existential threat,” one that requires us to saddle our great-grandchildren with trillions of more dollars in unsustainable debt to address right now, or — wait for it — we will all die!

But hey, we can’t have our Olympic athletes suffering in rooms where the Paris geothermal cooling system might only get temperatures down to an unbearable 78 degrees Fahrenheit, so it is imperative that the United States join the room a/c caravan across the Pond to gay Paree.

That is basically what USA Today quotes U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland as saying: “We have great respect for the work that’s been done by the Paris organizing committee in particular and their focus on sustainability,” Hirshland said. “As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance. In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”

But wait: If climate change is truly an existential threat to all mankind, shouldn’t the desires of a few thousand Olympics athletes to stay cool in their rooms simply be ignored? For the “greater good” and all that stuff?

After all, that is what the central governments in every one of these countries do whenever public opinion disapproves of their policy choices. Why should this become an exception?

The global religious belief that mankind can control the climate like it has a thermostat we can turn up and down at will is an example of unbridled hubris that is unrivalled in human history. That hubris is only exceeded by the rank hypocrisy practiced by the loudest and most visible of the religion’s adherents.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS)

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President Of Country Hosting UN Climate Summit Defends Fossil Fuels, Slams Media And Green ‘Hypocrisy’

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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Nick Pope

To accuse us that we have oil is the same like to accuse us that we have more than 250 sunny days a year in Baku.

The president of Azerbaijan, host country of this year’s U.N. climate change conference, defended fossil fuels while slamming the media and climate “hypocrisy” in a Tuesday speech at the event.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev described fossil fuels as a “gift of God,” slammed the “Western fake news” media for criticizing his country’s emissions and stated that countries like his “should not be blamed” for developing their reserves of natural resources and bringing them to the market. The U.N. conference — also known as COP29 — has attracted tens of thousands of attendees to the Azerbaijani capital Baku to discuss initiatives like so-called “climate finance” for developing countries, standards for carbon credit markets and emissions reduction commitments.

Aliyev rattled off statistics about Azerbaijan’s relatively small contributions to global oil and gas production before criticizing the media, politicians and nonprofits for maligning his country for capitalizing on its natural resources.

“I have to bring these figures to the attention of our audience, because right after Azerbaijan was elected as the host country of COP29, we became a target of a coordinated, well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail,” said Aliyev. “Western fake news media and so-called independent NGOs, as if (they) were competing in spreading disinformation and false information about our country. To accuse us that we have oil is the same like to accuse us that we have more than 250 sunny days a year in Baku.”

Aliyev emphasized his view that there are many criteria by which to judge a country, but a nation’s resources and their sale are not one of them.

“I said it several months ago, and now all those who want, I mean international media, to attack me, just quote me that I said that this is a gift of God. And I want to repeat it today here at this audience, it’s a gift of God,” Aliyev said. “Every natural resource, whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them.”

Aliyev attacked those who have criticized his country as a petro-state, though Azerbaijan’s economy is “anchored” by oil and gas, which accounted for nearly half of the nation’s GDP and 92.5% of export revenue in 2022, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration.

“Unfortunately, double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became a kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries,” said Aliyev.

COP29 kicked off on Monday, and the Taliban even managed to send a delegation to the conference. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is still looking to be productive at the summit despite the looming return of President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to roll back climate initiatives and spending as well as withdraw from the U.N.’s Paris Climate Accords, according to The New York Times.

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Energy

Federal government’s ’carbon-free’ electricity target far-fetched

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From the Fraser Institute

By Elmira Aliakbari and Jock Finlayson and Tegan Hill

recent report by the Canada West Foundation, which analyzed 25 major projects that entered the federal government’s review process between 2019 and 2023, found that all 25 were still stuck in the early stages (phase 1 or 2) of the four-phase process.

Did you know that the Trudeau government wants to “decarbonize” Canada’s electricity generation by 2035? That is, make carbon-free sources (e.g. wind, hydro and solar) the sole power source for electricity generation in Canada.

Is this possible? No.

As of 2023 (the latest year of available data), nearly 81 per cent of Canada’s electricity came from carbon-free sources. To replace the remaining 19 per cent that relies on fossil fuels over the next 10 years, Canada would need to add a massive amount of generation capacity.

Specifically, we would need approximately 23 new large hydroelectric dams similar in size to British Columbia’s Site C project. Of course, due to regulatory hurdles and approval processes, it takes a long time to plan and construct major electricity generation facilities in Canada. The Site C project took approximately 43 years (from initial feasibility and planning studies in 1971) to secure environmental certification in 2014. Construction finally began on the Peace River in northern B.C. in 2015 with completion expected in 2025—at a cost of at least $16 billion.

Alternatively, we would need more than two large scale nuclear power plants the size of Ontario’s Bruce Power, which took nearly two decades to complete with billions of dollars in cost overruns.

Or we’d need approximately 11,000 new large wind turbines, which would require clearing approximately 7,302 square kilometres of land (that’s larger than Prince Edward Island and nearly nine times larger than Calgary). The new turbines would also require substantial investments in backup power systems due to the wind’s intermittency, which of course would further drive-up costs across the electricity system.

And remember, as Canada’s population grows, electricity demand will increase significantly. The infrastructure mentioned above would only decarbonize Canada’s current electricity needs, without accounting for the additional capacity required to meet future demand.

And yet, despite its aggressive plan to decarbonize, the Trudeau government in 2019 introduced the Impact Assessment Act (IAA)—also known as Bill C-69—which added layers of uncertainty and complexity to project reviews. A recent report by the Canada West Foundation, which analyzed 25 major projects that entered the federal government’s review process between 2019 and 2023, found that all 25 were still stuck in the early stages (phase 1 or 2) of the four-phase process.

In other words, while Ottawa’s electricity decarbonization plan requires an unprecedented wave of new energy projects, the government’s own regulatory regime will make it harder for new projects to get off the ground.

The total costs of the federal government’s plan are incalculable. But we do know who will get hurt the most. Three provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia—depend most heavily on fossil fuels to generate electricity. In Alberta, approximately 85 per cent of electricity comes from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, while carbon-free sources generate only 15 per cent. Clearly, Alberta and these other provinces will face the greatest challenges—and heaviest burdens—in decarbonizing their grids.

In light of the basic realities of project construction timelines, regulatory hurdles and the massive financial investment required, the Trudeau government’s target to achieve 100 per cent fossil fuel-free electricity by 2035 is far-fetched. But the costs of pursuing that target will be very real and felt by all Canadians, with the size of the costs depending largely on where you live.

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