energy production – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2021 and trend since 2000, including inventory-based Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) CO2 in GtCO2e (top) and Per capita GHG emissions in 2021 and trend since 2000, including inventory-based LULUCF CO2 in tCO2e/capita (bottom). Graphic: UNEP

December 29, 2023

Petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels, says UN report – “These plans throw humanity’s future into question. Governments must stop saying one thing and doing another.”

By Damian Carrington 8 November 2023 (The Guardian) – The world’s fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” which “throw humanity’s future into question”. The energy plans of the petrostates contradicted their climate policies and pledges, the report said. […]

Aerial view of the Mount Pleasant Coal Mine in New South Wales, Australia. Photo: Environmental Defenders Office

December 25, 2023

Four new coal mines approved in Australia in 2023

12 May 2023 (The Australia Institute) – So much coal news… and all of it bad! Exactly as we predicted here at Coal Mine Tracker, last week’s ‘rejection’ of the long-stalled China Stone and Range coal mines was laying the groundwork for the approval of new coal mines with more momentum and more powerful proponents. Thursday 11 May […]

Haitham Al-Ghais, the secretary general of OPEC, warned member countries of “undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels” at the COP28 summit In a letter dated 6 December 2023. Photo: Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters

December 8, 2023

OPEC leader tells members to block any COP28 climate summit deal to curb fossil fuels – “Reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions”

By Lisa Friedman 8 December 2023 (The New York Times) – The head of the OPEC oil cartel, alarmed that nations gathered at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai are considering an agreement to phase out fossil fuels, has directed the group’s members to scuttle any deal that would affect the continued production and […]

Climate scientist Dr. Graeme Pearman at his home in Bangholme, Victoria. On warning the world about abrupt climate change, he laments, “I often wonder: where did I go wrong? Why didn’t people respond? Is that my responsibility?” Photo: Nadir Kinani / The Guardian

December 4, 2023

“Where did I go wrong?” The scientist who tried to raise the climate alarm

By Graham Readfearn 20 November 2023 (The Guardian) – “I often wonder: where did I go wrong?” Graeme Pearman says. “Why didn’t people respond? Is that my responsibility?” When Guardian Australia meets him at his home on the outskirts of Melbourne, the veteran climate scientist is frustrated. “If you go through the whole process and […]

Screenshot from “Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 & the Pacific”, by The Juice Media, showing the rapid, record-breaking decline of Antarctic sea ice in 2023. Photo: The Juice Media

December 3, 2023

Video: Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 and the Pacific – “Let this major fossil-fuel exporter that’s cockblocked climate action for decades co-host a crucial summit with the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world while ignoring their pleas to stop harming them”

1 August 2023 (The Juice Media) – Hello. Bonjour. Ciao stronzi. Namaste. Ham maadarachod hain. I’m from the Australien Government with a message to the world. As cities bake, fires rage, reefs die, jet streams weaken, and 6-Ligma events cause climate scientists to shit their dacks, many are wondering if we’ve finally broken our favourite […]

Map of ensemble mean trends in ocean temperature and ice-shelf basal melting in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) for the Paris 2°C scenario. Temperature is averaged over the depth range 200–700 m. Trends are calculated at each point using annually averaged fields from 2006–2100. White regions indicate no significant trend. The Amundsen Sea region visualized here (latitude–longitude projection) is outlined in red in the inset map of Antarctica (polar stereographic projection). The black dashed line shows the 1,750 m depth contour of the continental shelf break and the blue dashed line outlines the continental shelf region used for analysis. Labels denote ice shelves (G, Getz; D, Dotson; Cr, Crosson; T, Thwaites; P, Pine Island; Co, Cosgrove; A, Abbot). Graphic: Naughten, et al., 2023 / Nature

November 10, 2023

The climate contradiction that will sink us – “We already have a refugee crisis; I shudder to think what would happen if everyone living within two meters of sea level would be displaced.”

By Zoë Schlanger 10 November 2023 (The Atlantic) – You’d be forgiven for thinking that the fight against climate change is finally going well. The clean-energy revolution is well under way and exceeding expectations. Solar is set to become the cheapest form of energy in most places by 2030, and the remarkable efficiency of heat pumps is driving their own uptake […]

Wind farms in Boqueirão da Onça, or Jaguars’ Ravine, in the Caatinga in northeastern Brazil. Conservationists say companies shouldn’t install turbines in long rows, which forces animals to make unnecessarily long detours. Photo: Dado Galdieri / The Wall Street Journal

September 30, 2023

Brazil’s big cats under threat from wind farms – “Wind power is a fantastic proposal, and the northeast certainly has plenty of wind … but wind parks must also take into account what is happening here on the ground”

By Luciana Magalhaes and Samantha Pearson 17 September 2023 JUAZEIRO, Brazil – Weighing more than 100 pounds, big cats have long reigned over this hot and semi-arid region of Brazil, developing tougher paws for the scorched earth and reaching speeds of 50 miles an hour to bring down wild boar and deer. But nothing could […]

The Trinity test fireball, 25 thousandths of a second after its detonation at the Alamogordo bombing range in New Mexico at 5:29 a.m. Mountain time on 16 July 1945. Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory

September 10, 2023

The atomic bomb laid down the marker for humanity’s era of catastrophic change – “An observable, unambiguous change in the physical properties or fossil content of the strata”

By Stephen Trimble 3 September 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – Christopher Nolan believes J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. “By unleashing nuclear power,” the film director concludes, “he gave us the power to destroy ourselves.” Nolan might exaggerate, but Oppenheimer, the subject of Nolan’s hit movie, is surely worthy of the […]

Estimated energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 and 2050 by sector, in billions of metric tons. Data: IPCC AR6 Scenarios Database hosted by IIASA release 1.0 average / IPCC C3: “Likely below 2°C” scenarios; ExxonMobil analysis. Emissions do not contain industry process emissions or land use and natural sinks Graphic: ExxonMobil

September 3, 2023

ExxonMobil predicts climate efforts will fail – “Fossil fuels remain the most effective way to produce the massive amounts of energy needed to create and support the manufacturing, commercial transportation, and industrial sectors that drive modern economies”

By Maggie Harrison 1 September 2023 (Futurism) – According to Exxon Mobil, oil giant and one of the more prominent architects of our planet’s fossil fuel-laden doom, humanity is likely to fail its climate goals of halting a global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius by 2050. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Exxon published its grim prediction in […]

Projected system-wide price for the Texas electricity grid on 20 August 2023. By 8:00 PM, the price was expected to rise to nearly $1000 per megawatt-hour. Graphic: ERCOT

August 20, 2023

Texas electricity prices soar 6,000 percent as a fresh heat wave is expected to shatter records – Spot electricity prices jumped to $4,750 per megawatt-hour from the average of $75

By Jason Ma 18 August 2023 (Insider) – Texas power prices soared 6,000% on Thursday as a fresh heat wave is expected to shatter temperature records in the coming days. Spot electricity prices jumped to $4,750 per megawatt-hour Thursday afternoon from the average of $75 on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from grid operator Electric […]