The insane Net Zero revolution is starting to devour its own children

Written by Chris Morrison on September 14, 2024. Posted in Current News

The latest technology to fall foul of the zealots passionate hatred of all things hydrocarbon is ‘carbon capture’, a process that consumes billions of dollars, often fails to meet expectations and, horror of horrors, justifies the continuing activities of oil and gas companies

Green Blob-funded Oil Change International (OCI) has released a report entitled ‘Funding Failure: Carbon capture and fossil hydrogen subsidies exposed’.

In an article circulated by Blob-funded Covering Climate Now and published by DeSmog (recently given £400,000 by the Rowntree Trust to continue running a grubby ‘blacklist’ of so-called ‘climate deniers’) ‘carbon’ capture is said to be a “colossal waste” with the United States leading the way in public spending on “false climate solutions”.

Perhaps not such good news for the Mad Miliband’s £8 billion GB Energy operation which will act as a state-run subsidy fund for numerous wacky green projects including ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen.

The zealots are correct about ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen. They both use vast amounts of energy to little effect. But there are few ‘green’ solutions in town to back up intermittent wind and solar power, so to date it is any port in a storm.

But capturing carbon dioxide from combusted material or the atmosphere and compressing it to store underground for eternity is crazy. The old saying, ‘fools and their money are easily parted’ springs to mind.

As an alternative to natural gas and a solution to electricity grid-scale storage, hydrogen – expensive, dangerous and lacking in kinetic energy – has almost nothing to offer.

Other major disadvantages of hydrogen have recently been discussed. The Daily Sceptic reported on a science paper that noted the higher combustion temperature of hydrogen can produce more ‘polluting’ nitrogen dioxide.

If runaway global ‘heating’ is your fear, the paper calculated that, pound for pound, escaping hydrogen causes 37 times more warming than CO₂ since it produces ozone in the troposphere and water vapour in the stratosphere.

All the past observational evidence points to the conclusion that the warming properties of gases ‘saturate’ at certain atmospheric levels, but for alarmists it seems that backing hydrogen is an increasingly bad look.

If the figures presented by OCI are correct, the scale of the waste is truly colossal. Since the 1990s an estimated $83 billion has been “invested” in ‘carbon’ capture, but it has failed to make a dent in ‘carbon’ emissions. “Carbon capture projects consistently fail, overspend or underperform,” the report claims.

Over 80 percent of projects in the U.S. are said to fail due to technical issues, over-investment and a lack of financial returns. Even if the projects functioned as planned they would only capture 0.1 percent of emissions.

No doubt OCI is worried about taxpayer money being hosed away on useless projects, although ‘greens’ usually take a relaxed view of such matters. But the real hatred for capturing CO₂ is that it is used to enhance oil and gas production.

The gas is sometimes pumped underground to extract the last barrels of oil from an exhausted field. ‘Carbon’ capture subsidies are said to enhance ‘fossil fuel’ extraction and boost oil industry profits.

The money wasted to date on ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen is appalling, but it is a fraction of the amount of public money made available to spend in the near future. OCI claims that policies announced since 2020 could amount to over $230 billion.

The table below shows the range of potential government expenditures with uncertainties due to potential tax credit claims.

One obvious take-away from the table is the ludicrous amounts of money committed by the United Kingdom, a legacy of Buffo Boris and recent ‘Net Zero’-obsessed Conservative governments.

For hapless British taxpayers, Mad Miliband is just the latest in a long line of politician removing cash from the wallets of working people and putting it in the hands of subsidy hunting, ‘planet-saving’ spivs where it is thought to most properly belong.

In the UK, as elsewhere, the ‘Net Zero’ madness has exploded as a political issue with citizens slowly realising what is being planned. None of this will come as a surprise to regular readers of the Daily Sceptic.

We have aimed to report on what the zealots have been writing and planning. Government-funded UK FIRES takes a realistic look at a future without hydrocarbons and envisages a 2050 world without meat, without personal travel and buildings made of compacted earth.

Britain could lose 75% of its energy supply by 2050 and the “whole excitement” of UK FIRES’s work has been to recognise that such a shortfall “is close to a certain reality”.

In other words, electrticity will become a thing of the past for all but the rich.

Meanwhile, the ‘green’ billionaire-funded C40 group, chaired by Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, raises the possibility of heavy reductions of personal transport and the imposition of Second World War-style rations with the populace being ‘allowed’ to have just 44 grams of meat a day.

This “pioneering piece of thought leadership” was said to seek a “radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns”.

Needless to say, none of this stuff gets a mention in mainstream media, but it is always a good idea to discover what the true zealot is actually planning. Few clues as to their plans are available while they are seeking political power, as we saw in the recent British General Election.

In the current U.S. Presidential campaign, Vice President Giggles is following a similar path, secure in the knowledge that carefully selected poodle journalists will not ask inconvenient questions.

The OCI report and its coverage via well-funded activist networks gives a valuable insight into the mindset of the true Net Zero zealot.

There is no back-up to intermittent wind and solar and medicines, fertilisers and plastics will all disappear in an absolutist ‘Net Zero’ world.

But they don’t care. Their new religion is ‘saving the planet’ from a ‘climate crisis’ that does not exist, and their work for the new god pays little heed to the colossal damage that will be caused.

See more here dailysceptic.org

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