Rubbery nuclear cost estimates

The world’s largest crane lifts a steel dome onto Hinkley Point C’s first reactor building. The cost of building the UK’s latest power plant has soared. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

In Australia, the right-wing Coalition ("Liberal"/National Party) opposition, in government when Australia became the first country in the world to abolish a carbon tax, is enthusiastically spruiking nuclear power. Their numbers defy belief.

Here's part of an article from The Guardian:

The primary reason the world is not embracing nuclear energy on a grand scale is simple: cost (although in Japan’s case, it’s also about safety).

The Frontier Economics report, which the Coalition is using to make its case, is written in an opaque way that makes direct comparisons difficult. Essentially, the report admits that the capital cost of nuclear is $10,000/kW, while solar and wind are $1,800 and $2,500 respectively.

So how is it that the Coalition’s modelling suggests that a world where nuclear makes up more than a third of the east coast energy grid could possibly be cheaper?

It’s easy to come up with the answer you want when you base your modelling on rubbery assumptions.

Firstly, we should appreciate that even a $10,000/kW estimate for nuclear is considerably optimistic if we look at the experience of comparable countries over the past decade. The cost at the off-cited Hinkley C plant in the UK has, to date, risen to $27,515/kW. Three others – France (Flamanville 3), Finland (Olkilutoto 3) and the US (Vogtle) – are between $15,000 and $16,900. [In other words, nuclear in the West is a minimum of 7 times as expensive as wind and solar]

Delays have been a key factor in driving up the cost of nuclear power. The longer it takes to build and operate a plant, the higher the cost of finance. The Coalition believes we can overturn national and state legislation and acquire land and planning approvals virtually overnight. And then we’ll just install an ‘off-the-shelf’ nuclear power plant, ready to run.

By its own admission, having to tweak nuclear power plants so they operate at maximum safety and efficiency can blow out build times and costs. It beggars belief that the Coalition claims Australia, which has no nuclear energy capability, could ship, build and integrate into the grid with no challenges, with a 50,000-strong nuclear workforce appearing by magic.

There is no mention of the costs of extending the life of existing ageing coal-fired power stations, or the likelihood that these plants will increasingly fail as they reach end-of-life, raising energy costs as supply falls short and, increasingly, the likelihood of blackouts. And, apparently, nuclear waste can be transported and stored without cost.

The Coalition also argues that, because wind and solar energy are not always “on”, we’ll need to build a lot more capacity, along with transmission and storage. It calls this “overbuild”, but its assumptions have overegged what that need might realistically look like, especially as battery storage becomes cheaper over time (unlike the experience of nuclear) and of longer duration. [Battery pack prices have halved this year]

Finally, to arrive at these rose-tinted costs, the Coalition has had to cut back on estimates of the amount of energy we will demand over the next two decades by almost half what the Australian Energy Market Operator says we need. That’s because it’s assumed we won’t worry about EVs or electrification. [This has led the Coalition to claim that this will cut electricity costs by 44%.  They have deliberately confused capital cost with cost per kWh of output. Of course capital costs are 44% lower if you are going to produce 44% less electricity!] This is why the Coalition will undo Australia’s 2030 43% emissions reduction target, which we are set to get very close to, taking us back to our Morrison-era status of global climate pariah. [The Coalition plans to abolish Labor's 43% target] 

And this is the kicker. Under the Coalition’s plan, our modelling shows Australia’s domestic emissions will rise by around one billion – yes billion – tonnes, at a cost of $240bn to the economy, society and environment, based on Infrastructure Australia’s cost of carbon methodology.

Most commentators who are not creatures of the Murdoch media think that this is just a ploy to prolong the use of coal and gas.   If it will take at least 15 years to build out a nuclear fleet, in the meantime we will need to extend the lives of our coal power stations.   Since they are already long in the tooth, and will be very expensive to refurbish, that will mean building new coal power stations.  But new coal in Australia costs 3 times as much per MWh of output as new wind and solar backed up by 4 hours of storage.  Which is why no utility is interested in building new coal power stations.  

In addition, the Coalition hasn't said what they're going to do about rooftop solar.  Rooftop solar, in summer, contributes 16% of total electricity supply, beating out all other sources except black coal.  Since old-fashioned nuclear power stations can't easily be ramped up or down, i.e., they're always "on", rooftop solar output will have to be curtailed to allow nuclear to keep running.  In other words, the money millions of people have spent installing rooftop solar to save on electricity bills will be wasted.  Not a winning proposition, for sure.

Wannabe dictator

 Fox "News" does it again --- lies.  

Oh, the irony.

By Fiona Katauskas

Fox News contagion

 By Mike Luckovich

Dotty right-wing still denies climate change

 From a tweet by Richard Wike, from Pew Research.  

Long term asset class returns

This chart is from an interesting article in The New Daily, an Australian newspaper which was started by union super funds to counter the pernicious influence of the Murdoch Press.

Note that this is the total return, i.e., includes rents and dividends.  If you own your own house, you would obviously not get a rent return, but on the other hand, you would have saved yourself the rent you would have paid.  Note that the returns for less risky/less volatile investments, such as bonds and cash are over the long term much lower than from the riskier/more volatile investments.  Also, observe that the returns over these 96 years for residential property and shares are practically identical, but there are long periods, sometimes decades long, when they diverge.  Finally, the chart is drawn using a log scale. 

Wage earners bear the cost of inflation

 From Sally McManus, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions

Looking forward to economists and others calling out company profits for driving inflation as businesses pass on price rises and gouge to pump up profits. Perhaps the RBA will call for a cap on profits? Or are workers to pay in price rises & wage cuts?

In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, wages in Australia have been stagnant for 10 years, even though real GDP has risen 30%. All the rise in GDP has gone to the top 10% and the top 1%. This pattern has been repeated in all the English-speaking countries where neo-liberalism and the Murdochcracy hold sway. [The chart shows nominal, i.e., not inflation-adjusted wages and profits]

Subsidising newspapers

 This is an oldish report from Inside Story.  But the points it makes are still relevant.

The idea that governments should provide financial assistance to news publishers is receiving more serious consideration in Australia than at any time in living memory. At the heart of the Senate inquiry into the Future of Public Interest Journalism, established in May in the wake of another round of lay-offs at Fairfax, lies the question of government’s role in ensuring a “viable, independent and diverse” news media. During the committee’s hearings – and in submissions it has received – some form of public subsidy is figuring prominently among the potential answers.

The reason is straightforward enough. Australia has lost between 2500 and 3000 media jobs this decade. That’s a quarter of our total journalistic capacity. Advertisers have left for Google, Facebook and other non-journalistic vendors of eyeballs, and they’re not coming back. Subscriptions to news outlets are growing but even non-subscribers enjoy the benefits of public interest journalism – liberal freedoms, democratic participation and low corruption. That means public interest journalism is unlikely to be privately purchased in the kind of quantities a healthy democracy needs.

And yet, as Matthew Ricketson, professor of communication at Deakin University and key player in the 2012 Finkelstein Review, told me, “I think if you asked the average person in the street, should the government provide money to the media, and put it like that, they’d probably be wary about it. Because they’d be worried about control and editorial interference.”

Ricketson is no doubt right. We don’t even need to accost people on the street. A submission to the Senate inquiry by libertarian researcher Chris Berg articulates exactly this anxiety. Arguing against state support for individual firms and journalists, Berg claims that the “real or perceived political interference, or just funding decisions that favour particular sides of politics, would undermine their democratic function.” Berg imagines an unsustainable conflict of interest in which “government planners would have to support organisations which are specifically dedicated to countering the planners’ interests, and would have to do so in a way that does not affect the political balance of the industry.”

In outlining this case, Berg makes no reference to the experience of any country in the world where subsidies already exist. And for good reason: the international evidence flatly contradicts his position. The five countries that topped the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index in 2017 were Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. All five provide direct subsidies to their newspapers (typically targeted at publications with weaker market positions). Lest the conjunction of state support and press freedom be dismissed as a Scandinavian curiosity, consider the finding of a 2014 policy brief from the London School of Economics. Of ten countries where governments provide direct assistance to their news industry, only Italy has any issues in relation to press freedom – and it still generally ranks in the top third of press freedom indices.

Senators and observers need only review the very comprehensive appendix to the submission of the Journalism Education & Research Association of Australia (itself an updated version of Annex K in the Finkelstein Report) to see just how widespread subsidy systems are. As well as the Nordic countries, Austria and the Netherlands provide annual direct subsidies. The Dutch government also offers loans and loan guarantees to support new media start-ups. The French employ a suite of measures, including subsidisation of transport, distribution and communications, a digital innovation fund, and tax incentives for journalists and publishers. Newspapers in Britain are exempt from the value added tax, normally levied at a rate of 20 per cent. A dozen other European countries, including Germany, Italy and Ireland, also provide a total exemption or significant reduction in their VAT.

That Berg didn’t feel the need to explore evidence from any of these countries is a symptom of the prevailing assumptions of our political culture. In Australia, we have taken it for granted that there would be something fundamentally dubious about governments handing over cash to newspaper owners. And yet this practice is as accepted in other parts of the world as it seems strange to us.

Internationally, subsidy regimes tend to be around half a century old. They have endured as governments have changed and power has oscillated between left and right, and they generally enjoy broad support across party lines. Josef Trappel, head of Communication Policy and Media Economics at the University of Salzburg, told me that “there is support for these kinds of subsidies almost across the entire political spectrum” in his country. “The strong parties in Austria, which are basically the Social Democrats, the Conservatives, the Freedom Party and the Greens – they are convinced that public subsidies for the press are a good thing.” It’s hardly the kind of consensus that would exist if governments were using subsidies to favour friends and intimidate opponents.

Robert Picard is one of the world’s leading academic experts in the field, dividing his time between the Reuters Institute at Oxford and the Information Society Project at Yale. “What we have been able to show in studies over the last four to five decades now,” he told me, “is it is possible to fashion subsidy mechanisms where the discretion to give the money is taken out of the hands of the existing government.” There are two critical elements in the design of subsidy schemes that protect them from abuse. The first is that subsidies are disbursed by a body that’s at arm’s length from the government of the day. Typically, it’s an independent statutory commission, but in Belgium, for example, the responsibility is delegated to an industry organisation. The second feature is that subsidies are allocated according to explicit and objective criteria, meaning that even the independent body has very little discretion.

In these respects, press subsidies tend to work in much the same way as the election funding provided through the Australian Electoral Commission, which makes its allocations according to first-preference votes received. As with election funding, we shouldn’t be complacent about the possibility that public assistance to the news industry could be abused. But like election funding, we have every reason to be confident that the risk can be managed satisfactorily. As well as Picard and Trappel, I spoke to media scholars in Denmark, Sweden and Britain. None could think of an example of an allegation of subsidies being used by governments to intimidate or favour news organisations – or the appearance of such.

It turns out that news publishers can accept support from the state without compromising their independence. The freest media in the world are subsidised by the very governments they hold to account. There’s nothing to stop the Public Interest Journalism Senate committee – chaired by Labor’s Sam Dastyari with the Greens’ Scott Ludlam as deputy – from concluding that subsidies don’t harm democracy.

But do they do any good? The answer to this question is more complicated, partly because it raises another: good for what? In the twentieth century, the newspaper industry was swimming in cash. The problem was a tendency towards monopoly – so subsidies worked if they increased diversity and competition. In the twenty-first century, newspaper companies, big and small, are losing revenue and shedding the journalists vital to a healthy democracy. Whether subsidies can do any good in response to this problem is the question everyone is asking.

Sweden is widely regarded as having one of the most successful subsidy schemes in the world. The Swedish Press Subsidies Council oversees subsidies for newspaper distribution and digital development, and what are called operational subsidies – annual payments targeted to the weaker players in news media markets. To qualify for the subsidy – which is funded by a tax on advertising – a print or digital newspaper needs to be published at least once a week, meet a minimum circulation requirement and, critically, have less than 30 per cent market share. The paper also needs to be at least 51 per cent original editorial content (and the more there is, the greater the subsidy). The subsidies constitute only 2–3 per cent of total industry revenue but typically amount to between 15 and 20 per cent of revenue for the weaker titles that are their main beneficiary. For some, the subsidy can amount to as much as a third of total earnings.

Sweden introduced its subsidy system in 1970 after two decades in which a net sixty newspapers had gone out of business. While there were local factors at play, this was an instance of an international phenomenon: the strong tendency towards monopoly in twentieth-century newspaper economics, memorably described by Warren Buffett as “survival of the fattest.” The “fattest” newspaper in a market enjoyed highly advantageous economies of scale and was the most attractive to advertisers. Over time, thinner rivals were driven out of business. In most Western countries, the total number of newspapers, newspaper proprietors and cities where two newspapers competed all sharply declined over the course of the twentieth century.

The Swedish government’s intervention mitigated against this trend by tilting the scales in favour of the second and third newspapers in each regional market. On the eve of the global financial crisis, Sweden – a country with a population of fewer than ten million people – had seventy-eight daily newspapers and the same number of weeklies. There were five geographical markets with separately owned newspapers, and a further ten where there were two competing newspapers owned by the same company. (Recall that the test for receiving the operational subsidy revolves around producing original editorial content, not being independently owned.)

How much credit the subsidies deserve for this happy state of affairs is a matter of scholarly debate. Affluent and highly literate, the Swedes have always had remarkably high rates of newspaper readership. (Historically around 75 per cent of adults reported reading a newspaper each day, almost twice the percentage in countries like Australia and Britain.) The strong tradition of “political parallelism” – close alignment between newspapers and political parties – has probably helped smaller papers stay in business. These factors are important, but few question the role of subsidies in the remarkable diversity and vitality of the Swedish news industry.

Yet it’s also the case that subsidies have not spared the Swedish news industry from the problems associated with collapsing advertising revenue in the digital environment. The Swedish Newspaper Market During the 21st Century, a report delivered to the Swedish government this year, describes how “the newspaper industry is not employing as many people any more, and the number of local editorial offices has decreased.” Total industry revenue has declined to levels not seen since the 1980s, and where five cities had separately owned newspapers a decade ago, now there are none. “What has happened,” Lars Nord from Mid Sweden University told me, “is that second-ranking newspapers have in many cases been bought by the leading newspaper and merged into one newspaper company, sometimes with two different titles and sometimes with one single newspaper.” The last remaining city in Sweden with separately owned newspapers was Karlstad. The city’s two newspapers announced a merger in January.

Perspective is important here, though. The same report describes a level of ownership concentration, nationally, that Australia – with its duopoly controlling 90 per cent of the market – would love to have. “The eight largest newspaper groups,” the report explains, “now control seventy-six out of Sweden’s ninety-three mid- and high-frequency daily newspapers.” That’s right, the eight largest newspaper groups have a combined 82 per cent market share.

The Swedish case makes it clear, if it wasn’t already, that subsidies aren’t a silver bullet. The problem of lost advertising revenue is orders of magnitude greater than any existing subsidy solution. In Sweden, state support amounts to less than 3 per cent of total industry revenue; advertising has traditionally accounted for two-thirds of revenue. So the question Australia should be asking is not whether industry assistance is going to be the solution but whether it can be part of it. Josef Trappel suggests that “the composition of revenue in the future might be a certain kind of mosaic of different elements. And I think one piece in that mosaic can and should be subsidies. It should not be the most important one. It should not be the only one. It should not be the dominant one. But it can help.” He observes that “in those countries where there are subsidies, newspapers are doing better than in others.” Isolating the effect of state support, amid all the variables at play, is as challenging as it is important. But, on the face of it, there are grounds for believing that appropriately designed subsidies make a difference.

See also this academic paper on the Swedish example

The best thing about competitive newspaper subsidies is that it will reduce the influence of this man.

Fox "News" isn't news at all

 

Murdoch bias tracker

 

NewsCorpse unbiased? How we laughed!

 From a tweet by Kevin Rudd, a former Labor Prime Minister of Australia.  Australia is in the throes of a federal election campaign.

Crunching the numbers on the front pages for the first 2 weeks of the campaign, the Murdoch Bias Tracker shows stunning results. But Murdoch's CEO insists there's no bias at all!

Putin's mouthpiece

 A cartoon by Nick Anderson

The climate shuffle dance

From Common Dreams

 While more than a half century ago the Twist was the craze in dance halls globally, today the Climate Change Shuffle is the craze in government halls and conference sites worldwide as officials dance around the dangers of climate change.

The first step in the Climate Change Shuffle is a straightforward maneuver: deny climate change. With feet solidly on the floor, confidently dismiss any scientific consensus on climate change and global warming, including it is caused by human activities. Deny that climate change is a threat to humanity and health of the planet as long as possible

The second step in the Climate Change Shuffle, which is highly popular and easily done, is the delay. With body swaying gently from left to right, emphasize that the true answers to environmental issues are economic growth, advanced technologies, and human ingenuity, all of which will need some time and resources. Lean forward proposing the establishment of commissions to produce lengthy technical reports and continue to delay as long as possible.

The third and final step in the Climate Change Shuffle, which should be performed effortlessly without movement, is to do nothing. Simply remain still, don't take any steps forward and let time slowly pass by as long as possible. Climate change will likely soon be forgotten, displaced by something more immediate, such as gas prices, a sex scandal, or a military invasion.

Mounting scientific evidence, including the recent Sixth Assessment Report of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), indicates that global warming is reshaping the world more rapidly and severely than was known several years ago. Nevertheless, governments, especially the major emitters of greenhouse gases, continue dancing the Climate Change Shuffle.

The top ten emitters of greenhouse gases account for two-thirds of the world's CO2 emissions. Far in first place is China, which is responsible for about 30 percent of the world's CO2 emissions. In a distant second place is the United States at 14 percent, followed by India at 7 percent and Russia at 5 percent (Figure 1).

Environmental scientists, naturalists, and concerned citizens, including young activists, worldwide have warned that human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people and calling for needed action. Ecosystems and populations least able to cope are expected to be hardest hit by the consequences of climate change.

Also, thousands of scientists have warned governments that the future habitability of planet earth depends on immediate, large-scale action in no less than six critical and interrelated areas: energy, short-lived pollutants, nature, food, economy, and population.

Their recommended actions include limiting the burning of fossil fuels, restoring ecosystems, moving to plant-based diets, curtailing consumption or degrowth, and stabilizing world population.

However, most of the recommended actions are largely unappealing to governments and their constituents. Transitioning from burning fossil fuels to renewable energy, for example, is considered a difficult task. Global greenhouse gas emissions are broadly from energy, agriculture, industry, and waste, with almost three-quarters from energy consumption.

The alternatives to fossil fuels are not readily available to meet the rising global demand for electricity. Fossil fuels account about two-thirds of global electricity generation, with coal, natural gas, and oil contributing 38, 28 and 3 percent, respectively versus renewables contributing 9 percent.

Some progress has recently been achieved moving from meat to a plant-based diet. However, curtailing consumption, or shrinking the economy, is not likely to be embraced by most populations any time soon.

Also, attempts to stabilize populations are anathema to most governments, businesses, and many others. They consider demographic growth essential for economic growth, political power, and national identity. Consequently, rather than stabilization, world population is expected to increase from 8 billion today to 10 billion by around mid-century.

When confronted by the overwhelming evidence of climate change, governments that have a major impact on global warming glide to the Shuffle's delay step. As witnessed at the disappointing Glasgow climate change summit (COP26) last November, many countries are simply not prepared to make firm commitments on needed actions with timetables.

An important reason why many governments perform the Climate Change Shuffle is the demand for electricity and the reliance on coal-fired power stations to meet that rising demand. The top four countries, namely, China, India, the United States, and Japan, were responsible for 76 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020 (Figure 2).

With its 1,110 coal-fired power stations, China alone accounted for approximately 53 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020 and those power stations provided 61 percent of China's electricity. Following China but at a considerably lower level is India, which is responsible for 14 percent of the world's coal-fired electricity with its coal-fired power stations providing 71 percent of India's electricity.

In third and fourth place are the United States and Japan, which accounted for 11 and 9 percent, respectively of the world's coal-fired electricity in 2020. However, in contrast to China and India, the contributions of the coal-fired power stations to domestic electricity consumption in the U.S. and Japan are substantially less, 19 and 29 percent, respectively.

Another important reason why some governments continue doing the Shuffle is because climate change has become a highly partisan issue. With climate change becoming a contentious issue contributing to political paralysis, few elected governments are able to adopt the necessary legislation and implement the needed actions to address climate change.

In the United States, for example, 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress continue to deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. Also, Democratic and Republican voters in the U.S. are far apart in their views regarding climate change.

Whereas 78 percent of Democrats said climate change should be a top priority in 2020, 21 percent of Republicans said it should be. Moreover, the gap between them has widened over the past several years, with increasing proportions of Democrats saying climate change should be a top priority (Figure 3).

When faced with the unequivocal scientific evidence about climate change and the lack of needed actions, some observers, organizations, and funds have increased their efforts to urge governments to adopt the needed climate change policies.

However, others, including many students, have become incredibly worried by years of empty promises by political leaders and are pessimistic about the outlook for future.

They note that a quarter century ago when world population was nearly 6 billion, government leaders gathered in Kyoto, Japan, and agreed to curb greenhouse emissions. Seven years ago, when world population had reached more than 7 billion, governments adopted the Paris Agreement's vision of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees. And today with world population at 8 billion and expected to reach 9 billion in 15 years, few nations are living up to their commitments.

Also, others have become fatalistic about global warming as they witness a rapidly closing window to secure a livable future as governments dance the Climate Change Shuffle. Additional scientific studies, they feel, will make little difference in the near certain outcomes. They are convinced that governments will not be able to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. With direct and clear language, many have simply concluded: "we're screwed."

In sum, whether one is optimistic, pessimistic, fatalistic, or indifferent regarding climate change and the responses of governments, three conclusions seem warranted.

First, the widely reported scientific evidence and findings of published reports on human-induced climate change and its far-reaching effects worldwide are clear, unequivocal, indisputable, and distressing.

Second, countries will continue to experience the consequences of climate change with serious disruptions to the planet's natural environment and severe adverse effects on human populations, including flooding, droughts, heat waves, shortages of water and food, warming oceans, storms, rising sea levels, wildfires, and melting glaciers and polar ice caps.

Third, until governments are fully committed to taking the needed actions to address climate change, which does not appear likely any time soon, government officials will continue to dance the Climate Change Shuffle, i.e., deny, delay, and do nothing.

A depressing analysis,   

The US is so divided thanks to the Murdoch media and the Republican Party that its commitment to fighting climate change is doubtful.  

China is not a wealthy country, and its government can't afford to alienate its citizens.  Unlike the US it has no right-wing denialist press and oil-soaked billionaires, but it also needs to ensure that rapidly growing electricity demand is satisfied.   China is the largest investor in renewables in the world, and it has mandated that its electricity generating companies must reach 50% installed capacity by 2025, as well as having strong EV targets.  Even with these steps, though, Chinese emissions are not going to start falling for another decade.  

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred Europe to accelerate the transition to net-zero because of the need to reduce imports  of oil and gas from  Russia.  But without the rest of the world following, the decline in total global emissions will be small.

Unless we push our governments to act on climate by voting them out of office if they don't, we are not going to avoid a 2 degree rise in global temperatures, with disastrous consequences.

NewsCorp: from denialism to delayism

 From RenewEconomy

Have you heard the good news? One of the key institutions holding back climate action in Australia – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – is suddenly on Team Climate Action! Today, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that the company’s Australian outlets are set to launch a campaign urging “the world’s leading economies” to embrace a target of net zero emissions by 2050; to be fronted by columnist Joe Hildebrand. The details aren’t out yet, but I contend that we can comfortably predict what it will look like.

It will be a centrist, pro-business approach to climate action. It will make a show of dismissing the “hysterics” of climate activists, while urging governments, including Australia’s, to set distant, meaningless and non-binding climate targets. It won’t allow any room for emissions reductions in line with the 1.5C goals or the Paris agreement; no short-term meaningful targets or actions such as those highlighted in the IEA’s recent ‘net zero’ report. It won’t argue for a coal phase-out by 2030, or the end of all new coal, gas and oil mines in Australia, or a ban on combustion engine sales by 2030-2035; all vital actions if Australia is to align with any net zero target.

It’ll champion controversial technologies like CCS and fossil hydrogen. It’ll highlight personal responsibility: tree planting, recycling and electric vehicle purchases. It will not propose or argue in favour of any new policies; at least none that might reduce the burning of fossil fuels.

How can we know all this before we’ve seen the actual campaign? It’s easy – let me explain.

Here’s a remarkable statistic for you. In the month of August this year, global media coverage of climate saw its highest volume since the December 2009 Copenhagen climate meetings. That’s partly down to the release of the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group one report into climate change, six years in the making.

That report reiterated something extremely important: every single tonne of carbon dioxide does damage. Actions must be immediate and aggressive to align with the most ambitious pathways. Delay is deadly.

During the Black summer bushfires of 2019-20, I did a few interviews about Australia with baffled and perplexed international reporters. “What is going on over there? Why did the people elect such a climate laggard?”. A key part of my response was to pin blame on Australia’s media industry. Mostly on News Corp, which dominates the country’s uniquely concentrated media landscape, and which is notorious for its heavily politicised climate views. In fact, a recent study quantified this in historical terms, analysing media coverage within Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia for its climate science accuracy.

By a comfortable margin, News Corp’s Daily Telegraph and the Courier Mail scored the second and fourth worst among every media outlet analysed between 2005 and 2019 (The Australian wasn’t included in the analysis). Australia has, in general, seen the least accurate climate science coverage from 2013 onwards, despite a general rising trend in scientific accuracy over the past decade. For a decade and a half, News Corp lied about climate science with the blatant aim of protecting the revenue streams of the fossil fuel industry, and protecting its political allies.

This is important as a historical study, but today, it’s increasingly irrelevant. As the study points out, the accuracy of climate science has essentially plateaued in media coverage, with outright denial consigned to the dustbin.

The authors highlight that “the terrain of climate debates has shifted in recent years away from strict denial of the scientific consensus on human causes of climate change toward ‘discourses of delay’ that focus on undermining support for specific policies meant to address climate change”. The fundamental goal is the same – staving off action – but the way it manifests is very different.

There are many substantial recent examples of this. A good one was the severe blackouts that spread across Texas in February this year, which were immediately blamed on wind power failures, alongside easily debunked claims that snows and ice were blocking solar panels and freezing up wind turbines in Texas and around the world.

This isn’t climate change denial: it’s “mitigation denial“. That is, a move away from denying the problem exists and towards decrying its solutions as utterly unacceptable. An important part of this performance is pretending to have a moment of having seen the light, but then continuing to commit the same acts of delay as before.

What might reasonably seem like a surprising change of heart in News Corp’s stance on climate is actually a long-term tactical shift that has been occurring for at least a few years. Whatever policies they failed to destroy through their earlier campaigns, they will try and reframe through racist, nationalistic, technocratic and pro-business frames.

Whatever policies they can delay or destroy, they’ll simply keep running scare campaigns about, insisting that ‘the balance isn’t right’, and that the threat of climate action is greater than the threat of climate change, as they always have (in Australia, News Corp’s partnerships with Google and Facebook mean these campaigns to destabilise climate action are growing more powerful and more harmful every day). When the next federal election comes around, the “COSTS OF NET ZERO” scare campaigns will ramp up in Australia as they are in the UK, and News Corp will be at the forefront, pleading that acting too fast will cause catastrophe. Absolutely mark my damn words: this is what will happen.

Net zero by 2050 isn’t enough. We’ll know that the denialism has truly ended when organisations like News Corp treat the IPCC’s latest report like it’s real. That is, when they acknowledge that every additional unit of greenhouse gases causes harm to life on Earth, and that actions to stop their release must be as fast as possible. That climate change is an emergency that requires rapid action to wind down the fossil fuel industry in a just and equitable way, and that its replacement must be grown to full size with just as much passion and urgency.

This campaign won’t look anything like that. We know what it will look like – and it won’t be anything surprising at all.

Pro-Trump counties have triple the death toll of pro-Biden ones

 From Raw Story

MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday reported on the higher death toll in the most Republican counties vs the most Democratic ones.

Hayes pointed to a new report that was published by data journalist Christopher Ingraham under the headline, "GOP COVID policy is killing GOP voters".

Ingraham's data showed that in counties where Trump received less than 20% of the vote, the death toll in August was 4.89 per 100,000 residents. However, in counties where Trump received more than 80% of the vote, the death toll was 14.89 per 100,000.

"That is more than three times as many people dying from COVID as in those most, pro-Biden counties," Hayes said.

Hayes says the data gives "some real empirical weight to the evidence we've seen, for months and months and months, that the delta wave is wreaking havoc disproportionately in red America."

Hayes noted that with vaccines, the deaths were "largely preventable."

"It is happening because the agenda of the Trump, MAGA, Republican Party has been, by-and-large, to ignore the risks of COVID, refuse to protect yourselves, others from it, and when people die, it is 'freedom' or something," Hayes said.

 

Source: GOP Covid policy is killing GOP voters

Who is to blame for this?  Individuals must take some of the blame.  The evidence has been clear.  On the other hand, most of them watch Fox News, which has consistently downplayed Covid, screeched about mask mandates, and spread fatal misinformation about the vaccines.  And of course, the Republican Party,  which has demonised all attempts to reduce the threat of Covid.

Now they tell me

 A cartoon by Mike Luckovich

A tale of two States

Victoria, run by Labor (leftish) and NSW, run by the 'Liberal' Party (right-wing).  

Victoria has been excoriated by the Murdoch  media as run by swivel-eyed leftist loons, NSW has been held up by the same media as running 'gold-standard' covid measures.  The Premier of NSW, known to both her friends as Saint Gladys, postponed introducing a snap lockdown to prevent a wave of covid infections, and has just removed the lockdown despite the number of cases still rising, while Victoria, under 'Dictator Dan', moved swiftly to impose a two weeks lockdown to break the infection transmission chain.  The results have been obvious:

Source: @Tofoafelix

Newscorp and Murdoch

 From Climate Action Australia

Rupert Murdoch & Brexit

We have always been at war with Eastasia

Big Brother is Watching You--from George Orwell's 1984

From ClimateCrocks:

It’s hard to feel any sympathy for Trish Regan, the Fox News host who was fired after a rant in which she called the coronavirus “yet another attempt to impeach the president.” We may never know how many Fox viewers became gravely ill or died because they ignored social distancing in response to people like Regan, who told them that the pandemic was a politically motivated hoax. But the number was surely significant.

The twist in the Regan story, however, is that what she said wasn’t significantly different from what her whole network had been saying for weeks. Her career-killing mistake wasn’t saying something false and evil, it was her timing. She apparently missed the abrupt turn in the party line by a few hours.

For Regan’s rant came just after Fox and right-wing media in general suddenly changed their line from “the pandemic is a liberal hoax” to “everyone must unify behind our great leader in his heroic struggle against the Chinese virus.” And for some reason Regan didn’t get the memo.

Actually, Regan wasn’t the only person who didn’t get the memo. A number of people on the religious right are still sticking with the virus-as-hoax story, notably Jerry Falwell Jr., who defied public health experts by reopening Liberty University — and promptly created his own personal virus hot spot. But most leading figures on the right have swerved on command.

Needless to say, the mounting coronavirus death toll hasn’t produced any apologies from pundits who previously claimed that the virus was a hoax, let alone admissions that the terrible, horrible, no-good mainstream media were actually giving accurate information. Perhaps more surprisingly, as far as I know there haven’t been any howls of protest from Fox viewers, or Rush Limbaugh listeners, who are now being told something completely different from what they were hearing three weeks ago. Their trust in Fox, their disdain for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and, above all, their faith in Donald Trump are apparently unshaken.

The parallels with George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” are obvious. When Oceania suddenly shifts alliances, and its former ally Eastasia becomes an enemy, everyone knows what to believe: not only was the nation at war with Eastasia, it had always been at war with Eastasia. In Orwell’s vision, however, this mind-set was produced by a totalitarian state whose vigilant Thought Police stamp out any hint of independent thought. America isn’t a totalitarian state — not yet, anyway — yet there are tens of millions of American apparently willing to act and think as if the Thought Police were already up and running.

Orwell wrote a great essay a few years before “Nineteen Eighty-Four” titled “Looking Back on the Spanish War.” In it he wrote of his vision of a “nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.

Well, a lot of Americans evidently already live in that nightmare world. And that scares me more than Covid-19.
-----Paul Krugman

Welcome to the future

Climate denialists are still out there, still spruiking their dotty denial of basic science.  But Exxon knew about the risks of global warming way back in 1982.  And proceeded to fund denialist websites, politicians, and stinktanks.  Their disgraceful lies and propaganda were then picked up by the hate-for-hire politicians and the toxic sludge of right-wing media, such as the Murdochcracy.   So successful have these malignant low-lifes been that there are still some ordinary folk who believe that the science isn't settled (it is) and that transitioning to a carbon-free economy will cause economic collapse (it won't, whereas inactivity on climate will).  But Exxon's scientists got it exactly right.  They forecast that CO₂ would reach 415 parts per million (ppm) by 2020 (the highest in 3 million years.) And it has.  They forecast the consequent global temperature rise of 0.9 degrees C.  And we reached that in 2017.

Next time someone tells you that the models haven't correctly predicted global temperatures, point out that the earliest model, by the scientists at an oil company, got it right.

From Climate Denialist Crock of the Week (Peter Sinclair)

For the record, here's what actually happened to the temperature since 1970:

Source: NOAA