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To: Brumar89 who wrote (844567)	3/23/2015 9:55:55 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583410

"No way environmentalists will allow that solar plant to kill all the birds in western Nevada." No way all the birds in Western Nevada are as stupid as conservatives. "my side is winning." LMAO. Deniers deny. More signs of peak coal as China’s Shenhua forecasts 10% sales decline By Sophie Vorrath on 23 March 2015 China’s largest coal producer, Shenhua Energy Company, has warned of 10 per cent decline in domestic coal sales in the coming year, offering further evidence that the world’s second-largest consumer of coal has reached its peak. The prediction – which follows China’s 2.9 per cent reduction in coal consumption in 2014, its record investment of $89.5 billion in renewables, and the government’s 2014 announcement that it would peak its carbon emissions by 2030 – was part of Shenhua’s 2014/15 results and business targets announcement on Sunday. The company says it estimates this year will see a 10 per cent or 47Mt reduction to 404Mt in its domestic coal sales in 2015. Capex plans for coal and power in 2015 are down 25 per cent on 2014 levels to $US3.2 billion, while Shenhua’s investment in ports and rail are forecast to be down 12 per cent year-on-year to $US2.5 billion. And while Shenhua is due to hold a briefing with analysts later on Monday, some, like the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), say the news should send shockwaves through the global coal markets. “As the top producer in China with a 15 per cent market share, Shenhua is a key barometer for the Chinese coal market,” said IEEFA’s Tim Buckley – director of energy finance studies, Australasia. “This plan to reduce volumes a further 10 per cent in 2015 sends an unmistakable signal that China is intent on cutting the emissions intensity of its energy mix by a rapid diversification away from coal. “While proponents of the view that coal is only in a cyclical downturn argue the 2.9 per cent reduction in China’s coal consumption in 2014 was an anomaly, Shenhua’s own forecast provides more evidence that China has passed peak coal.” World Resources Institute global director, Jennifer Morgan, said the prediction provided yet another positive sign that China was shifting to a low-carbon economy and would meet its 2030 climate goals. “The Shenhua announcement is consistent with projections showing that coal use in China could peak by 2020 and decline thereafter with the low-carbon policies the country has put in place,” she said. According to Buckley, Shenhua’s average coal price received in 2014 dropped almost 10 per cent year on year, with total coal volumes (own production and traded volumes combined) dropping 12.4 per cent to 451Mt, and the decline accelerating rapidly in the year’s last quarter. Nevertheless, Shenhua appears to remain financially robust with only limited financial leverage, a position which Buckley credits to the company’s realistic outlook. “Shenhua is a rare example of a coal company with a healthy balance sheet,” said Buckley. “The drop in production and sales is simply a result of it falling in line with Premier Li Keqiang’s recently announced plans to cut the country’s energy intensity by another 3.1 per cent in 2015 … and to cap coal use to below 65 per cent of total primary energy consumption by 2017.” Without doubt, Buckey added, the greatest impact of China’s hastening shift to cleaner energy would be felt by the seaborne thermal coal sector – and those economies, like Australia’s, that are wedded to the business of digging up and exporting coal. “The message to investors is plain: this is a sector in structural decline,” said Buckley. And China’s own senior climate and energy advisor from the Natural Resources Defense Council agrees. “The most recent forecasts from Shenhua signal that coal production in China has entered its winter. As the largest coal-producing company in China and the second largest in the world, Shenhua’s projection of domestic coal sales reductions can serve as a weather vane for the industry. “The high production era has ended. China’s coal production and consumption is expected to enter a plateau for the next few years and ultimately go downward with the continued development and improvement of energy efficiency, clean energy and renewables,” he said. Shenuhua’s 2015 forecast is undoubtedly further bad news for the already much maligned coal mining and export projects planned for the Gaililee Basin and Abbot Point in Queensland. The planned projects – including the development of huge mines at the site of the Carmichael coal deposit, and the expansion of the nearby port – have been criticised for their “almost unprecedented level of financial complexity and risk,” due to their huge scale, greenfield nature and foreign ownership. They are also considered to have environmentally disastrous implications, not least of all for the devastating impacts Abbot Point port development proposals will have on the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Indeed, the Australian Coral Reef Society – a group comprising Australia’s top coral reef scientists – released a report on Monday outlining the damage the projects will do to the reef, ahead of the June meeting of the World Heritage Committee, which will decide if the Reef should be listed as a World Heritage Site ‘in danger’. “What our report shows is that regardless of where dredge spoil is dumped, the Abbot Point project will cause significant harm to our Reef,” said Selina Ward, one of the report’s authors and biology lecturer at The University of Queensland. “Coal dust is already at high levels in the sea around Abbot Point and these levels will increase greatly if the development goes ahead. “Dredging will destroy surrounding seagrass and may smother corals and harm other creatures like turtles and dugongs. Recent evidence has shown a doubling of the incidence of coral disease close to dredged areas. There are only three percent of the number of dugongs living on the reef that there were in 1960. “Port expansion would also see hundreds of massive coal ships moving through the Reef each year, with all the risks they bring with them of collisions, pollution, and introduction of exotic species,” Dr Ward said. reneweconomy.com.au

To: Brumar89 who wrote (844567)	3/23/2015 10:14:38 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583410

" my side is winning." Stranded Assets International Heritage Site is winning. Global Shale Fail: Oil Majors Leaving Fracking Fields Across Europe, Asia With some analysts predicting the global price of oil to see another drop, many oil majors have deployed their parachutes and jumped from the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) projects rapidly nose-diving across the world. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the unconvetional shale oil and gas boom is still predominantly U.S.-centric, likely to remain so for years to come. “Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have packed up nearly all of their hydraulic fracturing wildcatting in Europe, Russia and China,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. “Chevron halted its last European fracking operations in February when it pulled out of Romania. Shell said it is cutting world-wide shale spending by 30% in places including Turkey, Ukraine and Argentina. Exxon has pulled out of Poland and Hungary, and its German fracking operations are on hold.” Though the fracking boom has taken off in the U.S. like no other place on Earth, the U.S. actually possesses less than 10 percent of the world’s estimated shale reserves, according to The Journal. Despite this resource allotment discrepency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently revealed that only four countries in the world have produced fracked oil or gas at a commercial-scale: the United States, Canada, China and Argentina. Image Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration False Premises, False Promises? As Post Carbon Institute has pointed out in two major reports, estimated reserves often prove over-inflated compared to the actual ultimate productivity of fracking fields. While Post Carbon's sample data focused on U.S. shale fields, the new EIA data appears to back up the organization's long-standing thesis, albeit on a global scale. That is, the global fracking boom has in large part been based on false premises and accompanying false promises. EIA's role here is crucial, serving as an entity which often initially trumpets the estimated reserves of shale basins and then quietly back-pedals with downgrades months or years later. As reported previously on DeSmog, John Krohn — former communications director for industry front group Energy in Depth — now serves as a spokesman for EIA. “A view filled with false premises is bound to generate promises,” Asher Miller, executive director for Post Carbon Institute said in an October 2014 press release announcing his orgnazation's report titled, “ Drilling Deeper.” “The Department of Energy's oil and natural gas forecasts prepared by the EIA are failed attempts to paint a picture of the country's energy future for government policymakers and businesses…We should not confuse oil and gas industry salesmanship with the accurate information the country needs to provide a sound basis for U.S. energy policy.” Fracking may eventually go global in a major way. But unlike in the U.S., it doesn't look like there will be any books to write about a global shale boom anytime soon. desmogblog.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (844567)	3/23/2015 11:35:29 PM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By bentway Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1583410

Congrats... Gulf Stream is slowing down faster than ever, scientists say The Gulf Stream that helps to keep Britain from freezing over in winter is slowing down faster now than at any time in the past millennium according to a study suggesting that major changes are taking place to the ocean currents of the North Atlantic. Scientists believe that the huge volumes of freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic from the rapidly melting ice cap of Greenland have slowed down the ocean “engine” that drives the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean towards north-west Europe, bringing heat equivalent to the output of a million power stations. Scientists believe that huge volumes of freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic from the rapidly melting ice cap of Greenland have slowed down the ocean “engine” that drives the Gulf Stream (Getty) However, the researchers believe that Britain is still likely to become warmer due to climate change providing the Gulf Stream does not come to a complete halt – although they remain unsure how likely this is. Calculations suggest that over the 20th century the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – the northward flow of warm surface water and the southward flow of deep, cold water – has slowed by between 15 and 20 per cent, said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is more than a 99 per cent probability that this slowdown is unique over the period we looked at since 900 AD. We conclude that the slowdown many have described is in fact already underway and it is outside of any natural variation,” Professor Rahmstorf said. The scientists calculated that some 8,000 cubic kilometres of freshwater has flowed from Greenland into the Atlantic between 1900 and 1970, and this rose significantly to 13,000 cubic kilometres between 1970 and 2000. Freshwater is lighter than salty water which means that it tends to float on the surface of the ocean and in doing so disturbs the normal sinking of dense, cold saltwater to the ocean floor, which is the main driver of the Atlantic circulation. An iceberg in Ilulissat, Greenland; researchers have been studying the phenomena of the melting glaciers and their long-term ramifications for the rest of the world (Getty) In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Professor Rahmstorf and colleagues point out that maps of global surface temperatures have consistently indicated an overall warming trend around the world, except for the region of the North Atlantic south of Greenland. “It is conspicuous that one specific area of the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up,” said Professor Rahmstorf, who added that previous research had indicated that a slowdown in ocean currents may be the explanation. “Now we have detected strong evidence that the global conveyor has indeed been weakening in the past hundred years, particularly since 1970,” he said. The study used proxy measurements of the Atlantic currents, using ice cores, tree rings, coral growth and ocean and lake sediments, to estimate regional temperature variations and so assess how the Gulf Stream has changed over the past 1,000 years. Machair, a grassy coastal habitat found only in north-west Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, is one of the several elements of the UK’s “cultural heritage” that is at risk from climate change (Getty) Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, who helped to calculate the amount of freshwater flowing into the Atlantic from melting ice caps, said that the slowdown can be linked to man-made climate change. “Now freshwater coming off the Greenland ice sheet is likely disturbing the circulation. So the human-caused mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet appears to be slowing down the Atlantic overturning, and this effect might increase if temperatures are allowed to rise further,” Dr Box said. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said: “Common climate models are underestimating the change we’re facing, wither because the Atlantic overturning is too stable in the models or because they don’t properly account for Greenland ice melt, or both.” independent.co.uk