This month’s open thread. Please try and stay focused on substance rather than personalities. There are many real issues that are particularly salient this month, and so maybe we can collectively try not to have the comments descend into tedium.
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5 Responses to "Unforced Variations: Aug 2025"
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“Trump administration cancels plans to develop new offshore wind projects”
“The Trump administration is canceling plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development, the latest step to suppress the industry in the United States.”
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https://apnews.com/article/trump-wind-permitting-offshore-7a05dff77ba92e4a7761604583a6d208
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And the next step backwards is coming fast: “The Interior Department is considering withdrawing areas on federal lands with high potential for onshore wind power to balance energy development with other uses such as recreation and grazing. It also will review bird deaths associated with wind turbines, which are allowed under federal permits that consider the deaths “incidental” to energy production.”
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All the lost American jobs and economic benefit because of Trump’s personal aesthetics and a lingering wounded pride for losing a court battle in Scotland over a few offshore wind turbines viewable from one of his courses:
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“Trump’s war on windmills started in Scotland. Now he’s taking it global
President’s opposition to offshore wind more than a decade ago now threatens a huge industry in the US and beyond”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-clean-energy-war-global
“And the next step backwards is coming fast: “The Interior Department is considering withdrawing areas on federal lands with high potential for onshore wind power to balance energy development with other uses such as recreation and grazing. It also will review bird deaths associated with wind turbines, which are allowed under federal permits that consider the deaths “incidental” to energy production.”
The impact of wind turbines on people hiking and cattle grazing is insignificant, because people can easily walk and cattle can easily graze within a wind farm, and under the turbine blades, and without the areas of walking and grazing being significantly compromised. While the turbine blades have a large diameter, at ground level the footprints of the wind turbine towers are small, and add up to a very small fraction of the land area of a wind farm.
Regarding bird strike:
“In his 2013 Report , The avian benefits of wind energy , Benjamin K. Sovacool assesses the number of bird fatalities associated with various energy sources based on meta-analysis and a collection of results from experiments from across the country . His findings indicate that on average , wind turbines killed .3 to .4 birds per GWh of electricity they produced , while coal killed approximately 5.2 bird per GWh (Sovacool 2013) . Standing alone , these numbers are indicative of the marked increase in harm done unto bird populations posed by coal….”
https://websites.umass.edu/natsci397a-eross/whether-or-not-wind-turbines-are-a-significant-threat-to-bird-populations/#:~:text=His%20findings%20indicate%20that%20on,per%20GWh%20(Sovacool%202013)%20.
The commentary explains the reasons.
“This month’s open thread. Please try and stay focused on substance rather than personalities. There are many real issues that are particularly salient this month, and so maybe we can collectively try not to have the comments descend into tedium.
Land of Confusion
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pyOla0JQuMg
The rallying song
Reposting this BlueSky Andrew Dessler from Endangerment (h/t Philip Clarke)
Please note: “We are primarily looking for Ph.D. scientists at universities or government labs in appropriate fields. I realize that this will exclude some qualified people and I apologize, but we felt this was necessary for a variety of reasons.”
https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3lvbrnzqmyo27 [good discussion in subcomments]
DOE Climate Response Form – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwVruhK2TZpTImdk1eDw0En9zEirB5piFU6FFhZhHTIY2q0A/viewform?pli=1
Does anyone take the Chinese emission figures serious? In 2024 China used about 5Gt of coal. By common metrics this should translate into some 12 to 12.5 Gt of CO2, roughly equating to total Chinese CO2 emissions.
If I have it right, the story goes like this. In early 2015 some statistics emerge showing China using 17% more coal than previously known and reported. Just afterwards Liu et al 2015 was published in Nature, which, in line with some governmental institutions, claimed Chinese coal simply contained 40% less carbon than the IPCC base assumption.
Those 40% less is really the key finding of the paper, they also name it in the abstract, and they even show the numbers. While the IPCC assumes an average carbon content of 71.3%, Chinese coal only had 49.9%, thus 40% less. The paper had 24 co-authors and will have been thoroughly peer reviewed by Nature.
I mean it is like they wanted to make a joke over it. As anyone can tell, 49.9 is just 30% less than 71.3. This can not be an oversight. Also the notion of some kind of Chinese “miracle coal”, low in carbon but rich in energy, is absurd.
Adding insult to injury, the paper points out two “consequences” of its finding.
a) as Chinese emissions actually had been overestimated, it would only be fair for China to emit more CO2 in the future
b) otherwise it “implies a considerable (downward) revision of the global carbon budget” because weaker than thought CO2 sinks, meaning less emissions for everyone else
As strange as it is, those implausibly low emissions from Chinese coal usage are to this day the basis for Chinese emission figures. And if they were not true, we would be missing out a couple of Gt of CO2 p.a.