Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Worldwide oil consumption is close to 100 million barrels per day, and rising (apart from a small Covid-related slowdown). Rosebank is the proverbial drop in the ocean, and would reduce the need for imported oil. Demand has to be met from somewhere for the modern world to function, and Russian supply is off the menu.
Worldwide oil consumption is close to 100 million barrels per day, and rising (apart from a small Covid-related slowdown). Rosebank is the proverbial drop in the ocean, and would reduce the need for imported oil. Demand has to be met from somewhere for the modern world to function, and Russian supply is off the menu. – – – H/T saighdear . . . Plans to create an oil field more than twice the size of the controversial Cambo development risk “wrecking” Scotland’s climate and setting net-zero targets back.
Rosebank, located north-west of Shetland, could produce over 70,000 barrels of oil every day at its peak under proposals brought before Westminster by Norwegian state-controlled company Equinor, says STV News.
However The Scottish Greens have branded the blueprints “a climate disaster” and urged the UK government to turn the bid down.
It comes just months after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon publicly condemned the Cambo plans, which were shelved last year.
The Scottish Government does not have the power to block new oil fields being created, but Green MSP Mark Ruskell, the party’s energy and environment spokesman, said the opportunity to state the UK’s credentials as a leader on climate change “must not be squandered”.
“We are already past the point when we should have been moving away from oil and gas, yet Westminster is doubling down on it,” he said. . . . Rosebank is the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea, with nearly 500 million barrels – a claim disputed by Equinor which says the recoverable reserves estimate 300 million.
Equinor has said a final investment decision could be made in 2023, with the first oil expected in late 2026.
Sounds impressive until you realize that 83% of the added energy consumption in 2021 was supplied by fossil fuels, which means renewables are losing ground and fossil fuels are gaining. Sorry environmentalists, your goal is moving away from you.
Energy use is going up. Are we transitioning to renewables? Do renewables matter? See the change from 2020 to 2021 below:
Total global energy use increased 8,650 TeraWatt-hours in 2021 and 83% of the increase was supplied by fossil fuels! Only 14% of the increase was supplied by renewables, with an additional 3% by nuclear.
But, what about total energy consumed in 2021? It was 176,431 TeraWatt-hours, 77% fossil fuels and 13% renewable, excluding nuclear. Sounds impressive until you realize that 83% of the added energy consumption in 2021 was supplied by fossil fuels, which means renewables are losing ground and fossil fuels are gaining.
Sorry environmentalists, your goal is moving away from you.
And as usual, Ward is wrong again, this time about Atlantic walrus, who have been busily rebuilding their once-decimated populations brought to near-extinction levels by human slaughter over 350 years. Legal protections against hunting enacted by Norway in 1952 have allowed the species to recover, albeit slowly.
And as usual, Ward is wrong again, this time about Atlantic walrus, who have been busily rebuilding their once-decimated populations brought to near-extinction levels by human slaughter over 350 years. Legal protections against hunting enacted by Norway in 1952 have allowed the species to recover, albeit slowly.
That’s because in some areas (like Svalbard) very few females were left to populate the old hauling grounds (NPI 2022), which markedly reduced the rate of recovery until very recently.
Atlantic walrus status
The IUCN Red List classified the Atlantic walrus as ‘near threatened’ in 2016: an important step below ‘vulnerable’ which takes into account current healthy population numbers. This was despite concerns the subspecies could possibly face a population decline of >10% within three generations due to sea ice loss (much less than the Pacific walrus suffered due to food deprivation back in the 1980s (Fay et al. 1989; Lowry 1985), before everything could be blamed on lack of sea ice).
The US Fish and Wildlife Service determined in October 2017 that the Pacific walrus is not being harmed by climate change and is not likely to be harmed within the foreseeable future (MacCracken et al. 2017; USFWS 2017). The IUCN Red List (2015) assessed the Pacific walrus as ‘data deficient‘ (Lowry 2015). Despite these findings, the IUCN listed the walrus species (i.e. both subspecies together), as ‘vulnerable’ (Lowry 2016), apparently based on modelled projections of future declines.
In Svalbard, however, Atlantic walrus numbers have been steadily rising as summer sea ice has been falling. The Norwegian MOSJ website has conveniently graphed this trajectory, copied below:
The numbers on the graph start with two baseline estimated numbers provided in 1980 and 1993 (1980=100 and 1993=741), and conclude with population counts from aerial surveys done in 2006, 2012, and 2018 (2006=2629; 2012=3886; 2018=5503).That’s 109% between 2006 and 2018, and 42% between 2012 and 2018: impressive increases for any species.
However, the 2016 North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) Report on Atlantic walrus (updated in 2021) stated that the tendency of animals to pile on top of each other at haulouts makes it hard to see every individual, even if you are counting them in a photograph. Large numbers of animals in the water are similarly difficult to count, especially if they are close together and actively diving and swimming.
As a consequence, officials determined that all recent counts of Atlantic walrus were probably an underestimate of the true population abundance. This means the 2018 estimate based on an aerial survey was likely an underestimate, which means it’s highly likely (given other evidence) that numbers have continued to climb since then.
However, overall sea ice coverage is of little consequence to the issue of Atlantic walrus health and survival around Svalbard: what we need to know is what the ice has been doing in the Barents Sea, especially over the last 15 years or so.
Data on Barents Sea ice since 2006 has been published by Regehr et al. (2016) but only up to 2015. It shows the greatest decline of all Arctic regions: a loss of 4.11 days per year. It appears that this trend may have continued to 2022 (Frey et al. 2022).
In other words, the Svalbard population of Atlantic walrus increased 109% between 2006 and 2018, even as summer sea ice declined markedly in the Barents Sea.
[In Franz Joseph Land, in the eastern half of the Barents Sea, walrus numbers in 2017 were estimated to be approaching “pre-hunting levels” (9,000-11,000)].
As did Matt Ridley, I call that walrus thriving in the face of sea ice loss. It makes a mockery of model predictions of future calamity based on summer sea ice loss because it is now clear that the less summer sea ice, the more food for walrus and other species (see below). Winter and early spring ice, on the other hand, is declining only modestly and that’s when walrus really need it to mate and give birth.
Primary Productivity Increases
A report by Frey and colleagues this year (Frey et al. 2022) confirms that primary productivity–which generates more food for walrus–has continued to increase due to less sea ice coverage in summer since 2003, especially in the Barents Sea (Crockford 2021).
In the graphic from the report copied below, note the marked overall increase in primary productivity in the Barents Sea compared to other regions (left column, 3rd from the top): it has seen the greatest increase in primary productivity, including a huge spike in 2017 (the year before the last walrus survey).
The increased amount of food available to all species (including walrus) means that the carrying capacity of the Barents marine ecosystem has also increased since 2003–all as a consequence of dramatically less summer sea ice.
Wandering juveniles
Despite all of the above, we shouldn’t forget the individual that started this discussion: a lone male estimated to be 3-5 years of age that visited the UK in December. In other words, an immature animal a decade away from what is considered breeding age for males (about 15 years). Mature walrus congregate on the sea ice to mate and give birth in the winter/early spring (January-April); immature animals and seniors past breeding age do not participate in this activity and are free to wander well away from the pack ice (Freitas et al. 2009; NAMMCO 2021).
Wanderer ‘Thor’, as long as he stuck to shallow coastal regions where he could feed easily (as he apparently did), was not in any danger from climate change on his UK sojourn, which had the added advantage of being well out of range of predatory polar bears.
References
Crockford, S.J. 2021.The State of the Polar Bear Report 2020. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 48, London. PDF here.
Crockford, S.J. 2022.Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception. Amazon KDP.
Fay, F.H., Kelly, B.P. and Sease, J.L. 1989. Managing the exploitation of Pacific walruses: a tradegy of delayed response and poor communication. Marine Mammal Science5:1-16. PDF HERE.
Freitas, C., Kovacs, K.M., Ims, R.A. et al. 2009. Deep into the ice: overwintering and habitat selection in Atlantic walruses. Marine Ecology Progress Series 375:247-261.
Frey, K.E., Comiso, J.C., Cooper, L.W., Garcia-Eidell, C., Grebmeier, J.M. and Stock, L.V. 2022. Arctic Ocean primiary productivity: the response of marine algae to climate warming and sea ice decline. 2022 Arctic Report Card. NOAA.DOI: 10.25923/0je1-te61
Lowry, L. 2016. Odobenus rosmarus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T15106A45228501.
MacCracken, J.G., Beatty, W.S., Garlich-Miller, J.L., Kissling, M.L and Snyder, J.A. 2017. Final Species Status Assessment for the Pacific Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), May 2017 (Version 1.0). US Fish & Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK. Pdf here (8.6 mb).
NAMMCO. 2021. Atlantic walrus. North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission Report for 2016, updated January 2021. Tromso, Norway. https://nammco.no/topics/atlantic-walrus/
I came across a laudatory article about the Scottish Hywind project, entitled “The world’s first floating offshore wind farm turns 5 — here’s how it’s going“. It’s all full of congratulations about the “capacity factor”, meaning how much of the nameplate capacity it actually generates. And in fact, at a claimed 54% capacity factor, that is impressive.
The wind farm has a nameplate capacity of 30 megawatts (MW). At 54% capacity factor, that’s 142 gigawatt-hours generated per year. As I said, impressive.
There’s just one leetle tiny fly in the ointment … as detailed here, electricity from Hywind is being sold to the grid, not to the consumer but to the grid, for $0.25 per kilowatt-hour. That’s about four times the cost of fossil fuel electricity, and guess who is subsidizing the difference?
Yep. The poor UK taxpayer. At $0.25 per kWh, that electricity subsidy is costing the taxpayers just over $26 megabucks per year, about an eighth of a billion dollars over the five years of its existence … hell of a deal.
This is the ugly reality of wind and solar. They are hugely subsidized by the taxpayers no matter where they are installed. The subsidies are both direct and indirect. They don’t make money, they are not economically competitive anywhere except in the fevered green dreams of the ecolarmists who are forcing them on the poor taxpayer.
Here’s the bottom line:
In the US, the average electricity price to the consumer is on the order of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour.
The Manhattan Institute says that globally, we’ve subsidized wind/solar/biofuels to the tune of $5 trillion over 20 years.
Our World In Data says that globally, they’ve delivered 9.12 petawatt-hours (1015 watt-hours) in 20 yrs.
That’s $0.55 per kilowatt-hour that we’ve thrown down a rat-hole.
(Folks don’t realize how big $5 trillion dollars is … here’s a way to grasp it. If we were to waste a million dollars each and every single hour, setting fire to $24 million dollars a day, 24/7/365, it would take us 570 years to waste $5 trillion. Think about all the good things that money might have done. To pick just one thing, it could have provided clean drinking water to every single village on the planet with lots of money left over … but noooo, the green lobby must have its insanity paid for by the taxpayer.)
And what has the five trillion dollars bought us?
As our UK cousins say, “Sweet Fanny Adams”, a polite way of saying sweet F*** All. In other words …
Nothing.
Grrrr …
The good news, on the other hand, is that drought-prone northern California where I live is getting lots of rain. Here’s the view from my porch, with very wet pumpkins on the patio table.
Of course, according to the media and the oh-so-scientific climastrologers, last year when there was a drought in California it was a sure sign of dreaded climate change. And now when we get rain, guess what?
It’s another sure sign of dreaded climate change …
… and also of course, to go with the so-called “good news” about wind power discussed above, the bad news is that the California electrical grid can’t handle wind. Go figure. We’re out of power at our house, and it’s far, far from just us. Here’s the Pacific Gas and Electric outage map. I live an hour and a half north of San Francisco, which is where the red triangle is on the coast.
As a result, we’re running chez nous on our trusty Honda 2200i gas-powered generator for the indeterminate future, the PG&E site says “ESTIMATED RESTORATION: To Be Announced”, the gorgeous ex-fiancee and our grandson are playing the acoustic piano, the rain is pouring down, and all the woke people around here with their $70,000 sparky cars can’t charge them.
As for me, the grass is green outside my window, and as long as I’m looking down at it and not up, my life is wonderful.
My very best to all of you, whatever your weather may be.
w.
My Usual: Misunderstandings are the bane of the intarwebs. To reduce the number, please quote the exact words you are referring to, so we can know just what and whom you are discussing.
New studies affirm Antarctica has not been cooperating with either the global warming or “polar amplification” narratives.
“The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.” – Singh and Polvani, 2020
The amount of storage America needs for a grid run on erratic wind and solar power is so galactically vast the numbers don’t matter. Because every which way they are calculated, every estimate, the highest one, the lowest one, it doesn’t make any difference.
They are all unaffordable.
And they’re not just unaffordable in the sense that it hurts. They’re unaffordable in the sense that there is no economy left.
Basically America would need 12,500 times as many batteries as it has now. At current prices this would cost about $175 trillion dollars, which is eight times the entire GDP of the United States.
Some researchers predict costs will fall, but even at fantasy low ball estimates that are one tenth of current prices, the cost of those batteries is still nearly $20 trillion.
We now know that the battery storage for the entire American grid is impossibly expensive, thanks to a breakthru study by engineer Ken Gregory. Looking at several recent years he analyzed, on an hour by hour basis, the electricity produced with fossil fuels. He then calculated what it would have taken in the way of storage to produce the same energy using wind and solar power. He did this by scaling up those year’s actual wind and solar production.
Based on his work, which only covered 48 states, our round working estimate of the required storage for the whole country is an amazing 250 million MWh. America today has less than 20 thousand MWh of grid scale battery storage, which is next to nothing.
Grid scale batteries today cost around $700,000 a MWh. For 250 million MWh we get an astronomical total cost of $175 trillion dollars just to replace today’s fossil fuel generated electricity needs with wind and solar.
Let’s start with the reality. The EIA has collected annual utility data on the cost of grid scale battery arrays. A recent report is “Battery Storage in the United States: An Update on Market Trends — August 2021”.
From 2013 to 2018 the average reported cost was around $1,500,000 per MWh.The range was pretty large, from under $500,000 to around $3,000,000 per MWh.
Wojick compares a whole range of estimates on the past and likely future cost of batteries which vary from $70,000 per megawatt hour up to $1.5 million. As he says:
If wind and solar developers were required to include the batteries needed to make their projects reliable, none would ever be built.
It’s the cost of the system that matters, not the cost of a half hour of electrons at midday.
There is a reason fans of solar and wind power never quote the cost of a 24 hour reliable supply.
On January 1, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” rang in the new year by airing a segment in which several scientists, including Dr. Paul Ehrlich, predicted that we are on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction event and that “the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
On January 1, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” rang in the new year by airing a segment in which several scientists, including Dr. Paul Ehrlich, predicted that we are on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction event and that “the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
Suffice to say, Ehrlich does not have a stellar track record when it comes to making predictions about impending planetary doom. For those unaware of Ehrlich, in 1968 he authored The Population Bomb, in which he wrote, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death…nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Obviously, Ehrlich was dead wrong about his doomsday prediction in the 1970s. However, that has not stopped him from constantly ringing the apocalypse alarm bell. Indeed, for more than half a century Ehrlich has been producing ridiculous claims of mass starvation, ecological Armageddon, and a host of other wacky prophecies, all of which none have come to pass.
Nonetheless, despite his abysmal history of failed predictions, Ehrlich was front-and-center on “60 Minutes,” engaging in his most outrageous claims to date.
For example, according to Ehrlich, “humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from.”
Actually, that is completely untrue. As Michael Schellenberger notes, “The assertion that ‘five more Earths’ are needed to sustain humanity comes from something called the Ecological Footprint calculation. I debunked it 10 years ago with a group of other analysts and scientists, including the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, PLOS Biology.”
During the segment, Ehrlich’s Stanford colleague, Tony Barnosky, also made several shocking predictions about a looming mass extinction event that he claims will wipe out life as we know it.
According to Barnosky, “There are five times in Earth’s history where we had mass extinctions. And by mass extinctions, I mean at least 75%, three quarters of the known species disappearing from the face of the Earth. Now we’re witnessing what a lot of people are calling the sixth mass extinction where the same thing could happen on our watch.”
He added, “The data are rock solid. I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that will say we’re not in an extinction crisis.”
Once again, lets separate fact from fiction.
Per Environmental Progress (EP), “The IUCN has estimated that 0.8 percent of the 112,432 plant, animal, and insect species within its data have gone extinct since 1500. That’s a rate of fewer than two species lost every year, for an annual extinction rate of 0.001 percent.”
Moreover, as EP points out: “Many environmentalists and conservationists claim that fossil fuels and economic development are responsible for the decline in population numbers. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“In fact, denying developing countries access to fossil fuels and economic growth is among the largest threats to wild animals. Making charcoal and burning biomass are top drivers of tropical deforestation, and is still the primary source of energy in Sub-Saharan Africa,” explains EP.
So, as Ehrlich and friends continue to beat the world-is-going-to-end unless we curb population growth, disavow fossil fuels, and reduce consumption of material goods, they could not be more misguided.
Human innovation has overcome the vast majority of the problems we’ve encountered to date. People like Ehrlich and Barnosky are anti-human, in that they view humans as the source of problems. In reality, humans are ultimate problem solvers, and if history has taught us anything, it is that the capacity for humans to conquer unforeseen difficulties is literally limitless.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
Originally published by The Center Square. Republished with permission.
The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60- to 90-year period.
The mechanism and even the existence of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) have remained under debate among climate researchers, and the same applies to general temperature oscillations of a 60- to 90-year period.
The recently published study of Ollila and Timonen has found that these oscillations are real and they are related to 60- and 88-year periodicities originating from the planetary and solar activity oscillations.
These oscillations can be observed in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO), and actually in the global surface temperature (GST). The similarities between the GST, AMO, PMO, and AHR (Astronomical Harmonic Resonances) are obvious in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. The 60-year fluctuations of AMO, PMO, AHR, and temperature trend of HadCRUT5. The AHR trend is from the study of Ollila (2017), and the PMO has been digitized from Figure 5 of Chen et al. (2016) with 2-year steps.
The oscillations are not limited only to temperatures. Researchers have studied oscillations of day lengths, magnetic field magnitudes, sunspot lengths, auroral records, cosmogenic isotopes like 14C and 10Be, Indian moons intensities, sediments of NE Pacific, 14C of tree-rings, and sea carbonates.
The oscillations periods of these studies vary from 60 to 90 years. The most common and prominent periodicity is 88 years and is called the Gleissberg cycle. Named after Wolfgang Gleissberg, who discovered in 1958 that solar cycles weaken and strengthen over about 80 years.
The sun has been suggested to be the origin of an 88-year oscillation since this period can be connected to the repetitive occurrence of the basic Schwabe cycle of 11 years. This solar cycle length varies typically from 10 to 14 years, which explains why the Gleissberg cycle length varies around 88 years.
The other main periodicity of the research studies is around 60 years. The researchers normally suggest no origin for this periodicity.
Ermakov, Scafetta, and Ollila have analyzed that the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn can create temperature variations of 60 years by moving the solar system barycenter, which causes variations in the cosmic dust amount entering the atmosphere. The temperature effect happens through cloudiness variations.
The authors have studied how well the variations of astronomical harmonic resonances (AHR) could explain the 60-year temperature variations, which are based on instrumental records and on the tree-ring data of the supra-long Scots pine tree-ring record for northern Finnish Lapland (subsequently called the Finnish timberline pine chronology (FTPC)), stretching to the year 5634 BC.
The strong feature of the FTPC tree-sing signal is the one-year accuracy of the tree-ring method and therefore it is the most effective form of proxy information on the past climate.
The radial growth of (tree-ring width) is regulated by the average summer temperature in cool areas and precipitation in arid areas. The minimum factor for pine growth in Lapland (the northern part of Finland) is temperature.
The FTPC tree-ring series is the longest tree-type series in the world. The explanation is that so-called pine subfossils once sank into the oxygen-free swamps and the bottom mud of lakes for millennia.
The FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) analysis was carried for finding out the main periods for the FTPC signal, the AHR signal, and the Ljungqvist temperature proxy data, Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) of the tree-ring data (FTPC), AHR, and Ljungqvist temperature proxy data.
These analyses show that the well-known Gleissberg cycle of 80 to 90 years is the dominating cycle caused by the sun’s activity changes but the observed 60-year cycle can be connected to the dominant frequency of the AHR signal.
The authors have combined the AHR signal and the Gleissberg signal. These signals had a common maximum in 1941 which explains the warm period of the 1930s.
These two oscillations may also be in opposite phases or close maximum or minimum phases. In Fig. 3 the combined signal of 60- and the 88-year signal is the blue break line curve and the red curve is the FTPC signal.
Fig. 3. FTPC signal and combined effect of 60- and 88-year signals.
It is easy to see by the naked eye that the ups and downs of these two trends happen close to each other. The FTPC curve is spikier and the authors have identified that the identified volcanic eruptions are the main causes of these deviations.
The 60- and 88-year oscillations explain the well-known temperature oscillations for the 1900s and our study shows that these oscillations are a permanent phenomenon affecting the global surface temperature on a millennia scale.
This study utilized detrended temperature data of HadCRUT5 and the purpose was not to find out the long-term (from 100 to 1,000 years) temperature effects of solar activity changes.
The maximum combined temperature effect of AMO and Gleissberg oscillations was in 2020, and now their impact is slowly descending. In addition to these oscillations’ impacts, the Sun’s activity seems to also decrease.
The original study has been published by Wiley Online Library (The Royal Meteorological Society) and it contains more detailed analyses and figures: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7912
Dr. Antero OIlila is the author of 21 climate research articles. His results are not in line with the IPCC science like greenhouse effect specification, climate sensitivity, anthropogenic CO2 amount, and residence time. His website is https://www.climatexam.com.
Throughout the centuries, people have predicted the future by gazing into a crystal ball and entering a meditative state. Sometimes, they peered at different types of stones and surface types.
Throughout the centuries, people have predicted the future by gazing into a crystal ball and entering a meditative state. Sometimes, they peered at different types of stones and surface types. Nostradamus used a big fancy Obsidian mirror for his predictive fortune telling work. Modern forecasters tend to use more scientific methods, and like their predecessors, often come to conclusions perhaps more influenced by the perspective of the forecaster than the rigor of the method.
This is perhaps especially true when the forecaster seeks to understand what will happen in global energy markets and the related greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency views the future through the prism of European obsession with climate change. The US Energy Information Administration seeks to balance an objective assessment of supply and demand with the political aspirations of the current Administration. OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is equally rigorous, but views matters from the perspective of the oil producers and, more broadly, from an Asian viewpoint. This makes its most recent report, World Oil Outlook 2045, uniquely interesting.
To begin with, OPEC is decidedly optimistic about future growth, at least for some regions. Using the latest United Nations data, it projects the global population will increase by 1.6 billion between 2021 and 2045, with over 96% of that growth happening in the non-OECD countries. Rejecting the current media gloom and doom, OPEC sees global GDP increasing by three per cent per year on average over the period, so that the global economy in 2045 will be double the size it was in 2021.
The consequences of this are not good for those who think the world must quickly shrink its energy consumption on the way to so-called “net-zero” GHG emissions by 2050. OPEC projects global primary energy demand to increase from 286 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe/d) a day in 2021 to 351 mboe/d in 2045, a rise of 23%. Worse, hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal) will still constitute 79% of energy consumption, and biomass (10%) and renewables (11%) will remain far behind, notwithstanding trillions of dollars in government subsidies. Horror of horrors, oil consumption will rise from about 99 million barrels today to 107 million barrels per day in 2027 before (perhaps) gradually declining to 2045.
There are many factors influencing these trends, including notably increased urbanization in most countries and a population boom in much of Asia and Africa. The aviation, road transportation and petrochemical sectors will be the main contributors to future growth in oil demand. Strikingly, the total vehicle fleet is projected to increase from about 1.5 billion in 2021 to 2.5 billion in 2045, with most of the growth in Asia.
Even though OPEC foresees the electrical vehicle fleet being about 540 million vehicles by 2045, internal combustion engine vehicles would still be about 78% of the global fleet.
What does all this mean for energy-related carbon dioxide emissions?
Based on projected policies in the OECD countries, CO2 emissions there are set to decline by three billion tonnes per year between 2021 and 2045.
This will be more than offset by increased emissions in the developing non-OECD countries, so that by 2045 global emissions will be higher, not lower, than in 2021!
According to the UN, global carbon dioxide emissions will have to decline by at least 70% from today’s levels by 2050 and emissions in the developed OECD countries would have to decline effectively to zero. No doubt the proponents of alarm will continue to repeat that demand, but the projections of at least one major forecaster show how unlikely it is.
Average global temperatures have risen just over one degree Celsius since 1860. Environmentalists’ claims of impending climate catastrophe can be addressed by other authorities. OPEC’s crystal ball at least portrays a more hopeful future world in which we will have much more income and resources to respond to, or adapt to, whatever comes.
A 2021 publication by the government of Canada released last month called Species at Riskin Nunavut says the region is “now observing higher numbers of polar bears“, and that management goals are “more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies)“. Local Inuit are said to be “concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages” caused by polar bears.
Polar bear in Arviat, Nunavut, 3 October 2022. Chris Mikijuniak photo.
Polar bears in Canada are considered a species of ‘special concern’ (COSEWIC 2018), not threatened as they are in the USA. See the map of Nunavut below.
They steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that an increased number of bears compared to the 1970s is also a factor in many regions, as bear numbers continue to rebound from the effects of overhunting (Crockford 2019, 2020).
In addition, no mention is ever made of the fact that more adult males in many populations–a direct result of hunting restrictions or outright bans–puts competitive stress on young bears who may then cause a wide variety of problems out of desperation. Problems include many near-miss encounters, fatal and non-fatal attacks, and extensive property damage (including ruined snow machines, see below).
Back in the 1980s, seeing more polar bears meant there were actually more bears around. But now, scientists insist that seeing more bears means there are fewer bears because of less sea ice–and that these bears are attracted to human habitations because they are desperate for food (i.e., more conflicts due to a “shortage of ice”).
The logic of this is often hard to fathom, especially when many serious problems with bears occur when sea ice is abundant, including the 2018 fatal attack in Foxe Basin that required an ice breaker to rescue the survivors (Crockford 2019).
Here’s a quote from a Labrador polar bear safety guide from 2019 that simply makes sense:
The more people you have out on the land and the more bears you have, the higher potential you have for a bear-human encounter.”
It seems to me that Inuit in Nunavut are quite right to be concerned about rising polar bear numbers, regardless of what’s happening with sea ice.
The first harvest restrictions were imposed in the 1960s. Since then, the Polar Bear has been an iconic species at risk on a national and international scale, creating additional pressure to conserve the species. However, science and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ ) are now observing higher numbers of Polar Bears, and the management goals are more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies). Inuit are concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages by Polar Bears; this may be due to a combination of factors, including rising population numbers in some areas and a reduction in sea-ice duration and extent.
Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats.
Crockford, S.J. 2020. State of the Polar Bear Report 2019. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 39, London. PDFhere.
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