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.
Fossil Fuels Are Back. Shell (SHEL.L) will cut at least 15% of the workforce at its low-carbon solutions division and scale back its hydrogen business as part of CEO Wael Sawan’s drive to boost profits.
Shell has taken another axe to its once lofty decarbonization plans, as the U.K. oil giant’s pivot back to fossil fuels picks up steam.
The group plans to cut at least 15% of staff working in its low-carbon solutions division while scaling back its hydrogen business, Reuters first reported Wednesday.
The move will see 200 jobs go in 2024, with another 130 placed under review by the company, according to a statement from Shell. [emphasis, links added]
The division specializes in solutions to decarbonize the transport and industry sector but is separate from its renewables business.
The focus of the cuts is its hydrogen light mobility unit, which develops technologies for passenger vehicles. The unit’s ambitions have been clipped as customers opt for EVs.
“We are transforming our Low Carbon Solutions (LCS) business to strengthen its delivery on our core low-carbon business areas such as transport and industry,” a representative for Shell told Fortune.
“We remain committed to investing in viable low-carbon business models and focusing on our strengths as we play our part in the decarbonization of the global energy system.”
There are 1,300 people working in the LCS division, Reuters reported, but the company has said that isn’t a full reflection of the people contributing to the unit.
It’s the latest move from CEO Wael Sawan, who joined in January, that pivots Shell back to fossil fuels.
Fossil Fuels Are Back
Across the globe, oil giants have been doubling down on their commitment to fossil fuels in the face of global plans to shift to sustainable energy.
Earlier this week Chevron, the second biggest oil company in the U.S., bought rival Hess Corp. in a $53 billion deal.
The group expanded its presence in the Permian region straddling Texas and New Mexico with the deal, and left the world in little doubt about its commitment to fossil fuels.
The fresh arms race to secure oil resources comes despite the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s leading energy agency, reaffirming its prediction that demand for coal, oil, and natural gas would peak in 2030.
Still, oil groups have been emboldened by rising prices in recent years tied to supply chain logjams following COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has left the commodity in short supply and helped companies like Shell to eye-watering profits.
Africa’s poor will be hardest hit not by ‘climate change’ but by the policies pushed by the West’s green lobby. African forests and drinking water will diminish further.
It would seem straightforward that resolving the “climate change” problem would serve the poor the most, given that they are the hardest hit. But, by a tragic turn of irony, moves to “fight climate change” are precisely what is hurting the poor most. It is not “climate change” but the policies adopted in response to it that are the problem afflicting the poor the most.
…
Most of us who take affordable electricity ‘24/7’ supply for granted are unaware of the existential constraint on people’s daily lives that a lack of electricity implies. This was brought home brilliantly by Geoff Hill at a talk in House of Lords in Westminster on Monday. Geoff is Africa correspondent for The Washington Times, the first non-American John Steinbeck Award winner and has published with the Mail & Guardian(Johannesburg), The East African (Nairobi) and across the African continent.
…
This leads us to the third striking feature of the climate finance data collated by CPI. Within the 92% of the $640 billion spent on climate finance directed to climate mitigation in 2020 (as opposed to the 8% spent on adaptation), 91% (or $536 billion) was spent on solar and wind power. Yet no country in the world has developed without the dense energy available from fossil fuels. Asking Africans to leave their fossil fuels resources in the ground in return for “climate finance” from Western governments and multilateral agencies to invest on unreliable solar and wind power is plainlyunworkable. Dilute, unreliable and intermittent power from the wind and the sun will not meet the continent’s quest for higher standards of living, to save the forests and to have clean water to drink.
I don’t have a link to Geoff’s speech, if anyone has a link please post it in comments.
I really hope this Forbes article is more than a one off glimmer of sanity. If mainstream media news outlets were to start consistently acting like real journalists again, investigating and discussing real world problems caused by climate policy, instead of uncritically cheering on every ridiculous green idea which crosses their desk for the sake of the cause, the world would rapidly become a much better place.
ANY estimation of the timing of a tipping point must take into account the uncertainties, which are so considerable that they are all inadequate in the light of day, when made. Bet you won’t read that in the media?
A reminiscence of an article about the imminent “tipping point” of the Atlantic overturning circulation:
At the end of July 2023, we reported on a paper that thought it had identified the “tipping point” of the Atlantic Overturning Circulation (AMOC): It should (most likely) be ready as early as 2057. It kicked up a lot of dust, we described it. Our summary at the time:
“DD23 is an exercise in statistics, very far from any evidence of physical significance for the AMOC itself. The conclusions are not supported by the content of the paper.”
In the meantime (mid-September 2023), another, not yet peer-reviewed (preprint) paper appeared, which finds very similar. It uses several data series for sea surface temperatures (SST) and another “fingerprint” of the AMOC, a dipole that avoids the warming itself from being included in the result of the AMOC decrease sought.
And lo and behold: she comes to completely different conclusions. Depending on which series one uses (especially in the early years up to about 1950 they are very incomplete in direct observation and what is missing is supplemented by various “infill methods” that have a strong effect on the statistics on which the article in question is based) one comes to completely divergent results. Thus, the “collapse” of the AMOC is postponed by almost a hundred years, if you use the same “fingerprint”, only a different SST series (instead of HadISST1 ERSSTv5).
The other, also SST-based “fingerprint” postpones the “collapse” determined by the methods of the paper to between 2100 and the year 3300 and beyond! At the end, the authors, including, interestingly, Niklas Boers of PIK, who is probably concerned about the scientific reputation of the institution, write:
“We emphasize that these uncertainties, originating from underlying modelling or mechanistic assumptions as well as from the employed empirical data, need to be taken into account and propagated thoroughly before attempting to estimate a future tipping time of any potential Earth system tipping element.”
ANY estimation of the timing of a tipping point must take into account the uncertainties, which are so considerable that they are all inadequate in the light of day, when made. Bet you won’t read that in the media? They had their hands full, with the active help of Prof. Rahmstorf, also from PIK, to propagate the imminent end of the AMOC. That’s what the attentive reader has this blog for.
Even if recent recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way it is still a difficult challenge to establish how much of this change is due to increasing man made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.
A new Norwegian paper has found that the effects of man-made CO2 emissions are not strong enough to explain global warming in the last 200n years, implying that natural factors must play a large role:
The study contains a lot of statistical analysis. But the bottom line is that Global Climate Models, GCMs, do not track past temperature changes at all well:
Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world. The longer allergy season is a result of a longer growing season which has benefitted, plants, insects, animals, and humans as the planet has modestly warmed.
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) ran a segment during its local morning edition titled, “Climate change is contributing to an extended allergy season.” While the story itself is likely true, it buries the lede. The longer allergy season is a result of a longer growing season which has benefitted, plants, insects, animals, and humans as the planet has modestly warmed. Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world.
Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton report at MPR:
If you suffer from seasonal allergies, you may be dealing with sneezing, sniffles, and itchy eyes further into the fall — and that’s in part due to climate change.
. . .
The allergy season has been extended by 21 days in Minnesota, ….
Warmer temperatures and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the environment make plants and trees happy, Potter says. That means more photosynthesis and thus more pollen on both the front and back ends of the season.
Way to bury the lede MPR. Reading only the headline one would be left with the impression that allergies were just one more supposedly unmitigated harm resulting from climate change. Yet, as even MPR acknowledges, allergies are a negative side effect of the carbon dioxide induced greening of the Earth, which trees benefit from. And, they aren’t the only ones.
As explained in previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, here, and here for example, pollinators like bees and bats, wild and domesticated plants (think crops and flowers), and people, in general, have benefitted from the extended growing season.
Interestingly, despite the longer allergy season, cities and suburbs are increasingly devoting land to permanent “green spaces,” touting the benefits of bringing nature (and pollen-laden plant life) into urban areas. These benefits include decreasing the urban heat island effect and associated warming, improving air quality, and there is even an international study from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Colorado State University suggesting that urban green spaces reduce premature human deaths.
Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
Although no one should dismiss the plight of allergy sufferers resulting from the greener world, allergies are by and large treatable. Worrying about climate change will do nothing to mitigate the warming induced extension of allergy season. As a result, the best recommendation for allergy sufferers is to stock up on allergy medications, and then enjoy the benefits of a much greener world. Outdoor exercise can be healthy and fosters an appreciation of nature. More plants, wild plants and food crops alike, means fewer hungry and malnourished people and more habitat for wildlife; surely even most allergy sufferers can see the net benefit of that.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
…Running out of puff. Siemens Energy is in talks with the German government to secure billions of euros of guarantees for long-term projects after warning that losses at its troubled wind turbine business would be higher than forecast.
What follows is a brief summary of recent developments adversely affecting the wind industry. I have been posting links as comments in various places at Cliscep drawing attention to the events in question, but as they are coming thick and fast, it seems sensible to draw them together in one place. One might have thought that such problems would occasion something of a re-think in the corridors of power regarding the direction of travel of the UK’s energy policy, but to date none of this seems to have registered with the majority of our politicians, and certainly not with those currently in charge or with those who are most likely to replace them.
First there was the failure of the latest contracts for difference round. Readers may recall that when Kwasi Kwarteng was in charge of what was then called BEIS, he was reduced to pleading with renewables developers to take up their options under previous Contracts for Difference (CfD) rounds. This was because the “contracts” were no such thing – rather they were one-way options which developers could take up or walk away from they as they chose, depending on what they decided was in their best interests at the time. Because the low bids (that had been shouted from the rooftops by renewable energy enthusiasts) were unviable, and because market prices were higher, the developers chose to walk away from the options rather than to implement them. Mr Kwarteng’s pleas were made in vain.
Consequently the UK government decided to tighten up the process in AR5, and ensured that going forward the “contracts” really would be contracts, which the developers, once they made bids which were accepted, would be legally obliged to implement. The only problem with that brilliant idea was that the developers recognised it for the trap it was, and so not a single offshore wind farm bid was forthcoming in this year’s CfD round.
This resulted in an article in the Daily Telegraph with the heading “Wind industry on hold after auction flop spooks developers” and sub-heading “Bosses warn that lack of state support risks undermining Britain’s overall net zero goals”. An extensive quote from the article is due, given its importance:
Offshore wind farm developers are delaying non-essential work on UK projects after a government renewables auction flopped, with industry sources warning they may be forced to wait until after the next election to get schemes moving again.
At least two major companies are pausing or slowing investment to the minimum pace necessary to keep projects alive, with one describing the current position as a “holding pattern”.
The slowdown comes after confidence was knocked by the disastrous fifth auction round for renewable energy subsidies earlier this month.
No bids were received by offshore wind developers due to what companies said were unrealistically low prices.
The cloud of uncertainty has spooked developers, who warned there was now little chance the UK will reach its target of 50 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030.
One executive said: “The target is a joke now. Ministers just haven’t got it. They don’t realise how fundamentally serious the situation is.”
Another executive said they believed ministers had grasped the scale of the problem but were failing to reassure the sector about how they would approach next year’s auction.
The renewables industry soon regrouped, and started demanding that the UK government make financial assistance available. Paul Homewood usefully summarises this development , with a helpful link to another Daily Telegraph article, which summarises the problem. In brief, developers are demanding £75 per Mwh, which is considerably more than the prices they signed up to under the options they can (and probably will) walk away from. That £75 figure is misleading since, for some bizarre reason, figures are always quoted at 2012 prices. Allowing for inflation, as Paul Homewood points out, that price equates to nearer £95 per Mwh in 2023 prices. As he says:
The undeniable reality is that offshore wind never was viable at the fanciful prices signed up for last year and before. The cheapest offshore wind being sold via CfD is from Triton Knoll, which is being paid £97.82/MWh.
There never was any intention to trigger those contracts, instead wind farm owners always planned to sell at much higher prices on the open market.
In the latest auction, this loophole was closed by the government, leaving the wind industry between a rock and a hard place, with their bluff having been well and truly called.
As Europe turns to renewable sources to diversify energy supplies away from Russian oil and gas, a peaceful marine scene conceals a billion-dollar security headache.
Rising above the Baltic Sea less than 10 km (6 miles) off the coast of Denmark, 161 wind turbines spin slowly. They supply around 4% of the country’s power, sent to shore through two cable connections.
The turbines have no barriers or surveillance.
“Our technicians are only here until five o’clock in the afternoon, then they go home,” said Thomas Almegaard, head of operations at Nysted wind farm, co-owned and operated by Denmark-based Orsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind developer.
“If the Russians wanted to cause damage, they could do it easily,” he told Reuters aboard a service vessel as it sailed through the wind farm.
“We don’t do any monitoring.”
Naturally this leads up to a call for yet more money from governments:
Developers like Orsted think governments should take the lead and help provide the billions of dollars needed to protect their infrastructure. But even as North Sea countries alone plan to install enough wind power for more than 100 million homes by 2030, governments are still considering how much they can spend to safeguard such offshore assets.
As usual, in the UK, it seems that the long-suffering taxpayer, not the developers, will have to pick up this extra bill:
Britain, which has spent 65 million pounds ($79 million) adapting two vessels for underwater surveillance and seabed warfare, said its government was responsible for security policy and works with industry to implement protection measures.
Finally (for now – no doubt further developments will continue to come out of the woodwork), there is the recent news about the financial woes of Siemens, driven by problems with its wind energy division, Siemens Gamesa. The Financial Times has the story under the heading “Siemens Energy seeks government guarantees as wind crisis deepens”:
Siemens Energy is in talks with the German government to secure billions of euros of guarantees for long-term projects after warning that losses at its troubled wind turbine business would be higher than forecast.
The Dax-listed company said on Thursday that it was in need of backstops for projects as the financial picture at its wind turbine business deteriorates. In June, the group said that overhauling the division, which has been beset by technical mishaps, would cost €1bn.
Without the guarantees, a €110bn portfolio of clean energy projects planned by the company will be in jeopardy, according to executives at the Munich-based company…
…“Their business in wind is in utter disarray,” said William Mackie, head of capital goods research at Kepler Cheuvreux….
In the case of Siemens, problems seem to be arising in substantial part from technical flaws with their turbines, but as the article notes, the whole wind industry is being adversely affected by higher interest rates and increased costs.
It all makes for sorry reading. Will the penny ever drop?
Worldwide crude oil consumption is currently estimated at roughly 96.5 million barrels per day. According to OPEC, global demand is expected to reach 109 million barrels per day. Estimations vary slightly from other sources as well, but it is predicted that – if demand forecasts hold – we may run out of global oil from known reserves in about 50 years. To put it in layman’s terms, 100 million barrels of oil is more than 4 BILLION gallons of crude oil being sucked out of the earth EVERY DAY. How long can those withdrawals take before the wells run dry?
Today’s wealthy country’s teenagers, and young adults like Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, may see the end of crude oil and our materialistic society before they reach the age of 70 or 80.
Thanks to all the products human ingenuity has been able to develop over the last 200 years, after the discovery of crude oil, the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion.
Today those oil based products are the foundation for more than 50,000 merchant ships,more than 20,000 commercial aircraftand more than 50,000 military aircraft.The fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of jets moving people and products, and the merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs, are also dependent on what can be manufactured from crude oil.
Question: Once President Joe Biden ceases all oil production in America, when will he educate the public about his alternative source for the products and components to support the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, and Space programs that are now reliant on crude oil for those products and fuels?
Looking back at the history of the petroleum industry, it illustrates that the black cruddy looking crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could be manufactured (refineries) into oil derivatives that are now the basis of chemical products, such as plastics, solvents, and medications, that are essential for supporting modern lifestyles. The more than 6,000 products that are based on oil are being used for the health and well-being of humanity and the generation of electricity did not exist a few short centuries ago.
Like all the products needed by ships and planes, all the electricity generation options available, such as wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas, are all dependent on the products and components manufactured from crude oil to be able to generate electricity.
Crude oil has become the basis of our materialistic society as all the components and equipment for the generation of electricity by wind, solar, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro are all made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil !
Question: When will California Governor Gavin Newsom begin to educate Californians as to where they will get the products and components to support an electric vehicle state, as EV’s are now totally made with crude oil?
With less oil to feed the supply chain of products for all the infrastructures such as hospitals, electronics, communications, transportation, and more, that did not exist a few centuries ago, we may be heading backwards toward the pre-1800’s when humanity had only superior intelligence while competing for survival with the wild animal kingdom.
To minimize the importance to the 8 billion now on this planet, to live with less oil, it remains imperative to identify the backup source that can support the growing product demands of the health and well-being of the world’s population.
Question:When will Swedish activist Greta Thunberg begin to educate her followers about her alternative source for the products and components to build wind turbines and solar panels, once crude oil production ceases?
The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society, as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
Ridding the world of raw crude oil before we have a replacement to produce the oil derivatives currently manufactured from crude oil, we’re back to the 1800’s.
The greatest threat to the world’s populations could be the future for billions to exist and prosper without those oil derivatives that are currently supporting more than 6,000 products for society.
Shockingly, very few parents, teachers, students, politicians, and those in the media, have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products in our daily lives from crude oil! Energy Literacy at its best!!!
From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”, tells us that we need to look at the loud messages of a few high-profile individuals:
President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and teenager Greta Thunberg want to rid the world of crude oil usage, but they need to belly-up to the bar and explain how,
Humanity can continue to enjoy the products and fuels that are currently made with the oil derivatives manufactured from the crude oil they wish to eliminate.
We have become a product driven society in less than 200 years. The conundrum is that world leaders and policy makers don’t want crude oil, but they definitely need the products now dependent on crude oil!
Further eradicating the world of crude oil usage without first having a replacement in mind, is immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, and could be a major threat to the world’s eight billion population.
If humanity cannot clone the products now based on crude oil, we RID THE WORLD OF AIRPORTS, JETS, SHIPS, SPACE PROGRAMS, and STOP SOCIAL MEDIA, and THE PRODUCTION OF CELLPHONES, COMPUTERS, and PORCELAIN TOILETS that are dependent on the derivatives manufactured from crude oil!!
For the sake of Africans and the rest of the world, African leaders need to confidently reject the net-zero movement and embrace energy freedom—including fossil fuel freedom. Since 1980, India’s fossil fuel use has increased by >700% and China’s by >600%.
My message: For the sake of Africans and the rest of the world, African leaders need to confidently reject the net-zero movement and embrace energy freedom—including fossil fuel freedom.
Why African leaders need to confidently reject the net-zero movement
– Africa needs rapid growth in fossil fuel use, the opposite of net-zero, to develop and prosper. – The morally bankrupt and weak net-zero leadership cannot withstand a confident African challenge.
3 facts that prove Africans need fossil fuels to prosper
1. Every prosperous country has developed using fossil fuels 2. Even prosperous countries can’t replace fossil fuels with solar and wind 3. Fossil-fueled development isn’t causing a climate crisis, it’s making humanity much safer from climate
1. Every prosperous country has developed using fossil fuels.
No poor country has been able to develop to the point of prosperity without massive fossil fuel use.
The reason is that development requires energy, and fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective, including scalable, source of energy.
Africa is the world’s poorest region. Most Africans want rapid development and with it, prosperity.
This is absolutely achievable. But only by using the proven practices every once-poor place has used to develop and prosper.
One such practice is large-scale fossil fuel use.
In recent decades China and India have used large amounts of low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels to rapidly develop.
Since 1980, India’s fossil fuel use has increased by >700% and China’s by >600%.
India’s life expectancy increased by 17 years and China’s by 14!1
Fossil fuels are so uniquely good at providing low-cost, reliable energy for developing nations that even nations with little or no fossil fuel resources have used fossil fuels to develop and prosper. E.g. South Korea (83% fossil fuels), Japan (85% fossil fuels), Singapore (99% fossil fuels).2
The obvious path for African development and prosperity is to use fossil fuel whenever it is the most cost-effective option, which is most of the time, and certainly to responsibly produce the significant fossil fuel resources that exist in Africa.
It is deadly for Africa to forego fossil fuels.
2. Even prosperous countries can’t replace fossil fuels with solar and wind.
Africa is being told to develop without growing fossil fuel use and to use mostly solar and wind instead.
But given that even very prosperous places can’t use mostly solar and wind, this is a death sentence for African development.
Over the last two decades, the prosperous world has been trying to use more and more solar and wind energy.
Africans should take note of the ominous results of this experiment so far: higher prices and reliability declines even at relatively low levels of solar and wind use.
Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants.3
Solar and wind’s basic problem is unreliability, to the point they can go near zero at any time. Thus they don’t replace reliable power, they parasitize it. This is why they need huge subsidies and why no grid is near 50% solar and wind without parasitism on reliable neighbors.
The popular idea that we can use mostly or only solar and wind with sufficient battery backup is not being tried anywhere because it’s absurd. Batteries are so expensive that just 3 days of global backup using Elon Musk’s Megapacks would cost $570 trillion, about 6X global GDP!4
Consider that Germany, to get 37% of its electricity from unreliable solar and wind, has doubled its prices—now 3 times US prices. And Germany can only get away with 37% because it has neighbors to bail it out when solar and wind fall short. Impoverished Africa can’t prosper on this path.5
When net-zero advocates say Africa should “leapfrog” fossil fuels with solar and wind just as many have “leapfrogged” landlines with cell phones, they are making an absurd analogy.
Cell phones can actually replace landlines for most purposes. Solar and wind can’t replace fossil fuels.
Justified by net-zero goals, South African bank FirstRand has announced to stop funding coal mines and coal power plants. In a situation where South Africa’s power grid is struggling to keep the lights on. This is hurting the economy but it also makes the poorest South Africans suffer most of all.6
Given that every prosperous place on Earth has depended on and continues to depend on massive fossil fuel use, and that attempts to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind are failing, the push for Africa to adopt net-zero—aka fossil fuel elimination—is a death sentence for African development.
If net-zero is a death sentence for African development, why is it so popular around the world?
Because the world has a deadly moral obsession with eliminating human climate impact at all costs—including, disgustingly, the cost of destroying Africa’s chance to prosper.
The justification for pursuing net-zero at all costs is that we have a climate crisis that’s becoming a climate apocalypse that will hurt Africa most of all. So Africa must join others in going net-zero.
But others aren’t actually going net-zero and there’s not a climate crisis.
3. Fossil-fueled development isn’t causing a climate crisis, it’s making humanity much safer from climate
While fossil fuel use has a warming impact on climate, this impact is minor compared to the incredible ability fossil fuels give us to master all forms of climate danger.
Myth: We are more endangered than ever by climate because of fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions.
Truth: We have a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths due to our enormous fossil-fueled climate mastery abilities: Heating or cooling, infrastructure-building, irrigation, crop transport.7
Africans, like the rest of the world, are far safer than climate than they were 100 years ago. If they can use fossil fuels to develop and prosper, they’ll be safer still as the world slowly warms. And note that even in Africa cold-related deaths still exceed heat-related deaths.8
The obvious path forward for Africa is energy freedom: the freedom to produce and use all cost-effective sources of energy—including, essentially, fossil fuels—which means rejecting all net-zero targets.
Is this possible in the face of international opposition? Absolutely.
The morally bankrupt and weak net-zero leadership cannot withstand a confident African challenge
While the international net-zero movement may be economically and politically powerful, it is morally and psychologically weak.
It will crumble if Africans confidently reject it.
For years African leaders, instead of confidently rejecting net-zero like the plague (it’s actually far more dangerous than the plague) have cooperated with the net-zero agenda, signing onto net-zero commitments—above all the Paris Agreement.
This has been a huge mistake.
A major reason African leaders have cooperated with the net-zero movement is fear of repercussions from this powerful global movement that can punish African nations by cutting off aid, discouraging financing, and discouraging trade.
Such cooperation is deadly—and unnecessary.
Africans must understand a key psychological fact about leaders in the US and many other prosperous nations: They’re terrified of challenges from 2 types of people above all: the poor and the nonwhite, both of whom they falsely claim to support.
You can capitalize on this fear.
Imagine if African leaders stood up and said: we have an absolute right to use all forms of energy, including fossil fuels, to develop and prosper, and anyone who tries to deny us this right is anti-poor, anti-black, and anti-human.
Joe Biden et al would have nothing to say.
In recent years I have been very happy to see African leaders stand up a little to net-zero, usually in the form of advocating a “just transition.”
But this is still way too weak. Talking of a “just transition” still accepts the deadly idea of a rapid transition to net-zero.
The idea of a “just transition” to net-zero usually means some combo of: Africa gets to use a little fossil fuel, and the prosperous world pledges to rapidly reduce its emissions plus give Africans some handouts if Africa doesn’t challenge net-zero overall.
This is terrible.
For Africa to accept any limitation whatsoever on its fossil fuel production and use is immoral and deadly.
And it’s not in Africa’s interest for the prosperous world to rapidly go net-zero: that will absolutely destroy the global economy, including any meaningful aid to Africa.
Africans need to stop talking about a “just energy transition” and instead embrace the concepts of “energy expansion” and “energy evolution.” This means using more energy and finding ever-better ways of producing energy. But absolutely not ruining Africa by limiting fossil fuels.
An essential step to African leaders standing up against net-zero is to announce ASAP a withdrawal from the irredeemably immoral Paris Agreement, which commits African nations to rejecting the fossil fuels they need to develop and prosper.
This should happen at COP 28.
If African leaders find themselves threatened behind the scenes by wealthy and powerful net-zero leaders, there is an easy solution: Expose the threats publicly. Imagine what virtue-signaling weasels like Antonio Guterres will do if they are exposed for threatening Africans.
To be most effective at fighting the net-zero movement, you must recognize that this wealthy movement’s hostility toward African fossil fuel use is deeply racist. By saying “fossil fuels for me but not for thee” it’s implying that dark-skinned people don’t need a lot of energy.
Observe that net-zero advocates often fawn over the idea of Africans using solar to power some lights or a radio—as if that’s anywhere near enough energy. It’s because they believe that dark-skinned people don’t really want a modern life, so they don’t really need much energy.
I believe that the color of your skin has nothing to do with the content of your mind and with what you want out of life. I believe that most people, when given the choice, want more energy and more progress. I know Africa is full of ambitious people who want these things.
To summarize:
– The net-zero movement is destroying the fossil fuel freedom Africans need to develop and prosper. – The morally weak net-zero leadership can’t withstand a confident African challenge.
It’s time to challenge them, and that includes withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
I will do everything I can to help African leaders successfully fight the net-zero movement. I will do it because it’s a matter of justice, and because I and everyone I care about will be much better off in a world where net-zero has been defeated.
Churchill is one of the few human settlements where polar bears can be observed in the wild. Frequently called “Lords of the Arctic”, these animals are huge. Male polar bears can grow to more than 600 kg (1,320 lbs) and stand 3.05 metres (10 feet) tall. But despite their massive size, these bears can move with surprising speed.
Despite misleading warnings in mid-August that a record number of incidents had already taken place, and that Churchill was on track for a record-number of bear problems this fall, the number of incidents and bears captured so far have been well below other years after the same number of weeks ashore. And while this is shaping up to be the longest ice-free season on record for Western Hudson Bay bears, it may not be a record year for problem bears in Churchill.
“On average, officers receive around 250 calls from residents and detain around 50 bears every year, according to statistics provided to Live Science by the Manitoba government. The record number of bears captured in a single year was 176, in 2003.” LiveScience, 16 August 2023
Problem bear reports
Although the season is far from over, this year after 19 weeks on shore–to 22 October–the Churchill Polar Bear Alert Program has registered a paltry 158 incidents with problem bears (item 2, “occurrence reports to date”) compared to 246 in 2018, and 263 in 2016 at week 19. Only 2017 had a similar number of incidents (148) after 4 months ashore. Note that bears captured are item 3, “bears handled to date.”
In other words, while this year is shaping up to be an extended ice-free season for Western Hudson Bay polar bears due to an earlier-than-usual sea ice breakup at mid-June (at 17 June, about 4 weeks earlier than usual for the last 7-8 years), so far that doesn’t seem to be translating into an increase in problem bear incidents. Even with the ‘zero-tolerance’ for bears near town that’s been normal for the last 10 years, 158 incidents and 12 captures after 19 weeks onshore is a pretty quiet season.
In comparison, 2016 was a late freeze-up year and bears couldn’t depart for the ice until early December. But by the same point in the onshore season at 19 weeks–which was the 3rd week of November in 2016 because most bears didn’t leave the ice until mid-July–there had already been 262 incidents and 41 bears captured:
In 2017–the other low incident season in recent years–by week 19 (third week of November), sea ice was forming and bears were on their way to the ice. By that time, there had only been 148 incidents and 22 captures:
Last four years
Churchill bears from 2019 to 2022 spent 4 months or less on shore, so can’t really be compared to this extended year: bears were only on shore for 16 weeks in 2019, 14 weeks in 2020, 17 weeks in 2021, and 15 weeks in 2022. However, just to show what happens during a short season on shore, in 2019 the second week of November was week 16 and by then enough ice had formed for the bears to leave, and there had been only 138 incidents and 24 captures:
In 2020, the season was even shorter: less than 4 months. Although freeze-up didn’t come until the end of November, the bears hadn’t left the ice until August. By the end of the season, there had been only 116 incidents and 4 captures:
Prospects and consequences of a late freeze-up
This year, based on records about two weeks away from the first week of November, when freeze-up happens some years, this has been a low incident season. However, the season isn’t over yet and ice is not likely to form until late November at the earliest. That’s not the result of human-caused climate change but a strong El Nino, which also delayed Hudson Bay freeze-up in 2016 and 1998/1999.
Most bears have already been onshore for about 120 days. Combined with the early breakup this year, a late freeze-up in early December could mean bears will be on shore for another 7 weeks or about 170 days total, which as far as I’m aware,hasn’t happened before.
And ominously, that’s the new “cut-off” date polar bear specialists have set for catastrophic starvation of male bears (i.e., 171 days).
Peter Molnar and colleagues concocted a model for Western Hudson Bay polar bear survival a decade ago (Molnar et al. 2010) that predicted 28-48% of male polar bears in WH would die if climate change caused the fasting period to be extended from the 120 days (4 months) that were usual during the 1980s to 180 days (6 months) sometime in the future (see also Robbins et al. 2012, which I wrote about here).
Those calculations were revised and used to formulate the scientifically implausible prediction of doom for the future of polar bears published in 2020 (Molnar et al. 2020), which depended on discredited RCP8.5 (“business as usual”) climate scenarios (Burgess et al. 2021; Hausfather and Peters 2020). Based on these predictions, polar bear specialist should be expecting wide-spread starvation of adult males and females with cubs near Churchill if freeze-up is delayed until early December (about 170 days ashore):
“Mother bears cannot fast as long as solitary females due to their reproductive burden; males cannot fast as long as solitary females due to the higher maintenance requirements and lower storage energy of their leaner bodies; and cubs are more vulnerable than yearlings due to their higher reliance on maternal energy reserves. …in 2015, the fasting period reached 153 days, approaching the conservatively estimated impact threshold for male survival (now ≤171 days), and possibly also for the survival of females with offspring (between 98 and 192 days in 2007; now possibly lower).” [Molnar et al. 2020:733, my bold]
Bears cause problems when they are truly stressed by lack of body fat, so something to keep in mind over the coming weeks is that by the end of the late freeze-up season of 2016 (at week 22, second week of December), there were a total of 386 incidents and 53 captures:
Time will tell what actually transpires this year. I expect that scientists will keep the media posted with updates, have their cameras ready to record the impending catastrophe, and that conservation officers are prepared for problem bear incidents to sky-rocket as the animals become desperate for food.
Or not, if the experts turn out to be wrong, as they almost always are. I suspect WH polar bears have already adapted, via natural selection, to changing sea ice conditions over the last few decades and will therefore weather this challenge relatively unscathed, while polar bear specialists never consider this as a possibility. That’s because I am a expert in evolution and they are not (Crockford 2023). And unlike the conservation-focused experts, I’ll be willing to admit I’m wrong if this really is a devastating season for WH polar bears.
References
Burgess, M.G., Ritchie, J., Shapland, J., and Pielke Jr., R. 2021. IPCC baseline scenarios have over-projected CO2 emissions and economic growth. Environmental Research Letters 16:014016. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcdd2
Crockford, S.J. 2023. Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778038328
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620
Molnár, P.K., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence. Nature Climate Change 10:732-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9
Robbins, C.T., Lopez-Alfaro, C., Rode, K.D., Tøien, Ø., and Nelson, O.L. 2012. Hibernation and seasonal fasting in bears: the energetic costs and consequences for polar bears. Journal of Mammalogy 93(6):1493-1503. http://www.asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/11-MAMM-A-406.1
AP Photo (left photo); AP Photo/Ashley Landis (right side)
The Biden administration faces an oil crisis the likes of which haven’t been seen since the price shocks of the 1970s. What is clear is that the 1970s was a pivot point for energy.
Then-President Jimmy Carter listening to former Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) at a fundraising reception in 1978. | AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File
Ed. Note: This MasterResource post from February 2011 is reprinted for its relevance with the 50th anniversary of the Arab Embargo this month. If authorities impose price and allocation controls today as they did in the 1970s, or during the world wars, expect a return of the gasoline lines. [Bradley has written three pieces on the anniversary of the Arab Embargo at EconLib (here and here), AIER (here), and IER (here).]
For decades I have enjoyed the opinion-page editorials of the Wall Street Journal, both the unsigned editorials and the guest opinions. During the 1970s energy crisis, and today amid climate alarmism and the futile crusade to regulate carbon dioxide, the Journal has been a bastion of sound economic thought.
I was recently reminded of perhaps my favorite WSJ energy editorial of all, “Buffer of Civility,” published during the dark days of energy rioting in summer 1979 (yes, the U.S. experienced fuel riots from federal price controls that caused energy shortages).
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“Buffer of Civility,” Wall Street Journal (June 26, 1979)
How much this would affect the price of gasoline is a matter of conjecture, but we know of no informed opinion that would put the clearing price as high as the $1.60 a gallon that has already been touched by a favored station or two in the current crisis. The Department of Energy recognizes that its regulations are the cause of lines, and indeed has proposed deregulation in the past. Now it is asking for comment on four different price-control alternatives. The best is a single uniform national price lid; if it were set high enough –$1 in our opinion, $1.30 in nearly everyone’s—the market itself would dictate a lower price and still handle the allocation problem. We would have the moral equivalent of decontrol, and people would no longer be rioting over gas station lines.
The truckers’ revolt has the same root cause. Diesel fuel has escalated in price, boosting trucking costs already pushed up by the 55-miles-an-hour speed limit and inflation generally. Why does an increase in costs lead to strikes and highway blockades and shootings? It would be far more peaceful if truckers simply boosted their rates to pass along the higher costs, letting consumers decide which items are, and which are not, worth the additional cost of higher truck rates. This civilized course is not the one the truckers are following, but the reason has nothing to do with their being colorful characters who talk CB and love violence. The reason is that their prices are controlled by a bunch of white-collared bureaucrats called the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Police with dogs and billy clubs cleared the streets of Levittown, Pa., Sunday after a two-day riot by fuel-hungry motorists and truckers, plus the usual thrill-seeking teenagers. Dozens of people were hospitalized, one with a gunshot wound, storefront windows were smashed, two service stations vandalized and firemen attending a burning auto were pelted with rocks and beer cans.
The social fabric of this society is stretched tauter than any time in a decade. Even with people being killed in gasoline lines and gunshots ripping through truck cabs, of course, we are still a long way from, say, 1968, with slums aflame and campuses everywhere erupting. American society survived that and will survive this. The difference is that the disruptions of the 1960s really did have roots deep in the culture. The long hot summer of 1979 is entirely needless, even silly.
The gasoline lines, with their inconveniences and distempers, could be abolished overnight, literally with the stroke of a pen. President Carter need only exercise his authority to lift price controls from gasoline, which would also abolish the Department of Energy system of allocating gasoline supplies. Once dealers were free to bid against each other for available supplies, the price mechanism would automatically direct supplies into any locality where heavy demand suddenly erupted. Learning that gasoline will be expensive but at least available, motorists will stop topping off tanks. The problem of lines will go away.
By now, of course, the big trucking companies have grown comfortable with the ICC, acquiring a vested interest in its denials of entry that limit competition. (The big oil companies are well along the same route with DOE.) So while the truckers have your attention, they are also opposing truck deregulation efforts being led by President Carter and Senator Kennedy. The President and the Senator are right. Open price competition not only makes the best use of the nation’s economic resources, it also avoids the kind of social disruption that results when the allocation of diesel fuel has to be decided in a political joust between truckers and farmers.
Classical economists used to list among the virtues of the price mechanism that it avoided social strife. It did not set group against group, they taught. In our lifetime, we have protected the poor with income transfers to insure a minimum standard of living, but we have generally allowed prices to allocate goods among different end uses. It has worked so smoothly we did not understand what the classical economists meant; today we see. In addition to its economic virtues, the price mechanism is a vital buffer of civility.
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