Day: February 18, 2024

Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

As we all know, the Guardian is a leading protagonist when it comes to proselytising about the “climate crisis” and the “need” for Net Zero. If you’re an organisation which exists to push that agenda, then the Guardian will probably be happy to publish whatever you write, without first applying any critical editorial standards.

Too many eggs in one basket

From Climate Scepticism (cliscep.com

By MARK HODGSON

As we all know, the Guardian is a leading protagonist when it comes to proselytising about the “climate crisis” and the “need” for Net Zero. If you’re an organisation which exists to push that agenda, then the Guardian will probably be happy to publish whatever you write, without first applying any critical editorial standards.

A good example is the “report” by CarbonBrief on 8th August 2022 (and updated on 24th August when gas prices peaked, but never subsequently updated despite gas prices now being less than 10% of the price they reached on that day).

On 7th October 2022 the Guardian website featured an article by Caroline Lucas repeating the claim and linking to the CarbonBrief report, even though by the date her article appeared, the price of gas had already fallen steeply (by around 60%) from the peak of 702.95p per therm (which was used to justify the highly dubious claim made by CarbonBrief) to 285.04p per therm (today, by the way, it sits at 60.29p per therm). In other words, the original claim was highly dubious (as I pointed out in The Lies Have It), and it was already wildly untrue by the time Caroline Lucas wrote her piece and the Guardian published it. Amusingly (I missed it at the time) the url for the Caroline Lucas article was https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/07/energy-crisis-it-isnt-that-we-have-too-little-oil-and-gas-we-have-too-much-lucas. While the jury is out as to whether we have too little oil and gas, all of us hear at Cliscep would probably agree that we have too much Lucas.

The other day I spotted another article in the Guardian, this time by Gaia Vince. It broadly consisted of the stuff we have come to expect, both from her and from the newspaper for which she was writing, but the final section of her article included this:

Alarming forecasts from Big Wind this week, as the world’s three largest companies are struggling with hikes in raw material costs, delays, investment problems and high inflation — offshore wind is around 30% more expensive now.

Finally, I thought: recognition that the claims of cheap renewable energy are false – surely then, we will see something of a mea culpa for having mislead Guardian readers for so long, and perhaps a bit of sense will appear regarding the UK’s energy policy? I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead the article assured us that we just have to accept higher prices:

Governments must create the conditions for rapid expansion in these challenging offshore and floating markets, even if it means agreeing higher energy prices in the short term. Now, where did we put that £28bn?

My own suspicion is that going down this road will saddle us with higher energy prices in the meduim and long term too. However, only time will prove which of us is right.

All of the above is a long-winded way of setting the scene for the huge surprise I received yesterday when I read another Guardian article, this time with the heading “Power struggle: fears for UK energy generation as green projects delayed” and the sub-heading “Path to relying solely on green power appears long as series of problems collides with reality of keeping the lights on”. Written by Alex Lawson, it could almost have been written by any of us here at Cliscep.

He starts by talking about the fact that the 280 miles between Hadrian’s Wall and Peterhead (which includes, he says, stunning Scottish countryside and quaint villages) is “to become a building site for vast power lines connecting offshore windfarms with urban centres.” This, he tells us, is part of the “national transmission plan” necessitated by net zero driving increasing demand for electricity and the consequent need to accommodate numerous “green” energy projects.

Policymakers face a tricky decade as the target of decarbonising the electricity system by 2035 collides with the day-to-day job of keeping the lights on and ensuring electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial machinery are powered.

He goes on to point out that in worst-case scenarios we will struggle to meet the surging demand forecast for the early 2030s if “nascent technologies” (such as pie-in-the-sky – my words rather than his – CCS and hydrogen) fail to take off as hoped. Although “the scenarios vary wildly”, we in the UK could be left with “39 gigawatts less power than previous forecasts.”

The problem is exacerbated, given that gas power stations still provide most of our electricity (35.7% last month), nuclear power looks increasingly problematic (at least over the necessary timescales) given further delay to Hinkley Point C, and windfarm planning has been shaken by supply problems “that forced the world’s biggest developer, Ørsted, to scale back, and for Sweden’s Vattenfall to pull out of a huge offshore project [Norfolk Boreas] off the Norfolk coast after they said rising costs meant it was no longer profitable”.

Although he suggests that switching gas plants to hydrogen is viable, he acknowledges it will be costly. CCS is unproven at scale; and large battery projects are facking a backlog to connect to the grid. And even National Grid ESO acknowledges that we will struggle to meet security of supply by relying on battery technologies alone.

A section of the article then talks about the problems experienced by those project developers seeking to connect to the grid – a problem I discussed in Gridlock. Then there is talk of the need to shift consumer demand to times of greater supply and lower demand (in other words, customers are there to serve the needs of the grid, not the other way round).

Next he moves on to discuss the problems with the Labour Party’s energy plans such as its “target to decarbonise power by 2030 and how practical a target to only use gas-fired stations as a backup really is.” Its reliance on Drax is problematic, given its dubious green credentials and massive subsidies (as pointed out by Jit in The Beast of Selby). And there is the question mark within the party over how much money to commit to decarbonising home heating, and the problem of vested interests to be overcome in this area – not only gas companies, but also trade unions.

He concludes thus:

An industry source says: “Everything relating to government decarbonisation targets has an asterisk with ‘subject to security of supply’ attached.”

The path to relying solely on green power appears as long as the journey to Peterhead.

Well said Alex Lawson. And what a refreshing change, in the Guardian of all places!

As a postscript, I should add that I took a look to see what other articles Mr Lawson has written, and was pleased to note that he doesn’t shy away from writing things that don’t seem to fit the Guardian agenda, such as (to give just a few examples) “Danish windfarm firm Ørsted to axe up to 800 jobs and pause dividend”; “UK electric vehicle maker Arrival enters administration with 170 jobs at risk”; and “‘Hypocrisy’: Tata builds vast India furnace despite Port Talbot emissions claims – Owner says shutting Welsh blast furnaces will cut emissions, but it is opening a new one in India”.

I hail an independently-minded journalist committed to telling it like it is, and (unusually for me) I give considerable credit to the Guardian for allowing him to write there as he does. At least one journalist is allowed to let the Guardian’s readers know that chickens are coming home to roost.

How Cloud Cover and Atmospheric Density Control Global Warming

The atmosphere’s density regulates the greenhouse effect. Climate scientists estimate that around 30% of the downward infrared energy from greenhouse gasses that slow the earth’s surface cooling originates in just the lower 10 meters of our atmosphere, the densest layer. Over 80% of the downward infrared originates between the surface and 500 meters of altitude.

Jim Steele

The atmosphere’s density regulates the greenhouse effect. Climate scientists estimate that around 30% of the downward infrared energy from greenhouse gasses that slow the earth’s surface cooling originates in just the lower 10 meters of our atmosphere, the densest layer. Over 80% of the downward infrared originates between the surface and 500 meters of altitude.

Low altitude clouds, like various stratus clouds, can increase the amount of downward infrared but decrease solar heating. Stratocumulus and stratus clouds shade roughly a fifth of the oceans, reflecting 30 to 60 percent of incoming solar radiation. However above 500 meters, the infrared emitted from clouds escapes more easily to space as decreasing air density reduces the greenhouse effect.

Cumulus-type clouds are the result of rising thermals as convection carries most of earth’s solar-heated surface warmth up and away. As clouds form, the latent heat stored in the air’s water vapor is released as that vapor condenses into liquid drops. Water vapor is the earth’s dominant greenhouse gas contributing at least half of any greenhouse warming. Vapor condensation in clouds dries the air above the clouds and reduces most of water’s greenhouse effect at those higher altitudes.

Cumulus clouds typically form at altitudes between 300 and 1500 meters. Anvil clouds (cumulonimbus) form where strong convection carries heat and moisture to the stratosphere (6000 to 20,000 meters) enabling heat to escape virtually un-impeded. Earth’s stratosphere on average is about as dense as Mars’ atmosphere. Even though 95% of Mars’ atmosphere consists of CO2, its atmosphere is not dense enough to intercept much escaping infrared. So, Mars’ night-time temperatures typically plummet by 83°C to 99° C below zero.

Anvil clouds are excellent indicators of where heat is being released unimpeded to the stratosphere. Overall, clouds can reveal where the greenhouse effect has become greatly reduced with little impact on our surface temperatures.

In addition, any decline in cloud cover not only reduces infrared heating from low-altitude clouds, fewer clouds will increase solar heating. When testing for natural contributions to global warming, most climate models only consider change in the sun’s irradiance but ignore how clouds control the intensity of solar heating, especially in the tropics. Since 1980, satellites have detected a significant drop in the percentage of cloud cover (graphic A). The warming effect of reduced clouds coincides with the hypothetical relationship between warming and rising CO2 concentrations.

Natural La Nina-like conditions have been shown to reduce cloud cover over the eastern Pacific. As seen in graphic B the eastern Pacific, most affected by La Nina conditions, is the region with the greatest flux of solar energy into the ocean. The solar heated waters are then circulated away from the equator towards the poles. The blue regions in graphic B, indicate where that heat is released. Due to this transport of heat, regions outside the tropics enjoy warmer temperatures than possible if only solar and greenhouse radiation alone is considered.

To understand why solar energy, not CO2 is heating the oceans, watch: Science of Solar Ponds Challenges the Climate Crisis

Lastly, that scientists report the Pacific Ocean shifted from El Nino-like conditions with more cloud cover during the Little Ice Age, to the dominance of La Nina-like conditions and reduced cloud cover in the eastern Pacific over the past 150 years. So it should be no surprise that oceans have absorbed more solar heat resulting in a warmer earth .

We, the Arbiters of Truth, are Working Really Really Hard to Understand Those Stupid Lying Climate Denier Liars

Sigh, another in a long line of “trying to understand” the motivations and reasoning for people who disagree with them, but in reality are likely more informed than them.

From Watts Up With That?

Sigh, another in a long line of “trying to understand” the motivations and reasoning for people who disagree with them, but in reality are likely more informed than them.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-50591-6

I don’t have much to say about this ugliness, but I’ll let their writing speak for itself.

Abstract

Using data from Twitter (now X), this study deploys artificial intelligence (AI) and network analysis to map and profile climate change denialism across the United States. We estimate that 14.8% of Americans do not believe in climate change. This denialism is highest in the central and southern U.S. However, it also persists in clusters within states (e.g., California) where belief in climate change is high. Political affiliation has the strongest correlation, followed by level of education, COVID-19 vaccination rates, carbon intensity of the regional economy, and income. The analysis reveals how a coordinated social media network uses periodic events, such as cold weather and climate conferences, to sow disbelief about climate change and science, in general. Donald Trump was the strongest influencer in this network, followed by conservative media outlets and right-wing activists. As a form of knowledge vulnerability, climate denialism renders communities unprepared to take steps to increase resilience. As with other forms of misinformation, social media companies (e.g., X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok) should flag accounts that spread falsehoods about climate change and collaborate on targeted educational campaigns.

Introduction

Climate change denialism persists in the United States, with estimates ranging from 12% to 26% of the U.S. population1,2. It is more pronounced in some states and regions3. Reasons for this denialism are multifaceted: Political affiliation and ideology, income, education, and exposure to extreme weather events are all important factors4,5,6. Denialism is more prevalent where local economies are highly dependent on fossil fuels7, in rural communities, and in populations where mistrust in science is pronounced8,9. Social media reaches millions of users, providing a key mechanism for influencers to spread misinformation10. The ability of social media to influence and harden attitudes was apparent in the response to COVID-19 vaccines11.

Understanding how and why climate change opinion varies geographically and documenting it at an actionable scale is crucial for communication campaigns, outreach, and other interventions12,13. Most estimates of the extent and geographic configuration of climate change denialism rely primarily on national surveys, with the Yale Climate Opinion Survey being the only dataset that provides estimates at the state and county levels for the entire U.S.3. These survey efforts, however, are time-intensive and expensive and are therefore destined to cover short time spans and, often, limited geographic extent. The Yale Survey combines data from more than 2500 national surveys and uses multinomial regression modeling to downscale estimates to subnational levels. Independent representative surveys conducted in states and metropolitan areas validate the predictions from the Yale Survey models3.

Mining social media data (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, and X, formerly Twitter) is a tantalizing alternative to survey-based approaches14,15. X is a social media platform with an extensive data repository. By adjusting for the skew toward certain demographic groups in users, data from this platform is useful for estimating public views on an array of topics, such as politics, social issues, and COVID-19 vaccination rates16,17. Data from Twitter has also been used in predictive modeling of election outcomes18. Account holders can misuse it to oppose scientific knowledge and spread misinformation19.

This study used Twitter data (2017–2019) to: (i) estimate the prevalence of climate change denialism at the state and county levels; (ii) identify typical profiles of climate change deniers; (iii) understand how social media promulgates climate change denialism through key influencers; and (iv) determine how world events are leveraged to promulgate attitudes about climate change.

We used a Deep Learning text recognition model to classify 7.4 million geocoded tweets containing keywords related to climate change. Posted by 1.3 million unique users in the U.S., these tweets were collected between September 2017 and May 2019 (see Online Methods S1). We classified these tweets about climate change into ‘for’ (belief) and ‘against’ (denial). Our analysis resulted in a profile of climate change deniers at the county level, provided insight into the networks of social media figures influential in promoting climate change denial, and generated insight into how these influencers use current events to foster this denial.

After confirming the validity of using social media data instead of information collected through surveys to capture public opinion on climate change at policy-relevant geographical scales, we found that denialism clusters in particular regions (and counties) of the country and amongst certain socio-demographic groups. Our analysis reveals how politicians, media figures, and conservative activists promulgated misinformation in the Twittersphere. It maps out how denialists and climate change believers have formed mostly separate Twitter communities, creating echo chambers. Such information provides a basis for developing strategies to counter this knowledge vulnerability and reduce the spread of mis- or disinformation by targeting the communities most at risk of not adopting measaures to increase resilience to the effects of climate change.

Results

Where in the U.S. is climate change denial prevalent?

Our study found that 14.8% of Americans deny that climate change is real (Fig. 1A), a percentage consistent with previous national studies (Fig. S4). Using geolocation information, we determined that denialism is highest in the Central part of the U.S. and in the South, with more than 20% of the populations of OK, MS, AL, and ND consisting of deniers. Along the West and East Coasts and New England, belief in climate change is highest. However, climate change denial varies substantially within states, often clustering in geographic swaths across multiple counties (Fig. 1B). For example, in Shasta County, California climate change denial is as high as 52%; yet overall less than 12% of the population of California does not believe in climate change. Similarly, the average percentage of deniers is 21% in Texas, but at the county-level this ranges from 13% in Travis County to 67% in Hockley County.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-50591-6

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-50591-6/figures/1

The full study can be found here.

H/T mark-blr

EU Greens chief slams Belgian central banker’s claim climate fight will leave EU poorer

The co-president of the Greens/EFA European parliamentary group, Philippe Lamberts, rebuked recent warnings by the head of Belgium’s central bank that the green transition will make Europe poorer, saying that anyone who does not see the transition as a matter of survival should give the floor to “more serious people”.

The co-president of the Greens/EFA European parliamentary group, Philippe Lamberts, rebuked recent warnings by the head of Belgium’s central bank that the green transition will make Europe poorer, saying that anyone who does not see the transition as a matter of survival should give the floor to “more serious people”.

Talking to Euractiv on Tuesday (13 February), Lamberts challenged Pierre Wunsch’s remarks to the European Parliament’s plenary session on Tuesday that EU policymakers needed to be “more candid” about the climate transition being “a negative supply shock that will reduce [Europe’s] growth potential”.

The Euractiv has the story.

“If we start saying that basically we cannot afford to invest for [our own] survival then I believe that we need to have a discussion with more serious people,” Lamberts rebutted. [That] Europe should engage full-on in the green transition to me cannot be questioned. It’s a matter of environmental and economic survival.”

Contesting Wunsch’s prediction that the energy transition would not make Europeans “collectively richer”, the Greens MEP said Europe’s failure to confront climate change would be tantamount to “collective suicide”.

Jean-Marc Nollet, co-president of Belgian environmental party Ecolo, echoed Lambert’s warnings.

“It is the absence of a [green] transition that will impoverish Europe and its citizens,” Nollet told Euractiv. “A society that does not invest in the transition is a society that condemns its companies. Conversely, investing means being a pioneer, relocating, and capturing the jobs of tomorrow.”

The price of inaction

Nollet added that Wunsch “should know what the scientists are telling us”, namely that “the cost of inaction is five times higher than the cost of action”.

Antoine Oger, research director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), said yet more daunting forecasts are set to come from a European Environmental Agency (EEA)’s report showing that the accumulated costs of inaction could prove significantly more severe – as much as “one hundred times higher than mitigation measures”.

“It is now clearly cheaper to save the planet than to ruin it.”

Tim McPhie, spokesperson for climate action and energy at the European Commission, declined to comment on Wunsch’s remarks specifically but also warned that the price of inaction is “very important to bear in mind,” he told Euractiv.

He pointed to a Commission communication issued last week which estimated that the cost of failing to facilitate the green transition could knock 7% of the EU’s GDP by the end of this century.

Industrial woes

Wunsch’s remarks, however, channelled widespread worries around the effects the transition will yield on different sectors.

On the industrial front, he suggested that high energy prices may have made European industrial firms permanently uncompetitive compared to those in China and America.

Read the full story here.

DAVID BLACKMON: The Billionaire Class Is Fueling The War Against Abundant American Energy

It has been an open secret for years now that big foundations funded by billionaire families like the Gates, Getty, and Rockefeller clans have played a big role in funding the various climate alarmist campaigns to vilify so-called “fossil fuels.” Lesser known until recently is the role these billionaire foundations play in convincing various government entities to travel down the same path.

From The Daily Caller

DAVID BLACKMON

DAVID BLACKMON IS AN ENERGY WRITER AND CONSULTANT BASED IN TEXAS. HE SPENT 40 YEARS IN THE OIL AND GAS BUSINESS, WHERE HE SPECIALIZED IN PUBLIC POLICY AND COMMUNICATIONS.

It has been an open secret for years now that big foundations funded by billionaire families like the Gates, Getty, and Rockefeller clans have played a big role in funding the various climate alarmist campaigns to vilify so-called “fossil fuels.” Lesser known until recently is the role these billionaire foundations play in convincing various government entities to travel down the same path.

Fox News reported this week that several billionaire interests, led by the Rockefeller Family Fund, put pressure on the New York Attorney General’s office during 2015 to target ExxonMobil with a subpoena for records related to an investigation into the company’s early research related to global warming. A series of leaked emails between Lee Wasserman, long-time director for the RFF, and then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s office first pitched the idea in early 2015. Schneiderman ultimately responded to the pressure, sending an initial subpoena to ExxonMobil in November that same year.

The RFF’s involvement in the push to pursue ExxonMobil extended into influencing and paying for media coverage. In September, 2015, Inside Climate News published the first in a series of articles under what it called its “Exxon Knew” series. The RFF funded that effort via multi-million-dollar grants to ICN and its parent, Lost Light Projects, as reported in the Daily Caller in 2016. In October that same year, RFF grants were also behind a series of articles jointly published by the Los Angeles Times and the Columbia School of Journalism, demonizing ExxonMobil. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: Another Green Vehicle Pipe Dream Explodes Like The Hindenburg)

“We’ve spent years tracking the nexus between left-wing environmental groups and their billionaire funders, and this once again proves the connection between the financial, ideological, and political influences on the widespread legal attacks on the American energy industry,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute For Energy Research, said in an email. “It’s clear that anti-oil sentiment in this country is being driven by this network of billionaires, activists, and politicians who show little concern for how their political campaigns hurt everyday Americans.”

The strategy behind the New York AG’s investigation evolved out of a meeting of climate activist organizations held in La Jolla, CA in 2012. There, a playbook was developed to attack the oil and gas industry using the same tactics that had been deployed against the tobacco industry starting in the 1980s. The plan’s success hinged on identifying and co-opting a “sympathetic state attorney general” willing to play the lead role in kicking off what would become an ongoing series of lawsuits targeting the industry.

The activists ultimately landed on Schneiderman as their most likely and most willing partner. When Schneiderman was forced to resign due to a personal scandal, his successor, current AG Letitia James, eagerly took up the torch. But the case was ultimately thrown out of court by the New York state Supreme Court, which characterized its claims as “hyperbolic.”

The RFF was in the news earlier this month when, on Feb. 8, The Wall Street Journal reported it and other left-wing billionaire interests – including Michael Bloomberg – were instrumental in pressuring the Biden White House to implement its January “pause” on the permitting of proposed new liquefied natural gas export facilities. 

Citing sources “familiar with the effort,” the WSJ writers detail a billionaire-backed campaign that began four years ago to co-opt and organize local community activist groups to oppose new LNG export capacity even as U.S. LNG became such a crucial supply source for American allies in Europe in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The activists then worked to “buttonhole” administration officials at conferences and meetings around the world, pressuring them to freeze the process based on flimsy, hyperbolic climate alarm arguments similar to those behind the case against ExxonMobil.

“They got our attention,” one unidentified White House official is quoted as saying by the Journal. 

Well, yes, they did, but to what end? While they are all promoted using lofty propaganda depicting these campaigns as efforts to curb the malleable concept of “climate change,” what these and other efforts by the RFF and their billionaire collaborators invariably boil down to is increasing the cost of energy for the masses, diminishing U.S. energy security, and making our country increasingly reliant on China.

Eventually, the only reasonable conclusion to make is that those outcomes are in fact the plan.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock drop out of massive UN climate alliance in stunning move

The stunning announcements come as the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and worldwide face an onslaught of pressure from consumer advocates and Republican states over their environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities.

JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) on Thursday announced that they are quitting or, in the case of BlackRock, substantially scaling back involvement in a massive United Nations climate alliance formed to combat global warming through corporate sustainability agreements.

In a statement, the New York-based JPMorgan Chase explained that it would exit the so-called Climate Action 100+ investor group because of the expansion of its in-house sustainability team and the establishment of its climate risk framework in recent years. Fox Business has the story.

BlackRock and State Street, which both manage trillions of dollars in assets, said the alliance’s climate initiatives had gone too far, expressing concern about potential legal issues as well.

The stunning announcements come as the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and worldwide face an onslaught of pressure from consumer advocates and Republican states over their environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities.

“The firm has built a team of 40 dedicated sustainable investing professionals, including investment stewardship specialists who also leverage one of the largest buy side research teams in the industry,” the bank said in a statement shared with FOX Business. “Given these strengths and the evolution of its own stewardship capabilities, JPMAM (JP Morgan Asset Management) has determined that it will no longer participate in Climate Action 100+ engagements.”

BlackRock, meanwhile, withdrew its U.S. business from Climate Action 100+, shifting involvement in the alliance to BlackRock’s smaller international entity where a majority of clients are pursuing decarbonization goals, the Financial Times first reported Thursday. A spokesperson for BlackRock confirmed to FOX Business that the move had been made in recent weeks. 

And State Street said its exit from the alliance was made because Climate Action 100+’s “phase 2” commitments conflicted with the firm’s internal investing policies. 

“SSGA has concluded the enhanced Climate Action 100+ phase 2 requirements for signatories are not consistent with our independent approach to proxy voting and portfolio company engagement,” State Street said in a statement, according to the Financial Times.

Climate Action 100+ was formally established in December 2017 at the U.N. as a way of aligning the world’s largest private sector financiers of greenhouse gas producers. Since the association was created, it has grown to include more than 700 financial institutions that are collectively responsible for a staggering $68 trillion in assets under management.

The group — which is overseen by a nongovernmental steering committee comprised of ESG activists — calls for members to engage companies on “improving climate change governance,” curbing carbon emissions and strengthening climate-related financial disclosure policies. Its actions have largely taken aim at investments benefiting the oil and gas industry, while boosting green energy investment strategies.

The Climate Action 100+ “phase 2” strategy, which was set to be implemented later this year, calls for member investors to actively engage with companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

“More than 700 investors are committed to managing climate risk and preserving shareholder value through their participation in the initiative,” a spokesperson for Climate Action 100+ told FOX Business on Thursday. “Since its inception, Climate Action 100+ has experienced remarkable growth — and that has only continued.”

“The initiative has recently entered its second phase, which offers more ways investor signatories can participate,” the spokesperson continued. “Last autumn alone, more than 60 new signatories joined, and we expect interest to continue growing.”

Read the full story here.

California Enjoys the Northwest’s Water

Two years ago, media outlets were headlining strident messages that California had moved into a “megadrought” and that there was little hope for relief.

From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Two years ago, media outlets were headlining strident messages that California had moved into a “megadrought” and that there was little hope for relief.

Story after story claimed that global warming had permanently changed the situation and that California’s reservoirs would remain unfilled.

Fast forward two years and these apocalyptic warnings appear more like a rendition of chicken-little than reliable climate science.

Massive rainfall has hit the Golden State, while we in the Northwest are enjoying a warmer-than-normal winter with less snowpack than normal.

Below is the percent of average precipitation for the last month over the western U.S.  Some parts of California have received over 400% of normal!

To illustrate the soggy California situation, below is the accumulated precipitation at Los Angeles since October 1 (the current water year). Brown indicates normal values.   LA is now running about 40% above normal

Compare this to Seattle (below).  We are slightly above normal.   Precipitation-wise we running nearly exactly on climatology.   That may surprise some.

As I have described in several previous blogs, we are now experiencing El Nino conditions, which tend to make California very wet, while our area generally experiences near-normal precipitation.   

The latest forecast of accumulated precipitation through Tuesday shows a continuation of the pattern with heavy precipitation expected in California.  And yes….only modest precipitation over Washington.  Oregon enjoys a piece of this wet bounty.

The origin of this wet situation is a strong El Nino low center off of Califonia, illustrated by the upper level (500-hPa pressure, about 18,000 ft) at 10 PM on Monday.  The purple shading indicates an unusually strong low.  I am getting tired of this pattern.

The current extended prediction of accumulated precipitation through April 1 by the European Center model suggests this pattern is not going away, with very wet conditions over California, but drier than normal in the Washington Cascades (see below).

But what about the Northwest snowpack during the next few months?    I will leave that to an upcoming blog.

The Six Months That Short-Circuited the Electric-Vehicle Revolution

Automakers went all in on battery power, but buyers have proven more hesitant.

Automakers went all in on battery power, but buyers have proven more hesitant.

The Michigan plant where the F-150 Lightning electric truck is built used to vibrate with excitement.

President Biden visited in 2021 and test drove the blazing-fast pickup. Before the first ones even started rolling off the assembly line in the spring of 2022, Ford said it would expand the factory to quadruple the number it could build. The WSJ has the story.

That energy is rapidly fading. Ford is cutting the plant’s output by half, and workers are relocating to other facilities, mostly those making gas-powered pickups and SUVs.

The sudden change “was a little bit of a shocker,” said Matthew Schulte, who inspects trucks at the factory in suburban Detroit. “Reality has set in.”

As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.

A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a dramatic societal shift to electric cars: government regulations, corporate climate goals, the rise of Chinese EV makers, and Tesla’s stock valuation, which, at roughly $600 billion, still towers over the legacy car companies.

But the push overlooked an important constituency: the consumer.

Last summer, dealers began warning of unsold electric vehicles clogging their lots. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and others shifted from frenetic spending on EVs to delaying or downsizing some projects. Dealers who had been begging automakers to ship more EVs faster are now turning them down.

Even Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk warned of “notably lower” growth in vehicle deliveries for the company in 2024.

“This has been a seismic change in the last six months of last year that will rapidly sort out winners and losers in our industry,” said Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley on an earnings call in early February.

EV sales continue to grow, and auto executives say they remain committed to the technology. But many are recalibrating their plans.

Ford has pulled back on EV investment and could delay some vehicle launches, while increasing production of hybrids, which run on both gasoline and electricity. It lost a staggering $4.7 billion last year on its battery-powered car business and projects an even bigger loss this year, in the range of $5 billion to $5.5 billion.

Some auto executives acknowledge they got ahead of the market with overzealous demand projections. Pandemic-era supply-chain shocks and a resulting car shortage created long waiting lists and early buzz for EVs, making the industry overly optimistic.

Only later, as a barrage of new EVs hit the market, did executives realize that car buyers were more discerning than they expected. Many were hesitant to pay a premium for a vehicle that came with compromises.

Farley and other industry CEOs are still confident that EVs will eventually take off, albeit at a slower pace than initially envisioned. But for now, the massive miscalculation has left the industry in a bind, facing a potential glut of EVs and half-empty factories while still having to meet stricter environmental regulations globally.

“Ultimately, we will follow the customer,” GM Chief Executive Mary Barra told analysts this month.

In 2020, as the car market unexpectedly heated up during pandemic lockdowns, traditional automakers shifted from dabbling in electric cars to launching an all-out blitz. They outlined plans to build dozens of battery factories, EV assembly plants and vehicle models, pledging more than a half-trillion dollars of investment in the technology through 2026, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.

The rapid rise of Elon Musk’s Tesla added to the urgency. Over just a few years, its market value rocketed past those of legacy car companies. Wall Street cheered strategic moves toward electrics and bid up shares of EV startups.

Tougher auto-emissions restrictions in Europe and China gave car companies little choice but to add more EVs or risk penalties. The Biden administration steered the industry toward more environmentally friendly cars, earmarking hundreds of billions in subsidies for battery production, consumer tax breaks and EV chargers.

At the start of 2023, car executives were expecting to cash in on their EV bets.

GM’s Barra had been among the earliest and most vocal industry advocates of shifting to EVs. The Detroit automaker set a goal of phasing out nearly all gas-engine vehicles by 2035.

“This is a breakout year,” Barra said on GM’s January 2023 earnings call. GM was finally making its own batteries and said it was ready to start cranking out EVs to satisfy pent-up demand for a new electric Cadillac SUV and Hummer pickup truck.

Ford, emboldened by swelling orders for the F-150 Lightning, increased prices for the pickups by as much as $20,000 over the original sticker. Elsewhere, car executives were talking up their plans to accelerate EV factory work.

Trouble ahead

Then warning signs began to appear. In mid-January of last year, Tesla slashed prices on some models by more than 20%, triggering a chain reaction.

Used-car dealers who had Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys in stock saw their values plummet by thousands of dollars. Customers who had bought Teslas at higher prices were furious.

“Why cut EV prices when demand is greater than supply?” Bank of America analyst John Murphy wondered.

Musk insisted that there was no demand problem. The company was trying to broaden appeal by making its cars more affordable, he told analysts.

Inside Ford, staffers analyzed what Tesla’s cuts might mean for its own EV sales. About two weeks later, Ford reduced prices on some versions of its Mustang Mach-E SUVs by nearly 9%.

Speaking to analysts in May, Farley largely shrugged off the pricing pressures, saying they weren’t reflective of broader interest in EVs. He remained upbeat about Ford’s outlook, reiterating plans to expand Lightning output.

Around that time, car dealer Mickey Anderson began noticing that EVs were accumulating on his lots in Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado.

At first, Anderson and other retailers thought the slower sales were a fluke. At meetings with manufacturers in the late spring and summer, the dealers compared notes.

“We were worried,” Anderson recalled. “We went from wait lists to six months of supply, seemingly in a matter of weeks.”

Read the full story here.

The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs

We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating versions of “We told you so”. When in March 2020, the world’s governments decided to “shut down” the world’s economies and throttle any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible collateral damage, even if most of them were censored. 

From The Daily Sceptic

By JEFFREY A. TUCKER

We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating versions of “We told you so”. When in March 2020, the world’s governments decided to “shut down” the world’s economies and throttle any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible collateral damage, even if most of them were censored. 

Every bit of the warnings proved true. You see it in every story in the news. It’s behind every headline. It’s in countless family tragedies. It’s in the loss of trust. It’s in the upheaval in industry and demographics. The fingerprints of lockdowns are deeply embedded in every aspect of our lives, in ways obvious and not so much. 

Actually, the results have been even worse than critics predicted, simply because the chaos lasted such a long time. There are seemingly endless iterations of this theme. Learning losses, infrastructure breakages, rampant criminality, vast debt, inflation, lost work ethic, a growing commercial real estate bust, real income losses, political extremism, labour shortages, substance addiction, and more much besides, all trace to the fateful decision. 

The headlines on seemingly unrelated matters go back to the same, in circuitous ways. A good example is the news of the electric vehicle bust. The confusion, disorientation, malinvestment, overproduction and retrenchment – along with the crazed ambition to force convert a country and world away from oil and gas towards wind and solar – all trace to those fateful days. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, “As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.” 

Reading the story, it’s clear that the reporter is downplaying the sheer scale of the boom-bust.

That’s not to say that Tesla itself is going bust, only that it has a defined market segment. The technology of EVs simply cannot and will not become the major way Americans drive. It might have seemed otherwise for a moment in time but that was due to factors that traced exactly to pent up demand caused by lockdowns and huge errors in supply management due to bad signalling. 

Looking back, the lockdowns hit in the spring of 2020 and supply chains were entirely frozen by force. This might have been a major problem for car manufacturers that had long relied on just-in-time inventory strategies. However, at the very time, the demand for travel collapsed. Commutes came to an end, and vacations too. At that same time, pre-arranged Government subsidies and mandates for EVs flooded the industry, all of which were later ramped up by the Biden administration. 

As demand picked up, retailers sold their old inventory of cars and looked to manufacturers for more but the chips needed to complete the cars were not available. Many cars were put on hold and lots emptied out. This continued through the following year as used car prices soared and stock was otherwise depleted.

By the time matters became desperate in the fall of 2021, manufacturers discerned a heightened demand for EVs and began to retool their factories for more. There was even a time when cars were being shipped without power steering, just to meet the demand. 

It might have seemed for a time like the crazed period we just lived through was birthing a completely different way of life. A kind of irrationality, born of shock and awe, swept industry and culture. The EV was central to it.

This demand seemed to pan out in 2022 as Americans grabbed whatever cars were available, perhaps willing to give the new doohickies a shot. So on it went as more carmakers threw more resources at production, benefitting from massive subsidies and staying in compliance with new mandates for reducing their carbon footprint. 

There was no particular reason to think anything would go wrong. But then the next year began to reveal uncomfortable truths. Cold weather dramatically cuts the range of the EVs. Charging stations are not as readily available on longer trips, charging takes longer than one expects, and having to plan such matters adds time. In addition, the repair bills can be extremely high if you can find someone to do it.

Tesla as a manufacturer had planned out all such contingencies but other carmakers less so. Very quickly the EVs gained a bad reputation on a number of different fronts. 

“Last summer, dealers began warning of unsold electric vehicles clogging their lots. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and others shifted from frenetic spending on EVs to delaying or downsizing some projects,” writes the Journal. “Dealers who had been begging automakers to ship more EVs faster are now turning them down.”

In short, “the massive miscalculation has left the industry in a bind, facing a potential glut of EVs and half-empty factories while still having to meet stricter environmental regulations globally.”

Today, lots are selling the cars at a loss just to avoid the costs of keeping them around. 

Truly, this has been one spectacular boom-bust in a single industry. There seems to be no real end to the bust either. These days it appears that everyone has given up on any chance of actually converting the mass of American cars to become EVs. All recent trends are headed in the other direction. 

Meanwhile, the EV is deeply loved by many as a second car for well-to-do suburban commuters who own homes, can charge overnight and have a petrol or diesel car as a backup for cold weather and out-of-town trips. That is to say, the market is becoming exactly what it should be – a street-worthy golf cart with very fancy features – and not some paradigmatic case for the ‘Great Reset’. That’s simply not happening, despite all the subsidies and tax breaks.

“A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a dramatic societal shift to electric cars,” writes the Journal, including “Government regulations, corporate climate goals, the rise of Chinese EV makers and Tesla’s stock valuation, which, at roughly $600 billion, still towers over the legacy car companies. But the push overlooked an important constituency: the consumer.”

Indeed, the American economy, much to the chagrin of many, still primarily relies on consumers to make choices in their best interest. When that doesn’t happen, no amount of subsidies can make up the difference.

This story is impossible to understand without reference to the crazed illusions caused by lockdowns. Those are what provided the respite of time to allow automakers to retool. Then they boosted demand artificially for transportation after a long period in which inventory had been depleted. 

Then the whole ridiculous ethos of the ‘Great Reset’ convinced idiotic corporate executives that nothing would ever be the same. Maybe we would get 15-minute cities powered by sunbeams and breezes after all, along with a social-credit system that would allow the authorities to decommission our ability to drive in an instant. 

It turns out that the entire bit, including the fake prosperity of the lockdown economy, made possible by money-printing and grotesque levels of Government spending, was unsustainable. Even sophisticated car companies bought into the nonsense. Now they are paying a very heavy price. The new market depended on a panic of buying that turned out to be temporary. 

In short, the illusions of these horrible policies have come crashing down. It was born of liberty-wrecking policies under the cover of virus control. Every special interest seized the day, including a new generation of industrialists seeking to displace the old ones by force. 

More and more, it’s obvious what a disaster this was. And yet no one has apologised. Hardly anyone has admitted error. The big shots who wrecked the world are still in power. 

The rest of us are left holding the bag, and paying very high repair bills for cars that are non-optimal for driving from one town to another and back again in the cold weather that was supposed to be gone by now had the ‘climate change’ prophets been correct. They turn out to be as correct as those who promised us that we would no longer need ‘fossil fuels’ and that the magic inoculation would protect everyone from a killer virus.

What astonishing illusions were born of this nutty and destructive period. At some point, not even corporate CEOs will be tricked by the experts.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.