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.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in January that US domestic production of crude oil for September 2023 set a new all-time high of 13,247,000 barrels per day. That fact probably deserved more notice than it received given that it was the most oil any nation on earth had ever managed to produce in a single month. The high-tech modern US oil and gas industry is completely transformed.
We and our friends have no need to truckle to the Kremlin or Saudi Arabia.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in January that US domestic production of crude oil for September 2023 set a new all-time high of 13,247,000 barrels per day. That fact probably deserved more notice than it received given that it was the most oil any nation on earth had ever managed to produce in a single month. The high-tech modern US oil and gas industry is completely transformed.
Even more remarkable is the fact that US producers managed to break the record in November, and then exceed the September number again in December, the most current month for which full data is available.
It is likely November’s all-time record of 13,319,000 barrels per day (bpd) has been exceeded at least once again during the first quarter of 2024, as producers find ways to wring more production out of each wellbore.
That ability to increase per-well performance through the application of more effective processes and advancing technologies has been crucial to the ability to raise overall production given that the upward curve has continued even in the face of an active rig count that has dropped by over 25 per cent in the past 15 months. That is a feat the US industry has never achieved in any other period in modern times.
The September 2023 record took place exactly 15 years after American crude production had hit a production nadir not seen since 1943, when the manpower and resource requirements of fighting World War II slowed the business to a crawl. The US churned out just 3,974,000 bpd in September 2008, a level the State of Texas alone exceeded by almost 2 million bpd 15 years later.
Those were the days before the shale revolution kicked off in earnest. Indeed, it was the very next month, October, 2008, when the first successful horizontal oil well was drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale formation in South Texas. Management at the company that drilled that first well, Petrohawk Energy, thought they were drilling for dry natural gas. Imagine their surprise when the light brown sweet oil began flowing up the pipe along with the gas stream.
Two years later, drillers were completing successful horizontal wells in the first of many productive shale formations in the Permian Basin of West Texas. By 2012, production from Texas, which had amounted to just a little more than 1 million bpd in 2008, had risen to 3 million bpd. In November 2023, Texas produced 5,657,000 bpd, and would rank as the 4th biggest producing nation on earth if it were a standalone country.
These numbers are stunning, and they are coming in the face of a President, Joe Biden, and an administration that continues to invoke federal regulations and executive orders designed to impede the industry’s ability to grow. So, other than advancing technology and human ingenuity, how do we account for this ongoing expansion of America’s energy might?
Officially, the maximum winter sea ice extent for 2024 was 15.01 mkm2, reached on 14 March. At an unimpressive “14th lowest” on record, this is astounding news for the winter following the “hottest year on record.” Undeterred, the US government headline writers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) today went for “Arctic sea ice reaches a below-average maximum.” Note the long-term average (1981-2010) is only 15.65 mkm2 and 15.01 is within 2 standard deviations (see below, screencapped 14 March 2024).
Officially, the maximum winter sea ice extent for 2024 was 15.01 mkm2, reached on 14 March. At an unimpressive “14th lowest” on record, this is astounding news for the winter following the “hottest year on record.” Undeterred, the US government headline writers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) today went for “Arctic sea ice reaches a below-average maximum.” Note the long-term average (1981-2010) is only 15.65 mkm2 and 15.01 is within 2 standard deviations (see below, screencapped 14 March 2024).
This is what the sea ice maximum extent of 15.01 mkm2 looked like on 14 March this year:
The year 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850 at 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). This value is 0.15°C (0.27°F) more than the previous record set in 2016. The 10 warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2014–2023). Of note, the year 2005, which was the first year to set a new global temperature record in the 21st century, is now the 12th-warmest year on record. The year 2010, which had surpassed 2005 at the time, now ranks as the 11th-warmest year on record.
According to today’s data from today’s NSIDC report (shown below), the lowest maximum extents were reached in 2015-2018 (14.82-14.52), with 2016 being an especially warm El Nino year. It makes sense that 2017 was the lowest, since it followed the very warm summer of 2016.
However, the max extent for winter 2023 was not far behind, which is odd considering that according to NOAA, warm La Nina conditions didn’t kick in until June 2023. March ice extent for 2023 (now the 5th lowest) was still being influenced by the cold La Nina conditions that prevailed in 2021 and 2022 (2021 now 8th lowest, 2022 now 11th lowest, at 14.88, not shown).
And now 2024 max extent is the 14th lowest, following the warmest global temperature since 1850 was reached in summer of 2023?
Rarely mentioned is that 2005-2007 (weak El Nino/El Nino years) were all below this year’s extent of 15.01 and 2006 and 2007 were both among the 10 lowest extents listed above (2005 was 14.95; 2006 was 14.68, 2007 was 14.77).
It’s almost like Arctic sea ice extent in winter has almost no relationship with global temperatures!
It is not at all evident that the 1987 Montreal Protocol bans on presumed ozone-depleting substances (ODS) like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) materially affected the flat to negative trajectory of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica.
There has been a “continued, significant ozone reduction since 2004, amounting to 26% loss in the core of the ozone hole” (Kessenich et al., 2023).
It is not at all evident that the 1987 Montreal Protocol bans on presumed ozone-depleting substances (ODS) like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) materially affected the flat to negative trajectory of stratospheric ozone over Antarctica.
Massive Antarctic ozone holes – the largest on record in 45+ years of tracking – have been ongoing in the 21st century. In fact, “five of the past eight years overall have exhibited record ozone holes,” with a negative trend resulting in a “26% loss in the core of the ozone hole” from 2004-2022 (Kessenich et al., 2023).
Because the presumed effect of the ODS bans have not been realized in the last 35 years, the scientists who still believe humans are responsible for ozone losses (i.e., 2022 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion) are now saying the ozone recovery from ODS damages “should be on track” to being realized by 2065 – over 40 years from now. This estimate is quite convenient, as most of the scientists formulating these predictions will be dead.
Another new study (Jonas, 2024) points out that ozone holes were observed in the 1960s too. This is well before 1979, the conveniently-chosen “start” year for ozone hole formation.
Also, the data appear to show “the annual ozone minimum at the South Pole is related to lower stratospheric temperature independently of chlorofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide.”
Wallace Manheimer provides the advice in his Daily Caller article Here’s A Better Way For Billionaires To Give Their Money. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. In the second part of this post Dr. Manheimer explains how philantropists and many others have been duped by Net Zero claims.
Many of your fellow billionaires contribute large sums to “cure” a nonexistent climate crisis, falsely naming it an “existential threat.”
They wrongly claim that wind and solar can support modern civilization. For instance, Michael Bloomberg has proudly committed $500 million to eliminate coal. Jeffery Bezos has committed $10 billion to a variety of climate causes and “clean energy” efforts. These billionsdwarf resources available to small groups fighting, for instance, degradation of their land by gigantic wind companies.
Furthermore, these philanthropists direct many dollars into foolishness like Critical Race Theory and a fabricated division of the world into oppressors and the oppressed. In addition to unnecessary climate panic, college campuses harbor harmful notions of “gender fluidity” and dangerous divisiveness among students that manifest as rampant antisemitism and hostility toward the deplorables du jour.
You know this is wrong but, despite your wealth, may feel powerless to stem the societal degradation. You make your own large contributions to hospitals, museums, medical schools, etc. Of course, that is very commendable. Still, you may be looking for other avenues for your generosity – perhaps actions that could not only help people but also challenge the promotion of negative forces.
Well, we have a few suggestions.
Let’s first consider possibilities within the U.S. As a private citizen or group of citizens, you can certainly place ads into major media to expose the fraudulence of scientifically invalid claims of a climate crisis. You could cite the mountain of scientific evidence that contradicts the popular apocalyptic narrative as well as the tens of thousands of prominent scientists attesting that there is no climate crisis. Sources include the CO2 Coalition, Global Warming Petition Projectand CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration. Furthermore, you could partially balance the scales by financially supporting local groups fighting installation of hundreds of gigantic wind turbines, each the size of the Washington Monument; or square miles and miles of solar panels, which will permanently scar their land.
If you’re more inclined to support universities, then we suggest financing a faculty position about Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Lincoln. Their accomplishments and documents are sources of inspiration worldwide. Alternatively, you might consider supporting nuclear science and engineering departments, or initiating an interdepartmental organization, for domestic and international students, in the disciplines of petroleum geology, engineering, and industry.
Internationally, there are many countries that suffer from a lack of energy. The less developed world is not giving up on fossil fuels regardless of pompous calls from the climate industrial complex for them to do so. “I firmly believe that no African country can be asked to halt the exploration of its natural resources, including fossil fuels,” says Kenyan President William Ruto.
Even the head of the United Nations’ most recent climate summit, Sultan Al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, said that use of fossil fuels cannot be discontinued “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Perhaps nobody exhibited resentment of meddling in Third World energy policy more than did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “The colonial mindset hasn’t gone. We are seeing from developed nations that the path that made them developed is being closed to developing nations.”
Lesser developed countries will continue to advance in ways they see fit, employing fossil fuels (and hopefully also nuclear power). China and India are building coal-fired power plants at a furious pace, and Africa and other regions will soon as well. There is no stopping it! Rather than utter hypocritical and futile pieties, let’s help them and, while doing so, also help promote sensible, clean energy technologies developed in the U.S.
Coal promises to be the salvation of more than half of sub-Saharan Africans — the number who labor daily with inadequate supplies of electricity. Cooking, heating and lighting are done with a combination of wood, charcoal and dried animal dung. The World Health Organization estimates that about half a million die each year from the resulting indoor air pollution.
Ultra-super critical coal-fired generating facilities, recently developed in the United States, are cleaner and more efficient than traditional plants. American billionaires investing in these sources of clean, affordable, reliable electricity could save the lives of untold numbers of sub-Saharan Africans.
Nigeria, once an important oil producer, never instituted effective pollution controls and, with the advent of hydrofracturing technology in the U.S., is hardly competitive on the world market. In fact, Exxon Mobil is considering pulling out of the country. The right investments could restore both Nigeria’s environment and oil industry.
There are many new things for rational, public-spirited billionaires to support. Why leave the field to those pursuing the climate fetish and promoting destructive ideologies and fads?
Dr. Wallace Manheimer is a life fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and is a member of the CO2.Coalition. He is the author of more than 150 refereed papers.
Background: Manheimer Steamrolls Net Zero Claims
Accomplished and distinguished physicist Wallace Manheimer published a crushing argument against the rationale for Net Zero claims and policies. His paper is While the Climate Always Has and Always Will Change, There Is no Climate Crisis. published in the Journal of Sustainable Development. In italics with my bolds and added images.
Abstract
The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on relible, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none if these qualities.
This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison.
Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis. Radiation forcing calculations by both skeptics and believers show that the carbon dioxide radiation forcicng is about 0.3% of the incident radiation, far less than other effects on climate. Over the period of human civilization, the temperature has oscillated between quite a few warm and cold periods, with many of the warm periods being warmer than today. During geological times, it and the carbon dioxide level have been all over the place with no correlation between them.
A damning indictment of the Net Zero political project has been made by one of the world’s leading nuclear physicists. In a recently published science paper, Dr. Wallace Manheimer said it would be the end of modern civilisation. Writing about wind and solar power he argued it would be especially tragic “when not only will this new infrastructure fail, but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary”. The stakes, he added, “are enormous”.
Dr. Manheimer holds a physics PhD from MIT and has had a 50-year career in nuclear research, including work at the Plasma Physics Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He has published over 150 science papers. In his view, there is “certainly no scientific basis” for expecting a climate crisis from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the next century or so. He argues that there is no reason why civilisation cannot advance using both fossil fuel power and nuclear power, gradually shifting to more nuclear power.
There is of course a growing body of opinion that points out that the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to all the fashionable green technologies. Electric cars, wind and solar power, hydrogen, battery storage, heat pumps – all have massive disadvantages, and are incapable of replacing existing systems without devastating consequences.
Manheimer points out that before fossil fuel became widely used, energy was provided by people and animals. Because so little energy was produced, “civilisation was a thin veneer atop a vast mountain of human squalor and misery, a veneer maintained by such institutions as slavery, colonialism and tyranny”.
This argument hints at why so many rich, virtue-signalling celebrities argue not just for Net Zero but ‘Real’ Zero, with the banning of all fossil fuel use.
King Charles said in 2009 that the age of consumerism and convenience was over, although the multi-mansion owning monarch presumably doesn’t think such desperate restrictions apply to himself. Manheimer notes that fossil fuel has extended the benefits of civilisation to billions, but its job is not yet complete. “To spread the benefits of modern civilisation to the entire human family would require much more energy, as well as newer sources,” he adds.
In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”.The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.
Perhaps one of the best voices to cast doubt on an approaching climate crisis, suggests the author, is Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid motions:
“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm
Much of Dr. Manheimer’s interesting paper debunks many of the fashionable nostrums surrounding politicised ‘settled’ climate science. It is an excellent read. Discussing some of the contrary opinions that debunk obviously false claims, he says it is “particularly disheartening” to see learned societies make definitive claims when so much contrary information is readily available. He points out that over the last 10,000 years, the Earth has almost certainly been warmer. There have been warmer and colder periods, just like today.
To find the off-narrative information, even Google can be used, Manheimer says – though he does note that the company warns it will not provide information on “claims denying that long-term trends show that the global climate is warming”.
Figure 18. Per capita food production in kcal/(per-capita per day) from 1961 to 2009. Notice that there is a steadily increasing production, with no sign of any ‘slowly escalating but long-enduring global threat to food supplies.’
Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?
NEW YORK – AUGUST 14: (U.S. AND CANADIAN NEWS MAGS OUT UNTIL AUGUST 23, 2003 – ALL MAGAZINE SALES MUST CALL FOR CONFIRMATION OF AVAILABILITY) The sun sets over the Manhattan skyline August 14, 2003 during a major power outage affecting a large part of the north eastern United States and Canada. (Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images)
Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?
No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.
A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14. The front page article had the headline “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.” The gist is that various sources of new electricity demand are rapidly emerging, from data centers to EVs to AI. Demand for electricity is starting to rise, but wind and solar generators can’t be added to the grid fast enough to fulfill this demand. And thus utilities are starting to add large numbers of new natural gas plants.
The Times provides this chart of the recent history of electricity demand in the U.S., with a projection for the next decade:
Demand has been flat for fifteen years, but now looks about to surge. From the Times:
To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas. In Kansas, one utility has postponed the retirement of a coal plant to help power a giant electric-car battery factory.
So why not just build a bunch of new wind turbines and solar panels?
Some utilities say they need additional fossil fuel capacity because cleaner alternatives like wind or solar power aren’t growing fast enough and can be bogged down by delayed permits and snarled supply chains. While a data center can be built in just one year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and a decade to build some of the long-distance power lines they require. Utilities also note that data centers and factories need power 24 hours a day, something wind and solar can’t do alone.
I like that last line about wind and solar not being able to provide “power 24 hours a day” by themselves. Finally, somebody has noticed.
And the Times even has figured out that something about this might be inconsistent with the government’s ridiculous “climate” pledges:
Burning more gas and coal runs counter to President Biden’s pledge to halve the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gases and to generate all of America’s electricity from pollution-free sources such as wind, solar and nuclear by 2035.
Other than that one sentence, the Times piece is noticeably devoid of any quantitative information on what promises have been made by the U.S. as to “greenhouse gas” emissions, and on what progress has been made toward achieving those promises. However, here at Manhattan Contrarian we know that the information to answer those questions can be found easily. So let’s take a look at it.
The two main pledges as to GHG emissions that the U.S. has supposedly made to the international community are:
In the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 (when Barack Obama was President), the U.S. pledged to reduce GHG emissions by 26-28%, from 2005 levels, by 2026.
At a World Climate Summit on April 22 (“Earth Day”), 2021, President Joe Biden pledged to reduce U.S. GHG emissions, from 2005 levels, by 50-52% by 2030.
And how is progress going toward those pledges? The EPA puts out an annual Report titled “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.” The most recent such Report came out on February 14, 2024, and contains information through the year 2022. Here is the summary chart of numbers:
Total U.S. “gross” emissions were 6,341.2 MMTCO2e in 2022, compared to 7,488.2 MMTCO2e in 2005. That’s a decrease of 1147.0 MMTCO2e, or 15.3%. But notice in the two most recent years reported, the emissions went up rather than down.
Today, the pledge date of the Paris Climate Agreement, 2026, is only two years away, and we’re barely half way toward the goal. Moreover, most of the supposed “progress” has been achieved by closing coal power plants and replacing them with natural gas, a process that is now nearly complete. There are almost no coal plants left to close. And now electricity demand is rising and utilities are looking to build more natural gas plants. The 2026 pledge will never be achieved.
And the 2030 pledge is even more ridiculous.
Here is a chart from page 2-29 of EPA’s Report showing trends in U.S. GHG emissions by economic sectors:
As you can see, the large majority of the decreases in emissions achieved since 2005 have been in the electric power sector. A chart with numbers on the same page of the Report says that emissions in the electric power sector went down from 2457.4 MMTCO2e in 2005 to 1574.7 MMTCO2e in 2022. That’s a decline of 882.7 MMTCO2e since 2005 in this sector alone, representing 76.9% of the decline in emissions achieved over all sectors.
But if the remaining annual emissions from the electric power sector are only 1574.7 MMTCO2e, then that is all the further reduction in emissions that can possibly be achieved in that sector, even if all production of electricity by fossil fuels has been completely eliminated. If those 1574.7 MMTCO2e of emissions are eliminated tomorrow by closing down every single fossil fuel power plant, then the 2022 total national emissions of 6341.2 MMTCO2e would go down to 4766.5 MMTCO2e — not even close to the 3744.1 MMTCO2e (that is, 50% of 7488.2) that Biden supposedly committed us to by 2030.
And how about all those other sectors where emissions have barely budged since 2005? Nothing is going to change. Have you noticed any move away from using aviation fuel for airplanes? Something other than fossil fuels for steelmaking? A move toward electric farm equipment? Yes, there are now some all-electric cars — but that trend is also starting to stall out.
On Monday, Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil company — gave a speech in Houston where he said a bunch of obvious things that somehow other oil executives (from companies based in the U.S. and Europe) are unable to say. The speech was widely reported. Here is one report from CBC. Excerpt:
The head of the world’s largest energy company on Monday urged the world to accept the “hard realities” that oil and natural gas will be around for a long time to come and consumption of both sources of energy is likely to grow for at least the next decade or two. . . . “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions,” he said. . . . “All this strengthens the view that peak oil and gas is unlikely for some time to come, let alone 2030,” he said. “No one is betting the farm on that.”
“Abandon the fantasy” — I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published a radical climate agenda rule that would require most public companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions in order to be listed on American stock exchanges.
The Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published a radical climate agenda rule that would require most public companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions in order to be listed on American stock exchanges.
The SEC is tasked with regulating securities – stocks and bonds – not maneuvering a destructive climate agenda behind the backs of Americans’ duly elected representatives in Washington. This rule is a vast overreach beyond the modest powers granted to the SEC under federal law. In fact, twenty-two states have already filed a legal challenge.
American investors are concerned with financial returns and increasing shareholder value, not advancing an ideological climate agenda that stifles American innovation through mountains of paperwork and endless red tape for the American businesses that keep our economy strong.
We request that you use all of the legislative powers at your disposal to strike down the SEC’s climate disclosure rule, including defunding the rule via the appropriations process and overturning it through the Congressional Review Act resolution effort being led by Congressman Bill Huizenga and Senator Tim Scott.
Sincerely,
Read the letter with complete list of signatories here:
“Do we need a clean energy industry that depends on government handouts forever? Yes, if you ascribe to the climate disaster mantra…. Does anyone consider letting market forces drive technology development?”
“Do we need a clean energy industry that depends on government handouts forever? Yes, if you ascribe to the climate disaster mantra…. Does anyone consider letting market forces drive technology development?”
An op-ed in Monday’s Houston Chronicle, “Houston is making a losing bet on fossil fuels,” greeted visitors to CERAWeek. Author Randall Morton attacked oil company CEOs and Houston business leaders for defending a “declining” industry. His opening sentence? “Leaders of the oil and gas industry are in Houston for CERAWeek, grappling with the inevitable decline of the industry.”
Morton then goes after the “economic development leaders at the Greater Houston Partnership [who] are doubling down on this declining industry.” He specifically identifies the GHP’s Energy Transition Initiative – hydrogen and carbon capture – as failed technologies.
Fair enough, but he misses a critical point. These technologies are less about betting on “fading fossil fuels” than they are decisions to suck on the federal teat of subsidies. That reality was acknowledged by Energy Secretary Jenifer Granholm in her CERAWeek talk when she told the audience, “Many of you are taking advantage of those irresistible tax credits. Good!” (No mention from any federal officials about the deficit spending and monetary inflation used to pay for it.)
Subsidies Are for Losers
Changing human behavior, which is what subsidies are designed to accomplish, apparently doesn’t sway Morton. Maybe he wants even more government money for his favorite technologies, but he never tells us what those might be. He fails to understand an Economics 101 point: The market picks winners, leaving losers for government. And losers they have proven to be to date, not unlike synthetic fuels of a half century ago.
“Inflation Reduction Act”
There seemed to be no shortage of taxpayer money being thrown at green energy technologies, based on the legislation passed in 2021 and 2022. First, there was the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, then it was the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The former included a laundry list of favorite climate investments to help localities deal with the clean energy transition including $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, $5 billion for zero-emission and clean buses, $2.5 billion for clean ferries, and $65 billion for clean energy transmission.
The irresponsibly named IRA bill was a trove of subsidies and tax credits for clean energy. The Congressional Budget Office at the time of its passage estimated the bill to cost $391 billion between 2022 and 2031. An analysis by investment firm Goldman Sachs put the cost at $1.2 trillion, while a money manager estimated it at $1.4 trillion. Even the CBO has upped its initial cost estimate to $660 billion through 2031 and increased it to $786 billion for 2024-2033. Many of these subsidies, which originally had time limits, have had them removed—allowing subsidies for the life of projects, further bloating the cost of the bill.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote about the CBO’s revised estimates. They included two charts that dramatically show how much the various categories of spending are projected to increase and how those spending categories will spread over the forecast periods.
The Inflation Reduction Act conservatively has increased by nearly two-thirds since it was enacted in 2022.
You will note the magnitude of the spending increases. They will be even greater according to Goldman Sachs. For categories of green energy spending like electric vehicles, energy efficiency, and carbon capture & clean fuel, they will be much greater in 2031 and 2033.
Many of the subsidies in the IRA will continue for well after the 10-year cost assessment period inflating the overall cost of the bill.
In the world of industrial policy, which the Biden administration is engaged in, the question becomes should one reject the government’s free money? For Morton, no one should succumb to the siren song of subsidies, even if they were enacted to prompt these specific investments. Shunning the subsidies would open companies and CEOs to attacks from activists and politicians for not being patriotic and supporting the government’s effort to solve the existential climate crisis. And they could be slammed by shareholders for accelerating their company sunsets.
Do we need a “clean” energy industry? How about one that depends on government handouts forever? Yes, if you ascribe to the climate disaster mantra. How many years do we have before the world ends? This fear is what is driving the shoveling of taxpayer money into corporate coffers as long as they make the “correct” investments. Does anyone consider letting market forces drive technology development?
The Coal Question
Some of the claims Morton made were superficial at best. He tried to link Big Oil to King Coal. He was using the decline in U.S. coal production and the reduction in coal employment as the lesson for oil’s future.
Our coal production has declined as shown in the chart below, but as you can see in the second chart, our coal exports are up and we continue to import coal at about the same level as we did in the late 1990s. Coal’s decline was because we are blessed with huge natural gas resources that create less pollution.
Our coal use is down due to soaring natural gas production and lower cost to generate electricity.
Coal exports continue growing and our imports are up as global coal markets are posting annual records with no end in sight.
Final Word
Energy has turned into a subsidy play, something for everyone. Yes, so-called Big Oil is at the table. One can join Randall Morton in calling out hydrogen and CCSU as the wrong approach. But why not consider ending similar government favor for wind, solar, and batteries? Do consumers and taxpayers–and the freedom to choose–matter?
Energy expert Allen Brooks writes at Energy Musings, from which this article is adapted.
Nothing strikes as much fear through the establishment’s fact-checkers and hate-vanquishers as the rise of ‘populism’. Democratic backlashes against dominant ideologies and policy agendas are the natural and inevitable reaction to the intransigence of those who advance them.
Nothing strikes as much fear through the establishment’s fact-checkers and hate-vanquishers as the rise of ‘populism’. Democratic backlashes against dominant ideologies and policy agendas are the natural and inevitable reaction to the intransigence of those who advance them. These reactions, which look likely to sweep many populist parties to power in elections this year, are seen by incumbents as the re-emergence of ‘dark historical forces’, but our leaders have no other words for the challenges to their authority than ‘far-Right’. The reason they cannot grasp what’s really going on – indeed, one of the causes of their unpopularity – is that they’ve placed too much faith in what has turned out to be really bad science.
According to the narrative of anointed pundits, tractors on their way to Europe’s capital cities and the EU Parliament are like so many Nazi tanks rolling across the continent. The EU Parliamentary election is at risk of a ‘far-Right takeover’ as polling shows voters beginning to reject the liberal consensus. This paranoid fantasy is not wholly without a basis in fact – the benighted really are changing the political landscape. Following Giorgia Meloni’s 2022 victory in Italy, Geert Wilders’s PVV became the largest party in the Netherlands last year but has been unable to form a Government. Since 2020, AfD has doubled its polling to around 20%, pushing Germany’s SPD and Greens into third and fourth places. The German Government is now contemplating banning the party, so bereft of ideas is it about how to counter its criticisms in the public square. France’s longstanding spectre haunting global blobists, Marine Le Pen’s party, would, according to recent polling, win a majority of seats in the National Assembly if an election were held tomorrow.
According to the establishment view, science is at loggerheads with the populism now sweeping across Europe. But to pit science against ideology in this way is false. Science has been used to legitimise numerous contemporary political agendas, invoked in the same way that God used to be to legitimise a particular political platform. Most notably, ‘climate science’, which is invoked by increasingly remote elites struggling to overcome yawning democratic deficits claim that ‘saving the planet’ is in the best interests of their electorates. Yet, to those being forced to pay the price for these economically ruinous policies, it’s obvious that the Net Zero agenda is, at root, an ideological crusade designed to advance the interests of wealthy elites. And many are now wondering if the ‘climate change’ we’re constantly being warned about will be as devastating as the policies designed to mitigate its effect, which seem to require the suspension of democracy, the transformation of society and the draconian regulation of lifestyles insofar as they require energy.
As politicians and others have met resistance to their agendas based on ‘unimpeachable science’, they have sought an explanation. The answer they found is epitomised by a 2011 article by liberal science warrior Chris Mooney, who helpfully set out ‘The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science’. Neuroscientists and social psychologists, explained Mooney, had identified differences in the structure of brains owned by liberals and conservatives, which made the latter more prone to ‘motivated reasoning’ and therefore to ideology, whereas liberals were biased only towards truth. This explained why Republicans were more sceptical of climate change then their Democrat counterparts who obediently recognised the authority of ‘the scientific consensus’. Mooney’s essay, which followed his 2005 book, The Republican War on Science, was itself worked into a book in 2012, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.
Mooney’s work, born in the pre-Obama era of ‘muscular atheism’ and a regrouping of Left-of-centre ideas around scientism, though largely inconsequential, marked the completion of cognitive and behavioural scientists’ entry into the political sphere. Only somebody with insufficiently developed neural circuits – a.k.a. Republicans – could disagree with climate propaganda, or they were funded by Big Oil, or both. It didn’t really matter, because Science had spoken.
But Mooney’s confidence was misplaced. Whereas the scientific consensus on climate change had been broadly (and falsely) reported as being as indubitable as ‘basic physics’, the new lab-coated recruits of this political, and increasingly cultural war, could not claim anything so tangible. First, studies confirmed that academic psychology was experiencing a ‘replication crisis’ – barely a third of published science in the field could be reproduced experimentally. Second, psychological science was revealed to be dominated by Left-wing scientists, with measurable impacts on peer-review. Conservative scientists were less likely to be published. A soft science – and perhaps the softest science – was now being used to supposedly explain why more people didn’t believe in hard science, although, to complicate things, the hard science wasn’t that hard after all.
In Britain, where politics was less polarised under a suffocating Blairism, this naked scientism had a much easier ride into the establishment. A consensus on climate change – and pretty much everything else – had formed in Westminster, excluding any inconvenient influences from politics. In a 2010 report, jointly produced by the Cabinet Office and the Institute for Government, Cabinet Secretary, then Sir, now Lord Gus O’Donnell, who had commissioned it, wrote in the foreword:
Many of the biggest policy challenges we are now facing… will only be resolved if we are successful in persuading people to change their behaviour, their lifestyles or their existing habits.
The report, citing “major advances in understanding the influences on our behaviours” argued that “influencing behaviour is central to public policy”, and that in tackling “crime, obesity or environmental sustainability, behavioural approaches offer a potentially powerful new set of tools”.
But there had been no development in the behavioural sciences – they remained mired in the depths of the replication crises and obvious ideological bias. The only change that occurred was a dim view of individuals’ competences had developed and become fashionable within policy circles, displacing a view that had hitherto constrained technocratic paternalism. Barely a year following its publication, Cass Sunstein’s 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness had become the British Establishment’s operating manual. The Nudge Unit, properly known as the Behavioural Insights Team, was born.
After all, something had been lacking in public life since before even Blair’s triumphant arrival at Downing Street and politicians struggled to put their finger on it. In the early days of New Labour, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott declared that the state’s performance would now be measured by a ‘quality of life barometer’. Even the amount of birdsong – a metric of ecological sustainability and subjective wellbeing – would be measured. Sadly for Prescott, the plans for happiness were shelved in favour of a ‘War on Terror’, and so it was a touchy-feely David ‘hug-a-husky’ Cameron who finally seized the therapeutic initiative. He had convened a Quality of Life policy group in 2007 to investigate the policies required to make us adjust our behaviour to make life better for everyone, e.g. use less fossil fuels. And having taken office in 2010, the nudgers were the very group to help him make the ‘difficult’ choices required to save the planet.
The coalition ‘greenest Government ever’ brought together the two opposition parties that had convinced themselves they were planet savers. But the strongest constituency in Britain (ever) had a very different idea about what was lacking in politics. Worse, the Leave vote having won, no less an earthquake in the form of Donald Trump sent a second panic through the anointed classes. How could the nudgers, either side of the Atlantic, have got it so wrong? In the wake of these catastrophes, psychologists set to work developing new hypotheses to explain the public’s lack of gratitude.
Then, the most curious intervention from psychologists in the years between the Referendum and the Covid pandemic came from the green quarters. In 2018, an obscure 2016 paper by clinical psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon came to the attention of climate protesters. The paper called for the creation of a “climate emergency movement”, which would “lead the public into emergency mode”. This “mode is the mode of human psychological functioning that occurs when individuals or groups respond optimally to existential or moral emergencies”, claimed the psychologist. Thus, having had the ‘truth’ of the ‘climate emergency’ explained to them, the public would rise up and force governments to act to save the planet. Klein-Salamon’s hypothesis spawned Extinction Rebellion and its franchises, and Greta Thunberg’s Schools Strike movement. But the public, in their millions, stayed at home. Rather than rising up, they became impatient with the failure to clear the mere dozens of protesters from the streets.
A more successful intervention by social psychologists was the infamous survey which claimed that 97% of academic papers on climate change supported the consensus position. Cook et al.’s 2013 study was routinely cited by Obama as representing the “overwhelming judgement of science”. It’s authors believed, like Klein-Salamon, that the public would be more receptive to the ‘climate emergency’ scaremongering if they knew it had the backing of most climate scientists – a contentious hypothesis of science communication known as the Gateway Belief Model. “An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public support for climate policy,” explains the paper’s introduction. The paper was not accurate, but it created an article of faith around which its adherents could organise their arguments. It was political communication, not science communication.
But how effective has this psychological ‘science’ been?
It’s beginning to look like the advice of behavioural ‘scientists’ about how to engage the public on Net Zero and other policies is a bit duff. Big promises are made by these academics about their ability to influence the public. But what are they really capable of achieving?
Extremely limited evidence underpins behavioural scientists’ claims. The classic example of ‘nudge’, for example, is the discovery that the image of a fly painted onto a urinal helps men to take better aim, thereby leaving conveniences in better condition. Away from the toilet, psychologists discoveries are difficult to quantify in wider society. Some psychologists, observe their critics, have used exotic and inappropriate statistical methods to report greater effects than can realistically be detected and expressed in conventional terms. Even in the lab, an attempt to quantify the Gateway Belief Model found that consensus messaging yielded just a +1.7% change in support for climate policies. This result was later disputed by other researchers in the field, who conversely found ‘reactance’ in studies of consensus messaging – an awareness of being manipulated, which increased rather than overcame polarisation.
It is a peculiar debate between academics on the green-Left about how best to manipulate climate-sceptic conservatives, rather than have it out with their enemy in the democratic open. And this cod-science’s hostility to democracy and the hoi polloi, which is conceived of as an unthinking, malleable mass, is reproduced in countless governments’ policies and communications. Perhaps then, they have not merely failed to manufacture consent but have actually helped to turn electorates against their would-be masters.
It would be too much to say that the global ‘populist backlash’ is wholly caused by green blob head-shrinking. But behaviourists’ work seems more intended to legitimise intransigence and to justify draconian policy to politicians than to win over the public, whose reaction to it does not require a PhD to understand. Many millions are poured by governments into research which hasn’t merely produced some ‘reactance’ but ultimately looks set to be near-terminal for the green cause, if progressive governments and politicians suffer the catastrophic defeats at the ballot box that many predict. If the intention was to win over the public, then the psychologists are even more out of touch than their clients. Academic psychology epitomises, rather than rescues, elite intransigence.
People can be hectored and punished into lockdowns and forced by high prices to reduce their energy usage, and democracy can be slowly eroded. But academic psychologists have been unable to turn insight about men peeing on flies into preventing a pissed off public reciprocating official sentiments.
When presented with actual choice, rather than one dictated by ‘choice architects’, the public do not choose either heat pumps or EVs, nor green technocratic globalists. Britain, for the moment, looks set to buck the trend sweeping the rest of the planet. But that’s partly because successive Conservative governments have placed far too much faith in propaganda informed by behavioural science, just like their progressive counterparts abroad. There’s a lesson here for Keir Starmer – but you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll ignore it.
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Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices.
An influx of cheap Chinese solar panels is forcing local manufacturers out of the market.
Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices.
Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed. The Telegraph has the story.
The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve. This sounds like great news for the EU, which recently pledged to triple its solar power capacity to 672 gigawatts by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to 200 large nuclear power stations.
In reality, though, it has caused a crisis. Under the EU’s “Green Deal Industrial Plan”, 40pc of the panels to be spread across European fields and roofs were meant to be made by European manufacturers.
However, the influx of cheap Chinese alternatives means that instead of tooling up, manufacturers are pulling out of the market or becoming insolvent. Last year 97pc of the solar panels installed across Europe came from China.
The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) has warned of a looming “wave of bankruptcies” including Dutch panel producer Exasun and Austrian module manufacturer Energetic.
ESMC secretary general Johan Lindahl has appealed for “urgent” measures to safeguard the sector, calling for the EU to buy up all those unwanted solar panels to keep his members in business.
The best estimates suggest that about 90 gigawatts worth of solar panels are stashed around Europe. That solar power capacity roughly equates to 25 large nuclear power stations the size of Hinkley Point C.
The crisis is extending back to China too, where Longi, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, is set to slash its workforce by almost a third as the industry struggles with oversupply.
The sheer scale of the problem was revealed in a recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
It warned that although the world was installing at record rates of around 400 gigawatts a year, manufacturing capacity was growing far faster.
By the end of this year solar panel factories, mostly in China, will be capable of churning out 1,100 gigawatts a year – nearly three times more than the world is ready for. For comparison, that’s about 11 times the UK’s entire generating capacity.
For some solar power installers, it’s a dream come true. Sagar Adani is building solar farms across India’s deserts, with 54 in operation and another 12 being built.
A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon.
A well-funded environmentalist group played a key role in the push to remove dams in the Pacific Northwest’s Klamath River ahead of premature deaths of thousands of salmon.
American Rivers — an organization that has received millions of dollars from left-of-center environmentalist grantmaking organizations in recent years — was “the orchestrator of the Klamath dams removal project,” according to Siskiyou News, a local outlet in Northern California. The drawdowns of several reservoirs pursuant to the scheduled removal of four dams in the river preceded the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of young salmon in the waterway, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The push to remove the dams is often marketed as beneficial for salmon, as proponents of the plan — including American Rivers — haveargued that the dams obstruct the natural movements of salmon as well as their access to habitat. However, weeks after beginning the process to remove one of the systems scheduled for deconstruction on the river, a large number of the 830,000 young salmon released into the river on Feb. 26 had died as of March 2, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). (RELATED: White House Won’t Confirm If Biden Will Visit East Palestine, Says He’s ‘Taking It Very Seriously’)
CDFW officials attributed the mass-death to gas bubble disease, which is caused by changes in water pressure, and stated that the changes in pressure driving the deaths was attributable to old dam infrastructure that is slated for removal. The agency further stated that water turbidity and dissolved oxygen levels do not appear to have contributed to the mass-death.
The young salmon that died travelled through a tunnel involved in the dam infrastructure that had previously not been accessible to the fish before officials altered the flow of water through the system as part of the removal process, Peter Tira, an information officer for the CDFW, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The deaths were primarily a function of where the fish were released into the water, and the outcome, though unfortunate, is a learning opportunity for stakeholders who remain committed to making the Klamath River a free-flowing cold water river system again in the long-term, Tira told the DCNF.
Water from the Klamath River mixes with water from a different body in northern California. (Photo via the office of Republican California Rep. Doug LaMalfa)
Dead fish are pictured along the Klamath River system. (Photo via the office of Republican California Rep. Doug LaMalfa)
American Rivers is also closely involved with the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit coalition that is playing a key role in the removals in accordance with its stated mission to “remove the Klamath hydroelectric dams and restore a free-flowing river.” Along with other organizations involved with the KRRC, American Rivers has appointed several officials to the group’s board of directors.
However, some officials and environmental policy experts are not buying the government’s explanation for the mass-death of salmon, asserting instead that it is clear that the removal of the dams set conditions for the mass-death.
“The risk of gas bubbles is well known, so the fact that one million salmon were killed is a failure of government staff to prevent their death. Rather than act as this is the fault of the dam, government staff should acknowledge their mistake and learn from it,” Todd Myers, the director of the Washington Policy Center’s Center for the Environment, told the DCNF. “It is unfortunately typical that when government actions harm the environment, agencies spend more time deflecting blame than addressing the problem or being held accountable.”
Regardless of whether or not dam removal is the right decision, poor planning or execution of the removals should not be excused, Myers emphasized.
Republican California Rep. Doug LaMalfa, whose district includes the river and a is a longtime opponent of removing the dams, agreed with Myers’ assessment of the causes for the deaths.
LaMalfa has been warning removal proponents “from day one” that moving to hastily remove the dams without a comprehensive plan to handle second-order effects could be catastrophic, he told the DCNF. He believes many proponents of removing dams are mostly interested in adding metaphorical “trophies” to their shelves rather than devising and implementing effective plans to remove the dams responsibly.
“This is about political scores. People like me and others have been warning them for two decades that when you do this and you have no plan for the silt — and they don’t have one — they have been exposed that they have no plan. They’re just doing it, doing it on the fly,” LaMalfa told the DCNF. “We see the destruction with the flume that has gone down the whole river and out in the ocean. I understand it’s even moved all the way up towards Crescent City, which is many miles up the coast.”
American Rivers, meanwhile, does not appear to have publicly addressed the high volume of salmon deaths in the river, despite having advocated for the removal of the Klamath River dams for years. American Rivers did not respond to requests for comment.
Water samples collected by locals demonstrate the condition of water extracted from affected segments of the Klamath River. (Photo via the office of Republican California Rep. Doug LaMalfa)
There are still several other dams on the river that are set to come down as part of the removal project. Many property owners are seeing the values of their property along the water drop because of changes driven by the dam removal, LaMalfa told the DCNF.
“People with homes in the area are seeing their home values drop, even in one case their actual house might drop into the canyon because the water table has shifted,” LaMalfa told the DCNF. “And people with loans on their homes no longer have the value to keep their equity up.”
For its part, KRRC has established a mitigation fund to pay locals who may be adversely impacted by the consequences of dam removal.
“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) manages the Fall Creek Fish Hatchery,” which is the facility that released the ill-fated salmon into the waterway, a KRRC spokesperson told the DCNF. “The Department determined the mortality of salmon fry was caused by remaining dam infrastructure, not by dam removal. Fortunately, that infrastructure will be removed along with the rest of the dam this year. In the meantime, CDFW will be trucking fish around the dam to avoid this occurring with upcoming releases from the hatchery. “
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