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.
Back in April the Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed on a time frame for phasing out coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s. There was just one problem: Only the U.S. and Germany are among the world’s top ten coal consumers.
The G7 virtue signaling came in the wake of the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in December 2023 and a UN warning that “excuses” for failing to take bold action on climate change were “not acceptable.”
Back in April the Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed on a time frame for phasing out coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s. There was just one problem: Only the U.S. and Germany are among the world’s top ten coal consumers.
The G7 virtue signaling came in the wake of the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in December 2023 and a UN warning that “excuses” for failing to take bold action on climate change were “not acceptable.”
What ought to be “not acceptable” is the fact that, except for a few Caribbean islands, European nations already have the world’s highest electricity costs.
The UN counts as members both China and India, which together consume nearly 70% of the world’s coal production. Neither is a member of the G7. Nor does the “bold” G7 commitment explain how their self-imposed coal ban – which they want to impose on poor African nations – even matters.
FutureCoal (formerly the World Coal Association) CEO Michelle Manook mused that the G7 official communique was “unclear in which they seek to achieve,” since “many of the G7 countries do not rely on coal for baseload electricity,” while Germany and Japan “have publicly stated that they still need coal to keep the lights on.”
Manook’s organization says that, instead of bashing coal, world leaders must embrace a balanced, pragmatic, and responsible approach to energy policy. German finance minister Christian Lindner in late 2023 dismissed the government’s aim to phase out coal by 2030. Without coal, admitted Lindner, the nation’s power grid will likely face serious problems.
By contrast, Japan, which operates the world’s most efficient coal power fleet, had avoided setting any firm date for ending its reliance on coal – even as it cautiously restarts its nuclear energy industry over a decade after the Fukushima disaster.
The EU’s spurious commitment to abandoning coal was made as climate activists burned photos of G7 leaders whose nations were falling far short of Net Zero targets that are artificial numbers created with little regard for short-term human well-being or of the hardships of energy poverty.
EU nations are still recovering from an energy inflation rate that exceeded 40% in June 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many households and businesses are still struggling with the cost of energy. None of that mattered to the well-heeled, naive green activists.
In another virtue signal, the EU nations in May unanimously agreed to leave the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), an international agreement that protects energy investments. The 1998 treaty allows firms and investors to sue governments whose anti-energy policies hurt profits. The right to challenge government policies, however, covers investments in hydropower, solar, wind, and other clean energy sources as well as fossil fuels.
The ECT, signed by 50 nations after the fall of the Soviet Union, protects European energy firms with fossil fuel assets in former Soviet states against risks to their investments and trade, such as having their assets seized or contracts breached. Signatories include nations in Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Once again, the coal killers prefer cutting off their noses to save face the moment the Greta Thunberg brigades storm the barricades. But how can industry trust nations that spuriously abrogate contracts?
Meanwhile, in the United States, the government that believes throwing money at a problem just announced $428 million in Department of Energy grants for 14 federal-linked projects in 15 U.S. “coal communities” to advance the domestic manufacturing of “clean energy” products.
These heavily subsidized projects are said to possibly leverage over $500 million in private sector investment into small- and medium-sized manufacturers and create over 1,900 jobs in communities with decommissioned coal facilities. The projects are intended to address five key supply chains – grid components, batteries, low-carbon materials, clean power generation, and energy efficiency products.
The largest subsidy, $87 million, goes to Mainspring Energy Inc. in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, to build a manufacturing facility to produce 1,000 linear generators that can run on any gaseous fuel. The DOE press release assures us that at least 80% of the 291 construction-related jobs will “seek to be unionized,” and that the facility will create “600 operations positions.”
FutureCoal’s Manook was speaking up for the world’s poor in saying that, “The world needs wider apolitical leadership beyond the G7 to engage the Global South in investing in all technology solutions, including abated coal, to lower global emissions. If the G7 or other forums choose to weigh in on these debates, then they must adopt a pragmatic, responsible fuel and technology-agnostic position supporting all nations’ sovereign rights.”
Manook went further, stating that, “These forums should recognize FutureCoal’s Sustainable Coal Stewardship roadmap, which showcases the existing abatement and commercial opportunities that enable the entire coal value chain to mitigate emissions.” Known technologies, she added, can abate up to 99% of coal emissions during combustion.
One of those nations is South Africa, where about 90,000 people work in coal mining and thousands more work at coal-fired power plants. Multiple South African communities and local municipalities depend on the coal economy – just as many Americans and British did until their governments began to wage war on the world’s oldest high-energy fuel.
Even anti-coal Bloomberg admits that labor unions and communities in eastern South Africa, which supplies almost all the nation’s electricity and coal, are not happy with the Europe-influenced government decision to promote labor-killing wind and solar energy projects on the other side of the country.
South Africans are aware that access to electricity is fundamental to fulfilling basic social needs, driving economic growth, and fueling human development – it is the pathway out of poverty toward prosperity. Areas without high-quality electricity are home to over 8 million South Africans, and a 2020 study showed a direct correlation between income levels and electricity access.
The study concluded that “efficient and effective financing and investment climate alone are not enough to warrant energy security, but right policies, good governance, and institutional quality are necessary to ensure that the entire nation has adequate access to electricity.
Shuttering coal mines and closing coal-fired power plants in a nation – let alone an entire continent – woefully short of “sustainability” in electricity access is at worst the new face of a colonialist superiority complex, at best merely a panicked response to local political pressures.
As Afrobarometer’s Abel Oyuke put it, “Access to electricity is fundamental to opportunity in this age. It’s the light that children study by; the energy that allows an idea to be transformed into a real business. It’s the lifeline for families to meet their most basic needs. And it’s the connection that’s needed to plug Africa into the grid of the global economy. You’ve got to have power.”
Nigeria’s Dr. Justice ‘Mine Derefaka agrees that achieving universal access to energy in Africa is “paramount.” While South Africa’s coal extension may seem counterintuitive to some, he adds, “it is a necessary hedge to maintain stability and ensure a responsible, just transition that leaves no one behind.”
Likely you’ve heard the recent and previous warnings from Mann and friends about the ocean conveyor belt (including the Gulf Stream) slowing down and freezing us all. With the COP gathering next month, something scary must be proclaimed, and Global Freezing is it, replacing Global Boiling earlier this year. The declaration signed by Mann and 43 other scientists was Open Letter by Climate Scientists to the Nordic Council of Ministers, Reykjavik, October 2024.
Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, commented on this movie: “I don’t recall a lot except that the whole science was incredibly wrong,”, “one does not get an ice age out of global warming.”
Likely you’ve heard the recent and previous warnings from Mann and friends about the ocean conveyor belt (including the Gulf Stream) slowing down and freezing us all. With the COP gathering next month, something scary must be proclaimed, and Global Freezing is it, replacing Global Boiling earlier this year. The declaration signed by Mann and 43 other scientists was Open Letter by Climate Scientists to the Nordic Council of Ministers, Reykjavik, October 2024. Preface:
“We, the undersigned, are scientists working in the field of climate research and feel it is urgent to draw the attention of the Nordic Council of Ministers to the serious risk of a major ocean circulation change in the Atlantic. A string of scientific studies in the past few years suggests that this risk has so far been greatly underestimated. Such an ocean circulation change would have devastating and irreversible impacts especially for Nordic countries, but also for other parts of the world.”
“Given the increasing evidence for a higher risk of an AMOC collapse, we believe it is of critical importance that Arctic tipping point risks, in particular the AMOC risk, are taken seriously in governance and policy. Even with a medium likelihood of occurrence, given that the outcome would be catastrophic and impacting the entire world for centuries to come, we believe more needs to be done to minimize this risk.”
The Warning is based on Fear, not Facts
1. The AMOC has been stable for the last four decades.
The potential weakeningof the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in response to anthropogenic forcing, suggested by climate models, is at the forefront of scientific debate. A key AMOC component, the Florida Current (FC), has been measured using submarine cables between Florida and the Bahamas at 27°N nearly continuously since 1982. A decrease in the FC strength could be indicative of the AMOC weakening. Here, we reassess motion-induced voltages measured on a submarine cable and reevaluate the overall trend in the inferred FC transport. We find that the cable record beginning in 2000 requires a correction for the secular change in the geomagnetic field. This correction removes a spurious trend in the record, revealing that the FC has remained remarkably stable. The recomputed AMOC estimates at ~26.5°N result in a significantly weaker negative trend than that which is apparent in the AMOC time series obtained with the uncorrected FC transports.
Fig. 1: The Western Boundary Time Series observing network in the Straits of Florida.
The network consists of the submarine telecommunications cable between West Palm Beach and Grand Bahama Island (cyan curve), ship sections across the Florida Current (FC) at 27°N with in situ measurements at nine stations (white circles), two bottom pressure gauges on both sides of the FC at 27°N (yellow stars), and along-track satellite altimetry measurements (magenta dotted line). CTD Conductivity-Temperature-Depth, LADCP Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, XBT expendable bathythermograph.
Fig. 6: Florida Current (FC) volume transports corrected for the secular change in the Earth’s Magnetic Field (EMF).
a The time series of the daily FC volume transport: (blue) not corrected for the secular change in the EMF, (red) corrected for the secular change in the EMF. The linear trends of the FC transport not corrected and corrected for the EMF are shown by the blue and red lines, respectively. b The differences between the cable and ship section transport for the cable data (blue squares) not corrected for the EMF and (red circles) corrected for the EMF. The linear trends of the differences (ΔT) not corrected and corrected for the EMF are shown by the blue and red lines, respectively.
Daily transport estimates from the cable record (black; prior to corrections applied in this study); estimates from the Pegasus (orange diamonds) and Pegasus in dropsonde mode (Pegasus-DM; light blue circles) sections; estimates from the dropsonde sections (blue circles); and estimates from the Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP) sections (red circles). The linear trends for 1982–2023, 1982–1998, and 2000–2023 periods are shown by the orange, cyan, and magenta lines, respectively.
2. Paleo records show past AMOC changes due to seafloor shifts not climate change.
The global meridional overturning circulation (GMOC) is important for redistributing heat and, thus, determining global climate, but what determines its strength over Earth’s history remains unclear. On the basis of two sets of climate simulations for the Paleozoic characterized by a stable GMOC direction, our research reveals that GMOC strength primarily depends on continental configuration while climate variations have a minor impact. In the mid- to high latitudes, the volume of continents largely dictates the speed of westerly winds, which in turn controls upwelling and the strength of the GMOC. At low latitudes, open seaways also play an important role in the strength of the GMOC. An open seaway in one hemisphere allows stronger westward ocean currents, which support higher sea surface heights (SSH) in this hemisphere than that in the other. The meridional SSH gradient drives a stronger cross-equatorial flow in the upper ocean, resulting in a stronger GMOC. This latter finding enriches the current theory for GMOC.
On the basis of a series of simulations for the Paleozoic, we find that the GMOC is primarily controlled by:
freshwater input into ocean;
wind-driven Ekman pumping in the midlatitudes, and
SH anomaly in low latitudes.
The latter two factors are especially important for the strength of the GMOC and are highly related to continental configuration. Our major conclusions find validation through Paleozoic climate simulations using the HadCM3 model by Valdes et al. (53, 67) and a non-IPCC class model, FOAM, by Pohl et al. (52) (figs. S17 and S18). This last study by Pohl et al. (52) also pointed out the unfortunate absence of proxy data for validating the direction and magnitude of the Paleozoic GMOC.
Controlling factors for the global meridional overturning circulation
Fig. 5. Schematic of controlling factors for the GMOC during the Paleozoic. The schematic is based on the situation for 400 Ma. Three main factors are shown, the less net precipitation in the south SH; the strong westerlies, ocean surface current, and Ekman upwelling in the midlatitude region in NH; the SSH anomaly and associated pressure anomaly in the low-latitude region.
Although there has been tremendous interest in understanding the mechanisms that govern the MOC, surface topography in the westerlies region and the presence of an open seaway in the low-latitude region were previously largely overlooked. Our study thus draws attention to how the evolution of continents in these two regions affects the strength of MOC. Our study indicates that the traditional theory for MOC misses an important element, that is, the influence of a low-latitude seaway. Previous studies either did not have such a seaway (1, 34, 43) or had a partial seaway that connected the present-day Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean only (32–34). Their focus was mostly on the strength of the AMOC and mechanism invoked generally involved freshwater and salinity only (32, 33, 68), while as demonstrated above, a fully open low-latitude seaway affects the MOC in a fundamentally different way.
3. AMOC alarm presupposes Arctic “Amplification” of Global Warming
Activist scientists claim the Arctic is warming up to five times faster than lower latitudes. This is based on models projecting scarce temperature records great distances over the Arctic ocean drift sea ice. There are three flaws in the arctic warming claim (from Arctic “Amplification” Not What You Think)
a. Arctic Amplification is an artifact of Temperature Anomalies
Clive Best provides this animation of recent monthly temperature anomalies which demonstrates how most variability in anomalies occur over northern continents.
b. Arctic Surface Stations Records Show Ordinary Warming
Locations of 118 arctic stations examined in this study and compared to observations at 50 European stations whose records averaged 200 years and in a few cases extend to the early 1700s.
c. Arctic Warmth Comes from Meridional Heat Transport, not CO2
4. Hypothesis that rising CO2 will collapse the AMOC is flawed.
The “AMOC is collapsing” narrative goes like this:
Ocean circulation is driven by density differences, which depend on the salinity and the temperature of the water. Cold, salty water is heavier than warm, fresh water. When flowing water reaches Greenland, it becomes very cold and salty, causing it to sink and flow south, where the water warms and rises closer to the surface again. Some compare the process to a conveyor belt going around and around.
This graphic shows a highly simplified schematic of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) against a backdrop of the sea surface temperature trend since 1993 from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (https://climate.copernicus.eu/). Image credit: Ruijian Gou. > High res figure.
Changing the salinity of the water messes up the way the water flows. That’s why the melting of the Greenland ice sheets is a big problem: It’s injecting a ton of freshwater into the ocean far north, where the water is usually very salty. The more freshwater, the weaker the circulation—not to mention that atmospheric temperatures are also increasing, which also makes water lighter. The new study shows that if the density dynamics change enough, the conveyor belt will eventually stop moving, aka “collapse.” That means it won’t transport any water, saline, or heat across the globe.
So the scenario is that supposed amplified Arctic warming will cause iceberg calving and glacial melting, and the freshwater will slow and eventually stop the AMOC. Firstly, the above study shows seafloor configuration has greater impact than salinity changing. Secondly, the spread of freshwater is not so simple.
Anthropogenic warming is projected to enhance Arctic freshwater exportation into the Labrador Sea. This extra freshwater may weaken deep convection and contribute to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) decline. Here, by analyzing an unprecedented high-resolution climate model simulation for the 21st century, we show that the Labrador Current strongly restricts the lateral spread of freshwater from the Arctic Ocean into the open ocean such that the freshwater input has a limited role in weakening the overturning circulation. In contrast, in the absence of a strong Labrador Current in a climate model with lower resolution, the extra freshwater is allowed to spread into the interior region and eventually shut down deep convection in the Labrador Sea. Given that the Labrador Sea overturning makes a significant contribution to the AMOC in many climate models, our results suggest that the AMOC decline during the 21st century could be overestimated in these models due to the poorly resolved Labrador Current.
One way to warn of forthcoming critical transitions in Earth system components is using observations to detect declining system stability. It has also been suggested to extrapolate such stability changes into the future and predict tipping times. Here, we argue that the involved uncertainties are too high to robustly predict tipping times. We raise concerns regarding
(i) the modeling assumptions underlying any extrapolation of historical results into the future,
(ii) the representativeness of individual Earth system component time series, and
(iii) the impact of uncertainties and preprocessing of used observational datasets, with focus on nonstationary observational coverage and gap filling.
We explore these uncertainties in general and specifically for the example of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. We argue that even under the assumption that a given Earth system component has an approaching tipping point, the uncertainties are too large to reliably estimate tipping times by extrapolating historical information.
“The conclusions of this study are certainly in line with my understanding of the current state of the art,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and professor at Columbia University and the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Schmidt was not involved in the new work, but has extensively researched climate variability and systems like AMOC.
“I have not been impressed by previous or recent efforts to predict upcoming tipping points in either AMOC or ice sheets — there is more going on than just patterns in time series and we still don’t have sufficiently complex and calibrated models to have a robust idea of what will happen,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s GISS.
Footnote
In researching for this post I discovered an informative website Ocean to Climate Science news & articles on topics related to ocean and climate by oceanographer Sang-Ki Lee. Some additional examples of studies for further reading on this issue are below.
The BBC say more fell up in the hills at Chiva, but that does not have a long term record, and inevitably rainfall will be much higher as the moist air rises rapidly over the hills. In other words, chalk and cheese.
Not for the first time, the BBC are using human tragedy to push their increasingly hysterical climate agenda.
The poorest American is richer than 75 percent of humanity, and about 4.56 billion people on this planet are living on less than $10 a day, and billions are living with little to no access to electricity.
Electricity is needed for all infrastructures, starting with water filtration and sanitation.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Oliver Hemmershas aDoctorate in Physics from the Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He was a Researcher in Physics, the Executive Director of UNLV’s Harry Reid Center and C- level executive.
Steve Curtis has a Master’s degree in Health Physics from UNLV. He has spent decades studying spent fuel issues in Nevada and worked as a technical field team leader for nuclear search and characterization missions for the Department of Energy. He is currently engaged in education, speaking, and writing in favor of nuclear power returning to the United States, especially from recycling spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors.
Most everyone in the United States has access to electric power that is required by water filtration, sanitation, airports, hospitals, medical equipment, appliances, electronics, communications systems, heating and ventilating, space programs, and militaries.
However, several billion people in the rest of the world do not have any access to the infrastructures being enjoyed in wealthier developed countries. This is something most Americans find hard to believe.
Yet, the solution is simple. Getting Government to quit “helping”, as it is the job of the American people and free enterprise to innovate products people like, not the Government. Again, the basic solution is anchored in the basic economic principle of free enterprise, unencumbered by Government “help”.
The most pronounced factor in poverty, or basic quality of life, is affordable electricity in our modern world. We find it difficult to operate any of our machines without it. Yet 120 years ago, almost nobody had electricity. Such is the magic of modern innovation. Access, however, is not enough. Electricity must be dirt cheap or almost free. Don’t laugh. Thanks to free enterprise, we can now make all the long-distance phone calls we want for one low monthly cell phone fee.
The solution to affordable electricity is within the grasp of “we the people” more than you think. Technology exists, now all we need is political will. Two factors have accentuated the need for more clean electricity in the last few years: More concern about clean air, and a massive increase in electricity demand projected to double or triple in the coming decades, driven by the sudden popularity of Artificial Intelligence, Datacenters, and EV charging.
Sitting on the sites of all our nuclear power plants are already-mined, already formed pellets, for future affordable electricity. There are 90,000 tons of energy worth its weight in gold (at 1 cent/kWh) just sitting there. Some call this “nuclear waste” and are trying to spend tax dollars to bury it forever. Fortunately, the anti-nuclear lobbying has prevented this from happening. It turns out that recycling this material in fast reactors can extract all the hidden energy in uranium, not just 3% of it as is common in today’s reactors.
The major impediment, ironically, is that the United States has not defined a disposition plan for this “waste” material and a great many people, with good reason, regard this as detrimental to placing trust in a nuclear power industry. If this problem cannot be solved, how can nuclear power be good? It turns out that the nuclear power industry had the solution decades ago and, through the “magic” of Government “help”, that solution was legally stopped.
So, the Slightly Used Nuclear Fuel (SUNF) piled up. Being called “waste” has poisoned the public perception. However, with the new name, SUNF, there may be a way to see a bright new world ahead in plentiful, safe, clean, reliable, robust, and, best of all, cheap electricity. All we must do is get the Government to stop regulating it out of affordability.
To put this so-called “waste” into perspective, the amount of electricity contained in just the so-called “waste” material, we have is the equivalent of 270 years of our current electricity consumption in the US by itself, and we are creating 2,000 tons of additional SUNF per year. There is enough to power for our ramping demands for Artificial Intelligence, datacenters, and EV chargers and still have enough to export to those in adjoining states who do not have sufficient electricity.
If we could see our way of transitioning this production of electricity to private enterprise and allow companies to compete for your electricity business, it is not difficult to see the possibilities. Consider that, if disposition of this material is, indeed, a top priority, then the faster we dispose of it, the better, right? So, people would be encouraged to use electricity as fast as they can.
With affordable electricity, unlimited clean water, unlimited hydrogen, unlimited electricity for billions around the world would be realized. In fact, using proven nuclear generated electricity technology, power at one cent per kWh (it is well more than ten cents now) would be profitable. So, one low monthly price for electricity could not be far behind.
In fact, the US military is looking to power their bases with their own individual nuclear power plants as “micro-grids”, all owned by the individual base and not needing any power from external sources. As the competition ramps up for better and better reactors and the availability of power skyrockets, the American people finally get the advantage in the marketplace. Best of all, technology exists today to make all this possible. So, what are we waiting for?
It looks like we will need a Governor of a state to see the vision and develop this idea for their own state. The lucky state that seizes this opportunity could be the nucleus of the next electricity production revolution. Leveraging the existing Congressional Nuclear Waste fund for start-up costs in return for reduced regulations and some initial facilities, the state would benefit, the US Government would benefit, and, best of all, electricity customers would benefit. However, the overwhelming support of the public is needed for this to happen. Our US Government works for you, so you can make your desires known to a State Governor who can make the proposal to the US Government.
Since the nuclear power industry has proven to be the safest industry in the world for over 7 decades, regulations could easily be reduced to allow such a beneficial industry to thrive in free enterprise nirvana.
It would not take a lot of imagination to see free enterprise vs. government regulations spreading to the world. Running water, sanitation, and modern appliances would find their way into the poverty centers in South Asia, Africa, and the Pacific and East Asia. It just takes leadership.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
After its politically driven foray into electric vehicles, Volkswagen is facing significant financial challenges…plans to close at least three of its German factories…unprecedented move in the company’s history…. tens of thousands of jobs will be lost!
After its politically driven foray into electric vehicles, Volkswagen is facing significant financial challenges…plans to close at least three of its German factories…unprecedented move in the company’s history…. tens of thousands of jobs will be lost!
Anti-auto green party activist, liberal arts college-dropout on the supervisory board!
The news for VW is real bad, and now the powerful IG Metall engineering and metal workers’ union is already hinting at strikes to prevent the cuts. Additionally, the company is looking to cut more than $4.3 billion in costs
But don’t start feeling sorry for VW. The problems are largely self-made by incompetent managers and politicians.
Firstly, the German state of Lower Saxony, where VW is headquartered in Wolfsburg, owns approximately 20% of Volkswagen. Then, secondly, in the late 2010s, VW began its earnest push into electric vehicle production with the introduction of its ID family of electric cars. The increased focus on electric vehicles was largely politically driven by factors like increasingly stringent emissions standards and overly optimistic future demand for electric vehicles.
EV car sales stall, plant closure
However, VW electric vehicle sales have since taken a turn for the worst. EVs aren’t popular in Germany. Their sales in the first half of 2024 were approximately 317,200 units worldwide, lower than the same period in 2023 (321,600 EVs). The future of EV sales now looks bleak: Volkswagen just announced the closure of its Audi Brussels plant in Belgium, which primarily produces electric vehicles. This decision comes due to lower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles and is expected to take effect in February 2025.
Green Party anti-auto activist, college dropout on VW supervisory board!
And if you think VW being owned by a green-leaning state is already problematic for the management of the company, take a look at who sits on the company’s supervisory board: Julia Willie Hamburg, a German politician from Alliance 90/The Greens, Ms. Hamburg also serves as the Deputy Minister-President of Lower Saxony and the State Minister for Education and Culture.
Now let’s look at her qualifications: According to her resume, Ms. Hamburg was educated in Hanover where she studied political science, German philology, and then studied philosophy at the University of Göttingen.
She dropped out of all her studies without a degree. Moreover, she’s an anti-car activist who travels by bicycle. She has neither industrial management experience, financial expertise nor an inkling of automotive engineering. That folks, is one of the top executives at VW. No joke!
So, don’t be surprised if VW gets its clock cleaned by the competition over the next few years.
Recently, President Trump discussed offshore wind (OSW) power generation with Joe Rogan on the very popular (14 million listeners) Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He promised to terminate the OSW industry “on day one”.
He should. Offshore wind is a travesty – economically, environmentally, and morally.
Recently, President Trump discussed offshore wind (OSW) power generation with Joe Rogan on the very popular (14 million listeners) Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He promised to terminate the OSW industry “on day one”.
He should. Offshore wind is a travesty – economically, environmentally, and morally.
Shredding thousands of birds and bats, ruining vast acres of ocean floor, destroying historical fishing grounds, exterminating endangered species (like the North Atlantic Right Whale)’, burdening the electric grid with unreliable and expensive electricity, OSW has no redeeming attributes and exists only by virtue of massive subsidies (construction and production tax credits and outright grants) paid for by US taxpayers. Take these obscene subsidies away, and offshore wind in the US evaporates. As Warren Buffet famously said about the need for offshore wind, “Without the tax credits, why bother?”
In fact, because OSW generates electricity less than 50% of the time, it actually is a parasite on the electricity grid, requiring the construction of huge additional amounts of reliable, dispatchable electricity generation, such as from natural gas, to provide power for the 60% of time when the wind doesn’t blow or blows too hard.
A host of organizations on the East Coast, including CFACT, the Heartland Institute, the National Legal and Policy Center and numerous civic organizations plus concerned citizens in New Jersey. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia have brought ligation against US government agencies, State utilities, and wind developers to stop OSW based on obvious violations of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Unfortunately, all of these cases that have been decided by the courts thus far have gone down to defeat, both at the trial court and appellate levels. It is difficult to win these cases against the force of the US government and with judges who are loath to substitute their opinions on the merits against the supposed expertise and judgement of the extensive federal bureaucracy galvanized by the Biden Administration to promote offshore wind.
So the question remains: how can President Trump fulfill his promise to eliminate OSW?
Fortunately, there is an answer. He can issue an Executive Order rescinding the Biden Administration’s Executive Order 14008.
Executive Order 14008 is the guiding document which launched the entire OSW program in the US. Titled “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”, the Order was issued by the Biden White House on Feb.1, 2020, just two weeks after his Inauguration. This extraordinarily detailed Order, written entirely by the wind industry lobbyists, established the whole rationale for and structure of the federal bureaucracy charged with implementing OSW.
For example, EO 14008 creates and mandates:
– a climate “policy” declaring that there exists “a profound climate crisis that threatens our ability to live on planet earth” (does anyone actually still believe this nonsense?)
– a mandate to rejoin the Paris Agreement
– creation of a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and a National Clmate Advisor
– creation of a National Climate Task Force of 21 government agencies to implement OSW
– a mandate for “zero emission vehicles”
– a pause on new oil and gas leasing for offshore waters
– creation of a Civilian Climate Corps
– establishment of an “Environmental Justice Council” of 18 federal agencies to prevent “environmental injustice”
– creation of a working group of the Interior, Energy, and Commerce Departments to deploy 30 gigawatts of OSW by 2030
– a $230 million grant program and $3 billion loan program to support offshore wind
If EO 14008 is rescinded in its entirety, a single stroke of the pen will reverse both the febrile rationale for the offshore wind program and its supporting bureaucratic infrastructure. Gone also is the Executive Branch impetus and rationale for implementing many of the discretionary parts of the ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act that require further bureaucratic approval. Since the rescission is accomplished by an Executive Order, it is not required to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act, which demands hearings, public input, and other procedural requirements, nor does it require Congressional approval. A rescission can also be accompanied by the Trump Administration’s replacement of a handful of political appointees in the relevant federal agencies in order to stymie key provisions of the offshore wind program.
Indeed, the Wall Street Joirnal has reported that Trump’s transition team has already drafted 300 Executive Orders to be implemented soon after President Trump takes office.
One can only hope that rescission of EO 14008 is at the top of this list.
“Whether it is the unprecedented subsidies for renewable energy or the unprecedented war on American energy, the Biden administration’s policies are behind the increase in America’s electricity prices.”
“Whether it is the unprecedented subsidies for renewable energy or the unprecedented war on American energy, the Biden administration’s policies are behind the increase in America’s electricity prices.”
During the first three years under Biden vs. last three under Trump, average wholesale electric prices in the seven U.S. independent or regional service areas have increased by 72%. Retail prices are also higher. The average 2024 U.S. residential rate to date is 24% higher than in 2020. For all end users—residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors—prices are up 23%.
This rate surge reflects the massive renewable energy subsidies authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, signed by President Biden, that tripled the outlay of such federal largesse. Another factor is the administration’s natural gas policies, which banned imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal; joined with the European Commission to reduce Europe’s dependance on Russian oil; and put a pause on LNG permits. Natural gas combined cycle, the the technology of choice in a free market, is as cheap as ever, representing the path not taken.
Whether it is the unprecedented subsidies for renewable energy or the unprecedented war on American energy, the Biden administration’s policies are behind the increase in America’s electricity prices.
Wholesale Prices Up 72% Wholesale electricity prices are the best indicator of the direction of electricity prices. State regulations on retail prices often shield consumers from immediate exposure to rising energy prices. Eventually, though, consumers will bear the full brunt of higher wholesale electricity costs either through higher retail electric prices, lower income, or higher prices for other goods and services.
Figure 1 shows the “all-in” energy prices for the seven U.S. Independent System Operators or Regional Transmission Organizations. These areas cover about 70% of the electricity used in the United States, which roughly corresponds to the percent of U.S. population in the service areas.
The average wholesale price of electricity across these service areas from 2021 to 2023 was $70 per megawatt hour, up from $41 from 2018 to 2020. This means the average wholesale electricity price during the first three years of the Biden administration jumped 72% over the average price of the last three years of the Trump administration.
ERCOT, which covers most of Texas, had the highest average wholesale price over the last three years at $117. It also had the highest three-year increase at 208%. ISO New England had the second highest average price at $81, followed by California ISO at $80. CAISO also had the second highest three-year price increase at 81%. New York ISO was next averaging $68, although prices in New York City were considerably higher at $80. The service areas for these and other service entities are shown below (Figure 2).
Retail Prices Up 20%
Despite the regulatory brakes on increases, Figure 3 (below) shows that retail prices have also been rising rapidly during the Biden administration.
For 2024 year-to-date, residential electricity prices have averaged 16.34 cents per kilowatt hour. This an increase of 3.19 cents, or 23%, from 2020, the last year of the Trump administration. For all end users in the residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation sectors—prices are up 2.39 cents, or 23%, during the same period. Retail prices rose much more slowly during the Trump administration. Residential prices rose only 5% and for all end users only 3%.
There is no doubt that these increases in end-user electricity prices are only the beginning. The recent increases in wholesale electricity prices are already baked into the future retail electricity prices. Regulators will consider the higher costs that generators are incurring and increase future retail prices.
Biden’s Energy Policies At Fault
Across the news, headlines scream about the housing affordability crisis. “Housing on the ballot: Harris, Trump push different plans for tackling housing affordability crisis,” says AP News. The Economic Times asks the question, “US housing crisis: Why is America facing shortage of homes and will this crunch revive inflation?”
Yet very few are talking about a crisis of energy affordability. This is interesting, considering housing prices are not increasing much faster than electricity prices. For instance, housing prices in Texas’s four largest metro areas (Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio) are up 25% over the last four years, not much more than U.S. residential electricity prices and far less than wholesale prices. Perhaps the reason for this difference is that most people who know what is causing electricity prices to increase do not want to talk about it.
The Cost of Renewable Energy Subsidies
In a recent article, The Problem with Solar, the authors wrote that the problem with solar is “it’s basically free—but at the same time it’s hideously expensive.” They got it half right.
Their reason for optimism about solar is “the cost curves for photovoltaic generation have come down farther and faster than anyone thought possible. Cue the breathless headlines: “the age of basically-free solar power for all is upon us!” This is a very common message in both media and academia these days. The only problem with it is that it is completely wrong.
Solar, like wind, can appear cheap when one focuses only on the generation of electricity taking place in the moment. The sun shines, the wind blows, and electricity is generated. No fuel costs at all. Yet this misses the 90% of the renewable iceberg that is underwater.
The only reason solar and wind are part of the U.S. commercial electric grid is because of subsidies. Figure 4 above shows that renewable energy subsidies last decade were double those for fossil fuels and five times those for nuclear. But this does not show the full story. Bennett et al. give us the rest in Figure 5 (below).
From 2010 through 2019, solar received $82 per megawatt hour of electricity generated. That is 42 times the amount of subsidies per megawatt hour nuclear received, 112 times coal, and 211 times oil and gas. For wind, its multiples were 10 times nuclear, 26 times coal, and 48 times oil and gas. The “free” wind and solar generation actually cost taxpayers $74 billion last decade in federal subsidies, without including the cost of the electricity or state and local subsidies.
As costly to taxpayers as renewable energy subsidies were last decade, this decade the costs are exploding. Figure 4 shows that renewable subsidies will more than triple this decade and will be ten times more than both fossil fuels and nuclear, not taking into account the per megawatt hour measure of the subsidies. The primary reason for the increase in renewable energy subsidies this decade is the Inflation Reduction Act.
Figure 6 below shows that from 2017 through 2022, the year President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, the average annual cost of renewable energy subsidies was $8.1 billion. However, once the IRA went into effect in 2023, the average cost of renewable energy subsidies tripled to $24.9 billion annually. The harm that renewable energy was doing prior to the IRA has accelerated with the cost of maintaining grid reliability rapidly increasing because of the growth of renewables.
The Reliability Cost of Renewable Energy
A remarkable event occurred in 2023; coal, nuclear, and renewable energy converged to become essentially equal generation sources on the U.S. grid. This would have been unthinkable a quarter of a century ago. Figure 7 shows the growth of renewables from essentially zero generation to almost equaling coal, which is generating less than half of its output from 2001, and being only slightly below nuclear.
This convergence signals a new chapter in the long-running battle to maintain grid reliability in light of two major generation sources–wind and solar–that cannot be counted on to generate electricity when it is needed.
The key feature of wind and solar as generation sources is their intermittency. This means that unlike coal, natural gas, and nuclear generation, they are only available when nature cooperates. This adds tremendous—and generally unacknowledged—costs to maintaining the reliability of the grid.
Going back to the article, The Problem with Solar, its authors explain why a seemingly inexpensive energy source is nothing of the kind:
The answer is that, yes, solar power generation has become close to free… but only when the sun is shining. Which happens some of the time, but not all of the time, not predictably and not necessarily at the times people need power the most.
The dirty little secret is that, at the scale relevant to most people, solar generation’s cost advantage is sort of beside the point. For solar to serve as the backbone of a grid, it needs to be backed with storage. That can come in the form of batteries, hydrogen, or pumped hydro. All of these are expensive; none of them scale. Storing a kilowatt-hour of electricity in a chemical battery costs an order of magnitude more than just generating it in a nuclear power plant. Which is why a 100% solar grid would be insanely expensive, even though generating solar power is basically free.
This also applies to wind, and explains in laymen’s terms what scientists have said for years; it is a well-known fact that the reliability value of renewable energy declines as its grid penetration increases. Which means that either batteries or natural gas backup generation must be on standby for those periods when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While batteries are insanely expensive, backup natural gas generation is merely stark raving mad expensive.
Energy researcher Robert Bryce explains why continuing the growth of renewables is not only expensive, but also impossible. Bryce examined a 2023 report by Tesla that claimed that we could transform the world’s electric grid in about 20 years to support a “sustainable energy economy,” one that relies almost completely on renewables. Bryce highlights Tesla’s claim “that building the infrastructure for a ‘sustainable energy economy will cost $10 trillion.’” At $500 billion a year, that is 20 times the current level of renewable energy subsidies. Bryce also shows that electricity from solar is getting more, not less, expensive. He then explains the physical impossibility of Tesla’s plan:
Nevertheless, it only takes a minute to understand why that 240 TWh of storage is so gobsmackingly silly. First some basics. Recall that 1 TWh is equal to 1,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) and that one Gigafactory can manufacture about 50 GWh of batteries per year. Tesla currently has 5 Gigafactories. Thus, Tesla’s current battery storage output is, in rough terms, 250 GWh per year. Now recall that the Master Plan requires 240 TWh, which is 240,000 GWh. Therefore, as can be seen in the graphic directly above, producing 240,000 GWh of battery capacity would require the output of all of Tesla’s existing Gigafactories for the next 960 years.
The high costs, failing reliability, and physical challenges of building and maintaining a grid dominated with wind and solar generation is not just a problem for the future, however. The growth of renewables fueled by government subsidies—and exacerbated by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—is causing major problems today. Texas provides a real-life example.
The Texas Example
As noted above, Texas leads the nation with a 208% increase in wholesale electricity prices over the last three years. Why would Texas, which leads the nation in natural gas production and has long relied on it to generate electricity, experience price hikes because of wind and solar generation?
The short answer is that Texas also leads the nation in generating electricity from renewable energy. In 2023, 34% of electricity generated in Texas came from wind and solar. The longer answer also helps explain why Texas is experiencing more reliability problems because of renewables than any other state.
The ERCOT portion of the Texas grid, which serves 27 million customers, is the only ‘energy-only’ electric market in the United States. What this means is that decisions about building new generation are left to the market, not to regulators as is done in other states. This worked well in Texas for about 15 years, as long as market prices were allowed to balance the needs of generators and consumers. Investors found many opportunities to profitably invest in new, primarily natural gas, generation that led to robust grid reliability and affordable prices.
However, as renewable subsidies and renewable generation continued to grow, they distorted market prices and led to almost all new investment going to renewables. Over the five-year period from 2018 to 2023, generation from coal-fired plants fell 34%, nuclear generation was down 1%, and natural gas generation was up only 17%. Meanwhile, generation from wind increased 55% and solar generation was up 900%.
The situation is getting worse. ERCOT forecasts renewable generation will increase by 58,654 megawatts through 2029 (wind by 3,628 megawatts, solar by 36,868 megawatts, and batteries, which also receive billions in subsidies, by 18,158 megawatts). Thermal resources, however, will only increase by 1,074 megawatts. Renewables are projected to make up 98.2% of new generation on the Texas grid over the next five years.
The reason for this shift to renewables is simple. It is now more profitable in Texas to build new solar and wind generation than natural gas. This is not, though, because renewables are inherently profitable investments. It is solely because of renewable subsidies. In 2024, the subsidies will increase the return on investment for generators by about 30% above what they earn selling electricity.
The result of the shift to wind and solar has been a rapid decline in grid reliability. There are two types of reliability problems caused by renewables. The first is caused directly by the intermittency of renewable generation. When changes in weather conditions cause declines or outages of renewable generation, complicated and costly steps must be taken to bring backup natural gas generation online.
The second problem is the long-term decline in reliability caused by renewable energy subsidies. This was on display in 2021 when, thanks largely to renewables, Texas experienced perhaps the worst blackout in American history during Winter Storm Uri. When wind and solar generation failed during the storm, there was not enough backup generation to compensate. Though natural gas generation also experienced problems, if the money that had been invested in renewables had instead gone to natural gas—or nuclear or coal, there would have been enough generation to possibly avoid the blackout entirely, or at least to ensure that Texans only experienced temporary 30-minute rolling blackouts.
Dealing with both types of reliability problems is “insanely” expensive. And because of Texas’s market design—and the way Texas politicians have chosen to deal with the problem, the costs are more transparent than they are in other states.
The best way for Texas to deal with its growing reliability problem would have been to eliminate all state and local renewable subsidies and force renewable generators to pay for the cost imposed on the grid by federal renewable subsidies. Instead, Texas politicians decided to double down on subsidies by giving them also to thermal generators. Texas began this process about 2014 when the reliability issues of wind generation and renewable subsidies began showing up on the ERCOT grid.
Then in 2019 politicians and regulators greatly increased the thermal subsidies, and did so again in 2021 and 2023 because of the Uri grid failure (Figure 8). The cost of Texas thermal subsidies in 2023 was $16 billion, in addition to the $4 billion renewable received. This effort, mistaken as the approach might be, demonstrates the high costs renewables are imposing on the U.S. electric grid, why Texas led the nation in wholesale price increases over the last three years, and why electricity prices have risen during the Biden administration.
A Brief Word about Natural Gas Prices
According to Potomac Economics, “There are two primary drivers of [electric] market prices: natural gas prices and the number of hours of supply shortages during the year.” There has been a correlation between gas and electricity prices over the period this paper examines, but it has lessened as the growth of renewables created new cost-increasing grid shortages that did not previously exist.
One of these new shortages is the “duck curve,” the time when there “is an increased need for electricity generators to quickly ramp up energy production when the sun sets and the contribution from PV falls.” This sunset shortage did not exist before solar came online. As the U.S. Department of Energy explains, “High solar adoption creates a challenge for utilities to balance supply and demand on the grid.”
Wind has created similar shortages. Wind output can be reduced over long periods of time, as it was in 2023. But it can also happen daily. Whether these shortages are long- or short-term, expected or unexpected, it costs a lot of money to have alternate generation on standby and even more when it is necessary for the generation to run. These renewable-induced shortages have added to the cost of electricity as renewable generation grid penetration has increased while reducing the correlation between natural gas and electricity prices.
Whatever the correlation is between natural gas and electricity prices, the Biden administration’s energy policies have had a significant effect on natural gas prices. Rep. Dan Newhouse summed up the administration’s Unprecedented War on American Energy: “From cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline to revoking leases for oil, gas, and mining across the West, it is clear the president’s unprecedented war on domestic energy producers has put the United States in a vulnerable position.” All of this and other policy decisions raised natural gas prices. Thus, to the extent that natural gas prices correlate to increases in electricity prices, this still points to the Biden administration.
Conclusion
Whether it is the unprecedented subsidies for renewable energy or the unprecedented war on American energy, the Biden’s administration’s policies have led to a significant increase in America’s electricity prices.
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Bill Peacock is the policy director of the Energy Alliance, a project of the Texas Business Coalition to raise awareness of issues about the energy market that matter the most to consumers: Reliability, Affordability, and Efficiency
Range-challenged electric vehicles could face further sales disincentives with a proposal from Britain’s top engineers that battery sizes be reduced by one third. In a just-published report on the supply of critical materials for Net Zero projects, the U.K.-based National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) points to an obvious fact – there isn’t anything like the amount of raw materials available to transition to Net Zero and most of the extraction processes required are an ecological disaster.
Range-challenged electric vehicles could face further sales disincentives with a proposal from Britain’s top engineers that battery sizes be reduced by one third. In a just-published report on the supply of critical materials for Net Zero projects, the U.K.-based National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) points to an obvious fact – there isn’t anything like the amount of raw materials available to transition to Net Zero and most of the extraction processes required are an ecological disaster. The report sets out in terrifying black and white what is coming down the future political rationing track. The lack of resources to replace cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons is also noted in a new McKinsey report, which states that critical minerals face a supply shortage “as demand soars for raw materials to fuel [the] clean energy drive”. Current mineral supply could be as low as 10% of projected 2050 requirements, McKinsey suggests.
The NEPC brings together 42 engineering operations and is led by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Its report calls for “upstream mobility policies” to reduce transport demand via a shift from cars to buses, bikes and electric scooters operating in tandem with smaller batteries and alternative battery chemistries. The cynical might read this to mean that fanatical politicians such as the Mad Miliband mandate reduced EV range and throw further billions of pounds at yet more unproven technologies while ramping up the war on motorists.
The range of most EVs is not much cop to start with. Neil Winton is a senior contributor with Forbes and has looked in detail at the claimed ranges of EVs. He is not impressed with the figures supplied by manufacturers, writing recently that the Lexus RZ 300s, which retails at $71,350, has a claimed range of “up to“ 297 miles, but the battery only filled to an average of 224 miles. The problem is that range falls off a cliff at high speed, reports Winton. Sustainability Professor Peter Wells explains: “For an electric car, the extra energy required getting from 60 mph to 75 mph is astonishing and virtually doubles energy consumption to move all that air out of the way.”
Cutting battery size by a third or using low energy-density sodium batteries, as suggested by the NEPC, risks producing cars no one wants to buy. The only solution would be rationing using restrictions mandated by law. Of course, many such restrictions are already in force across Europe, where the traditional car industry and its large numbers of well paid jobs are being slowly destroyed.
The penny has been dropping about the obvious shortages of critical Net Zero resources for some time, although the public is mostly kept in the dark by the Net Zero-captured mainstream media. EVs are a particularly significant source of anticipated demand for critical materials, observes the NEPC, and a reduction in battery size could save 46,000 tonnes of lithium. This would stop the excavation of 75,000,000 tonnes of earth, enough to fill Wembley Stadium 19 times.
On the wider front, the NEPC says that developing new extraction infrastructure is slow and often risks worsening environmental and social harms. In the Baotou region of China, described as the rare earth capital of the world, toxic waste has contaminated groundwater. This has ended the local ecosystem’s ability to support agriculture and cattle rearing and necessitated the resettlement of whole villages. “Such pollution impacts can last for decades or centuries,” the report notes.
Over at McKinsey, the green light is being signalled for greens to dig up the planet to save Mother Earth from topping up CO2 plant food in the atmosphere. McKinsey reveals that demand for seven minerals could double in the next five years. These comprise lithium, cobalt, nickel, dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium. Each is noted to serve specific functions in “clean” energy applications. Lithium demand could face a 700% surge. Significant shortfalls are forecast across multiple minerals by 2030. Supply of dysprosium – used in magnets for EVs and wind turbines – and terbium – useful in display electronics – could fall 75% below demand. Lithium, ubiquitous in batteries, may see its production targets fall by 40%.
Nowhere do the figures remotely add up. Indeed it is hard to comprehend the level of stupidity involved in those who plan the Net Zero disaster with no idea where the materials will come from or the costs involved. McKinsey writes of a significant scale-up of extraction but the energy transition is said to be in its early stages with “only an estimated 10% of required deployment of low-emission technologies by 2050 achieved in most areas”. In other words, it can only get worse.
There are also concerns about the geographic concentration of critical materials affecting the resilience of supply chains. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 75% of cobalt, while China processes 60% of all rare earth elements. Again to use other words, we must hope that greens don’t develop a conscience about child mining labour in the DRC, while the rest of us must desist from making disobliging remarks about the Chinese Communist Party.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
It should go without saying that natural gas in normal conditions doesn’t liquify itself. It’s a shame the Biden-Harris administration acts as if it does.
It should go without saying that natural gas in normal conditions doesn’t liquify itself. It’s a shame the Biden-Harris administration acts as if it does.
When the gas comes out of the ground it must be captured immediately, transported by pipeline to a processing plant, processed, fed into another pipeline, and transported to a liquefaction facility, where it is super-cooled to 260 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) and becomes a liquid. But that’s only half the deal. After it is liquified, the gas is loaded onto a specialized ship called an LNG carrier, transported across the ocean to a regasification facility, regasified, fed into another pipeline, and delivered— to residential customers where it will warm their homes or cook their food; to power plants to generate electricity; and to all manner of factories as a raw component in the manufacture of fertilizers, steel, plastics, paint, and other commodities.
Breaking into the global LNG market has been a generational endeavor—and an outstanding success—for the American economy. The technical sophistication required to master the liquefaction, transportation, and regasification of this vital hydrocarbon is not trivial. Each LNG cargo represents the fruits of years of permitting and construction, the investment of billions of dollars, and negotiations of contracts (also known as “off-take agreements”) that will be in force for decades. Long-term operations, long-term relationships, long-term impact.
The arrival of carriers laden with American LNG to Europe in the months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was celebrated by the Biden-Harris administration. These ships, metaphorically speaking, set sail a decade earlier, as LNG export terminals navigated the dilapidated federal regulatory process. These liquefaction facilities, in turn, rely on natural gas supplied from fields that themselves had to be explored and developed over many years.
But now the White House incumbents are playing with fire. Their decision in January 2024 to pause most export approvals until the completion of duplicative economic and environmental studies has already damaged the trustworthiness of American natural gas supplies. Japan, one of our closest allies and most important customers for LNG, was the first to sound the alarm. That damage will be compounded if these studies provide an excuse for the federal government to extract concessions from the U.S. natural gas industry before approvals resume.
Regulatory uncertainty means higher costs, longer and delayed timelines, and potentially disrupted supply chains. “Turning off” LNG exports would cause a cascading series of dislocations throughout the economy, not only in the export sector. It has taken the better part of a generation already to achieve the nation’s dominant position in natural gas. That is at risk with the stroke of a pen. The next president can lift the pause on approvals, but that will need to be done carefully to mitigate the risk of litigation, and only Congress can provide a permanent solution.
The UN COP29 meeting starting Nov 11th, fights for relevance in the shadow of the US Election, like a suckerfish under an aircraft carrier.
The latest confected attempt to get attention is to guilt trip the West — telling us that women and babies will die if we don’t install enough solar panels. This is despite humans being mammals which evolved to cope with the heat and the cold. We live a more closeted, protected existence than any time in the last million years. Not many people give birth in caves these days. Indeed we’re a species that inhabits towns with monthly temperatures that vary by 90 degrees Celsius and we are supposed to panic about another half a degree?
The truth is that being cold, poor and hungry increases stillbirths just as much as any heatwave, and the thing that saves babies on a hot day is an air-conditioner. The answer to all four killers thus, is cheap electricity and fossil fuels.
One day history students will study how the UN uses biblical paraphrasing to demand their tithe and control:
The report follows an ultimatum from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on the climate emergency: “We’re playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time.” He said global heating was supercharging monster hurricanes, bringing biblical floods and turning forests into tinderboxes, and said governments had to rapidly wean the world off its fossil fuel addiction.
Naturally, only babies that die from heat stress are politically marketable, the UN doesn’t care about the ones that die from the cold:
Increasing climate extremes are causing more lost babies, premature births and cognitive damage to newborns, the report said. For example, a study in India found a doubled risk of miscarriage in pregnant women suffering heat stress, while another in California found a significant association between long-term heat exposure and stillbirth and premature birth.
Five minutes of research, which the Guardian team don’t do, turns up a meta-study showing that poverty doubles the risk of death in babies:
Numerous studies confirm that mothers of low socioeconomic status and unemployed parents face a far higher risk of having a stillbirth or a low birthweight child [7–10]. It has been demonstrated that women or families living in adverse socioeconomic conditions have twice the risk of having a stillborn baby compared to their more privileged counterparts [11]. Unemployment and unfavourable economic conditions are usually associated with poor maternal nutrition, elevated psychological stress during pregnancy and limited access to medical supervision and prenatal care. Several studies show that pregnant women with elevated levels of stress have considerably higher risks of a stillbirth, independent of age, parity, education, smoking and alcohol habits or other compromising characteristics…. Moreover, in low income countries or deprived environments, poor maternal nutrition and low body mass index can result in higher stillbirth frequency [15]. — Tsimbos et al (2021)
Thus to save babies, and follow the science — we must burn more fossil fuels
Wealthier nations have higher CO2 emissions, more heaters, more air conditioners, better food, and their babies don’t die as often.
t is a crime the UN is not helping poor African nations build coal plants.
Child Mortality falls as CO2 emissions rise per capita. | OWID
UPDATE#2: TonyfromOz asked where China was, and pointed out that it and many big countries were missing which is a great point. So here below are the top 25 largest in population plus a few other notables.
As expected, the largest countries almost all fall in the centre of the trendline.
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