Best Energy Picks - March 23, 2024
Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.
This week’s best energy picks:
Sea Level Scam? — Down the Mine Shaft with EVs — Green Politicians Demand Interest Rate Protection for Big Green Grifters — Hurricane Hype Season Returning Soon, and much more.
The official narrative seems to be seriously flawed:
Is all of this [sea level warning] anything to get scared about? Absolutely not. As stated earlier, linear sea level rise of about 3.3 mm/yr is consistent with what has been going on throughout history since the last ice age, and implies a rise of around one foot by 2100. Nerem, et al., state in their paper that the acceleration rate that they estimate of 0.084 mm/yr^2 would imply sea level rise of 65 cm by 2100, which is 25.6 inches, or just over 2 feet.
The rate of 0.045 mm/yr^2 derived from the unaltered NASA data would imply a much smaller increase by 2100 of about 16 inches, really not much more than the ongoing linear trend. Meanwhile, here in Manhattan, where everyone claims to believe the worst climate scare stories, the fanciest new condos continue to get built along the shoreline, just a few feet above sea level. The new thing is to put the building mechanicals a few floors up, in case some big storm brings the sea water into the basement.
What’s most interesting about all this is what it reveals about the sea level rise scare story. The claims of “acceleration” prove to be based on dubious extrapolations from data that show only very slight, if any, deviations from linearity. Those slight deviations may reflect some underlying process or may just reflect the effect on a curve-fitting exercise of one or two outlying data points.
Our overlords modify the data to enhance the apparent acceleration, and then claim the ability to use a slight non-linearity to project sea level out 80 years or so to try to scare us with a few inches of difference. In the real world, the few extra inches are insignificant, and none of us will even be around then anyway. I plan to recommend to my grandchildren — all now 5 and under — not to live too near the coast in their retirement. That should take care of it.
The lengths that the bureaucrats will go to maintain their scary narrative are truly extraordinary. And what’s most amazing is how many seemingly smart people don’t see through it.
But, the narrative is everything, which explains everything doesn't it?
Hat Tip: S.H.
A great article exposing deceit in EV marketing:
Throughout recorded history, mining has continued to be key to a flourishing society. From the gold trade of medieval Florence to Spain’s Golden Age backed by New World silver, precious metal mining has always been intertwined with the desire to conquer new territory and flaunt extravagant wealth. The advent of modern steel production methods in 18th century Britain brought about a completely new economic paradigm altogether: industrial capitalism. Now, almost three centuries later, mining still supplies the lifeblood for advanced technologies. Only, that’s not what the likes of the “energy transition” brokers would have one believe…
[D]ig a little deeper, and one discovers that EVs have a dirty little secret: their batteries depend on enormous quantities of mined lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper and rare earth metals. An average EV battery weighs 1,000 pounds, in lieu of the fuel tank holding about 80 pounds of gasoline in a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. While ICE cars emit carbon primarily through the combustion of gasoline during regular use, EV-associated carbon emissions occur mainly at the upstream manufacturing stage, during the excavation, processing and assemblage of minerals into massive Li-ion batteries…
Often stressed by EV manufacturers are guarantees that the consumer never sees the effects of the upstream emissions, and that the overall lifetime benefits of EVs ultimately outweigh the ICE alternative…
[S]uch forecasts are ultimately based on modeled assumptions, which may or may not bear out in reality…
However, as a bombshell study by Bain & Co. recently found, California is currently significantly off-target in meeting its net-zero by 2045 goals, estimating instead a destination date of 2060 or beyond. As California goes, so goes the nation…
As far as policy goes, a little honesty might be in order. But honesty in energy policy is not the order of the day. An unfolding scandal in EV emissions compliance regulations has rocked the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in recent months. While the Department of Transportation requires gas-powered cars to report real values for measured fuel efficiency, the DOE until now has permitted EV manufacturers to simply multiply their efficiency by 6.67 to calculate the equivalent miles-per-gallon (MPG), an estimate that tends to produce absurdly high MPG figures. An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal critiqued the lack of scientific evidence for this regulation by approximation, saying “that number has no basis in reality.”
There is no grift in honesty, so it's unlikely to happen. Only facts such as this article reveals will ever tell the real story.
Hat Tip: K.L.
Green Politicians Demand Interest Rate Protection for Big Green Grifters
Following two years of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, and just one day before the central bank's meeting on Wednesday, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse, both climate alarmist Democrats, wrote a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell calling for an immediate halt to the interest rate hiking cycle to avert further collapse of the renewable infrastructure space.
In the letter, first obtained by Bloomberg, the senators warned that interest rate hikes have "completely tanked major renewable infrastructure projects across the country."
They said the tightening cycle had diminished the nation's ability to create green jobs and lower electricity costs that are critical to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
"The Fed's interest rates have stalled progress and hampered the country's ability to combat the climate crisis," the letter said
This comes as some of the most ambitious renewable power projects (including wind and solar) have been shelved, electric car sales slump, and clean energy stocks tank.
The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, heavily invested in solar, wind, and hydrogen stocks, including SolarEdge, First Solar, Sunrun, Orsted, and Plug Power, has crashed 52% since peaking in January 2021.
Interest rate hikes threaten the Democrat's green energy bubble. The bad news for them is that higher rates for longer rates will cause more pain.
Just more evidence it's all a scam, a Big Green Grift!
Hat Tip: R.N.
Hurricane Hype Season Returning Soon
This year’s hurricane season, which officially starts June 1, is being predicted by WeatherBELL as the “hurricane season from hell,” with weather patterns similar to those of 2005, 2017, and 2020.
Along with it, says the firm’s meteorologist and chief forecaster Joe Bastardi, will come the climate change blame game, which he calls a false narrative…
After the 2020 season, Jim Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, blamed “warmer-than-average ocean temperatures” for the hurricane “hyper-activity.”
He said an increase in more ferocious hurricanes over the past 40 years was linked to climate change.
Mr. Bastardi said he expects to hear similar messaging this year if it pans out like he’s predicting.
“If you hang around people constantly spouting negative stuff and how bad it is, guess what you’re going to believe? … It’s a great strategy for pushing this thing—if I wanted to argue the CO2 [carbon dioxide] argument, I'd do exactly what they’re doing,” Mr. Bastardi told The Epoch Times.
“But there’s been no increase. And the size of the storms is getting smaller. That’s the other thing: hurricanes are smaller and more compact.”
Oceanographer and certified consulting meteorologist Bob Cohen concurred.
He said there’s currently a transition from El Niño patterns to La Niña, which is “correlated with higher-than-normal hurricane activity.”
“Right now, the subsurface temperatures are much cooler than during El Niño,” he told The Epoch Times. “The immediate near-surface temperatures are still warmer, but the subsurface water pool and the warm water pool have dissipated, and so once that pops to the surface, it becomes La Niña,” Mr. Cohen said.
He said he expects “we'll hear a lot more alarmist messaging” if 2024 is a busy hurricane season, as predicted.
But, like Mr. Bastardi, Mr. Cohen said hurricanes aren’t getting bigger or more intense. He said that as temperatures naturally warm coming out of the Little Ice Age, hurricanes and weather events will get less intense—not exponentially worse.
The hype will never end, because it pays.
Hat Tip: D.N.
And, Briefly:
Natural Gas Boosting the Economy, from E.I.
Senator John Kennedy vs. Climate Change Activist, from T.Z.
From Capitalism to Corporatism, from R.N.
The EPA Is About to Outlaw Your Car, from S.H.
Should We All Be ‘Sick Of The Energy Transition?’, from D.B.
Texas Withdraws $8.5B from BlackRock over ESG, from J.S.
The Bloodbath from China Manufacturing of EVs in Mexico, from D.B.
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