Best Energy Picks - July 6, 2024

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

Jul 06, 2024

This week’s best energy picks:

The Slimy World of Green Energy Grifting — Another Climate Crisis Narrative Is Iced! — Are the Podesta Brothers Doing Some Green Grifting of Their Own? — CO2 Emissions Baseline Scenarios? It’s More Like 3 Card Monte! — and much more.

The Slimy World of Green Energy Grifting

This story exposes how it all works. And, it’s about the Simons family, which we have written about repeatedly (see here and here). Nathaniel Simons, the man behind the dark money schemes to push solar through the Sea Change Foundation and Energy Foundation, is the son of Jim Simons.

Around the time that Democratic leaders were secretly negotiating the details of President Joe Biden's landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Democratic Party megadonor James Simons's hedge fund substantially upped its financial stake in several solar energy companies, which reaped windfalls from the bill.
According to federal elections filings, eight days before Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) publicly unveiled the IRA on July 27, 2022, Simons wired $2.5 million to Schumer's Senate Majority PAC. Then, in August, one week after President Joe Biden signed the bill into law, Simons sent another $2.5 million check to the same PAC.
Simons's trading activity, coupled with his aptly timed donations to the Senate Majority PAC, raises questions about whether he had advance knowledge of the IRA negotiations, which were supposedly kept private until Schumer and Manchin's announcement in late July…
Among its most significant provisions, the $739 billion climate and tax package expanded generous tax credits for solar manufacturing and both residential and commercial solar projects. The lead solar industry association in the United States called the tax credits "one of the most important federal policy mechanisms to support the growth of solar energy."
Simons, who died in May, had a close personal relationship with Schumer. Simons once said he helped Schumer craft legislation, the Associated Press reported, and the Senate majority leader characterized Simons as a "dear friend and mentor."

…Financial data reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show that Simons's hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, increased its stakes in First Solar, Daqo New Energy, Canadian Solar, and Maxeon Solar Technologies between July and September of 2022, the same time period when the IRA was negotiated, announced, passed, and signed into law…
During that three-month period in 2022, the hedge fund purchased 132,489 shares worth approximately $17.5 million in First Solar, a U.S.-based solar panel maker…
Also in the third quarter of 2022, Renaissance Technologies upped its stake in the Chinese firm Daqo New Energy, from 263,200 shares worth $18.8 million to 923,117 shares worth $49 million…one of the world's largest manufacturers of polysilicon, a base material for solar wafers…
Renaissance Technologies also upped its position in Chinese solar panel maker Canadian Solar in the third quarter of 2022. The fund went from owning zero shares in the company one quarter earlier to reporting a position of 374,102 shares worth $13.9 million…
And the hedge fund further increased its position in solar panel maker Maxeon Solar Technologies from less than $1 million to $3 million in the third quarter of 2022…

The Simons family has been No. 1 among Big Green Grifters for a long time now and it’s also, of course, been at the forefront of fractivism and pushing a “climate crisis.” None of this is a coincidence.

Hat Tip: T.C.

Another Climate Crisis Narrative Is Iced!

Well, this is certainly interesting:

Using hundreds of old aerial photographs dating back to 1937, combined with modern computer technology, researchers have tracked the evolution of glaciers in East Antarctic. The area covers approximately 2,000 kilometers of coastline and contains as much ice as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.
Compared to modern data, the ice flow speeds are unchanged, or at least not in any way related to our emission of 1,600 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
In stark contrast, the Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica has been the subject of extensive media coverage. Dubbed the ‘Doomsday Glacier’, it is often portrayed as a ticking time bomb that could lead to catastrophic sea level rise. Yet research in 2018 funded by National Science reported unsuspected volcanic activity in the region.
Recent data have been reported for 10 Antarctic stations under operation scattered along the Antarctic coastline. These results are not impacted by volcanic activity. Results? Zero warming which is really inconvenient news for global warming activists.

West Antarctica’s mean annual surface temperatures cooled by more than -1.8 C (-0.93 C per decade) from 1999-2018. Not just West Antarctica, but most of the continent also has cooled by more than -1 C in the 21st century.
Throughout the Holocene (Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, and earlier) and until a few hundred years ago (from ~ 7,100 to 500 years before the present), coastal Antarctica’s Victoria Land (VLC) was substantially warmer than today.
The Ross Sea was also sufficiently ice free to allow for elephant seal populations (as large as ~200,000 individuals) to thrive. Today, however, elephant seal populations, which require extended sea ice free sea waters to breed, forage, and provide nourishment for their pups, can no longer subsist anywhere even remotely close to the coasts of the Antarctic continent. It is now too cold and the sea ice is too extensive.

Once again, we see the hype behind the “climate crisis” narrative just isn’t so.

Hat Tip: T.Z.

Are the Podesta Brothers Doing Some Green Grifting of Their Own?

The Podestas are the ultimate insiders. Are they playing grifting games, too?

Late Monday, US District Judge James D. Cain Jr. in Louisiana ruled in favor of Louisiana and 15 other red states that had challenged the "temporary pause" on new LNG export licenses. Donald Trump appointed Judge Cain, who wrote that the pause "is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy."
The White House announced in January that the Energy Department would temporarily stop approving new LNG export licenses to assess the impact of shipments on global warming…
The ruling means DOE must restart its permit approval process soon. However, it's unclear when this will happen.
In a note in early February, Matt Egan and Brent Bennett of RealClear Wire wrote that the president's politically motivated actions mainly targeted "Texas and Louisiana, red states that account for the bulk of US LNG exports." Some have speculated that Biden's action could have been a move to retaliate against red states that opposed open southern borders.

**Tony Podesta (l) and John Podesta (r)**

A separate report from the Washington Free Beacon said Biden's Climate Czar, John Podesta, ultimately pushed the decision.
Here's more from RealClear Wire's Larry Behrens about Podesta's LNG attack:
As a well-known climate warrior, it makes sense Podesta would be pushing for policies against American energy interests. Yet at the same time, Podesta's brother, Tony, one of DC's most well-connected mega lobbyists, has financial connections to foreign LNG companies, including one with links to a Russian oligarch. It is concerning to see the Podesta family standing to profit from a policy priority of the White House who employs another Podesta. Foreign companies, including Russia, are clear beneficiaries Biden's LNG attack. It should be raising questions about potential conflicts of interest and profit motives at the White House.

It certainly looks like grifting, and it’s brazen, if nothing else.

Hat Tip: R.N./D.S.

CO2 Emissions Baseline Scenarios? It’s More Like 3 Card Monte!

Climate scientist Roy Spencer exposes the fraud that is the IPCC baseline scenarios for global emissions:

One of the main complaints rational people have had about global warming projections is that the “baseline” scenarios assumed for future CO2 emissions are well above what is realistic…
The IPCC knows very well that as long as climate models are run that produce extreme amounts of climate change, few people will question the assumptions that went into those model projections. Peoples’ careers now depend upon the continuing fear of a “climate crisis” (which has yet to materialize)…
In the following plot, I show estimates of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use through 2023, and EIA projections every 5 years from 2025 through 2050 (green). Also shown are the latest (AR6) SSP scenarios that come closest to the AR5 RCP scenarios…

While an emissions scenario like SSP5-8.5 has been widely used to scare humanity with climate model projections of extreme warming, this plot shows the last several years of global emissions (through 2023) suggest the future will look nothing like that scenario.
And, it should come as no surprise that “Net Zero” emissions by 2050 is a delusion.

The public, fortunately, is starting to see the truth about the IPCC; that its science has been thoroughly politicized.

Hat Tip: S.H.