Best Energy Picks - May 4, 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:
COP29 to Be Hosted by Leader Who Sees Oil and Gas as “Gift of the Gods” — Elites Want Us to Give Up Our Showers, But Shouldn't They Lead the Way? — Europe Shows Us Climate Corporatism and Cultism Are the Road to Hell — No Way, But Nonetheless An Edict to Derail — and much more.
COP29 to Be Hosted by Leader Who Sees Oil and Gas as “Gift of the Gods”
This will make two COP confabs in a row where the host nation advocates for oil and gas!
Ilham Aliyev, the strongman president of Azerbaijan, used his platform at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Germany on Friday to declare the presence of fossil fuels in his country a “gift of the gods” and declare his intention to expand Baku’s exports to Europe.
Aliyev’s robust defense of oil and gas – major contributors to his nation’s economy – was particularly notable as the United Nations honored Azerbaijan with hosting duties for this years “COP29,” the U.N.’s annual climate alarmism conference. Azerbaijan is taking the reins from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world’s most formidable oil exporters, which appointed the head of the state-run oil company there in charge of organizing the conference.
COP29, the sequel to last year’s COP28, will take place in Baku in November. The objective of the COP (Conference of the Parties) summits is to address the alleged “climate crisis” the world is facing by pressuring Western nations to make commitments to abandon fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions. Environmental activists and the tens of thousands of elites who participate in these conferences annually rarely pressure the world’s top polluting countries, India and China, into limiting the use of fossil fuels or their carbon emissions.
Aliyev delivered an address at the Berlin conference in which he committed to investing in the development Azerbaijian’s natural gas industry with the intent of supplying Europe, which has seen its fossil fuel supply jeopardized by its staunch opposition to the invasion of Ukraine by top supplier Russia.
I certainly look forward to Aliyev's welcoming speech as the jet-set climate con-men and cultists arrive in November for this COP event! I hope the camera is focused on the audience, though.
Hat Tip: R.N.
Elites Want Us to Give Up Our Showers, But Shouldn't They Lead the Way?
No story betters indicates the condescension with which the gentry class that runs everything views us:
We are expected to sacrifice all of our Earthly comforts in the name of climate change. The latest issue brewing across the media is water conservation, specifically taking daily showers. Experts at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) state that the average 8-minute shower wastes 20 gallons of water. There are now calls to establish a new norm of not showering every day to save the environment.
“There’s no need to shower every day,” a recent BBC article suggests. The author said she showers a mere three times a week, which would be seen as a sign of an underlying mental health disorder if not for climate conservation efforts. The author said some of her friends only need to bathe once per week. The article quotes chemist David Whitlock, who went 12 years without a shower, only spraying himself with “good bacteria.” The article calls out numerous “experts” who do not shower every day and are “brave” for admitting their hygiene habits.
Climate zealots are attempting to frame daily showers as a “performative act.” “If you go 100 years back, we didn’t shower every day, because the shower was not a normal thing to have,” Professor Kristen Gram-Hanssen from the Department of the Build Environment of Aalborg University in Denmark, as quoted by the NY Post. “We don’t shower because of health. We shower because it’s a normal thing to do.”
…The powers that be were insisting we wash our hands numerous times a day to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, but now they want us to sit in our own filth? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suggested that Americans begin cutting down their time in the shower. The EPA believes we can save 2.5 gallons of water for every minute spent out of the shower. They suggest we wash our hair with the water off and believe five minutes in the shower is more than sufficient. Now, the EPA wants to frame this as a way to cut down on utility costs.
I say this is a perfect opportunity to employ an Alinsky tactic by enrolling 100 or so folks to not take showers for a week and then do a protest in the lobby of the EPA or the BBC.
Hat Tip: D.S.
Europe Shows Us Climate Corporatism and Cultism Are the Road to Hell
This article by the great Conrad Black describes the disaster that is European climate policy:
For a long time, it was a political free lunch: everybody loves the environment, and the climate change issue was very skillfully transformed by the left into an assault on the capitalist system from a new angle in the name of saving the planet. As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing.
The burden of subsidized wind and solar farms didn’t appear on peoples’ energy bills, though eventually they were placed on the back of the taxpayer. Now, however, net zero policies are directly eating into the earnings and savings of the public and in most of Europe, the taxpayer rebellion is exploding, and the advantages of democracy are being reaffirmed as elected governments scamper to the rear, explaining that there has been a misunderstanding. When the German government tried to compel the people of that country to change their gas boilers for heat pumps at a cost of thousands of dollars per home, what critics called “boilergeddon,” it produced a so-called green-lash.
Another political disaster has befallen the western European governments that had rolled over like poodles in front of the climate change alarmists: once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe…
It is now clear in Europe, as it long has been in the private sector of the United States, that with whole industries and millions of jobs at stake, implementation of net zero policies in the West would make China the dominant economic and industrial power of the world. Even our most naïve and insipid global warming crusaders are unenthused by that bone-chilling prospect. Although Germany has finally acted to protect its auto industry, it is not yet doing the same for the public. It is still officially planning to ban weekend driving to meet climate targets. If the federal German government proceeds with such an insane plan, it will sink without a ripple at the next election.
It's amazing to see how far the German Energiewende has fallen after so many years of being lectured by those who proclaimed it to be the future.
Hat Tip: S.H.
No Way, But Nonetheless An Edict to Derail
This is the sort on insanity that got Europe in such trouble:
Various industry and advocacy groups are lining up against California's costly measure, calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deny a waiver needed to fully implement it. In the past month, more than 30 leading conservative organizations and individuals, hundreds of state and local chambers of commerce, and the U.S. agricultural sector have pleaded with the EPA to help stop this piece of extremism from escaping one coastal state.
Railroads may not be something most Americans, whose attention is on their own cars and roads, think about often. But rail is the most basic infrastructure of interstate commerce, accounting for around 40% of long-distance ton-miles. It's also fairly clean, accounting for less than 1% of total U.S. emissions. Private companies, like Union Pacific in the West or CSX in the East, pay for their infrastructure and equipment. These facts haven't stopped the regulatory power grab.
Most importantly, the California Air Resources Board regulation would have all freight trains operate in zero-emission configuration by 2035. At the end of the decade, the state is mandating the retirement of diesel locomotives 23 years or older, despite typically useful lives of over 40 years. Starting in 2030, new passenger locomotives must operate with zero emissions, with new engines for long-haul freight trains following by 2035. It limits locomotive idling and increases reporting requirements.
Given the interstate nature of railway operations, California needs the EPA to grant a waiver. If the agency agrees, the policy will inevitably affect the entire continental United States.
The kicker is that no technology exists today to enable railroads to comply with California's diktat, rendering the whole exercise fanciful at best.
Is there any hope for California? Sometimes it appears not, but the same rule that applies to high prices applies here as well. High prices lead to more competitors and that lowers prices in the end. California is also now getting competitors (e.g., Florida and Texas) and is losing population, which will ultimately lead to saner policies or there will be no California.
Hat Tip: T.Z.
And, Briefly:
After Install, Solar Panels Become Maintenance Nightmare, from D.S.
Having Children Is Destroying The Environment, from J.C.
Rockefellers Have a Bad Day at The Senate Budget Committee, from S.H.
Dumb, Dumber, and Dum-dee-dee-dum, from D.B.
Wind Generation Decline for First TimeSsince 1990s, from J.S.
Will Latest Bids Boost Offshore Wind for NJ?, from R.N.
The Good News about Climate Change, from R.C.
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #China #Solar #Showers #Biden #GlobalWarming
"So many nuggets, so little time" - great compilation, keep 'em rollin!
Other mammals bathe regularly with tongues. Birds bathe in water or fountains whenever possible, and also bathe feathers from a built-in oil gland. Most human cultures bathed regularly, and Islam required daily. Nonbathing was invented by the British sweatshoppers, who also gave us the frauds of "rights" and "democracy". Bathing prevents us from fulfilling our "right" to work 24 hours a day for the venture capitalist, so it had to be downplayed.