Best Energy Picks - November 9, 2024

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

Nov 09, 2024

This week’s best energy picks:

COP Begins with Appeal for Fossil Fuel Deals! — Alberta Conservatives Recognize the Value of CO2! — Corporatist Big Wigs Told to Keep Lawyers Close As ESG Loses Favor — Buck Up, Get Down to the Facts, or Bow Out! — and much more.

COP29 Begins with Appeal for Fossil Fuel Deals!

Every COP event is a disingenuous exercise and COP29 may be the worst to date:

A senior official at COP29 climate change conference in Azerbaijan appears to have used his role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals, the BBC can report.
A secret recording shows the chief executive of Azerbaijan's COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing "investment opportunities" in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.
"We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed," he says.
A former head of the UN body responsible for the climate talks told the BBC that Soltanov's actions were "completely unacceptable" and a "betrayal" of the COP process. As well as being the chief executive of COP29, Soltanov is also the deputy energy minister of Azerbaijan and is on the board of Socar….
COP29 will open in Baku on Monday and is the 29th annual UN climate summit, where governments discuss how to limit and prepare for climate change, and raise global ambition to tackle the issue.
However, this is the second year in a row the BBC has revealed alleged wrongdoing by the host government.
The BBC has been shown documents and secret video recordings made by the human rights organisation, Global Witness.

**SOCAR’s Heydar Aliyev Baku Oil Refinery, Source: Interfase, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>**

It is understood that one of its representatives approached the COP29 team posing as the head of a fictitious Hong Kong investment firm specialising in energy.
He said this company was interested in sponsoring the COP29 summit but wanted to discuss investment opportunities in Azerbaijan's state energy firm, Socar, in return. An online meeting with Soltanov was arranged…
Initially, Soltanov suggested the potential sponsor might be interested in investing in some of the "green transitioning projects" Socar was involved in - but then spoke of opportunities related to Azerbaijan's plans to increase gas production, including new pipeline infrastructure…
Soltanov then described natural gas as a "transitional fuel", adding: "We will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps forever."
The UN climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, acknowledges there will be a role for some oil and gas up to 2050 and beyond. However, it has been very clear that "developing… new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C."
It also goes against the agreement the world made at the last global climate summit to transition away from fossil fuels.

BBC and the folks who did the secret recording obviously see Solantov as some kind of traitor and believe they've uncovered a crime but what they've really uncovered is simply the truth, including the fact these COP events are disingenuous to the core.

Hat Tip: J.N.

Alberta Conservatives Recognize the Value of CO2!

Alberta may be the one sane part of Canada these days:

On November 2, Alberta's ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) approved a resolution stating, in part:
“CO2is a nutrient foundational for all life on Earth...The earth needs more CO₂ to support life and to increase plant yields, both of which contribute to the Health and Prosperity [sic] of all Albertans.”
A UCP member speaking in favor of the resolution stated:
"According to the CO2 Coalition, higher CO₂ levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide.”
The resolution recommended that the Government of Albedorserta should:
Abandon Net Zero targets
Remove the designation of CO₂ as a pollutant
Recognize that CO₂ is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth

As you can imagine, this did not sit well with the climate alarmist community. DeSmog Blog called us "the notorious CO₂ Coalition." Another stated:
"The CO2 Coalition, an organization that promotes the view of carbon dioxide as beneficial, appears to have influenced Resolution 12. During the UCP’s annual general meeting, a member advocating for the resolution cited the CO2 Coalition, stating that 'higher CO2 levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide.' This reference suggests that the CO2 Coalition’s materials and messaging contributed to shaping the arguments and rationale behind the UCP’s decision to reclassify CO₂ and abandon net-zero emission targets."
But wait... there's more:
"The US-based Coalition must be squirming in their dampened seats in excitement at having the home of the oil sands not just be a hot bed of interest in their antediluvian, a-scientific perspective, but actually changing the official policy of the ruling party. I’m sure that gasoline soaked paper bags were being passed around at what passes for the Coalition’s headquarters, huffing cancer-causing hydrocarbons clearly being their drug of choice."

I'd say the DeSmog Blog, founded by this fellow, just showed us who they are and it's anything but pretty pretty.

Hat Tip: G.W.

Corporatist Big Wigs Told to Keep Lawyers Close As ESG Loses Favor

The inevitable rejection of ESG approaches:

We've known the ESG grift has been coming to a screeching halt for years now, with major investment banks and companies dropping their initiatives while the GOP goes on a rampage to try root out the faux-virtue signaling.
But now with President Trump once again taking the White House, one investment bank is advising ESG fund managers to "keep their lawyers very close", as the full scale death of ESG may very well be on the door step, according to Yahoo Finance.
Aniket Shah wrote in a note this week: “We’d encourage all ESG fund managers to have a lawyer on the team, or on speed-dial.”

He continued: “Antitrust risk remains high for asset managers in ESG; there haven’t been any cases yet, thus there is no legal precedent. Further, legal risks regarding fiduciary duty will stay relevant as states enforce anti-ESG laws.”
Yahoo reports that Trump's victory has already hit green sector stocks, with wind-energy companies among the hardest hit. Beyond potential bans and obstructive policies, the ESG sector faces rising legal risks.
Key GOP figures argue ESG-focused firms neglect fiduciary duties, while Republican attorneys general accuse financial firms using ESG metrics of collusion against fossil fuels and fueling inflation.
In response, "greenhushing"—keeping ESG efforts quiet—is likely, Jefferies analysts note. Corporate CEOs are also expected to seek legal guidance to adapt to this shifting landscape.

Investors will only tolerate BS for so long before asking how their money is doing.

Hat Tip: D.S.

Buck Up, Get Down to the Facts, or Bow Out!

A recent peer-reviewed paper published in Nature and fawning coverage of the story in The U.K.’s Guardian indicate that many climate scientists are so sensitive that they are unable to handle criticism of their work, suggesting that they and their work should not be subject to critique, even when it is demonstrably wrong, because it hurts their feelings and ultimately, their work.
It appears they are using victimhood as a shield from undergoing the back-and-forth exchange of ideas inherent in the scientific method, especially when scientists propose that their research demands political action.
The scientific method requires that a hypothesis be ruled out or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with actual observations…
But The Guardian seems determined to present these professionals not as robust researchers capable of handling criticism, but as delicate flowers wilting under the harsh glare of public doubt.
Instead of addressing substantive climate criticisms — such as failed climate models, failed climate predictions or the fact that climate policies often do more harm than good — these scientists turn to emotional appeals. They argue that the public’s harsh words are as great a threat as climate change itself. They even suggest that “climate anxiety” is exacerbated by online abuse from skeptics…

Meanwhile, facts are still stubborn things. And, as documented on the Failed Climate Predictions Timeline, almost none of those science-based climate predictions that made media headlines over the past 30 years have materialized.
So, to the climate scientists who complain about “abuse” on X: Toughen up. If you can’t defend your models and predictions against public criticism, especially when there is a history of failure, maybe you’re not as confident in your conclusions as you claim to be. If you can’t, perhaps it is time to buck up or bow out.

There is no crying in science. Don't they know that?

Hat Tip: R.N.