RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2021/03/04/climate_policy_is_a_money-making_opportunity_for_the_elite_766755.html

“The climate transition presents a historic investment opportunity,” says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. “What the financiers, the big banks, the asset managers, private investors, venture capital are all discovering is: There’s a lot of money to be made in the creation of these new [green] jobs,” chimes in presidential climate envoy John Kerry. Fink concedes that the economy remains “highly dependent” on fossil fuels. He also asserts that BlackRock is “carbon neutral today in our own operations.” It’s a claim open to challenge. “If a company or individual says to me they are net-zero, I know it is complete crap,” tweeted Glen Peters, research director of the Oslo-based Center for International Climate Research.

Peters was taking to task former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who had claimed that investments in renewable energy offset emissions from fossil-fuel investments. Carney quickly backed down, but the spat reveals the fissure in the climate movement that first became visible with Michael Moore’s 2020 movie Planet of the Humans, which pitted true believers on one side against those positioning themselves to reap profits from the climate money pouring into decarbonization.

Carney is a leading light of the climate-finance oligarchy, positioned at the nexus of politics and finance. He is a climate adviser to British prime minister Boris Johnson and serves as UN secretary-general António Guterres’s special envoy on finance and climate action. He is also vice-chair of Canadian alternative asset manager Brookfield, heading its ESG and impact-investing business. One privilege of being a climate savior: any concerns over conflicts of interest don’t apply when the interests of the planet are at stake.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/why-texas-blackout-has-greens-so-scared-rael-jean-isaac/

Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the “climate crisis” forced his hand. “We can’t wait any longer.  We see with our own eyes.  We know it in our bones. It is time to act.”

Within days, most of the country was seeing “with our own eyes” and feeling “in our bones” a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were  left frozen (and inoperable). 

This constituted a double whammy to the huge global warming establishment. First was the cold, when the “science” had confidently predicted a steadily warming Texas.  Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid. 

Within hours the mainstream media had risen to the challenge.  Journalists employed their familiar word games, quickly substituting “climate change” for global warming.  Readers might be a tad confused if they read “The brutal cold striking Texas is emblematic of a world facing more unpredictable weather due to the rising impact of global warming” but substitute “climate change” for the last two words and presto, the sentence works.  To be sure, that’s only because “climate change” is a meaningless term. 

While the belief in man-made global warming rests on a scientific theory (rising carbon dioxide levels from burning fossil fuels will produce a large increase in water vapor, a greenhouse gas, raising the earth’s temperature),  no scientific theory underpins “climate change.” The climate has shifted dramatically over time, clearly without benefit of human activity.  Twenty thousand years ago, a mere moment in geologic time, what is now Chicago was buried under ice a mile thick. To pontificate about “climate change” is to give fake profundity to a silly statement of the obvious.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/texas-reliance-on-renewable-energy-has-led-to-this-winter-mess/

I’m writing from Texas, so I’ll try to finish this column before the electricity goes out. 

As you may have heard, we’ve had an unusually powerful winter storm down here and, in spite of the fact that every third household has a four-wheel-drive super-duty pickup truck, Texas has come to a standstill. When a little bit of ice settled on the freeway, a half a dozen people lost their lives in the ensuing 135-car pileup. 

Meanwhile, after years of mocking Californians for their self-imposed energy troubles, Texans are experiencing rolling blackouts — and a whole lot of blackouts that refuse to roll on but instead sit obstinately in place — because our power grid cannot keep up with the spike in demand. 

As in California, Texas’s energy scarcity is largely artificial: The state produces an extraordinary amount of natural gas, but there has been a woeful underinvestment in infrastructure ranging from pipelines to winterizing equipment at utilities. You may as well not have the fuel at all if you can’t get it to where it’s needed or use it once it’s there.

What Texas has invested in is renewables, especially wind. These have performed especially poorly: The state’s electric-grid regulator reports that though wind and solar still make up a relatively small share of the state’s overall energy mix, they accounted for 40 percent of the capacity shut down by the storm: Out of the 45 gigawatts that went dark, 18 gigawatts were from wind and solar. 

Wind is in many ways a good bet for Texas, especially in the western and northern parts of the state, the Saudi Arabia of gales. The sunny parts of the state also generate a fair bit of solar power, which also is welcome. The problem is that these power sources are unreliable. Solar panels don’t work with a couple of inches of snow on top of them, and an icy storm can cause those massive wind turbines to freeze up and stop working. As of right now, most of those Texas turbines are not functioning power sources — they are modern art. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/20/climate-hysterics-urging-biden-to-go-well-beyond-paris-climate-deal-limits-n1427096

The once-in-a-century storm and cold snap that hit the South this past week has given the climate hysterics a “told ya so” moment, which is made even more annoying by Joe Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Accords on Friday.

“The extreme weather events that we’re experiencing this week across the central, southern, and now the eastern United States do yet again demonstrate to us that climate change is real and it’s happening now, and we’re not adequately prepared for it,” Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said.

She said it herself: this was a “weather event,  proving nothing about climate change at all. But don’t stop the hysterics now. They’re on a roll.

CNBC:

“We have to ratchet up the commitments now if we are to stay on course to averting a catastrophic three degree Fahrenheit warming,” said [climate scientist Michael] Mann, the author of “The New Climate War,” during a Friday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “We have to increase our commitments and the other countries of the world have to do that.”

Climate change was not at the top of Joe Biden’s agenda that he ran for president on, and it certainly wasn’t one of the top issues of concern to Americans. But in our rush to save the planet from…something, we’re likely to destroy several industries and cost perhaps millions of Americans their jobs. That’s what increasing our commitments truly means.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/02/19/its-official-the-us-has-rejoined-the-pairs-climate-accords-n2585004

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced Friday that the United States is officially back in the Paris Climate Accords. 

“On January 20, on his first day in office, President Biden signed the instrument to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement. Per the terms of the Agreement, the United States officially becomes a Party again today,” Blinken released in a statement. “The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality. Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see.”

“Now, as momentous as our joining the Agreement was in 2016 — and as momentous as our rejoining is today — what we do in the coming weeks, months, and years is even more important. You have seen and will continue to see us weaving climate change into our most important bilateral and multilateral conversations at all levels. In these conversations, we’re asking other leaders: how can we do more together?” he continued. 

President Donald Trump took the U.S. out of the agreement in 2017, saving taxpayers $3 billion, and still continued to cut emissions at rates higher than European countries who stayed in the accords. From Forbes: 

Yesterday, The United Nations released its Emissions Gap Report 2020, an annual assessment of contributions to greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. The report has some notable information amid an array of complicated projections that may or may not come true. It claims, for instance, that “despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise.” 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-usa/it-is-official-u-s-back-in-the-paris-climate-club-idUSKBN2AJ16T

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States officially rejoined the Paris climate agreement on Friday, reinvigorating the global fight against climate change as the Biden administration plans drastic emissions cuts over the next three decades.

Scientists and foreign diplomats have welcomed the U.S. return to the treaty, which became official here 30 days after President Joe Biden ordered the move on his first day in office.

Since nearly 200 countries signed the 2015 pact to prevent catastrophic climate change, the United States has been the only country to exit. Then-President Donald Trump took the step, claiming climate action would cost too much.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry took part in virtual events on Friday to mark the U.S. re-entry, including appearances with the ambassadors of the UK and Italy and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, saying the United States will try to make up for lost time due to Trump’s withdrawal.

“We feel an obligation to work overtime to try to make up the difference. We have a lot to do,” Kerry said at the event with the UK and Italian ambassadors.

Biden has promised to chart a path toward net-zero U.S. emissions by 2050. Scientists have said that goal is in line with what is needed, while also stressing that global emissions need to drop by half by 2030 to prevent the most devastating impacts of global warming.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-2-17-texas-time-to-get-rid-of-this-ridiculous-wind-powe

Texas. It is the number one energy producing state in the United States. It is both the largest producer of oil, and the largest producer of natural gas, and has been for decades. Texas also has abundant coal reserves. It has been ground zero of the fracking revolution, which has revolutionized oil and gas production, vastly increased supplies, driven prices down by around two-thirds since 2014, and turned the U.S. into a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. By all rights, Texas should be the shining beacon of fossil fuel energy abundance for everyone else to envy.

And yet in Texas this week, there has been a good blast of cold air, accompanied by some meaningful ice and snow storms, and suddenly Texas finds itself with widespread power blackouts covering much of the state. Although the levels of cold and ice have been somewhat unusual, they have also been well within the range of historical experience. Meanwhile, other states farther north have been colder and have had more snow and more ice and yet the power has not gone out. What gives?

The simple answer is that despite its great abundance of fossil fuel energy, Texas nevertheless fell big for the ridiculous scam of trying to produce a high percentage of its electricity from wind. Yes, the story is somewhat more complicated than that, as stories always are. But not much more complicated. Basically, with its grid stressed in many ways in the past week, the wind was useless to carry the load that needed to be carried.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial today collects some basic data from Texas as to electricity supply capacity and usage. Total winter generation capacity for the state is about 83 GW, while peak winter usage is about 57 GW. That’s a margin of over 45% of capacity over peak usage. In a fossil-fuel-only or fossil-fuel-plus-nuclear system, where all sources of power are dispatchable, a margin of 20% would be considered normal, and 30% would be luxurious. This margin is well more than that. How could that not be sufficient?

https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/10/26/yes-joe-biden-really-does-want-to-end-the-oil-and-gas-industry-in-america

The Biden Plan

Among other items, Biden’s energy plan calls for the elimination of carbon from power generation by 2035.  The genesis of the Biden Plan, which can be found on the Democratic Party Platform website, is the Biden-Sanders Manifesto of July 20, 2020, which was submitted to the Democrat National Committee by co-Chairs John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The plan calls for:

Installation of 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems;
Installation of 60,000 wind turbines;
500,000 charging stations along American roads
Converting the fleet of 500,000 school buses to zero-emission alternatives within five years;
Transition of the 3 million vehicles in the federal, state, and local fleets to zero-emission vehicles.
Dictate net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all new buildings by 2030, on the pathway to creating a 100 percent clean building sector by converting four million buildings.
Additional regulations for the oil and gas industry to achieve what is vaguely defined as “environmental justice.”

Joebiden.com, the official campaign website, under “The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Future,” offers more general and aspirational policies, but in line with the Green New Deal.   Through elimination of natural gas for power, government investment in electric vehicles to push out hydrocarbon fuels, and regulation of fossil fuels, the Biden plan will effectively eliminate natural gas and oil from American energy.