RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/the_democrat_war_on_fossil_fuels.html

On October 19, in the heat of an election campaign, President Biden told the American people, “We need to increase oil production.”  He went on to say, “My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production.”  It was a disingenuous statement from a man whose sense of reality, fact, and fiction have become an undecipherable narrative.  Biden failed to mention the executive order he issued which stipulates, “the Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.”  This pause is ongoing.  Biden uses the same executive order as an instruction to the secretaries of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security, “to organize and deploy the full capacity of its agencies to combat the climate crisis.”

Millions of Americans are employed by businesses supporting the fossil-fuel industry.  Others choose to invest in fossil-fuel businesses.  All Americans rely on fossil fuels to power their businesses, transportation systems, and utilities.  Democrats will destroy these people’s jobs, capital, and imperil the U.S. economy.  The Biden administration decreed that, “we must combat the climate crisis with bold, progressive action that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.”  By executive order Biden has weaponized the federal bureaucracy to destroy the fossil-fuel industry. 

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) makes the business of refining oil difficult.  The law provides broad powers to the EPA.  It “directs the EPA Administrator to revise regulations to ensure that domestic transportation fuel sold or introduced into commerce, on an annual average basis, contains a specified volume of renewable fuel.”  The George W. Bush Administration and a bipartisan majority in Congress enacted the EISA providing authority to the EPA to dictate terms for the blending of renewable fuels in refineries.

In 2021, 13.9 billion gallons of ethanol were blended into gasoline.  Unfortunately for refiners, they were mandated by the EPA to blend 20.17 billion gallons.  Since there was a shortfall in EPA mandated ethanol consumption in 2021, refiners had to purchase Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) credits to make up the difference.  Each gallon of ethanol produced as a biofuel for blending  comes with a D6 RIN.  Each refiner/blender has a quota imposed by the EPA based on its annual mandate and the production capacity of the refinery.  If the refinery blends more than its quota, the surplus RINS may be sold as credits on the market.  If the refinery blends less than its quota, it must purchase RINS to make up the difference.  If no RIN credits are available on the market, they may be bought from ethanol producers.  In 2021 refiners had to purchase RIN credits for 6.27 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels they did not consume.  RIN credit costs vary as they are part of a RIN market that fluctuates.  In 2021 D6 RIN costs ranged between $.20/gallon and $1.20/gallon. A conservative estimate of RIN credit costs to refiners in 2021 is $6 billion.  This cost is passed on to consumers in the price of gasoline.  If the cost can’t be passed to the consumer, it comes out of the refiner’s margin.  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-policy-for-dummies-windfall-tax-oil-companies-joe-biden-11667339340

President Biden has the worst energy policy since Jimmy Carter, so it was probably inevitable that he would disinter one of Mr. Carter’s worst ideas—a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies. Doesn’t he know that when you tax something, you get less of it?

Sorry, rhetorical question. “Their profits are a windfall of war—the windfall from the brutal conflict that’s ravaging Ukraine and hurting tens of millions of people around the globe,” Mr. Biden said Monday of oil companies reporting strong earnings this year.

The reality is that their profits owe more to his Administration’s war on fossil fuels than Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion. Oil prices surged at the start of the war amid uncertainty about the impact of Western sanctions on Russian supply. But prices have moderated as China and India have continued to buy Russian crude at a discount, while markets have downgraded global economic forecasts amid central-bank tightening and Chinese lockdowns.

But gasoline prices remain relatively elevated because production, especially in the U.S., isn’t keeping up with demand. Recent refinery shutdowns in the U.S. and Europe have created a supply bottleneck, boosting refiners’ normally narrow margins. It’s no small irony that government policies and investor pressure to reduce production have inflated Big Oil’s profits.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/authors/john_murawski/

As California, New York, and other states move to phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars, public officials routinely echo the Biden administration’s claim that electric vehicles are a “zero emissions” solution that can significantly mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Car and energy experts, however, say there is no such thing as a zero-emissions vehicle: For now and the foreseeable future, the energy required to manufacture and power electric cars will leave a sizable carbon footprint. In some cases hybrids can be cleaner alternatives in states that depend on coal to generate electricity, and some suggest that it may be too rash to write off all internal combustion vehicles just yet. 

Ashley Nunes, Harvard Law researcher: Buy a Tesla? “If you care about the environment, keep the Kia,” he says.
ashley-nunes.com

“I have a friend who drives a Kia he’s had for about 15 years,” said Ashley Nunes, a research fellow at Harvard Law School. “He called me and said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of buying a Tesla. What do you think?’” 

“I said, ‘If you care about the environment, keep the Kia,’” Nunes said. 

Nunes’ advice points to the subtle complexities and numerous variables that challenge the reassuringly simple yet overstated promise of electric vehicles. Few dispute that the complete transition to EVs powered by cleaner electricity from renewable energy sources will have a less dire environmental impact than today’s gas-powered automotive fleet. But that low-carbon landscape exists on a distant horizon that’s booby-trapped with obstacles and popular misconceptions. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-doomsday-is-nigh-again-united-nations-environment-climate-change-fossil-fuels-11666989086?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Human beings, the wretches, continue to disappoint the savants at the United Nations, and never more than on climate change. The global body announced last week that despite all of the world’s climate sacrifices and trillions of dollars in renewable spending, we’re all still doomed unless mankind makes radical changes in lifestyles and standards of living.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement required countries to commit to reducing their emissions to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It’s already warmed about 1.1 degrees. Not that the alms offered up by President Biden and European leaders will do much good.

According to the U.N. report, all climate policies currently in place will result in warming of 2.8 degrees. Most countries haven’t implemented policies to meet their emissions targets. But even if they did, temperatures would still rise by 2.6 degrees. And if Western countries meet their “net-zero” goals? The world would warm 1.8 degrees.

Ponder that. Even if Europe and the U.S. banish fossil fuels from the electric grid, ban gas-powered vehicles, and find a way to capture CO2 from factories, the world still wouldn’t avoid the U.N.’s climate doomsday. One reason is that China, which emits two-thirds more CO2 than Europe and the U.S. combined, has only committed to peaking its emissions by 2030.

Thus, the U.N. report says drastic changes in human behavior are needed. To take one example, about a third of emissions come from the global food system. According to the report, about seven gigatons in CO2 reductions—roughly equal to those from today’s global natural gas production—by 2050 will need to come from people eating less meat.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=7648e06456

Often I have referred to the situation that the UK, Germany, California and others have set themselves up for as “hitting the green energy wall.” But now that the UK has actually gotten there and has begun to deal with the consequences, I’m not sure that “hitting the wall” is the best analogy. A better analogy might be “driving into the green energy cul-de-sac.” After all, when you hit a wall you can probably just pick yourself up and turn around and be on your way. In the cul-de-sac you are trapped with no evident way of getting out. You might be in there for a long time.

This is where the UK finds itself today. For well more than a decade, they have been aggressively and intentionally pursuing the green energy fantasy. The Net Zero emissions target was made mandatory by legislation in 2019. They have built hundreds of wind turbines and solar panels, while at the same time closing almost all of their coal mines and coal power plants. That has left them largely dependent on natural gas to back up the intermittent renewables. They have plenty of natural gas right under their feet in a large shale formation, but for years they dithered about allowing fracking to produce the gas, and then in 2019 they imposed a blanket moratorium on fracking. With production from their North Sea gas fields declining, they must buy gas on the European market. And although they don’t buy much gas directly from Russia, the European market has been driven to great heights by the cutoff of Russian supplies. Result: average annual residential energy bills in the UK, which were around £1000 as recently as earlier this year, went up to about £3000 this month, and have been projected to go as high as £5000 by this coming April absent some sort of government intervention.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-energy-education-for-democrats-oil-majors-profit-drilling-fossil-fuel-gas-permitting-inflation-midterms-biden-11667155465?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

If Democrats lose next week’s election, one reason will be soaring energy prices. The lesson that an electoral defeat should drive home is that this is the result of their own policies.

Consider President Biden’s outrage Friday over last week’s robust earnings reports for oil and gas companies. Six of the largest “made $70 billion in profit in one quarter,” he said at a fundraiser. These “excess profits are going back to their shareholders and their executives instead of going to lower prices at the pump.” The President who has done everything in his power to limit U.S. oil investment is now furious that he succeeded.

Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to believe oil companies should be allowed to make a profit or even cover marginal costs. “We need to keep making progress by having energy companies bring down the cost of a gallon of gas to reflect what they pay for a barrel of oil,” he said. Anything more is “excess” profit.

Keep in mind that oil majors’ current profits follow steep losses in the pandemic. As oil prices plunged amid lockdowns, companies and OPEC nations pared investment and shut in wells. Demand for oil then bounced back much quicker than supply, which has driven up prices—and profits. That’s Econ 101.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/climate-lunatics-throw-mashed-potatoes-on-monet-masterpiece/

Just nine days after climate doom fanatics threw tomato soup onto Vincent Van Gogh’s famed Sunflowers painting in the National Gallery in London, the apocalyptically named Last Generation group has struck in a similar way, hurling mashed potatoes at Claude Monet’s Haystacks, which recently sold for $110 million, in the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, before they glued their hands to the wall and settled in for a long day of climate hectoring, mythology, propaganda, and sloganeering. It’s an annoying and stupid form of protest, but get used to it: there is going to be a lot more of it, and worse.

According to the Guardian on Sunday, one of the climate clowns explained after throwing the starchy treat at the Monet: “People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying.” Smart move: people are starving, so let’s have a food fight in an art museum. But of course, the climate activists wouldn’t be engaging in stunts of this kind if they were rational thinkers who could critically evaluate what they were told and reject the climate propaganda that has been irresponsibly pounded into them since they were toddlers.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2022/10/27/with_their_attacks_on_david_malpass_global_warming_hysterics_reveal_their_shallow_ways_861412.html

In 2008 Nigel Lawson published An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. The Tory radical who served as Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was promptly attacked for having the temerity to write about the theory of global warming absent scientific credentials.

Lawson thankfully didn’t cower amid the arrows directed his way. Instead, Lawson responded that he would cease talking about global warming as soon as other non-scientists like Al Gore, Tony Blair, and other self-serious hysterics did the same. Brilliant!

As readers surely know, the Al Gores of the world never took Lawson up on his offer. The non-scientist in Gore continues to express alarm about “global warming,” and he continues to attack those who disagree with him.

Indeed, Gore recently went after David Malpass, president of the World Bank. Gore described Malpass as a “climate denier,” only for the World Bank head to be asked his views on whether or not human progress is the cause of a warming planet. Malpass’s response was, “I’m not a scientist.”

Please think about Malpass’s response, along with the vitriol directed at Lawson fourteen years ago. For writing a book about so-called “global warming” without scientific credentials, Lawson was demonized.

In which case, Malpass’s response to the question was seemingly the correct one for the warming nail-biters in our midst. Not a scientist, Malpass would leave the question of warming to the scientists. Gore et al should have been thrilled, except that Malpass’s response actually brought on more frothing at the mouth from warming’s religionists.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/10/26/joe_toomeys_searing_indictment_of_president_bidens_energy_policies_861133.html With the midterm elections just two weeks away, it seems almost too easy to pick on President Joe Biden. His approval ratings are bad (about 38% of those polled approve of his job performance) and candidates from his own party are staying away from him. As ABC News reported recently, “Democrats in make-or-break races are […]