RUTHFULLY YOURS

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 […]

https://www.aier.org/article/fake-science-fuels-climate-extremism/

“Follow the science,” we are told, especially the junk science that climate alarmists invent.  I recently debunked a piece of junk climate science whose alarmism was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS, and elsewhere. The junk science was produced by the Federal Reserve. Fed officials claimed that warming will cut economic growth by a third, but my simple statistical analysis showed their results were within the margin of error and that minor improvements and new data flip their result!  

Mainstream economics shows that warming will have minor economic effects compared to the economic growth we expect over the next century. That is a problem for the climate lobby, which unfortunately includes the Fed. Since economic growth will swamp the economic effects of global warming, the Fed set out, it seems, to prove that warming will reduce growth. The fact that Florida, on average 26 degrees warmer than Michigan, has grown faster didn’t faze them.

The Fed isn’t the only institution to fall into chicanery. The study was published in a peer-reviewed academic economics journal, given wide media coverage, and cited in a congressional report to justify the Green New Deal.  Bogus research makes big splashes. But when it is debunked, there isn’t a ripple.  

The best economic model, validated by a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus, shows that if nothing is done to reduce emissions, warming will reduce world GDP by about three percent by the year 2100.  If global GDP continues to grow at the rate it has been growing, then the world in 2100 will be five times richer than it is today. A three-percent reduction in GDP would make us 4.8 times richer instead of 5.0 times. Not exactly catastrophic! Mainstream economics doesn’t deny climate change and accepts that some policies to mitigate it might pass a cost-benefit test. But it does not predict a climate apocalypse, even if we do nothing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/western-worlds-energy-folly-in-a-new-york-nutshell-europe-renewables-grid-reliability-green-fossil-fuels-emissions-wind-solar-11666374183?mod=opinion_trending_now_opn_pos3

The latest report from New York state’s grid operator is a master class in everything wrong with the Western world’s approach to climate change.

That is: everything wrong with an approach that consists of throwing money at green business interests in defiance of any practical consideration. If you think something else is going on, such as abating climate change, think again.

To meet a legislated goal of emissions-free electricity by 2040, New York will need up to 45 gigawatts of what it delicately calls DEFRs, or dispatchable emissions-free resources. Not only is that more than the state’s total current generating capacity of 37 gigawatts, these DEFRs, which are carbon-free like wind and solar yet not interruptible like wind and solar, don’t exist and have no prospect of existing in the next decade. Starting very much sooner than 2040, New York’s real choice will be Third World electricity reliability vs. paying fossil-fuel operators large fees to keep their plants up and running in a highly inefficient part-time fashion.

Many involved in the state’s energy “transition” might question whether purging the last 10% or 5% of fossil fuels from the system is worth the exorbitant cost. Don’t expect anyone to admit the bigger problem: The transition won’t likely do much to reduce global emissions.

This is the great unmentionable. When New Yorkers use less coal, oil or gasoline because of environmental mandates, the market price transmits the benefit to other global users, who then use more. Even more unspeakable is the corollary: Emission-spewing activities simply relocate from one part of the world to another. China’s emissions growth, from half the U.S.’s to almost 300% of the U.S.’s in 30 years, is partly the product of a transplant of emissions from the U.S. and Europe.

If pressed, Biden officials will privately revert to gobbledygook about carbon taxes that appear immaculately without anyone having to advocate them. The media fill the gap with wishful thinking and Soviet econometrics, confusing inputs with outputs. Yes, world-wide investment in renewables in the past two years has exceeded investment in fossil fuels. Supposedly this proves fossil fuels are on their way out. No, it proves fossil fuels are a better deal, consuming less investment to meet their share of the world’s growing power needs.