Climate Initiatives

Experts Were the Covid Crisis in 2020

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Tamny makes the case that authoritarian government is a poor substitute for free people managing themselves facing a public health threat.  He writes at Real Clear Markets Dear Washington Post Editorial Board, the Experts Were the Crisis In 2020.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020. According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.” Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.

That’s the case because “the thing that matters most to any man” is “the saving of his own skin.” That this needs to even be said speaks to how wrongheaded the Post’s editorial board’s approach to the virus was, and still is. It implies we have dead because government didn’t act properly, as though free people eager to live were unequal to a virus that the right kind of collective governmental action was more than equal to. Ok, but what was government going to do? Better yet, what if the virus had struck in 2015 when Barack Obama was still in the White House. What would he have done? Would he have instructed a virus that was spreading faster than the flu to take a “time out”?

The simple truth missed by the Post is that as humans
we’re wired to preserve ourselves.

On the matter of life and the presumption of death, government is excess. Whatever solution Obama might have come up with, or whatever Donald Trump did come up with, or (try not to laugh) whatever Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would have done if the virus had revealed itself in 2021 would have been vastly unequal to the solutions crafted by free people.

Deep down the Post’s editorialists must know the above is true. Indeed, it’s not that the Soviet Union lacked experts, or that Cuba lacks experts now. The problem was and is that the remarkable knowledge of very few very smart people will never measure up to the collective knowledge of the citizenry. That’s why communism failed so impressively in the Soviet Union, and it’s why it fails in Cuba. Translated for those who need it, the people are the market and markets work. As I make plain in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the problem was experts and politicians substituting their limited knowledge for that of the people. That was the crisis. Not so, according to the Post and the report they cite.

Supposedly the “leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough” such that “1 million died.” Wrong. Over and over again. To see why, imagine if 10 million Americans had died in March of 2020. Can the Post editorial board think of what government might have done that would have somehow improved on a feverish individual desire to survive against long odds? The simple truth glossed over by the Post is that the more threatening a virus is (and the Post seems to view what most didn’t know they were infected with as wildly threatening), the more superfluous government action is.

Really, who reading this ever needs to be forced to avoid behavior that might result in sickness, or even death? And if the reply to this question is that some people DO need to be forced, you’re making the best case of all for unfettered freedom. Think about it. Those who reject expert opinion are the most crucial “control group” as a virus spreads. By going against the grain, we learn from their freely arrived at actions if the virus is as lethal as presumed, or not, how it spreads, how to perhaps avoid its spread, and all manner of other important bits of information suppressed by one-size-fits-all national solutions.

It cannot be stressed enough that free people crucially produce information. Instead of allowing them to produce it in abundance in 2020, the response arrived at by Democrats and Republicans was to lock people in their homes, thus blinding a nation “with more capabilities than any other country” to the best approaches to a spreading virus. Please keep all of this in mind with the report’s assertion that the “most important and fundamental misjudgment” about the virus was how it spread. You think? Of course, the muscular assertion ignores yet again that if knowing how a virus spreads is of utmost importance, the only credible answer is freedom.

Consider the latter in light of the statement of the obvious that all advances in medicine have always been born of matching doctors and scientists with the abundant fruits of wealth creation. In 2020, rather than encourage the very wealth creation that has long been the biggest foe of death and disease (by far), panicky politicians quite literally chose economic contraction as a virus mitigation strategy. Historians will marvel at the abject stupidity of the U.S. political class, but not the Post’s editorialists or the authors of a report that the editorialists remarkably find insightful.

Rather than acknowledge the obvious about government and experts as the crisis, the Post editorialists and the experts they kneel before bemoaned a national abdication of “wartime responsibilities.” One gets the feeling Tolstoy would chuckle yet again. In his words, “The course of a battle is affected by an infinite number of freely operating forces (there being no greater freedom of operation than on a battlefield, where life and death are at stake), and this course can never be known in advance; nor does it ever correspond with the direction of any one particular force.”

In short, on matters of life and death government control
is wretched, crisis-inducing excess.

 

Obviously Climate Policies Are Inflationary

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Rupert Darwall explains how central bankers avert their eyes from the obvious in his Real Clear Energy article Inflation, Net Zero, and the Bank of England. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A central banker tiptoes toward the inflationary consequences of Net Zero.

“What a banker,” read the unsubtle headline in the Sun. “BoE official on £190k salary says Brits must accept they’re worse off.” The Mail agreed. “BoE chief risks fury as he says Brits must accept they are poorer.” What sparked the tabloids’ outrage was a Columbia Law School podcast with Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist and a member of the Bank’s interest-rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee. Pill made the uncontroversial point that higher energy prices were making Britons worse off, but that attempts by workers and firms to recoup the real spending power they’d lost risked embedding inflation.

Pill’s analysis should have been directed at his fellow central bankers,
who let inflation slip the leash.

In his Geneva speech, Pill says that central bankers need to assess structural factors likely to prevent inflation falling back to target. “If a rise in energy prices is seen as permanent, it is more likely to trigger greater intrinsic inflation,” he argues. If it does, it would “justify a stronger tightening of monetary policy.” Not mentioned by Pill, however, are the effects of climate policy and net zero on energy costs and prices – and therefore the persistence of inflation on an economy being subjected to a multi-decadal program of decarbonization.

Climate policies drive up energy costs through two channels.

The first are policies forcing energy companies to replace hydrocarbons with inefficient, inferior lower-carbon alternatives, notably wind and solar. Were such technologies superior and capable of delivering greater efficiencies, there would be no need for government intervention promoting their adoption. The second channel is by progressively constricting the sources of energy supply, for example by Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investors preventing investment in new oil and gas fields, thereby increasing the market share of OPEC plus Russia.

In Britain’s case, powering past coal meant increased dependence on natural gas to keep the lights on. As Pill notes, all market transactions involve distribution of some “economic surplus” between the parties; “the more effective the seller is in extracting that economic surplus, the higher the resulting economic price will be.” Unfortunately for Britain and the rest of Europe, Vladmir Putin and Gazprom have a much better understanding of how energy markets work than Western politicians who made their continent vulnerable to surplus extraction through the myopic pursuit of net zero.

With the Bank of England, it’s not so much myopia as wilful blindness to any possibility of a link between climate policies and inflation. In a speech this month unironically asking “Climate action: a tipping point?,” Sarah Breeden, the bank’s executive director for financial stability and risk, describes its role as creating a regulatory framework that encourages markets “to allocate capital to support real economy decarbonization,” i.e., to worsen the supply constraints on hydrocarbon energy. At the November 2022 G20 meeting in Bali, Deputy Governor Sir Dave Ramsden spoke of the need to avert climate catastrophe. “Among all the shocks – many unprecedented – facing the global economy today, the challenge of climate change is the most profound and far reaching,” Sir Dave declared, in the very month it was announced that consumer price inflation in Britain had reached 11.1 percent.

From the governor on down, the Bank of England became obsessed with conjuring up specters of climate risk as threats to financial stability, all the while blanking out any possibility that climate change policy might threaten attainment of the bank’s inflation mandate. Less than two years ago, Andrew Bailey, the bank’s governor, was talking of net zero as a way of regenerating capital and raising productivity. “These positive effects should be larger in countries like the UK that are net importers of energy,” Bailey asserted – the opposite of what the bank’s chief economist is now saying.

Alarm bells should be ringing in Threadneedle Street. Giving evidence to a House of Lords inquiry on the Bank of England independence, former chancellor George Osborne cast doubt on making climate goals one of the bank’s objectives. His former Labour opponent, Ed Balls, who helped design the arrangements making the bank independent in 1997, went further, arguing that it didn’t make sense to give the bank a role for which it had no tools, and suggesting that climate had become a distraction from its core mission on price and financial stability.

Climate is worse than a distraction:
misjudgement and misanalysis of climate-change policy is a key factor
in the Bank of England losing control of inflation.

You Won’t Survive “Sustainability” Agenda

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Joel Kotkin explains in his Spiked article The inhumanity of the green agenda.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The ‘sustainability’ regime is impoverishing the world.

In recent years, the overused word ‘sustainability’ has fostered a narrative in which human needs and aspirations have taken a back seat to the green austerity of Net Zero and ‘degrowth’. The ruling classes of a fading West are determined to save the planet by immiserating their fellow citizens. Their agenda is expected to cost the world $6 trillion per year for the next 30 years.

Meanwhile, they will get to harvest massive green subsidies
and live like Renaissance potentates.

In Enemies of Progress, author Austin Williams suggests that ‘the mantra of sustainability’ starts with the assumption that humanity is ‘the biggest problem of the planet’, rather than the ‘creators of a better future’. Indeed, many climate scientists and green activists see having fewer people on the planet as a key priority. Their programme calls not only for fewer people and fewer families, but also for lower consumption among the masses. They expect us to live in ever smaller dwelling units, to have less mobility, and to endure more costly home heating and air-conditioning. These priorities are reflected in a regulatory bureaucracy that, if it does not claim justification from God, acts as the right hand of Gaia and of sanctified science.

The question we need to ask is: sustainability for whom?

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen recently suggested that her department sees climate change as ‘the greatest economic opportunity of our time’. To be sure, there is lots of gold in green for the same Wall Street investors, tech oligarchs and inheritors who fund the campaigns of climate activists. They increasingly control the media, too. The Rockefellers, heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, and other ultra-wealthy greens are currently funding climate reporters at organs like the Associated Press and National Public Radio.

Under the new sustainability regime, the ultra-rich profit, but the rest of us not so much. The most egregious example may be the forced take-up of electric vehicles (EVs), which has already helped to make Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the world’s second-richest man. Although improvements are being made to low-emissions vehicles, consumers are essentially being frogmarched into adopting a technology that has clear technical problems, remains far more expensive than the internal-combustion engine and depends primarily on an electric grid already on the brink of blackouts. Green activists, it turns out, do not expect EVs to replace the cars of hoi polloi. No, ordinary people will be dragooned to use public transport, or to walk or bike to get around.  [BMW will come to mean “Bike, Metro, and Walking.”]

The shift to electric cars is certainly no win for the West’s working and middle classes. But it is an enormous boon to China, which enjoys a huge lead in the production of batteries and rare-earth elements needed to make EVs, and which also figure prominently in wind turbines and solar panels. China’s BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett, has emerged as the world’s top EV manufacturer, with big export ambitions. Meanwhile, American EV firms struggle with production and supply-chain issues, in part due to green resistance to domestic mining for rare-earth minerals. Even Tesla expects much of its future growth to come from its Chinese factories.

Building cars from primarily Chinese components will have consequences for autoworkers across the West. Germany was once a car-manufacturing giant, but it is expected to lose an estimated 400,000 car-factory jobs by 2030. According to McKinsey, the US’s manufacturing workforce could be cut by up to 30 per cent. After all, when the key components are made elsewhere, far less labour is needed from US and European workers. It’s no surprise that some European politicians, worried about a popular backlash, have moved to slow down the EV juggernaut.

This dynamic is found across the entire sustainability agenda. The soaring energy costs in the West have helped China expand its market share in manufactured exports to roughly equal that of the US, Germany and Japan combined. American manufacturing has dropped recently to its lowest point since the pandemic. The West’s crusade against carbon emissions makes it likely that jobs, ‘green’ or otherwise, will move to China, which already emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world.

Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership is looking to adapt to changes in the climate,
instead of undermining economic growth chasing implausible Net Zero targets.

There are clear class implications here. California’s regulators recently admitted that the state’s strict climate laws aid the affluent, but hurt the poor. These laws also have a disproportionate impact on ethnic-minority citizens, creating what attorney Jennifer Hernandez has labelled the ‘green Jim Crow’. As China’s increasingly sophisticated tech and industrial growth is being joyously funded by US venture capitalists and Wall Street, living standards among the Western middle class are in decline. Europe has endured a decade of stagnation, while Americans’ life expectancy has recently fallen for the first time in peacetime. Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heymann suggests that the only way to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 is by squelching all future growth, which could have catastrophic effects on working-class and middle-class living standards.

Rather than the upward mobility most have come to expect, much of the West’s workforce now faces the prospect of either living on the dole or working at low wages. Today, nearly half of all American workers receive low wages and the future looks worse. Almost two-thirds of all new jobs in recent months were in low-paying service industries. This is also true in Britain. Over recent decades, many jobs that might have once supported whole families have disappeared. According to one UK account, self-employment and gig work do not provide sustenance for anything like a comfortable lifestyle. Rates of poverty and food shortages are already on the rise.

As a result, most parents in the US and elsewhere doubt their children
will do better than their generation,
while trust in our institutions is at historic lows.

The fabulists at places like the New York Times have convinced themselves that climate change is the biggest threat to prosperity. But many ordinary folk are far more worried about the immediate effects of climate policy than the prospect of an overheated planet in the medium or long term. This opposition to the Net Zero agenda was first expressed by the gilet jaunes movement in France in 2018, whose weekly protests were initially sparked by green taxes. This has been followed by protests by Dutch and other European farmers in recent years, who are angry at restrictions on fertilisers that will cut their yields. The pushback has sparked the rise of populism in a host of countries, notably Italy, Sweden and France. Even in ultra-with-it Berlin, a referendum on tighter-emissions targets recently failed to win over enough voters.

This is class warfare obscured by green rhetoric.
It pits elites in finance, tech and the nonprofit world against
a more numerous, but less connected, group of ordinary citizens.

Many of these folk make their living from producing food and basic necessities, or from hauling these things around. Factory workers, truck drivers and farmers, all slated for massive green regulatory onslaughts, see sustainability very differently than the urban corporate elites and their woke employees. As the French gilets jaunes protesters put it bluntly: ‘The elites worry about the end of the world. We worry about the end of the month.’

This disconnect also exists in the United States, according to long-time Democratic analyst Ruy Teixeira. Attempts to wipe out fossil fuels may thrill people in San Francisco, but are regarded very differently in Bakersfield, the centre of the California oil industry, and in Texas, where as many as a million generally good-paying jobs could be lost. Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full national ban on fracking, widely supported by greens, would cost 14 million jobs – far more than the eight million jobs lost in the Great Recession of 2007-09.

No surprise then that blue-collar workers are not so enthusiastic
about the green agenda.

Just one per cent, according to a new Monmouth poll, consider climate as their main concern. A new Gallup poll shows that just two per cent of working-class respondents say they currently own an electric vehicle and a mere nine per cent say they are ‘seriously considering’ purchasing one.

These Western concerns are nothing compared to how the sustainability agenda could impact the developing world. Developing countries are home to roughly 3.5 billion people with no reliable access to electricity. They are far more vulnerable to high energy and food prices than we are. For places like Sub-Saharan Africa, green admonitions against new agricultural technologies, fossil fuels and nuclear power undermine any hope of creating desperately needed new wealth and jobs. It’s no wonder that these countries increasingly ignore the West and are looking to China instead, which is helping the developing world to build new fossil-fuel plants, as well as hydroelectric and nuclear facilities. All of this is anathema to many Western greens.

To make matters worse, the EU is already considering carbon taxes on imports,
which could cut the developing world off from what remains of global markets.

More critical still could be the impact of the sustainability mantra on food production, particularly for Sub-Saharan Africa, which will be home to most of the world’s population growth over the next three decades, according to United Nations projections. These countries need more food production, either domestically or from rich countries like the US, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and France. And they are acutely aware of what happened when Sri Lanka adopted the sustainability agenda. This led to the breakdown of Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector and, eventually, to the violent overthrow of its government.

We need to rethink the sustainability agenda. Protecting the environment cannot come at the cost of jobs and growth. We should also assist developing countries in achieving a more prosperous future. This means financing workable technologies – gas, nuclear, hydro – that can provide the reliable energy so critical for economic development. It does no good to suggest a programme that will keep the poor impoverished.

Unless people’s concerns about the green agenda are addressed, they will almost certainly seek to disrupt the best-laid plans of our supposedly enlightened elites. In the end, as Protagoras said, human beings are still the ultimate ‘measure’ of what happens in the world – whether the cognoscenti like it or not.

 

 

 

No Supreme Ruling on Deadbeat Cities’ Climate Lawsuits

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Denver Business Journal reports US Supreme Court rejects Boulder’s $100M climate lawsuit against Suncor, Exxon.  That headline is misleading in that SCOTUS declined to rule on the motion to restrict such lawsuits to federal courts.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The United State Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a lawsuit Boulder and two other local governments filed against oil refiners Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil and deemed similar climate change-related lawsuits matters for state courts.

The nation’s highest court issued orders Monday rejecting oil companies’ request to take up the Boulder case and similar lawsuits filed against other oil industry giants such as BP, Sunoco and Shell by the governments of Baltimore, Maryland; San Mateo County, California; and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Boulder city and county governments and San Miguel County, home to Telluride, joined together in 2018 and sued Calgary-based Suncor Energy and Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil. The plaintiffs argued the communities face at least $100 million in costs over 30 years “to deal with the impacts of climate change caused by the use of fossil fuel products like those made and sold by Suncor and Exxon.”

Oil companies and local governments bringing similar legal cases have been jostling over whether state courts or the federal bench should have jurisdiction. Monday’s denial by the Supreme Court settles the jurisdictional matter, but doesn’t end the cases.

“We will continue to fight these suits, which are a waste of time and resources and do nothing to address climate change,” said Todd Spitler, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil. “Today’s decision does not impact our intention to invest billions of dollars to lead the way in a thoughtful energy transition that takes the world to net zero carbon emissions.“

Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the consideration and decision, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh would’ve taken up Boulder’s case at the Supreme Court, the order noted.

Suncor owns the three oil refineries in Commerce City, the only refineries in Colorado.  A jurisdictional fight arose about which level of court — state or federal — is appropriate for such cases.

Local governments and the U.S. Department of Justice argued the cases belonged in state courts.  Oil companies asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the Boulder case and settle issues the companies said are common among more than a dozen lawsuits working their way through lower courts.

Allies of the oil and gas industry expressed disappointment at the Supreme Court’s decision.  Having state courts handle the cases could lead to a patchwork approach to policy questions that are inherently federal or international in scope, said Phil Goldberg, special counsel for the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, in a statement issued Monday.

The good news is that state courts likely will, after the substance of the liability claims is heard, dismiss them like a New York City lawsuit against Exxon was two years ago, he said.

“The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable for people and sustainable for the planet,” Goldberg said.

“It should not be figuring out how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek
to monetize climate change and provide no solutions.”

The Boulder and San Miguel County case was called a stunt by the state oil and gas industry when it was first filed.  Companies shouldn’t face legal liability for “doing nothing more than engaging in the act of commerce while adhering to our already stringent state and federal laws,” said Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, at the time.

But supporters of community claims point to evidence that’s shown oil companies understood but did not publicly disclose the potential ramifications of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere. [There is again the lie of labelling the harmless trace gas plant food as “pollution.”]

They argue that climate-change-inducing emissions are at the root of incidents like the unusual, deadly deluges of September 2013, and out-of-season wildfires, like those that destroyed over 1,000 Superior and Louisville-area homes on New Year’s Eve, 2021, and have forced communities to bear the costs of responding to such disasters .[Yet in the UN report they say there is virtually no evidence of a relationship between extreme events and climate change.]

Q:  Why These Lawsuits?  A: Deep Pockets

Background Previous Post: Supremes Will Soon Rule on Deadbeat Cities’ Climate Lawsuits

Caleb Johnson writes at New York Post The Supreme Court will soon decide on cities pushing an extreme climate agenda.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H\T John Ray

On one hand, cities are suing oil and gas companies for alleged climate-related damages.
On the other, the same cities write in their municipal-bond disclosures
they cannot attest to the effects of climate change.

This makes Friday’s Supreme Court conference on Suncor v. Boulder critical. The nation’s highest court will decide if it will take up the case to rule on whether these climate suits should be heard in state or federal court.

No matter where they proceed, these cases not only lack merit but deserve greater scrutiny given the plaintiffs’ companion bond disclosures.  Municipalities like Boulder, San Francisco and Baltimore, among others, have been filing claims against oil and gas companies, seeking damages they allege are directly attributable to the firms’ actions.

But holders of these cities’ bonds could be forgiven for being surprised by these lawsuits.  Because the ambiguous claims these cities made to their bondholders belie the specific nature of the claims they later made to courts.   

In their bond disclosures, these cities all acknowledge they’re unable to forecast
with any degree of certainty climate change’s adverse effects
and the science underlying their assumptions is evolving.

Fair enough. But contrast this with the incredibly specific claims in these cities’ lawsuits.  In 2017, San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, filed a lawsuit in state court against five energy companies, alleging they are responsible for very specific effects of climate change and should pay for infrastructure such as sea walls to deal with its ongoing and future consequences.

The lawsuit’s claim about predicting the effects of climate change comes into serious question when the city attorney’s bond-issuing employer has stated it cannot accurately determine the extent of climate change for its investors.

In a 2018 petition in Texas state court, Exxon alleged the “stark and irreconcilable conflict” between the municipalities’ allegations in the lawsuits and their disclosures in bond offerings indicated the suits were brought “not because of a bona fide belief in any tortious conduct by the defendants or actual damage to their jurisdictions, but instead to coerce ExxonMobil and others operating in the Texas energy sector to adopt policies aligned with those favored by local politicians in California.”

Its petition was denied, but the concern about the “stark and irreconcilable conflict”
has quietly simmered ever since — and for good reason.

Disclosures in other areas have been a source of angst for muni bondholders.  In 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease and desist order against the City of Boulder for misstating that it had complied with prior agreements to provide continuing disclosure to its investors.

What prompted renewed interest in this issue was not just the reexamination of bond risks after Credit Suisse’s failure but also the solicitor general’s recent recommendation to the Supreme Court, urging the justices to reject ExxonMobil and Suncor’s petition for their case to be heard in federal rather than state court.

Credit Suisse’s AT1 investors have reason to be upset but not necessarily all that surprised.  After all, those bonds were yielding 9.75%, suggesting the risks were high.  For comparison, the average yield on ostensibly much safer 10-year muni bonds is about 2.49%.

But what if, in addition to the risks laid out in disclosure documents, Credit Suisse had been aware of other material risks it had failed to disclose to its bondholders?  Well, that would be securities fraud.

Might the same hold true for these municipalities doing the bidding
of trial lawyers pushing an extreme climate agenda?

To the extent that these cities have a much greater degree of certainty about the risks they face, have those risks been adequately described to all audiences, investors and the courts alike?

The question remains.  And while these lawsuits seem meritless, one hopes the Supreme Court concludes at least that they ought to remain in federal court — where they belong.

 

 

Climatists Against Growing Rice, Because . . .Methane

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Beautiful rice terraces in the morning light near Tegallalang village, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.

M Dowling reports at Independent Sentinel They’re Coming for Your Rice, But We Always Have Bugs.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Rice feeds half the world

The top rice producers are in Asia The world’s top rice producer is China, at 214 million metric tons. India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam are next. In Africa, Nigeria (6.8 million) is the largest producer. Brazil (11.8 million) and the United States (10.2 million) are also top producers, according to 2018 data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

But Now This Warning

 

The new “crisis” came at us in 2019 from Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum:  This is how rice is hurting the planet   Global rice production is releasing damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, doing as much harm as 1,200 average-sized coal power stations, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates around 770 million tonnes of rice were produced in 2018, with China and India responsible for approximately half of that amount.

Flooding isn’t strictly necessary for rice to grow – it’s an efficient way of preventing the spread of invasive weeds. It’s so fundamental to how many rice farmers operate that it’s not easy to imagine it being grown any other way…

Microbes that feed off decaying plant matter in these fields produce the greenhouse gas methane. And because rice is grown so prolifically, the amount being created is not to be sniffed at – around 12% of global annual emissions.

This crisis is as bogus as the rest of the asbsurdities Schwab conjures up.
Dr. William Happer at C-Fact explains the issue with methane gas.

“Methane, the molecule CH4, is the main constituent of natural gas. Animals like cattle and sheep belch methane as they chew their cud. They are able to get more energy from forage by digesting some of the cellulose with the aid of methane-generating microorganisms in their stomachs. Termites use the same trick to digest wood. Microorganisms in soils, notably rice paddies, also emit large amounts of methane.”

“Few realize that large increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases cause very small changes in the heat balance of the atmosphere. Doubling the concentration of methane – a 100% increase, which would take about 200 years at the current growth rates – would reduce the heat flow to space by only 0.3%, leading to an average global temperature change of only 0.2 °C. This is less than one-quarter of the change in temperature observed over the past 150 years.

“Most of the predicted catastrophic warming from greenhouse gas emissions is due to positive feedbacks that are highly speculative, at best. In accordance with Le Chatelier’s principle, most feedbacks of natural systems are negative, not positive.

It wouldn’t do much!

“So, even if regulations on U.S. methane emissions could completely stop the increase of atmospheric methane (they can’t), they would likely only lower the average global temperature in the year 2222 by about 0.2 °C, a completely trivial amount given that humans have adapted to a much larger change over the past century while reducing climate deaths by over 98%. And U.S. regulations will have little influence on global emissions, where producers are unlikely to be as easily cowed.

“Given that consumption of fossil fuels is likely to increase over the next few decades as developing countries pull themselves out of poverty, restrictions on U.S. oil and gas production will simply shift production to autocratic nations such as Russia, which have much higher methane-emissions rates than U.S. producers do.“

“In fact, there is no climate emergency and there will not be one,
with or without new regulations on methane emissions.”

“However, you can bet that if the Biden administration is successful in promulgating regulations on oil and gas producers, it will expand these efforts into ranching and agriculture, which emit about the same amount of methane as energy production. No sector of the economy will remain untouched by the EPA’s long arm of climate regulations.“

Give Daisy and the Rice Farmers a Break!

Background Post Climatists Aim Forks at Our Food Supply

The attack on world food supply has four prongs to it, just like the forks in the image.

1.  Exaggerate the Minor Climate Impact of Methane (CH4)

2.  Oppose Methane from Livestock as a Fossil Fuel, like Coal and Oil.

3. Freak Out over N2O as an Excuse to Ban Fertilizers

4.  Meat Shame People’s Diets Because Vegans Love Animals

 

 

Net Zero Not Rational

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jonathan Lesser explains in his Real Clear Energy article Why “Net Zero” Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering for neglible climate impact.

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda. In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

Global critical metal demand for wind and PV

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to “save” the climate. Although a recent Washington Post article suggests that wealth be viewed in terms of “joy, beauty, friendship, community, [and] closeness to flourishing nature,” impoverished individuals who cook with animal dung – such as 80% of the population in the African nation of Burkina-Fasso – aren’t likely to find much joy and beauty in economic misery. Granted, having to cook with animal dung ensures “closeness to nature,” although probably not the one the article’s author envisions.

Rather than approaching energy policy clearly, the U.S. (and most of the western world) is pursuing so-called “net zero” energy policies aiming to fully electrify western economies, while relying almost entirely on wind and solar power. The additional required electricity – after all, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun sets nightly – would supposedly be supplied by energy storage batteries or hydrogen-powered generators.

Two factors drive these policies. 

First, there is climate hysteria, which promotes claims that have either proven to be false (the “end of snow” in Great Britain, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park) or posit extreme scenarios (complete agricultural collapse, massive sea level increases, more frequent hurricanes). The actual evidence is to the contrary, including increased agricultural yields, minimal sea level rise, and no increases in observed hurricane frequency. 

Second, these policies are driven by old-fashioned greed. Green energy subsidies, which were already large, have been hugely expanded under the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA is a virtual smorgasbord of green energy subsidies for offshore wind, solar power, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure. The green energy pork, which relies on climate alarmism for its justification, is increasing electricity costs and reducing standards of living, such as in Europe, where deindustrialization is taking place because of unaffordable energy costs. Even progressive California admits its zero-emissions goals primarily will benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Although the author of the Washington Post article may think differently, modern society requires ample supplies of reliable and affordable energy. A modern society that runs solely on electricity must have a foundation built upon three key pillars.  First, it must provide lots of electricity, far more than is generated today, because U.S. electricity consumption accounts for only about one-fifth of total energy consumption. Second, all of that electricity must be available 24-7. Third, it must be affordable. Those pillars cannot be supported by reliance on intermittent wind and solar power and huge banks of batteries to store electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Nor will those pillars be based on technologies that don’t even exist, such as generators that run on pure hydrogen. 

Even if one believes that addressing climate change is crucial and
that low- or zero-emissions technology will yield worldwide benefits,
the current approach is the most expensive way to achieve it. 

Despite the hyperventilation of some politicians, such as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s predictions of doom, climate change need not entail economic suicide. A far better approach is adaptation to and mitigation of potential future damages that may be caused by a changing climate, such as gradual sea level rise and slightly warmer temperatures.

It is doubtful the U.S. will adopt this approach in the near future, because political expediency nearly always beats rational economics. But as economist Herb Stein said long ago, something that cannot go on forever, won’t. The unrealistic energy policies in place today eventually will collapse under their own weight. The resulting costs to U.S. consumers and businesses will be staggering. 

See also Series of Four Posts– World of Hurt from Climate Policies

Part 1, Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs

Part 2, Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation

Part 3, 100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet

Part 4, Leave it in the Ground Means Perpetual Poverty

 

European Energy Suffering, Now Hydro and Nuclear

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Irina Slav explains at Oil Price Europe’s Energy Troubles Continue: Hydro And Nuclear Output Declining.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

♦  Europe’s hydro and nuclear output is declining, leading to more energy troubles.
♦  Renewables are struggling to fill the gap as wind and solar output increase.
♦  The EU may require increased LNG imports from the US to meet energy demands.

Last year, Europe was on the brink of an energy breakdown as Russian gas flows dried up and most of Europe doubled down on renewable energy.

The renewable energy bet paid off, in a way. Solar and wind electricity generation in Europe hit a record in 2022. In fact, for the first time in history, wind and solar together produced more electricity than natural gas-fired power plants.

There was just one problem with that. Lower hydro and nuclear output
more than wiped out the significance of that record output.

Droughts were severe in Europe last year. They threatened major trade routes such as the Rhein in Germany and the Po in Italy. And they also caused severe declines in hydropower electricity output. For example, in Spain, hydropower output dropped by almost half because of the droughts. All this might repeat this year as well.

Meanwhile, nuclear wasn’t doing so swell, either. France suddenly found that years of underinvestment in maintenance would have consequences: emergency reactor shutdowns for repairs and maintenance.

The problems cost EDF a massive annual loss of $19 billion as half of its reactors had to be shut down for maintenance. Most blamed the pandemic, but nuclear experts such as Mark Nelson saw the roots of the problem much further into the past when France decided to bet on renewables over nuclear.

That might have been the case in 2022, but this year things are different. Wind and solar are still producing electricity at a record rate, it appears, but declines in hydropower and nuclear output are so severe they are more than offsetting those record output rates, Reuters’ Gavin Maguire reported in a recent column.

Maguire noted that Europe managed to boost its wind and solar power capacity by 9 percent last year to 57.29 GW, which was a record high. At the same time, however, the troubles of hydro and nuclear dragged total electricity generation down and are still doing it.

Over the first quarter, European power generation stood at 1,213 terrawatt-hours, which was 6.4 percent lower than output for the first quarter of 2023. That’s according to climate change advocacy Ember. According to Maguire, this is not necessarily alarming in itself. This time last year, Europe was coming out of pandemic lockdowns, and demand was soaring.

Where things could become problematic is later in the year as business activity across the continent begins to rebound after the energy crunch of last year, the Reuters columnist noted. And most of the Russian gas that was available last year is no longer an option.

French nuclear is a major source of hope, but it will be a while yet before output recovers. At the moment, French nuclear power plants are producing 17.5 percent less than the average output rate for 2020 and 2021. That’s down from 23 percent for last year, so there is some progress, and that’s a good sign.

Hydro is trickier because, although to a lesser extent than wind and solar, hydro is weather-dependent. With Europe’s mild winter that saw a lot less snow than usual, a repeat of last year’s drought is not out of the question. In fact, it is a distinct possibility.

What this means is that Europe may need to import a lot more LNG from its new top supplier, the United States. Some have worried that the EU is building too much LNG import infrastructure that would become stranded assets before too long, but right now, those assets appear to be vital for the bloc’s energy survival.

Energy Doublethink Update April 14, 2023

Posted on by Ron Clutz

First from the Zero Carbon zealots at Resilience Record clean-power growth in 2023 to spark ‘new era’ of fossil fuel decline.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The power sector is about to enter a “new era of falling fossil generation” as coal, oil and gas are pushed out of the grid by a record expansion of wind and solar power, according to new analysis by climate thinktank Ember.

Wind and solar power reached a record 12% of global electricity generation last year, according to Ember’s global electricity review 2023. This drove up the overall share of low-carbon electricity to almost 40% of total generation.

With even faster growth set to continue this year, Ember says 2022 is likely to mark a “turning point” when global fossil fuel electricity generation peaked and began to fall.

The thinktank forecasts that, by the end of 2023, more than 100% of the growth in electricity demand will be covered by low-carbon sources.

Experts broadly agree that global electricity generation needs to be completely decarbonised by 2040 if the world is to stay on track for its climate targets.

OTOH we have:

This month a 2023 US Energy Outlook from EIA (Energy Information Agency).  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Our projected growth in associated natural gas production is mainly driven by three trends:

♦  Rising oil prices support increased production from unconventional oil formations with significant natural gas volumes.
♦  Many unconventional oil wells are aging, and as these wells age, they tend to produce a higher ratio of natural gas relative to oil.
♦  Associated natural gas resources are becoming more economical, driven in part by provisions in the IRA, which creates penalties for venting and flaring methane and encourages producers to capture more natural gas from oil formations.

We project that associated natural gas production will increase from 7.2 Tcf in 2025 to 8.8 Tcf in the United States by 2050 in the AEO2023 Reference case. In the AEO2023 High Oil Price case, associated natural gas production peaks at 13.6 Tcf in 2035, accounting for 30% of the total domestic natural gas supply. By contrast, in the AEO2023 Low Oil Price case, associated natural gas production falls to 4.2 Tcf by 2050.

Strong continuing international demand for petroleum and other liquids will sustain U.S. production above 2022 levels through 2050, according to most of the cases we examined in our Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023). We project that the United States will continue to be an integral part of global oil markets and a significant source of supply in these cases, as increased exports of finished products support U.S. production.

In our AEO2023, we explore long-term energy trends in the United States and present an outlook for energy markets through 2050. We use different scenarios, or cases, to understand how varying assumptions about the future could affect energy trends. These cases include:

  • The Reference case, which serves as a baseline, or benchmark, case. It reflects laws and regulations adopted through mid-November 2022 but assumes no new laws or regulations in the future. It also assumes the Brent crude oil price reaches $101 per barrel (b) (in 2022 dollars) by 2050.
  • The High Oil and Gas Supply case, which assumes 50% more ultimate recovery per well for tight oil, tight gas, or shale gas in the United States compared with the Reference case. It also assumes 50% more undiscovered U.S. oil and natural gas resources and 50% more effective technological improvements than in the Reference case.
  • The Low Oil and Gas Supply case, which assumes 50% less ultimate recovery per well and undiscovered sources, and 50% more effective technological advancement than the Reference case.
  • The High Oil Price case, which assumes the price of Brent crude oil reaches $190/b (in 2022 dollars) by 2050.
  • The Low Oil Price case, which assumes the price of Brent crude oil reaches $51/b (in 2022 dollars) by 2050.

Although domestic consumption of petroleum and other liquids does not increase through 2040 across most cases, production of U.S. petroleum and other liquids remains high because of more exports of finished products. In the High Oil Price case, increased production leads to the most U.S. exports among all cases over the projection period at 9.13 million barrels per day (b/d) by 2050, more than double the 3.9 million b/d exported in 2022. The Low Oil Price case shows the opposite trend with the least 2050 export volumes of 407,000 b/d, nearly 90% less than 2022 exports.

Electric Power Outlook

The figure above illustrates the relationship between installed capacity (left panel) and electricity generation (right panel). Because wind, solar, and nuclear have the lowest operating costs, their electricity generation over time mirrors their trend in installed capacity: slightly declining for nuclear, and increasing for wind and solar. By contrast, natural gas and coal have higher operating costs, and so their generation can vary over time depending on demand levels and the relative operating cost of other technologies.

In our March Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast the wind share of the U.S. generation mix will increase from 11% last year to 12% this year. We forecast that the solar share will grow to 5% in 2023, up from 4% last year. The natural gas share of generation is forecast to remain unchanged from last year (39%); the coal share of generation is forecast to decline from 20% last year to 17% in 2023.

The electric power sector includes electric utilities and independent power producers. It does not include generators in the industrial, commercial, or residential sectors, such as rooftop solar panels installed on homes or businesses or some combined-heat-and-power systems.

Comment:

The statement above concerning capacity and operating costs is simplistic, and could be misleading.  EIA actually has a more realistic method of comparing power sources.  Example below:

EIA has developed a dual assessment of power plants using both Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Costs of Electricity power provision. The first metric estimates output costs from building and operating power plants, and the second estimates the value of the electricity to the grid.

More detailed discussion here:

Cutting Through the Fog of Renewable Power Costs

 

Waste Not, Want Not, Still True About Food

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jack Hubbard reports at Real Clear Markets Eat What You Want While Questioning ‘Food Sustainability’ Claims.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Earth Day started 50 years ago, and if you judge the event by society’s environmental conscientiousness, it’s been a success. Today, people are increasingly considering the environmental impact of products they buy. That’s true not just of cars and clothing, but also what we eat.

A survey last year found that 37% of consumers look for sustainability claims on food. Food marketers have taken note, increasing the number of food products with eco claims.

But buyers should beware: Not all food sustainability claims are true.

Where is the Beef?

Perhaps the single most common claim you’ll hear today about food is that meat is bad for the environment. Ads for plant-based fake meat commonly assert this. These claims are parroted by animal rights activists who–naturally–don’t like people eating meat. You can even find a few documentaries that try to paint meat as eco-unfriendly.

But is eating meat actually bad for the environment? No.

A frequently cited statistic is that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from animal agriculture. But what you may not know is that this figure doesn’t apply to the US, where we have the most advanced modern agricultural technology in the world.

American agriculture has become economically and environmentally more efficient over time. For instance, we need 60% fewer cows yet produce twice as much milk as we did in the 1930s.

The EPA tracks greenhouse gas emissions and reports them by sector. According to the EPA, all of our agriculture only accounts for about 9% of total US greenhouse gas emissions, while animal agriculture accounts for only about 4%. That’s why researchers estimate that if the entire U.S. population went vegan tomorrow, it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 3%. That also means, as an individual, giving up meat will have zero impact on curbing climate change.

Fake Meat Doesn’t Lower Emissions

It turns out that producing plant-based fake meats actually produces the same amount of emissions as producing chicken. And cell-cultured meat–that is, grown from cells in a lab setting–has five times the emissions of regular chicken.

Why? Because while making fake meat may use less land than raising chickens, it uses much more electricity to power all those factories that make fake meat.

 “Organic” Feels Good

“Organic” is another term that many consumers look for, thinking organic food is better for the environment and their health. Once again, reality is different from perception.

A recent study of organic vs. modern agriculture on different factors such as land use, climate, over-fertilization, and energy use. Modern farming was superior on land use while organic farming was better on chemicals. Overall, the two compared equally on most factors.

(Most consumers also believe that organic food is more nutritious. But once again, scientific research has found there’s no real difference.)

Food Waste Is Important

The biggest environmental impact associated with food isn’t about the food we eat. It is actually about food we don’t eat.

The USDA estimates that up to one-third of food produced in the country is thrown away. Whether that’s meat or fake meat, or organic produce or non-organic produce, that food took resources to grow and fuel to transport. And all of those resources go to waste when you don’t finish your meal or throw out the leftovers.

What’s the lesson?

Eat what you want and ignore the marketing claims. In the big picture,
anyone’s diet has a small footprint. But whatever you choose to eat,
make sure you don’t let it go to waste.

l

.

Don’t Buy Green Hydrogen Hype

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Frank Lasee gives the game away in his Real Clear Energy article The Expensive Impossibility of Green Hydrogen From Part-Time Wind and Solar.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

There has been some new thinking from the anti-CO2 religionists. The fact that the world is desperately short of lithium and cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, at the scale they want to force, is dawning on them. There isn’t enough and likely will not be enough in the coming decades to meet the electric batteries demand. Certainly not enough for grid scale electric batteries too.

The climate alarmists haven’t let the facts get in the way of their unrealistic green fantasy of averting climate doom with part-time wind and solar. That it could somehow replace all the coal, oil, and natural gas we use, which provide us with 80% of our energy.

Except one huge, huge problem. Wind and solar produce little or no energy 70% of the time.  Reliable, full-time, on demand electricity keeps the heat going and the lights on when it is dark, and the wind is not blowing.

The new expensive, impractical, and impossible federal $9.5 billion
hydrogen subsidies talking point is wasted spending.

Green hydrogen made from wind and solar is not practical and is a very expensive form of energy storage and transport.  Hydrogen is not a fuel. Hydrogen must be created; it must be made from another energy source, just as electricity must be made from other energy.

No one is making green hydrogen at scale because it is difficult, expensive and requires major factories. Spoiler alert, there isn’t excess “green” energy – wind and solar – to make hydrogen with.

Green hydrogen requires 13 times more water than hydrogen produced.

Sea water must be desalinated first for an added cost. More water is needed for cooling. So, it is a good idea to locate hydrogen facilities near abundant water, not in the chronically short of water western U.S.

Then the water must be heated to 2,000 degrees and electrocuted. Then the hydrogen must be super chilled to near absolute zero. Then it’s compressed to 10,000 psi, three times the psi of an average scuba tank.

Then you have usable hydrogen- liquid, super- cold, compressed hydrogen.
This is an expensive energy-intensive process.

The insurmountable problem with this process is that it cannot be turned on an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset when solar panels provide the electricity. Or turned on when the wind blows and turned off when the wind stops.

Without some other energy storage device to store the “over-produced” wind and solar electricity, making green hydrogen is impossible. The costs of over-building wind and solar, then adding batteries to provide a steady stream of 24/7 electricity to make “green” hydrogen is astronomical. And in 25 years when the wind towers and solar panels wear out, or when the batteries need to be replaced every 10 years, you need to essentially start over.

Green hydrogen sounds good. And there is a well-funded industry
of selling it and obscuring the truth.

They have to cover up the facts and mislead people in order for the government and investor gravy train to keep them in business.

Canada and Germany Sign Agreement to Enhance German Energy Security with Clean Canadian Hydrogen August 2022

Don’t fall for the green or the pink hydrogen hype. It just doesn’t make sense. Apply a little common sense and critical thinking and you will join me in opposing this waste of money.

The hydrogen lobby duped congress to provide $9.5 billion for hydrogen hubs. Even red states who know this is a boondoggle are attempting to land this federal largesse.

Because it will create jobs with borrowed taxpayer money. I remind you that the US is $31 trillion in debt, with estimates it will balloon to over $50 trillion over the next decade.

These hydrogen jobs will last only as long as the subsidies do. Then like the Obama U.S. solar revolution, they will go bankrupt.

Frank Lasee is a former Wisconsin state senator and former member of Governor Scott Walker’s administration. The district he represented had two nuclear power plants, a biomass plant and numerous wind towers. He has experience with energy, the environment, and the climate. You can read more energy and climate information at http://www.truthinenergyandclimate.com which Frank leads.