Part I of II

John Kerry relinquishes Special Climate Envoy post to accept role in Biden presidential campaign — modern record for consecutive political failures within reach!

Following the climate confab — COP28 — in Dubai late last year, John Kerry celebrated the “transition from fossil fuels” signed by 200 countries. It was the latest entry into the endless parade of climate horribles, deceptions, charades and their enabling charlatans.

To climate realists, including scientists not seeking largesse at the trough, the rueful/bruised experienced –Germany, France, Spain, et al — the parade is and should be nearing its entry into oblivion. It will join the acid rain/ozone hole hysterias as amusing curiosities and relics of political and scientific malfeasance. The primary difference between those oddities and the climate “crisis” is that governments actions in the name of Save The Planet have and will continue to have dramatic political and financial consequences. Nations peopled with acolytes of climate “action” at all costs are in dire straits, some at the precipice of energy suicide…for now just a focus on the U.S.

Among the climate realists you may count Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of Meteorology at MIT, author and noted environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. the Obama Administration lead on climate change, Dr. Steven Koonin, a theoretical phsyicist, Alex Epstein, advocate for conventional fuels including nuclear and Dr. Gary Vasey, whose take on “the non-Climate crisis” is worth sharing here.

The essay was published September 21, 2023. Dr. Vasey holds a Ph.d from the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, U.K.) for research into the paleoenvironment and fossil fauna of the Carboniferous period and a B.Sc. (First Class honors) in Geological Sciences from the University of Aston. Dr. Vasey resides in Brno, Czech Republic.

Awakening to the Nonsense

I had a business meeting today on Zoom and as the call came to an end – we had been discussing commodities as that is what I do – the person on the call made a simple statement – it’s upside down and getting worse – God knows where this will all end. We then went on to discuss the non Climate crisis, the stupidity of net zero, the silliness of just stop oil and everything else. I was quite surprised by this conversation as the person I was talking to had never opened up like this before. and you know what – it’s happening more and more.

People are not stupid – not all of them anyway. More and more people are realising that this is all nonsense. Bull. We are being fed a bunch of BS and if we are to accept it at face value and go along, it will result in a catastrophe beyond anything humanity has ever experienced.

People talk a good talk about net zero, weather, renewables, the energy transition and so on but if you are an analyst specialising in commodities like me, there is a problem – a huge and massive problem. While they push to stop farming, ban meat, get us in EV’s, stop us using natural gas and so on, when you look at the big picture, its obvious that there is no plan except to destroy civilisation as we know it. None of this hangs together at all.

What do I mean?

Well, there isn’t enough battery metals to give everyone an EV and even if you invested billions in finding new metals, it would be 20 or more years before anything would change in terms of metals supply. If you switch to renewables then there won’t be enough power to charge all those batteries anyway – especially if you convert heating, cooking and everything else to electricity. If you did mine enough metal to make the batteries, the planet would be so badly pillaged and raped, it would be an environmental disaster… I could go on. Without farms there is no food and without CO2, yields drop and people starve. The point is, none of this actually works. Taken in the pieces it is presented, some will buy into it but the big picture simply doesn’t exist. Why? Because it isn’t viable.

What is viable is to push us all back into the stone age and as many of us starve or die of cold, population will be reduced and perhaps there will be enough trees to burn for heat for those that are left. Meanwhile, the so called elite – those fat wealthy greedy inhumans will continue to enjoy the life they lead now as none of this applies to them. As your car is taken away, your ability to take flights lost, your ability to eat a rich and varied diet replaced with insects and grubs, they will still be jet setting in their private jets and big houses. You will have willingly given in to a bunch of pseudo science and nonsense but they, they will be just fine.

The problem with insanely wealthy people is that they become immune to pleasure. It’s like a drug – the more you get the more you need to keep getting high. The super rich become increasingly corrupted by their inability to find pleasure anymore. One home is not enough – a bigger one is needed and a second and a third. Normal relationships no longer give pleasure either and so people like (Jeffrey) Epstein flourish providing more and more corrupt kicks to people addicted to pleasure. You and I no longer matter. In fact, we are an annoyance – useless eaters in fact.

Think on this – the future they are selling is a sham – a prison – a hell hole.

The more of us that figure this out and the sooner we figure this out, the better. (emphasis added)

Dr. Vasey pulls few punches, his narrative rather salty. Clearly his outcomes are accurate should the Greens’ goals be achieved. What’s worrisome and instructive is to gauge progress toward those goals.

Rather than weave a narrative describing misguided actions by the U.S. — and their interrelationships in economic decline and receding world influence — a simple list of same, plus the results so far illustrates how far down the rabbit hole we’ve descended. Consider

Cancel Keystone Pipeline XL — abrogate trade agreement with our ally Canada. Consign crude imports to transport by more expensive/dangerous means — rail and truck. Lose the Montana onboard to XL for domestic Bakken crude which will result in no reduction in crude transported by rail and truck. Deprive Gulf Coast refineries of the crude grade for which they were designed, thereby costing said refiners efficiency and expense.

Suspend LNG export terminal approvals — the suspension is to allow environmental and economic analyses to be “updated.” To the uninitiated that means tightening restrictions and requirements so as to slow/halt permitting. Break promise to European consumers that the U.S. would assist in weaning them from Russian hydrocarbons.

Act to restrict domestic drilling— in unusual bombast (even for him) President Biden vowed to end fracking and permitting any such activity on federal lands. Taken together these actions raise domestic prices to the detriment of consumers. To boot, they raise revenues for our adversaries Iran and Russia. The fallout from their enhanced revenues are increased funding for Russia and its war against Ukraine, increased Russian crude sales to China for its adventures in the Pacific, increased revenue for Iran to fund Middle East mayhem and attacks on U.S. troops and assets. Another by-product is revenue to purchase weapons from North Korea and provide Kim jong-il a revenue stream.

Raise automobile/truck fuel efficiency standard, mandate electric vehicles, spend government revenues for electric charging stations, provide rebates for costly electric vehicles — This administration’s EPA proposes that all coal and natural gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. it also proposes 62% of all cars sold in the U.S. be fully electric by 2032, a mere eight years hence. Daily press reports state that demand for electric vehicles is in steep decline. Meanwhile operators of the nation’s electric grid are sounding alarms. One of those PJM Interconnect, operating in the Northeast, “Fossil-fuel power plants are retiring much faster than renewable resources are getting developed, which could lead to energy imbalances.” Read shortages and blackouts. PJM also stated that the steep costs of complying with EPA regulations will cause a decline of 40,000 megawatts of power generation by 2030, a drop of more than 20% in less than six years. Add in the increased dangers of cyber and physical attacks on the grid, thanks to the wave of migrants crossing both northern and southern borders and the fantasies of current energy policies are laid bare.

2023 Inflation Reduction Act — An advocacy organization for all things green, The World Resources Institute asserts “The Biden administration’s most important climate action to date was signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law, August, 2022, the most comprehensive climate legislation the U.S. has ever seen. The law invests hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.” As for climate legislation, the institute conveniently overlooks The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Investing hundreds of billions of dollars in unproven technologies, a la Solyndra and its ilk hardly earns a merit badge. Electric vehicle demand, as stated is waning, not to mention recalls and spontaneous combustion. Happily the institute did not undertake a definition of environmental justice. Anyone might guess that means regulations and even more spending. A final note, the institute laments the absence of pollution taxes and the absence tightened restrictions on appliances, cement, steel and plastics.

There are multiples of these, but one quickly gets the idea…in Part II, we’ll examine lies, damned lies and statistics.