More than a third of the area charred by wildfires in Western North America can be traced back to fossil fuels, scientists find
More modelling madness. If you look at the underlying journal article, you find that the so-called "findings" below were in fact just model output. And when the models are made by the far-Left Union of Concerned Scientists, you can be sure that the models had Greenie results built in. What a con!
Millions of acres scorched by wildfires in the Western US and Canada — an area roughly the size of South Carolina — can be traced back to carbon pollution from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement companies, scientists reported Tuesday.
The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 37% of the area burned by wildfires in the West since 1986 — nearly 19.8 million acres out of 53 million — can be blamed on the planet-cooking pollution from 88 of the world’s major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, the latter of which have been shown to produce around 7% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
The amalgam of megadrought and record-breaking heat that’s drying out vegetation due to climate change has stoked the West’s wildfires. And researchers found that since 1901, the fossil fuel activities of these companies, including ExxonMobil and BP, among others, warmed the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius — nearly half of the global increase during that period.
Carly Phillips, a research scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author on the study, said the findings add to a significant library of research that directly links climate change or the impacts of the crisis to burning fossil fuel.
The sun sets over the University District in Seattle, Saturday, May 13, 2023. Saturday's temperatures reached record-breaking highs for several cities across western Washington.
“We know that many of these companies have known for decades about the consequences of climate change,” Phillips told CNN, referring to several studies and award-winning reports that have shown fossil fuel executives knew of but downplayed the growing threat. “But instead of sharing that information with the public, they engaged in this deliberate misinformation campaign to deceive the general public and cast doubt on climate science.”
Fossil fuel companies have denied the conclusions of those reports.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/us/western-wildfires-fossil-fuels-study-climate/index.html
***************************************************Not so easy to turn Texas Green
Bobby Tudor made a fortune in fracking. The clean-cut financier opened shop in 2007 and spent the next 10 years backing large-scale projects in West Texas, supercharging one of history’s greatest oil and gas expansions. But over lunch in February, even as he predicted that oil and gas would be around for the foreseeable future, Tudor offered a dimmer view of the industry’s role in the region. “Oil and gas is just not going to be the same engine for growth,” he told me. “It will flatten, and then it will decline.”
Which is why Tudor, a consummate Texas fossil-fuel money man, is betting big on green energy.
It’s not hard to see why. The state is already the largest producer of renewable energy in the U.S. Clean-technology startups are flocking to the Houston region, and big energy companies are pursuing hydrogen projects across the state. The city of Houston alone could receive as much as $250 billion in annual investment in the emerging energy sectors by 2040, according to data from Mckinsey, thanks in part to its existing infrastructure and skilled labor force. Tudor has started a new firm focused on cutting emissions, and is chairing a powerful business coalition dedicated to the transition and composed of some of the biggest names in energy, including Exxonmobil, Chevron, and Shell. “In Houston, when we see $1 laying on the ground,” he said, “we bend over and pick it up.” There’s just one problem: politics. While many cities, states, and even countries are fighting for the trillions of dollars in public and private green investments that are transforming the energy industry, many Texas leaders, including a powerful segment of the state’s political leadership, are opposing the new opportunities. Some fear that clean energy will hurt the state’s incumbent fossil-fuel business. But many oppose the energy transition as a proxy for opposing Democrats, another way to prove to the conservative base that they are the reddest around. The result is a raft of measures that could hamper green-energy projects and incentivize carbon-heavy ones.
These divisions are setting up a surprising, high-stakes fight. Tudor’s coalition, the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), is organized by the city’s most prominent business group, and its members are putting serious cash behind new energy efforts. But some politicians are pushing back, launching efforts to slow renewable energy and publicly vilifying environment initiatives. “[Major oil and gas firms] may have supported us in the past, but they certainly don’t align with us now,” says Jason Isaac of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “They’re going to go and chase money—and it’s unfortunate.”
The fight in Texas can tell us a lot about the bigger push to address climate change. A wellexecuted transition would help cut global emissions, create wealth and opportunity for millions of Texans, and set an example for the world. But the unfolding debate also shows why it’s not so simple. Politics and culture are powerful forces everywhere, and despite mounds of evidence about the value of transition, it’s unclear whether long-term economic considerations will win out. We all have an interest in the outcome. “We need to do it for commercial reasons,” says Tudor, but “we have a responsibility to do it too. The challenges of climate change, and the energy transition broadly, are so enormous that they’re not going to be solved without us.”
On the news and in popular culture, Texas can seem like a MAGA fever dream as politicians race to pass antiabortion laws and grandstand about critical race theory. But the business community driving the state’s economy gives a different impression. Chatting at a sleek Italian restaurant in Houston’s eclectic Montrose neighborhood, Tudor sounds more patrician than partisan. We talk about oil prices, yes, but also about Houston’s diversity and civic life, and the divergence between energy-industry financial returns and the region’s economic development. It’s an old-school vision of companies as pillars of the community that Tudor and many of his fellow executives share, one where business and government are partners in the greater good.
It’s a reading rooted in history. Before the 20th century, Texas was a largely rural, agrarian state; the discovery of vast oil reserves in 1901 changed that almost overnight. Within a matter of years, the oil industry expanded rapidly and so did the state’s urban centers. Whether by necessity or ideology, the government has largely stayed out of the way of the private companies that drove rapid growth and economic prosperity.
That has left Texas well positioned to capitalize on the energy transition. Building big infrastructure projects in Texas is easy thanks to a light regulatory environment. Much of the existing infrastructure—think pipelines—can be converted to carry carbon dioxide or hydrogen. The state has the highest concentration of chemical engineers in the country, jobs well suited not just for oil and gas but also for new energy technologies. And the local higher-education system, funded in large part by industry, has top programs to continue churning out energy workers.
But it’s hard for a transition to catch on when there’s so much money to be made in petroleum. At times over the course of the past 50 years, oil and gas has constituted 15% of the state’s economic output, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and the state’s broader economy in turn oriented toward fossil fuels as well. The industry’s prospects have whipsawed lately. The sector already had been underperforming the rest of the stock market in the years before COVID-19 hit. As energy demand tanked worldwide amid the lockdown, the price of oil briefly went negative, sending shock waves throughout the industry.
This unprecedented upheaval coincided with the beginning of Tudor’s campaign to get the industry to embrace the transition. An energy price spike driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 reopenings has led to dramatic profits for the industry and softened the shortterm financial urgency of embracing the transition.
But the immense volume of capital flowing into clean energy, especially as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), has sparked newfound resolve in the local business community to go green. “The IRA was a turning point,” says Greg Matlock, who leads EY’s Americas Energy Transition practice. “We were on the phone with clients, and within a week you could see tangible movement on transactions. It was quick and it was palpable.”
In Houston, it’s easy to see this on the ground. The downtown skyscrapers are full of incumbent oil companies, but a couple of miles away, in what city officials are calling the Innovation District, a new energy ecosystem is taking shape. I visited the office of Ara Partners, a private-equity shop with a self-proclaimed “industrial decarbonization strategy” that sees profits in helping companies cut their carbon footprint.
“Houston was the right place because the world of made things is made here,” says Troy Thacker, the firm’s CEO. Across the street, I visited Greentown Labs, an incubator where dozens of startups are working on everything from installing wind turbines more efficiently to turning cow manure into an alternative fuel source. Houston startups alone received $1.95 billion in venturecapital money in 2022, with energy-related startups raising almost as much as the next three sectors combined, according to data from the Greater Houston Partnership.
Across the state, investments from new and incumbent players aim to make Texas a world leader in green hydrogen, a clean way to store renewable energy. In Matagorda County, south of Houston, a company known as Highly Innovative Fuels, funded in part by old-school energy players like Baker Hughes, is building a massive facility that will use renewable electricity, green hydrogen, and technology that captures carbon dioxide. A venture-capital-backed energy company named Humble Midstream is building a hydrogen-export facility. Mckinsey estimates the hydrogen economy alone could be worth $100 billion to the state’s economy.
in Austin, i watched Jane Stricker, the executive director of HETI, present a vision of Texas as a capital of the energy transition to a gathering of lobbyists, regulators, and legislators. Her pitch: policymakers should join with business leaders to speed the shift. “We can solidify our position if we really lean into our role,” said Stricker, a former BP executive. “We have the opportunity to create massive economic growth.”
But for all of Texas’ business-friendly swagger, not everyone views a public-private green collaboration as a good thing. Responding to Stricker at the energy gathering, a Texas energyindustry insider questioned whether the state’s businesses were actually on board, then challenged the entire premise. “Can you articulate: transition from what to what?” he asked. In the discussions that followed, academics, elected officials, and business leaders laid out a range of positions. A renewable-energy lobbyist decried
GOP attempts to stomp out his industry. A state regulator laughed offa question about using funds from President Biden’s infrastructure law.
Business leaders try to play down the political opposition they face, arguing that ultimately lawmakers won’t turn down easy money. But while there are mixed opinions in Texas’ GOP, today opposition to clean energy and climate policy is defying the state’s business-friendly reputation and threatening to slow the transition in Texas.
Nowhere is that opposition clearer than in state government offices in Austin. The state legislature is crafting policies to stymie renewable energy. One bill would create new permitting requirements just for renewable-energy projects, requiring plant developers to evaluate the impacts on wildlife. Fossilfuel power plants would be exempt. Other measures would provide those plants new state subsidies. “There definitely is a contingent that’s looking to push up natural gas by pulling renewables down,” says Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.
And then there’s the anti-ESG rhetoric, a new front in the culture wars. Texas has banned a group of financial firms from doing business with state and local governments for using environmental, social, and governance metrics. These moves send a signal that green businesses aren’t welcome. “It could go faster if the state political forces were less antagonistic,” says Kay Mccall, president of the Renewable Energy Alliance Houston. “When you look at it, it’s almost silly.”
As a fly on the wall in startup conference rooms in Houston and Austin, I got a sense of the mood: outraged, but optimistic that economics will prevail over politics. Texas will realize some of its potential because of the direction of the market and the allure of tax incentives. The state’s pro-business roots, skilled workforce, and abundant natural resources have set it up to do big things in the energy transition.
But the outcome is not preordained. State politicians seem determined to limit green opportunities that big energy companies are eager to pursue. Even if they can overcome the political hurdles, activists worry that a business-led approach to the energy transition may not be the best for the world, as companies don’t want to give up profits to be made in oil and gas. Which means Texas may end up less green, and less prosperous, than it could be. □
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The Green Movement Is a Jobs Killer. Are Unions Finally Figuring This Out?
Could it be that union bosses are finally waking up to the cold reality that the greatest threat to steel workers, the United Auto Workers, miners, machinists and the Teamsters is the radical climate change agenda of the environmentalists?
The green movement has taken the Democratic Party hostage -- and President Joe Biden's all-in embrace of far-left green policies is wreaking havoc on rank-and-file union jobs.
The United Auto Workers recently announced it would withhold its endorsement of Biden as he runs for a second term. "The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers," UAW President Shawn Fain recently declared. "The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom" for America's workers.
My only question: Why did it take five years to figure this out?
What a shock that a union that makes automobiles would have second thoughts about endorsing the reelection of a president who, just a few weeks ago, announced new regulations that are intended to end production of all gas cars within a decade. That's a death sentence for UAW workers.
Meanwhile, California Democrats have proposed new rules to end the production of nearly 2 million diesel trucks. Has anyone alerted the Teamsters?
These rules would crush unions like Godzilla stomping on a twig. Perhaps the UAW is finally realizing that Biden's goal is to get all traditional cars and trucks off the road. That's not going to leave many card-carrying UAW members left to pay dues. Meanwhile, the electric cars and the parts will be made in China and developing countries controlled by Beijing.
To his credit, Biden is only doing what he promised back in 2020. He declared war on energy and the combustible engine -- and yet the union bosses endorsed him. Most amazing was the United Mine Workers and some of the Pipefitters unions endorsing Biden. Apparently, they weren't paying attention to his stated goal of shutting down every coal mine in America and most oil and gas pipelines.
Talk about selling the rope to your hangman.
Rank-and-file hard-hat union members are on to this gambit -- which is why most private-sector union voters went for former President Donald Trump in the last two election cycles, even as the union bosses endorsed and gave tens of millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton and then Biden.
Even now, as Biden cozies up to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and places a metaphorical blade at the neck of the blue-collar union workers, the union bosses are reluctant to call for a divorce with "lunch bucket Joe."
After acknowledging the threat that Biden posed to the livelihoods of tens of thousands of union members, the UAW's Fain warned that "another Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster."
How? Union workers saw huge job and wage gains when Trump was president. Fain even muttered some disingenuous mumbo-jumbo about getting behind a "pro-worker, pro-climate" agenda for the working class. That's an oxymoron.
This isn't complicated. The leftists' religious pursuit of "zero emissions" leads to a green holy land with no smokestacks, no power plants, no cars, no trucks, no steel mills, copper mines, pipelines, gas stoves, air conditioners, airplanes, nuclear plants, washers and dryers, pesticides, plastics, or cows and other livestock.
Oh -- and as we sprint to a new post-industrial-age America, with no need for blue-collar unionized workers. The green "degrowth" movement isn't about creating prosperity for union workers but about putting them on unemployment lines.
It's good news that the Big Labor bosses are finally expressing some doubts about what the climate change agenda means for hard-hat workers. But if they keep working to elect climate change crazies, the demise of our union workforce will be swift and brutal.
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Australia: Unattainable energy targets
"It is bullshit". Former Snowy Hydro boss Paul Broad is far from alone in his expert, if refreshingly colloquial, view that Australia’s farcical state, federal and corporate greenhouse gas emissions targets are simply unattainable – and never were. And now, the head of the world’s second-biggest miner, Rio Tinto, says his company’s scope 1 and 2 emissions targets were a mistake – and he won’t join rivals BHP, Vale, Glencore and Fortescue (with its ambitious net zero by 2040) in pretending he can set achievable targets for the scope 3 emissions of Rio’s overseas customers, over which Rio has no control. He likens such scope 3 targets to greenwashing.
Even some stock-market tipster sheets are confidently promoting a surge in demand for fossil fuels, ie. coal, oil and gas, as the growing recognition that politically correct emissions targets cannot be achieved, will provide soaring share prices as the current green virtue-signalling by banks and investment managers of superannuation funds, is replaced by the pragmatism of market forces – and the national need for reliable energy.
In regretting having set his company’s emissions reduction targets of 15 per cent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2030, Rio’s CEO, Jacob Stausholm, warned that it would take ‘hard choices’ to meet them as it is now clear that ‘decarbonising at scale is a lengthy process’. This follows his Davos warning earlier this year that governments and corporate executives were ‘fooling ourselves’ on how long the process of de-carbonising would take. He followed up last week in Perth with the view that, ‘People still do not understand how much work was required to meet these goals…. You have to be realistic on what it takes.’ And added that for solar power, ‘I don’t think people have realised the amount of land that is necessary.’
Paul Broad, former-CEO of Snowy Hydro 2.0, the chaotic, massively delayed (planned for 2021 and may be ready by 2029) and hugely over-run costs (from an estimated $2 billion to the current $20 billion including transmission and still rising; economically it will never pay for itself), says Labor’s ‘unrealistic’ renewable energy plans would ‘risk the lights going out…. The notion that you’re going to have 80 per cent renewables in our system by 2030 is, to use the vernacular, bullshit. This transition, if it ever occurs, it will take 80 years, not eight. There are massive changes that need to occur’.
On top of all this, the former Snowy Hydro boss warned that more than $10 billion in electricity transmission projects were unlikely to be built on time, threatening the transition from coal generation to renewables. ‘Not enough would be in place by 2030 to allow Australia to reach its target of tripling the current level of renewables by the end of the decade.’ So coal will be needed: ‘You can’t close Eraring and Vales Point; closing Liddell was bad enough…. And we need more gas.’
But will we be able to get enough coal and enough gas?
Labor governments, state and federal, face a dilemma at a time when their priority is gaining popular support for the Indigenous Voice to parliament. Do they approve contested gas and coal developments on economic grounds or oppose them in support of Aboriginal objectors who in many cases appear to have been manipulated by climate activists into drawn-out costly lawfare that is aimed more at meeting activists’ zero emissions agendas than bringing the benefits of income, jobs and prospects to remote areas?
After years of toing and froing, two multi-billion gas developments with governmental approval still face uncertainty. This month’s announcement by the Northern Territory government that it would approve fracking in the massive Beetaloo basin, has generated strong opposition that will inevitably lead to further delays on top of the five years between the Territory accepting fracking in principle and doing so in practice. The federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo ‘has the potential to rival the world’s biggest and best gas resources’ and provide gas for the next 20 to 40 years.
But in an open letter to the Territory government, almost 100 scientists have urged it to abandon its fracking plans for Beetaloo, warning of ‘the damage it will inflict on our climate’, with one claiming the rise in emissions will intensify bushfire seasons and floods and accelerate the death of coral reefs.
Significantly, in the context of prospective lawfare, the scientists assert that fracking poses risks to Aboriginal people and their culture ‘at an unacceptable level’.
The other major gas project on hold is the Santos’ $US 3.6 billion Barossa offshore development 130 kilometres north of the Tiwi Islands, some of whose traditional owners demonstrated successfully in the Federal Court that they had not been satisfactorily consulted as required by law when Santos dealt directly with the Tiwi Land Council.
Now that Santos is taking action to meet this requirement (even with nationwide newspaper advertisements) there is still no certainty that drilling, which was suspended by last September’s legal action, will resume so that Santos can meet its commitment to deliver gas by the first half of 2025 to its Japanese and Korean partners, both of which are increasingly concerned about energy security. With the personal assurance from Prime Minister Albanese to the Japanese Prime Minister late last year that Australia would remain ‘a steady and reliable supplier’ of energy to Japan, the Albanese undertaking will be tested against his support for indigenous rights if further traditional owner legal action causes more delays.
One traditional owner has made clear his continuing opposition: ‘We have fought to protect our sea country from the beginning to the end and we will never stop fighting. Our sea is like our mother – we are part of the sea and the sea is part of us.’
And other traditional owners, who had lodged human rights claims against the group of banks, including ANZ, Westpac and NAB, involved in a $1.5 billion loan to the project, have followed it up by targeting superannuation funds for ‘failing to meet international human rights standards [by] investing in the companies’ as the project breaches ‘the economic, social and cultural rights of the Impacted Tiwi communities’, with a spokesman adding, ‘We do not want Santos to build a pipeline or to drill off the coast here… and we want the super funds to hear us and act.’
This combination of the pursuit of unachievable emissions targets and the unrestrained use of lawfare against major fossil fuel projects (even before the Voice provides an added weapon) means that Australia’s much-needed $20.5 billion coal and gas-led improvement over the past six months in the budget bottom line is unlikely to be repeated.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/business-robbery-etc-113/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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