May 05, 2024

The Climate Cult Reacts As Its Political Position Begins To Slip

May 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

For two decades and more, the political position of the climate alarm cult in the U.S. and Europe has only seemed to strengthen with time.
In the U.S., the Obama and Biden Administrations have both pushed huge regulatory initiatives to restrict use of fossil fuels (with only some modest roll-backs during Trump’s four years); some of the most sweeping restrictions got pushed through just a week ago.
Meanwhile, blue states like California and New York have enacted ever-more-extreme restrictions by statute. In Europe, there has been a near all-party political consensus in favor of the “net zero” agenda, notably including even the mainstream conservative parties in the largest countries like the UK and Germany.
I have long said that sooner or later a combination of physical reality and cost would stop the “net zero” juggernaut in its tracks.

May 01, 2024

The Biden Administration Ever More Delusional On Energy

May 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy.
Despite hundreds of government actions and initiative in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkable stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production.
The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming from fossil fuels has remained nearly unchanged. EIA data here for 2022 (latest I can find) show about 79% of U.S. primary energy from fossil fuels, barely changed since Biden took office, and indeed very stable for decades.
Perhaps this situation of stable energy production and consumption results because it reflects what markets and consumers want and need to satisfy their demand for energy. So do you think that the hyperactive regulators might just relax and let the consumers have what they want?

April 29, 2024

April 29, 2024/ Francis Menton

Around the U.S., and particularly at the most elite college campuses, seemingly smart and well-educated young people keep up their passionate protests in support of the Hamas rapists and murderers and against Israel and Jews generally.
The claimed reason for the protests is that Israel is engaged in “apartheid” or “genocide,” or even the ultimate evil, “settler colonialism.” Yet meanwhile, the world is filled with state actors treating their own or neighboring populations in the most appalling ways, far worse than anything that Israel could remotely be accused of, without attracting anything like the passion and vitriol directed at Jews and Israel.
Think North Korea, keeping its own population in permanent prison conditions, and often starving; or China, cracking down on all dissent and even confining large sub-populations (e.g., Uyghurs) in slave labor camps; or Azerbaijan, which expelled an entire Christian community of about 150,000 people just a few months ago. These examples, let alone the human rights abuses in places like Iran or Cuba or Venezuela, attract almost no interest from our passionate student demonstrators, not to mention even slight notice from the press or anyone else.
How to explain this discrepancy?

April 27, 2024

April 27, 2024/ Francis Menton

In my self-designated role critiquing various schemes for total transformation of the world energy system, I get to review large amounts of poor, shoddy, and incompetent work. When people get into advocating for this “energy transition,” the stars regularly align to bring forth the most extreme levels of ineptitude.
Start with the fact that the “smartest” people are filled with arrogance and hubris, but are not actually very smart. Add that many innumerate Politics and English majors have flooded into a field that cries out for engineering calculations. Add too that groupthink and orthodoxy enforcement prevent anyone from pointing out obvious flaws. And then throw in a strong dose of religious zealotry that obstructs the intrusion of anything resembling critical thinking. All in all, it’s a prescription for catastrophe.
But in a field rife with bad, worse, still worse, and even dangerously incompetent work, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything as shockingly inept as the Report just out from the International Energy Agency with the title “Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions.”

April 25, 2024

April 25, 2024/ Francis Menton

It’s hard to imagine any job more excruciatingly dull than that of the Washington regulator.
You beaver away for months on end generating 300 or 500 page documents justifying the latest the latest agency finaglings, all of which text needs to be cleared with scores of co-participants via endless meetings and by repeated circulation of marked-up drafts that draw hundreds of inconsistent edits from self-important functionaries. Ugh!

But then, into this miasma of infinite boredom, from time to time, there intrudes a frisson of great excitement. This happens when the agency decides to seize control and transform a large swath of the economy by its own edict.
The latest agency to make its grab for the excitement of the limelight is the FTC.

April 21, 2024

April 21, 2024/ Francis Menton

We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an “all of government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth.
But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much.
Let’s have a round-up of some recent data points.