Natural Gas Now Best Picks of the Week – November 7, 2020

We’re Finally Done with the Paris Accord,
Which Accomplished Nothing Compared to Natural Gas

Good riddance. We’ve already done better by ourselves.

…the Paris Climate Accord required of nations like China—or rather, what it didn’t require. Far from imposing heavy emissions targets on them, the agreement established a global Green Climate Fund aimed at pilfering $100 billion each year by 2020 from the U.S. and Europe to encourage developing countries to reduce their emissions—easy money in exchange for lip service about “going green.”

The Green Climate Fund is history’s biggest scheme to redistribute wealth from Western, low-carbon countries to communist China, India, and other major CO₂ emitters. India even announced that it needed an incredible $2.5trillion from the fund—nearly the entire GDP of France in 2019—to reach its goals by 2030.

Photo of NRDC office foyer in Beijing: MMoser Associates

Like all good communists, Chinese government figures feign support for grand environmental agreements they later ignore—particularly when those projects would reverse American energy independence and undermine our military power—and they’ve found their most useful idiots in the American environmental lobby.

All you need to know about the Paris Accords is that we’ve accomplished far more with natural gas when we’ve substituted it for coal.

And, Here’s What We Mean

Why we don’t need the Paris Accords and just natural gas:

From January to June 2020, the electric power sector consumed 184.8 million short tons (MMst) of coal, 30% less than during the same period in 2019. After setting an annual record of 1,045 MMst in 2007, coal consumption in the electric power sector has been declining. This decline is happening as many coal-fired power plants are retiring or are converting to natural gas, driven by tighter air emission standards and the decreased cost-competitiveness of coal relative to other resources.

In addition to reduced coal-fired generation capacity, declines in electric power sector coal consumption so far in 2020 are partially a result of competition arising from low natural gas prices, which reached record lows at the U.S. Henry Hub benchmark in the first half of the year.

See what I mean?

Environmental Credibility? Nah, That’s A Oxymoron

From our buddy, Steve Heins, who recently wrote this op-ed for another friend, Jason Spiess, over at The Crude Life:

Recently, I have written that credibility isn’t an ordinary word. In particular, a recent Newsweek piece by Michael Mann is a classic example of a new form of “news,” which can only be described as paid advertising for climate extremism. Unsurprisingly, Newsweek is known for its one-eyed approach to reporting on climate issues.

First, check out the headline: “The Oceans Appear to Be Stabilizing. Here’s Why it’s Very Bad News | Opinion.”

And, then, there is “That’s bad for marine productivity. It means the potential interruption of food webs and fish populations that provide the main source of protein for more than three billion people” is hyperbole without a modicum of semantic precision. The two quotes have their problems of equivocation and scare tactics: the ocean “APPEARS…”; and “It means the POTENTIAL interruption’” which are in the same category as: could, might, possibly, projected, etc.

Logo for EDF, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars from special interests trying to milk governments for subsidies

Without meaning too much disrespect, The Environmental Defense Fund received over $156,000,000 from donations in 2017 and lord knows how much money in public and private grants that year. It is safe to say they receive more money now, for satellites and atmospheric grants. Their studies about the amount of methane in the earth’s atmosphere and its effect on climate change have been mostly hypothetical from the beginning.

Harvard, Yale, Columbia, George Mason, Princeton, Syracuse, and Duke have the same conflicts of interest, especially with large amounts money available NGOs/Foundations, and grants for professors and the University itself. In fact, Duke was fined $112 Million by the EPA for mishandling data.

Then, there is the problem of quoting a scholar claiming he was a Nobel Prize winner, with a history of exaggerating cataclysmic Climate Change, using the famous “Hockey Stick” as proof of global warming. Over the years, there are many examples of environmental catastrophes occupying his mind, although Mann will not allow anyone access to his Hockey Stick research, by claiming it is proprietary.

Is it possible that the environmental doomsday narrative has seduced its proponents with grant money and notoriety?

Then, there is the matter of a China University playing a significant role in the above mention study on stable ocean waters, hurricanes and climate change. China and credibility aren’t exactly synonymous these days, given Covid 19 and environmental promises.

When one adds up the sources involved in magazine article, (Newsweek, two extreme climate change professorial advocates, and China), it isn’t hard to suspect there are conflicts interest and credibility problems. CNN, The New Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, BBC, National Geographic, Time Magazine and many other large media sources have the same problem.

Environmental credibility has almost become an oxymoron.

Well said, Steve! It all fits together, doesn’t it?