Previous thread:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/88832/
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https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/30/the-world-is-transitioning-to-fossil-fuels/
Despite the fanfare surrounding wind and solar, the world’s dependency on fossil fuels is increasing. Last week, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said that the world is now “transitioning to coal.”
Saad al-Kaabi, Energy Minister of Qatar, says, “Many countries particularly in Europe which had been strong advocates of green energy and carbon-free future have made a sudden and sharp U-turn. Today, coal burning is once again on the rise reaching its highest levels since 2014.”
They are right. Global coal demand will reach an historic high in 2022, similar to 2013’s record levels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “Global coal consumption is forecast to rise by 0.7 percent in 2022 to 8 billion tons…. Coal consumption in the European Union is expected to rise by seven percent in 2022 on top of last year’s 14 percent jump.”
Coal will continue to be a sought-after energy source as “rising gas prices after 2030 will make existing coal-fired generation more economic,” the IEA says. Global energy demand will grow by 47 percent from now through 2050, and oil is expected to be the major source of energy.
Analysts are projecting “a huge gas-to-coal fuel transition in power and industrial sectors” of Europe. Yes, not gas to renewables, but gas to coal. In fact, the European Union’s coal consumption grew 16 percent year-on-year for the first half of 2022. European countries imported 7.9 million tons of thermal coal in June, more than doubling year-on-year. Annual coal imports are expected to reach 100 million tons by the end of the year, the highest since 2017.
Even in the most developed economies of the West like Germany and the UK, fossil fuels continue to dominate as the only dependable source of energy. Germany is set to become the third highest importer of Indonesian coal in 2023, ranked just below coal-guzzling China and India.
AP says, “Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.” Rather than wind or solar, it is coal that is keeping the lights on in Europe.
Taking stock of the tremendous performance of coal, a Shaw and Partners senior analyst commented, “Who would have thought dirty ol’ coal would have been the best-performing equities in the last financial year? So far this financial year it’s also the best-performing sector.”
Given this reality, can the Western economies protect themselves from being victims of their own green policies that neither produce the required energy nor save the planet?
Many Western leaders are not ready to admit that this is a misery self-inflicted by their green-energy obsession that compromised the supply of fossil fuels.
The global green energy movement’s primary goal is to make economies transition to renewable sources of energy, a move that some believe will help save the planet from climate change. However, sources like wind, solar, and biomass are neither reliable nor affordable — nor even “renewable.” These indisputable facts were disregarded as western economies continued to make their so-called energy transition.
As a result, much of Europe, UK, and North America find themselves in an energy turmoil.
Instead of harvesting their abundance of fossil fuels, these economies are in state of lamentation, desperate for the procurement of the very fuel sources they once despised.
This week, the White House said it was concerned about a cut in oil production announced by OPEC, despite the Biden administration’s denigration of domestic oil. In Europe, leaders are livid over a gas shortage, another fossil fuel that they claim is bad for the planet.
Qatar’s Saad Al-Kaabi says that European ”green” policies are responsible for high energy prices and that leaders in the West “don’t have a plan.” Energy shortages have forced them to return to the most dependable sources — coal and oil. They are now scampering to ensure energy security for winter, when many believe likely that there will be power blackouts in the UK and Germany.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate with the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
This commentary was first published by the Washington Times, October 25, 2022
IN THIS ISSUE:
If carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are causing dangerous climate change, China is the straw that stirs the drink. China emits more carbon dioxide than all the developed countries on Earth combined.
There is the rub. In his speech kicking off the annual weeklong Communist Party Congress, President Xi Jinping announced fossil fuels have a strong future in China as energy security will be among the country’s top priorities in attempting to advance economic growth. At the end of the conference, in a historic but not unexpected event, Xi was elected to an unprecedented third five-year term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
Xi said aspirational goals to peak and eventually zero out carbon emissions would be tempered with prudence given the recent power shortages following from a limited amount of renewable power sources replacing fossil fuels for electric power generation over the past few years.
Despite China’s commitment to peak carbon emissions between 2030 and 2035, in 2021 the communist state significantly expanded coal mining and use in response to power shortages that idled factories and slowed economic growth.
Xi’s speech restated China’s position that it will not end the use of fossil fuels until enough sufficient, reliable non-emitting energy sources are available to replace them.
“We will work actively and prudently toward the goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality,” Xi said in his address. “Based on China’s energy and resource endowments, we will advance initiatives to reach peak carbon emissions in a well-planned and phased way, in line with the principle of getting the new before discarding the old.”
In addition to increasing coal use, Xi’s spokespersons also made it clear China will expand its exploration and development of oil and gas resources to ensure energy security.
China is not the only country placing shoring up energy security ahead of fighting climate change. The New York Times and National Public Radio both reported on Germany’s race to reopen and expand coal mines and restart previously shuttered coal-fueled power plants in the face of a severe power shortfall entering the fall and winter. Germany previously shut coal power and nuclear power plants and replaced them with huge investments in wind and solar, with Russian natural gas as the backstop. Germans currently pay the highest prices for electricity in all of Europe. As wind and solar have failed to supply reliable power and Russian gas has been cut off during the Ukraine war, Germans face a chilly winter if sufficient coal power plants can’t be brought online quickly.
Italy’s new leader has announced her party and its governing partners want to pull back on the carbon commitments Italy made to reach the EU’s climate goals. The AP reports Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, “contended that the European Union had failed to craft policies that would ensure available, affordable energy supplies. Sky-high energy prices ‘have forced businesses and families down to their knees,’ Meloni said.”
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Party, unlike other parties that contended to control parliament and install the prime minister, has proposed no specific emission reduction targets, and Meloni has indicated her government will relax Italy’s emission reduction targets. Meloni has also indicated she and her parliamentary partners support reopening previously closed nuclear plants and developing domestic gas resources in the Adriatic Sea instead of just importing gas from foreign countries.
Real Clear Energy reports Vietnam has decided not to end coal to meet climate goals it set when it signed the Paris climate agreements. Vietnam now intends to increase coal use and imports for at least the next 13 years because more coal, natural gas, and oil are necessary to meet the country’s growing energy demands.
In Latin America, support for fossil fuels is breaking out all over. The Offshore Engineer reports Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, and Mexico are leading the way in new offshore oil and gas development, securing financing and granting leases for new production projects. State-owned and private companies are also purchasing tankers and equipment and developing refineries to advance energy independence while increasing exports of fuels for which they foresee growing global demand.
While leaders of countries across Asia, Europe, and South America still talk about the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to fight climate change, they are moving forward with policies guaranteed to increase emissions—not for emissions’ sake, of course, but to secure the reliable energy supplies necessary to ensure economic growth and their respective governments’ ability to remain in power.
Actions speak louder than words.
SOURCES: The New York Times; NPR; BBC; CNBC; Euronews; Associated Press; Real Clear Energy; Time; Offshore Engineer
Guardian: World Close to “Irreversible Climate Breakdown”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/29/guardian-world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown/
Where is this climate disaster? Despite decades of trying, we still haven’t crossed one of their imaginary tipping points.
World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies
Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits
by Damian Carrington Environment editor
Fri 28 Oct 2022 04.37 AEDTLast modified on Fri 28 Oct 2022 15.28 AEDTKey UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits
The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.
Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.
He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.
Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money.
On Thursday, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubledtheir quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.
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“Furthermore, the world is unfortunately in a geopolitically unstable state,” said Rockström. “So when we need collective action at the global level, probably more than ever since the second world war, to keep the planet stable, we have an all-time low in terms of our ability to collectively act together.”
“Time is really running out very, very fast,” he said. “I must say, in my professional life as a climate scientist, this is a low point. The window for 1.5C is shutting as I speak, so it’s really tough.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies
Record profits for oil and gas is a real vote of confidence in renewables, the “cheapest form of energy” /sarc.
Reading the Guardian article its difficult to see what bothers them most, all these imaginary tipping points we are always about to cross but never quite reach, or that profits in the oil and gas industry, which Guardian have been telling everyone to divest for years, are soaring into the stratosphere.
Time to find a new fake crisis guys. You had people for the first decade or two, since the climate crisis went big in the early 90s, but the long running movie is getting boring. Four decades and we still haven’t seen the monster. All we have are endless empty promises that it is about to get interesting.
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Blah, Blah, Blah. Over 3 decades of the same climate propaganda that has been mostly wrong. The biggest impact has been for the planet to green up with a booming biosphere and a climate optimum for most life!
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
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U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
PETER JAMES SPIELMANN Associated Press June 29, 1989:
https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.
Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing ..
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https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/01/uk-trapped-in-the-green-energy-cul-de-sac/
Mike Maguire
November 1, 2022 10:12 am
The craziest thing about this is the continued acceptance of the term “green” energy for what is actually ANTI green energy or FAKE green energy.
Fossil fuel emissions of CO2 are massively greening up the planet and causing a booming biosphere. Nobody has repealed the law of photosynthesis.
It should be enough to just know that we are taking that away by eliminating fossil fuels which means LESS planet greening.
But the worse part is replacing it with a source like wind…………the energy source from environmental hell………..and calling THAT the green energy!
Wind turbines and fake green energy is what’s wrecking the planet.
https://www.masterresource.org/droz-john-awed/25-industrial-wind-energy-deceptions/
Death by Greening:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
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Mike Maguire
Reply to Mike Maguire
November 1, 2022 10:28 am
Photosynthesis using the building block for life and beneficial gas, CO2. All animals eat plants or something that ate plants.
Wind turbines KILL birds and bats. Fossil fuels increase food for them.
The planet was close to CO2 starvation before humans rescued life with beneficial CO2, during this current SCIENTIFIC climate optimum.
The fake climate crisis, is entirely manufactured based on science DISinformation.
We were this warm 1,000 years ago during the Medieval WARM period, the last climate optimum. During the Holocene climate OPTIMUM just over 5,000 years ago, it was 2 deg. C warmer than this in the higher latitudes(that always warm the most) with LESS Arctic ice that we have today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
With today’s fake climate crisis, ALL extreme weather events caused by natural variability(most that have occurred numerous times in the past) by the new, political/non scientific definition of climate change……..were caused by the fake climate crisis as a result of the 1 deg. C of beneficial warming(that is saving lives) the past century.