Month: May 2017

Rex Tillerson: Dark Knight Of The Natural Gas Lobby

Rex Tillerson: Dark Knight Of The Natural Gas Lobby

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Let’s cut to the chase.  The coal lobby and the natural gas lobby are dueling over the captain’s share of the U.S. electricity-generating market.  As The Donald would say, “The stakes are yuge.”  Americans spend almost $400 billion a year on electricity.

As Trump agonizes over the Paris Accord, self-imposed deadlines sail by.  Escaping the accord requires action.  Delays increasingly resemble a decision to remain.

Inside the palace, rival camps intrigue.  Those advocating ditching Paris rally around EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and controversial presidential adviser Steve Bannon.  Their adversaries follow Princess Ivanka, national economic adviser Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Of the two dozen mandarins with audible input into the decision-making process, the following seven have previously expressed skepticism about the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis: Trump, Pruitt, Bannon, Tillerson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Vice President Mike Pence.  Only the haughty Ivanka seems silly enough to believe such bunk.

So the deliberations aren’t about the science.  This is a no-nonsense debate about America’s national interest as it pertains to the unique circumstances of the Paris Accord.  Little quarter is given to wider ethical or ideological, let alone aeromantic, contemplation.

Let’s cut to the chase.  The coal lobby and the natural gas lobby are dueling over the captain’s share of the U.S. electricity-generating market.  As The Donald would say, “The stakes are yuge.”  Americans spend almost $400 billion a year on electricity.

Recent figures have natural gas fueling 34% of this market and coal 31%.  Percentages fluctuate monthly.  Twenty-sixteen was the year natural gas surpassed coal.  When the climate caper gained traction, in the late 1980s, coal enjoyed a near-60% market share, while natural gas held only 10%.  With this in mind, one plotter around Trump’s table looms ominous.

Rex Tillerson was born unto middle-class parents in 1952 in Wichita Falls, Texas.  After graduating with a civil engineering degree from the University of Texas in 1975, Rex immediately commenced employment with Exxon.  Aside from part-time jobs while a student, Exxon (ExxonMobil after 1999) is the only employer Rex ever had.  He remained a loyal company man for 42 years, severing ties only after his appointment as secretary of state appeared certain.

Tillerson became ExxonMobil’s chief executive and chairman in 2006.  His annual pay package, stock and salary, over the last decade averaged around $30 million.  Upon assuming the secretary of state portfolio, he cashed in his ExxonMobil shares and options.  His net worth is $300 million.

During his eleven-year reign, Tillerson transformed ExxonMobil in two overlapping ways, both germane to the Paris Accord debate.  Pre-Tillerson, ExxonMobil was vilified by environmentalists for questioning climate science orthodoxy and for funding climate-skeptical groups.  These practices ended under Tillerson; however, both he and the company remain unforgiven.  In fact, environmentalists now exploit Tillerson’s mea culpa in a campaign called “Exxon knew,” the premise of which is that Exxon is even more reprehensible because it knew about the alleged harm caused by its carbon dioxide emissions.

The second transformation occurred in 2010 with ExxonMobil’s $31-billion merger-acquisition of XTO Energy Inc, then the USA’s largest independent natural gas producer.  In a stroke, ExxonMobil went from being a minor player in the natural gas business to vying with Shell for the title of world’s largest privately owned natural gas company.  In engineering this merger (and in endorsing climate change), Tillerson followed a path beaten by BP and Shell decades earlier.

When Margaret Thatcher embraced “global warming” during the 1984-5 coal miners’ strike, many presumed that nuclear power would replace coal-fired electricity.  Alternatively, the Germans, with a monocle toward energy independence and industrial supremacy, championed renewables.  Few outside BP’s and Shell’s boardrooms grasped natural gas’s potential for gaming the climate hoax.

As the pitchmen from the 250,000-member Texans for Natural Gas, or from Europe’s GasNaturally meta-coalition, never tire of telling us, gas-generated electricity emits about half the carbon dioxide per watt than does coal-generated electricity.  Wielding this fact, BP and Shell emerged, by the early 1990s, as the most effective and deep-pocketed climate crusaders.  Until Tillerson, ExxonMobil was the major Big Oil climate holdout.

Tillerson’s “Letter to Our Shareholders” in ExxonMobil’s 2015 Annual Report provides a cellophane-clear view on the company’s transformation.  He states frankly, “ExxonMobil views climate change as a serious risk” and follows this a few lines down with “Products we produce, such as cleaner-burning natural gas, also help reduce global emissions.”

Natural gas is the Climate Industrial Complex’s dark horse.  The Climate Change Business Journal does not even recognize natural gas, per se, as a climate industry.  The authors discuss only the gas industry’s efforts at reducing fugitive methane emissions and at carbon capture and storage.  To purists, the $1.5-trillion-a-year Climate Industrial Complex consists only of the makers and mongers of solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, bio-fuels, etc.  There is no room in their inn for a “fossil fuel” industry whose existence predates the climate campaign.

While environmentalists resist acknowledging an alliance with multinational oil corporations, there is no denying that one exists.  BP, Shell, and now ExxonMobil cavalierly demonize carbon dioxide as a pollutant as they promote compliance with the Paris Accord.  They fervently contend that their cannibalization of coal-generated electricity is essential to achieving compliance.  Conversely, they also at times claim that the coal-to-gas switchover is entirely market-driven.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 29, 2017 at 06:22PM

The ‘Business Case’ for Paris Is Bunk

The ‘Business Case’ for Paris Is Bunk

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

The climate accord is a boon—yet pulling out would be unfair?

As President Trump weighs whether to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, some have tried to present a “business case” for why the U.S. should stay in. An economic windfall would come with the early and aggressive investment in alternative energy that the accord mandates, or so the argument goes. The Paris Agreement’s backers have told a very incomplete story and reached the wrong conclusion.

The economic merits of the Paris Agreement take on a different air when more fully considered. Climate-change advocates’ bizarre premise is that economic gains will come from restricting access to the most abundant, reliable and affordable fuel sources. Never mind that this defies the experience of many European nations that have invested heavily in renewable energy. After “Germany’s aggressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar,” for example, the magazine Der Spiegel declared in 2013 that electricity had become “a luxury good.” Apparently this time will be different.

There are a few interesting hypocrisies to consider as well. The commercial interests that strongly support the Paris Agreement typically have created programs to exploit, game or merely pass through the costs of the climate-change agenda. Many also maintain a green pose for marketing purposes. The classic example of this rent-seeking behavior was Enron, which in 1996 purchased Zond Energy Systems (now GE Wind) to complement its gas pipeline. Enron then set about lobbying its way to green-energy riches. It seems that Paris backers hope for a sudden public amnesia about the many businesses that use government to push out smaller competitors.

Green companies also argue that, beyond economic benefits, their ability to slow climate change helps contribute to the public good. To my knowledge, none declare a measurable impact on climate from their businesses or their desired policies.

Mr. Trump should keep in mind that the people calling for him to stick with the Paris Agreement largely did not support him during the campaign. Few would like to see him succeed now. As for his strongest supporters, they’re the ones who will take the hit if he breaks his promise to withdraw.

Some countries have threatened to punish the U.S. if it pulls out of the accord. Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, Mexico’s undersecretary for environmental policy and planning, said in an interview with the New York Times: “A carbon tariff against the United States is an option for us.” Countries imposing costs on their own industries through the Paris Agreement complain that they are at a disadvantage if the U.S. doesn’t do the same. Apparently they didn’t receive the talking points describing green energy as an economic boon for everyone involved.

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via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

May 29, 2017 at 06:01PM

November 9, 2016 – Celebrating In Canberra!

November 9, 2016 – Celebrating In Canberra!

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
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via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog http://ift.tt/2i1JH7O

May 29, 2017 at 05:49PM

Dear Mr. President: @POTUS Please Exit the Paris Climate Agreement

Dear Mr. President: @POTUS Please Exit the Paris Climate Agreement

via Watts Up With That?
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Dear Mr. President:

Are you are still wondering whether to Exit Paris? Overseas and US officials, environmentalists and bureaucrats urge you to Remain. But you promised voters you would Exit. Please keep your promises.

Exit Paris isn’t about the environment. It’s about letting us utilize our fossil fuel energy to create jobs, rebuild our economy, and Make America Great Again. It’s about avoiding immense transfer payments from the USA to foreign governments, bureaucrats and parties unaccountable to Trump-voting taxpayers.

Worse, even if the USA Remains, and the repulsive payments flow, Paris offers no help in removing real air pollutants. Carbon dioxide isn’t one of them, by the way: it’s plant food, not poison.

Exit Paris: Business

Some high profile American companies recently signed a note urging Remain. Follow the money. Many leaders of those companies didn’t support your election and voted Hillary. And they expect to get billions from us taxpayers and consumers, for locking up our fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy.

We who voted Trump, your base, want Exit. Just as you promised.

Remain, so that we maintain markets for American energy technologies? Some companies will make off like bandits. The rest of us will get skewered. Global buyers of energy systems understand the benefits of America’s world-beating fossil technologies. They understand the life-cycle value of after-sales support poorly delivered by our international competitors. Trust Chinese warranties? We don’t either.

Why ask corporations about Remain or Exit Paris? They pass Remain-driven energy costs on to consumers. Instead, ask consumers about ever-increasing energy bills. You’ll get a different answer.

Corporations have shareholders in the USA, of course, and some of them elected you. But corporations also have European shareholders. Corporations there must survive political economies aligned with Paris’s unaccountable bureaucratic control of energy, jobs, economic growth and living standards. You have to choose: shareholders, entrepreneurs, consumers and families – or rent seekers and bureaucrats.

Renewable energy lobbyists, Obama holdovers – and misguided souls in your own administration – say Remain, to keep a seat at the table. That’s nonsense. Businesses were flogged by the past administration and no longer recognize their obligations to shareholders, much less to societies they are supposed to serve with reliable, affordable power that creates and preserves jobs.

Those companies responded to incentives in a massively hostile American political economy. Those hostilities represent decades-long campaigns by anti-energy groups that got rich while claiming to represent shareholders, and by foreign governments seeking transfer payments. You promised change.

Exit Paris: Group of Seven

Mr. President, you’ll be pressured mightily at the G7 to Remain Paris. Hugely-invested and conflicted world leaders will give you no peace. Your delegation will hound you. Keep your Exit staff close. Why?

Because America got snookered into signing the Arctic Council’s May 11, 2017, Fairbanks Declaration. Now the same pro-Remain forces will claim America wants that language. What language?

Start with Perambulatory Paragraphs 8 & 9: “Reaffirming the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the need for their realization by 2030.” And this: “U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 13.a: Implement the commitment undertaken by developed country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible.”

They want to take our money, while they shackle our economy. But there’s more.

Paragraph 31 (p. 6): “…we welcome the updated assessment of Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic, note with concern its findings, and adopt its recommendations.…The Arctic states, permanent participants, and observers to the Arctic Council, should individually and collectively lead global efforts for an early, ambitious, and full implementation of the Paris COP21 Agreement….”

Your State Department Obama-carry-overs slipped this one past their boss, Secretary Tillerson – and you, by extension. This is where the real art of the deal comes in. Take a leadership role and terminate this. Don’t get sandbagged. Don’t sandbag the people who voted for you. Resist the pressures you’ll face in Sicily. Anything but Exit Paris undermines your credibility and betrays voter trust and America’s future.

Exit Paris: Diplomacy

One reason cited to Remain Paris and Remain UNFCCC and their climate treaties is to “avoid diplomatic blowback.” There certainly will be that, but it’s a cost far more easily borne than the sum of what we paid yesterday and will be told we must pay tomorrow in lost energy, jobs and money. Follow the money:

Emerging nations want the USA to Remain because they expect billions in cash from us every year – plus free technology transfers – at US corporate, taxpayer and consumer expense. Advanced countries want us to Remain because we will inadvertently fund and sign onto programs that they use to seize ever-greater bureaucratic control over energy, resources, jobs and living standards, within their own borders and ours.

The Chinese want us to Remain because it protects access to our market for energy technologies. Do you believe Chinese press releases and speeches that claim they are switching massively to renewable energy? Neither do we. But we see them building more coal-fired power plants in China, Africa and elsewhere.

Europeans want us to Remain in Paris to ensure that our fossil fuels, energy prices, economy, jobs, living standards and ability to compete globally are as shackled by climate insanity as theirs already are.

Some say Remain Paris for a seat at the table. Will the planet otherwise forget American leadership? Better that the deal crumbles without us making huge transfer payments and shackling our economy. Even better is that you lead America and the world back from the climate hysteria precipice.

Anti-America, anti-energy forces unite at the UN and its UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its director, Ambassador Espinosa of Mexico, spoke recently at Georgetown University – to advocate greater bureaucratic control over energy, natural resources, jobs, living standards and human lives. The past administration was in lock-step with this. You should absolutely be against every part of it.

Exit Paris: Science

Paris is a horrible idea, since unassailable empirical evidence demonstrates that: Carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and better. Atmospheric CO2 levels trail rather than lead warming. Water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas. Thanks to carbon dioxide, agricultural productivity has increased over recent decades by over $3.2 trillion. Scientists project up to $10 trillion more in improved crop yields over the coming decades.

Climate science is absolutely not settled. Smart scientists who support you prove there’s no credible path to climate cataclysm due to fossil fuel use and CO2 increases. Doomsayers have gotten rich by peddling false, alarmist, anti-scientific claims, while the rest of us have suffered. This must not continue.

To support Exit Paris, you should reverse the absurd, scientifically unsupportable claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” our welfare. Doing that will substantially remove the ability of subsequent administrations to restore policies that demonize fossil fuels and CO2. Many of the policies addressed and corrected by your recent environmental Executive Order are vulnerable until the endangerment finding disappears. Much of the mischief and job killing of the last eight years can be laid at that doorstep.

Exit Paris, because even outgoing EPA officials admit it will not noticeably affect Earth’s temperature.

Exit Paris: US Politics

Paris intentionally provides for ever-tightening restrictions on American citizens and businesses – thus far with no vote by us or the Senate. Who rewrote our Constitution to allow a president, in his final days in office, to impose such a far reaching treaty on us without our advice, consent, approval or vote?

If you need Exit support of fellow elected officials or a constitutional avenue, submit Remain Paris to the Senate. The measure will crash on that rocky shore, giving you all the support you need to Exit Paris.

Your voters heard you promise to Exit Paris. The support you still enjoy from your voters is because we see that you are keeping your promises. Keep this one, too, Mr. President.

Please Exit Paris. Those who voted for you will remember and approve. Those who detest and resist you will still detest and resist you if you Remain.

Thank you for considering our heartfelt analysis.

Sincerely,

Paul K. Driessen and Mark J. Carr

Driessen is an environmental policy analyst and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. Carr consults on energy, environmental, transportation and agricultural policy. (To contact President Trump about this vitally important Exit Paris issue, go here to sign CFACT’s Say No to Paris petition.)

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May 29, 2017 at 02:51PM