Will Biden-AOC energy policies do to Americans what UK climate obsession is doing to Brits?
The post Bringing Britain’s energy woes to America? appeared first on CFACT.
via CFACT
January 18, 2022 at 04:11AM
Month: January 2022
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A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction on President Joe Biden’s oil and gas permitting ban on federal lands.
The court initially found the administration’s moratorium on issuing new leases was illegal in June, but the Biden administration ignored the court’s decision until now.
The Biden administration refused to offer its first oil and gas lease sale until in mid-November.
States Sue Over Moratorium
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the leasing moratorium. He was joined by the AGs from 12 other states, including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
Prior to oral arguments, Landry’s office issued a press release saying the Biden administration cannot legally halt all lease sales because Congress, by statute, has commanded that lease sales happen on a regular basis.
Landry’s statement cited the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act as explicitly requiring the Federal government to offer lease sales.
“Joe Biden is harming tens of thousands of American jobs using legal strategies that he knows will fail, all in an attempt to satisfy his political base,” said Landry. “Furthermore, he is doing nothing to lower energy prices or relieve the pain at the pump which are hurting the poor and the middle class.”
“By executive fiat, Joe Biden and his administration have single-handedly driven the price of energy up – costing the American people where it hurts most, in their pocketbooks,” Landry said in separate press release issued at the time the lawsuit was filed, in March. “Biden’s Executive Orders abandon middle-class jobs at a time when America needs them most and put our energy security in the hands of foreign countries, many of whom despise America’s greatness.”
Landry called the court’s decision good for America, saying the federal injunction is a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of workers who produce affordable energy for Americans.
Lawsuit Delivers Victory
The federal court ruled Biden’s leasing moratorium illegal in June, 2021, but the administration ignored the court’s order, saying it was justified in doing so until all appeals were exhausted.
In mid-November the court affirmed its nationwide injunction, at which point the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held the first Gulf oil and gas lease sale in mid-November 2021.
At a press conference held outside the BOEM’s offices in New Orleans, Landry declared the sale a win for the hundreds of thousands of Louisianans and for the hundreds of millions of Americans who rely on affordable and dependable energy.
The judge’s ruling and the lease sale resulting from it are good for Louisiana and the nation as a whole, Mike Moncla, President of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association said in a statement.
“This lease sale is an important victory, not only for the 250,000-plus oil and gas workers in the state but for every American who is facing high energy costs as a result of our diminished oil and gas supply,” Moncla said. “We look forward to working with Attorney General Landry as we continue our opposition to the Biden administration’s failed energy policies that undermine our nation’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
‘Slow-Walk Toward Compliance’
Restricting oil and gas leases on federal lands was never about saving the planet, says Bette Grande, president of the Roughrider Policy Center.
North Dakota Attorney General, Wayne Stenehjem, also sued in U.S. District Court, asking the Court to compel the BLM to resume the mandatory leasing program, says Grande.
“In Louisiana v Biden the judge issued an injunction compelling the BOEM to act,” said Grande. “Interior’s response to that injunction, citing E.O. 14008, was to slow-walk toward compliance.”
‘Follow the Money’
This single lease sale does not mean the Biden administration now supports domestic oil and gas production, Grande says.
“Industry experts welcome the end of the lease sale moratorium but are wary of new regulatory hurdles that will come in its wake,” said Grande. “The efficient development of shale resources requires planning and capital, but producers are forced to hopscotch around federal roadblocks; the result is waste, inefficiency, and an uncompensated taking from mineral owners – all in the name of fighting ‘global warming.’
“Biden’s response to the higher gas prices brought about by his policies is to beg countries in the Middle East to sell us more oil,” Grande said. “This proves the administration’s policies are not about the climate, rather they are aimed at lining the pockets of a crony corporatist cabal – follow the money.”
via Watts Up With That?
January 18, 2022 at 04:07AM
Credit: nationalreview.com
Hilarious – somebody must have been watching too many Hollywood fantasy movies. But why on earth is the Met Office paying for such juvenile nonsense?
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It is a bleak forecast even by the Met Office’s standards – the complete collapse of society leaving armed militias and criminal gangs to roam the land unchallenged, says the Daily Mail (via Climate Change Dispatch).
That is one of the doomsday scenarios set out in a report commissioned by the UK’s weather service to model the potential consequences of climate change.
The extraordinary report, called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and developed for the Government-funded UK Climate Resilience Programme, sets out supposedly ‘plausible futures’ as a result of global warming.
One of those scenarios described by the authors is a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems.’
After that, ‘a tipping point is reached when the police and justice system (as known in the past) cease to exist.’
Due to ‘past investments in military and defense… without an effective central government, different military groups (militias, criminal groups, etc) rise to de facto power.’
Under a different scenario in the report, a ‘rich elite’ imposes conscription. ‘Society is more divided than ever,’ the report suggests, ‘with the majority of the population having low incomes and poor health, contrasting with a rich ruling elite. Social unrest increases and the prison population skyrockets. To keep the general population in line, governments introduce military conscription by the end of the century.’
The report makes another ‘woke’ political point by claiming that climate change would lead to the privatization of the NHS.
Continued here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
January 18, 2022 at 04:06AM
I recently came across an exchange between a proponent and opponent of the proposed Morgnec Road Solar LLC installation on the 400-acre Clark farm, located on Route 291 at the eastern border of Chestertown, Maryland. The rebuttal by Frank Lewis (to Pamela Reeder) is noteworthy, throwing punch after punch against the idea that solar has any advantage, just disadvantages.
The “Shared Letter to County Commissioners: Proposed Morgnec Solar Project” (September 24, 2021) follows:
Paula B. Reeder
With climate change-related issues becoming ever more acute, it is incumbent on all MD municipalities to support the State’s goal of having at least 50% of electric power used in the State generated by renewable power sources by 2030, with 14.5% of the total generated by solar power producers.
Achievement of this goal will require 6 times the amount of solar power generated by existing producers. Of all existing renewable energy sources, solar power is the cleanest, most dependable, most environmentally friendly source available.
Further, it is inexhaustible. Implementation of the Morgnec Rd. solar power station will reduce local dependence on and costs associated with buying power from the privately owned PA/NJ/MD Interconnection LLC; improve the sustainability and lower power production costs at our regional electric power grid thereby reducing pressure to increase consumer electric rates; and reduce reliance on fossil fuel-based power production and our carbon footprint.
Frank Lewis’s rebuttal:
… [Reder] states “solar power is the cleanest, the most dependable, most environmentally friendly source available. Further, it is inexhaustible.”
This statement is ludicrous. Solar panels utilize numerous rare earths – cobalt, nickel, cadmium, lithium, vanadium, graphite – whose mining techniques are among the dirtiest and most environmentally damaging in the world. Not accidentally, this mining takes place almost exclusively in China and Africa, where environmental protections are nonexistent.
The statement about dependability is the most laughable, as solar power obviously ends each day at sundown, decreases in the winter to miniscule amounts, and fluctuates daily in unpredictable ways as clouds, haze, and rain obscure the sun. Overall solar power generation is available for less than 40% of the time, whereas all other sources (except wind) are at 90% plus. This mandates a poor and inefficient return on the capital costs.
Solar power always has to be backed up 100% by other generation techniques, usually gas turbines, which can ramp up and down quickly to compensate for its fluctuation. Solar power in excess of about 30% of grid power destabilizes the grid because of this variability, and leads to power blackouts, as was seen this past year in California and Texas, when electricity demand peaked and blackouts ensued for several days to a few weeks.
As far as “inexhaustibility” is concerned, solar panel lifetime is officially stated at about 25 years, but in reality the panels decrease steadily in efficiency after installation, and rarely last beyond 15-20 years. By contrast, gas turbines and other fossil fuel plants run for decades, and nuclear plants typically last for 80 years plus. Both can supply uninterrupted power 24/7/365.
Lastly, the cleanup of solar panels when their lifetime ends, as far as handling and disposition of the many toxic metals involved in their construction, is currently a totally unaddressed and unsolved problem. If solar power were not maintained and supported by government subsidies, it would cease tomorrow, as has been demonstrated in California on several occasions over the last three decades when subsidies were temporarily withdrawn.
Also in her second point, Ms. Reeder states that solar power will be less expensive. This is also totally untrue. First, the power generated will be sold wholesale to the grid, and distributed everywhere through conventional power companies in the usual way at usual rates.
Second, the fact that solar power must always be 100% backed by gas turbines means that when you buy solar you automatically have to buy two power generation systems so that power can still be delivered when the sun doesn’t shine.
The total costs are approximately twice what other types of power generation require. Solar power is considered cheap only because this universal need for a backup power generation system is not factored into its stated cost.
This has been clearly demonstrated in Germany and Denmark, which have more solar power than any other countries in Europe, and where the power costs are approximately 150% as high as the average of power costs in France, England, or Sweden.
The same is true in California and Texas. Without exception, in every locale where solar power has been introduced as a major source of power, electricity costs rise, usually by about 50% over conventional power. To speculate that solar power will lower energy costs is folly which contradicts documented reality. In addition, countries which have installed large solar installations have failed to lower their CO2 emissions, belying its principal rationale as a method for reducing global warming.
Frank R. Lewis (Millington)
The post Solar: An Example of Grassroot Opposition appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
January 18, 2022 at 01:03AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 