Month: September 2024

Just Another Frivolous Climate Lawsuit

By Jason Isaac

September 19, 2024

A leftwing judicial influence group is finding the spotlight unwelcome.

The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) brands itself as an objective source for judges interested in climate change issues and has held “educational” events for over 2,000 judges. My organization, the American Energy Institute, recently unveiled CJP’s many ties to far-left climate plaintiffs pushing Green New Deal-type policies by lawsuit.

After treatment in major news pieces and prominent editorials, Environmental Law Institute president Jordan Diamond recently responded with a non-sequitur in the Wall Street Journal.

These essential facts are unrebutted in Mr. Diamond’s letter: CJP takes millions of dollars from the same entities bankrolling climate change cases against energy providers. Activist academics who shape CJP programming also advise the climate plaintiffs on the side or support them in amicus filings. And the “educational materials” themselves skew heavily toward climate plaintiffs, presenting as fact claims that defendants are vigorously disputing in dozens of cases.

It is no answer – it is completely irrelevant – to note as Mr. Diamond does that CJP does not “participate in litigation” or “advise judges on how they should rule in any case.” CJP is more subtle by design. It is a leftwing group that exists to condition the legal environment such that climate change lawsuits receive a more favorable hearing. CJP achieves its policy objectives without being heavy-handed and obvious.

And CJP’s goal is to produce policy change. They say so themselves. Sandra Nichols Thiem, ELI’s judicial education director, said in 2022 that CJP’s goal is to help create “a body of law that supports climate action.”

Honolulu’s climate change lawsuit against energy providers is a good example of ELI and CJP at work.

ELI personnel apparently helped get that lawsuit going. Emails show that ELI board member Ann Carlson used a discretionary fund to pay for a trip to a 2019 conference meant to “encourage Hawaii to consider a nuisance lawsuit” against energy providers. Carlson spoke at that conference alongside Vic Sher, a trial lawyer who represents two dozen states and municipal entities in climate change lawsuits. Ultimately the city and county of Honolulu responded to this call to action, filing a nuisance suit against providers in 2020. Who did Honolulu enlist to represent them? That would be Vic Sher.

Honolulu had every expectation of success, given that a good friend of ELI holds the state’s highest judicial post. Mark Recktenwald, the chief justice of Hawaii’s state supreme court, is an ELI ally who has presented at least three times for the group about rising sea levels and climate change litigation generally. Honolulu’s lawsuit reached the state supreme court in 2023. And it was Recktenwald who wrote the decision allowing Honolulu’s lawsuit to proceed. Energy providers have appealed Recktenwald’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That’s conditioning at work. Would ELI and CJP ever be so bold as to participate in litigation or tell judges how to rule? Of course not. Instead, they quietly manipulate the environment – guiding the right people to the right places or equipping judges with select information – such that their preferred outcomes are assured.

The U.S. Supreme Court may yet derail these well-laid plans. Energy providers turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in February after the Recktenwald ruling, asking the justices to disallow lawsuits of the kind Honolulu is bringing. We are likely to find out if the high court will hear the case early in 2025.

It’s understandable that ELI and CJP want to conceal the nature of their operations while the appeal is pending. But no one should be obtuse about the Climate Judiciary Project. This is an outcome-oriented operation, whatever Mr. Diamond pretends in the unwelcome spotlight.

The Honorable Jason Isaac is CEO of the American Energy Institute and their sister trade association representing American energy producers that unapologetically support free markets and liberating American energy. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

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September 20, 2024 at 08:05PM

Again Wuhan Lab Coverup for Covid Virus Origin. Don’t Buy it!

Today we have a coordinated release globally of a study claiming to disprove the Covid 19 virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Viology (WIV).  An example is the article from the UK so-called Independent ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ Covid pandemic originated at Wuhan market stall.  Excerpts in italics.

US and French researchers traced coronavirus to one stall in
Wuhan, China after analysing genetic samples

It is beyond “reasonable doubt” that the Covid-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese animal market, a new scientific study has found.

Researchers from the United States and France discovered one stall in Wuhan, China, was a hotspot for coronavirus after analysing hundreds of genetic samples collected by Chinese authorities in 2020.

The analysis, published in Cell, compiled a list of animals including raccoon dogs, masked palm civets, hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines, that were likely to have passed the virus to humans.

“It’s far beyond reasonable doubt that this is how it happened,” Professor Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona told the BBC, noting that other theories involve some “really quite fanciful absurd scenarios”.

Professor Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research in the US, added: “We find a very consistent story in terms of this pointing to the market as being the very likely origin of this particular pandemic.”

Color me skeptical.  Both Worobey and Andersen were carrying Fauci’s water in 2020-21 when he was lying to congress about funding gain of function research at WIV.  Qui Bono from this paper?  China, who destroyed all the evidence in 2020, but now it supposedly appears in 2024.  And Fauci, who enlisted these and other researchers to publish fake studies in various journals to cancel the lab-leak explanation for the covid pandemic.

For a desciption of the malfeasance perpetrated by these charlatans, see this expose by Vanity Fair in 2022 “This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy.

For a level-headed reaction to this latest coverup, here is a comment to the published Worobey et al paper by Alexander Chervonsky Professor of Pathology The University of Chicago.  In italics with my bolds.

Two seemingly mutually excluding theories of SARS-CoV2 origin are now a matter of a heated debate.

On one hand, scientists siding with the lab-leak idea are bringing up a lot of reasonable but circumstantial evidence in favor it.  There is no real way to prove the leak until an unbiased commission of researchers inspects the potential sites and lab records.  That is unlikely to happen, and the problem may be never solved, unless another leak, next time a leak of critical information happens.

On the other hand, a seemingly large group of scientists supports the natural origin of the COVID19 pandemics. The key point here is that they also do not have a direct evidence of SARS-CoV2 being transmitted to humans through an intermediate host in a manner similar to what was found before for SARS and MERS viruses.

The debate becomes more and more heated, not at the least being motivated by non-scientific reasons. Major journals publish unbalanced editorials favoring ‘natural origin’ theory that so far has not produced the fatal blow to the opposite view. It is argued that it is hard to find a needle in the haystack (an animal that is an intermediate host for SARS-CoV2), but this is the real source of uncertainty. 

For an unbiased critical mind, it is impossible to take sides in this debate simply because both previous lab leaks (including of SARS virus) and a natural transmission through intermediate hosts of human SARS and MERS coronaviruses have been documented. If one wants to convince that unbiased critical mind of the natural origin of human SARS-CoV2 – show us the money!

Find the intermediate host, find the virus, explain in molecular terms
how it got the furin cleavage site, or better continue working hard.

The article by Michael Worobey is an example of delivering arguments that can hardly make a dent in the leak theory for the following reasons:

  • Since COVID19 can be totally asymptomatic, the claim that the first symptomatic cases came from the putative place of origin (the markets) cannot be taken seriously;
  • Nothing in this article suggests that the virus could not have been brought to the market by someone from Wuhan Virology lab who went there to buy food for his/her family;
  • Markets are places of high concentration of people and are perfect for quick transmission between sellers and visitors (or visitors and sellers);
  • The sensitivity of racoon dogs to SARS-CoV2 argument can be used equally well for human to animal transmission as for racoon dogs to human. Again – show us the actual virus in the intermediate host or remain calm.

Calm, however, is an unlikely outcome of this debate. My argument is that scientific thinking and integrity should come first.  It is really tiring to read the numerous editorials and letters that are unilateral with no substance.  I rest my case totally prepared to be convinced one way or another by solid direct evidence.

Comment:  The origin debate is important and heated because it determines whether or not the pandemic virus was or was not man-made, and the accountability for consequences that comes with that.

 

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September 20, 2024 at 06:35PM

Green Deal Cuts EU Emissions, Doubles Them Elsewhere

The news and analysis from University of Groningen is reported at Science Daily European Green Deal: A double-edged sword for global emissions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Greenhouse gas emissions will fall in the EU, but rise even more elsewhere

Summary:  The European Green Deal will bring down the emission of greenhouse gases in the European Union, but at the same time causes a more than a twofold increase in emissions outside its borders.

The European Union aims to be carbon-neutral by 2050 as part of the comprehensive Green Deal that was agreed upon four years ago. However, an analysis of the policy documents outlining the practical measures of the Green Deal shows that it will decrease carbon emissions in Europe, but also increase carbon emissions outside of the EU. This increase is more than double the amount of carbon emissions saved by the Green Deal. This analysis was published in Nature Sustainability on by an international team of scientists led by Klaus Hubacek, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Groningen.

The European Green Deal is a set of policies intended to fully decarbonize Europe by 2050, but it also includes measures for clean energy production and ecological restoration. Hubacek and colleagues from the United States and China carried out full supply chain analyses of the policy documents underlying the Green Deal. Their conclusion is that the Green Deal in its current form will lead to an increase in emissions in countries outside the EU by 244.8 percent compared to the Green Deal’s carbon reduction goal in the land, land use change, and forestry sector within EU borders.

Reasons to be Skeptical of Policies

One example is the measure to increase biodiversity in Europe by planting three billion trees. ‘However, trees require a lot of land that cannot be used to produce food. That means that food must be produced elsewhere, and to do this, land must be converted into cropland. This increases the carbon dioxide emission and reduces biodiversity,‘ says Hubacek. In this way, the EU would reduce carbon emissions within its borders, but ‘export‘ them to the countries that would produce our food, for example Africa or South America.

Of course, the Green Deal does contain a paragraph forbidding the import of products (such as meat or animal feed) for which woodland is converted to farmland. Hubacek is sceptical: ‘Nothing stops these other countries from growing products for Europe on existing farmland and felling forests to produce for the local market. There are simply too many uncertainties in these types of regulations.’ The Green Deal also calls for an increase in organic farming, but this requires more farmland in Europe. Hubacek: ‘Again, there is very little information available on the impact on land use.’

No free lunch

However, the scientists did not just reveal the negative impacts of the Green Deal on the rest of the world. They also looked at different scenarios to see if overall carbon reductions could be enhanced. ‘We found one very effective way to do this.’ says Hubacek, ‘By adopting the more plant-based “planetary health diet,” it is possible to save an enormous amount of carbon emissions.’ Another measure is to phase out food-based biofuels within the EU, which would reduce the amount of farmland needed and thus save carbon emissions and prevent biodiversity loss. Also, the EU could assist developing regions to increase their agricultural efficiency, which would also reduce land use.

Although the Nature Sustainability article shows that the European Green Deal in its present form could result in a net loss for the global environment, the scientists conclude that it can be remedied. ‘By adopting the planetary health diet, which is relatively simple’, says Hubacek. However, there is one more thing that needs to change, he stresses: ‘The programme is driven by techno-optimism, but our analysis underlines that there is no free lunch. I very much doubt that “Green Growth” is possible, as everything you produce requires an input of resources. So we really need to consume less.’ There is a strong sense of urgency now that global warming seems set to surpass the 1.5 degrees from the 1995 Paris Agreement, and many other planetary boundaries are also being overstepped. Hubacek: ‘It is time to implement measures that work.’

Comment:

The authors share the IPCC notion of climate emergency caused by GHGs, but are practical enough to realize the proposed policies are counter productive.  I am among those who agree with Dr. Happer that the only climate crisis is coming from the torrent of ill-advised governmental policies that are not likely to reduce GHG emissions or temperatures, but will achieve great economic and social destruction.

See the series of four posts World of Hurt from Climate Policies

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 1

See Also

Climate Policies Fail in Fact and in Theory

 

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September 20, 2024 at 04:17PM

Gulf of Mexico Oil Production to Approach 2 Million Barrels per Day by 2026… Unless…

Guest “Unless Enviromarxist terrorist groups shut us down” by David Middleton

September 16, 2024

Federal Gulf of Mexico production

Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), September 2024
Data values: U.S. Petroleum and Other Liquids Supply, Consumption, and Inventories and U.S. Natural Gas Supply, Consumption, and Inventories


We recently implemented a new model for forecasting crude oil and natural gas production from the U.S. Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM) in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). In our latest outlook, we forecast that GOM production will remain relatively flat with new fields offsetting the natural production declines from existing fields.

We forecast that 1.8 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil will be produced in the GOM in 2024 and 1.9 million b/d in 2025, compared with 1.9 million b/d in 2023. We expect GOM natural gas production to average 1.8 billion cubic feet a day (Bcf/d) in both 2024 and 2025, compared with 2.0 Bcf/d in 2023. At these volumes, the GOM would contribute about 14% of U.S. oil production and 2% of U.S. marketed natural gas production.

We expect 12 new fields to start production in the GOM during 2024 and 2025, without which we would expect GOM production to decline. Seven of these fields will be developed using subsea tiebacks, or underwater extensions from existing Floating Production Units (FPUs) at the surface. We expect four new FPUs, which would produce crude oil and natural gas from five more fields. We expect that fields that have already started in 2024 will contribute 22,000 b/d of crude oil production in 2024, and fields that will start production in 2024 or 2025 will contribute 231,000 b/d on average in 2025 as additional production comes online and ramps up.

For more information on our new model, our forecast and supporting assumptions, and new infrastructure coming online, please refer to our recently released article, EIA expects flat oil and natural gas production from the Gulf of Mexico after model update.

Principal contributor: Eulalia Munoz-Cortijo

Tags: forecasts/projectionsnatural gasSTEO (Short-Term Energy Outlook)liquid fuelscrude oiloil/petroleumproduction/supplyGulf of Mexico

US EIA

Assuming the industry prevails in court, Gulf of Mexico oil production will average 1.9 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2025. This will be the result of a dozen recent deepwater discoveries being brough online.

We expect 12 new fields to start production in the GOM during 2024 and 2025. Seven fields will be developed using subsea tiebacks, or underwater extensions to existing FPUs at the surface. Five fields will produce from four new FPUs, with one of the new FPUs (Salamanca FPU) targeting production from two fields. We expect that fields starting in 2024 will contribute 22,000 b/d of crude oil production in 2024 and fields that start production in 2024 or 2025 will contribute 231,000 b/d in 2025 as additional production comes online and ramps up.

US EIA

Peak Oil my @$$…

The Gulf of Mexico was once a huge gas play back when natural gas was >$8/mcf. Today, most of the production is associated natural gas. The typical Gulf of Mexico oil well produces 1 million cubic feet (mmcf) per 1,000 bbl of oil.

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September 20, 2024 at 04:05PM