From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Tilak Doshi

The inauguration of Donald Trump on Monday, January 20th as 47th President of the United States promises to dramatically change the trajectory of U.S. energy policies pursued by the outgoing Biden administration as well as the previous two-term Obama presidency.

In a speech and Q&A session on January 7th, the President-elect stated that both climate alarmism and Biden’s energy policies are “huge scams”; that he would terminate U.S. participation in the UN’s Paris Climate Agreement; that he would rescind Biden’s cynical permitting “pause” on LNG export infrastructure development allegedly to assess its impact on U.S. energy security and domestic natural gas prices; that he would do away with Biden’s EV mandates “very quickly”; that he would “un-ban” Biden’s blanket offshore oil and gas drilling ban; that he would rescind all the actions taken by the Biden regulators to disadvantage or ban gas appliances and stoves; and that he would unwind Biden’s offshore wind boondoggle. He has also vowed to rescind unspent funds earmarked for climate provisions contained in the euphemistically named, boondoggle-laden Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

It is of course too early to assess how quickly the incoming Trump administration can achieve these objectives. Vested interests, bureaucratic backsliding and the considerable resources of the climate industrial complex will seek to constrain the Trump administration’s energy policy ambitions.

But it would be a mistake to look at the Trump administration’s energy policy promises as the only hope in turning around what has been a decades-long onslaught against fossil fuels in the U.S. and Western Europe. Key developments in world energy affairs in 2024 suggest that a Trump administration will have important allies in Europe and around the world in its fight against the globalist climate agenda.

Europe’s deindustrialisation and the green backlash

The impact of Europe’s deindustrialisation – a process that began with Germany’s adoption of Energiewende in 2010 which sought to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with solar and wind – became painfully evident last year. Germany’s Federal Statistics Office reported on January 15th that the economy contracted for the second consecutive year in 2024, highlighting the depth of the downturn gripping Europe’s biggest economy with few signs of any imminent reprieve. The avalanche of headlines on Germany’s economic and political implosion after Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacked his Finance Minister in November were only the latest in a series of reports over the past two years on the “sick man of Europe” (“Behind Germany’s Political Turmoil, a Stagnating Economy”, “Germany Is Unraveling Just When Europe Needs It Most”, “Europe’s Economic Apocalypse Is Now”) .

Sky-high labour and business operating costs, caused by the myriad regulations of over-reaching bureaucrats and among the world’s highest energy prices brought about by the follies of the EU’s and U.K.’s “climate leadership” policies of the past two decades, have cost Europe dearly. In 2008, the EU and U.S. economies were neck and neck. Today, the U.S. economy is 50% larger than its hapless ally across the Atlantic.

A growing ‘greenlash’ against the environmental agenda in Europe and U.K. – along with the rejection of mass immigration and the open-ended commitment to funding Ukraine’s war – has led to the rise of populist “far-Right” political parties. They have achieved significant success in regional and national elections in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany and the U.K.

Geert Wilders, the political leader of the Party for Freedom which is in a coalition of four parties which constitute the Dutch Government, sounded positively Trumpian as he decried government spending on the climate and supporting Ukraine and the need to reduce taxes, stating: “I want us to finally put the Dutch first.”

Alice Weidel, leader of the German AfD party that has 20% voter support across the country, making it Germany’s second strongest political party, is yet another potential Trump ally. In one of her typically fiery speeches to the Bundestag, she said: “Germany is deep in recession… And it’s not Putin, not the world, not some fictitious climate disasters that are to blame for this. This incapable Government is responsible for the collapse…”

In an extended interview with Elon Musk – who will lead the Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s incoming administration – Ms. Weidel spoke of Angela Merkel as the first “green” chancellor who “wrecked and destroyed” the country with its “obnoxious energy policy” which made Germany “the first industrial economy that unplugged nuclear power plants”.

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform U.K. party which is now neck and neck with the ruling Labour Party on 25% in some polls, has long been a personal friend of Mr. Trump. Like Mr. Trump and reflecting most Reform U.K. members, Mr. Farage is skeptical about climate alarmism. His party manifesto states that Net Zero policies are “crippling our economy” so “scrapping climate change goals should be made a priority for the next government as it would save the public sector £30 billion per year for the next 25 years”.

There are other leaders in the EU that share Mr. Trump’s opposition to the fundamentalist beliefs of the climate church. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban dismisses EU plans to tackle climate change as a “utopian fantasy”. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has pointedly stated that “ecology has been militarily occupied from the Left” and that “Greta Thunberg’s ideology will lead us to lose thousands of companies and millions of jobs in Europe”. Parties opposed to the unconstrained green climate agenda are now in governing coalitions in Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Energy pragmatists in the Global South

Ever since the first ever international forum devoted to the environment and climate change took place in Stockholm in 1972, the developed countries of the West have made climate policy a centrepiece in their international relations. From the earliest UN negotiations starting in 1992 at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developing countries in the ‘Global South’ such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa had “common but differentiated responsibilities”.

This meant that the developed countries (primarily the West, but also its allies including industrialised Japan and South Korea) adopted commitments to reduce carbon emissions by specified amounts over a specified period. This was allegedly dictated by the Science^TM popularised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change periodic “Summary for Policymakers”. The developing countries not only did not have any binding policy commitments but were expected to receive considerable support in “climate finance” to assist mitigating and adapting to climate change.

After almost three decades of negotiations at the Conference of Parties (COP) at the UNFCCC forum, the chasm that exists between the policy perspectives of governments in the collective West and those of the rest of the world that make up 80% of the global population is no closer to being bridged. The delegations from China and India among other developing countries at COP26 held in Glasgow in 2021 successfully insisted at the last minute that the forum’s final communique refer to a “phase down” not a “phase out” of fossil fuels. This was to ensure there was no watering down of their aspirations for higher standards of living which depend on reliable and affordable fossil fuel supplies.

At COP28 held in Dubai in 2023, the contradictions between the climate alarmists of the West (which included both government representatives and a vast phalange of environmental NGOs that are accorded semi-official status at COP meetings) and the energy pragmatists of the ‘Global South’ broke into the open and was widely reported in the media.

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the President of the COP28 climate summit and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said pointedly in an interview: “You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuels… Please, help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Nor is Dr. Al Jabber the only natural ally of the in-coming “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration. Al Jaber’s remarks were amplified by Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman who told Bloomberg that the world’s biggest oil exporter would not agree with Western demands to phaseout fossil fuels. “Absolutely not,” he said in an interview in Riyadh. “And I assure you not a single person – I’m talking about governments – believes in that… If they believe that this is the highest moral ground issue, fantastic. Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Last year’s COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in the presidential elections, much to the consternation of climate activists and a hyper-ventilating media around the world. The Financial Times saw Trump’s triumphant win as “a blow to global climate action” which would “cast a pall over the UN COP29”. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, host of COP29, came out as among Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, describing his country’s oil and gas resources as “a gift from God” and that oil and gas would be needed for “many more years”.

Upending green geopolitics

That the upcoming Trump administration will upend the green geopolitics pushed by the progressive environmental Left in the West is in no doubt. This was evident at the confirmation hearings for key nominees in the Trump administration which took place this week. Chris Wright, an oil executive and the nominee for Secretary of Energy, said this at his Senate hearing: “President Trump shares my passion for energy… if confirmed, I will work tirelessly to implement his bold agenda as an unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable and secure American energy.” He continued:

There’s seven billion people in the world that don’t live lives anything like we do…They want what we have. And of course, they should get what we have. And through market forces and improvement and leadership, particularly leadership from the President-elect Trump, I think we’re going to see growing more abundant energy resource coming out of our country and hopefully out of the world so that everyone else can live lives like we do.

Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent was asked at his confirmation hearing about fears that President-elect Trump’s efforts to reverse gains made in green energy would favour China. He responded as follows:

China will build a hundred new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race. China will build 10 nuclear plants this year. That is not solar. I am in favour of more nuclear plants. And I would note that the IRA as scored by the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] is wildly out of control in terms of spending on the upside.

Mr. Trump couches his promised energy policies in the mantle of “America First”. Yet in his ambitions to bring about a renaissance in energy production in the U.S., he enjoys the prospects of strong support from all corners of the world not beholden to the powerful lobbies of the globalist climate agenda.

Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a former contributor to Forbes, and a member of the CO₂ Coalition.

From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

My group and scientists from the University of Albany are now studying the meteorology of the LA wildfires earlier this month and have significant early results.  At the American Meteorological Society meeting last week, I attended many wildfire meteorology sessions and talked to several colleagues who have actively studied such events. The LA fires were a topic of considerable discussion.

We have a good idea of what happened:  an extreme/unusual Santa Ana event associated with severe downslope winds.   In this blog, I will show you some early simulations and explain why this event occurred.  

I will also describe why climate change did not play a significant role.

As I will explain below, this is not only a Santa Ana event, but an unusual one, with extreme winds descending to lower elevations.  Some lower-elevation stations, such as Burbank, experienced their strongest wind gusts on record.  Model simulations suggest the development of what is known as a high-amplitude mountain wave leading to a downslope windstorm event.

Santa Ana 101

Santa Ana’s are associated with strong northeasterly (from the north to east) winds over southern California.  These strong winds are accompanied by very low relative humidity and are very favorable for southern CA wildfires.   

The typical large-scale weather pattern associated with Santa Anas includes a large high-pressure area over the Great Basin, with the strongest events also having a low center to the southwest (see below). Such a pattern results in strong northeasterly winds approaching the mountains of southern CA.

The observed sea level pressure pattern at 4 PM January 7 (below) showed many of these elements, with the low to the south being particularly strong (warm colors indicate above-normal pressure, cool colors show below-normal pressures).

This pattern produced extreme, perhaps precedented. northeasterly winds approaching the region in the lower atmosphere.  To illustrate,  the color shading in the map below shows wind differences from normal at 925 hPa (about 2500 ft above sea level) at 10 PM Tuesday (January 7) evening.  The light gray indicates very unusual winds (more than six standard deviations from normal).  The wind direction and speed at some points are also shown.

This was not your normal Santa Ana.

High-Resolution Simulations

To understand what happened,  UW Research Scientist David Ovens, a member of my research group, ran a very high-resolution forecast/simulation of the event using the WRF model, with a grid spacing of 1.3 km (this is very high resolution).

Let me show you a surface wind gust forecast (32 hours into the prediction) for 12 AM on Wednesday, January 8.   The areas of the Palisade and Eaton fires (the two biggest ones) are shown by red outlines.   

Extreme winds (with gusts exceeding 70 knots, 81 mph) were forecast over and downwind of the San Gabriel Mountains.  HUGE threat.    Lesser, but still strong winds (50-60 mph gusts) are noted in the Palisades area extending to the west and south.   

To understand what is going on, it is useful to plot vertical cross-sections through the fire areas to show the 3-D atmospheric structure.   Below is a cross-section (at 8 PM Tuesday) through the Eaton fire; a section that crosses the San Gabriel Mountains.  The shading shows sustained winds in knots, the x-axis is the horizontal distance and the y-axis is height in pressure (700 is about 10,000 ft)

Wow.    Very strong acceleration of the air as it descends the southern slopes of the San Gabriels, with the strongest winds near Altadena, where the fire went crazy.  This was a very powerful downslope windstorm with a highly amplified mountain wave pattern.

Another cross section, this time going through the Palisades fire at 10 AM on Wed. January 8, is shown below.   Very strong winds to the lee (south) of both the interior mountains and Santa Monica mountains to the south (left side of the figure).

These and earlier simulations by the UW WRF model and NOAA/NWS models (such as the HRRR, High Resolution Rapid Refresh) consistently forecast the extreme downslope winds DAYS in advance

It was also clear that there were unusually large amounts of dried “fuels” ready to burn.  The fuel load was particularly high after TWO unusually wet winters (2022-2023, 2023-2024).  A dry start of winter ensured massive amounts of fuels were ready to burn. 

This was clearly a situation of extraordinary extreme wildfire danger.  That is why I blogged a strong warning the day before.  Why the National Weather Service did the same.  LA officials should have know a severe threat was in place.

All that was needed was an ignition source.  For the deadly and large Eaton Fire near Pasadena, it appears that a problematic electrical transmission tower was the origin of the fire.

For the Palisades inferno, it is either some smoldering embers from a New Year’s Eve fireworks blaze or the failure of some aged powerlines found north of Skull Rock.   Perhaps, arson is another possibility.  Several fire experts I talked to at the AMS wildfire meeting thought the powerlines were the most probable cause, but a definitive evaluation is not yet available.

What is clear is that LA did not shut off the power to the region even AFTER the fire was initiated and that only limited fire-fighting resources were in place before the fires began.  Not good.

Bottom Line:   A very skillfully predicted Santa Ana event with record-breaking winds hit LA earlier this month. Two wet winters resulted in unusually high levels of dried fuels. Human ignitions initiated the fires.

Influence of Global Warming

There are several media outlets and climate activists that are suggesting that LA fires were the result of global warming or significantly enhanced by human-caused warming.  

These claims are contrary to the best science, which indicates minimal impacts of human-caused warming.  

Such claims undermine the importance of key societal failures, from not shutting off power and fire-hardening homes to not having sufficient fire-fighting capabilities or adequate warnings and evacuation protocols.

Key reasons why global warming is not an important factor include:

1.  There is no evidence that global warming increases Santa Ana winds.  In fact, there are strong physical reasons (with supporting scientific literature) that global warming WEAKENS Santa Ana winds.

2.  The available fuels were unusually abundant because the two previous years have been much wetter than normal.  There is no evidence this is caused by global warming.  And there is no long-term trend for wetter winters, which would be evident if this was a climate issue.

3.  The immediately prior months were drier than normal.  This is not predicted by global warming projections and there is no historical trend to drier early winters which would occur if climate was a cause (see plot below of Los Angeles precipitation for Oct. 1-January 6 ).

3.  There are some outrageous claims that the LA fires are the result of increasing “weather whiplash” due to climate change.  This “whiplash” theory is unsupported by observations, such as the plot shown above.

I am particularly troubled by the media pushing weather/climate theories that are untrue.  A prime example is the unsupported claim that the Lahaina fire was associated with the passage of a hurricane to the south.   This was proven to be false.