By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Opponents of oil and gas have increasingly targeted energy projects through misinformation, protests, lawfare and misinformation, hurting a strategic U.S. industry that employs more than 11 million Americans, and negatively impacting our country’s economic stability.” (Energy Transfer, below)

Pragmatic rent-seeking by crony capitalists is a major problem in the United States. Political capitalism allows “the worst of get on top,” while misallocating resources from consumer to governmental ends. Think of Ken Lay of Enron. James E. Rogers of Public Service of Indiana/Duke Energy. John “beyond petroleum” Browne … Ben van Beurden of Royal Dutch Shell… GE’s Jeff Immelt… T. Boone Pickens … John Hofmeister. The wind and solar crowd. Even Kelcy Warren, co-founder and chairman of Energy Transfer, the subject of this post.

As a Houston Chronicle editorial stated on Monday:

A few of Trump’s Texas-based allies and donors stand to make a killing off Biden’s climate law. Energy Transfer, led by Trump booster Kelcy Warren, is a partner in Texas’ HyVelocity hydrogen hub, which won more than $1 billion in Department of Energy grants. Occidental Petroleum, whose CEO raised millions for Trump, won a $1 billion grant to build a carbon capture hub near Corpus Christi. Even Trump’s BFF Elon Musk admitted that the IRA’s tax credits for battery manufacturing could make as much as $250 million per quarter for Tesla. [1]

ExxonMobil Takes the Political Bait

Sadly, ExxonMobil has gone into the political capitalism camp–with bad results. In an attempt to try to appease the enemy of fossil fuels (futile: the more they get, the more they want), the last two decades has seen the storied company invest unsuccessfully in algae oil (renewable biofuels) and hydrogen. Its carbon capture and storage play is at risk with the possible end of tax subsidies with the new administration.

Exxon CEO Lee Raymond (1993–2004) smartly avoided such taxpayer bets and explained why; his successors succumbed to the climate lobby and have hurt shareholders, employees, and the general public. Raymond was also transparent and correct on the climate issue, stating in 2010:

We in the petroleum industry are not dismissing the global climate change issue. But I don’t believe anyone should have the moral authority to deny people the opportunity to improve their way in life by arbitrarily depriving them of the means…. I hope that the governments of this region will work with us to resist policies that could strangle economic growth.

“Take Back the Truth”

Amid the political capitalism, there is room to applaud moments of free market energy. Enter Energy Transfer’s new website, Take Back the Truth, which the company describes as

dedicated to setting the record straight, not only on oil and gas – the lifeblood of our modern society – but our projects and our company. Oil and gas have enabled the benefits we enjoy in our everyday lives. Opponents of oil and gas have increasingly targeted energy projects through misinformation, protests, lawfare and misinformation, hurting a strategic U.S. industry that employs more than 11 million Americans, and negatively impacting our country’s economic stability.

The picture/logo below includes no industrial wind turbines or solar arrays–just below-ground pipeage amidst CO2-enriched greening.

The truth bombs follow on the site:

Fact: The Dakota Access Pipeline does not encroach on any tribal lands.

Fact: Greenpeace targeted Energy Transfer’s business constituents with misinformation.

Fact: Energy Transfer’s lawsuit is not about free speech.

Fact: Energy Transfer did not desecrate culturally important sites.

Fact: Neither Energy Transfer nor Dakota Access used extreme violence against protestors.

Fact: Greenpeace organized, funded and supported illegal acts of trespass, property damage and violence.

Energy Transfer’s news releases detail the ongoing lawsuit against Greenpeace and push back against their critics. The best defense is offense!

Final Comment

Energy Transfer’s Kelcy Warren is to be commended for playing offense against the Progressive Left. In this regard, he joins Liberty Energy/Chris Wright in a fight for basic property rights and for energy for the masses, not the climate elite. Both Warren and Wright hark back to the first philosopher of energy, Alex Epstein.

There is a new politics in the air in the U.S. but also around the world. Amid the progress and upside, however, there are government interventions that still need correction. Firms such as Energy Transfer need to accept the end of some favorable-to-them intervention (HyVelocity hydrogen hub) to be true and consistent. And to do their part in slashing Leviathan.

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[1] “Private Sector Could Scuttle Energy Scheme.” Houston Chronicle (February 3, 2025).

Less than a year ago I posted a short article asking the above question, but about COP29. Although it may seem a little early to post this, there’s so much going on in the world regarding climate issues today, not least the implications of Trump’s arrival in the White House, posting this now would seem to be appropriate. Indeed, there are already some COP30 related items appearing on the COP29 thread.

As I said last year, having studied climate issues going back to the 1950s, I’ve followed UN climate negotiations in detail since 2007. My conclusion is simple: if global greenhouse gas emissions are to be cut substantially – as we are told is necessary if humanity is to avoid potential catastrophe – the overriding issue, far more important than any domestic concern, is whether or not the governments of major non-Western economies are willing to act accordingly. Yet they’ve shown, and continue to show, scant in interest in so doing. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is hardly going to help.

I set out the evidence and reasons for this failure in an essay published in 2020. Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes my conclusion. The ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 for example if anything reinforced it: the opening paragraph of its item 28 stating that Parties’ ‘global efforts’ should take ‘into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances’ and item 38 repeated the Paris Agreement’s Article 4, unambiguously confirming developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation. That’s a perfect example of what always happens at these conferences: words are inserted in the concluding communiques or agreements letting developing countries off the hook. And COP29 turned out to be a total failure with nothing of substance or even of much interest being agreed.

So what’s going to happen at COP30?

Well, it’s supposed to be an especially important Conference as it will be held ten years since the adoption of the ‘landmark’ Paris Agreement. Moreover, 2025 is the year when Parties are required to submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – setting out targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and showing how they will reach them. These new NDCs have been described by Simon Stiell, executive director of UN Climate Change, as ‘among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century’.

The deadline for submission was 10 February. However only ten countries (all of which, apart from the USA, Brazil and the UK, are relatively insignificant) will achieve that. And, as the USA is no longer relevant and Brazil is the COP30 host, the whole thing would seem to be getting off to a particularly poor start. The plan now is to defer the deadline until September. But that will leave very little time for the UN to produce its planned assessment of expected emission reductions, which is supposed be the key document informing the Conference.

Will the Parties – especially big emitters such as China, India and Russia – meet the new deadline? And, if they do, will they produce NDCs that include credible emission-cutting targets? We’ll see – but, in view of past experience, it’s hard to be especially optimistic.

Robin Guenier – February 2025

News Brief by Kip Hansen —  8 February 2025 — 1000 words

A new study out of the University of Florida and the Colorado School of Mines  written by Emma J. MacKie, Joanna Millstein, and Katherine A. Serafin and titled:

“47 Years of Large Antarctic Calving Events: Insights From Extreme Value Theory”

states that (from the Abstract):

“We use 47 years of iceberg size from satellite observations. Our analysis reveals no upward trend in the surface area of the largest annual iceberg over this time frame. This finding suggests that extreme calving events such as the recent 2017 Larsen C iceberg, A68, are statistically unexceptional and that extreme calving events are not necessarily a consequence of climate change.”

The Conclusion is a little more precise:

“…our analysis shows that maximum calving size has not increased over our study interval. Rather, extremely large calving events are likely typical of a healthy ice sheet system wherein exists a quasi‐stable cycle of calving front advance and retreat. The lack of an upward trend in annual maximum iceberg area could be attributed to an overall increase in the number of smaller calving events, which may inhibit the development of extremely large calving events.”

As with all results of these types of studies, one must read carefully what the authors are saying. 

1. Over the last 47 years (the extent of reliable data), “maximum calving size has not increased”.

2.  “extremely large calving events are likely typical of a healthy ice sheet system wherein exists a quasi‐stable cycle of calving front advance and retreat.”

3.  There has been a “…lack of an upward trend in annual maximum iceberg area” .

4.   Then follows a couplet of face-saving  “could be” and “might”: “could be attributed to an overall increase in the number of smaller calving events, which may inhibit the development of extremely large calving events.”

Basically, the villain Climate Change has been shown not to be causing an increase in massive icebergs to calve off the ice shelves of Antarctica.

Rather, it seems, from their study, that large icebergs breaking off is part of the perfectly normal and expected behavior of these ice shelves. 

This is a serious study based on a great deal of computational power and some novel approaches to “to understand their [sea ice and massive icebergs] physical drivers, temporal trends, and future likelihood” including extreme value theory (EVT).

The authors attempt to mitigate the unexpected findings by postulating that instead of more massive icebergs, there may have been many smaller icebergs:  “While extreme calving events have not grown in area over the observational period, overall ice shelf area is decreasing (Greene et al., 2022). Our results suggest that this mass reduction is primarily driven by small calving events.”

Let’s just check that “overall ice shelf area is decreasing” (which should mean over the 47-year study period):  (These two graphs cover approximately the same years as the study, 1979-2024/5, whereas the study uses 1976-2023)

The above is Antarctic Sea Ice Extent, in millions of square kilometers, at the height of the Antarctic Summer, with 2025 coming in in the middle of the pack and in the same general range as the earliest years, the 1980s.

This graph is Sea Ice Volume….and shows that 2024 was exceptionally low, but, if we highlight the higher years since 2010, we get this:

Most of the years in the last 15 years have been the higher/highest  volume years.    So maybe, the authors could have taken a closer and a broader look at the longer-term statistics.  The authors cite a single study, Greene et al. (2022), in support of  “overall ice shelf area is decreasing”.

Bottom Lines:

1.  The repeated claim that Antarctica is producing more and more and larger and large icebergs is not correct.  There is no trend (and possibly a negative trend) in massive icebergs calving from Antarctic ice shelves. 

2.  The large icebergs calved in recent years have not been caused by Climate Change, but are apparently just part of the long-term cycle of ice shelf growth and decline.

3.   Concerns over Antarctic Ice Shelf area (km²) seem overheated…the area covered by ice shelves off the coasts of Antarctica is highly variable and currently in line with the extent seen in the 1980s. 

4.  Media claims to the contrary are false and based primarily on untrue Climate Crisis narrative talking point:  “The icecaps are melting”. 

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Author’s Comment:

Arctic Sea Ice, what passes for the Northern polar ice cap, is currently in a low ice mode, similar to that seen in the 1930s.  So much so that commercial shipping again is possible over the Northeast Passage (Northern Sea Route) from Europe to Asia for a short season every year.  Russia is using that window in the seasonal ice to ship its LNG from its Arctic LNG 2 project  to China and elsewhere.

Antarctic Sea Ice is highly variable in both extent and ‘thickness’.  Extent has been ‘measured’ by satellite using images which can be compared year to year.  Thickness is currently estimated using gravity measurements from satellites and by the “Global Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (GIOMAS).”

As we all know, melting sea ice does not add to sea level or cause sea level rise.  Only melting land ice (glacial ice) can do so.

Less ice at the northern pole of the planet is a good thing as it allows shorter shipping routes in our ever more interdependent commercial societies.    Sea ice in Antarctica is a negligible issue.  Land ice mass on Antarctica is a scientific controversy.

Thanks for reading.

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