Weekly clippings #48 - non-extreme weather, non-transition, fossil fuel salvation, non-alarm, lagging sustainability, net-zero name change
Welcome to another weekly collection of Examining ESG. This week features:
SCIENCE
• Extreme Weather and Climate Change
• Saving Climate From the Greens
INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS
• The Earth and Civilization Have Been Saved By Fossil Fuels
• A Wealth-Creating Way of Reducing Global CO2 Emissions
• New Study Identifies Big Reductions In US Natural Gas Emissions
• New York Shows Off Its Expertise In Central Planning: The Buffalo Billion
• Why you shouldn’t be alarmed about unusually warm temperatures
• Ronald Stein: Environmentalists’ silence on humanity and environmental atrocities
• Trillions in taxpayer subsidies haven’t made wind and solar power cheaper or better for Americans
• Abolish DEI Statements - Assessing a debate about a controversial hiring practice
• Sustainable investments lagging interest: Mackenzie Investments survey
ABSURDITIES
• Melting ice both speeds up and slows down time
• 'Net-Zero' a Problem? Just Change the Name!
SCIENCE
Extreme Weather and Climate Change "Evidence for observed changes in drought, flooding, tropical cyclones and hurricanes, fire weather, and others is spotty, globally non-uniform, of varying levels of quality, duration, and areal coverage. Measured trends in flooding, drought, wildfires, and hurricanes, have, in fact, been seen to decline over all or parts of the time period IPCC claims to have observed increases."
Our take: data indicating extreme weather is not increasing is widespread but still not well recognized. Could there be a media and political bias?
Saving Climate From the Greens A pro-fracking, pro-nuclear CEO takes on ‘ridiculously naive’ energy policy. "Why does government persist in demonstrably failed and foolish efforts? It took billions of dollars in subsidies from carmakers and federal taxpayers to get early adopters to buy electric vehicles, so it’s pretty clear car buyers aren’t that keen on EVs. They’ll put one in the garage if the price is right, but the right price is thousands less per vehicle than it costs to build them."
"Energy transition” describes a nonexistent, mythic phenomenon found nowhere in the data. Wind, solar and biomass have always existed. All forms of energy consumption are going up, but oil, gas and coal still carry the load and no policy will alter this, especially as China embraces EVs to cut reliance on imported oil in favor of domestic coal."
“Decarbonization,” likewise, is a polysyllabic prettifier for sending gas-fired U.S. and German heavy industry to China to run on coal, with twice the emissions."
Our take: few CEO's are willing to do proper due diligence on the absurd claims for dangerous man-made global warming and climate change, and stand by their findings, but their numbers are slowly growing.
INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS
The Earth and Civilization Have Been Saved By Fossil Fuels "...Earth, absent the benefits of fuel-powered machines and electrical energy created by fossil fuels, is a dangerous place (as noted) characterized by mass poverty, recurring starvation, death from extremely cold or extremely hot temperatures, poor medical care, poor sanitation, exhausting manual labor, bad water, inadequate shelter, devastating natural disasters, and low life expectancy.
"The nations that suffer the most today are those that lack such technology. Without fossil fuels, people will keep suffering because they will remain poor and helpless.
"Coal, oil, and gas are responsible for almost all the energy created today—about eighty percent. Solar and wind provide only about three percent, though this is gradually increasing. Fossil fuels have allowed humanity, insofar as it has advocated reason, to master nature by following the laws of nature and science, thus enabling the human race to multiply and thrive. Fossils fuels are abundant in nature: plentiful, cheap, and reliable when production and transportation are not opposed by government regulations."
Our take: this from one of the world's great business leadership experts, who is extremely reality-oriented.
A Wealth-Creating Way of Reducing Global CO2 Emissions "Canada’s rich endowment of natural gas resources offers an immense opportunity to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions while also helping to rescue the Liberal-government-ravaged Canadian economy by exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China, Japan, South Korea and the other coal-dependent Asia-Pacific countries. Switching from coal to natural gas for producing electricity and generating heat for buildings and industrial processes can typically reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent for the same unit of output, while all-but eliminating the toxic compounds and lung-clogging particulates emitted from burning coal that shorten the lives of millions living in smog-stricken Asian cities."
Our take: the current Canadian government clearly avoids this reality and thus sacrifices both Canadian and worldwide human well-being to their climate ideology.
New Study Identifies Big Reductions In US Natural Gas Emissions "A study published Tuesday finds that America enjoys a profound abundance of natural gas so large that even the most conservative estimates indicate a supply for at least the next 100 years. The study, conducted by The National Petroleum Council – a federal advisory committee that serves under the umbrella of the Department of Energy – also finds that federal energy and climate policies already in place would create a 59% reduction in methane emissions by 2050."
Our take: like Canada, the US has enormous natural gas it could share with the world, improving human lives by leaps and bounds, but political/ideological restrictions try to prevent this.
New York Shows Off Its Expertise In Central Planning: The Buffalo Billion "Let’s face it: Central planning of the economy hasn’t worked out so well in many places where it has been tried (e.g., Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc.). But then, here in New York, we are so much smarter than the dolts who fell on their faces in those backwaters. With utter confidence in our genius, we have embarked upon the total centrally-directed transformation of the economy into “net zero” utopia, via the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019. But that project is barely getting under way. It will be a few years before we have enough feedback to judge it a success or failure. Meanwhile, is there any other significant central planning initiative here in New York that has gotten far enough so that we can judge whether it is succeeding? Yes! — It’s the “Buffalo Billion,” a massive state-subsidized industrial development project in the long-declining Great Lakes port in far Western New York. Let’s get an update. The summary is, it’s hard to believe how badly wrong this has gone."
Why you shouldn’t be alarmed about unusually warm temperatures "Even with recent temperatures, which are a temporary anomaly, not the new normal, cold is a bigger problem than heat and fossil fuels keep us safer from both."
"Anyone commentating responsibly on warm temperatures must acknowledge 4 facts:
1. Cold-related deaths > heat-related deaths
2. Earth is warming slowly, and less in warm places
3. Fossil fuels make us safer from dangerous temperatures
4. Anti-fossil-fuel policies increase danger from cold and heat"
Our take: considering things in their full context is not seen from climate change alarmists.
Ronald Stein: Environmentalists’ silence on humanity and environmental atrocities "While wind and solar do not emit carbon dioxide, there are substantial environmental degradations and humanity atrocities occurring in China, Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The materials for EV batteries and to produce electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, require large scale mining of critical minerals and metals, many of which are mined and refined in countries like China and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where human rights violations against miners are common and environmental protections are limited."
Our take: climate alarmists rarely place high value on human lives, choosing instead the non-human standard of "the planet" or "the environment" as if these had significance absent humans to value them.
Trillions in taxpayer subsidies haven’t made wind and solar power cheaper or better for Americans "The typical way to measure the cost of solar simply ignores its unreliability. The same is true for wind energy. Biden’s Energy Information Administration puts solar at 3.6¢ per kilowatt hour, just ahead of natural gas at 3.8¢. But if you reasonably include the cost of reliability, the real costs explode — one peer-reviewed study shows an increase of 11 to 42 times, making solar by far the most expensive source of electricity, followed by wind. The enormous additional cost comes from the need for storage. Electricity is required even when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, yet our battery capacity is woefully inadequate."
"A new study looking at the United States shows that to achieve 100% solar or wind electricity with sufficient backup, the US would need to be able to store almost three months’ worth of annual electricity. It currently has seven minutes of battery storage. Just to pay for the batteries would cost the US five times its current GDP. And it would have to repurchase the batteries when they expire after just 15 years."
Our take: advocates for wind and solar are notoriously bad at understanding full-system costs of energy.
Abolish DEI Statements - Assessing a debate about a controversial hiring practice This month, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an eminent scholar of race and civil rights, published an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in academic hiring. “I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” he wrote. “The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince.”
Sustainable investments lagging interest: Mackenzie Investments survey - Earth Day poll by Mackenzie Investments finds gap between Canadians' climate beliefs and investment habits.
"Uncertainty about sustainable investing was noticeable. Over six-in-10 (61 per cent) said they have concerns about greenwashing and transparency, while 43 per cent expressed worries sustainable investing tends to deliver lower returns than traditional avenues."
Our take: as a leading Canadian investment manager, Mackenzie, like most other money managers, has not done a proper due diligence on the basic claims of the ESG/sustainability/net-zero/climate-alarmist movement. Just as we expect investment managers to investigate investment opportunities diligently, so they should investigate world-changing claims of climate change disaster. Surprisingly few money managers have done so, instead accepting wildly erroneous assumptions that lead them to make all manner of ill-informed decisions, at great risk to their reputation and to human flourishing.
ABSURDITIES
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