This is Not Cool

“Sky is the Limit” for Oil Prices

“Above what anyone expected”.
“A fifth of the world’s energy supply stuck.”

President Trump is pushing oil tanker crews to “show some guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.

“These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of. … They have no Navy, we sunk all their ships,” Trump said, according to Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, who recounted the president’s remarks during an interview.

“Farmers and small businesses will see dramatically higher costs from diesel.”

Fox43 – Harrisburg, PA:

As fighting in the Middle East enters its second week, the American Farm Bureau is sounding the alarm on fertilizer prices.

On Monday, the American Farm Bureau held a press conference to discuss the volatility of the fertilizer market since the start of the Iran War. According to the bureau, the Middle East is a key export hub for nitrogen fertilizer, accounting for nearly half of the world’s urea exports and 30% of ammonia exports.

Earth Warming Accelerating as Aerosols Reduced

Bloomberg:

Planetary warming has significantly accelerated over the past 10 years, with temperatures rising at a higher rate since 2015 than in any previous decade on record, a new study showed.

The Earth warmed around 0.35 degrees Celsius in the decade to 2025, compared to just under 0.2C per decade on average between 1970 and 2015, according to a paper published on Friday in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. This is the first statistically significant evidence of an acceleration of global warming, the authors said.

The past three years have been the hottest on record, compared to the average before the Industrial Revolution. In 2024, warming went past 1.5C, the lower limit set by the Paris Agreement. That target refers to temperature increases over 20 years, but breaching it for one year shows efforts to slow down climate change have been insufficient, the scientists who wrote the new paper said.

Study: Agriculture, Climate Change Pounding Bird Populations

No, it ain’t wind turbines.

Science:

Using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the authors found that about half of the 261 species analyzed showed significant declines from 1987 to 2021, and a quarter showed accelerating declines. Hotspots of accelerating abundance decline were located in regions with high-intensity agriculture (high cropland area, fertilizer use, or pesticide use)

The first notable finding is that warm and warming regions coincide with areas of abundance decline (ΔN, Fig. 3, A and C, and figs. S7 and S8). This pattern is consistent with the evidence that bird populations are shifting their distributions northward as they track cooler conditions (31). Increases in temperatures have been shown to increase the risk of bird species’ extinction as a result of a lack of species adaptability to rapidly changing climatic conditions (32), and consistent temperature-related responses have been documented across both Europe and North America (33). Our results further support this by showing that areas experiencing greater warming (Fig. 3C) also exhibit stronger abundance declines, suggesting that rising temperatures may be a driver of recent bird population losses.

Oil Strikes in Tehran Bring Polluted, Toxic Pall over Mideast

Drop Site News on X:

Israeli strikes on oil depots around Tehran have released massive quantities of toxic hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Mixed with rainwater, these chemicals are causing highly acidic precipitation that can cause skin burns and severe lung damage upon contact, according to Iranian authorities.

▪️ Dense plumes of black smoke from the Shahran and other refineries have blotted out the sun, plunging parts of the city into darkness and creating a “nuclear winter” effect, NYT reported. Authorities warned that these noxious fumes cause acute respiratory distress and eye irritation.

▪️ Oil-saturated rainwater has blanketed the city, leaving rooftops, balconies, and streets covered in a thick, murky black liquid and oily soot. This contamination poses a long-term risk of heavy metals like nickel and vanadium leaching into the soil and local water systems.

▪️ Environmental groups warn the pollution threatens migratory birds crossing the Persian Gulf. The “black rain” and smoke plumes can cause internal organ damage and destroy the insulating properties of bird feathers, leading to hypothermia and death.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society warned of the dangers of the rain, advising residents to protect themselves and to cover exposed food from oily soot particles. Officials said the rain is highly corrosive and could potentially damage civilian structures.

Trump “Backed in Corner” in Epstein Oil War

As I wrote last week, Iran is in the driver’s seat, despite being hammered by superior US and Israeli power.
Number one because their capacity to wreck interlinked and globally integrated
markets, which are rapidly ramping pain on Americans, and could, according to some well informed officials, disrupt the global economy.
For many who though this was all fun and games for a long time, real impacts showing up that could be long lasting, and real fears about an expanding war and worldwide ripple effects are putting increased pressure on the team of unprepared amateurs in the Trump cabinet.

Some darker fears of an uncontrolled WWIII scenario are making the rounds.

Batteries, Solar, Can Rival Nuclear for Reliability

Mark Jacobson has taken a lot of heat for his insistence that Wind, water, solar and batteries can power the grid reliably – but relentlessly evolving technology keeps proving his point, particularly since massive battery buildout in states like California and Texas is creating what amounts to a phase-change in how the grid works, crowding out gas to an amazing degree.

Mark Jacobson on X:

Fossil gas use for electricity down 59.5% in 2026 versus 2023 in the world’s 4th-largest economy.

16th-straight and 43rd of 66 days in 2026 with >100% WindWaterSolar on California’s main grid

Fossil gas use continues to plummet as solar & batteries rise

Michigan’s Tornado is Earliest EF 3 on Record

Two weeks ago I was in the northernmost part of Lower Michigan in Gaylord, attending a remembrance event for survivors of a highly destructive ice storm that swept thru a year ago in early April, knocking out power for weeks in some cases, and causing immense damage to infrastructure, including electric transmission, that is still being addressed.
One topic that came up was that Gaylord was just getting over another traumatic event, a very rare EF 3 strength tornado that hit the community in May of 2022. Tornadoes in this part of the upper midwest are, needless to say, extremely rare historically.

Last week another twister of similar strength hit last week in early March, this time in South Michigan, part of a larger band of storms that caused a ground stop at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, where I was waiting for an (eventually cancelled) flight.
With thousands passengers stranded, rental cars disappeared quickly, but I managed to snag one by Ubering about 15 miles west of the airport in the Chicago suburbs. That had me driving through western Michigan under some unusually intense rain and fog conditions for hours to get home, about the same time twisters were killing 4 people not far away.
The video from Union City, MI looks not so much like Michigan in March, as Oklahoma in May.
Union Lake is still iced over.

War Makes Euro Energy Prices Swing

An economy in transition, more batteries needed.
Look for massive acceleration in renewable adoption.

Financial Times:

European electricity prices are swinging wildly from daytime to evening as the Iran war’s disruption to gas supplies accentuates growing volatility in Europe’s power markets amid the rise of renewables. Wholesale prices in markets such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are rising and falling by hundreds of euros per megawatt hour over the course of an afternoon, data from Montel Analytics shows, as abundant electricity from solar panels is replaced by gas-fired power as the sun goes down.

Prices then slump again as the evening peak passes. On March 4, day-ahead prices in Denmark swung from €26 per MWh at 2pm to almost €430 at 5.45pm, less than four hours later. Prices in the Netherlands jumped from €24 to €450 over the same period, with similarly large swings in Belgium and Germany. European wholesale prices have become more volatile in recent years due to the growth of intermittent renewable power, which means low prices when it is windy and sunny and higher prices when fossil fuels are needed to meet demand.

Nightmare: An AI Takeover Scenario

Maybe we should think about this.

War Could Bring Down Global Economy – Underlines Need for Renewables

Financial Times:
Qatar’s energy minister has warned that war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world”, predicting that all Gulf energy exporters would shut down production within days and drive oil to $150 a barrel.

Saad al-Kaabi told the FT that even if the war ended immediately it would take Qatar “weeks to months” to return to a normal cycle of deliveries following an Iranian drone strike at its largest liquefied natural gas plant. Qatar, the world’s second-largest producer of LNG, was forced to declare force majeure this week after the strike at its Ras Laffan plant.

While Qatar only exports a small proportion of its gas to Europe, the energy minister said the continent would feel significant pain as Asian buyers outbid Europeans for whatever gas is available on the market, and as other Gulf countries find themselves unable to meet their contractual obligations.

“Everybody that has not called for force majeure we expect will do so in the next few days that this continues. All exporters in the Gulf region will have to call force majeure,” Kaabi said. “If they don’t, they are at some point going to pay the liability for that legally, and that’s their choice.”

Financial Times:

The Middle East war had bolstered the case for investment in clean energy sources and battery storage, Microsoft said, as nations rushed to secure oil and gas supplies.

Microsoft’s global vice-president for energy Bobby Hollis, responsible for buying power for the tech group worldwide, said the oil and gas price surge had underscored the need for renewable energy in power supply as protection from volatile fuel costs.