Month: March 2022

New Video: Western Drought Will Never Go Back to Normal – Because There is No Normal Now

Last year I spoke to Park Williams and Ben Cook, authors of a study showing the uniqueness of the current dry spell in Western North America.
At that time, their 2019 study showed that the unfolding event was unparalleled in at least 500 or so years. The team, along with Jason Smerdon of Columbia, revisited the data in light of extreme dry conditions in 2020 and 21, and found that the current 22 year period is now dryer than any similar period since the 800s CE.

Oh.

Following up on that, I checked in with Samantha Stevenson and Julia Cole, who have a new paper that dovetails nicely. The point that Stevenson and Cole make is that with rising temperatures, the atmosphere has capacity to hold more moisture, in fact, it “wants” to hold more moisture, what scientists call “increased evaporative demand”, or ED.
As they explain, in the current 22 years and counting spell, while we may at some point return to rains such as were common in the last century, 1980s and 90s, by then the Evaporative Demand will be greater due to higher temps, and the bar will be raised. It will take more rain just to bring the region back to what was once considered “normal”.

The soil conditions already in place due to warming would, in past decades, have been considered already a mega drought, but now, that’s only the baseline.

Each succeeding dry spell will be the same.

See clip from last year’s convo with Park Williams below.

Continue reading “New Video: Western Drought Will Never Go Back to Normal – Because There is No Normal Now”

How Big Oil Pushed Europe’s Dependence on Russian Gas

Above, the CIA’s Reagan-era warning against excessive dependence on the then-Soviet Union for energy resources.

New York Times:

The language in the C.I.A. memo was unequivocal: The 3,500-mile gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany is a direct threat to the future of Western Europe, it said, creating “serious repercussions” from a dangerous reliance on Russian fuel.

The agency wasn’t briefing President Biden today. It was advising President Reagan more than four decades ago.

The memo was prescient. That Soviet-era pipeline, the subject of a bitter fight during the Reagan administration, marked the start of Europe’s heavy dependence on Russian natural gas to heat homes and fuel industry. However, those gas purchases now help fund Vladimir V. Putin’s war machine in Ukraine, despite worldwide condemnation of the attacks and global efforts to punish Russia financially.

In 1981, Reagan imposed sanctions to try to block the pipeline, a major Soviet initiative designed to carry huge amounts of fuel to America’s critical allies in Europe. But he swiftly faced stiff opposition — not just from the Kremlin and European nations eager for a cheap source of gas, but also from a powerful lobby close to home: oil and gas companies that stood to profit from access to Russia’s gargantuan gas reserves.

In a public-relations and lobbying blitz that played out across newspaper opinion pages, congressional committees and a direct appeal to the White House, industry executives and lobbyists fought the sanctions. “Reagan has absolutely no reason to forbid this business,” Wolfgang Oehme, chairman of an Exxon subsidiary with a stake in the pipeline, said at the time.

Those efforts, nearly a half-century ago, show how some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies played a critical role in opening up Russia’s reserves by opposing sanctions and advocating for business interests over national security, human rights or environmental concerns.

Today, Europe’s reliance on Russia’s gas has put European nations in a compromised position: They continue to purchase Russian energy, transferring enormous sums of money to Moscow, which fund a Russian invasion that they denounce.

Reagan’s effort to block the pipeline decades ago, which ultimately failed, also laid the foundations for a huge build-out of natural gas, which is now hindering Europe’s attempts to tackle climate change. Even as natural gas has helped to replace dirtier coal, the pipelines and other gas infrastructure that followed have effectively committed Europe to a reliance on gas that not only continues today, but remains difficult to unravel even in a moment of global unity against Russian aggression.

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Will High Oil Prices Boost Renewables, Drilling, or Both?

Above, Andrés Gluski, president and CEO of global energy company AES, makes some fair points, is generally bullish on renewables and storage in both Europe and the US.
While oil and gas importers moving away from Russia, AES is moving solar and polycrystalline silicone sourcing out of China. Many moving parts, but market pressures generally in direction of clean energy.

Houston Chronicle:

There are two schools of thought on the curious spot at which the energy industry now sits.

One is that high crude oil prices will spur a new era of oil and gas exploration, especially as Russian oil and natural gas look like they’ll remain a taboo commodity for some time to come. U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who has championed pivoting away from fossil fuels since she took office last year, recently called on energy executives to boost production to help ease prices as the United States imposes a import ban on Russian oil and its European allies seek to end their reliance on Russian energy.

European countries will be clamoring to buy U.S.-produced natural gas as the intensifying war in Ukraine puts Russian supplies in peril and leads them to rethink their sources of energy over the long-term. Germany, for example, has blocked the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was built to transport Russian gas to Western Europe, and plans to build two liquefied natural gas import terminals.

The shift is helping to spur the expansion of the U.S. LNG industry, concentrated along the Gulf Coast. The Energy Department forecasts the United States this year will surpass Qatar and Australia to the become the largest exporter of natural gas this year.

But on the other hand, the current energy crisis could be a watershed moment for clean sources of energy.

As the Houston Chronicle’s James Osborne reported recently, governments and companies often seek out alternative forms of energy when fossil fuel prices spike. During the energy crisis of the 1970’s, power plants turned to nuclear and began to invest in developing solar and wind energy. Those renewable technologies have moved into the mainstream, generating cheaper electricity than traditional power plants and becoming the fastest growing segment of the power industry.

Electric vehicle technology has also reached the point where it is competitive with internal combustion engines, with the recent surge in gasoline prices leading to a jump in EV sales.

“Think about the learning curves seen in wind and solar,” said Steve Pattyn, founder and chief investment officer of Yaupon Capital Management at CERAWeek. “People 10 years ago were asking ‘wind and solar — do they even work? They’re so expensive.’ Now, the cheapest electricity in the world comes from West Texas wind farms.”

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Ukraine War is Masks Off for Climate Deniers

Because the struggle for clean energy and a peaceful world is not separate from the struggle for democracy and freedom.
Do we get it now?

Because the struggle for clean energy and a peaceful world is not separate from the struggle for democracy and freedom.
Do we get it now?

When he’s not trashing clean energy, Tucker Carlson is usually praising and supporting Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Rex Tillerson – Former Exxon CEO, First Trump Sec. of State, with Friend.