EU industrial gas demand takes a nosedive (top), industrial output stable. (bottom).
The lesson we keep learning over and over – energy demand much more elastic with price than most conventional wisdom would indicate.
Tweeted by Leon Hirth, Prof at Hertie School of Business in Berlin.
Below, we first learned this lesson about price elasticity in the 70s.
Continue reading “Graph of the Day: Euro Gas Demand vs Industrial Production”Fetterman campaign in Pennsylvania continues to set new standards in hilarious political campaign trolling.
Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor turned GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, declared Wednesday that carbon dioxide is not a climate problem because it accounts for just a small fraction of the air in Earth’s atmosphere, a longtime talking point of climate change deniers.
Oz made the remark during a forum in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he and his Republican rivals were asked how they would address soaring energy prices as U.S. senators. In a combative primary, the political newcomer known for hosting a long-running daytime TV show has taken heat for his past stance against fracking due to health concerns, which his campaign has disavowed.
Each of the candidates onstage argued that Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s largest energy-producing states, should tap even more of its resources.
“As a scientist, I’ll tell you the Green New Deal is a lie,” said Oz, who is a medical doctor, not a climate scientist. He was referring to what is little more than a loose set of guiding principles to combat global climate change. “It’s not just unfair because we’re sacrificing our energy independence. Actually, we want more than energy independence, we want energy dominance.”
Then Oz launched into a talking point that would make even the most fervent climate deniers proud.
The “ideology that carbon is bad” is “a lie,” he said. “Carbon dioxide, my friends, is 0.04% of our air. That’s not the problem.”
Carbon dioxide is absolutely the problem when it comes to planetary warming. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity are the main driver of climate change, accounting for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Continue reading “If it Walks like a Quack: Dr Oz and Climate Denial”
As always, the poorest of the poor will be most impacted.
I spoke to scientists and experts about the catastrophic cross-over between melting glaciers, and torrential monsoon rains that are coming more and more frequently.
I’m in Southwest Missouri, and drove 2 hours down to northwest Arkansas yesterday.
Every river is showing sandbars and dry spots, creeks are dusty dry.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Everyone from economists to engineers is keeping a close eye on the Mississippi River water levels, at risk of falling to record lows in the weeks ahead.
The dry conditions are also drying up how much crops river barges can carry, which could make the highest inflation of grocery prices in decades even worse in the months ahead.
Wheat, corn and soybeans account for 60% of American exports from the Gulf Coast.
Our ABC24 drone camera Monday found the Mississippi River in Memphis a shell of its former self, with sandbars prevalent and the seventh lowest level recorded over the weekend.
“I’ll summarize it as significant,” Michael Clay with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.
Clay works with other river communities to adjust and keep river cargo flowing, even when levels are forecasted to approach a record low by month’s end.
“Unless it rains more, which the meteorologists are not seeing at this moment, it’s going to continue to fall again,” Clay added.
While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said a release from the Ohio River will raise the Mississippi River’s level in Memphis two feet in the coming days, he’s still concerned after that.
“Just downstream of us as we move into the Vicksburg district corps of engineers, there are several activities that are requiring short-term channel closures,” Clay said.
“Any disruption that happens right now, it will take months before it shows up in the grocery store,” Dr. John Gnuschke, an economist in Memphis, added.
Dr. Gnuschke said the low river levels limit how much crops can flow to market.
That means the highest year-to-year increase in grocery prices since 1979 will be prolonged for many shoppers.
“This just says that this part of the inflation story is not going to decline as fast as we might have hoped,” Dr. Gnuschke said.
Lindsay Jacobson of CNBC on climate migration’s top destinations.
I spoke to Lindsay for my video about climate and insurance coverage.
Naively calling this a “500 year flood”.
They’re all going to want to be bailed out.
Death toll still rising.
Michael Grunwald in The Atlantic:
Cape Coral is Florida on steroids, a comically artificial landscape featuring seven perfectly rectangular man-made islands and eight perfectly square man-made lakes. It was built by two shady brothers who made their fortunes selling scammy anti-baldness tonics, then used their talent for flimflam to sell inaccessible swampland to suckers. They didn’t bother to build sewers or parks or other infrastructure, except all those eco-destructive plumbing canals designed to dry out the floodplain and create waterfront property along their banks. It was just a real-estate play, a quarter acre in middle-class heaven for $20 down and $20 a month, and the suckers bought it, even after the hucksters got busted for fraud.
Environmental destruction is bad, especially for a state whose natural resources are its best selling point, and it’s a shame that the drive to tame nature that carved Cape Coral out of a swamp has been so prevalent in Florida. Fraud is also bad, and also synonymous with a state whose real-estate market has been a punch line for a century. “You can even get stucco,” the land-swindler played by Groucho Marx quipped in Cocoanuts. “Oh, how you can get stuck-oh!”
But it’s important to remember that Cape Coral’s hucksters and suckers were ultimately right. Cape Coral now has 200,000 residents. It’s got no colleges, tourist attractions, or major industries—its top employers are its government, hospital, and supermarkets—but not only is it still one of America’s fastest-growing cities, it’s projected to remain in the top five for decades to come. It’s a triumph of Lies That Came True, which was the title of a 1983 memoir by a Cape Coral pioneer, and could be the state motto.
In Lee County, where Governor DeSantis dithered on evacuation. Many questions being asked.
On Sunday, a Lee County man was working on clearing debris from his home when CNN’s Jim Acosta approached him to ask how they fared through Hurricane Ian.
The man showed Acosta the damage to the home, the most significant parts were at the back of the home because the house is on a canal.
But it was the comments that the man made about deaths in the area that was the most shocking.
“Four doors down, their son’s best friend is a Lee County sheriff, and they’re finding hundreds of bodies now,” the man told CNN. Acosta noted it’s the same information that they are hearing too. “It is not like 20s. It is hundreds of bodies that they’re getting in and looking.”
Fort Myers Beach, in Lee County, storm surge below.
All solar Community, just 12 miles from landfall at Fort Myers, rides thru the teeth of Hurricane Ian and comes thru safely, with no blackouts.
CNN:
Anthony Grande moved away from Fort Myers three years ago in large part because of the hurricane risk. He has lived in southwest Florida for nearly 19 years, had experienced Hurricanes Charley in 2004 and Irma in 2017and saw what stronger storms could do to the coast.
Grande told CNN he wanted to find a new home where developers prioritized climate resiliency in a state that is increasingly vulnerable to record-breaking storm surge, catastrophic wind and historic rainfall.
Continue reading “Solar Community Rides Thru Ian with No Blackouts”What he found was Babcock Ranch — only 12 miles northeast of Fort Myers, yet seemingly light years away.
Babcock Ranch calls itself “America’s first solar-powered town.” Its nearby solar array — made up of 700,000 individual panels — generates more electricity than the 2,000-home neighborhood uses, in a state where most electricity is generated by burning natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel.
The streets in this meticulously planned neighborhood were designed to flood so houses don’t. Native landscaping along roads helps control storm water. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. This is all in addition to being built to Florida’s robust building codes.
Some residents, like Grande, installed more solar panels on their roofs and added battery systems as an extra layer of protection from power outages. Many drive electric vehicles, taking full advantage of solar energy in the Sunshine State.
Climate resiliency was built into the fabric of the town with stronger storms in mind.
So when Hurricane Ian came barreling toward southwest Florida this week, it was a true test for the community. The storm obliterated the nearby Fort Myers and Naples areas with record-breaking surge and winds over 100 mph. It knocked out power to more than 2.6 million customers in the state, including 90% of Charlotte County.
But the lights stayed on in Babcock Ranch.
“It certainly exceeded our expectations of a major hurricane,” Grande, 58, told CNN.
“The storm uprooted trees and tore shingles from roofs, but other than that Grande said there is no major damage. Its residents say Babcock Ranch is proof that an eco-conscious and solar-powered town can withstand the wrath of a near-Category 5 storm.
“We have proof of the case now because [the hurricane] came right over us,” Nancy Chorpenning, a 68-year-old Babcock Ranch resident, told CNN. “We have water, electricity, internet — and we may be the only people in Southwest Florida who are that fortunate.”
