Month: March 2024

Oil Oligarchs Will Coordinate Global Election Interference

There is no doubt – the global oil oligarchy will do whatever it can to elect Donald Trump and end democracy in America.
US oil majors, and Republican leadership will go along because it benefits them, and their leadership believe that they are invulnerable to any political or sexual oppression, as well as the climate catastrophes, that will follow for the unwashed masses.

Thom Hartman:

Have you noticed gas prices are rising? Get ready: you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The bloodthirsty leader of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia loves his dictatorial soul-mate Donald Trump and is today setting the stage to intervene in November’s election in a big way, much like he did with a smaller test run during the fall of 2022 when he drove US gas prices up above $5, forcing President Biden to release oil from the US strategic petroleum reserve.

As Stanley Reed reported for the Business pages of The New York Times three days ago:

“Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Sunday that it would extend [their one-million-barrels-a-day] cuts in oil production through June, noting that it was acting ‘in coordination with some’ other states.”

That “other state” would be their OPEC+ partner Russia, which also announced last weekend a simultaneous production cut of 471,000 barrels a day. Putin wants Trump back in the White House, too.

This time, though, because Trump refused to block the sale of America’s largest gasoline refinery to Saudi Arabia in 2017 (completed in 2019 with Trump’s blessing), no matter how much oil Biden releases from the reserves will be irrelevant: if the Saudis shut down their Port Arthur, Texas refinery this October “for maintenance,” US gasoline prices will explode.

It’s the largest refinery in America: as Foreign Policy magazine noted in May 2017:

“Port Arthur, referred to as the ‘crown jewel’ of U.S. refinery infrastructure, can process 600,000 barrels of oil a day.”

That alone is enough to radically swing gasoline prices in the US.

So, get ready: it’s coming this fall. And unless the administration acts quickly, there will be nothing they can do about it. Gas at $6 a gallon could easily throw the election to Trump, as Biden will take the blame (just like in November 2022) and Fox “News” and rightwing hate media will hang gas prices around his neck like a flaming tire.  

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Prayers for Rain: New Fires Add to Texas Disaster

Fox Weather: “We’re praying for rain.”

As Texas burns, Alberta declares an early beginning to fire season, and conditions are ripe for a repeat of last year’s poisonous clouds of smoke to cover the US – the usual suspects are out with disinformation on wildfires.
PolitiFact has this very handy, and well annotated, fact check.

PolitiFact:

  • Flawed government data appears to show a massive decline in wildfires after 1930.
  • The data suffered from double and triple counting, and in the 1920s and 1930s, federal officials wrongly recorded millions of acres of intentional fires as wildfires.
  • The best assessments suggest that fires today are about on the scale the country saw in the first few decades of the 20th century.
Reuters photo: Dead cattle in wake of Texas wildfires

An article from the conservative Heartland Institute argues that the role of climate change is “grossly overemphasized.” 

“U.S. acres burned each year are much fewer now — even in our worst years — than was the case in the early 20th century,” the Oct. 11 article said.

The author points to U.S. government data that shows a dramatic drop in the number of acres burned, from over 40 million in 1930 down to 10 million around 2015.

The problem is, federal officials have known for some time that their data was unreliable, and this year, they took most of it off their website (which drew accusations of cherry picking the numbers from the Heartland Institute).

Many factors made the data shaky. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story of bad data is that the government’s old information includes millions of acres in the 1920s and 1930s that burned not by accident, but by intent. On top of that, there was also double counting, and, as some see it, undercounting.

Continue reading “Prayers for Rain: New Fires Add to Texas Disaster”

Privately Funded Methane Monitoring Satellite will Name and Shame Polluters

Guardian:

A washing-machine-sized satellite is to “name and shame” the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry.

MethaneSat is scheduled to launch from California onboard a SpaceX rocket on Monday at 2pm local time (22:00 GMT). It will provide the first near-comprehensive global view of leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil and gas sector, and all of the data will be made public. It will provide high-resolution data over wider areas than existing satellites.

Methane, also called natural gas, is responsible for 30% of the global heating driving the climate crisis. Leaks from the fossil fuel industry are a major source of human-caused emissions and stemming these is the fastest single way to curb temperature rises.

MethaneSat was developed by the Environmental Defense Fund, a US NGO, in partnership with the New Zealand Space Agency and cost $88m to build and launch. Earlier EDF measurements from planes show methane emissions were 60% higher than calculated estimates published by US authorities and elsewhere.

More than 150 countries have signed a global methane pledge to cut their emissions of the gas by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Some oil and gas companies have made similar pledges, and new regulations to limit methane leaks are being worked on in the US, EU, Japan and South Korea.

The EDF’s senior vice-president, Mark Brownstein, said: “MethaneSat is a tool for accountability . I’m sure many people think this could be used to name and shame companies who are poor emissions performers, and that’s true. But [it] can [also] help document progress that leading companies are making in reducing their emissions.”

Winter Will Never Be the Same

Out doing yard work today.
Growing things are about a month ahead of schedule.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:

In the last week Michigan saw the highest February temperatures ever recorded, and brutal weather whiplash, as sharply colder air blew in and touched off powerful extreme storms more characteristic of April.

For Michiganders, it was yet another signpost of accelerating impacts of human caused climate change – which have already changed the way we live in Michigan, forever.

This winter will end as one of the warmest on record in North America. January was the 8th consecutive month of record warm global surface temperatures. But by mid century, winters like this will simply be the average.

The snow covered slopes, woods and trails where we’ve spent our winters, are waning, and unpredictable.

Fifty years ago, Midlanders had access to two large outdoor skating areas that we knew would be frozen through the long winter months. Cross country skiing was available for many of us not far from our doorsteps, as well as sledding, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and ice fishing.

Now those activities exist only as memories, brief opportunities for a week or weekend, or luxuries for those able to travel distances to experience them.

Paradoxically, Great Lakes that are more often ice free will evaporate more moisture, meaning intense lake effect snowstorms when temperatures are below freezing.

According to Dr Richard Rood of the University of Michigan, warmer temperatures mean that although snow, even heavy snow, will still occur, winters will be soggy and muddy, as rain becomes the dominant precipitation.

Tellingly, Yamaha announced last year that it will be exiting the snowmobile manufacturing business, which it has found to be “unsustainable”.

Impacts are being felt in all four seasons.

Insect pests that were formerly dampened by winter freezes, like ticks, are becoming more pernicious. 

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In Tahoe: Rivian EV Truck Provides Emergency Power

Global Temps Update: Madness Marches On

Zeke Hausfather on X:

February 2024 was the warmest February on record in the ERA5 dataset, at around 1.79C above preindustrial records. It beat the prior record set during the 2016 super-El Nino by 0.12C.

It wasn’t only the warmest February on record – this past month saw the largest anomaly (change from the 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline) at 1.79C of any month on record, beating out December (1.77C) and September (1.73C) 2023. The past 12 months are 1.56C above preindustrial.

While the month began exceptionally warm, global temperatures have fallen back a bit outside of record territory in recent weeks, and are now roughly tied for where 2023 was this time of year (though we should not over interpret day-to-day variability):

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Does That Make me Quaisy? Startup Uses Star Trek Tech for Geothermal Energy

For sheer exuberantly Sci-Fi audacity, you have to love the Geothermal startup Quaise – which is developing basically a phaser-on-kill solution to tapping deep earth energy.

Quaise via Businesswire:

Geothermal is the only renewable, clean source of energy capable of providing baseload power at the scale of the energy transition.

Quaise Energy plans to harness deep geothermal by introducing millimeter wave drilling systems capable of reaching depths between 10-20 km. At these depths, geothermal energy is power-dense, virtually unlimited, and available everywhere on the planet.

“A rapid transition to clean energy is one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity,” said Arunas Chesonis, Managing Partner of Safar Partners. “Geothermal energy can provide a lot more power using fewer resources. We have to approach the clean energy transition from both of those angles. Quaise’s solution makes us optimistic for a future where clean, renewable energy will secure the future of our planet.”

The funding will be used to accelerate product development. The company will build field-deployable drilling machines to demonstrate the capabilities of this novel drilling technology in the field by 2024. It will also expand its multi-disciplinary teams based in Boston, Houston, and Cambridge, UK, doubling its number of engineers and creating new roles to refine and execute its commercialization strategy.

“This funding round brings us closer to providing clean, renewable baseload energy,” said Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy. “Our technology allows us to access energy anywhere in the world, at a scale far greater than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered with abundant clean energy.”

The company plans to use its novel drilling technology to repower traditional power plants, saving infrastructure costs and utilizing the current oil and gas industry’s workforce to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable energy industry.

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