Month: April 2025

Zeke Hausfather and Devin Rand in the Climate Brink:

Last September the Washington Post published an article about a new paper in Science by Emily Judd and colleagues. The WaPo article was detailed and nuanced, but led with the figure above, adapted from the paper.

The internet, being less prone to detail and nuance, ran with the figure, with climate skeptics calling it their “new favorite graph” and reposting it everywhere, claiming that it shows the insignificance of recent human warming relative to the Earth’s long temperature history.

The furor over the graph reached its apogee in January when Joe Rogan showed it in a podcast interview with Mel Gibson, saying that “If you believe these silly people, way before human beings had ever existed, there’s always this rise and fall. And this idea that the whole thing is based on carbon emissions from human beings is total bullshit. It’s not true. Right. We might be having an effect, but we’re having a small effect, a very small effect.”

So we decided we’d do the barest amount of actual diligence on the claim. We read the actual paper (non-paywalled version here). And, lo and behold, we found that rather than dismissing the role of CO2 on longer-term changes in the Earth’s climate, it makes one of the strongest claims yet that “CO2 is the dominant driver of Phanerozoic climate [the past 485 million years], emphasizing the importance of this greenhouse gas in shaping Earth history.” The authors even express surprise that CO2 explains so much of the apparent temperature variation, and that solar variability does not have as dominant an effect.

Continue reading “Climate Denier’s New Favorite Graph Doesn’t Say What they Think it Says”

85 percent of investors think Musk’s political activities will have a negative impact on Tesla’s market fundamentals.
Ya Think?

Below, the report above points out that for all the damage done to the company, the purported benefits, in terms of lowered government spending, have not materialized.

And, as the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Tesla’s not his only baby.

Continue reading “EVs Up, Tesla Down with Musk’s Brand Destruction”

Catch CBS now before the Trump Administration revokes their license.

Oil guy Matt Randolph is back with a very worthwhile explainer on how oil companies are responding to the downturn caused by their favored President kneecapping their business model.

Rystad Energy via OilPrice.com:

• US oil producers are struggling to defend margins at $60 WTI due to additional corporate costs that raise the all-in breakeven price.
• Trade policies and market volatility are threatening US oil production growth, particularly in the Permian Basin, as companies may need to cut back activity to maintain investor payouts.
• Increased hurdle rates and debt service costs have pushed the estimated all-in corporate cash flow WTI breakeven to approximately $62.50 for new activity in 2025.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude prices dipped into the low $60 per barrel range following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced on 2 April. While the subsequent 9 April move to pause the new levies at 10% for most countries for the next 90 days helped WTI prices recoup some losses, the market remains extremely volatile. This price level is well above the fundamental upstream breakevens for most US shale players, especially those in the Permian. However, Rystad Energy finds that additional corporate items, including higher hurdle rates, dividend payments and debt service costs, means that the “all-in” corporate cash flow breakeven for many US oil players is closer to $62.50 WTI. If the recent price downturn is sustained, these price levels could threaten US oil production growth this year, as operators may be forced to cut back activity to maintain investor payouts.

Continue reading “How Oil Companies Think About Recessions”

Hard to have much respect for Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who portrays himself as a hard headed, data driven guy (just not so much on climate data).

He took the job knowing that the “Drill Baby Drill” mantra was bullshit, that oil companies could not and would not follow that plan, but stood up for the nonsensical 50 dollar a barrel target that would collapse the industry.
Now it’s happening, it’s happening to his own company, and he is unwilling to separate himself from the fable.

Politico:

The U.S. oil industry is suffering from the lowest crude prices in years, surging costs for steel and an economic downturn that could send consumer demand for its products plummeting.

Oil prices have tumbled nearly 15 percent since April 2 to their lowest level since April 2021, a drop that is testing oil executives’ patience. And it’s prompting some in the industry to warn the White House that Trump’s trade policy risks killing his plan for “energy dominance.”

So far, though, the sector is sticking with its support of President Donald Trump, hoping that his calls to negotiate trade pacts with individual countries to avoid tariffs and Republicans’ plan to extend tax cuts would offset their financial pain.

Continue reading “Trump’s Energy Team is a Keystone Kops Crapshow”

Pretty good, factual reporting above. Naturally, our Neo Nero didn’t like it.

The Hill:

President Trump railed against CBS on Sunday night, saying the network should lose its broadcast license after “60 Minutes” aired segments on Ukraine and Greenland that the president said cast him in a negative light.

“Almost every week, 60 Minutes … mentions the name ‘TRUMP’ in a derogatory and defamatory way, but this Weekend’s ‘BROADCAST’ tops them all,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post after watching Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast.

“They did not one, but TWO, major stories on ‘TRUMP,’ one having to do with Ukraine, which I say is a War that would never have happened if the 2020 Election had not been RIGGED, in other words, if I were President and, the other story was having to do with Greenland, casting our Country, as led by me, falsely, inaccurately, and fraudulently,” he continued.

Trump sued CBS News in October over a “60 Minutes” interview with his campaign opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris,that aired shortly before the 2024 presidential election. In the lawsuit, Trump claimed the network deceptively edited the interview to portray Harris in a positive light.

CBS News’s parent company, Paramount, has said the president’s lawsuit is an “affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact,” claiming Trump is trying to “punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like.” 

“One of the most important unanswered questions in climate science” that I knew basically nothing about. So probably worth your while.

Takes some real genius to make our best friends hate us this much.

For most of a century, the United States has been the haven for investors in troubled times, and US bonds have been considered a repository of value globally precisely because the country’s commitment to rule of law, to great science and data, to non-politicized scientific, regulatory and economic institutions, like NASA, NOAA, the Center for Disease Control, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve.

But trust in agencies like that implies that there are such things as “facts” – that are real and non-negotiable, that something called “reality” has precedence over politics, or the needs and whims of billionaires, big corporations, oligarchs, or would be dictators.
The agenda of the fossil fuel industry over the last 50 years has been to gradually break down that trust, and the idea that some lefty, radical, “reality based community” can pass “laws” and “regulations” that have more force than the sheer power of money, intimidation and influence of the powerful.

If the wrecking crew wins, and they are very close, the era of American influence will come to an end, and if faith in American institutions disappears internationally, our ability to attract the investors that currently keep our entire economy and our deficits afloat, will disappear, with unpredictable, but dire results.
The Billionaires will be fine, of course, but everyday Americans will find the world changed in ways they never dreamed possible.

New York Times:

Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation.

Continue reading “War on Science Threatens US Global Leadership”

This has everything to do with what we are about here.