September 2025 – Page 2 – This is Not Cool

Oil Patch Sours on Trump

Tired of getting screwed by Trump administration incompetence? You’re not alone.
The clown show that is Trump economic policy has collateral damage that it’s reached even his strongest supporters.

Politico Power Switch (email):

A quarterly survey of oil and gas companies released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas quotes industry executives who blast Trump on everything from tariffs and policy uncertainty to his attacks on renewable energy.

“Life is long, and the sword being wielded against the renewables industry right now will likely boomerang back in 3.5 years against traditional energy,” wrote one unnamed executive.

The comment cut a sharp contrast with Trump’s speech Tuesday at the United Nations, where he castigated countries for building renewable energy projects and boasted that “we have the most oil of any nation anywhere.”

“We stand ready to provide any country with abundant, affordable energy supplies if you need them, when most of you do,” Trump said.

American oil producers heavily backed Trump in last year’s presidential contest, but their simmering discontent with the president has emerged as an early theme of his second term.

Oil executives told the Dallas Fed earlier this year that Trump’s push to lower fuel prices, which lessens the economic incentive for producers to drill, was incompatible with his stated desire to increase production. The president’s decision to impose tariffs on a wide range of foreign products has driven up drilling costs at a time when producers are struggling with an oversupplied market, sluggish demand and weak prices.

The Weekend Wonk: Gavin Newsom and Chris Wright at Climate Week

Above, highly recommended interview with Gavin Newsom at Climate Week in New York.

Below, lying sack Energy Secretary Chris Wright immediately followed Newsom.
The Moderator David Gelles did a crap job of checking him.

If you follow this page, you will be able to spot Wright’s distortions and lies. Too many to go through here, but perhaps we can discuss in comments.

Below, I spoke to retired NOAA expert and IPCC Lead Author Jim Kossin about Wright’s distortions of his work.

Trailer: “The Lost Bus” Docu-Drama on California’s Paradise Fire

Paul Greengrass is terrific director of action, responsible for 3 of the “Jason Bourne” movies, as well as the docu-dramas “Captain Phillips”, about Somali Pirates hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, in 2009, and “United 93” fictionalizing the death struggle between passengers and terrorist on the doomed eponymous flight on September 11, 2001.

Here he takes on a story from one of the deadliest wildfires in recent history, that devastated Paradise California, in 2018.

CBS had a look back several years after, below.

Texas’ Toxic Geysers, Earthquakes and Poisoned Wells

The Permian Basin, which stretches across West Texas and New Mexico, if it were a country, would be one of the major oil and gas producers in the world.

That vast area is currently becoming a toxified sacrifice zone for the industry, while regulators sit back and watch.
Below, Mr Global, Matt Randolph, a Vice President and principle partner of Sentinel Energy, in Oklahoma.

Why is My Electric Bill so High?

Jesse Peltan on X:

If renewables are so cheap, why are electricity prices going up? As many (like @duncan__c) have pointed out, electricity generation is actually getting cheaper but delivering that electricity is getting more expensive.

Increased delivery costs are often attributed to transmission needed to connect renewables, but transmission isn’t actually the problem.

Gavin Newsom Talks Climate Week on Colbert

Gavin Newsom has been making waves with his social media campaign skewering and parodying Donald Trump’s ridiculous persona.

Clean Transition Moving Ahead Despite Troglodytic Trump

Axios:

President Trump isn’t an existential threat to the energy transition and climate change, investor and climate activist Tom Steyer said Tuesday at an Axios House event during Climate Week NYC.

Why it matters: Steyer’s free-market views offer an upbeat contrast to the Trump administration’s focus on fossil fuels and nuclear over other clean-energy technologies.

Zoom in: “The energy transition is in full swing,” said Steyer, a 2020 presidential aspirant who co-founded and is co-executive chair of investment firm Galvanize.

Steyer said this year has been Galvanize’s best by far: “Profits scale. We want to change the world. We need to do scale.”
Steyer called the importance of the investment tax credits for solar and wind “overrated,” in response to a segment asking him to rate actions as overrated, properly rated or underrated.

Steyer also downplayed Trump’s threat to global climate change, noting the U.S. is responsible for just 11% of emissions.

Trump’s Embarrassing UN Science Denial

Sounding more like a tipsy, dementia riddled barfly than the President of a great nation, Donald Trump once again humiliated the United States on a global stage with a series of insane, ungrounded bleets about climate and energy.

CNN:

Global warming and climate change: Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” and he also referred to “the global warming hoax.” He didn’t precisely explain what he was calling the con job or hoax, but global warming is a demonstrated fact. Trump also baselessly suggested that scientists now use the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming” so that they can’t be accused of getting things wrong if the world ends up cooling; in reality, climate scientists use both phrases, often saying “global warming” when referring to the long-term trend of increasing global temperature and “climate change” when referring to the numerous effects the world is experiencing because of that trend.

NASA says on its website: “‘Climate change’ encompasses global warming, but refers to the broader range of changes that are happening to our planet. These include rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in flower/plant blooming times.”

For example, a 2023 report from the UN’s climate change panel, titled “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report,” said this: “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.” In a section titled “Future Climate Change,” the report also said this: “Continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modelled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).”

Kimmel’s Back, and So is Offshore Wind

Mark the calendar. Turning point.

Reuters:

Danish offshore wind developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO), opens new tab can restart work on the nearly finished Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island, a federal judge ruled on Monday, after President Donald Trump’s administration halted the project last month.

The ruling is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in U.S. waters. It is a palpable victory for Orsted, which has been losing $2 million a day since the project was halted on August 22.

Revolution Wind is located 15 miles off the coast. Once completed, it is expected to produce enough electricity to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Orsted’s U.S.-listed shares were up nearly 9% at $11.60 following the ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth.

The U.S. Interior Department said it would continue to review the project while work proceeds.

“As a result of the Court’s decision today, Revolution Wind will be able to resume construction as BOEM (the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) continues its investigation into possible impacts by the project to national security and prevention of other uses on the Outer Continental Shelf,” an Interior spokesperson said.

Washington Post:

Jimmy Kimmel will return to television Tuesday, nearly one week after Disney-owned ABC took his long-running late-night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” off the air under pressure from the Trump administration, station owners and conservative critics over comments he made after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Georgia Governor Will Beg Korea to Come Back

The Korean/American commentator above points out the importance of saving face and making amends and apologies in Asian culture, and asks if Georgia Governor Kemp, soon to visit Korea, will be making abject apologies for the recent catastrophic ICE raid at a Georgia construction site, where Hyundai engineers were advising and training staff at an EV battery factory.

A lot of interesting perspectives from Korean news reports on American current events in the video above.

Korea Herald:

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is seeking a meeting with Hyundai Motor executives in Seoul following a US immigration raid that detained more than 300 Korean workers at the company’s joint battery plant in Georgia.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other news outlets, Kemp’s office sent emails on Sept. 8 — just four days after the unprecedented immigration raid — stating that he wishes to meet Hyundai officials during an upcoming trip to Korea and underscoring Hyundai’s importance as a key investor and partner for Georgia. The visit will be Kemp’s third to Korea.

The governor’s office noted that his planned visit to Korea had been under discussion prior to the high-profile raid and was not a direct response to the detentions.

Though details remain undisclosed, Kemp is slated to attend a Southern governors’ conference in Japan on Oct. 28-29, prompting speculation his Korea visit may take place around then.