The Future Of Energy In The U.S.: Which Projection Do You Believe?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | April 10, 2022
What will the production and consumption of energy look like in the United States in 2050? There are two very different answers to that question.
On Side One are those who assert that we face a “climate crisis” that can only be addressed by the rapid forced suppression of the production and use of fossil fuels. Therefore, some combination of government coercion, investor pressure and voluntary institutional action will shortly drive coal, oil and natural gas from the energy marketplace, to be replaced by carbon-free “renewables.” And thus by 2050 we will have achieved the utopia of “net zero” carbon emissions.
Those on Side Two think that the Side One vision is completely unrealistic fantasy. Simple arithmetic shows that without massive energy storage no amount of building of wind and solar generators can make much difference in fossil fuel use for electricity production; and adequate energy storage devices to fill the gap do not even exist as a technical matter, let alone at remotely reasonable cost. Result: no matter what the grandees say, fossil fuel production and use in 2050 will be as high or higher than they are now.
Which Side do you think is right?
At the moment, all of the Great and the Good seem to have planted their flags on Side One. President Biden leaves no doubt as to where he stands. By Press Release of April 22, 2021, Biden committed the U.S. to a “net zero” economy by 2050:
On Day One, President Biden fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the United States to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, reaching net zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.
And by various Executive Orders, Biden has the whole federal bureaucracy committed to the fossil fuel suppression project, from stopping drilling to blocking pipelines to decommissioning power plants.
In the investment world, all of the biggest banks and money managers are on board. Here is a link to the “Road to Net Zero” web page of BlackRock, the nation’s largest mutual fund manager. Pithy quote:
We believe that the transition to a net zero world is the shared responsibility of every citizen, corporation, and government. . . . In January 2021, we committed to supporting the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner – and announced a number of steps to help our clients navigate the transition.
And it goes without saying that the world of academia has joined Side One with full unanimity. After all, these are the “smartest” people; and the “smartest” people all know that the “climate crisis” can only be solved by suppressing fossil fuels. Here is a representative statement from President Peter Salovey of Yale University, June 24, 2021:
To avoid the most severe outcomes of climate change, experts recommend taking immediate action to reach world-wide carbon net neutrality in the next three decades. Yale will become a net zero carbon emissions campus in less than half of that time. Along our path to zero actual emission by 2050, we expect to reduce our actual emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2035.
So surely then, with this kind of unanimous agreement from the top, backed by the full force of federal government coercion, fossil fuels will be completely gone by 2050.
Perhaps before getting too confident in that conclusion, we should check in with the Energy Information Administration. The EIA is the part of the federal Department of Energy that provides data and statistics on U.S. energy production and consumption, both historical and projected. Once a year, generally in March, they issue what they call their Annual Energy Outlook, or AEO. AEO2022 just came out on March 3. The opening page of AEO2022 provides a wealth of links that can keep you busy for hours if you have the inclination.
The incredible thing about this AEO is it’s like nobody told them that the fossil fuels are about to be suppressed. Basically, they treat the whole “net zero by 2050” clamor as so much background noise. For example, what is the EIA’s view as to U.S. natural gas consumption from now through 2050? That’s in this chart:
Net zero anyone? Instead, it looks like ongoing slow but steady growth throughout the entire projection period.
How about U.S. crude oil production? Surely that will plummet toward zero well before 2050. Not according to the EIA:
Basically, they predict that U.S. crude production will increase substantially over the next few years, and then level out and remain there through 2050.
To be fair, the two charts above represent what they call their “reference case.” They have other charts that show high production/consumption cases and also low production/consumption cases. However, the high cases are driven by high prices, and the low cases are driven by low prices. There is no effect discernible in the EIA projections resulting from regulatory suppression, let alone from woke investors or the pompous pronouncements of academia.
One of my favorite charts is this one covering projected “light duty vehicle” sales, aka cars.
And you thought that buying anything but a fully-electric vehicle would be illegal by 2030? The EIA’s projection is that even by 2050, fully-electric vehicles will not have achieved 10% of the market, while fully gasoline-powered vehicles will still have a market share around 75%.
Numerous other links on the AEO2022 intro page provide for fascinating reading, essentially contradicting everything about our energy future that is coming out of the White House. For example, there is “EIA projects U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fall in the near term, then rise.” In other words, the claims of “net zero” emissions by 2050 are so much hot air. Or there’s “Petroleum and natural gas are the most-used fuels in the United States through 2050.”
So place your bet as to which projections you believe. For myself, obviously I’m going with reality over fantasy.
Ukraine requests $50bn in aid
Samizdat | April 17, 2022
Ukrainian economic adviser Oleh Ustenko has requested $50 billion in financial support from the G7 countries to cover the budget deficit created by the military conflict with Russia in a television address on Sunday. He said Kiev is also considering issuing 0% coupon bonds to bridge the fiscal gap.
In the meantime, the World Bank is preparing a $1.5 billion support package for Ukraine. The loan will include a $1-billion payment from the development lender’s fund for the poorest countries. The funding comes on top of about $923 million in fast-disbursing financing approved by the World Bank last month.
The US and NATO have also been sending billions of dollars Ukraine’s way, although in the form of military aid rather than cash. The Biden administration just this week approved yet another $800 million in weapons, ammunition, and other military assistance including artillery systems, rounds, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. It comes less than a month after the Biden administration sent an $800 million bundle of anti-aircraft systems, firearms, ammo, and body armor Kiev’s way on March 16.
Washington’s contribution has been matched by that of the European Union and several individual member states, including Germany and Sweden, some of which have violated their own long-standing policies of not supplying lethal aid to countries at war by flooding Ukraine with anti-tank weapons, Stinger missiles, and armored vehicles, among other military equipment.
However, even amid a constant stream of military aid by the US and NATO allies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted a video calling for the rest of the world to #ArmUkraineNow – complete with a very specific grocery list of desired equipment. Should countries fail to deliver, the Ukrainian leader claimed, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and the Baltic states would quickly fall under the tank treads of the Russian army.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
Russia has repeatedly stated it has no plans to even occupy Ukraine, let alone invade neighboring nations, but the talking point has become a favorite for Zelensky. The president has likened the invasion of his country to various events in World War II, including Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust, as well as the September 11th terror attacks in his efforts to convince the rest of the world to open their hearts as well as their bank accounts to the plight of his country.
Pro-lockdown Researcher Accuses Critic of “Libel”
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | April 17, 2022
A new pro-lockdown study has been doing the rounds on social media. In a Twitter thread, one of the authors claims that it “confirms the tragic consequences of delaying the UK’s first lockdown”. He argues that, if lockdown had started just one week earlier, there would have been up to “35k fewer deaths”.
Although the thread went viral (as many pro-lockdown threads do), the study was not without its critics. One of these was Philippe Lemoine, whose work I’ve discussed several times here on the Daily Sceptic.
In a Twitter thread of his own, Lemoine retorted that the study “doesn’t confirm jackshit” and merely exemplifies the “ridiculous methods that pass as counterfactual analysis in the field of epidemiology”. He went on to say that drawing strong conclusions about the “tragic consequences” of delaying lockdown is “intellectually dishonest”.
Profanity aside, the criticisms Lemoine proceeds to outline are well taken. As he points out, the latest pro-lockdown study is based – yet again – on the assumption that epidemics keep growing exponentially unless the government decides to do something. This assumption is not merely questionable, but false.
We know from examples like South Dakota – whose libertarian governor Kristi Noem did basically nothing – that infections start falling long before the herd immunity threshold is reached, even if there’s no lockdown. (There are at least eight other places where infections fell from a peak in the absence of both business closures and stay-at-home orders.)
Armed with the assumption that the only thing capable of arresting epidemic growth is lockdown, the authors conclude that Britain’s first lockdown had a large effect – one that would have been even larger if it had been imposed a week earlier.
Of course, there’s ample evidence to suggest this isn’t true: infections peaked around the same time in no-lockdown Sweden; reconstructions of Britain’s epidemic curve show cases peaking before the first lockdown; and Chris Whitty himself told MPs that “R went below one well before, or to some extent before, March 23”.
So, another pro-lockdown modelling study based on assumptions that we know are wrong. (Note: I’m not saying the lockdown had absolutely no effect; just that you can’t claim it had a large effect.) However, the story doesn’t end there.
The author of the original Twitter thread didn’t take kindly to Lemoine’s criticisms. After demanding to know “who specifically” Lemoine was accusing of intellectual dishonesty, he asked him to remove the “libellous” tweet and “desist from further public defamation”.
While Lemoine (a Frenchman) could have perhaps been politer, resorting to accusations of “libel” when faced with criticism isn’t a ‘good look’ for a scientist. It suggests you’re more concerned with social status than with finding out the truth. Why not just ignore the Twitter digs, and answer the man’s criticisms?
While this little dispute hardly matters, it doesn’t show ‘The Science’ of lockdown in a very favourable light.
MIT’s Dean of Science responds to me: She’s NOT interested in looking at the vax safety data!
She has intellectual curiosity in all areas of science… except the vaccines
Steve Kirsch with MIT Dean of Science Nergis Mavalvala taken April 15, 2022 at MIT breakfast in Palo Alto
By Steve Kirsch | April 15, 2022
Summary
The Dean of Science at MIT believes open discussion to resolve differences of scientific opinion should be encouraged. That’s the good news.
However, when I asked her whether she would publicly call for such a discussion for the vaccines, her answer was “No.” That’s the bad news.
I also asked her if I could show her data that would change her mind. Her answer was, “No.”
This is an important issue; it is an issue that affects the health of every MIT student, staff, and faculty member. She knows that there are two legitimate sides of this issue because she knows that at least one MIT faculty member agrees with me that the COVID vaccines are dangerous. Yet open discussion on this is forbidden at MIT. They simply are not interested in hearing from anyone with any credentials (such as my colleagues) who is able to challenge their policies.
Dean Mavalvala should be actively facilitating the resolution of this important issue by calling for an open discussion. Instead, she is stonewalling and hoping it will go away. She’s wrong. It won’t.
My meeting with Dean Mavalvala
I was able to speak personally to the Dean of Science at MIT today thanks to an MIT breakfast scheduled 10 minutes from my home.
As you can see from the photo above, she’s fully bought into the mainstream narrative that masks work even though the science says they don’t work at all (and it isn’t even a close call). So I didn’t think my conversation would go that well. I was right.
I started off asking her why nobody at MIT would sponsor my talk. She said that the faculty sponsor must be both familiar with and supportive of the body of work.
OK, so that’s actually a reasonable response. No objection from me.
She also knew that Professor Retsef Levi had agreed to sponsor my talk on the MIT campus. But it wasn’t MIT who located Professor Levi. I was the one who found Professor Levi. He subscribes to my Substack and saw my frustration and reached out to me.
Professor Levi is a hero… one of the few (perhaps only) MIT faculty members who independently looked at the data and came to the same (obvious) conclusion that the vaccines were bad news. All of his attempts to persuade other MIT faculty members to look at the underlying data were unsuccessful. So now I don’t feel so bad. It’s not just me. People just don’t like to be shown they are wrong…especially on something that is life threatening.
I asked Dean how I could convince her that the MIT policies on the vaccine and masking were wrong. She replied that science advances through peer-reviewed research.
I said sure, but that process has been corrupted. She agreed with that but said that’s the way it is.
She was not interested in looking at any data that would challenge her beliefs that the vaccines are safe and effective
Next, I asked if I could meet with her to share the data showing the vaccines are unsafe. She said she was not interested in that because that isn’t her field.
That’s interesting because right after our conversation, she gave a talk about how she is fascinated by all areas of science and loves her job as Dean since she gets to learn about all the cool stuff going on at MIT.
Yet she is not interested in seeing data that challenges her beliefs that affect everyone at MIT, and that has likely caused injury and perhaps death of MIT students, staff, and faculty members. So her intellectual curiosity basically stops at the point that I challenge her strongly held beliefs.
I said that it is really important that there should be an OPEN discussion between the different points of view on the vaccine. She agreed.
She then gave her talk.
After the talk, I asked her if she would “walk the talk.” Specifically, would she publicly call out the “experts” who refuse to be challenged to have an open discussion with those who have differing views?
Her answer was “no” she wouldn’t call for this because she thinks the vaccines are safe.
I pressed her on this. I believe that her role as Dean of Science at MIT includes championing science in public policy. When public policy is based on bad science, all our science leaders should be speaking out about that. At that very instant, she and her handlers insisted that “she had to leave” before she could answer my question.
So I then sent her the following email offering to finish the conversation.
Dean Mavalvala,
I’m sorry you were rushed at the end and we didn’t have time to continue our conversation.
This is important to resolve as we believe that over 100,000 Americans have been killed by the vaccine and we have 10 different ways to show that. If we are right, the vaccines should be immediately stopped and not mandated at MIT.
I would like to finish our conversation on a zoom call. It would take less than 5 minutes.
I think you have a responsibility to call for the right thing which is an open discussion between the two sides. You agreed this was the right thing to do before your speech.
This isn’t going to be resolved by “peer reviewed science” since that process has been corrupted (which you acknowledged). Also, resolution of differences through publication of peer reviewed studies is a laborious, time consuming process that has been corrupted.
It’s important to have the disagreements over the vaccine resolved ASAP as a huge number of Americans refuse to be vaccinated. Are they justified? It’s a matter of great public concern.
Open discussions are a faster, more efficient way to resolve such differences. This is especially important when we are in a state of emergency.
For example, in less than 2 hours, we were able to resolve all of our issues with the Bangladesh mask study due to the interactive nature of the discussion. In just 2 hours, it became clear to any objective viewer that the study failed to show masks worked. This would have taken years to resolve via peer review since there would be conflicting papers.
In addition, science is supposed to encourage resolution of differences through discussion and debate rather than censorship.
I note that the scientists who disagree with the mainstream narrative WANT an open discussion/debate on the key issues.
Yet those who claim the vaccines are safe and effective WANT censorship and REFUSE to be held accountable.
For example, this happened in Canada where 3 top Canadian scientists asked for a discussion with Canada’s health authorities. The authorities did not show up at the table. They sent no one. How do we resolve our differences when the other side is afraid to show up at the table?
As Dean of Science at MIT you should be speaking out publicly against the censorship of scientists because you should be a defender of Science. Similarly, I believe you should call for those who promote the mainstream narrative on vaccine safety to accept challenges from legitimate qualified scientists. You could say this is not your role, but the fact is that no other prominent person is stepping up to the plate to do this. As a defender of science, it is your responsibility to step in and make things right, don’t you think? If not, who will?
-steve
I will let you know if I hear back. Don’t hold your breath.
If you know anyone at MIT, be sure to share this article with them.
Battle for Mariupol is ending
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | APRIL 17, 2022
The Russian Ministry of Defence offer of surrender terms to the personnel of the extreme nationalist neo-Nazi battalions and foreign mercenaries in the Azovstal iron and steel works to end hostilities by 1.00 pm Moscow time on Sunday would only have been a proforma gesture.
Moscow’s statement said, that radio interceptions at Azovstal — as many as 367 in the past twenty-four hours — showed that the militants were in a hopeless situation, practically without food and water, and were seeking permission to lay down arms and surrender but “the Kiev authorities categorically forbid them to do this.”
Yesterday, Denis Pushilin, Head of the Donetsk administration, openly called for “elimination” of the neo-Nazi militants holed up in Azovstal.
Azovstal is a massive Soviet-era plant, a city within the city of Mariupol. There is an underground city beneath the plant built in the Soviet era which includes Cold-War realities — structures to withstand bombing, blockades, and even nuclear strike. The Russian estimation is that a maximum of 2500 people could be holding out in the underground city equipped with armoured vehicles and huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
The Russian side is in some hurry to finish off the operation in Mariupol. The forces there are are urgently needed to be redeployed to the Donbass front. Kiev, on the other hand, is banking on delaying the Russian operation which gives it more time to reinforce its forces in Donbass.
President Zelensky has once again switched tack to speak about the diplomatic track. His latest stance is that Ukraine is ready to discuss abandoning its bid to join NATO and the status of Crimea with Russia, but not until Moscow halts hostilities and withdraws its troops!
The Ukrainian armed forces already lost 23,367 people while 1,464 people surrendered in Mariupol as of yesterday and another 2,500 are blocked at the city’s Azovstal plant. As for the Donbass, Russian forces enjoy superiority in numbers, logistics, firepower and terrain and a defeat on that front will leave Zelensky no choice but to seek a negotiated settlement on Russian terms. (See a relatively balanced prognosis by the American military analyst Colonel (Retd.) Daniel Davis, The Battle For Donbas Will Be A Tough Fight For Ukraine.)
Indeed, Zelensky and his American mentors hope that the battle for Donbass is wide open. The point is, although much of the war in eastern Ukraine will be fought in areas of open ground, Russian forces also have to take several significant population centres to achieve their objectives in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, including Severodonetsk, Rubizhne, Lysychansk, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk as well as several smaller towns.
The Russian performance so far does not bode well for rapid success against built-up areas. Again, the weapons provided by the West have helped Ukrainian forces significantly to prevent Russia controlling the skies. The Ukrainian side is counting on these factors to stem the tide of the battle. Plus, of course, their morale is high.
Be that as it may, this time around, there is no confusion in the Russian mind that a peace settlement is round the corner. The Russians are unlikely to allow themselves to be hoodwinked again, when they took Zelensky for his word, trooped into the talks at Istanbul where an agreement was initialled on the basis of which, in an extravagantly emotional gesture of goodwill, they withdrew troops from Kiev and other northern territories, but only to see their interlocutors in Kiev backtrack on the terms of the agreement.
The strange Russian behaviour conveyed misperceptions that the Kremlin might be looking for the exit door. Evidently, that has emboldened the Western powers to embark upon a large-scale rearmament project for Ukraine, including transfer of heavy offensive systems, high-precision ammunition, modern air defence systems, American Stinger missiles, etc. for use in the upcoming new phase of military confrontation.
It is an open secret that military personnel of the NATO countries are deployed alongside the Ukrainian forces under the guise of “foreign volunteers.” The foreign fighters are led by US officers and the whole command of the Ukrainian armed forces is concentrated mainly in the hands of the Americans.
Arguably, the sinking of the warship Moskva fits into this paradigm. Russian analysts estimate that the last week’s missile strike on the Russian flag ship Moskva was actually masterminded and coordinated by the Pentagon. According to the ADS-B Exchange flight tracking site, a US Navy plane with electronic gear was spotted near the village of Zhurilovka in eastern Romania in the vicinity of the stricken ship Moskva (which probably guided the missile attacks.) Read here and here.
The implied message is: ‘Bring ‘em on.’ In military terms, though, the sinking of the ageing warship, 43 years old, may not be a game changer for the Russian operation. Everything now hinges on the offensive in Donbass — and, potentially further Russian operation in Kherson and Odessa without which the NATO will continue to pose an acute threat to Russia in the Black Sea region. NATO is already slouching toward Moldova.