MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘renewable energy’

Here’s Why the Renewable Energy Agenda Won’t Work… And What It Means For Investors

Posted by M. C. on November 13, 2023

Apart from the obvious (the US for all intents and purposes has no strategic oil reserve), there is a hell of a lot of buying that has to occur to build those reserves up. In other words, we aren’t going to see any selling pressure hereon in from the strategic reserve but rather a whole lot of buying. We suspect that Vlad Putin is well aware of this.

Let’s cut to the chase: the next 10 years will see a repeat of 2000-2010. The outperformance may well last for a lot longer than this. The essence is that we don’t have to be concerned at all about energy related stocks underperforming the general stock market for a very long time.

by Chris MacIntosh

We are reminded of the below words of wisdom…

We noticed lately an uptick in analysis and commentary that is questioning the climate change narrative. Pieces like this one:

Clearly this climate change narrative/ideology too shall pass like every fad, but it will take time. This is ok. It just means that we will see the fossil fuel sector (oil, gas, coal, and related services) continually outperform the S&P 500 over the next 10+ years.

Take China… It Doesn’t Care…

I assure you, China doesn’t care about the ESG nonsense. What’s interesting is China’s dependency on coal – some 64% of their electricity comes from coal.

China produces (from domestic sources) about 85% of the coal it consumes (granted, this includes both coking and thermal coal).

With respect to coal, China has two big problems, and few appreciate the magnitude of the problems.

Firstly, China only has 35 years of coal reserves at today’s consumption levels, and secondly, the grade of those reserves is deteriorating. In other words, it is taking more coal to produce the same amount of heat.

Not only this but China wants to increase coal-fired power stations by 20-30% over the next 10 years or so. Where is all this coal going to come from if the volume and quality of China’s reserves are deteriorating?

This Bloomberg article highlights the deterioration in China’s coal grades.

From the article:

China’s coal imports, including low-grade lignite, climbed to an all-time high of 44 million tons in August, while domestic production of 382 million tons was also a record for the time of year. Imports over the first eight months have nearly doubled to 306 million tons, more than the country usually takes in a whole year.

The increases in supply come as the government seeks to avoid the power shortages that have crippled the economy in recent years. China’s rush to extract more coal has also degraded the quality of its domestic output so that more fuel is needed to generate the same amount of heat.

When energy security is discussed, few pay second thought to coal (particularly in light of today’s climate change ideology). China is going to have to source an increasing amount of coal from other countries, and there is only a few they can source it from (unlike oil).

How about the US? Only 17 days left ?!

While US government shutdowns make the headlines, quietly in the background the US only has 17 days of supply left in its strategic reserve.

Apart from the obvious (the US for all intents and purposes has no strategic oil reserve), there is a hell of a lot of buying that has to occur to build those reserves up. In other words, we aren’t going to see any selling pressure hereon in from the strategic reserve but rather a whole lot of buying. We suspect that Vlad Putin is well aware of this.

Would this be an opportune time to hit back at the US? Rockets, bombs, tanks — that is the way old fashioned wars were played. Yeah, it is still how regional conflicts are played, but wars on a global scale are likely to be fought using energy as the weapon of choice.

What is going on here?

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Here’s Why the End of Coal is Just Another Failed Utopia

Posted by M. C. on November 3, 2023

Backfire: World’s Fourth Largest Iron Ore Producer Stops Purchasing Carbon Offsets

by Chris MacIntosh

Take a quick look at the brave new world that is renewable energy and with it the end of coal.

Of course, this has been followed up with a steady stream of hysteria. Stern-faced weather-men, weather-women, and weather-people insist we’re facing apocalyptic heat, or cold, or rain or cats coming down, even dogs. Either way, New York is soon to be underwater… or is it dry as a bone? Depends on the day and weather-people, I guess.

One does have to wonder at what point folks wake up. Perhaps literally it takes place when one wakes in the morning, pulls back the curtains, and sees the sun shining and a beautiful day ahead… right after having heard the night before from some spineless diversity hire on the idiot box that Armageddon is surely coming… because, climate change. I often wonder about these things.

It’s worth remembering that the witch burning in the so-called Dark Ages lasted for nearly a decade and by some accounts only stopped when they began running out of women, so it’s entirely possible that this hysteria continues unchecked for a long time.

What warms the cockles of my heart (I’m not sure what cockles are but mine are warm) is that clearly many countries either see this for the obvious nonsense it is or they simply look at the option of baking or freezing (depending on where they live and perhaps the seasons), and conclude that they are unprepared to give up on the central heating or air conditioner. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the “elites” who are telling them to stop showering do so from the comforts of one of their multiple mansions after landing their private jets. Either which way, electricity consumption seems to be continuing unabated — as we promised it would.

Here’s a neat infographic of what powered the world last year.

It’s almost as if coal isn’t going away anytime soon. Wow! “You mean to say the pointy shoes with their “modeling” of outcomes are about as far off as Neil Ferguson was on the COVID hysteria.

And now as ZeroHedge reports, Fortescue Metals just halted playing the carbon offset game.

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Children of the Corn and the Fraud of Renewable Energy

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2022

This spring, Ukrainian farmers might have a little trouble between missile strikes getting their crops planted. However, if Ukrainian agriculture is taken offline by war, American farmers can make up some of the difference by raising food rather than fuel additives. That is, if Congress lets them.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/children_of_the_corn_and_the_fraud_of_renewable_energy.html

By Jon N. Hall

In July of 2021, this writer took a little trip through rural Missouri. Besides visiting kinfolk whom I hadn’t seen for far too long, one purpose of my trip was simply to do something else, something different. You see, I’d become something of a recluse and I really needed to just go outside, blow the stink off, maybe even commune with Nature, whatever that is.

My destination was a spot near the center of the northeast quadrant of the state, about a three-hour trip by car. The most expeditious route from Kansas City would be to take I-70 to Columbia and then motor north on US 63 for about an hour. Not really interested in expedience, I chose the scenic route, “a road less traveled,” US 24 to be exact.

Driving eastward on 24, what impressed me was the modern world’s utter dependence on petroleum. Not only was I leisurely tooling along in my 1990 Taurus, which happens to burn gasoline, but everything I surveyed depended on oil. The lawns and pastures of the rural folk were nicely manicured. All that mowing takes a lot of oil, but that’s nothing when compared to the crops, especially the corn.

The corn crop did not look like any corn that this kid could remember. It was lush and tightly packed, dense even. Every field looked like it had been planted and cultivated by the same farmer, maybe some corporation. I’d bet a buck that this corn I drove past was genetically-modified Frankencorn, and totally dependent on high-powered fertilizers. I’ve probably eaten tons of it in the cheap salty corn chips I’m addicted to.

Corn (a.k.a. maize) is used not just as food for people and cattle, it’s also used to produce ethanol, and not just for boozers, but to mix in with our gasoline.

Since 2005, Congress has required oil refineries to add ethanol, mostly from corn, to their gasoline. It’s called the “Renewable Fuel Standard” (RFS). The EPA runs the program. In January, Reuters reported: “EPA will have to decide on the next phase of the program in coordination with the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. The EPA plans to propose requirements… in May this year.”

Members of Congress should not leave the changing of RFS to some pointy-headed bureaucrat in the administrative state (i.e. the EPA) but should adjust the program themselves. And they should seriously consider ending the program. Or, they might consider an idea floated in “How To Fix The Ethanol Industry” by Robert Rapier at Forbes in 2019.

To understand just how wacky the RFS is, read “Stop the Ethanol Madness” by Mario Loyola, which ran at the Atlantic in November of 2019. Loyola explains how RFS is not only uneconomic but is also destroying the environment. Loyola asserts that “today’s corn-ethanol program is a glaring failure, and it is unconscionable that politicians of both parties are conspiring to keep it alive despite knowing full well what its problems are.”

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Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax that Benefits its Greenie Elmer Gantries like Al Gore – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2020

We are not concerned with slightly reducing the harm caused by industrial civilization; we are interested in stopping that harm completely. Doing so will require dismantling the global industrial economy, which will render impossible the creation of these technologies.

Al Gore.  When he left the vice presidency in 2001, his net worth was estimated at $1 million to $2 million.  Since then, his wealth has skyrocketed to $300 million,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/progressive_ecogroup_admits_it_renewable_energy_is_a_hoax_that_benefits_its_greenie_elmer_gantries_like_al_gore.html

Independent physicist John Droz, Jr. alerted me to the website of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), an international environmental organization that calls for the total destruction of what it refers to as the “global industrial economy,” a.k.a. capitalism.  Given the group’s hard-left credentials, its call for dismantling capitalism throughout the world is not surprising.

What is surprising is that in an unusual show of progressive candor, Deep Green Resistance openly acknowledges what skeptical scientists have been saying for more than two decades: that renewable energy is a government-backed hoax that enriches big corporations — and green energy investors like Al Gore — at the expense of taxpayers and the environment.  If you find that admission hard to believe, please keep reading.  The questions and answers below are verbatim from the FAQ page on the organization’s website.

Will green technology save the planet?

No. Wind turbines, solar PV panels, and the grid itself are all manufactured using cheap energy from fossil fuels. When fossil fuel costs begin to rise such highly manufactured items will simply cease to be feasible.

Solar panels and wind turbines aren’t made out of nothing.  They are made out of metals, plastics, and chemicals. These products have been mined out of the ground, transported, processed, manufactured.  Each stage leaves behind a trail of devastation: habitat destruction, water contamination, colonization, toxic waste, slave labor, greenhouse gas emissions, wars, and corporate profits.

The basic ingredients for renewables are the same materials that are ubiquitous in industrial products, like cement and aluminum. No one is going to make cement in any quantity without using the energy of fossil fuels. And aluminum? The mining itself is a destructive and toxic nightmare from which riparian communities will not awaken in anything but geologic time.

From beginning to end, so called “renewable energy” and other “green technologies” lead to the destruction of the planet. These technologies are rooted in the same industrial extraction and production processes that have rampaged across the world for the last 150 years.

We are not concerned with slightly reducing the harm caused by industrial civilization; we are interested in stopping that harm completely. Doing so will require dismantling the global industrial economy, which will render impossible the creation of these technologies.

Will renewable energy save the economy?

Renewable energy technologies rely heavily on government subsidies, taken from taxpayers and given directly to large corporations like General Electric, BP, Samsung, and Mitsubishi.  While the scheme pads their bottom lines, it doesn’t help the rest of us.

Further, this is the wrong question to ask.  The industrial capitalist economy is dispossessing and impoverishing billions of humans and killing the living world.  Renewable energy depends on centralized capital and power imbalance.  We don’t benefit from saving that system.

Instead of advocating for more industrial technology, we need to move to local economies based on community decision-making and what our local landbases can provide sustainably.  And we need to stop the global economy on which renewable energy depends.

“Stopping the global economy” means destroying the capitalist system that created here in America the most widespread prosperity the world has ever known.  That a progressive eco-group would admit that the true agenda behind the push for renewable energy has nothing to do with “saving the planet” and everything to do with destroying capitalism is quite remarkable.  To reinforce its position that renewable energy is a hoax, DGR’s website has a cartoon that shows dollar bills being sucked from a wind turbine directly into the pocket of a fat cat investor in subsidized green energy projects.

The Elmer Gantry of renewable energy

Few insiders have profited more from taxpayer-backed renewable energy projects than Al Gore.  When he left the vice presidency in 2001, his net worth was estimated at $1 million to $2 million.  Since then, his wealth has skyrocketed to $300 million, and if the climate change legislation he advocates is enacted, the former vice president stands to become a billionaire.  Much of his enviable fortune has come from being an inside investor in government-backed renewable energy projects, many of which went belly up after the insiders made off with millions, leaving hard-working U.S. taxpayers stuck with the bill.

Like all wealthy eco-preachers, the Elmer Gantry of renewable energy uses his immense wealth to indulge in lavish living.  When asked by Rep. Marsha Blackburn during his 2009 testimony before Congress whether he personally profits from his advocacy of global warming, Pastor Al professed a vow of poverty, and if you’ve never seen video of the tense encounter, you don’t want to miss it: “Every penny I have made I have put into a non-profit deal, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is out of greed, you do not know me.”

Turned out Rep. Blackburn knows him quite well.  As greedy owner of a gargantuan green energy fortune, Pastor Al looked her squarely in the eye and denied making even a penny of profit.  If every penny he makes goes into a non-profit deal, how did he end up with $300 million?  The same way his alter ego pilfered money from the Lord: by concealing his true stripes.

As the social Utopians at Deep Green Resistance openly acknowledge, the push for a “green economy” is a scam that enriches big corporations and fat-cat investors like Al Gore.  Shortly after teen climate activist Greta Thunberg gave an emotion-charged speech at the UN last September, I wrote about the renewable energy hoax in The Cynical Plot behind Global Warming Hysteria.  If not for a totally corrupt western media, two things would have happened years ago: man-made global warming theory would have been blown out of the water, and Pastor Al would have been called out as the self-righteous hypocrite he is.

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How Trading Renewable Energy Will Grow the Industry | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on September 5, 2017

The commentators aren’t buying it.

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/how-trading-renewable-energy-will-grow-the-industry/

The plan? To allow the UK and Norway to import and export natural power sources. The UK could import 1400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 750,000 homes. Norway will benefit from wind energy exported from the UK in a scheme that’s both intelligent and efficient. Read the rest of this entry »

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