The hot, semi-arid, wind-swept Caatinga is a far cry from the steamy, dense jungles of Brazil’s Amazon region to the south. Pumas and Jaguars have adapted to the Caatinga’s harsh environment and thrived there as apex predators since time immemorial. But they are now facing extinction thanks to Chinese and European wind-power developers who are making the region uninhabitable for the big cats. The spinning, 150-foot-long blades atop the outsiders’ wind turbines are scaring the pumas and jaguars away from the area’s scarce sources of water, forcing them to abandon their lairs and roam vast distances across dusty plains in search of life-sustaining rivers and streams…

People convicted of killing jaguars, pumas, and other wild animals in Brazil can land in jail for up to 18 months, but enforcement of the law is lax. Wind developers are indirectly killing lots of big cats by driving them out of their habitat, but there have been no prosecutions to date. As for the villagers setting traps for jaguars and pumas trying to escape the wind turbines, they quickly bury or burn the dead animals, and wildlife rangers are none the wiser. Meanwhile, the number of pumas and jaguars in the Caatinga continues to drop…

The notion that installing industrial-scale wind-power facilities along Brazil’s northeastern coast – or any place else, for that matter – will have any effect on the world’s climate is absurd. But the monstrosities, along with their solar-array equivalents, are having a profound and harmful effect on wildlife. All of this is far removed from the posh c suites of wind-power developers in Europe and China who, unlike the big cats and villagers in the Caatinga, have the luxury of closing their eyes to the havoc they are wreaking.

Environmentalism should not be cover for wreaking havoc on the environment, but that’s what’s happening as the institutions of environmentalism are co-opted by money and power, which is what happens to most big institutions. This is the alternative to natural gas? Hell, no!

Hat Tip: R.N.

So, You’re Saying the Enemy Is Us?

Government is necessary evil. That reality of that phrase should be apparent to all, but we tend to only remember the first part and sweep the second part under the rug. The evil nature of government, of course, call to us to limit government to the necessary but the temptation to expand is too strong, yielding terrible results over and over again.

Governments and financial institutions all over the world declared war on investment in fossil fuels under the misguided view that supply and prices would not be affected. According to JP Morgan, there is a chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas complex that exceeds $600 billion per year. In 2022, with oil prices rising to the previously mentioned $122/barrel, companies all over the world continued to reduce investment in exploration and production. Development capital expenditure was kept to a bare minimum, and even some European oil and gas giants started selling their “net zero emissions” strategy, ignoring the global energy reality. Total oil and gas investment came below depreciation for the sixth year in a row, according to Goldman Sachs.

The energy transition cannot happen through ideological imposition. It requires technology and competition. Destroying the incentives to invest in oil and gas and imposing an ideological, not industrial, view of energy has made developed economies more dependent on fossil fuels.

When politicians decide, they willingly ignore economic calculations because they believe that the political world dictates prices, not supply and demand. Economic analysis has been abandoned, and the result is an exceedingly negative scenario.

Developed economies have destroyed all incentives to invest in diversification and security of supply of oil and gas driven by an ideological view of the world without having a feasible, abundant, and flexible alternative. Thus, when the United States administration imposes more restrictions on oil and gas investment and the European Union decides to reduce nuclear capacity and ban the development of domestic resources, all they have done is make their economies more dependent on foreign suppliers.

Western governments now demand that OPEC produce more while, at the same time, saying that their nations will not use fossil fuels in ten years. This is the imaginary

deal that we, in the West, offer to oil and gas producing nations: “Dear oil and gas producers, you have to produce as much as we demand and sell it cheap, investing billions of dollars in development, but we will not use your product in ten years”. I imagine there is no rush to sign such a deal.

Yes, the real enemy of natural gas and our own welfare is us for electing politicians who imagine it’s their duty to pick winners and losers and pass out our own money as if it were theirs.

Hat Tip: D.S.

Global Warming Isn’t A Crisis, Don’t Panic!

A voice of reason on the subject of climate change, Bjorn Lomborg, says don’t panic.

Heat waves are clearly made worse by global warming. But saturated media coverage of high temperatures in summer fails to tell the bigger story: Temperature-driven deaths are overwhelmingly caused by cold.

Globally, a recent Lancet study found 4.5 million cold deaths, nine times more than global heat deaths. The study also finds that temperatures increased half a degree Celsius in the first two decades of this century, causing an additional 116,000 heat deaths annually. But warmer temperatures now also avoid 283,000 cold deaths annually. Reporting only on the former leaves us badly informed.

Across the world, governments have promised to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions at a cost beyond $5.6 trillion annually…

Even if all the world’s ambitious carbon-cutting promises were magically enacted, these policies would only slow future warming. Stronger heat waves would still kill more people, just slightly fewer than they would have. A sensible response would focus first on resilience, meaning more air conditioning and cooler cities through greenery and water features. After 2003’s heat waves, France required air conditioning in nursing homes, reducing heat deaths 10-fold despite higher temperatures.

Avoiding both cold and heat deaths requires affordable energy access. In the United States, cheaper gas [natural gas] from fracking allowed millions with low budgets to keep warm, saving thousands of lives…

Cutting carbon emissions is one of the least effective ways to help prevent future fires. Much faster, more effective and cheaper solutions include controlled fires to burn away vegetation, improving zoning and better forest management…

To do better on climate, we must resist the misleading, alarmist climate narrative. Panic is a terrible adviser.

True!

Hat Tip: S.H.