1. Chart of the Day I (above) shows another important US energy milestone that resulted directly from America’s fracking revolution. This year through July the US produced nearly 100% of the energy consumed according to data from the Energy Information Administration and marked the first time since 1957 that America was basically energy self-sufficient. As recently as 2005 America produced less than 70% of the energy consumed, which was a record low that followed a downward half-century trend from 100% energy self-sufficiency in 1957. In just 14 years that 50-year trend was reversed, thanks to the revolutionary technologies of fracking and horizontal drilling that accessed oceans of shale and shale gas, which made America energy self-sufficient again for the first time in more than 60 years.
2. Chart of the Day II (above) shows another US energy milestone — US net petroleum imports declined to only 4.8% through September of this year, which is the lowest level in at least 70 years going back to 1949. It’s more evidence of America’s new status as the world’s leading energy superpower (No. 1 producer of crude oil and natural gas) and marks an important new era of energy independence for the country (see Chart of the Day I above).
3. The Brave New World of Ample Oil is the title of a blog post by Tilak Doshi, here’s a money quote:
The shift from a perceived world of oil scarcity to abundance has been brought about in an astonishingly short period of time by the advent of the “fracking” revolution in the US. This combines horizontal drilling and hydraulically-fracturing shale rock with high-pressure liquids to extract “unconventional” oil and gas. In the past decade, US crude oil production more than doubled. By mid-2019, US production was rated at over 12 million barrels/day, surpassing Russian and Saudi Arabian output as the world’s largest.
Academic studies suggest that global oil prices would have been higher by $10 to $50 per barrel if there had not been a fracking boom in the US. Given the scales involved, even with conservative estimates on the price impact, the US upsurge in unconventional oil production has probably led to the biggest transfer of wealth in history. Largely at the cost of reduced oil revenues to OPEC and Russia, benefits have primarily flowed to the world’s largest oil markets in the US, China, India, Japan and South Korea as well as the US unconventional oil producers.
MP: Consider that and let it sink in…. The US fracking boom has likely resulted in “the biggest transfer of wealth in history.”
4. Excellent in-depth analysis of the preposterous claim that there is a “climate crisis, catastrophe, or emergency” or that climate change is an “existential threat,” from Dagfinn Reiersøl writing in Quillette.
5. Video of the Day (above). In the video above, Ezra Levant shreds the 11,000 “scientists” who “signed” (i.e., clicked) the “climate emergency” viewpoint that pretends to be “science.”
6. The Cost of Decommissioning Wind Turbines is Huge is what we learn from the Institute for Energy Research:
As with other aspects of renewable energy, the decommissioning of wind turbines was not planned out well in terms of their disposal when their useful life is over. Because wind turbines have a shorter life span than most other technologies, the dismantling of these units is already in progress in Europe and will soon be needed in the United States. Due to the size of the units, landfills do not have the capacity or equipment to break down the huge rotor blades. Repowering is being done in Europe and some turbines are resold to developing nations. But, needless to say, it is expensive to decommission wind turbines and who pays when the funds are not sufficient to cover the expense is an issue.
7. Video of the Day II (above) — Fracking Ban?! — is from the Clean Energy Alliance about the green nitwitery coming from some of the Democratic candidates who want to ban the advanced, revolutionary drilling and extraction technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling:
Have you heard what U.S. Democratic presidential candidates have been saying about hydraulic fracturing? Most of the front runners are calling for an outright ban. Banning fracturing would have immediate and wide-ranging negative consequences for the U.S. energy industry, the nation’s economy, and America’s national security.
8. How To Trigger A Global Recession? Ban Fracking says Mark Mills:
It is magical thinking to believe that shale production could be replaced quickly by wind and solar – at any price, and regardless of climate change motivations. To put this in perspective: since 2007, American fracking technology has added 500 percent more energy to markets than have all of the planet’s wind and solar farms combined.
Thus the wild card actually on the table this political season is whether America might literally pull the rug out from under the world’s economy. Consumers here and abroad might take seriously a phrase that’s become popular in our political lexicon: elections have consequences.
MP: That’s an amazing energy fact that since 2007, American fracking technology has added 500 percent more energy to markets than have all of the planet’s wind and solar farms combined. And that also explains the top two charts and energy milestones above. We Must Confront ‘Climate Change’ with Reason Rather Than Emotion
9. We Must Confront ‘Climate Change’ with Reason Rather Than Emotion is the title of an op-ed by Joe Nalven:
In 1841, Charles Mackay, a Scottish journalist, collected a series of such emotion-driven crowd phenomena that can be likened to current efforts to ramp up climate advocacy: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. There was the Dutch Tulip mania in the 18th century. The fascination of alchemists and their delusion of being able to turn base metals into gold. The Flagellants of the 14th century who whipped themselves, hoping to seek the pity of God or to rid themselves of the bubonic plague. In the United States, we might note the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century, or more recently, the Red Scare of the 20 th century. These are just a handful of public delusions that are a recurrent human social problem. Call it an outsized emotional reaction that spreads to a community (which is sometimes described as a mass psychogenic illness). It can be positive or negative, mild or frenzied, localized or uncontained and widespread.
That is the herd thinking to which we are susceptible. Mackay observed in 1841, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
That danger has always been part of the human condition. The challenge is to recognize it, to be cautious in participating it, and to avoid urging it upon the wider community when the cause is uncertain, ambiguous and unlikely to be solved by the frenzy of the masses.
10. Why Extinction Rebellion seems so nuts: The more dogmatic environmentalism becomes, the more it loses touch with reality is the title and sub-title of an article in Spiked by editor Brendan O’Neill:
Extinction Rebellion (XR) makes the same fundamental mistake as every naturalist misanthrope in history. It views population growth and humanity’s use of resources as variable and everything else, most notably human ingenuity, as fixed. This means its basic math, not to mention its morality, is wrong.
XR makes the same mistake as Thomas Malthus did, and as the early 20th-century eugenicists did, and as 1970s eco-extremists did. It sees humankind as merely a consuming force, never as a producing or imaginative one. This is why Malthus failed to foresee the Industrial Revolution, which obliterated his claims that humankind would starve; and this is why contemporary eco-alarmists fail to see, or simply ignore, the potential of the Nuclear Revolution – because these people have a jaundiced view of mankind as merely a user, an exploiter, a drain, which means they rarely appreciate mankind’s capacity for production and discovery and invention.
Greens have gone from talking about climate change to climate emergency to climate breakdown to climate catastrophe. These are not scientific terms; they are moralistic terms that express a fearful and often quite unstable view of humanity’s impact on the planet.
Why is XR like this? Because for too long green thinking has been insulated from debate and confrontation. Censorship has been deployed to deflect criticism from the green ideology. Anyone who raises questions about eco-misanthropy is branded a climate-change denier and efforts will be made to expel him or her from public life. The tragic environmentalist outlook has been forcefielded against rational, serious challenge, and in such a criticism-free vacuum green thinking has become more estranged from reason and more apocalyptic in outlook.
Censorship is the midwife of stupidity, and more importantly of dogmatism. When religious or political or moral ideologies are insulated from critique, they become dogmas. They become belief systems that are cleaved to, not because they have been tested and discussed in the public sphere, but because their adherents just know that they are right. These are the perfect conditions in which arrogance and intellectual hollowness can flourish, and in which defensiveness and fury become the default responses to any challenge from outside.
The post Tuesday evening links, all energy/climate hysteria edition appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.