FEAR is being used to control us by the Climate Change Wackos

[dan_s]

FEAR is a powerful emotion. It works to control the "cattle" because most people don't do any research and just believe what they are told over and over by people who's primary goal is to retain power. Have you noticed that none of the stuff we've been told about Global Warming has come true?

By Irina Slav January 29th

“In every corner of the country and the world, people are suffering the devastating toll of climate change. Historic hurricanes and floods wiping out homes, businesses, and houses of worship. Wildfires destroying whole neighborhoods and forcing families to leave their communities behind.”

This is the opening paragraph of President Biden’s statement on the pausing of approvals for new LNG export capacity. It is a very good intro as intros go, setting the tone of the whole statement, stating the most important part of the message, and, of course, invoking negative emotions.

These days, it’s a top priority to scare and depress people if you’re in politics, regardless of whether you’re a regional party functionary in Europe or, indeed, the president of the United States.

I do have a slight doubt most people would ask “What historic hurricanes?” given that the past three years have been relatively unremarkable and last year was a huge disappointment as far as apocalyptic visions go but it doesn’t matter. If a scare must be had, a scare shall be had. In this case, however, there was more than one scare. And the second one is the more important — and painfully pathetic — one.

The Biden administration paused approvals for new LNG plants under pressure from environmentalists. The pressure began building last year, when green activist Bill McKibben, of “We must develop an aesthetic appreciation of wind and solar installations” notoriety, presented in the New Yorker a study on LNG.

The study was authored by a person who calls himself “a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist” and teaches at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell.

In this study, Robert Warren Howarth claimed that LNG is devastatingly worse for the climate than coal. And this is why, per Howarth, “ending the use of LNG must be a global priority.” Something tells me the world would beg to differ but this has turned out to be unimportant, trumped by climate fears — or should I say voter loss fears.

“From Day One, my Administration has set the United States on an unprecedented course to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad,” the Biden statement continues, listing record investments, “unlocking clean energy breakthroughs” and, last but not least, “rallying world leaders to transition away from the fossil fuels that jeopardize our planet and our people.”

Right. Okay. Those would be the same “fossil fuels” President Biden urged the industry to produce back in 2022 when prices were going through the roof. They would also be the same “fossil fuels” that he promised in abundance to energy-strapped Europe and the oil and gas industry once again delivered on that promise and made some nice, fat profits, which the federal government taxed appropriately and with glee.

And then Venture Global said it wants to build a second, bigger LNG export plant. It got an approval for it and an approval to sell the LNG to countries, with which the U.S. has free trade agreements.

The project ran into a wall while it was awaiting its non-FTA export permit. To make it all more interesting, Venture Global is being sued by several European supermajors for violating its supply contracts for its first plant, Calcasieu Pass, to sell LNG on the spot market. I find this to be one of the funniest stories from the energy world.

The reason the CP 2 project ran into a wall was an anti-LNG campaign that got too loud to ignore in the White House. Campaigners from Louisiana and Texas say the explosive growth in LNG capacity along the Gulf Coast is hurting local communities with extra pollution. Them I am inclined to believe — living around an LNG plant or a refinery is probably not the healthiest experience however stringent regulations are.

Then there are the teens that carried “Ban LNG” posters at the COP28. And, of course, there’s McKibben and there’s Howarth. And then there was, according to the New York Times, a 25-year-old influencer by the name of Alex Haraus, who led an online campaign to kill Venture Global’s CP 2 project. The White House apparently invited this influencer to a meeting to discuss his and his friends’ grievances.

Let’s repeat that, shall we? The White House invited a 25-year-old influencer with 700,000 followers on TikTok and about 100,000 on Instagram, to inform a decision that could end up cancelling 17 LNG projects — and billions in profits with the related federal tax revenues.

Now, let’s imagine that all of the people who follow Alex Haraus on TikTok and Instagram are Americans of voting age. That’s 800,000 potential votes in the next elections. How significant are these numbers, when we know that the total number of Americans eligible to vote is more than 255 million as of 2022 and that in the 2020 elections, voter turnout came in at 66% of that eligible population?

Well, the significance is relative. In absolute terms, 800,000 potential voters is not a whole lot in a country with a total 255 million voters. But if you’re a party that fears it might not win unless it mobilises all the votes that it can, these 800,000 potential voters could become significant — assuming, let’s repeat this, that all of these people are indeed Americans eligible to vote.

This is quite an assumption, indeed. And it’s not the only one, either. Because there is a bigger assumption behind the Biden admin’s decision to “pause” approvals for new LNG capacity and this is the assumption that most of the Democrats’ voting base are as concerned about climate change and methane’s effect on it as Alex Haraus. That’s not as safe an assumption as it might seem.

A Pew Research Center survey from a year ago revealed that climate change is a relatively minor concern for most people in the U.S. Some 37% of respondents in that survey said it should be top concern for the president and Congress to address in 2023. This compared with 75% saying that the top priority should be strengthening the economy and 57% saying reducing crime and improving education should be the top concern. Horrible people.

Not only this but another Pew Research survey, from October 2023, found that “Only about one-third of Americans think climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is happening,” and I don’t mind telling you I laughed out loud at this. < MY TAKE: Great news that 1/3rd of Americans can actually see what BS the Climate Change Wackos have been spreading.

So, let’s do a rough recap. Most Americans of voting age have bigger problems than climate change and they want these problems solved first. But the President, whose approval ratings, by the way, are at an all-time low of 33%, chooses to prioritise climate change over the economy by “pausing” the approval of export facilities that could deliver some substantial — and much needed — tax gains over the medium to long term.

But, the White House tells us, “The U.S. is already the number one exporter of LNG worldwide – with U.S. LNG exports expected to double by the end of this decade.” Well they won’t double if you suspend approvals for new projects.

Even if the pause is indeed a pause and not the start of a slow death for LNG capacity growth, the very fact of it must have made some potential investors think twice about putting their money in a Gulf Coast LNG plant instead of a plant anywhere else where such “pauses” would be a lot less likely. I’m thinking Africa, for example, or Asia.

To be honest, I don’t believe this pause is the start of a slow death for LNG in the U.S. But it is the start of a squeeze for the LNG industry because the federal government will use the pause to tighten environmental regulations for LNG producers. That never bodes well but especially in this case. Thanks to Howarth’s study, LNG producers might reasonably expect to be forced to eliminate all sorts of methane emissions.

This would inevitably mean higher production costs for their liquefied gas. This, in turn, would mean lower profitability in a context with plenty of competition on the global LNG market. Shell, BP and Repsol might never get the cargos they signed up for with Venture Global — or at least not at the price they signed up for.

But, some might object here, there is growing demand for “clean” LNG, i.e. LNG with the smallest possible methane emissions footprint. Indeed, several years ago I was assured by a person active in the certification of methane emissions from the energy industry that demand for this sort of LNG was on a strong rise, and not just from Europe.

I do still have my doubts, however. I mean, seeing how countries that couldn’t afford LNG when Europe prompted a surge in prices chose to replace it with coal rather than borrow money to buy the gas, it’s hard to believe methane emissions are a big priority for most of the world.

Yet they are a priority for Europe. Last November, the Brussels Brain Trust agreed caps on methane emissions from oil and gas imports, to go into effect from 2030. These caps will force anyone who wants to sell gas to Europe — in whatever form — to invest in methane leak elimination. Europe really likes it natural gas as expensive as it can possibly make it. And its friends across the Atlantic seem to be happy to oblige, by “pausing” new LNG capacity.

The pause will probably be temporary. But the methane reduction regulations that are no doubt coming, and soon, will take care of a lot of planned LNG projects by making them unprofitable. Because methane emissions matter. And if there’s no one to clip your international energy dominance wings, why, then you should clip them yourself.