JOE Biden may call it the ‘Putin price hike’, but the root cause of our energy crisis has been festering for years.
In this Forbes article, Tilak Doshi details how the oil and gas sector in the West has been starved of investment as a result of Government climate policies, pressure on banks from governments, central banks and regulators not to lend to fossil fuel companies, the activities of eco-activist investors, woke hedge funds, judicial decisions, environmental roadblocks and a lot more.
Biden himself repeatedly stated before the election that he would phase out fossil fuels.
Instead oil companies are happier using surplus cash for dividends and share buybacks, or ploughing money into the heavily subsidised green trough. Anything for an easy life!
Unsurprisingly, supplies are tight and prices rocketing. At the moment the imbalance is still tiny – after all, we can still buy the stuff. The frightening thing is that this major shock to the global economy is just a taste of what the Climate Alarmist Cult has in store for us.
We need only recall what the International Energy Agency proposed last year. A so-called Roadmap set out more than 400 ‘milestones’ on the global journey to Net Zero by 2050. ‘These include, from today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and no further final investment decisions for new unabated coal plants.’
An immediate ban on all new oil and gas projects would be catastrophic for global energy markets.
According to the anti-fossil fuel organisation Global Witness, such a ban would quickly lead to substantial cuts in production. By 2030, oil output, for instance, will have fallen by 40 per cent:
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/oil-gas-and-mining/overexposed/
It does not take an Einstein to work out the effect this would have on markets, prices and consumers. Not least when world demand will have continued to rise, Paris Agreement or no Paris Agreement.
It is impossible to predict how much prices would rise, as we would be in uncharted territory. What is certain is that those who could not afford energy would have to go without.
Those of us old enough will recall the oil crisis of 1974 caused by the oil embargo following the Arab-Israeli War. Global prices tripled, yet curiously global oil production actually rose slightly in 1974, (though it fell by 5 per cent in 1975). Nevertheless we were on the verge of petrol rationing in the UK: I remember getting ration coupons.
Less memorable, for some reason, was the 1979 oil crisis, precipitated by the Iranian revolution, which led to a 4 per cent decline in oil output. Crude oil prices doubled, and there were fuel shortages and long queues at petrol stations. This energy crisis was in large part responsible for the global recession of the early 1980s.
Both of these short-term crises were tea parties compared with the global shock the IEA’s policies would instigate. Those earlier crises were quickly nipped in the bud by new oilfields being brought on stream to make up for shortages. Global oil production, for instance, was already 22 per cent higher in 1979 than in 1972, before the Arab-Israeli War.
But in the IEA’s world, there will be no such recovery, only a long contraction. In the IEA’s fantasy world, none of this matters because we will get all the energy we need from wind and solar power.
In the real world the results will be cataclysmic. So far we have been talking about abstract numbers, but the effects of such a collapse in the supply of energy will go way beyond a hit to our wallets or even a bit of rationing. The economic dislocation would be severe, with mass unemployment. There will inevitably be civil disorder and riots, poverty and starvation. Societies will be destabilised and governments overthrown.
And all in the name of a baseless fear.
Fortunately, I suspect that most of the world will refuse to follow the West down its suicidal path. But if they were ever in any doubt, the past 12 months have surely been a warning of what lies in store if they do.
Sea level Alarmist in Chief is at it again
Fairbourne, West Wales
I SEE that the Alarmist in Chief, James Bevan, has been up to his tricks again. According to Sky News: ‘Some British coastal communities will “inevitably” be forced from their homes as climate change eats away at their shores, the head of England’s Environment Agency (EA) has warned.
‘Sir James Bevan, the EA’s chief executive, said that climate change means “some of our communities cannot stay where they are”.
‘He told the Flood and Coast Conference in Telford on Tuesday: “While we can come back safely and build back better after most river flooding, there is no coming back for land that coastal erosion has taken away or which a rising sea level has put permanently or frequently under water.”
‘Sir James said that this means the “right answer . . . will have to be to move communities away from danger rather than try to protect them from the inevitable impacts of a rising sea level”.
‘Although he said it is far too early to say which communities are likely to move in due course, the Welsh village Fairbourne has already been told it will have to relocate as Gywnedd Council cannot maintain flood defences indefinitely.’
In reality, there are very few communities which face Bevan’s threat that ‘they cannot stay where they are’, because of sea level rise, certainly not in our lifetime.
Even Fairbourne, which has been the subject of regular scare stories in recent years, is under no immediate threat. Although it was built on a salt marsh, certainly not the sort of site where you would dream of building houses now, it is protected by a sea wall and sea levels across the estuary at Barmouth, less than two miles away, have not risen at all since 2000.
Monthly Mean Sea Levels at Barmouth
https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1771.php
Sea levels around Britain are typically rising at a long term rate of 2mm a year.
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-161
What is more significant when it comes to sea flooding are peak tides, usually the coincidence of storms and high tides. The last such peak was in the winter of 2013/14.
Ironically Sky themselves covered this story shortly afterwards, apparently before they caught the global warming bug. They interviewed some of the villagers, who rubbished the alarmist claims, for instance:
‘Alan Jones finds the council’s decision [to abandon Fairbourne] on the village’s future ludicrous. The 2014 storm, whose overspill preceded the decision, left, he says, one conservatory flooded. “How can they predict what’ll happen in 40 or 50 years’ time? They can’t get the weather right for next week,” he adds.’
According to Wikipedia: ‘The best estimate at present is that the area will be abandoned between 2052 and 2062, though the range of uncertainty is between 2042 and 2072. This is based on a rise in critical sea level of 0.5 metres.’
But at the current rate of rise, it will take 250 years to reach 0.5 metres.
As the villagers sensibly point out, why all the alarm now, which is hugely damaging to their property values. This irresponsible scaremongering by Bevan is a source of great worry, not to mention financial consequence, for communities like Fairbourne. It has no basis in facts, and is purely intended to scare the public into accepting the suicidal Net Zero agenda.
