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Naturally Hot, Exaggeration Not
By Kennedy Maize -- October 21, 2024“What has come to be known as ‘weather attribution,’ research assigning causation to observed weather events, is fraught with methodological problems. Veteran climate scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr. in his Substack publication The Honest Broker calls it ‘weather attribution alchemy’.”
Last year was hot, unusually so. The global temperature was almost 0.3°C above 2022 levels, so much higher that even conventional analyses of global warming didn’t appear to explain it. As a recent article in Science magazine notes, iconic climate scientist James Hansen was suggesting that a new, air-pollution-driven warming mechanism might be at work. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt posited that a novel, unknown force could be involved.
Wrong, says a team of six climate scientists led by Shiv Priyam Raghuraman (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana). The culprit is more likely the familiar climate confounder, El Niño (technically, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO).…
U.S. Offshore Wind: GE Vernova’s Big Problems
By Kennedy Maize -- October 3, 2024“European energy companies Orsted, Equinor and BP have taken a combined $5 billion of writedowns on U.S. offshore wind projects that are mostly in development, in part because their existing power sales contracts would not cover the cost of building and financing the projects.” (- Reuters, below)
Facing a series of costly physical problems and a becalmed market, GE Vernova, the largest offshore wind turbine developer in the U.S., has informed European authorities that it plans to lay off up to 900 workers around the world as it scales back its offshore business. The Maritime Executive reported that the General Electric wind development spinoff notified the European Works Council for France of its planned downsizing.
Under EU law, member states have established councils to “facilitate the information and consultation of employees with a focus on transnational issues….”…
The Department of Interior (Project 2025)
By Kennedy Maize -- September 6, 2024The Heritage Foundation’s 922-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project) prominently includes political prescription for various energy and environmental reforms in the U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and Environmental Protection Agency.
While Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the document, it is virtually certain that if elected, he would move swiftly to try to implement the blueprint. Many of its authors were his appointees in his administration and likely would lead his government beginning in 2025.
The Heritage project for the Interior Department programs and policies is back to the future. Essentially, the chapter wants to erase the Biden administration’s policies and actions, many of which replaced Trump administration policies.
After describing the roles of the far-reaching agency, the chapter lays out its goal:
…Given the dire adverse national impact of Biden’s war on fossil fuels, no other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons, much of which is yet to be discovered.