“To ensure we maintain this dominant position long into the future … my administration is announcing today that export authorizations for American liquefied natural gas can now be extended through the year 2050.”

“Today, I’m taking another bold action to support energy jobs in Texas. In a few moments, I will sign four critical permits, granting approval to vital pipeline and railway infrastructure on our nation’s border.”

Last week, President Trump got back on the energy trail (see previous energy-related talks here, here, here, here, and here) with a speech at Double Eagle Energy in Midland, Texas. Some highlights of his talk follow:

“Thanks to the hardworking citizens like you, the United States of America is now the number one energy superpower anywhere in the world. …

“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.” – Fred Krupp (EDF), 2011.

Thirty something years apace, what can anti-CO2 activists claim for their efforts? Answer: not much, except for an incalculable amount of resources wasted to travel and politick around the globe.

Consider this bottom line. In 1988, the year the global warming alarm started, the global market share of carbon-based energies was 88 percent. Today, it is just a bit diminished at 85 percent. Total usage of natural gas, coal, and oil in this period increased by two-thirds, with CO₂ emissions rising 61 percent. Fossil fuels–dense, mineral energies–rock!

With this in mid, consider the article below from Greenwire (E&E News), dated April 5, 2011, by Colin Sullivan.…

“Plastic is light, easy to store and transport, comes in an endless variety of textures and shapes and can hold almost anything…. Unfortunately, plastic is much more difficult to recycle than materials like glass, aluminum or paper.” – Eureka! Recycling

The eco-snoops and lifestyle police don’t like plastic, the stuff of oil and gas. But the rest of the world lives by plastic–and benefits. The boom in feedstocks has produced a boom in plastic capacity. Reported Beth Gardiner for Yale Environmental 360 (December 19, 2019):

Companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic — which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts — to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels, analysts say.

“Hyperbole toward the Paris Climate Accord, joining that of the Kyoto Protocol, is over. Dense, mineral energies are the wave of the future, while dilute, intermittent, earth-defacing renewables are in trouble. Dana Nuccitelli–are you listening?”

“The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars,” read the Guardian headline on December 14, 2015. The subtitle to Dana Nuccitelli’s piece: “195 world nations have agreed to ignore climate science denial and cut carbon pollution as much as possible.”

This, in fact, was the same hyperbole following the Kyoto Protocol more than two decades before. “We’ve bet on the future, while others have bet on the past,” proclaimed Enron lobbyist John Palmisano from Kyoto, Japan in late 1997.

But the Paris Climate Accord would be different. “In stark contrast to the shortcomings of previous international climate negotiations,” Nuccitelli’s article begins, “the Paris COP21 talks have ended with an agreement stronger than most expected.”…