“The case for a near-term peak in oil demand is certainly more plausible than that of peak oil supply, but its popularity reflects a degree of exuberance that is not warranted by the data.” (— Michael Lynch, below)

With the onset of the Pandemic, the anti-industrial image-makers went to work. The Pandemic was (somehow) climate-related. The shutdowns were a harbinger of a climate-constrained world. The (victimized) oil industry was too vulnerable as an industry and vocation.

And Peak Oil Demand was now here.

Nope. PR aside, oil dominates the transportation market. Get Americans back toward normal, and the planes, trains, and automobiles will be out in force. RVs too, as well as cruise ships.

The recent rebound to $60 per barrel signals a robust fossil fuel world to come as the population gets back to its traditional ways.…

“‘I think ultimately we’re headed for an era in which my grandchildren will be driving electric cars, powered primarily by renewable energy,’ [George W.] Bush said. Oil, he said, brings economic, environmental and national-security problems.

– Kate Galbraith, “W. is for Wind,” Texas Tribune, May 25, 2010.

Let history note that Enron and Texas governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry created an industry that consumers in a free market did not. With the help of the federal Production Tax Credit of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, since renewed 13 times, as well as the $6.9 billion CREZ transmission line, Texas became the wind power state on the backs of national taxpayers and in-state ratepayers.

Bush’s “America is Addicted to Oil” reference in his 2006 State of the Union address did not come out of nowhere.…

“One wonders what might have happened if over the last 20 years or so investors and generators had not been chasing the $21 billion worth of subsidies and benefits they received by building renewable generation in Texas.”

“With economics being about the unseen, not only the seen, it is fair to imagine a more robust, resilient power sector without the grand distraction of integrating intermittent renewables and otherwise ‘decarbonizing.'”

Much debate has ensued since Texas’s rolling blackouts last month in the face of an historic winter storm.

Poor winterization, lack of integration with the national grid, bureaucrats, deregulation, Enron (Ken Lay), and frozen natural gas pipelines have been targeted by politicians and media pundits.

However, the mainstream does not discuss the central player, renewable energies, except to say wind and solar were not the cause.…

“To think you are smart enough to control nature and you must force people … to obey? That is the same kind of despotic behavior we have seen out of the worst tyrants.”

– Joe Bastardi (quoted below)

A recent E&E News article, “Fringe weatherman advised Abbott before deadly Texas storm” (February 25, 2021), is the latest marginalization job on a “climate science critic.” Author Scott Walderman begins his piece as follows:

Days before a historic snowstorm crippled his home state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sought advice from an unusual source: Joe Bastardi, the go-to weather forecaster of Fox News host Sean Hannity.

The hit piece (against Bastardi, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Abbott) goes downhill from there with ad hominem.

Here are the Bastardi quotations in Walderman’s piece:

By Bastardi’s telling, the conversation with Abbott wasn’t groundbreaking or controversial.