Press release:
The America First Energy Conference examining the scientific, economic, and political foundations of the America First Energy Plan will be gathering in Houston, Texas at the J.W. Marriott Hotel on Thursday, November 9, 2017.
This conference will bring together some of the country’s most prominent energy policy experts including:
- Myron Ebell, Director of Energy Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
- David Legates, Professor of Climatology, University of Delaware
- Anthony Lupo, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Missouri
- David Schnare, Director, Free-Market Environmental Law Clinic
- James Enstrom, President, Scientific Integrity Institute
- Robert Phalen, Professor of Medicine, University of California-Irvine
- Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph
- Mark Krumenacher, Senior Vice President, GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc.
- Isaac Orr, Research Fellow for Energy Policy, The Heartland Institute
- Roger Bezdek, President, MISI
- Nick Loris, Energy Economist, The Heritage Foundation
- Craig Idso, founder, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
- Michelle Smith, farmer and rancher, VP of Land at Quiat Companies
- Hal Doiron, NASA Engineer (Apollo Project) The Right Climate Stuff
Additional speakers to be announced soon include a senior member of the Trump administration, a state attorney general, and leaders in the energy industry.
Panels and speakers include:
Energy and Prosperity
- Roger Bezdek
- Nick Loris
- TBA
Climate Science
- Anthony Lupo
- David Legates
- TBA
Shale Oil and Gas Revolution
- Mark Krumenacher
- Isaac Orr
- Bud Weinstein
Future of Coal
- Two coal executives talk; moderated by former coal executive
Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide
- Kevin Dayaratna
- Ross McKitrick
- Paul Driessen
Energy and Agriculture
- Craig Idso
- Will Happer
- Michelle Smith
Reforming EPA
- Steve Milloy
- David Schnare
- David Stevenson
No Judith Curry!! For shame!
AGW apostle heads EXPLODING everywhere !! 🙂
No, chuckling would be a better word.
The more intelligent (the cynical and cunning, i.e., the enviroprofiteers and envirostalinists) ones will be “exploding.” The dull ones, the poor befuddled blighters they pay (or not, heh) to keep the AGW brand promoted, will laugh. Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools. …. .Ecclesiastes 7:6.
For an energy conference, the line-up (so far) is kind of devoid of energy industry people.
David Middleton
Good point.
What I don’t get is, is this a Heartland Institute event or is it officially backed by President Trump? Is it part of the Red Team/Blue Team initiative?
To me, it doesn’t look like it’s anything more than a Heartland Institute event (as good as they are).
Now that I’ve read the current full list of speakers…
JOE LEIMKUHLER
Vice President of Drilling
LLOG Exploration
http://americafirstenergy.org/cr3ativspeaker/joe-leimkuhler/
LLOG has successfully developed Macondo… 🖒🖒
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/138570/drilling_to_start_at_macondo_reservoir
David,
“Leimkuhler graduated from the University of Montana in 1981 with bachelor’s degrees in Geology and Forestry”
Interesting. My late father in law was a UN Senior Forester, he managed major forestry projects across the globe including Nigeria, Burmah, Cuba and Peru, to name but a few, that will be operational in hundreds of years time.
He despised the greens, condemning them as ignorant do gooders with no grasp on reality.
His views on deforestation were also enlightening, stating it had nothing to do with regulated commercial loggers who treat forests as their ‘farm’ to be cared for and invested in. He knew from first hand experience that most deforestation is conducted by unregulated loggers, wrongly slandered as ‘illegal loggers’. He saw these unregulated loggers as merely a response to local demand for fuel and commerce; villages, towns and cities in developing countries rely on wood for cooking and heating so citizens naturally chop down trees to live. He was also the first to promote fossil fuel use to eradicate this problem.
If Leimkuhler is as practical as my FIL, he’ll be a convincing speaker.
David,
I thought the same thing when I read this. The social-economic implications of the horizontal completions revolution cannot be overstated. Without this, consumer energy costs would be 2 to 3 times higher than they are today, and the Obama economic doldrums would have been a full blown depression. And don’t just invite the majors to this conference, they were MIA when this technical development occurred. This was a true entrepreneurial success story, which is still evolving.
I was glad to see that the VP of Drilling for LLOG is scheduled to speak. LLOG is “little oil”… But they were able to successfully develop the Macondo reservoir (BP/Deepwater Horizon blowout)…
https://www.epmag.com/llog-eyes-macondo-block-well-811491
A brilliant idea. Now we need to see whether the MSM gives its any coverage or chooses to deride its participants, along with giving massive coverage to protestors against the conference. It will be very instructive.
Well, the coverage will depend on the credibility of the participants
to me this looks like ‘the usual suspects’ from a group of fossil fuel/Koch rightwing/Republican think tanks
If you were really interested in US energy you would have renewables experts there… whatever your opinion on renewables, billions of dollars worth of investment has gone into wind and solar and renewables supply a lot of US energy. Renewables have a significant and expanding footprint.
Sounds like some of the RIGHT people to me
And YES billions of dollars worth of investment has gone into (the) wind
Coverage will be minimal to nil. Nothing to do with credibility
In Griff’s world, credibility is measured by how well the person sticks to the party line.
Bryan, did Griff actually try to claim that the fact that billions have been spent on renewables as proof that investing in renewables is a good thing?
@MarkW
No, Griff’s point was that since renewables are consuming so much investment capital they have earned the right to be heard. Sort of like, the Communist Chinese aren’t very nice people, but they rule the largest population on earth so when governments meet to talk, you can’t really exclude them.
To maintain credibility they just need a couple Hollywood celebrities and a windmill in the corner
“If you were really interested in US energy you would have renewables experts there…”
Ah yes….the usual government welfare capitalists masquerading as tech innovators.
Perhaps allow Fossil Fuel People to make presentations during the morning/afternoon while the facility is run on Fossil Fuels and then allow the Renewable Energy People make their presentations in the evening while the facility is run exclusively on Solar/Wind.
If need be, we have a trailer mounted Fossil Fuel (diesel) Generator (Mobile Sub Station) that can be hooked up in an emergency and power a good section of a Electric Grid Circuit. I wonder how big a renewable trailer mounted generator would need to be to do the same job??
So Griff, I assume you also dismiss any reports out of groups funded by George Soros, Tom Steyer, the Rockefeller Foundations and of course any spin offs of John Podesta’s clearly left wing “Center for American Progress” including, but not limited to, ClimateProgress.
Yes billions have gone into “renewables”, but is is a matter of debate whether wind and solar supply “a lot of US energy”. As you know, hydro and wood burning stoves make up the bulk of the “renewables” and those are not what are under discussion.
“billions of dollars worth of investment has gone into wind and solar and renewables supply a lot of US energy. Renewables have a significant and expanding footprint.”
Why are so many of your comments nothing but platitudes?
In Houston, huh? Wonder what the parking situation is downtown.
You can’t even tell there was a hurricane or flood just over a month ago. The conference isn’t downtown. It’s in the Galleria (Uptown) area.
Houston just hosted the SEG conference last week.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/07/houston-is-open-for-business/
That’s the beauty of capitalism for ya.
Should have added UK and German speaker to let them see and feel what’s what in the future economy of the USA as a contrast to the terminal policies of Europe and its bid for third world status.
Yes, it needs some German speakers… Germany has expanded its economy while achieving 35% renewable electricity, turning off over half its nuclear and having the world’s most reliable grid.
“Germany” does not have its own grid, northwestern Europe does. You need to count in France, Norway, Poland, etc as contributing to the stability of the grid. It is precisely parallel to a US state, linked to other jurisdictions with other energy policies. The others in this grid are having qualms about Germany’s dumping effectively subsidized power into the grid, producing severe pricing distortions.
All depending on how to use statistics:
Weimann notes that according to the Ministry of Environment, wind and solar energy in 2016 made up only 3.3% of Germany’s primary energy supply and that so far it represents only a “thimble” of the energy that is needed.
Giff, Germany’s economy is currently powered by 35 coal plants (lignite and anthracite).
Griff,
Germany’s households pay the full price for the “Energiewende”: the highest tarriffs in Europe after Denmark, the world’s wind Champion. Tariffs for industry (still) are low, as the steel- and chemical industry have treatened to move out with any new investments if these go up…
They have installed 110% capacity in wind and solar (about 60%-40%), besides keeping 120% capacity in “conventional” power, mainly (brown)coal and (new) gas. The latter as main replacement of closed nuclear plants and fast backup for wind. See:
https://www.energy-charts.de/power_inst.htm
If there is full wind, they dump their surplus at the neighbours. If there is little wind and no sun, they use (brown)coal and gas all the way… See:
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&week=40&year=2017 for this week and push on “import, export” and compare that with the production in weeks 2-4, mid-winter when there was European wide hardly any wind and little sun…
Tom Halla
““Germany” does not have its own grid, northwestern Europe does. ”
Well, I understand that there are clearly marked boundaries on the synchronous grid of Continental Europe (also known as Continental Synchronous Area; formerly known as the UCTE grid). See Wiki…
The feed-in to that grid is monitored so in effect there are national grids with interconnections. Germany is being sued for dumping ‘renewable energy’ below cost onto the grid because they are forced to buy it from producers even if not needed. Dumping violates the WTO rules. That suit is only sustainable if the grid can be isolated, conceptually and by measurement.
Griff: Germany’s grid is not even close to being the world’s most stable. The number of human manual interventions required to save that grid from collapsing, at least in part, has risen from a few times per year not long ago to more than 400 now. That danger is the direct result of adding so much intermittent wind and solar power sources. There are also inevitable problems with AC frequency harmonics which may soon overwhelm many systems that pass a certain threshold. Wind, in particular, brings far more problems that just its intermittency.
Stable grids? Quebec, which is >4 times the size of Germany.
This should evoke paroxyms of indignation by green NGO’s and their political supporters.
Why? Its just the usual suspects selling the usual (fossil fuel/Koch) line.
nothing to see here…
Ed, you are as delusional as Michael Mann….and I’m really quite tired of your B.S. accusations. You’ve crossed a line.
Get it through your head. None of these people are funded by Koch, Heartland’s energy and climate programs are not funded by Koch (though a few years ago they did have a government health care risks education program that had a small donation from Koch, but no longer), and I myself have NEVER taken a dime from Koch.
You exhibit the typical lazy attributes of climate activists worldwide: you don’t acquire new information, or seek to correct information you have in your head, but instead, lazily rely on regurgitated memes from social media.
Be as upset as you wish, but don’t make that claim again on the pages of this website.
Ha ha,
Agree with Anthony here,since this funding fallacy stupidity has been ongoing for so long that most skeptics quit countering the irrelevant funding claims,since it is so BOOOOOOORIIIING!
I quit posting evidence that most Koch/big oil funding claims are flat out lies or highly misleading,that doesn’t contribute to the debate at all. It is a waste of time to deal with this 20 year long funding babble,with warmists who never get past that dumb fallacy, onto real debates.
When warmists bring up this dead claim,it is a sign that they are too lazy or ignorant to debate the details of the topic. The Conference hasn’t even started yet,with no papers available to publish,yet already Griff attacks it without any credible argument.
So dumb.
Just another ploy utilized by activists and Scientologists alike
Don’t answer your question or try to defend their position, instead, turn the discussion back around on you and force you to defend false accusations.
Lazy logic and conspiracy theories.
The only Koch welfare queens impacting climate policy are the ones from Berkeley Earth.
http://berkeleyearth.org/funders/
$150,000 bought them a whole lot of “unrestricted” data tampering
https://imgur.com/a/Jz0Vv
Falsehoods, fabrications and pure delusion, griffiepoo ed.
Billions wasted on overpriced bird/bat killing land wasting wind and solar. Pure parasites.
Utterly dependent upon fossil fuel, nuclear or hydroelectric energy generation; since wind and solar energy sources are unable to supply consistent quality energy.
I’m not crazy for the use of “America First” in the title. Imagine a conference titled “America First Food Conference”, or “America First Defense”, or America First Medicine” or “America First Monetary”. You get the idea. It’s a red herring. Of course we should be doing what is in our own best interests. Why wouldn’t we?
I think simply calling it an “energy conference” would suffice.
The “America First” phrase insinuates, correctly, that unqualified, or “unmarked,” “energy policy” is usually rest-of-the-world first.”
“Of course we should be doing what is in our own best interests. Why wouldn’t we?”
Because for much of the previous few decades, we haven’t, and especially during the last 8 years. Furthermore, an entire generation of individuals are being educated to believe that such a thing is anathema to the “moral” human living in a global environment.
Let the “America First” mantra continue unabated.
This needs to be the beginning of a series. If it’s a ‘one and done’, it’ll be far to complex to allow more than cursory attention.
From the event web site: “Trump has already turned back years of Obama’s anti-energy policies, allowing the United States to once again emerge as a global energy leader.”
Yet domestic production increased from 5M barrels per day to 9.6M during Obama’s Presidency. The US became a global energy leader again during Obama’s Presidency, not after. What a joke of an accusation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/06/us-oil-output-to-hit-record-10-million-barrels-a-day-next-year-eia.html
Obama did everything he could to impede oil & gas production. Unfortunately for him, the shale revolution took place on State and private mineral leases.
All of the increase in oil & gas production came from areas not under Federal control:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42432.pdf
Ha ha ha…,
I was thinking up a similar,the states did it reply,but you did it much better than I would have done.
I knew all along that most of the growth was on NON Federal lands,amazing he didn’t know since it is so easy to find the information.
Obama did nearly as much damage to oil production from the Federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico as hurricanes Lili, Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Ike – combined.
Damage from Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Ike suppressed production by 568 million barrels from September 2005 through June 2009.
Obama’s unlawful drilling moratorium and “permitorium” suppressed production by 435 million barrels from November 2010 through July 2015.
Fortunately, those 435 million barrels are still there and accessable
The point is that the production was delayed. Just like it was with the hurricanes. In the private sector, the time value of money is a real thing.
Production delays often leave the oil unaccessible if it results in the field becoming uneconomic and premature abandonment.
And that is a very good point
I’d like to see more nuclear related topics and names such as Rod Adams of Atomic Insights. It also seems weighted towards conservatives and skeptics. I’d like to see someone like Michael Shellenberger.
David Middleton
Are you going to attend?
I spent about 3 years at 2323 McCue. The Galleria was our “after supper” walk. It was nice and safe place to get in 5 miles. Many, many out of country folks there.
I seriously doubt it. I can’t justify putting the $349 on my expense account or taking a day off work for it. I’m sure some of the discussions will be interesting… But it appears to have little to do with oil & gas exploration. Although the talk by LLOG’s VP of drilling would be interesting if its about their development of the Macondo resource.
Deepwater projects usually get creative names. We named some of ours after Caddyshack characters and the Bushwood country club. LLOG’s host platform is called Delta House and the fields are named after Animal House characters. LLOG renamed Macondo, “Niedermeyer.”
Wrt the ‘Koch’ note above, some time ago I heard our Lord Krebs say that all ‘deniers’ were funded by the fossil fuel industry. He is the chair of the Climate Change Committee and I took his slander as a personal uinsult. That such a prat should be where he is beggers belief. Recently he suggested that building regulations should be recast to take account of impending heatwaves, the idiot. In U.K. It’s cold that kills
“Wrt the ‘Koch’ note above, some time ago I heard our Lord Krebs say that all ‘deniers’ were funded by the fossil fuel industry. He is the chair of the Climate Change Committee and I took his slander as a personal insult.”
Alarmists and Leftists need to demonize someone or something, as part of their tactic to undermine the credibility of anyone they are arguing with. So they associated you with that Demon, and they claim Koch or the NRA are in control of the Right, which do their bidding like puppets on a string, and therefore anything the Right does can be dismissed as a product of Big Money Influence and has nothing to do with the facts.
“The Koch brothers did it” is on a par with “97 percent”. It’s a debating tactic, although don’t doubt that many on the other side believe wholeheartedly in the Big Money Boogey Man on the Right.
So when you argue climate change subjects, alarmists, in order to dismiss your arguments, claim the Koch brothers paid you to say that; or they say, “But 97 percent of scientists agree with me”.
See how easy this argument is to make: Koch brothers, or 97 percent doesn’t take much brainpower to repeat over and over again. It’s a lot easier than actually knowing all the facts of the issue.
I plan to attend the conference and would like the chance to put
a face to a name if others from WUWT plan to attend.