Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; As promised, Biden has launched a full frontal assault on the USA’s oil and gas jobs, while he investigates the impact of US domestic energy independence on climate change.
Biden administration suspends federal oil and gas permitting
3 MIN READ
(Reuters) – The Biden administration has temporarily suspended oil and gas leasing and permitting on federal lands and waters while it evaluates the legal and policy implications of the program, according to a Department of Interior memo.
The move appears to be a first step in delivering on newly sworn-in President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to ban all new federal drilling permits, part of his wider agenda to combat global climate change.
The order was welcomed by environmentalists and derided by the oil and gas industry, whose largest onshore drilling companies have stockpiled permits here in anticipation of a change in federal policy.
U.S. federal lands and waters account for close to 25% of the nation’s crude oil output, making them a big contributor to energy supply but also to America’s greenhouse gas emissions.
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Oil and gas industry trade groups American Petroleum Institute and Western Energy Alliance swiftly issued statements condemning the pause.
“With this move, the administration is leading us toward more reliance on foreign energy from countries with lower environmental standards and risks to hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in government revenue for education and conservation programs,” API President Mike Sommers said.
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-interior/biden-administration-suspends-federal-oil-and-gas-permitting-idUSKBN29Q2N1
This comes hot on the heels of Biden cancelling the Keystone Pipeline.
To be fair, nobody can say this is any kind of surprise – Biden promised to shut down US domestic fossil fuel production during the October Presidential debate. So in that sense he is keeping his promise to do just what he said he would do.
So what do you do if you are a soon to be unemployed fossil fuel worker? Biden has a plan – Biden thinks you should “learn to code”, get a job with a big tech company.
You have to wonder what his puppet-masters feel is the endgame.
It is really starting to feel like:
“The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Due process involved or just his royal majesty?
“…So what do you do if you are a soon to be unemployed fossil fuel worker? Biden has a plan – Biden thinks you should “learn to code”, get a job with a big tech company…”
Buttegieg said the thousands who will lose their jobs due to the Keystone XL permit cancellation will just have to get “different” jobs. Real thought and leadership there.
Biden signed 15 Executive Orders on his first day (and then had to have a long nap). Trump made a decision, had his staff work up a policy and order then signed them one a time to get action. Who believes Biden charged his not yet official staff to draft all these new orders before his first day in the Oval Office? Most likely he has not read them, would not understand the implications even if he had but simply signed away as his puppet masters demand. Welcome to the US deep state White House.
I” wonder if the folks who voted for Biden will have buyers remorse when gasoline prices and natural gas prices start rising.
Most of them will blame the increases on evil oil company executives and demand that the government nationalize the oil industry.
Remember Carter?
When the Arab oil embargo hit, they passed a law declaring that it was illegal to raise prices on existing oil wells. The long gas lines were the result of this law. The law and the lines were in effect until the law was repealed under Reagan.
It is highly unlikely most Democrats even remember that fiasco, much less learned any lessons from it.
Yeah, we’ll have climate change, that’s for sure. Just not sayin’ right now WHICH kind of climate will change. Depends on whether or not we can still cook with gas and have a refrigerator…. and a freezer…. and heat in the winter…. and so on.
I’m pretty sure Milankovitch will have some say in it too
Seen at the billboard of the OPEC cafeteria:
Under new management ! Get more bang for your payola! For “Honest Joe” Biden the highest bidder matters.
Here’s my question: if all carbon-based fuels were shut off everywhere and we had to use electricity to heat homes and cook food, how much CO2 would be lost in the atmosphere and how long would it be before the drastic loss of CO2 would:
A – shut off plant growth, which includes crops
B – make the atmosphere lose a significant heat load
and
C – change the weather systems drastically?
Roughly about 6% or less.
A- Never. Man made CO2 has no or negligible effect on plant growth. Transpiration/respiration from plants should sustain plant growth.
B – Never. Man made CO2 has no or negligible effect on atmospheric temperatures.
C – Never. Man made CO2 has no or negligible effect on natural weather systems.
It doesn’t matter whether we increase or decrease the amount of CO2 we humans release into the atmosphere, we will never be able to burn enough fossil fuels to significantly affect the climate.
Wrong on A. About half of the CO2 from fossil fuel burning remains in the atmosphere. About half has been used to increase plant life on earth, resulting in the observed increease of leaf area on earth.
How does a plant know which molecule to take up and which to leave in the atmosphere?
Plants prefer 12C over 13C. So they actually preferentially take up CO2 from fossil fuel emissions.
C12 isn’t just produced by fossil fuels as well you know. Fossil fuels release a mixture of both carbon isotopes as do plants. One of the big problems has been that you cannot identify what isotope has been released by what method – there is no fossil fuel ‘fingerprint’ in the different carbon isotopes.
Sorry should have read “all 3 isotopes” as, of course, C12, C13 and C14 are released by both plants and plant-based fossil fuels. C13 and C14 naturally decay to the lighter isotopes in the atmosphere, eventually decaying to C12 over a period of time.
Fossil fuels have almost no 14C. 13C is a stable isotope; it doesn’t decay.
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https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/isotopes/mixing.html
Fossil fuels (-28‰) are more depleted in 13C than the atmosphere (-8‰) and oceans (-10‰)
If half of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuel combustion was still in the atmosphere, the observed δ13C depletion would have been greater. The average δ13C of the terrestrial biosphere (-26‰) is about the same as the average δ13C of fossil fuels (-28‰).
Over the past 200 years the δ13C of the atmosphere has dropped from about -6.5‰ to about -8‰. Over that same time period atmospheric CO2 has risen from about 277 to 410 ppm. It all 133 ppm of additional CO2 came from fossil fuels, the δ13C would be about -13‰. Cumulative CO2 emissions over that time period have been equivalent to about 220 ppm. So, most of the 12CO2 we’ve emitted has been taken up by plants.
Apologies – not sure how I missed C13 being a stable isotope although I did note that C13 can be converted into C14 in a natural process and most of the C14 in the atmosphere today is ‘bomb’ C14 – created during atomic testing. Interesting that. So your point is either A – we’ve released a lot of CO2 from fossil fuels and about half has been taken up by plants or B – we’ve released less fossil fuels and relatively little has been taken up by plants. I admit I may have missed a point where you prove that the amount of fossil fuel CO2 released is greater than I obviously think it is.
The problem with trying to determine exactly how much of the atmospheric CO2 is from fossil fuels, is that we just don’t know enough about all of the natural sources, sinks and exchange processes. We’ve emitted more than enough to cover the rise… But the δ13C change indicates that most of those emissions didn’t stay in the atmosphere.
Maybe. The problem I have with that calculation is twofold – first, the alarmist message is that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years so presumably they can keep the sums simple- if they had to calculate the rate of C13 in the atmosphere vs fossil fuels on a faster turnaround of CO2, say one or a few years then the calculations would get hideously complex. Secondly the calculation assumes a simple relationship between plant and fossil fuel C13. However if, as alarmists would have us believe, fossil fuel emissions were at a lowish rate up until the 40’s or so then took off like a rocket then most of the fossil fuel emitted C12 can only have been taken up after this point which probably skews the numbers and anyway doesn’t give you a constant, linear progression on fossil fuel C13 ratios. Or am I grossly overcomplicating what should be a relatively simple relationship calculation?
It is complicated. However, we do know that we’ve moved a fair bit of carbon from geologic sequestration into the active carbon cycle mostly in the form of CO2. We have increased the total pool being exchanged. We don’t know how long that CO2 will remain in the active cycle… Could be decades to 100’s of thousands of years. That said, the atmospheric residence time of individual molecules is probably less than 5 years.
Reducing CO2 emissions over the long-term is a smart thing to do. However, it appears that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is very low… So there is no climate crisis/emergency.
Hmm. That last bit need not be said – having seen the long discussions on climate sensitivity I’m aware of some of the issues and I do realise the climate emergency is a non event. I am fascinated by the nuts and bolts of the processes though. If this hadn’t come up I wouldn’t have realised that C14 actually decays into N14 and cosmic rays hitting the top of the atmosphere can convert N14 into C14. Thanks again for the info David.
Sorry ignore the last entry – I’m obviously tired and rambling – tried to edit it and just fell outside the time limit. David- thank you, I think I do understand the issues a lot clearer after you spent some time explaining it. Estimated CO2 emissions should be much higher but if they were then C13 values in atmospheric CO2 should be far lower. We’re missing something somewhere along the line. Maybe.
We’re probably missing a lot of pieces of the puzzle.
“Plants prefer C12 over C13” Really? Or is it that C12 makes up over 98% of the CO2 so is just more commonly taken up? Not sure of that one.
“Prefer” wasn’t the best word to use… The plants aren’t actually making a choice.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/education/isotopes/stable.html
Yep. Got it. Photosynthesis discriminates against C13 over C12 in most or all plants but at a slightly different rate depending on the plant.
Actually probably not – warmth will encourage plant growth as well as CO2, as will water. The observed increase in greening may well be a response to a natural increase in temperatures preceding CO2 increase. I still stand by my answer.
Numerous studies showing that higher CO2 levels boost plant growth are out there.
Greenhouse operators often boost CO2 levels to 1000 to 1200ppm in order to boost growth.
I don’t disagree with you, it’s just that there are other ways of increasing plant growth apart from carbon dioxide. The difference between us is that I think that only a small increase in man-made CO2 has occurred, (incapable of causing that amount of greening on its own) and you seem to think that huge amounts of CO2 have been released, causing all of the greening. Not a huge difference really, just a matter of degree.
As others have pointed out, if the amount of CO2 that was generated by all the fossil fuels that have been burnt, had stayed in the atmosphere, the rise in CO2 concentrations would have been 2 to 3 times greater than what has been seen.
I’m willing to follow the data to where ever it leads.
If the increase in CO2 didn’t come from burning fossil fuels, where did it come from? It didn’t come from the oceans, even the IPCC is only claiming that they have warmed less than 0.01C over the last 60 or 70 years.
If you believe it came from increased volcanism, please id the volcanoes, also explain why the slope is so steady.
Even if you believe all that about CO2 affecting climate, Biden’s efforts will have no measurable effect on global climate. His efforts will most likely have a negative effect on the economy especially for working class Americans.
The US Federal government, under the Biden presidency, is going to be spending money like there is no tomorrow, yet at the same time COVID-19 pandemic effects have greatly reduced the amount of tax revenue that it will be collecting for CY2020 and 2021.
So what does financial “science” say should be one of the very last things the government should do under these conditions: eliminate revenue from the sale of oil and gas permits (and the associated royalty payments it can obtain from active production from those lands).
Good ol’ Joe . . . always promising to follow the science, then simply ignoring those very same promises.
Oh, yeah, let’s also stimulate the US economic recovery by choking down two of its major home-sourced resources: oil and gas . . . yeah, Joe, that’s the ticket! /sarc off
The people who run Biden believe that government spending is good for the economy, and that more spending is always better.
Remind me again who it is who has just run up record national debt?
One has to be willfully ignorant to continue to believe that we are not living through some kind of left leaning attempt at global economic destabilisation to bring in a new world order. The attacks on Western economies have been relentless. Fossil fuel based industry has created the biggest relief from drudgery and servitude in the history of humanity and it is relentlessly attacked for reasons of fake influence on slight and highly beneficial global warming. Fake concerns about the miracle fabrication and food packaging material plastic, are wasting untold fortunes on sorting plastic to landfill it. The second in a series of fake epidemics managed by left leaning useful idiots in WHO have driven the world economy into collapse through massive wealth redistribution via worthless PCR tests, unnecessary vaccines and crippling lockdowns. China continues to tie up resources around the world unchallenged and unhindered by even the faintest adherence to global warming ideology. American elections are massively interfered with by social media monopolies threatened by antitrust action and the MSM turns a blind eye to that and massive other election irregularities. Fake science about the effects of farming on the Great Barrier reef and on species extinctions threaten an agricultural industry that possibly in the only time in human history has driven the wolf of starvation from the door. Massive movement of production to China has crippled Western economies and the MSM is uninterested. MSM has become wholly unreliable, looking more like Pravda from the bad old days of the Soviet empire with the vast majority of people no longer trusting them and their ill concealed goal of sowing confusion. Western Civilisation is under an extremely well funded and well organised attack to destroy our economy so that a new, left leaning global tyranny can assume control. Before the Covid made it crystal clear how easy it is to strip people of their rights and rationality, I would have called myself misguided but now I am a full blown conspiracy theorist and anybody unwilling to entertain the idea of a global conspiracy should read the up on the history of left wing revolution as do gooders have crippled one state after another in their miserable legacy of treachery and incompetence
Sometime around $4.00 gasoline, the peasants will break out the pitchforks.
I remember paying $4.50 when I moved cross-country in 2008, no pitchforks then.
Maybe around $10.
Let’s be positive about this Biden insanity. At least they are actually doing what they said they would do, rather than simply promising to do things people would like them to do.
This may be a step in the right (in both senses of the word) direction by the Dems. People who voted for them can’t now say oh,. we didn’t think you meant our jobs, and our incomes or our investments would be sacrificed on your alter of climate nonsense
The easy option for the oil companies, is to stop supply into state agencies of all fuels that are now considered (by the Dems) to be counter to national security. A cold unheated White House and a freezing Capitol building, might focus minds into some rational thinking..
Here’s to hoping.
So, where is the GOP sponsored bill that would overturn Biteme’s EOs? To say they don’t have enough votes is not good enough. My observation is that there are plenty of warmists in the GOP.
$10 gas sells a lot more electrics. Energy independence is achievable solely by energy poverty. And the environment is just an excuse we use to do what we want.
“Biden has launched a full frontal assault on the USA’s oil and gas jobs, while he investigates the impact of US domestic energy independence on climate change.”
Really. What kind of an investigation will there really be?
Texas remembered. Pennsylvania did not.
The dead people who voted in Philadelphia don’t need oil & gas… 😉
Science, real science, has nothing to do with his decision. Follow the money.
I concur, over half of amerikans are delusional, and the other half of amerikans are socialist scum. Meanwhile, real Americans, not the cardboard cut outs, the paper ballots , know the score !!
Biden will bankrupt America and the world if he is successful in closing all fossil fuels. The costs of wind and solar are through the roof and on up to heaven !!! Complete nonsense and if you do basic research you will find they don’t work. Read a website STOP THESE THINGS to see how they are going in Australia. Constant blackouts and no electricity to heat or cool homes. This is not progress for humanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zPNgt2GWwg&t=5s
War for oil incoming
Even if one believes that CO2 affects climate even though there is no real evidence of it, Biden’s actions will have no measurable effect on global climate but will have adverse effects on the economy. Biden’s actions will hurt the economy primarily for working class Americans.If Biden really wants to significantly conserve on the use of fossil fuels then he should bet behind an effort to replace ageing fossil fuel plants with nuclear power plants.
You guys still don’t get it ?? Biden, and the demokratz party, wants you dependent on them, totally. And after they fix the prices at $7 a gallon, they will offer you a $ 1dollar, demokratz government discount . Then the media will praise the graciousness of your rulers !!
Well…we went from geniuses to,..hum…I lost my train of thought…ugh.
Au Contrair, Biden Stomps out Federal Oil and Gas Permits because it promotes independence, and monetary wealth, to the people, that know, he’s full of shit ,
On the brighter side, that oil and gas will still be there in the ground when the liberals get tired of freezing in the dark and decide it’s OK to bring it up.
It will start the destruction of our economy. That’s what the cabal wants – destroy economies, create fighting/friction inside our nation (all nations), and create endless wars. The triad! It’s infected all parts of our society.