What could be better than SNL for examining Biden Administration energy policies?
Paul Driessen
As Covid lockdowns eased this past year, people all over the world went back to work and play. But while oil, natural gas, coal and electricity demand predictably shot up, President Biden canceled and hyper-regulated pipelines, leases and drilling permits. European leaders took similarly shortsighted actions. Inadequate global supplies chased rising global demand, and prices predictably skyrocketed.
Regular gasoline that averaged $2.17 per gallon in 2020 hit $3.49 in November 2021, costing American motorists $17 more to fill their tanks.
Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm laughed it off, saying, “If you drove an electric car, this wouldn’t be affecting you.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg echoed her flippant comment; so did White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
President Biden begged Russia and OPEC to produce more oil, siphoned oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and told the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by American oil companies. Meanwhile, his administration and their environmentalist allies continue pressuring banks and financial institutions to deny loans to oil and gas companies and refuse to invest in them.
Less charitable folks among us might wonder if the Marx Brothers or Bevis and Buttheadgeek are now setting energy policy. Others might channel Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin, and their raucous Saturday Night Live skits. A current events version might go something like this.
Den Astroyd: Hello, I’m Den Astroyd, host of Weekend Update. Despite recent setbacks, President Biden remains committed to “Building Back Better” and “transforming” America away from oil, gas and coal. During tonight’s Point-Counterpoint, Jan Granski will take the pro-transformation viewpoint, and I’ll take the anti-transformation counterpoint.
Jan Granski: Den, only a complete climate crisis denier and fossilized idiot like you could possibly oppose replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. If we don’t, Earth will fry, icecaps will melt, coastal cities will be inundated by rising seas and destroyed by hurricanes, and precious wildlife will be driven to extinction. But when haven’t you ignored reality? You’re a capitalist pig who lives to line the pockets of Big Oil. You think every American should have a big house and fly or drive wherever and whenever they want. You don’t give a damn about preserving a livable climate and planet, you jerk.
Den Astroyd: Jan, you ignorant slut. Your climate crisis exists only in worthless compute models and your fevered imagination. Your pals’ real objective is amassing more power, while they make commoners freeze jobless and hungry in the dark. Saving the planet? What a joke. Under your asinine policies, China will eat our kungpao lunch, while it spews out more greenhouse gases every year and turns our planet into a massive open pit mine and toxic waste dump – to extract raw materials needed to blanket our country with bird-killing wind turbines and habitat smothering solar panels. And you’ll just keep hopping into bed with any Climate Industrialist who’ll pay you twenty bucks to shill for their greenbacks energy scams.
I miss SNL’s old spunk and mojo. But you only have to look at the actual evidence to realize Michael-Mann-made climate cataclysms exist only in junk-science computer models that rely on the bogus assertion that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide has replaced the complex, powerful, natural forces that have always governed Earth’s climate and weather.
The slight rise in actually measured average planetary temperatures is less than half of what climate models predicted (chart on page 5), and the discrepancy gets worse every year. Moreover, increasing CO2 is greening our planet, helping forests, grasslands and crops grow faster, better and with less water. Indeed, the worst possible outcome is a colder climate with less atmospheric CO2. That would shrink arable land, shorten growing seasons, reduce plant growth, and starve humans and animals.
As horrific as recent (and all) tornadoes are, 40% fewer strong to violent tornadoes (F3-F5) hammered the United States the past 35 years than the three decades before that (1954-1986). And the history of hurricanes making US landfall since 1850 shows no consistency, pattern or upward trend. In fact, the only reason climate alarmists can claim an increase in Category 3-5 hurricanes in recent years is that Harvey, Irma and a few others came after a record-setting 12-year absence of powerful hurricanes hitting the USA (October 2005 to August 2017).
As to buying an electric vehicle to avoid more pain at the pump, that’s a lot easier for jet-setting, limo-riding elites than it is for Average Joe families. The sticker shock of $50,000-100,000 EVs is just the beginning. If you want a fast charge when you get home, you’ll have to upgrade your neighborhood and home electrical systems to 220 volts – and hope AOC’s utopian wind and solar power cooperates.
Europe’s wind turbines performed at barely 14% of their “rated” or “nameplate” capacity during the fourth quarter of 2021. That’s barely one day per week; four days a month. It means you’ll also need expensive PowerWalls, to ensure backup electricity during extended blackouts when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
Pray, too, that you don’t get stuck in a blizzard. Even if you turn off your heater, the cold will quickly kill your EV’s battery. Don’t get caught in a traffic jam trying to escape the next fiery conflagration roaring through a mismanaged California forest, either. And be careful where you park your EV, as those half-ton battery modules have a nasty habit of bursting into flames that cannot be extinguished easily.
If you still insist on buying an EV, please think about the poor kids and parents slaving away for a couple dollars a day in cobalt and lithium mines. Pay Fair Trade prices, so that they can get living wages.
Any Net Zero economy means a lot of turbines, panels and batteries – and a lot of mines, processing plants and factories to extract the raw materials and manufacture the non-renewable equipment.
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. calculates that replacing all US fossil fuel use (today’s electricity generation, home heating and cooking, factory power, and vehicle fuel) with “green” electricity would require over five million 2.5-megawatt, 650-foot-tall wind turbines, sprawling across two-thirds of the continental USA – or solar panels blanketing 40% of that land mass – plus thousands of miles of new transmission lines.
Give some thought too to what we’re going to do with all those turbine blades, solar panels, battery modules and other “renewable” energy equipment when they’ve reached the end of their productive lives – often in just 10 or 20 years. We’re going to need some massive landfills. Perhaps the Grand Canyon?
“Clean, renewable, sustainable” energy, my eye.
Keep one other thing in mind. Democrats, environmentalists, bureaucrats and judges despise mining, processing and most manufacturing. Very little will happen in the United States – and it can’t be done without fossil fuels. It will happen overseas, under minimal environmental and safety safeguards.
That means China, India and other countries will continue burning fossil fuels for all these operations, and to lift more people out of abject poverty. That means it’s pointless for the USA, Britain, Canada, Australia and Europe to “decarbonize” their economies – and send their economies down the toilet – while all these other countries keep growing, mining, manufacturing and emitting greenhouse gases.
A final reality: Africans, Asians and Latin Americans will no longer tolerate living in huts and slurping gruel – under the eco-imperialist, carbon-colonialist, energy-Apartheid rules that rich-country environmentalists have been imposing on them.
In fact, Americans and Europeans aren’t going to tolerate Net Zero decarbonization much longer, either. Especially to “save our planet” from a nonexistent manmade climate crisis.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
Good report, Paul, and a great way to start the New Year. I also miss the original Saturday Night Live, and sometimes view short clips of some of the more famous skits. Here’s one that might be more appropriate for our current situation, as you outlined above:
Emily, if we don’t maintain back-up generators, which utilize fossil fuels, then many persons, perhaps even you, might starve in the dark when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
Emily Litella: Oh, I might starve in the dark? Then NEVER MIND!
“Jane, you ignorant slut” is the sort of line cancel culture did away with (as well as SNL being funny).
Luckily now we have Ricky Gervais who doesn’t hesitate to say stuff like that and much more.
It was better when he used the line
”Jane you ignorant mis-guided slut”
The CAGW crowd are such easy targets for sarcasm, satire, mocking, and ridicule, that it’s positively an embarrassment of riches.
Unfortunately, most people won’t see such witty comments since they don’t read this blog- where such wit if finely tuned. :-}
Mr. Bill and Mr. Bill McKibben, amazing likeness. Oh no…..
I’ll be honest I know naff all about SNL – save that it’s apparently way out to the left, but
“SNL”
Doesn’t this programme have a certain English expat, one John Oliver?
It’s a curious phenomenon. Some people, bands, acts etc just bomb in the UK and find their fortunes abroad – like John Oliver has. He was just another vin ordinaire stand-up.
I’ve heard it said that [some] Americans are captivated by an English accent, which is funny because:
“Channel 4 once turned down John Oliver as host of a satirical show because they didn’t like his accent. Ironically, the British broadcaster ruled him out when they were looking to ape the success of The Daily Show in America.”
https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2018/01/31/39034/revealed:_why_john_oliver_had_to_go_to_america_to_find_success
You don’t get much further left than Channel 4 (owned and operated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport)
Yes, Americans think the Brit accent is hilarious- but the Scotch accent even more so.
Phew It’s good to know that what we think of diverse American accents is evenly matched over there.
You have a quaint lingo!
Y’all fortunate to have us Yanks over here preservin’ the purity of the English language.
Scottie on Star Trek was hilarious, tho he wasn’t actually Scottish.
Yes, he was canadian just like Capn Kirk
Clearly he wasn’t a Scott because he never wore a kilt- in the spaceship.
He did in “The Wrath of Khan”.
well, yuh gotta give the Scots credit as warriors- going into battle wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes
The Germans didn’t call them ‘The Ladies From Hell’ for nothing. It has been said that the Scots, in the distant past, dropped their kilts entirely when charging into battle. In those days the Kilt was a full body garment and very valuable to a poor crofter. Their fear of pissing off the wife by damaging it in battle exceeded their fear of the fight itself.
… and those pipes can strike fear in anyone backed by the wail of a few hundred naked, blue died highlanders coming at you full tilt.
Caesar describe the Gauls looking similar- scared the hell out of the mostly 5′ tall Roman soldiers. It was Roman discipline that won the battle but before he left Gaul, Caesar had to kill a few million.
… and Roman engineering that won the wars.
Actually, as I understand, the Scots went into battle having divested themselves of their kilts. It must have been a horrible sight seeing all those hairy lads bounding through the waist-high thistles, screaming…
Yeah … that’s what I wrote above. The ancient kilt was one long piece of cloth, used for everything from bedding to entire outfit. For some, there was no sense in damaging it in battle. Mind you, it was also a form of cloth armor that could deflect a sword cut.
A dinna ken, laddie, but if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!
An here’s t auld lang syne!
Aye, but you mispelled cr-r-r-r-r-r-rappp!
Oliver is not too infrequently ‘taken to task’ by comedian and political entertainer Steven Crowder on his “Louder with Crowder” program starring also Dave Landau …
Google search of those videos (tinyurl used so link is short):
https://tinyurl.com/yhwdznwp
“Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm laughed it off, saying, “If you drove an electric car, this wouldn’t be affecting you.””
If you’re rich enough to afford an electric car, you probably don’t care what energy costs. Not understanding this shows immense insensitivity to ordinary people with modest incomes- the people the Dems are supposed to care the most about.
From “Let them eat cake” to “Let them drive electric cars”. Some things never change.
The Dems know there won’t be anything close to a quick transition into EV cars. Their plan is to make the costs of owning and operating an ICE car so unaffordable that mass transit is the only option for anyone who isn’t filthy rich.
the elites want to limit the mobility of hoi polloi. Easier to control and manipulate. Independent news and opinion cannot spread rapidly.
I believe the covid quarantines were intentional in order to prevent the spread of individual knowledge and experiences of the virus so that almost everyone was getting controlled news from corporate media outlets
Exactly right! They condescending to the “deplorables, bitter clingers, dregs of society,” in other words, the working people who don’t buy into their utopian socialist narrative.
I have an acquaintance who leans towards the greens who recently purchased an EV.
I asked him had he considered the true cost of owning an EV as replacement batteries are extremely expensive when they need replacing.
His reply “Oh I will trade it in for a new EV before then”
I have just replaced a factory fitted battery in a my wife’s petrol car just 3 years 1 month from new.
What will a second hand EV be worth if the purchaser could be faced with a very large bill for a new battery pack at any time.
Ms. Granholm is out of her mind. Electric cars take much more expensive raw materials in unprecedented amounts than any other option. All the expense of making, building, and supplying electricity make them much more expensive with little if any reduction in resources or the horrendous CO2 molecules
A reasonable alternative is well-designed hybrid cars. They can produce similar performance to similar standard vehicles but they get nearly all the available efficiency that can be had from fossil fuels. The hybrid design would bring all vehicles nearly up to diesel engines which fairy routinely produce some 90+ percent of the available energy in fuels. Their main draw back is their poor power to weight ratio for vehicles and the more noxious pollutants in the exhaust. Diesel engines are most effective for large trucks, long range transport, use in ships, where they and turbine engines are unopposed.
Volvo recently said that building an EV produces 70% more emissions than building an ICEV. The main reason being the mineral resources required, especially for the battery. They calculated that the EV would have to be driven for 4 years before it became less emission producing than an ICEV.
We have a Tesla recharging station in a local shopping center. It has about 15 charging points. Everytime I go by, the charging points are full, and there is a line of very expensive cars doing nothing but waiting to be charged.
so- not sure how they work- if someone parks their car there to charge it- then goes shopping- and stays shopping after the car is fully charged- they’ve got that charger not working- perhaps they should have to pay if they leave their car after its charged
“Pray, too, that you don’t get stuck in a blizzard. Even if you turn off your heater, the cold will quickly kill your EV’s battery.”
So, for those who don’t own a garage to store their car in nasty winter weather- say it’s very cold overnight- maybe zero F. Will an EV even start? I presume that anyone who owns an EV now can afford a garage- but when we commoners are forced to buy them, also paying for a new garage will be out of the question.
Make sure the garage is not attached to your house.
You can’t drive far in your garage.
But you can hire Bill Clinton to redefine what “drive far” means.
Yes, indecent can be defined as in all the way.
Detached garage with firebreak that is.
I see an increased demand for garages designed with kiln rated material.
High refractory garages are all the rage among the very woke Tesla owners.
You can’t even charge the battery if it gets below 32F.
wow- didn’t know that- so this is worse than I thought- a friend of a friend just got one- I’ll have to discuss this with him- maybe he’s got a nice warm garage, but he likes to ski- so I’ll have to ask if he’s heading up into VT or NH and how he’ll charge it in cold weather
Maybe go skiing in July?
What? Just trying to be helpful.
I read somewhere that if you use fast chargers a lot it degrades the battery life. Unfortunately didn’t keep reference.
“In fact, Americans and Europeans aren’t going to tolerate Net Zero decarbonization much longer, either. Especially to “save our planet” from a nonexistent manmade climate crisis.”
The Dems are going to get smashed in the next election cycle- especially if Republicans constantly blame the Dems for high energy costs- that’s all most people need to hear. The switch back to the right should be the end of all this net zero idiocy.
That’s our hope. Things are looking good so far.
“Never interrupt the enemy while he’s making mistakes”. They couldn’t have planned that better by installing Zhou Bie-Den and Kamala. Next year should be fun to watch as they err with greater and greater depth and creativity.
“Next year should be fun to watch”
The Democrats are going to get more desperate as it dawns on them that they are heading towards losing their majority political power.
““In fact, Americans and Europeans aren’t going to tolerate Net Zero decarbonization much longer, either. “
I’d like to believe you. So, how do you see that happening?
Most of us don’t mind slow and careful change- but few like revolutions- which don’t go so well for the French and Russians. It’s the old debate from the 19th century.
I think a cold winter with blackouts and fuel short for heating will do the trick. I’m not wishing for this misery for Brits and Euros but the total lack of preparation by doctrinaire leaders, their failure to sign a low cost deal with Russia because of the ‘optics’ in the seventh year of a worrying cooling trend…
I’m Canadian and understand well that you can’t muddle through such a situation in winter. If you can lay hands on a potbelly stove and cut some illegal wood or even get coal, I would advise this or some alternative if you are not in your own house.
It’s possible to sell almost anything under ideal conditions, but come winter in Northern countries (especially here in Canada) it’s another story entirely.
Don’t count on it. The Dems are confident they can steal the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. With good reason.
Joe Manchin or no Joe Manchin, it’s why they haven’t stepped back one bit from their plans regardless of the opinion polls.
Or they’ve stepped up because they know their time in power is short?
Time will tell.
2022 is make or break. The Dems will move heaven and earth in using lawfare attacks on private citizens and on public election officials to thwart the efforts of the election integrity reform movement.
They will also be upgrading their vote fraud machine to handle the challenges of the 2022 mid-term election cycle.
I agree with you inasmuch as assessing the intentions and hubris of the Democrats. However I don’t think even they can pull off a second “palace revolt”, like 2020. Not even the media and BLM (or equivalent) will help them now. “There Will Be Blood“. Too many people expect it and are already preparing.
Yes … they have no sense of history … don’t know about those French problem solvers …
😉
Joseph, no matter who is elected the Deep State continues to roll along. The “movers and shakers” all bounce around between political gigs, government bureaucracies and NGOs. The Deep State cares only about increasing personal and governmental power at all levels. I don’t see that changing.
but if the political turn around is strong enough- the Deep State can be defeated- it needs to be rooted out- we need such a change, what with China on the rise—
strange, but when I about 12, around ’62, my sister was dating a guy- who joined the navy after high school- just a regular guy- when he was on leave he told me that what the military feared the most wasn’t Russia, it was China
supposedly Napoleon said, “Let China Sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world”- well, it’s happened- Mao said, “The Chinese have stood up”
so the West had better clean up its act- and I don’t say that as some far right guy- I’m an independent
The biggest defense against China (and Xi’s biggest hurdle) is Confucianism. It is even more counter to communism than the Western free market.
humor…the best medicine.
Excellent article.
The “freezing in the dark” meme may be closer to reality than we think.
With a half dozen friends partying at my house over Christmas, we didn’t immediately notice the house cooling off. Christmas cheer was flowing liberally.
My NG heating system had began cycling off and requiring manual restarts every few minutes. Not an ideal situation with outside temperatures hovering around minus forty.
Luckily, I have an electric backup system that I turned on which was able to bring my house back to comfortable conditions in a few hours.
It wasn’t until the next day that I learned that our electric providers in Alberta had asked us to conserve electricity as they were nearing capacity.
From the error codes I believe my gas system was suffering from low gas delivery and pressure. I am at the end of a line. The electrical squeeze was apparently because of a lack of wind. Shades of Texas!
We made it through with the help of extra blankets. I still had two 3000 watt generators for further backup but my gasoline supply would only have been good for a few hours if used for heat. Closer than I like to a complete shut down. I am now considering a wood fired backup as well because a loss of heat in an Alberta winter can be catastrophic.
Because of federal pressure, Alberta has been replacing coal fired generation with NG and wind. That action has certainly not warmed our winters and it certainly has not improved my opinion of our Liberal government and their climate fighting policies. They have forced me to fight a very cold climate with expensive alternative heating systems and backups.
I am nearing 80 years of age and have survived similar cold snaps many times with much more primitive equipment but I cannot look forward to a return to warming my feet in a cookstove oven, breaking ice in the water bucket, or visits to an outdoor biffy in -40.
Okay, this is a story about an almost situation, but it may be an early warning.
You know it’s going to get worse before anything else happens
Nice rant. Too bad comedians today don’t have the courage to do traditional, purposely unpolitically-correct comedy like the old SNL. RIP Norm Macdonald.
If you will or could, take a gander at comedian Steven Crowder’s work and see if this is the ‘cutting edge’ that SNL used to do:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIveFvW-ARp_B_RckhweNJw
I think it’s the likes of Monty Python the world needs more of.
It is an unescapable fact that net-zero will cause temperatures to SOAR!
In their discussion of atmospheric aerosols, NASA states that “Stratospheric SO2 aerosols reflect sunlight, reducing the amount of energy reaching the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface, cooling them”. And, anthropogenic SO2 aerosols, from the burning of fossil fuels, “absorb no sunlight but they reflect it, thereby reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface”.
Conversely, if the amount of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere decreases, temperatures will inevitably rise.
In 2019, the atmospheric loading of industrial SO2 aerosols was 79 Million tons (down from 136 million tons in 1979, due to global Clean Air efforts).
The drive to net-zero, and a “Green Energy” economy, by banning the burning of fossil fuels will cause a further decrease in SO2 aerosol emissions. and an observable increase in average anomalous global temperatures.
So, globally, trillions of dollars are being spent to lower Earth’s temperatures,with no effect other than to cause them to rise.
A recent example of Global SO2 aerosol emissions is shown below:
More Cowbell!
Bar Cpde:
Not very bright, are you?
Another version:
Den Astroyd: Joe, you ignorant slut….
As the saying goes;
” You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.”
cheers
Excellent stuff Paul. But, one thing I guess I am never going to convince you of is that your ‘kids and families slaving away in awful cobalt mines’ is away over the top. Yes there have been abuses, particularly when Hutu tribesmen briefly enslaved these traditional workers during the time of the Rwanda massacre. I would like you to know your concerns also are the hyped promotions of the same dark side you fight so well against.
It is a given that in any region endowed with valuable mineral resources in Africa, Latin America (in Brazil they are officially known as garimpeiros) and Asia, families engage in mining and tend to be much better off than their compatriots in non mining regions.
The government’s protect their access to such employment, and to varying degrees provides advice on techniques and safety. Moreover, global mining companies, like Glencore operate large, modern, safe, clean cobalt mines and concentrators, staffed with well paid Congolese miners that produce most of the cobalt.
Okay, so what do I know about all this. One of my duties as an employee of the Geological Survey of Nigeria in the mid 1960s, was to provide technical assistance to indigenous miners of tin in hardrock and placer deposits – mineral identification, survey of deposit, mining, and processing (constructing an efficient sluice box with an added, simply made heavy mineral jig) to meet concentrate specs acceptable to smelters.
Also assisted local development of a high grade lead-zinc deposit I discovered in a regional map area I was working on. Local farmers had cleared scrub forest for planting and had rough-broken the soil. A white stripe across the clearing about a meter wide turned out to be the mineral anglesite, lead sulphate from oxidation of galena, lead sulphide.
Other work with indigenous entrepreneurs included development of a building stone quarry and stone sawing plant in Tanzania in the 1980s funded by the government (the stone is an 8m thick layer of volcanic ash (welded tuff) at the foot of Kilimanjaro. And other projects elsewhere.