By Robert Bradley Jr. — March 21, 2022
“We are on a war footing—an emergency—and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply…. And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can.” (Secretary Granholm, March 9, 2022)
“Believe me, it would take a fool to not see that this empress has no clothes.” (RLB, below)
I have been in the business of criticizing the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) ever since it was created in 1977. And I have never read a more fanciful and pitiful speech than this one. Yes, it is very well written (whoever the speechwriter was). But how do you square the circle; and how do you eat your cake and have it too?
We are in a climate crisis, right? It is an “existential threat,” states President Biden. It is “without exaggeration, about survival,” states John Kerry.
So why does the scripted, puppet Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm come begging Big Oil to rev up oil production, carbon dioxide emissions notwithstanding?
It’s all politics. But the hypocrisy of resetting the reset, however short-term it might be, is boundless. (And many on the Left remain quiet, although a lot of true believers are going into rehab or trying to deal with their raw anger.)
Believe me, it would take a fool to not see that this empress has no clothes.
Excerpts from the DOE Secretary’s speech of March 9, 2022, follow (subtitles added):
More Oil Please–We Appreciate It
President Biden announced yesterday that the U.S. will ban Russian oil imports…. Bravo to BP, Exxon, Shell and others in the private sector who are withdrawing from Russian operations. But there’s more to do….
We are on a war footing—an emergency—and we have to responsibly increase short-term [oil and gas] supply where we can right now to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families…. And that means you producing more right now, where and if you can….
So yes, right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand….
For over a hundred years, the oil and gas industry has powered our nation and gotten us where we are today. We are eternally grateful for that….
Climate Emergency Too
And at the same time, the war in Ukraine isn’t the only thing sending shock waves through the energy sector. We’ve also got to reckon with the impact of climate change—and the clean energy transition that isn’t just coming; it’s here.
Don’t Fuss
You all know that – you’re wrestling with it yourselves: your investors are demanding climate action. And your customers are demanding climate action—seventy percent of voting Americans support the clean energy transition….
I get it—this is beyond hard…. But we can’t do it if we are fighting internal battles. Some people here (or at least lobbyists and Beltway politicians) seem to think this is the time to recycle old talking points.
Not Biden’s Fault
People are arguing that if a pipeline that wouldn’t have even been in operation by now were still under construction, the situation with today’s oil prices would somehow be different.
Or that President Biden’s policies have decreased production, when we are actually at record levels of natural gas and LNG, and will be at record levels of oil production by next year. When there are over 9,000 onshore drilling permits that are sitting unused. We all know that’s the same old DC BS.
Take Our Bribes!
Aren’t we ready to finally work together to confront this moment of crisis…and come out stronger on the other side?
I’m here to tell you that the Department of Energy, and the entire Biden administration, is ready to work with you to seize the opportunity of clean energy.
That means we have to deploy clean technologies as fast as possible—but we’re under no illusion that every American will get an EV or a heat pump tomorrow or next month or next year.
It is a transition…and we’re pragmatic about what it means. We know it won’t happen overnight. And we’re serious about decarbonizing while providing reliable energy that doesn’t depend on foreign adversaries. That means we’ll walk and chew gum at the same time….
And we are here to work with anyone and everyone who’s serious about taking a leap toward the future…by diversifying your energy portfolio to add clean fuels and technologies, like many of you are starting to do or have been doing…by creating good-paying jobs for your talented workforce in the energy industry of the future…and by reaping the rewards of a clean energy market that will exceed $23 trillion by the end of the decade.
Maybe you’re excited about clean hydrogen. Maybe it’s carbon capture and storage. Maybe it’s offshore wind… geothermal… lithium from geothermal brines… sustainable aviation fuels… EV charging…you name it.
We’re ready to partner with the private sector through the $62 billion that Congress just gave us in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Most of that funding is going out through competitive grants…and we’re eager to receive your best and most innovative ideas.
I’m here to extend a hand of partnership…because we’ll only be able to meet these challenges of oil and gas supply and climate change by working together.
Ukraine … Clean Energy?
For me, Putin’s actions and the resolve of the Ukrainian people give me even more determination to get this energy transition right….
And we want you to power this country for the next hundred years with zero-carbon technologies.
Good History?
It’s often hard to see history in the making. But we’re on the cusp of the most important transition human society has ever seen. I hope we’ll look back at 2022 as the year the world took giant steps to improve energy security and tackle climate change.
And to do that—to be on the right side of history—we need to work together. Let’s start now.
Nowhere did I see a mea culpa, that Biden and pals policies contributed to any of these problems, or that Biden was changing course.
They are constitutionally incapable of understanding their own hypocrisy.
I’m slowly grinding through Iain McGilchrist’s magnum opus, The Matter With Things.
McGilchrist points out that the two hemispheres of the brain attend to things in very different ways. The left hemisphere has intense focus on getting hold of things. In a bird, it solves the problem of plucking a seed out of a bed of gravel. The right hemisphere pays attention to the environment in general. It notices the cat sneaking up. Obviously, the bird won’t survive unless both of its hemispheres are working.
There is a pile of evidence about what the two hemispheres do in humans. There is clinical data about people who have had left or right hemisphere strokes. There have also been many split brain experiments where one or the other hemisphere is temporarily incapacitated.
The right hemisphere understands context. It is the brain’s BS detector.
The left hemisphere is very good at procedures. On the other hand, it demands certainty. When presented with something new, it gloms onto the first reasonable sounding explanation that comes along. If it is later presented with evidence that explanation is wrong, it will ignore it. If no explanation is presented, the left hemisphere will make something up.
The symptoms of left-hemisphere-only thinking are remarkably like schizophrenia and autism.
We do have an existential problem. Our education system causes the right hemisphere to atrophy. The more education, the worse it is. As far as I can tell, the most afflicted become liberals. Just as a bird can’t survive if both its hemispheres are working, neither can society. A society based on deluded thinking can’t survive.
Defund the universities.
Their philosophy (e.g. religion or behavioral protocol “ethics”) is constructed from emanations from penumbras or Twilight Fringe (i.e. conflation of logical domains).
The more education, the worse it is. As far as I can tell, the most afflicted become liberals. Just as a bird can’t survive if both its hemispheres are working, neither can society. A society based on deluded thinking can’t survive
CB, I haven’t the foggiest whether it still holds or not but I was taught many years ago in Psych 101 that assigning functions to different sides of the human brain was only valid for right-handed people. The brains of lefties were so scrambled they weren’t sure if they’d ever figure ’em out, and us ambies are even worse :<)
For a long time hemisphere laterality was an academic no-go zone because it had been hijacked by pop psychology bs. As far as I can tell, McGilchrist has put it back on a solid footing.
In The Matter With Things, he talks a bit about left handedness. I could be misremembering, but I think the hemispheres of left handers generally follow the standard rule.
The general rule is very simple. The left hemisphere focuses narrowly. The right hemisphere pays attention to the environment in general.
I strongly recommend this video which is entertaining, enlightening, and a little less than 12 minutes long.
If you like McGilchrist, you should watch his interview with Jordan Peterson on youtube. Mind blowing stuff.
Beyond limp
“And we want you to power this country for the next hundred years with zero-carbon technologies.”
Depends on what you mean by “zero-carbon” technologies Mr. DOE Secretary. If you are talking about nuclear power, then I suggest you put the taxpayers’ money where your mouth is….into current and future generation nuclear power technologies. I do not think the fossil fuel industry is heavy into nuclear.
If you mean wind and solar, forget it unless you are okay with dependency on China for solar panels and the raw materials to manufacture them….AND a much larger footprint on the Earth than fossil fuels currently require. And ask how many Americans are willing to fly across the country (or across the Atlantic or Pacific fort that matter) in a solar battery-powered aircraft. Not me.
Somehow I doubt that the current DOE Secretary has much (if any) background in the physics, economics and engineering of electricity generation. His technical illiteracy, like that of most politicians, is the bane of anyone who understands the technical complexities of energy generation.
Excuse me, Ms. DOE Secretary. Forgot it was a woman.
Your forgetfulness in this area is just an indication of enlightened you are.
I believe that’s Ms. DOE Secretary, although still technically illiterate.
Yes, I know. See me comment at 6:48 pm.
They just mean until the midterms and after that all bets are off and it’s back to nonsense and overreach in the extreme like other dictators holding all the cards.
Granholm was the worst governor in the country when she was governor of Michigan and she hasn’t gotten any smarter. What a ridiculous bunch of hypocrisy, lies, and misdirection.
as a resident of michigan, i agree.
What is truly sad is that the republicans that controlled the governor and both chambers of legislature after her did nothing to roll back her renewable energy policies that have so harmed fellow Michiganders.
Here in UP there is a small solar energy farm erected by a local company and I wonder in the dead of winter during an eight inch snow fall how much they can possibly get from it. Or the couple of wind mills in Mackinac City.
Waste all of it!
And, even though she grew up in Canada & lived in Michigan, she is still clueless enough to think we can use heat pumps in our winters. She & Kamala both need to be sent back to Canada.
You can keep them, we’ve got enough idiots as it is.
Winter heat pumps all depend on where your heat source is. Mine is underground, which works fine 🙂 (not cheap though)
“this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …”
[Obama, June 3, 2008]
“ . . . we’re on the cusp of the most important transition human society has ever seen. I hope we’ll look back at 2022 as the year the world took giant steps to improve energy security and tackle climate change.”
[Jennifer Granholm, March 9, 2022]
The echo comes back with new words but the same schist.
Good comment, John. Jennifer, born in Canada, first degree in Political Science at Communism West (Berkeley), brief career as actress, then Professional Liar Degree (Juris Doctor) from Harvard, and she is qualified to be head of Department of Energy? Where she is acting out her “Net Zero” fantasies?
All current energy pricing happened on Biden’s watch, under Biden’s policies and Biden’s appointees. But it’s not his fault. It’s somebody elses.
The war on fossil fuels is about to become a much discussed subject. Lots of people are going to be interested in knowing why they are going to have to give up their lifestyles as an outcome of the destruction of the fossil fuel industry perpetrated by the radical Democrats.
Real people vote their wallets, not future utopia.
It sure is a good thing all those imaginary people vote 100% Democrat, or we’d never get that future Utopia.
…Wait…
“Lots of people are going to be interested in knowing why they are going to have to give up their lifestyles as an outcome of the destruction of the fossil fuel industry perpetrated by the radical Democrats.”
The destruction of the fossil fuel industry will not “merely” require people to give up their “lifestyles”: it will mean that they give up their lives. This country can’t sustain its population with 19th century technology and agriculture, and a total cessation of fossil fuel use would bring about the death by starvation of most of the population within a few months.
It happened in Ukraine in the 1930s, by intent of the most progressive leader, Joseph Stalin. To those who say “it can’t happen here”, I have to disagree – it’s already happening.
The idiots who believe in the climate emergency and vote that way will go to their deaths freezing in the dark thinking that they are saving the environment and it was all worthwhile.
And never once suspecting they’ve been scammed.
And never once giving a thought to the rest of us they are dragging down with them, just so they could feel good about themselves without having to think too much.
Mr. Abbott: “about to become a much discussed subject.” I agree, but the discussion appears to be dems saying “net zero” and Rs who try to hide under the desk because they fear the enviro lobby. There has already been much empty discussion.
If you have a strong stomach:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/27/remarks-by-president-biden-before-signing-executive-actions-on-tackling-climate-change-creating-jobs-and-restoring-scientific-integrity/
And now Brandon is on his knees to other countries begging for the fossil fuels we need but have right here at home that his policies and Executive Orders have cut off.
(Long before Putin reared his ugly head.)
LOL
ROFL +100
We’re getting close to understanding what doing without fossil fuels and not having any backup will do to us.
I would love to see where this came from “seventy percent of voting Americans support the clean energy transition”. Maybe at $1 a month or even $10 but surely people should catch on that the $10 more every time they fill up is just the start of the costs
We are already at $20 more per fillup.
Hah!
In CA it’s nearly 3X that!
I’m at about $5 more per fillup.
When the system starts hiding costs (ex: government funding for RE-increases taxes, but with no clear association to the tax paying citizen) it becomes very difficult to establish where the increases are coming from. If they decide to start following the Oz pattern and begin blowing up the old power stations, the costs of going back will become phenomenal.
If it is just to be for a temporary transition period why would any investor comply with their demands.
A one way ride to insolvency.
What a crock. I am sick and tired of my government lying to me. Day in and day out it is the same old tired and worn out lies. There is no climate emergency it was made out of whole cloth, then repeated adnauseam. There is no energy crisis it also was manufactured and again repeated adnauseam. Drop the climate emergency and everything else automatically goes back to normal. These people make me sick.
How unfair, Energy Secretary Jennifer takes her important job very seriously indeed:
I think Putin is laughing harder than that.
Apart from hydro there is only one proven low-emission technology that works brilliantly but is not mentioned.
Who cares about emissions, the CO2 levels are practically starving the plants.
Hey great idea! SOLAR PUMPED HYDRO
…oh wait we already have that, it’s called clouds.
Hydro stored energy is nice, if you have mountains and consistent rain. Without elevation where does hydro pressure head come from? In the prairie lands they used to use wind (abundant) to pump water into tanks. Even now the central US communities have water towers emblazoned with their names (but use electricity to pump it). But surely the pressure and flow adequate to run a community is not sufficient for energy production, and there is that nasty law of energy losses that means you’ll NEVER recover whatever energy it took for you to pump the water uphill.
Take a knee, beg, good girl.
As governor of Michigan, Ms Granholm must surely be interested in the reason for the anomalous surface temperature increase of the local Great Lake.
I’m on my phone at the moment so I can’t check, but IIRC Lake Michigan is warming twice as fast as the global. Ocean average. Has she never wondered why? Could it be that a vast cloud of CO2 has settled above it? The matter can be easily settled by inviting Greta Thunberg who is able to see CO2 to have a look but will take a while as she will have to walk to get there.
There is room for a new panic here : ALW (Anthropogenic Local Warming) needs an explanation. It’s happening all over the world – Lake Tangyanika, Baikal, North Sea, Baltic, Red Sea, enclosed areas of water suffering from ALW. Greta is going to be a very busy girl.
Seriously, ALW is actually a thing. Ms Granholm might begin by explaining the state of the Sea of Marmara. It’s a perfect example of weird ALW.
JF
It’s true! Just a couple of months ago, large parts of Lake Ontario were covered in ice, and now suspiciously it’s all gone, and worse is yet to come, using my own climate models, it is certainly guaranteed that by mid-2022 the lake will have warmed enough to actually swim in! If that trend continues, the lake will actually boil away!
Looking for funding for a faster server farm and enough electricity to run the simulations further than mid-2022.
Seriously, look at the longterm warming trend of Lake Michigan. There really is something odd going on.
JF
Yeah: it’s climate change….
Climate-driven shifts in deep Lake Michigan water temperatures signal the loss of winter – Welcome to NOAA Research
Real time Great Lakes surface temperatures curtesy NOAA as of March 21, 2022:
Lake Superior .49C last year 1.85C (currently below long term ave)
Lake Huron .98C last year 2.03C (currently below long term ave)
Lake Michigan 2.06C last year 3.00 (currently at long term ave)
Lake Erie 1.95C last year 2.58 (currently a few tenths above ave)
Lake Ontario 2.71C last year 3.10 (currently a few tenths above ave)
Nothing unusual at all.
All data found here:
https://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/statistic.html
Griff, why are Lake Michigan etc warming two to three times faster than the global ocean average? Have you no intellectual curiosity?
Rather than just trolling, do something useful. Quantify ALW
JF
Can’t they give the job of Head of DOE to Kamala. She finds everything funny and the DOE would be somewhere her inane laughter would be most appropriate….
“Look into my eyes, Kiddo, no more fossil fuels” From that moment fossil fuel prices in the USA began their uninterrupted rise to today’s unacceptable high.
Just to bring a little Cross Atlantic balance into things. Here in the UK we are paying $2.40/ltr for diesel or $9.10/US gal equivalent.
If you think it can’t get any worse, believe me you don’t have to suffer the impact of the Climate Change Act 2008 introduced by Labour the equivalent of the US Dumbocrat Party.
Coal is a black substance we get out of the ground. Oil is a liquid we extract from the ground. This ground may be on land or under the sea. Power Stations can be very large. Windmills turn when the wind is blowing. Solar panels use the sun…..Love K.
I see you have experience of speech writing for Kamala there, Alba. 🙂
It would normally be embarrassing watching adults pee their pants BUT……bwahahahahahah!
The Saudis would do well if they stand down in the face of Houthi drone attacks on oil facilities. The same goes in the proxy war in Libya.
If 70% of Americans want green energy, they better start waking the F up!
The next HUGE money milking operation is carbon capture. It’s going to make them BILLIONs. Even Exxon is in on the scam.
I have some nominations for the first Mars colonists, and they are all Biden appointees. Hurry up with the rocket before we all perish waiting for the liftoff.
Putin is emboldened, again.
Whenever Democrats tell us it’s an emergency and they must do something to fix it, my ass begins to twitch. They’re addicted to emergencies. They use them to spend crazy amounts of money on pet projects. Nothing gets fixed, we go further in debt, and the non-fix creates a host of new emergencies that must be fixed.
People who use the phrase “right [/wrong] side of history” are trying to pretend they know how the story will turn out before it has been written. It’s a kind of intertemporal question-begging.