At the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) in Azerbaijan, attendees are full of dire predictions that the world’s climate will worsen under President-elect Trump. But when Trump fulfills his campaign promises to increase U.S. oil and gas production and removes President Biden’s pause on new liquid natural gas exports, global emissions will likely decline rather than rise.
This is because exports of U.S. natural gas generally displace coal, reducing global CO2 emissions. Even Germany, Europe’s largest manufacturer, is using lignite coal (rather than the less-polluting bituminous coal) to deal with shortages of renewables now that it has closed its nuclear power plants and Russian gas is no longer available.
About 3 billion people in emerging economies lack electricity and running water, and cook over wood and dung. Natural gas power plants would reduce particulates from wood and dung and make the air cleaner. Under President Biden, the World Bank does not make loans for fossil fuel power plants.
More U.S. gas for export will lower prices of Russian and Qatari gas, harming countries that are invading Ukraine and tied to Iran. Prices are set based on future production, and even announcements of energy production will weaken America’s enemies.
Natural gas production has lowered U.S. emissions of CO2, which have declined by a billion metric tons over the past 16 years as natural gas has substituted for coal use in the generation of electricity. Over the same period, CO2 emissions in China have risen by 5 billion metric tons.
Between 2022 and 2023 US coal exports to Europe increased by 22% compared with the prior year. Because coal has more emissions than natural gas, it is surprising that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has not asked for a pause in coal exports, only on natural gas exports.
America’s natural gas exports to Europe have been soaring since 2022, when Russia decreased the flow of natural gas. According to the Energy Information Administration, America exported an average of almost 12 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas in 2023, more than any other country.
Europe is America’s biggest customer, and in a phone call to President-elect Trump, European Union President Ursula von der Leyen suggested that US natural gas could replace Russian gas.
But even if America stopped all use of fossil fuels immediately, global temperatures would only be two-tenths of 1 degree Celsius by the year 2100, according to government models. This is because China, India, Africa, and Latin America are ramping up their use of coal to reach Western standards of living. China is home to large supplies of coal, but little natural gas, and uses its domestic coal supplies for generating electricity to power its global manufacturing capacity.
A second Trump administration will not only encourage production of natural gas but also faster permitting of pipelines and LNG terminals to move the natural gas from the interior of the country to the ports, and into export terminals to be shipped to Europe and Asia.
America’s natural gas production, at over 100 billion cubic feet per day, is greater than pre-pandemic levels, but production is primarily on private lands. It could have been even higher if Biden had not restricted leases on federal land and if pipeline approval were faster.
Trump’s energy plan includes permitting reform, allowing different sources of energy to compete on a level playing field, opening more lands to natural gas development, reversing Biden’s climate agenda, expediting nuclear technology, and protecting the energy grid.
Trump, unlike Biden, will not instruct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to slow down pipeline and liquid natural gas export terminal construction in the name of a transition to renewables. Nor will Trump instruct the Securities and Exchange Commission to discourage investment in pipelines, or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to discourage loans for fossil fuel projects.
The more natural gas is exported, the lower are global emissions. With Trump’s changes, natural gas will be able to travel to where it is needed due to faster infrastructure permitting.
As the northern hemisphere moves into its winter season, the need for more energy for warming homes and businesses becomes even more pressing, and natural gas is cleaner than coal. COP29 attendees have no reason to demonize Trump’s energy agenda, which will be a boon to the environment.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth serves as the Director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment and The Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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For the most part, I only hear people complain of the cold.
With cheap energy – and it already is much cheaper – in the US things can only get better
With our big government, high tax and spend, net zero strategy fings can only get worse.
The question in my mind is how long before it becomes obvious which nation is prospering and which one isn’t? How long has TTK got?
42 days.
A distillation of the article:
…blah…blah…blah… global emissions will likely decline rather
because…blah…blah…blah…reducing global CO2 emissions. Natural
gas production has lowered U.S. emissions of CO2…blah…blah…blah…
Over the same period, CO2 emissions in China …blah…blah…blah…
Because coal has more emissions than natural gas…blah…blah…blah…
The more natural gas is exported, the lower are global emissions.
Suggesting ways to reduce emissions of CO2 is stupid.
“climate scientists tell us”
They have useful idiots to do their bidding. Here’s a debate of one vs. an actual scientist (chemist). The useful idiot doesn’t even know shit about carbon isotopes.
Nor does he know anything about metrology, what a doofus:
“Carbon dioxide retains heat” — HAHAHAHA
CO2 impedes earth’s ability to cool itself b reflecting upwelling radiation.
Ha ha ha
Shuttup.
Complete anti-science GARBAGE. !!
CO2 does not “reflect” anything.
Nor does it impede Earth’s ability to cool itself.
Your grasp of any actual science is not a laughing matter…
.. unless you want people to laugh AT you. !
Anti AGW ignorance as usual from BeNasty, the website Climate Buffoon
CO2 absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared radiation (heat energy), which is why it’s considered a greenhouse gas, trapping heat within the Earth’s atmosphere by absorbing and re-emitting this infrared radiation in all directions, including back towards the Earth’s surface.
Absorbing and re-emitting radiation can be more simply described as reflecting radiation
A simpleton like you should understand a simple explanation, but you prefer to embarrass yourself again and again.
What is the percentage of “heat” retained by CO2? No reaction is 100% efficient.
“CO2 absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared radiation . . . .)
The IR window is from 8 microns to 14 microns (Wikipedia). The three IR bands of CO2 are: 4.26 microns (2349 1/cm), 7.2 microns (1388 1/cm), and 14.99 microns (667 1/cm). So CO2 competes with water vapor, and the so-called 15 micron band is outside of the IR window.
“Absorbing and re-emitting radiation can be more simply described as reflecting radiation”
Not really. Reflection is where angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. When a CO2 molecule emits an IR photon, it can be in any direction–not reflection at all. But you already know that.
“. . . absorbing and re-emitting this infrared radiation in all directions . . . .”
It’s not exactly in all directions. The KT 1997 paper claims it’s essentially 40% upward and 60% downward. The primary reasons (assuming KT 1997 is correct, and that’s a big assumption) are the density of the atmosphere is greater near the surface and the atmospheric IR interacts with the surface.
“essentially 40% upward and 60% downward.”
Actually Jim, even if CO2 does re-emit, a rare event, a large proportion is more sideways than up or down.
The atmosphere works in 3D, not 2D.
Even then the mean free path of that frequency in the lower atmosphere is only some 10m or so, so totally irrelevant.
Poor dickie-boi..
You said CO2 reflected energy… TOTAL FAIL !!!
Now you double down showing just how ignorant you really are of basic science. HILARIOUS.
Nearly all energy absorbed by CO2 is removed by conduction before there is any re-emission.
Of the tiny amount that might be re-emitted, some 68% has more horizontal vector than downward vector.
Some radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by CO2, a IR active gas, up to the tropopause. Calculations of the free mean path for CO2 show that energy passes from surface to tropopause in less than 5 milliseconds. This is almost speed of light, so delay is negligible.
Warming by atmospheric CO2 has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet
You still have not presented a single piece of evidence for any of these questions.. COMPLETE FAIL
1… Please provide empirical scientific evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2.
2… Please show the evidence of CO2 warming in the UAH atmospheric data.
3… Please state the exact amount of CO2 warming in the last 45 year, giving measured scientific evidence for your answer.
You remain TOTALLY EMPTY of anything remotely resembling science.
“Nearly all energy absorbed by CO2 is removed by conduction before there is any re-emission.”
The term is “quenching.” It’s when a molecule transfers some of its higher energy to another molecule that it bumps into.
This process also applies to H2O.
“quenching” aka collisional deactivation.
You do know that net radiation transfer is determined by the temperature difference…
… and that CO2 does not alter the temperature gradient.
Or do continue to DENY basic science.
Or are you just ignorant of basic science.
CO2 and H2O do not emit any IR light. See my comment above. At RT and 1 atm. pressure, the collision frequency of the gas molecules is ca.10
billion times per second.
IR is not heat.
H2O retards the cooling of earth especially at night when the RH is ca. 70%. At night time a desert cools rapidly since there very low humidity.
Yes H2O alters the atmospheric temperature gradient and slows energy transfer…
CO2 does not.
FYI: In one cubic meter of air at 70 deg. F and with 70% RH contains ca 0.78 g of CO2 and 14.3 g of H2O. H2O is about 95% of the greenhouse effect.
CO2 does not reflect IR light. After absorbing IR light, it undergoes vibrational excitation, and then in an instant it undergoes deactivation by collision with N2,O2 and Ar which results in an increases their kinetic energy and consequently an increase of the temperature of the gas.
The above also applies to H2O.
I assume your “Ha ha ha” was intended to be a “/sarc” marking.
This economist is a total weasel: “I’m not a scientist but…”
“It’s included in the models…”
He sounds like a clone of Alan J.
nailed it!
Yes and modern coal fired power plants are clean.
Not in China, at least not 2011, see my post below.
What about coal mining? Is coal mining clean?
Are sprawling Solar Farms clean? Wind Farms? What about roads & rail roads
how ’bout airports? How ’bout all the land AI is gobbling up? Land fills? It’s a long list, but your side seems to have it in for oil wells & coal mines. Why is that?
Getting rid of clearing land for wind and solar will help the environment.
Hold the companies accountable for the wildlife they’ve killed.
Right now, they get a pass on the fines that have been charged to fossil fuel production.
We’re talking about coal mining. Specifically, one commenter said coal was clean burning. I asked about coal mining. Is it clean?
For the record, no, manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines is not clean. At least not how China does it.
If you’re thinking strip mining, no, not during the mining. But after the mining the land can and has been reclaimed (at least here in the US).
Nature has also “destroyed” areas of land for no purpose or benefit to Man or the local “environment” whatsoever. (Mount St. Helens?) But those areas recover.
Reminds me of the time a gormless greenie posts a picture of a “natural” bushland area with a lake, saying, “this is what the area should be like”.
Turned out to be a reclaimed open-cut coal mine site. 🙂
We never saw the little muppet again. 🙂
Last summer, Mother “The Torch” Nature set ablaze several million acres of forests in western Canada.
Currently, She is on a rampage in southern California.
Mother nature does that every year it is nothing new. In fact She set the forest ablaze so bad in the Canadian prairies, in I think 1950, that people in Europe had the sun dimmed by and could smell the smoke. There is no climate crisis. All of these weather incidents have happened before and will happen again.🤷♂️🙄
I like your attitude, Steve! : )
And I agree with it.
CO2 does not need to be reduced, so talking about reducing CO2 is missing the point, which is that CO2 is a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, and there is no evidence that CO2 is harmful in any way.
Some people need to stop thinking that reducing CO2 is desirable.
Reducing CO2 should be avoided as doing so bankrupts nations for no good reason.
Thank you for the encouragement (-:
I had a similar thought while reading the article. Somebody is trying to sell an unpopular idea based on a myth that they don’t really believe. It’s a pretty good example of how crony capitalists glom onto the Green faith to make money.
It would be so refreshing to hear the truth without the hypocritical Greenwashing.
Producing more oil and gas in the US will lead to lower prices in the US compared to the global market if there are logistical constraints on export. If you’re a consumer, that sounds ideal. If you’re a producer it’s a threat. The average consumer/voter would oppose exporting natural gas if they were acting on their own self-interest.
Now if you’re a limited government guy like me, you take the attitude that if people want to invest in pipelines and LNG export facilities, that’s their right. Where I am adamantly opposed is when they want the taxpayer to build the infrastructure for them, so that the taxpayer gets to pay a higher price for natural gas and they get rich. That’s not the free market. It’s crony capitalism.
Adding insult to injury, we’re supposed to consider it a good deal because we’re lowering global CO2 emissions and maybe also because we’re hurting our implacable ancient foes, the Qataris.
Bullshit, on so many levels.
The Heritage Foundation shouldn’t have a CO2 calculator. It should have a calculator showing how the economy will improve as we get back to using abundant ff.
Obviously means to say the change in global temperatures would only be two-tenths of 1 degree Celsius
I sure hope they meant 0.2° lower than it would have been. If our average temperature is 0.2°C, there won’t be much agriculture!
I wonder, with how blue the west coast port cities are if there will be push-back on the shipping of LNG to Asia? Hopefully, the ones who will do the actual shipping will raise a stink about any attempts by their blue leaders or the JSO folks to circumvent the process.
Aren’t the port workers extraordinary overpaid? No wonder they’re blue. They should be well paid but not as much as they are, IMHO. If they were to go on strike- would Trump be as tough as Reagan was regarding the air traffic controllers?
The dock workers may very well go on strike in January.
Trump can’t fire dock workers the way Reagan fired the Air Traffic controllers.
Trump can require the dock workers to delay their strike for 90 days so more negotiations can take place, but that’s about the most he can do.
Of course, Trump could call in the military to take over operations if the strike threatens economic and national security. Which it will if the strike goes on for any length of time.
Americans are not going to be too happy if the dock workers cause them further economic hardship and I doubt Trump is going to sit by and watch the economy collapse.
Dock workers should be reasonable, otherwise there is going to be a lot of trouble for them. Their loud-mouthed leader needs to cool his rhetoric.
The military is well trained in the work of sea port shipping?
The U.S. military is very good at moving a lot of cargo in a short time.
Read “Moving Mountains” by General William G. Pagonis for an example.
In Canada, the average wage of a longshoreman is $43.59 per hour.
A decent dockworkers strike would get us a good jump on re-shoring a lot of things. More power to them.
The US dock workers can be made redundant, as the Chianese have demonstrated. Search text and video for “Qingdao Port, Shandong Province, China”
“China is home to large supplies of coal, but little natural gas”
But, is that definitive? China is a big country. Has it been thoroughly explored geologically?
China needs to put real pollution controls on its power stations. True story: From our room in a high rise hotel we couldn’t clearly make out the morning Tai Chi exercise in the square below. But we could hear some “popping” sound. When we got down to the ground floor and outside we could see that there were guys practicing with their bull-whips. Besides that you could literally taste the pollution in the air. That was in 2011. Maybe it’s improved since then. Uh or maybe it’s gotten worse.
China shouldn’t have welded its people into their buildings. But it did.
My last trip there was 2018. Looking out the window of the plane, just about every coal fired plant put out brown smoke (full of nitrogen and sulfur oxides, plus).
A couple of times in Wuhan, my taxi took me by the steel mill/power plant area, have never experienced such foul air that had only seeped into the cab.
True or not? I read an article that claimed all those coal plants being built in the last decade or so are the high efficiency, low pollution types.
China’s electricity production in 2023 was Coal 70%, Hydro 13%, Wind 9%, Nuclear 5%, solar 3%.
No gas, which implies that there is not much to be had economically.
NG should replace Coal when the cost of NG per mmBtu is lower than Coal, or more specifically, when the cost of electric power per MW-h is lower for NG than for Coal. Otherwise, Coal should be the fuel of choice all other issues considered. We have technology and regulations to keep emissions from coal fired power plants down to levels that do not hare humans and the environment. Therefore, the choice of feedstocks for power production should be economic.
It all comes down to the need for government to kill the squirrels to save them.
RIP P’Nut.
You said “choice”. Unfortunately, that word does not exist when saving the earth. Only mandates will work, just as they always have in fascist governments.
Plus coal is better for baseload than gas, since gas has to be piped in continuously. Coal can be stockpiled to avoid interruptions in supply resulting in interruptions of power production.
O/T farmer protest in Wales.
“”he “ran out of the backdoor like a flipping rat”.
…
senior Labour grandee and former adviser, John McTernan, claimed that Britain does not need family farms and suggested Sir Keir should treat them like Margaret Thatcher dealt with the miners in the 1980s.””
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-budget-family-farm-tax-b2648253.html
Now we know.
The premise of this is not quite right.
It accepts the implication that using Carbon-based fuel is bad for the environment. Arguably, mining and burning lignite is not a great idea – unless that’s all you have. But otherwise there is no problem.
If the Trump administration can stop and/or redirect the waste of resources going toward wind and solar there will be early and future benefits to the environment.
It is not CO2 that’s the problem, but rather lost opportunities and the building of mega-tons of future waste – at great expense.
Why do so many papers on WUWT start out with the assumption that reducing CO2 emissions is improving the environment and should be a goal? All evidence points to the fact that the more CO2 in the atmosphere the better for the earth and all inhabitance. If? CO2 warms the earth a little in the winter at night and near the poles, that’s good also. Frost line moves toward the poles. more airable land, longer seasons more greening, increase crop yields, etc.
Jimmie, it could be that for so long the position of CO2=beneficial has been considered and accepted as far-right extremism to those consuming Aus-Brit-Canuck-American MSM. Most espousing the social benefits of carbon dioxide emissions here at WUWT are so deemed as extremist by proxy. Also, few articles for general MSM distribution are in the CO2=good vein, so the majority of articles written and posted at WUWT are attempting to insinuate to the indoctrinated reader that there could be some good to utilizing CO2 exuding fuel use for energy production. Eating the elephant of CO2=evil one bite at a time by slowly breaking the general mindset of your average MSM consumer? Not saying I agree with this as it prolongs and substantiates the opposite if scientific truth…
Just an idea of why we see these types of articles.
Regards,
MCR
why does wuwt continue to call hydrocarbons “fossil fuels”? hydrocarbons have nothing to do with fossils
Because the term is in common use and easily understood by most people.
So are a lot of things that aren’t true; like –
The world is on fire … it’s not.
The sea is boiling … it’s not.
CO2 is the major GH gas … it’s not.(Water vapour is.)
I could list 1,000s more
I just said the term was in common use. If you are trying to name this fuel in a sentence, using the words “fossil fuel” is much easier than trying to describe it with an explanation of an, obscure to the average person, alternative source. Mostly for brevity of course. 🤷♂️ 😉
You mean like hydrocarbon and coal fuels?
Canada could be net zero today by exporting natural gas to China to cut coal use.
But instead we export our jobs to China via a carbon tax which simply moves emissions to China from Canada, benefitting China at Canadian taxpayer expense.
China is very unlikely to stop using all those shiny new coal powered plants for at least another 60 to 80 years, no matter how much natural gas is made available for it to purchase.
The author is clueless about the fact that US oil and natural gas prices are historically low and capital for new exploration is tightening.
Drill, Baby, Drill’ Hits Wall of Capital Restraint | OilPrice.com
As a result of the election of Trump. global CO2 emissions will increase in the next four years and the world will be slightly warmer as a result.
If Harris had been elected, global CO2 emissions would have increased in the next four years, and the world would have been slightly warmer as a result.
Nothing Trump does in the next four years will change the future global climate by enough to measure.
The best Trump can do is to stop the government from scaring people about a slightly warmer planet. He failed to do that during Trump 1.0.
Trump can at least slow wasteful federal spending on climate change. But consider past Reduction Act Repeal Votes:
Republicans have already voted 54 times to repeal the landmark climate and clean energy plan and other provisions of the law. Democrats are not interested/
This year 18 House Republicans have urged Speaker Mike Johnson not to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits. A full repeal IRA seems unlikely
“and the world would have been slightly warmer as a result.”
WRONG.. you have shown you have no scientific evidence of that baseless conjecture.
Burning anything (including turning on a 60 watt bulb) produces heat**. Where does it go?
** “heat is energy in transfer“
BeNasty
Dumb yesterday
Dumb today
Dumb tomorrow
Consistent
So still absolutely ZERO to back up anything you say.
You really are a mindless little AGW-cult-monkey, aren’t you dickie-boi !
Burning coal and hydrocarbons introduces heat energy into the environment that would not be there except for the steam turbine electricity generators. So slightly warmer is correct.
“As a result of the election of Trump, global CO2 emissions will increase in the next four years”
Gibberish nonsense.
CO2 emissions would increase regardless of Trump being elected.
My obvious point was that CO2 emissions would increase no matter who was US president. … Next time have someone read my comment to you and explain it
Next time, don’t type moronic, ignorant sentences.
Read what you type before you post, to stop yourself looking like an gormless idiot. !
“Read what you type before you post, to stop yourself looking like an gormless idiot. !”
But it’s what he does best !!
You need to consider scan and scroll when making posts.
The declarative 2 sentences later is the point you wanted to make.
Once you invoked Trump, and in the phraseology you chose, you created a moment for reaction and further reading was abandoned.
Nothing Trump does in the next four years will change the future global climate by enough to measure.
Correct.
Projection time.
As a result of the
election of TrumpChina’s and India’s continued emissions increase global CO2 emissions will increaseinfor the nextfourThirty years and the worldwillmight be slightly warmeras a resultregardlessThere…fixed it for you
Got nuthin to do with Trump 47, CO2 would continue to increase under Harris 47 had she been a better candidate (but she wasn’t)!
Aah but now Republicans control House, Senate AND Executive so Democrats need not be interested they will have little say and not much power beyond the filibuster.
Democrats are just like dickie-boi.
Brain-washed into ignorance, and determined to stay that way.
That is a bad outcome for the plants and life on Earth more broadly. Humans need to be working hard to restore CO2 levels to more survivable levels ahead of the coming glaciation of the northern hemisphere.
But it will be good for humans.
Reduction of coal CO2 does not mean total reduction of CO2.
With the election of Trump, one can almost dare to look for an end to the multiple insanities that have gripped the unthinking world for the last 40 years.
“COP29 attendees have no reason to demonize Trump’s energy agenda, which will be a boon to the environment.”
Those idiots won’t see it that way. They live in the fantasy world where wind and solar should replace everything. Which of course is idiotic, but so is the whole “climate crisis” bullshit story.
Funny, how my utilities supplier, raised electric prices, just before summer, and now, raised natural gas prices just before winter? Last chance to gouge the public before Biden leaves the stage. Strange how I don’t recall ever seeing the reductions in prices?
This article is based on the premise that “emissions” wild be lowered as natural gas replaces coal. Since greenhouse gas emissions have a minute impact on temperature, lowering them has no benefit.
The article presents an interesting and somewhat different perspective on the impact of Trump’s policies on the environment. It highlights how increased U.S. oil and gas production and exports could potentially reduce CO2 emissions by displacing coal, improving global air quality. This does sound like a promising solution, especially when countries like Germany are seeking alternative energy sources due to shortages in renewable energy.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that while natural gas may be an improvement over coal, it may not be the ultimate long-term solution. Transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar and wind could provide a more sustainable approach to tackling climate change in a comprehensive way.
Of course, the geopolitical aspect mentioned in the article is also a significant consideration. It’s understandable how increasing gas exports could affect countries like Russia and Qatar, but it’s crucial to remember that the main goal should be to find climate solutions that ensure a better future for everyone.