Resetting the climate doomsday clock.

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MORNING ENERGY NEWS | 02/22/2021

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Your attention please. We have a new deadline!

CBS News (2/19/21) reports: "The wild winter weather this week has been called historic and unprecedented, and John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, wants to stop it from becoming typical. 'Obviously we want to prevent this from becoming the new normal to the degree that we can,' Kerry told CBS News' Ben Tracy. Many people wrongly believe that climate change only relates to temperatures increasing, not decreasing. Kerry said it threatens all weather patterns. 'I think it's a very appropriate way to think of it, so it is directly related to the warming, even though your instinct is to say, wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age. But it's not,' Kerry said. 'It is coming from the global warming and it threatens all the normal weather patterns.'"

"There are some who are arguing that it was a market failure because of the deregulation of the electricity market a while back, but that’s an easy scapegoat when really it’s a combination of an unprecedented natural disaster, fault of a flawed board of directors, and government failure."

– Vance Ginn,
Texas Public Policy Foundation

Big Wind does the Texas Two Step...

Didn't John Kerry brag about negotiating the Paris Treaty with China? Maybe he can use all that good will he built up to beg them not to cut off all those rare earth minerals that Biden's clean energy future depends on.

Bloomberg (2/20/2021) reports: "China may ban the export of rare-earths refining technology to countries or companies it deems as a threat on state security concerns, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Chinese government is currently conducting a review of its rare-earths policy. Officials view the technology needed to refine and purify the raw materials as a more powerful weapon in protecting state interests than the actual minerals, and is looking at banning sales of the technology to some countries or companies, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. While China has no plans to restrict shipments of rare earths to the U.S., it is keeping the plan in its back pocket should a trade war break out again, the person said. The Asian nation is also exploring a ban on rare earths as part of its sanctions on some individual companies, including Lockheed Martin Corp., which violated China’s core interest over arms sale to Taiwan, the person said."

This kind of frank talk can get somebody into a lot of trouble these days.

National Post (2/18/21) column "It is time that the brand of environmentalism that travels under the cloak of global warming apocalypse drops its halo. Environmentalism, the brand, Global Warming the banner, is pure politics. GW partisans are as hard and as cynical and as manipulative as the most corroded politicians. GW is not about what it says it’s about. It is hardball against the world that most of us appreciate. It is a sly hard-nosed anti-Western ideology wrapped up in a camouflage coat of 'we love Nature.' It cares nothing about the working class. It cares less about the most poverty ridden nations of the world, or their people. Paradoxically it is only because countries such as Canada and the U.S. are so prosperous, so accustomed to simply pushing buttons or throwing a switch to get what we want or need that we think we can afford to toy, to alter, or completely displace the systems that have brought us to where we are. Prosperity is, in this context, a dangerous state. It makes us careless. It also takes away the consciousness that the systems built over the generations, and the energy resources that have enabled that prosperity should not, and cannot, be written off and dismissed as 'a danger to the planet.' That amounts to a toxic level of nothing more than virtue-signaling."

Sorry, Joe, but that's not how it jobs work.

Real Clear Investigations (2/18/21) reports: "Last Labor Day, candidate Joe Biden made an impassioned pitch to leaders and members of the AFL-CIO, America’s largest labor federation. Stressing that “the great American middle class was built by unions,” he jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis as he promised, 'I’m going to be the strongest labor president you have ever had,' drawing a smile from his longtime ally and friend, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. But Biden has also declared climate change the nation’s greatest challenge and is supporting strategies that could cost struggling union members hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs that will not be easily replaced. From interviews with labor leaders, RealClearInvestigations has found that President Biden may be hard-pressed to balance the competing demands of these two core constituencies -- unions and environmentalists. How he addresses those tensions will shape his much-anticipated climate plan to cut carbon emissions...But many fossil fuel workers won’t be riding the renewable energy boom. Most new jobs will be in the construction of wind and solar farms, which is temporary work and often not in the same regions that provide fossil fuel employment. The pay is significantly lower too. The median wage for a solar installer is about $45,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $59.86
Natural Gas: ↓ $2.93
Gasoline: ↑ $2.63

Diesel: ↑ $2.84
Heating Oil: ↓ $181.73
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $63.39
US Rig Count: ↑ 445

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