As gas prices climb and politicians and scientists look for new sources of energy, climate change enthusiasts continue to sound the alarm to support the New Green Deal.
Sunrise 350 Colorado, a grassroots movement to bring awareness, solve the climate crisis, and support a sustainable future stated “For millennia we have depended on a stable climate, which has shaped every part of our way of life. Now, we face the frightening reality that this foundation will crumble within our lifetimes unless we take immediate and decisive action to transform our energy system. Communities across America are already experiencing severe impacts, with working-class people and people of color being hit the hardest.”
On Nov. 4, Jimmy Sengenberger wrote for The Federalist, “Fundamentally, the Green New Deal and Colorado’s Little Green Deal are cut from the same cloth.”
Working class and people of color, who currently pay $6 or $7 a gallon for gasoline in California, can attest to it. So can Colby Edgington of Greeley who has experienced the Sunrise 350 progress firsthand.
A Massive Lifestyle Degraded by the New Green Deal
For two decades, Edgington regularly earned six figures driving moving trucks for oil companies in Weld County and across the west. Then in 2020, oil prices tanked, and with it Edgington’s income. His marriage ended. He sold his house. Then, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. A staunch ally of the oil and gas industry was gone. To top it off, Colorado passed another round of sweeping regulatory changes.
Frustrated, Edgington pledged to never set foot in the oilfield again. “I took a job hauling construction equipment,” he remembered. “I had already lost a lot of personal stuff because of the stress (of oil and gas). It wasn’t something that I wanted to hang on to any longer.”
Attempting to Pivot in an Uncertain Future
In Weld County, where most of Colorado’s oil is produced, the skyline is no longer dotted with oil rigs. Local tax revenues have plummeted. Many drivers, electricians, welders, and rig hands, previously in demand, find themselves out of work.
On the national stage, Joe Biden is attempting to sell the country on a renewed focus on cleaner energy. Never mind the unequaled progress the nation has made in this forum since the ‘70s. Returning to the Paris Climate Accord is seen by some as a major concession to China, while nothing short of a punitive measure levied against the American people.
The drastic shift in both political and economic winds has forced many in the state’s oil and gas industry to face tough realities regarding future career prospects. Some are finding work in different fields. Others are hanging on, in hopes that a bad 2022 midterm for Democrats might reshuffle the deck.
KUNC interviewed a half dozen oilfield workers about the Biden Administration and Colorado’s shifting regulatory environment from a future job outlook perspective. Their sentiments were mostly negative.
Jack Hamlin, a petroleum engineer and co-founder of the Facebook community Energy Strong Colorado, has seen the group’s tone shift over the past several months. He said recent regulatory changes on the state level, coupled with Biden’s recent executive orders aimed at attacking climate change, have made people more worried about the future.
“We get messages for people looking for help, what they can do, voicing their frustration,” Hamlin said. “It’s been a tough year from a moral standpoint.”
“Fundamentally, the Green New Deal and Colorado’s Little Green Deal are cut from the same cloth.”
Bi-Partisan Warnings
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post account on March 26, 2019, John Hickenlooper stated, “The resolution sets unachievable goals. We do not yet have the technology needed to reach “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” in 10 years. That’s why many wind and solar companies don’t support it. There is no clean substitute for jet fuel. Electric vehicles are growing quickly yet are still in their infancy. Manufacturing industries such as steel and chemicals, which account for almost as much carbon emissions as transportation, are even harder to decarbonize.”
While acknowledging the existence of climate change, he pointed out that the approach pushed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass) would be “an approach that would limit our prospects for success.”
Congressman Ken Buck was slightly more explicit. In an op-ed published in the Denver Post on Sept. 18, 2020, Buck warned of a new green deal consequence. “You’d think by now, that these environmentalists would have learned their lesson-that Coloradans do not, and will never, support job-killing initiatives against the oil and gas industry.”
Could the Model be Flawed?
In 2013, former President Barack Obama tweeted, referencing a study by Australian climate change researcher John Cook, “97% of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
The 97% comes from a survey of almost 12,000 peer-reviewed science papers conducted by Cook. In truth, the survey found a 97% consensus only among peer-reviewed papers taking a position on the cause of global warming. The catch was that only 34% of the papers took a position on the subject.
Since 33% of the papers appeared to endorse the notion that humans cause climate change, Cook divided 33 by 34 to arrive at his 97% figure. A more honest approach would have been for Cook to have said that 1 percent of scientists say humans are NOT causing climate change, one-third say that humans ARE and TWO-THIRDS of scientists are not making such dogmatic proclamations.
After the University of Delaware Professor David Legates reexamined Cook’s study, he found that even the 33% figure might be artificially high. Based on Legate’s assessment, only .03 percent of the 11,944 abstracts Cook examined state that humans are causing Earth’s climate change.
According to the Trumpet, more recently, over 31,000 U.S. scientists signed a petition saying, “There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Among these scientists were two Nobel Prize-winning physicists, four NASA astronauts, and more than 9,000 PhDs.
Facts Behind the Fiction
A 2011 National Geographic study revealed that a small nuclear war could lower global temperatures by an average of 2.25 degrees for two to three years after the event.
Negative impacts from a 10% decrease in global precipitation and additional ultraviolet rays reaching Earth would hopefully put a damper on any “pros” that might be associated with such an action. While most find it inconceivable that such a measure would garner support, it is believed by hard opponents that most, if not all members of the green movement would welcome such a development.
What appears more likely is the government’s increased role proposed by the Green New Deal. The nightmarish COVID-19 lockdowns are fresh in American minds. Experiencing governments’ willingness to exercise authority demonstrated hidden agenda inclinations within our government.
Climate change, like COVID, translates to more power for the government. Most of Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill has little to do with building bridges or repairing roads and more to do with climate change.
Most disquieting is that Colorado’s Greeting Card Governor Polis is OK with peddling his party’s flawed agenda, clearly placing it ahead of his constituents’ financial well-being. This alone should be of deepest concern.
“Green” proposals to ban or restrict the production of oil & natural gas to decrease the use of fossil fuels overlook the fact that almost all precursor organic chemicals used in medicines, plastics, fertilizer, building & electric wire insulation, wind turbine blades, battery electrolytes & housings, utility pipelines (water, sewer, communications, electrical & natural gas) asphalt for roads & shingles, synthetic rubber for tires, etc (the list is extremely long) comes from natural gas & oil which typically come out of the ground together from a well. In addition natural gas is used as a heat source in the manufacture of cement (for concrete), recycling of aluminum, smelting for copper, glass & fiberglass & is the only viable source of some industrial gases – especially helium which is critical to some manufacturing processes for things like computer chips, disk drives, & fiber optic cables, cryogenic cooling for things like MRI machines, gyroscopes, nuclear weapons security & fuel tank pressurization for rockets. Note also, there is no retail market for coal. Its primary use is steel manufacturing & bulk delivery for reliable (outage proof) electric power generation while natural gas does have a retail market in that it is used to heat & cook food in about half the homes in the US as well as heat & cool some commercial buildings. Without oil & natural gas, retrofitting these homes & buildings to use “green” electricity would be very expensive & in some cases next to impossible. Also, in the long run it would be smarter to focus on “clean” coal or nuclear for electricity production because the consumer is going to be directly affected by the future price & availability of natural gas & wind & solar cannot store enough energy to maintain the base load or accommodate large, industrial electricity users like aluminum manufacturers.
Re: “There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide…is causing or will, in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”
It could definitely be a problem if CO2 wasn’t consumed by plants. But since plants consume CO2 to produce the main source, if not the only source of oxygen, and have done it very well for millennia to the point where oxygen is 21% of the atmosphere and CO2 is 0.04%, it’s unknown (especially by climate scientists) how every plant species on earth would evolve and adapt to higher CO2 levels if given the chance. All we know for sure is that the current plant life is happy with 0.04% of CO2
Re: “Could the Model be Flawed?”
Where is the “science” or analysis that proves climate change is not significantly affected by the earth’s core considering 1) it is estimated (because no one knows for sure) to be 10000 degrees F (the same temperature as the sun’s surface) 2) it is “on” continuously (24/7) transferring heat spherically to the earth’s surface unaffected by the earth’s orbit, diurnal changes, atmosphere or cloud cover 3) the bottom of the majority of the oceans (which cover 71% of the earth) are closest to the earth’s core heat source, are the main source of atmospheric temperature changes and water vapor, have several underwater volcanoes to include those in 40000 miles of tectonic plate fissures, ~100,000 underwater mud volcanoes as well as “black smoker” and sea mount volcanoes, and it has never been viewed let alone explored or extensively analyzed for heat transfer 4) the only directly observable view we have of the earth’s core is from the deepest hole drilled which is about 0.2% the distance to the earth’s center and 5) seismic measurements (the main window we have to the earth’s interior) are unable to penetrate the earth’s core, are affected by the temperature and density of subterranean materials and are therefore subject to diverse interpretations?
Note the deepest hole drilled into the earth’s crust is the Kola borehole (7.6 miles). Let’s assume this borehole accurately defines the entire surface of earth’s properties down to 7.6 miles and by inference also tells us everything we need to know about the rest of the earth’s properties that lie below it. On an analogous, 2 dimensional scale that would be the equivalent of totally exploring a landmass the size of India and claiming we now know everything there is to know about the rest of the earth’s surface. Note that if the India sized landmass we totally explored was somewhere inside Russia, we would not know the earth had any oceans.
The bottom line is whatever is going on in the earth’s core may or may not be the cause of any perceived climate change – but considering the lack of observability into how the core operates, in my mind there is reasonable doubt with the hypothesis that “the change” is due solely to a trace gas (CO2) that is 0.04% of the earth’s atmosphere and is partially consumed in the photosynthesis Calvin cycle process to sustain plant life.
Re: “methane”
It is noted there are an estimated 140 million housing units and another 6 million commercial buildings in the US and all have bathrooms and other facilities with open sewer vents that release methane, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia into the atmosphere 24 hours/day. So it’s not clear how much methane the oil companies and cows contribute especially when it is in the oil company’s best interest to not release methane, but to sell it to customers as natural gas.
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