“Shell, ExxonMobil, and other companies should defeat these frivolous lawsuits against fossil fuels, which are more a complaint against high-energy civilization than the defendants. The plaintiffs should be ordered to pay all court costs, as well as the opportunity cost for the company having to litigate rather than find energy for the masses.”
A DeSmog piece by Matthew Green, “Lost Decade: How Shell Downplayed Early Warnings Over Climate Change,” reports on a smoking gun that is more like a broken, discarded water pistol.
“Newly discovered documents from the 1970s and early ’80s show that Shell knew more about the ‘greenhouse effect’ than it let on in public,” reads the subtitle. The article continues:
…A confidential October 1989 Shell publication titled “SCENARIOS 1989 – 2010” outlines a high-emissions “global mercantilism” scenario in which average global temperatures rise by “considerably more” than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Another factor [for the inaugural project] is a new federal tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour on wind power that begins Jan. 1. There was an earlier federal subsidy that fueled the first boom, but it expired in 1985.”
“Wind Farm Awaits State’s Go-Ahead,” read the title of a Houston Chronicle business article (November 18, 1993). The state’s first major wind power project was timed to receive the brand new federal Production Tax Credit enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (1.5 cent/kWh, inflation-adjusted).
Note the following:
“First wind and solar–and now batteries. How can a business editorialist not talk about cost and opportunity cost? Does $65 billion and counting ring a bell? I guess when you are a climate alarmist, economics does not matter.”
“‘Demand response’ is more government intervention to rescue prior. ‘Virtual power plants’ are the ultimate government takeover of the grid. Wound the supply side, load it up with costs, and force demand down.”
In “Natural Gas, Coal and Nuclear Power are Failing the Texas Grid, New Tech is the Future,” Houston Chronicle business editorialist Chris Tomlinson carries the water for Green New Deal/Net Zero interests, including his wife’s business of wind/solar origination. His 750-word piece is a tissue of half-truths and misdirection that only church-going climate alarmists can like.
CHRIS TOMLINSON COMMENTARY
The Texas electric grid’s biggest failures so far this summer are coming from the supposedly most reliable generators: fossil fuels.…