THE STORY OF THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

President Biden revoked, via one of his first Executive Orders, the Federal permits authorizing the completion of the Keystone Pipeline.  A month after President Trump took office in January 2017, he signed a Executive Order authorizing its completion.  Why are our Presidents playing flip-flop?  To help you understand this issue, here’s the background of the pipeline:

BACKGROUND

In November of 2015 President Obama vetoed the TransCanada Corporation’s proposed $7 billion Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline (also known as the Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion Project),  it meant that 830,000 barrels of oil a day would not travel from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf’s oil refineries via a pipeline.  Though a politically popular decision with environmentalists,  it was very unpopular with construction unions, as well as most Americans.

To counter criticism, some from leaders in his own political party, President Obama made an appearance in Cushing Oklahoma on March 22, 2013  saying that he would fast-track any required permitting of the 485 miles of pipeline traveling from Cushing down to the Gulf.  That part of the proposed pipeline is on privately-owned land in the U.S. so President Obama couldn’t do much to stop its construction even if he wanted to.  Without the northern leg of the pipeline, however, the 830,000 barrels of much-needed oil/day wouldn’t be coming from Canada and this leg of the pipeline the President could and did stop because the pipeline would have to cross the Canadian-American border (and therefore required Federal approval).

TransCanada subsequently modified its proposed route through the environmentally-sensitive areas of Nebraska and resubmitted its application.  There was not much remaining that was controversial and the U.S. State Department  found it to have “no significant impacts on the quality of the human environment,” which is the wording and standard contained in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).

The Keystone pipeline is not simply about oil, but also about eleven thousand construction jobs and up to 100,000 indirect jobs, as well as significant positive effects on the economy, including U.S. energy independence.   It was therefore important to analyze President Obama’s decision to determine if it was mostly political or based on genuine detriments to the environment.

It’s no secret that the far left is anti-fossil fuel because of what it perceives as unacceptable pollution.  To this end, the Obama Administration came out with 5 sets of anti-coal regulations which were estimated to cost the United States  the loss of over one million jobs.  In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) zeroed in on anti-fracking regulations to control the utilization of the huge natural gas reserves (over a 100-years worth) in the U.S.; however,  the far-left contended that its opposition to the Keystone Pipeline was mainly because of possible leaks from the line.  In addition, former Energy Secretary Chu had stated that it would be desirable to have U.S. gas prices at European levels ($8-10/gallon), so that alternative fuels would be more price-competitive.

Carbon emissions in the United States have been drastically reduced over the past 50 years.  Autos emit only a tiny fraction of what they used to.  Coal-fired power plants have been cleaned up.  In contrast, China brings on-line  two new coal-fired power plants a week and these plants, unlike U.S. plants, emit lots of pollution.  Air pollution knows no boundaries, so it’s a lot less polluting to the earth for the U.S. to burn its coal (and oil) rather than for China.

Solar and wind sources of energy only supply about 5% of the nation’s energy needs.  Hydroelectric supplies less than 10%, nuclear about 19% (France gets 80% of  its energy from nuclear).  So for the foreseeable future the U.S. still needs fossil fuels.  Therefore this dilemma is not really a dilemma at all.  If the U.S. cannot get the oil it needs from domestic sources and help improve the economy and create thousands of jobs at the same time, it will get it from foreign sources and give up to $500 billion a year of its wealth to countries that don’t like us and in some instances mean us harm, and to the detriment of the economy as well.

The United States is constantly improving  extraction and utilization methods for fossil fuels, while continuing to develop alternative sources of energy, including nuclear energy.  The potential for Keystone Pipeline leakage can be mitigated through built-in protective redundancies.  Even the original Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), prepared pursuant to NEPA, published in late August 2011 after three years of preparation, found “no significant impacts” from the pipeline.  If a pipeline oil leak did occur, it’s far easier to stop it and then clean it up, than if a leak occurred from an offshore pipeline.

There’s simply not enough alternative energy, including nuclear energy, currently available and it will be decades before there is, so for now we need fossil fuels and the United States has more natural gas, coal, and oil than any other country in the world, but it also has an array of laws and regulations preventing its access and use.  The pipeline could be raised off the ground, as is the Alaska pipeline, or it could detour around the major 200,000-square-mile Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer in Nebraska and other surrounding States.

CONCLUSION

If the United States does not complete the Keystone pipeline, Canada will likely build an oil pipeline from the Tar Sands to its west coast and the 830,00 barrels of oil a day will be sold to China and an additional 150,000 barrels of oil a day from the Bakken Formation in North Dakota will have to continue to use trucks and rail to haul its oil south to Gulf refineries rather than simply using a safer Keystone Pipeline to transport it.  Contributing to upward price pressure of oil will be the “slow-walking” or even forbidding of permitting of wells in the Gulf,  not allowing drilling in ANWAR and on most of the Outer Continental Shelf…and OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), will once again play the major role in setting world oil prices by manipulating supply.

President Obama delayed his decision  on the pipeline until after the 2014 mid-term elections, basically because a large Democrat donor (Tom Steyer)  pledged to donate over $50,000,000 to the Democrats if he did so (Steyer actually spent close to $80,000,000).  After the 2010 mid-term elections, the new Republican-led House of Representatives voted to build the pipeline but the still-Democratic-led Senate voted against it.  The 2014 Congress began in January 2015, and both the Republican-led House and now Republican-led Senate approved it, but President Obama vetoed it.  President Trump signed an Executive Order on January 24, 2017 ordering the re-opening of the approval process for the pipeline.  On March 23, 2017, the State Department granted a permit for the construction of the pipeline to proceed.  President Biden in January 2021 signed an Executive Order revoking the Federal permits authorizing the completion of the pipeline, which had not yet been completed.

Consequently, thousands of Union construction workers lost their jobs as well as 100,000 plus other “indirect” workers that provided services to those construction workers.

 

 

IS CLIMATE-CHANGE DUE MOSTLY TO THE SUN OR IS IT MOSTLY MAN-MADE?

On January 27, 2021, President Biden signed three Executive Orders concerning climate change.  The most controversial one stopped the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, thus throwing out of work 11,000 Union direct construction workers as well as up to 100,000 other (indirect) jobs.  Another controversial provision banned new oil and gas leases on Federal lands, including the 19-million-acre ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge), though some of this land has been “unbanned”.  President Biden also directed Federal agencies and the Department of the Defense to make climate change a priority in their operations.

Climate change has been controversial since its onset in the 1970s when global cooling was the main concern by environmentalists. Therefore, we need to take a close look at it.  That’s what this post attempts.

THE ISSUE

Climate change, global cooling, or warming: terms that have been politicized to the extent that one has to question the sources of all data and facts cited to prove or disprove: 1) whether global warming, cooling or climate change even exits, and if it does, 2) is it man-made or caused by something else or a combination of both.  Further, if it does exist and is mostly man-made, 3) how bad is it and, 4) can anything be done to significantly stop it if it’s bad enough to warrant being stopped.  If we can answer each of these concerns, then we’ll know what to do, if anything.   Here’s my analysis:

1) Whether the earth is warming, cooling or staying the same basically depends on the point in time you select to compare this year’s  earth’s temperature to.  For example, a few hundred years ago the earth went through a “Little Ice Age” (1280-1850 AD) so of course today’s temperatures would be  warmer than then.  You may cite the melting Arctic glaciers as other evidence of global warming.  OK, but you need to consider that glaciers wax and wane over time and when Arctic ice is waning, Anarctic ice is waxing.  In other words, climate constantly changes (in the “Medieval Warm Period” from 900-1300 AD and it was a few degrees warmer than today’s temperatures).  Over thousands of years the Earth has cooled and gotten warmer and cooled and gotten warmer, etc.  In fact, the Earth has had 5 major Ice Ages over the past 2 billion years,  5 periods of serious global cooling.

2) In the last few hundred years some data suggests that the earth appears to have warmed and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increased, so a case can be made for there being a correlation between the two.  Remember that correlation doesn’t mean causation.  Scientists do know that there is a significant correlation between Sunspots and weather on earth.  However, how much of the recent warming is due to CO2 and how much is due to Sun spots and Solar Flares is suggested by the fact that although atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased, the earth’s temperature has remained almost the same, which suggests that carbon dioxide has little or no effect on the earth’s temperature.  A 2015 book by George Root, Climate Change Reconsidered, state that only climate change from 1950 to the present may be due to increased CO2 levels but contrary to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed under auspices of the UN, the maximum amount of global warming is only plus 0.22 degrees Centigrade per century.

3) Is any global warming, cooling, or climate change cause for alarm and action?  Thus far, it’s been relatively minor and any slight increase in the earth’s temperature is probably a good thing…more crops, better weather.  Of course, the adverse effects  from the previous huge California drought, specifically the lack-of-water problem in California’s Central Valley was 100% man-made by former President Obama’s policy of manipulating stored water for the Delta Smelt, a small fish on the Endangered Species List, rather than use it for the cropland and farmers that lived there and for the thousands of migrant farm workers that helped harvest their crops.  Insofar as extreme weather activity is concerned, the past half-century has seen fewer major hurricanes and extreme tornado activity in the United States.

4) Can anything be done about global warming , cooling or climate change if  it gets really bad in the future?  There are various ways to reverse global warming but not global cooling.  My preference is, if there is global warming,  the geoengineering proposals that seem preferable because they affect every country equally and do not harm any country’s economy.  So what should be done now, if anything?  “Watchful waiting” is in order but everyone needs to endeavor to get global warming or climate change out of politics because it should be solely a matter of science.  The Kyoto Protocols were rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1997 by 95 to 0.  And well they should have been, because the largest polluters, China and India. were exempted.  Moreover, the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord because the Accord did nothing to help the environment but would have cost America $3 billion/year that would have been redistributed to other countries.

Recall the “Hockey Stick graph” scandal in which a team led by a professor at the University of Virginia created a graph that eliminated data depicting the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period  in an effort to support the global warming hypothesis.  Then the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change actually and unbelievably included the misleading graph it in its Third Assessment Report.  Therefore, I believe it prudent to be very skeptical of any data depicting global warming or cooling.  However, if you’re an ardent believer in man-made climate change, you really should focus you efforts on the countries most responsible: China and India.  The U.S., despite its large economy, has done the most in cleaning up the environment.  In addition, if you really want to help the environment, focus your efforts on combatting ocean pollution.

With help from the Sun, the Earth’s climate changes constantly and gets warmer and then cooler.  People contribute some, but for the most part it appears the Sun is responsible.  From my course in meteorology at Penn State University,  I  learned that “yes, climate changes all of the time…that is the very nature of climate…”  However, large sums spent on projects that attempt doing something about it are not warranted until there is solid evidence and that we can significantly do something (unlike the political and do-nothing Paris Climate Accord).  Currently, claims of global warming are: 1) a ruse to give climate-related contracts to friends who will pay back significant sums (“kickbacks”) to politicians; 2) used as a rallying cry by which politicians attract and hold young, idealistic people to vote for them; and 3) the ruse the Left is using to weaken Capitalism.

The November 2018  fourth national climate change assessment by the U.S. Global Change Research Program paints a dire picture, with even larger errors in the upper tropical troposphere.  In addition, Dr. Michaels says that the only accurate climate model is the Russian model and that model shows very little evidence of upcoming climate change so I checked out what the premier and super-qualified expert on climate change (Patrick J. Michaels, PhD in ecological climatology) had to say.  Dr. Michaels states in a November 26, 2018, post in “Climate Depot” that “the draft fourth national assessment (“NA4″) uses a flawed ensemble of models that dramatically over-forecasts warming of the lower troposphere.”  In other words, climate change is very minor.  Other experts say that some data indicates the world is about to enter into a 25-year period of global cooling due to weak Solar Cycles 24 and 25.  Read Cold Sun and Dark Winter by John L. Casey, and chapter 2 (“A Less Giving Sun”) of the book, Twilight of Abundance by David Archibald if you would like to see the research on this.  A Newsweek magazine article, “The Cooling World,” dated April 28, 1975, first addressed global cooling.

CONCLUSION

To recap, climate and weather are primarily caused by the sun with only a small amount caused by people, so there’s only so much that can be done about it to make any difference.   If anyone says that climate change is “settled science,” you need to know that nothing in science is ever completely settled.  I estimate that about half of all scientists disagree with climate-change being mostly man-made.  Bad weather for a few consecutive years is simply “weather,” whereas bad weather for 15-20 consecutive years is “climate.” Weather changes all of the time.

Everyone should do whatever they can to keep our environment clean.  As far as I can determine, there is no climate emergency and no existential threat from our climate.  The existential threats to the U.S. are from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran; all of the hoopla is partisan political B.S. (see Swedish professor and world-renowned environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg’s 2021 book, “False Alarm [how climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet”]).

 

ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE BAD FOR AMERICA

Auto companies are making electric vehicles, using the environment and government incentives and regulations as their justification…but Americans aren’t buying them.   Journalists haven’t even questioned the numerous assumptions in our government’s decision and have displayed an unbelievable amount of incuriousness. Therefore, let’s ask a few basic questions that have not been asked by so-called “professional journalists”.

o Fossil fuels are burned somewhere to generate the electricity that fuels electric vehicles.  Are the pollutants created by the fuel burned by automobile gas engines greater than the amount created by burning the fuel necessary for producing the electricity needed to power electric vehicles?

o Are electric vehicles more susceptible to EMP (electric magnetic pulse) attacks than gas-fueled automobiles. Aren’t the high-voltage transmission lines that carry the electricity from the power plants to the gas stations extremely vulnerable to an EMP attack?

o The batteries used by electric vehicles require rare-earth minerals (Neodymium, Dysprosium, Cobalt, Nickel, etc.), most of which come from or are controlled by China whereas the U.S. could produce enough oil to fuel all of the cars on the road, and even have plenty to export.  Isn’t this a serious national security problem?

o The motivation of the younger generation for supporting electric vehicles is cleaner air; the motivation of government leaders appears to be massive under-the-table cash from “kickbacks”.  Think of the one-billion-dollar, government-funded, battery-factory boondoggle, “Solyndra,” as a great example (where the funds it received disappeared).

o Electric vehicles can eventually have a “kill switch” that can immediately disable them.  This has serious ramifications for tyrannical government officials because government can shut down anyone, anytime.

o Because electric vehicles are limited in the distances they can travel due to lack of recharging stations and how long it takes to recharge batteries, they limit freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want.

CONCLUSION 

The United States has huge gas, oil and coal reserves.  In fact, it developed them to the extent that it exported oil and gas when Donald Trump was President.  Today, it’s paying its enemies for oil, President Biden having shut down leasing Federal lands for oil and gas, as well as stopping construction of the Keystone XL and the Dakota pipelines, stopping drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and significantly raising fees for drilling.  These policies are making the U.S. more dependent on Russian and mid-East oi, enriching those countries and giving them the funds they need to cause mischief around the world.  Moreover, with the advent of electric vehicles, China will have a great deal of control over most developed countries due to it possessing over 90% of the world’s Cobalt, Nickel, and other rare-earth minerals that are necessary to make the batteries that are used in electric vehicles. In the event of a war, America’s power plants  would probably be destroyed very quickly, leaving those Americans with electric vehicles stranded.  The Unites States should therefore think twice before going “all-in” with electric vehicles.