Cheerleading for wind/solar is misplaced. Compare hydraulic fracturing and wind/solar:
Despite decades of taxpayer support, wind/solar are still unreliable grid parasites with maximum capacity factors of 25-40% (meaning it take 3-4 times the capacity to generate the same amount of energy). They produce power based on the weather, not our needs.
On the other hand, fracking produces enormous amounts of reliable energy (supplanting coal in electrical generation) and feedstock for manufacturing/chemical processes while improving our national security and generating lots of tax dollars (taxes/royalties) for the US government.
A hypothetical transition from ICE to BEV would not reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly or at all. A number of studies show that emissions from the manufacturing of BEV exceed the lifetime emissions of ICE although the number of assumptions required to make such calculations requires a certain amount of faith in the credibility of the source. The transition is not possible anyway because of resource limitations and international politics.
Looking at the excellent graph showing the steady decarbonization rate of the economy for so long, regardless of short-term policies, let us recall that the time in question was a time when US heavy industry was hollowed out and that work shipped overseas. Steel mills, aluminum smelters, shipyards, foundries, forges, pressure vessel fabrication shops... all of these suffered slow attrition throughout the late 90's,, the 00's and teens as east Asian (not just China, but India, Indonesia, South Korea and others) nations steadily took the lead from long-established US firms hobbled by labor costs and crippling business and environmental regulations. If this shift was beneficial for the sake of decarbonization, it also carried serious disadvantages regarding national security and strategic leadership. Today America could not repeat the production surge that let us win World War II because there is no "surge" capacity present in our heavy industries. The Kaiser miracle, when 2700 Liberty ships were built between 1940 and 1944, would be impossible today. US industry is struggling to produce 60,000 155 mm artillery shells per month at present, with hopes to increase that to 100,000 per month before year's end. Russia is reportedly on track to produce 3 million 155 mm artillery shells per year. A soft squishy service economy, such as the US has become, is in danger of disaster when the barbarians hammer at the gates.
Presidents MAY matter in any policy context if and only if their policies are followed sufficiently long to have an impact. For policy decisions that try to address "problems" that won't become problems for decades, the answer to your question is unlikely to be YES - too many administrations, too few visible positive accomplishments, too many negative side effects, and too much wasted tax revenue.
As an example, let's suppose we actually close NG plants in the near future. Result - no discernible impacts on climate, blackouts (and not just rolling, as in CA now), and growing poverty. Yes, Presidents may make a difference, but in this case the policy would be a disaster. Biden would have "created a devastation and called it a victory" (Tacitus). As Jack Welch said, "If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near."
Roger, what is your opinion on the recent administration move to shut down coal and new natural gas power plants in the near future? Will that achieve the 8-9% reduction required to meet their CO2 reduction goals? And at what cost to the economy?
On another note, I am looking over a new paper by Cooper, V.T. et al, in Science Advances 10.eadk9461 (2024) 17 Apr. 2024, pp 1-11, which used Last Glacial Maximum data to deduce a median modern-day Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of 2.4 degrees C. The paper specifically rejects very high ECS of 4 or 5 degrees C as outside the evidence. It would seem that science is slowly, quietly , driving more and more nails into the coffin of RCP 8.5.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "fictional" free market. I hope you mean that our energy markets are not free markets because of massive interference by the government -- including insane regulations holding back nuclear, subsidies for unreliables like wind and solar, and so on. The concept of free markets is far from fictional. It's something we should fight hard to move closer to.
When it comes to energy, we see endless red tape and regulations which the communists describe as "the market".
Government enacts an ICE ban by 2035? That's the market speaking, even though the actual market is running as fast as possible from EV's..
Canadian government places massive constrains on the proposed Energy East pipeline in Canada and Transcanada responds by cancelling the project? That is a private company responding to market forces, according to the communists.
As sad and funny as it sounds. Thats how Canada currently works, Trudeau and Guillbeault making pronouncements from the mount, and clowns describing those pronouncements as "market forces".
Leftist truthspeak.
And the country is falling apart, exactly as predicted.
I found this article to be a muddle. Early in the article
"One interpretation of these data would be that presidential administrations do not matter for annual U.S. emissions reductions. This is correct up to a point and especially for the short period that each leader is in office."
Then the last paragraph
"The bottom line: Presidents do matter a great deal for energy policies and their outcomes, and thus for carbon dioxide emissions. A comprehensive U.S. energy policy needs to carefully consider those dimensions of energy policy that can be influenced on short time scales within an administration’s term, those dimensions that necessarily require a longer-term perspective, and not to confuse the two — regardless the political pressures."
Why should energy policy consider those dimensions that can be influenced on short time scales within a president's term? That is short term thinking, like asking how many miles of roads were built in a president's term.
Rather than looking at personalities (presidents) we should consider which policies produced good results. Considering personal factors is the same fallacy often used when looking at GDP growth in a president's term. GDP, like energy, is influenced by policies, not personalities.
"Why should energy policy consider those dimensions that can be influenced on short time scales within a president's term?"
Answer: Consider the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That necessitated immediate and significant changes to US energy policies on time scales of weeks, months, and years.
The US response to the invasion of Ukraine was a reaction required by events on the ground. Policy, on the other hand, relies on planning and projections.
I guess I'm not following your line of thought in this article. You seem to conflate the long term (policy) with the short term (a few years). There's a difference between successful policy which necessarily takes decades and a politician taking credit for what happened under his watch that he may not have had anything to do with.
Roger thanks for partaking in the follow up comments.
I too found the article to feel a bit muddled. But I think you are operating on multiple "planes of thinking". In this case policies as enacted by presidents and the market/technology changes among others. Which "rudder" has affected the course of the overall ship more? The graph of slow declining of carbon dioxide emissions tells the whole story IMO...
It amazes me that the destruction of the pipelines has been almost completely ignored by the MSM. I’m at least 90% sure that the US is responsible; that’s probably why it is ignored. Who else has the motive, means and opportunity? Seymour Hersh seems to have the details in his early Substack posts.
Individual Presidents and Prime Ministers can make a huge impact, if they force unnatural and UNNECESSARY rapid change for no discernable scientific reason, causing massive waste through bad policy (See Biden/Trudeau/Merkle etc etc etc etc). the impact isn't on CO2, its on us.
Also, #2
Replacement = Coal to nuclear, EVs that displace ICEs, incandescent to LEDs.
As we know, we had a massive fail intermediate step from incandescent to LED in those awful curly vacuum fluorescent bulb, a failure entirely driven by bad policy put forward by alarmist alarmists and politicians. Because they are usually wrong.
EV's will end up being the same but infinitely worse failure. Based on current technology, hybrids are the only thing that makes sense, the best intermediate step from ICE to EV, assuming and IF we get the new "magic battery" tech for the EV's to complete the transition. Current battery tech for EV's is going to be a disaster at scale, any realistic reading of the requirements and downside makes that clear.
Lets not double down investing in failure, Trudeau has already done that enough, we cannot afford any more "success", its collapsing the economy.
Well EVs are far superior to the ICE drive. After all you are just talking replacing an ICEngine with an Electric Motor, EMs are far superior to ICEs. The problem is as always the battery tech is not up to snuff. So you are right that hybrids are the obvious choice for light vehicles or the Methanol engine. Especially series hybrids with constant speed extreme efficiency Methanol engine/generators.
However, for heavy duty applications, diesel engines in rail, heavy trucking, mining equipment, construction heavy equipment, buses, ferries, LRTs and short distance shipping it is very cost effective to go BEV. The battery problems can be mitigated with high value transport. Cost savings in the $60k/yr region for a diesel heavy truck replacement. Essentially you are replacing a 30% efficient diesel engine with a 60% efficient gas turbine with gas @ 10% the energy cost of diesel fuel. Tesla has proven the range issue is manageable for most routes. Some use of diesel will always be warranted for long routes in remote areas, i.e. ice roads.
Other than that, for low energy transport applications, which are the most common personal transport in Developing Nations, BEVs are proving more cost effective than ICEVs. That is because small motors and small batteries are suffice. These are light vehicles or motorbikes that are used almost entirely for short range urban transit.
I also believe CO2 is not the issue and has nothing to do with EV mandates. This is something far more sinister. More to do with their 15min pod cities plan.
Mandates in general are always a bad idea. That means your typical idiot politician, birdbrain bureaucrat or corrupt, money-grubbing parasite crony multi-national will be micromanaging policy. A recipe for total failure in every way, as it has been.
There are free market ways to promote innovation and improved economic efficiency.
The canadian EV mandate is simply the latest admission by the federal liberals that the carbon tax does not work and they actually don't believe it will do what they say it will.
The rising carbon tax is supposed to change all our habits, but ALL of the economists they quote in support of the carbon tax say that in return you get rid of all other caps, mandates, regulation and red tape and let the tax work.
So of course they do the complete opposite.
Because they are always wrong.
They aren't even smart enough to understand that every energy pronouncement they make underlines that they don't believe in the carbon tax.
That's it. A carbon tax or the much more rational & effective Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend, is a Free Market approach and therefore cannot work unless it replaces all the Free Market destroying subsidies, mandates and exemptions been given to BEV light vehicles, Wind & Solar, Hydrogen, Utility Battery Storage, Agrofuels, ITER, biomass power & CCS.
Well, I’m not defending or think we need any sort of price on co2 except maybe to encourage more.
I’m just pointing out that the defenders of carbon pricing, at least here In canada are illogical idiots who are incapable of two rational logical thoughts in a row.
Yes, he cuts like a knife through the nonsense we see daily in general media regarding energy and energy policy.
The EV push is shaping up to be an absolute economic and environmental disaster, it would be such an easy win to incentivize hybrids with realistic mileage requirements. We leverage the existing ICE infrastructure while reducing demand, taking the win.
But no.
EV's are just like renewables, so much magical thinking in that if we just ban everything else then we will be incentivized and will develop the necessary tech.
There is far too much at stake here to sacrifice all to a non-existent climate emergency (as i learned on this site).
No the EV push is comparatively trivial vs the Wind & Solar push. With their EV mandates & subsidies we are talking $billions wasted, with wind & solar we are talking $trillions wasted. EVs won't destroy the economy, wind & solar will definitely destroy our industrial socioeconomic system. Likely that is the intention of our Malthusian Overlords.
With EVs it is more likely their goal is a roundabout way to stop us plebeians from driving, by making light vehicles too expensive. That way they can happily warehouse us in their 15min cities, living on UBI (at the government's discretion) with CBDC controlled spending and stuck in 250sq.ft. apartments eating noddles, with bugs for protein. Pretty obvious the Aristocracy never has liked us and is just hoping for the day they can get rid of all of us.
But 'CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS' are not an issue. CO2 alarm is a massive, over exaggerated Marxist alarmist hoax. There are countless vastly bigger issues and threats to humankind, starting with American provocation of nuclear war with Russia, American kid glove treatment of Iran and Islamic regimes, American Marxists opening the USA's borders to all comers. Real pollution is in the food chains, oceans...and minds of young people targeted by Marxists and Communists; target No 1 'old USA' and 'old Europe'. While you prattle on about 'CO2 emissions' China is getting ready to destroy your entire economic base and society. And laughing at how easy it has been to fool you about tiny changes in the weather.
That's all true, however the reality is there is no way we have enough fossil fuel to supply the 5fold increase in World Primary Energy Supply that will be needed to fulfill the aspirations of Developing Nations for a modern lifestyle. Fossil fuel + Renewables isn't nearly enough supply.
The only energy source capable of supplying that level of energy is nuclear. And it can supply that for at least 20Myrs with fission, until the sun dies with fusion. Happy coincidence, nuclear has the lowest emissions of any energy source by far. Conclusion: we urgently need to transition to a mostly nuclear energy based civilization ASAP.
This is why the Communist left in the West have demonized nuclear since the 1950's. First the Soviets and now the Chinese know that cheap, abundant energy makes an industrial, secure nation. As the soppy West falls for their climate hoax and our grids start to fail, 'solar power', even on sunny days in winter when the sun is low, won't run the the heater in your Tesla nor take you to the end of your street.
Oof, no. Why would anyone expect these variables to follow any trend alongside Presidential tenure?? That’s not how energy, climate, or any policy works. Analysis is quantification gone cray, cray. I mean you got it right in the last paragraph, but no one‘s gonna read down that far. They’re just gonna remember the table.
Cheerleading for wind/solar is misplaced. Compare hydraulic fracturing and wind/solar:
Despite decades of taxpayer support, wind/solar are still unreliable grid parasites with maximum capacity factors of 25-40% (meaning it take 3-4 times the capacity to generate the same amount of energy). They produce power based on the weather, not our needs.
On the other hand, fracking produces enormous amounts of reliable energy (supplanting coal in electrical generation) and feedstock for manufacturing/chemical processes while improving our national security and generating lots of tax dollars (taxes/royalties) for the US government.
A hypothetical transition from ICE to BEV would not reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly or at all. A number of studies show that emissions from the manufacturing of BEV exceed the lifetime emissions of ICE although the number of assumptions required to make such calculations requires a certain amount of faith in the credibility of the source. The transition is not possible anyway because of resource limitations and international politics.
Please share a good analysis.
Do you remember "Acid Rain"?
Do you know Chris Keefer?
Canada got rid of the largest coal fired power plants and built 20 nuclear power plants in 20 years in the 1970's.
Surely we should be able to do that again.
Looking at the excellent graph showing the steady decarbonization rate of the economy for so long, regardless of short-term policies, let us recall that the time in question was a time when US heavy industry was hollowed out and that work shipped overseas. Steel mills, aluminum smelters, shipyards, foundries, forges, pressure vessel fabrication shops... all of these suffered slow attrition throughout the late 90's,, the 00's and teens as east Asian (not just China, but India, Indonesia, South Korea and others) nations steadily took the lead from long-established US firms hobbled by labor costs and crippling business and environmental regulations. If this shift was beneficial for the sake of decarbonization, it also carried serious disadvantages regarding national security and strategic leadership. Today America could not repeat the production surge that let us win World War II because there is no "surge" capacity present in our heavy industries. The Kaiser miracle, when 2700 Liberty ships were built between 1940 and 1944, would be impossible today. US industry is struggling to produce 60,000 155 mm artillery shells per month at present, with hopes to increase that to 100,000 per month before year's end. Russia is reportedly on track to produce 3 million 155 mm artillery shells per year. A soft squishy service economy, such as the US has become, is in danger of disaster when the barbarians hammer at the gates.
Off topic but not really, we are talking policy choices.
Curious what Roger thinks about such blatant outrageous gaslighting about who is responsible for suggesting renewables are cheaper and better?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/23/renewable-energy-transition-australia-labor-government-net-zero
I can't swing a dead cat without running into nonsense about how wind and solar really really truly are cheapest, this time for sure, we promise.
Maybe this requires a new piece on how the messaging is shifting from "it will be easy" to "no one said it would be easy you climate denier you".
Presidents MAY matter in any policy context if and only if their policies are followed sufficiently long to have an impact. For policy decisions that try to address "problems" that won't become problems for decades, the answer to your question is unlikely to be YES - too many administrations, too few visible positive accomplishments, too many negative side effects, and too much wasted tax revenue.
As an example, let's suppose we actually close NG plants in the near future. Result - no discernible impacts on climate, blackouts (and not just rolling, as in CA now), and growing poverty. Yes, Presidents may make a difference, but in this case the policy would be a disaster. Biden would have "created a devastation and called it a victory" (Tacitus). As Jack Welch said, "If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near."
Roger, what is your opinion on the recent administration move to shut down coal and new natural gas power plants in the near future? Will that achieve the 8-9% reduction required to meet their CO2 reduction goals? And at what cost to the economy?
On another note, I am looking over a new paper by Cooper, V.T. et al, in Science Advances 10.eadk9461 (2024) 17 Apr. 2024, pp 1-11, which used Last Glacial Maximum data to deduce a median modern-day Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of 2.4 degrees C. The paper specifically rejects very high ECS of 4 or 5 degrees C as outside the evidence. It would seem that science is slowly, quietly , driving more and more nails into the coffin of RCP 8.5.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "fictional" free market. I hope you mean that our energy markets are not free markets because of massive interference by the government -- including insane regulations holding back nuclear, subsidies for unreliables like wind and solar, and so on. The concept of free markets is far from fictional. It's something we should fight hard to move closer to.
When it comes to energy, we see endless red tape and regulations which the communists describe as "the market".
Government enacts an ICE ban by 2035? That's the market speaking, even though the actual market is running as fast as possible from EV's..
Canadian government places massive constrains on the proposed Energy East pipeline in Canada and Transcanada responds by cancelling the project? That is a private company responding to market forces, according to the communists.
As sad and funny as it sounds. Thats how Canada currently works, Trudeau and Guillbeault making pronouncements from the mount, and clowns describing those pronouncements as "market forces".
Leftist truthspeak.
And the country is falling apart, exactly as predicted.
I found this article to be a muddle. Early in the article
"One interpretation of these data would be that presidential administrations do not matter for annual U.S. emissions reductions. This is correct up to a point and especially for the short period that each leader is in office."
Then the last paragraph
"The bottom line: Presidents do matter a great deal for energy policies and their outcomes, and thus for carbon dioxide emissions. A comprehensive U.S. energy policy needs to carefully consider those dimensions of energy policy that can be influenced on short time scales within an administration’s term, those dimensions that necessarily require a longer-term perspective, and not to confuse the two — regardless the political pressures."
Why should energy policy consider those dimensions that can be influenced on short time scales within a president's term? That is short term thinking, like asking how many miles of roads were built in a president's term.
Rather than looking at personalities (presidents) we should consider which policies produced good results. Considering personal factors is the same fallacy often used when looking at GDP growth in a president's term. GDP, like energy, is influenced by policies, not personalities.
You ask:
"Why should energy policy consider those dimensions that can be influenced on short time scales within a president's term?"
Answer: Consider the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That necessitated immediate and significant changes to US energy policies on time scales of weeks, months, and years.
The US response to the invasion of Ukraine was a reaction required by events on the ground. Policy, on the other hand, relies on planning and projections.
I guess I'm not following your line of thought in this article. You seem to conflate the long term (policy) with the short term (a few years). There's a difference between successful policy which necessarily takes decades and a politician taking credit for what happened under his watch that he may not have had anything to do with.
Seems like we are in violent agreement here
Roger thanks for partaking in the follow up comments.
I too found the article to feel a bit muddled. But I think you are operating on multiple "planes of thinking". In this case policies as enacted by presidents and the market/technology changes among others. Which "rudder" has affected the course of the overall ship more? The graph of slow declining of carbon dioxide emissions tells the whole story IMO...
thanks!
Swift reaction indeed: The USA at last sells LNG to Europe after Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines were destroyed.
It amazes me that the destruction of the pipelines has been almost completely ignored by the MSM. I’m at least 90% sure that the US is responsible; that’s probably why it is ignored. Who else has the motive, means and opportunity? Seymour Hersh seems to have the details in his early Substack posts.
Yes, Doomberg nailed that to the wall.
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/friends-like-these
Ha!
Individual Presidents and Prime Ministers can make a huge impact, if they force unnatural and UNNECESSARY rapid change for no discernable scientific reason, causing massive waste through bad policy (See Biden/Trudeau/Merkle etc etc etc etc). the impact isn't on CO2, its on us.
Also, #2
Replacement = Coal to nuclear, EVs that displace ICEs, incandescent to LEDs.
As we know, we had a massive fail intermediate step from incandescent to LED in those awful curly vacuum fluorescent bulb, a failure entirely driven by bad policy put forward by alarmist alarmists and politicians. Because they are usually wrong.
EV's will end up being the same but infinitely worse failure. Based on current technology, hybrids are the only thing that makes sense, the best intermediate step from ICE to EV, assuming and IF we get the new "magic battery" tech for the EV's to complete the transition. Current battery tech for EV's is going to be a disaster at scale, any realistic reading of the requirements and downside makes that clear.
Lets not double down investing in failure, Trudeau has already done that enough, we cannot afford any more "success", its collapsing the economy.
Well EVs are far superior to the ICE drive. After all you are just talking replacing an ICEngine with an Electric Motor, EMs are far superior to ICEs. The problem is as always the battery tech is not up to snuff. So you are right that hybrids are the obvious choice for light vehicles or the Methanol engine. Especially series hybrids with constant speed extreme efficiency Methanol engine/generators.
However, for heavy duty applications, diesel engines in rail, heavy trucking, mining equipment, construction heavy equipment, buses, ferries, LRTs and short distance shipping it is very cost effective to go BEV. The battery problems can be mitigated with high value transport. Cost savings in the $60k/yr region for a diesel heavy truck replacement. Essentially you are replacing a 30% efficient diesel engine with a 60% efficient gas turbine with gas @ 10% the energy cost of diesel fuel. Tesla has proven the range issue is manageable for most routes. Some use of diesel will always be warranted for long routes in remote areas, i.e. ice roads.
Other than that, for low energy transport applications, which are the most common personal transport in Developing Nations, BEVs are proving more cost effective than ICEVs. That is because small motors and small batteries are suffice. These are light vehicles or motorbikes that are used almost entirely for short range urban transit.
As an electrical guy, yes electric motors are superior to engines.
But as you note, its not the motor its the battery.
And of course, i don't believe CO2 is an issue so the entire underpinning of mandates is false, just like covid.
Denial is rampant. In my head.
I also believe CO2 is not the issue and has nothing to do with EV mandates. This is something far more sinister. More to do with their 15min pod cities plan.
Mandates in general are always a bad idea. That means your typical idiot politician, birdbrain bureaucrat or corrupt, money-grubbing parasite crony multi-national will be micromanaging policy. A recipe for total failure in every way, as it has been.
There are free market ways to promote innovation and improved economic efficiency.
Yes.
The canadian EV mandate is simply the latest admission by the federal liberals that the carbon tax does not work and they actually don't believe it will do what they say it will.
The rising carbon tax is supposed to change all our habits, but ALL of the economists they quote in support of the carbon tax say that in return you get rid of all other caps, mandates, regulation and red tape and let the tax work.
So of course they do the complete opposite.
Because they are always wrong.
They aren't even smart enough to understand that every energy pronouncement they make underlines that they don't believe in the carbon tax.
That's it. A carbon tax or the much more rational & effective Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend, is a Free Market approach and therefore cannot work unless it replaces all the Free Market destroying subsidies, mandates and exemptions been given to BEV light vehicles, Wind & Solar, Hydrogen, Utility Battery Storage, Agrofuels, ITER, biomass power & CCS.
Well, I’m not defending or think we need any sort of price on co2 except maybe to encourage more.
I’m just pointing out that the defenders of carbon pricing, at least here In canada are illogical idiots who are incapable of two rational logical thoughts in a row.
Is this after all just nonsense? Or is it a realistic take on things?
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/teslas-turmoil-the-ev-meltdown-in
Robert Bryce's blog is excellent and I would strongly recommend it to those who like Roger's blog.
Yes, he cuts like a knife through the nonsense we see daily in general media regarding energy and energy policy.
The EV push is shaping up to be an absolute economic and environmental disaster, it would be such an easy win to incentivize hybrids with realistic mileage requirements. We leverage the existing ICE infrastructure while reducing demand, taking the win.
But no.
EV's are just like renewables, so much magical thinking in that if we just ban everything else then we will be incentivized and will develop the necessary tech.
There is far too much at stake here to sacrifice all to a non-existent climate emergency (as i learned on this site).
"The EV push is shaping up to be an absolute economic and environmental disaster,"
I dare say, one might even call it a "blood bath"....
No the EV push is comparatively trivial vs the Wind & Solar push. With their EV mandates & subsidies we are talking $billions wasted, with wind & solar we are talking $trillions wasted. EVs won't destroy the economy, wind & solar will definitely destroy our industrial socioeconomic system. Likely that is the intention of our Malthusian Overlords.
With EVs it is more likely their goal is a roundabout way to stop us plebeians from driving, by making light vehicles too expensive. That way they can happily warehouse us in their 15min cities, living on UBI (at the government's discretion) with CBDC controlled spending and stuck in 250sq.ft. apartments eating noddles, with bugs for protein. Pretty obvious the Aristocracy never has liked us and is just hoping for the day they can get rid of all of us.
"Before reading on, please provide you best guesses matching the presidential administration with with the annual rate of carbon dioxide emissions"
.
.
Should be:
.
.
"Before reading on, please provide YOUR best guesses matching the presidential administration with with the annual rate of carbon dioxide emissions"
Thanks Frank, at the top no less!
But 'CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS' are not an issue. CO2 alarm is a massive, over exaggerated Marxist alarmist hoax. There are countless vastly bigger issues and threats to humankind, starting with American provocation of nuclear war with Russia, American kid glove treatment of Iran and Islamic regimes, American Marxists opening the USA's borders to all comers. Real pollution is in the food chains, oceans...and minds of young people targeted by Marxists and Communists; target No 1 'old USA' and 'old Europe'. While you prattle on about 'CO2 emissions' China is getting ready to destroy your entire economic base and society. And laughing at how easy it has been to fool you about tiny changes in the weather.
That's all true, however the reality is there is no way we have enough fossil fuel to supply the 5fold increase in World Primary Energy Supply that will be needed to fulfill the aspirations of Developing Nations for a modern lifestyle. Fossil fuel + Renewables isn't nearly enough supply.
The only energy source capable of supplying that level of energy is nuclear. And it can supply that for at least 20Myrs with fission, until the sun dies with fusion. Happy coincidence, nuclear has the lowest emissions of any energy source by far. Conclusion: we urgently need to transition to a mostly nuclear energy based civilization ASAP.
This is why the Communist left in the West have demonized nuclear since the 1950's. First the Soviets and now the Chinese know that cheap, abundant energy makes an industrial, secure nation. As the soppy West falls for their climate hoax and our grids start to fail, 'solar power', even on sunny days in winter when the sun is low, won't run the the heater in your Tesla nor take you to the end of your street.
Oof, no. Why would anyone expect these variables to follow any trend alongside Presidential tenure?? That’s not how energy, climate, or any policy works. Analysis is quantification gone cray, cray. I mean you got it right in the last paragraph, but no one‘s gonna read down that far. They’re just gonna remember the table.