THB Insider #18
Follow Up Edition - Mann's Million, Materials, and More
Today, I provide some follow ups on recent THB posts. At the bottom, please find a complete PDF of my slide deck from my talk earlier this week to CLINTEL, a group of self-described skeptics and net zero opponents.
Let’s get to it . . .
Michael Mann Loses Another Court Battle, Now Owes $1.1+ Million
Yesterday, a DC Court ordered climate scientist Michael Mann to pay defendants Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute $477.350.80. The fees were awarded under the Ani-SLAPP Act, which the court explains is, “to protect targets of meritless lawsuits” and “to create a substantive right not to stand trial and to avoid the burdens and costs of pre-trial procedures.”
Mann’s loss adds to his recent legal woes:
Ordered in January to pay National Review $530,820.21, under the same act;
Had his $1 million punitive damage award reduced in March to $5,000 by the court;
Sanctioned later in March for acting in “bad faith” in the trial, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in penalties, on top of the $1.1+ million listed above.
Mann followed up his legal loss yesterday with an apparent threat against President Trump, exhorting that “we’re in second amendment territory” — screenshot below (I’ve just been informed that he has taken it down).
Mann’s odious behavior has long been celebrated by the climate community and the major media. That may or may not continue, but I’d guess he now has the attention of the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania (where he is a top administrator) and perhaps the Secret Service.
More Details on the Trump Administration’s Politicization of Intelligence
Earlier this week I discussed the politicization of intelligence under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard (catch up here). The politicization of intelligence is in the wheelhouse of issues I discuss in my book, The Honest Broker, which gives this site its name. One chapter in that book is on the decision to go to war in Iraq.
In my post earlier this week, I allowed for the possibility that the politicization of intelligence in this case could be by the Trump Administration, or perhaps by the intelligence community.
News that broke soon after I posted removes all doubt.
Reuters reported that DNI Gabbard’s chief of staff, Joseph Kent, admitted in an email that the available intelligence did not support the claims made by President Trump that the Venezuelan government was directing the activities of Tren de Aragua, a group designated as terrorists by the State Department:
In his email, Kent argued that it would be logical for Venezuela, a U.S. adversary, to send gang members across the border, saying that any country seeking to harm the United States "would naturally take their bad actors and send them to our nation.”
“When Biden announced that the border was open I think we let a quest for ... direct links between the Venezuelan government and TDA obstruct basic common sense,” he wrote, adding that the National Intelligence Council needed to start “looking at getting a new assessment written on TDA and their relationship with the government of Venezuela that reflects basic common sense.”
In parallel, the New York Times reported more details on the content of Kent’s email (emphasis added):
“Flooding our nation with ‘migrants’ and especially ‘migrants’ who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation, even if the gov of Venezuela isn’t specifically tasking or enabling TDA’s operations,” Mr. Kent wrote . . .
Kent explained in the email that the intelligence officers need to “rethink” their conclusions in order to protect Trump and Gabbard, who had already made public claims contrary to what the ODNI had concluded:
“We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard’s position and for the president of the United States.
According to the reporting, the intelligence was declassified by the ODNI, with Kent’s approval, based on his apparent misjudgment that it would be interpreted as supporting the claims by the President and Gabbard. In my view, the ODNI declassification undercuts Gabbard’s expressed concerns about a leak.
This situation is a big deal. Fortunately, the intelligence community, and members of both parties in Congress recognize that. Intelligence is politicized — by Republicans or Democrats — at considerable risk to national security.
Materials Demand Implied Under Alternative Energy Transformation Scenarios
My post earlier this week — Heavy Metal — had a wide readership. Some people interpreted the Michaux analysis as concluding that an energy system transformation is impossible. That is incorrect. What Michaux concluded is that the IRENA 1.5 scenario coupled with existing technologies implies a world with massive requirements for mineral extraction. It was a quantitative thought experiment, not a prediction or even projection.
Consider Seaver et al. 2023, which conducted a similar (if much less comprehensive) analysis of the mineral implications of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 under various IPCC scenarios. They arrive at qualitatively similar results (despite assuming future technologies that do not presently exist, like carbon capture and storage):
Overall raw material demand and material-associated emissions are heavily driven by wind and solar technology trends. . . Scenarios in which electricity generation from solar and wind constitutes more than 40% of all electricity generation in 2050 show considerably higher demand not only for such specialty materials but also for structural bulk materials like cement and steel . . .
Kalt et al. 2022 also arrive at qualitatively similar results, acknowledging that solar and wind generation is highly materials intensive:
Our results confirm that low-carbon energy scenarios are much more material-intensive than pathways with higher fossil-fuel consumption and fuel-related GHG emissions. Depending on technological progress and choice of specific technological options, the transformation of the electricity sector and, regarding progressing electrification and sector coupling, energy supply in general may become a considerable driver for metal requirements worldwide. Aluminium use in the electricity sector could rise particularly fast, driven by requirements in transmission and distribution grids as well as power plants. Although studies on the future economy-wide demand for copper and aluminium usually apply highly aggregated approaches without consideration of specific energy technologies or infrastructure components, the majority of projections in the literature appear as reasonably compatible with electricity sector scenarios limiting global temperature rise to 2 or even 1.5 °C. Grid expansion and reinforcement, necessary to accommodate large shares of volatile renewable generation capacities and provide universal access to electricity as proclaimed in SDG 7 (UN, 2018), is an important factor that may not be disregarded. Whether the associated material requirements can be mitigated through decentralized grid structures, smart grids, etc. is especially relevant for regions with currently less developed electricity systems (like large parts of Africa and Southern Asia) since these regions account for the largest growth in material stocks in ambitious decarbonisation scenarios.
Some use these various studies to cheerlead for or against their favorite energy technologies — yawn. I take from them that any scenario of energy system transformation needs to explicitly consider and quantify materials implications, rather than assuming them away.
Some Multimedia from Me this Week
I appeared on my friend Tisha Schuller’s podcast. Tisha’s Substack — Both of These Things are True — is well worth a follow. Listen to our chat below.
I gave a lecture on scientific integrity shortfalls in climate science to CLINTEL, a self-described group of climate skeptics and net zero opponents. I welcome the chance to engage with people who hold different views than I do — The main message of my talk and our subsequent conversation was that effective climate action and scientific integrity are perfectly compatible. Perhaps no one changed their minds (I didn’t so why would anyone else?) but perhaps we all gained better understanding of the views of others, and that’s a win. Below the talk, paid THB subscribers can download a PDF of my full slide deck.
Here is that talk:
Have a great weekend!
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BONUS CONTENT FOR PAID THB SUBSCRIBERS - MY CLINTEL SLIDE DECK