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Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Peter Williams: Don't tell Greta


Or Mr Guterres either

Don’t tell the climate alarmists.

Don’t tell the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The world is using more oil than ever.

Oh, and more coal than ever as well.

According to a report from Bloomberg, world oil consumption reached 102.5 million barrels a day this past month (July), more than the record of 102.3 million barrels a day that we had in pre-covid times back in August of 2019.

The comparison for the first few months of this year tells a similar story.

The world was consuming 100.8 million barrels a day from January to April. In 2019 in the same period, the number was 99.9 million a day.

Oil demand surges in the northern hemisphere summer because people go away for holidays either driving their petrol powered car or flying in a plane powered by oil.

What’s even more astounding is that demand for oil is likely to increase up to 4 percent in the next five years before settling on a high plateau.

There is, according to Bloomberg, no chance that oil consumption will drop any time soon. The report says there is no chance that oil consumption by 2030 will reduce enough for the world to meet net-zero emissions targets.

Here’s the kicker – many western governments, although not New Zealand for now, are telling oil companies to invest in more production, while at the same time preaching renewables and green energy in public.

British media are reporting today that at least hundred new oil and sea gas licenses will be issued.

Politicians specialize in hypocrisy, although the British PM Rishi Sunk is trying to smooth the waters with the inevitable protests by saying that banning everything is not the answer to climate change.

Ironically though, he did emphasise a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK in 2030 would still go ahead.

As for coal, consumption was up 3.3 percent last year to 8.3 billion tonnes.

It’s the first time the world has burnt more than eight billion tonnes in a calendar year.

The International Energy Agency says it will stay near that level this year as strong growth in Asia for power generation and industry outpaces declines in the US and Europe.

Mr Guterres of the UN can go on all he likes about global boiling, but unless China and India, and for that matter the US, stop using or at least start reducing consumption of oil and coal, then the greenhouse gas emissions - which may or may not have an impact on the world’s climate - will not be reducing significantly.

Quite why New Zealand is even bothering to become the virtue signaling leader of the world on matters of emissions when oil and coal consumption internationally is at record highs is beyond my comprehension.

Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.

5 comments:

Basil Walker said...

NZ is a minority virtue signaller because Labour has more educated communicators type than reasonable thinking people with work ,family, business backgrounds . The PIJF stymied debate and the universities only conducted one side of the discussion / debate / engagement. Interestingly the Global warming fiasco is idealogical , therefore in the same basket as religion and treaties. All are unable to be transformed into law.

Doug Longmire said...

New Zealand is simply virtue signaling, because New Zealand's CO2 emissions are so minute they simply cannot make any measurable difference to anything at all.
Using the IPCC's own data:-

New Zealand's CO2 emissions are only 0.17% of total human global emissions.
Human emissions are only 3% of total global CO2 emissions.
So New Zeeland's CO2 emissions are 3% x 0.14% = 0.0042% (= 1/25,000th ) of total global CO2 emissions.
So New Zealand's contribution to "global warming" of 1.5 degrees would be 1.5 x 0.0042%, which equals approx one TEN THOUSANDTHS of A DEGREE.

This is as close to zero as you can get, and is far to small to even measure at all.

Rob Beechey said...

NZs gross emissions are 0.17 of the worlds gross emissions. Let that sink in. While oil and coal consumption is on the rise around the world our ideologically driven alarmists are prepared to bankrupt us in the name of virtue signalling. If there indeed was a climate emergency, that leading atmospheric scientists dispute, what can we do about it?
When will this madness end?

Anonymous said...

And closer to home, definitely don't tell our Dame Anne Salmond, who also quotes Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres that “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has begun".

Globalists shills!!!

Allan said...

Like it or not Minister Shaw, hydrocarbon fuels are still going to be in demand for many years to come. Like water and electricity any sensible govt. would consider them as a strategic necessity, so my question would be why ignore the fact that we already possess these assets and instead, rely on importing them from abroad. Have we learned nothing from Europe's problems when you rely on one source of supply for anything, in their case gas from Russia.