The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+28 -- December 4, 2018

Updates

Later, 5:22 p.m. Central Time: I kind of had the same thoughts after Macron, France and the yellow vests:

Original Post 

We'll talk about this later. I'm a bit behind, so will come back to all of this later. Link here.

Macron will "re-consider." From Reuters.

The global carbon tax revolt, from The WSJ:

France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike. Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation.

The fault line runs between anti-carbon policies and economic growth, and France is a test for the political future of emissions restrictions. France already is a relatively low-carbon economy, with per-capita emissions half Germany’s as of 2014.

French governments have nonetheless pursued an “ecological transition” to further squeeze carbon emissions from every corner of the French economy. The results are visible in the Paris streets.

The article has 684 comments so far. Some of these comments:

I'm not a climate change naysayer, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit on the planet in terms of cutting carbon from the atmosphere.  That low-hanging fruit isn't France, especially at this time. [see data below]

We have been hearing this hair on fire doomsday hysteria for literally decades. Most all of it coming from those so easily duped into being led by government propaganda that more often than not is only an excuse to grab money from the producers and redistribute it while skimming much of it into their own pockets. Clean water, air and environment are good things and America has made great progress since my youth of smog hanging over Atlanta.

If you want to reduce dependence on carbon based fuels, don't tax carbon, don't regulate it, develop better alternatives so people willingly chose them. But I guess that defeats the purpose.

How Macron thinks a gas tax will counter "man-made global warming"? By making the population immobile? That is a genius solution in the 21st century.  And the French still think there would be no one better than Macron? Then you deserve what you got.

I’m sure all the money the government collects from these taxes will be used judiciously and effectively (sarcasm). This is a big wealth redistribution, money grab, and power play by the political elites. I’m so glad there is a growing community of folks who are not swallowing the ‘we must manage climate change with your money’ kool aid.  

CO2 emissions by country (data from 2015, most recent year in which data is available)

• China:  9,000
• US: 5,000 and leveling off, decreasing
• India: 2,000 and growing by leaps and bounds
• Russia: 1,500
• Japan: 1,000
• Gemany: 750
• Saudi Arabia: 500
• UK: 400

France: 300 or 3% of that of China; 1.5% of that emitted by the  top ten emitters
Folks, France is not the problem when it comes to global warming. One wonders what lobby is funneling money into Macron's coffers.

My hunch: more CO2 will be emitted by the elite traveling to Poland to attend the UN global warming conference now being held.

Personal note: why I never accepted the "manmade global warming story" from the beginning. Remember: we have been told repeatedly that if we do nothing, the earth will no longer be habitable for humans. At least as far back as ten years ago we were told we only had ten years to solve the problem. Data I'm reading suggests that, almost thirty years later, we have made no headway -- in fact, one could argue efforts have stalled/backtracked (e.g., France), so with that in mind, my reply to a reader, in a "not-ready-for-prime-time" e-mail why I never accepted the "manmade globale warming story":

In 1941 or thereabouts there was an existential issue for most of Europe and maybe even the entire world. Had Germany and Japan won the war, the world would have been divided between those two countries. It was so important to win that war, the US spent huge amounts of resources and money (including the Manhattan Project) to defeat the Germans/Japanese at any cost.

FDR and Churchill did not go on speaking tours and winning Nobel peace prizes for a PowerPoint presentation to raise money to fight Germany.

We are now being told that we are facing something much, much worse than what we faced in 1941. We are being told we have only ten years to save the world, and if the temperature jumps one or two degrees we are all doomed. Dead. The earth destroyed. Another Venus.

We've only had "ten years to save the earth" since 1994. By some accounts, even before 1994.

And yet, how do the smartest and most powerful people in the world go about saving us from something much worse than the Germans and the Japanese? Books, conferences, pledges of money to some committee in South Korea to disperse to South Pacific island nations; PowerPoint presentations.

This, more than anything else, tells me that the smartest and most powerful people in the world really don't believe we are in any trouble. Books, speaking tours, yada, yada, yada hardly seems sufficient if things are as bad as they say they are.

If manmade CO2 really was the problem, the best (and only solution) would be nuclear power plants. And no one is building nuclear power plants any more (with rare exception). There would be huge global efforts to plant more trees to absorb CO2. There would be "Manhattan Projects" to build "factories" that would suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Coal would have been banned worldwide decades ago. Martial law around the world would fast-track solar/wind farms, transmission lines, etc., until nuclear power plants could be built.

No, the fact that the UN is simply hosting conferences around the world and not doing much more tells me everything I need to know about "manmade global warming." 

With France giving in to what are minor riots in the big scheme of things speaks volumes. Even France agrees that this inconvenience is not worth the effort to save the world.

New England is managing just fine. Link here. The folks kept the 0600 surge in electricity demand below $125/MWh. But it's just like clockwork. About 0600, the electricity demand begins to surge in New England. The natural gas plants kick in; wind and solar are unchanged -- not dispatchable. Natural gas hits its peak and a call goes in to have Canada "send" more hydro-electricity to New England. But that hydro-electricity spot price is incredibly expensive. So, to keep the price from surging further, the call goes in to fire up the coal-generated electricity plants. Day in, day out, just like clockwork.