Trump’s presidency will have only the minutest effects on global warming - indeed he is betting on the wrong horse on fracking with the world AND the USA moving increasingly towards renewables - DRAFT
MID EDIT
I will incorporate material from: SHORT DEBUNK: If Trump is elected for 4 years it will have only minute effects on global warming
Here is a draft for a new debunk.
On global warming, negligible effects. He will keep the inflation reduction act in place because he will find it hard to get the votes to change it since many Republicans benefit from it. He has pivoted on electric cars probably in response to Elon Musk. He can drill lots of oil but if at the same time everyone is transitioning to renewables and over time we'll need less and less oil and finding and extracting more oil doesn't increase the demand.
The US has slowly falling emissions already and they will continue to fall faster as it rapidly transitions to renewables, which is now unstoppable.
Also whatever Trump does, California which has the largest population of any state is strongly pro renewables. The main friction between Trump and California in his first term was on electric cars and that will go away this term.
Meanwhile the state with the highest level of wind power generation and second only to California in solar is Texas!
It is rapidly transitioning to renewables. In 2024, solar power will produce more power than coal in Texas for the first time
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Solar power in Texas doubles MORE than doubles EVERY 2 YEARS. SECOND to California on Solar and AHEAD on Wind..
. Momentous changes on the way in ERCOT as Texas renewable transition rolls on
More on this at the end.
A small company UrbanLink in Florida also is a pioneer in renewables, in all electric aviation. They have ordered 10 planes from Eviation which is one of the leaders in the current race globally to the first commercial short flight all electric planes.
Electric planes have huge potential because they cost far less to run and they are now feasible on short haul flights.
I talk about this in my blog:
BLOG: Rising to the challenge of zero emissions aviation
This is a change that will likely happen within Trump’s term, the first all electric short haul passenger flights in the USA and once it starts it likely will spread fast because the USA is a perfect place for this, with many people doing short-haul flights because of the large distances between urban communities. The range is currently 550 miles for the first one to likely see service, the Alice plane from Eviation. That range will increase as the technology improves. Alice can recharge in 30 minutes so it doesn’t have a major turn-around time.
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Eviation Aircraft, the innovative company behind developing the world’s first all-electric aircraft, Alice, has announced a new partnership with South Florida-based UrbanLink Air Mobility.
This collaboration involves a commitment to provide 10 Alice commuter aircraft to UrbanLink, signifying a major advancement in the field of Advanced Air Mobility.
The deal will also explore an option to acquire an additional ten planes.
The new aircraft will support UrbanLink’s commitment to developing an all-electric fleet of aircraft, marine craft, and ground vehicles to provide end-to-end zero-emission transportation.
Operating out of its hub cities of Miami, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, UrbanLink will deploy Alice as part of its urban mobility solutions.
With orders totaling more than US$ 5 billion, the all-electric Alice heralds a new era of sustainable air travel.
Alice’s 9-seat commuter and cargo versions are designed to delight customers and passengers with innovative technology and beautiful design while also providing carbon-free and cost-effective point-to-point travel.
. World’s 1st all-electric planes to fly in US, 505-mile range on 30-min charge
Alice’s first flight was two years ago.
The manufacturing is based in Seattle.
287 mph half the speed of a Boeing 747 and range about 550 miles.
plan to increase to a 20 to 40 seat passenger aircraft like a commuter aircraft.
Ideally suited for moving packages in late evening / early morning for FedEx / DHL.
I talk about these developments in my
BLOG: Rising to the challenge of zero emissions aviation
Two key Trump swing states are big on renewables: Texas and Florida
So Trump can’t stop the race to renewables innovation and two of the key states for his election are involved, he depended on Texas and Florida and though neither was likely to flip to Harris the polls had them at a few percent chance of flipping.
As soon as we stop emissions the warming stops.
Here is Zeke Hausfather explaining how global warming stops as soon as we reach net zero emissions indeed it likely goes down as we control methane emissions too. Explainer: Will global warming ‘stop’ as soon as net-zero emissions are reached? - Carbon Brief
I think he'll try to increase fracking but run into the same problem Biden had when oil prices were high and he tried to get the fracking companies to increase production to reduce oil prices. The fracking companies are very risk averse especially after that short period during the COVID pandemic, which was under Trump when briefly the price of oil went negative. Crude oil producers actually had to pay oil refiners to take their oil away for a few weeks in 2020.
This was under Trump so they may well be wary of his promises as he tries to get them to boost oil again.
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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic hammered the oil industry in 2020, forcing U.S. oil prices to go negative for the first time on record. In a matter of hours on April 20, the May 2020 contract futures price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) plummeted from $18 a barrel to around -$37 a barrel.1
Oil producers were faced with a glut of crude oil that left them scrambling to find space to store the oversupply. Brent crude oil prices also tumbled, closing at $9.12 a barrel on April 21, a far cry from the $70 a barrel that crude oil fetched at the beginning of the year.2
The plunge of U.S. oil futures into negative territory was short-lived. But the collapse in demand was so fast and volatile that it led many people to question whether oil would be able to fully recover in 2021.
So they will worry about risk and by the end of Trump’s team there will likely be a global overcapacity for global demand.
The IEA says that by 2030, the oil supply will be 114 million barrels of oil a day but the demand will level off at 106 million barrels of oil a day. That is a surplus of oil over demand similar to the levels during the COVID lockdowns.
By 2028 when Trump leaves office then his oil that he boosted will be harder and harder to sell:
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Based on today’s policies and market trends, strong demand from fast-growing economies in Asia, as well as from the aviation and petrochemicals sectors, is set to drive oil use higher in the coming years, the report finds. But those gains will increasingly be offset by factors such as rising electric car sales, fuel efficiency improvements in conventional vehicles, declining use of oil for electricity generation in the Middle East, and structural economic shifts. As a result, the report forecasts that global oil demand, which including biofuels averaged just over 102 million barrels per day in 2023, will level off near 106 million barrels per day towards the end of this decade.
In parallel, a surge in global oil production capacity, led by the United States and other producers in the Americas, is expected to outstrip demand growth between now and 2030. Total supply capacity is forecast to rise to nearly 114 million barrels a day by 2030 – a staggering 8 million barrels per day above projected global demand, the report finds. This would result in levels of spare capacity never seen before other than at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. Spare capacity at such levels could have significant consequences for oil markets – including for producer economies in OPEC and beyond, as well as for the US shale industry.
As well as many other issues. I think with oil he is betting on the wrong horse. It’s not impossible that Trump sees negative oil prices briefly again at the end of his presidency.
With his support of Musk he will continue to boost electric cars which will reduce oil dependency in the USA so there will be less need of oil in the USA than before and also less because he won’t be able to stop the rapid transition of the power stations to fossil fuels. Indeed renewables already are competitive with the lowest price fossil fuels. By 2028 they may well cost less. But unlike renewables, almost all the cost of the power for a fossil fuel power station is in the fuel. So fossil fuel power stations will have to run at a loss to compete with renewables some time in the next decade or two and with the rapid reduction in prices of renewables it may happen within Trump’s term.
So he will face a situation where Trump’s own policies to boost oil will lead to the US producing more and more oil at a time when there is too mch in the world and at the same time his policies on electric cars will reduce demand and then the natural competition with renewables will also reduce demand from power stations. So the US will be using less and less and producing more and more and the world will be using less and less with the rest of the world acting to increase ambition on net Zero even as the US withdraws from the Paris agreement.
Interestingly Robert Kennedy had to promise to Trump to not touch anything to do with oil. In his bid to be a Democrat presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy pledged to ban all fracking throughout the USA. Not just on federal lands.
. RFK Jr says he would ban fracking in 10-point plan to tackle plastics pollution
How long will Trump and Kennedy remain aligned? And Kennedy is another larger than life character who is not easily going to be Trump's poodle.
I don't think he can pass much legislation in his first 2 years. And as with any president, I don't think he'll be any different, the first 2 years are the honeymoon period especially the first year. A president NEVER lives up to the promises they made in the campaigns. And then it's about how much enthusiasm there still is for his or her policies after the first year disappointment of not doing what he promised to do.
And as with the first term I think Trump will do far right things mainly through executive orders. This means all of them will be easy for the next president to reverse simply by issuing new executive orders. I don't think he'll reverse the Inflation Reduction Act because too many Republican states depend on it.
And it doesn’t make sense to reduce funding on renewables research when it is a field where China and the US are in competition for the global market and with other players in Europe e.g. the UK. He won’t want the US to fall behind there.
Will see. But I wouldn't be surprised if MAGA and Trumpism only lasts through to the end of Trump's second term.
And one of the things that may sink it is this non-scientific non non-economics-based based approach of boosting oil just because to do that goes down well with his electorate when it makes no economic and no scientific sense to do that. And the younger generation in the USA are the ones who will have to live with the impacts of climate change which are not going to go away. He will face more fires in California, more hurricanes in Florida, more sea surges and will keep telling Americans that it is nothing to do with human activities or global warming and the young voters will eventually have had enough of all this.
The good thing is from this election that this lets him carry through with the project and if he'd not been elected and been in prison or whatever there'd have been this big "What if" question for Trump enthusiasts. Now they can see what he is able to do or not able to do.
And will see what happens. And I think it is just as with any president that he will be judged by how well he does in office.
And on global warming I think he will be judged as having betted on the wrong horse with his emphasis on “drill baby drill” which may well lead to negative oil prices as soon as the end of his presidency in a world that is transitioning away from oil as fast as it can.
I think by the end of his term - unless he pivots to renewables and to supporting action on global warming. It’s not impossible, he is one of the few presidents who could do an about turn like that in a moment and nobody would really be surprised.
But if not then I think he’ll be seen by many in the USA as a bit of a fossil on climate change at the end of his term, when at 82, he’ll also be older than Biden at the end of his term, Biden is 81.
He isn’t up for re-election in 2028 but the Republicans may struggle to get anyone else elected in his place and Democrats would pivot strongly to renewables and action on climate change. A new Republican president might have to too.
By removing America from the Paris agreement Trump forces this to near the top of election issues in 2028 when it might otherwise be lower on the list and the Democrats may well get in on a pledge to return to the Paris agreement. But the Republicans may have to pivot to do the same to compete.
Global temperatures are as expected for global warming and exactly on track with the predictions.
When you take account of pledges for net zero we are on track at present for 1.7 C.
Right now we are at around 1.2 C - but it's the average over 20 years before and after. Individual years can vary +-0.25 C or more. The El Nino raised the temperature of some parts of the oceans well as a bit of land by moving some warm water from below the sea surface up to the surface. Then we calculate the average by working out the average of the sea surface + the air just above the land.
That warming raised the average temperature for this year to above 1.5 C though the year hasn't ended yet.
About the 2023 warm year:
About this generally:
The issue is the speed of the warming not where we end up:
And we can go back from 1.7 or 1.8 C if we get that high but may not want to.
More on Texas as renewables pioneer, this was an interview for COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
It may be a nice way to end to help see that renewable are the future in the USA even in Texas which is the heart of oil production but is seeing in a microscale the same transition that is happening globally. Interestingly it was actually strong on renewables before California and before England with a wind mandate under Bush in 1999. The oil men back then understood that wind power made economic sense in windy Texas before most of the rest of the world.
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Also Texas is very big on renewables now.
It is in the sun belt - that means they have LOTS of solar power:
We didn't do it for the cleanliness. We didn't do it for climate change. We did it because it makes us a lot of money for the landowners and saves us a lot of money for the consumers.
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One study found that all this cheap renewable energy is saving the average Texas household almost $200 a year, though skeptics say that figure may be inflated.
There are a slew of factors that contributed to this boom. Texas' geography is one. Rob Minter works for the energy company Engie, which has major renewable projects across the state.
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It's a big state. There are a lot of areas where it's sunny and it's windy. In the wide open spaces of West Texas and South Texas, there are some wonderful areas for development of renewable resources.
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Texas also had its share of influential oilmen who saw the light on renewables, people like billionaire T. Boone Pickens.
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There's even one who became governor. In 1999, then-Governor George W. Bush, working with a Democratic legislature, signed a law deregulating Texas' power market to make it more competitive and enshrined a state mandate for wind power.
There were landowners who were willing to lease their land for these new industries.
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Texas had a mandate before England, before California, before New York. You list all these liberal economies, and Texas had a renewables mandate before them.
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Today, the Lone Star State generates more megawatts of wind power than any other in the nation. When it comes to solar, Texas trails only California and actually ranks first in utility scale solar projects.
Combined with nuclear, Texas now generates almost 40 percent of its total energy needs from carbon-free sources, a huge surge in just a few years' time. Texas, of course, like so many other parts of the country, has suffered through a string of climate-driven disasters. They just had record-breaking heat waves this past summer. And this area is always under threat from hurricanes.
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During 2021's paralyzing winter storm in Texas, which caused widespread blackouts and left 246 people dead, renewables were falsely blamed for making things worse.
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But a subsequent analysis showed it was unwinterized fossil fuel plants, principally natural gas, that were responsible for most of the blackouts.
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In this year's legislative session, Republican legislators, many with the support of the fossil fuel industry, introduced a slew of anti-renewable bills, including a new tax on owners of electric cars.
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But in a surprising turn, almost none of the anti-renewable bills passed and made it to Governor Abbott's desk, proof, Michael Webber says, that green energy in Texas has become more or less politically bulletproof.
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The urban Democrats like it because it's clean and renewable, and the rural Republicans like it because it's good for economic development.
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Texas' clean energy boom is also being driven by its ready-made army of workers and entrepreneurs coming directly out of the oil and gas industry.
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None of this means that Texas has turned its back on fossil fuels. It is still by far the national leader in oil production and natural gas production.
And this is the essential challenge for negotiators gathered in Dubai. How quickly can the world's powers shift this balance and transition as fast as Texas, if not faster?
. Texas goes green: How oil country became the renewable energy leader
So I can make this into a new debunk expanding on that short debunk I already have.