Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land

JP Morgan Chase — it’s hard to find a more “woke” company than that one. Under celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon, JPM in its corporate pronouncements consistently positions itself at the most exquisitely correct end of the politically correct spectrum.

But reality can be tough. In its email of a couple of days ago, the Global Warming Policy Foundation links to JPM’s 2021 Annual Energy Paper. The Paper comes from JPM’s Asset and Wealth Management Group. The lead author is a guy named Michael Cembalest, who appears to have his ear right down on the ground of the global energy business. The bottom line is that all the talk about “deep de-carbonization” of the world economy any time soon is a ridiculous fantasy. Fossil fuels are not going away for a long time, if ever. Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are increasing? You’d better get used to that.

Once again, this “deep de-carbonization” thing is a case of the really “smart” people deceiving you, or maybe themselves; or more likely, both.

For starters, let’s consider some of the extreme wokeism that issues from the executive suites in JPMville. This is not limited to matters of “climate,” but extends as well to other usual topics, like for example “systemic racism.” On that subject, here is JPM CEO Jamie Dimon, as quoted in Forbes in October 2020:

“Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. We can do more and do better to break down systems that have propagated racism and widespread economic inequality, especially for Black and Latinx people. It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”

Meanwhile, over in the climate arena, JPM’s high-level pronouncements totally buy into the idea that we’re going to save the planet by financing a bunch of wind turbines, or something. Last October, JPM put out a big statement with the pompous title of “How one of the world’s biggest banks plans to tackle climate change.” Excerpt:

Climate change is among the most urgent problems facing humanity; businesses and governments have an imperative to act. Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to restrict a rise in the world’s average temperature, would enable us to take a giant step towards a safer, greener, more sustainable future. . . . For the world to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, there needs to be an acceleration of emerging technologies that are not yet widely commercially available or economically viable. . . . Our company, JPMorgan Chase, announced this month that we will start aligning our financing portfolio to meet the Paris goals.

Then just a couple of weeks ago, on April 15, JPM followed up by announcing a big new plan to “Advance Climate Action and Sustainable Development” with some $2.5 trillion in investments:

JPMorgan Chase aims to finance and facilitate more than $2.5 trillion over 10 years – beginning this year through the end of 2030 - to advance long-term solutions that address climate change and contribute to sustainable development. . . . This long-term target complements the firm’s Paris-aligned financing strategy and will help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy by encouraging actions that set a path for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050

Wow, that sounds great! Or is it all just a cynical grab for some of the upcoming gusher of government subsidies, with no detectable effect at all on the climate, or even much effect on the use of fossil fuels? For some insights, let’s look at that 2021 Annual Energy Paper. The document is not short (42 pages), and certainly does not fall in the category of “climate skepticism,” but it does contain some notable doses of hard-headed realism that are normally completely lacking in this field.

Our main focus this year: why is the transition [away from carbon-based fuels] taking so long? Deep decarbonization plans assume massive changes in electric vehicles, electricity transmission grids, industrial energy use and carbon sequestration, but each faces headwinds often not accounted for by energy futurists. As shown below, many prior forecasts of the renewable transition were too ambitious since they ignored energy density, intermittency and the complex realities of incumbent energy systems. . . .

President Biden just announced a new GHG emissions target: a 50% decline by 2030 vs a 2005 baseline. This very ambitious target implies a decarbonization pace in the next 10 years that’s four times faster than in the last 15 years. Even with the amount of money the administration plans to dedicate to the task, it’s an enormous hurdle. . . .

The even more important and larger question: even if the US succeeds, what about everyone else? Over the last 25 years, the developed world shifted much of its carbon-intensive manufacturing of steel, cement, ammonia and plastics to the developing world. . . .

Loudly proclaiming that you have achieved some (small) decreases in carbon emissions while offshoring most of your energy-intensive manufacturing — That’s one good way to fool yourself.

The world gets more energy efficient every year, but levels of emissions keep rising. . . .

It’s those pesky Chinese and Indians and Africans who think they ought to be able to have electricity and cars and air conditioning just like you do.

How is the global energy transition going? Taken together, the aggregate impact of nuclear, hydroelectric and solar/wind generation reduced global reliance on fossil fuels from ~95% of primary energy in 1975 to ~85% in 2020. In other words, energy transitions take a long time and lots of money. . . . [T]he IEA still projects that 70%-75% of global primary energy consumption may be met via fossil fuels in the year 2040. Why don’t rapid wind and solar price declines translate into faster decarbonization? As we will discuss, renewable energy is still mostly used to generate electricity, and electricity as a share of final energy consumption on a global basis is still just 18%.

Yes, all those thousands of wind turbines and solar panels blanketing the landscape are at best hoping to replace a minority of a sector that itself only represents 18% of energy use to begin with. Why are we spending (wasting) these many trillions of dollars again?

Getting beyond the Executive Summary and into the details of the Paper, there are many great tidbits. A section on “Transmission Realities” shows how bringing “renewable” power to where it’s needed runs into the same roadblocks from environmentalists as all other energy development:

While MIT and Princeton assume rapid growth in transmission infrastructure, actual development can be a hornet’s nest of siting challenges and legal costs even when projects are eventually built after years of planning. Let’s start with HydroQuebec’s plan to sell hydropower to the US. . . . Take Northern Pass, a 1.1 GW transmission project to bring hydropower from Quebec to the Northeast through New Hampshire (80% via existing right-of-ways or underground lines). . . . [A] New Hampshire siting committee blocked Northern Pass. . . . Now Massachusetts is trying to import Canadian hydropower through Maine (“New England Clean Energy Connect”) but has already run into an injunction due to opposition from environmental groups. . . .

Then there’s the Holy Grail of carbon sequestration and storage, sometimes known as CSS. Hey, why not just take all of this dangerous CO2 and bury it somewhere in the ground? The Paper looks at some of the practical realities:

After 20 years of planning and conjecture, by the end of 2020 carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities stored just 0.1% of global CO2 emissions. . . . The highest ratio in the history of science: the number of academic papers written on CCS divided by real-life implementation of it. . . . The Princeton CCS buildout, just to sequester an amount equal to 15% of current US GHG emissions, would require infrastructure whose throughput volume would be higher than the volume of oil flowing through US distribution and refining pipelines, a system which has taken over 100 years to build. . . . Sequestering 25% of global CO2 through direct air capture would require 25%-40% of the world’s electricity generation plus 11%-17% of its primary energy.

That’s my plan. And by the way, JPM’s plan to end “systemic racism” isn’t going any better.

These scumbag bankers are guilty of market manipulation, were fined nearly 1 billion recently, and the CFTC continues to ignore them harvesting huge barrels of money at the expense of everyone else.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/jp-morgan-settles-spoofing-lawsuit-alleging-fraud-in-metals-trades.html

**J.P. Morgan settled for an undisclosed amount a lawsuit that accused the firm of “spoofing” trades in the precious metals market.
**The suit by hedge fund manager Daniel Shak and two commodity traders accused J.P. Morgan of manipulating the silver futures market, costing plaintiffs $30 million in losses.
**The bank is also nearing a settlement of $920 million to resolve government investigations for similar alleged conduct in the precious metals and Treasury futures markets, CNBC has learned.

When big banks such as Chase were considered “too big to fail” and were bailed out by the taxpayer, it gave fools like Jamie Dimon undeserved power. He and his board knows that they can squander huge amounts of capital entrusted to them by savers and in the final analysis have little real risk for themselves personally and their stockholders. Most of these “politically correct” projects are boondoggles and will never have a return on investment and the capital invested will have been wasted.

Most of these “politically correct” projects are boondoggles and will never have a return on investment and the capital invested will have been wasted.

Not unlike the government and the way they waste hard earned money taxed from the working classes.

I don't think carbon dioxide makes one bit of difference in atmospheric temperature.

The three narrow spectral lines of IR energy absorbed by carbon dioxide are also absorbed by the broad spectral absorption range of water vapor.

Water vapor ranges from 5 to 100 times greater atmospheric percentage than carbon dioxide, depending on humidity.

A photon of IR energy travels, on average, less than 100 meters at sea level before being absorbed, primarily by water vapor. That is 50% absorption every 100 meters (actually less, but depends on humidity)

There is virtually no IR energy in the range absorbed by the three carbon dioxide spectral bands that make it through the last 5,000 ft of atmosphere just due to water vapor absorption.

If all the IR photons get absorbed by water vapor anyway then it does not matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. At 409 parts per million, carbon dioxide is a very small percentage of the atmosphere. It could be double, triple or even ten times greater percentage and carbon dioxide would not change the amount of IR absorbed in the atmosphere because it would all be absorbed by water vapor anyway. No difference in IR absorption and no difference in atmospheric energy capture.

The sun's IR output does make a difference, but we are not the cause of that.

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