Scientific American Admits The International Energy Agency are Zealots
The International Energy Agency, which does seem to have become the International Anti-Energy Agency recently, has the good grace to admit that zealotry had overwhelmed judgement. Well, they didn’t put it that way.
But Scientific American, which seems to have become Political American recently, concedes that
“The International Energy Agency predicts global demand for oil and gas will rise well beyond 2030, marking a sharp departure from the agency’s previous forecasts that demand for oil would peak by 2030.”
And here we were right in the middle of a glittering green energy transition. What happened? Um uh we made it all up. No wait, it was…
It was a combination of stubborn reality and flaccid political will, apparently:
“In a new report, the IEA says low gas prices, growing concerns over energy security and a global lack of ambitious climate policies will delay the peak of the fossil fuel era until at least 2050.”
At least, you say. And yes, people have been predicting peak oil since at least 1919 so we suppose they might as well go on saying it and they’ll eventually be right. (Unlike those who keep predicting the end of Arctic ice and moving the target, who will never be.) Sooner or later some new technology really will replace it. Not because a bunch of zealots chanted “Wind mill! Wind mill! Wind mill!” but because buyers really wanted it at the market price.
Thus when Sabine Hossenfelder commented “Breaking: Peak Oil has been postponed again” engineering professor Henry Schriemer added:
“And demand will continue to increase until either substitution costs vanish or the oil does.”
Aye. There’s the rub.
David Blackmon was half-right in writing:
“In a shift which likely has much to do with pressure from the United States and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the base modeling scenario in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook for 2025 (WEO) eliminates a controversial projection for peak oil demand coming no later than 2030. In a surprise, IEA’s revised forecast of global demand rising through 2050 brings it right in line with similar projections made by OPEC and ExxonMobil.”
But while we agree with the latter, we doubt that political pressure was a big deal. We think it was far more important that the IEA, whose brand is very heavily built around boring, stolid, technocratic credibility, had been captured from within by wild-eyed activists who were making it look stupid. And note, as so tediously often here, that what happened was a matter of one model that gave them a result they once wanted being replaced by another model that gives them a result they now want. It’s all make-believe.
Speaking of credibility vanishing like a fatuous peak-oil prediction, the Scientific Communism piece had nothing to do with science, a field that might have involved, say, discussing the technical basis and possible shortcomings of modeling. Instead, they rant:
“The report comes as world leaders meet in Brazil for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, where extreme heat, President Donald Trump’s broad reversal of the U.S.’s climate action policy and a slowing of action to curb emissions are high on the agenda.
Last year was the hottest on record and the first to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report shows. The IEA projects that under current policies, the world is on track for 2.5 to three degrees C of warming by 2100, far above the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperatures below two degrees C.
The report warns that the 1.5-degree-C target will be out of reach without the removal of carbon dioxide with technologies such as carbon sequestration. The agency says that if countries rapidly scale up renewables, energy efficiency and clean fuel use, however, further warming may still be preventable. Climate advocates have pointed to other mitigation efforts beyond policy that could muddy the IEA’s forecasting.
‘There’s a revolution happening right now and it’s in renewables and electrification,’ said Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember, a London-based energy research organization, to the New York Times. ‘Scenarios based on policies and legislation are behind the curve of technology change.’”
Bosh. As we wrote last week, there is something of a push among alarmists tiptoeing away from their earlier predictions to say the curves have bent down because of aggressive climate action that never happened not because someone reprogrammed the computer. But Scientific Zealotry, as we quoted above, takes the opposite tack, attributing this new projection to “a global lack of ambitious climate policies” not success of same. Moreover, as Bjorn Lomborg noted:
“Climate myth: Solar and wind are taking over the world/ No/ New report from International Energy Agency shows that solar and wind will cover 12-16% of global energy by 2050”
Solar and wind combined. Not each. Then he complains:
“Yet, The Guardian claims new report shows renewable ‘transition “inevitable”, despite Trump’”.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
source climatediscussionnexus.com