It Was Never About Emissions
It Was Never About Emissions
Carbon capture technologies are about to get the nuclear treatment
“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” – Antonio Guterres
Propagandists have long understood the power of words, context, and framing to achieve political objectives. If executed with disciplined regularity, subtle semantic shifts can shape public opinion such that what was once considered common knowledge can quickly become dangerous Oldspeak. Given the trillions of taxpayer funds being earmarked for the so-called green energy transition, the motivation to control the climate narrative is exceptionally high. We see this in the evolution of the term “global warming” to “climate change” to “climate crisis,” each new moniker bringing with it more scientific flexibility than the last. With some parts of the world experiencing an unusually warm summer—a phenomenon that can likely be explained by the formation of a cyclical El Niño-Southern Oscillation—the United Nations Secretary-General just birthed the egregious, alarmist term “global boiling.”
Hysterics aside, we have recently noticed a subtle but determined effort to execute another semantic shift that lays bare the raw and ugly core of the Malthusian climate agenda. For decades, we were told that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels were dooming the planet and that we needed to slow and then eventually eliminate the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Now, with industry on the cusp of validating carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies at commercial scale—an advance that would theoretically allow humanity to benefit from the life-nourishing energy fossil fuels provide while minimizing global emissions of CO2—environmentalists are throwing everything they have at stopping such developments in their tracks. As part of this coordinated effort, the word “emissions” is being purposely de-emphasized in Newspeak, replaced instead with “burning.” Read how YouTube currently contextualizes all videos on its platform that mention climate:
To discover that emissions emanating from the burning of fossil fuels is the real issue to be dealt with, one has to click through to “learn more,” something we presume precious few people do. Lest you think we are reading too much into this nuanced framing, consider how the environmental outrage machine has been dialed up to unprecedented levels ahead of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), set to be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this November. The President of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, also happens to be Group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. With the conference approaching, Al Jaber made clear his intention to put CCS technology at the center of the COP28 agenda. The resulting daily Two Minutes Hate has been epic (emphasis added throughout):
“The United Arab Emirates’ approach to the Cop28 climate summit it will preside over in November is ‘very dangerous’ and a ‘direct threat to the survival of vulnerable nations,’ according to the UN’s former climate chief.
Christiana Figueres, who was pivotal to the delivery of the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2015, also said the country holding the presidency of the UN summit could not put forward its own position and had to be neutral…
Figueres was responding to a speech by Al Jaber in which he said: ‘We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero carbon alternatives.’
That was widely interpreted to mean using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to capture CO2 emissions, and not completely phasing out fossil fuels themselves. ‘The fact that ‘emissions’ is in that sentence is very worrisome,’ said Figueres, on the Outrage and Optimism podcast she co-hosts.”
We have always been at war with burning. Got it.
Contrary to how the industry is generally portrayed, commodity producers are among the most technologically sophisticated organizations on the planet. Each day, tens of thousands of scientists and engineers do the dizzying array of hard work that makes life easy for the rest of us, which makes our collective disdain for their efforts rather inexplicable. If you challenge these professionals to solve a difficult problem—like removing CO2 from the combustion products of fossil fuels and finding ways to permanently store it underground—they are likely to crack it. The vigorous opposition flowing from the Malthusians must mean their efforts are pretty close to the finish line.
With the support of the Biden administration, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) includes generous incentives for the development and commercialization of CCS technologies, and the industry is mobilizing to proliferate innovative solutions on a scale that could meaningfully reduce our CO2 emissions. Let’s take a tour of some of the latest advances, and ponder what we can expect in the months and years ahead.