Friday's Energy Absurdity: For Fatih Birol, Gaslighting is a Way of Life *UPDATED*
David Blackmon
Apr 14, 2023
Friday's Energy Absurdity: For Fatih Birol, Gaslighting is a Way of Life
[Follow me on Twitter at @EnergyAbsurdity]
Speaking to the Columbia Global Energy Summit in New York Thursday, IEA Chief propagandist Fatih Birol told attendees that Global demand for fossil fuels is falling more rapidly than assumed and could peak by the late 2020s as "a new global energy economy is emerging much faster than we had imagined," as reported by Energy Intelligence.
Birol’s statement comes less than a month after analysts at his own agency raised their projection for global crude demand growth in 2023 by another 200,000 bopd, the second estimate boost so far this year. It also came the same day China’s communist government announced it will dramatically increase its production and consumption of coal as it attempts to restore stability and reliability of its electric grid in advance of summer. China, for those unaware, already consumes more coal than all other nations on earth combined.
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Birol’s latest fossil fuel gaslighting also comes in the face of dramatically rising demand for and exports of U.S. LNG during the first quarter of 2023, as the thirst for the fuel continues to increase in both Europe and Asia.
[Birol’s statement also came the same day U.S. president Joe Biden urged the Irish Parliament to “go lick the world,” but that’s probably not relevant.]
Undeterred by these inconvenient realities, though, Birol plowed ahead with this propaganda promoting the idea that the energy transition fantasy is actually proceeding according to plan.
From the Energy Intelligence report:
Birol told the Columbia Global Energy Summit in New York that the proliferation of heat pumps is very strong around the world, as are sales of electric vehicles (EVs), and nuclear energy is also making a comeback, all of which are helping to fight climate change.
Keeping the momentum going, however, means that investments in new energy need to scale up faster and also need to include developing countries to keep global warming below 1.5° Celsius, Birol said.
[End]
Always, there is this need for more incentives and debt-funded subsidies to increase the pace of scaling-up investments in the chosen rent-seeking industries of the global elites - wind, solar and electric vehicles. It has been the same message of rising urgency and more money more money more money more money in every speech the man and his fellow elites whose countries fund his agency for a decade now.
But even an expert gaslighter like Birol can’t ignore reality completely. Thus, in his next breath, he admits the world still needs oil and gas:
At the same time, the world will still need investments in oil and gas as well. But Birol reiterated that large-scale investments in developing new oil and natural gas fields are not needed; rather, the world should limit demand for oil, gas and coal.
Birol said that a company cannot invest in growing oil production by 3 million barrels per day and at the same time subscribe to the goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions “in the absence of a huge decarbonization revolution” — although he did not name the company he was referring to.
[End]
This is perhaps the most tiresome man on earth, or he would be were it not for the periodic fright propaganda bleatings by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The truth here is that demand for every form of fossil fuel continues to rise globally, as even the IEA admits in its efforts to maintain some shred of credibility. No credible agency or company group of analysts expect that reality to change by the late-2020s, and few expect it to change appreciably sooner than 2040 or beyond.
Indeed, so long as enormous economic powerhouses like China and India are able to retain their “developing nation” status and remain exempt from making any real, near-term carbon reduction commitments, this reality of growing demand for all forms of fossil fuels is not going to change.
No amount of gaslighting from Fatih Birol can change that.
That is all.
UPDATE: As if to emphasize my point, the IEA published this chart today showing global crude demand continuing to rise rapidly for the rest of 2023:
You just can’t make these people up, folks, and why would anyone in their right mind even want to try? |
