Northwest Natural gas company has a BIG PROBLEM. They are trying to sell fossil fuel in an area that strongly disapproves of fossil fuels. Yet we are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, because they provide a high quality of life at very reasonable prices (or once reasonable prices). What is Northwest Natural to do when they are constantly bombarded with calls for outright bans on their product?
Years ago, the company changed its name to Northwest Natural and has never stopped pandering to woke attitudes since. They correctly realize that their product is indispensable in the short term and perhaps the most economical and environmentally friendly way of providing the energy we need for the long-term future. Yet they dare not say so for fear of displeasing the ruling class.
They know what the public largely does not know. The United States has vast reserves of natural gas, thanks to American technologies, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. In 2007, the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and adjacent states was shown to contain 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. By the end of that year, the reserve had grown to 50 trillion cubic feet. Today, it is one of the largest gas fields in the entire world, with proven reserves of 500 trillion cubic feet.
When I tried to write about it for The Oregonian ten years ago, Editorial Page Editor Bob Caldwell refused, because he had never heard of the bonanza. Today, Democrats are busy trying to keep that gas from being distributed, by blocking pipelines to keep it from being sold domestically and exported as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Until recently, Boston was importing Russian LNG instead of using far cheaper supplies from the Marcellus. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are shipping our European friends as much LNG as possible to alleviate shortages. Most of that comes from fossil fuel friendly states like Texas and Louisiana.
Meanwhile in unfriendly Oregon, local Democrats could completely starve out the gas company with regulations and taxes. Of course, they would face devastating blow-back from consumers unable to heat their homes or even cook their meals. So they do as President Biden does, namely everything they can to discourage fossil fuel businesses, short of banning them.
Will consumers figure out who is harming their interests? Or will they once again blame the fossil fuel companies for shortages and rising prices, or Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump? Democrats have always been able to shift blame before, why not again? We can hope that the good times are just too fresh in people’s minds for the blame shifting to succeed. Under Donald Trump, everything worked as we expected. Now under Biden, everything is going wrong, dangerously wrong.
Where does that leave Northwest Natural? They must be worried, as the nonsense escalates. But true to form, they escalate their own nonsense to respond to the overwhelming nonsense around them. That makes them as culpable as the ruling elites and as suicidal. If we actually faced a climate emergency, there would be justification for action, but even then, there would need to be accountability for real results. There is absolutely no accountability today. And no one involved is willing to point out how suicidal the wild spending has become.
Northwest Natural took out a full page ad in the Oregonian recently that was pure virtue signaling. To those of us with strong scientific backgrounds it said that the gas company has no idea what it is doing, beyond appeasement. And appeasement has never worked with a political class that cares nothing about the truth, even to the point of destroying this country.
“There is no greater challenge than climate change,” has become the ludicrous line that our local politicians force Northwest Natural and others under their thumb to repeat endlessly. Yet it is clearly silly in a world with very serious problems, like a war in Ukraine, escalating energy prices, runaway inflation, looming food shortages, a massive invasion of poor people along our southern border, a return of school massacres, out of control crime and homelessness, and a President who hardly knows what day it is.
As to “climate change” everyone with any scientific training knows that our climate has always changed for perfectly natural reasons. And there is no evidence that anything unusual is happening today. This year the Pacific Northwest did experience its coldest April in the satellite record, according to Professor Cliff Mass at the University of Washington. But there was equivalent heat in Kazakhstan to keep the global temperature anomaly close to the average of the last 30 years.
Where is the “catastrophe” that the media keeps promoting but scientists reject? “We don’t have that kind of evidence,” said the former President of the National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone. “To state that climate change will be ‘catastrophic’ hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science,” according to Mike Hulme, the director of the Tyndall [Climate] Centre at the University of East Anglia.
“How we heat and power our homes and businesses….It all must change. And as rapidly as possible,” Northwest Natural goes on to claim. Those are words without meaning, because they offer no details. Does Northwest Natural want us to scrap our gas furnaces and stoves for electric equivalents? They seem to understand that generating electricity from a combination of gas and wind is less efficient than using the same gas in our homes. And gas appliances continue to work if the power goes out, requiring at most a small backup generator.
What is Northwest Natural’s plan? They are championing “renewable natural gas,” “hydrogen,” and “carbon sequestration.” Never mind that renewable natural gas is more preposterous than renewable wind and solar, because you cannot collect cow farts or even methane emissions from landfills economically. Northwest Natural knows this but must find it hilarious that the ruling class can be fooled into thinking this is a solution. “Hydrogen” is another buzzword in common use, because the byproduct from burning hydrogen is water. But where do they get hydrogen? The plan is to get it from an electrolysis of water, using electricity produced by burning natural gas! This is again hilarious.
Northwest Natural wants to be a leader in renewables, like electric utilities, when they are just becoming another leader in foolishness.
“Carbon Capture” is yet another of their slogans. It betrays a complete lack of understanding that atmospheric carbon dioxide is essential to life on Earth, and the level has been declining on average for the last 140 million years. True, the level has gone up slightly since the end of World War II. That is good news not bad, because we were near the minimum to support life on this planet. Life did start to die back at the end of the last Ice Age, when CO2 dipped below 200 ppm. Now we are finally getting better crop yields to feed the seven billion people who live on this planet. The additional CO2 is noticeably greening the Earth.
Although climate nonsense is ubiquitous, sky high natural gas prices and a war in Europe are forcing a revaluation of energy strategies in much of Europe. The United Kingdom is about to declare natural gas a clean green fuel and move to exploit their considerable reserves. That is a very positive return to sanity for them. Elsewhere, China and India are accelerating their construction of coal-fired power plants, a move to decrease poverty.
The President and CEO of Northwest Natural, David H. Anderson, owes our community an apology for the disgraceful behavior of his company in promoting climate hysteria. Although he has no scientific training himself, I am sure he knows how to locate someone who has. And he needs to show some courage. We have no future, if the utter nonsense does not stop soon.
Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He is one of the Directors of the CO2 Coalition and has a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.
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