Western leaders are madder than I thought

 Unherd

Europe is belatedly grappling with the (entirely foreseeable) consequences of imposing sanctions on Russia. The Nord Stream pipeline has been intermittently closed over the summer, reportedly for “maintenance” (which no one believes). Another closure has just been announced.

As a result, prices are rocketing across the continent, with the ripple effects already being felt by businesses and consumers. 

-----

From the comments:

"This certainly has to do with Russian sanctions, but that isn’t the whole story… by any stretch.The serious misery we are only just beginning to experience is far more the result of decades of short-termist policy making re energy security, and pandering (and I would argue ‘elite capture’ – an almost cult-like groupthink among the elite/governing classes) and their naive wholesale stampede toward the ruinous policy of Net Zero …well before we have any adequate infrastructure or technology in place to replace the ‘old’ energy types [namely oil, coal and gas]."

"The rot started in 1997 when Blair stopped all new nuclear projects and was made worse by Milliband’s disastrous 2008 Climate Change Act. The 2010 coalition continued the nonsense with the LibDems insisting on having the Energy Department under their control.
And yes, it’s got worse since 2015 with undeliverable policies on gas boilers, petrol/diesel vehicles and heat pumps making a bad situation worse.
All political parties have been singing from the same hymn sheet and now we haven’t got a prayer."

 "This article completely misses the point – this energy and cost of living crisis was not caused by western leaders’ failure to appease an aggressive tyrant’s unprovoked invasion of a democratic neighbour, but by them adopting energy policies which allowed them to become dependent on and at the mercy of this particular tyrant for many of their energy needs in the first place. An ultra-nationalist bully like Vladimir Putin was always going to start a major war eventually, and now he has."

"If the West had not thoroughly embraced Green energy and gone away from reliable, cheap coal and nuclear it would not be in the big crunch it is in now.
It will take more than 100 years to displace fossil fuels, if they even need to be displaced (AGW is BS). What is the big rush? Why immiserate the people for a pipe dream? (Oh, yeah, it makes them feel virtuous!)"

 

Energy Company Shuts Down Access to Home Thermostats During 90 Degree Heat Wave in Denver

 Gateway Pundit

Now you know why the government and Big Tech were pushing smart meters.

Residents in Colorado were surprised this week when they were unable to adjust the smart meters in their own home. The government shut down access to their home thermostat in order to save on energy during the current heat wave.

It’s for your own good......When thousands of Xcel customers in Colorado tried adjusting their thermostats Tuesday, they learned they had no control over the temperatures in their own homes. via @jaclynreporting https://t.co/mgLEC6SEzR    ......

The Gateway Pundit warned consumers about smart meters back in 2011 when the Obama White House was pushing the idea.

We posted this report by The P/Oed Patriot back on December 20, 2011."

 

The misinformation and lies that are peddled to the public on climate change dwarf the misinformation on COVID

 American Thinker

The misinformation and intentional lies on climate change/global warming dwarf the misinformation the government fed us on COVID and are an existential threat to our survival as a great country.  Essentially, climate change pushers are infecting the U.S. with a pandemic of the indoctrinated. 

The Earth is not rapidly warming.  We have had a one- to two-degree rise in 160 years after a little ice age ended in 1860.  That is cyclical and normal and certainly has no relationship with an exponential rise in fossil fuel consumption. 

Sea levels are not rising rapidly.  Sea levels have risen and fallen throughout history, and a nine-inch rise in over 100 years in seas that average over 12,000 feet deep is essentially immeasurable.  It certainly cannot be attributed to organic fuel combustion engines. 

Floods and droughts are not worse than ever.  The Earth is covered by deserts and seas, which are there because of big floods and long droughts. 

Climate change is not killing thousands of species each year.  Extinctions have always occurred, and it appears that fewer than two species per year have gone extinct the last 500 years, and those certainly can't be attributed to humans, CO2, or fossil fuels.   ...

One of the most egregious examples of pure lies was that polar bears were dying because of climate change.  They are thriving today, and somehow that story is not printed because it doesn't scare the public into submission...........

Why don't journalists do their job and ask Biden, Kerry, AOC, Gore, Gates, and all the others spreading this propaganda for scientific data showing a direct relationship between fossil fuel consumption and temperature?  The answer is that they don't care and probably know there is none. 

Getting rid of organic fuel combustion vehicles and replacing them with vehicles powered by the flammable pollutant lithium will not change the climate at all.

Anyone who believes that politicians and bureaucrats who can't control budgets, crime, borders, or a virus; can't keep their promises on Obamacare; and can't get kids to read or do math at grade level can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity forever if we just destroy our economy needs to take a cognitive test."

 

 

It doesn't matter what they say: This isn't climate change's fault

 American Thinker

The study did find that there was less physical activity during the coronavirus pandemic.  You think?  When experts and rulers shut down schools, closed playgrounds and fitness centers, and locked everyone in his house for nearly two straight years? .....

In light of all this, experts still have the nerve to tell us man-caused global warming/climate change is responsible for kids' declining physical (and mental) health?!

I am sick and damn tired of experts telling us that the COVID-1984 vaccines are safe and effective.  And mandatory.  I am sick and damn tired of being told that all white people are (inherently!) racist, that men can be women and vice versa, and that "abortion is health care."  Or "love."  And that I am a "domestic terrorist" simply for holding these views.

And I am sick and damn tired of being told that — in addition to floods, droughts, extreme heat, and extreme cold — man-caused climate change/global warming is demonstrably responsible for the coronavirus, Monkeypox, cedar apple rust, inflation, Russia invading Ukraine, the sudden rise in polio cases, distrust of our institutions, Jan. 6, supply chain issues, food shortages, Liz Cheney's defeat, falling spermatozoa levels in males in Western nations, Chinese aggression, stock market volatility, homelessness, painful rectal itch, loneliness, the opioid crisis, the decline in the popularity of Major League Baseball (MLB), Lyme disease, solar flares, and acid reflux.

Is climate change also to blame for Joy Behar, Jerry Nadler, MSNBC, the Impossible Whopper®, and Nicki Minaj?

And for...studies like this one?

Global warming is the greatest scientific fraud in history

 American Thinker

Until the advent of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, the Piltdown Man was the most remarkable scientific fraud in history.  The anthropogenic global warming hypothesis has now assumed that title."

 Neil Oliver GB News Video

Neil Oliver: 'It's hard to tell yourself you've been taken for a fool but open your eyes'

From the comments -

"I hope this monologue escapes the censors and is available for future generations to look back to a time when people were unafraid to speak out against the unfolding tyranny"

 

"This is perhaps the best monologue Neil has done so far. Honestly baffles me how so many people in general still refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that something nefarious has gone on these last couple years by those we placed our trust in and refuse to open their eyes to it all."

 

"Niel Oliver, one of the few who tell the true story of what is going on in this the world. Thanks for your work. Support from the Netherlands"

 

"I'm 56 now. If someone had shown me the future back in '96 when life was so much better I think my blood would have run cold at the prospect of the life awaiting me. I still struggle to believe this is all actually happening."

 

Update :  Video link is to Rumble (back up)

Article: Back Off, Oh Masters of the Universe

 Jordan Peterson   (Video- A Must See)

Globalist utopians demand that we fall in line with their "cure" for climate change. Dr Jordan B Peterson explains why the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is absolutely preposterous."

-----

From the comments: 

"I read this article this morning and found it to be incredibly powerful. Kudos to the Telegraph for publishing it. They've carried more than their fair share of eco-alarmist pieces too over recent years but credit where it's due. It's had 2751 comments at time of writing - the overwhelming majority of which are rightly praising it and recognising its importance. Neil Oliver's latest monologue on GB News (14th Aug) has had a similar reception. Very encouraging signs"

. "I literally am taken back, not by the overwhelmingly insightfulness of this man, but by his willingness to forgo his ego and his consequence to take on the likes of a monster far greater than any thing our own minds could conjure with his own time and his own words he lays down his self for the good of all mankind. When, in history have we ever seen such selflessness. Do not take lightly this act of selflessness. This is a moment in time to remember. I am in awe."

"Holy crap, the hair stood up on my arms listening to this man simply breaking down the world... People need to listen and listen carefully before having an opinion on something so precious and so delicate..... Thank u"

The Basic Math Problem that Undoes Global Warming Hysteria

 American Thinker

Members of the Biden administration have taken to saying we need the pain to get the gain.  I demonstrate for you now that it is not possible to produce enough vehicles in 12 years or in 25 years.  Therefore, this is definitely all pain and no gain.  By destroying the U.S. fossil fuel industry, it does seem they are determined to destroy the U.S. economy from within.

Therefore, why are they pushing this agenda and this ridiculous solution?  If you believe that the "man-made climate catastrophe" is around the corner, how will destroying the U.S. and the world economy help?  Simple answer is "it won't."  The U.S. is the most innovative nation in the history of the world.  If you take us out of the equation, serious problems cannot be solved.

For those who say the globalists have a plan, I can assure you based on this high-level math that they do not have a serious plan to address "man-made climate change" (if they really believe it).  It will probably take trillions of dollars injected into the world economy and thirty to forty years to replace all gas-powered vehicles with electric (assuming we can find the minerals and components to manufacture the batteries).

Without the magic wand referenced repeatedly by globalists, there is no way to produce enough electric vehicles to make a difference.  The real question then becomes, why are they pushing to convert to electric vehicles (it won't help in time) to solve an "existential problem"?  I think we have to "follow the money" to find out."

 

Climate Alarmism Descending upon the Lower Levels of Government

 American Thinker

Everyone knows about the disastrous Green New Deal that is being foisted upon us by our federal rulers in D.C. However, few New Yorkers realize that our state is way ahead of the game when it comes to destroying modern life as part of the climate change hoax. We have our own version of the GND known as the Climate Leadership and Communities Protection Act (CLCPA).

Since the Dems have held the legislature and governor’s seat, some of the most destructive programs and regulations have been imposed to stop the use of fossil fuels in our homes, cars and every facet of our lives without regard for the consequences.   ........The reality is that around 80% of New York City’s electric needs are still generated by fossil fuels. There is no way that this pork barrel smorgasbord will efficiently replace the city’s largest fossil fuel power plant and make it into a “renewable energy hub”. Coupled with the loss of Indian Point, Ravenswood could end up jeopardizing and destabilizing the city’s electric grid indefinitely, unless there is a dramatic change in the political power structure of New York state."

 

Now it's 'mega-floods' that will destroy the whole world

 American Thinker

This time, it is mega-floods in California replacing mega-droughts, and again they are supposedly caused by us and fossil fuels.  Not once do journalists give a damn that their previous dire predictions have been 100% false. 

To the compliant, complicit media, and other Democrats, floods, droughts, too much snow, too little snow, record cold, record warmth are all caused by us, instead of cyclical and natural.  The solution is always bigger government and more control of our lives.  It is arrogant and ignorant for anyone to pretend they can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activities if we just hand over trillions of dollars and let bureaucrats and politicians control all aspects of our lives. "

 

The Elite Panic of 2022

CJ 

What terrifies elites is the loss of their cultural monopoly in the face of a foretold political disaster. They fear diversity of any kind, with good cause: to the extent that the public enjoys a variety of choices in cultural products, elite control will be proportionately diluted.

Our cultural monolith, never popular, is today pounded by crosscurrents that undermine its solidity. Alongside the vast progressive choir, quieter voices—conservative, libertarian, religious, none-of-the-above—could soon arise, leaving our culture more fractured, more divided, and more representative of the nation as a whole. If that were to occur, sullen elites will point to 2022’s springtime of discontent, and remark, with typical vehemence, that their panic was fully justified."

 

Panic at the Top

 American Thinker

If the absurd raid on Mar-a-Largo has not persuaded you yet that the Deep State and their cohorts are terrified of their loss of political and cultural dominance, I urge you to read this thoughtful piece by former CIA analyst Martin Gurri. He traces how with the panic over the Wuhan virus, the elites managed a level of control over both the population and the information about the disease and how to treat it.

It’s a wonderful, thoughtful essay and a summary cannot do it full justice, but if you are afraid that we cannot get out of the elite chokehold on our culture and political life, it may give you some comfort. He is optimistic as few are that the elites are rightfully panicked that their cultural supremacy is in its last stages:  "

 

The Green War on Dutch Farmers Should Concern Everybody

 American Thinker

Although the Netherlands has a population of 17 million and is only slightly larger than the U.S. state of Maryland, it is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the United States. Dutch farms produce enormous quantities of beef, pork, dairy products and many other agricultural goods that are sold all over Europe and the world. The Dutch can produce so much food in such a small country thanks to the application of technology to farming methods. Dutch farms are perhaps the most advanced in the world. Thanks to the latest technology, Dutch food is not only plentiful but also inexpensive, efficient, and clean without sacrificing quality.   ......

If anyone doubts these radical Green goals, look no farther than Sri Lanka. The country’s economy collapsed, resulting in food shortages and mass unemployment. A leading cause (though not the only one) of this meltdown was the radical Green policies of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In April 2021, he banned the importation of chemical fertilizers used by 90% of the country's farms and forced farmers to revert to "organic" methods.

The effects were swift. One-third of Sri Lanka's farms went dormant, and 85% of farmers suffered crop losses. Rice production fell 20%, while its price rose 50%. Sri Lanka was forced to import rice from a market in which it had previously been self-sufficient. Tea production, a cash crop for Sri Lanka, fell 18%. Inflation skyrocketed, food became scarce, and many small farmers were ruined."

Democrats continue to wage war against the oil industry in the name of ‘climate emergency’

 American Thinker

As soon as Biden took office, he actively worked to destroy the fossil fuel industry by asking all the federal agencies to focus on climate change through the lens of Democrat policy, despite lacking empirical evidence that it was an “emergency.”   .....Additionally, the Democrats push for massive use of rare Earth minerals to produce batteries for all the “electric” technology. They don’t care if the cost of acquisition is rampant pollution and human rights abuses, it’s all a means to an end. From a piece published in the Harvard International Review:     ...Biden, Mayor Pete, and the others tell people that the way to protect against high fuel prices is to simply go purchase an excessively priced, inefficient, and impractical electric car powered by highly-flammable pollutant, Lithium."

This is what finally puts an end to Australia

 American Thinker

There is an ominous buzz in the new Australian Parliament — Albo and the Greens are planning to pass 40 new bills, quick smart.

Each bill will probably need 100 new regulations and 200 new inspectors, auditors, and enforcers plus many new taxes and fees.  They will not deliver "Net Zero" — they are "Net Negative."  They will divert labor and capital from productive activities to bureaucracies and green energy speculators.   ....Probably the worst bill in Green-Albo's legislative avalanche is "The Climate Change Bill."  This dreadful piece of legislation gives the government the ability to "ratchet up" green targets without new parliamentary approval but makes it difficult for future governments to ratchet back these targets.  This will clutter rural Australia with imported solar panels and windmills and destroy forests and grasslands with spider-webs of roads and transmission lines.  It will make blackouts more likely and destroy any heavy industry we have left.  Filling our cities with electric cars will stress the electricity grid and add greatly to urban fire risks.  And in 15 years (or after every cyclone), we will have an enormous problem trying to dispose of the worn out, non-degradable wind and solar generator debris."

 

UK: Lights out for winter? Warning 12m people will be in energy poverty

 JoNova (Australia)

All hail the clean green energy reset — where people are being warned to get ready to live in colder, darker houses, and big energy users will be offered money to stop work. Make plans to turn that factory off! Buy candles!

The UK sits on a giant gas storage site they could have tapped 10 years ago. Instead costs are up so much Ofgem has warned this could push around 12 million people into fuel poverty which is one in six people in Great Britain. The energy price cap is projected to hit around £3,200 (maximum annual tariff).

Apparently even newspapers are getting thinner. High energy costs make everything expensive.

Back to the dark ages? Now millions of Britons could be told to switch off the lights and turn down the thermostat to avoid blackouts this winter under emergency plans

Daily Mail, 24 July 2022

Households might have to turn down their thermostats and switch off lights to avoid blockouts under emergency plans.

To avoid rolling blackouts in the UK, the National Grid could also pay some large energy users to use less power to ease the pressure on the grid.

Britain’s next PM urge to target long-term plan after major ‘wake-up’ call

Express.UK

…with the energy price cap tipped to soar to around £3,200 (maximum annual tariff) in October, industry regulator Ofgem has warned this could push around 12 million people into fuel poverty."

 

Net Zero produced the most dramatic fall in European energy since the late Middle Ages

 JoNova (Australia)

If we measure the vibrancy of an economy by its energy use, the EU peaked in 2006 and is down 10%. The UK, alas has fallen even further and faster and is down 30%.

John Constable at the GWPF has produced a damning report on Europe’s Green Experiment and remarked that there hasn’t been a fall in energy this large “since the end of the late middle ages”.

Effectively, the EU paid €770 billion to export it’s carbon emissions and jobs to China and import nearly everything else.

• The study shows that up until 2005 the EU’s energy consumption was on a rising trend, but it has now fallen by over 10% on the 2006 peak, and is now back at levels last seen in the 1990s. The UK is even more severely affected, with consumption falling by about 30% on its peak in the early 2000s and is now at levels last seen in the 1950s.
• Further analysis reveals that electricity generation productivity has collapsed, with system load factor falling from an adequate 56% in 1990 to a worryingly inefficient and expensive 37% in 2020."

 

Climatologists Embarrassed: Increase in Global CO2 Levels Accompanied by Arctic Sea Ice Growth!

 WUWT

 

The CO2 content of the Earth’s global atmosphere has steadily increased from about 380 ppm in 2009 to more than 420 ppm annually by 2022, leading to the further greening of the Earth. The increase in global CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere has been accompanied by growth in Arctic sea ice areas and strong growth in Greenland ice masses this year.”

What an embarrassing development for Al Gore and the tight circle of consensus scientists."

Florida's Ron DeSantis takes a stand against the scourge of ESG

 American Thinker

Environment, Social, and Governance, better known as ESG, is a metric that measures whether a nation or corporation can demonstrate the maximum amount of corporate virtue-signaling.  The most striking example is Sri Lanka, the former government of which massively increased its ESG by mandating only organic fertilizer in the small nation, leading to massive inflation, famine, and the violent overthrow of its government.  ESG is bad business and, as Sri Lanka demonstrates, dangerous to human well-being.  Now Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that Florida is leading the way to stand against this utterly toxic metric.   .....

"The upshot of all this, Tucker," said DeSantis, "is we want to stop these kind of Masters of the Universe from trying to do through economic power what they cannot achieve at the ballot box.  And it's really an end-run around democracy where they're trying to impose these things."

That's exactly right.  In addition, DeSantis believes that other states will follow Florida's lead."

What Greens don't get about volcanoes, oceans, and weather

 American Thinker

Earth's climate history is written in the rocks.  Anyone who cares to read that record will see that recurring Ice Ages, not global warming, pose the greatest threat to life on Earth.  Even in today's warm Holocene Era, the Little Ice Age was a time of war, famine, and distress, whereas the Medieval Warm Period heralded a time of peace and plenty.

Earth's weather is driven by winds powered by convection currents, which get most of their energy from the sun.  ...Australia's famous weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, was well aware of the natural cycles in climate as far back as 1923 — long before coal, cattle and cars could be blamed for "global warming."  ...A bleak northern winter approaches.  As blackouts beckon and the lights start to flicker, coal is suddenly OK again.  But Europeans and Australians still plan a "Net Zero" ritual sacrifice of their farmers on the alarmist altar.  None of this sacrifice will deter La Niña, or stop the volcanoes, or feed the people."

 

Al Gore is baaaack

 American Thinker

...Several Fox News hosts ripped into the recrudescence of this Democrat relic.  Fox host Jesse Watters has a particularly good take, calling Gore a "grifter" and "stickup artist" and comparing his latest act to the return of bad '70s fashion trends:  ....

The question remains, though: why is Gore showing up on prime time all of a sudden? 

The green agenda is falling into complete discredit, what with the example of Sri Lanka, which "went green" and saw its economy collapse, and the Netherlands, whose green agenda set off a mass agricultural sector revolt.  Similar collapses for similar reasons are brewing in Pakistan, Panama, Canada, Italy, and other places.  Bankruptcy, dictatorship, and actual hunger are the rubble of the environmental wackoism and the byproducts of "going green" that have overtaken the world in the wake of Gore's initial entry into green wackoism, which was his Academy Award–winning wokester movie called An Inconvenient Truth.  A recent Rasmussen poll showed that the public views the green agenda at rock bottom among its priorities, while the scolding press prioritizes the issue among its top items.....he other thing is that Gore knows that the greenie agenda is failing — the messaging from Sri Lanka and the Netherlands and all places that have adopted the green agenda is a legacy of failure.  The high gas prices at the pump along with the blithe call to buy expensive and environmentally unfriendly carbon compound–consuming electric cars is also a failed message.  For Gore, all of that is his rice bowl, so he may be in a sense trying to save his legacy — by offering up his face to the cameras as a substitute for the riots and ruins the public are seeing with their own eyes."

The BBC Says They Want To Talk

Real Climate Science

The BBC refuses to talk to anyone who tells the truth about energy and climate – but they have written a primer on how to talk to a climate denier........ 

Rebutting the IMF’s Carbon Arbitrage Scheme

 WUWT

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently issued a draft paper called “The Great Carbon Arbitrage” making various points that are scientifically wrong or unsupported. Our member Lars Schernikau wrote to the IMF asking for clarification and explaining the scientific issues at hand. A reply from the IMF is outstanding. The IMF draft paper targets specifically coal and makes various grossly misleading and actually unsupported statements in direct contradiction to scientific data and information available. This comes at a time when Europe and the world needs to increase coal burn to avoid a worsening energy crisis."

Ireland joins Canada and the Netherlands in contributing to world famine

 American Thinker

What we’re witnessing is a form of madness, as various world governments enter into a race to return the world to a time of cold, dark, and famine. It’s no wonder, then, that Ireland just hopped on board the “let’s create a famine” bandwagon. Ireland too is demanding that its farmers cut their emissions by 28%:  .........This is all to “save the planet,” of course. The current world population is around 8 billion. And while the Georgia Guidestones may be nothing but dust now, it’s reasonable to believe that it states a target world population that sits very well with the World Economic Fund and its acolytes around the world: Fewer than 500 million people. The rest of us are extraneous and would be better as natural fertilizer than as living, breathing CO2 polluters. "

Apocalypse from now on?

 Spiked Online

...Why did they become so central to the media narrative of the heatwave? It is as if the fires offered the best means to present the heatwave as a disaster. After all, the media had portrayed the heatwave as such before the event – as did all those government bodies which classified the heatwave as a ‘national emergency’. More importantly, they wanted, almost unconsciously, to turn the heatwave into something other than it was – into a ‘warning sign’ of the catastrophe to come, a portent of the apocalypse, a terrifying, hellish glimpse into the future. As with every other ‘extreme’ weather event today, our political and media class were determined to present this week’s heatwave as part of our unfolding climate ‘catastrophe’. They wanted to turn it into yet another episode in the dominant metanarrative of our era.......

The myth of the climate crisis

Except that things are not inexorably getting worse. Not by any objective standards. And that is telling. It shows us that the catastrophism that is gripping parts of society is not driven by an actual, observable uptick in disaster. It is driven by something else – by a broader, doomladen cultural sensibility.

 ....There are good reasons for the fall in the number of fires in Greater London. Chimneys and chip pans, which were the source of many conflagrations, are not used to anything like the same extent today. And the rise in use of smoke alarms and sprinklers will also have reduced the risk of fire.

What all this tells us is that the dreadful fires that consumed several houses in Wennington and other properties elsewhere in the UK were not part of an unmanageable, upwards trend. And they certainly were not evidence of the unfolding climate catastrophe. Quite the opposite. They bucked the trend. They were horrible but largely exceptional events. "

The war on fossil fuels is concluding—and the good guys are losing

 American Thinker

There are several entities that saw a benefit in declaring war on fossil fuel: The environmentalists who are so historically illiterate that they believe a world without fossil fuels will be a bucolic paradise, rather than a Hobbesian nightmare; the leftists who want to break the West to rebuild it as a socialist paradise; the Great Reset/New World Order crowd, which envisions happy, possession-free serfs; and the Chinese, who foresee a bloodless conquest of the West which, believe me, will not be anybody’s paradise. While the winner among these groups isn’t clear, the loser is coming into focus: Ordinary people across the Western world. The latest example comes from Germany 

In 2018, President Trump warned Germany, which was proudly shutting down its own coal production and refineries, not to become dependent on Russia’s oil and gas:

Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states, such as Poland, for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.

Germany and other European countries, basking in Greta Thunberg’s approval and wallowing in their virtue, sneered at Trump’s words and went their own way. And then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. There is no “I told you so” big enough to encompass Trump’s prescience.    

 ....In other words, Germany is facing a total industrial collapse; meanwhile, the media continues to repeat the increasingly more laughable propaganda that Putin is losing the war."

Think It’s Not Now? How Britain Roasted in TEN-WEEK Heatwave During Summer of ’76

 WUWT

The current non-stop sunshine has evoked memories of the summer of 1976, when there were 15 consecutive days that saw temperatures of 89.6F (32C) somewhere in the UK.  ....the summer of 1976 was caused in part by very hot air that had originated in the Mediterranean. The warm weather and lack of rain began on June 23 and did not abate for more than a month.

The highest temperature recorded in the summer was on July 3, when the mercury hit 96.6F (35.9C) in Cheltenham. The average maximum daily temperature was 67.8F (19.9C).  .....By late August, there were only 90 days’ of water supply left in London. In Leeds, the figure was 80. .......However, a week after Mr Howell’s appointment in late August as minister for drought, the rain finally arrived and the hottest and driest days of Britain’s most famous summer were finally at an end.  It had been the worst drought in England in 250 years. 

The hot weather of the past few weeks has prompted many Britons to draw on their memories of the summer of 1976.

On Twitter, one wrote: ‘I’m a survivor of the summer of 1976. What a time to be alive. It was amazing. I was 15 and the No government as I remember instructed me in how to behave.’

Another said: ‘I have no idea how so many of us got through summer of 1976, unscathed. We didn’t have social media to try to frighten the life out of us.’

Carbon capture in Iceland – Oh, the irony!

 American Thinker

Carbon, as we all know, is the central building block of organic life here on Earth. Carbon dioxide is an animal byproduct of the process of living: forming within cells during metabolism, moving via the bloodstream to the lungs, then being exhaled. Plants inhale CO2 to live and grow. What a wonderful symbiosis covering our world! Other sources of CO2 include volcanic eruptions and the byproducts of human communities—burning various fuels for heating, cooking, transport, and industry.

A little less than 0.03% (3 parts in 10,000) of the Earth’s atmosphere is made of CO2, classified as a trace gas. NOAA has this to say “…global average atmospheric carbon dioxide was 414.72 parts per million (‘ppm’ for short) in 2021, setting a new record high…” NOAA’s records only go back 60 years—or 3 parts in 225 million of the Earth’s 4.5 billion years. Perhaps our nation’s premiere atmospheric sciences institution can be forgiven for missing a few facts. But I don’t think they should be.

Evidence exists that CO2 in the atmosphere appears to have no correlation at all with global temperature, although rejiggering timescales can make it look that way. A clear chart shows that, at one time, there were 10,000 ppm (22 times today’s amount) and the Earth was colder than it is today. The climate changes mostly due to the sun and its various cycles and not because of carbon in the air.

Nevertheless, there are those who believe that atmospheric carbon will doom us all.   ...Swiss company Climeworks is building a facility designed to pull 36,000 tons of carbon annually from the atmosphere and sink it underground. That’s 0.0001% of the estimated 36 billion tons that human activity emitted last year. As human inputs account for an estimated 22% of atmospheric carbon, that’s not a lot of mitigation. ....So why do this now? Follow the money. Microsoft just invested part of its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund into Climeworks."

 

Flawed food science behind alternative protein

 American Thinker

There have been musings from the World Economic Forum (WEF) about giving insects a role in our food systems as an alternative protein to meat. The WEF boldly tells us that in the future… “meat will be a special treat, not a staple for the good of the environment and our health.”   ......It is mind-boggling that one could statistically combine these types of results (most were negative) -- all from randomized trials -- and yet somehow find that “…soy protein lowers LDL cholesterol by a small but significant amount.” Sounds much like the flawed science used by drug companies in their randomized trials to justify the efficacy of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19."

Nearly in the Grip of a Cult

 American Thinker

One cult we know a lot about: “anthropomorphic climate change.”  After a half century, “saving the planet” has been woven into the culture.  Many people share the conceit that humans have the power to save or destroy the earth. 

Over the years, green initiatives have made inroads, being translated into laws and policies.  Now, though, a rising generation of left-wing Democrats, backed by aspiring oligarchs, is pushing a radical green agenda with greater intensity.  Average Americans are already shouldering the costs.     .......The other cult, which is our focus here, centers on the rise of artificial intelligence, which futurists claim will supplant humans as governors.  And, no less, the expectation that practically omniscient, predictive algorithms will control every aspect of human existence. .......

Both cults are magnets for rich, powerful people.  Both satisfy those who seek even greater wealth and power.  Green radicalism is a path to both.  A future run by elites and smart machines attracts elites who thirst for control.  Then come those who seek to fill voids left in their lives by abandonment of God.  They’ve sought religion substitutes in scientism.     ....But we needn’t arrive at Schwab’s dystopic world.  A powerful counter worldview needs to develop.  One that accounts for the spiritual in humans… one that rejects materialism and declares faith and freedom as mutual… one that peoples across the globe rally to because it stands for the inherent value of every human life… one that will kill Schwab’s monstrous vision before it kills us."

 

The revolt against green tyranny has toppled its first government, as farmers' protests spread across Europe

 American Thinker

Green tyranny has finally provoked mass reactions, and the first government has fallen after imposing insane policies that wrecked the food supply for its people.  Both the president and the prime minister of Sri Lanka are resigning in the wake of massive mobs storming and occupying their residences, burning the P.M.'s private house and refusing to leave the presidential palace until both men are out of office.   ....Sri Lanka foolishly signed on to the green initiative in farming, going organic and limiting the importation and use of chemical fertilizers.  Food production, including tea, a vital export earner of foreign exchange, collapsed, and now the government is broke, people are hungry.  .....But it is not just third-world countries that are experiencing mass revolts against top-down green policies.  Farmers in Holland, in open revolt against government plans to destroy their livelihoods by limiting nitrogen application for fertilizer, are tying up that country's roads and cities.  And the revolt is spreading to Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland."

The global warming fraud revealed in one graph

 American Thinker

Two highly distinguished emeritus professors — William Happer, Professor of Physics, Emeritus of Princeton and Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus of MIT — have called out the corruption of science in the global warming/climate change fraud.   ....But for a really quick understanding of the depth of the fraud, take a look at this graph put together by John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville that they cite comparing the predicted temperatures of the global warming models with the actual temperature record:   

As Happer and Lindzen summarize their conclusion:

Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry picking or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence marshalled in support of the theory of imminent catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.

The Global Warming Golden Goose

 American Thinker

Climate science was an obscure and unimportant corner of academia until the professors lucked out with global warming.  The global warming idea apparently struck a spark with the government and media establishments and caught fire.  Money and influence flooded from Washington to academia.    ...

Global warming provided the professors and academic administrators with a junk science golden goose. They were determined to stop anyone from killing the goose. 

A narrative was developed to crush “deniers” who dared to question the global warming narrative. The deniers were depicted as agents of the international oil companies.  ....Climate science groups have been spending billions of dollars developing computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere in an attempt to support the global warming narrative. The computer models are obedient to their authors.  The scientists can manipulate the models to show whatever result that supports the desired conclusion -- global warming or global cooling. Kevin Trenberth, no denier and one time head of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), may have clarified the situation when he said: “None of the models… correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.” 

Tucker Carlson’s latest on ‘green’ energy is mandatory viewing

 American Thinker

Also in premodern times, if the energy supplies failed (the wind stopped blowing, the water stopped flowing, and the slaves and/or animals died from disease), there were two inevitable results: Famine and then, once the people were sufficiently weakened, deadly epidemic disease, not on a COVID scale (~1% of the total population) but on a cataclysmic scale, whether it was a single nation seeing tens of thousands dying from smallpox or typhus, or one-third to one-half of the world’s entire population dying from the plague.    ......George Orwell fully understood and perfectly illustrated in 1984 how the past exists only to justify the left’s current and future policies. If the past isn’t helpful, it must be ignored or rewritten. What this means is that leftists cannot learn from the past. All they can do, rather like cross a raging river on the backs of alligators, is just keep erasing their mistakes and assuring a beleaguered population that the newly rewritten past fully justifies their future plans.  ......Tucker Carlson understands all this: He understands all nation’s needs for energy, he understands that solar and wind power cannot serve a modern nation’s needs, and he understands that the leftists are lying and cheating to circumvent the constitutional limitations on despotism. I often say that something Tucker did is a “must-see” because it so perfectly (and often amusingly) encapsulates an issue. This time, I’m telling you that Carlson’s latest monologue is a must-see because it’s a warning bell. If we ignore it, frankly, we’re doomed."

Dutch farmers are fed up with totalitarianism rebranded as 'climate change'

 American Thinker

The "climate change" agenda is a global, existential threat to prosperity and freedom from tyranny.  Nowhere else is that more apparent right now than in the small European country of the Netherlands.  Under the tutelage of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte became a "golden pin-up boy" for the Agenda 2030 cause.  Rowan Dean, a reporter for Australian outlet Sky News, said:

Currently the Dutch government is embarked upon insane efforts to slash greenhouse gases [sic] and reduce the amount of nitrogen ammonia in the soil by 30 to 70 percent by 2030[.] ...

The Netherlands House of Representatives has released a state which said: 'The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.'

 ....As O'Neill noted, it's not just the Dutch rising up against the beast of Green fanaticism and the "Cult of Net Zero" — but the French and Sri Lankans, too.  "Progressive" environmentalism has gone over like a lead balloon with ordinary, working-class people — as it turns out, they're more concerned with economic stability, food security, and an optimal standard of living than supporting totalitarianism and the narcissism of the global elites.  It seems as though the globalists have overplayed their hand.  They've failed to adhere to conventional wisdom — boiling the frog and slowly eroding rights — and the historical lessons of Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution — starving people have nothing else to lose."

Global warmists lie, phantom people die

 American Thinker

Warmists come in two varieties, government warmists and socially propagandized warmists.

Government warmists (and their partners in national media, ABC, NBC, CBS etc.) know that global warming is a scam. They are promoting it to hide their real agenda of global governance. They have learned that a global problem, like global warming, is a very good way to sell global governance  .....

Socially propagandized warmists have been told "the big lie" about global warming so often that they believe it deep down in their soul (check out "airplane woman,"). There is no reasoning with these people, so don't even try.

Propagandized warmists are exactly what government warmists want, a large group of people who will never question what the government is dishing out. They're like the guy who even after the Covid peak, still wears a mask while driving in his car alone. 

Both groups of warmists emphatically state, "The science is settled."

Richard Feynman, as great a scientist as ever lived, wrote and lectured about science:

 All scientific knowledge is uncertain.

[S]cientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. Some of them are most unsure; some of them are nearly sure; but none is absolutely certain.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated."

 

On climate, Americans don’t want to die because of a theory

 American Thinker

It seems obvious to me that the current occupant of the White House and his backers would rather see the American SUV with all 330,000,000 of us aboard drive off a cliff rather than allow us to use the abundant fossil fuel within our borders. While I admire their dedication to their cause, I would like them to stop long enough for all of us Green “unbelievers” to get off before they complete their journey. I wish the current Democrat party leaders had the insight once possessed by Jefferson Davis, the Democrat party leader in the first half of the 1860s.

Back in 1864-65, as he sensed the demise of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, said, “If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”     ......What I don’t see from Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Greta Thunberg, or all the other apostles of Green, is a plan. I’ve seen their posters and heard their slogans, but I do not see a plan to get us from where we are to the bright and shiny day where trucks deliver, cars drive, and jets fly, all without using fossil fuel. I doubt batteries the size of mattresses that cost between $3,000 to $18,000 are the answer. This may sound unkind, but most of those expensive mattresses need fossil fuel for recharging."

 

Russia’s Ukrainian Invasion May End the Monomaniacal Focus on Carbon Emissions

 American Thinker

Every now and then droplets of reality splash on the noggins of the world’s big thinkers. Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine seems to have highlighted -- to all but the Biden administration -- the folly of a singleminded attempt to curb carbon emissions, emissions which by the way may be more of a boon to the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants than not. (A discussion for another time.)

In Foreign Policy, Ted Nordhaus suggests the invasion may end the cold war on fossil fuels.  He argues that global leaders have had too great a focus on carbon emissions while ignoring questions of affordability and reliability of energy supply, and those are policies which most hurt the poor. (Although right now, even those of us not poor are seeing daily evidence of how unaffordable these extravagant fantasies of a carbon zero world are becoming.) 

He describes historically how the end of the Cold War era led both to an unrealistic idea of the course of energy supply and the performative theater of internationalists: ....."

 

Australia's Energy Crisis Worsens As Gov't Ask People To Keep Lights Off To Avert Blackouts

ZeroHedge 

Wholesale electricity prices have soared and on Monday exceeded the capped price of A$300 per megawatt-hour. Above A$300, coal power generation plants lost money and forced some operators to shutter power generation units, thus removing energy capacity off the grid and sending prices even higher. The rise of power prices began when coal prices jumped following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Bowen snapped at a journalist when asked if more coal power is the answer the energy crunch. 

Chris Bowen isn't having any of Uhlmann's 'wind doesn't always blow' rhetoric.   ......Also, the coldest start to a winter season in decades is boosting heating demand and worsening the problem. Australia better find a way to bring more coal power plants online or risk widespread blackouts amid high demand because of the winter chill.

 

Biden’s War on Oil and Gas

WUWT 

President Joe Biden’s “performance” had “started badly and got worse” during a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, says Sky News host Rita Panahi.      (Video)  

New Zealand to tax bovine belches?

 American Thinker

Kiwi Climate Change Minister James Shaw stated, "There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that.” Sure. Now tell us the one about the three bears.

The proposal includes incentives for farmers who reduce emissions through certain feed additives and allows on-farm forestry to be used to offset emissions. The Earth will be noticeably cooler by 2026, I’m sure.   ......We used to esteem farmers. And now we propose to penalize them for providing food for us because their livestock may belch on occasion? How the times have changed. Perhaps a better approach would be for the government to leave farmers alone. Unfortunately, those who rule over us are utterly incapable of leaving things -- or us -- alone.   .....If New Zealand ends up enacting the Belching Bovine Plan, it may not be a large agricultural exporter much longer."

 

The Green New Deal crashes into the rocks

 American Thinker

What a surprise!  Carbon-based energy is much more important than we were led to believe.  A slight reduction in domestic resource development has sent seismic shock waves throughout our economy.  Bottom line: Folks are often willing to go along with calls for sacrifice… unless and until they are made to really suffer.    .....

The obvious question is: how will this all play out?  The corrupt news media will likely go even farther in its over-the-top hysterical portrayal of ordinary weather events, trends, and hiccups.  As in Crichton’s novel, what used to be a typical seasonal phenomenon – hurricanes -- are now being portrayed as cataclysmic events, even though the last 140 years have seen no significant trend up or down in frequency.  And yet, the EPA claims the opposite, even though most of its sources show stability instead.  That’s what you get when you rely on corrupt government scientists.  Meanwhile, the damage being done by suppressing the use of carbon-based energy will continue, though defections from this dogma have begun, out of obvious necessity.

Also, there’s this pesky scientific discipline known as "geology" and its biological cousin called "paleontology."  The most recent ice age ended 11 to 12 thousand years ago.  At its peak, about 30% of the Earth’s surface was covered by ice.  Such ice has been melting ever since and causing a gradual rise in mean sea-level that has steadily averaged about 3.4 millimeters per year or about 13 inches per century… that is, until the next ice age begins."

New Research Applying Scientific Method Shows The Perception CO2 Causes Global Warming ‘Can Be Excluded’

NoTricksZone 

Instead of focusing on probabilistic percentages and constructed correlations between two events in efforts to determine potential causality, 4 scientists have revisited the requisite conditions for causality in applying the scientific method. They find “the common perception that increasing CO2 causes increased [temperature] can be excluded because it violates the necessary condition for this causal direction.”

 

Selling Global Warming to Eskimos

 American Thinker

....That's essentially what the "climate change" issue is, a charismatic smooth-talking sales campaign selling the world the notion of catastrophic man-caused global warming via an endless string of deceptive narratives. Even the name of the issue, "climate change," is deceptive. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, taught around the world from the grade school level through college, used the "global warming" phrase a minimum of 25 times while never mentioning "climate change" once. Why change the name? When 'man-caused global warming' pauses instead of continually rising as more atmospheric CO2 irrefutably rises, the public starts asking questions.

No problem. Switch to "Climate Change™" and blame it for last year's seven million acres of U.S. wildfires, while crossing your fingers that nobody recalls the nearly 22 million acres burned in 1937.

When objective, unbiased observers examine the issue, they find no end to disingenuous imagery and misleading narratives. Case in point: media don't use clear, midday photos of coal-fired power plants, they instead show views taken at sunset or sunrise where the always-backlit harmless steam emissions resemble sinister pollution clouds. News reports imply the colorless carbon dioxide in the steam is a pollutant, despite the fact that commercial greenhouse growers pump CO2 into their buildings to help their plants and flowers grow bigger and faster. Beyond that, news outlets simplify the name of that odorless, colorless trace gas as "carbon pollution," evoking mental images of smokey black soot.

If the public is not being presented with accurate depictions of just those few items, how many others are misrepresented?"

Turning the idea of a 'climate change' class action into a reality

 American Thinker

A class action against the climate changistas for the huge economic damage they have caused is doable. Not only is it doable, but we’re doing the groundwork to make it happen.

In several articles at American Thinker, I’ve proposed class action lawsuits against those who have used IPCC modeling as the basis to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. The IPCC and its supporters say replacing fossil fuels is necessary by 2050 to save the planet and humankind from total destruction due to rising temperatures."

Anthropogenic climate change will be a non-issue if this volcano blows

 American Thinker

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of the most hysterical climate-change greenies are based in urban regions.  A big city represents the heaviest human footprint there is, something that misleads people into believing that man can ride herd on nature.  In fact, we humans are always scrabbling along, hanging by our fingernails and hoping for the best.  Whether it's earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, or just inexorable greenery (e.g., kudzu, every jungle), when nature gets a head of steam, we're tossed about like ants after a careless human foot kicked their anthill.  And surely the most stunning and destructive example of nature's power is a volcano.  That's why volcanic activity in Antarctica is a bit unnerving.   ....Should this volcano erupt, all or part of the Antarctic ice sheet will instantly melt, and the oceans will rise by feet, not the centimeter or two that panics greenies.  In addition, the sun will be obscured for years.  When the Lake Toba eruption occurred, the Earth's temperature dropped — not by one or two degrees, but by 15!  At the time, the human population shrank almost to extinction."

Electric utopia takes a deadly U-turn

 American Thinker

Electric vehicles have been pushed hard as a solution to the world’s faux climate emergency, but in India they have turned into killing machines.  Many EV bikes and scooters have been bursting into flames across the country. The frequency of such incidents has increased considerably since spring 2022.

In my home state of Tamil Nadu, a man and his daughter were killed when their EV scooter caught fire. You might think it as a one-off incident, but that is not the case.   .......

In Paris, the use of 149 electric buses was suspended after two caught fire. Dramatic footage shows buses in a ball of fire, a sight that would make any municipality inclined to withdraw such vehicles from fleets.

Some underground parking lots in Germany are banning electric and hybrid cars for obvious reasons. Often, lithium-ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish because the addition of water produces hydrogen and lithium-hydroxide, increasing the intensity of the blaze.  ......So to the longstanding concerns about inhumane conditions of mining lithium and other minerals for EV production, we add the direct threat that EVs pose to users and the general public. We are killing people in reaction to the irrational hysteria of a climate cult."

 

Carbon Dioxide and Climate – Friend or Foe?

American Thinker 

Is CO2 really the bogey man? Is it a friend or foe of planet Earth? The answer may surprise you. 

CO2 is one of several greenhouse gasses. Water vapor however is the largest contributor to the Earth’s greenhouse effect. CO2 is also plant food. Think back to high school biology and photosynthesis. Water, CO2, and sunlight combine to produce carbohydrate and oxygen, the carbohydrate being the plant food.

CO2 is a relatively small percentage of air, 0.035% to be exact, less than one half of one percent of the air around us. CO2 levels can vary significantly, from less than 400 parts per million outdoors to over 1000 inside a crowded room. Submarine crews tolerate CO2 levels of up to 8000 parts per million without adverse health effects.

Although a minor component of our atmosphere, CO2 is essential for plant growth. A 100 percent increase in CO2 levels increases plant growth from 22-41 percent, depending on plant type. Aside from CO2, temperature also affects plant growth. Warmer temperatures translate to higher growth rates, assuming the other photosynthesis ingredients remain in place.  ......

Unless of course the climate change alarmists at the UN and elsewhere are less concerned about carbon footprints and global temperatures than they are promoting a major socioeconomic reset, where top-down government control is used in the name of “saving the planet.”

The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, a consultant organization to the UN, claims, “If we are to address the climate crisis we need to challenge the structural causes of the crisis which lies on unequal distribution of wealth, of carbon, and of power.”

They let the cat out of the bag, “Unequal distribution of wealth,” one of Karl Marx’s pet peeves."

Earth day is coming up. It is a good time to remind the public what the predictions were 52 years ago

 American Thinker

On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the world was warned that billions would die soon because of a disastrous ice age.  The Earth had been cooling for thirty years, and it was about to get much worse.  Crops would not survive the ice age, so the people couldn't be fed.  The Earth was cooling even though CO2, the population, and fossil fuel consumption were rising rapidly, which we are told causes warming.

The complicit media dutifully repeated these warnings to scare the public with no questions and no research.  The warnings were 100% wrong because they were WAGS (wild-a-- guesses) instead of based on scientific data.

In 1922, this was in the Washington Post to scare the public. Again, there was no research or questions or scientific data...In 1989, the U.N. essentially gave the same warnings as in 1922 and again the sycophant media reported it to scare the public with no questions asked because they don't care when they are campaigning for a leftist agenda to destroy America."

I agree with scientists and journalists that damaging cold weather is caused by climate change

 American Thinker

Scientific data shows that the climate has consistently and naturally changed for billions of years, so yes, when we have late damaging frosts, they are caused by natural climate change. I hope a lot of money and time wasn’t wasted in coming to this logical conclusion.     What didn't cause late frosts is warming, supposedly caused by fossil fuel usage, rising CO2, humans, methane, cars and so many other things that the media, scientists, and others say we must stop using. It is a simple concept that fossil fuels and humans can't cause both warming and cooling.Throughout history, we have had warming periods and cooling periods. We have had floods and droughts. Storm activity has also fluctuated throughout billions of years.Why do journalists and others continually lie to the public that the current droughts and floods are worse than ever when that is demonstrably false. It is clearly to indoctrinate people into submitting to government policies that will destroy our quality of life and the economy as a whole.

Children of the Corn and the Fraud of Renewable Energy

 American Thinker

The corn crop did not look like any corn that this kid could remember. It was lush and tightly packed, dense even. Every field looked like it had been planted and cultivated by the same farmer, maybe some corporation. I’d bet a buck that this corn I drove past was genetically-modified Frankencorn, and totally dependent on high-powered fertilizers. I’ve probably eaten tons of it in the cheap salty corn chips I’m addicted to.

Corn (a.k.a. maize) is used not just as food for people and cattle, it’s also used to produce ethanol, and not just for boozers, but to mix in with our gasoline....

To understand just how wacky the RFS is, read “Stop the Ethanol Madness” by Mario Loyola, which ran at the Atlantic in November of 2019. Loyola explains how RFS is not only uneconomic but is also destroying the environment. Loyola asserts that “today’s corn-ethanol program is a glaring failure, and it is unconscionable that politicians of both parties are conspiring to keep it alive despite knowing full well what its problems are.”

Ethanol has about one-third less energy than does gasoline. So cars using ethanol get fewer miles per gallon. Flex-fuel vehicles that use E85 get up to 27 percent fewer miles per gallon.  .......

The corn ethanol lobby immediately rose up, and six days after the bill’s introduction, FarmProgress ran “Senate bill repeals corn ethanol mandate.” The article is worth reading as it reveals the entrenched interests at play in RFS. But the article is dated, as the world’s food supply has been damaged by the war in Ukraine, which is a breadbasket to much of the world.

This spring, Ukrainian farmers might have a little trouble between missile strikes getting their crops planted. However, if Ukrainian agriculture is taken offline by war, American farmers can make up some of the difference by raising food rather than fuel additives. That is, if Congress lets them.

 

'Climate change': An Ideologically Driven Movement

 American Thinker

Scientists have been telling us that humanity will end in ten years for the past half-century. Their track record predicting the future is less trustworthy than the prophecies of the Oracle of Delphi.  Carl Grant Looney, Ph.D. in his dazzling book Climate Change and the Emergence of Civilization: Global Warming, Great Floods and Ice Ages assembled spectacularly wrong predictions made by the leading scientists around 1970.  Does anyone remember the “scientific” theory of “acid rain” propagated during the 1970s and 1980s, which was supposed to destroy the forests and poison our lakes and rivers unless we closed down coal-fired power plants? ...It is a fact that climate has been in constant flux for millions of years. The collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia around 2200 B.C. was brought about by a catastrophic rise in temperatures and subsequent droughts.  Some may be surprised to learn that the Romans grew grapes in northern England. Hence, temperatures on this planet were a lot higher then. Given the level of erudition of global warming advocates, we should wonder whether they are aware that neither the Bronze Age civilizations nor the Romans had cars, oil refineries, or coal-fired power plants."

Vermont's green coup d'etat

American Thinker 

Vermont’s Senate has embraced an “act relating to environmental justice” which seeks to redistribute the costs of environmental pollutants from the city mice to the country mice, while punishing white people who live where there is fresh air for the sin of country living.  The law is patently unconstitutional by design – social justice ideology condemns the U.S. Constitution, and seeks to replace it with infinite powers in the social justice elite.

The false narrative of the far Left denigrates America contemptuously:

Americans have traditionally treated the ideas of equality and freedom as meaning simply that the individual is not prevented from following his own life, but that the society has no obligation towards the individual. This view is consistent with the country’s capitalistic history, and has resulted in the wealth and income inequality from which the society suffers… Because the black population suffers most, it has become the leader of the fight to bring the reality of our society into line with the economic, social and political expectations of the people.

The truth is, people who live in urban areas suffer the increased risks of pollution regardless of race; numerous white Vermonters suffer abject poverty despite living deep in the environmentally-clean mountains (and they can’t use a bus or go to the museum: unrecognized urban benefits).

 

The 'Religiofication' of Climate Change

 American Thinker

Climate change is the unofficial state religion of the Biden administration.  In his commentaries on mass movements, Eric Hoffer warned of the "religiofication" of practical purposes into holy causes and noted, "Blind devotion and religiosity leads to belief that the movement is virtuous and a source of strength.  The adherent identifies as a supporter and defender of a holy cause."   .....Climate czar John Kerry stated that walking away from global warming at Kyoto sent a message of duplicity and hypocrisy and that ignoring the twelve-year doomsday forecast issued in 2019 spelled certain disaster for the planet. ....Mr. Kerry's and wife Teresa's combined personal wealth is estimated to be $1.2 billion.  They have owned a private jet, beachfront properties, and a yacht, making their carbon footprint enormous  .....With the United States experiencing the highest rates of inflation in 40 years and energy costs soaring, activists ignore the hardships of ordinary Americans and insist that climate change is the primary existential threat facing humanity.  Sixty-nine percent of Americans support a reduced focus on climate change and efforts to allow for more oil and gas exploration.  Yet the 2022 federal budget proposes $36 billion to support climate change dogma that rejects these incontestable facts:   .....

No credible scientific body has stated that climate change threatens the collapse of civilization or human extinction.

Cold temperatures kill far more people than hot temperatures.

For 80 years, climate alarmists have failed to make correct predictions.

Over the past 600 million years, atmospheric CO2 and temperature levels have fluctuated widely and often without correlation.

The Power of Terrible Ideas

 American Thinker

The notion that our planet is in imminent danger of becoming uninhabitable because of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is more recent, dating to the late 1980s.  In The Age of Global Warming Rupert Darwall also traces Its roots to two men, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius who, in 1896, wrote a paper predicting that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures by 5 to 6 degrees centigrade, and Guy Callendar, who, over forty years later attributed a global temperature rise from 1934 to 1938 to a rise in C02.  Unlike Szasz or Laing, neither have been celebrated in global warming circles, probably because, as Darwall writes, both men thought rising C02 levels were a happy development, contributing to plant growth and staving off a rapid return to an ice age and “deadly glaciers.”   ......No one points up the absurdity of the entire enterprise as well as MIT emeritus professor of atmospheric science Richard Lindzen.  “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21^st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

The Strategic Threat from Net-zero Emissions

 American Thinker

In any event, net-zero emissions are unnecessary. Climatologists perpetrated a grave error of physics in 1984 when they borrowed feedback method from control theory in engineering physics without understanding it. They forgot the Sun was shining. They added the large solar feedback response to, and miscounted it as part of, the actually minuscule feedback response to the small direct warming by greenhouse gases. Thus, they overstated CO₂-driven warming fourfold. After correction, global warming will continue to be, as it has long been, small, slow, harmless, and net-beneficial. Not a cent need or should be spent on attempts – futile in any event – to abate it.

Had it not been for the West’s capitulation to Communist propagandists paid by Russia and China to peddle the official global warming narrative and profiteering by the ineffable strategic immaturity, scientific illiteracy and economic innumeracy of our current generation of politicians, trembling in fear of being unpersoned, the West would never have given Putin the means to rebuild his forces. But it is we who elect the politicians. Irresponsibly, we chose a close-to-Communist administration led by a fumbling geriatric in the United States and an etiolated, clapped-out, effete, no-longer-Conservative administration led by a notorious and all-too-exploitable sexual incontinent in Britain."

 

The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Vehicles

 American Thinker

America may be headed for a new type of energy crisis. While fracking technology still gives us relative energy independence, there is a distinct possibility that an electricity energy crisis awaits us. What if the demand for electricity significantly exceeds the supply over the next decade? We’d have soaring prices and rolling brownouts. That crisis could easily be triggered by the electric vehicles (EVs) Biden’s administration is pushing.

By his Executive Order and an associated Action Plan, Biden’s administration calls for 50% of all new vehicles sold in America by 2030 to be EVs. That means an additional 50 million new EVs on the road in the next nine years, all in an effort to lower Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, namely CO2. .....

Here’s the bottom line: There isn’t nearly enough electrical power available or in the pipeline to fuel 50 million new EVs by 2030. That would require an additional 150 billion kWh’s per year of deliverable electricity. Even the largest power plants only deliver about 8 billion kWh’s per year.

To achieve the administration’s climate change policy goals for EVs, America must build and commission about 20 large new fossil fuel-powered plants or several dozen large new wind and solar farms. That’s impossible by 2030 because large power plants take years to plan, build and bring online. Which means 2030 will either collapse the energy grid or result in a lot of cars that won’t go."

 

An Obama photograph proves the lies of ‘climate change’ and COVID

 American Thinker

 

The cult of Climate Change tells us that, unless we abandon all fossil fuels, the oceans will rise and every coastal community will be destroyed. When Obama bought his coastal Martha’s Vineyard house it was pretty clear that he didn’t believe a word of this narrative. This was rather peculiar considering the vast amounts of taxpayer money he funneled to green energy initiatives as part of the 2009 “stimulus” spending following the recession.

Heck, going back further, that first beachfront purchase was even more peculiar when you consider the speech Obama gave when accepting the Democrat party nomination in 2008:"