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:"

The Great Climate Rip-Off

 American Thinker

Is the climate changing?  Yes.  Is mankind contributing to the change in climate?  Yes.  Should major national policy respond to this change?  No!

Climate changes continuously, both warming and cooling.  There is nothing new in this and probably nothing to get excited about.  Man inevitably modifies the climate.  The only questions are by how much and in which way.  Historically, man has modified the landscape sufficiently as to make a noticeable impact on the climate.  The essential question we must address is, how much are we, today, impacting the climate, and is that impact harmful?

The answer is we don't know!  My suspicion is that we have had only a modest, and probably benign, influence. 

Given that we don't know, it is seriously bad policy to imperil our future in an attempt to control the climate.  It also smacks of hubris to believe we have that much control over Mother Nature."

 

Stanford Professor’s Plan to Save the World

 American Thinker

The goal of 100% elimination of CO2 emissions makes no sense, not even for true believers in global warming. About half of the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels is reabsorbed by the Earth. To stop increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere a 50% reduction of CO2 emissions is enough.

Climate change a.k.a. global warming is junk science. But because it is a treasure chest for academics and political activists, it is promoted as sound science.   .....Advocating impractical, radical solutions for imaginary problems is not necessarily a negative for career success. Mark Jacobson not only has a new house and two Tesla cars, he is director of Stanford’s Atmosphere/Energy program. He travels and grants interviews. He is featured in many YouTube videos."

 

The Profound Junk Science of Climate

 American Thinker

Climate change prophecy hangs its hat on computer climate models. The models have gigantic problems. According to Kevin Trenberth, once in charge of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “[None of the] models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate [of the Earth].” The models can’t properly model the Earth’s climate, but we are supposed to believe that, if carbon dioxide has a certain effect on the imaginary Earths of the many models it will have the same effect on the real earth.   .......Once money and status started flowing into climate science because of the disaster its denizens were predicting, there was no going back. Imagine that a climate scientist discovers gigantic flaws in the models and the associated science. Do not imagine that his discovery would be treated respectfully and evaluated on its merits. That would open the door to reversing everything that has been so wonderful for climate scientists.  Who would continue to throw billions of dollars a year at climate scientists if there were no disasters to be prevented?"