Day: November 29, 2023

Voice of America Is a Superspreader of Misinformation About Human Health and Climate Change

By Linnea Lueken

Healthcare and medical business concept

Voice of America (VOA), a U.S. government funded international news agency, posted an article titled “Heat, Disease, Air Pollution: How Climate Change Impacts Health,” which claims that climate change threatens human health because it worsens extreme heat, air pollution, infectious diseases, and mental health problems. Each claim is false, with none being supported by existing evidence. Each of these health problems existed before the industrial revolution and amidst modest warming most are getting better.

The article reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared climate change the “single biggest health threat facing humanity,” and that avoiding a temperature rise exceeding 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial levels as countries committed to in the Paris climate agreement is essential to prevent catastrophic health impacts.

Four categories of health threats are particularly highlighted in the VOA article, the first being “extreme heat.”

VOA writes that this year is “widely expected to be the hottest on record,” and heat “is believed to have caused more than 70,000 deaths in Europe during summer last year,” and also cites a Lancet study that claims by 2050 five times more people will die of heat each year if 2°C warming occurs.

There has been a lot of media coverage claiming that this year is the “hottest on record,” focusing on individual months and the northern hemisphere in particular. However, the data used is suspect, not only because the land-based temperature record is flawed and contaminated with the urban heat island effect, but also as discussed in “Media Fails to Examine Actual Data in Making “Hottest Summer Ever” Claims,”  media conflate measured average temperatures with average temperature anomaly measurements, which are not interchangeable.

The planet began modestly warming even before the industrial revolution began, meaning 2023 is just a continuation of a multi-century trend. Blaming emissions for this year’s heat in particular ignores other natural factors, like increased water vapor from a massive volcanic eruption, an the onset of a powerful El Niño, and increased solar activity.

As described in Climate at a Glance: Temperature Related Deaths, because research shows that cold temperatures actually kill between 10 and 16 times more people than hot temperatures, the slight warming over the past century has likely reduced premature mortality related to temperatures by as many as 166,000 people from 2000 to 2019. The clear evidence shows that cold temperatures kill far more people than hot temperatures and, as a result, as the Earth has modestly warmed, deaths related to non-optimum temperatures have declined significantly.

The next category of health threats discussed by VOA is air pollution. The VOA cites the WHO to assert that outdoor air pollution driven by fossil fuel emissions kills “more than four million people every year,” partially in the form of PM2.5. This figure is not supported by real world data.

Worse still for the claim, VOA admits that deaths from air pollution have fallen over time, not increased, even as the Earth has warmed. As a result, it’s unclear how this category even relates to climate change at all. According to the IPCC, there is no consensus on even the existence of any effects of global warming on “air pollution weather,” or temperature inversion conditions that may cause ground level ozone.

The claim that infectious diseases are on the rise due to climate change has been refuted at Climate Realism many times, for example, here, here, and here, and VOA makes no new claims in this regard. VOA claims that because of animal migration, the risk of infectious disease will spread, especially those spread by mosquitos like dengue, chikungunya, Zika, West Nile virus, and malaria.

The fact remains that no matter what the computer models say, more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that temperature alone is not enough to guarantee migration or longer survival of mosquitoes or mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria. Human interventions like the use of DDT, emptying standing water, mosquito netting, and other methods, far outweigh any effect of temperature.

Paul Reiter, a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained in a paper that “it is facile to attribute this resurgence [of malaria in some regions] to climate change.”

Looking at other animal sources of disease outbreaks like the Bird Flu, the exotic animal trade and wet markets are much more likely candidates.

There is no evidence that modest warming has caused disease outbreaks due to animal migration nor that continued modest warming it threatens to do so in the future.

VOA devotes only a small section to the final category, mental health, writing “Worrying about the present and future of our warming planet has also provoked rising anxiety, depression and even post-traumatic stress — particularly for people already struggling with these disorders, psychologists have warned.”

This shouldn’t be hard to explain, since media and government alarmism has been significantly ramped up over time. Despite data to the contrary, the mainstream media has increasingly used words like “catastrophe,” “crisis,” and “uninhabitable” to describe the condition of the planet. Some media outlets have tried pointing out that this scaremongering is counterproductive, but it hasn’t stopped, with CNN recently declaring that “no place in the US is safe.”

In the light of this near daily the barrage of climate scare stories, it is no wonder that people struggling with or prone to mental illness in particular are deeply afraid. Survivors of a natural disaster may also struggle with PTSD or similar ailments, but it doesn’t mean that climate change is the cause, as discussed in “Wrong, Mainstream Media, Climate Change is Not Causing PTSD.”

In the end, objective scientific data does not show that human health is being negatively impacted by climate change, and it is certainly not the biggest health threat facing humanity. Because almost every claim in the story is refuted by hard data, it actually throws suspicion on much of the good work unrelated to climate alarm that the VOA and the WHO do. It is especially bad that VOA included the WHO’s unverified mental health claims in the story, since it is fearmongering by mainstream media outlets, like VOA, that are the source of climate (reporting) related mental health problems, not climate change itself.

Linnea Lueken

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”

Linnea Lueken

The post Voice of America Is a Superspreader of Misinformation About Human Health and Climate Change appeared first on ClimateRealism.

Get ready for another pointless UN climate conference

By Steve Goreham

The United Nations Climate Conference begins on Thursday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. More than 70,000 delegates are expected to attend from almost 200 nations. The COP28 event will emit large amounts of carbon dioxide but is unlikely to have any measurable effect on global temperatures.

COP28 is the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, an annual event that has been going on since 1995. The Conference of the Parties is the decision-making body of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is an international agreement that was established in 1994 by the U.N. with the intention of “preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system.”

Pope Francis, King Charles III, Bill Gates, John Kerry, and many other dignitaries will lead the 70,000 attendees. Heads of state, industry and business leaders, leaders of environmental groups, and media representatives will also attend. The Nature Conservancy plans to send representatives from 20 nations.

The attendees will arrive in the UAE primarily by private jet or commercial aircraft, powered by jet fuel. For each kilogram of jet fuel burned , 3.16 kilograms of carbon dioxide will be emitted. They will then travel from the airport to Dubai’s Expo City by limousine or taxi, fueled by gasoline or diesel fuel. Some may take electric vehicles, but these EVs will be charged by UAE electricity, 82% of which is produced by natural gas.

And yet, COP28 delegates will inevitably push for the end of the use of hydrocarbon fuels, which are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, who is likely to attend, stated in 2021: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas, and coal, from now — from this year.” Many delegates support Birol’s statement.

But most of the conference attendees will have cellphones, which are made from plastic from oil or natural gas. They will be wearing suits, ties, shoes, and other clothing, much of which will be composed of synthetic fibers from hydrocarbons. They will dine on food produced by farms that use synthetic nitrogen fertilizer created from ammonia, produced using natural gas or coal fuels. Hydrocarbons drive our modern society.

Developing nations, too, need oil, gas, and coal to raise the standard of living for their people. Renewables provided only a tiny part of the energy consumed in developing countries in 2022, such as in Africa (2.4%), India (5.9%), the Middle East (0.7%), and Southeast Asia (6.3%). More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are now being planned or under construction across the world.

Ironically, developing countries appear to be all in for world decarbonization, with heavy participation at annual U.N. climate conferences. And why shouldn’t they be? Poorer nations seek billions in wealth transfers from richer nations in the name of climate change. Prior to the COP26 conference in Scotland in 2021, for example, India demanded $1 trillion per year from wealthy countries to help it reach “net zero” by 2070. About 25% of all financial aid to the developing world now goes to fund climate-related projects, up from only 4% in 2005.

The U.N.’s attendees don’t seem to mind since its climate conferences are already steeped in hypocrisy. Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, is well known for his CO2-emitting private jet flights, but he considers his work too important to travel by alternatives that emit less CO2. Gates, the billionaire, built and owns a 66,000 square foot mansion in Medina, Washington, which uses more than 20 times the electricity of a typical U.S. home. Climate change advocates demand emissions reductions from society that they are unwilling to observe themselves.

Not that it matters much, anyway. There is little evidence that the annual COP climate conferences held over the last 27 years have had any effect on the climate. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere continues to rise steadily. In 2020, global industrial emissions of CO2 declined by more than 8% during the COVID-19 crisis, but this decline was undetectable in the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Nor has there been any significant change in energy consumption. World energy consumption has tripled since 1965. From 2004 to 2021, the world spent about $5 trillion to promote renewable energy and installed more than 300,000 wind turbines. But in 2021, coal, oil, and natural gas provided 81% of global energy consumption, the same percentage as in 1999. The COP climate conferences can best be characterized as futile.

One thing rising faster than world energy use is COP attendance. About 5,000 attended each of the first five COPs, but this rose to more than 27,000 for COP15 in Copenhagen and more than 30,000 for COP21 in Paris. This year’s conference may have more than 70,000 attendees, but “the sky’s the limit” for future attendance at this carbon dioxide-emitting event.

The U.N. says climate change is “the defining issue of our time.” If we all live long enough, we may have to endure the 50th Conference of the Parties. And it will be just as futile and pointless then as it is now.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

Biden’s EV Boondoggle Enriches Himself

green plant leaves growing on coin stacking money saving business finance success wealth investment budget concept. stack coin on wood table with green blur background.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The Greenest thing about the New Green Deal is the Money.

The spending on “Green Energy Projects” is enormous and uncontrolled.  Larry Behrens explains at Real Clear Energy Too Favored to Fail:” Taxpayers Bailout Biden’s Green Friends.  Excerpts in italics wtih my bolds.

While America struggles to buy groceries, President Joe Biden has a
green slush fund worth billions of dollars, and he’s not afraid to use it.

Billions Disappear with Rivian Bankruptcy

Recent revelations uncovered that the CEO and lobbyists of Rivian, an electric vehicle manufacturer, held a quiet meeting at the White House with Biden’s Climate Czar, John Podesta. That’s right, the same John Podesta who served as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign before being pulled from the ranks of profitable green consulting to oversee distribution of $369 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Biden selected a political operative with green company ties to dole out the goodies from one of the largest slush funds in history. Now green CEOs who are hemorrhaging cash are beating a path to his White House office, presumedly with hat in hand.

According to media reports, Rivian is deep in the red. Last year, they lost $6.8 billion. In 2021, it was $4.7 billion, which is in addition to the $1 billion lost in 2020. These massive losses happened as EV manufacturers enjoyed large subsidies both to build and sell their vehicles. In fact, President Biden went out of his way to praise Rivian in early 2022, even though their stock had already lost half its value on its way to losing 87% of its value since 2021. Losing over $12 billion in less than three years would normally be a problem in the business world, but in the upside-down reality of Biden’s green agenda, that gets you a meeting at the White House.

Tax dollars are flowing from the IRA so quickly that the Department
of Energy’s Inspector General (IG) may be running out of adjectives.

Earlier this month in testimony before the Senate, the IG said, “the current situation brings tremendous risk to the taxpayers.” Red flags about American dollars flowing to foreign companies or just being wasted here at home are going up, yet according to budget watchdogs, their concerns are met with deaf ears by senior Biden Administration officials. The IG notes there were “billions and billions of dollars lost or stolen” from federal Covid funds, and Biden’s slush fund is even bigger. To put it bluntly, the green vault is wide open and the grifters are lining up.

“Green Banks” Dole Out Taxpayer Cash

Here’s a particular galling example. One little known aspect of the IRA are so-called “green banks.” For greenies, the scheme is simple: regular banks will not fund their boondoggles, so they need a taxpayer backed entity to dole out cash. Unlike regular banks, these green banks do not need to make a profit to stay afloat because the government is their funder.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham was caught trying to set up a green bank without the trouble of going through the elected legislature. The board of the bank will be green non-profits who will be in charge because as the New Mexico climate czar put it, “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars…This greenhouse gas reduction fund is a remarkable little beast.” Recently, Grisham announced the green bank anyway. The slush fund is open for business, and everyone has their hand out.

Congress is watching the “green bank” scheme because they know it is ripe for abuse. The problem is clear: The White House put a political operative in charge of what is nothing more than a political fund. For Barack Obama, they were too big to fail, but Joe Biden is taking it further. When it comes to his failed agenda, his green boondoggles are “too favored to fail.”

Biden’s Wasted EV Subsidies Eclipse Solyndra

Helen Raleigh reports at The Federalist The Biden Administration’s Electric Vehicle Subsidies Are Becoming Another Solyndra.  Excerpts in italics wtih my bolds.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm made $1.6 million from
an electric car company the Biden administration boosted
that just went bankrupt.

Proterra, an electric bus and battery company that President Joe Biden touted as a success of his green energy initiative, filed for bankruptcy in August. Last week, it finally sold its embattled battery business at a rock-bottom price as part of the bankruptcy proceeding. The rise and fall of Proterra demonstrates once again that politicians should refrain from betting taxpayers’ money on business ventures to advance their political agenda.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Proterra has sold only 550 electric transit buses since its founding in 2004. Most of the sales were underwritten by government agencies with federal grants. Proterra’s electric buses were plagued with mechanical defects and other performance issues, such as limited range and long charging times. Besides government subsidies, the company only survived as long as it had due to powerful political connections. Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, served on its board.

Despite all the quality issues of its EV buses, Proterra went public in January 2021 and raised $650 million, more than three times its annual revenue. A month after the company’s IPO, Biden tapped Granholm as his energy secretary. Proterra’s political connection to the Biden administration paid off in many ways.

Surviving on Grants and Tax Credits

In April 2021, Biden took a virtual tour of a Proterra facility to promote his infrastructure plan. The proposal included $6.5 billion in grants to help replace diesel-powered school and transit buses with electric ones. During the tour, Biden lauded Proterra for “getting us in the game.” He predicted that Proterra and other electric vehicle companies would “end up owning the future.”

Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act further enriched Proterra’s coffer. The law had little to do with reducing inflation, but it gave massive government handouts to the green energy sector. For instance, IRA includes a $40,000 per vehicle tax credit for purchasing electric commercial vehicles and an additional tax credit for EV batteries.

Proterra admitted in its quarterly report that “the availability of this new unprecedented level of government funding for our customers, suppliers, and competitors to help fund purchases of commercial electric vehicles and battery systems will remain an important factor in our company’s growth prospects.” Proterra’s political profile rose even more after Biden appointed Gareth Joyce, CEO of Proterra, to serve on the President’s Export Council in February this year.

Backed by Biden, Buried by Biden

Excessive government spending under Biden has sparked high inflation rates that were last seen in the 1970s. To bring inflation rates down, the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates. Higher rates increased production and operations costs for many companies. As legendary investor Warren Buffett famously said, “Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.” Proterra was one of those companies that had been caught “swimming naked” in this new environment.

The company struggled because it had difficulty passing rising costs on to its existing customers, since most were government agencies with little budget flexibility. Nor could Proterra outsource its production overseas or import components at lower costs. Receiving government grants comes with strings attached. One requirement is that companies like Proterra must produce at least 70 percent of their EV components in America. Proterra couldn’t afford to cut the prices of its EVs to drum up sales.

Finally, Proterra filed for bankruptcy in August. Government subsidies could not offset the financial pressure of rising inflation, higher interest rates, and falling sales. Last week, a Swedish automobile manufacturer, Volvo, bought Proterra’s battery business for $210 million, a great deal considering Proterra was valued at $1.6 billion a year ago.

Another party who got an excellent deal was Granholm. She sold her Proterra shares for $1.6 million last year. They would have been worth nothing if she had held on to her Proterra shares until this

August. The biggest loser of the whole Proterra saga is American taxpayers.

No Good News for Electric Vehicles

Proterra was not the only EV company that went under. Michigan-based Electric Last Mile declared bankruptcy in June 2022. Ohio-based Lordstown Motors went bankrupt a year later. Ironically, these companies benefited from the Biden administration’s climate handouts, but the economic consequences of the same policies eventually doomed them. Even large automobile companies’ EV units are struggling. Ford estimates it will lose $3 billion this year on its EV business. The company relies on sales of gas-powered vehicles and government subsidies to keep the EV business afloat. 

What’s In This for the Bidens?

Fred Lucas explain in his Daily Signal article Hunter Biden’s Cobalt Deal With China Increases Cost of His Father’s Push for Electric Cars.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Presidential son Hunter Biden’s most recent controversy—assisting a Chinese company’s purchase of a large cobalt mine—is linked directly to a top Biden administration policy of promoting electric vehicles.

Cobalt, a relatively rare and expensive mineral, is an essential part of batteries used to power electric automobiles. The COVID-19 pandemic also made U.S. officials and the public much more aware of Communist China’s control of the supply chain for drugs and other products.

The younger Biden, 51, is a one-time partner in China-based Bohai Harvest RST, known as BHR, and reportedly remains a stakeholder. 

The New York Times first reported over the weekend that BHR facilitated mining company China Molybdenum’s $2.65 billion purchase of a cobalt and copper mine from an American company, Freeport-McMoRan. 

Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. told The Daily Signal,

The latest news [that] he assisted a Chinese company purchase one of the largest cobalt mines is another example of Hunter Biden using his influence to line his pockets and help a foreign adversary. Conducting oversight of Hunter Biden’s questionable ethics and dealings that undermine our national security will continue to be a top priority for Oversight [Committee] Republicans.

The committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., tweeted: “By helping Chinese companies mine rare minerals in Congo, Hunter Biden is helping Communist China corner the Electric Vehicle market that @POTUS is subsidizing here at home.” 

Summary:

The campaign is to force electric vehicles upon Americans who otherwise do not want them.  And why?  It’s not about climate change, not about the environment.  It’s about greed not green.

CNN Cries Doom Over Snowfall Decline – Of Just 2 Percent

By James Taylor

CNN published an article this weekend raising alarm about “disappearing” snowfall during the past 50 years, all the while burying the negligible amount of snow decline. By CNN’s own data, snowfall has declined merely 2 percent during the past half-century, which is statistically insignificant and barely measurable.

Moreover, 1973 was an above-average snowfall year, so choosing 1973 as the starting point is dishonest. Finally, CNN failed to mention that snow cover trends have been flat for decades and are actually rising during the past 30 years.

All these facts show that CNN – like climate activists do regarding so many climate issues – is crying ‘the sky is falling’ over essentially nothing.

CNN’s article, “New maps show where snowfall is disappearing,” was published on November 25 and quickly rose to the top of Google News searches for “climate change.”

“Snowfall is declining globally as temperatures warm because of human-caused climate change, a new analysis and maps from a NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] climate scientist show,” reads the article’s opening paragraph. The article then asserts that less snow somehow “threatens to disrupt food and water for billions of people.”

However, there is no decline at all in precipitation. In fact, NOAA reports there has been an increase in precipitation in recent decades. Instead, precipitation is merely shifting – on the very edge of wintry late fall and early spring – from snow to rain. How does more precipitation and longer growing seasons threaten to disrupt food and water for billions of people?

Worse, only after five paragraphs of alarm does CNN quietly note that snowfall has declined just 2 percent during the past half century. That is an almost indistinguishable small amount that can barely be measured. At that pace, it would take 250 years for a mere 10 percent of our current snowfall to then be falling as rain.

Still further, the snowfall data show an increase in snowfall in many American ski destinations like Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Utah. The lion’s share of the modest snow decline is in the U.S. Southeast, which does not receive much snowfall, anyway.

The choice of 1973 as a starting point is also suspect. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab tracks global snow cover going back to November 1966, when satellites first began to track global snow cover. The year 1973 had unusually high snow extent, even for the early years of snow measurement. If current snowfall was compared to1967, which was the first full year of the satellite record, CNN would be reporting on an increase rather than decrease in snowfall, and CNN would likely be crying alarm and blaming increasing snowfall on global warming, also. The same holds for an analysis beginning in 1990 or 2000, with snow cover modestly increasing since then.

In short, there is no declining snowfall crisis. There is only a crisis of media dishonesty regarding all things climate change.

[Photo courtesy of Pixabay.]

James Taylor

James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute.

Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy.

Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.

The post CNN Cries Doom Over Snowfall Decline – Of Just 2 Percent appeared first on ClimateRealism.

Daily Mail: COP28 will be an Oil and Gas Contract Bazaar

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Can you imagine a more hilariously ignoble end to the great push to green the global economy, than for the centrepiece of the green movement to transform into a giant oil and gas market?

Dubai’s climate shambles exposed: UAE energy tsar Sultan Al Jaber secretly used COP28 talks to push his own oil and gas projects, in latest shock revelations about warming meet

By JAMES REINL, SOCIAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 04:15 AEDT, 28 November 2023 | UPDATED: 04:15 AEDT, 28 November 2023

UAE officials have used the UN climate change talks they will host this week to push for lucrative new oil and gas deals, say the latest damaging leaks about the summit in Dubai.

Sultan Al Jaber, the Emirati president of the UN’s COP28 meeting, planned to raise commercial oil and gas interests with foreign officials ahead of talks in the UAE’s business hub, leaked internal reports show.

They are the latest claims to cast doubt on whether the talks will boost efforts to cut emissions of planet-heating gases — or are more akin to a public relations exercise for the Gulf petro-monarchy.

…Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12796143/Dubai-climate-shambles-UAE-energy-Sultan-Al-Jaber-secret-COP28-oil-gas.html

Maybe I should write to Sultan Al Jabber, suggest he pay WUWT a commission for advertising his COP28 oil industry bazaar?

Obviously it is unfair the UAE’s oil and gas industry is getting all the attention, so to maintain parity and fairness, I vote the next big green environmental COP conference be hosted by Saudi Arabia.

Al Gore Ghosts Dubai 2023 with 1989 Alarm (What’s New, Pussycat?)

From MasterResource

By Robert Bradley Jr. 

“The global environment crisis may demand responses that are comparatively radical…. It will call for … a Strategic Environment Initiative.” (Al Gore, 1989)

Al Gore might be the the slickest of the 70,000 expected at the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP28) climate meeting in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30th until December 12, 2023. Gore is the world’s #1 climate barker–and has made tens of millions of dollars from his “crisis.” He has one of the highest CO2 footprints on the globe … but he is different, you know.

So what’s new with Al Gore’s pitch? Not much. His crisis in the 1980s is still the crisis of 2023. We are in a “planetary emergency.” We are almost out of time. There is hope with a new energy future….

Mid-course correction not. Sort of like Enron, the climate crusader until its demise.

—————-

Just to document the yawns that 99 percent of the world have toward the never-ending crisis, read excerpts from his Washington Post editorial, “Earth’s Fate Is the No. 1 National Security Issue” (May 14, 1989).

The world is in a crisis–and we are ignoramuses for not seeing what is so clearly obvious (“don’t look up,” they say 34 years later). And an all-of-government (Biden’s phrase) to arrest the ‘crisis’ that only the experts and politicians can see, not us boiling frogs (as one person recently said about us uncleansed). Here he is:

“Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with the planet Earth. The world’s forests are being destroyed; an enormous hole is opening in the ozone layer. Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate. Chemical wastes, in growing volumes, are seeping downward to poison groundwater while huge quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and chlorofluorocarbons are trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising global temperatures.”

How much information is needed by the human mind to recognize a pattern? How much more is needed by the body politic to justify action in response? It took 10,000 human lifetimes for the population to reach 2 billion. Now in the course of one lifetime, yours and mine, it is rocketing from 2 billion to 10 billion, and is already halfway there.

Yet, the pattern of our politics remains remarkably unchanged. That indifference must end. … the environment is becoming a matter of national security — an issue that directly and imminently menaces the interests of the state or the welfare of the people.”

To date, the national-security agenda has been dominated by issues of military security…. Many of us hope that the global environment will be the new dominant concern.

The global environment crisis may demand responses that are comparatively radical. This central fact suggests that the notion of environmentally sustainable development at present may be an oxymoron, rather than a realistic objective. It declares war, in effect, on routine life in the advanced industrial societies. And — central to the outcome of the entire struggle to restore global environmental balance — it declares war on the Third World.

… the effort to solve the global environmental crisis will be complicated …. It will call for the environmental equivalent of the Strategic Defense Initiative: a Strategic Environment Initiative.

An Energy SEI should focus on producing energy for development without compromising the environment. Priorities for the near term are efficiency and conservation; for the mid-term, solar power, possibly new-generation nuclear power, and biomass sources (with no extraneous pollutants and a closed carbon cycle); and for the long term, nuclear fusion, as well as enhanced versions of developing technologies.

Needed in the United States probably more than anywhere is a Transportation SEI focusing in the near term on improving the mileage standards of our vehicles, and encouraging and enabling Americans to drive less. In the mid-term come questions of alternative fuels, such as biomass-based liquids or electricity. Later will come the inescapable need for re-examining the entire structure of our transportation sector, with its inherent emphasis on the personal vehicle.

The U.S. government should organize itself to finance the export of energy-efficient systems and renewable energy sources. That means preferential lending arrangements through the Export-Import Bank, and Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Encouragement for the Third World should also come in the form of attractive international credit arrangements for energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable processes. Funds could be generated by institutions such as the World Bank, which, in the course of debt swapping, might dedicate new funds to the purchase of more environmentally sound technologies.

Finally, the United States, other developers of new technology, and international lending institutions, should establish centers of training at locations around the world to create a core of environmentally educated planners and technicians — an effort not unlike that which produced agricultural research centers during the Green Revolution.

But we must also transform ourselves — or at least the way we think about ourselves, our children and our future. The solutions we seek will be found in a new faith in the future of life on earth after our own, a faith in the future which justifies sacrifices in the present, a new moral courage to choose higher values in the conduct of human affairs, and a new reverence for absolute principles that can serve as guiding stars for the future course of our species and our place within creation.

“Transform ourselves”. How about yourself? As I noted on social media:

The leader of the climate industrial complex–and one of the biggest CO2 footprints in the world. And lots of Green–as in money.

Following the analysis of Vijay Jayaraj:

Al Gore created a billion-dollar profitable market for himself by lying to us about Polar Bears and Arctic Ice. His green investment firm is now worth 36 Billion US$. It pays him $2 million every month!!

Yellow Brick Road to Green Dystopia

Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

J. Peder Zane warns us that green dreamers will destroy social wellbeing in his Real Clear Investigations article Let’s Count the Ways RCI Has Exposed the Green Pipe Dream.  Excerpts in italics wtih my bolds and added images.

While brandishing the moral cudgel with full force – President Biden describes climate change as “an existential crisis,” i.e., every person and puppy will die if we don’t submit to his agenda – the left also suggests the transition will be easy-peasy: Just build some windmills, install some solar panels, and swap out your car, stove, and lightbulbs for cleaner and cheaper alternatives.

The up front gold is clear and costly, the end of the road in shadows.

Though much of the cheerleading media downplays this fact, it is already clear that Biden’s enormously expensive, massively disruptive goal is a pipe dream. In a recent series of articles, my colleagues at RealClearInvestigations have reported on several of the seemingly intractable problems that the administration and its eco-allies are trying to wish away.

The dishonesty begins with the engine of the green economy – the vast array of wind and solar farms that must be constructed to replace the coal and gas facilities that power our economy. James Varney reported for RCI that the Department of Energy’s official line is that the installations required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area” – or roughly 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles. However, Varney noted, “the government report that furnished those estimates also notes that the wind farm footprint alone could require an expanse nine times as large: 134,000 square miles. That is equivalent to the land mass of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky combined – plus all of New England.

Convert Albany county New York into a wind farm required just to replace the now shuttered Indian Point nuclear power plant.

Echoing the 19th century adage that figures don’t lie, but liars figure, the discrepancy mostly involves estimates of what can be built around the windmills. Each turbine’s footprint is relatively small, but they have to be spaced far apart. The DOE’s smaller number is based on the fanciful assumption that all the surrounding land can be used for agriculture and other purposes, while the larger figure assumes none of it will. The truth probably is somewhere in between. That the government is trumpeting the impossibly small number – while ignoring the additional land needed to build transmission lines which will carry the current to end users – is telling and troubling.

Given Biden’s aggressive timeframes for the build-out – 2035 is a mere dozen years from now – one might expect that the administration has a master plan detailing where and when these green farms will be constructed. It does not. And, as Steve Miller reported for RCI, this challenge already seems insurmountable given the “grassroots resistance … coalescing in varied new state laws and local ordinances that threaten to bog down solar and wind development in a multi-front legal and regulatory war on a scale not seen before.”

In a stinging irony, opponents are routinely invoking arguments regarding
endangered species and wetlands that environmentalists have long deployed
to kneecap pipelines, gas fields, and other fossil fuel projects.

Another largely ignored problem area is charging stations for electric vehicles. John Murawski reported for RCI that California’s first-in-the-nation move to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars after 2035 is highlighting an array of challenges and dislocations. To keep electric cars rolling, the state “may need to install at least 20 electric chargers for every gas pump now in service to create a reliable, seamless network” – or more than 2 million new stations during the next decade, which is about 10 times as many EV ports as gas station nozzles.

It might be hard to convince private businesses to house the chargers, because, as a 2022 report from the California Energy Commission noted, “Revenue from electricity sales alone is often not enough today for chargers to be profitable, especially for stations with lower utilization.” That’s why California is investing at least $14 billion to subsidize this fantasy.

Even if the EV infrastructure gets built, it will require a massive change in behavior. The days of fill ’er up once or twice a week will likely become a distant memory. Most public stations will only be able to provide between five and 60 miles of range for an hour hook-up. Private citizens will need to pony up for their own charging infrastructure at home, while renters and low-income drivers will have to rely on employer and municipal largesse to supply chargers.

The green dream also involves knotty geo-politico issues. Ben Weingarten reported for RCI that America’s transition to renewables is empowering its most formidable economic adversary. “China currently holds a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential to the Biden administration’s desired alternative energy transition,” Weingarten wrote. “Energy experts believe that its dominance will become more entrenched in the years ahead because of domestic environmentalist opposition to perceived ‘dirty’ mining and refining operations, and the Biden administration’s ‘clean energy’ spending blitz – which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies.”

What’s more, if the U.S. slows its production of oil and gas in the coming years, hostile or problematic nations that continue to drill – including Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Venezuela – will reap the benefits should renewables fail to become a reliable source of power.

Finally, the systematic erasure of these and other consequential questions
is part of a broad effort to quell dissenting views.

While climate action advocates in the government, media, and academia argue that the science is settled, Murawski reported for RCI that a growing number of experts are courageously challenging this orthodoxy. In August, for example, “more than 1,600 scientists, including two Nobel physics laureates, signed a declaration stating that there is no climate emergency, and that climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria,” Murawski wrote. “The skeptics say the radical transformation of entire societies is marching forth without a full debate, based on dubious scientific claims amplified by knee-jerk journalism.”

In detailing the central arguments of these skeptics, Murawski reported that few fall into the camp of “climate deniers” – itself a shameful label used to equate climate change with the Holocaust. They acknowledge the Earth is warming. Some, however, question whether human activity is to blame and, if it is, whether the massive human interventions being demanded can make much difference. Others say that the money spent retooling the economy would be better spent spurring economic growth that will allow people to adapt to a changing world.

Murawski reported that many dissenters believe that “[S]logans such as ‘follow the science’ and scientific consensus’ are misleading and disingenuous. There is no consensus on many key questions, such as the urgency to cease and desist burning fossil fuels, or the accuracy of computer modeling predictions of future global temperatures. The apparent consensus of imminent disaster is manufactured through peer pressure, intimidation, and research funding priorities, based on the conviction that ‘noble lies,’ ‘consensus entrepreneurship,’ and ‘stealth advocacy’ are necessary to save humanity from itself.”

A lie is rarely noble. It is almost always evidence of a weak argument and contempt for those it seeks to influence. Those who see climate change as an urgent danger and believe they know how to counter the threat should make their case forthrightly instead of recycling tired myths. Our democracy faces an existential threat when the will of the people gives way to the coercion of the masses.

Canadian Green Electricity Push Blocked by Alberta

Watts Up With That?

Alberta has invoked the Sovereignty Act to set limits on the exercise of federal power. But the federal government claims there is no legal basis for their actions.

Alberta invokes Sovereignty Act over federal clean electricity regulations

Premier Danielle Smith believes net-zero electricity grid by 2035 is risky and costly

Michelle Bellefontaine · CBC News · Posted: Nov 27, 2023 5:22 PM EST 

Alberta’s United Conservative government has invoked its controversial Sovereignty Act for the first time by introducing a resolution to push back against the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations. 

The resolution, tabled in the Alberta legislature Monday, instructs governments and provincial entities such as the Alberta Electric System Operator and the Alberta Utilities Commission to ignore the regulations when they come into force “to the extent legally permissable.”

The resolution also raises the possibility of Alberta setting up a Crown corporation to protect the private sector companies that provide electricity in the province. If passed, the resolution would direct AESO, AUC and the Market Surveillance Administrator to consult with stakeholders on the feasibility of such a corporation. 

…

Steven Guilbeault, the federal minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, said the potential use of the Sovereignty Act never came up in months of meetings between federal and provincial officials as part of a working group on the CER and the oil and gas emissions cap.

…

“There is no legal basis for what Alberta is doing ,” Guilbeault told reporters on Parliament Hill.

…Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/sovereingty-act-clean-electricity-regulations-1.7041533

A video of the Premier announcing the invocation of the Sovereignty Act, and her reasons for doing so. Well worth watching – Alberta is lucky to have a straight speaking premier like Danielle Smith.

Even if the Alberta Sovereignty Act is defeated in the end, just delaying the green menace with a tangle of lawsuits is a win, a chance for more people to wake up and start pushing back.

It is especially delicious that Premier Smith timed this act of defiance against green insanity almost on the eve of the international COP28 climate conference.

More than 3,000 auto dealers sign letter opposing Biden’s electric vehicle mandate

Electric vehicles ‘are stacking up on our lots,’ car dealers write to Biden

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/3000-auto-dealers-sign-letter-opposing-bidens-electric-vehicle-mandate

By Thomas Catenacci

FOXBusiness

A coalition of more than 3,000 auto dealers nationwide is sending an open letter to President Biden, calling on him to “tap the brakes” on his administration’s aggressive electric vehicle (EV) push.

The coalition — which includes dealers located in all 50 states and who collectively sell every major car brand — is taking particular aim at the Biden administration’s tailpipe emissions standards released earlier this year which are the most aggressive federal regulations of their kind ever issued. Under the regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the majority of new vehicle purchases will be electric within a decade.

“These vehicles are ideal for many people, and we believe their appeal will grow over time,” the dealers wrote in their letter to Biden on Tuesday. “The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs [battery electric vehicles] arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots.”

“Last year, there was a lot of hope and hype about EVs,” the letter continued. “Early adopters formed an initial line and were ready to buy these vehicles as soon as we had them to sell. But that enthusiasm has stalled. Today, the supply of unsold BEVs is surging, as they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships — even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives.”

They added that, while the goals of the EPA regulations are admirable, they are also “unrealistic based on current and forecasted customer demand.” The dealers further noted that the best indicator of customer demand in the auto marketplace is how EVs are stacking up in their lots.

The letter further noted that there are many issues facing the EV industry such as lacking charging infrastructure, energy grid instability and a lack of reliable mineral supplies vital for EV batteries.

“Mr. President, it is time to tap the brakes on the unrealistic government electric vehicle mandate. Allow time for the battery technology to advance. Allow time to make BEVs more affordable. Allow time to develop domestic sources for the minerals to make batteries,” the letter stated. 

“Allow time for the charging infrastructure to be built and prove reliable. And most of all, allow time for the American consumer to get comfortable with the technology and make the choice to buy an electric vehicle.”

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), for example, China produces about 75% of all lithium-ion batteries, a key component of EVs, worldwide. The nation also boasts 70% of production capacity for cathodes and 85% for anodes, two key parts of such batteries.

In addition, more than 50% of lithium, cobalt and graphite processing and refining capacity is located in China, the IEA data showed. Those three critical minerals, in addition to copper and nickel, are vital for EV batteries and other green energy technologies. Chinese investment firms have also been aggressive in purchasing stakes in African mines in recent years to ensure a firm control over mineral production.

Farmers Fightback: Primary Producers Revolt Against Mass Industrial Wind & Solar Rollout

From STOP THESE THINGS

The wind cult’s proponents never face the prospect of being surrounded by hundreds of 250m high whirling wonders, slicing and dicing birds and wrecking the ability of neighbours to sleep in their own homes and wrecking the environment, more generally.

No, all that pointless misery and suffering, that’s for the other guy. The virtue signalling acolyte is always tucked away in leafy-green suburbs, safe in their very own smugness.

These characters are happy to dump industrial monstrosities in the backyards of rural residents – destroying once peaceful and prosperous communities.

But their victims are less enthusiastic.

Even those farmers who have been duped into signing contracts to allow wind power outfits that spear these things on their properties are having serious second thoughts.

Farmers are rejecting offers to host wind turbines to avoid being left with the massive cleanup costs after these things grind to a halt. At first blush, being paid an annual license fee of $10-25,000 per turbine, per year sounds lucrative enough. However, put that against the $600,000 plus cost of demolishing and removing a single turbine, and the deal soon loses its gloss.

Notwithstanding the rural backlash, Australia’s Green-Labor Alliance has just announced plans to secretly subsidise grand wind and solar projects which everyone in the trade knows would never get past first place without additional $billions in taxpayer subsidies. Labor’s utterly clueless Energy Minister, Chris Bowen is ready to squander taxpayer’s cash on more chaotically intermittent wind and solar, but hasn’t got the courage to explain to the voting public how much he is ready to spend; nor is he eager to explain just how much more power consumers will pay for his ‘grand’ wind and solar experiment.

Here’s Chris Kenny’s take on the disastrous state of Australia’s energy policy (with a few pics added by STT for illustrative effect).

City NIMBYs v regions in a fight over renewables
The Australian
Chris Kenny
25 November 2023

Three things are clear about Chris Bowen’s renewable energy policy: many landscapes will never be the same; electricity will become more expensive and less reliable; and none of this will alter the climate.

Farmers and others from regional communities will rally in Sydney’s Martin Place next week to campaign against renewable energy projects that will blight landscapes, alienate farmland, damage bushland and disrupt livelihoods.

Public protests do not come naturally to people of the land; we can be relatively confident they will not glue themselves to the road, chain themselves to critical infrastructure or block the traffic, and I doubt children will be given the day off school to join them.

But governments would be unwise to take them for granted. In August farmers from central and western Victoria drove their tractors into Melbourne’s Spring St parliament precinct to protest against transmission line projects linked to renewable schemes. In Europe farmers have been increasingly agitated and activist against climate policies that undermine their viability.

Labor governments, state and federal, already are facing regional opposition to onshore and offshore wind projects, solar installations and transmission lines. Legal challenges and community protests are in play, and federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s ridiculous, unfunded, taxpayer-guaranteed acceleration of renewable energy ambitions will make this only worse, creating political spot fires all over the country while further undermining the nation’s energy affordability and reliability.

The hubris and self-harm on display here is monumental. A nation rich in coal, gas and uranium seeks to refrain from using those resources, preferring to conduct a world-first experiment in renewables plus storage, all the while insisting this will be cheap and reliable while generating jobs and economic security. It is delusional.

The push for climate action generally comes from high-income people who live close to the city centres; a look at the electoral map bears this out. But the price paid for these policies is highest in regional areas.

These locations would be cost effective because there would be no need for expensive transmission lines to take electricity from source to consumers. But we all know hell will freeze over before wind turbines or solar farms found their way into the teal, Greens or green-tinged Liberal or Labor seats close to the CBDs. These are places for preaching climate action, not delivering it.

Yet the aesthetics in regional areas are dismissed, as are the additional costs and the impact on land use. It is a textbook case of out of sight, out of mind – or someone else’s problem.

This goes to the increasing divide between urban dwellers and country folk. Tesla drivers and tractor owners often operate in different spheres, and this divide often seems like one between the woke and the practical, or the sanctimonious and the aspirational. These are becoming the most critical fractures in society; despite advances in communication, information and transport making it easier than ever for all of us to mix and communicate, the level of mutual understanding seems to be in decline.

In the country, kids grow up with a clear understanding of where meat, wheat, milk and wool come from and what is required to produce them. In the cities kids in their late teens see a video of an abattoir and it is enough to turn them into activist vegans, seeking to deny meat to others.

The radical vegans now insist on pet owners transitioning their dogs to vegetarian diets – animal activists at war with nature. I look forward to them taking vegetable patties to the Serengeti to wean lions off zebras.

We over-sanitise things, separate ourselves from natural processes or at least disassociate our end products from their source. A few years back, on a country trip, we had been teaching our young boys about different breeds of cattle, some dairy and some beef, and as we watched a herd being loaded on to a truck their fate dawned on my then five-year-old. “Oh, are they going to be beefed?” he asked. We still laugh at the turn of phrase. He still loves his steak.

In the inner cities people can enjoy steak tartare and Florentine all their lives without ever seeing an animal slaughtered. Likewise, they can demand clean energy and pontificate about renewables to their heart’s content without ever having to worry about jobs lost from the local coal-fired power station, or surrendering their land or neighbourhood character to wind turbines, solar farms and transmission lines.

Yet in the brutal numbers game of politics, the city folk dominate. Regional communities need to make some noise and they are about to do so.

We need governments to focus intently on the costs and benefits of everything they do. Yet Bowen this week will not even reveal the broad financial costs of the latest expansion of his renewable zealotry. He used a lame analogy about people keeping their cards close to their chest at real estate auctions, and it was enough to stop most journalists pressing him further.

Still, the previous day he announced a deal with the NSW government to underwrite six projects storing a gigawatt of power for a capital cost of $1.8bn, so it is reasonable for us to presume the full 32GW will cost 32 times that amount, or at least $57.6bn. All this investment must be covered by taxpayers or repaid through higher prices – or both.

But, according to Bowen, renewables are the cheapest form of energy because apparently “the sun doesn’t send a bill and the wind also doesn’t send an invoice”. This bloke should not be in charge of our energy grid, he should be writing lyrics for the Wiggles.

The pain in higher electricity prices and reduced reliability is increasingly obvious. South Australia has the greatest renewable penetration and it has the highest electricity prices and, a few years back, suffered its first statewide blackout.

This is the path the nation is following. But what is the gain?

Bowen suggested this week that the trade-off for regional communities concerned about renewable projects would be a more benign climate. Seriously.

“Rural people will pay a big price if we don’t deal with climate change,” Bowen said on Sky News. “You know the impact on farming, productivity in agriculture, of climate change is really severe, really strong, the farmers that I talk to know that.”

This insults the intelligence of voters and dodges reality.

There is no chance that any of Australia’s virtue-signalling and reckless energy policies can have any discernible influence on the climate. Even former national chief scientist Alan Finkel admitted that if we shut down the entire country, thereby reducing our emissions to zero, the effect on the global climate would be “virtually nothing”.

So why would Bowen pretend that his renewables transition would lead to better conditions for farmers? Is he deluded or deliberately deceitful?

This is the great lie of our contemporary politics – that the expensive, risky and unprecedented rewiring of what was a cheap and reliable energy system will improve the weather. Whatever you think of climate change, this is simply untrue – yet it is one of those big lies that public broadcasters, educators, bureaucrats, leftists, academics and virtue signallers prefer to perpetuate.

And so, for no environmental gain, we demand that regional Australian put up with unreliable, uncosted and unsightly renewable energy projects. “We all live in the country for a reason,” NSW farmer Grant Piper says. “We appreciate the country and the environment we live in, and we don’t want to see it destroyed.”

Piper is opposing transmission lines and other projects in what has been designated a Renewable Energy Zone in NSW’s Central West. “This seems like a case of destroy the village to save the village,” he says. “It’s destroying the environment right here, right now, it’s not gonna save the environment.” He is right. It is as simple as that.

Piper is helping to organise next week’s protest, bringing opponents of various projects around the country together.

Steven Nowakowski is an environmentalist and photographer from north Queensland who is distraught about almost 100 wind farm projects slated for the state’s coastal ranges which, until now, have been spared from agriculture and other development.

He has used drone footage to show the amount of land clearing and habit destruction being carried out to install wind farms in these pristine forests.

“I don’t think people really understand or consider the scale of what is involved in the green energy transition,” Nowakowski says. He may be right but the awareness is starting to build.

I have interviewed cray fishers from Port MacDonnell in South Australia worried about an offshore wind project; potato farmers near Ballarat and other farmers farther west angered by transmission lines; graziers in the NSW high country fighting transmission lines to Snowy 2.0; whale tourism operators opposing offshore wind off Newcastle; landholders near Goulbourn upset by a large solar farm; and the list goes on. Each community is torn, each project struggles against local opposition, and for every firefight around these projects now, there will be 10 more under Bowen’s plan. The battles will be noisy and passionate. The locals have lots to lose and the government has staked its future on this renewable energy strategy.

There are many imponderables about how this climate and energy policy will land. But three things are clear: many landscapes will never be the same again; our electricity will become more expensive and less reliable; and none of this will alter the climate.
The Australian