Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The Kansas City Star ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been historically.
The Kansas City Star ran an opinion piece claiming climate change is already making weather more extreme in Kansas and Missouri. This is false. There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been historically. Almost all the records for such events in both states were set nearly a century or more ago, when global average temperatures were cooler.
Climate change is already taking a toll on Kansas and Missouri, and not just in the form of wintertime vegetation. Both states are enduring long-running droughts that have challenged the region’s farmers and forced some communities to start hoarding their drinking water. That’s probably just the beginning.
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Climate change is going to make the extremes more extreme — more intense rain and snowstorms, but also more extended periods of drought. Our big swings will get bigger and more destructive.
But Mathis’ sees an even worse problem, in particular, that the majority of people aren’t that concerned about climate change.
“Last week, Heatmap News reported its new poll found that Midwesterners are ‘consistently blasé about climate change,’” writes Mathis. “Fifty-two percent of folks in our region — a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless — say warming ‘poses little or no risk to their region.’”
The residents of those two states are right to be unconcerned about climate change making their states’ respective weather worse, since historical evidence and data show that neither drought nor flooding amid recent decades of modest warming are worse than they have been historically. Indeed, as Mathis himself notes, Kansas and Missouri are not strangers to droughts, floods, and rapidly changing weather extremes.
“The Midwest is already a ‘high variability’ weather region,” writes Mathis, who discussed this fact with Chuck Rice, a professor of soil microbiology at Kansas State University who served on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. “Think about all the times you’ve heard the joke that if you don’t like the weather around here ‘just wait five minutes.’”
Although it is true that parts of Kansas and Missouri are currently suffering from various degrees of drought, it is not a long-term drought, nor is it historically severe. A short-term drought is no evidence of climate change. Droughts in the early and mid-twentieth century, 70 and 90 years of global warming ago, were more prolonged and severe than the droughts experienced in either state since the beginning of the 21st century. Since official record keeping began, Kansas and Missouri both experienced their most sustained droughts in the 1930s, only to both also experience a sustained drought again in the 1950s. Longer term records developed from proxy data show even more severe and sustained droughts, multiple decades long, have not been uncommon throughout the region’s history.
Figure 1. Western Kansas annual droughts during past 1,000 years. The vertical axis is the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The more negative the PDSI, the drier (orange). On the opposite side, the more positive the PDSI, the wetter (dark green). Data obtained from Cook et al. 2004, Science 306 (5698):1015-1018. https://climate.k-state.edu/news/stories/2016/06/climate_basics_5/image1.gif
What’s true of drought across Kansas and Missouri is also true of excessive rainfall and flooding. Kansas experienced its worst flood in 1844; Missouri’s largest recorded flood was 1785, with the flood year of 1844 being its second greatest flood. More costly damage has been done by floods in both Missouri and Kansas since then, in 1903, 1951, 1993, 1998, and 2007. But the reason that more people and property were harmed by the more recent floods is not higher rainfall totals or deeper flood waters, but rather purely demographics. More people and development had taken place in the areas flooded than existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries when heavier flooding occurred. Neither recent rainfall totals nor floodwater depth have been greater in the 21st century than in the past.
Neither a single flood event, no matter how severe, nor single instances of drought, no matter how widely covered in the media, are evidence climate change is making weather in Kansas or Missouri worse or less predictable. Only a long-term sustained trend of either or both types of weather events might implicate climate change in weather changes, but there are no such worsening trends for either state. In short, data provide no evidence that climate change is making weather worse in Kansas or Missouri, so residents there are displaying common sense when they downplay the threat of climate change in their lives. The media should follow the public’s lead on this point. Follow the science, Mathis and the Kansas City Star, rather than hyping a false climate alarm narrative.
In any case, we had a big winter forecasted in Europe. The first shot came in December; perhaps Al Gore helped it out since most forecast services got caught flat-footed, and we all know about the Gore effect.
Rain and storms are not only important for the storms themselves, but when they start repeating, they try to tell you something.
Notice how much rain we have had up the east coast the past ten days.
I have clients in Europe involved in De-Icing planes. Because of the way things are done today in the EU, getting the materials to create the fluid can be prohibitive. So, my client has to know well before winter when he can get the supplies before anyone else does and at lower prices. So we talk all year round. He is one of those people who knows the weather inside out, so it is more like we conference, But HE LOOKS AT THE WEATHER ALL YEAR ROUND. Obviously, snow and cold to him mean more than what goes on in one’s backyard.
In any case, we had a big winter forecasted in Europe. The first shot came in December; perhaps Al Gore helped it out since most forecast services got caught flat-footed, and we all know about the Gore effect. (Nature shoving it back at him at these conferences.) I wrote this explaining how Mets reporting on storms hitting the UK were more concerned with blaming climate change than understanding what it was signaling! https://www.cfact.org/2023/11/28/climate-agenda-blinding-people-to-the-forecast/ And then when it came and caused airports to close in Europe, the Climate Cabal (that’s what they are) claimed it was global warming that caused it, I have never seen such ignorance on display. Fitting, Ignorance, and Arrogance are what people who are pushing this are all about.
So look at the rain Nov 6-20 as heavy rain streaks into Europe:
Look at the cold that came Nov 26-Dec 10
It warmed up after this. The last 2 weeks:
But the rains have come again:
This time, the cold is coming back and holding. And Europe’s energy situation will be tested.
January temps and snow:
Germany is again an epicenter.
But this is the Canary in the coal ( COLD???) mine for the US. Our winter forecast called for a warmer-than-average December, and then JFM colder and stormier than average. My concern is the next 2-3 weeks, though not terribly cold (It will be colder than average across the south but still mild across the north, but with normals coming down, it will be cold enough for snow to be put down). It will be followed later in the month, into February, by severe widespread cold.
I have been covering this threat since fall, and you are probably hearing tales of the stratospheric warming going on, something we counted on for the winter well before. Most of the analogs we looked at had that kind of event. So, if right, it will be good old-fashioned grunt work that got in front of models.
This JFM forecast is from us:
These are not a probability scheme but actual temps. The US model 10 days ago had this:
It has “cooled” to this:
But there is no cool anywhere, just normal. So, we have a big difference with the model.
This is excerpted from Weatherbell.com on setting up the severe cold later in Jan.
Thirty days of snow on the euro.
So the snow gets laid down.
On Jan 8, the Euro 500 mb looks like this:
Here is the blend of 4 of the most severe 5 day cold shots in the last 50 years for the entire nation:
20 days later:
Here is the European for Feb 4:
There are a lot of hints.
There is a strat-warm that precedes a major cold.
There is an easterly QBO. This is associated with increased blocking and patterns that back up (for example cold in Europe first).
There is a migrating ONI Modoki with weak to non-existent comparative ( SOI) enso metrics.
Once to the 20th and beyond and especially centered around Feb 1 ( and, btw, its not like before that nothing is going on, there is plenty) the kind of severe extreme US cold that can deliver freezes to the LRGV and Florida, send it to 0 in NYC and -10 in Chicago; I think this is on the table. If it happens, it is not like it came out of nowhere.
OPPOSITE LAST WINTER when severe cold at Christmas flipped for JFM to warm, We have been saying it’s the opposite this year.
But if this does happen it fits into this idea:
In March I put out the Fab 5. 57-58,65-66,02-03, 09-10,86-87. for this winter. The hypothesis I have about what is causing warming says a strong short-lived El Nino would develop ( ONI). This was in defiance of modeling as the dynamic models were weaker and the statistical barely had any at all. As it turns out, with the SOI and MEI that was not a bad idea. The problem is the model was not forecasting for that, it was forecasting for the ONI. Those were the years shown.
Just using those years, Christmas should look like this:
It did:
So, from almost 8 months out, the correct analogs forecasted the warmth.
The entire HDD season starting in November:
JFM:
Central to this is respect for the La Nina base state shown so clearly by the MEI since the ’97-’98 Super Nino.
This is clearly showing that El Nino can no longer last relative to the overall base state, so a quick turn to a La Nina for next year was forecasted. So, there is no lollygagging to a La Nada, The La Nina is coming gangbusters. Other areas of the ocean are not susceptible to the slosh back like this as we continue overall to get the input of high geothermal. Sorry, it’s there, no matter what you want to say about man-made input.
With it comes the step-up function, the product of the overload, as big El Ninos go off ( this one amplified by last year’s volcano input of WV).
The way it warms due to the relationship of wv to temps has distorted the global wind oscillation, meaning we have stronger easterlies in the tropical Pacific in the means (intuitive if you warm up the western and northern Pacific more due to the circulation distributing heat). So, westerlies can not sustain themselves in the tropical Pacific, and the La Chateliarian response is a quick return in the atmosphere to the La Nina base state. And the Oceanic Nino Index is responding; look at this by next summer.
Hence, the Dec 2023 hurricane forecast for next year, https://www.weatherbell.com/hurricane-season-from-hell-first-look , which, if it has merit, means the hurricane season from hell is coming. That also is nine months out. So let us see when it’s all said and done how N-M plays out with JFM in front of us. But rest assured, this has as its source information that is totally ignored in many circles, and I think is supplying an important source region for explaining the why of the weather and climate now and by doing that aiding in going forward.
Bottom line: Winter has played possum so far but it was supposed to. What I am seeing now says to me that JFM has the potential to turn severe, with the worst part for the states later this month into mid-February and Europe in January. It is exciting not only because of the weather but also because it is a test of the hypothesis that has been shown here on CFACT so many times.
If your car does not start or your energy prices go through the roof, you’ll have seen it coming.
There are 1.3 million households in Wales, so over this two period climate spending by the Welsh Government will cost each and every one £4000. And that is on top of all of the other costs imposed by the UK Government.
At the moment the Welsh Budget for 2024 to 2025 is still at the draft stage, but they are planning to spend £2.6 billion of your money on fighting climate change during the upcoming financial year:
And this is on top of the £2.6 billion they are spending this year:
Some of this money may be taken out of other budgets – for instance, new schools, which will now be built to Net Zero standards, but at a much higher cost. Most of the budget will, I would guess, be wasted though; for instance school budgets will be raided to pay for heat pumps and other superfluous expenditure.
These costs, by the way, exclude non-fiscal resources, such as Civil Service staff costs.
There are 1.3 million households in Wales, so over this two period climate spending by the Welsh Government will cost each and every one £4000. And that is on top of all of the other costs imposed by the UK Government.
Kenyan agricultural engineer Jusper Machogu told the COP 28 delegates, “we want to flourish, we want to replace the 90 percent of Africa’s energy that comes from burning firewood, cow dung, and crop residue. We want to have the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and synthetic fertilizers, all available thanks to fossil fuels.”
The horde has left Dubai, many in their private jets. Next stop in the champagne and caviar COPcon is Baku, Azerbaijan, which, at 92 feet below sea level, seems an appropriate place to bury Net Zero. The award came on the heels of an historic agreement between Azerbaijan and next-door Armenia, which both nations hope will bring peace to intertwined peoples with a long history of deadly strife.
Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim nation of 10 million people, straddles Europe and Asia. It relies heavily on oil and gas production, which accounts for nearly half the nation’s GDP and nearly 93 percent of its export revenue. Baku has been an oil center since 1837when tsarist Russians built the first oil-distilling factory nearby.
Prior to the 1905 Russian revolution, Baku produced half the world’s oil sold in international markets. During World War II, Baku supplied 80 percent of the oil for Russia’s eastern front. The nation has rebuilt and expanded its infrastructure since liberation from Soviet rule in 1991.
But while the new Azerbaijani government rebuilt synagogues, it also, in 1990, began a pogrom to expel resident Armenians. Despite this and the recent conquest of ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region west of Baku, Azerbaijan won the right to host COP 29 when Armenia dropped its bid and supported Baku. The defeated quasi-independent Nagorno-Karabakh government agreed to dissolve as of January 1, 2024.
Meanwhile, the imperialists in Brussels and other European capitals continue to plot their abandonment of the fuels that supply 82 percent of the world’s electricity – a move that would destroy the Azerbaijani economy.
A dozen countries led by the Netherlands have announced crackdowns on what the EU calls “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” Canada’s climate minister, Steven Guilbeault, says harming oil companies “ensures that spending is aligned with climate ambition.”
Clearly, such planners have not gotten the memo. Or they choose to ignore the wisdom of the Global South (and China, too, for that matter).
As Brendan O’Neill so brilliantly pointed out, “African diplomats said at COP 28 that ‘the idea of a fossil-fuel phaseout [is] unworkable.’” Moreover, he added, “India, China, Brazil, and other nations are not prepared to sacrifice their economic health at the altar of our deranged anti-modernism.”
O’Neill also hits on the real story of COP 28 – that, for perhaps the first time in 28 tries, the clash between Western ideologues “who are exhausted with the modern world” and developing nations “who want in on the modern world” was out in the open for the world to see.
Developing nations spokespeople tended to agree. Nigeria’s environment minister, Ishaq Salako, expressed astonishment at the rhetoric of John Kerry, Al Gore, and others, saying, “Asking Nigeria, or indeed, asking Africa, to phase out fossil fuels is like asking us to stop breathing without life support.”
The G77 coalition of 135 developing nations also made it clear that its members will not stop using coal (and oil and gas, as well), which they see as vital to ensuring what a spokesperson called “a dignified life for our people.”
Kenyan agricultural engineer Jusper Machogu told the COP 28 delegates, “we want to flourish, we want to replace the 90 percent of Africa’s energy that comes from burning firewood, cow dung, and crop residue. We want to have the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and synthetic fertilizers, all available thanks to fossil fuels.”
After 500 years of exploiting Africa’s resources and doing little, if anything, to bring prosperity or even electricity to Africa’s billions, the West now seeks to bully Africans into abandoning a major source of continental wealth – and drive them deeper into debt to install ineffective wind farms and solar arrays. Only Africa (and a few other scattered poor nations) would suffer, as China and India have long since told their would-be superiors to pound sand.
The Institute for Energy Research notes that while nations “officially” agreed to reduce global fossil fuel consumption, oil, gas, and coal still account for about 80 percent of the world’s energy, with production of each hitting new records as world energy demand grows. Even the stodgy British, who proudly abandoned coal years ago, approved a new coal mine shortly after realizing the Russian oil might not be so readily available as an alternative.
Post-pandemic global interest rates, spiked by massive “Net Zero” spending by the Biden Administration and European governments, are adding to the already unaffordable costs of building new renewable energy projects. Cost, along with citizen outrage, is making it increasingly difficult to build new wind farms and solar arrays.
The UN admits that developing countries would need nearly six trillion dollars over the next few years to give up fossil fuels and try to power entire nations on intermittent energy sources – all of which would depend on either debt to mostly European banks or heavy strings attached to government-to-government loans or grants. Yet prior promises of $100 billion have yet to materialize.
[Maybe developing nations also see how Ukraine’s abandonment of its nuclear arsenal left that country vulnerable to Russian aggression.]
Growing backlash in Europe adds to the suspicion that Africans would never see the promised “aid.” At the recent EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, European Council President Charles Michel proposed cutting nearly all of a 10 billion euro fund earmarked for helping European nations build renewable energy projects (wind turbines, hydrogen plants, carbon capture) – a timid enough response to the profligate trillion-dollar boondoggles of the Biden Administration.
The simple truth is that not even the West has enough money to spare to disengage from the engine that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Matt Ridley cites a Climate Change Economicsarticle that admits that achieving Net Zero by 2050 would save about a trillion dollars a year in avoided costs of climate change – at a cost of $10 to $43 trillion a year just to get there. Simply put, every dollar invested in Net Zero brings the West closer to bankruptcy.
O’Neill describes COP 28 as “a war of sorts between Americans and Europeans beholden to the eco-religion and developing nations more interested in growth.” Allison Pearson chastises the eco-religionists who ‘claim that they alone are on the right side of humanity” despite the fact that their project to “save the planet” spells a “painful reduction in comfort and joy for millions” (I would say billions).
Pearson chides the fearmongers who predict a “climate catastrophe” without Net Zero for ignoring the elephant in the room – that we are “certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it.”
O’Neill condemns the “neocolonial arrogance, its indifference to the needs and rights of people in the developing world” that stands starkly exposed at COP 28 as a vain search for meaning by a generation that so desperately wants to be as relevant as those who brought an end to racial segregation and Apartheid generations ago.
Energy consultant Tilak Doshi called out the “carbon imperialism” of the U.S., the EU, and their developed country allies at COP 26 in Glasgow for daring to dictate a carbonless future energy policy for the developing world. While that arrogance was still in evidence at Dubai, what has changed, he said, “is the pointed responses in opposition by government representatives outside the climate-evangelical Western group of countries intent on weaning the world off fossil fuels.”
Kerry, Gore, and the climate crowd are eagerly anticipating their visit to Baku, where they intend to lay out plans to turn Azerbaijan into a deserted wasteland and quash the hopes and dreams of Africans desperate for affordable electricity and other “modern conveniences.”
Perhaps, though, they should take a cue from the host nation and its historic enemy Armenia, who laid down their weapons to join arm in arm to welcome these glamourous barbarians from the West.
Gro Brundtland, when chairing the world’s first conference on sustainable development, stated that “sustainable” must yield to the higher goal of alleviating poverty, and in the real world, this must include energy poverty. It’s time to abandon climate imperialism – and to set Africa free to chart its own destiny.
That would be good for Africa, even better for the planet and all of its people.
Human beings are an adaptable species – which is fortunate, given that modern-day politicians incessantly foist new laws, rules and regulations on us.
In few areas of public policy is this more exhaustive than net zero. So we’ve grown accustomed to paying 50p for a plastic bag in some supermarkets. Driving in many cities now brings an array of charges, and that’s before bewildered motorists accidentally stray into a new bus or cycle lane, yet still we just shrug. The Telegraph has the story.
As of October this year, single-use plastic straws, bowls, trays and cutlery have been banned, but seldom do we complain.
And the wider green drive is paying dividends, of sorts. This week it was reported Britain has become the first major economy to halve its carbon emissions. Curiously, the news has not been widely shared nor lauded by the nation’s usually noisy eco-fanatics. Perhaps it doesn’t fit their common refrain that the Government “isn’t doing anything” about climate change.
Some people may think this reduction has been painless, but they’d be wrong. While the minor inconveniences can be downplayed, the costs should not be.
Green levies now make up a significant proportion of energy bills. Restrictions on new North Sea developments and a windfall tax are likely to have combined to drive up energy bills further at a time when the post-Covid rebound and war in Ukraine had already sent them soaring.
Progress on environmental aims may have been aided by the failure of successive governments to build homes and lockdowns, but those policies have themselves wrought enormous harm on the UK economy.
It has, however, been relatively straightforward. The decarbonisation of power and offshoring of heavy industry, for instance, accelerated an existing trend. The consumption of intermittent renewables was able to increase because fossil fuels could be relied on to provide baseload power.
The next half will be much more difficult, clobbering the economy and imposing massive costs on the consumer. Conscious that the public’s patience may begin to wear thin, the Prime Minister earlier this year promised a more “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach” to net zero. This primarily involved pushing back the deadline for the end of new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers – but even the new 2035 date will be a stretch.
Despite the subsidies and the exemptions from resident parking permits or congestion charges, only a small proportion of vehicles in the UK are currently electric.
The charging infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate and battery duration is prohibitive for many. Meanwhile, the Government is shovelling money towards homeowners to boost heat pump uptake, yet is falling far short of its annual installation targets.
The bigger problem is that Rishi Sunak has far less wriggle room than he might have voters believe.
If the 2050 net zero target – the most consequential economic policy decision for generations, made by a piece of secondary legislation without a proper parliamentary debate – wasn’t restrictive enough, the Government is obliged to set binding, five-year carbon budgets which cap the maximum amount of emissions allowed during each period. Ministers face legal action if they fail to do enough to reach them, as judged in part by the apparatchiks on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) quango.
We are currently on the fourth (2023-27) carbon budget, which requires a 52pc fall in emissions compared with 1990. This might be achievable, but the fifth and sixth (involving a 77pc fall by 2037) surely won’t be, at least not without a walloping blow to our economy, freedoms and living standards.
In its sixth Carbon Budget Paper, the CCC, which ostensibly provides advice to the Government but often acts more like an eco-activist NGO, advises homeowners to turn on their heating in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again in the evening when demand for electricity is higher. Rishi Sunak was ridiculed when, in September, he announced there will be no tax on meat nor new levies on aviation, as though such ideas were preposterous.
And yet they’re right there in this document, which says that around 10pc of emissions saving will come from “changes that reduce the demand for carbon-intensive activity” – particularly “an accelerated shift in diets away from meat and dairy products… slower growth in flights, and reductions in travel demand”. Will the public tolerate such radical changes to their lifestyles, ones that may not even be necessary?
Few would challenge the need to decarbonise, but our current, highly dirigiste approach will be economically ruinous. There will be huge waste, with the taxpayer footing the bill: when the Government asked the economist Dieter Helm to look into what it was doing to meet the net zero target, he concluded that up to £100bn had been squandered, largely from investment in technologies which hadn’t matured to the point where they were cheaper than the alternative.
New York City is moving forward with several climate policies which are likely to make everyday life even more costly for the middle class in one of the country’s most expensive cities.
New York City is moving forward with several climate policies which are likely to make everyday life even more costly for the middle class in one of the country’s most expensive cities.
The city is aiming to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% come 2050, push a sweeping building electrification mandate known as Local Law 97 and impose an automobile traffic congestion fee, each of which will increase the costs of living or working in the nation’s largest city, especially for the middle class, energy and New York policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan each already rank within the 15 most expensive places to live in the U.S., according to an analysis conducted by CNBC.
“The city is wealthy because, somewhere out there, people are producing energy, food, clothing and so on, and people are trading all of that in New York,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF. The city’s emissions target “will make things more expensive and drive people away to places like Florida,” he added. (RELATED: This Populous Blue State Has A Green Energy Mandate. Experts Say It Threatens Grid Reliability)
That flight of capital would shrink the tax base, thereby straining the city’s finances further, Kish told the DCNF. “People without the means, working people, do not have the opportunity to just pack up and leave,” Kish told the DCNF. “But it’s easy if you’re Mike Bloomberg.”
Local Law 97, meanwhile, is poised to impose emissions standards that approximately 50,000 buildings in New York City will have to meet starting in 2024, with additional restrictions imposed starting in 2030, according to The New York Times.
Some buildings are easier to retrofit with the appropriate wiring and equipment necessary to comply than others, and a large share of the high costs incurred by landlords and building owners for coming into compliance will almost certainly be passed on to residents, Jane Menton, a mother who lives in a Queens co-op and has led a grassroots effort to fight against Local Law 97, told the DCNF.
“Progressives in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn are so afraid to go against the narrative that this rule is a climate solution… but it’s unaffordable to convert buildings to electric so they won’t convert to comply with the rule, they will just pay fines which will then allow the city to use the money to plug gaps in the budget,” Menton told the DCNF. “The same politicians and advocates who claim to care about the city’s working class wrote a law that will push them out of their homes… functionally, this law is just a carbon tax on the middle class.”
Notably, other cities, such as Boston, have pushed for similar building electrification policies to fight climate change, and the Biden administration has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help state and municipal governments pursue policies that “decarbonize” buildings as well.
The New York City congestion pricing tax is promulgated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which is technically not an agency operating under the auspices of the municipal government.
Congestion pricing is meant to reduce emissions and air pollution by charging drivers fees to enter certain sections of the city. Specifically, the MTA has proposed to charge passenger cars $15 and trucks as much as $36 to be able to enter a large swath of Manhattan, according to local outlet NBC 4.
However, the proposal may not significantly reduce the amount of traffic that piles up on the city’s roadways, potentially even increasing the amount of congestion in areas like the Bronx, according to the New York Post. Qualifying low-income drivers who register with the appropriate authorities could also receive a 50% discount on the charges after their first ten trips into the relevant area of Manhattan, according to local digital news outlet northjersey.com
“Congestion pricing should be viewed primarily as a revenue action to cover the MTA’s indefensibly high capital costs,” Ken Girardin, director of research for the Empire Center, a New York-focused think tank, told the DCNF. “As to congestion itself, policymakers have declined to do basic things like enforce parking rules or dial back the parking permits given to public employees or other policy changes that would take cars off lower Manhattan roads because those aren’t things you can borrow money against.”
The policy would also make life more expensive for people who do not live in the city but make the commute each day to go to work, according to Politico. Notably, politicians in London, the U.K’s largest metropolis, have attempted a similar scheme, which Republican New York City Councilman Joseph Borelli of Staten Island described as “a complete disaster” and an “abject failure” when discussing New York’s forthcoming version of the scheme in January.
“If all of New York state went ‘net-zero’ today, United Nations climate modeling indicates that a mere 0.0023° F of global warming would be avoided by 2050. That is far from measurable, much less significant. So nothing would be accomplished,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, told the DCNF. Businesses will stay in NYC and play along with the climate agenda, including high taxes, as long as costs can be passed on to locals. When profitability stops, businesses will leave… The costs of the climate agenda are regressive. Poorer people will feel them first.”
The offices of Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the MTA did not respond immediately to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) tells Australians that record breaking extremes are getting worse because of our cars and our air-conditioners (that’s “The State of the Climate“). But when the BOM can’t predict record breaking rain a month in advance, or even the day before, we know the BOM doesn’t understand what drives the climate.
Australians are angry the BOM didn’t see the flooding rains coming
Worse, we’re betting the nation on the BOM’s ability to predict the climate.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) tells Australians that record breaking extremes are getting worse because of our cars and our air-conditioners (that’s “The State of the Climate“). But when the BOM can’t predict record breaking rain a month in advance, or even the day before, we know the BOM doesn’t understand what drives the climate.
Somehow the BOM expect Australians to spend trillions and rearrange their economy based on their fifty year prophesies, but not to mind when “this summer” goes right off the rails.
But the real weather gods had another idea, and all the places under any shades of green below got somewhere from 100% to 300% of the average rainfall. The indigo and purple zones got even more.
This was a savage downpour — seven feet of rain in five days fell at one location:
No fewer than 12 locations across far north Queensland posted record rainfall totals.
Some areas received a year’s rainfall in a single day, isolating towns, closing highways and leaving hundreds stranded by surging floodwaters. Black Mountain near Cooktown recorded a cumulative 2189mm over the five days, while Mossman South, an hour northwest of Cairns, had 1935mm.
The BOM suddenly wants to absolve itself of liability
People have noticed there is now a mandatory check box forcing users to agree to a legal disclaimer clearing the BOM of all liability:
Users of the BOM app now have to agree to a 699-word “terms and conditions” statement that includes “information at this app … may not be accurate, current or complete”.
“To the maximum extent permitted by law, the bureau excludes any liability that may arise in connection with the BOM Weather app or any information or material presented therein or your access to or use of any of the same,’’ the bureau says in a “terms and conditions” statement that appears when a user attempts to download its app. — Mackenzie Scott, The Australian
They know they are in trouble.
I say the BOM can have immunity the same day Australians can also tick a box excluding ourselves from any and all costs, imposts and taxes related to any BOM predictions.
To be fair to the BOM, a hysterical and ill-informed media has allowed climate alarmism to infect reporting of what should be routine weather events.
For thirty years the Australian media has made hyperbolic scare stories about the weather while the BOM tacitly stood by and smiled. Where were they as the tenets of science were trashed, and critics were called “climate deniers”? If the BOM are victims of this hyperbole now, they reap what they sowed.
The BOM raised the stakes, and they don’t get to weasel out by saying “we used the best science” as if the best science wasn’t riddled with holes. If the science is good enough to throw away trillions of dollars, then the worst failures need a truckload of explanation.
Predicting the weather is hard. We could forgive the BOM for getting a complex immature science wrong, but not when they also tell us it’s just simple physics, they’re absolutely sure, and there is no doubt they’re wrong (give us your money!).
In the introduction to this series, righteous risks were defined as the threat to societal well-being when value-based motives influence decision-making more than facts and evidence. Policies should be determined according to the best pragmatic solutions to complex problems with conflicting interests being addressed through a consensus approach.
In the introduction to this series, righteous risks were defined as the threat to societal well-being when value-based motives influence decision-making more than facts and evidence. Policies should be determined according to the best pragmatic solutions to complex problems with conflicting interests being addressed through a consensus approach. More and more though, regulators are being led by moral dogma and ethical exclusion techniques dictated by influential stakeholders.
Policymaking is often framed now in a virtue context rather than policy management.
Fighting climate change is the morally responsible thing to do and takes an overarching precedent.
Good leaders can only protect public health by banning synthetic chemicals and pesticides (associated with evil corporations peddling poisons).
Plastic waste has caused moral outrage, from straws up a turtle’s nostril to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, so it is a righteous imperative that all plastics should be removed from the market.
Industry has been profiting for decades at the expense of the poor, working class so the benign regulator must act to restrict company involvement in any policy process.
The distinction is clear: industry lobbies (deceptive, bad) while NGOs advocate (supportive, good).Capitalism is inherently wasteful and unjust; we must transition to a degrowth, human economy.
Sustainability is a virtue and pollution and waste are the key vices.
The problem though is that such moral dogma is usually framed in clear black and white (good v evil) distinctions while the reality of policymaking is usually more grey. Most plastic applications are more sustainable than the alternatives; a large proportion of proposed climate measures will damage the environment; industry is the key driver of sustainable innovations; agroecology and organic farming will lead to greater degradation and food loss… but any leaders who accept such realities are dismissed with a wave of righteous indignation.
Aren’t all Facts Value-Driven?
There has always been a normative influence to any decision-making process, often framed as “the right thing to do”. The values driving decisions may be socialist, Christian, liberal, conservative – such is the nature of politics. But these values were tones while the facts, the data, the scientific evidence, were always the anchors for their decisions. Such decisions had always been considered as objective or at the very least, respectful to the evidence.Post-modernists though want us to believe that scientific data is value-driven as well (by cherry-pickers with political interests). In reality, those who are funding the research are value-driven … and the scientists seeking such funding might be forced to pony up to the trough aware that they need to add those values or fit the research results to the funders’ interests. Today if a scientist wants funding or wants to get an article published, they need to exaggerate the link of their data to climate change, synthetic chemical risks, potential for biodiversity destruction… (reminiscent of debates on how many angels can dance on a pin). This creates a belief that there is morally correct data – a righteous risk.This mindset though raises a serious question for research integrity as seen with the recent debate after Patrick Brown admitted he had to over-emphasize climate effects to get his paper published. But it in no way means that scientific data is value-based as post-modernists portend.Much of the moralization of the environmental health policy process is driven by activist NGOs who are using their social media and mass media networks to define a narrative that funnels any decision into an ethical choice (our way or the bad way). Their simplistic solutions (organic food, renewable energy, zero-waste, carbon-neutral transportation…) are ethically framed as good things to do. Industry lobbies are bad but we are the good guys protecting you. Any industry that does not fit within their righteous framework is being systematically “tobacconised”: delegitimized and deformalized as evil scourges on the heart of humanity.But how did these activist groups become the key influencers in these ethically-driven regulatory chambers? How did policymaking shift from the pragmatic balancing of the best possible choices among the myriad of interests and stakeholders (Realpolitik) to pure virtue politics – leading by a sort of Divine Rite of Virtue? As always with any lobbying success, we need to follow the money.
Foundations: Virtue Capitalism
Time was that NGOs would raise money through membership dues, coin drums and the clipboard brigades on street corners. As the non-profit sector expanded in size and influence, around the beginning of the millennium, they grew in staff and campaigns, some becoming global powerhouses. Greenpeace had a fleet of pirate ships that needed funding, Friends of the Earth needed to hire the best lobbyists, Pesticide Action Network needed to pay for scientists … loose change just didn’t cut it.At the same time, the world of foundations and charitable trusts was changing.Time was that foundations and family trusts funded research into deadly diseases, humanitarian missions, scholarships and the fine arts. But their coffers increased and their boards became more ambitious (not to mention an influx of dot-com and Web 2.0 billionaires all taking the “Pledge”). In a recent Firebreak article, I examined this evolution in the non-government sphere.The policy arena is changing rapidly as certain righteous-driven foundations (from Bloomberg Philanthropies to the Rockefeller Brothers to Soros’ Open Society Foundations) are donating to NGOs who are driven to advance a fundamentalist narrative, put their values at the core of policy campaigns and lobby policymakers relentlessly to put their virtue policies above evidence and other stakeholder interests. In the last decade, foundations have become the key funding source for most environmental-health NGOs, and the number of these groups have grown impressively (while memberships and internal dialogue have declined to insignificance). Some of the more abrasive and less scrupulous NGOs, like US Right to Know and Corporate Europe Observatory, are entirely funded by the same group of, often, militant foundations or non-transparent donor-advised funds.Donor-advised funds allow interest groups like tort law firms and the organic food industry lobby to anonymously support activist groups without disclosing their support or their conflicts of interest. It allows NGOs to operate non-transparently while condemning other groups for, well, the same thing. I recently showed how Jennifer Baichwal, director of the film Into the Weeds, was funded via dark sources to produce a film saluting the tort law industry for taking on Monsanto and their non-transparent practices. As they travel the world promoting their film as part of the anti-glyphosate campaign, do these activists not see their hypocrisy? And Baichwal is excessively righteous.
From my Foundations for Activism series in The Firebreak
As social media campaigns can deliver more efficient lobbying returns, as research studies can be more economically financed and poor findings more easily published, and as media groups can be more easily manipulated (by the same foundation funding), these foundations have grown more successful in advancing their ethical values onto policy measures. The public policy landscape has changed as these soft lobbyists are able to instal activists to represent their moral objectives.
For ambitious young people today, I would recommend working your way up a foundation’s management structure. The directors of large foundations carry more influence and (moral) power than many global leaders. The president of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Mark Malloch-Brown, for example, was the former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. But what you gain in influence you will likely have to pay for with cynicism.
Uncompromising Promises
Ethics may speak of good v evil in some absolute virtue theatre, but there are grey scales … or should I say: “white lies”. These are ethical compromises for the greater good. A white lie is pragmatic and removes the uncompromising sanctimony that rigid, righteousness demands. Politics is the art of compromise but moral zealots would refuse any compromises to their level of virtue excellence. If you hold yourself to a higher noble standard, and you identify others as pure evil, then any compromise to the interests of the heathens (ie, industry, researchers or consumers) is inconceivable.
People do not compromise if they don’t have to. If activists, or their NGOs, are handsomely paid by ethically-driven foundations to pursue some policy outcome that is deemed morally pure, then they will fight it out to the bitter end. Some examples:
Earlier this year, The Risk-Monger leaked an internal document from a group of German anti-biotech campaigners who had admitted the evidence on plant breeding was against them. Their solution was to reframe their campaign as a social justice struggle of good v evil. As the organic retail chain, Bioland, is still funding their admitted lost cause, it is inconceivable for them to sit down with policymakers and find a compromise with industry.
If foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies pay activists to campaign to stop the use of nicotine alternatives like vaping, and they have identified the companies promoting e-cigarettes as evil, then it will be very unlikely that they would be open to a compromise. They are accountable to their funders and no one else.
Ironically, in order to hold to their higher moral identity, these activists are lying to the public and spreading baseless fears. But as they see themselves as crusaders, I’m sure they don’t see it that way. As long as these foundations keep the NGOs well-funded and ready to fight over the long haul, then compromises are not on the table. Their righteous virtue is not for sale.
Spreading their Wings of Influence
Each foundation has, by definition, a set of moral objectives that earmark their philanthropy. Bloomberg Philanthropies‘ objectives, for example, “guide initiatives that tackle a wide range of issues to save and improve lives around the world”. This cause includes funding campaigns on public health and the environment, promoting NGOs taking a strong position against sugary drinks, snacks and vaping. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation aims to create “enduring solutions for just societies and a healthy, resilient natural world”. In seeking justice on issues concerning human health and the environment, it is not surprising that much of their money goes to moralising, militant NGOs.But these foundations are not just funding NGOs to do their bidding; they are also buying ink in the mainstream media, paying tort law firms to pursue public nuisance lawsuits and using their donations to UN agencies as free microphones for their activism (COP28 in Dubai seemed to have a special hall dedicated to speeches from philanthropists who have donated to UN activities).As media organisations go through a painful economic transition with the shift to digital news, foundations have discovered the benefits of funding news organisations like The Guardian or creating new ones like the The Examination. But we would be naive to think their funding was not tied to issues and values that are central to the foundations. These foundations are effectively buying off struggling journalists to articulate their shameless sanctimony.
Tens of millions of foundation money donated to The Guardian earmarked for specific “news” stories
Through their well-funded, multi-pronged programmes and a diverse army of NGO activists, media groups and public figures, these foundations are able to manipulate public perception on food diets, energy sources, new nicotine products, packaging materials, livestock and farming practices… They don’t need to be scientific or evidence-driven, just forceful and ethically-postured.
Yes, Michael Bloomberg actually said this
I have referred to this trend as eco-prohibition or greenhibition. This can be seen as NGOs start to impose their righteous restrictions on consumers who may enjoy snacks, alcohol, meat, vaping, fashion or travel. Not everyone can or wants to pay more for elitist organic food they are told is morally better. Affordable energy supplies should be a right in the West and not a privilege for the wealthy. In fact very few consumers welcome or share the green ideals, appreciate how they are being imposed and share their values. But when foundations have billions to spend, control the media and have convinced themselves they are in the moral mainstream, the democratic process is just a minor detail.There is, of course, a poison pill to protect these foundations. Should any group attack how the foundations are undemocratically imposing their values, they would be seen as “shooting Bambi” and come across even more despicably. The Risk-Monger has shot Bambi on several occasions when the campaign sanctimony had fermented with too much hypocrisy (and has paid heavily for it).And then, just when we thought it could not get any worse, in the last five years, the nature of foundations and activist philanthropy evolved to a worrying state: virtue on steroids.
Effective Altruism and Earn to Give
The FTX-Sam Bankman-Fried and Sam Altman episodes of the past year reflect another type of righteous risk to be considered, when foundations start to interfere with capitalism and democracy for all the wrong reasons. The “foundation consortium”, Effective Ventures, ties together a series of donor-advised funds targeting high-income individuals (particularly in the tech and crypto sector).
These types of next-gen foundations are more like well-funded cults … secretive, abusive and subject to their own moral standards
In cult-like fashion (including multiple cases of sexual abuse of young women pulled into the organisation’s opportunistic appeal), the Effective Altruism (EA) philosophy is that you should try to earn more to be able to give more in order to more effectively save the world. It started out as a methodology to determine the most efficient way for busy, high-net worth individuals to donate to charities making a difference (like malaria nets, vaccines…), but the algorithms (and the key influencers) shifted to promoting more existential risk projects like preventing nuclear meltdowns, climate collapse or runaway AI bots taking over the world. It morphed into a type of algorithmic philanthropy and their solutions could only justify the argument why bots should not have money.
And while the Effective Ventures organizations did well with third-party donor-advised commissions, conference fees and a rapidly expanding following of young worshippers flocking to San Francisco, some young billionaires got a little too caught up in the idea of having the power to save the world. Sam Bankman-Fried, an outspoken advocate and board member of the Effective Ventures group, took the “earn more to give more” righteous philosophy to a higher level by stealing billions from his Alameda Research hedge fund investors, using their money to save the world.
This morality stuff is hard for millennials to get right.
Effective Altruists in the Silicon Valley are forming an influential network for pushing (their conception of) ethical policies forward with large donations aimed at advancing their interests. This network was made evident when two EA-connected OpenAI board members tried to remove Sam Altman as its CEO (for pushing forward the commercial interests of AI over the group’s philanthropic objectives). See my assessment of how aggressive these EA philanthropists have become.
Having thousands of little Robin Hoods running around feeling better about their questionable business practices is a righteous risk in itself. Today billions of dollars of unaccountable donations are flowing through these shell foundations to activist groups and zealot lobbyists who are aggressively running communications campaigns to raise their dogmatic ideologies to the centre of public dialogue, shaping a particular value-driven narrative. From these anti-capitalist campaigns, there has been a marked increase of vilification of practices from conventional farming to vaping to using fossil fuels. The American donor-advised fund structure, where investors can advance their interests non-transparently by donating dark money to activist groups through these third party laundering foundations, should be made illegal.US Right to Know was exposed for accepting USD 360,000 in stolen Alameda Research investors funds in 2022. Until this day, they have refused to give these illegitimate funds back. Their righteous sanctimony must never be used against themselves.
Controlling Righteous Funding
Righteous risks are like any other risk management situation. In order to reduce exposure to righteous risks, the methods in which foundations are operating needs to be addressed. As they are becoming larger and more influential, their role in the influence game must be controlled.
Foundations should not be funding news organisations directly or through media foundations.
The dark money, non-transparent, donor-advised funds should be made illegal (or at least not tax deductible).
Without a representative population (outside of some billionaire), foundations should not be actively involved in policy debates
While foundations present themselves as virtuous, philanthropic endeavors to improve the world (along their objectives and goals), they are effectively undermining democratic institutions by enabling a small group of activists to impose their elitist value system on the greater population with little dialogue or consultation. With seemingly unlimited funding, their influence is expected to expand.
We will not be able to manage righteous risks until we manage the fuel that is powering the key drivers.
The Righteous Risks series will now look at some case studies where policymakers got a bit carried away with their sanctimony.
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In Episode 405 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the state of the Endangered Species Act a half century in operation and laments the closure of the Orvis Arlington, Virginia, fly shop. Tune in to learn more.
“In reality, the endangered species program and inclusion on the List may be likened to a hospital where patients check in but rarely check out. Of the relatively few that do, some are heralded as recovered. More often than not, the reality is the species should never have been listed. When such species are declared ‘recovered,’ it could be likened to a doctor claiming to have cured a patient upon discovering the patient had been misdiagnosed as in poor health. Such patients would be no more cured than some of these species have ‘recovered.’ Like doctors engaged in this malpractice, federal officials have repeatedly made claims over decades that are devoid of scientific integrity.” — Rob Gordon, author of the new Western Caucus Foundation “The Endangered Species Act at 50” report
In Episode 405 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the state of the Endangered Species Act a half century in operation and laments the closure of the Orvis Arlington, Virginia, fly shop. Tune in to learn more.
In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
The 85mph claims were based on a single wind gust measured in Kincardineshire, in NE Scotland. The Met Office have not said exactly where, but it will inevitably be either an exposed coastal cliff top, or a high altitude site:
Take a look below at some of the maximum wind gusts that we have seen so far today 🌬️ pic.twitter.com/MgKto1sDbR
All of the other sites listed are unrepresentative exposed locations. There is no evidence of anything like these wind speeds away from exposed coasts.
Wind turbine in Ayrshire yesterday morning, totally shredded in the strong winds associated with #StormGerrit.
They should have a limit in windspeed, and automatically turn off to prevent the motor malfunctioning like this. pic.twitter.com/GBS5HAOfja
The wind turbine destroyed was in Ayrshire, but we don’t know where. However, at Girvan, a typical coastal site in the county, average wind speeds reached only 27mph yesterday, when the wind turbine blew apart, probably indicative of 45 to 50mph gusts. This is not an unusually strong wind by any means, though of course the wind turbine could have been on top of a hill.
What is also noticeable if you watch the video, is that the trees are barely moving, something they certainly would have in a real gale.
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