Day: March 14, 2024

Teaching The Science:  Virginia Style

Science is not hard but ridding our schools of this kind of extreme advocacy is nearly impossible when our “experts” mouth these lies without blinking. It is simply indoctrination.

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen — 13 March 2024

Like many of the United States, the Commonwealth of Virginia has passed, or is passing, laws, rules, regulations that dictate how the often controversial topic of Climate Change is to be taught in its schools.

The latest  reads like this:

“The Board shall develop, adopt, and make available to each local school board model policies and procedures, based on peer-reviewed scientific sources, pertaining to the selection of instructional materials on climate change and environmental literacy, including a requirement for any such selected material to accurately portray changes in weather and climate patterns over time, the impacts of human activity on changes in weather and climate patterns, and the effects of climate change on people and resources.”

Stephen D. Haner, of the Thomas Jefferson Institute, called my attention to exactly what they are doing in Virginia.  To dig into the issue, we start with Teaching, Learning & Assessment » K-12 Standards & Instruction » Science.  We can find the Middle School (depending on the school district, grades 6-8 or all grades 7-8)  Instructional Plans here.  [Warning, there are lots and lots of them.]

I picked just one sub-topic of Climate Change science that I know something about, having written here on the topic many times, Ocean Acidification [OA for short].  The inestimable Jim Steele has thoroughly covered this issue here as well.

If you are not well-versed in why OA is a climate change topic, or need to be filled in on the basic oceanic chemistry involved, read just this one essay by Jim:  “Un-refutable Evidence of Alarmists’ Ocean Acidification Misinformation in 3 Easy Lessons”.

In my experience, Middle School students are just beginning to be really interested in the world around them and how it works.  If you are not sure of this, go to a Middle School Science Fair in your area.  But because they have not yet learned the underpinning basics of chemistry and physiology (for instance), they are exceptionally easy to mislead with “sciency” explanations for common phenomena.  (Think Al Gore and The Science Guy). 

How are the Middle Schools in Virginia going to teach this?  Here is the abstract:

“Overview:    Lesson plan introducing and exploring via hands-on lab the idea that raising acidity in the world’s oceans is reducing the availability of carbonate, which impacts calcifying organisms such as oysters and sea urchins.

Subject:      Earth and Space Systems, Earth Resources, Living Systems and Processes

Level:      Upper Primary, Middle School Grades:     Grade 5, Grade 6

Material Type:    Lesson Plan

Author:      Erin Brown

Date Added:      07/25/2019“

They offer a video to be shown to the class:  Science Bulletins: Acid Oceans.   The video is out of the University of California at Santa Barbara (my alma mater).  It is not absolutely terrible, but it is dangerously mis-leading for 12 and 13 year-olds.    Refer back to Jim Steele’s primer on ocean carbonate chemistry.   Note that the video only shows that in the lab, sea urchin larvae grow a little less when extreme amounts of CO are bubbled through 5 gallon pails of sea water containing the larvae.  CO2 does not enter sea water by any action that is simulated by “bubbled through” small volumes of sea water

But the worst is yet to come….they offer up a hands-on experiment for the kids to do.  Nothing impresses a young mind more than “seeing for themselves”. 

Here’s the lesson plan:  It is titled “Acidic Oceans Lesson Plan” (it is a .doc file).  Saavy readers can see the problem already.  The oceans are not, and cannot become, acidic.  The oceans (the planet’s sea waters) are chemically basic.  

But, let’s see where they are going with this:

“What phenomenon(a) is/are the focus of this lesson?  Raising acidity in the world’s oceans is reducing the availability of carbonate, which impacts calcifying organisms such as oysters and sea urchins.”

Background:  Shells serve as a protective structure for both marine and terrestrial organisms. Marine ecosystems that depend upon calcium-carbonate to make shells, such as coral reefs or oyster beds, can be impacted by changes in ocean pH due to increased carbon dioxide. In experimental conditions under very high levels of CO2, shells of clams, oysters, corals, snails and urchin shells dissolve. If these organisms are unable to build or repair shells, due to increased acidification caused by industrial emissions, deforestation and other human activities, they will likely cease to exist in these environments.

I don’t think the student’s see this lesson plan itself, and it does have caveats for the teachers:  which contradict the blunt, and misleading, lead-in.

“These results do not occur for all organisms. In experimental conditions, extreme increases in carbon dioxide result in crabs, lobsters, temperate sea urchins, limpets, and calcifying algae all building thicker shells with the more acidic conditions. Some organisms are able to adapt more rapidly than others, some will leave an environment if they cannot adapt and others may cease to exist in that environment. Nutrient levels, water temperature, food availability and habitat changes also can have an impact. Efforts to reduce that impact have the greatest chance of preserving some of these habitats.”

So, teachers are given a bit more nuanced view in that second part.  Do you think the teachers are telling students that some shellfish and some crabs and lobsters actually form better shells with more CO2?  Let’s look at this from the student’s point of view.

1.  They are told CO2 in the atmosphere enters the oceans cause “rising acidity”.

2.  Then they are told that “In experimental conditions under very high levels of CO2, shells of clams, oysters, corals, snails and urchin shells dissolve.”

3.  This is followed by: “…due to increased acidification caused by industrial emissions, deforestation and other human activities, they will likely cease to exist in these environments.”

None of these statements are strictly true, certainly not as received by the as-yet-uneducated minds of Middle School students

Despite the falsity of these assertions, the teach will then have the students demonstrate for themselves that these lies are true:

a.  The teacher shows them the little UCSB video linked above ( link for you ). 

b.  Here is the experimental procedure:

Explore (20 min.):  

  1. Using the pH test strip, test the pH of each substance. [lemon juice, vinegar, cola, ammonia, and water]. Knowing what you do after watching the video, predict the effect of the solutions on the pieces of shell. What will happen if I put a piece of egg shell in cola, water, vinegar? Which solution will have the greatest effect on the shell?
  2. Put a separate piece of shell into each small dish. Keep one piece in a dish on its own as a control.
  3. Use the dropper to place a few drops of selected liquid on the shell piece. Use a different piece of shell for each liquid. Label the dish with the type of liquid you used. 
  4. Watch what happens. What do you observe? Which liquids react with the shell first?
  5. From your observation on the eggshell, what might be some consequences of ocean acidification for animals with shells? How might you test this hypothesis? 
  6. Allow the shell pieces to sit overnight, then make another set of observations.

If you are not horrified yet by the mis-application of the scientific method in the above example, take a look at the explanation the teacher is instructed to give them:

Explain (10 min.):  Allow students to share observations and theories.  This activity allows you to see firsthand the effects ocean acidification can have on calcifying organisms. When exposed to vinegar, which is an acid, the calcified eggshell produces CO2 bubbles as it dissolves. The shells and skeletons of live calcifying organisms can be similarly affected as the ocean acidifies. If shell-building organisms are affected then all of the organisms that depend on them will also be impacted.  Have students brainstorm ways to reduce CO2 emissions.

If the student’s are not sufficiently traumatized by the news that all the lobsters and clams and sea urchins are going to be dissolved alive, the teachers then directs (for 40 minutes):

Elaborate/Evaluate (40 min.):  Have students do some research on a shellfish of their choice to determine its place in a food web.  Students should illustrate the food web, and then write a paragraph describing how the acidification of the ocean affects not only the shellfish itself, but also other organisms in its food web.  Students may also include some ideas on how to reduce human CO2 emissions.

Anyone see a pattern there?  Mis-leading, exaggerated basic chemistry is used teach that the shells and skeletons of living sea organisms can “be similarly affected” – meaning dissolved – “as the ocean acidifies”.    The emphasis always ends with “how to reduce human CO2 emissions.”

Readers with middle school children (in Virginia and elsewhere) should do something – starting with asking their children everyday, “What did you learn about in school today?”  And then be prepared to re-educate them. 

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

Science is not hard but ridding our schools of this kind of extreme advocacy is nearly impossible when our “experts” mouth these lies without blinking.

Egg shells do dissolve in acidic household solutions and don’t dissolve in water (neutral)  or ammonia (basic).  Instead of tricking the student into thinking that eggshells (or clam shells) will someday dissolve in sea water, they might have had students adjust the pH of a cup of water until add drops of vinegar into a cup of water until their pH strips showed a pH of 8.1 (pH of sea water) and then dripped that on eggshells.  Nothing would happen. They could repeat this to discover how much vinegar they would have to add to a cup of water to lower the pH to less than 7.  Drip on eggshells.  Nothing happening, repeat and repeat.   This lesson may lead to a different interpretation. 

No person should be teaching science topics in middle school if they cannot see that the Virginia OA lesson is not only not good science, but it is mostly just plain false.   What it is not is just “dumbed down for middle school”   

It is simply indoctrination.

World needs oil to prevent net zero energy shortages, warns Shell

Warning comes as energy giant waters down key climate pledge to cut its carbon intensity.

Warning comes as energy giant waters down key climate pledge to cut its carbon intensity.

The world is at risk of energy shortages unless more money is invested in drilling for oil and gas, Shell has warned.

The energy giant said global investment in low carbon energy was only half what is needed, meaning the world could be at risk of energy shortages in future unless alternative sources are secured.

The warning came as Shell watered down a key climate pledge to cut its own carbon intensity and pledged a sharp increase in production and sales of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The Telegraph has the story.

Separately, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that the world was facing a “slight deficit” of oil this year because of surging US demand and continued production cuts from Opec+ countries.

Earlier this week Rishi Sunak announced plans to build new gas power stations in Britain, warning that the country risked blackouts during the transition to net zero without the investment.

Shell chief Wael Sawan said: “The world must achieve an orderly transition away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy to achieve net zero emissions.

“Today, fossil fuels meet around 80pc of global energy demand, with an even greater reliance in many developing countries. We support a balanced energy transition, one that maintains secure and affordable energy supplies as the world moves to net zero.”

He said expanding LNG production was essential to the energy transition, with Shell planning to boost production from 28 million tonnes to around 39 million tonnes.

Mr Sawan said: “We expect LNG will play a critical role in the transition. It continues to provide a secure supply of energy in many European countries.

“It also offers flexibility to electricity grids as wind and solar power grow, and opportunities to lower carbon emissions from industries such as cement and steel by replacing coal.”

Shell’s decision to ramp up production of LNG, set out in the company’s new Energy Transition Strategy, marks a step back from the green policies drawn up in its last strategy, which was published before the Ukraine conflict disrupted global energy markets.

The company now plans to reduce the “net carbon intensity” of the energy it sells by 15-20pc by 2030. Its previous target had been to reduce the measure by 20pc.

It has also dropped a plan to reduce the net carbon intensity of its energy by 45pc by 2035 because of “uncertainty in the pace of change in the energy transition”, although it still intends to achieve a 100pc reduction by 2050.

Read the full story here.

“Prove It” CO2 Tariffs: The Wolf Is At the Door

Pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) is the weapon of the anti-industrial, anti-energy “Progressives.” Those with termite aspirations want to substitute dilute, intermittent, infrastructure-bloated energies for what the sun’s work over the ages naturally gave us: oil, natural gas, and coal.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“It is shocking that legislators would contemplate advancing policy that would increase taxes, drive up prices for American families, harm workers and those on fixed incomes, and punish energy use. Yet this is precisely what a carbon tariff does.” (Free Market Letter, below)

Government intervention expands and expands from its own shortcomings. And in the service of “global climate change,” where deep-ecology alarmism prevails and economics is demoted, regulation is open-ended and increasingly strident.

Open international trade has been the gold standard for hundreds of years in theory and in practice. Adam Smith noted how the international division of labor produces the most goods and services for the greatest number, increasing the Wealth of Nations. His logic remains today.

Pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) is the weapon of the anti-industrial, anti-energy “Progressives.” Those with termite aspirations want to substitute dilute, intermittent, infrastructure-bloated energies for what the sun’s work over the ages naturally gave us: oil, natural gas, and coal.

An international tariff regime based on the CO2 content of goods and services is a fool’s errand—a promotion for the grifter side of the economy where experts-plus-politics displaces economic freedom.

The free-market community is aligned in opposition to this sea-change step-up in government control over the domestic and world economies. Their letter of January 16, 2024, to Members of Congress follows.

As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is reportedly going to mark-up the PROVE IT Act (S. 1863) this week, the undersigned organizations want to express strong opposition to carbon tariffs and the PROVE IT Act. This legislation is a gateway for a carbon tax on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax.

It is shocking that legislators would contemplate advancing policy that would increase taxes, drive up prices for American families, harm workers and those on fixed incomes, and punish energy use. Yet this is precisely what a carbon tariff does. A carbon tariff is two taxes in one. First, a carbon tariff is a tax on imported goods, borne by American consumers, workers, and businesses. Once the structure for imposing a carbon tariff has been established, it can then be used to impose a domestic carbon tax.

To think that the government would develop the administrative infrastructure to impose a domestic
carbon tax without following through is naïve, at best. If the United States were to impose a tax on imports based on their carbon intensity, then there would be an expectation that domestic goods would be subjected to a comparable tax-based scheme. In fact, a domestic carbon tax might be required to meet international trade obligations.

The PROVE IT Act is not a benign government measurement scheme that will exist for knowledge purposes. It would create a detailed carbon-emissions measuring system for domestic and foreign goods, putting into place exactly what is needed to implement a carbon tariff and a domestic carbon tax.

Some proponents assert that the PROVE IT Act will help respond to the European Union’s (EU) carbon tax, otherwise identified as a carbon border adjustment mechanism. The United States should push back against the EU’s extreme green policies and not, under any circumstances, accept their disastrous environmental and energy policies.

The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism and carbon tariffs are a way to impose extraterritorial
regulations. Recently, we have seen these types of regulations domestically, as American farmers know
all too well. Some states have imposed barriers to selling goods, such as eggs and pork, based not on the
nature of the goods but due to moral and ethical preferences on how food should be produced.

Just imagine foreign countries trying to impose their moral preferences on Americans by using tariffs as leverage over how the U.S. uses energy or how American farmers produce food. Carbon tariffs and the PROVE IT Act will help establish this precedent.

Maybe even worse than the imposition of all these new taxes is the purpose of the taxes. They are taxes to punish energy use. Since more than 80 percent of the world’s energy comes from coal, natural gas, and
oil, which produce carbon dioxide emissions, a carbon tariff is a tax on the energy that makes modern life
possible.

It would make medical care, housing, communications, food, and transportation less affordable, especially for people who already struggle to pay their bills. It would have a disproportionate impact on the poor and hurt those on fixed incomes, the elderly, and local institutions like hospitals, libraries, and schools.

The PROVE IT Act and carbon tariffs are not just bad policy, but bad politics. After all, supporting new taxes and opposing affordable and reliable energy is a toxic concoction. A new survey sponsored by the American Energy Alliance and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that most Americans opposed a carbon tariff on imported goods, with 63 percent of Republicans opposed.

This opposition to paying carbon or energy taxes becomes even clearer when respondents were asked what they are willing to pay each year to address climate change. The median response was just $10, and 35 percent (including 17 percent of Democrats) said they are unwilling to pay anything. American Energy Alliance president Thomas Pyle captured the results very well:

The results reconfirm what we already knew: voters are not willing to pay any tax associated with carbon dioxide or energy – including a carbon dioxide or energy tax on imported goods. Those who believe in limited government and free energy markets continue to be allied with the vast majority of voters concerning the destructive and pointless nature of carbon dioxide taxes and on the fundamentals of the climate change issue.

As the markup of the PROVE IT Act approaches, there may be disingenuous gimmicks such as amending
the bill to say it may not be used to impose a carbon tariff. Such a provision does not change the fact that
the foundation would have been created to impose a carbon tariff and domestic carbon tax. Any new
legislation could easily get rid of such a prohibition, and that is exactly what would happen.

The PROVE IT Act and other carbon tariffs efforts show a complete disregard for what matters to Americans. They want affordable, reliable energy to power their homes and lives, not government
meddling that drives up their household bills. They don’t want federal schemes that treat energy use as a
sin.

We strongly urge legislators to oppose the PROVE IT Act and any other legislation dealing with carbon tariffs.

Sincerely,
Daren Bakst: Director, Center for Energy and Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Droz, Jr.: Founder, Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED)
Phil Kerpen: President, American Commitment
Kristen Walker: Policy Analyst, The American Consumer Institute
Thomas J. Pyle: President, American Energy Alliance
Jason Isaac: CEO, American Energy Institute
Margaret Byfield: Executive Director, American Stewards of Liberty
Richard Manning: President, Americans for Limited Government
Brent Gardner: Chief Government Affairs Officer, Americans for Prosperity
Grover Norquist: President, Americans for Tax Reform
David T. Stevenson: Director, Center for Energy & Environment, Caesar Rodney Institute
Ryan Ellis: President, Center for a Free Economy
Daniel Mitchell: President, Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Jeffrey Mazzella: President, Center for Individual Freedom
Isaac Orr: Policy Fellow, Center of the American Experiment
Craig Rucker: President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
Elizabeth Stelle: Director of Policy Analysis, Commonwealth Foundation
Matthew Kandrach: President, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
E. Calvin Beisner: President, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Dr. Steven J. Allen: Vice Chairman, The Conservative Caucus
Jerry R. Simmons: President/CEO, Domestic Energy Producers Alliance
Kristen A. Ullman: President, Eagle Forum
Craig Richardson: President, Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)
Adam Brandon: President, FreedomWorks
George Landrith: President, Frontiers of Freedom
Cameron Sholty: Executive Director, Heartland Impact
James Taylor: President, The Heartland Institute
Ryan Walker: Executive Vice President, Heritage Action for America
Mario H. Lopez: President, Hispanic Leadership Fund
Tom Harris: Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition
Annette Olson: Chief Executive Officer, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy
Jon Sanders: Director, Center for Food, Power, and Life, John Locke Foundation
Seton Motley: President, Less Government
Bob Barr: Chairman, Liberty Guard, Member of Congress, 1995-2003
Brandon Arnold: Executive Vice President, National Taxpayers Union
Daniel C. Turner: Founder & Executive Director, Power The Future
Donna Jackson: Director of Membership Development, Project 21 Black Leadership Network
Paul Gessing: President, Rio Grande Foundation
Bette Grande: CEO and President, Roughrider Policy Center
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: Deputy Director (Intelligence), Strategic Threat Assessment Group
David Williams: President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Derrick Max: President, Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
Ben Zycher: Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Germans ‘may be left in the cold three days a week’, energy titan warns

If German coal plants are closed down, as is required by 2030, the country faces around 100 power cuts of up to 21 hours annually, according to Westenergie, Germany’s largest electricity-distribution system operator.

Blacked out cityscape

If German coal plants are closed down, as is required by 2030, the country faces around 100 power cuts of up to 21 hours annually, according to Westenergie, Germany’s largest electricity-distribution system operator.

From Brussels Signal

Carl Deconinck

Germany’s planned coal phase-out will lead to enormous supply gaps in the power grid, according to the head of the country’s primary domestic energy company.

If German coal plants are closed down, as is required by 2030, the country faces around 100 power cuts of up to 21 hours a time annually, according to Westenergie, Germany’s largest electricity-distribution system operator.

That would mean many areas would be without electricity for around 90 days a year.

Katherina Reiche, head of Westenergie, warned electricity supply was under severe threat and widespread power outages will result from the Government pushing through the planned coal phase-out.

“It may be that we have to postpone the coal phase-out somewhat,” Reiche told the Economic Journalists’ Association in Düsseldorf, according to an article published by Die Welt on March 12.

Reiche, a former politician for the Christian Democrats (CDU), also warned against stirring up exaggerated climate fears among the population.

“Politicians must not give the impression that the world will end after a certain date.”

Instead, the German Government must move away from its “panic rhetoric”, she said.

Drawing on weather data spanning the past three decades and projections of expected production capacities six years in the future, under specific circumstances there exists a substantial risk of significant supply shortfalls in 2030, according to Reiche.

This could potentially result in power shutdowns lasting anywhere from one to 10 hours.

When dark, windless phases are added in to the equation, things could get more disturbing. Periods of undersupply and power shortages, which could last up to 21 hours, may well happen once every three days, she said.

Such long-lasting power outages would cripple an already struggling German economy.

Initial plans by Berlin to phase out coal are aimed at 2038 but the progressive traffic-light Government has brought the date forward to 2030, ostensibly to faster curb global warming.

In late February, three East German regional leaders called on the Government to scrap the 2030 target date.

Die Welt noted that studies, both independent scientific ones and those commercially commissioned, have explored whether Germany could smoothly phase out nuclear power, coal and gas within a few years.

Results vary: Some say it is possible but at an eye-wateringly high cost, while others warn of serious risks to Germany’s electricity supply reliability.

The war in Ukraine has thrown a spanner in the works; Russian natural gas is no longer able to play a role and climate-neutral alternatives are insufficiently available.

The costs regarding Germany’s Energiewende – energy transition – are becoming clearer. At least €5 trillion in investments will be needed for Germany to reach its goal of climate neutrality, forecasting institute and state-owned KfW Bank said, much on electrification.

Reiche suggested that by 2035 an average of €12 billion to €16 billion a year will need to have been invested to upgrade the electricity distribution grid alone.

Ultimately, all these costs will fall on the shoulders of customers either via their electricity bills or indirectly through taxes.

The Scientists Modelling Climate Change on Made-Up Planets

The famous ‘Fermi Paradox’ asks why, if life really is every bit as prevalent in the cosmos as some astrobiologists claim, with their equally famous ‘Drake Equation’ (which purports to show extraterrestrial life should be teeming just about everywhere in the universe), then where is it all?

From The Daily Sceptic

BY STEVEN TUCKER

The famous ‘Fermi Paradox’ asks why, if life really is every bit as prevalent in the cosmos as some astrobiologists claim, with their equally famous ‘Drake Equation’ (which purports to show extraterrestrial life should be teeming just about everywhere in the universe), then where is it all?

One possible answer might be that, once all intelligent civilisations reach a certain point of advancement, they stumble across the so-called ‘Great Filter’, a developmental obstacle which simply can never be overcome, no matter what planet you are living on, which ultimately destroys the whole species in an irreversible Mass Extinction Event. This Great Filter was once often imagined to be nuclear war – now, it is increasingly deemed to be climate change, a phenomenon no cutting-edge industrial civilisation can supposedly ever escape from unscathed, on Earth or off it.

One leading advocate of this kind of doomsday thinking today is Adam Frank, a U.S. astrophysicist whose 2018 book Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth and many co-authored academic papers have attempted to delineate a so-called “Astrobiology of the Anthropocene”. The ‘Anthropocene’ is the proposed (and recently rejected) term many scientists want to give to the current geological era on Earth, which they say has been irrevocably impacted and influenced by mankind and his technology, namely nuclear bombs and fossil fuels.

The Misanthropocene Era

As the distinctly Malthusian Frank said in a promotional 2018 interview with Scientific American: “My argument is that Anthropocenes may be generic from an astrobiological perspective: what we’re experiencing now may be the sort of transition that everybody goes through, throughout the Universe.”

If Anthropocenes (or Alienthropocenes) are indeed “generic”, then doesn’t that mean they can potentially be modelled? Possibly so. According to Professor Frank (not to be confused with The Simpsons’ Professor Frink), “a civilisation, to some degree, is just a mechanism for transforming energy on a planetary surface”, a statement so utterly reductive in its nature it really ought to be the governing motto of the UN or EU these days.

Being something of a UFO buff myself, I have long been of the personal opinion that any actual aliens mankind should ever encounter will most likely turn out to be totally, well, alien in their nature, so much so we might not even be able to recognise them as being actual animate life-forms at all, a bit like most normal people feel when looking at Rachel Reeves. Professor Frank, though, disagrees, being apparently so in thrall to the currently dominant technocratic myth of Homo Statisticus (have you ever met anyone with 2.4 actual children?) that he feels it plausible to extend its basic pattern out across the entire Universe:

Well, just as we understand planetary climates pretty well, we can use the basic, fundamental tenets of life to guide us, too. Organisms are born, some of them reproduce, and they die. Living things consume energy and they excrete waste. That should be true even if they’re made of silicon or whatever. The next step is to incorporate principles of population biology, in which the idea of ‘carrying capacity’ — the number of organisms that can be sustainably supported by the local environment — is very important. This approach can also be mathematically applied to the state of a planet. So in our modelling work we’ve got an equation for how the planet is changing and an equation for how the population is changing. What ties them together is the predictable result that as environmental conditions on a planet get worse, the total carrying capacity goes down. A civilisation with a population of n will use the resources of its planet to increase n, but at the same time, by using those resources, it tends to degrade the planet’s environment.

But what if some aliens are incorporeal in nature, being made of gases, for instance? What if they therefore don’t actually need to eat or excrete at all? What if some of them are made from – or perhaps breathe – CO2? Or what if they are extremophiles (i.e., lovers of extreme climates) and therefore very high temperatures are actually good for some ETs’ health, not bad for it? Wouldn’t climate change akin to the kind Frank currently warns is taking place here on Earth make them thrive? Plus, what atmospheric gases will there even be to be boosted or dissipated by hypothetical industrial activity on other planets in the first place? Global warming may not even be chemically possible on Planet Fictional at all. These objections are all pretty obvious, and I do hope Professor Frank addresses them in his actual book (which I haven’t read), because if he hasn’t, it may be in danger of being interpreted by the ungenerous-minded as a work of mere sci-fi with numbers in it.

From Drake Equation to Fake Equation?

Speaking of numbers, as Frank and his co-researchers claim to have produced climate-models for generic other planets which do not even actually exist, where have they got the necessary data to fill them up with? It must be pretty detailed data because, look, Frank has somehow managed to create modelling graphs for the four presumed most likely scenarios for any planet’s long-term sustainability or civilisational collapse path, once intelligent life eventually appears on it:

Black line: made-up trajectory of made-up planet’s made-up population
Red line: co-evolving made-up trajectory of made-up planet’s made-up environmental state (a proxy for its made-up temperature, says Professor Frank)

The first model-graph, labelled ‘Die-Off’, is the one which currently appears to apply to doomed old Planet Earth, at least in the view of Frank. According to Commander Data, talking in another 2018 promotional interview with LiveScience:

In this scenario, the civilisation’s population skyrockets over a short period of time, and as the aliens guzzle energy and belch out greenhouse gases, the planet’s temperature spikes, too. (In this study, temperature was used to represent human-made impacts on the planet’s habitability via greenhouse gas pollution.) The population peaks, then suddenly plummets as rising temperatures make survival harder and harder. The population eventually levels off, but with a fraction of the people who were around before. Imagine if seven out of 10 people you knew died quickly. It’s not clear a complex technological civilisation could survive that kind of change.

It probably could if they were all just civil servants.

Chatting SHIT?

Elsewhere, I have developed an innovative but speculative data-based concept of my own that I sincerely hope one day takes off. It is known by the acronym SHIT – or Statistics Having Imaginary Truth, and I coined it to denote the way most economists appear to just make up their forecasts and predictions out of thin air, producing ‘authoritative’ figures from nowhere like fiscal rabbits from a monetary hat. I write this present piece in the days immediately following Jeremy Hunt’s latest budget, by the way.

Although I tend to accept Earth is getting somewhat warmer these days (albeit nowhere near enough to destroy all human life upon it, or whatever Al Gore is currently standing naked in the street and yelling out loud to gullible passersby), I am nonetheless becoming increasingly inclined to consider long-term climate forecasts for our planet as increasingly becoming a complete and utter shower of SHIT likewise. If so, then how much more SHITtier must data-based climate models for other planets – planets which, I here repeat once again, and in italics for extra emphasis this time, do not even exist – be?

A further question must also be asked: where precisely did Frank get the data for the models and graphs reproduced in his 2018 book and articles from, exactly? According to what he said in his interviews, it was from prior studies made of Easter Island/Rapa Nui, the now-lifeless barren ocean island where, once upon a time, or so the standard promulgated narrative goes, foolish humans lived sustainably and well until, in a short-sighted fit of greed, they stupidly chopped down all the place’s trees, causing a drought and then being left with neither wood for fuel nor tasty arboreal produce to eat any more, thus dying off en masse. But was this really true?

Easter Egg-stinction Event

According to Professor Frank and his colleagues:

Easter Island presents a particularly useful example for our own purposes since it is often taken as a lesson for global sustainability. Many studies indicate that Easter Island’s inhabitants depleted their resources, leading to starvation and termination of the island’s civilisation.

Except that, “many studies” of another kind say this isn’t what actually happened there at all; in the opinion of some revisionist modern scholars, the standard story of Easter Island’s downfall and depopulation is actually a modern-day green myth designed to promulgate a cautionary warning about what will happen to modern-day industrialised Western civilisations if, like the imprudent old Easter Islanders, we too are rash enough to use up all our resources, destroy our local environment or help bring about acts of needless climate change.

The key 2021 paper purporting to demonstrate that this now famous old popular narrative is indeed just a myth contains much data and many graphs of a technical nature which, as far as this mere layman knows, may one day turn out to be just so much SHIT too. However, if the Easter Island Extinction narrative really was just an overblown environmentalist fable created to groom Greta Thunberg into existence, it would appear that the primary data Professor Frank says he and his colleagues based his models of shared off-Earth exoplanetary collapse on in his 2018 book were pure SHIT themselves, were they not?   

There Is No Planet B

If Frank’s book was just marketed as a fun hypothetical thought-exercise, then I would find it wholly unobjectionable – it’s good for scientists to be free-thinkers. But he appears to have been promoting it as a spur to persuading politicians to implement actual real-world ‘climate-friendly’ policy objectives, and then being treated seriously in this aim by the mainstream scientific press. Therefore, you do have to ask: are such pop-science studies as Frank’s 2018 book, being aimed primarily at a lay-audience who probably know no better, really intended to function more as green-friendly political agitprop than as genuine science as such?

To end his LiveScience interview, Professor Frank asks his readers a question, the answer to which is clearly supposed to be obvious:

Across cosmic space and time, you’re going to have winners — who managed to see what was going on [i.e., a self-inflicted climate crisis] and figure out a path through it — and losers, who just couldn’t get their act together and their civilisation fell by the wayside. The question is, which category do we want to be in?

The winners! The winners! I want to be on the side of the winners! Except that, if the West does indeed compliantly tear up its whole current dirty – yet conveniently cheap, reliable and efficient – energy infrastructure to save going the way of the supposed Easter Island idiots, who will the actual winners on our planet be? The Chinese, Russians and others, who will quite happily go on burning coal and oil while we shiver in abject poverty and they quite happily extend their autocratic tentacles across the globe, enabled to dominate us militarily, economically and industrially by piles and piles of dubious pseudo-scientific SHIT being promulgated by a caste of weird, West-ruling cultists who honestly expect to be taken seriously when they go around shouting mad things like “Climate change killed off all the imaginary aliens, so junk your gas-fires now or DIE IMMEDIATELY!!” to ostensibly reliable, august and disinfo-slaying outlets like Scientific American and LiveScience.

Perhaps a sinister race of non-human alien beings do indeed walk among us after all – they’re called the governing class.

Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.

New York Post Misses the Boat on Sea Level Rise

A story published in the New York Post (NYP) on March 3rd 2024 by Carl Campanile has the alarming headline: Sea levels around NYC could surge up to 13 inches in 2030s due to climate change: state study. The story and study cited is false, because it relies on an impossible climate model scenario known as RCP8.5, which has been debunked

From ClimateRealism


By Anthony Watts

A story published in the New York Post (NYP) on March 3rd 2024 by Carl Campanile has the alarming headline: Sea levels around NYC could surge up to 13 inches in 2030s due to climate change: state study. The story and study cited is false, because it relies on an impossible climate model scenario known as RCP8.5, which has been debunked by actual climate scientists as we reported here and here.

Surprisingly, just a day later on March 4th, 2024 the editorial board of the NYP published this headline: NYS DEC’s ‘sky is falling, seas are rising’ lunacy. Both stories are about the same report, an assessment done by the New York state Department of Environmental Conservations (NYDEC), which claimed that sea levels could rise by more than a foot in some areas around New York City in a decade or less.

With dueling headlines a day apart, it’s hard to really know what the position of the NYP is, but of the two, the latter headline is far more measured and realistic.

As mentioned previously, the RCP8.5 climate model used to make these claims is implausible if not impossible, and has come to be accepted in the climate scenarios community as being an unrealistic projection.

To give you an idea of just how unrealistic this model projection is, lets examine one of the oldest records on sea level in the United states, The Battery tide gauge in New York City from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This record shows a constant and mild sea level rise going back over 150 years:

NOAA says this about the data in that chart:

The relative sea level trend is 2.92 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.09 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1856 to 2023 which is equivalent to a change of 0.96 feet in 100 years.

In other words, it would take just over 100 years for sea level to rise by an additional one foot in New York City. Yet, there are the claims of 13 inches of rise in about 10 years, according the the NYP article citing NYDEC. For that to occur, sea level would have to start rising at over 10 times the current rate as displayed by the data at The Battery tide gauge shown above. This is extremely unlikely if not impossible, as sea level has never demonstrated such dramatic and immediate increases that would be required in the scenario outlined by NYDEC.

In a takedown of this absurd claim, climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. Ph.D, had this to say in an essay, Bonkers in Yonkers:

You don’t have to be a climate scientist to see that SSP5-8.5 is far more extreme than the more plausible scenarios consistent with history and the projected near-term future to 2050. Extreme, implausible scenarios have their purposes, but are misused if prioritized as the basis for policy and planning.

…

The real world is not headed for a RCP8.5 future, which means that planning for a RCP8.5 world is not just misguided, but bad science, poor policy, and a waste of taxpayer money.

…

Whatever the understandings and motivations of these experts, the continued misuse of climate scenarios in New York is an example of regulatory capture by a small group of like-minded people who sit largely out-of-sight, protected by their authority and the inscrutable complexity of climate scenarios.

Clearly the claims made by NYDEC are completely out of line with reality. But worse than that, they’re not even looking at all of the data available. For example it has been known for quite some time that New York City is actually sinking due to the weight of its own infrastructure. Last year the NYP published this headline: NYC is sinking under the weight of its buildings, geologists warn. in that article it is stated:

New geological research warns that the weight of New York City’s skyscrapers is actually causing the Big Apple — whose more than 1 million buildings weigh nearly 1.7 trillion pounds — to sink lower into its surrounding bodies of water.

The city is plopping closer to the water at a rate of 1 to 2 millimeters a year, “with some areas subsiding much faster.”

This is from a peer reviewed publication from May 2023 in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future titled: The Weight of New York City: Possible Contributions to Subsidence From Anthropogenic Sources. In that publication abstract they say:

Geodetic measurements show a mean subsidence rate of 1–2 mm/year across the city that is consistent with regional post-glacial deformation, though we find some areas of significantly greater subsidence rates. Some of this deformation is consistent with internal consolidation of artificial fill and other soft sediment that may be exacerbated by recent building loads, though there are many possible causes.

It seems far more plausible that New York City is suffering under its own weight rather than being inundated by supposedly climate driven sea level rise based on an implausible or nearly impossible climate model such as RCP 8.5.

The media does everyone a disservice when they report on these wildly irrational claims of imminent sea level danger while ignoring the complete story of why at least half of it is actually happening. Further, they are unnecessarily alarming people by not looking at real world timelines of actual sea level rise such as The Battery tide gauge right there at the tip of Manhattan Island.

Such journalism is simply cheap and irresponsible without the entire story being reported.

A tale of two Johns as SPECs

Leave it to Joe Biden. When the 80-year-old plutocrat John Forbes Kerry steps down as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), he chose 75-year-old John David Podesta, Jr., to finish out the year. The two climate czars could not have come from more different beginnings.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Leave it to Joe Biden. When the 80-year-old plutocrat John Forbes Kerry steps down as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), he chose 75-year-old John David Podesta, Jr., to finish out the year. The two climate czars could not have come from more different beginnings.

For his self-important mission to “save the planet,” Kerry has been called a “climate clown” on social media and “the Forrest Gump of Climate” by Bloomberg Media. Ever the aloof Eurocentric diplomat, Kerry never lets anyone forget how important he is. Podesta, from much more humble roots, prefers to work behind the scenes, often in a supporting role.

It was clearly past time for Kerry to go. The day before he “retired,” Kerry spoke at a press conference and raised eyebrows and temperatures when he blurted out that people might “feel better” about the Russian government if Russia would just commit to fighting climate change as hard as he has done.

Kerry’s strange remarks came in response to a question from a Russian reporter as to whether the long-running U.S. campaign against Russian influence – one that has escalated into a major war that could soon become nuclear – was interfering with climate cooperation. The Russian Federation waited until 2019 – when Paris opponent Donald Trump was President — to adopt the Paris Agreement, overcoming strong opposition from Russian industry lobbyists.

At the time, Rusian Edelgeriev, President Putin’s climate advisor, said his country would become a “full-fledged participant in this international instrument.” He boasted that Russia had cut its carbon emissions nearly in half since 1990, the year of the collapse of the old Soviet Union.

But oil and gas provide about 20 percent of the Russian economy, and Europeans who had shunned fossil fuel production themselves were still heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels to keep their own economies afloat. Russia today is developing coal resources in the Far East and wants to open more Arctic shipping lanes.

Imagine the grating of teeth in the Kremlin as Kerry droned on that even with its “illegal” war against Ukraine, “they ought to be able to find the effort to be responsible on the climate issue.” Maybe Kerry was saddest that, because of the war, he has not been able to fly back and forth to Moscow (or preferably, to a Crimean dacha?) to “negotiate”.

Missing from Kerry’s diatribe was the well-known fact that Russia only contributes 5 percent of global human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, less than half that of the U.S. (12.6 percent), and only a tiny fraction of China’s whopping 33 percent. But Kerry would not dare tell China it “ought to be more responsible on the climate issue.”

Instead, after lengthy negotiations in Beijing, Kerry insisted he was not disappointed that no new agreements came from his “work,” or that President Xi reaffirmed that China would pursue its climate goals at its own pace and in its own way. Kerry was just glad he got a few free meals.

In his first year as SPEC, Kerry took a reported 48 trips on his wife’s private jet, including meetings with authoritarian heads of state. He refused to publicly criticize China for building a new coal-fired power plant every week. But he did compare the fight against climate change to the Allies’ fight to defeat Nazi Germany.

Young Americans may remember that Kerry was the (losing) Democratic Party nominee for President in 2004. They may also know that, long before became the “climate guy,” Kerry was a spokesperson for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The Massachusetts brahmin, after a failed Congressional campaign and a short stint as Michael Dukakis’ lieutenant governor, parlayed his fame (or infamy) into a U.S. Senate seat in 1984. He stayed in the Senate until 2013, when he became President Obama’s Secretary of State, following the inestimable Hillary Clinton. His crowning moment there was signing the Paris Agreement on climate change. No wonder Biden chose him.

As SPEC, Kerry is best known for his defense of his widespread use of private jets. Kerry famously stated, “If you offset your carbon, it is the ONLY choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”

Kerry’s messianic vision continued: “I have to fly to meet with people to get things done, but what I am doing almost full time is working to win the battle for climate change. And if I offset and contribute my life to do this I am not going to be put on the defensive.”

Kerry loves flying almost as much as mirrors. He even flew on a giant military transport to Antarctica as a lame duck just days after President Trump was elected in 2016 – ostensibly to meet with scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent.

Kerry has always been “special.” His grandmother sent him to elite boarding schools in Europe as his father served in the State Department’s Bureau of United Nations Affairs, then as U.S. attorney for Berlin, and later at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo.

Young John was whisked back to the States to attend more elite boarding schools before matriculating at Yale University, where he distinguished himself as a debater and soccer player but not as a student. His GPA was “lackluster” (a 76 average), but it got him into Yale.

Before marrying the billionaire heiress to John Heinz’s huge fortune, Kerry was already the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate (other than Heinz), as the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives. His own 2011 financial disclosure admits to personal assets ranging from $230 to $320 million (not including any Heinz money).

By contrast, 75-year-old John Podesta grew up on the streets of Chicago, the son of a Greek-American mother and an Italian-American father, a factory worker who never finished high school. His big break in life came when he met the young Bill Clinton in 1970 when both were working on a Senate campaign.

John and his older brother Tony built their lives around politics, with John serving as an attorney for various Democratic Party leaders and Tony working as a lobbyist. Together they formed the Podesta Group, a government relations and public affairs lobbying firm with close ties to the Democratic Party. Not bad for a couple of poor kids.

Politics has been good to the Podestas. John served as chief of staff for President Clinton and counselor to President Obama before joining the Biden Administration as senior advisor for clean energy innovation and implementation. There he has overseen the disbursement of $370 to $783 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives under the (sic) Inflation Reduction Act.

Both Podestas have left their biggest public marks through the political nonprofits they created, Tony was a founding president of Norman Lear’s People for the American Way, while John is the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, which helped to craft the Inflation Reduction Act, a cash cow for progressive interests.

In sum, while Kerry has often been compared to a strutting peacock, Podesta has long been one of the most effective operatives in Washington and a major architect of the Progressive agenda. Kerry may have gotten a lot of headlines, but Podesta has used the power of the purse to impact the business and diplomatic communities far more effectively.

Climate Bureaucrats Give China a Free Pass

China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past 20 years, dwarfing those of the U.S. But according to our progressive federal bureaucrats, America’s cumulative historical emissions are the problem and Beijing now deserves a free pass.

From Watts Up With That?

By Oliver McPherson-Smith

March 11, 2024

China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past 20 years, dwarfing those of the U.S. But according to our progressive federal bureaucrats, America’s cumulative historical emissions are the problem and Beijing now deserves a free pass.

The federal government’s climate.gov site ostensibly provides “timely and authoritative scientific data and information about climate science, adaptation, and mitigation.” This mandate apparently includes trying to guilt Americans out of questioning progressive policies while the world’s second-largest economy emits at an unparalleled level. In a blog post, federal climate comrades say that America’s historical emissions, coupled with higher emissions on a per-capita basis, mean that “the United States bears a greater share of the responsibility for current conditions—on both a national and per-person level.”

According to our taxpayer-funded emissions arbitrators, China emitted less in the past, so its gargantuan emissions today—2.61 times larger than the U.S.—shouldn’t really be the focus. America’s cumulative emissions dating back to 1750, they argue, are the original sin for which we must now atone. Unlike China, America has apparently emitted more than its fair share, so “any future U.S. emissions will undermine progress to stop global warming.” In case the message isn’t clear, the climate commissars add for good measure that China’s emissions are actually the American people’s fault because American consumers buy Chinese-made goods.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda mouthpieces agree. Xinhua, the CCP’s news agency, declared last year that the U.S. bears “major historical and global responsibility for climate change” and must, therefore, repay its “historical debts.” Not to be outdone, the state-run China Daily says that China’s per-capita emissions are lower than those of America, so the world’s largest emitter is actually doing the “hard yards on climate.”

This readiness of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats to cast off both the basic principles of justice and common sense should be a cause for concern. While socialist regimes have long embraced collective guilt and group punishment, individual responsibility is fundamental to the American tradition. This principle played a clear role in the fight for America’s freedom; colonial outrage ensued after Britain’s collective punishment of Massachusetts in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. With free will and personal accountability before the law, the American people today are not responsible for the actions of earlier generations. There is no criminal or climate “historical debt” to be socialized across generations.

Equally concerning is the willingness of our self-declared “authoritative” apparatchiks to distort emissions data to guilt Americans into conformity. China is far and away the single largest source of emissions today. While scientific knowledge should be perpetually debated and refined, portraying China’s emissions on a self-congratulatory per-capita basis is not an environmental breakthrough. The composition of the atmosphere is determined by absolute measurements, not on a per-capita basis, meaning that China’s actual emissions remain the same, regardless of how they are portrayed. In short, measuring per-capita emissions is as consequential as measuring the temperature in per-capita degrees Fahrenheit.

Rather than berating Americans for the actions of their ancestors, federal bureaucrats should turn their attention to America’s recent environmental track record as a potential model for reducing emissions. Recognizing America’s clean energy potential, the Trump Administration simultaneously prioritized domestic oil and gas production and the enforcement of well-calibrated environmental protection rules. The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency “assessed more in civil penalties, criminal fines, and restitution… than the agency collected in the first four years of the prior [Obama] administration.” This strategy doesn’t need warped justice or contorted data to justify its effectiveness; the economy grew, Americans got wealthier, air quality improved, and emissions fell. For progressive bureaucrats, however, these observations are inconvenient truths.

Oliver McPherson-Smith, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Millions of households face £200 jump in energy bills

“Without gas backing up renewables, we face the genuine prospect of blackouts.”

Plans to boost UK’s energy security with gas-fired power stations to cost consumers £5bn.

Households face paying almost £200 extra on their energy bills under plans to keep Britain’s lights on by building more gas-fired power stations.

Experts said the policy, announced by Rishi Sunak on Tuesday, would result in a bill of around £5bn for consumers, equivalent to £178 per household, most likely spread over a decade or more. The Telegraph has the story.

Tom Smout, of Aurora Energy Research, which conducted the findings, said: “What consumers are being asked to buy is energy security.

“The priority is to keep the lights on by having backup for the intermittency of renewables.

“An extra 5Gw of new backup generating capacity is needed to keep the lights on. Each gigawatt of capacity will cost about £1bn.”

Documents published on Tuesday by the Government said plans to boost Britain’s energy security by building more gas-fired power stations will be funded by bigger payments to plant operators, resulting in higher energy bills for homes and businesses.

Electricity generators will be paid via the so-called capacity market, an auction system that pays operators to be on 24-hour standby to deliver power when supplies become tight.

The plants will only be fired up when renewable sources like wind and solar fail to deliver, typically due to poor weather.

According to official estimates published on Tuesday, gas plants are only expected to be used for around 700 hours in 2030 – the equivalent of about 29 days.

The predicted figure for 2035 is below half of that and falls to less than 100 hours from 2040 onwards.

It follows a stark warning from ministers that for at least the next two decades Britain risks having too little generating capacity to keep the lights on.

Britain’s ability to generate electricity has become increasingly reliant on the weather as net zero targets spur a shift to renewable power sources such as offshore wind and solar power.

However, periods of low wind and less sunlight, a phenomena known as “dunkelflaute”, create problems for energy supplies as it causes renewable production to plummet.

Announcing the new gas-fired power stations on Tuesday, Claire Countinho, the Energy Secretary, said: “A weather-dependent, renewables-based electricity grid means we will need to have flexible power for when the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine.

“Without gas backing up renewables, we face the genuine prospect of blackouts.”

From the full story here.

Aussie Green Party Leader Used Private Jets, Expensed $1 Million to Taxpayers

How Greens leader Adam Bandt spent thousands on private jet flights while lecturing you about climate change

Flights for the future

From Watts Up With That?

Aussie Greens Leader Adam Bandt flew a private jet to give a speech on the evils of fossil fuel.

How Greens leader Adam Bandt spent thousands on private jet flights while lecturing you about climate change

By DAVID SOUTHWELL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

PUBLISHED: 12:25 AEDT, 12 March 2024 | UPDATED: 20:48 AEDT, 12 March 2024

Greens leader Adam Bandt has come under fire for racking up an expenses bill of almost $1million a year, including hundreds of thousands on printing and two private jet flights.

The anti-fossil fuel campaigner also claimed $12,000 on a taxpayer-provided vehicle and petrol allowance plus $29,000 on government COMCAR trips and taxis, according to figures from the Department of Finance.

Despite his party’s core policy of cutting C02 emissions Mr Bandt used two private jets during the 2022 election campaign, landing tax payers with the $23,000 bill.

…Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13184903/How-Greens-leader-Adam-Bandt-spent-thousands-private-jet-flights-lecturing-climate-change.html

What can I say? Another green leader outed as a total hypocrite. Is this even news?