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.
Throughout the summer so far, wildfires have been bumbling along at a low level. However, cumulative fire area in Europe is well above average because of a spike in fire activity in February and March, which occurred in Romania, not around the Med.
“Wildfires have burnt 227,000 hectares of land since the beginning of the year – more than double the average for this time of year over the past two decades.
While far above average, it’s not the highest in EFFIS’ records, which go back to 2002. Europe had particularly bad fire seasons in 2003 and 2017, when blazes burnt more than 1,100,000 hectares in each year – an area equivalent to the island of Jamaica.
It’s not yet clear if 2025 will be a record year, as that will depend on how the fire season evolves in the coming months.
The number of fires in Europe has also surged this year so far, with 1,118 blazes detected as of July 8, versus 716 in the same period last year, EFFIS said.”
They naturally blame it all on climate change:
“Scientists say the Mediterranean region’s hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. Once fires start, plentiful dry vegetation and strong winds in the region can cause them to spread rapidly and burn out of control.”
The actual data shows they are lying through their back teeth.
Throughout the summer so far, wildfires have been bumbling along at a low level. However, cumulative fire area in Europe is well above average because of a spike in fire activity in February and March, which occurred in Romania, not around the Med.
84000 hectares burnt in three major fire outbreaks there at the time.
Romania of course does not have a Mediterranean climate, it has a temperate continental one, meaning it is not prone to wildfires. The fires in March had nothing to do with climate change, but were deliberately set for land clearing, as Romania-Insider reported at the time:
The authorities have linked the fires to intentional actions by residents attempting to clear land, a practice that has led to blazes spreading across vast areas, often in difficult-to-reach locations.
DSU head Raed Arafat emphasized that the wildfires were not caused by weather phenomena such as lightning but were intentionally set. “At this moment, we cannot attribute these forest fires to high temperatures or lightning. They are solely the result of deliberate actions by individuals – either those who have been doing this for a long time or those who intentionally set fires to clear fields or burn dry vegetation,” he stated, as quoted by Digi24.
Only 4% of Canadians think climate change is our top problem. But many of them are hard-core activists ready to block projects.
Over the past several months, public concern about climate change has declined dramatically, replaced by newfound enthusiasm for the development of Canada’s vast oil and gas reserves. The federal government is now under mounting political pressure to expedite the construction of pipelines to tidewater that will bring economic growth, employment, energy security and funding for social programs or tax relief.
What caused the sharp reversal in public opinion? And will the government actually deliver?
Prime Minister Mark Carney has long championed climate catastrophism and a commitment to net zero, both in his various jobs on the world stage and in his 2021 book, Values. After entering politics, however, he has embraced fossil fuels, and the legacy media have joined him in a head-spinning abandonment of its obsessive focus on global warming’s alleged existential threat to humanity. Whether Carney’s transformation reflects transitory political expediency or is an overdue acknowledgment of economic and scientific reality is now key to Canada’s economic prospects.
Over the past four decades, incessant advocacy from the scientific establishment, media and opinion leaders made first global warming and then climate change the consensus view. Deviation jeopardized reputations and careers, especially for scientists and academics, who risked losing funding or even their jobs. It was no surprise, then, that in 2022, 73 per cent of Canadians believed we were confronting a climate emergency. But now, according to a recent Leger poll, only four per centsay climate change is the number one issue facing Canada.
President Donald Trump’s shocking tariffs and 51st-state talk have diverted Canadians’ attention from climate change. And so have the exorbitant costs of green policies, the growing realization that nothing Canada does can measurably impact global temperatures, and the fact that green policies either weren’t adopted in many countries or have became politically toxic in countries where they were. Despite literally trillions of dollars being spent globally on reducing emissions, hydrocarbons still account for over 80 per cent of the world’s primary energy.
According to McKinsey, achieving net zero globally by 2050 would cost the Western countries a prohibitive $275-550 trillion. That makes it politically untenable.
Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler recently argued that green policies are largely responsible for European GDP falling from equal to American in 2008 to just two-thirds of it today. Soaring energy prices have led to de-industrialization, compounding the effects of high taxes and social spending, intrusive regulations and a protected workforce. Canada also, and for similar reasons, suffered a lost decade: growth of just half a per cent in real GDP per capita — compared with 20.7 per cent in the U.S.
And maybe the public has finally become skeptical of endless prophecies of impending disasters: “endangered” polar bears almost tripled in the past 50 years; hundreds of Pacific islands have increased in land size; death from extreme weather decreased by 99 per cent in the past 100 years; nine times as many people die from the cold as the heat; and so on. The Little Ice Age ended in the late 19th century with a gradual rise in temperatures — if not, we would still be in an ice age. Yet just 14 months ago, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said we had only two years to save the planet.
Future psychologists, economists and historians will examine the early 21st-century phenomenon of collective climate hysteria, what drove it, what ended it (if it has ended) and what damage it wrought. One thing is all but certain: there will be no admission of guilt for the enormous harm inflicted on Canada and other economies. Although the public has moved on, a hard-core group of climate militants is prepared to exploit every legal and regulatory impediment to resource development in Canada. The federal government will have to use all its legislative and executive authority to push the new energy projects it says it favours through to completion. Only then will Canadians know whether Mark Carney has truly changed his core beliefs.
1. “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades?” Yes No Don’t Know (volunteered)
2. [If yes, solid evidence] “Is the earth getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels or mostly because of natural patterns in the earth’s environment?”
Human Activity Natural Patterns Combination (volunteered) Not sure / Refused (volunteered)
So, the 79% who said there’s solid evidence of warming the last 40 years got a follow up question: mostly caused by human activity or mostly natural? Slightly more than half said mostly human, thus a result of 44% believing both that it is warming and that humans are mostly to blame.
Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued letters to portable fuel container (PFC or gas can) manufacturers encouraging them to add vents to gas cans to ensure safe and effective refueling. This announcement comes in response to years of complaints about slow, frustrating fuel flow from modern gas cans. With this reminder to manufacturers to incorporate self-closing vented designs, EPA wants to help make it easier and faster for Americans to refuel.
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued letters to portable fuel container (PFC or gas can) manufacturers encouraging them to add vents to gas cans to ensure safe and effective refueling. This announcement comes in response to years of complaints about slow, frustrating fuel flow from modern gas cans. With this reminder to manufacturers to incorporate self-closing vented designs, EPA wants to help make it easier and faster for Americans to refuel.
“Part of Powering the Great American Comeback means ensuring manufacturers have the clarity and encouragement to deliver products Americans want,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “The confusion surrounding gas cans has been a frustration for years. We are proud to address this issue head on. Moving forward, Americans should have gas cans that are compliant, but most importantly, that are effective and consumer friendly.”
Today’s letter is part of EPA’s broader effort to address the issue of regulatory confusion and accurately communicate to make sure manufacturers and the public understand EPA’s requirements. This will clear the way for manufacturers and consumers to be able to produce and use gas cans that are safe, compliant, and consumer friendly.
Background
In 2007, EPA finalized a rule requiring PFC manufacturers to reduce evaporative emissions by sealing in gasoline vapors. These rules took effect in 2009 and specifically allow vents as long as they close automatically when not in use. Due to widespread confusion, many manufacturers stopped installing vents altogether.
In 2008, Congress passed the Children’s Gasoline Burn Prevention Act, requiring that gas cans be child-resistant, similar to a prescription bottle cap. These child resistance rules led to many of the spring-loaded, hard-to-use nozzles. This is enforced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
In 2020, Congress enacted the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act, also enforced by CPSC, which mandated flame mitigation devices in cans to prevent flashback ignition. This further complicated nozzle and spout designs.
EPA’s evaporative emissions standards were designed to protect public health without compromising usability.
Energy Minister, Michael Shanks’, claims last week that scrapping Net Zero, as Nigel Farage proposed, would cost a million jobs, were soon shown to be a fantasy when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its own analysis of green jobs the day after.
Energy Minister, Michael Shanks’, claims last week that scrapping Net Zero, as Nigel Farage proposed, would cost a million jobs, were soon shown to be a fantasy when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its own analysis of green jobs the day after.
As usual they padded out the numbers to make it sound impressive, ending up with a total of 690,000. However, the vast majority were jobs which have been around for decades and have nothing to do with Net Zero – waste, forestry, water, energy efficiency and so on:
Amazingly there are more jobs in environmental bureaucracy than there are in the whole of the renewable sector, which employs 77800.
Two thirds of the total have been around for years, as mentioned above. Another 48000 are simply rebadged – for instance, where carmakers switch from making petrol cars to electric ones.
But it is those 88100 jobs in the green bureaucracy that really stand out – environmental charities, consultants, education, civil servants and in house pen pushers. All the hangers on that you and me have to pay for one way or another.
If Reform get rid of them, we should all raise a toast!
During the first half of 2025, a new record was set for the number of deaths caused by climate and weather disasters. Can you guess what that record was?
During the first half of 2025, a new record was set for the number of deaths caused by climate and weather disasters. Can you guess what that record was?
If you read left-wing media sources, and believe anything they say, you might think that the recent record has something to do with a large and growing number of deaths. Recent articles in sources like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and CBS News all explicitly claim that climate change is making weather events “deadlier,” or leading to increasing numbers of deaths, or some variation of that same message. I’m sure if you checked thirty such “mainstream” news sources over the past year, all thirty of them would have pieces parroting that same narrative.
Therefore you might be surprised by the actual record that has been set: The first half of 2025 (January to June) has seen the fewest number of deaths from climate and weather disasters of any first half year this century.
But before getting to the details, let’s consider what you might believe if all you read or see is the usual “mainstream” sources:
From MSNBC, July 9, “How climate change is making natural disasters deadlier”: “At least 119 are dead and over 170 people are still missing after the catastrophic flooding in Texas. NBC News’ Jay Gray and The Kerry County Lead Editor and Publisher Louis Amestoy share the latest updates from Kerrville, Texas, and University of Pennsylvania Presidential Distinguished Professor Michael Mann joins Chris Jansing to discuss the impact of climate change on natural disasters.”
From CBS News, March 18, “World climate report warns of growing risks to lives, economy and planet”: “A new report from the World Meteorological Organization delivers a stark warning: climate change is accelerating, with some impacts now irreversible for centuries. The State of the Global Climate reportconfirms global temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions and sea levels all reached record highs in 2024.”
From the New York Times, October 31, 2024, “Climate Change Is Making Disasters Deadlier. Here’s How Much.” “Two weeks before world leaders meet to debate the climate crisis, a report released on Thursday shows the 10 deadliest extreme weather events in the past two decades were made worse by burning fossil fuels.”
So let’s now look at the actual data on deaths from climate and weather disasters during the 25 years since 2000, and specifically focusing on the first half of each year. The following statement (quoted by Pielke) appears in the Executive Summary of the Aon report:
At least 7,700 people were killed due to natural disasters during the first half of 2025, which is well below the 21st-century average of 37,250. Majority of the deaths (5,456) occurred as a result of the earthquake in Myanmar.
An earthquake is not a climate or weather disaster. Take out those 5,456 deaths from the Myanmar earthquake, and you have only 2,244 deaths left that could possibly fall in the climate or weather category.
How does that compare to other recent years? Pielke goes over to the EM-DAT data base, where he finds data for deaths from weather and climate-related disasters for each of the years from 2000 to 2024. Here is the chart he compiles for January to June of each year:
The tiny red bar at the right represents the ~2,200 climate/weather related deaths through June 30, 2025. Those ~2,200 deaths from climate and weather-related disasters this year is clearly the lowest in the comparable period of the 26 years in question. The second-lowest is 2009 at about 2,600. Also obvious is that the numbers of deaths are hugely dominated by major disasters that have occurred in a few years, particularly 2008, 2010 and 2022. But with or without those outlying years, there is no obvious trend up or down in the annual number of deaths from these causes.
So 2025 is clearly the record holder for fewest first-half-of-year climate/weather disaster deaths in the 21st century. But how about before that? Pielke does not have comparable data for the comparison. However, before modern weather reporting and disaster warnings, deaths from climate and weather disasters were generally hugely greater than they are today. Drawing on other sources, he finds fairly rough estimates of around 50,000,000 deaths from climate and weather disasters in the decade of the 1870s (that would be 5,000,000 per year), 5,000,000 in the 1920s (500,000 per year) and 500,000 as recently as the 1970s (50,000 per year). The generally much greater levels of deaths in prior decades leads Pielke to the following assertion:
I’d go so far as to suggest that it is likely that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any half year in recorded human history.
It’s not possible to prove that assertion definitively, but it is very likely correct.
The constant efforts of the media to scare people out of their wits on this subject are, frankly, despicable.
We remember: by mid-2023, the data on global temperatures had shown a very marked increase. It had gotten warmer globally quite quickly, by an incredible 0.5°C compared to 2022. This led to a new record for the year being announced in 2024. The German public television Tagesschau (and many other media) did so in great detail.
We remember: by mid-2023, the data on global temperatures had shown a very marked increase. It had gotten warmer globally quite quickly, by an incredible 0.5°C compared to 2022. This led to a new record for the year being announced in 2024. The German public television Tagesschau (and many other media) did so in great detail.
The whole (climate) world asked about the cause. The Tagesschau correctly concluded that the (rather mediocre) El Nino could only make a very small contribution in the second half of 2023. Looking at the temporal change, the rise in global temperatures occurred simultaneously with the El Nino rise in ocean temperatures in the tropical East Pacific (an area called “Nino 3.4”) and that was already an indication that this could not be where the problem is: The lag is usually 3 months for global temperatures to follow Nino 3,4. Causality would have been violated.
It was already apparent in January 2022 that something was up. A volcano called Honga-Tunga-Honga erupted. It is an underwater volcano and large masses of water were hurled into the stratosphere. Here is a satellite image of it.
It has long been known that stratospheric water vapor causes temperatures on the ground to rise globally. But a volcano like this is a natural event, the warming effect is then added “on top” of the greenhouse gas effect. However, the “bump” itself was not man-made. Unfortunately, the news report did not mention this at all.
Every “impulse” that affects global temperatures (including land volcanoes such as the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991, which had a cooling effect due to many aerosols in the stratosphere) does so with some delay. The climate effect builds up slowly in the atmosphere and the thermal inertia of the Earth system as a whole does the rest.
Consequently, studies such as this one appeared at the beginning of 2023, which predicted a temporary warming of more than the “famous” 1.5°K deviation from pre-industrial values.
According to the Tagesschau, this is exactly what happened: “2024 was also the first calendar year to be 1.6 degrees warmer globally than pre-industrial levels from 1850 to 1900.”
However, the report itself attributes this to progressive man-made warming. At the time, this also partly reflected the state of knowledge that some literature on the subject sought to convey. This study from July 2024, which even determined an overall cooling effect of the volcanic eruption due to the aerosols that also occurred, should be mentioned here as a representative example.
Here’s the most complete possible development of global temperatures according to GISS:
The values are extrapolated to the end of July 2025, this month is estimated using a model, 7 days before its end.
The volcano in question occurred at the end of January 2022. Not much happened until around May 2023. Then, however, the “impulse response” of the climate system probably took place: in September 2023, an additional warming of 0.58 °C was detected compared to the average for 2022. The entire year 2024 saw an increased level of 0.39°C compared to 2022. This can NOT be explained by the gradual increase in forcing by greenhouse gases etc.!
Between 1980 and 2020 there was a warming of 0.018 °C/year, now it should suddenly be a factor of 10 in the years 2022-2024? That was always completely unlikely!
Likewise the downturn in 2025 of over 0.4°C globally, within just 6 months.
So, the (climate) world continues to puzzle. Here too, no definitive cause can be given for the roller coaster ride of global temperatures. However, the probability speaks for a course that was determined to a large extent by the underwater volcanic eruption with a lot of water vapor input into the stratosphere (unprecedented quantities, according to this study).
However, this is not suitable for warning of a man-made “climate catastrophe” by exceeding the (purely politically determined) 1.5°C mark, even with the wisdom of “accelerating warming”. The whole 2023/24 thing was very likely a natural event. The 3/10°C missing from the 1.5°C warming compared to pre-industrial times in 2022 could also be missing again in 2026, the gap will probably be a little smaller.
“Volcano is over”, hopefully also the propaganda and scaremongering!
As New Jersey families endure summer heatwaves, there’s growing support for practical energy policies that keep the lights on and air conditioning running.
As New Jersey families endure summer heatwaves, there’s growing support for practical energy policies that keep the lights on and air conditioning running.
According to new polling from Independent Women’s Voice, 85% of likely voters in the 2025 New Jersey statewide elections worry about rising energy costs expected to result from existing state climate policies–including 83% of women.
Garden State residents were expected to see a 20% spike in their utility bills commencing on June 1st, even as some ratepayers were already paying $500 a month. This is a consequence of the Murphy administration embracing a plan to force consumers into using 100% renewable energy. But the Board of Public Utilities bailed them out and delayed implementation of the rate hike until after September 30th. So New Jersey voters are spared enormous energy cost spikes for now, but not for long.
Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ)’s Energy Master Plan, an executive order signed in 2023 mandating the state reach 100% clean energy by 2035 through solar, wind, electric vehicles, and batteries, is squarely to blame for higher utility bills. Murphy’s green transition plan is estimated to cost $1.4 trillion in lost income, or $140,000 per average New Jerseyan over the next 25 years, while yielding no tangible environmental benefit. This isn’t sustainable for struggling families who already can’t pay their energy bills on time.
Overall, 80% of swing voters are concerned about energy reliability – including 81% of women. Upon learning the 20% electricity rate hike is attributed to Murphy’s agenda, 53% of women reported they are less supportive of New Jersey’s climate policies.
Since 2017, when Governor Murphy entered office, five coal plants and the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, which produced 20% of the state’s electricity capacity, have permanently closed down. Unsurprisingly, the Energy Master Plan has invited more energy insecurity into the Garden State – which is now a net-energy importer state. Unsurprisingly, New Jersey will never reach its clean energy goals, as it’s mostly powered by natural gas (49%) and nuclear (42%) for electricity generation. Renewables, like solar energy, barely account for 8% of New Jersey’s energy mix. States like New Jersey can’t run on part-time energy.
PJM Interconnection, a grid operator servicing New Jersey and 12 other states, said that prematurely retiring power plants and replacing them with renewables like solar and wind could undermine grid stability this summer. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) equally warned in its 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment that solar and battery additions “introduce more complexity and energy limitations into the resource mix.”
Due to rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, air conditioning, manufacturing, and transportation costs, energy is a top issue for New Jersey voters going into the fall. 64% of swing voters and 59% of women saying energy was among their top three issues, respectively.
After learning about the implications of Murphy’s 2035 net-zero target, swing voters decreased their support for the governor’s climate policies by 9% and women decreased their support by 11%, respectively.
New Jersey voters are equally worried that Governor Murphy’s climate policies are more extreme than California’s. Our polling found 72% of swing voters and 71% of women are concerned with the extreme direction their state is heading in.
New Jersey’s energy crisis is self-inflicted. After implementing this costly Energy Master Plan and closing down 6 reliable power stations, Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) now wants his constituents to conserve energy by setting their ACs to 76-78 degrees Fahrenheit, delaying appliance usage until 8pm, and making a plan for power outages.
The late President Jimmy Carter famously called on Americans to set their homes “to 65 degrees in the daytime and lower at night” to reduce heating costs, which helped make him a one-term president. This strategy of sacrificing for less reliable energy, to be climate-friendly, isn’t a winning strategy for today’s New Jersey Democrats, either.
New Jerseyans, like their fellow Americans, want abundant, reliable, and secure energy. There are two legislative remedies Trenton lawmakers can consider to achieve this: exploring the feasibility of small modular reactors (SMRs) and reforming the Energy Master Plan to deemphasize unreliable solar and wind energy. Since New Jersey already has two nuclear power plants, SMRs – smaller reactors that are portable and easier to construct – will supplement existing projects, produce more reliable energy, and help the state reduce its reliance on imported electricity.
It’s imperative whoever succeeds Governor Murphy after November puts their constituents ahead of costly climate policies that reduce quality of life and do little to conserve the environment.
Gabriella Hoffman is director of Independent Women’s Center for Energy and Conservation. Follow her on X at @Gabby_Hoffman
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Paul Homewood came across another die-hard believer still saying “What about all the subsidies!” He reminds us of the Guardian headline hand-wringing over $7 Trillion dollars of subsidies in support of fossil fuels. The main source of this meme is the IMF, so I went to their two year old report data to create the graphs that the IMF won’t.
Paul Homewood came across another die-hard believer still saying “What about all the subsidies!” He reminds us of the Guardian headline hand-wringing over $7 Trillion dollars of subsidies in support of fossil fuels. The main source of this meme is the IMF, so I went to their two year old report data to create the graphs that the IMF won’t.
The IMF fossil fuel fantasy update of 2023…
The trillion dollar claims of fossil fuel subsidies amount to nothing more than IMF wet dream. Literally, 80% of the “subsidies” are what they’d like to charge oil and gas companies for things like the imaginary damage that CO2 does on simulated Earths in broken climate models. The IMF calls this “implicit subsidies”. You can I might call it a brazen fake (or worse).
The IMF has a budget of over $1 billion dollars a year, and they have 20 impenetrable super-graphs on their blog and report, but they don’t have the simple graphs like this, that I did below, showing that most of the subsidies are the “implied” imaginary sort, and that one country on Earth does all “the subsidies”. (Click to Enlarge…) Nobody mention China.
The orange “subsidies” are the total fantasies here. It really is that bad.
Fossil fuels cause car accidents, congestion and road wear don’t you know?
Unbelievably, other parts of the “80% implicit subsidy block” even include things like the cost of traffic accidents, fatalities, congestion and wear and tear on the roads. Somehow when fossil fuels cause congestion, and we suffer a loss of productivity, that’s an implicit subsidy because the price of fuel was not efficient. (Congestion is when your car gets stuck and slows you down, and “efficiency” is when you spend an hour riding a horse, and 2 hours mucking out the stables?)
“… things get weirder. For instance, about 39 percent of the “social cost” of gasoline in the IMF analysis comes from accidents, traffic fatalities, and congestion. It is true that these things are externalities. But they’re caused by automobile use, not by gasoline use per se. If we switched over to solar-powered electric cars tomorrow, we’d still have traffic accidents and congestion. It’s strange to argue that this is some sort of “subsidy” for gasoline specifically.”
It’s true: The Government could have charged you more tax:
Apparently, in the deep-climate-dimension — a Blob-academic can imaginethat we’d have less congestion if we taxed fuel more and discouraged driving; therefore, a lower tax is a “subsidy”. I presume efficient pricing means people should be paying so much more that there is no congestion? I wonder if their model includes the cost of suicide and divorce when taxes are so high people spent an hour less at home each day because they have to catch buses, they give up taking the kids to soccer, and don’t eat fresh food from the farmers markets that they can’t afford to drive to?
Maybe the IMF will accidentally solve congestion because everyone will give up and move to the country to grow cabbages?
The IMF Gods-of-control actually flesh out their fantasies of what they think “efficient pricing” for coal, gas, and petrol would be, and in every country on Earth.
Lo and behold, marvel at the Super-Graph below where the efficient pricing is laid out. Be grateful girls and boys, we only pay the red-dot retail price. When the IMF rules the world the real price will be the full bar. They are just practicing for when they are One World Government and can solve congestion, productivity, car accidents and stop storms with taxes!
Imagine how many man-hours this took?
page 14, IMF
I found it so hard to believe they did include road congestion and accidents, I will just include a few passages showing the intricate, vainglorious detail:
Estimating Average Delays from Road Congestion
Average delays are then multiplied by: (i) the relationship between marginal and average delays, which is estimated to be 400 percent (based on a review of the literature); (ii) vehicle occupancy (averaging over cars and buses); (iii) people’s value of travel time (VOT) which is assumed to be 60 percent of the nationwide average market wage in 2022;25 (iv) fuel economy (to express costs per liter rather than per km); and (v) the portion of the fuel demand elasticity that comes from reduced driving (and therefore affects congestion) versus the portion that comes from improved fuel economy/shifting to EVs (that does not affect congestion).26
And wear and tear on the road too:
Externalities from wear and tear on the road network imposed by high axle-weight vehicles are based on highway maintenance expenditures by country (from IRF 2022 and OECD 2023) per unit of road diesel fuel use, an assumption that half of the expenditures are attributed to vehicle use as opposed to other factors (weather and natural deterioration) and scaled by the driving portion of the fuel price elasticity.
Make these people beg directly to the voters for their salaries. It would end this nonsense in a minute…
The poor suffering Blob experts are losing the information war
They can’t seem to get a break, even with all the Governments, bankers, media, universities and the United Nations to help them.
If only they had truth on their side, they could just explain it, but since they don’t — the next best thing is publishing concocted studies demonizing the truth-tellers as conspiracy theorists, and blaming profiteering Big-tech. Free speech is so dangerous, they warn, that “Elon Musk-owned X lacked fact-checks or Community Notes on 99% of the posts”. Ninety nine percent! Clearly, The Blob wants warnings and labels on every single damn tweet. No moment in the public town square can be left unguarded.
We can’t have adults thinking for themselves! And that’s the thing isn’t it, there is something profoundly condescending and undemocratic about those who believe adults can’t be trusted to have conversations that no one corrects, live, one tweet at a time. The incredible unbridled smuggery of the Blobocrats is there for all to see, (as is the desperation) yet so rarely mocked, tarred and feathered as required.
But it’s true, climate misinformation (put out by Professors) puts lives at risk — right now people are dying because they can’t afford air conditioning or heating. Climate sorcerers at universities took public money and told them the “science was settled” and they needed to redirect jet-streams with solar panels and windmills. It was a wanton electro-weather experiment that pushed the price of electricity up.
Censorship is the real killer
Climate misinformation can always be fixed if the skeptics are not censored
Major social media platforms are enabling and profiting from misinformation around extreme weather events, endangering lives and impeding emergency response efforts, a research group said Tuesday.
The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—which analyzed 100 viral posts on each of three leading platforms during recent natural disasters including deadly Texas floods—highlights how their algorithms amplify conspiracy theorists while sidelining life-saving information.
Just name-calling:
“The influence of high-profile conspiracy theorists during climate disasters is drowning out emergency response efforts,” the report said, adding that the trend was “putting lives at risk.”
The crime of writing something un-fact-checked!
Nearly all of the analyzed posts on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram lacked fact-checks or Community Notes, a crowd-sourced verification system increasingly being adopted as an alternative to professional fact-checkers, the report said.
DeSmog are now “reporters on climate misinformation” (and prophets too):
Following natural disasters, misinformation tends to surge across social media—fueled by accounts from across the political spectrum—as many platforms scale back content moderation and reduce reliance on human fact-checkers, often accused by conservative advocates of a liberal bias.
“Climate disinformation costs lives,” said Sam Bright of DeSmog, which reports on climate misinformation campaigns.
“As extreme weather events become more and more frequent, these falsehoods will only get more dangerous.”
Converting power stations to global air conditioners costs a trillion or two, and the price is not just money, but blood, sweat and tears.
Mortality increases in rooms that are too cold or too hot, and financial stress increases death rates. For example…
Cumulative hazards for mortality across each level of financial strain are shown. The light blue line indicates severe financial strain, or those who reported not having enough monthly income to make ends meet. The orange line indicates moderate financial strain, or those who reported having just enough to make ends meet. The dark blue line indicates those with no financial strain, or those who had more than enough money to make ends meet.
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