A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues
“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.” —Albert Einstein
CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:
Geologic evidence shows that Earth’s climate has been in a constant state of flux for more than 4 billion years. Nothing we do can stop that. Much of current climate and energy policy is based upon the erroneous assumption that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which make up just 0.1% of total greenhouse gases, are responsible for “dangerous” global warming/climate change. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions have no significant effect on global temperature/climate. All efforts to reduce emissions are futile with regard to climate change, but such efforts will impose massive economic harm to Western Nations. The “climate crisis” is a scam. U.N officials have admitted that their climate policy is about money and power and destroying capitalism, not about climate.
For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:
A Review of the state of Climate Science
The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate
A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View
Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review
The High Cost of Electricity from Wind and Solar Generation
The “Social Cost of Carbon” Scam Revisited
ATMOSPHERIC CO2: a boon for the biosphere
Carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth
Impact of the Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to drop it
New study shows that carbon dioxide is responsible for only seven percent of the greenhouse effect
Six Issues the Promoters of the Green New Deal Have Overlooked
“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.” —Thomas Jefferson (1822)
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”- Sir Isaac Newton
CLIMATE NEWS
New Surface Stations Report Released – It’s ‘worse than we thought’
by Anthony Watts
A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable.” The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standard, and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.(Read more) (Read full study, 62 pages)☼
New Book: The Truth About Energy, Global Warming, and Climate Change: Exposing Climate Lies in an Age of Disinformation
Since 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has led the scientific effort to document and develop a policy advancing the argument that anthropogenic CO2 emissions resulting from burning hydrocarbon fuels are causing a climate change disaster of unprecedented proportions.
In this book, Jerome R. Corsi exposes the political, scientific, and economic reasons for concluding the IPCC is an advocacy creation of the United Nations that masquerades as a scientific research community to push climate hysteria for globalist political purposes. Drawing extensively on scholarly published peer-reviewed literature in the fields of climate science, geology, astronomy, energy physics, and statistical methodologies, Dr. Corsi reframes the global warming argument from the realm of politics to the sphere of science where the discussion properly belongs.
Corsi explains how IPCC scientists have resorted to using fraudulent research methodologies to rig Earth temperature data to falsely claim that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused unprecedented global warming and catastrophic climate change in a pattern that became evident in the late 1990s. (Read more) ☼
Climate Spending in Inflation Reduction Act
by John Cochrane
We’re going to spend an additional $250 billion or so on climate policies in the humorously titled “inflation reduction act.” OK, how much carbon will that remove, on net, all things included, how much will that lower the temperature and when, how much and when will it quiet the rise of the oceans? Our contributor Bjorn Lomborg looked at the Rhodium Group estimate for CO2 emissions reductions from Schumer-Manchin policies. He then plugged them into the United Nations climate model to measure the impact on global temperature by 2100. He finds the bill will reduce the estimated global temperature rise at the end of this century by all of 0.028 degrees Fahrenheit in the optimistic case. In the pessimistic case, the temperature difference will be 0.0009 degrees Fahrenheit. (Read more) ☼
Climatologists Embarrassed: Increase In Global CO2 Levels Accompanied By Arctic Sea Ice Growth!
By P Gosselin
The CO2 content of the Earth’s global atmosphere has steadily increased from about 380 ppm in 2009 to more than 420 ppm annually by 2022, leading to the further greening of the Earth. The increase in global CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere has been accompanied by growth in Arctic sea ice areas and strong growth in Greenland ice masses this year. (Read more) ☼
Since Oct 2014 Humans Emit 230+ Billion Tonnes of CO2 Emissions But Atmosphere Temps Do Not Increase (see report and graphs) ☼
More New Studies Affirm Rising CO2 Leads To Land Surface Cooling By Driving Earth’s Greening Trends
By Kenneth Richard
Earlier this year we highlighted a new study indicating the rising greening trends in the last four decades can be attributed to the change in precipitation patterns and “the physiological impact of rising CO2.” Greening-induced increases in evapotranspiration lead, in turn, to an increase in the global cloud cover. Increases in cloud cover reduce incoming solar radiation. A decline in incoming solar radiation cools the surface. (Read more) ☼
Drought in Western and Central Europe
by Roger Pielke Jr.
Europe is in the midst of what has been called the worst drought in 500 years. However, In Western and Central Europe — basically Atlantic France all the way to Moscow, north of the Mediterranean region and south of the North Sea region — the IPCC and the underlying peer reviewed research on which it assesses has concluded that drought has not increased and, logically, that increased drought cannot be attributed to human-caused climate change. (Read more) ☼
Failed Climate Predictions
The Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting on August 15, 2022 featured a talk by Dr. Willie Soon on all the nonsense about climate. Soon’s talk, presented in a video (1 hour, 4 minutes), is both amusing and informative. [watch video ] Soon’s discussion of the science begins at 23:19 point of the video. Dr. Soon and others have a new website called Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES) ☼
See also: Corruption of Climate Science Supported by Flawed Models (link) ☼
Climate activists embrace extreme tactics, violence as deadline to ‘save the planet’ draws near
by Thomas Catenacci, Fox News
Climate change activists in the U.S. and across the world are ramping up their actions in what they say is an attempt to save the planet.
In recent months, far-left activists have glued themselves to famous paintings, disrupted new pipeline construction, scaled buildings, blocked rush-hour traffic, lit themselves on fire, threatened to disrupt the Congressional Baseball Game and slashed tires of random sport utility vehicles (SUV) in cities around the world.
The activists have argued that world governments have failed citizens by not acting aggressively enough to enact policies curbing warming. (Read more) ☼
Climate hypocrisy: Leonardo DiCaprio traveled on gas-guzzling private jets, yachts while funding climate nuisance lawsuits. (Read more) ☼
ENERGY NEWS
What would global decarbonization actually cost? Part 1
by Robert Lyman, Dr. Jay Lehr
Looking back less than 200 years, we had a decarbonized society with no coal fired power plants, no natural gas power plants, and the Beverly Hillbillies had not yet discovered oil. It’s easy to see how civilization has benefited from more than 250 leading-edge, hydrocarbon processing licensed refining technologies used by the more than 700 refineries worldwide that service the demands of the eight billion people living on earth with more than 6,000 products made from the oil derivatives manufactured out of raw crude oil at refineries. None of these products were available to society before 1900. (Read more) (Read part 2)☼
See also: Analysis: 41 Inconvenient Truths on the “New Energy Economy”
Democrats’ New Climate & Green Energy Legislation Has Zilch Impact On Climate Change, Per The UN’s Science
from C3Headlines
Biden and the Democrats’ newest legislation is chockful of handouts for their green energy cronies donors that will have a “significant” impact on global warming, or so say the Democrats.
But when this legislation is analyzed by experts, using the UN’s own climate models, the CO2 emission reductions will only – in a best case scenario – reduce total global temperatures an immeasurable 0.0002°C by the year 2100; and, the more likely worst case scenario will reduce global temps by a ludicrously small amount – 0.000006°C. (Read more) ☼
The “Energy Reduction Act”
Nate Jackson, Patriot Post
The Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act: The chief beneficiaries of your hard-earned tax dollars will be solar, wind, batteries, biofuels, hydrogen, carbon capture, and the like. It turns out that $370 billion will buy a lot of tax credits for Democrat special interests and Chinese communists, all at the expense of the American people and with virtually no change to global temperatures. (Read more) ☼
About the Newly Approved Nuclear Microreactor
by Anthony Watts
While greens are clamoring for more unreliable wind and solar, nuclear is about to make a big leap forward with the recent Pentagon approval of the first microreactor.
Microreactors are factory-built, plug-and-play reactors.
They can be used to power military bases, disaster recovery efforts or remote locations where traditional infrastructure doesn’t exist. These mini reactors can provide between 1-20 megawatts of thermal energy used directly as heat or converted to electric power. They fit on the back of a semi-truck and will not require a large number of people to operate them. Microreactors can integrate seamlessly into distributed grids to complement renewable power and are expected to run continuously for about 10 years without refueling. Once the core is spent, they can be exchanged for a new one. (Read more) ☼
5 ways Biden and his team can bring down energy prices and help struggling Americans
By Karen Kerrigan FOXBusiness
1. The U.S. should produce as much energy as we can at home.
2. The administration should avoid targeting energy companies with new tax plans.
3. The administration should support infrastructure projects such as pipelines that help move energy supplies to market faster and safer.
4. The president should lean into America’s vast supplies of natural gas by fast-tracking projects that can help meet customer demand.
5. We should take energy security into our own hands.
(Read more) ☼
An Inconvenient Truth: ESG Is Fueling Inflation Woes
by Gabriella Hoffman
Inflation has emerged as the top issue for most Americans ahead of the midterm elections. Rising labor costs, energy prices, and interest rates are increasingly adding to inflationary woes.
And much to the Biden administration’s chagrin, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is the largest driver of inflation. Additionally, Democrats refuse to admit their push for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), especially in energy policy, in both the public and private sectors is also a major problem. As more financial leaders scrutinize so-called sustainable investing, there’s ample evidence suggesting ESG exacerbated the 9.1% increase in the consumer price index. Of the three ESG prongs, the “E” factor?—which accounts for environmental stewardship and natural resources development in business practices—is primarily contributing to inflation. (Read more) ☼
Aluminum Mill Producing 20% of US Supply Can’t Afford Their Electric Bill – This is Biden’s Energy Crisis
by Jack Davis, The Western Journal
Century Aluminum has seen their electric bill triple in the past few months. Alcoa and two steel plants are facing the same problem. (Read more) ☼
Ethanol and Biodiesel: Few Benefits, Many Problems
by Linnea Lueken
Accounting for its effects on fuel economy, air quality, and food prices, biofuels likely produce net harms on balance. Ethanol and biodiesel are biofuels made from agricultural products.
Ethanol has a lower energy density than gasoline, which means vehicles get fewer miles per gallon. Per unit of equivalent energy, ethanol produces more carbon dioxide than normal gasoline. Ethanol fuels produce more nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other air pollutants, which contribute to worsening air pollution, especially in summer months. (download full report) ☼
China’s coal-fired power emissions dominate
By Donn Dears
The Biden administration and its allies are hell-bent on eliminating America’s CO2 emissions, no matter the consequences, because of a perceived climate threat. A few examples include:
Coal-fired power plants are being closed and rules are in place preventing the building of new High Energy Low Emission (HELE) coal-fired plants.
Pipelines have been shut down and new pipelines cancelled.
Leasing for oil production has been slowed and huge areas of the United States have been placed off limits for oil production.
Attempts are in the works to use ozone restrictions to prevent fracking.
These actions are weakening the United States and harming Americans.
Meanwhile, China, the country that is the greatest threat to the United States, is proceeding with its economic development without concern for CO2 emissions, in-spite of rhetoric to the contrary. (Read more) ☼
Petroleum and natural gas provide more than just energy. More than 6,000 products are made from petroleum. See some of them here. ☼
Charging Electric Cars Like “Spilling Liters Of Petrol”…(Hidden) Losses During Charging Are Huge
by P Gosselin
“Hidden gas guzzlers”…The wonders of electric cars are turning out to be pie-in-the-sky fantasies. Massive energy losses from generation, to transmission, to charging and during battery storage are turning electric mobility into a cost nightmare. (Read more) ☼
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Carbon Capture Pipelines = Environmental Idiocracy!
by Tom Deweese
In Iowa, along with North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska, the push is on to enforce a plan to capture CO2 and bury it in the ground. Of course, the excuse is to protect the earth from Climate Change! Here’s the scheme. Thousands of acres of privately-owned, food-producing Midwest Corn Belt farmland are targeted for a new 1300-mile long-pipeline. But NOT a pipeline to bring us desperately needed fuel oil.
Two main forces are pushing these Carbon Dioxide Pipelines. They are private companies named Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 Ventures. These private companies have already sent out letters to farmers across Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Explaining the project, they are saying, “Navigator is proposing to build a large scale carbon capture pipeline system spanning more than 1300 miles across five states in the Midwest…” “The pipeline system… will capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from local facilities before these emissions reach the atmosphere and transport the CO2 safely via pipeline to a permanent and secure underground sequestration site in Illinois.” The letter goes on to explain that “the pipeline will materially reduce the participant’s carbon footprint and further the global goal of carbon neutrality.”
These are private companies. They are not public utilities. Yet, their letter to property owners contains this threat. “We intend to file a petition with the Iowa Utilities Board for permission to build the pipeline.” It goes on to say, “Our goal is to reach voluntary agreements with all landowners along the Project route, though if we are unable to do so, we may need to request the right of eminent domain (condemnation) from the Board.” So, the message is clear to property owners… be real nice and give up your land voluntarily, or we will just take it! (Read more)
See also: Carbon Capture Didn’t Make Sense 12 Years Ago And It Doesn’t Make Sense Now ☼
Banning Modern Agriculture and High Crop Yields?
Biden EPA policies will raise prices and harm crops and environment, in name of saving species
by Paul Driessen
In just seven decades, America’s conventional (non-organic) farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – while using steadily less water, fuel, fertilizer and pesticides – feeding millions more people. Among the many reasons for this miracle is their ability to control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from this vital food, animal feed and fuel (ethanol) crop.
Long-lasting herbicides don’t just control weeds. They also promote no-till farming, which helps farmers save costly tractor fuel and avoid breaking up soils – thereby reducing erosion, retaining soil moisture, safeguarding soil organisms, and locking carbon dioxide in the soil (reducing risks of “dangerous manmade climate change,” some say).
In the United States, the second most widely used herbicide after glyphosate (Roundup) is atrazine, which is critical to controlling invasive and hard-to-kill weeds impervious to other herbicides. Atrazine is used on 65 million acres of corn, sorghum and sugarcane. That’s equivalent to Colorado or Oregon, on croplands scattered across a dozen Midwestern states. It’s also used on millions of acres of golf courses, lawns and highway medians nationwide.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has periodically reviewed atrazine science – which now comprises more than 7,000 studies over the past 60 years. It has found the herbicide is safe for people, animals and the environment.
But that hasn’t stopped the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and other groups from campaigning to have atrazine banned outright or regulated into oblivion. (Read more) ☼
Great Barrier Reef Defies Climate “Science” and Pundits
By Anthony Watts
Ten years ago, we were told about the “Great Reef Catastrophe” and how the reef would be almost gone today. Since 1986, Australia has measured the reef every year. In 2022, two-thirds of the reef has more coral than ever before. (Read more) ☼
POLITICS & THE STATE OF THE UNION
Do we have an epidemic of Donkey Pox?
“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” —James Madison (1792)
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to
operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to
detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error
undetected will flourish and subvert.” – J Robert Oppenheimer.
‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Is Euphemism for Big Government Socialism, Higher Prices
The Daily Signal
In the midst of a recession, with inflation eating away an average of $6,800 in purchasing power from the incomes of families with two workers, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would impose tax increases, manipulative federal subsidies, and price controls on every American family. The bill would deepen the growing recession, continue to depress household incomes, and will continue to increase prices. Further, the bill would increase spending on crony corporatist subsidies and wealth redistribution by roughly $510 billion over the next decade. However, the true cost would be nearly $200 billion higher after accounting for budget gimmicks. (Read more) ☼ A better name for this legislation would be “the Inflation Acceleration Act.” See some of the spending boondoggles here. ☼
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Biden-Manchin climate: ‘Mother Earth gets angry from time to time, & this legislation will help us address all of that’ (Source) ☼
See also:
Inflation Reduction Act is ‘deceptive marketing,’ will hurt struggling Americans, economist says
Manchin-Schumer spending bill could eliminate 30,000 jobs, new analysis shows
Inflation Reduction Act—or Radical Green New Deal?
Harvard Study Obliterates Claims of January 6 “Insurrection”
by Bob Adelmann
Three scholars from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School sought answers to why protesters participated in the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. If they were looking for proof that there was an organized insurrection — defined as “the act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority … specifically, the armed resistance of a number of persons to the power of the state” — they were greatly disappointed.
The best they could come up with was that most protesters were there to support their president, Donald Trump, and his claims of election fraud. Insurrection was a distant third on the list, at less than eight percent. (Read more) ☼
Billionaire-funded eco group quietly taking farmland out of production in rural America
by Thomas Catenacci, Fox News
The American Prairie (AP), a conservation project in Montana, has quietly scooped up more than 450,000 acres of land with the help of its billionaire donors and the federal government.
The little-known project aims to create the largest “fully functioning ecosystem” in the continental U.S. by stitching together about 3.2 million acres of private and public lands, according to the American Prairie Foundation. (Read more) ☼
Judge reinstates Obama-era ban on coal sales from federal land
Almost half the nation’s annual coal production is mined by private companies from leases on federal land. (Read more) ☼
The Demise of American Citizenship
by Steve McCann
From 1860 to 2000, in the largest legal migration in human history, over 61 million immigrants arrived in the United States. They were not only escaping poverty and oppression, but they were eager to assimilate and attain the most sought-after national status in the world: American citizenship. Today in the 21st century, American citizenship and its one-of-a-kind written contract with the central government, the Constitution with its Bill of Rights, is under relentless assault by the nation’s governing establishment and teetering on the edge of meaninglessness.
No nation can maintain its status as a nation without secure and identifiable borders. Citizenship means nothing if untold millions of illegal immigrants openly defy the laws without consequence. It is estimated that 22 million illegals resided in the United States as of 2018. Responding to an explicit invitation from the Biden administration, another 2+ million have walked unchallenged across the border in the past 18 months.
These so-called undocumented immigrants are becoming legally indistinguishable from citizens as they openly reside in 500 sanctuary jurisdictions, receive welfare, education and medical care, are granted drivers licenses, and given tuition breaks at public universities as they, not legal immigrants or American citizens, are exempt from federal immigration, health and travel laws. (Read more) ☼
Paul Krugman, Accidental Propagandist
by Barney Brenner, Townhall
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is a prolific writer, having authored or edited 27 books and published myriad other pieces. But one need read just a few words from almost any of his Times columns to find fiction which even college-age conservatives will know is nonsense. And New York Times readers, astonishingly, accept it all as gospel. (Read more) ☼
Green Fascists Are Destroying the World
by Edward Ring, American Greatness
Earlier this summer, the CO2 Coalition was banished from LinkedIn. The CO2 Coalition, with only three full-time employees and an annual budget of under $1 million, had committed the unpardonable sin of sharing contrarian perspectives on climate science. Its work, produced by a network of volunteers that includes dozens of distinguished scientists, offers indispensable balance on a topic that requires honest debate now more than ever. Among the many comments that followed LinkedIn’s decision, the mentality of the climate crisis mob came through loud and clear. If “the science is settled,” then any contrary perspective is dangerous and must be silenced. This is not the environmentalism of previous generations, and this new zealotry does not negate or diminish the common sense concern for the environment that most reasonable people share. But this new breed of intolerant, fanatical environmentalism, manifested in the movement to avert a “climate crisis,” is perhaps the most virulent and dangerous expression of fascism in America today. (Read more) ☼
Census Bureau Admits Overcounting 7 Blue States, Just 1 Red State
by Hans von Spakovsky
In a shocking report, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that it overcounted the populations of eight states and undercounted the populations of six states in the 2020 census.
All but one of the states overcounted is a blue state, and all but one of the undercounted states is red. Those costly errors will distort congressional representation and the Electoral College. It means that when the Census Bureau reapportioned the House of Representatives, Florida was cheated out of two additional seats it should have gotten; Texas missed out on another seat; Minnesota and Rhode Island each kept a representative they shouldn’t have; and Colorado was awarded a new member of the House it didn’t deserve. These harmful errors also mean billions in federal funds will be misallocated. (Read more) ☼
Interesting Editorials:
The Federal Government Refuses to Listen
Apocalyptic versus post-apocalyptic climate politics by Dr. Judith Curry
By permitting economic malaise, the Biden administration deliberately seeks to punish the independent spirit of American freedom in order to subjugate it to its federal vision of regulatory control.
Propaganda and Disinformation in the Information Age
Many in the U.S. media are using old Soviet tactics to influence American policymakers and voters.
Whoops! Department of Education Makes $300 Billion Accounting Mistake on Student Loans ☼
Parting thoughts:
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” -James Madison (1794)
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. – Thomas Jefferson
END
wryheat 