A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues
Consequences of the climate scam:
There is no “climate crisis.” But there is an international political scam regarding climate and energy. The scam is about to take its toll. This winter many places in Europe and some places in the U.S. will experience some unpleasant consequences of this scam because energy policy is producing a scarcity of energy to heat homes and generate electricity.
The political scheme is to stop generation of electricity using “fossil” fuels and turn instead to “renewable” energy such as wind and solar generation. This option is turning out to be neither “greener” nor cleaner than the use of fossil fuels. Europeans are experiencing skyrocketing costs for electricity as they replace reliable fossil fuel electrical generation with wind and solar which cannot respond to supply and demand.
Part of the reason wind and solar generation is not “green” is that it takes up vast areas of land, wreaking havoc with agriculture and destroying wildlife habitat and chopping up birds and bats.
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute:
If all electricity were to be supplied by solar generation it would require 11,674 solar farms with a total footprint of 525,312 square miles.
If all electricity were to be supplied by wind generation, it would require 6,954 wind farms with a total footprint of 1,808,166 square miles.
If all electricity was supplied by nuclear generation, it would require 3,553 nuclear stations with a total footprint of 4,619 square miles. (Source)
Here is what it would look like:
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats. Newer studies reveal that these appalling estimates are frightfully low and based on misleading or even fraudulent data. The horrific reality is that in the United States alone, “eco-friendly” wind turbines kill an estimated 13 million to 39 million birds and bats every year. See also: Avian mortality from solar farms , and Health Hazards of Wind Turbines
And by the way: $3.8 Trillion of Investment in Renewables Moved Fossil Fuels from 82% to 81% of Overall Energy Consumption’ in 10 Years (link to story) ☼
“All wind and solar power on an electric grid must be backed up with an equal or greater amount of fossil fuel power running on standby 100% of the time in order to maintain grid equilibrium when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.” – Dr. Jay Lehr
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly — and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.” —Thomas Sowell
MORE ON ENERGY
HOW MUCH ENERGY WILL THE WORLD NEED? (Watch this video) ☼
Biden’s Green Policies Are Seriously Hurting Domestic Oil Production
by Jack McEvoy
Summary: Besides canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, the Biden administration has produced regulations that hurt refineries and deny or delay leasing and drilling permits. Biden’s green policies have created a hostile environment for investment in oil and gas, which has hurt production. (Read more) ☼.
Producing Energy Transition Metals: Charted
Metals are the backbone of clean energy infrastructure and technologies, but the mining and processing of energy transition metals also generates significant carbon emissions. (See report) ☼
The Real “Existential Threat” To People and Planet
by Don Ritter, PhD.
It’s ironic. The very Biden Administration and European Government policies that are supposed to address the asserted “existential threat” of climate change are themselves the true existential threat to modern civilization. “Existential” issues like war, peace, economic vitality, jobs and living standards all have the same critical driving force: energy – all forms of energy. Energy to transport people and goods, to run farms and provide food, to heat and cool homes, to power manufacturing, and to fuel ships, planes and vehicles for our military. Natural gas is essential for fertilizers to feed a hungry world. Oil and natural gas are the building blocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fibers, paint and thousands of other products.
Today, these vital, almost-taken-for-granted benefits come almost entirely from oil, gas and coal. Those who have it will be powerful; those who don’t will not. China and Russia know this well.
Europe made a deal with the devil by handing its energy supply to Vladimir Putin and energy-rich Russia – while crippling its own energy future with anti-fossil-fuel climate change policies. Europe closed its coal, gas and nuclear power plants, while building expensive, unreliable, weather-dependent solar and wind facilities. Putin’s war on Ukraine couldn’t have happened without his dominance over gas, oil and coal supplies to Europe.
And where is the United States government on energy reality? It’s copying Europe, with vast green energy subsidies and an unrelenting “whole of government” regulatory war on fossil fuels.
America should be telling an energy-insecure world, “We will do everything in our power to increase the supply of energy,” in an-all-of-the-above approach: not only fossil fuels and renewables, but nuclear, and hydroelectric power when feasible. Instead, we beg hostile dictatorships – that pay no attention to human rights or ecological values – to increase their production, because we refuse to increase ours. (Read more) ☼
Biden’s energy policies costing U.S. economy $100 billion a year: study
by Aaron Kliegman
President Biden and senior officials in his administration have repeatedly said this year that the U.S. is near “record levels” of domestic oil and gas production. According to a new study, however, that’s not exactly the case. Biden administration’s policies have caused the U.S. to produce significantly less oil and gas during Biden’s presidency than it would have during a second term for former President Trump — to the detriment of the national economy.
“The U.S. would be producing between 2 and 3 million more barrels of oil a day and between 20 and 25 more billion cubic feet of natural gas under the Trump policies. This translates into an economic loss — or tax on the American economy — of roughly $100 billion a year. (Read more) ☼
Biden’s Climate Policies Leaving Americans Out In The Cold
Winter is coming, and Americans may get a cold shock when they get their heating bills, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that deserves more attention. Bundle up and set your thermostat at 68 degrees, or prepare to pay a bundle. Average U.S. household spending will increase for all heating fuels this winter (October through March), including natural gas (28%), heating oil (27%), electricity (10%), and propane (5%), the EIA forecasts. (Read more) ☼
Ill-advised ‘net-zero’ emissions policies are netting worldwide pain
by Bjorn Lomborg
The world is waking up to the fact that the climate policy goal of achieving “net-zero” CO2 emissions brings crippling economic pain. Fossil fuel prices shot up by 26 per cent across industrialized economies last year and will rise globally by another 50 per cent this year. Politicians blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the long-term trend stems mostly from governments demonizing fossil fuels while their societies remain dependent on them. Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, global investment in fossil fuels has halved, inevitably driving up prices.
As fossil fuel prices climb, activists believe people will shift painlessly to renewable energy sources. But they’ve made a major miscalculation: renewables are far from ready to power the world. Solar and wind can only work with massive amounts of backup power, mostly fossil fuels, to keep the world running when the wind dies down, the sky clouds over, or night falls. Moreover, renewables mostly generate electricity, which is just one-fifth of our total energy use — the vast majority is non-electric like transport, industrial processes and heat. (Read more) ☼
A Comprehensive Roundup Of Official Energy Madness
by Francis Menton
At this website, I try to give readers a steady flow of the latest instances of official energy madness, the ongoing efforts of our politicians, bureaucrats, academics and journalists to undermine and destroy the energy infrastructure that is the basis for our prosperity and our comfortable lives. But if you just read these examples one by one, however outrageous they may be individually, you can lose track of the overall picture. In the big picture, our government, aided and abetted by academics and journalists, is conducting a full scale war on the energy sector of the economy. (Read more) ☼ Read also: “Energy Inflation Was By Design.” and Placing The Blame For Europe’s Energy And Economic Crisis ☼
Without Any Demonstration Project Or Feasibility Study
by Francis Menton
Essentially the entire developed part of the world is currently embarked on a crash program to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy system of the economy. The program has two main parts: first the suppression of the production and distribution of fossil fuels; and second the construction of large numbers of wind and solar generation facilities to replace them. Both parts of the program are currently underway simultaneously in all advanced countries, as a matter of what we are told is the highest moral urgency.
But will the coming fossil-fuel-free system actually work to provide the energy we need to run our modern economies? There are very substantial reasons to think that big problems are inevitable, the main one being that wind and solar generators don’t produce anything most of the time, and can’t be ramped up on demand at a time of need.
So surely, there must be multiple small to medium-scale demonstration projects around the world showing exactly how this fossil-fuel-free future system can be accomplished, and how much it will cost.
Actually, and incredibly, no. There is no such thing anywhere in the world as a functioning demonstration project that provides full energy to an economy of any size without reliance on fossil fuels, and using only carbon-emissions-free sources like wind, solar, hydro and/or storage. There isn’t even a demonstration project that supplies just the electricity sector of any economy (typically about 25-35% of final energy usage) with the energy it needs free of fossil fuels. Indeed, there isn’t anything remotely close.; (Read more) ☼
Native American tribes dependent on fossil fuel resources rip Biden admin for double standard
by Thomas Catenacci, Fox News
Native American tribes that rely on fossil fuel production across the nation reiterated their demand that the Biden administration allow them to develop the resources on their lands.
Tribal leaders and energy experts …criticized efforts to restrict oil, gas and coal production even as those resources sustain thousands of Native Americans’s way of life. The Department of the Interior has repeatedly expressed support for boosting tribal sovereignty for Indigenous tribes, but has also pursued a climate agenda limiting fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters.
Roughly 20% of the nation’s total oil and natural gas reserves, 30% of domestic coal reserves west of the Mississippi River and additional natural minerals — altogether worth about $1.5 trillion — are on Native American lands, according to a 2014 study from think tank Property and Environment Research Center (PERC).
However, about 86% of Indigenous land with energy and mineral resource potential remain undeveloped and just 3% of domestic oil production comes from tribal land. (Read more) ☼
Running the World into the Ground
By Ed Brodow
The actions of the people who are in charge of governments are supposed to benefit the countries they serve — in theory, at least. In practice, the opposite is true. In the West, our leaders are destroying everything they can get their hands on. First, human beings are incapable of controlling the climate, which operates in cycles and always has since the planet was created. Second, our economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and — contrary to the lies fed by the administration — fossil fuel alternatives do not exist, and will not exist in the foreseeable future.
(Read more) ☼
Connecting “Energy Inflation” With “Climate Extremism”
by Kevin Mooney
In the approaching 2022 midterm elections, American voters will have the opportunity to decide whether oil industry executives are really to blame for high energy prices—or if it’s instead the political class that needs a shakeup.
In a new report for Real Clear Energy, Joseph Toomey, a career-management consultant, makes a persuasive case that the energy inflation now victimizing American consumers and taxpayers is the result of deliberate public-policy choices made here at home. Even as President Biden vilifies energy companies, the evidence is overwhelming that the current regime in Washington is beholden to climate extremism at the expense of affordable energy, Toomey argues. (Read more) ☼
Bloomberg and NewsBusters Show ESG Is Neither Virtuous Nor Profitable
by Linnea Lueken
A recent Bloomberg article, covered by NewsBusters, shows the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment trend that has gained popularity in the business world in the last few years is not a profitable bet for investors, nor will it guarantee any of the environmental promises made. The Bloomberg analysis shows that the “woke” ESG movement is a scam. (Read more) ☼
Bjorn Lomborg: Electric Car Subsidies Are a Bad Investment
Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. California and many countries, including the U.K., Germany, and Japan, will even prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade or two. But if electric cars are really so good, why do we need to ban the alternatives? And why do we need to subsidize electric cars to the tune of $30 billion per year?
Ultimately, the reason electric cars are championed is because of their promised emission reductions. Yet the IEA estimates that even if the whole world achieves all of its ambitious stated electric vehicle targets by 2030, the additional saved CO2 emissions over this decade will be 235 million tons. The standard climate model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals that this will reduce global temperatures by only 0.0002°F by 2100. (Read more) ☼
ENVIRONMENT
The Great Recycling Fraud
From The Daily Skirmish’ Chris Wright
NPR accidentally told the truth it’s a doozy:
The vast majority of plastic that people put into recycling bins is headed to landfills, or worse…. the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%….. Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together…. plastic trash has few markets — a reality the public has not wanted to hear…. “It’s not going to a recycling facility and being recycled. It’s going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can’t do anything with that material….” That message has been difficult for the public to absorb with so many different bins in public spaces, and their own communities telling them to put their plastic in recycling containers…. “Politically it’s easier….’ (Read more) ☼
CLIMATE
UN Declares: ‘We own the science’ & ‘the world should know it’ so ‘we partnered with Google’ to ensure only UN climate results appear
by Marc Morano
The United Nations revealed that they “own the science” of climate change and they have manipulated Google search results to suppress any climate view that deviates from UN claims. Melissa Fleming, the Under-Secretary for Global Communications at the United Nations made the remarks at a World Economic Forum ‘Tackling Disinformation’ event titled “Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2022.” Marc Morano comment: “As I wrote in my book, The Great Reset, the public health bureaucracy and the ‘climate community’ have become political lobbying organizations, and they are using ‘The Science’ to support their preferred policies—policies that dovetail with the Great Reset and advance the power of the administrative state.” The UN now joins Anthony ‘I am The Science’ Fauci in claiming ownership of science.” (Source) ☼
7 Theories of Climate Change
by Joseph Bast
“At least seven theories of climate change enjoy some support in the scientific community. With the anthropogenic global warming theory now in disrepute, it is a good time to review the other six …”
This booklet identifies seven theories, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) plus six others that do not claim man-made emissions are a major cause of climate change. Each theory is plausible and sheds light on some aspects of climate change that were hidden or obscured by too great a focus on the AGW theory.
The six alternative theories are:
Bio-thermostat — rising temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere trigger biological and chemical responses that have a cooling effect, like a natural thermostat.
Cloud formation and albedo — changes in the formation and albedo of clouds create negative feedbacks that cancel out all or nearly all of the warming effect of higher levels of CO2.
Human forcings besides greenhouse gases — mankind’s greatest influence on climate is not its greenhouse gas emissions, but its transformation of Earth’s surface by clearing forests, irrigating deserts, and building cities.
Ocean currents — global temperature variations over the past century-and-a- half and particularly the past 30 years were due to the slow-down of the ocean’s Thermohaline Circulation (THC).
Planetary motion — natural gravitational and magnetic oscillations of the solar system induced by the planet’s movement through space drive climate change.
Solar variability — changes in the coronal ejections and magnetic fields of the sun cause changes in cloud formation, ocean currents, and wind that cause climate to change. (Read full report) ☼
Most Of The Pacific Ocean’s Volume Has Undergone Intensifying Cooling Since 1993
by Kenneth Richard
The Pacific Ocean is 5 to 6 km deep. New research indicates the bottom half (2 km to the bottom) of the Pacific has been robustly cooling since 1993. (Read more) ☼
Arctic Sea Ice Refuses to Disappear, despite Ever Rising Arctic Temperatures
The loss of sea ice in the Arctic due to global warming has long been held up by the mainstream media and climate activists as cause for alarm. The ice would be completely gone in summer, they predicted, by 2013, then 2016, then 2030. But the evidence shows that Arctic ice is not cooperating, and in fact its summer extent in 2022 was the same as in 2008. And this stasis has occurred even as Arctic temperatures continue to soar. (Read more) ☼
A New Study Says the Climate Crisis Is ‘Not Evident Yet’
A new peer-reviewed study that assessed climate changes over time and potential “crisis indicators”—such as natural disasters, heat waves, and crop yields. The study ultimately concluded that observations to date show “no clear positive trends of extreme events.” (Read study) ☼
We Are Squandering A Fortune On Climate Fixes Doomed To Fail
by Tom Hafer and Henry I. Miller
The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act is in fact mostly about climate change. In a bill with total funding of about $485 billion, approximately $369 billion is for measures to address global warming, with the lion’s share going to subsidies for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles. Is this an effective use of the money? Will these measures actually produce the desired results? In summary, the climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act are expensive, will produce no meaningful temperature reduction even if implemented globally – and none at all if implemented mostly by the U.S., EU, and a few other industrialized countries. (Read more to see the details) ☼
Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century
from Nature Communications
Abstract
Atlantic hurricanes are a major hazard to life and property, and a topic of intense scientific interest. Historical changes in observing practices limit the utility of century-scale records of Atlantic major hurricane frequency. To evaluate past changes in frequency, we have here developed a homogenization method for Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency over 1851–2019. We find that recorded century-scale increases in Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency, and associated decrease in USA hurricanes strike fraction, are consistent with changes in observing practices and not likely a true climate trend. After homogenization, increases in basin-wide hurricane and major hurricane activity since the 1970s are not part of a century-scale increase, but a recovery from a deep minimum in the 1960s–1980s. We suggest internal (e.g., Atlantic multidecadal) climate variability and aerosol-induced mid-to-late-20th century major hurricane frequency reductions have probably masked century-scale greenhouse-gas warming contributions to North Atlantic major hurricane frequency. (Read full paper) ☼
After Hurricane Ian: No Trend in Florida Landfalls, Global Activity Trending Down
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
With Hurricane Ian (now a tropical storm) exiting the east coast of Florida, there is no shortage of news reports tying this storm to climate change. Even if those claims actually include data to support their case, those data are usually for cherry-picked regions and time periods. If global warming is causing a change in tropical cyclone activity, it should show up in global statistics.
The latest peer-reviewed study (March 2022, here) of the accumulated wind energy in tropical cyclones since 1990 (when we started have sufficient global data) showed a decrease in hurricane activity. There was an increase in Atlantic activity, but this was matched by an even larger decrease in Pacific activity, due to a shift from El Nino to La Nina conditions during that time. So, yes, there is climate change involved in the uptick in Atlantic activity in recent decades. But it’s natural. Looking at just the numbers of global hurricanes since 1980, we see no obvious trends. (Read more) ☼
Top Climate Scientist Slams Climate Alarm
by Cap Allon
Warming by carbon dioxide is logarithmic due to ‘saturation’ within the infrared spectrum, and any future doubling of the gas in the atmosphere will be associated with the same warming of around 1°C.
This is considered obvious by atmospheric scientist and Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, and hardly controversial — although in today’s politicized environment, where CO2 has been forged into a scary and taxable ‘stick’ to bop the global population over the head with, this thinking does fatally undermine the ‘settled’ science concept of the AGW Party and so is regarded as heresy punishable by censorship and demonetization.
Professor Lindzen notes that the present “absurd ‘scientific’ narrative” leaves us with a quasi-religious movement — atop of all this has been the ”constant Goebellian repetition by the media of climate alarm”.
In a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Lindzen warns that unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, “this is only likely to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO2”, disasters which include the “hobbling” of Western energy systems. (Read more) ☼
New Report Teaches the Media the Difference Between Weather and Climate
By Anthony Watts
One of the most common mistakes made when discussing climate change is claiming that specific weather events are proof of climate change. A recent example is the erroneous claim that Hurricane Ian was made stronger by climate change. The media will often refer to weather and climate interchangeably, even though the two meteorological terms have distinct meanings. Weather is a short time frame phenomenon or event – minutes to days – while climate is a long-term, minimum 30 year, trend.
Weather can be highly variable on an hourly, daily, weekly, or even yearly basis – one day it might be sunny with afternoon thunderstorms and the next it’s cold and snowing. Climate is the observed weather averaged over 30 years for a specific area or region. A 30 year average cannot, “drive” daily weather events. There is no physical mechanism for a statistical average to impact daily weather. The weather for a particular day, by contrast, can be either representative of or unrepresentative of a particular region’s climate for a specific season. Hurricane Ian was representative of the type of weather event that commonly arises in the North Atlantic during hurricane season, and not outside the norm.
The new Climate at a Glance (CAAG) reference page, Weather vs. Climate, clarifies the issue using fully referenced sources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, The World Meteorological Organization, The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the European Space Agency (ESA). (Source) ☼
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. In fact, when there is an apparent correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been shown to follow, not lead, changes in Earth’s temperature. 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. By the way, like all planetary bodies, the earth loses heat through infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases interfere with (block) some of this heat loss. Greenhouse gases don’t warm the Earth, they slow the cooling.
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
Why reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel will have no effect on climate
STATE OF THE UNION
Biden’s destroying the economy. Is it intentional?
By Stephen Moore, Washington Examiner
Here are seven Biden administration steps to undermine an economy and a society from within. They will all sound familiar with the president’s policies since he took office 21 months ago.
1. Dismantle the nation’s energy supply. We get 70% of our energy from fossil fuels. Biden has declared war on American oil and gas, making us more dependent on our enemies for our basic energy needs.
2. Don’t enforce the border. Biden is letting hundreds of thousands of potential criminals, terrorists, welfare recipients, and enemies of the United States into our country through a porous southern border with Mexico. Immigration is good, but it must be orderly and regulated.
3. Devalue the nation’s currency through inflation. Inflation is up nearly 15% since Biden came into office. Inflation is a means to erode the value of a currency.
4. Destroy the nation’s finances by running up multiple trillions of dollars of debt. No president in modern times has so recklessly pushed our nation into debt as rapidly as Biden through his $4 trillion in spending paid for with red ink.
5. Divide rather than unite the nation. Rich versus poor, black versus white, gay versus straight, rural versus urban. Biden promised unity. Instead, he pits groups against each other. This is the identity politics of the Left that is the opposite of “e pluribus unum.”
6. Dumb down and indoctrinate our children with anti-American propaganda in the schools and media. And allowing teacher unions and left-wing activists to take over the curriculum with anti-American propaganda. It is the opposite of nurturing patriotism and love of country.
7. Decriminalize a lot. Let criminals onto the streets. End bail. Empty the prisons. Let minor crimes go unpunished. Biden’s policies favor criminals over victims. It’s a scene out of a Batman movie.
Are these policies intentional or simply completely misguided? I don’t know. But does it matter? Either way, our country is in grave peril. (Source) ☼
America’s Future: The Case for Optimism
by John Anthony
The daily assaults on America’s culture can make it hard to find hope. Attacks on our monetary system, the imprisonment of political dissenters, the DOJ’s vendetta against Trump and anyone pro-America, Soviet style censorship, and the attempted gender modifications of our children seem too much like world control is here.
Yet, every issue we face is the result of a single problem. When we recognize, solve, and attack that, we can restore the nation we love. Let me explain.
Propaganda depends on the nearly unbroken repetition of a narrative that penetrates susceptible groups who repeat it until the lie takes on the illusion of universal truth. The massive energy we see devoted to censorship, bullying, cancelling, and physical force is for the sole purpose of protecting the ‘unbroken repetition.’
When the repetition collapses, the message weakens. When it is broadly recognized as false, the narrative crumbles and the narrators are discredited.
Propagandists fear two forces above all others. 1. Brave people who know and speak the truth, and 2. networks of people who successfully communicate that truth to large swaths of community members.
As you will see the left is losing on both fronts. (This is a long, but interesting article, Read more) ☼
Central Bank Digital Currencies: Potential Financial Catastrophe in Search of a Problem
Peter St. Onge, Daily Signal
The White House released a framework recently on regulation of digital assets that included a call for the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to continue behind-the-scenes efforts to impose a government-run cryptocurrency known as a central bank digital coin.
A central bank digital coin would be one of the most authoritarian—and one of the most reckless—government schemes of the past 50 years. It would gamble with our economy and our financial system, threaten our fundamental liberties, and could, ironically, reduce the dollar’s existing prestige.
What’s a Central Bank Digital Coin?
Such a “coin” is a government-run cryptocurrency whose value is fixed, in this case at $1, copying the “stablecoin” cryptocurrency model and replacing the dollars in your bank and your wallet. A central bank digital coin can either be intermediated, meaning it’s managed through banks, or disintermediated, meaning people effectively park their money at the Federal Reserve. The Fed effectively becomes your bank.
In either case, governments—and hackers—can see all personal information about what you spend, where you spent it, and potentially, why you spent it.
Beyond that built-in surveillance power, central bank digital coins can be easily programmed so bureaucrats can forbid you from buying a given product, or even force you to buy it. Indeed, China has already bragged about the power to dictate all spending in its own central bank digital coin.
Promoters of the concept argue they could reduce transaction costs and promote international use of the dollar. Both are wrong. (Read more) ☼
“Woke” Academia
University of Southern Maine students demand professor be replaced for saying only two sexes exist (link)
Teacher suspended for refusing to follow pronoun policy reinstated after backlash (link)
NYU chem professor says he was fired after students complained class was too hard (link)
Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, is hosting a seminar for only white faculty to help them “practice anti-racism in their daily lives,” according to the university website. (link)
Public School Fires Substitute Teacher for Raising Concerns Over Book Depicting Same-Sex Couples (link)
Biden’s EPA Launches ‘Environmental Justice’ Office
by Jack McEvoy
The Environmental Protection Agency announced it is launching a new environmental justice office to distribute taxpayer dollars to minority communities that the agency claims are disproportionally affected by climate change and pollution.
The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which will employ a Senate-confirmed director and more than 200 staffers, will be in charge of allocating the $3 billion in environmental justice grants mandated by the recent passage of the Democrats’ $370 billion climate spending bill, according to an EPA press release. (Source) ☼
Biden Creates a New and Convenient Special Diplomat
by Katie Pavlich, Townhall
President Joe Biden has created a new “special diplomat” position to represent…plants and animals. Monica Medina is taking on a new role as special envoy for biodiversity and water resources, the State Department announced. She is the wife of White House chief of staff Ron Klain. (Read more) ☼
The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization
by Victor Davis Hanson
We are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions and methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.
Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.
To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature. But…(Read more) ☼
Big Brother: The Biden administration is demanding Amazon censor books they disagree with and Amazon is complying.(link to story) ☼
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.” —H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.’ – Dwight D. Eisenhower noted in his farewell address in 1961
“You never compromise with violence. You never compromise with intimidation. You never compromise with those who want to use it to extinguish freedom and democracy, because if you do then the very things for which you stand are extinguished.” —Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” —James Madison (1794)
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