A monthly review of climate, energy, environmental, and political policy issues
Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel
You may post comments at the end of this post or send them to wryheat@cox.net
Highlights of subjects covered:
State of the climate – summer 2023; There Is No Climate Crisis; The Blunt Truth about Global Warming Models; NOAA data shows the vast majority of state maximum temperatures took place before 1955; The Climate Crisis Frenzy is a Mass Hysteria Movement; Antidote for CO2 Hysteria; EPA’s Proposed Power Plant Regulations are Dangerous and Unscientific; One Simple Energy Question Devastates ‘Net-Zero’ Pipe Dreams; Novavax: The Only Real Covid Vaccine.
CLIMATE ISSUES
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” —John Adams (1770)
“In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.” –Michael Crichton
State of the climate – summer 2023
by Judith Curry, Jim Johnstone, Mark Jelinek
A deep dive into the causes of the unusual weather/climate during 2023. People are blaming fossil-fueled warming and El Nino, and now the Hunga-Tonga eruption and the change in ship fuels. But the real story is more complicated. (Read more of this long post) ☼
“There Is No Climate Crisis”…1600 Scientists Worldwide, Nobel Prize Laureate Sign Declaration
1609 signatories recently signed a declaration that states there is no climate crisis, thus casting doubt over man’s alleged role in climate change and extreme weather. Their doubt is based on data showing that natural factors are very much at play, the warming is slower than predicted, the models are unreliable, that CO2 has great benefits and weather disasters have not increased. The media hysteria and weather hype are not supported by data. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide. (Read more) ☼
The Blunt Truth about Global Warming Models
By Vic Hughes
I may be one of the first scientists in the country to know that predicting long-term temperatures is not possible.
Almost 50 years ago, while in grad school, I had a contract from an Army research lab to use a state-of-the-art models to predict long-term temperatures. I quickly realized that the goal of the project, to forecast accurately the temperature long-term, was impossible because small errors in data inputs could result in huge forecasts errors. Equally important was that errors compounded so quickly that it caused the error ranges to explode. The results were junk. As an example, what good is a temperature forecast with an error range of plus or minus one hundred degrees?
I give university speeches to scientists and tell them: if you ever see some data or forecasts, your first question has to be “what’s the error range?” If you don’t know the error range, the data are almost useless. It’s not coincidental that the Climate Mafia don’t highlight this problem
So what about modern technology solving these problems? These error problems are still true today. It’s not that the long-term temperature forecasts are wrong; it’s that they can’t be right. All global warming modelers know this, or they are incredibly stupid, or they just lie about it for money or power.
When the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made even a pretense of being science-based, they used to admit it. From the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report: “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” (Read more) ☼
Thanks to Government, Maui’s Lahaina Fire Became a Deadly Conflagration
by Connor O’Keeffe, Mises Institute
Though details are still emerging, it’s becoming clear that government failure did much to make this disaster worse—and possibly even started it. While the so-called experts are blaming climate change—and in the process demanding that government grab even more power and authority ostensibly to someday give us better weather—the destructiveness of this fire was the product of an all-powerful and all-incompetent régime. (Read full post) ☼
See also: The Real Cause of the Maui Wildfire Disaster (link) This post explains the unusual weather event (It was not climate change). ☼
NOAA U.S. Average Temperature Anomaly Data January 2002 Through July 2023 – Where’s the Crisis?
(link)
See also: NOAA’s Actual U.S. Maximum Temperatures Data Completely Debunks Climate Emergency [the vast majority of state maximum temperatures took place before 1955] (link) ☼
What NASA and the European Space Agency are admitting but the media are failing to report about our current heat wave
By Thomas Lifson
The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.
So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools [about 38 billion gallons which increased atmospheric water vapor by 13%]. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature. (Read more and see a satellite view of the eruption) ☼
See also:
See also: NOAA’s Actual U.S. Maximum Temperatures Data Completely Debunks Climate Emergency [the vast majority of state maximum temperatures took place before 1955] (link) ☼
What NASA and the European Space Agency are admitting but the media are failing to report about our current heat wave
By Thomas Lifson
The current heat wave is being relentlessly blamed on increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but there is a much more plausible explanation, one that is virtually endorsed by two of the world’s leading scientific organizations. It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have.
So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools [about 38 billion gallons which increased atmospheric water vapor by 13%]. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature. (Read more and see a satellite view of the eruption) ☼
See also: Record Global Temperatures Driven by Hunga-Tonga Volcanic Water Vapor – Visualized (link) ☼
New ‘Nature’ Study Finds Very Little Danger Of Methane Reaching Surface
by Pierre Gosselin
A Nature study finds there’s very little risk that global warming would lead to more methane escaping from the oceans into the atmosphere. Global warming alarmists have often used the scenario of increased methane in the atmosphere accelerating warming and climatic change.
At the bottom of the sea, there are large deposits of naturally occurring methane hydrate. There’s a fear that these ice-like deposits could melt and be released into the atmosphere if the oceans warmed. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. The researchers looked at the concentration and natural radiocarbon content of methane dissolved in the water column from the seafloor to the sea surface at seep fields along the US Atlantic and Pacific margins.
No methane reached the surface. Their measurements revealed no evidence of seep CH4 (methane) reaching surface waters when the water-column depth is greater than 430 + 90 m. The methane often remains in the undersea sediments, dissolves in the ocean, or is converted to carbon dioxide by microbes. (Read more) ☼ See also my blog post: THE GREAT ARCTIC METHANE SCARE, AGAIN. (link) ☼
Reparations For The Climate Scam Hit $300 Trillion And Counting. They Want More
by Flat White
No one is quite sure how much public money has been sequestrated in the name of ‘Climate Change’, except that it totals somewhere in the tens of trillions over the last two decades.
We also know that this money hasn’t bought a single, fractional degree in ‘climate change’.
Global leaders want to set that figure in the hundreds of trillions.
If it turns out that our political leaders, scientific experts, and virtuous global bureaucracies lied about the whole ‘end is nigh’ scenario – can we have our money back?
Plenty of citizens facing down the current economic crisis would like to know when they can expect reparations for the financial harm done to them, their families, and future generations.
(Read more) ☼
Media Fearmonger About Climate Change But Vilify Practical Solutions (link) ☼
Treasury Dept. Hires Climate Czar To Impose Climate And ESG Agenda (link) ☼
IPCC’s New Chairman Rebukes Climate Hysteria And Misleading Claims
by Dr. Benny Peiser
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has welcomed the rebuke of exaggerated climate hype and alarm by the IPCC’s new chairman, Professor Jim Skea. In interviews with German news media over the weekend the new head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was wrong and misleading for climate activists to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity. (Read more) ☼
OilPrice.com Contributor Misses the UHI Influence on Phoenix Warming Trend
by Linnea Lueken
A recent article posted at Oilprice.com claims that recent warming trends in Phoenix, Arizona are due primarily to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This is false. Data show that the high levels of warming, especially at night and as measured at an airport, are primarily due to urbanization over time, with the modest warming of the past hundred-plus years playing a very small part in comparison. (Research shows that the warming is due to the Urban Heat Island effect.) (Read more) ☼
The Myth Of An Overheated Planet Destroyed By Four Facts
by Alex Epstein
Myth: This year’s hot temperatures show that fossil fuels are already making Earth unlivably hot.
Truth: This year’s hot temperatures are part of a slow warming trend on a planet where far more people die from cold than from heat, and where we need fossil fuels to protect us from both. Leading media outlets are portraying this summer’s temperatures as unlivably hot, and offering the rapid adoption of anti-fossil-fuel policies as a solution. In reality, cold is a far bigger problem than heat—and anti-fossil-fuel policies will make us more endangered by both. (Read more) ☼
Wrong, USA Today, Ocean Currents Aren’t Near Collapse (link) ☼
The Problem with Modelling
By Norman Rogers
The book, The Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations by Kenneth Green, is banned by Amazon. I don’t think Amazon bans many books. They don’t have time to read them all. The book is available at Barnes and Noble.
The Plague of Models is a wide-ranging attack on a broad spectrum of government regulation and policy, including alleged cancer-causing substances, air pollution, and doomsday predictions like global warming, acid rain, and the ozone hole. It is also an attack on the scientists who use computer models incorrectly to generate scientific results, better known as the computer slogan “Garbage In Garbage Out ‘ (GIGO). (Read more) ☼
The Climate Crisis Frenzy Is a Mass Hysteria Movement
by William L. Kovacs
Ever since the Biden administration promised to eliminate fossil fuels, climate activists have combined their quest to use the government to control society with creating a collective group possessed by illusions and excessive fears that climate change is destroying Planet Earth. This Climatism Collective believes that dismantling society will enable government to prevent the end of the world.
Researchers refer to such collective fears as mass hysteria. They consider it a psychogenic illness, “a condition that begins in the mind rather than the body.” It involves people feeling anxious, sick or crazed, notwithstanding the absence of any physical reason for their condition. (Read more) ☼
Antidote for CO2 Hysteria
by Ron Clutz
To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.
People should be celebrating, not demonizing, modern increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). We cannot overstate the importance of the gas. Without it, life doesn’t exist.
Contrary to the mantra that today’s CO2 concentration is unprecedentedly high, our current geologic period, the Quaternary, has seen the lowest average levels of carbon dioxide since the end of the Pre-Cambrian Period more than 600 million years ago. The average CO2 concentration throughout Earth’s history was more than 2,600 ppm, nearly seven times current levels. (Read more) ☼
CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:
by Jonathan DuHamel
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. There is no physical evidence to support that assumption. 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. If there were no greenhouse gases, we would have freezing temperatures every night.
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
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 ☼
ENERGY ISSUES
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken
Joe Biden’s Tailpipe Rule: The WeWork of Regulations (link)
EPA’s Power Grid Assumptions Are Disconnected From Reality (link)
Comments On The Insanity Of EPA’s New Power Plant Rule (link)
Regulatory Onslaught: Biden’s Ban On Incandescent Light Bulbs Now In Effect (link)
Amid Power Cuts, The Climate Gang Is Coming for Our Thermostats (link)
The Biden administration proposed a plan to lock up nearly 1.6 million acres of public lands from oil and gas development across western Colorado in response to multiple legal challenges filed by environmental groups. (link)
Biden Reiterates He Still Wants To Block All Offshore Drilling (link)
The Real World Costs Of Backing Up Weather-Dependent Electricity Generation With Battery Storage (link)
Wind Farms: The Great Green Deception Of The 21st Century (link)
California Has Another Planet-Saving Idea (link)
Offshore Wind Power Isn’t ‘Clean and Green,’ and It Doesn’t Cut CO2 Emissions (link)
New Book—Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure (link)
The Multibillion-Dollar Racket That’s Thwarting Safe, Affordable Nuclear Energy (link)
CO2 Coalition Submits Comment on EPA’s Proposed Power Plant Regulations as Dangerous and Unscientific
(Summary, Full Comment 47pages)
A proposed federal rule to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants should not be adopted because it scientifically invalid and would endanger lives by denying people the benefits of fossil fuels and increasing levels of CO2, according to two eminent physicists.
The rule has been proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is accepting comments on draft regulation intended to reduce CO2 emissions to avoid purportedly dangerous atmospheric warming. Among those who have submitted comments are Drs. William Happer and Richard Lindzen, professors emeriti at Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.
“We demonstrate (in the 47-page commentary) that EPA failed to consider critically important aspects and data concerning CO2, fossil fuels and climate change, and EPA relied on numerous studies that violate the scientific method,” wrote the professors, each authors of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers on climate and closely related subjects.
“As a result, the proposed rule, which could eliminate fossil fuel electricity plants that provide 61% of electricity in the United States, will be disastrous for the country for no scientifically justifiable reason.”
The comments cite cases of the U.S. Supreme Court requiring that scientific knowledge “be derived by the scientific method” and that an agency consider important aspects of a problem and relevant data for a rule not to be considered “arbitrary and capricious.” The EPA has failed to meet both requirements, said the professors.
Important considerations that EPA’s rulemaking overlooked include the following, according to the professors’ comments:
Carbon dioxide is essential to the process of photosynthesis that makes life possible, and increased atmospheric levels have improved crop harvests and an overall greening of Earth. “(O)ver the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution a rise of CO2 from about 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 420 ppm has caused an approximate 20% increase in the food available to people worldwide,” the professors said.
Fossil fuels are indispensable in creating nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides that feed nearly half the world and whose elimination would result in widespread starvation; their combustion releases carbon dioxide and thus increases plant growth, creating more food worldwide; and they provide the most reliable, efficient and low-cost energy for many uses, including the production of 61% of the nation’s electricity.
Eliminating fossil fuels and their CO2 emissions in the pursuit of an ill-advised “net zero” agenda would deny their benefits to the world, including 2.3 billion people who face some level of food insecurity and more than 900 million who are severely affected by insufficient nutrition.
Moreover, the professors say, EPA fails to recognize that analysis based on the principles of the 400-year-old scientific method “proves that there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.” In support of their assertion, the professors said:
All the computer models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data.
600 million years of data prove that today’s CO2 level of 420 ppm is very low, not high, and that higher levels of CO2 do not cause or even correlate with higher temperatures.
“Even at today’s relatively low levels, atmospheric CO2 is now ‘heavily saturated,’ in physics terms, meaning that additional increases in atmospheric CO2 can have little warming effect.”
Rather than employing the traditional scientific method, the professors said, EPA relies on so-called consensus, peer review, government opinion from the International Panel on Climate Change, computer models that do not work, data falsified by the omission of contradictory information and fabrication of supporting data. ☼
One Simple Energy Question Devastates ‘Net-Zero’ Pipe Dreams
by Steve Goreham
Which is more environmentally friendly — an energy source that uses one unit of land to produce one unit of electricity, or a source that uses 100 units of land to produce one unit of electricity?
The answer should be obvious.
Nevertheless, “green” energy advocates call for a huge expansion of wind, solar and other renewables that use vast amounts of land to replace traditional power plants that use comparatively small amounts of land.
If we set a nuclear plant to one unit of land required for one unit of electricity output, then a natural gas-powered plant requires about 0.8 units of land to produce one unit of output. A coal-fired plant uses about 1.4 units of land to deliver one unit of power. A standalone solar facility requires about 100 units of land to deliver the same average electricity output as a nuclear plant that uses one unit of land.
A wind facility uses about 35 units of land if only the concrete wind tower pads and service roads are counted, but over 800 units of land for the entire area spanned by a typical wind installation.
Production of electricity from biomass has the poorest energy density, requiring over 1,500 units of land to output one unit of electricity.
As a practical example, compare the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the eastern California desert to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant near Avila Beach, California.
The Ivanpah facility produces about 793 gigawatt hours per year and covers an area of 3,500 acres. The Diablo Canyon facility generates about 16,165 gigawatt hours per year on a surface area of 750 acres. (Read more) ☼
Why Has Biden Declared War on Natural Gas?
by Stephen Moore
Natural gas is the world’s wonder fuel: cheap, abundant, made in America, reliable AND clean burning. So why are the Biden administration and environmental groups against it? There’s really no good answer.
What makes the Left’s war against natural gas inexplicable is that the single biggest factor in reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere has been the increased reliance on natural gas for electric power generation as we transition slowly away from coal. (By the way, emissions from coal plants have been dramatically reduced as well, which is one reason why the air that we breathe today is much cleaner than the air 20 or 50 or 100 years ago.)
No country produces more natural gas than America. Latest reserve forecasts predict we have nearly 100 years of natural gas with existing drilling technologies, and hundreds of years of potential supply. We’re not running out. We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.
All we need to be the world energy superpower is liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines and drilling permits. We also need states to redefine natural gas as a “clean” and “net zero” form of energy so that utilities can use it. Why isn’t this happening?
The main reason is radical environmentalists want to end all natural gas and oil production, and force utilities and consumers to get our power and transportation fuels from unreliable and expensive wind and solar power. (Read more) ☼
ELECTRIC VEHICLES
California Moves To Siphon Your EV’s Battery To Power Its Grid (link)
Blown Away: The Explosive, Dangerous Reality Of EV Batteries (link)
Biden Accelerating His EV Fantasy By Forcing The Sale Of Unwanted Cars
The administration has just mashed the accelerator in its relentless drive to outlaw affordable cars and the freedom they represent. The National Highway Safety Administration’s July 28 proposal would raise the mandatory average fuel economy target for automakers to an improbable 58 miles per gallon, essentially forcing Ford, Toyota, and Kia to sell more electric cars, whether customers want them or not. Automakers, which generally do their best to get along with their federal masters, indicated that the new rule is neither reasonable nor achievable. (Read more) ☼
New data show temperatures above 86F begin a precipitous decline of EV performance
By Olivia Murray
A new report showed the “optimal temperature” range for Evs to avoid issues. That scope was limited to between 59 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Outside that limited field, there are either “slow reactions” or “accelerated side reactions.” (Read more) ☼
STATE OF THE UNION
“A sacre respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” —Alexander Hamilton (1794)
Novavax, The Only Real Covid Vaccine (link) Read this article!
‘Alarming evidence’ links China’s Communist Party to American K-12 schools, anti-indoctrination group claims (link) ☼
New York Times claims ‘climate change’ means ‘the end of the summer vacation as we know it’ – ‘Our relationship to travel has reached a tipping point’ (link, includes video) ☼
Green Policies and Government Incompetence Led to the Tragedy of the Maui Fire (link) ☼
Climate Brainwashing In Schools Is Bordering On Child Abuse (link) ☼
The Critical Minerals Quagmire Hurts Consumers
by Kristen Walker
Our government officials demand we convert to renewable energy. And soon. Yet, this switch requires an exponentially larger supply of critical minerals. A supply that is not readily available and is years (perhaps decades) from existing. We’ve basically been given a destination with a makeshift roadmap filled with obstacles, hurdles, and barriers along the way.
Currently the U.S. is reliant on imports for all critical minerals. Even though we sit on vast amounts of mineral reserves, very few are produced domestically.
By its own admission, the White House acknowledges that demand for critical minerals will “skyrocket to 400-600%” over the next few decades. Every single aspect of a transition to renewable energy—electric vehicle (EV) batteries, storage, solar panels, windfarms—will require a substantial increase in mineral resources, not only here, but abroad.
China is the undisputed leader in critical minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, and wind-turbine magnets. They account for 63% of the world’s rare earth mining, 85% of rare earth processing, and 92% of rare earth magnet production.
We are home to just one active lithium (key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries) mine, which barely produces enough to power 80,000 EVs annually. We have just one nickel mine up and running. The only cobalt mine opened its doors last fall only to suspend activities earlier this year. There is zero graphite and zero manganese mining.
All five of these minerals are the most used when it comes to various renewable energy components. Yet, we import the vast majority of them. Some from openly hostile nations (i.e. China) and others from countries known for poor working conditions and child labor (i.e. Democratic Republic of the Congo). This puts the U.S. at the mercy of not just our allies, but corrupt and/or inhospitable countries, placing our national security at risk.
The U.S. has one of the more rigorous pathways to mineral production. It can take 10 years for a mine in the U.S. to receive all the required permits to begin operations. Thacker Pass, one of the largest lithium reserves in the U.S., has had a number of its permits delayed for more than a decade. Stringent environmental policies make securing such permits exceedingly difficult. Consumers suffer the consequences of such short-sighted policies. They are feeling the pain at the pump, the grocery store, restaurants, and utility bills. They are suffering through shortages and blackouts. (Read more) ☼
Will New EPA Regulations Starve Millions Of People?
By Jerome R. Corsi
Two distinguished climate scientists (William Happer, professor of physics, emeritus, Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, emeritus) have filed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a 45-page comment on the proposed regulation the EPA announced on May 11, 2023, setting emission standards that would require nearly all of coal- and gas-powered plants in the U.S. to capture almost all—90 percent—of their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2038 or shut down.
In their comment, Happer and Lindzen demonstrated that the EPA (1) failed to consider critically important aspects and data concerning CO2 fossil fuels and climate change, and (2) relied on numerous studies that violate the scientific method. They concluded: “As a result, the Proposed Rule, which would eliminate fossil fuel electric plants that provide 61 percent of electricity in the United States, will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”
To support their claim, Happer and Lindzen argued that the EPA had failed to consider the following “important aspects of climate change and relevant data.”
Carbon dioxide is essential to life, creating via the process of photosynthesis the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe. Without carbon dioxide, there would be no human life or other life on earth.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create more food for people worldwide, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas. To illustrate, increases in carbon dioxide over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 420 ppm, caused an approximate 20% increase in the food available to people worldwide, as well as increased greening of the planet and a benign warming in temperature.
Fossil fuels are indispensable in creating nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides that feed nearly half the world; their combustion releases carbon dioxide and thus increases plant growth via increased CO2 fertilization effect, creating more food worldwide; and they provide the most reliable, efficient and low-cost energy for many uses, including the production of 61% of the nation’s electricity.
The number of people worldwide who are moderately or severely food insecure is 2.3 billion, including over 900 million who face severe food insecurity. Each ton of carbon dioxide emissions eliminated reduces the amount of food available worldwide. “Net zero” would reduce carbon emissions by over 40 gigatons (Gt) every year, and consequently would proportionally reduce the amount of food produced. Without the “use of inorganic [nitrogen] fertilizers” derived from fossil fuels, the world simply “will not achieve the food supply needed to support 8.5 to 10 billion people,” resulting in widespread starvation. (Read more) ☼
Opinion: The price of refusing to prosecute
By Austin VanDerHeyden
Violent criminals are roaming free, and the public servants charged with putting them away refuse to do anything about it.
In a disturbing movement that’s plaguing major cities across America, progressive prosecutors are simply refusing to prosecute crimes. Unfortunately, Tucson is not immune to this dangerous trend.
One possible reason for Pima County’s failure to prosecute violent crimes? That would be money: the county has happily raked in nearly $4 million in grants over the past eight years from the left-leaning MacArthur Foundation to reduce the county’s inmate population. The county is literally getting paid to keep criminals out of jail — and Conover’s policies suggest the county is taking full advantage of that financial incentive. (Read more) ☼
Five ways Ayn Rand predicted America’s political crises, from parents spurned to the rise of cancel culture
by Kerry J. Byrne
1. Rand foresaw America’s tragic failures in education
2. Rand warned against government encroaching on parental rights and authority
3. Rand predicted the intellectual dangers of victimhood
4. Rand warned that ever-larger government would stifle intellectual freedom
5. Rand argued capitalism would perish in a society cowed by cancel culture
(Read more) ☼
The Bidens: “Stone Cold Crooked” (5)
by Francis Menton
With every passing day it becomes more and more clear that we have a President who has been for years, and may still be, in simplest terms, on the take. Using family members as fronts, and the prerogatives of elected office as bait, he has presided over a bribe-collection business that has leveraged U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid to rake in millions for the clan, mostly or entirely from business interests aligned with the worst of our adversaries on the foreign stage.
In your wildest dreams, could you ever have imagined that the U.S. presidency could sink so low? (Read more) ☼
‘It’s Murder’: Remdesivir Victims Decry FDA’s Shocking New Move
By Stella Paul
Remdesivir may be the most despised drug in American history, earning the nickname Run Death Is Near for its lethal record during COVID. Experts claimed that it would stop COVID; instead, it stopped kidney function, then blasted the liver and other organs. Now this reviled destroyer of kidneys has been approved by the FDA for COVID treatment of kidney patients. Does anybody else feel as if the FDA is shoving its power in our faces and laughing at us? (Read more) ☼ Follow the money.
Lessons From China On The Planned Economy
by Francis Menton
It’s hard to learn what’s going on in China, and it’s getting harder. Data series that show anything unfavorable are suppressed or discontinued, and journalists who might write something negative are increasingly unwelcome. But there is every reason to think that China’s forty-year economic boom at the minimum is stalling out, and indeed its economy may be headed for a major crash. (Read more) ☼
END
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