wryheat

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

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 ☼

END

Tucson Electric Power Should Dump Wind and Solar Generation of Electricity – Go Nuclear

According to the Tucson Electric Power (TEP) website, they are striving to generate 70% of their electricity production with wind and solar installations by 2035. They intend to limit generation of electricity by fossil fuels and close their coal-fired plants.

In my opinion that is a mistake because wind and solar generation are unreliable and take up large land areas. The rational is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which is claimed to cause global warming although there is no supporting physical evidence.

I suggest that TEP build nuclear generating plants and get rid of wind and solar generation. That also will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and provide a reliable source of electricity for us.

To see why wind and solar generation is a bad idea, read my post:

Problems with Wind and Solar Generation of Electricity – a Review (link).

The Nonsense of “Net Zero”

“Net zero” is predicated on the assumption that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels cause “dangerous” global warming. There is no physical evidence to support that assumption. In fact, rising CO2 in the atmosphere is produced, in part, by rising temperature. That is because the ocean holds about 50 times the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Cold ocean water contains CO2 more than warm water. Rising temperatures cause some of that carbon dioxide to leave the water and go into the atmosphere. In one sense, “Net zero” has cause and effect backwards.

Planet Earth is now in an interglacial period. Global temperatures are about 10°C cooler than in much of the past 600 million years during which life thrived. So global warming is not so “dangerous.”

Phanerozic temp

“Net zero” aims to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by carbon capture and storage. That is, capture CO2 emissions at the source and send it via pipeline to underground storage areas, a very expensive process.

Carbon capture plant

Electric vehicles are spawn of “net zero.” Electric vehicles have short ranges, require long refueling times, require almost twice the copper, cobalt, lithium as regular vehicles. Hence, CO2 emissions during mining and manufacturing are about twice that of vehicles run by fossil fuels.

“Net zero” also aims to reduce use of fossil fuels. Hence the rise of electricity production by wind and solar generation, both of which cannot respond to supply and demand, require fossil fuel backup, require huge expanse of land, destroy habitat, kill millions of birds and bats, and require production of millions of batteries. It is simply impossible to provide enough energy storage to make renewables reliable. (See: “A Simple Reason Why Net Zero Is Impossible” and “Net Zero grid batteries alone would bankrupt America”) A better solution would be to build many small nuclear reactors to produce electricity.

From H. Sterling Burnett:
A large-scale power grid consists of two segments: baseload power and peaking power. Baseload power is the minimum amount of energy needed for normal daily operations, which requires a fairly constant flow of power. Coal, nuclear, hydro, and to a lesser but growing extent natural gas have satisfied the country’s baseload for the past century because they operate full-time, providing a steady flow of power.

Peaking power is the additional power needed when the system is faced with unusual amounts of demand, as in July and August in Texas or Arizona, when air conditioner use soars, and in December and January in Minnesota or North Dakota, when the furnaces kick in. Natural gas has commonly served to provide peaking power because it can be cycled on and off quickly, as needed.

Bottom line: “Net zero” will have no effect on climate, it will have very high costs, and it will reduce our standard of living.

For more background, see my blog posts:

Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review

Why reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuel will have no effect on climate

SCIENCE, CLIMATE, ENERGY AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2023 APRIL

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues. Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

The global climate scam is in full swing. Globalists are using it as an attempt to control our lives by controlling our energy production, the kinds of appliances we can have, the kind of cars we drive, and even the kind of food we eat (bugs anyone?). Many of our politicians are playing along either through ignorance or as a means of seeking more power.

“The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda.” — Michael Crichton

“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles.”— Richard Feynman

“Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.” —Benjamin Rush (1788)

Below we examine the facts of climate, energy, and related policies.

CLIMATE ISSUES

History and Human Biology Argue for Warmth, not Cold

by Vijay Jayaraj, CO2Coalition

To those who have been misled to believe that a warming planet is dangerous, prepare to have a myth shattered: Data from hundreds of scientific journals across major publishing platforms and policy reports from major governments say cold is responsible for more deaths than hot weather worldwide. Nonetheless, many people find it hard to believe this fact because of the decades-long propaganda and hysteria surrounding global warming. Here is why we should be thankful that our world is warming. (Read more) ☼

Earth’s Greenhouse Effect Has Not Been Enhanced, But Instead Its Impact Has Declined Since 1983

by Kenneth Richard

In the satellite era scientists have continued to observe the Earth’s total greenhouse effect (which includes effects from greenhouse gases and clouds) exerting an overall negative impact (cooling) on surface temperatures since the 1980s. This rules out both CO2 and an enhanced greenhouse effect as drivers of global warming. (Read more) ☼

Lack of U.S. Climate Warming Now Extends Beyond 9 Years

from C3Headlines

Per NOAA, U.S. temperatures have been on a slight cooling trend since February 2014. Despite atmospheric CO2 levels increasing 5.2% (˜+22.0 ppm) during that time, there has been no overall U.S. warming over the last 9 years and 2 months. The global doomsday existential threat that many politicians and reporters claim to be taking place is somehow conveniently avoiding the nation with the world’s best climate reporting system. (See chart) ☼

Tornadoes, Climate Change, and the Media

By Anthony Watts

After the recent devasting tornadoes in the Midwest and South, some media outlets scrambled to try to link the weather events to climate change, when in fact there is no hard data to support this. In fact, tornado data refute claims that tornadoes are increasing in number, range, or severity. (Read more) ☼

Comments on Tucson’s climate action plan

The plan declares a “climate emergency” and requires the city to “achieve carbon neutrality for City operations by 2030.” The plan ignores the fact that there is no physical evidence that carbon dioxide has a significant effect on global temperature and that global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels constitute just 0.1% of total greenhouse gases. The plan also ignores the fact that water vapor constitutes 95% of green house gases.

You can read a draft of the plan here, 156 pages. It is labeled “TUCSON Resilient Together Climate Action and Adaptation Plan.”

In introductory remarks, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, claims that “Tucson is one of the fastest-warming cities in the country” which she blames on rising carbon dioxide emissions. She ignores the urban heat island effect (UHI) which is the phenomenon that cities are usually much warmer than surrounding rural areas, especially at night. The main cause of UHI is that in cities, the land development, concrete and asphalt, absorbs heat during the day and gives it up during the night. (See my post on UHI here).

The figure below shows temperature in Tucson and Tombstone, AZ for the same period. Tucson temperature is rising due to the UHI (or maybe CO2 doesn’t work in Tombstone.)

Tucson-tombstone mean temp

It appears to me that the Tucson plan is very “woke.” The executive summary states: “This plan outlines the City’s roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as to adapt and build community-wide resilience to the current and future impacts of climate change. Tucson Resilient Together centers equity and environmental justice in these efforts because the impacts of climate change are unfairly distributed toward the front line communities of Tucson, which historically have been marginalized by government-led planning efforts.”

Some of the actions the city plans to take:

Tucson Million Trees: an initiative led and driven by Mayor Regina Romero to plant one million trees by 2030 to increase the city’s tree canopy and help mitigate the impacts of climate change in heat-vulnerable neighborhoods. Question: how much water will those million trees need?

Solar Tucson: an initiative to promote and install solar in the community through highly visible installations on city-owned buildings, including community centers, the Tucson Convention Center, police substations, water facilities, park shade structures, and parking lots.

Electricity Production: Tucson Electric Power currently produces about 20% of its power from wind and solar generation. The City plan is to increase that to 70% by 2035.(This will make our electric grid very unreliable and may cause frequent blackouts. See my posts on problems with wind and solar electrical generation here.) This ignores the fact that all wind and solar generation needs backup by fossil-fuel burning or by nuclear generation.

Transportation: The City will discourage private vehicle travel. Instead the City will “reprioritize sustainable movement – starting with walking, biking, and public transit. This will be supported by land use regulations that support our vision for a ‘15-minute city,’ where every resident can access daily necessities within 15 minutes of walking or biking. The City will encourage electric vehicles and electric City transportation. (I wonder how that will work with establishment of much less reliable generation of electricity.)

The City wants to “Adopt a ‘smart growth’ approach that supports car-free and car-lite living throughout the City of Tucson and concentrates public services and infrastructure investments in existing neighborhoods.” The City will also replace all its fossil-fuel vehicles with electric vehicles. (Sorry, the fire department can’t come right now; they are recharging their engines.)

In my opinion “decarbonization” and all of its implications will be very expensive and completely unnecessary. It is all based on the false assumption that it will prevent climate change. See my blog article: A Review of the state of Climate Science.

Science, Climate, Energy and Politics news roundup 2023 March

A monthly review of climate, energy, and political policy issues

Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

CLIMATE

This month we begin with climate science, something that politicians are ignoring or don’t understand. The result of political policy has been the devastation of our energy sources resulting in bad economic consequences. Climate policies are also affecting farmers and our food supplies by increasing the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel and limiting production of fossil-fuel derived fertilizers. Furthermore, the climate cabal is trying to scare us by promoting natural cycles as something unusual due to “dangerous” global warming. Reducing or eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels with have no effect on global climate.

Much of climate policy (the “climate crisis” meme) is based on garbage-in, garbage-out climate models, monetary greed, and the quest for power. As James Madison said: “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Global Warming – Natural or Manmade

by Dr. Roy Spencer

[This short essay was written several years ago by Dr. Roy Spencer, a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and formerly a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. He is currently in charge of a global satellite system which measures atmospheric temperature.] See his website: https://www.drroyspencer.com/

“Global warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution.

Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far.

But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800’s.

It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankind’s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40. [In 2023 it is 42]

The “Holy Grail”: Climate Sensitivity. Figuring out how much past warming is due to mankind, and how much more we can expect in the future, depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”. This is the temperature response of the Earth to a given amount of ‘radiative forcing’, of which there are two kinds: a change in either the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth, or in the infrared energy the Earth emits to outer space.

The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.

The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’ influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably a closet ‘skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate. Climate change — it happens, with or without our help. ☼

Climate at a Glance: Atmospheric Rivers

Key Takeaways:

Atmospheric rivers are long, concentrated regions in the atmosphere that transport moist air from the tropics to higher latitudes.

The phrase “Atmospheric River” is often erroneously used by the media attempting to link climate change and excessive rainfall events on the U.S. West Coast.

Atmospheric rivers are natural and normal parts of our global weather patterns, happening on the U.S. West coast on average every 1-3 years.

Geological Science has shown that extreme Atmospheric River events have occurred on the U.S. West Coast as far back as A.D. 212, occurring on average every 200 years.

Claims that climate change is making more severe Atmospheric Rivers are not supported by observational evidence, research on the phenomenon, or computer model projections. (Read more) ☼

Climate at a Glance: The Polar Vortex

Key Takeaways:

The phrase “polar vortex” is often erroneously used by the media to link climate change and severe winter weather events.

The polar vortex was first identified as a cause for some instances of severe winter weather events in 1853.

Claims that climate change is creating new and more severe polar vortex events are not supported by either observational evidence or computer climate models.

Short Summary:

Extreme winter weather is often attributed to an atmospheric weather event known as a “polar vortex outbreak” or an “Arctic outbreak.” The Polar Vortex is nothing new: The term first appeared in an 1853 issue of E. Littell’s Living Age.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The polar vortex is a large circulation of low pressure and cold air that forms every winter in the stratosphere above the North and South poles. The term vortex refers to the counter-clockwise flow of air that helps keep colder air close to the poles.

Sometimes during winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the polar vortex will become less stable and disrupt the polar jet stream circulating in the same direction miles below the vortex — thus sending cold Arctic air southward over the United States. (Read more) ☼

Climate Research Has A Serious Conflict-Of-Interest Problem (Link) ☼

Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks, March 2023

by Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

Below are a series of fact checks of the 13 most common climate claims such as those made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The contributors of these reviews are all recognized experts in the relevant fields. For each claim, a brief summary of the relevant rebuttal is provided along with a link to the full text and graphical support of the rebuttal and the names and the credentials of the authors of for each rebuttal. (Read more) ☼

Climate ‘Experts’ Are 0 for 41 With Wrong Predictions

by Mark Simone

For more than 50 years, climate alarmists in the scientific community and environmental movement have not gotten even one prediction correct, but they do have a perfect record of getting 41 predictions wrong. (Read more) ☼

2M Years Ago Corals, Manatees Occupied N. Greenland Seas, As Elephants Browsed A Forested Landscape

by Kenneth Richard

The northern coasts of Greenland are today a barren polar desert. Existing moisture is frozen into permanent ice sheets at these latitudes, precluding plant growth.

But two million years ago, when CO2 levels were claimed to only hover around 300 ppm, an 11-19°C warmer-than-today north Greenland (82°N) had no ice sheet coverage and instead was teeming with vegetation (shrubs, herbs), as well as birch, poplar, and thuja forests (Kjaer et al., 2022).

Megafaunal browsers such as mastadons (elephants) had access to abundant food sources (berries, twigs, leaves, etc.). Caribou and reindeer grazers, hare, and rodents thrived in the green landscape. Geese soared in the High Arctic skies.

Sea coasts near northern Greenland had green algae, coral reefs, and dugong – marine animals cousin to the manatee. Horseshoe crabs that today cannot spawn in waters any colder than 45°N (southern France) were able to occupy the much warmer-than-today Arctic waters at 82°N. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

by Jonathan DuHamel

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

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

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 ☼

CLIMATE MADNESS

Is this the greatest ripoff in American history?

America has spent $100 billion of your money on climate change. How’s that working out?

By Stephen Moore,|Creators Syndicate

For at least the last 20 years, politicians in Washington, at the behest of green energy groups, have spent some $100 billion of taxpayer money to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going for us so far?

A recent Associated Press story, based on the latest data on global carbon emissions, provides a pretty accurate report card: “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached a Record High in 2022.”

Where did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more, even as wind and solar only produce about 12% of our energy. Is this the greatest ripoff of U.S. taxpayers in history?

Childish Beliefs Drive Lethal Energy and Agricultural Agendas

by Paul Driessen

Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams. (Read more) ☼

Activist ‘Scientists’ Announce Record Cold Caused By Global Warming

by Jack Hellner

Leftists are pushing an agenda to destroy industries that produce reasonably priced energy by claiming these industries cause an existential threat of warming, extreme changes to the climate, and threatening our survival.

Record-cold temperatures, along with record snow and rain are obviously causing skepticism, so the pushers of the theory decided it was necessary to put out a piece of pure propaganda: that record-cold temperatures occur because the Earth is warming. (Read more) ☼

Gas Station Bans Next on Climate Agenda: Colorado city BANS new gas stations due to ‘obligation’ to tackle ‘climate change’ – Follows California cities (Read more) ☼

ENERGY

China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds (Link) ☼

Pakistan plans to quadruple domestic coal-fired power, move away from gas (Link) ☼

Germany Wary Of Europe’s Ban Of Fossil Fuel Cars By 2035… Too Pricey, Technically Unfeasible (Link) ☼

No Link Found Between Gas Stoves and Respiratory Illness: Study (Link) ☼

Holding Anti-Fossil-Fuel Leaders Responsible For The Global Energy Crisis

by Alex Epstein

The energy crisis is simple. Politicians around the world, including US Democrats, have restricted fossil fuel investment/production/transport on the false promise of replacement by unreliable solar/wind. The result: higher prices and lower security. [Ins this article Epstein gets into the details of bad energy policy.] (Read more) ☼

Biden Seals Off Millions Of Acres Of Land, Water From Future Oil Drilling

by Thomas Catenacci

The Biden administration announced that it is indefinitely blocking 16 million acres of federal land and water in Alaska from future fossil fuel drilling. (Read more) ☼

Challenging “Net Zero” with Science

[link to full paper]

Executive Summary

Governments around the globe are taking actions to implement fossil fuel-free or “Net Zero”

energy systems without a thorough examination of the scientific basis for doing so. This paper

undertakes that examination by reviewing the scientific support (or lack thereof) that has been

used to justify this transition to Net Zero. No atempt is made to address the significant

economic, societal or environmental consequences of a near-total reliance on renewable energy

and the required battery-backup that is necessary to transition to a fossil fuel free future.

Two of the paper’s authors – Drs. William Happer and Richard Lindzen, professors emeriti at Princeton University and Massachusets Institute of Technology, respectively – have spent decades studying and writing about the physics of Earth’s atmosphere. The third, Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist of more than 40 years, has spent much of the last decade writing and speaking about the interplay of geology, history and climate.

The authors find that Net Zero – the global movement to eliminate fossil fuels and its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases – to be scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people. Among the paper’s findings are:

• Net Zero proponents regularly report that extreme weather is more severe and frequent because of climate change while the evidence shows no increase – and, in some cases, a decrease – in such events.

• Computer models supporting every government Net Zero regulation and the trillions of dollars subsidizing renewables and electric cars, trucks, home heating, appliances and many other products do not work.

• Scientific research and studies that do not support the “consensus” narrative of harmful man-made global warming are routinely censored and excluded from government reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment.

• Conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that contradict the narrative of catastrophic global warming from fossil fuels are rewritten by government bureaucrats for public reports to support the false narrative of Net Zero.

• The many benefits of modest warming and increasing carbon dioxide are routinely either eliminated or minimized in governmental reports.

• Eliminating fossil fuels and implementing Net Zero policies and actions mean the

elimination of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that will result in about half the world’s population not having enough food to eat. Many would starve.

• The adoption of Net Zero is the rejection of overwhelming scientific evidence that there

is no risk of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.

Net Zero, then, violates the tenets of the scientific method that for more than 300 years have underpinned the advancement of western civilization. ☼

The Feasibility of “Net Zero” Economy in the USA

by Michael Kelly

Professor Michael Kelly, from the University of Cambridge in the UK, has previously studied the impact of Net Zero projects in the UK and his native New Zealand, and has now turned his expertise to the United States.

His headline findings are a stark warning for politicians across the country.

“The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $12 trillion for electrification projects, and $35 trillion for improving the energy efficiency of buildings. A work-force comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers. The bill of specialist materials is of a size that, for the USA alone, is several times the global annual production.”

Professor Kelly warns that politicians are not thinking through the scale of the project they are pursuing.

“It’s clear that no country has the manpower, the materials, or the money to deliver Net Zero. It cannot be attempted without establishing a command economy, and even then it would fail. This is a fool’s errand.” (Read full paper) ☼

The War On Natural Gas – Pipeline Edition

by Ben Lieberman

The Biden Administration’s climate change-inspired war on natural gas continues on multiple fronts. Most recently in the news are the regulatory attempts to curtail the use of gas in home appliances, especially stoves. Meanwhile, the Administration’s go-slow approach to oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands is now in its third year, as is the administration’s policy of pressuring banks not to lend to natural gas producers. But every bit as damaging as the efforts to block the production and use of natural gas are those against the infrastructure that comes in between – the nation’s gas pipeline network. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), 2022 was a record low year for interstate pipeline capacity additions since the agency starting keeping statistics in 1995.

By all rights, it should have been a record high year, given the still-growing estimates of domestic natural gas reserves – a 32 percent jump from 2020 to 2021, the most recent year for which EIA has compiled data. Thanks to the shale revolution, the amount of natural gas used each year is less than the additional discoveries that can be economically developed. And there still is solid demand for natural gas, as is demonstrated by the high prices being paid by consumers in the U.S., tight supplies and risks of shortages plaguing New England, as well as growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) export opportunities that are both economically and geopolitically beneficial. (Read more) ☼

Renewables Aren’t Renewable

by Edward Ring

By now it should be beyond serious debate that “renewable” energy cannot possibly scale adequately to replace fossil fuels. Worse still, renewable energy systems are even less sustainable than fossil fuels and cause more environmental destruction. Renewables also fail to offer significant reductions in carbon emissions, and in some cases actually cause more carbon emissions.

Why these facts are dismissed by America’s elites is a story of corruption, collusion, megalomania, greed, cowardice, intellectual negligence, and delusional mass psychosis.

As a result, Americans face a future of perpetual scarcity: rationed, algorithmically micro-managed access to energy, punitive pricing for energy use over government mandated thresholds, and a wasteland of landscapes ruined by solar farms, wind farms, battery farms, distribution lines, open pit mines, evaporation ponds, and dumps; all the destructive consequences of industrial scale “renewables” development. At this rate, the blind rush to eliminate fossil fuel and rely solely on renewables will cause catastrophic worldwide shortages of energy, spawning deadly poverty and desperate wars. (Read more) ☼

ENVIRONMENT

PM2.5: Mass Killer or Mass Fraud?

By Steve Milloy

PM2.5 is fine airborne soot and dust. A PM2.5 particle is about one-twentieth the width of a human hair. The soot form of PM2.5 is emitted by all forms of manmade and natural combustion: from fossil fuel plant smokestacks; truck and automobile exhaust pipes; and furnaces, fireplaces and barbeques to wildfires and volcanoes The dust form of PM2.5 exists as pollen, pet dander, dust and mold. Smokers of all sorts inhale PM2.5 in massive amounts, especially compared to PM2.5 levels in outdoor air. You may think that last point condemns PM2.5 as a killer. But it actually is the among the best evidence that PM2.5 doesn’t kill anyone.

(Read more) to see the EPA’s junk science about regulating particulate mater. The EPA invented PM2.5 as the most toxic substance known to man, that is, any inhalation can result in death as soon as hours. Or, alternatively, PM2.5 may kill you after a lifetime of (unavoidably) inhaling it. No other substance known to man works this way and there is no body of science to support these claims. The EPA’s own courtroom admission undercuts its claims about the epidemiology and its own human experiments fail to provide any support to the motion that PM2.5 causes adverse health impact, let alone kills.☼

STATE OF THE UNION

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson (1824)

Biden’s Energy Policies Cost U.S. Households More than $2,300 Since 2021

by Linnea Lueken

Biden’s energy policies have caused energy costs to rise across America, from natural gas to electricity, costing Americans more than $2,300 since entering office in January 2021.

Over the Past Two Years:

Overall residential electricity prices increased by 17 percent

Industrial electricity prices rose 34 percent

Home heating oil prices increased by 88 percent

Oil prices rose 61 percent

Natural gas prices rose 51 percent

The price of gasoline rose by $1.15 per gallon, or 46 percent

Rapidly rising energy prices are no accident. They are the predictable result of Joe Biden’s war on affordable and reliable energy. The Biden administration has implemented dozens of policies since he took office that have increased energy costs. In 2022 alone, Biden pushed the following policies:

Slow walking oil and gas leasing plans, missing legal deadlines by months

Threatening new windfall taxes on oil companies

Issuing the lowest number of energy production leases since the 1940s

Repeatedly canceling legally required oil and gas lease sales

Passing the first direct federal tax on methane emissions

Doubling rental fees on onshore leases

Increasing and introducing new fees associated with leasing

Increasing onshore royalty rates by about 36 percent

Reinstating the Hazardous Substance Superfund Financing Rate on crude oil and imported petroleum (Read more) ☼

The Real Meaning of Equity

By Stephen B. Young

President Joe Biden and others of his ilk pimp the word “equity” to earn political profits for themselves. They have prostituted a good word by giving it a new and illegitimate meaning.

President Biden has just imposed on our federal government an executive order on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity that mandates using racism to determine government actions and selection of its public servants. This executive order violates the norm of equity set forth by Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Common Law.

The basis for equity is showing personal responsibility to deserve individualized consideration, rewarding our character and good faith. Equity is not an entitlement, but something to be earned and well deserved.

The word that should be used by President Biden and those who advocate DIE discrimination is compassion — compassion for those who have drawn the short straw in humanity’s age-old war of all against all, where the “strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” (Read more) ☼

The Woke Wrecking Machine

by Victor Davis Hanson

Almost everything that has followed from the woke mass hysteria gripping the nation since 2020 has proved disastrous.

Wokeism destroys meritocracy in favor of forced equality of result—history’s prescription for civilizational decline.

If we continue with the woke hiring of administrators, air traffic controllers, ground crews, pilots, and rail workers, there will be even more news of disasters and near-miss airline crashes.

Wokeness demands a McCarthyite suppression of free expression. No wonder a woke FBI recently hired out social media censors to suppress stories it deemed unhelpful.

Soviet-style, wokeism mandates strict ideological party-line narratives under the cover of “science.” No wonder a woke government lied that requiring vaccines would prevent both infection and infectiousness. (Read more) ☼

Challenging the National Science Teaching Association’s Position Statement on Climate Change

by CO2Coalition

The CO2 Coalition has reviewed the National Science Teaching Association’s Position Statement on Climate Change and has found that it has serious problems, which we address in this assessment. Our objections to this document are many but can be separated into two major categories.

• Reliance on “consensus” science and a rejection of critical thinking skills and the scientific method.

• NSTA’s censorship and rejection of all contradictory science.

A primary role for the NSTA should be to develop critical thinking skills for students and to instill in them knowledge and use of the scientific method. Students should be encouraged to review all facts on a subject (in this case climate change) and make up their own minds rather than be indoctrinated into an established political agenda.

Unfortunately, the NSTA has taken a strong position that is antithetical to the scientific method, critical thinking and open scientific debate. (Read full report, 24 pages) ☼

America’s Nightmare Winter

A prediction by Bill Bonner

Someday in the future… perhaps on a particularly cold night…

… America’s entire energy system will collapse.

Fuel won’t get delivered. Rolling blackouts will sweep the land. Pipes will freeze. Food in the freezer will go bad. You may shiver in the dark… praying for a little power – for weeks.

Experts tell us if diesel fuel is cut off, it would take only three days before supermarket shelves are bare.

In the 72 hours following an energy cut off, almost all businesses would run out of supplies and shut down. And if this continued… in a matter of weeks, civilization as we know it would come to an end.

Everything moves by container ship and truck… and almost every ship and truck run on diesel. So when the diesel fuel stops coming, ships stop sailing, trucks stop rolling, goods stop arriving – food, medicine, building materials… everything.

Most Americans don’t that realize diesel fuel is the workhorse of the economy. It’s used everywhere to keep trucks, tractors, ships, freight trains, and factories moving.

And that’s just the beginning…(Read more) ☼

Business and Labor Agree: It’s Time for Permitting Reform

by Mike Sommers & Sean McGarvey

American infrastructure projects take far too long to move through Washington’s many permitting and review hoops. From bureaucratic red tape to legal challenges and delays, critical infrastructure projects that bring reliable, affordable energy and good-paying jobs to U.S. communities are slowed down often to the point of outright cancellation, and the losers are America’s workers, families, and businesses.

A recent study found that at least 10 major energy infrastructure projects, representing more than $34 billion in private spending, were canceled or risked cancellation due to reams of red tape. Countless others have been stalled – each representing squandered economic growth and energy denied from our grid. One of the biggest sticking points for the permitting of these projects is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to a 2017 study, $157 billion in energy investment was trapped in the NEPA pipeline.

In Appalachia alone, pipeline projects that would deliver 4.6 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas for families and businesses could support thousands of well-paying American jobs and inject $19 billion in private spending into local and regional economies. But instead, their benefit remains unrealized.

Consider this: Preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under NEPA takes more than four years to complete, and about 25 percent of these statements take even longer. Project proponents report that the average EIS runs more than 600 pages, far exceeding guidelines by the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Lengthy EIS timelines and excessive reporting requirements are crucial factors in a company’s decision to abandon a project because there is no fixed timeline for project approval.

We recommend that NEPA reviews be time-limited and uniform across the federal government. (Source) ☼

Biden washing machine rule would make Americans dirtier and stinkier — and raise prices: manufacturers

by Matteo Cina, Fox News

First it was gas stoves, now it’s washing machines.

President Biden’s Department of Energy proposed new efficiency standards for washing machines that require new appliances to use considerably less water, all in an effort to “confront the global climate crisis.”

Leading industry corporations have voiced their opinion on the rule, claiming the mandates force manufacturers to reduce cleaning performance to ensure their machines comply. As the Washington Free Beacon described it, “each cycle will take longer, the detergent will cost more, and in the end, the clothes will be less clean,” according to manufacturers.

The proposed washing machine change is the latest example of the Biden administration pushing more consumer regulations to advance green initiatives. (Read more) ☼

See also: Five Stealthy Ways Biden Is Coming For Your Gas Stove (link) ☼

New EPA Water Regulations to Cost Municipalities Billions

By Eric Lendrum

New guidelines issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over maintaining the safety of drinking water could force local municipalities to spend billions in order to remain in compliance.

The new regulations will force municipalities to install new filtration systems in order to reduce the amount of the chemicals known as PFAS and PFOS, a class of 14,000 chemicals that can contaminate drinking water for as many as 200 million Americans. Such chemicals are often used in household products such as non-stick pans, stain-resistant treatments, semiconductor coatings, and firefighting foam. (Read more) ☼

Trump Administration Accomplishments (29 pages)

U.S. Mineral Production Value by State in 2022

by Niccolo Conte

Arizona tops the list of mineral-producing states, with $10.1 billion worth of minerals which account for 10.3% of the U.S. total, largely due to the state’s prolific copper production. The state of Arizona accounted for around 70% of domestic copper production in 2022, and as a result also produces large amounts of molybdenum as a byproduct.

The state of Nevada was the next top mineral producer at $8.9 billion worth of minerals, thanks to its longstanding leadership in gold mining (accounting for 72% of U.S. gold production in 2022) and by having the only operating lithium project in America. (Read more) ☼

END

SCIENCE, CLIMATE, ENERGY AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2023 FEBRUARY

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

IN THIS ISSUE:

We show how many current or proposed policies are detrimental to America; we show that the renewable energy fantasy goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is impossible; and CO2 has many benefits: that clouds are the decisive drivers of our weather, our energy status and hence also our climate. We also review crazy climate policies.

STATE OF THE UNION

“Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will

find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone,

and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized

and selfish interest.” —President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

When fanatics are on top, there are no limits to oppression.” — H.L. Mencken

Biden’s Misguided Policies in State of the Union Address (link, 9 pages)

Fact-Checking 7 Claims in Biden’s State of the Union Address (link) ☼

Biden Proposal Puts Climate Agenda Above America’s Defense

by Travis Fisher & Maiya Clark

The Biden administration seems bent on forcing defense contractors to comply with new climate pledges instead of protecting Americans from our enemies.

At issue is a new rule called the “FAR Rule” that uses a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulations to bulldoze federal contractors—including defense contractors—into compliance with the Paris climate accords, also known as the Paris Agreement.

Regulations are notoriously boring, but the stakes are high: In fiscal year 2021, the federal government obligated $637 billion through contracts that were subject to Federal Acquisition Regulations.

The FAR Rule should be dropped because it weakens our national security, wasn’t authorized by Congress, skirts required rule-making procedures, and is so disruptive to the agencies involved that it likely triggers what’s called the Major Questions Doctrine.

The Congressional Research Service explains the doctrine thusly: “The Supreme Court has declared that if an agency seeks to decide an issue of major national significance, its action must be supported by clear congressional authorization.”

First and foremost, the FAR Rule risks turning defense contractors into just another tool of climate activists. The new regulation places the Department of Defense’s basic mission of national security second to climate change. Rather than helping arm America against growing threats from China, the rule requires major contractors to count their level of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide and develop a plan to comply with the Paris climate accords.

(Read more) ☼

Social Security and Medicare Cuts Are Coming, Whether Politicians Do It or Not

As legislators refuse to act, benefits will be cut without any possibility of sheltering those seniors who are poor. by Veronique De Rugy (Read full article) ☼

Biden Admin Hobbles Its Own ‘Green’ Ambitions By Blocking Massive Mining Project

by Antonino Cambria, Daily Caller

The Biden administration is stymieing its own “green” energy efforts after the Interior Department announced the blocking of mining in parts of Northeast Minnesota for the next 20 years.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland signed Public Land Order 7917, withdrawing 225,504 acres in the Superior National Forest from leasing to mining or geothermal companies through 2043, according to the department’s press release. The administration has canceled multiple mining projects over the past two years while prioritizing a green energy transition, which requires mining of critical minerals and metals. (Read more) ☼

Minnesota’s Duluth Complex has one of the world’s largest undeveloped mineral deposits, including copper, nickel and cobalt that are needed in vast quantities for EV batteries. Other mining projects in Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska have been stuck in permitting purgatory and the courts. ☼

Washington Governor Jay Inslee mandates an all-electric state

by Ronald Stein, CFact

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, like California’s Governor Newsom, is mandating his state toward an all-electric state. In doing so, Inslee is demonstrating his visionary limitations, as he cannot see the ugly side of his wind, solar, and EV mandated world.

For the vast acreage required for wind and solar, it’s pathetic destruction of pristine landscapes.

The problem with renewables is that they don’t work most of the time. Practically every windmill or solar panel requires a backup from coal, natural gas, pumped storage hydro, or nuclear. The percentage of actual electricity generated by renewable sources compared to the nameplate capacity, is about 24 percent. (Read more) ☼

White House officials blamed the “thousands” of unidentified flying objects in the skies above America on used car salesmen during a Monday (Feb 14) briefing. Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall claimed that most of the things flying over us are probably “used car lot balloons.” (Read more) ☼

Why Joe Biden is coming for my family’s 70-year-old farm

by Kent Hoffman

When I started managing our family’s farm in 2000, I had big plans to keep us going strong in the 21st Century. My dad, who started the farm in 1953, worked his tail off growing corn, soybeans, wheat, and raising hogs. I saw a chance to expand, and while it’s been a long slog, today we farm over 1,900 acres.

But now I’m worried we can’t keep expanding because of the heavy hand of the federal government. It’s the most infuriating thing I’ve ever encountered.

The Biden administration rolled out its long-awaited “Waters of the United States” rule just before the new year, the latest version of the regulation that won’t die. It follows the Obama administration’s attempt to claim enormous federal power over land like mine, simply because a small amount of water sometimes runs over it, as water is known to do.

The Trump administration went the other direction, giving my farm a break and me some hope. Yet in the name of “clean water,” the Biden EPA is once again claiming control, the likes of which D.C. should never have over my property. (Read more) ☼

Destroying Meritocracy Is Deadly

by Victor Davis Hanson

A recent epidemic of airline near misses deserves both attention and reflection. Similar problems are plaguing the U.S. military. (Read more) ☼

‘Conservatives Need Not Apply’ Under Biden Administration’s Proposed Hiring Rules

by Hans von Spakovsky

In a move that has gotten little notice in the press, the Biden administration is proposing federal hiring rules that easily could be abused to deny employment to anyone who questions liberal, woke policies, criticizes the government, or belongs to a politically incorrect organization.

The vague, nebulous language of the proposed changes in existing government hiring regulations could be exploited and allow biased government managers to put up a virtual “Conservatives Need Not Apply” sign when it comes to the federal civil service, leaving rejected applicants with little recourse. (Read more) ☼

Biden preparing to relinquish national sovereignty to WHO globalists

By Olivia Murray

Last year, conservative media ran reports about a “pandemic treaty” — it was a binding agreement between the World Health Organization and its member-states, including these United States. It seemingly died (although it was only delayed), but now it’s been resurrected, and reports suggest that Biden is expected to unilaterally enter our country into the treaty, which would subject American citizens to a global medical police state. From an Epoch Times article via JD Rucker at America First Report:

“Written under the banner of ‘the world together equitably,’ the zero draft grants the WHO the power to declare and manage a global pandemic emergency. Once a health emergency is declared, all signatories, including the United States, would submit to the authority of the WHO regarding treatments, government regulations such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates, global supply chains, and monitoring and surveillance of populations.” (Read more) ☼

“Things in our country run in spite of our government, not by aid of it.” ~ Will Rogers

“The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.” ~ Ayn Rand

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” —Thomas Sowel

“Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history. To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord. But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives. As the world becomes ever scarier, Americans must — as Benjamin Franklin once warned — hang together, or most certainly they will soon all hang separately.” —Victor Davis Hanson

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

New geological study proves that the green energy movement is impossible to achieve

By Robert A. Bishop

The renewable energy fantasy goal is achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Carpet-bombing propaganda has convinced the public to accept the extravagant claim that technology currently exists to reach net zero carbon emissions. Like carnival barkers, the net-zero fanatics say renewable energy is affordable, sustainable, scalable, and not an economy wrecker.

The goal is to create a first-generation green power grid relying on wind turbine farms, solar array farms, and power storage battery banks replacing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. In addition, the new power grid would power a global fleet of electric vehicles that would replace the internal combustion engine.

Western society has taken one hundred fifty years of progress to achieve a fantastically complex energy system using the dense source of cheap hydrocarbon energy, the master resource. Yet, the net-zero devotees believe the complex energy system can be dismantled with minimal disruption and replaced with a low-density renewable energy grid that is intermittent and nonscalable, in less than thirty years.

Well, I have horrible news for the devotees; the green energy fantasy collides with the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenies never researched whether or not there are sufficient base and rare earth metals and adequate time to mine and build out the technologies to accomplish the net-zero carbon 2050 target date.

Simon P. Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland has compiled an exhaustive study dismantling the overly ambitious task of phasing out fossil fuels. His comprehensive analysis focuses on the required physical material resources and the extraction timeframe to create renewable energy generation systems.

The comprehensive study found the current estimated metal reserves are woefully deficient in almost every category. (Read more) ☼

Curbing US oil, gas production would hurt the environment, report finds

by Aaron Kliegman, Fox News

Environmentalists seeking to halt U.S. oil and gas production in the name of combating climate change are undermining their own agenda and risking greater damage to the planet, according to a new report. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) released a paper showing that the U.S. is the most environmentally friendly major energy producer and arguing that, like it or not, because petroleum products are here to stay, limiting U.S. production would have a devastating effect on the environment. (Read more) ☼

Natural Gas – Generated Nitrogenous Fertilizers Prevent Worse World Hunger

by Joshua Antonini, Heartland Institute

Half of the people on Earth are alive today thanks to nitrogenous fertilizers made of and with natural gas. An estimated 44 percent of the world’s people were consuming food produced with nitrogen fertilizers in 2000, according to an article in Our World in Data. That percentage had risen to 48 percent by 2008. The article, which summarized findings published in Nature Geosciences by scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil, estimated that by 2015, three-and-a-half billion people were alive thanks to these products.

The Haber-Bosch process, the main method for industrial synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production, uses the nitrogen found in the atmosphere and the hydrogen from natural gas to make ammonia. “Approximately 60% of the natural gas is used as raw material,” an article in Fertilizers Europe explains, “with the remainder employed to power the synthesis process.”

The result is synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer, which, when combined with selective crop breeding and various forms of chemical protection (herbicides and pesticides), significantly improves crop yields. As Smil noted in a 2011 article for the journal World Agriculture, fertilizers and other related advances have “more than tripled the average U.S. wheat yields during the 20th century.” Smil found yield multiples of 5.8 for France and 3.8 for China. In the United States, corn yields alone “rose more than five-fold,” while rice yields in Japan “increased nearly three times.” (Read more) ☼

Are You Really Against Fossil Fuels? Read This Before You Answer

by Vijay Jayaraj

It is easy for anyone to say that they are against fossil fuels. Opposition to coal, oil and natural gas is fashionable and will prompt heads to nod and even hands to applaud in most places.

But are people aware of the extent to which their lives are dependent on fossil fuels? Do they know that more than 90 percent of things used in their everyday lives are derived from fossil fuels?

From your toothbrush to your car tire, a majority of the things you use today has been made possible because of fossil fuels. Shoes, refrigerators, washing machines, coffee makers, furniture, pens, eating utensils, eyeglasses, commodes, medical gear, camping equipment, and the list goes on and on. Also: Cement, Steel, and Plastic, Fertilizers etc. (Read more) ☼

Gas Stove Just a Starter

by Ron Clutz

As explained below, the move against gas stoves is just an opening into a larger war against methane because of its CO2 emissions. Coal was bashed as a fuel already long ago, and now activists want to disqualify gas lest it serve as a bridge energy source with much lower CO2 emissions, delaying the desired upheaval. The current assault on domestic appliances should be seen as the thin edge of a wedge to destroy natural gas supply, in parallel with actions against coal and oil. (Read more) ☼

Everything that needs electricity is made with oil

by Ronald Stein

The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.

Renewables may be able to generate intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine, but they cannot replace what is manufactured from fossil fuels, that are demanded by lifestyles and economies around the world. (Read article for a list and a graphic of all things made from petroleum) ☼

Wind Turbine Collapses Caught on Video

There have been a rash of recent wind turbine malfunctions across the US and Europe, ranging from failures of key components to full collapses. Some industry veterans say they’re happening more often, even if the events are occurring at only a small fraction of installed machines. The problems have added hundreds of millions of dollars in costs for the three largest Western turbine makers, GE, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens Energy’s Siemens Gamesa unit; and they could result in more expensive insurance policies—a potential setback for the push to abandon fossil fuels and fight climate change.(Read more and watch video) ☼

Are Electric Vehicles The Solution To Climate Change?

Short answer: NO!

In this long article Dr. Terence E. Winters reviews the myriad of subsidies for EVs and then shows why the alleged reduction in carbon dioxide emissions will have no effect on climate.

Sub-headline: “OR, IS IT A GOVERNMENT-SUBSIDIZED SCAM AT OVER $30,000/CAR?”

Yes. (Read full article) ☼

See also: Ford Halts Production, Shipping of Electric F-150s Over Battery Issues (link) ☼

Evidence says offshore wind development is killing lots of whales

Many humpback whales have been turning up on the U.S. East coasts. This seems to coincide with expansion of leasing for off-shore wind turbines. The prime cause of deaths seems to be “sonar blasting” which is used to survey the ocean bottom. Also, driving the hundreds of enormous monopiles that hold up the turbine towers and blades will be far louder than the sonic blasters. (Read more) ☼

Greenpeace Betrays Founders to Peddle Junk Science

by Dr. Patrick Moore

Since 2016, when acoustic sonar surveys required for construction of 1,500 wind turbines began on the U.S. Atlantic coast, 174 Humpback whales have washed ashore dead. This represents a 400 percent increase in mortalities from previous years. And then there are the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales, of which less than 400 individuals exist today. They recovered somewhat after being hunted to near extinction in the 1930’s, but now they are thought to be declining. Federal government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are authorizing the sonar surveys. Greenpeace, the organization I helped found in 1971, has sided with the wind turbines over the whales, stating there is no “proof” that sonar is involved in this tragedy. (Read more) ☼

India’s Uncompromising Commitment to Coal

By Vijay Jayaraj

This week, the UK scrambled to ready its coal plants as wind turbines froze in extremely cold weather. It is no surprise as coal is one of the most reliable, affordable and abundant energy sources in the world.

In fact, coal is still the largest contributor to global power generation. Leaders of Asian countries know this and are not inclined to risk their objective of economic liberty with overreliance on highly volatile and expensive “renewable” technology.

Abundant and economical energy is necessary to meet basic needs such as lighting, cooking, and powering appliances that can improve the quality of life for millions of the poor and even prevent early death. Hospitals, schools, water systems and industrial facilities need reliable access to electricity if they are to play a role in alleviating poverty and deprivation.

As a fuel, coal is plentiful and relatively cheap. Coal-fired power plants are a reliable and established technology for generating electricity. Technologies like wind and solar are inherently intermittent and relatively expensive. They rely on machines that have comparatively short life spans and require many times the materials and acreage to generate equivalent amounts of electricity. At best, these so-called green technologies are suitable for limited applications but certainly not for the baseload supplies of large populations. (Read more) ☼

Green Energy: Greatest Wealth Transfer to the Rich in History

by Steve Goreham

“Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles.”

We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE

CO2 Benefits: A Summary

This post summarizes and links to many articles on the benefits of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which include: increased plant productivity, more efficient use of water, enhancement of plant medicinal properties, reducing temperature stress in plants. (Read more) ☼

Clouds, not greenhouse gases, are the decisive drivers of our weather, our energy status and hence also our climate. (A long and technical explanation: Source) ☼

Climate Fact Check for January 2023

Seven pieces of climate propaganda from January 2023 exposed and debunked.

This article covers fact checks on climate headlines for January including atmospheric rivers, gas stoves and asthma, migratory bird deaths etc. (Read report, PDF or here) ☼

Antarctica Hasn’t Warmed In 70 Years Despite CO2 Rise, Stumping Scientists

by Frank Lasee

antarctica penguinsEven though the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere has been going up all over the world, average temperatures in the Antarctic have not gone up in the last 70 years. (Read more) ☼

In fact, 2021 was the coldest 6-month winter since records began in 1957.

The Nation Flounders on Miami Sea-Level Rise Story

by Sterling Burnett and Anthony Watts

A recent debate in The Nation claimed Miami should either make plans to evacuate from the Florida coast or become the model of adaptation in response to rapidly rising sea levels from climate change and the refugees that will result from it. The story is not just false, it is laughably inept. There is no evidence the United States faces the loss of any major coastal city due to climate change or that climate change has or will create climate refugees. (Read more) ☼

New Paper Shows Hurricane Activity Not Getting Worse, More Active

By Dr. Benny Peiser

While scientists are quite clear that we are not seeing a dramatic increase in hurricanes or even any increase at all, the public has been conned into thinking that tropical storms are getting worse. It’s high time the mainstream media came clean and told people what is really going on.

(Read more) ☼

Reuters Editor Comes Clean About CO2 Hysteria

by Ron Clutz

Neil Winton disavows his uncritically adopting global warming belief in his Daily Skeptic article: Covering Climate Change for Reuters, I Thought CO2 to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

by Jonathan DuHamel

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

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

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

CLIMATE MADNESS

The Climate Cultists Are Coming For Electric Cars, Too

by Allysia Finley

Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis, and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living. (Read more) ☼

Crushed Bug ‘Additive’ Now In Pizza, Pasta, And Cereals Across The EU

As of Jan. 26, 2023, a food additive made out of powdered crickets began appearing in foods from pizza to pasta to cereals across the European Union. The Liberal World Order has decided that the little people must eat bugs to prevent the climate from fluctuating, in accordance with ruling class ideology. (Read more) ☼

The Great Food Reset: ‘Lab-grown meat’ harvested in ‘massive steel vats’ edges closer to fed approval & U.S. dinner plates

If you want to eat lab-grown or bugs, that should be your choice. But, the climate agenda/Great Reset goal is to collapse modern high-yield agriculture and meat production to meet net-zero climate goals. As shortages and prices skyrocket on meat and other foods, it will be much easier to push insect-eating and lab-grown ‘meat’ to the public. (Read more) ☼

The Climate Faithful Have Developed Religious Dietary Restrictions (and You Guessed It — We’ll All Be Expected to Eat This Way)

by Athena Thorne

“Climatarians” (also called “reducitarians” or “climavores”) are people who make their food choices based on how what they eat will impact the earth, with the aim of reducing their carbon “foodprint.” The Earthist version of original sin is that, simply by living, people commit climate sin every time they eat, breathe, travel, and heat or cool their homes. Naturally, the younger generations are the most pious Earthists, having been recently exposed to the most evangelical Earthist education system yet.

“Climavores, as you might expect, follow a diet less defined by ingredients—unlike veganism, for example,” global consulting firm Kearney informs us. “Instead, Climavores actively make food choices based on climate impacts, practicing climate-conscious eating based on a series of dietary trade-offs intended to benefit the planet.” (Read more) ☼

Europe Joins California In Banning Gas Car Sales By 2035 (link) ☼

PC MADNESS

How Woke Can You Go? Majority-Minority Groups Automatically Disqualified for ‘Food Equity’ Grant If CEO Is White

by Tyler O’Neil

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation is offering a three-year, $300,000 grant to advance “healthy food equity,” but many organizations that work to expand access to healthy food in minority populations need not apply. Indeed, some organizations that employ a majority nonwhite staff and have a majority-nonwhite board of directors automatically are disqualified from the grant. (Read more) ☼

“During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

SCIENCE AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2023 JANUARY

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

Eating bugs, atmospheric rivers, our turbulent climate past, and bad energy policies are just a few of the subjects we cover this month.

Articles compiled by Jonathan DuHamel

CLIMATE ISSUES

A note on climate alarmism:

by Jonathan DuHamel

Climate alarmists claim that if Earth’s temperature rises more than 2°C, life will perish. However, most people do not realize that we are in an interglacial period of an ice age and that it is much cooler than normal. Geologic evidence shows that for much of the past 600 million years, global temperature was as much as 13°C warmer than it is now and life flourished.

“Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle

requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough

habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us, and we risk

becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.” —Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Climate & Human History

from the CO2Coalition

There exists a fascinating relationship between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of great civilizations and empires. We find that the facts are opposite to the prevailing “consensus” predictions of apocalyptic doom from modest warming.

Nearly all great advances occurred during warm periods. Before climate science became politicized, the warm periods were called “climate optima” by those studying such things because both the Earth’s ecosystems and humanity benefited from the blessed warmth.

Conversely, the human condition declined during cold periods–and markedly so.

Wolfgang Behringer, in his book A Cultural History of Climate, reveals that “even minor changes in climate may result in huge social, political and religious convulsions.”

“Cooling has always resulted in major social upheavals, whereas warming has sometimes led to a blossoming of culture. If we can learn anything from the history of culture, it is that, even if humans were ‘children of the Ice Age,’ civilization was a product of climatic warming.” ☼

What Climate Crisis? A Primer On Earth’s Turbulent Climatic Past

by Ian Plimer

“For more than 80 percent of the time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice. We live in unusual times when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight.”

In this essay professor Plimer examines climate history on a large scale and examines plate tectonics and the position of Earth relative to the sun. He notes: “No past warming events have been driven by an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. No past cooling events were driven by a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

“On a scale of tens of millions of years or more, the Earth’s climate is driven by plate tectonics. On a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, the Earth’s climate is driven by orbital cycles which bring Earth closer to or more distant from the Sun. On a scale of thousands of years to decades, the Earth’s climate is driven by variations in energy emitted from the Sun.”

He concludes the essay this way: “We are putting all our efforts and wasting trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into trying to prevent mythical human-induced global warming, yet we still don’t prepare for the inevitable annual floods, droughts, and bushfires, let alone longer-term solar – and orbitally–driven global cooling.

We have a crisis of single-minded stupidity exacerbated by a dumbed-down education system supported by incessant propaganda, driven by financial interests and political activist authoritarianism.” (Read full article) (See also Plimer’s book “Green Murder”)☼

Scientist: ‘There Is No Climate Crisis’ And ‘No Particular Correlation Between CO2 And Temperature’

By Kenneth Richard

The modern notion that human CO2 emissions are equivalent to a “deadly poison” may one day be viewed as “the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.”

In a new paper published in the Journal of Sustainable Development, Manheimer (2022) summarizes some of the evidence for the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature in the paleoclimate as he rips apart the claim that humans are driving a changing climate.

About 4000 years ago the limit of Northern Hemisphere tree growth extended 322 km (200 miles) farther north than it does today, as it was much warmer back then.

During Medieval times the Vikings were able to grow barley for centuries. Today Greenland is too cold to grow this crop.

The Romans grew wine grapes in northern Britain, indicating the climate was much warmer than today about 2000 years ago. Wine vineyards cannot flourish at these latitudes today (unless the new “hybrid” grapes, bred to survive in colder climates, are used).

Observing paleo temperature and CO2 concentration charts for the last hundreds of millions of years, it can be affirmed there is “no particular correlation between CO2 and temperature.”

In the paper abstract, Manheimer writes: “The emphasis on a false climate crisis is becoming a tragedy for modern civilization, which depends on relible, economic, and environmentally viable energy. The windmills, solar panels and backup batteries have none if these qualities. This falsehood is pushed by a powerful lobby which Bjorn Lomborg has called a climate industrial complex, comprising some scientists, most media, industrialists, and legislators. It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis.” (Read more) ☼

The Case Against Human Caused Climate Change

by David Robb

[This is an excerpt from a much longer article.]

There is no question that climate change is happening. What is still open is whether the change is due to human use of fossil fuels, or is it something natural? Climate activists and even government authorities have tried to claim that the science is settled, and there is consensus that human activities are the cause. Aside from the fact that science doesn’t rely on consensus, there is considerable evidence that the change is natural.

Consider, …just two bits of evidence. First, in the mid 1600s, Europe was in the depths of the Little Ice Age. It was so cold that the Thames river froze over – something that has not happened since. About 1650, temperatures began to rise, and that rise has continued at about the same rate until just recently. Use of fossil fuels didn’t begin until about 1850 when coal began to replace wood for heating, cooking, and industrial applications such as steam power. In other words, the temperature rise began two hundred years before the use of fossil fuels and the corresponding rise of CO2. The rise in CO2 followed the temperature rise; how can the effect precede the cause?

A second bit is that the historical record is clear. Carbon dioxide levels in prehistory were over 20 times the level we have today, yet there was no catastrophic heating or runaway greenhouse effect. Indeed, all the evidence points to that period as one of lush forests, a benign climate across all the continents, and no tipping points.

Part of the evidence is found in the massive limestone deposits found across the world. Close examination of limestone shows it to be the fossil remains of uncountable creatures who thrived in the warm seas, drew dissolved carbon dioxide from the water around them, used it to form calcium carbonate for their shells, which then fell to the ocean floor to form the limestone we see today. All that prehistoric CO2 is now found locked up in limestone, and we are left with dangerously low levels in our atmosphere today. (Read more) ☼

What are atmospheric rivers?

In Janurary, California and other parts of the west coast were inundated with heavy rain and snowfall. Alarmists blamed “climate change.” However, the weather was produced by an “atmospheric river” which is a common phenomenon.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics. These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow. A well-known example is the “Pineapple Express,” a strong atmospheric river that is capable of bringing moisture from the tropics near Hawaii over to the U.S. West Coast. Atmospheric rivers are a key feature in the global water cycle and are closely tied to both water supply and flood risks — particularly in the western United States.” (Read more from NOAA) ☼

IPCC Climate Models Grossly Exaggerate ‘Global Warming’

By Jerome Corsi

Several recently published studies have provided methodological objections to alarmist IPCC global climate models that predict catastrophic global warming will result from anthropogenic CO2 atmospheric concentrations from burning hydrocarbon fuels. These studies indicate that a more accurate reading of the earth’s surface temperatures suggests global climate warming over the next few decades will be moderate. The studies further indicate that more precise surface temperature readings would seriously dampen the hysterical mass media demand for radical public policies requiring radical decarbonization to achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE) as quickly as possible.

In November 2022, meteorologist Roy Spencer, Ph.D., a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, published a ground-breaking study demonstrating that 36 climate models used to guide national policy may have exaggerated “global warming” over the last 50 years by as much as 50 percent. Spencer’s research shows that increased urbanization, not increased CO2, is responsible for exaggerating the temperature measurements recorded in the NOAA homogenized surface temperature dataset.

In August 2022, meteorologist Anthony Watts found that 96 percent of the temperature stations in the United States used to measure global warming and climate change did not “meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be ‘acceptable,’ uncorrupted placement.” (Read more) ☼

To End Climate Lunacy, Stop Treating Warming & C02 Hysterically

by David Simon

Those who oppose economically destructive “climate” policies – like those promoted by the Biden administration and at the recent United Nations COP27 conference – will continue to fail to stop the advance of these policies so long as they continue to accept the false claim that warming of the planet and carbon dioxide emissions are harmful.

They are not. On balance, global warming and CO2 emission are beneficial.

Before getting to why that is, however, it is crucial to understand why accepting the false climate claim is so harmful.

When the destructiveness of climate policies is shown, the response is that the policies nevertheless are necessary to address what President Biden refers to as the “existential threat” of global warming and increased CO2 emissions.

When it is noted that these climate policies will at most microscopically and insignificantly reduce temperatures and CO2 emissions, climate policy mandarins push for even more draconian policies.

The result has been that since the 1990s, climate policies have become increasingly destructive and wasteful. Even worse, their continued intensification appears unlikely to be stopped until the public and policymakers are persuaded that global warming and CO2 emissions are not harmful. To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts. (Read more) ☼

Antarctica Has Not Warmed For Over 70 Years

By Kenneth Richard

New studies affirm Antarctica has not been cooperating with either the global warming or “polar amplification” narratives. The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. (Read more) ☼

Top Ten 2022 Media Climate Stories – Fact Check

This summary serves as a fact check on the top ten disasters that mainstream media attributes to climate change. (link) ☼

According to media reports, 2022 was the Hottest coldest driest wettest year ever (link) ☼

Despite Media Hype, 2022 Global Wide Hurricane Season Ends with Weakest Storm Levels of the Last 42 Years

According to NOAA, measured worldwide hurricane season science data for all year 2022 tropical storms shows that global wide storms were at their lowest strength levels in the last 42 years. Additionally, NOAA’s science measured tropical storm data through year 2022 clearly demonstrates that global hurricanes are not trending stronger in numbers, duration or intensity. The number and strength of tornados were also below average. (Read more) ☼

Record Agricultural Yields Should Allay Climate Fear

by Vijay Jayaraj

Countries all over the world are surpassing previous records for production of food crops. This is good news that stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture that the media paints daily in reports on climate and weather. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE MADNESS

Let Them Eat Bugs!

By Janet Levy

Give up cheeseburgers, and eat bugs instead. That’s what the Davos elite want you to do, while they dine on $50 burritos and slabs of steak. They would even have you feel good about being a meat- and diary-free insectivore. To this end, they have carefully manufactured the cult of environmental alarmism, whose virtue-signaling adherents have been duped into thinking an ecological disaster is at hand. The cult’s latest scapegoat is agriculture. The wise global leaders of the World Economic Forum (WEF) have decreed that farming must be restricted to “save the planet.” By 2030, they dictate, plebs must adopt the ecologically sound practice of entomophagy, or insect-eating. (Read more) ☼

A Rebuttal From Doctors for Disaster Preparedness

Eating bugs can be dangerous

Using insects as a main source of animal protein is a big part of the World Economic Forum’s plans for us. But that may have some bad side effects on your body (Read report) ☼

ENERGY ISSUES

NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR). The company’s power module becomes the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States. The design is an advanced light-water SMR with each power module capable of generating 50 megawatts of emissions-free electricity. (Read more) ☼ [Note: these installations should be used to replace wind and solar generation which is unreliable and require huge land footprints.]

The Gas Stove Gambit

by Ron Clutz

Is it really a “bait and switch” gambit so that government can monitor indoor air quality and/or get rid of fossil fuels? (Read more) ☼

Biden admin quietly admits canceling Keystone XL Pipeline cost thousands of jobs, billions of dollars

by Thomas Catenacci

The Biden administration published a congressionally mandated report highlighting the positive economic benefits the Keystone XL Pipeline would have had if President Biden didn’t revoke its federal permits.

The report, which the Department of Energy (DOE) completed in late December without any public announcement, says the Keystone XL project would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had a positive economic impact of between $3.4-9.6 billion, citing various studies. A previous report from the federal government published in 2014 determined 3,900 direct jobs and 21,050 total jobs would be created during construction which was expected to take two years.

But immediately after taking office in January 2021, Biden canceled the pipeline’s permits, effectively shutting the project down. (Read more) ☼

China to accelerate approval of new coal projects to ensure energy supply

By Global Times

China reiterated its focus on energy security, vowing to ensure the supply of energy and electricity, coordinate resources and accelerate approval of new coal projects, while asking coal enterprises to expand production as peak season approaches. Power generation companies should store more high-quality coal to ensure power generation during peak times. (Read more) ☼

Let’s Take the Final Step to Reshore U.S. Mining for Battery Metals

By Danny Ervin

The U.S. depends on China for more than half of the minerals and metals deemed critically important for our nation’s economic health and military readiness. While China has made mineral production and processing a strategic priority, the U.S. has done the reverse. Mining in the U.S. has been pushed to the margins.

As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. was the world’s largest producer of rare earth minerals. Today we have just one rare earth mine remaining and the U.S. must ship its ore to China for processing. Demand for rare earths is massive and growing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says a wind turbine rated at 3.5 megawatts of electricity contains 1,300 pounds of rare earths.

There is just one lithium mine left in the U.S., one for nickel, one for cobalt, one for manganese. These raw materials are vital to the manufacture of batteries used in electric vehicles and the transmission of solar and wind power on the nation’s electricity grid.

The problem isn’t a lack of mineral resources in the U.S. The National Mining Association says the U.S. is home to $6.2 trillion worth of mineral reserves.

Despite the enormous stakes, nothing has been done to make America’s own minerals on public lands more accessible to mining companies. A complex permitting process is the problem, requiring companies to wait 10 years or more to get government approval to mine in public lands. This is shackling the transition to EVs and clean energy technologies with huge, growth-killing costs. (Read more) ☼

Green Energy Failed To Meet Power Demand During Winter Storm

by Jack McEvoy

Renewable energy was unable to generate sufficient power to meet elevated energy demand during Christmas Eve snowstorms, forcing utilities in the northeastern U.S. and Texas to burn more fossil fuels to prevent outages.

Although wind turbines, solar panels and other forms of green energy have been consistently touted by the Biden administration as reliable alternatives to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, renewables accounted for a small percentage of grids’ power output after snowstorms and a “bomb cyclone” nearly caused power outages in New England and Texas. Grid operators in both areas were forced to burn oil, a fuel that is significantly less efficient than natural gas, to avoid power outages as renewable energy sources were stymied by the harsh weather. (Read more) ☼

A Quiet Refutation of ‘Net Zero’ Carbon Emissions

Two energy reports show the U.S. is burdening and dismantling its grid to achieve an impossible goal.

By Steve Milloy

‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.

In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.” The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.” In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.

The other recent report is “2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a government-certified grid-reliability and standard-setting group. NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather. The U.S. just got another taste of this during the Christmas electric grid emergency. So there you have it: We are dangerously dismantling our electric grid while burdening it with more demand in hope of attaining the goal of “net zero by 2050,” which the utility industry has admitted is a fantasy. (Read full article) ☼

ENVIRONMENT

The Recycling Religion Is Garbage

by John Stossel

For decades, we’ve been told: recycle! “If we’re not using recycled paper, we’re cutting down more trees!” says Lynn Hoffman, co-president of Eureka Recycling. Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it. The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.

Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.” Most of the material ends up in landfills. (Read more) ☼

ECONOMY

How to tell that the climate alarmists aren’t serious

By Maker S. Mark

[The “globalists” want western nations to decrease/eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, but are okay with China increasing emissions.]

“….allowing China to increase emissions at a time that you are asking other countries to sacrifice with proposed reductions is a totally ridiculous and unserious solution to the man-made climate change problem. The real question then becomes, why are Western nations being asked to sacrifice in this way? I think we have to “follow the money” to find out. China increases manufacturing capability to produce the green products needed by the West. It increases this capacity while significantly increasing emissions of the very gases the rest of the world are trying to cut. Cutting Western energy consumption will hurt Western economies, and allowing China to increase energy consumption will allow its economy to expand. This solution to man-made climate change is nonsensical, unless this solution is really a financial reordering. China seems to be the only country truly benefitting from the current green plans.” (Source) ☼

THE EPA

EPA Reinstates Dubious Waterway Regulation

Joe Biden’s bureaucrats bring back an Obama-era power grab just for fun. The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers effectively resurrected the dubious redefinition of the “waters of the United States” found within the 1970 Clean Water Act. The EPA broadly expanded the definition of “waters of the United States” to include nearly any body of water — virtually down to the size of a puddle. (Read more) ☼

The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend the Clean Water Act

If SCOTUS finds in favor of a small-town Idaho couple in Sackett v. EPA, it could end the federal government’s jurisdiction over millions of acres of land. (link) ☼

State Attorneys General, Other Groups, File Petition Opposing U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Rule

by Bethany Blankley, Heartland Institute

Sixteen state attorneys general, 15 state associations, and multiple organizations are fighting against another Environmental Protection Agency rule they argue jeopardizes American energy and national security. The AGs, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to halt the EPA from implementing “radical climate regulations.” At issue is the EPA’s “Revised 2023 and Later Model Year Light Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards.” (Read more) ☼

PROPERTY RIGHTS

Environmental Groups Deal Another Blow To Key Alaska Mine, Undermining Biden’s Green Energy Dreams

by Jack Mcevoy, Daily Caller

Two environmental groups spent $20 million to make lands and waters close to Southern Alaska’s Bristol Bay off-limits to economic development, a move that will hinder the construction of a mine that produces minerals that are needed to expand renewable energy production. Pebble Mine sits on top of 80.6 billion pounds of copper and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, highly conductive metals which are crucial to producing solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal energy facilities.(Read more) ☼

WATER

Desalination of Sea Water Can Augment Our Water Supply Without Harming Sea Life

by Jonathan DuHamel

Desalination of sea water can produce the freshwater we need to augment our natural supplies. The most common method is reverse osmosis where the sea water is forced through a semi-permeable membrane which removes the salt. However, the process is energy intensive which some environmentalists claim will put more dread carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if the electricity comes from fossil-fuels. That can be solved by powering the plants with small, dedicated nuclear generators. The other claim by some environmentalists is that the effluent from the desalinization process, very salty brine, is harmful to wildlife. A new study shows this concern is overblown. A seven-year study, jointly conducted by Southern Cross University and the University of New South Wales at the Sydney (Australia) desalination plant found that when the plant was in operation, fish population in the area almost tripled. (Read more) The state of Arizona is currently considering building a desalination plant in Sonora, Mexico.☼

California’s Mega Water Wasters

by Edward Ring

Californians are squandering millions of acre-feet of storm runoff at the same time as they face permanent water rationing. (Read more) ☼

STATE OF THE UNION

“Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.” —James Madison (1788)

The Economic Cost Of The Pandemic: State By State

by Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution

Abstract: Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) now shows the significant impact of the pandemic on learning. The abstract nature of test score declines, however, often obscures the huge economic impact of these learning losses. NAEP results indicate large differences in learning losses across states, and this analysis provides state-by-state estimates of the economic impacts of the losses. Students on average face 2-9 percent lower lifetime incomes depending on the state in which they live. By virtue of the lower skilled future workforce, the states themselves are estimated to face a GDP that is 0.6 to 2.9 percent lower each year for the remainder of the 21st Century compared to the learning expectations derived from pre-pandemic years. The present value of future losses for states depends directly on the size of each state’s economy. At the extreme, California is estimated to have lost $1.2 trillion dollars because of learning losses during the pandemic. These losses are permanent unless a state’s schools can get better than their pre-pandemic levels. (Read full paper, 12 pages)

How Green Investors Pay the Media to Promote ‘Climate Change’

by Daniel Greenfield

The Associated Press revealed last year that it had scored $8 million to promote claims of global warming. The AP impartially described this massive conflict of interest as an illustration of “how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism”.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” its executive editor claimed. That is no doubt true. And an incredibly damaging admission.

The philanthropic quid-pro-quo saw five organizations fund the AP’s dedicated team of “more than two dozen journalists” to cover “climate issues” that the wire service would then plant in papers around the country to terrify Americans into supporting ‘green’ taxes and subsidies.

The Associated Press did not bother to explain to its readers or the newspapers that run its stories why these organizations were impelled to throw millions at it except sheer benevolence.

Nor did it explain why they might be particularly interested in convincing Americans that the climate sky is falling and that our economy must be dismantled and ‘greened’: raising energy prices and putting millions out of work. (Read more) ☼

Citizens! The Declaration of Independence: Now Read It, and Learn

By Frederick Melchiorre

The Declaration of Independence makes clear points regarding tyranny, points now particularly applicable to the Biden administration given the current state of the federal government.

The very first American document reads:

All men… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security. The sole role of the government, to secure our unalienable rights, is no longer the goal. Our “civil servants” show no concern for our safety, they trod on our civil rights and decry human rights for the most vulnerable, and desecrate our economic rights for affordable property-ownership. Where is “the pursuit of happiness?” There remains no vestiges of the ideals the founders created, especially that pertaining to “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” God is an anachronism and anathema to modern society; especially to progressive Democrats. (Read more) ☼

Biden Throwing Taxpayer Dollars Down The Climate Change Rathole

by James Rogan

President Joe Biden pledged to the United Nations in 2021 that the U.S. would give $11.4 billion annually to international climate change funds. Biden repeated that pledge at the recent COP27 climate conference. Biden’s climate change pledges are hot air, and he knows it.

Under the Constitution, Biden does not have the authority to commit U.S. funds to overseas development projects. In fact, under the Constitution, only Congress can commit such funds and only Congress has the authority to make binding international agreements. (Read more) ☼

5 Infuriating Ways People Got the First Amendment Wrong in 2022

As free speech becomes an increasingly important part of the culture war, people won’t stop misinterpreting—and outright violating—the First Amendment.

by Emma Camp, Reason Magazine

1. Yes, you can yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

2. The Stop WOKE Act stops speech.

3. No, it is not a First Amendment right to shut down your critics.

4. Filming police is a First Amendment right.

5. Heckler’s vetoes are not protected speech.

Read an explanation of each point. ☼

ESG’s Perverse, Narrow, Fraudulent Ethical Principles

by Paul Driessen

Warning: Your retirement fund may have been Shanghaied by BlackRock or other Wall Street asset managers who’ve unilaterally decided that the tens of trillions of dollars of other people’s money they control should be used to advance political causes they favor – to “make the world a better place.”

As most people know, ESG stands for Environmental protection, Social justice, and Governance of corporate and societal affairs. They’re all noble-sounding causes.

However, under ESG they’re centered around progressive, woke agendas, with the prevention of “man-made climate cataclysms” uppermost. Fund assets are used to drive “net zero” climate agendas and punish or de-fund fossil fuel companies.

That narrow focus creates serious problems. (Read more) ☼

The War Against We the People

By Jeff Crouere

In the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, our Founding Fathers declared that the brilliant centerpiece of our government was created by “We the People of the United States.” It was clearly not, “We the Politicians” or “We the Bureaucrats.”

Unfortunately, our federal government has utterly abandoned “We the People.” It was never more apparent than in the disgusting spectacle of the recently passed $1.7 trillion monstrosity known as the omnibus spending bill. (Read more) ☼

INTERESTING EDITORIALS

Under Wokeism, Animal Farm Comes to Life (link) ☼

The Globalist Scourge (link) ☼

Our government ‘protectors’ are releasing savages onto our streets! (link) ☼

A Mandate for the GOP House (link) ☼

TUCKER CARLSON: World Economic Forum exists to ‘destroy national economies’

Tucker Carlson compares attendees of the World Economic Forum to ‘supervillains’ (link) ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

by Jonathan DuHamel

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

Climate Change in Perspective (30 pages)

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

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 ☼

END

SCIENCE AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2022 DECEMBER

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

STATE OF THE UNION

“I sometimes wonder if our leaders are very smart and just putting us on, or very stupid and mean it.” – Mark Twain

As we leave 2022, how could we characterize the happenings of the year? We lost energy independence, but gained many new pronouns; the president declared our southern border secure, but that security seemed to apply only to illegal entrants; and political “woke” rhetoric deemed that men could get pregnant, and let elementary school children witness “drag queen” performances etc.

Perhaps 2022 was not so different from the year described by Charles Dickens in the introductory paragraph of his novel: “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859):

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Thomas Jefferson’s words, written in 1822:

“The worst ideas in Congress never die; they just get sneaked into unrelated bills.” – Elizabeth Nolan Brown

How to Destroy the United States

by Victor Davis Hanson

It would be hard to imagine any planned agenda to destroy America that would have been as injurious as what we already suffered the last two years. Read the ten points mentioned by Hanson. ☼

Who’s Really Facilitating America’s Border Crisis? Biden Isn’t Acting Alone

by Rob Bluey

Catholic Charities and other non-governmental organizations are working in concert with the Biden administration to facilitate the worst border crisis in American history, according to an investigation that examined the movement of 30,000 mobile devices in the United States.

The shocking report is a snapshot of the border crisis over the course of just one month and it shows how the mass resettlement of illegal aliens is impacting nearly every congressional district in America.

Using the movement patterns of anonymized cell phones, The Heritage Foundation investigation reveals how tens of thousands of illegal aliens are making their way to the U.S. interior thanks to the aid and comfort of a network of private organizations. (Read more) ☼

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: Rand Paul Releases His 2022 Festivus Report

by Spencer Brown

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) kept up his holiday tradition of releasing an annual “Festivus Report”, shining a light on the ways in which the federal government wasted Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars on frivolous, woke, and absurd projects during the year. In his 2022 issue of the Festivus Report, Paul logged $482,276,543,907 worth of wasteful spending, “including a steroid-induced hamster fight club, a study to see if kids love their pets, and a study of the romantic patterns of parrots.” Yes, really. “No matter how much money’s already been wasted, politicians keep demanding even more,” Paul noted in this year’s report. (Read more) ☼

CLIMATE ISSUES

The world is being subjected to a great scam concerning climate and energy. The purpose is to impose global governance by elitists.

Dr John Christy, distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville discusses climate.

Christy interview video: https://youtu.be/qJv1IPNZQao 49 minutes

Summary:

By using data sets built from scratch, based on satellite and other data, Christy, with other scientists including NASA scientist Roy Spencer, have been testing the theories generated by climate models to see how well they hold up to reality. Their findings? On average, the latest models for the deep layer of the atmosphere are warming about twice too fast, presenting a deeply flawed and unrealistic representation of the actual climate. 100% of climate models produce more warming than physical observations. There is no climate crisis. There has been no increase in extreme weather events during the past 140 years. According to satellite data, Earth has warmed 0.5°C during the past 40 years. None of that warming is reliably attributable to human activity. Carbon dioxide invigorates the biosphere. Energy production from fossil fuels has a much lower environmental footprint than wind and solar energy production.

Political policies have no effect on climate.☼

Misperception and amplification of climate risk

by Judith Curry

“Something frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk.” – Swedish physician Hans Rosling et al.

This post is a follow up to my recent post Victims of the faux climate ‘crisis’. Part I: Children. The issue of psychological trauma of children is one that I am continuing to work on, to identify root causes and a way forward.

The theme of this particular post is how our perceptions of risk differ from the actual risk itself. Understanding this difference provides insights to understanding these fears, as well as providing insights into how these differences are manipulated by propagandists. (Read more) ☼

Climate and CO2 Hysteria Is Optional

by Ron Clutz

They are not. On balance, global warming and CO2 emission are beneficial.

Before getting to why that is, however, it is crucial to understand why accepting the false climate claim is so harmful.

When it is noted that these climate policies will at most microscopically and insignificantly reduce temperatures and CO2 emissions, climate policy mandarins push for even more draconian policies.

The result has been that since the 1990s, climate policies have become increasingly destructive and wasteful. Even worse, their continued intensification appears unlikely to be stopped until the public and policymakers are persuaded that global warming and CO2 emissions are not harmful. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “First you win the argument, then you win the vote.”

To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts. (Read more) ☼

The Top FIVE Climate Change LIES

by Laurence Fox

Laurence Fox breaks apart the lies repeatedly fed to the public and details the manipulation by the billionaire-funded lobby groups and activists.

Climate Lie Number One: Wind Power Is NINE Times CHEAPER Than Gas

Climate Lie Number Two: Island Countries Are SINKING Into The Sea

Climate Lie Number Three: Net Zero WILL Make YOUR Bills Cheaper

Climate Lie Number Four: Storms Are Getting MORE Frequent And MORE Intense

Climate Lie Number Five: Climate Change Is KILLING People

For details watch this video. 13 minutes. ☼

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen rejects ‘climate change’ as ‘a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative’

Richard Lindzen’s new paper: An Assessment of the Conventional Global Warming Narrative

Some highlights noted by Climate Depot:

CO2 is a particularly ridiculous choice for a ‘pollutant.’ Its primary role is as a fertiliser for plant life. Currently, almost all plants are starved of CO2. Moreover, if we were to remove a bit more than 60% of current CO2, the consequences would be dire: namely death by starvation for all animal life. It would not likely lead to a particularly cold world since such a reduction would only amount to a couple of percent change in the radiative budget. After all, a 30% reduction of solar radiation about 2.5 billion years ago did not lead to an Earth much colder than it is today, as we earlier noted in connection with the Early Faint Sun Paradox.

The Earth’s climate has, indeed, undergone major variations, but these offer no evidence of a causal role for CO2. For the glaciation cycles of the past 700 thousand years, the proxy data from the Vostok ice cores shows that cooling precedes decreases in CO2 despite the very coarse temporal resolution (Jouzel et al.,1987, Gore, 2006). Higher temporal resolution is needed to show that warming preceded the increase in CO2 as well (Caillon et al, 2003). For earlier variations, there is no suggestion of any correlation with carbon dioxide at all, as shown in Figure 9a, a commonly presented reconstruction of CO2 levels and ‘temperature’ for the past 600 million years or so.

This all leaves us with a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system (a process that has played a prominent role in causing current inflation), while lifting sanctions for Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, which was designed to bypass the existing pipeline through the Ukraine used to supply Germany. It has caused much of the European Union to ban exploitation of shale gas and other sources of fossil fuel, thus leaving it with much higher energy costs, increased energy poverty, and dependence on Russia, thus markedly reducing its ability to oppose Mr Putin’s aggressions. …

Unless we wake up to the absurdity of the motivating narrative, this is likely only to be the beginning of the disasters that will follow from the current irrational demonization of CO2. Changing course will be far from a simple task. As President Eisenhower noted in his farewell address in 1961: 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. ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE BACKGROUND:

For more on climate science, see my Wryheat Climate articles:

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

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 ☼

CLIMATE & ENERGY MADNESS

The climate movement is bizarre. . . . It’s taken control of all these elite institutions. The movement’s ideology is the official religion of the British government, including the British Conservative Party. It’s the official religion of the United Nations. It’s the official religion of the World Economic Forum. Climate activists have made the great reset, which is fundamentally about a transition to renewables for climate change, the dominant ideology of the global elites. . . . The whole mainstream news media and the global elites are basically part of this cult. The idea that the world is coming to an end is mainstream among journalists. – Michael Schellenberger

Demands for ‘climate reparations’ are laughable

by Dan Hannan, Washington Examiner

The demands for climate reparations from wealthy countries are so absurd, so unscientific, and so offensive to natural justice that it is difficult to know where the criticism should begin.

The argument is that, since countries that industrialized earlier produced a lot of carbon a hundred years ago, they now owe a debt to poorer states. Naturally, this argument appeals to assorted Marxists, anti-colonialists, and shakedown artists, and COP27 has been dominated by insolent demands for well-run states to pony up. (Read more) ☼

Why reparations now?

By Mark C. Ross

The absurdity of the concept of reparations for slavery, an institution that ended several generations ago, is beyond mind-boggling. But there’s a blatantly cynical reason for the sudden lurch in that direction: formerly reliable Black voters are now slipping away from the Democrats. This also explains Biden’s recently expressed profuse generosity towards the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. (Read more) ☼

Meanwhile back on the real Earth

OP ED Watch

If you’re looking for a real climate crisis, forget Sharm el-Sheik and look at the damage climate change policy is doing to real people. For instance “Brits are paying the highest electricity bills in the entire world”. Having narrowly edged out the Republic of Ireland. And by a remarkable coincidence, “UK faces biggest fall in living standards on record”. Not, arguably, the best time to try to give away billions to pay for bad weather on the other side of the world while continuing to hammer your own energy industry. (Read more) ☼

Connecticut Just Made Climate Change Studies Compulsory

by Eric Worrall

Starting next July, Connecticut will become one of the first states in America to mandate climate change studies across its public schools as part of its science curriculum. Currently, nearly 90% of public schools across Connecticut include climate change studies in their curriculums. However, by mandating it as part of state law from grades five to 12, climate education will effectively become protected from budget cuts and climate-denying political views at a time when education in the US has become a serious culture war battleground. (Read more) ☼

EVs

Swiss look to ban use of electric cars over the winter to save energy (Link)

The Muddled Reality Of Electric Cars

by Bjorn Lomborg

Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. Germany, the U.K., and Japan, among other countries, 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 subsidize electrics to the tune of $30 billion per year?

The reality is far more muddled than the boosters of electric cars would have you believe. Carbon emissions from an electric car depend on whether it is recharged with clean or coal power.

Moreover, battery manufacturing requires lots of energy, which today is mostly produced with coal in China. That is why the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its lifetime will still emit about half as much CO2 as a gas car, this will reduce global temperatures by only 0.0001°C by 2100. (Read more) ☼

The Mirage of Electric Vehicles

by Willis Eschenbach

For those who think that electric vehicles make a difference … think again.

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab has just released a study showing that in 2021, US privately-owned plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) “saved about 690 million gallons of gasoline.” (That’s about 4 days worth of gas). (Read more) ☼

The Elites’ War On Cars

by I & I Editorial Board

No human invention has expanded liberty like the automobile. That’s one of the reasons that the Western ruling class wants to end private ownership of cars. The other reason is just as insidious. The elites’ crusade against the automobile is also motivated by the same reason they’re waging a war on food. They are convinced Earth is running out of resources and they want to hoard as much as they are able for themselves. The most efficient method to guarantee that their bellies remain always full, and the tanks of their jets, yachts, limousines, and luxury cars are filled with fossil fuels, is to restrict consumption by those “common people” who make up the middle and lower classes. (Read more) ☼

ENERGY ISSUES

Will Nuclear Fusion Power Save Us?

by Dr. David Whitehouse

“Nuclear fusion breakthrough,” are the world’s headlines today. Eventually we will have free, pollution-free energy. No CO2 emissions, we will be saved. I have lived with the promise of nuclear fusion all my life and it has always been decades away. It’s become something of a bad joke amongst the science community that fusion is always decades away.

Nuclear fusion liberates energy by combining light atoms – isotopes of hydrogen – rather than by using the radioactive decay of large atoms such as uranium and plutonium – nuclear fission. It could have many advantages; the reaction can be switched off (not possible with fission), it uses water as a fuel and produces very little waste. The question is how do you fuse atoms? (Read more to learn the pros and cons) ☼

‘Net zero’ is a lie, admits the utility industry and its regulators

by Mark Morano

[“net zero” means producing electricity with no carbon dioxide emissions.]

A new report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) buries net zero. Investment managers, public traded companies, regulators, politicians and more who have so far talked very loosely about net zero should now be on notice that they are talking about pure fantasy, if not falsehood. For investment managers and public-traded companies net zero is false and misleading and should have legal ramifications. (Read more) ☼

The Energy Storage Conundrum

by Francis Menton

An electrical grid powered mostly by intermittent generators like wind and sun requires full backup from some source; and if that source is to be stored energy, the amounts of storage required are truly staggering. When you do the simple arithmetic to calculate the storage requirements and the likely costs, it becomes obvious that the entire project is completely impractical and unaffordable. The activists and politicians pushing us toward this new energy system of wind/solar/storage are either being intentionally deceptive or totally incompetent.

(Read full paper, 32 pages) ☼

Energy Storage Report: Hydrogen as An Alternative to Batteries

by Francis Menton

At first blush, hydrogen may seem to offer the obvious solution to the most difficult issues of energy storage for backing up intermittent renewable generation. In particular, the seasonal patterns of generation from wind and sun require a storage solution that can receive excess power production gradually for months in a row, and then discharge the stored energy over the course of as long as a year. No existing battery technology can do anything like that, largely because most of the stored energy will simply dissipate if it is left in a battery for a year before being called upon. But if you can make hydrogen from some source, you can store it somewhere for a year or even longer without significant loss. Problem solved!

Well, there must be some problem with hydrogen, or otherwise people would already be using it extensively. And indeed, the problems with hydrogen, while different from those of battery storage, are nevertheless equivalently huge. Mostly, to produce large amounts of hydrogen without generating the very greenhouse gas emissions you are seeking to avoid, turns out to be enormously costly. And then, once you have the hydrogen, distributing it and handling it are very challenging. (Read more) ☼

Save America’s grid!

By David Wojick

It is no secret that America’s electric power grid is becoming unreliable. The secret is whose fault it is. Not knowing who to blame makes it hard to fix.

If I could get a show of hands I bet that almost no one has heard of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They are called NERC which rhymes with jerk. They are a private corporation endowed with federal authority to keep America’s lights on. NERC makes and enforces the regulations governing grid reliability in America. The looming threat of numerous blackouts is their fault. They have obviously failed to maintain reliability, which is their specific mission. (Read more) ☼

How Climate Activists Have Increased CO2 Emissions By Vilifying Nuclear

by Leah Barkoukis

Climate activists who have successfully vilified nuclear energy, leading to plant closures around the Western world, may be surprised to learn that their efforts have actually increased greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report from The Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center. As nuclear proponent Michael Shellenberger has explained, the true reason climate activists oppose nuclear energy is that it means renewables are unnecessary. (Read more) ☼

Power Grids Being Ruined By Preferential Treatment Of Unreliable Electricity

by Alex Epstein

Today’s grids are being ruined by systemic preferences for unreliable electricity:

1) no price penalty for being unreliable

2) huge subsidies for unreliables

3) mandates for unreliables

Congress should end these now.

Policy solution: End all mandates for unreliable solar and wind

These mandates, which require areas to use solar or wind and shut down reliable fossil fuels and nuclear, regardless of the impact on cost and reliability, should be ended at every level: national, state, and local.

Summary: America can stop the decline of our grid and move toward low-cost, reliable, and cleaner electricity by ending all preferences for unreliable electricity:

1. Require tech-neutral reliability standards

2. End all solar and wind subsidies

3. End all solar and wind mandates (Read full report) ☼

Biden Admin Prepares To Kill Alaska Mine, Hobbling Green Agenda And Costing State Billions In Potential Revenues

by Jack Mcevoy

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended prohibiting the operators of Southwestern Alaska’s Pebble Mine from disposing of waste material in the nearby Bristol Bay, a regulation that would prevent the mine from opening. However, the mine could generate billions in revenue by producing minerals that are crucial in supporting the Biden administration’s “clean energy transition.”

The EPA said Pebble Mine’s potential waste discharges would threaten nearby sockeye salmon fisheries by polluting the water and preventing the fish from spawning and reproducing, according to an agency proposal released Thursday. Despite this, the mine would extract about 1.5 billion tons of copper, molybdenum as well as other critical minerals and could deliver more than $8 billion to Southwestern Alaska, according to a report published by Northern Dynasty Minerals, the mine’s owner. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that Pebble Mine “would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers and result in long-term changes to the health of the commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay. The project could generate an estimated $1.7 billion in state tax revenue and $1.4 billion in federal taxes as the operator will pay both governments royalties in exchange for the rights to extract precious metals over a 20-year period, according to the report. The mine also sits on more than 107 million ounces of gold. (Read more) ☼

“There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.” —George Washington (1795)

END

SCIENCE AND POLITICS NEWS ROUNDUP 2022 NOVEMBER

A monthly review of climate, energy, and environmental policy issues

The UN’s Annual Climate Scam Party

The 27th annual Conference of Parties (COP 27) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held this November in beach-side resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The purpose of the meeting was to extract trillions of dollars from rich countries to pay “reparations” to “developing” countries which have been “victims of climate change.” The meeting was attended by about 45,000 people many of whom arrived by private jets. The attendees enjoyed sumptuous meals of red meat and shrimp. while saying the rest of us should eat bugs.

COP27 President, Sameh Shoukry declaring that they are “fair, balanced, and transparent in our approach.” However, the UN deliberately ignores forty years of advances in understanding the limitations of how atmospheric greenhouse gases influence earth’s temperatures. The UN’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “…have provided incontrovertible evidence that their representative scenarios are physically impossible.” Thus, none of their projections, forecasts, or long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns are based on laws of physics. (Source)

The UN IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one.

See: COP27: Meet The Financiers And Merchants Of Death.

And: Seven Ways Climate Reparations Are Absurd ☼

Where is the warming?

Avg Temp anomily Jan 2002-Oct2022

Shakedown: Biden Signs U.S. Taxpayers Up For Climate Reparations

The use of climate policy to soak Americans keeps getting worse, and the United Nation’s climate conference in Egypt ended with an agreement on a new fund to pay reparations to poor countries. Welcome to the latest climate shakedown.

Wealthy countries will now set up a fund to cover climate damage for the least developed countries. This will be financed from “a broad donor base” and “mosaic of solutions,” such as international development banks and taxes on aviation, shipping, and fossil fuels. Details about the reparations fund—such as which countries will pay, how much, and which countries will benefit—will be fleshed out over the next year. Next time Democrats control Congress, they will argue that the U.S. has an obligation to pay reparations, as they argued that the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending is necessary to meet the Paris commitments. Next time Democrats control Congress, they will argue that the U.S. has an obligation to pay reparations, as they argued that the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending is necessary to meet the Paris commitments.

This is separate from the $100 billion a year that rich countries have promised to help poor countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. (Read more) ☼

Big Climate Brother Coming Your Way (voluntary now, mandatory later)

From MasterResource, By Robert Bradley Jr.

“If alive today, F. A. Hayek would recognize and warn against the climate ‘road to serfdom.’ It is an evil that comes in steps, never in the whole. But the warning signs are increasing. It is time to expose and resist, politely but firmly.”

The climate crusade has no end point because it is futile. But the intellectual, political, media elite are not going to stop at failure. They will march on and on with the message that the public must sacrifice to save the earth. (Read more) ☼

Bad climate and energy policies continue to cause high prices, shortages of goods, and will be responsible for shortages of heating fuel this winter. Below are stories of real science, bad science, and stupid policy.

“There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.” —George Washington (1795)

H L Mencken said decades ago, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” ☼

CLIMATE SCIENCE

In physical science, physical evidence separates science fact from science fiction.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an extraordinary gas on this planet. Without it, all green life would cease. All complex life, which is dependent on green life, would cease. The EPA’s declaration that “the Administrator finds that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated both to endanger public health and to endanger public welfare” is extraordinary. It requires extraordinary physical evidence. The EPA has none. Instead, it relies on the opinions of government functionaries who are generally ignorant of how science works.

(See: The Alarmist Claims Of Climate Doom Are Missing One Thing: Evidence)

The Dangers of Low Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations

by Craig D. Idso — November 1, 2022

CO2 literally is the “food” that sustains essentially all plants (and animals who consume plants, including humans) on the face of the Earth. And when that food supply is diminished, nature begins to diminish.

In my last post I shared the results of research findings demonstrating that rising atmospheric CO2 levels represent no current direct threat to human health and/or cognitive performance and decision making. Further, I explained that they present no realistic future threat either; for CO2 levels would need to increase some 36 times above the present concentration before they would even begin to pose a mild health concern.

That value (i.e., 15,000 ppm) will never occur, given it is a factor of ten above the approximate 1500 ppm atmospheric CO2 limit that scientists think is possible if society utilized all of the currently-known fossil fuel reserves on the planet.

But what about low CO2 concentrations? Might they pose a threat to humanity? In short, yes. The lower the CO2 concentration, the greater the risk. This certainly applies to net reductions in PPM, but it also applies to reductions in CO2 from government climate policies against market preferences for mineral energies, natural gas, coal, and oil. The more CO2 the better, in other words. (Read more) ☼

Facts and Lies about Cattle and Methane

by Walter Starck

The implementation of regulations and taxes intended to significantly reduce emissions of methane from livestock is unneeded, ineffective and based entirely on a highly misleading consideration of relevant scientific understanding. It amounts to a hypothetical solution to an imaginary problem and is being pursued for green votes in the name of virtue signaling, woke politics and publicity; not for any harm that can be either demonstrated or prevented. (Read more and scroll down for 7 pertinent facts) See also: Methane- the Irrelevant Greenhouse Gas (Link) ☼

Daily Sceptic Reports on Research Showing U.S. Warming is Exaggerated by 50 Percent

By Linnea Lueken

A recent post from The Daily Sceptic describes new research conducted by scientists seeking to accurately determine U.S. surface temperatures after the influence of the urban heat island effect is removed. The results revealed that the eastern United States has experienced 50 percent less warming over the last 50 years than official records indicate. This important research confirms what The Heartland Institute’s recent report, “Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed,” found that official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature stations produce corrupted data due to their location in man-made hot spots. (Read more) ☼

Nitrous Oxide and Climate

by Gregory R. Wrightstone

Nitrous oxide (N20) has now joined carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) in the climate alarm proponents’ pantheon of anthropogenic “demon” gases. In their view, increasing concentrations of these molecules are leading to unusual and unprecedented warming and will, in turn, lead to catastrophic consequences for both our ecosystems and humanity.

Countries around the world are in the process of greatly reducing or eliminating the use of nitrogen fertilizers based on heretofore poorly understood properties of nitrous oxide. Reductions of N2O emissions are being proposed in Canada by 40 to 45 percent and in the Netherlands by up to 50 percent. Sri Lanka’s complete ban on fertilizer in 2021 led to the total collapse of their primarily agricultural economy.

To provide critically needed information on N2O, the CO2 Coalition has published an important and timely paper evaluating the warming effect of the gas and its role in the nitrogen cycle. Armed with this vital information, policymakers can now proceed to make informed decisions about the costs and benefits of mandated reductions of this beneficial molecule.

This new paper (47 pages) joins previous CO2 Coalition reports on other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane.

Key takeaways from the paper:

At current rates, a doubling of N2O would occur in more than 400 years.

Atmospheric warming by N2O is estimated to be 0.064°C per century.

Increasing crop production requires continued application of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in order to feed a growing population. (Read more) ☼

Climate Alarmist Claim Fact Checks

by Joseph D’Aleo

Updated Nov. 17, 2022 (link)

CO2 is Innocent but Clouds are Guilty. New Science has Created a “Black Swan Event”**

by Charles Blaisdell PhD ChE

**From web sources: “,… in 1697 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Australia, upending the belief” (that all swans were white) “and transforming how we understand the natural world. …the phrase “black swan event” came to refer to an event that suddenly proves something that was previously thought to be impossible.”

Our tax dollars have been at work with NASA for the last 20+ years putting satellites in orbit to detect and measure the “CO2 effect” on Global Warming, GW. After 20 years, the CERES satellite (and others) has discovered that cloud reduction is the major effect on GW for those 20 years. Two papers published in 2021 reach this conclusion. These new papers do claim some sign of CO2 effect (and other greenhouse gases) on GW; but the papers show the dominate effect on GW for those 20 years was the cloud reduction effect (albedo reduction- warming). (Read more 40 pages) ☼

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. 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:

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