People for the West -Tucson
Newsletter, February, 2019
PO Box 86868, Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
pfw-tucson@cox.net
Real environmentalism can go hand in hand with natural resource production, private property rights, and access to public lands
The “Green New Deal” Will Send US Back to the Dark Ages
by Jonathan DuHamel
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” -Bertrand Russell
The “Green New Deal” promotes an energy policy and tried-and-failed social programs that will, by some estimates, cost $49 trillion during the first 10 years. (Cost estimate source) The National Review estimates that 5.8 million jobs would be eliminated under the Green New Deal. (Source)
The energy portion of the deal is based upon a profound ignorance and misunderstanding of how the climate system works. For example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claims: “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change…” Promoters of utility-scale renewable energy, which probably would not exist without government mandates and subsidies, take advantage of that ignorance. (See Renewable Energy Subsidies Costly to Taxpayers, Benefit Big Companies)
Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute gives us the “highlights” of energy policy under the Green New Deal:
First, keep it in the ground by halting all fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and offshore areas; halting all permitting of fossil-fuel power plants, pipelines, and other infrastructure projects; banning fossil-fuel exports; and ending “massive, irrational subsidies” for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, waste incineration, and biomass energy.
Second, “the United States must shift to 100% renewable power by 2035 or earlier.” Large-scale hydro-electric power, biomass, and waste-to-energy do not qualify.
Third, public transport using renewable power only must be vastly expanded; sales of vehicles powered by gas and diesel engines must be banned as quickly as possible; and all such vehicles must be off the roads by 2040 at the latest. Of course, “federal credits for electric vehicles must be expanded.”
Fourth, Congress should “harness the full power of the Clean Air Act.” I’m not sure what more can be done to turn the economy upside down, but I may be missing something.
Fifth, this must be a “just transition.” This will require “support for communities who (sic) have historically been harmed first and most by the dirty energy economy,” as well as “retrofitting millions of buildings to conserve energy” and “actively restoring natural ecosystems.”
Sixth, the rights of indigenous peoples must be fully protected, although it’s not clear whether Native Americans will be allowed to develop coal, oil, and natural gas resources on their lands. My guess is they’ll be able to apply for compensation.
Finally, the Green New Deal must not protect fossil fuel producers from legal liability and cannot include “market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, [or] carbon capture and storage.”
It should be called the Back to the Dark Ages Manifesto. (link to original article)
All aspects of living require energy, and hydrocarbons provide 80% of America’s energy, more for the rest of the world. A government-mandated transition to 100% renewable energy would completely destroy the U.S. industrial base and cause lights to go out in millions of households across the country. This energy transition alone could cost $5.2 trillion, while greatly increasing your energy costs.(Source)
Read these articles to see why the energy portion of the Green New Deal is so stupid:
The Broken Greenhouse – Why CO2 is a minor player in global climate
Evidence that CO2 emissions do not intensify the greenhouse effect
An examination of the relationship between temperature and carbon dioxide
Why Replacing Fossil-fuel Generation of Electricity with Solar or Wind Is Dangerous
The high cost of electricity from wind and solar generation
The Green New Deal is not just about energy, it contains most of the old (and failed) socialist utopian policies such as free education through college, guaranteed jobs, free medical care. Read the list as complied by the Green Party.
All this free stuff will put the government in full control of your life, and cost only $49 trillion for the first 10 years. (Source)
According to Justin Haskins, Fox News:
The Green New Deal would dramatically reshape the U.S. economy and add tens of trillions of dollars to the national debt.
The radical plan would force families to pay more to heat, cool and provide electricity to their homes. It would raise the same costs for businesses, farmers, government and organizations, driving up their operating costs – and raising the prices for just about all the good and services Americans buy.
Under the Green New Deal, Americans would have to power their homes with renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. Every home and business in the United States would have to be “upgraded” for “state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety.” And a slew of massive government social programs and mandates would be created.
In addition to the energy provisions of the Green New Deal that have received the most attention from left-wing pundits and radical environmentalists, there is a lot of important information related to this proposal that proponents have deliberately kept out of the spotlight.
Here are five of the most important things you need to know about the Green New Deal.
1. It includes many radical programs that have nothing to do with so-called “green” energy.
2. It would do nothing to curb global warming.
3. Renewable energy costs significantly more than fossil fuels.
4. The Green New Deal would empower and give handouts to left-wing special interest groups and industries.
5. It would run up the national debt by tens of trillions of dollars. Read more
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808)
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” —Thomas Jefferson (1802)
A Cautionary Tale from Great Britain
Green Deal fiasco:
By Tom Kelly, Investigations Editor for the Daily Mail
Thousands of homeowners face rip-off energy bills for decades after being ‘scammed’ into joining a state-backed £400million eco-energy scheme that ‘utterly failed’.
The Green Deal – which ministers trumpeted as the ‘biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War’ – was abandoned after two years as MPs admitted it had been a ‘complete fiasco’ that brought almost no environmental benefits.
But more than three years after its collapse, families remain trapped repaying loans of up to £21,000 which they unwittingly took out for solar panels, replacement boilers and insulation. The repayments are added to monthly utility bills which in some cases have quadrupled once the loans were added to the cost of their usual fuel and will take more than 20 years to pay back.
In some of the worst cases, the scheme was allowed to be ruthlessly exploited by Government-approved ‘gangster companies’ who conned the elderly and vulnerable, including those with dementia, MPs told the Commons. Read more ☼
CLIMATE
Rebuttals to Climate Alarmist Claims
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/rebuttals-to-climate-alarmist-claims/
This post on my Wryheat blog provides summaries of rebuttals to claims made in the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment Report. The authors of these rebuttals are all recognized experts in the relevant scientific fields. At the end of each summary is a link to the detailed rebuttal.
The rebuttals debunk these claims:
Claim: Heat Waves are increasing at an alarming rate and heat kills.
Claim: Global warming is causing more hurricanes and stronger hurricanes.
Claim: Global warming is causing more and stronger tornadoes.
Claim: Global warming is increasing the magnitude and frequency of droughts and floods.
Claim: Global Warming has increased U.S. Wildfires.
Claim: Global warming is causing snow to disappear.
Claim: Global warming is resulting in rising sea levels as seen in both tide gauge and satellite technology.
Claim: Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice loss is accelerating due to global warming.
Claim: Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are causing ocean acidification, which is catastrophically harming marine life.
Claim: Carbon pollution is a health hazard. ☼
The Staggering Costs of Decreasing CO2 Emissions
by Alan Carlin
Climate extremists, like other hucksters, usually emphasize how their favored policies (decarbonization in this case) will avoid various alleged disasters, which never seem to happen except in the distant future. Rarely do they explain what these efforts will cost. Rather, the true believers always claim that the costs are small, even though they actually are not. The costs include (1) higher prices for usable energy, (2) lower reliability of energy supply, (3) visual and other pollution and wildlife damage. Higher energy prices are the most easily measured and understood of these costs, and were the basis for the recent Yellow Vest riots in France. Read more As an illustration, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) regulatory agency approved a project to construct wind turbines near Virginia Beach. The plan calls for construction of turbines 27 miles off the coast, to begin operation by the end of 2020. Virginia electricity rate-payers will pay the exorbitant costs of this project, $300 million. Also, the electricity produced from the two offshore turbines will receive 78 cents per kWh. The current wholesale price for electricity in Virginia is about 3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Read more
Taking down the latest Washington Post Antarctic scare story on 6x increased ice melt
by Anthony Watts
Washington Post headline: Ice loss from Antarctica has sextupled since the 1970s, new research finds
The new study claims ice loss of 252 billion tons per year beginning in 2009. (It takes about 360 billion tons of ice to produce one millimeter of global sea-level rise.)
Anthony Watts does the math and finds the change is 0.00095% of total Antarctic ice mass per year. Read post However, According to the new analysis of satellite data by NASA, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008. (Link) Another new study finds that the rapid Antarctic sea ice decline in late 2016 was largely due to natural climate variability of surface wind and ocean currents. (Link) ☼
Global Warming Crop Apocalypse Is Just Media Fear-Mongering
By James Taylor
Global warming alarmists and their media allies launched a new scare last week, claiming that global warming is causing crop failures and food shortages around the globe. In one of their biggest whoppers ever, the media are claiming that global warming has displaced “millions” of farmers in India and is causing – or will soon cause – similar devastation to farmers and crops in Bangladesh, Syria, and Honduras. Objective evidence, however, decimates the assertion and shows that crop yields continue to set annual records as growing seasons lengthen, frost events become less frequent, soil moisture improves, and more atmospheric carbon dioxide fertilizes crops and plant life. Read more ☼
Another Climate Propaganda Story Promoting the Normal as Abnormal
by Dr. Tim Ball
Almost every day there are stories in the media about weather or climate events that create the impression that they are new and outside of the normal pattern. None of them are. The objective is to sensationalize the story, even if it means using a meaningless period. A simple trick is to pick a period in which your claim is valid. This practice of cherry-picking the period of study is not exclusive to the media. It was a clear sign of corruption of climatology brought to a head with Roseanne D’Arrigo’s infamous comment to the 2006 National Academy of Science (NAS) panel that “if you are going to make a cherry pie, you have to pick cherries.”
That doesn’t condone the media use of the technique. All it does is illustrate why it was a convenient technique for creating a deception about what is normal. Read more for examples. ☼
2018 is the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States
By Paul Homewood
In the whirlwind that is 2018, there has been a notable lack of high-end twisters. This is the first year in the modern record with no violent tornadoes touching down in the United States. Violent tornadoes are the strongest on a 0 to 5 scale, or those ranked EF4 or EF5. It was a quiet year for tornadoes overall, with below normal numbers most months. Unless you’re a storm chaser, this is not bad news. Read more and see graphs See also from WUWT ☼
A Main Tenet Of Anthropogenic Global Warming Has Been Falsified By Observations
By Kenneth Richard, NoTricksZone
According to climate models, water vapor and precipitation trends were supposed to have been enhanced as a consequence of rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions. And yet after compiling decades of observational evidence, it has been determined there has been no detectable global-scale human influence on the Earth’s hydrological cycle.
There have been many new scientific papers published that document the observed lack of any detectable global trends in the Earth’s hydrological cycle during the last century, or since anthropogenic CO2 emissions began rising dramatically.
Without water vapor-induced temperature amplification, the model-based consequence of doubling CO2 concentrations to 560 ppm (from the pre-industrial 280 ppm value) is a warming of just over 1°C. This temperature change is neither dangerous or even concerning.
Simply put, the lack of supporting evidence for an anthropogenic intensification of the hydrological cycle effectively decimates a cornerstone of the dangerous anthropogenic global warming narrative. Read more ☼
PROPERTY RIGHTS
When environmentalism becomes corruption – Part 1
by Craig Liukko
All across the United States, private property rights are under assault – assault by state and federal legislators and regulators, environmentalist groups, wealthy liberal foundations, corporations and other special interests, often acting in coordination or collusion with one another. They are seizing or taking control of lands and other valuable property without due process or just compensation, under a host of environmental and other justifications, many of which are fictional at best.
I have personally witnessed attempts to shut down the small mining industry in my state of Colorado. Exploration and development by this industry often results in discoveries of major deposits of minerals that are essential for everything we make, use and do – including medical equipment, cell phones, computers, aircraft, aerospace, automobiles, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and modern high-tech weapon and communication systems.
Actions that block mineral development in the United States make us 50-100% dependent on sometimes less than friendly foreign sources, and on mines that are operated using, abusing and under-paying parents and children, often under horrendous health, safety and environmental conditions.
Stories like what my company went through can be found everywhere in the United States now. Worse, they are no longer confined only to businesses that rely on development of our nation’s vast and highly available natural resources – done today with the highest regard for laws, worker safety and the ecology.
Parting thoughts:
From Peggy Noonan:
“We have seen the political correctness of the social-justice warriors sweep the universities, hounding out those who would speak from an incorrect perspective, decreeing new rules of language and living. They do not understand that when you tell people, especially Americans, what they can and cannot say, can and cannot think, they don’t stop saying and thinking. They go underground, sometimes to the depths. And it is dark down there. Conservatives have long decried political correctness. The past 30 years they’ve provided the intellectual muscle against censorship. But an end to political correctness in the arts and entertainment cannot come from the right. It can come only from the left. All the organs of entertainment and art in America, from Broadway to Hollywood, through Netflix, the museums and onward, are entities of the cultural left. They are run and populated by the cultural left. They have the pertinent power. When conservatives write or speak against limits on free speech, what they say is heard by the left as mere reaction, a cover for intolerance, and so dismissed. The left will listen only to entities of the left who say: Enough. Art needs air, and that air is freedom.”
Some hypocracy:
“’We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked…’” Barrack Obama, 2005.”
“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. And I do think you have to control your borders.” Hillary Clinton, 2015,”
And some amusement:
Scientists discover new element – Pelosium
A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. The chemical symbol of Pelosium is Pu. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark particles called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Pelosium’s mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass. Read more at The Westerner
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Our Mission
1) Support private property rights.
2) Support multiple use management of federal lands for agriculture, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, recreation, timber harvesting and water development activities.
3) Support a balance of environmental responsibility and economic benefit for all Americans by urging that environmental policy be based on good science and sound economic principles.
Newsletters can be viewed online on Jonathan’s Wryheat Blog:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/
See my essay on climate change:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/climate-in-perspective/
The Constitution is the real contract with America.
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People for the West – Tucson, Inc.
PO Box 86868
Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
Jonathan DuHamel, President & Editor
Dr. John Forrester, Vice President
Lonni Lees, Associate Editor
People for the West – Tucson, Inc. is an Arizona tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporation. Newsletter subscriptions are free.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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