‘Blatant Violations’: Watchdog Challenges Key Data Used By Biden Admin To Push Sweeping Climate Agenda thumbnail

‘Blatant Violations’: Watchdog Challenges Key Data Used By Biden Admin To Push Sweeping Climate Agenda

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By The Daily Caller

A government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Biden administration over its use of a dataset frequently used to push its climate agenda.

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) filed the complaint with the Commerce Department over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) “Billions Project” dataset, which purports to keep track of natural [and climate] disasters that have caused at least $1 billion in damages going back to 1980. The billion-dollar disasters (BDD) data — cited frequently by the Biden administration to insinuate that climate change is intensifying and justify sweeping green policies — is based on opaque data derived from questionable accounting practices, PPT alleges in the complaint.

“American families and businesses continue to struggle with persistently high inflation, which many attribute in large part to the energy policies and government spending of the current administration. The idea that blatant violations of scientific integrity could be underlying the rationale for these policies should concern every American,” Michael Chamberlain, PPT’s director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated incident. The Biden Administration came into office pledging that its decision making would be grounded in the highest-quality science, but all too often has failed to live up to those promises.” 

PPT Scientific Integrity Co… by Nick Pope

The complaint was filed with the Commerce Department, as NOAA operates under its auspices, Chamberlain told the DCNF.

PPT’s complaint alleges that NOAA does not adequately disclose its sources and methods for compiling the BDD dataset, adds and removes BDD events from the dataset without providing its rationale for doing so and produces cost estimates that are sometimes significantly different than those generated by more conventional accounting procedures.

While NOAA states that it develops its BDD data from more than a dozen sources, the agency does not disclose those sources for specific events or show how it calculates loss estimates from those sources, PPT’s complaint alleges.

The complaint further alleges that NOAA’s accounting methods are opaque and “produce suspect results.”

For example, when Hurricane Idalia took aim at Florida in 2023, NOAA initially projected that the storm would cause about $2.5 billion worth of damages before insured losses ultimately came in at about $310 million, according to PPT’s complaint, which cites the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation for that figure. Nevertheless, NOAA subsequently marked up its estimate for how much damage the storm caused to $3.5 billion, a discrepancy for which NOAA provided no explanation, PPT alleges in its complaint.

NOAA researchers have disclosed in the past that the agency considers factors such as functions pertaining to livestock feeding costs — in addition to more conventional types of damages — in their cost calculations.

Further, the complaint alleges that BDD events are quietly added and removed from the dataset without explanation, citing Roger Pielke Jr., a former academic who believes climate change to be a real threat but opposes politicized science. In a forthcoming paper analyzing the merits of BDD statistics, Pielke compared the dataset in late 2022 to the dataset in the middle of 2023 and found that ten new BDD events were added to the list and 3 were subtracted without explanation.

Apart from the issues with methodology alleged by PPT in its complaint, the use of BDD events as a proxy for climate change’s intensity is inherently misleading because economic data does not reflect changes in meteorological conditions, Pielke has previously explained to the DCNF.

For example, increasing concentrations of assets, especially in coastal areas, can confound the usefulness of BDD events as an indicator for the intensity of climate change, as Energy and Environment Legal Institute Senior Policy Fellow Steve Milloy has previously explained to the DCNF. Hypothetically, the same exact hurricane could hit the same exact place, decades apart, with vastly different damage totals; this would be the case because there are simply more assets sitting in the way of the storm, not because the storm was any more violent due to worsening climate change.

NOAA has acknowledged this limitation of the dataset in prior communications with the DCNF.

Additionally, NOAA will add disasters to the list retrospectively because it adjusts for inflation, meaning that a hurricane that caused $800 million in damages in 1980 dollars would be added to the list because the damages exceed $1 billion when adjusted for inflation, for example.

The Biden administration has frequently cited the BDD dataset to substantiate its massive climate agenda.

For example, Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk cited the dataset in written testimony submitted to lawmakers in February explaining the White House’s decision to pause new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.

The BDD statistics are also referenced Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), the Biden administration’s landmark climate report that is intended to provide the most sound scientific basis for lawmakers and officials to craft climate policy.

NOAA asserted that the increasing frequency of BDD events is a sign of intensifying climate change in a January press release and blog post summarizing 2023, and then defended the use of the dataset in subsequent communications with the DCNF.

“Sensational climate claims made without proper scientific basis and spread by government officials threaten the public’s trust in its scientific officials and undermines the government’s mission of stewarding the environment,” PPT’s complaint states. “It also poses the danger of policymakers basing consequential government policy on unscientific claims unsupported by evidence.”

NOAA declined to comment, citing the active nature of the scientific integrity complaint. The White House and the Department of Commerce did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Entire Push To Halt New Natural Gas Exports Traces Back To One Ivy League Prof And His Shaky Study

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Read Biden’s Letter To Me On Energy Which Contains 10 Lies and 3 Truths thumbnail

Read Biden’s Letter To Me On Energy Which Contains 10 Lies and 3 Truths

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Dear Mr. Swier,

Thank you for writing to me.  Our Nation has a long history of producing the energy that fuels our cars, heats our homes, and keeps our lights on [TRUE].  Unfortunately, for too long, we have also relied on foreign nations to help meet our energy needs.  As President, I am fighting to keep energy prices low by promoting domestic energy production [LIE], cracking down on price gouging [LIE], and laying a new foundation for true and lasting energy independence [LIE] by investing in a clean energy future.

Since I came into office, companies in the United States have produced record levels of oil and gas [LIE].  And to bring prices down at the pump [LIE], my Administration released millions of barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve [TRUE].  Across the country, oil and gas companies have thousands of permits that allow them to drill in the United States right now [LIE]—but they are choosing not to.  And my Administration is calling on them to use their permits or lose them.

As President, it is my job to focus on the energy needs of Americans today and of the future [LIE].  To be truly free from our reliance on foreign oil [LIE], we are investing in all forms of energy here at home [LIE], including wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal power, and vehicle electrification [TRUE].  These investments are creating good-paying jobs and will lower energy costs for Americans [LIE].  And as we do this, we are making sure we leave no one behind—including rural America, the heartland, and energy communities [LIE].

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts about how we can bring true energy security and independence to America.

Sincerely,

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

©2024. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Blatant Violations’: Watchdog Challenges Key Data Used By Biden Admin To Push Sweeping Climate Agenda

White House Shoots Down Mike Johnson’s Plan To Link Ukraine Aid And Liquefied Natural Gas Reversal thumbnail

White House Shoots Down Mike Johnson’s Plan To Link Ukraine Aid And Liquefied Natural Gas Reversal

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By The Daily Caller

The White House said Tuesday that it would not entertain a compromise with Speaker Mike Johnson to connect an aid package for Ukraine with a reversal of the Biden administration’s moratorium on approvals for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, according to Bloomberg News.

Johnson reportedly suggested that such a compromise could be a workable solution for both parties to take care of high-priority items on their respective agendas, but the White House has made clear that the deal is dead on arrival, according to Bloomberg News. The right flank of the House Republican conference has opposed a new major aid package for Ukraine, while the White House is doubling down on its LNG exports pause after environmentalist groups showered the Biden administration with praise for its Jan. 26 decision on the issue.

“The president has been clear that House Republicans should pass the bipartisan national security agreement that already passed the Senate as soon as possible to get Ukraine the aid it urgently needs to defend itself from Russian tyranny,” the White House said in a statement, according to Bloomberg News. “The president supports the pause on pending, additional approvals of LNG export licenses to evaluate the economic and climate impacts on consumers and communities.”

Could Joe Biden’s Natural Gas Pause Cost Dems The Senate In November?https://t.co/57P0eAOGYJ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 29, 2024

The Senate passed a $95 billion aid package for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in February, but the House has yet to approve the bill and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk. The president has called on House Republicans to pass the foreign aid bill on numerous occasions, including during his State of the Union Address in March.

During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Johnson intimated that he was thinking about linking the two issues together in a single piece of legislation when the House returns to Washington after its spring recess.

Johnson reportedly floated the idea to connect Ukraine aid and a LNG pause reversal to Biden during a one-on-one meeting in March, according to Bloomberg News, which cited an individual with knowledge of the situation. Reuters previously reported that some in the White House were potentially willing to reverse the moratorium depending on what else was included in the compromise, but White House officials disputed that claim.

Climate activists — including the confrontational outfit called Climate Defiance and a 25-year old TikTok influencer — lobbied the Biden administration to impose the LNG moratorium ahead of the decision to do so. The pause will not reduce global emissions, but instead empower natural gas production in places like Russia and Qatar, energy sector experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The climate lobby and its activist voters are poised to be a key bastion of support for Biden in the 2024 race, with several organizations already endorsing his reelection campaign or declaring their plans to spend big to stave off former President Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Entire Push To Halt New Natural Gas Exports Traces Back To One Ivy League Prof And His Shaky Study

Biden Admin Leaned On Questionable And Misleading Science To Justify Halting Natural Gas Hub Approvals

Trump-Appointed Federal Judge Smacks Down ‘Arbitrary And Capricious’ Biden EV Scheme

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Climate change increases female genital mutilation. True or false? thumbnail

Climate change increases female genital mutilation. True or false?

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Female genital cutting is a barbarous practice that should have been consigned to the ash-heap of history long before this world experienced the pleasure of beholding my angelic baby face. Unfortunately, however, for the first time after a steady decline over two decades, it is now on the rise worldwide.

Sadly, the biggest contributors to this increase are a few African countries where the custom has never been sufficiently stigmatised. And the main factor behind it is rapid population growth. In other words, more women are now living in countries where the practice persists, which means more women, in absolute terms, are getting cut.

This is according an analysis by UNICEF, which was published this past International Women’s Day (March 8), The New York Times reporter who covered it clearly knew this, given that she’s covered the subject for two decades, and even referenced the report. And yet, somehow, she still managed to drag in climate change as a major factor behind the resurgence of the practice.

Weather disasters linked to climate change, so her argument goes, make “people increasingly vulnerable and more reliant on traditional community structures.” The implication is that, in places where those traditional structures include female cutting, climate change drives up the practice.

Upon sober examination, this reasoning makes very little sense. For one, erratic weather has been a constant feature in Africa forever. Additionally, multiple extreme weather events occurred during the two decades in which female cutting declined precipitously. Furthermore, even those countries and regions where female cutting has been effectively eradicated often experience extreme weather events.

In short, there is no evidence that climate change has anything to do with the recent resurgence of female cutting. The spurious attempt to link them is just the latest instalment in an absurd trend by pundits and commentators to pin the blame for age-old African maladies to climate change.

It’s not limited to Africa, of course, but it is particularly notable in contemporary foreign media coverage of the continent.

Consider the movement – about which we wrote recently – to eradicate food insecurity on the continent by promoting the cultivation of neglected traditional crops. This scheme is motivated, in part, by the conviction that the effects of climate change will make it increasingly difficult to grow introduced crops – like rice, maize and wheat – on the continent.

But there are two major problems with this position.

The first is that it is self-defeating. Traditional crops grow better, not because they are immune to climate change, but rather because they’ve been cultivated on the continent for longer, and so are better adapted. There is no reason to believe that drastic weather events, caused by climate change, wouldn’t affect them as much as introduced crops.

The second problem, which is more important, is that climate change is in fact a minor factor behind food insecurity in Africa (if at all); food insecurity has been a problem for decades but has improved tremendously in the last few decades. Where it persists, it’s often because of conflict or other forms of instability. Even the snobs at the World Economic Forum know enough to acknowledge this.

But doesn’t climate change at least drive conflict as well, so that it drives up food insecurity, at least indirectly?

Well, not really. Most of the armed conflicts in Africa have complex roots, few of which can be convincingly traced back to the changing climate. One would need to be decidedly quixotic to assert that, hadn’t the climate changed, Somalia wouldn’t have spiralled into its eternal civil war.

Likewise, any sensible betting man (if that isn’t an oxymoron), would be wise to put their odds squarely on the likelihood that the two military thugs currently tearing up Sudan would still be doing so even if the temperatures in Khartoum had remained at their pre-industrial levels. Ditto Mr Kagame’s marauding mercenaries in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Now, that the climate has been changing lately isn’t in question. And though the degree to which human activity is driving that change is debatable, it is obvious that it has played a meaningful role. It therefore makes sense that, in so far as climate change is bad for us and the planet, and to the extent that we can do something about it, we should do something about it.

Moreover, those who care deeply about this issue are perfectly within their rights to campaign for such action. But that doesn’t mean they get to shoehorn it into every conversation about human suffering and social ills. It isn’t that climate change is irrelevant; the climate is, after all, all-encompassing. But so is oxygen, and yet we never blame oxygen as for murders, though all murderers live on it.

Seeing all tragedies as functions of climate change smacks of desperation and elite snobbery. And, what’s worse, it is likely to do more harm than good, especially in Africa. For it is with regard to this continent that we most need to be serious when diagnosing the root causes of developmental and social ills, given that so few of them have been solved here.

Blaming genuinely horrific occurrences, such as the resurgence of female genital cutting, on climate change effectively obviates the efficacy of any potential attempts to tackle them in the near term, since the climate is unlikely to stop changing any time soon, even if humans stopped contributing to it immediately.

It may very well be that the motivations of those who do so are humanitarian, but I despair of the righteousness of anyone who would so casually condemn millions more women and girls to this barbarity until China stops burning coal.

Is climate change being blamed for too many planetary problems? Leave your comments below.  

AUTHOR

MATHEW OTIENO

Mathew Otieno is a Kenyan writer, blogger and dilettante farmer. Until 2022, he was a research communications coordinator at a university in Nairobi, Kenya. He now lives in rural western Kenya, near the shores of Lake Victoria, from where he’s pursuing a career as a full-time writer while concluding his dissertation for a master’s degree. His first novel is due out this year.

EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©2024. All rights reserved.

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Review of Climate: The Movie (The Cold Hard Truth)

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By Peter Murphy

Editors’ Note:  The film reviewed by CFACT we have viewed and think is excellent.  It is factual and scientific, but easily understood by a layperson.  A link is provided in the third paragraph.  View the movie.  You will enjoy it and be better informed for doing so.

Our (mankind’s) ability to control the weather and change the planet’s climate is greatly exaggerated. More precisely, it is a fruitless and wastrel endeavor and unnecessary besides.

That is the main takeaway from the new film Climate: The Movie (The Cold Hard Truth), written and directed by Martin Durkin and released last week.

The film can be viewed here.

Climate will always change, no matter how many square miles of solar panels and wind turbines desecrate the landscape and oceans, regardless of how many strip-mined electric vehicles the government attempts to force-feed us, and no matter how many trillions of dollars are printed and spent by politicians and virtue-signaling multi-billionaires.

Climate change is a natural phenomenon primarily influenced by solar activity, including sunspots, solar winds, and cloud formation. That’s right: the sun impacts Earth’s climate, something I learned by drawing pictures in kindergarten science, yet is disregarded by the vast climate change mega-industry of governments, corporations, media, grant-receiving scientists and professors, and the entertainment world.

Instead, said the industry is obsessed with carbon dioxide, which is a trace atmospheric gas comprising four ten-thousandths of the atmosphere, or 0.04 percent, that is essential to human, animal, and plant life. Indeed, CO2 makes the world livable and thriving, yet is falsely labeled a “pollutant” that somehow threatens the existence of Earth itself and must be curtailed. In fact, carbon in the atmosphere has been much higher at temperatures cooler and hotter than today, at levels resulting from temperature changes, rather than the cause of them.

Climate: The Movie features a series of interviews of prominent and credentialed scientists, including Steven Koonin, NYU professor and former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration; Richard Lindzen, retired atmospheric physicist from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Roy Spencer, meteorologist at the University of Huntsville in Alabama and an award-winning veteran of NASA; Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer at Harvard and the Smithsonian; and others, some of whom were blackballed for daring to challenge the prevailing climate change group-think narrative.

Another major feature of the film is data. How warm is the planet today compared to previous decades, centuries, and millions of years ago? Based on rock formations, temperature can be estimated going back as long as 500 million years. At the present day, it turns out Earth is in a colder period than the planetary norm. Measured over thousands of years, the climate has been quite stable, ranging within a few degrees, and now in an overall warming trend by about one degree since the late 1800s, during which average global temperature has varied modestly up and down.

Another key data point is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which was four and five times higher than the levels of today, at 2,000-plus parts per million, including during ice ages. Yet, such realities have eluded climate obsessives like John Kerry and countless others who assert that nameless scientists warn of exceeding 400 parts per million means the planet is headed to a proverbial danger zone.

In sum, the climate changes of recent decades and centuries have ebbed and flowed in an unremarkable, non-threatening fashion.

The film also discusses the importance of accurately measuring global temperature change by making apples-to-apples comparisons, which the climate alarmist industry routinely ignores to fulfill its political narrative. Temperature records of 100 or more years past were commonly taken from thermometers in sparse areas when the U.S. was a more rural nation. These readings do not properly compare to results taken in dense areas of today due to the “urban heat effect,” studied by Dr. Spencer. By contrast, temperature data measured by satellites, ocean or rural-based thermometers show smaller vicissitudes over time.

How did it get this way? How did climate change alarmists become a pervasive influence? Money. It always comes back to the money, primarily from government.

After a global cooling period in the 1970s, when actor Leonard Nimoy (“Mr. Spock”) and many others warned of the coming ice age (even as man-made carbon emissions were sharply increasing since World War II), temperature reverted slightly upward. This spawned a movement championed by then-U.S. Senator Al Gore, who became Vice President in the Clinton administration, which sharply increased funding to study global warming.

Government research funding typically chases problems to “study” and solve, the film asserts. The climate change issue, with its growing alarm bells, unscrupulously parroted in the media for decades, has since gone far beyond government research grants to subsidizing big corporate industries (e.g., solar, wind, EVs) to purportedly lower the temperature.

Politicians from President Biden on down who peddle climate exaggerations, dutifully echoed by most national media, will go on ignoring the science and reality presented in Climate: The Movie. To otherwise embrace the scientific evidence from this robust film would mean the end of the climate gravy train and the climate alarmist crusade to expand government power and control over society.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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The Panic Over Climate Change Is Not Catching On

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By Thomas C. Patterson

The Great Climate Change Revolution is headed for failure. You can tell that because it is already in big trouble before the ultimate heavy lifting has even started.

International accords, (i.e. Paris Agreement) passed with great fanfare to ensure cooperation on emissions reductions, are ignored by most of the signers, notably China. Consumers worldwide are balking at increased energy prices. Unsold EVs are piling up.

All this resistance is occurring well before the full rollout of the regulations and restrictions needed to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, the agreed-upon goal of climate activists worldwide.

It may not seem at first glance like the climate change movement is struggling. After all, mainstream dogma still holds that man-made warming has us careening toward disaster, possibly an uninhabitable planet. The only solution is to “just stop oil” along with coal and gas.

As John Kerry explains, there is no alternative. Biden’s proposals have nothing to do with politics nor ideology. “It’s entirely a reaction to the science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening”.

It was no surprise, then, when Biden officials recently rolled out new CO2 emissions requirements, maintaining the same endpoint by 2032. The only way for auto makers to comply would be for gas-powered cars to comprise only 30% of new car sales.

But there’s a telling detail. The 2030 requirements have been relaxed, which means that they’re still going to put the squeeze on to force more EV sales, just not right now. But what’s going to change to make regulations more palatable in 2032 then in 2030? There’s no evidence that the demand for EVs will be greater or that consumers will be more interested in purchasing them.

EVs were envisioned as the cutting edge of the “zero by fifty” campaign. If we could replace the outmoded, smoke-belching anachronisms on the roads with sleek new vehicles lacking tailpipe emissions, the new atmospheric standards would be a piece of cake.

But there are problems. Consumers aren’t wild about EVs. After years of the feds promoting them and subsidizing them in every way thinkable, they still account for just 8% of new car sales.

They are still too expensive, refueling can be difficult and they have poor resale value. Moreover, the giant batteries are a disposal nightmare. EVs increase soot pollution. Depending on the fuel source used to produce the electricity, they may produce no net carbon reduction anyway!

Auto makers for now are slashing prices on the mandated EVs and making up for it with profits from gas-powered cars. Ford alone lost $4.7 billion last year on EV production, a whopping $64,000 per EV sold.

Yet the Biden administration soldiers on, insisting EVs can capture 70% of all sales within eight years. Hint: they can’t. Look for other accommodations to reality to be made. Meanwhile they are doing a lot of economic damage, for no possible benefit.

Americans are less caught up in climate panic than ever. Surveys revealed that of all the issues in this year‘s election, voters rank climate change 10th in importance. “We’re number 10” may not make an inspiring campaign slogan, but the massive media, academic, and governmental infrastructure dedicated to its promotion means the climate change industry won’t disappear anytime soon.

As Swedish economist Björn Lomborg points out, climate change is a problem but only one of several mankind must grapple with. Meta-analysis of all scientific estimates shows climate change costs will likely average one percent of GDP across the century, a figure sure to be dwarfed by anticipated economic growth. Meanwhile, the proposed solutions insisted upon by the panic advocates will average $27 trillion annually, or seven times more than the problem itself.

Costs aside, we lead better lives because of fossil fuels. Abundant energy has more than doubled lifespans, dramatically reduced hunger and increased personal income tenfold. Climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined an astonishing 97% over the last century.

The worst thing we could do is to drive ourselves into poverty by “following the (false) science“. We need to stay economically and technically strong to be able to accommodate change as needed. Human beings do that, you know.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Biden’s Marxist EPA announces that their new job is to destroy the U.S. Constitution thumbnail

Biden’s Marxist EPA announces that their new job is to destroy the U.S. Constitution

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By Geoff Ross

The Communists installed at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continue installed White House squatter Marxist Joe Biden’s assault on essential supply chains, transportation vehicles and our free markets.

The unelected official’s at the EPA have bypassed the U.S. congress and announced an insane strict set of guidelines for heavy vehicles – including cement mixers, garbage trucks, RVs, ambulances and school buses.

Joe Biden’s Marxist plan to put oil companies out of business is part of the reason his EPA is now forcing 25 percent of long-haul trucks and 40 percent of medium size trucks must be “non-polluting” by 2032.

Obviously the adult capitalist entrepreneurs in the room understand this will make it next to impossible to do business and would inflict significant economic damage on our republic.

The EPA obviously has zero congressional authority to enact this policy and although on the outset we Americans are angry at this insane decision we must stay calm and be thankful these bottom feeding cockroach communists are implementing this now during an election year.

President Trump on day one in office will terminate the employment of these low IQ trilobites infesting this unnecessary government agency at the EPA funded by the low IQ Republican controlled congress.

Unconstitutional policies like this come out of the Karl Marx manifesto and to quote the unelected EPA Administrator Michael Regan-

‘This is another giant step forward to protect future generations from climate change,’

He sounds like he’s trying to emulate Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon speech. What a joke.

Climate change is a massive fraud created to dismantle the oil industry and selectively turn the United States into a third world return to the caves country.

Our planet has a constant cycle of climate change created by the sun, the earth’s rotation and volcanic activity. Grandma working a part time job driving a school bus is not affecting our climate.

So ladies and gentlemen stay patient and in November go vote for Donald Trump so these slimy Marxist stinky filled diapers running the EPA can be changed.

Don’t forget these EPA Marxists drive to work in big SUVs and Biden creates plenty of CO2 flying on Air-force 1 for fund raising with his Communist pal Obama and Epstein connoisseur pal Bill Clinton.

If Obama was concerned about climate change flooding the planet he would not have purchased a mansion close to the ocean. Bill Clinton definitely racked up thousands of pounds of CO2 emissions flying on Epstein’s jet to pedophile island.

The EPA communists also played the race card when they said that around 72 million people in the United States live next to truck freight routes, and they are more likely to be people of color or from low-income households.

Total communist propaganda horse crap. My family are people of color and we have friends of color who drive gasoline powered trucks to feed their families and put a roof over their heads. We ain’t worried about the imminent collapse of our planet’s ecosystem.

The EPA is an organization that Trump will either dismantle but most definitely he will take immediate action fire these low life scum Marxists in January 2025.

Trump will hire new employees and management who actually understand the role of the EPA does not include interference in our free market economy. Better yet defund the entire ball of wax.

©2024. Geoff Ross. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: To Control or not to be Controlled, that is the Question

RELATED VIDEO: CLIMATE THE MOVIE: The Cold Truth.

To Control or not to be Controlled, that is the Question thumbnail

To Control or not to be Controlled, that is the Question

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By Karen Schoen

This past week my husband and I were in the car going food shopping. His phone was on the console. It was lunch time and he said we haven’t had pizza in a while, what do you say we stop for pizza? Before I could answer, his phone answered and started telling us all the different varieties of pizza and the closest places. I shut the phone off. I don’t know about you but I don’t want some device telling me what to do. Who is listening, nudging, guiding and controlling our thoughts, our actions?  Is that what they mean by AI? Is that our New World Order? Control by a device? Is that where we are headed? or are we already there and we don’t know it? Humanity controlled by technology. Aside from taking away my free thought, Who is doing the programming?  Is is someone from Orwell’s Ministry of Love? Is that is what your children learn in school. Don’t think, just press a button.

Aside from not learning to read and write, students no longer learn the scientific method which supports critical thinking, logic, reasoning and consequences. Students are trained to think as they are told while professors are paid to use computer programs to get the outcome desired for the grant that is funding their career. Deviate and say good bye to your career.

How do you get a consensus in science? Design a a grant to meet your agenda and pay the scientists to prove your desire outcome. Is this the “new” sustainable settled science? A science that no longer allows for multiple questions, multiple methods and multiple results. The whole purpose of science is to question for without questions, there is no learning, no growth.  No growth is the desired results, Sustainability means: NO GROWTH.  The Globalist Utopia is: Everyone thinking the same. Everyone acting the same. Everyone having the same. Everyone eating the same in a world of limited population, resources and power. Except of course the leaders.

Man Made Climate Change is a perfect example.  Every time I debate Man Made Climate Change I wind up in the same place with no answers because I question outside the sound bite.  Let’s face it, the people trying to manage the decline of America are evil and practicing some form of communism. We all must believe the same or we are outcasts.  So if you want to see their limited knowledge and stump the globalists, I suggest you ask a few simple questions:

QUESITON: What part of the atmosphere is CO2?

ANSWER: .035-.04%

QUESTION: What would happen if you get to Net Zero CO2?

ANSWER: All living things will die

QUESTION: Is CO2 the result or cause of warming?

ANSWER: The result. You can’t be a cause and result at the same time.

Look at their charts and graphs. Most only go back 140 years. If they tell you , now is the coldest /warmest on record, ask how old is the record?  Make them go back to the climate of 1920-30. Less people, less industry but yet it was much colder or warmer.  The driver of our climate is the SUN along with other variables like, water vapor, clouds, gravity, mostly from mother nature. Way down on the bottom of the heap is man. So why is climate blamed on us, CONTROL.  If they can scare you they can control you. Learn and spread the truth, hold your head high.

Don’t take anything they say at face value. Remember most of what they say are words created by computer models. Computer models are only as good as their creator/programmer. Their creators are affirmative action graduates easily fooled or bribed. This is a excellent must see movie. Get out to popcorn and note pad.

Great important worthwhile movie CLIMATE THE MOVIE: The Cold Truth.

By sending your children to the public indoctrination clinic theyy become Affirmative Action Graduates.  They learn Diversity, Inclusion, Equity or as I call it Discrimination, Inequality, Exclusion.  By changing the order of the words, you find their true goal DIE.  Remember to them the earth is overpopulated so best thing is for you to do is to DIE. While they tell us that their goals are reducing poverty, world hunger and disease most of their programs aim for death hence DIE:  abortion, drugs, restricting farming, limiting mobility, vaccines, crime. By restricting excellence, innovation, creation and invention and promoting, entertainment and other favored controlled behaviors people begin to believe that life is meaningless and suicide is the answer.   When race becomes the dominant feature for hiring and merit takes a back seat, products and programs are doomed to fail. We now have a manage decline of America where freedom and liberty will be replaced by a CCP form of government controlling every aspect of our lives.    Today’s guest Physicist John Droz Jr explains the damage done to our students by an inferior education.

Look at all of the crises America has suffered under this administration filled with incompetent Affirmative Action Graduates.  The most recent of course is the Francis Scott Key bridge failure. Shipping giant Maersk confirmed that the Dali ship, operated and managed by Synergy Marine Group, collided with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Maryland around 1:27 AM. Synergy Marine Group promotes DEI in their company. Did DIE play a role? We may never know. What we do know is Congress allocated $1.2 trillion for a Bipartisan Infrastructure Build Back Better scheme that Mayor Pete is using to “fix racism on highways.”

After further investigation Ricki, today’s guest discovered: The Ship was owned by the Chinese, and registered in Singapore & operated under the Singapore flag. The CEO of the Chinese Merchant Shipping company that owned the ship was Angela Chao, the sister of Sen. Pedo Mitch McConnell’s wife-Elain Chao & daughter of the Chinese Billionaire & top Chinese CCP Politburo Member that ran China’s merchant shipping. He, their daddy, is dead, and Angela Chao was handed down the merchant shipping company. She, Angela Chao, was killed several weeks ago… Is this a psyops attack? Will we ever know?

Power on ship was lost just prior to reaching bridge & after Harbor Pilot Tugboats pulled away from the ship.  This was a major failure of Harbor Pilot Tugboats to not escort the ship thru the channel completely. Their job was to escort the ship under the bridge & out into open sea at 1:48.  This is standard protocol which was not followed.

In Ricki’s opinion, there are 2 possibilities China or the USA Deep State. Is it part of the USA Deep State on behalf of the Globalists to continue the destruction of our country? China controls the West Coast ports because of Pelosi, Newsome, Feinstein,  Waters, Governors of Washington & Oregon too.  Why would OBiden say that America, not the shipping company will pay for the reconstruction of the bridge?  Once you destroy a countries ports & take control of them, you control their commerce & infrastructure. You control everything coming in & going out.. “We The People Shall Speak”- Ricki is a 9/11 Survivor who has done numerous investigations into the Deep State.

Nationalists will dream of their future, their life and set a plan to achieve that dream. Globalists will have a visions of life and demand you fit into their vision without deviation. If you disagree squash you.

All Globalists want is Money, Control and Power. They can only get Power if we give it to them. Don’t give them yours. Challenge them with the truth. Doing Nothing is Affirmation. The Regime will not go quietly, Prepare.  Share with your 5.   So join me today.

Join the Florida Citizens Alliance goflca.org.  Help save America mentor a child.

Biden’s Signature Climate Law Has A Major Achilles’ Heel — And Dems Are Making It Worse thumbnail

Biden’s Signature Climate Law Has A Major Achilles’ Heel — And Dems Are Making It Worse

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By The Daily Caller

President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill is being held back by a lack of comprehensive permitting reform, the absence of which enables environmentalist lawsuits that impede green energy projects subsidized by the legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contained hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize green energy projects nationwide, but the bill did not include significant reform to the permitting process that would expedite construction timelines and insulate developments from environmental legal challenges. Unless Congressional Democrats can negotiate a permitting reform package with Republicans in an election year, these problems will continue to dog the IRA’s implementation, energy policy experts and stakeholders told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

After solar and wind developments have been built, they need to be connected to the grid via transmission lines to feed power into the grid. Permitting reform would speed up the lengthy paperwork process for that transmission, as well as provide developers an additional layer of protection against environmental lawsuits that also disrupt the construction of green energy developments.

Dems’ Energy Permitting Reform Bill Includes Billions For Eco-Activist Groupshttps://t.co/okXWYcE3Ph

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 30, 2024

However, that reform has not happened yet, thanks in part to Congressional Democrats’ inability to agree among themselves on what that reform should look like to counter Republican proposals, according to E&E News.

“I think that not having any transmission reform is a huge barrier to implementing the IRA,” Isaac Orr, a policy analyst for the Center for the American Experiment who specializes in energy policy, told the DCNF. “I think there was an understanding that permitting reform was necessary in order to implement a lot of the things Democrats wanted as soon as they got the IRA … It’s a physical reality that you need the transmission in order to incorporate all this new capacity on the grid.”

The lack of reform has left numerous green energy developments open to legal challenges filed by environmental groups, who often will pursue similar legal strategies adopted by opponents of fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the past.

For example, a coalition of tribes and environmental organizations are suing to block a massive $10 billion transmission project in Arizona, while different coalitions have taken to court to allege violations of environmental laws on the part of offshore wind developers building wind farms in waters off the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts. Elsewhere in the country, conservation groups have continued the years long fight against Wisconsin’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line by suing the government to stop construction.

“Reforms aimed at streamlining the federal government’s permit decision-making process and discouraging frivolous litigation have the potential not only to improve regulatory efficiency but also to bring about greater certainty and predictability in the offshore wind sector,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) told the DCNF. “Litigation, particularly around alleged National Environmental Policy Act deficiencies, has been a significant hindrance for offshore wind projects. A robust U.S. offshore wind market relies on confidence and certainty in the permitting and regulatory process, which is essential for fostering growth and ensuring the success of these projects, much like any other major infrastructure endeavor.”

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading advocate for comprehensive permitting reform, has tried to advance legislation to expedite the permitting process and minimize opportunities for litigation to gum up timelines for all kinds of energy projects.

In total, there are no fewer than ten different permitting-related bills in Congress and two major regulatory initiatives underway on the federal level, but progress on streamlining the permitting process is still very sluggish, according to Utility Dive.

“All of these things, the Clean Water Act, the way the National Environmental Policy Act is now run … you can’t get anything built because of these statutes,” Mike McKenna, a Republican strategist with extensive experience in and around the energy sector, told the DCNF about Congressional gridlock on permitting reform.

“So we are about a year into you’re what I think is going to be a seven- or eight-year process, where everyone on the Left starts figuring out, ‘Oh, my goodness, these guys were right, You can’t build any of this stuff.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy responded to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blue States Are Stripping Rural Counties Of Ability To Prevent Green Energy Takeover Of Their Communities

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

CFACT’s 2023 Impact Report thumbnail

CFACT’s 2023 Impact Report

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

2023 was one of CFACT’s best years yet! Thanks to the generosity of friends like you, CFACT was able to impact the public-interest debate as never before, both in the United States and around the world.

I’m therefore so pleased to present you our brand new 2023 Impact Report!  From our activities challenging political correctness on America’s college campuses through our Collegians program, to our calling out of corporations and their harmful ESG policies through our shareholder activism, to our special reports and media appearances, and to our take down the global warming extremists through our award-winning Climate Depot news and information service, CFACT continues to be a leader in the energy and environmental debate.

Rest assured, CFACT will continue to rise to the challenge of protecting our freedoms, providing education, and promoting progress.  We can’t do what we do without your help, and want you to know we are sincerely grateful to have it!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why wind and solar won’t save the planet: A U.S. case history

Is a consumer revolution against EVs looming?

Fox News: Whale of a lawsuit threatens to swallow up Biden green energy agenda

Morano on Fox and Friends: “Solar, wind & EV mandates designed to create chaos”

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s New Rule on Auto Emissions Will Accelerate Death Spiral for Auto Manufacturers thumbnail

Biden’s New Rule on Auto Emissions Will Accelerate Death Spiral for Auto Manufacturers

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By Ronald Stein

For one of the wealthier countries on this planet, America, with 330 million that represents about 4% of the world’s 8 billion on this planet, President Biden is speeding ahead with EV mandates to ditch most new gas cars by 2030.

Biden may not be cognizant that 80 percent of the 8 billion on this planet earning less than $10 a day, which is more than 6 billion on this earth, may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries, nor ever own an automobile.

In America, the elites have bought EV’s, and the elites may continue to buy EV’s, BUT we’re quickly running out of elites!

  • The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans.
  • The common folk need a workhorse vehicle, not just a second car toy that sits in the garage to be used on short ventures!
  • The current EV ownership profiles are reflected in the oligarchic elite that are highly educated, highly compensated, multi-car families, with low mileage requirements for the families second car.
  • Current EV owner profiles are dramatically different from most vehicle owners as they are single-car owners, not as highly educated, nor as highly compensated, and have higher mileage requirements for their workhorse vehicle.

Mandating a change to EV ownership and further austerity onto those that can least afford, the Nation and the other 96% on this planet may face a rebellion from those that need transportation.

Biden seems to be oblivious to the fact that there are more than 1.4 billion vehicles in the world, and almost 300 million trucks in the world, there’s been a mandate movement to have EV’s replace ICE vehicles to reduce emissions from the vehicular transportation sector.

Well, to-date, the mandate to EV’s has been a failure as we’re running short of elites that are buying them, and the auto manufacturers are starting to absorb the financial hits !

The previous worldwide gasoline usage peak was in 2019 before the Pandemic.

  • Today, there are 30 million EVs on the world’s roads that are owned by the elites that can afford them, and are mainly 2nd vehicles parked in the garage, or with low mileage usage, vs the high mileage workhorse vehicles that are internal combustion engines.
  • Today, there are also hundreds of millions of workers that now work virtually since the Pandemic and thus do not “drive” to work as often.

Well, even with those 30 million EV’s and millions of workers not driving as much, gasoline usage continues to rise. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global gasoline consumption in 2023 blew past the pre-lockdown 2019 peak !

By re-enforcing the mandates to EV’s, Biden is forcing automobile manufacturers into a death spiral, as most of the 8 billion on this planet will never be able to afford an EV !

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

DAVID BLACKMON: New EPA Auto Emission Rules Reflect The Madness Of King Biden thumbnail

DAVID BLACKMON: New EPA Auto Emission Rules Reflect The Madness Of King Biden

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By The Daily Caller

In a move that is certain to be challenged in the courts, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency enacted a de facto ban on many gas-powered cars this week in the form of a final regulation on allowable tailpipe emissions.

The regulation is designed to force two-thirds of new light-duty cars and 46% of medium duty autos sold in the United States to be electric vehicles by 2032, one of the more hare-brained schemes that make up the Biden Green New Deal energy policies.

In the press release accompanying the new rule, the EPA boasts that the new mandates “will avoid more than 7 billion tons of carbon emissions and provide nearly $100 billion of annual net benefits to society, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits due to improved air quality, and $62 billion in reduced annual fuel costs,” all of which is so much nonsense that no one really believes it. But this kind of fantasy narrative forms the very foundation of current Democrat party thinking on energy and climate policy.

In a statement, Tom Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, fired back at the EPA talking points, calling the regulation “another example of President Biden’s assault on the middle class.” Pyle correctly points out that the new rules “will make cars more expensive and ultimately make fewer cars available for Americans. By now, we have gotten used to incredibly damaging and stupid rules from the Biden administration, but this one is in a class by itself.”

But of course, raising the price for a new car in the United States is a feature of the Green New Deal policies pushed by Biden and his regulators, not a glitch. According to data kept by the St. Louis office of the Federal Reserve, the consumer price index when Biden assumed office in January, 2021 stood at 150.131. By February of 2024, that had skyrocketed to 179.311, a rise of 14% in just three years. By contrast, the index rose by just 1% during the first term of Donald Trump.

It is no secret that increasing the cost of energy is a central goal of the climate-alarm activist movement, not just in the United States but across the globe. The conceit there being that if you can force energy costs high enough and fast enough to make them unbearable to ordinary consumers, you will force people to conserve, i.e., do without. As Pyle correctly points out, it is a direct assault on the middle and lower classes in society, given the fact that rising energy costs essentially function as a regressive tax that impacting the poorest classes the hardest.

This is the core belief system that controls policy in the Democrat party today. It is simply beyond question at this point – literally every action this administration takes related to energy policy is designed to intentionally increase the cost for energy for every American. Consumers see it in the rising price for gas at the pump – more than 50% higher today than it was when Biden took office. They see it in skyrocketing home utility bills. They see it in irrational Biden policy actions like pushing offshore wind industrial projects, where big developers continue to demand more subsidies and higher rate guarantees before moving forward. They see it in the administration’s policies designed to depress the domestic oil and gas industry. They see it in policies intentionally designed to destroy reliability on the nation’s power grid.

And now they see it in this new EPA power grab. It comes after U.S. automakers have spent the last half year scaling back their plans for EV development and begging the administration to reconsider its irrational, destructive approach in light of the slowing demand for such cars and the ensuing massive financial losses. The vast majority of Americans simply do not want to own an EV, and forcing automakers to manufacture them regardless of market demand is the surest way to create the “bloodbath” in the domestic industry that Trump predicted last week.

It is madness, plain and simple, and if voters give this administration another four years in office, disaster will become inevitable.

AUTHOR

DAVID BLACKMON

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Biden’s New Zero Agenda Spells Trouble Down On The Farm And Supermarket

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By Bonner Cohen

Feeling the heat from farmers dumping manure in front of government buildings across the Continent, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pumping the brakes on a pillar of the European Union’s Net-Zero climate policy and withdrawing an EU-wide bill that would force farmers to reduce the use of chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030.

With elections to the European Parliament in Brussels set for later this year, backing away from one of Net-Zero’s most radical measures is an act of political realism. Europe is being rocked by soaring energy and food prices, much of it brought on by the political class’s obsession with lowering greenhouse gas emissions from all sources, including agriculture. With peasants running amok, the “climate crisis” will just have to wait.

Blissfully oblivious to what’s happening across the pond, the Biden administration is doubling down on its own version of Net-Zero emissions, and the American public may be in for some nasty surprises. And a new report by the Columbus, Ohio-based Buckeye Institute shows just how nasty those surprises will be. The report “Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm”, was authored by Trevor W. Lewis and M. Ankith Reddy.

The problems start with provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and Biden administration regulations favoring EVs over traditionally-powered vehicles in the agricultural sector, the report says.

Forced Transition to EVs

“First, EVs are significantly less reliable and more expensive to purchase repair, power, and maintain than combustion engine vehicles, making them impractical and ill-suited to working farms. Farm equipment must be durable and capable of operating in all weather conditions,” the Buckeye report points out. “Tractors and farm equipment must operate in off-road environments on poorly paved roads under constant risk of collisions that can permanently damage an electric vehicle’s sensitive parts, rendering it useless.”

“EV batteries drain faster in extreme cold and heat, and EVs lose range in the rain due to lower resistance between the car and the road and power diversion to the windshield wipers and headlights…Replacing an electric vehicle battery typically costs from $5,000 – $15,000, and general EV repairs require more labor and cost 25% more than standard vehicles,” the report adds.

“These reliability and financial concerns make EVs unattractive as farm equipment and make running a successful farm more expensive, but Biden administration rules will all but force farmers to buy or subsidize them anyway,” Lewis and Reddy note.

Reliance on Intermittent Energy

“Second, a nationwide transition to electric energy depends entirely on intermittent, unreliable zero-emission sources of electric power, namely wind and solar. Wind and solar do not produce power consistently throughout the day, and the variation in renewable power makes it harder for operators to schedule power demand, which makes energy prices volatile and ultimately more expensive,” the report says.

Easing the strains intermittent power puts on an already shaky electric grid requires bringing more natural gas power plants online, lest the country face more blackouts and brownouts. But in July 2023, the report notes, the White House Council on Environmental Quality increased the bureaucratic red tape on the approval of new natural gas projects.

“The Biden administration’s efforts to force farmers to adopt electric equipment ill-suited to farming and to replace natural gas generators with unreliable renewable energy sources is a recipe for unsustainable farming. Unfortunately, Washington’s central planners seem oblivious to that stubborn fact and remain committed to making Europe’s mistakes,” Buckeye points out.

Tracking Emissions from Farm to Table

American farmers also find themselves in the bull’s eye of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) reporting requirements proposed by the Biden White House. In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a mandatory ESG disclosure rule that would apply to every publicly traded company. “The rule would mandate costly ESG emissions reporting for a firm’s entire supply chain, requiring large publicly traded food processing companies, grocery stores, and restaurant groups to track and report emissions from farm to table,” the report explains. “Large companies looking to reduce their overall emissions would stop purchasing food from farms with high emission rates, once again applying financial costs and pressures to the American farmer.”

“With its heavy use of artificial fertilizers and fossil fuels, livestock methane emissions, weed and bug sprays, and genetically modified crops, agriculture has been targeted by ESG fiduciaries,” Lewis and Reddy note. And now, farmer Brown is being targeted by the Biden SEC.

The EU calls one of its Net-Zero agriculture programs “Farm to Fork.” But Europe’s farmers are in open revolt, and the powers that be in Brussels have taken notice. And the SEC’s power grab may also be in for some rough sledding. The Biden plan faces a stiff court challenge, with plaintiffs arguing that the SEC – under the “major questions doctrine” adopted by the current Supreme Court – lacks congressional authority to regulate an industry’s, including agriculture, entire supply chain.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

EXCLUSIVE: Firm Tied To China’s Military Industrial Complex Plans To Roll Out Massive Battery Chemical Plants In U.S. thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Firm Tied To China’s Military Industrial Complex Plans To Roll Out Massive Battery Chemical Plants In U.S.

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By The Daily Caller

The Chinese manufacturer of chemicals for electric vehicle batteries planning to build two U.S. factories has long-standing ties to China’s military industrial complex, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

Capchem Technology USA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of China-based Shenzhen Capchem Technology (Capchem), plans to build factories in both Ohio and Louisiana that would produce components for electric vehicle batteries. Chinese government documents reveal the Chinese chemical giant was selected over a decade ago to conduct aerospace research for China’s military industrial complex as part of a program overseen by a blacklisted Chinese government agency.

Corporate reports show the company, as recently as 2023, received payments from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology — a government agency spearheading the Chinese government’s so-called “Military-Civil Fusion” efforts.

“This network of [Chinese Communist Party] military-linked companies proliferating across the United States is a great example of why blind economic engagement with China is a national security threat,” Bryan Burack, senior policy advisor for China and the Indo-Pacific at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, told the DCNF.

The DCNF’s investigation is based, in part, on information provided by the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action.

Capchem specializes in manufacturing chemicals for electric vehicle batteries, and for years, the firm has advertised its products’ military uses in annual reports and online. Indeed, until very recently, the firm’s website boldly stated its products were used in “high-end military equipment.”

Yet, Capchem denied supplying the Chinese military, and the reference to “high-end military equipment” was scrubbed from the firm’s website within 24 hours of the DCNF reaching out for comment.

Capchem “does not have products used by Chinese military, or any other military organizations,” a spokesperson told the DCNF.

“When the English/U.S. website was developed, the ‘military’ reference was inadvertently included,” the spokesperson said. “You brought it to the company’s attention, and it was removed just as it had been in the Chinese version in 2020.”

However, the military reference also appeared on Capchem’s Chinese-language website when the DCNF reached out for comment. The reference on Capchem’s Chinese-language site appears to have been removed around the same time as their English-language was being scrubbed.

Capchem business filings and corporate announcements from 2023, along with Chinese financial service research reports from as recent as January 2024, also note the firm’s products had military applications.

‘Military-Civil Fusion’

Capchem’s work with China’s military industrial complex extends back to at least 2012. That year, the Guangdong province Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced Capchem was one of 70 companies selected to serve as a “Guangdong Provincial National Defense Science And Technology Industry Military-Civil Fusion Superior Work Unit.”

The work unit focused on “critical components within the aerospace field,” including “space flight-grade, high-reliability and core electronic components, high-end general chips, base software, etcetera,” the 2012 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announcement reads.

The project was overseen by China’s Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which is “under direct supervision of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,” and responsible for “nuclear weapons, aerospace technology, aviation, armament, watercraft and electronic industries,” according to China’s State Council.

China’s “Military-Civil Fusion strategy supports the modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army by ensuring it can acquire advanced technologies and expertise developed by PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities,” according to the U.S. Defense Department.

Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi recently sent a letter to the Treasury and Defense departments noting the U.S. government’s blacklist of Chinese military companies extends to companies working with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

“Among other qualifying considerations, a company is a ‘military civil fusion contributor’ if such company is ‘affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, including research partnerships and projects,’” the lawmakers wrote in January 2024. “The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was formed in 2008 and is key to the PRC’s military-civil fusion strategy.”

Capchem’s annual reports show the firm has received millions of dollars in payments from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology since 2017. The ministry paid the firm approximately $1.5 million for an “Industrial Foundation Project” in 2017, according to Capchem’s annual report for that year.

Capchem’s most recent annual report shows the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had a subsidy of just under $1 million earmarked for the firm at the end of the 2023 mid-term reporting period.

Despite this, Capchem initially denied getting any “money/subsidies/donations from the Chinese government” in an email to the DCNF, though a spokesperson did say the firm had received “economic development tax incentives.”

However, the spokesperson changed their tune when the DCNF pointed to the firm’s own annual reports.

“The last time the company received any Chinese government subsidies besides standard incentives or awards provided for all eligible companies was between 2016 and 2018,” the spokesperson said. “Any reference to subsidies in company reports apply to those received during that time. The company has received no such subsidies since 2018.”

Capchem’s corporate reports list $26 million in subsidies from various Chinese government entities. The company’s 2023 mid-term report lists roughly $10 million worth of new government subsidies in a section labeled “Programs Involving Government Subsidies.”

Heritage’s Burack said Capchem has been “subsidized by the Chinese government” and “manufactures for China’s military.”

“There’s no question who these companies really work for,” Burack said. “There’s no such thing as a private Chinese company.”

‘Aerospace And Military Industries’

Capchem has long advertised the dual military-civilian use for its products. For instance, Capchem’s 2009 annual report touted how the company’s products are used in “aerospace and military industries.”

The vice president of Capchem’s research institute, Liu Zhongbo, discussed the military application of the company’s sodium-ion batteries at a July 2023 battery forum in Jiangsu province.

“Lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries are representative of new battery types serving as an important foundation for supporting the wide application of new energy sources in the domains of electricity, transportation, communication, military, etcetera,” Liu said during the event, according to Capchem’s website.

“In the future, Capchem will closely follow the national strategy to support the mass production of sodium-ion batteries,” Liu said.

More recently, a January 2024 research report from Chinese financial service firm Huaan Securities identified Capchem’s “fluorinated polyimide” product as being used in the nuclear industry and by the military, and the firm’s “perfluoropolyether oil” product’s use in aerospace landing gear, rudders and aircraft control mechanisms.

‘Security Risks’

Capchem’s plans to expand their U.S. footprint come as federal and state officials move to prohibit the ownership of U.S. land by Chinese entities. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson recently issued an executive order in January 2024 banning entities tied to China from purchasing agricultural land within 10 miles of any “critical military facilities” in the state.

Capchem USA is planning on building an approximately $120 million factory in Lawrence County, Ohio, Capchem announced in June 2023. County commissioners recently approved a 50% tax abatement for Capchem USA’s facility, the Herald Dispatch reported. The facility will serve as a “production facility for the manufacturing of battery chemicals,” according to Capchem.

Capchem USA is also considering a $350 million plant in Louisiana, according to Louisiana Economic Development, a government agency.

Ohio Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup’s congressional district includes Lawrence County. Barbara Boland, Wenstrup’s press secretary, told the DCNF that the congressman has “warned of the potential security risks to our supply chains, intellectual property and national security posed by Chinese-owned companies operating in the U.S.”

“Congressman Wenstrup recommends local governments and those pursuing economic development opportunities to fully vet any companies seeking to establish a footprint in their communities,” Boland said.

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Daily Caller News Foundation investigative reporter, political journalist, and China watcher. Twitter: @LenczyckiPhilip.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Republican Attorney General Urges Biden Admin To Restrict Foreign Land Ownership Near Major Military Base

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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DAVID BLACKMON: The Energy Transition Has Become A Big Green Hot Mess

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By The Daily Caller

We spend a lot of time talking and writing about the green energy subsidies contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. That’s appropriate given that bill’s content of a raft of incentives and subsidies the CBO estimated would amount to $369 billion over 10 years, a number that some analysts have estimated will be a small fraction of the real final price tag of that bill.

Receiving less attention is the set of similar subsidy programs that were contained in 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), one of which allocated the princely sum of $5 billion to the Departments of Energy (DOE) and Transportation (DOT) to serve as grant money to subsidize the installation of fast-charging EV charging stations around the country. In late February, Nick Pope reported at the Daily Caller that, more than two years after passage of the bill, this government program has resulted in the opening of just two locations – in Ohio and New York – that include only 8 such charging stations.

The slowness of this process should not come as a surprise to anyone, given that this subsidy program incorporates the massive bureaucracies at two federal departments. It is the nature of government agencies to find ways of slowing whatever process over which they have purview, not to speed them up. That’s not a slam on the people who staff those agencies, but a simple recognition of the realities they face in attempting to conform their actions to the complexities of the laws they are required to enforce, of which the IIJA is merely one.

This tension between the nature and complexity of western law and the need for speed the Biden White House hopes to achieve with the setting of hyper-aggressive goals and timelines related to the adoption and enforcement of its Green New Deal policies always has been and remains the central conundrum of the energy transition in the United States. The pace of the multi-faceted, $300 trillion transition is already drastically behind schedule, both in the US and across the rest of the world. There is little prospect for that pace to catch up to the desired timelines anytime in the future.

This reality is not unique to the world of electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure needs, which are massive and hugely expensive. There is also the need for dramatically expanding the electric grid, which provides power to every aspect of not only the transition but to society as a whole. The needs there were already unimaginably huge even before the rise of AI, a power hog of unprecedented proportions.

While the IRA and IIJA included incentives and subsidies that address a subset of the thousands of moving parts of an integrated energy transition, many major elements – such as the gigantic transmission expansion needed for the power grid – were left out entirely.

When the IRA was passed, I warned that the Biden White House viewed it as not a stand-alone subsidy bill, but merely as a down payment for what it viewed as a series of even larger subsidy efforts to come. If one accepts that the climate is really in an emergency condition – as the climate alarm lobby’s propaganda claims – then the passage of a perhaps unending series of debt-funded subsidy bills becomes a moral imperative, after all.

One of the big dangers there is that the momentum behind this fear-driven need for speed begins to be used as justification for the limitation or even abrogation of guaranteed rights of all stakeholders. We see this already starting to happen in states like California and Massachusetts, where Democrat Governors Gavin Newsom and Maura Healey are pushing efforts to overrule the rights of local governments to deny permits for new wind projects and other “green” energy priorities.

The slowness of federal bureaucracies only serves to heighten this sense of alarm, the worst possible motivation to justify the allocation of trillions of debt-funded dollars. It is the worst of all possible worlds, one in which policies motivated by politics promote investment decisions free markets would never create on their own and result in outcomes that do not begin to solve the problem allegedly at hand. It is, in a word, a mess.

The views and opinions express in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

DAVID BLACKMON

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Why Are There No EV Charging Stations at Interstate Rest Stops? Blame the Feds!

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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A Tale Of Two Johns As SPEC [A John Kerry Tale]

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By Duggan Flanakin

Leave it to Joe Biden. When the 80-year-old plutocrat John Forbes Kerry steps down as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), he chose 75-year-old John David Podesta, Jr., to finish out the year. The two climate czars could not have come from more different beginnings.

For his self-important mission to “save the planet,” Kerry has been called a “climate clown” on social media and “the Forrest Gump of Climate” by Bloomberg Media. Ever the aloof Eurocentric diplomat, Kerry never lets anyone forget how important he is. Podesta, from much more humble roots, prefers to work behind the scenes, often in a supporting role.

It was clearly past time for Kerry to go. The day before he “retired,” Kerry spoke at a press conference and raised eyebrows and temperatures when he blurted out that people might “feel better” about the Russian government if Russia would just commit to fighting climate change as hard as he has done.

Kerry’s strange remarks came in response to a question from a Russian reporter as to whether the long-running U.S. campaign against Russian influence – one that has escalated into a major war that could soon become nuclear – was interfering with climate cooperation. The Russian Federation waited until 2019 – when Paris opponent Donald Trump was President — to adopt the Paris Agreement, overcoming strong opposition from Russian industry lobbyists.

At the time, Rusian Edelgeriev, President Putin’s climate advisor, said his country would become a “full-fledged participant in this international instrument.” He boasted that Russia had cut its carbon emissions nearly in half since 1990, the year of the collapse of the old Soviet Union.

But oil and gas provide about 20 percent of the Russian economy, and Europeans who had shunned fossil fuel production themselves were still heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels to keep their own economies afloat. Russia today is developing coal resources in the Far East and wants to open more Arctic shipping lanes.

Imagine the grating of teeth in the Kremlin as Kerry droned on that even with its “illegal” war against Ukraine, “they ought to be able to find the effort to be responsible on the climate issue.” Maybe Kerry was saddest that, because of the war, he has not been able to fly back and forth to Moscow (or preferably, to a Crimean dacha?) to “negotiate”.

Missing from Kerry’s diatribe was the well-known fact that Russia only contributes 5 percent of global human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, less than half that of the U.S. (12.6 percent), and only a tiny fraction of China’s whopping 33 percent. But Kerry would not dare tell China it “ought to be more responsible on the climate issue.”

Instead, after lengthy negotiations in Beijing, Kerry insisted he was not disappointed that no new agreements came from his “work,” or that President Xi reaffirmed that China would pursue its climate goals at its own pace and in its own way. Kerry was just glad he got a few free meals.

In his first year as SPEC, Kerry took a reported 48 trips on his wife’s private jet, including meetings with authoritarian heads of state. He refused to publicly criticize China for building a new coal-fired power plant every week. But he did compare the fight against climate change to the Allies’ fight to defeat Nazi Germany.

Young Americans may remember that Kerry was the (losing) Democratic Party nominee for President in 2004. They may also know that, long before became the “climate guy,” Kerry was a spokesperson for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The Massachusetts brahmin, after a failed Congressional campaign and a short stint as Michael Dukakis’ lieutenant governor, parlayed his fame (or infamy) into a U.S. Senate seat in 1984. He stayed in the Senate until 2013, when he became President Obama’s Secretary of State, following the inestimable Hillary Clinton. His crowning moment there was signing the Paris Agreement on climate change. No wonder Biden chose him.

As SPEC, Kerry is best known for his defense of his widespread use of private jets. Kerry famously stated, “If you offset your carbon, it is the ONLY choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”

Kerry’s messianic vision continued: “I have to fly to meet with people to get things done, but what I am doing almost full time is working to win the battle for climate change. And if I offset and contribute my life to do this I am not going to be put on the defensive.”

Kerry loves flying almost as much as mirrors. He even flew on a giant military transport to Antarctica as a lame duck just days after President Trump was elected in 2016 – ostensibly to meet with scientists about the impact of climate change on the frozen continent.

Kerry has always been “special.” His grandmother sent him to elite boarding schools in Europe as his father served in the State Department’s Bureau of United Nations Affairs, then as U.S. attorney for Berlin, and later at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo.

Young John was whisked back to the States to attend more elite boarding schools before matriculating at Yale University, where he distinguished himself as a debater and soccer player but not as a student. His GPA was “lackluster” (a 76 average), but it got him into Yale.

Before marrying the billionaire heiress to John Heinz’s huge fortune, Kerry was already the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate (other than Heinz), as the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family relatives. His own 2011 financial disclosure admits to personal assets ranging from $230 to $320 million (not including any Heinz money).

By contrast, 75-year-old John Podesta grew up on the streets of Chicago, the son of a Greek-American mother and an Italian-American father, a factory worker who never finished high school. His big break in life came when he met the young Bill Clinton in 1970 when both were working on a Senate campaign.

John and his older brother Tony built their lives around politics, with John serving as an attorney for various Democratic Party leaders and Tony working as a lobbyist. Together they formed the Podesta Group, a government relations and public affairs lobbying firm with close ties to the Democratic Party. Not bad for a couple of poor kids.

Politics has been good to the Podestas. John served as chief of staff for President Clinton and counselor to President Obama before joining the Biden Administration as senior advisor for clean energy innovation and implementation. There he has overseen the disbursement of $370 to $783 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives under the (sic) Inflation Reduction Act.

Both Podestas have left their biggest public marks through the political nonprofits they created, Tony was a founding president of Norman Lear’s People for the American Way, while John is the founder and former president of the Center for American Progress, which helped to craft the Inflation Reduction Act, a cash cow for progressive interests.

In sum, while Kerry has often been compared to a strutting peacock, Podesta has long been one of the most effective operatives in Washington and a major architect of the Progressive agenda. Kerry may have gotten a lot of headlines, but Podesta has used the power of the purse to impact the business and diplomatic communities far more effectively.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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How I ‘Made Sea Level Rise Go Away’!

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By John Droz, Jr.

A short story behind the story

Some readers may be surprised that I’m more than a pretty face. Through persistence, invaluable help from allies, and dumb luck, I’ve had some influence on a wide variety of issues, on local, state, and national levels. A reward for this is that I’ve been repeatedly targeted by anti-science, anti-citizen, anti-American parties.

What’s interesting, is that none of the targeting involves an accurate recounting of the relevant facts. This is a short summary about such a recent case. This example is about a major state’s legislative process, where I was a player. The scene is 2012, and North Carolina legislation about Sea Level Rise (SLR) had just became law.

Once that happened, the S hit the fan, as alarmists were outraged that Real Science took precedence over their political science. The “audacity” of our NC law became national news — even warranting a major hit piece by Colbert on late-night TV!

There are two major sagas here: 1) how this law came about, and 2) what happened after it was passed. Part one is a fascinating tale, but it is too long to cover today. If I get inspired (and have the time), I may write about that in a future episode.

Re #2, a LOT happened after the law was passed, and this commentary is about just one interesting part — where I again became a target (because I was instrumental in the NC SLR law being written and passed).

I’m writing about this now as Left-wing alarmists continue to bring this up. For example, this lengthy hit piece appeared March 12, 2024. It attempts to tag me on a few different matters, but my Teflon shield ensures me that none of them will stick, any more than their slings and arrows have in the past. (BTW, the author here, Ms. Burns, did not contact me, so there is not even a pretension of any fact verifications.)

As part of her ammunition to discredit me, she references this well-known article in Scientific American (September 2013) “The Man Who Makes Sea Level Rise Go Away.”

The first thought that comes to mind is “one lies and the other swears to it.” In any case, today’s brief commentary is about how that article came about…

In early 2013, I received a phone call from a contract journalist, who I did not know. He said that he had been hired to do an in-depth report about my role in bringing about this unique North Carolina SLR law. I asked him several questions and he seemed to be on the up-and-up. He requested an in-person interview.

Since he was three hours away in Raleigh, I invited him to come and visit us on the coast, promising that we would provide a very good lunch. A week or so later he did come and we had a cordial and productive four-hour session (including a superb home-made lunch). I requested that he send me a draft of what he was proposing, so that we could discuss any factual errors. He agreed to do that. Things were going well!

A week or so later he sent me the draft of his report. I thought that he had written an interesting, accurate, and informative story about my involvement with this NC law. I suggested a few minor edits, which he agreed to make. Still going OK!

A few weeks later he contacted me with the news that his editor had rejected his submission! I asked why and he said that the editor didn’t think that it was controversial enough… Hmmm, so for an article about what happened, the facts are not what will be reported… I asked him what he was going to do, and he said that he wouldn’t get paid unless he scrapped what he had written and started over…

So what eventually got published was version #2, where he injected things he knew were not accurate, just to make the editor happy. (For example, he wrote that I “spends much of his time quietly and effectively plying the halls of power in Raleigh…”) The reality is that I go to Raleigh about once every 3 years, and stay for just a few hours. He also did not send me any drafts of version #2 to comment on.

Fortunately, the article still has some remnants of truth in it — which is a credit to the journalist. In many cases (e.g., with Ms. Burns) we are not dealing with writers whose goal is to be objective and factual, but rather activists promoting undeclared agendas, posing as journalists.

It’s fascinating that the media continues to bring up matters where I was successful over ten years ago. Don’t they realize that it’s embarrassing to them to refresh people’s memory about their past failures? (E.g., despite all their alarmist rhetoric about the NC SLR bill, here we are 12+ years later, and what harm has it caused? None!)

Since the Left is generally adept at PR, it would seem that they would realize that they should move on. Yet they don’t!

What they are EXTREMELY concerned about (and they can’t help themselves) is that there will be more educated, critical-thinking citizens. That is the single greatest threat to their plans to promote unscientific, anti-American ideology.

Towards that end, take much of what you read in mainstream media about Science-related matters, with a very heavy dose of salt.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

My Substack Commentaries for 2023 (arranged by topic)

Check out the chronological Archives of my entire Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

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A Lesson for America: Green Policies Crush German Economy

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By Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Alexander Frei

Germany’s gross domestic product has been falling since the third quarter of 2022, causing fears of the first 2-yearlong recession since the early 2000s. German farmers are openly protesting new climate regulations that would raise the price of diesel fuel, vital for tractors and farm machinery. This discontent is mirrored by the general public, which is opposed to higher energy costs that drag down the economy. Recent polls show a significant shift in public opinion that’s increasingly opposed to the coalition government.

Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate, where invariably one party secures a ruling majority, multiple German parties must form a coalition to reach the required 50%+1 majority threshold.

Currently, the Green Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Free Democratic Party comprise this coalition. The latest polls show all these parties polling far below their 2021 election results while the more right-leaning parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union and the Alternative for Germany, are surging in popularity.

The recent economic slowdown has resulted in widespread political discontent, and the core of the slowdown has been disastrous energy policy.

Instead of the government focusing on making energy affordable, it has continued its commitment to the “Energiewende”—the “Energy Transition”—a government project aimed at radically shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. One of the project’s stated goals is to increase the use of renewable energy sources to 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Germany’s closure of its nuclear plants in April 2023 has made achieving net-zero targets significantly more challenging, given that nuclear power is capable of generating substantial amounts of carbon emissions-free electricity. The economic effect of these decisions is palpable for ordinary people, who feel it each month when paying their energy bills.

According to the most recent data published by the German Federal Statistical Office, consumers have been paying an average of 46 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. For comparison, the average price of electricity in the United States during December was just under 13 cents per kWh.

Cost disparities can also be seen in the price of gasoline. At the fuel pump, German consumers pay an average price of $7.23 per gallon, compared to $3.33 in America.

These high energy costs are slowing other aspects of the economy, leading to dramatic losses in purchasing power for consumers and threatening to make production unprofitable for many companies. In addition, small businesses and farmers, which rely on electricity and fertilizers to operate, respectively, have been hit extremely hard by these recent price increases.

In addition, the slowdown in global trade is profoundly affecting Germany’s export-centric economy, exacerbating the overall economic decline. Unfortunately for Germans, recent economic forecasts do not offer much hope either. Economists predict the economy to grow only by around 0.2% in 2024.

Large German companies have already taken notice and acted accordingly. Around 67% of German companies have moved at least some operations abroad, citing high energy prices and inflation as their main reasons for leaving. This wide-scale deindustrialization is especially prevalent for the mechanical engineering, industrial goods, and automotive sectors—the backbone of the German economy.

The tipping point came in February when the famous family-owned dishwasher manufacturer Miele announced that it would cut thousands of jobs and move production to Poland. Luxury car manufacturer Porsche initially planned on building a new car battery manufacturing plant domestically and then switched gears by announcing plans to open the proposed plant in America. Both the lack of future investment and deindustrialization create a snowball effect, worsening the situation.

Widespread dissatisfaction with Germany’s green policies should be a lesson for America. At the heart of the problem is Germany’s failure to allow for the energy industry to create affordable energy for its citizens. For years, the anti-business green energy agenda has decreased carbon emissions but increased the economic crisis. Germany’s experience shows that America needs a sound energy policy, not the arbitrary climate goals the current administration is pursuing.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

ROOKE: Leaked Docs Reveal The Trans Cult Is Going Even Further Than We Ever Knew thumbnail

ROOKE: Leaked Docs Reveal The Trans Cult Is Going Even Further Than We Ever Knew

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By Mary Rooke

An environmental group released leaked documents from the world’s top organization of doctors determining the correct course on youth and adult transgender healthcare late Monday.

The findings inside the WPATH Files published by Environmental Progress expose the sinister reality of this pseudoscience that has captured American children and goes far beyond anything we could have imagined.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is the leading organization that most doctors, hospitals, and clinics look to for guidance on the proper treatment for children and adults who present to medical professionals with gender dysphoria.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

Even just three years ago, the understanding of the transgender craze was largely mistaken as affecting a small number of confused children and adults. However, the massive increase of people (and young girls in particular) identifying as “trans” has made it a household topic. It is the result of a social contagion that makes otherwise healthy children believe they were born in the wrong body and the only corrective action to fix the issue is to chemically and surgically alter their bodies.

Most families in America have not gone untouched by the trend of children expressing the desire to change their “gender identity.”

At the heart of the issue is whether parents can trust the medical information that is given to them by their doctor. The documents clearly show they cannot. (ROOKE: American Parents Stood Up To The Trans Cult And Won Big In Maine)

In a conversation over medical recommendations for permanent surgical procedures, professionals in the field lamented that some surgeons required two authorization letters to proceed with surgically removing the breasts of a minor girl, according to the report. The doctors called the requirement to make sure the girl suffered from gender dysphoria “gatekeeping,” a term progressive activists use when someone of sound mind is concerned about the drastic actions being taken.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

One doctor promised to help write the second letter if a different signature was needed to get the surgery approved, even though it’s clear they have never treated the patient in question.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

In multiple instances throughout the report and transcript of the videos meetings, the world’s top minds in transgender medicine agree that there is simply no way minors can give informed consent to be placed on hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, or even surgeries that remove healthy sex organs such as breasts, penises and uteruses.

This seems like an obvious conclusion to anyone who has been around children for extended periods, but what has not been admitted before is that most parents responsible for determining the healthcare decisions for their confused children are also not capable of making an informed decision because they lack the biological knowledge to do so.

“But what really disturbs me is when the parents can’t tell me what they need to know about a medical intervention that apparently they signed off for,” Dianne Berg admitted, according to the transcript.

A conversation between medical professionals concerned about informed consent encapsulates the worry that parents are making permanent decisions for their children based on unproven science that is getting people maimed, sterilized and killed.

Unequivocally, parents have a divine right to determine their children’s healthcare needs. This was never questioned until recently when progressive activists started a political revolution by fighting to tear down these protections.

Part of this attack stems from forcing parents into a corner. More and more states are enacting policies that rip children from their protective parents if they refuse to go along with the “affirmation” model. Adhering to this thought requires acceptance of their child’s false gender identity, even if that means hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, and permanent surgeries.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

Most parents understand their children require therapies that don’t accept the delusions that a child is born in the wrong body and needs medical intervention to “fix it.” Still, if these parents search for other options (thanks to Transgender activists), the state will consider them abusers.

Another leg of the revolution against parental protections has been the attack on American children through the radicalization of the U.S. education system. Many schools adopt policies that allow children to socially and sometimes medically transition to their preferred gender without their parent’s knowledge or consent. These guidelines cause real-life harm and force parents out of the discussion about serious and life-altering topics. (ROOKE: I’d Like To Thank Joy Reid. Her Open Endorsement Of Porn For Kids Makes My Job Easier)

For a long time, the medical community painted hormone blockers and other hormonal treatments as reversible or non-permanent fixes for children to “try out” being part of the opposite sex.

The report shows that these procedures are neither of those and, in fact, cause lifelong medical complications such as infertility, lack of orgasm and a newly discovered increase in developing possible cancerous masses.

WPATH President Marci Bowers admitted that the effects of puberty blockers on fertility and sexual satisfaction when these children get into adulthood have not been adequately studied, according to the report.

“We do not fully understand the onset of orgasmic response, and blockers make this a major question. Fertility and more problematic surgical outcomes at adulthood are also concerns,” Bowers said in the WPATH forum.

“The fertility question has no research that I’m aware of as puberty onset allows for fertility options while blockers preclude those opportunities,” she added. “The orgasmic response question is thornier and observational based largely upon the growing cohort of puberty blocked individuals seeking gender affirming surgical care years later (le. now, with our office providing that care to a large number). To date, I’m unaware of an individual claiming [the] ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.”

As adults, we understand the reality of not being able to have children or experience a full sexual relationship with a spouse. Still, there is no way to fully grasp the gravity of this loss at 13 years old or if the medical field is telling parents that these blockers are simply buying their child time to work out their confusion.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

Even worse, it seems cross-sex hormones are known to cause more problems than just a change in voice and added breast tissue. The risk for prolonged usage for women is pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), cardiovascular health, and even death.

Many medical professionals documented in the WPATH Files noted having cases with several of these issues.

“For example, in the discussion thread dated March 24, 2022, a nurse practitioner asked about a ‘young patient’ who developed pelvic inflammatory disease after three years of testosterone. The natal female ‘has atrophy with the persistent yellow discharge we often see as a result,’ the nurse wrote. Vaginal atrophy is the thinning, drying, and inflammation of the vaginal walls that occurs when a woman has less estrogen, typically after menopause. For many women, vaginal atrophy not only makes intercourse painful but also leads to distressing urinary symptoms,” according to the report.

Screenshot Environmental Progress WPATH Files

“In December 2021, a doctor described a 16-year-old patient who had developed large liver tumors after being on norethindrone acetate to suppress menstruation for several years and testosterone for one year. ‘Pt found to have two liver masses (hepatic adenomas) – 11x11cm and 7x7cm – and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agent(s) are the hormones,’ the doctor wrote,” the WPATH Files reported.

“Another doctor replied to this with an anecdote about a female colleague who, after about 8-10 years of taking testosterone, developed hepatocarcinomas. ‘To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment,’ said the doctor, who had no more details because the cancer was so advanced that her colleague died a couple of months later,” according to the report.

This is medieval torture in a modern medical setting using American children as the subjects. These doctors admit the procedures are theories with insufficient medical data to prove the outcome is beneficial. The obligation our medical field has to “do no harm” is completely ignored when it comes to gender healthcare. The only logical move forward is for the U.S. government to launch investigations into the mistreatment of these patients to ensure this deadly ideology doesn’t capture more children.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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It’s Climate Fact Check Time

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By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Another month, another load of unvetted climate exaggerations and misrepresentations that climate campaigners set bouncing about the media echo chamber.

Fortunately, CFACT and our partners are on the job correcting the record.

Each month we work together to publish a scholarly climate “fact check” that debunks Green propaganda with verifiable data.

Read the full February “Climate Fact Check” at CFACT.org.

This month we remind readers about natural El Nino / La Nina cycles and the impact they have on our weather.  It was warm during the 1998 El Nino, it is warm during this one, and it will be warm during the next one, whether we live in a free economy or not.

The media wants you to know that Dallas hit 93 degrees on February 26th, 2024.  That’s a hot February day.  Dallas also hit 93 degrees on February 25th, 1918.  A touch of history adds valuable perspective, don’t you think?

The Washington Post is alarmed that recent Canadian wildfires kept on burning underground.  They called it a “zombie fire.”  We reproduced a newspaper ad about underground Canadian fires from 1988.

Nothing wrecks an alarming narrative like a touch of history.

Our February “Climate Fact Check” is chock full of facts like these and more.

Read the fact check at CFACT.org

©2024. Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. All rights reserved.

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