COP FLOP: UN COP29 climate summit faces ‘Trump Effect’ – UN advisors label summit ‘meaningless ritual’ – Climate grifters unhappy with $300 billion a year pledges thumbnail

COP FLOP: UN COP29 climate summit faces ‘Trump Effect’ – UN advisors label summit ‘meaningless ritual’ – Climate grifters unhappy with $300 billion a year pledges

By Marc Morano from Climate Depot

AWED MEDIA BALANCE NEWS: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections thumbnail

AWED MEDIA BALANCE NEWS: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections

By John Droz, Jr.

Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Checkout the 2024, 2023, & 2022 archives, plus asterisked items below.


— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

If You Only Have Time to Read Some Select Articles:

*** Critically Thinking about Children’s Books — What’s in Your School? (Part 1)

*** America First vs. America Last Report Card: K-12 Mathematics Achievement

*** A New Way to Educate K-12 Students

*** UN Plots Changes to Standardized Tests to “Green” Education Globally

*** Make Education Great Again!

*** Schoolhouse Limbo: How Low Will Educators Go to ‘Better’ Grades?

*** Comparing the Pollsters’ Presidential Predictions

*** Suing Election Officials Proves Effective

*** President-elect Trump’s bold plan to dismantle the Deep State and return power to the people

*** No, Joe. This is no peaceful transfer of power

*** RFK Jr. tapped to lead Department of Health and Human Services

*** Trump taps former WWE CEO Linda McMahon to serve as education secretary

*** Musk & Vivek Targeting Government Waste

*** Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government

*** Ramaswamy says some federal agencies will be ‘deleted outright’ by DOGE with ‘mass reductions’ on tap

*** The Plot to Manage Democracy

*** Federal court upends decades of environmental regulations

*** How Helene Gave Way to ‘Hurricane Snafu’ in the Carolinas

*** The American Library Association is Queering the Catalog

*** Trump: ‘Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country’

*** Science Shock: U.K. Met Office is “Inventing” Temperature Data from 100 Non-Existent Stations

*** How Can We ‘Trust The Science’ When We Can’t Trust The Data?

*** Manufacturing Consensus on Climate Change

*** President-Elect Trump: The final nail in the coffin of the environmental globalists?

*** Dutch appeals court overturns landmark climate ruling against Shell

*** COP29 is immoral (Alex Epstein)

*** The injustice of climate reparations

*** 3 undeniable facts about climate for #COP29

*** BRICS’ Kazan Declaration Trumps COP29 Climate Blather

*** Inaudible Infrasound from Wind Turbines Disturbs Health of Humans and ALL Organisms

*** Red Power

*** Ten Climate/Energy Action Items Trump Should Take On

*** Chris Wright, An Unapologetic Energy Humanist, Will Be The Next Secretary Of Energy

*** Chris Wright: An Energy Secretary Nominee Who Actually Knows Energy

*** Why I strongly support Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy — Epstein

*** Whistleblow Uncovers Covid Scam (Germany)

*** Now it can be told: the truth about the Covid jabs is slowly coming out

*** Nature paper shows the COVID “vaccines” increased your risk of getting COVID

*** How $190 Billion in COVID-19 Relief Spending Failed America’s Students

*** The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide

*** How Federal Funding Constrains Scientific Insight

*** Scientists Haven’t ‘Saved’ the Ozone Layer

*** Scientific American Ignored Years of Editor Laura Helmuth’s Appalling Conduct, Then Scalped Her After I Circulated Her Own Tweets

*** Does ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care Affect IQ?

*** Top Agriculture Exec: ‘All of Canada’s Shrimp Are Injected with mRNA, America Will Follow’

Secondary Education Related:

*** Report: The Key to Fixing the US Education System

*** Critically Thinking about Children’s Books — What’s in Your School? (Part 1)

*** A New Way to Educate K-12 Students

*** America First vs. America Last Report Card: K-12 Mathematics Achievement

*** UN Plots Changes to Standardized Tests to “Green” Education Globally

*** Make Education Great Again!

*** Schoolhouse Limbo: How Low Will Educators Go to ‘Better’ Grades?

Moms for Liberty call for DOE to be ‘shut down’: ‘Put parents back in the driver’s seat’

NC Funds even more money for School Choice

Higher Education Related:

How Academic Elites Are Undoing Centuries of Progress

A New College “Racism” Study Really May Be Peak Woke

Greed Energy Economics:

Another Wind Project Surpasses $ Billion in Subsidies

The Disastrous Economics of Trying to Power an Electrical Grid with 100% Intermittent Renewables

Unreliables Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:

*** Inaudible Infrasound from Wind Turbines Disturbs Health of Humans and ALL Organisms

Wind Energy — Other:

*** Red Power

Trump must trash Biden’s radical ‘environment justice’ rules on Day 1

Misc Energy:

*** Ten Climate/Energy Action Items Trump Should Take On

*** Chris Wright, An Unapologetic Energy Humanist, Will Be The Next Secretary Of Energy

*** Chris Wright: An Energy Secretary Nominee Who Actually Knows Energy

*** Why I strongly support Chris Wright for Secretary of Energy — Epstein

Trump says Interior pick Burgum will chair new National Energy Council

Weatherizing Your Home for Winter

New Data Shows NY is Nowhere Near Its Energy Goals

Utility Companies are Run by Technocrats Obsessed with Control Over Energy

Manmade Global Warming — COP29:

*** COP29 is immoral (Alex Epstein)

*** The injustice of climate reparations

*** 3 undeniable facts about climate for #COP29

*** BRICS’ Kazan Declaration Trumps COP29 Climate Blather

Argentina walks away from COP29 – amid fears Trump may pull US out of Paris climate deal

COP29 Preview: Hot Talk vs. Reality

It’s All About the Money

Green Activists Are Coming for Your Money

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** How Can We ‘Trust The Science’ When We Can’t Trust The Data?

*** Science Shock: U.K. Met Office is “Inventing” Temperature Data from 100 Non-Existent Stations

*** Manufacturing Consensus on Climate Change

Charitable Climate-Change Entities have Adopted Woke Attributes

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

*** President-Elect Trump: The final nail in the coffin of the environmental globalists?

*** Dutch appeals court overturns landmark climate ruling against Shell

Let’s Make CO2 Great Again

“Hygiene Poverty”: The Brutal Reality of Life in Net Zero Britain

US Election:

*** Comparing the Pollsters’ Presidential Predictions

*** Election Integrity Going Forward

Recharging The Light Of Liberty

US Election Integrity:

*** Suing Election Officials Proves Effective

PA Democrats openly admit to counting illegal ballots in McCormick-Casey race

Democrats are now proposing a shadow government to go against President Trump

Minnesota election judge faces felony charges over accepting unregistered votes

US Election — Trump:

*** President-elect Trump’s bold plan to dismantle the Deep State and return power to the people

*** No, Joe. This is no peaceful transfer of power

Choice of globalist water boy John Thune as Senate Majority Leader a slap in the face to 73 million Trump voters

Trump’s sentencing is canceled. Will reality ever take a bite out of Bragg’s outrageous case?

Progressives Insult Americans Because Trump Won

US Election — Trump’s Cabinet:

*** RFK Jr. tapped to lead Department of Health and Human Services

*** Trump taps former WWE CEO Linda McMahon to serve as education secretary

Karoline Leavitt feels well-prepared to tackle ‘hostile territory’ as White House press secretary

Who is Susie Wiles, Trump’s Chief of Staff?

US Election — Musk & Ramaswamy:

*** Musk & Vivek Targeting Government Waste

*** Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government

*** Ramaswamy says some federal agencies will be ‘deleted outright’ by DOGE with ‘mass reductions’ on tap

Pentagon holds briefing as dept fails to explain where $824 billion went

Misc US Politics:

*** The Plot to Manage Democracy

*** Federal court upends decades of environmental regulations

*** How Helene Gave Way to ‘Hurricane Snafu’ in the Carolinas

General Flynn: Democrats Must Remove President Biden Now

The UK’s Soviet Justice System

5,800 IRS Agents and Contractor Employees Owe Over $546 Million in Unpaid Taxes

Societally US:

*** The American Library Association is Queering the Catalog

Reality Wins: Transwomen Are Men

Religion Related:

*** Trump: ‘Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country’

Pope Francis rejects tradition, opts for wooden casket and burial outside Vatican

Science:

*** How Federal Funding Constrains Scientific Insight

*** Scientists Haven’t ‘Saved’ the Ozone Layer

*** Scientific American Ignored Years of Editor Laura Helmuth’s Appalling Conduct, Then Scalped Her After I Circulated Her Own Tweets

Health:

*** Does ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care Affect IQ?

*** Top Agriculture Exec: ‘All of Canada’s Shrimp Are Injected with mRNA, America Will Follow’

Survey Study Shows How to Reduce Family Physician Burnout

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** Whistleblow Uncovers Covid Scam (Germany)

*** Now it can be told: the truth about the Covid jabs is slowly coming out

*** Nature paper shows the COVID “vaccines” increased your risk of getting COVID

*** How $190 Billion in COVID-19 Relief Spending Failed America’s Students

*** The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide

Medical Journal Censorship is the Proximate Cause of the Covid Vaccine Catastrophe

Catholic woman fired for refusing COVID vaccine wins over $12M in Michigan court

Israel/Ukraine:

Pray for the safety of the Israeli people

Latest Developments in Israel

Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

A well-rated source to make a Ukraine donation


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Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone, as some documents (e.g., PDFs) are much easier to read on a large computer screen… We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize display issues.

Note 2: For past Newsletter issues see the archives from 2021, 2022, 2023, & 2024. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over all fourteen plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put this together — where you can search ALL prior issues, by year. For a background about how the Newsletter is put together, etc., please read this.

Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

Note 4: I am not an attorney or a physician, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or any of my websites) should be construed as giving legal or medical advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent, licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues, and consult a competent physician regarding medical matters.

Copyright © 2024; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

How to Cut $2 Trillion of Fat from the Federal Budget thumbnail

How to Cut $2 Trillion of Fat from the Federal Budget

By David Stockman

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

A goal of $2 trillion of budget savings is crucial to the very future of Constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America. In fact, the soaring public debt is now so out of control that the Federal budget threatens to become a self-fueling financial doomsday machine. So more power to the DOGE of Musk and Ramaswamy. In spades!

For want of doubt, just recall this sequence. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 on a call to bring the nation’s inflationary budget under control, the public debt was $1 trillion.

By the time Donald Trump was elected the first time it had erupted to $20 trillion, which has now become $36 trillion. And under current built-in spending and tax policies it will hit $60 trillion by the end of the current 10-year budget window.

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Thereafter, however, soaring interest expense will ignite a veritable fiscal wildfire. On paper, the public debt would power upward unabated to $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest projection. Yet even the latter is based on a Rosy Scenario budget model that assumes Congress never again adopts a single new tax cut or spending program and that the US economy steams along without a recession, inflation recurrence, interest flare-up, or other economic crisis during the entirety of the next quarter-century!

Of course, long before the public debt actually hits $150 trillion or 166% of GDP per the CBO’s current long-term projection, the whole system would implode. Every remnant of America as we now know it would go down the tubes.

So we need to be clear that the team of Musk and Ramaswamy is talking about savings of $2 trillion per year and relatively soon, too. We make this clarification because we see the usual clueless commentators on Bubblevision saying, “Oh, they must be talking about $2 trillion over 10 years or at least a multi-year period of time.”

But we don’t think they meant that at all because Elon’s statement on the matter at the Madison Square Garden rally was very clear, and, quite frankly, if realized over 10 years or even 5 years it would be hardly worth the bother. That’s because the nation’s fiscal doomsday machine will be accumulating interest expense so fast as to make $2 trillion of savings spread over a decade little more than a rounding error. To wit, Federal interest expense has already passed the $1 trillion per year mark, which figure will hit $1.7 trillion by 2034 according to CBO and would top $7.5 trillion per year at minimum by our calculations by mid-century.

That is, if something drastic is not done now—like a $2 trillion annual budget savings soon—America will be paying more interest on the public debt within 25 years than the entirety of the Federal budget—Social Security, defense, Medicare, education, highways, interest, and the Washington Monument—today.

So, yes, Musk surely did mean $2 trillion per year in this interchange:

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“How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion (annual) Harris-Biden budget?” Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and Trump’s transition team co-chair, asked Musk at the former president’s recent rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. 

Without offering specifics, Musk said in response that he thinks “at least $2 trillion” in a brief moment that has since gained widespread attention online and drawn mixed reactions from budget world.

Obviously, the sprawling Federal government and its prodigious expanse of spending and debt literally defies easy comprehension and graspable solutions. After all, the current annual budget of $7 trillion amounts to Federal spending of nearly $20 billion per day and $830 million per hour. And when you talk about the 10-year budget outlook, comprehension literally fades away completely: The current CBO spending baseline for 2025-2034 amounts to $85 trillion or just shy of the annual GDP of the entire planet this year.

So based on experience we suggest building the $2 trillion case around a target year and several big buckets of savings by type. The latter can then be used to build a detailed but comprehensible plan for arraying and conveying the desperately needed house-cleaning of the Federal budget.

In that context, FY 2029 makes the most sense as a target year since it would represent the 4th and outgoing Trump budget; and also one which would give sufficient time for phasing in some of the sweeping cuts that will be needed, but not so far in the distant future as to be largely irrelevant to the here and now of fiscal governance during Donald Trump’s second term.

We’d also suggest three big buckets of savings, which we would short-hand as follows:

  • Slash the Fat…by eliminating unnecessary and wasteful agencies and bureaucrats wholesale.
  • Downsize the Muscle…by curtailing national security capacities and functions not needed for an America First policy.
  • Cut the Bone…by reducing low-priority entitlements and subsidies that the nation cannot afford, and which a reasonable view of societal equity does not require.

Needless to say, when it comes to the vast wasteland of the Federal budget there are innumerable ways to skin the cat. But based on our own experience of more than a half-century of familiarity with the Federal budget as both a participant and an informed observer, we judge the following mix to be the most plausible and balanced way to get to the $2 trillion of annual savings by FY 2029.

To be sure, even this relatively judicious mix is sure to ignite firestorms on the banks of the Potomac like never before, but it can be strongly justified and defended for the reasons we will lay out in several subsequent installments.

  • Slash the Fat: $300 billion or 15%.
  • Downsize the Muscle: $500 billion or 25%.
  • Cut the Bone: $1.2 trillion or 60%.

Suffice here to say that even the first bucket would leave them screaming to high heaven in the Swamplands of DC. But even that $300 billion savings could be accomplished only by eliminating entirely the estimated $50 billion annual cost of Biden’s misguided Green New Deal, including all EV credits and subsidies, and $150 billion per year of other forms of corporate welfare and subsidies embedded in the budget and tax code.

We will amplify the details of this $200 billion of inherent fat and waste in Part 2. But suffice it here to say that attacking the usual shock effect lists of outrageous studies, stupid foreign aid projects, or even payments to dead people, as is often used to illustrate wasteful spending, will get you barely a fractional decimal point of the savings target, as desirable as eliminating this nonsense might be in its own right.

For instance, the savings from eliminating “Dr. Fauci’s Monkey Business on NIH’s Monkey Island” from the list below would amount to just 0.002% of the $2 trillion target, while eliminating the “USAID Fund to Boost Egyptian Tourism” would save just o.0003% of the target.

Even some of the larger ideas of this sort, such as more timely elimination of dead people from the Social Security rolls, would not get you very far, either. That’s because 1.1 million Social Security recipients pass on their rewards each year, and departing beneficiaries would be receiving an average benefit currently of $1,907 per month. So one month of dead people on the rolls costs the not inconsiderable sum of $2.1 billion.

At the present time, however, that does not actually happen. The rolls are purged every month based on newly filed death certificates, and this encompasses the termination of payments to anyone who died during the month, including the last day. So the average duration on the rolls of Social Security decedents is 15 days, which computes to $1.050 billion of payments.

Thus, the average duration of dead people on the rolls might well be cut by two-thirds if the Musk and Ramaswamy team could come up with some more efficient software to monitor, report, recalculate last month’s benefits, and then terminate decedents. In turn, that means getting the dead people off Social Security 10 days faster would amount to a savings of $700 million per year or about 0.04% of the $2 trillion target. That is to say, there is undoubtedly room for efficiency improvements and elimination of outright waste and stupidity everywhere in the Federal budget, but it unfortunately adds up to rounding errors.

Stated differently, if it doesn’t “scream and bleed” politically it won’t likely make a dent in achieving the $2 trillion goal. There is just plain nothing antiseptic about slashing the Federal budget.

In this regard, it would take an average 47% cut in the current nondefense Federal headcounts of 1.343 million, including the elimination of a dozen or more agencies entirely, to achieve the balance of $100 billion of savings in the Slash the Fat category.

And that’s a comprehensive figure based on an average cost per Federal employee of $100,000 in pay per year plus $44,000 in average benefits and fringes—escalated to $160,000 per bureaucrat by FY 2029. In Part 2, we will lay out the most plausible and judicious route to the Slash the Fat category with respect to both $200 billion of corporate welfare and Green New Deal waste and $100 billion of excess nondefense payroll.

Then in Part 3, we will lay out how to cut $500 billion per year of unneeded muscle from the national security budget, followed by $1.2 trillion per year of bone from the entitlement and domestic welfare basket.

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone 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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

Three GOP-backed candidates sweep open seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission thumbnail

Three GOP-backed candidates sweep open seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission

By Madeline Armstrong

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: Among other bright spots in the last election is Republican control of the Corporation Commission. This is very important for the future of the state. Voters want cheap and reliable energy and not follow the course of California.

Eight candidates competed for the three open seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission – three were registered Republicans in the race, three were Democrats and two were affiliated with the Green Party.

All three of those candidates endorsed by Arizona’s Republican party claimed the available seats with Rachel Walden receiving 17.89% of the votes, Rene Lopez receiving 17.37% and Incumbent Lea Marquez Peterson receiving 16.89% at 99% of precincts reporting.

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“It is a great honor to be elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission,” reads a post by Walden on X. “Thank you to all of the volunteers who knocked on doors, made calls on my behalf, and put up signs. I am so grateful for all of the grassroots efforts. But I am especially grateful for the hundreds of thousands of votes. Thank you for trusting me to serve on the Arizona Corporation Commission. I look forward to serving you to make sure our utilities are affordable and reliable.”

Incumbent Ylenia Aguilar was not able to retain her seat on the commission.

“While the outcome wasn’t what we hoped, I’m grateful to all the volunteers who helped shape this campaign,” Aguilar said. “It’s been an honor running [for] state office, meeting so many wonderful people, and visiting communities across our beautiful state. I will always advocate [for] the people of AZ.”

The ACC race has been scrutinized this year after Arizona saw one of its hottest summers in history resulting in energy price rate hikes. Some Arizona residents saw their energy bills increase by up to $100 a month.

According to a study conducted by Texas Electricity Ratings, Arizona is among the top ten states to see energy price increases with an estimate of $2,190.60 per household in 2024. The Democratic-backed candidates claimed that this was due to the current commission which has historically been led by registered Republicans. While prices did increase in recent years, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration places Arizona near the national average in monthly electric bills per household. 

In 2023, the ACC approved numerous energy rate hikes, which Petersen said were necessary and fair. These increases include a 9.31% revenue hike for Southwest Gas, a 153% hike for APS fuel reimbursements, a PSA rate increase that is expected to add almost $10 to users’ monthly bills and a rate increase for Southwest Gas that would allow it to recoup an “under-collected” amount of $357 million.

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“We’re all being hit by inflation, but a lot of our utilities have been dragging these expenses around for years,” Walden said during a debate hosted by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission. “Now it’s time to pay the bill.”

However, Joshua Polacheck, who only received 14.44% of the votes, claimed that utility companies are also seeing record profits.

“We should not be seeing record profits with our utilities while we’re seeing record prices every month with our electricity and gas bills,” Polacheck said.

Something Democrats across the state have been advocating for that they believe would help lower costs is shifting towards renewable energy sources.

“Right now it is cheaper to be building clean energy in our state, but instead we are providing perverse incentives to the utilities to be building infrastructure that we don’t need and getting in the way of our clean energy future,” Polacheck said. “There is a possibility of letting the market go free and I can’t believe I’m saying this as a Democrat, but the Republicans on this stage are getting in the way of the free market when it comes to energy.”

Polacheck also cited during his campaign the recent complaints from Mohave County residents following the approval of four new energy turbines being built near Kingman – and the ACC allowing them to do so without the typically necessary requirement of a certification of environmental compatibility.

The three candidates that will be joining the commission have all agreed on their main purpose which is to protect Arizona ratepayers and keep energy costs fair in Arizona.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and has been 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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

President Trump Announces Doug Burgum Will Lead the NEW “National Energy Council” thumbnail

President Trump Announces Doug Burgum Will Lead the NEW “National Energy Council”

By The Geller Report

Energy independence is back!

This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape.

President Trump just announced the forming of a new council called the National Energy Council to propel the nation into energy dominance. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum will lead it.

“It will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation of ALL forms of American Energy. This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”

WATCH: President Trump forms National Energy Council to propel the nation into energy dominance

‘Drill, drill, drill’: New energy council signals Trump to prioritize energy production

By:  – November 16, 2024 

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Friday afternoon that his pick for Interior secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, would also coordinate a new council on energy policy is a sign the incoming administration will make energy production a core part of its domestic policy.

Few details of the new National Energy Council were available Friday, as activists and lawmakers processed the surprise 4 p.m. Eastern announcement. But the move likely reflects a focus by Trump and his next administration on energy production, including fossil fuels.

“They’re signaling ahead of time that this is one of their priority areas,” Frank Maisano, a senior principal at the energy-focused law and lobbyist firm Bracewell LLP, said in an interview.

Burgum “will be joining my Administration as both Secretary of the Interior and, as Chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council, which will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy,” a written statement from Trump said.

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation.”

Trump said the council’s objective to increase U.S. energy supply would benefit the domestic economy and allies overseas and help power “A.I. superiority.”

“The National Energy Council will foster an unprecedented level of coordination among federal agencies to advance American energy,” Burgum said in a written statement. “By establishing U.S. energy dominance, we can jumpstart our economy, drive down costs for consumers and generate billions in revenue to help reduce our deficit.”

It was unclear what the role of the Department of Energy would be in such an arrangement. The current secretary in the Biden administration is Jennifer Granholm, a former governor of Michigan.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Does Trump signal the end of climate change extravaganzas? thumbnail

Does Trump signal the end of climate change extravaganzas?

By MercatorNet – A Compass for Common Sense

NEWS FLASH: John Robson, of the Climate Discussion Nexus, reports from Baku about COP29.


The 29th UN climate conference convened in Baku, Azerbaijan, on November 11 under something of a cloud. Or rather a pile-up of incoming storm fronts. There were a lot of reasons for delegates to arrive pre-discouraged. And then came the Trump of Doom. Or a peculiar orange formation mistaken for same.

I haven’t actually heard a whole lot of detailed references to the outcome of the American election, which not only put someone openly contemptuous of climate alarmism into the White House but also gave his party control of both houses of Congress. But it’s not as though people didn’t notice. Thus American marquee New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells, who I believe is absent physically but is certainly present ideologically, just wrote bitterly:

“Trump’s election may look like a black dawn to climate activists. And indeed it is: When the timelines of climate action are so short, and the paths to climate stability so narrow and difficult, any setback is a disaster.”

That he then whistled a happy “global renewables boom” tune that couldn’t change the mood. Not least because his own publication’s “Climate Forward” promptly emailed about “Trump’s potential threat to weather data”.

Canada’s “The Hub” chimed in with a typical Canadian perspective, aka something nobody outside Canada cares about at all: “There’s no reason for Trump to put the brakes on Canada’s low-carbon economic growth”. Nor indeed any reason for anyone to care, given our trivial contribution to supposedly planet-roasting “carbon pollution” despite our outsized contribution to sanctimony on the subject.

The strange thing is that Wallace-Wells did have a point, accidentally. It is true that Trump cannot stop America’s renewables boom, or for that matter Canada’s low-carbon economic growth, because neither is happening anyway. And more broadly, Trump can’t derail the COP agenda because it’s already off the bridge and smouldering in broken chunks in the river below.

Petrostate hospitality

As delegates here must be dimly aware, this conference is problematic in many ways. Including being hosted, for the second straight year, by a petrostate. Azerbaijan cannot really be called democratic, except by regime propagandists and I’m not sure how much they bother. (In case you all aren’t from around there, it’s an hereditary dictatorship whose late president Heydar Aliyev, who died in 2003, had been the local Soviet party boss from 1969 to 1983. He rose to that position via a KGB career that saw him reach the Politburo, before falling out with Gorbachev, being “retired”, then becoming president of Azerbaijan in a military coup in 1993. That it is ruled by the New Azerbaijan Party should not mislead you. But I digress.

The key point is that Azerbaijan is a poor country with a messy history and a lot of problems and one big hope: the energy industry. It accounts for about a third of the entire economy and 90 percent of exports, and they can’t just chuck it into the Caspian Sea and go back to living on salt.

In fact, speaking of the Caspian Sea, it’s in terrible condition ecologically. And as with things like having enough food, potable water, sewers, the ability to defend the nation’s borders in a rough neighbourhood, the idea of cleaning up the Caspian relies on generating a lot more wealth than they currently have. And while the government does hope to foster the tourist industry, an aspiration dealt a harsh blow by COVID, the truth is that Azerbaijan is hard to get to and there aren’t a lot of obvious reasons to come here on vacation.

They do have half the world’s active mud volcanoes, which is kind of cool. And also the Gobustan Petroglyphswhich were also. We went and saw both. But it’s no substitute for being the world’s 21st largest oil exporter, into a pipeline through Georgia and Turkey (I told you it was a tough neighbourhood) into Europe.

Azerbaijan is not alone, of course, in being dependent on hydrocarbon energy. Essentially the whole world is. But where many nations are dependent primarily as consumers, no small matter, some are also dependent as producers. And as the current president Ilhan Aliyev pointedly informed delegates, his government wasn’t about to ditch their key industry.

I could get off on a tangent about the challenges of “modernization”, which is actually and crucially Westernization, in a place with Azerbaijan’s history including forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1991 after previous forcible incorporation into the Russian Empire and a lot of other seedy ventures before that. They promptly introduced a modified Latin alphabet and phased out the Cyrillic one, though the replacement has 32 letters, about half of which are not pronounced the way we would.

Oh, and the roads are littered with Ladas, sometimes literally, though also in Baku at least you also see a lot of modern cars made everywhere but here. Likewise the name for car, “Avto”, was made in… Russia. Not a good sign.

There. I did get off on a tangent. But not entirely or I would have edited it out. It’s pertinent because the challenges facing anyone trying to create a decent life for the inhabitants of Azerbaijan are enormous (and arguably include its current government). But they would certainly get worse, even catastrophically so, if the economic lifeline were cut. Which brings me back to Donald Trump who, I’m told, is surprisingly popular here among people who have any idea who he is.

A key reason why the second election of Trump is so big delegates can’t cope with it is this. It’s not just that Orange Man Bad, or anti-Americanism, is one of the forms of hatred not merely permitted but encouraged in our modern, tolerant, diverse, equitably bitter world. It’s that the return of Trump, warts and all, is part of a much larger reaction that threatens the COP agenda and much more besides.

For all his flaws, he represents an overdue and necessary backlash of ordinary people against presumptuous elites who despise them and their lives and would casually wreck them, from COVID lockdowns to Net Zero. And whatever else comes along. And the COP delegates here, I think, dimly sense that it’s a powerful force. Only dimly, because they live in an intellectual as well as sociological bubble.

Copping it sweet

Despite the lack of mental diversity or real debate here, another undercurrent of gloom is that, as the name suggests, it’s the 29th such conference. And for the first seven, or even 15, it was possible to believe they really were going to produce a dramatic, rapid, workable solution to the crisis they claim is so immense and urgent that the great and good must gather every year, and often in between, to solve it for the wretched and ungrateful proles on expense accounts funded by same.

But somewhere around COP27 it dawned on a lot of them that they could not remake the world economy to run on wind, solar, unicorns or empty promises. So they switched to this notion that what the Soviets used to call the First World (and the smart set happily went along it), was going to give not billions but trillions of dollars to the “Third World” every year to deal with the effects of bad weather we allegedly caused by driving cars in 1972 or something.

What exactly the 50,000 or so people who have descended on Baku in the largest tourist incursion in its history make of all these considerations is unclear. I do not think 100 of them left the “Galactic metropolis” bubble of airport, taxi, hotel, taxi, conference centre, taxi, hotel, taxi and airport to see the country. It is in one sense a cosmopolitan gathering, with delegates from Scotland to Burkina Faso to Timor Leste to Kazakhstan to Indonesia.

In fact, I met one who was from Indonesia but was on the Kazakh delegation. In some sense it’s all one big if not at the moment especially happy family. And a friend back home asked me how the food was here and I responded that inside the conference centre it was quite good but exactly what you’d find anywhere in the galactic metropolis; it could as easily have been a sandwich and coffee bar in, say, Paris airport, complete with gluten-free apple cookies. They are here to save the world but not to see it or talk to it.

I do not think most of them, despite their pretensions, really know or care what life is like for the average Azerbaijani nor, crucially, what it would be like if their aspirations to “move away from fossil fuels” in short order were realized. For their information, and yours, there are just over 10 million people in this country, about a quarter of them in the greater Baku area, if that’s the right term, and Baku is basically the only metropolis. The rest live very differently, and close to the edge, though many in Baku are in straightened circumstances too.

Abandoning any realistic prospect of getting to “Net Zero” or meeting “Paris targets” or “1.5C” or any of that other insider jargon must nevertheless surely have had a depressing impact, even if many of them pretend it might still happen or at least don’t challenge the ubiquitous slogans on the walls here about it. But gathering year after year to try to extract lavish but insincere promises from First World politicians skilled at same can’t improve the mood much. And now there’s Donald Trump not just saying the whole thing is silly, but saying it on behalf of a massive constituency in America and beyond.

It’s too big and too awful to be discussed except in hushed tones or knowing asides. But yes, he has trumped their ace of conferences. And they know it.


Forward this to your friends!  


AUTHOR

John Robson

John Robson is the Executive Director of the Climate Discussion Nexus, a documentary filmmaker, a columnist with the National Post, the Epoch Times and Loonie Politics. He holds a PhD in American history from the University of Texas at Austin.

RELATED VIDEO: Oil and gas are “gift of God”, Azerbaijan leader Ilham Heydar oghlu Aliyev tells climate summit

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

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AGENDA 47: The Plan to Dismantle the Deep State

By Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)

Agenda 47 is the 20 point plan to dismantle and destroy the deep state while at the same time rebuilding America into a free nation once again.

Agenda 47 restores and strengthens our Constitutional Republic, returns power to the people and makes Americans healthy, happy and prosperous once again.

The 20 point plan

  1. Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion
  2. Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history
  3. End inflation, and make America affordable again
  4. Make America the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!
  5. STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER
  6. Large tax cuts for workers, and no tax on tips!
  7. Defend our constitution, our bill of rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms
  8. Prevent world war three, restore peace in Europe and in the middle east, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country — all made in America
  9. End the weaponization of government against the American people
  10. Stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders
  11. Rebuild our cities, including Washington D,C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again.
  12. Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world
  13. Keep the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency
  14. Fight for and protect social security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age
  15. Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations
  16. Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children
  17. Keep men out of women’s sports
  18. Deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again
  19. Secure our elections, including same day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship
  20. Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success

President Donald J. Trump Declares War on Cartels

Ending Veteran Homelessness in America

No Welfare for Illegal Aliens

The American Academy

President Trump’s Pledge to Homeschool Families

President Trump’s Message to America’s Auto Workers

President Trump’s Ten Principles For Great Schools Leading To Great Jobs

America Must Have the #1 Lowest Cost Energy and Electricity on Earth

Returning Production of Essential Medicines Back to America and Ending Pharmaceutical Shortages

President Trump Calls for Death Penalty for Human Traffickers

Rescuing America’s Auto Industry from Disastrous Job-Killing Policies

Rebuilding America’s Depleted Military

Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions

Cementing Fair and Reciprocal Trade with the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act

Using Impoundment to Cut Waste, Stop Inflation, and Crush the Deep State

Addressing Rise of Chronic Childhood Illnesses

Ending the Scourge of Drug Addiction in America

Celebration Of 250 Years Of American Independence at the Iowa State Fairgrounds

Day One Executive Order Ending Citizenship for Children of Illegals and Outlawing Birth Tourism

Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions

Ending the Nightmare of the Homeless, Drug Addicts, and Dangerously Deranged

Liberating America from Governmental Regulatory Onslaught

Watch more here.

The Bottom Line

We know that when President Trump makes a promise he keeps his promise. We also know that there are Democrats and some Republicans who don’t want Agenda 47 fully implemented.

We will be watching what President Donald J. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance and the Trump cabinet will do to implement Agenda 47.

We will also be watching what Congress does.

We believe that it will take up to 20 years to fully implement Agenda 47. Therefore we are looking forward to POTUS 47 to get it started followed by two terms for J.D. Vance to make Agenda 47 into Agenda 48, Agenda 49 and beyond.

©2024 Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.) All rights reserved.

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UN COP 29 Host Proclaims Oil and Gas ‘Gifts from God’

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

In a major embarrassment for the UN climate regime, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, took the stage at COP 29 and proclaimed oil and gas to be gifts from God.

Azerbaijan is the host country for this years UN climate conference.

Aliyev also denounced what he called the “fake news”  media for hypocrisy in labeling Azerbaijan a “petro state,” while the United States and Europe produce many times more oil than his nation.

WATCH: Oil and gas are “gift of God”, Azerbaijan leader Ilham Heydar oghlu Aliyev tells climate summit

You can’t make this stuff up!

In a major embarrassment for the UN climate regime the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, took the stage at COP 29 and proclaimed oil and gas to be gifts from God.

That’s not exactly how the Left’s climate narrative is supposed to go.

CFACT’s delegation is at UN COP 29, the biggest UN climate conference of the year.  Azerbaijan is this year’s host country.

Aliyev also denounced what he called the “fake news” media for hypocrisy in labeling his country a “petro state,” while the United States and Europe produce many times more oil and gas than his nation.  He also told the assembled conference delegates that Azerbaijan’s greenhouse gas emissions (if that’s your thing) are tiny when compared to other nations and the world.

The UN climate process has degenerated into farce, although it remains an incredibly expensive farce.

The Wall Street Journal called for this to be the last UN climate conference, writing that:

“The real joke of these summits is that so many people still take them seriously. Whatever one thinks of the arguments surrounding climate change, there won’t be a material reduction in global carbon emissions until China, India and other developing countries—such as, say, Azerbaijan—agree to sacrifice their economic growth on the altar of Western green fixations. This isn’t happening in practice, and Mr. Aliyev’s comments suggest leaders of those countries feel less pressure to pretend.

It makes you wonder if COP29 may be the last time anyone tries to organize a spectacle like this. The world should be so lucky.”

The UN climate regime is indeed faltering.  President Biden skipped COP 29 as did many other world leaders.

I told OAN News that, “you don’t see a Macron here, you don’t see a Justin Trudeau here, you don’t see leaders of the various western countries because they would be the ones giving out the money.  What you do see at COP 29 are leaders from a number of developing countries looking for money.”

Donald Trump’s victory poses a major challenge to the UN and the climate Left.

While there is plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects, you’d be surprised how many delegates and attendees here at COP 29 are quietly (sometimes not so quietly) cheering America on for our election results.

As I told OAN, many representatives of the developing world think it is crazy to talk about giving up private automobiles, abundant electricity and eating meat.  They want a high living standard for their countries.  They view President Trump as the leader who can restore sanity to climate and energy policy.

For nature and people too.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others.

Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film Climate Hustle, which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed Climate Hustle 2 staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

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

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Morano on Fox: President Trump “will pull the UN climate agenda down”

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Marc Morano discusses COP29 and the climate agenda under the new Trump administration on Fox & Friends.

COP 29: The U.S. can finally escape the Paris Climate Accords

Consider the following

During Donald Trump’s years after he pulled us out of the Paris Accords, the global temperature had its ups and downs but was essentially level.  Look what happened.

From  a Close up of Dr Roy Spencer’s site https://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Now suppose I thought like the mainstream media does about every weather event, but wanted to make my point for my side of the issue.

Here is the headline:

Joe Biden causes a massive temperature jump once America rejoins the Paris accords.

Nothing is further from the truth. Yet if you are a warped propagandist, you can take any event and blame it on someone, in this case, I can blame it on Biden putting us back in the all pain, no gain, Paris Accords

But it would be a lie.

What is true is the Paris Accords are UNABLE TO MEANINGFULLY ALTER THE GLOBAL CLIMATE.  It’s a waste of money and  a useless feel-good exercise.

In fact, the recent jump in temperature should be a nail in the coffin of the man-made climate change pushers for it proves it has to be water vapor linked. The simple intuitive explanation: Increase the water vapor and you increase the amount of energy in the atmosphere, and heat is a measure of energy.

Let us look at water vapors in relation to the whole shooting match.

Source: https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Koutsoyiannis-DogTail-Nov-2024.pdf

Co2 is next to nothing That means the increase in co2 has to have much less effect and is overwhelmed by clouds and water vapor. That man is only responsible for a small amount of that, and the US only about 10% of that, which makes it absurd to be dumping money and support into what is a fool’s errand.

If you simply look at Saturation mixing ratio tables ( I have shown this many times, so I am not going to go over it again), it explains not only why it would warm, but where it is warming most, in the driest coldest places. Much of the warming is in those areas during their cold seasons. Clouds have been decreasing in general across the tropics and increasing in the arctic areas, a sign of a distorted warming pattern brought about by the relationship of water vapor to temperature.

The combination of the strong El Nino and Tonga blasting the most measurable amounts of water vapor in the air led to the rise The question is why are the oceans warming and I like the hypothesis of geothermal input brought about by changes in the exosphere ( the core of the earth) reacting to the change in gravitational pull by the alignments of the planets and the sun, changing the center or the gravitational forcing. I will have an expert on my show, the Wise Guys of Weather on Am 970 the Answer, NYC 5 pm on Sundays, on this matter on Nov 24. It is mind-boggling but worth considering.

But the left in all its glory wants to scream at President-elect Trump for taking us out of the accords, which we should not be in anyway. Co’2, for whatever it may do, is dwarfed by large natural-scale forcing. And that should be clear as day given what we have just witnessed from the volcano and strong El Nino and the cumulative reaction. I have a hypothesis, that the left hates and a lot of people on my side don’t like on the geothermal spreading and the work of Dr. Arthuer Viterito jives with what this 50-year forecaster snow has observed. For whatever reason the oceans ARE WARMING but not because of what CO2 is doing. In fact, the warming oceans are likely a major contributor to the rise in CO2. If we reduced man’s CO2 input to zero on the chart above, the other drivers would simply take up whatever little effect it has.

Here is my forecast. Once President Trump stops this waste of money and pulls us out of the accords, the temperature will level off unless there is another Tongo or major El Nino. So if you try to link the warmth to man-made sources because the source of the spike has nothing to do with it, you have to be blind or brainwashed.

Or a liar.

Take your pick

In the meantime the sooner we are out of this worthless accord, the better.

AUTHOR

Joe Bastardi

Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting. He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore. His new book The Weaponization of Weather in the Phony Climate war can be found here: phonyclimatewar.com

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

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God comes knocking at the door of science

By MercatorNet – A Compass for Common Sense

Science at the Doorstep to God: Science and Reason in Support of God, the Soul, and Life after Death   by Fr Robert Spitzer SJ | Ignatius Press | 2023, 299 pages


Are all scientists really atheists? What can science do and what can it not do? Can it at least help understand whether the universe needs an intelligent creator? Can it throw light on the human soul as trans-physical, capable of surviving bodily death?

Fr Robert Spitzer believes it can, by offering a combination of converging arguments, as St John Henry Newman does in The Grammar of Assent. Author of Evidence for God from Contemporary Physics and articles about astrophysics and cosmology, Fr Spitzer has navigated the connections and disconnections between faith and science in a balanced and wise way, rather in the spirit of Fr Georges Lemaȋtre, proposer of the Big Bang, of whom he has much to write in this book. He shows that eight recent studies confirm the existence of an intelligent creator of physical reality as well as a trans-physical soul which survives bodily death

Did the universe have a beginning?

Fr Spitzer begins by asking whether science points to a beginning of the universe. There have been many theories about the cause of our universe: infinite or finite multiverses, a bouncing universe that waxes and wanes, of which our universe is just an interlude, a string of universes, and an infinite steady state quantum cosmology, which also would predate “our” universe, initiated by the Big Bang.

All of these theories, however, either require a beginning anyway, or else are incompatible with the facts, according to the best scientists in the area, whose arguments Spitzer rehearses in detail, but readably for the layman.

So was the Big Bang really the beginning?

All the indications are that it was: you cant have an expanding universe without a beginning; entropy would long ago have killed our universe if it were infinite, and so, if physical reality had a beginning, prior to which there was nothing, we are left with a something” beyond physical reality which can cause it all, that is, create it out of nothing. Sounds familiar?  

Life, the impossible

How about the extraordinary and unlikely fine-tuning which was needed for life to emerge? Sir Fred Hoyle, an adamant atheist, after discovering the need for exceedingly precise fine-tuning in the resonance levels of oxygen, carbon, helium, and beryllium needed for carbon bonding and carbon abundance, concluded that some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom”.

Spitzers most challenging chapter rehearses the background and subsequent development of this point. Spitzer looks long and hard at all of the other options, and comes to the conclusions that it is virtually impossible” for life to have emerged: the creator (or whatever) would have had to aim at a tiny (1/1010/123 ) volume of the available space. This figure is so unimaginably small (the denominator has so many figures if it were written out the solar system could not contain it) that most physicists agree that it is impossible to hit it. Low entropy, the cosmological constant, the ratio of mass to energy straight after the Big Bang also point to an impossible” achievement. But it has been achieved; so how did it happen?

Many hypotheses have been tried; string theory, cyclic or bouncing cosmologies, the multiverse… All of them cause the problems that they were trying to solve: they require a beginning, they are unobservable, and actually make it impossible in principle to observe what we actually are observing and to be what we actually are: carbon-based intelligent life forms. We really do need an unrestricted transphysical/transmaterial conscious intelligence” to ground our universe.

Can we disprove God?

Impossible. Neither observable evidence nor intrinsic contradiction could ever manage that, since the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is beyond observation, unlike the god” which is denied by Richard Dawkins & Co. But, more positively, can Gods existence be proved? Spitzer offers a basic Aquinas-style demonstration: there must be a unique and unrestricted uncaused reality at the basis of the whole of reality, or else there would be nothing at all, since everything else depends on it here and now. Such a reality will be spiritual, completely intelligible and unrestrictedly intelligent, aware of the what, why and wherefore of all caused realities.

Is human intelligence all that special?

A central theme of the book is an analysis of near-death experience, as evidence for a trans-physical soul. Spitzer uses peer-reviewed studies which offer a well-judged and careful analysis of the facts. We have evidence of blind people being able to see perfectly and identify surroundings; terminal lucidity in Alzheimer and hydrocephalic patients with almost no cerebral activity, leading to the question: is the brain really necessary?”

Could we have simply evolved materially to being intelligent animals? For Noam Chomsky, for instance, this will not work. We need to communicate knowledge, with declarative sentences. The once fashionable behaviourism is not at the races when it comes to this phenomenon, involving complex declarative sentences which associate subjects with predicate/object with multiple words between them, etc. Behaviourists just cant cope with long sentences.

Another argument for the trans-physical soul: for Thomas Nagel, atheist author of What is it Like to Be a Bat?, there is a subjective feel” about being an organism which goes beyond the actual organic make-up of the being. Facts about self-consciousness, therefore, are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts. There is something about consciousness that requires a trans-physical principle, since we can also reflect on ourselves, project ourselves into the future and have an awareness of our own inner world, distinct from the outer world we are inhabiting; even higher primates are unable to do this.

Transcendent experiences

Spitzer’s final chapter deals with religious experience, conscience, and the transcendental desire for perfect truth, love, goodness beauty and being/home are all matters which paint a picture of a truly material, carbon-based being, which still cannot be completely explained in a material way.

He concludes that when you take into account the beginning of the universe, the impossible fine-tuning for life, the fact that the world cannot explain itself, scientifically accepted near-death experiences, the irreducibility of self-consciousness and the transcendent religious, moral and aesthetic experiences it gives rise to, there is a converging series of indications of God and the soul which it is difficult to ignore. Science is at the doorstep to God, as Fr Spitzer claims, and the more we are able to reflect on its findings the more open we become to God’s existence and the reality of the spiritual soul.   


If there is a God, the next question is: does He matter? What do you think?


AUTHOR

Fr Patrick Gorevan

Rev. Patrick Gorevan is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. He lectures in philosophy in St Patrick’s College Maynooth and is academic tutor at Maryvale Institute. He has written on the early phenomenological movement, virtue ethics and the role of emotion in moral action. 

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

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The Dangerous Radical on Our Southern Border

By Collin Pruett

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Editors’ Note: It is worth noting that the US now has leftist governments on its northern and southern Borders. This has implications for immigration, economic integration, and public safety. At $60 billion-plus, remissions to Mexico are more than the nation earns in oil exports. In short, Mexico profits from illegal immigration into the US. They also benefit from the Chinese-inspired fentanyl manufacturing and transport based in Northern Mexico. Should [Since] Trump [was] be victorious in the coming [11/5] election, it will be interesting to see how US-Mexico relations proceed under the new feminist/leftist government in Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s inaugural speech was a study in bad ideas.

Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as Mexico’s president last Tuesday. Her ceremony was replete with the pomp and circumstance expected of the Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Her Toma de Protesta (oath of office speech) was delivered with a mild-mannered, cool effect—starkly contrasting with the flair and bombast of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). On matters of substance, however, the event cemented AMLO’s legacy in Mexican history. Sheinbaum paid AMLO reverent homage, hailing his personal and political achievements:

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You [AMLO] have asked us on several occasions not to unveil busts or put your name on streets, avenues, or neighborhoods; nor monuments or making great tributes. The truth is that you don’t need to because you will always be where only those who fight all their lives reside, those who do not give up, those who restore hope and joy; you will always be in the heart of the people of Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s speech itself was AMLO’s first great tribute. The Señora Presidenta postulated that “Mexican Humanism,” which she dubbed a “peaceful revolution” and the “Fourth Transformation of Mexico’s public life,” will be carried on in earnest. She waxed on, noting AMLO’s activism as a means of firing another diplomatic shot at Spain:

He retires from public life as a democrat and Maderista, to continue fighting from another trench, to write about what he has maintained since his first days when he worked with the Chontal Maya: that the origin of Mexico’s cultural greatness lies in the great civilizations that lived in this land centuries before the Spaniards invaded. It is no coincidence, but a harmony of history, that yesterday the reform of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, granting full rights to the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples of Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s potent oratory laid out a sweeping, visionary account of Mexican history. From the revolutionaries to the activists of 1968 to Pancho Villa, Sheinbaum deified a litany of progressive national heroes and symbols. Omitted, naturally, were the symbols and legacies of men who represented what Sheinbaum might call a less-progressed Mexico. King Felipe VI wasn’t invited, after all.

Mexico’s first female president continued the aspirational address with similar deifications of Mexican women. Capitalizing on her mandate, she made an unequivocally feminist speech, though not in the grievance-laden manner associated with American feminism. Her remarks contained only one passing condemnation of machismo. The message largely focused on addressing the material needs of Mexican women, a noble endeavor in a nation that still faces a 43 percent poverty rate

Sheinbaum laid the cornerstone of AMLO’s monument throughout the policy-oriented section of her speech. Mirroring AMLO’s 2018 Toma De Protesta, she listed her commitments and priorities, one to one hundred. The beginning of Sheinbaum’s list recounted specific commitments to Mexican Humanism and emphasized broad, populist economic policies. Given her party’s economic successes, Sheinbaum was able to indict the pre-AMLO past with authority:

The answer is: It [AMLO’s sixenio] changed the country’s development model, from the failed neoliberal model and the regime of corruption and privileges to one that emerged from Mexico’s fertile history, love for the people and honesty. We call it Mexican Humanism.

AMLO did, indeed, change Mexico’s developmental model. Embracing LNG and other fossil fuels, AMLO enabled a post-COVID manufacturing boom. Having successfully negotiated the USMCA Agreement, AMLO masterfully positioned Mexico for the onset of nearshoring. Impressive infrastructure projects across the country are being completed at a rapid clip, including transnational railways and port construction. The country benefited from record foreign investment throughout 2024 and has amassed an impressive roster of relocations. Morena has capitalized on the windfall, funding generous social programs that have contributed to the party’s staggering popularity. Though Mexico continues to struggle with inflation, the AMLO years fostered a relatively stable peso, especially in the eyes of an electorate accustomed to volatility.

Anecdotally, a conventional bullishness percolates in Texas. I’ve heard Dallas energy retailers, Houston pipeline salesmen, and Austin tech engineers all say the same thing: “Watch out for Mexico.” I can’t say I share the optimism, but the integration of the Texas triangle into a wider Latin American market, especially in light of the creation of the TXSE in DFW, is viewed as inevitable.

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I hate to break the news to my bullish Texas friends reading this, but Claudia Sheinbaum spent three years at the California Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory completing a PhD thesis in energy engineering. Her speech reflected an appreciation for market-oriented renewable investment, but contained a pledge to cap fossil fuel consumption at a daily 1.8 million barrels. She provided an assessment befitting a Berkeley education:

We are going to promote energy efficiency and the transition to renewable sources of energy to absorb, through these sources, the growth in energy demand. Remember that the energy reform proposed a production of three million barrels per day. That is environmentally impossible; it is better to promote efficiency and renewable sources.

I wrote last week that the United States might find Sheinbaum to be a less practical actor than her predecessor. Nearshoring, a critical priority for the United States as the global order frays, requires Mexican investment in fossil fuel production. The energy output required for manufacturing growth cannot be achieved by cobbling together an assortment of renewables. Taking Sheinbaum’s words, this task would be “environmentally impossible.” Her environmental proposals, coupled with judicial reform and broadly left-wing rhetoric, fueled a 14 percent drop in the peso’s value in the aftermath of her election. The delivery of her speech might communicate moderation to Americans accustomed to vitriolic rhetoric, but doubling down on ill-conceived ideological commitments amid a currency downturn is generally considered political malpractice. Ask Liz Truss.

Sheinbaum’s inflexible environmental views won’t just endanger further economic integration, it will endanger the sustainability of social subsidies that have proved the foundation of Morena’s popularity. Sheinbaum, armed with her PhD, will stake her presidency and popularity on reversing a key component of the AMLO developmental model she so ardently hails. Limiting fossil fuel extraction is a risky bet across multiple fronts. 

Despite this, Sheinbaum’s speech was impressive. It was visionary in its ambition, sweeping in scope, and straightforward in purpose and policy. From an American conservative’s perspective, her remarks might smack of socialism or climate alarmism, but those are mundane grievances. The troubling aspect of Sheinbaum’s address, rather, was what was communicated by omission.

Sheinbaum made no reference to the ongoing crisis at the U.S .–Mexico border or human trafficking. This is remarkable, given that American politics are wholly subsumed to the crisis. Sheinbaum would speak briefly on the need to reduce record homicides, but only as a segue to attack Felipe Calderón’s mid-2000s war on drugs: “In terms of security, we will guarantee the reduction of high-impact crimes. Calderón’s irresponsible war on drugs, which continues to do so much damage to Mexico, will not return. Our conviction is that security and peace are the fruit of justice.”

Sheinbaum’s only substantive mention of migration was her reference to the “heroes and heroines” living in the United States, sending “help” back to communities in Mexico. The overt praise for the $60 billion remittance flow from the United States to Mexico was jaw-dropping. Capital outflow associated with remittances reduces domestic demand and contributes to American wage stagnation. This practice, accomplished mostly via criminally trafficked labor, is inherently at odds with the economic interests of U.S. citizens. Sheinbaum’s open and profuse praise for the practice (with FLOTUS in attendance) lends credence to the unsettling suspicion that the Mexican government is acting (or rather not acting) to let traffickers operate undeterred. The financial motive is there, after all. When remittances of the U.S. dollar account for four percent of your nation’s GDP, confronting traffickers could become costly. One could also speculate that the Biden administration has been using this flow of remittances as a form of back-door foreign aid.

Claudia Sheinbaum may not be the most important head of state in the minds of the next American administration’s diplomats. Heads of state in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are competing for the guest-of-honor invitation to the State Department happy hour. But for an American president concerned with solving key crises of national interest—supply-chain security, migration, fentanyl proliferation—engagement with Mexico will be crucial. Sheinbaum’s address shows that, like her predecessor, Mexico is prepared to assert a sharp interpretation of their national interests. It would be a mistake to underestimate her political appeal and, by extension, Mexico’s new concept of self-identity. For the next sexenio, Claudia Sheinbaum will be a crucial figure in the story of the United States. She follows a man whose approval ratings and public adoration defy a dreary global political climate. AMLO has fundamentally reoriented Mexican politics, with consequences likely to resonate for decades. Will a great woman follow the great man?

*****

This article was published by The American Conservative 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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

485 Million Years of Non-Correlation! CO2 vs Temperature thumbnail

485 Million Years of Non-Correlation! CO2 vs Temperature

By Editors at the C02 Coalition

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Editors’ Note: As we read this, we got to thinking, which we admit is always a dangerous thing to do. The world is spending trillions on carbon capture, carbon trading, new forms of electrical generation, new vehicles, appliances, and social habits, all based on the assumption that C02 levels cause, let alone correlate, with rising temperatures. We are centralizing and regulating our economies not for the classic arguments of socialism but to save the planet. But all the horrors of socialism will befall us, even if for different motivations. What if all this effort is misplaced and the assumptions we are governing under are false? This new study shows there has never been a strong correlation between temperatures and C02 levels. How can one prove causation if one cannot even establish a correlation?  Of course, correlation and causation are not the same, but if CO2 were causing temperatures to rise in a process we don’t understand, there at least would be a correlation. If this new study is correct, the lack of correlation is fascinating, if not revolutionary. Increasingly, it looks like this whole push for the past 50 years is a hoax to justify government control of the economy and individuals. That we can get this far without first establishing causation seems to show the power of computer modeling married to “scientists” who are more interested in politics than in science.

How in the world did this new temperature reconstruction get past the Climate Industrial Complex’s censor machine?

The recent publication by Judd et al looked at nearly half-a-billion years of global surface temperatures and found that, rather living in a time of extraordinarily high temperature, we are in a period of near-historic lows. In fact, the global temperature peaked 100 million years ago at about 96.8oF (36oC) which was 37.8oF (21oC) higher than the temperature for 2023 (59oF and (15oC)! The inconvenient fact for the climate alarmists is that Earth’s temperature has been in a 50-million-year decline.

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We then compared this data to long-term CO2 data (see below) and found that CO2 and temperature don’t correlate very well at all.

For many years, the scientists at the CO2 Coalition have been educating thought leaders and the public about this fact.

*****

This article was published by the C02 Coalition and is reproduced with permission.

To read the entire study, click here and go to Science.org.

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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

3 Important Updates for American Nuclear Energy thumbnail

3 Important Updates for American Nuclear Energy

By Gabriella Hoffman

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

A nuclear energy renaissance is on the horizon here in the U.S.

Nuclear operates almost 24/7 and works 93% of the year, while being responsible for 18.6% of utility-scale electricity generation. Facilities boast a small environmental footprint—typically requiring one square mile for a single plant producing 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity. Solar and wind, in contrast, use 75 and 360 times more land, respectively, to generate the same amount of electricity. And it was the U.S. that pioneered this technology in the 1940s through the first operating nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago.

A growing share of Americans across partisan lines support expanding our nuclear power capacities. An August 2024 Pew Research poll found that 56% of respondents would like to see more nuclear reactors constructed here in the U.S. This is largely driven by alarm with adversaries like China and Russia approving more facilities.

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After a summer that saw the completion of Georgia Power Vogtle Nuclear Plant and President Biden signing the ADVANCE Act into law, three major developments suggest our country is getting serious about deploying this clean energy source.

#1. Energy Dept Releases Report Showing Potential for 60GW of New Nuclear Power

On September 9th, 2024, the Department of Energy released an extensive report identifying 60 GW of potential new sources of nuclear power across 41 operating or recently retired plants.

The report, “Evaluation of Nuclear Power Plant and Coal Power Plant Sites for New Nuclear Capacity,” thoroughly examined all 54 existing and 11 retired nuclear plants across 31 U.S. states. These facilities were evaluated based on “availability of adequate cooling water, proximity to large population centers or hazardous facilities, or unacceptable seismic or flood hazards.”

The excitement over the recent completion of the Vogtle Plant in Georgia and Tennessee being selected for a new uranium enrichment site has given way to more nuclear reactors, including Three Mile Island, to come back online.

#2. Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor Brought Back to Life

The energy industry, lawmakers, and social media lit up with excitement over the September 20th announcement of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station in Middletown, Pennsylvania, coming back to life, just five years after closing, to power Microsoft AI-powered data centers.

The deal brokered between TMI’s owner, Constellation Energy, and Microsoft will last 20 years and commence in 2028, pending approval. The rebranded Crane Clean Energy Center will occupy Unit 1 and is forecasted to pump back $16 billion in the Keystone State’s economy and create 3,400 indirect and direct jobs.

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Shortly after the deal was announced, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro urged PJM Interconnection—the regional transmission organization (RTO) coordinating the movement of electricity in 13 states, including his, and D.C.—to fast-track the plan.

“Given the lengthy review process for new projects, it is imperative that shovel-ready resources like the Crane Clean Energy Center be allowed to come online as quickly as possible rather than waiting in the [interconnection] queue as if they were an entirely new development,” Shapiro wrote in a letter.

Although the 1979 TMI accident was the worst nuclear incident in U.S. history, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) demystified misinformation surrounding the meltdown of Unit 2. It explained, “Small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public” but resulted in improvements to emergency response planning, operator training, and enhanced overall nuclear energy safety.” Commonwealth Foundation’s André Béliveau applauded the deal and recommended more private investment—not government interference—to supercharge these projects. He explained:

Private industry knows the need for reliable energy sources to keep the grid online for the new wave of data centers powering our ever-advancing technology needs. Current progressive policy trends toward a government-forced transition away from reliable energy and advocates for handouts to achieve it. These programs—such as the Inflation Reduction Act and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS)—disrupt price signals in our energy markets and flood them with unreliable, weather-dependent sources. Most importantly, such government programs force ratepayers to pay more for less reliable energy, threaten high-paying jobs, and arbitrarily close reliable power plants without replacements.

Due to this blockbuster TMI deal, major financial institutions want to bank on the excitement over potential nuclear energy investments—due to intermittent renewables being unable to meet future U.S. electricity demand.

#3. Financial Institutions Eager to Bank on Nuclear Energy

Financial asset managers had an aversion to nuclear energy investments, but appear to be reconsidering this position in wake of the $16 billion Three Mile Island deal.

Financial Times reported 14 global banks and financial institutions—including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs—are eager to support nuclear energy, with the hope the industry “will unlock finance for a new wave of nuclear power plants.” These institutions are aligning their goals with a campaign to triple the nuclear energy supply by 2050.

Banks cite “the difficulty and high cost of financing nuclear projects” as the reasons behind the slowdown of construction in the last 50 years.

It’s also expected banks will encourage nuclear investments so financial institutions can meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) pledges to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Morningstar suggested the best nuclear-friendly stocks and funds are TC Energy, Public Service Enterprise Group, and Constellation (which owns TMI).

Conclusion 

Our Center for Energy and Conservation supports sensible nuclear reforms and projects that boost our electricity supply, foster job creation, and balance development with environmental stewardship.

The revitalization of nuclear energy in America is noteworthy, yet it shouldn’t be lumped into net-zero climate goals.

Federal directives urging the U.S. economy to be fully rid of fossil fuels by 2050 have been doomed by relying on utility-scale solar and wind—nonviable alternatives. An estimated $1.8 trillion in subsidies, across a decade, is expected to be allocated towards the Biden-Harris administration’s preferred clean energy projects—namely wind, solar, and electric vehicles. The problem is these projects are unlikely to be profitable or fully operational.

Nuclear can’t face a similar fate. That’s why permitting reform, deregulation, and inviting market innovation in this space must be top of mind for regulators and lawmakers if they desire to unleash nuclear power capabilities here in the U.S.

To learn more about nuclear energy, go HERE.

*****

This article was published by The Independent Women’s Forum and has been 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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

WINNING: The Trump Effect thumbnail

WINNING: The Trump Effect

By The Geller Report

It’s been three days…..Let’s recap:

Hamas wants an immediate end to the war

Trump Gives Hamas until Inauguration Day to return the hostages

The Houthis surrender just hours after Trump wins Presidency saying, “Our operation in the international waters were for defensive purposes only, and we announce an immediate ceasefire.”

The EU said it will buy its oil from America not Russia.

— Qatar has told all Hamas officials in the country: You are no longer welcome here. Leave the country immediately.

Iran’s currency has crashed

Donald Trump and Elon Musk informed Zelenskyy that the war is over and urged him to prepare for negotiations. They also stated that no additional funds or weapons will be sent to Ukraine.

– Trump lawfare is disappearing (here and here)

The stock market is soaring

— Interest rates are down

The migrant caravan that was bound for our southern border has BROKEN UP now that Trump has won.

— China is optimistic and talking peaceful co-existence

Federal Judge strikes down Biden regime’s citizenship for illegals

The world is healing.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: McCormick Flips Pennsylvania Senate Seat Republican

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

‘Trump Wins, Planet Loses’ — Morano heads to UN’s COP29 in Azerbaijan — Gore depressed — Bernie Sanders: ‘Struggle against climate change is over’ thumbnail

‘Trump Wins, Planet Loses’ — Morano heads to UN’s COP29 in Azerbaijan — Gore depressed — Bernie Sanders: ‘Struggle against climate change is over’

By Marc Morano from Climate Depot

Mag: ‘Trump Wins, Planet Loses’ —

Plus: Morano heading to UN climate COP29 in Azerbaijan to help celebrate funeral of Net Zero —

Gore depressed —

Trump ‘a wrecking ball’ to climate —

Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘The global struggle against climate change is over’

Climate Depot note: I will be on the ground again this year attending the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan. Morano will be there for the week of November 10th through 15 in Baku, following the UN’s every effort to squelch your freedom and continue the dark path of net-zero rationing of energy, food, freedom of movement, and free speech. This will be my 20th out of the past 22  international UN summits to attend in person.

Flashback 2016: UN Armed Security Shuts Down Morano After he SHREDS UN Paris Pact at Climate Summit Next To Trump Cut-out

This year’s summit is being dubbed the “finance COP” because climate and green energy lobbyists are descending on the event to try to funnel even more U.S. taxpayer money into their pockets.

Morano: “With Donald Trump winning the US presidential election, the United Nations COP29 will turn into a giant wake, with the United Nations facing defeat of their anti-human climate agenda. The entire climate agenda is facing utter and complete collapse due to its unrealistic mandates and targets. Failure across the board is occurring, from emission targets to anemic electric vehicle sales to pushback by farmers fighting back against agricultural climate restrictions. The Trump victory will help push the United Nations and its net zero agenda into the dustbin of history. I will be on the ground with other team members to report daily on what’s happening post-election at one of the most consequential UN climate summits.”

Trump wins U.S. presidency! Net Zero, UN climate pacts, Green New Deal & Inflation Reduction Act face ruin

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “Congratulations to President Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance. Finally, US leadership has returned to fight the international climate agenda. The U.S. will finally have a president back in the Oval Office who will be pro-science, pro-environment, and fight the demented net zero climate agenda, the Green New Deal, and the UN climate treaty process.

President Trump will also be able to face off against the ridiculous, unsustainable, and unscientific claims that emanate from our most esteemed institutions. America will once again be a beacon of scientific realism regarding climate change and energy policy. Bravo!”

Grist mag: ‘Trump Wins, Planet Loses’ – ‘Poised to upend U.S. climate policy’

Ivy League University’s brightest climate bulb, Michael Mann, rips the U.S. for re-electing Trump: ‘America is a failed Democracy…Our people failed us…We now pose a major threat to the planet’

Watch: Sen. Bernie Sanders declares on CNN: ‘If Trump wins, the struggle—the global struggle—against climate change is over’

Despite Climate Concerns, Young Voter Turnout Slumped & Its Support Split Between the Parties

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: 

As early exit polling comes out, it appears that young voters—often expected to reliably support Democratic candidates—did not vote as a monolith. Although Kamala Harris still took the majority of the youth vote, her margin of support from young voters, 6 points, was much smaller than Biden’s 25 point lead in 2020, and young men—unlike in 2020—broke in favor of Trump…

Alice Siu, associate director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University, said that young voters’ opinions were more diverse than may have been expected…

Climate Didn’t Necessarily Move Young Voters to Harris: Young voters also consistently rank climate change as an important issue, and in the lead up to the election some experts suggested that young climate voters could tip the race in favor of Harris.

BBC: Trump victory is a major setback for climate action, experts say

AP: Experts worry Trump’s second term will cripple efforts to stop climate change

POLITICO: What’s at stake for climate policy? ‘Who the hell cares,’ Trump says

Gore depressed by Trump’s victory: ‘All major reform efforts, from civil rights to the climate movement, suffer dark days. And this is surely one’

Al Gore, Founder and Chairman of The Climate Reality Project on Trump winning: “In a moment such as this, it is important to remember that all major reform efforts, from civil rights to the climate movement, suffer dark days. And this is surely one.” Via Gore’s email list on November 6, 2024

‘A wrecking ball’: Experts warn Trump’s win sets back ‘global climate action’ – Poses ‘major threat to the planet’

Trump’s reelection has sweeping climate change consequences

‘It’s going to suck’: Climate world absorbs a reality they’d hoped to avoid: Trump is back!

‘A setback for global climate action’: Trump’s election victory sparks dismay — and defiance — among architects of the UN Paris climate accord

POLITICO: Trump victory a ‘gut punch’ to US climate action – ‘The stakes for the planet could hardly be higher’

Climate activists spray US embassy in London with orange paint after Trump reelection victory

Watch: Morano on Fox on Harris’s fracking flip flops: ‘She really thinks the people of Pennsylvania are stupid’ – Biden-Harris ‘riding the coattails of’ Trump’s energy policies

Grist Mag: ‘Authoritarianism is on the rise. Is climate change to blame?’ – ‘Global warming creates fertile ground for political strongmen to come to power’ – ‘Floods, droughts, & wildfires can help autocratic politicians consolidate power’

Implies Trump can win due to unchecked climate change: McCarthy believes this is true even though supporters of many strongmen — including a third of Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 — deny that climate change is real. “I think that people are reacting to manifestations of climate change or effects of climate change without always or often recognizing them as such,” he said.

Time Mag: ‘Climate change is causing sleep loss’ – ‘Led to 5% more hours of sleep lost worldwide over the past five years’ – Lancet study

CBS News: ‘Threat of foodborne pathogens is growing with climate change, experts warn’ – ‘McDonald’s (E. coli) outbreak is a reminder that climate change is real’

New Study implies UN climate pact can save unborn babies!? – Rising ‘miscarriages due to climate crisis’ – ‘Report aimed at decision-makers’ attending COP29 summit

If Green Energy Is the Future, Bring a Fire Extinguisher – Lithium battery fires are breaking out all over the place

‘Climate’ Policies in a Harris Admin: If Harris wins, ‘every county in America will be ground zero for climate policies’

Morano speaks at Western Kentucky University on climate change & the Great Reset

‘Game over’ for ‘climate action’! UK Guardian: ‘Five ways a Trump presidency would be disastrous for the climate’ – ‘Would restore climate denialism to an Oval Office’ – ‘A purge of science’

Dr. Matthew Wielicki: ‘Insanity at the Polls’: ‘The Myth of Voting to Save the Climate’ – ‘CO2 rises no matter who you vote for’

Morano accused of engaging in ‘Climate Denialism ‘ & ‘Crossing the Atlantic’ to ‘Spread Misinformation & Conspiracy Theories’ in Austrian speech

Climate change driving ‘record threats to health’ claims ‘major report’ by Lancet released ‘just weeks before the UN COP29 talks are held in Azerbaijan’ – Report ‘painted a dire picture of death & delay’

©2024 All rights reserved.

The Battery Electric Kool Aid Acid Test thumbnail

The Battery Electric Kool Aid Acid Test

By Duggan Flanakin

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

In his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe portrays LSD pioneer Ken Kesey as “seeking to create a new religion.” Fifty-three years later, President Joe Biden put his imprimatur, with equal religious fervor, on the battery-electric vehicle.

Biden was hardly the first political leader to endorse a forced shift away from the internal combustion engine. Norway began the process in the 1990s, with other nations soon joining in a European Union mandate that preceded the U.S. action.

Many see China as the biggest beneficiary of the electric vehicle mandates, and for good reason. Their heavily subsidized (including by forced labor) lithium battery and electric vehicle industries are, sans tariffs, undercutting almost every other nation’s auto industry, forcing many into seeking protections that cannot hold back the tide forever.

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In the U.S., several states, led by California, have gone beyond the federal mandate to force electric vehicles – including heavy trucks – down the throats of an unwilling public. On the other hand, multiple automakers, notably Ford, have lost so much money trying to comply with Washington and Sacramento they are backing away from previous boastful commitments.

There are, we are learning, other ways to comply with ever-tightening carbon dioxide emissions rules. Both automakers and fuel experts are coming up with a myriad of “solutions” that would not require massive charging networks and an overtaxing of an already fragile electric grid.

Once again, government and the fawning media told us that “the science is settled,” and that the plug-in electric was the only path forward to prevent the entire planet from literally catching on fire and burning humanity alive. Yet people have uncovered multiple flies in this supposed ointment, including the sad propensity of lithium-ion batteries to catch fire and to be disabled during power outages or when submerged in water.

For whatever reasons, scientists and engineers have forged pathways to new fuels, new engines, and other innovative solutions to the presumed “carbon crisis” that is the driving force behind the desired abolition of gasoline and diesel fuels.

Despite the mandates issued by politicians and bureaucrats, the auto buying community, the automotive engineers, and even the automakers are saying there has to be a better way forward. Here’s a look at just a few of the emerging developments in auto engineering and fuels technologies.

Ferrari was one of the key drivers of Italy’s demand that the EU back off the “battery-electric only” mandate. Ferrari has an engine that runs on hydrogen as fuel. Hydrogen fuels also have zero carbon dioxide emissions, low nitrogen oxides emissions, and the potential to replace gasoline and diesel fuels. But they also retain the sound of a gasoline engine while not needing a battery (let alone a thousand-pound battery) while offering advanced performance capabilities for high-speed driving.

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A curious thing about the Ferrari hydrogen engine is that its operating system is upside down. The cylinder head has its cams and valve at the bottom and the crankshaft is in the lower position. The pressurized lubrication circuit is based on the use of a dry sump and includes three oil pumps to ensure that oil is not trapped in the combustion chamber.

Porsche has filed a patent for a six-stroke engine – intake, compression, power, compression again, power again, and exhaust. While two-stroke engines complete a combustion cycle after one crankshaft revolution, and four-strokes need two revolutions, the six-stroke, says Porsche, functions with “six individual strokes that can be divided into two three-stroke sequences.”

Porsche’s objective is efficient and optimal use of power, as power is achieved on every third stroke and there is a more thorough utilization of the air-fuel mix. Porsche also seeks to galvanize the development of the combustion engine with vastly increased energy efficiency.

Meanwhile, Indiana-based Cummins, known for its diesel engines, has recently unveiled a new-design 15-liter, 500-horsepower hydrogen engine that runs on water, emits only steam, and can be refueled in seconds. The Cummins engine is revolutionary in the transport industry as it can replace the conventional diesel engine and is environmentally friendly.

The hydrogen fuel is stored in a tank and transformed into electrical energy via a fuel cell, which can convert up to 60% of the energy content of the hydrogen into electricity. The engine outputs up to 1,800 foot-pounds of torque for performance and towing capacity and has a fuel economy of up to 35% better than normal diesel engines, yet it produces zero emissions. Cummins hopes its hydrogen engine will succeed though other fuel-cell electric vehicles have failed.

Even Elon Musk has announced a strategic pivot towards hydrogen-powered Teslas. In a significant shift from prior skepticism over hydrogen as an energy source, Musk’s first hydrogen-powered model, tentatively named Model H, is expected to debut in 2026.

One likely reason for Musk’s change of course is the may well be recent advances in hydrogen fuel cell technology and the potential for much faster refueling (a key reason people eschew battery-electric vehicles). Another is the widely recognized shortcomings of battery-electric for long-haul trucking and industrial vehicles (including tow trucks).

Additional interest in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles comes from the $7 billion federal commitment to establish regional hydrogen production hubs and tax incentives for clean hydrogen production and fuel-cell vehicles. Still, the only public hydrogen fueling stations are in California, and both a lack of access to refueling and high current hydrogen prices resulted in fewer than 225 hydrogen vehicles being sold last year.

Yet another company, Kansas-based Astron Aerospace, recently introduced the H2Starfire engine, a rotary configuration that defies current combustion engine theories and has been dubbed “a near-impossible engine.” The engine has neither cylinders nor pistons and can use hydrogen as fuel. It is also very lightweight at just 35 pounds and may be able to achieve higher efficiency and performance – generating 160 horsepower.

The H2Starfire can reach up to 25,000 rpm and functions according to a principle that substantially diverges from conventional piston engines and Wankel rotaries. It achieves these using two sets of counter-rotating rotors: the aluminum half does the intake and compression jobs, while the titanium half at the rear handles expansion and exhaust. As the gears turn, the air and fuel are admitted and burned to produce power via a revolving motion.

This is but a sampling of the myriad of new engine designs that differ widely from the long-favored and heavily subsidized battery-electric vehicles that Chinese can produce (with internal subsidies) and sell for far less than all other automakers. None of these engines require lithium mining, and none have heavy batteries that reduce load capacity and have other problems too numerous to recount here.

These hydrogen vehicles may never catch on unless the cost of hydrogen fuel drops dramatically and the number of hydrogen refueling stations increases dramatically. The public has tired of battery-electric vehicles as people realize that reselling older BEVs likely comes with buying a very expensive replacement battery. In the interim, automakers have continued to increase miles per gallon and reduce emissions from internal combustion gasoline and diesel engines.

All in all, those who long ago drank the battery-electric Kool-Aid may hope they are not living in Jonestown.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, 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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

If Trump Wins

By Bret Swanson

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 Harris/Obama/Biden 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.

Energy Prices Shot Up 72% Under Harris-Biden and Their ‘War On American Energy’ thumbnail

Energy Prices Shot Up 72% Under Harris-Biden and Their ‘War On American Energy’

By The Geller Report

“Green” energy – green as in money for leftwing scammers.

Who, in their right mind, will vote for this?

Energy Prices Shot Up 72% Thanks To Biden And Harris’ War On American Energy

By: Bill Peacock, The Federalist, November 01, 2024

Critics of former President Donald Trump often claim he is lying. Much of the time, however, the critics fail to recognize he is simply using hyperbole to highlight the problems Democrats and establishment Republicans are causing across our country.

Sunday night, Trump was at it again during his campaign rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. He told the crowd, “We will achieve energy independence … We’re gonna drill, baby, drill. And I will terminate the green new scam and will cut your energy prices in half, 50 percent, within one year from Jan. 20.”

Trump was not spreading fake news. During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, electricity prices nationwide have skyrocketed. There is hope for major reductions in energy prices — if American politicians will repent of their support for renewable energy.

As I show in a new study by the Energy Alliance, wholesale electricity prices increased 72 percent during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration. The energy prices for the seven U.S. independent regional service areas averaged $70 per megawatt hour during that period, up from $41 from 2018 to 2020.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Biden Backward On Energy

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FEMA Whistleblower Goes Public, Reveals Agency’s Focus on ‘DEI Initiatives’ Over Disaster Response thumbnail

FEMA Whistleblower Goes Public, Reveals Agency’s Focus on ‘DEI Initiatives’ Over Disaster Response

By O’Keefe Media Group

Kelsey Goodman, a Hazard Mitigation Emergency Manager for FEMA’s Region 4, shed light on the agency’s evolving priorities, emphasizing that the number one goal of FEMA is instilling equity in emergency management—not to save lives or build stronger communities.

Following Hurricane Helene, residents in North Carolina expressed frustration over the lack of visible FEMA support in their communities, despite the widespread devastation and flooding. Many reported feeling abandoned, with Goodman noting there were ”Questions on the ground from home owners… asking where FEMA is, ‘Why aren’t they coming to help?”

Goodman expressed frustration about FEMA’s approach, stating that their internal narrative differed from the experiences of those in the affected areas. She explained that, internally, employees were told they were doing everything right, and “Anyone who has a problem with the way we’re doing things, they’re bad actors, they’re spreading misinformation.”

Moreover, Goodman pointed out FEMA’s increasing focus on equity initiatives, stating, “We are prioritizing disadvantaged communities when there’s no clear definition of what that is.” She argues that this focus detracts from FEMA’s core mission of assisting all Americans in urgent need following disasters. “When you’re dedicating that time and those resources to things that you can’t tie to fact… you’re not dedicating to the things that matter, which is helping American families stay safe,” she added.

Despite the risks of speaking out, Goodman felt compelled to share her perspective, stating, “If you feel a calling from the Lord…you need to speak the truth.”

She urged FEMA to refocus on the essentials of disaster response, declaring, “We have the resources. We need to get back to basics and use them to actually help people.”

WATCH: FEMA Whistleblower Goes Public, Reveals Agency’s Focus on ‘DEI Initiatives’ Over Disaster Response

EDITORS NOTE: This O’Keefe Media Group column and video are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

BREAKING-VIDEO: Huge Explosion in U.S. Base in Missouri thumbnail

BREAKING-VIDEO: Huge Explosion in U.S. Base in Missouri

By Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)

In the U.S., a powerful explosion is reported at the U.S. Army’s lithium battery factory in Missouri, according to some reports, apparently the Revolutionary Guards are responsible for the explosion.

Pentagon officials: “If it is indeed the Revolutionary Guards, the US will have the legitimacy to attack Iran immediately and widely.”

Residents near a battery recycling facility in Fredricktown were evacuated after a fire broke out at the plant Wednesday afternoon. No injuries were reported.

Drone video: Large battery plant fire in Fredericktown, Missouri

Explosion at industrial play in Frederick, Missouri caught on camera

This is an ongoing, initial report. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES!

©2024 . All rights reserved.