WASHINGTON — The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.
That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.
“Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.”
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Spending by federal agencies is governed by the extensive Federal Acquisition Regulations or FAR for short. In response to a Biden executive order, the FAR Council is conducting a silly public inquiry as to how climate change should be factored into federal spending. The Federal Government spends over $6 trillion a year so this is a very big deal.
The concept is ridiculous and some of the ideas are illegal but this foolish agency action deserves serious attention. The FAR Council has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) titled “Federal Acquisition Regulation: Minimizing the Risk of Climate Change in Federal Acquisitions“. Comments are due by December 15. I urge people to comment.
See https://www.regulations.gov/document/FAR-2021-0016-0001
Advanced Notices like this are asking for ideas prior to proposing regulations, including that the whole idea is nuts. One of the worst things mentioned is that in competitive procurements agencies should give preference to bidders who are cutting their emissions. I cannot believe this is legal but there it is.
The ANPRM includes this list of leading questions:
(a)How can greenhouse gas emissions, including the social cost of greenhouse gases, best be qualitatively and quantitatively considered in Federal procurement decisions, both domestic and overseas? How might this vary across different sectors?
(b) What are usable and respected methodologies for measuring the greenhouse gases emissions over the lifecycle of the products procured or leased, or of the services performed?
(c) How can procurement and program officials of major Federal agency procurements better incorporate and mitigate climate-related financial risk? How else might the Federal Government consider and minimize climate-related financial risks through procurement decisions, both domestic and overseas?
(d) How would (or how does) your organization provide greenhouse gas emission data for proposals and/or contract performance?
(e) How might the Federal Government best standardize greenhouse gas emission reporting methods? How might the Government verify greenhouse gas emissions reporting?
(f) How might the Federal Government give preference to bids and proposals from suppliers, both domestic and overseas, to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or reduce the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions most effectively?
(g) How might the Government consider commitments by suppliers to reduce or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions?
(h) What impact would consideration of the social cost of greenhouse gases in procurement decisions have on small businesses, including small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) small businesses? How should the FAR Council best align this objective with efforts to ensure opportunity for small businesses?
The questions imply proposals that clearly make federal spending an instrument of alarmist policy. Suppliers are required to report their greenhouse emissions and to take steps to reduce them. The result can only be to drive up the cost of goods and services, which taxpayers pay for.
I see no statutory authority for this nonsense. Surely only Congress can make rules like this. Agencies cannot just decide what to buy based on Biden’s climate power agenda.
Some of this is truly far out, like asking procurement officials to measure the life cycle emissions of products and services. Complex products up to and including warships can have components, sub-components, etc., from all over the world, and lead long complex lives. In fact, the Defense Department is a lead agency in this ANPRM, as is NASA.
Imagine trying to measure the life cycle emissions for $6 trillion a year’s worth of products and services, and then basing procurement decisions on these measures. This is truly absurd.
There is also this vaguest of concepts: the “climate-related financial risks” to the Federal Government, which are supposed to be both mitigated and minimized. The real risk here is doing silly stuff in the name of climate alarmism.
And of course, there is the nutty “social cost of greenhouse gases”. This goofy number is claimed to measure to the dollar the damage done over the next 300 years by a ton of today’s emissions. I am not making this up!
The Biden Administration is trying to grab power it does not have, using regulations that have no statutory authority. I urge people to comment, especially saying how stupid and dangerous this proposed rule-making really is.
*****
This article was published on November 26, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
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Fifteen state financial officers sent a letter to U.S. banks last week noting $600 billion in assets they pledge to take elsewhere if the financial institutions embrace corporate wokeism and prohibit financing to the fossil fuel industry.
Led by West Virginia Republican Treasurer Riley Moore, the group promised “collective action” in the form of an “economic boycott.”
“Just as each state represented in this letter is unique in its governing laws and economy, our actions will take different forms,” they wrote in the letter obtained by The Federalist. “However, the overarching objective of our actions will be the same – to protect our states’ economies, jobs, and energy independence from these unwarranted attacks on our critical industries.”
Signatories to the letter putting banks on notice include chief financial officers from Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Alabama, Texas, and Kentucky, in addition to West Virginia.
“How can we as states get dollars from severance taxes and then park it in banks that are at the same time trying to diminish those dollars by trying to boycott our industries?” Moore said in an interview with The Federalist. “This is just more of the same from these woke capitalists, globalist interests out there when it’s them trying to dictate to us the way we need to live our lives.”
Asked why more states haven’t joined the letter, considering at least 22 state financial offices are run by Republicans, Moore said it was a consequence of standard hesitancy.
“I do believe there are going to be more states that are going to join this coalition effort. I think they want to see a little bit of how this plays out,” Moore said. “How long are we just going to take it in the face and not do anything?”
President Joe Biden has been aggressive in quickly curtailing oil and gas development as promised on the campaign trail. Beyond the illegal suspension of new leases on federal land, the prohibition of new drilling sites on major untapped reserves, and higher fees in the pipeline for new energy exploration permits, however, it’s the administration’s pressure on Wall Street to refuse investment in the capital-intense industry that’s dealt the biggest blow to producers, spiking prices at the pump in the process.
“We can’t get capital because they’re putting so much pressure on banks not to lend to us in the name of climate change,” explained Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance.
Biden’s nominee for an important regulatory role at the Treasury Department however, shows no sign of an administration easing up on Wall Street. Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova, who was tapped to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has said she wants fossil fuel industries to “go bankrupt.”
If confirmed, Omarova would lead an agency tasked with “ensur[ing] banks and federal savings associations operate in a safe and sound manner, provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations.”
Considering the administration’s crusade against fossil fuels, it’s conceivable Omarova would weaponize the department to deter investment in an industry vilified by Democrats as single-handedly destructive to the planet.
In 2017, Omarova already urged Congress to delegate a “golden share” responsibility to federal agencies, which she defined as “a wide range of legal arrangements giving the government special, exclusive, and nontransferable corporate-governance rights in privately owned enterprises.”
State financial officers who are engaged in the tug-of-war with the Biden administration wrote in their letter last week their taxpayers would not tolerate public funds being managed by institutions that destroy economies and Americans’ health in the name of climate change.
“We have a compelling government interest when acting as participants in the financial services market on behalf of our respective states, to select financial institutions that are not engaged in tactics to harm the very people whose money they are handling,” they wrote. “Any financial institution that has adopted policies aimed at diminishing a large portion of our states’ revenue has a major conflict of interest against holding, maintaining, or managing those funds.”
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Research shows that countries with the highest levels of economic freedom also have the highest environmental performance.
One of the most frequently raised arguments against capitalism is that it is the primary driver of environmental pollution and climate change. But if we compare Yale University’s ranking of countries with the highest environmental performance with the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, a very different correlation emerges.
For more than 20 years, Yale University has been publishing the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and ranking countries according to their environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The EPI uses 32 performance indicators across eleven issue categories:
Air Quality
Sanitation & Drinking Water
Heavy Metals
Waste Management
Biodiversity & Habitat
Ecosystem Services
Fisheries
Climate Change
Pollution Emissions
Water Resources
Agriculture
According to Yale University’s analyses, Denmark, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and France are the highest ranked countries, followed by Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Germany. The report states, “One of the consistent lessons of the EPI is that achieving sustainability requires sufficient economic prosperity to fund public health and environmental infrastructure.” The researchers find that there is a clear positive correlation between environmental performance and country wealth, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
An interesting comparison can be made between the EPI and the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which has been measuring economic freedom around the globe since 1995. The index, which is also referred to as the capitalism index by the sociologist Erich Weede, was most recently published in spring 2021 and analyzes the level of economic freedom in 178 countries. The Heritage Foundation index applies twelve criteria, all of which are weighted equally:
Property Rights
Judicial Effectiveness
Government Integrity
Tax Burden
Government Spending
Fiscal Health
Business Freedom
Labour Freedom
Monetary Freedom
Trade Freedom
Investment Freedom
Financial Freedom
The ten most economically free countries in the world in the 2021 index are:
Singapore
New Zealand
Australia
Switzerland
Ireland
Taiwan
United Kingdom
Estonia
Canada
Denmark
The countries with the lowest levels of economic freedom were North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe. The 178 countries are all grouped in five categories: Free, Mostly Free, Moderately Free, Mostly Unfree and Repressed. The Heritage Foundation’s researchers compared the two indices – Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index and their own Index of Economic Freedom – for the year 2020 and found that the countries with the highest levels of economic freedom also had the highest EPI scores, averaging 76.1, while the “Mostly Free” countries averaged 70.2. There is then a big gap to the “Moderately Free” countries, which were rated much lower (59.6 points) for their environmental performance. The “Mostly Unfree” and “Repressed” countries registered by far the worst environmental performance (46.7 and 50.3 points in the EPI, respectively).
To smooth out the dynamic developments in the Index of Economic Freedom, it makes sense to take each country’s average score over 15 years from 2006 to 2020. This compensates for the kind of one-off effects that can result from short-term policy measures. These averages can then be compared with the Environmental Performance Index’s scores from 2020. The data reveal a clear positive correlation (the correlation coefficient is 67%). A regression analysis also confirms that for every one-point increase in the Economic Freedom Index there is a 1.06 point increase in the Environmental Performance Index. Such a high coefficient, combined with the very strong correlation between the indices, suggests a clear statistical relationship. This correlation can be explained by the causality between increased capitalism and greater technological progress and prosperity.
The economist Daniel Fernández Méndez addressed the potential objection that countries with greater economic freedom “are ‘exporting’ their polluting industries to the less free third world, while keeping non-polluting industries in their country.” However, this is clearly not the case. His analysis of the investments made by countries with high environmental standards reveals that only 0.1% of their foreign investments flow to countries with low environmental standards. The conclusions from these calculations are clear: “With the data analyzed, we can see that capitalism suits the environment. The greater the economic freedom, the better the environmental quality indexes. The ‘cleaner’ countries do not export their pollution by relocating companies.” Clearly, the environment is no different to so many other areas of life: Capitalism is not the problem, it is the solution.
Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. He is also a world-renowned author, successful businessman, and real estate investor.
Zitelmann has written more than 20 books. His books are successful all around the world, especially in China, India, and South Korea. His most recent books are The Rich in Public Opinion which was published in May 2020, and The Power of Capitalism which was published in 2019.
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We’ve all seen them, the Medicare TV ads exhorting seniors to apply for enhanced benefits. The government appears to be coaxing often reluctant retirees into greater dependence.
But this is a colossally bad idea, even for those of us who support helping citizens in their sunset years. It stimulates greed (it’s freeeee!) and entitlement in the demographic which government programs have already made into the most wealthy. It expands the reach of government into our lives.
But it’s worse than that. The ads are pitching benefits in a program already teetering on bankruptcy. Americans were told that their mandatory payroll contributions were put in a fund to finance payouts in retirement, but that was a lie. Politicians raided the trust long ago and today’s retirees are dependent on the (inadequate) contributions of today’s payers – yes, like any other welfare program.
The rational response would be reforms that include reducing expenses where possible. Instead, we spend untold millions to pump up program outlays. Not smart. Consequences to follow.
But screeching Medicare ads aren’t the only government initiative which, partisan disagreements aside, simply don’t make sense. Take electric cars. They’re touted as a big key to a carbon-free future. We’re pouring public funds into subsidies, charging stations and other enticements for owners.
We may disagree over the feasibility of carbon reduction strategies to ultimately reduce climate change, but it doesn’t matter. Electric cars aren’t the answer. They still require energy that must be produced somehow.
The pollutants may come from an electricity generating plant instead of a car’s exhaust, but the damage done isn’t greatly different. The environmental costs of battery production and disposal as well as the extra power sources needed to service a national fleet of autos make EVs an environmental loser.
But politicians use them anyway to bolster green credentials. Buyers like the subsidies, the perks, and driving a cool car. Manufacturers are joining the ranks of the uber-rich. So the beat goes on.
EVs could have some environmental benefit if nuclear generation sourced their electricity. Once again, stupidity intervenes.
The environmental Left decreed long ago that nuclear was off-limits. Nuclear power plants would henceforth be discouraged by excessive regulation and harassment. The strategy has basically worked, but it’s a shame.
It’s still true that nuclear is by far the most environmentally friendly, non-emitting energy source available. Nuclear-producing France pays 50% less for energy with 10% the amount of pollution experienced by Germany, which sanctimoniously exited the nuclear market years ago.
Here’s more lunacy. A year ago, America had finally achieved energy independence, after decades of kowtowing to Arab sheiks and oil-rich autocrats. Within days, the Biden administration returned us to supplicant status. Pipeline permits were canceled, offshore drilling cut back and even the remote ANWR oil deposits were shut down.
Meanwhile, with our consent, Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline was approved, which will dominate Western Europe’s natural gas supplies. Biden unsuccessfully begged OPEC to increase oil production, so US gas prices have predictably skyrocketed and a cold winter looms.
Again, the environmental benefits of our foolishness are nil. Pipelines are the most environmentally safe way of transporting natural gas. The fuels from Russia and the Middle East are no cleaner than ours.
We have more inane policies. Children too young to vote, drink, smoke, or drive are now permitted to change their socially constructed gender by irreversibly altering their bodies-without parental consent.
$450,000 payouts are seriously proposed for illegal immigrants who were separated from their children in a humane effort to avoid mixing children with adults during detention. In spite of causing no known harm, GMO bans limit the amount of food available to starving Africans.
The driving force for these nutty, harmful policies is the relentless pursuit of electoral success by pandering to special interest groups. We’ve come a long way from Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a “wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another…“.
Listen to political analysts uncritically predicting the fate of multi-trillion-dollar spending bills based solely on how the vote would affect legislators’ prospects for remaining in office another term.
It’s disgraceful, but we expect no more, so that’s what we get.
****
Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute
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California has gradually weaned itself off fossil fuel fracking well ahead of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2024 ban of the oil and gas extraction method.
The California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), the agency that oversees new permits, has denied 109 new permits from fossil fuel firms this year, according to Department of Conservation data. State regulators have approved just 12 permits in 2021, the most recent of which came in February.
Uduak-Joe Ntuk, the state’s oil and gas supervisor, said he couldn’t approve new fracking grants “in good conscience” in a September letter to the energy firm Aera Energy, The Associated Press reported. Ntuk cited the “increasingly urgent climate effects of fossil-fuel production” and “the continuing impacts of climate change and hydraulic fracturing on public health and natural resources.”
“Unfortunately, the State of California continues to take arbitrary actions that deliver little positive benefits for our fight against climate change but imposes big impacts on Californians – to our finances, to our freedoms, essentially to how we live and work every day,” Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) President and CEO Catherine Reheis-Boyd said in a statement last month.
“Real solutions do not come through arbitrary bans, mandates, and the whim of elected leaders,” she said.
On Oct. 8, the WSPA sued the Newsom administration over the mass denial of fracking permits. One month earlier, the Kern County Board of Supervisors also filed suit, challenging the state’s authority to ban access to oil and gas resources, according to The Bakersfield Californian.
“The decisions (Newsom) has made to unilaterally come after the oil and gas industry in violation of standing rules and standing law, that’s been established by the state Legislature, has been a gross overreach of his power,” Board Chairman Phillip Peters said after the suit was filed in September.
In April, Newsom ordered CalGEM to end new fracking permits by January 2024. He also asked the California Air Resources Board to conduct an analysis of how the state could completely wean off fossil fuel extraction by 2045.
The governor said the state “needs to move beyond oil.”
“In California, this is an industry that is used to getting its way,” Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney at environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity, told The San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday. “It is a sign that the tide is starting to turn, and the state is starting to prioritize public health and the environment over the profits of the oil industry.”
While California’s crude oil consumption has stayed level over the last several decades, it has become more reliant on foreign producers, state data showed. More than half of the state’s oil over the last ten years was imported.
Meanwhile, gasoline prices, which are tied to the cost of oil, have surged nationwide to multi-year highs, according to the Energy Information Administration. California has experienced the largest increase with prices hitting $4.79 per gallon on average.
President Biden’s move to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is expected to supply Chinese and Indian oil needs as gas demands have led to global shortages, reports said Tuesday. placeholder
The White House said the Department of Energy will release 50 million barrels of oil held in U.S. reserves — 18 million of which have already been congressionally approved for sale.
TOP REPUBLICAN ON ENERGY COMMITTEE SAYS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE AFTER BIDEN TAPS OIL RESERVE
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on November 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the S (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images / Getty Images)
China and India have been actively purchasing U.S. sour crude oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, first reported Bloomberg.
Sour crude oil contains high levels of sulfur, which reportedly makes it more expensive to process and traditionally turns buyers away.
But U.S.-produced sour crude oil appeals to foreign buyers because of its relatively affordable price tag, the publication said.
The White House’s Tuesday announcement means the U.S. will seek to accelerate sales abroad in an attempt to counter spiking prices at the gas pump.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on November 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the S (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images / Getty Images)
The additional 32 million barrels will be intended for U.S. consumers to alleviate increased demand.
Earlier this month OPEC+, led by nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia, refused to increase production to meet rising demands.
Gas shortages have led to rising inflation and gas prices at the pump not seen in seven years.
“The President has been working with countries across the world to address the lack of supply as the world exits the pandemic,” the White House said in a statement.
In a globally coordinated effort China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom will also tap their reserves to try and bring down gas prices.
“The president stands ready to take additional action, if needed, and is prepared to use his full authorities working in coordination with the rest of the world to maintain adequate supply as we exit the pandemic,” the administration added.
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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President Biden should withdraw his nomination of Saule Omarova to be Comptroller of the Currency — or the Senate should reject her.
Omarova, a professor at Cornell Law, said this concerning energy companies: “we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.” She would apply that same destructive, heavy hand of government throughout our financial system.
Omarova advocates a radical transformation of banking that is tantamount to nationalization and would leave your relationship with your bank unrecognizable.
Some, such as Senator John Kennedy, have focused on Omarova’s education in the Soviet Union. This included membership in “The Young Communists” and a college thesis entitled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in Das Kapital” which she has refused to share with the Senate. Omarova told Senators at her confirmation hearing, “I am not a Communist.”
CFACT does not hold growing up behind the Iron Curtain against people. In fact, it is usually an asset. We often look to those who grew up without freedom and its prosperity to share their hard-earned life lessons with those of us fortunate enough to have been born free.
However, the Left is trying to defend Omarova as the victim of a new McCarthyism (as if they didn’t spend the last five years shouting Russia, Russia, Russia! at people who had nothing to do with Russia).
The disqualifying problems with Omarova’s philosophy stem not from from the Socialist indoctrination she received back in the U.S.S.R., but from her immersion in the unmoored leftism flowing through American academia.
Last year Omarova laid out her philosophy of financial regulation in a law review article entitled The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy. This article is directly on point to the role of the Comptroller and disqualifies Omarova to hold the office.
Omarova advocates for nothing less than the de facto nationalization of the American banking and finance system.
In the financial world Omarova envisions private banks would no longer offer deposit accounts. We would all have a government bank account instead which the government would easily use to deposit, subtract and redistribute funds. The feds would be able to observe your smallest transaction. When the government determines it is time to stimulate the economy, funds could be “helicopter” dropped directly into those accounts deemed worthy. Omarova describes this as “QE (quantitative easing) for the people.”
Like all bad generals, Omarova is focused on fighting the last wars, the financial crisis of 2008 and the contraction of the economy due to COVID-19 shutdowns. She is all about pumping money into the economy with an unhealthy dose of left-wing redistribution along the way. Omarova needs to wake up. Deflation is no longer the threat, inflation is.
The debate should not be between pumping money into the economy via quantitative easing vs. throwing it out of “helicopters,” but rather how to restrain the growth of the money supply, as we did in the Reagan era, and get inflation back under control.
The Left’s radical plans for banking mirror their government takeover attempts on healthcare. Omarova’s anti-banking philosophy consists of incremental steps on the road to what might be termed “single banker,” analogous to the Left’s relentless push for “single payer,” socialized medicine.
At a time when the beast of inflation has been released to ravage American savings, the President should nominate and the Senate confirm only reliable central bankers focused on forcing the inflationary beast back into its cage to safeguard our system of economic freedom.
Saule Omarova should not be allowed to serve as Comptroller of our currency.
Joe Hoft over at Gateway is reporting that terrible Joe is selling America’s reserves of oil to Asia after shutting down oil production in the U.S. This is the act of an enemy. There is no pushback from quisling GOP ‘leadership.’
Practically overnight, America went from oil independence and being a net oil [exporter], to suffering shortages and, as noted, rising prices. When asked about the problem, Biden risibly blamed OPEC and Russia. Meanwhile, Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, simply cackled maniacally and claimed the administration was helpless
Biden is now under pressure to tap the SPR to relieve some of the pressure on fuel prices. (Again, remember that Biden birthed this problem by squashing American fuel production, thereby creating the shortage. There’s also the little matter of his administration working with Congress to print money like rolls of toilet paper—except that toilet paper is more useful than inflationary dollars.) Even Chuckie Schumer wants to lower prices by chipping away at our SPR emergency supply, despite our having vast, untapped resources beneath American land.
It turns out, though, that Biden is already tapping into the SPR; he’s just not doing it to help Americans. A report in investment circles is finally trickling down into the mainstream news: Biden is selling massive amounts of SPR oil…to Asia!
About 1.6 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a monthly record — was shipped out in October, according to data from market intelligence firm Kpler. Three cargoes were loaded onto a supertanker in the U.S. Gulf Coast and are headed to Asia.
“Given the ongoing pace of the current SPR release — 12 million barrels in the last two months and the biggest weekly release so far last week at 3.1 million barrels — it’s fair to assume more SPR barrels are going to leave U.S. shores in the weeks ahead,” said Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler.
Biden gave Taliban terrorists $84 billion in arms and gear and planes and choppers. Biden opened the Southern Border and more than a million illegal immigrants have crossed into the US. Now Biden sells the US oil reserves to Asia after changing America from being an oil exporter to dependent on Russia and the Middle East.
Is it time to impeach and remove Biden yet? If not when will it be enough?
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
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“Forget the CO2. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It controls the Earth’s temperature.” – American Chemical Society, founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress.
Biden’s Climate Change Agenda is a Complete Sham.
Currently the federal government spends more than $22 billion a year financing programs to stop climate change. That’s $41,856 every minute!
After the United Nation’s COP 26 Conference the Biden administration went on the offensive to push its Climate Change Agenda.
Biden’s Build Back Better plan calls for 185 times more spending on climate than future pandemic preparedness.
Biden’s economic plan involves $550 billion in climate initiative funding and only $3 billion in pandemic preparedness.
The massive $1,750,000,000,000 plan allocates an eye-popping $550 billion for climate change projects, the backbone of the economic plan. Meanwhile, only $3 billion goes towards beefing up future “pandemic preparedness” despite coronavirus‘ economic impact on the country.
[ … ]
The plan calls for significant climate investments valued at $550 billion over the next ten years, including $320 billion for clean energy tax credits and $110 billion in investments for clean energy technology.
Which gas then is to blame for global warming and should be controlled?
Water vapor accounts for 60-70% of the greenhouse effect while CO2 accounts for 25% —a notable difference when numbers alone are compared. It would seem then that water vapor should be climatologists’ primary focus. However, water vapor cannot be controlled by human intervention; it is simply a product of its environment.
[ … ]
As the atmospheric temperature rises, more water is evaporated from ground storage, such as that found in our rivers, oceans, soils, and reservoirs. The released water vapor becomes a greenhouse gas where it then absorbs more energy radiated from the Earth and thus warms the atmosphere. The warmer atmosphere results in further water evaporation and the cycle continues. This mechanism is known as a Positive Feedback Loop. [Emphasis added]
The Environmental Protection Agencies’ Big Lie. The EPA’s website states:
Greenhouse gases trap heat and make the planet warmer. Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.1The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. [Emphasis added]
NOTE: Human activity is NOT responsible for almost all of the increased greenhouse gases.
“Forget the CO2. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It controls the Earth’s temperature.”
It’s true that water vapor is the largest contributor to the Earth’s greenhouse effect. On average, it probably accounts for about 60% of the warming effect. However, water vapor does not control the Earth’s temperature, but is instead controlled by the temperature. This is because the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere limits the maximum amount of water vapor the atmosphere can contain. If a volume of air contains its maximum amount of water vapor and the temperature is decreased, some of the water vapor will condense to form liquid water. This is why clouds form as warm air containing water vapor rises and cools at higher altitudes where the water condenses to the tiny droplets that make up clouds.
So, what causes the earth’s temperature to rise, and fall? Why its the sun stupid.
In 2007, while doing some solar physics research, John Casey stumbled on a curious pattern among sunspots that would prove to be the most important problem he had ever confronted – what causes climate change and what is the planet’s next climate era going to be like? A few months later after completing his research, he made several a startling announcements to the world. In April and May of 2007 Mr. Casey said:
Global warming was about to end, within three years!
The Sun was going to begin a “solar hibernation” beginning with the next solar cycle #24 (which began in 2008). This hibernation would result in a record reduction in the energy output of the Sun.
The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans were about to begin a long term drop in temperatures lasting for decades.
A new cold climate era was beginning that posed a serious threat to all with the potential to bring global crop damage and loss of life through starvation, cold weather fatalities, and social upheaval on a historic scale.
He proposed that a new climate theory which he called the “Relational Cycle Theory” or simply the “RC Theory” should replace the greenhouse gas theory of manmade climate change and asserted that the Sun and not mankind was the primary cause of climate change.
Forget everything government officials, many media outlets, and “activist scientists” have warned about the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, because in reality there’s no cause for alarm, a group called the CO2 Coalition urges.
[ … ]
“Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant, it is in fact the very elixir of life,” Craig Idso, a science adviser to the CO2 Coalition, said during a panel discussion at CPAC exploring the benefits attached to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The CO2 Coalition, founded in 2015, describes its mission as “educating thought leaders, policymakers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.”
[ … ]
“Adding CO2 to the atmosphere enhances plant water use efficiency,” he said.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide could boost plant growth and make plants more resistant to droughts, he said. This could lead to increased food production, which in turn could offset projected food shortages. [Emphasis added]
So why does the EPA, the Biden administration and Democrats believe mankind is responsible for the climate changes? It’s simple, scare the people that the earth is coming to an end because of their bad behaviors and you can impose draconian limits on them.
I have learned three absolutes about the climate (a.k.a. weather)
The climate changes.
These changes in the climate follow natural cycles (e.g. summer, fall, winter, spring)
There is nothing mankind can do to change these natural cycles.
The Democrats are now joined by the government of Slovenia. Both want to control their populations using mandates. Biden’s vaccine mandates versus Slovenia’s no jab no gas mandate.
The U.S. State Department currently has a “Do Not Travel” alert for Slovenia. Interesting isn’t it.
Fuel stations across Slovenia are adopting one of the most authoritarian policies to date, requiring consumers to provide proof-of-vaccination, a negative COVID test, or proof of recovery from COVID to fill up their cars.https://t.co/NL4aJJIIvi
In the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill is funding for a Civilian Climate Corps (CCC). This $8 billion budget item was put into the bill to commission a federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct environmentalist activism on the American taxpayers’ dime (pages 8, 21, and 926).
We already have Climate Czar John Kerry calling for abolishment of fossil fuels by 2035. We have Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency Saule Omarova wanting to ‘bankrupt’ the fossil fuel industry to ‘tackle climate change’.
Gird your loins. The Democrats ‘Green New [Very Bad] Deal’ is here!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-19 17:51:212021-11-19 17:51:21The Democrats ‘Green New [Very Bad] Deal’ Is a Complete Sham
The Navajo Nation criticized the Biden administration for banning oil and gas leasing on a large swath of New Mexico land that supported much of its community.
The tribe argued that President Joe Biden failed to properly consult it before issuing the sweeping order earlier this week. Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Monday that the federal government would review a new rule prohibiting oil and gas leasing within the 10-mile radius around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwest New Mexico for 20 years.
Biden made the announcement during the White House Tribal Nations Summit and said the ban would “protect” the more than 200,000 acres of tribal lands covered by the rule.
“The Biden Administration bypassed previous requests to Congress for field hearings and for leaders to hear directly from our Navajo families affected in the Chaco Canyon region,” Navajo Nation Council Speaker Seth Damon said in a statement Tuesday. “It is important that the federal government consider and work with our Navajo allottees to further advance development.”
“The Administration must respect our tribal sovereignty and what the government to government relationship entails,” Damon continued.
The Navajo Nation previously opposed the ban proposed by the Biden administration, instead advocating for a 5-mile radius around the historic site, according to Damon. Fossil fuel companies return an estimated $90 million per year to Navajo mineral owners, a sum that helps support the largely low-income community, a watchdog report concluded in 2017.
“The White House is ignoring the will of the Navajo Nation, which voted overwhelmingly to support a five-mile buffer that would protect the park while enabling Navajo mineral owners to access their prime oil resources,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the fossil fuel industry group Western Energy Alliance, said in a statement. “Oil and natural gas development is already done in a way to protect cultural resources.”
Republicans also criticized the administration’s action, noting the indirect harm it would do to Navajo families.
“In the Biden administration’s desperate attempts to appease radical environmentalists, however, they are expanding that protected perimeter to miles outside the park, jeopardizing the ability of Navajo allottees to develop their mineral rights,” House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Bruce Westerman said in a statement.
Westerman added that the historic park is already protected.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confused a number of facts about fossil fuels in a video to her followers explaining why pipelines are bad for the country.
The congresswoman mistakenly asserted that the Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines were proposed to increase U.S. natural gas exports in the video she posted on her Instagram account Saturday. The two pipelines would transport crude oil, not natural gas, from Canada into the U.S. as an import, according to their operators.
“When you look at Keystone XL, and when you look at a lot of these other pipelines, people say, ‘Oh, this is for energy, you know, independence in the United States,’” Ocasio-Cortez stated during the video which has garnered more than 180,000 views. “We actually already produce enough to power our own country, whether you agree with it or not.”
“A lot of these pipelines are being built so that the United States can export and sell natural gas abroad,” she continued. “And, you know, people make geopolitical arguments as to why that should be the case.”
Line 3 has transported crude oil into the U.S. through Minnesota since the 1960s. Enbridge, the company that operates the pipeline, is currently constructing a $2.9 billion Line 3 replacement, but the company has faced intense resistance from environmental activists.
Ocasio-Cortez said that she believes Line 3 “should not exist.”
WATCH:
The Keystone XL pipeline would have similarly taken crude oil into the U.S. from western Canada. However, the pipeline — proposed as an extension to an already existing line that stretches from North Dakota to Texas — was canceled by its operator TC Energy after President Joe Biden revoked its federal permit.
More than 20 states have accused the president of overstepping his constitutional authority in an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging the permit revocation.
“The President has certain prerogatives to act on behalf of the United States in foreign affairs,” the lawsuit stated. “But as far as domestic law is concerned, the President must work with and abide by the limits set by Congress—whether he likes them or not.”
Republicans and fossil fuel industry advocates have argued that ensuring the U.S. has a steady, reliable supply of oil and natural gas protects national security. They also argue that the U.S. should leverage its own natural resources to be a net exporter of oil and gas rather than rely on foreign powers for energy.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-17 14:53:092021-11-17 14:53:09Watch as AOC Confuses Natural Gas For Oil In Video Explaining Why Pipelines Are Bad
In the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill is funding for a Civilian Climate Corps (CCC). This $8 billion budget item was put into the bill to commission a federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct environmentalist activism on the American taxpayers’ dime (pages 8, 21, and 926).
The Republican Study Committee also found in the Democrat Party’s reconciliation bill these “green mandates”:
Pushes Green New Deal in our public schools: Requires funding for school construction be used largely on enrollment diversity and Green New Deal agenda items (page 55).
Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education slush fund to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1,935).
Includes dangerous & deadly green energy mandate: Effectively forces Americans to get 40% of their energy from wind, solar and other unreliable forms of energy within 8 years (page 392). Reliance on these energy sources has proven deadly.
Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill prohibits several mineral and energy withdrawals (page 979). It overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 983) and the mineral withdrawals it prohibits would, ironically, include minerals necessary for renewable energy sources (pages 934, 940, 943).
Chases green energy pipe dreams: $264 million to the EPA to conduct research with left-wing environmental justice groups on how to transition away from fossil fuels (page 1063).
The Democrats also included a legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate. The bill increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation and includes $2.6 billion in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 168).
Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) the new Allgemeine-SS?
The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Nazi Party’s SS organization. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands. The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial political policies of Nazi Germany, the general policing of the German people and the protection of Adolph Hitler.
It now appears that the Civilian Climate Corps, if funded and organized, will become the “militant branch” of the Democrat Party’s climate change agenda. We can expect volunteers and conscripts, like Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, to join the CCC.
Will the CCC become responsible for enforcing the racial political policies of Socialist Democrats, like AOC author of the Green New Deal, and for the general policing of the America people?
The more government enforcement agencies, like the CCC, the more control over we the people.
Will we be arrested and sent to concentration camps by the CCC if we don’t comply with the Green New Deal’s mandates?
Is Biden and the Democrat Party Creating a Fourth Reich?
QUESTION: Are there similarities between Hitler’s Third Reich and the Biden Administration?
Since Biden’s election we have seen a dramatic increase in government control. Some are comparing what Biden is doing today as similar to what Hitler did after he took power in Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler’s regime was called the Third Reich. Hitler fundamentally transformed Germany into a dictatorship.
Are Biden, his administration, Democrats in Congress, at the local, county and state levels all working in concert to fundamentally transform America into a dictatorship?
The following is a brief history of what Hitler did when he took power in 1933. We then compare what Hitler did to what Biden has done since his inauguration on January 20th to date.
The Third Reich
The Holocaust Museum makes these key points about what Hitler did, once elected Chancellor, to create the Third Reich:
Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which Germans enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights.
After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag (the German Parliament), on February 28, 1933, the government issued a decree which suspended constitutional civil rights and created a state of emergency in which official decrees could be enacted without parliamentary confirmation.
In the first months of Hitler’s chancellorship, the Nazis instituted a policy of “coordination”—the alignment of individuals and institutions with Nazi goals.
Culture, the economy, education, and law all came under Nazi control.
The Nazi regime also attempted to “coordinate” the German churches and, although not entirely successful, won support from a majority of Catholic and Protestant clergymen.
Extensive propaganda was used to spread the regime’s goals and ideals.
Hitler had the final say in both domestic legislation and German foreign policy.
Open criticism of the regime was suppressed by the Gestapo (secret state police) and the Security Service (SD) of the Nazi party, but Hitler’s government was popular with most Germans.
The Fourth Reich
QUESTION: Like Hitler fundamentally transformed Germany into the Third Reich, is Biden also doing fundamentally the same things to transform America into a dictatorship/Fourth Reich?
Let’s compare what Hitler did to what has happened since Biden was elected president on January 20th, 2021.
Biden, like Hitler, is ending America’s Constitutional Republican form of government with a radical expansion of powers under the executive branch of government. OSHA and the CDC are using Covid to reshape our freedoms to choose our job, healthcare and economic futures.
Americans, like under Hitler, are seeing their guarantied basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness stripped away. Government mandates are replacing our basic rights. If you don’t obey and get vaxxed you lose your job. As more and more people vote for a living rather than work for a living we can understand how Democrats, like Hitler, gain more and more power over the individual.
The January 6th, 2021 protest in Washington, D.C is being used by Biden and Democrats, just as Hitler did using the Reichstag fire, as an excuse to oppress all political opponents. Those who participated in the Save America peaceful protest have had their constitutional rights taken away. They have been imprisoned, abused and even tortured. The Biden administration, and the Democrats in Congress, are demonizing those who peacefully protested the results of the 2020 election.
Under Biden’s “Build Back Better Agenda” we are seeing the coordination —the alignment of individuals and institutions— with Democrat Party goals. The Green New Deal impacts all major institutions. The vaccination mandates have clearly hit all companies with 100 or more employees. From manufacturing, to healthcare, to law enforcement, to first responders, to our public schools, all are impacted.
Since Biden’s inauguration we are witness a “cultural war” against those who do not agree with the policies and politics of the Democrat Party. If you are a parent and speak out against Biden’s plan to put Critical Race Theory in every classroom, then your are labeled a domestic terrorist by the FBI. If you don’t get jabbed then you’ll be punished. If you don’t obey your family won’t eat.
Propaganda is the foundation upon which the Biden administration is built. The legacy media, social media, the White House press secretary are in full agreement that telling the big lie (propaganda) is the best pathway to keeping power. Anything negative about Biden is either suppressed or spun to make Biden look competent and his opponents look like enemies of the state. Lies are being told by members of the Executive Branch daily. The “big lie” is now the standard operating procedure of Biden and his handlers.
Biden has coopted many Jewish, Catholic and Protestant clergymen. Churches fear losing their tax exempt status as Biden weaponizes the IRS.
Biden’s handlers have the final say on all domestic legislation and U.S. foreign policy. Even if those policies are dangerous domestically and overseas. From Biden’s immigration policy of open borders, to kowtowing to our enemies like Iran, China and Russia, to leaving Americans behind in Afghanistan. All are disasters.
Oppression. Biden is using the FBI to go after parents who disagree with what is being taught in our public schools. The FBI is complicit in suppressing opposition to Biden and Democrats. Some even suggest that the FBI is the new Stasi, the Ministry for State Security, or State Security Service, the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic. It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to have ever existed until Biden came along, that is.
Biden’s policies are becoming less and less popular with the American people. However, there are hard core groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Democrat Socialists like AOC, Nazi collaborator George Soros and the organizations he funds, and others who embrace Biden’s Fourth Reich.
Conclusion
The Democrats crave power. In his book 1984 George Orwell wrote, “Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
Will the CCC be the enforcers of climate orthodoxy? Let’s hope that this reconciliation bill never passes. However, if it does remember what the Declaration of Independence says:
When a government fails to protect the unalienable rights of its citizens, it is the duty and right of citizens to create another form of government.
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
It appears Biden, his administration and the Democrat party aren’t interested in their constituents interests. They are hell bent on inaugurating new programs that do violence to our Constitutional Republican form of government.
Gird your loins. It will most certainly get worse if the CCC is established.
So, it appears that: a. The Attorney General committed perjury b. DOJ used counterterrorism tools vs. everyday parents c. The Left will exploit almost any means to continue polluting young minds with anti-white CRT propaganda https://t.co/8FRO7jiRYI
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-17 13:52:072021-11-17 13:52:07Is the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) the new Allgemeine-SS?
Rather than relying on climate change models that could be the basis of expansive and costly regulations, policymakers should instead question those models, focusing on the legitimacy of their underlying assumptions.
So said The Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician at a recent climate change conference in Las Vegas that preceded the international summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that concludes today.
While the Biden administration continues to pursue regulatory policies based on a concept known as the “social cost of carbon,” increased carbon dioxide emissions have led to a “greening of the planet,” Kevin Dayaratna, principal statistician and data scientist for The Heritage Foundation said in his presentation at the Heartland Institute’s 14th International Climate Change Conference.
The nonprofit, Illinois-based free-market think tank attracted dozens of scientists, economists, and academics from across the globe to the conference, which ran from Oct. 15 to 17.
The Heartland Institute is a co-sponsor of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which has brought together scientists, researchers, and scholars from across the globe who dispute U.N. findings that point to catastrophic climate change. Dayaratna is among the researchers who have advised policymakers to refrain from enacting anti-carbon measures in the name of averting climate change.
“Regardless of one’s predictions on the extent of human influence on climate change, commonly proffered solutions by lawmakers here, such as carbon taxes and ‘cap and trade,’ will have no meaningful impact on altering the climate anyway, as we’ve demonstrated in prior Heritage Foundation research,” Dayaratna told The Daily Signal, the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.
Dubious Assumptions on Social Cost of Carbon
The social cost of carbon is typically defined as “the economic damages per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions,” according to Dayaratna’s slide presentation at the Heartland conference.
There are three statistical models the Obama administration used to measure the long-term economic impact of carbon dioxide emissions over a particular time horizon, Dayaratna explained. They are the DICE model, the FUND model, and the PAGE model.
The Biden administration recently reinstituted Obama-era climate-modeling exercises that attempt to calculate the social cost of carbon. But an “honest cost/benefit analysis” of carbon dioxide emissions is not possible under current modeling practices, Dayaratna said. That’s because the assumptions built into the climate models overstate recent warming trends while failing to account for the positive attributes of carbon dioxide, the data analyst told his audience.
“The benefits of CO2 may outweigh the damages,” Dayaratna said.
“In fact, when more realistic assumptions about how sensitive the climate is to carbon dioxide emissions are plugged into the climate models, many of the damages disappear from the forecasts,” he added.
“Is global warming necessarily a bad thing?” he asked, answering his own question: “CO2 in the atmosphere can increase agricultural productivity.”
One of Dayaratna’s slide presentations included a satellite image of “the Greening of the Earth” that occurred from 1982 to 2009. The Heritage Foundation statistician also cited a newspaper article in The Guardian dating back to 2004 that described how Pentagon officials told then-President George W. Bush that climate change over the following 20 years could “bring the planet to the edge of anarchy” and that “nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine, and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.”
The fact that those predictions of a catastrophe have not materialized demonstrates that there’s still much to learn about climate change and that climate models such as those used to calculate the social cost of carbon are “highly sensitive to assumptions” that may not be accurate, Dayaratna warned.
“‘Settled science’ is an oxymoron,” he said. “Science is never settled.”
Understating Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Dayaratna is the co-author of a peer-reviewed research article that explores “the implications of recent empirical findings about CO2 fertilization and climate sensitivity on the social cost of carbon in the FUND model.”
He and his colleagues selected the FUND model because, unlike the other models, the FUND model accounts for the possibility of agricultural benefits.
Nevertheless, they conclude that even the FUND model understates the benefits of carbon dioxide.
There is “overwhelming evidence that CO2 increases do have a beneficial effect on plant growth, so models that fail to take these benefits into account overstate the [social cost of carbon],” the research article says. “The recent literature on global greening and the response of agricultural crops to enhanced CO2 availability suggests that the productivity boost is likely stronger than that parameterized in FUND.”
After making “reasonable” adjustments to “agricultural productivity specifications” in combination with “moderate warming” forecasts that can be plugged into climate models, Dayaratna finds that there are “social benefits” to what he describes as the “lukewarming” the planet has experienced.
“There has indeed been man-made global warming, but the extent to which humans have contributed to it over the last century has been vastly overstated,” Dayaratna told The Daily Signal in an interview.
To use a term coined by Pat Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I like to refer to it as ‘lukewarming.’ The climate models also greatly overstate the amount of warming that is likely to occur going forward. Human CO2 emissions are indeed responsible for some warming, but much of it is the result of natural influences and this ‘lukewarming’ we have experienced, which is fairly mild, has benefits that are overlooked.
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring, colorless, odorless, nontoxic gas. It is a key element of photosynthesis and thus has agricultural benefits, and to consider it only as a pollutant that solely has deleterious effects is a mistake.
Dayaratna offered some advice for policymakers and the public at the conclusion of his Oct. 16 presentation.
“Models are highly sensitive to assumptions, and the Biden administration is using these same models,” he said. “We need to think seriously about the administration’s estimates, and the assumptions that went into producing them.”
If not, Dayaratna cautioned, predictions as inaccurate as those provided to Bush in 2004 could beguile the public into accepting costly regulatory policies that do not square with scientific observations.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2021-11-17 02:00:002021-11-17 02:00:00Climate Models Overlook Benefits of CO2 and ‘Lukewarming,’ Data Scientist Says
The Glasgow climate summit and recent bold climate proposals are more about politics and do little to actually help the global environment.
The recent climate summit in Glasgow saw world leaders gather together to unanimously declare—as articulated by U.S. President Joe Biden himself—climate change as the “[paramount] challenge of our collective lifetimes.” Calling on the world community to devote themselves to confronting this “existential threat,” Biden cited his own administration’s lofty goal of reducing carbon emissions by at least 50 percent in the lead up to 2030.
“High energy prices only reinforce the urgent need to diversify sources, double down on clean energy development, and adapt promising new clean energy technologies.” This will ostensibly manifest through the type of long-term development envisioned in the massive infrastructure bill currently making its way through Congress.
As previously stated in this publication, the United States—as well as the developed economies of Western Europe—is hardly the primary cause of concern for those who would wish to see lower carbon emissions on a global scale. Substantial growth projected in greenhouse gas emissions is largely due to developing countries, such as India and China, which are poised to continue increasing their reliance on coal. The latter country has already set plans in motion to build increased capacity for the high carbon-emitting fuel, while the former currently sees about 70 percent of its electricity output derived from coal.
That does not mean that the United States needs to simply disregard its levels of carbon emissions. The U.S. still relies on dirtier forms of petroleum for 35 percent of its energy consumption, and coal for 10 percent. Prioritizing a transition to natural gas, in addition to the energy security made possible through independence from imports, would see real movement in measurable reductions to U.S. emissions. Instead, with the price of natural gas doubling in part due to the Biden administration’spolicy choices, the use of coal has subsequently increased by 22 percent in 2021. Despite upending U.S. energy independence, the president apparently sees no irony in shamelessly asking for OPEC to increase production in an effort to reduce gas and oil prices.
The attempts of developed Western nations to subsidize policy that radically overhauls the energy landscape have a less than stellar record. Echoes of the Obama-eraSolyndra scandal still reverberate in the energy industry. Germany’s attempt to heavily subsidize wind and solar in the 2010s led to a significant increase in burning coal, due to the inability of the former two to provide energy without interruption. Although the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline may imply a more realpolitik approach in Berlin to ensuring a stable and clean source of fuel, coal burning still tops wind as the country’s primary source of electricity.
While U.S. renewable energy investment continued to rise by significant amounts throughout the Trump administration—despite claims that the former president heavily favored the oil and gas industries—frozen windmills in Texas this past winter, although not responsible for blackouts, displayed the danger of relying entirely on fickle renewables. The impact of the weather freezing the turbines led to a 60 percent drop in wind-energy production compared to the previous week.
These facts, however, are all irrelevant to those attempting to place climate as the central axiom around which to enact a new green-centric policy agenda. That is because their true goal is radical social reorganization based on equity-based notions of justice. The acolytes of transformational programs such as the Green New Deal are not interested in pragmatic, if gradual, steps that would allow the United States to practically and effectively become more energy efficient; rather, they are interested in recasting society according to ideological principles.
This is not the rambling of conspiracy theorists who envision an underground lair of technocratic elites laying the foundations for a one-world government—it is the words of the agenda’s own proponents. Vice President Kamala Harris, in collaboration with Green New Deal champion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, last year introduced the Climate Equity Act (CEA) in the Senate, in order to “center [the fight against climate change] in justice and equity.” Equity, as aptly described by James Lindsay, is shifting resources and shares in a system so as to ensure that outcomes proportionally resemble the envisioned conception of fairness.
Harris’s cosponsoring of the CEA is not an aberration in an otherwise moderate climate policy; it is rather a testament to the Biden administration’s wholesale buy-in to the radical green agenda. The 46th president has additionally created the new Office of Domestic Climate Policy, headed by chief of staff Maggie Thomas who has previously stated that there is “no role for natural gas” in the nation’s energy mix, short-term or otherwise. Instead, she supports a goal of 90 percent of electricity production coming from renewables by the year 2035. Another new establishment under the Health and Human Services Department is the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, tasked with the stated mission of “protecting vulnerable communities” from the impact of climate change. It is easy to see how these vaguely defined executive appointments not beholden to an electorate could morph into centralized authorities for enforcing a radical equity-based agenda—in fact, they would likely welcome the task in their mission statement.
During the Glasgow summit, President Biden additionally took it upon himself to apologize for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords during the Trump administration. Trump had originally withdrawn from the pact under the auspices of its disadvantageous impact on U.S. industry. Citing a commitment to the American workers, Trump criticized the deal as resulting in “lost jobs, lowered wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.” Considering the achievement of (now eliminated) energy independence, the United States becoming a net exporter of oil in 2019 for the first time in its history, a continued growth in renewables, and all while still managing a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, one has to question how exactly participation in the Paris Accord was in the national interest of the United States.
The answer is that it wasn’t. It wasn’t even really advantageous to the interest of reducing global carbon emissions. As previously stated, if multilateral agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord actually wanted to invest resources in the areas which are most crucial to reducing carbon emissions—in other words, where they would receive the greatest return on investment—they would focus almost exclusively on the challenges posed by developing countries.
This, however, is not the concern of those who seek to overhaul the world economy and hamstring western industry along the way. Those interested in a recasting of society are not concerned with actual concrete steps that would practically allow the United States to approach reductions in carbon, as well as more energy efficient solutions, through innovation and ingenuity. They are also not interested in prioritizing energy security for American citizens.
At the summit, Prince Charles called for a “war-like footing” on the climate issue, proclaiming the need of a “Marshall-like plan.” Another Brit, much greater and deserving of our attention, previously stated that there are those who will seek to perpetuate a sense of crisis in times of peace, so as to justify the individual citizen’s subjugation to the state. “The argument…that economic crises are only another form of war, such that we must live our lives in a perpetual state of war…this, of course, is the socialist view.” These words were written by Winston Churchill in defense of the U.S. Constitution, as a response to (ironically) the big-government views of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
According to Churchill, once the government found a seemingly just cause that it could utilize to incite the passions of its people, it would then be able to manipulate their desire to do good for its own purposes. After the individual is brought under the “subjugation of the executive government,” Churchill continued, “socialism…[allows] the rulers to demand of him in time of peace sacrifices only tolerable in a period of national self-preservation.”
Those who wish a radical overhaul of society—whether out of a genuine belief in the greater good or from a selfish desire for power—have found an issue that allows them to invoke a sense of moral superiority. What higher duty is there than responsible stewardship of our natural home, the earth? We must be on our guard that our desire to live up to this task does not blind us to the schemes of those who would seek personal advantage from our goodwill.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2021-11-17 01:55:002021-11-17 01:55:00Environmental Solutions, Not Social Overhaul
It’s time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo.
A couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I was taught in elementary school.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote learning.
The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. It has been ingrained into the American psyche over several decades. On a recent trip to the Caribbean, my friend’s wife exhibited nervous guilt while collecting empty soda, water, and beer bottles destined for the trash since our resort offered no recycling bins.
“I feel terrible throwing these into garbage,” she said, wearing a pained look on her face.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was a good chance the bottles she was recycling back in the States were ending up just like the ones on the Caribbean island we were visiting.
Difficult Implementation
As Discover magazine pointed out a decade ago, recycling is tricky business. A 2010 Columbia University study found that just 16.5 percent of the plastic collected by the New York Department of Sanitation was “recyclable.”
Since that time, things have only gotten worse. Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a story detailing how hundreds of cities across the country are abandoning recycling efforts.
Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it. Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.
One reason for this is that China, perhaps the largest buyer of US recyclables, stopped accepting them in 2018. Other countries, such as Thailand and India, have increased imports, but not in sufficient tonnage to alleviate the mounting costs cities are facing.
“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, told the Times.
Cost is the key word. Like any activity or service, recycling is an economic activity. The dirty little secret is that the benefits of recycling have been dubious for some time.
“Recycling has been dysfunctional for a long time,” Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, told The Times.
Has Recycling Always Been An Illusion?
How long? Perhaps from the very beginning. Nearly a quarter century ago, Lawrence Reed wrote about the growing fad of recycling, which state and local governments were pursuing—mostly through mandates, naturally—with a religious-like fervor. There were numerous problems with the approach, he observed.
The fact is that sometimes recycling makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. In the legislative rush to pass recycling mandates, state and local governments should pause to consider the science and the economics of every proposition. Often, bad ideas are worse than none at all and can produce lasting damage if they are enshrined in law. Simply demanding that something be recycled can be disruptive of markets and it does not guarantee that recycling that makes either economic or environmental sense will even occur.
If only lawmakers had heeded Mr. Reed’s advice, or that of John Tierney, who offered similar guidance in The Times the following year.
Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes make sense–for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there’s no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there’s no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative.
That’s economics, you say. What about the environment? Well, the environmental benefits of recycling are far from clear. For starters, as Popular Mechanicsnoted a few years ago, the idea that we don’t have sufficient space to safely store trash is untrue.
According to one calculation, all the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side–not that big (unless you happen to live in the neighborhood). Or put another way, it would take another 20 years to run through the landfills that the U.S. has already built. So the notion that we’re running out of landfill space–the original impetus for the recycling boom–turns out to have been a red herring.
Recycling Efforts Backfire and Create Waste Themselves
And then there are the energy and resources that go into recycling. How much water do Americans spend annually rinsing items that end up in a landfill? How much fuel is spent deploying fleets of barges and trucks across highways and oceans, carrying tons of garbage to be processed at facilities that belch their own emissions?
The data on this front is thin, and results on the environmental effectiveness of recycling vary based on the material being recycled. Yet all of this presumes the recyclables are not being cleaned and shipped only to be buried in a landfill, like so much of it is today. This, Mises would say, is planned chaos, the inevitable result of central planners making decisions instead of consumers through free markets.
Most market economists, Reed points out, “by nature, philosophy, and experience” a bunch skeptical of centrally planned schemes that supplant choice, were wise to the dynamics of recycling from the beginning.
As engineer and author Richard Fulmer wrote in 2016,
Recycling resources costs resources. For instance, old newsprint must be collected, transported, and processed. This requires trucks, which must be manufactured and fueled, and recycling plants, which must be constructed and powered.
All this also produces pollution – from the factories that build the trucks and from the fuel burned to power them, and from the factories that produce the components to build and construct the recycling plant and from the fuel burned to power the plant. If companies can make a profit recycling paper, then we can be confident that more resources are saved than are used. However, if recycling is mandated by law, we have no such assurance.
Again, economics is the key.
It’s time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo. It makes people feel good, but the idea that it improves the condition of humans or the planet is highly dubious.
It’s taken three decades, but the actions of hundreds of US cities suggest Americans are finally willing to entertain the idea that recycling is not a moral or legal imperative.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
Todays blog comes from Chris whose work you all seem to like! Please share as always!
I predicted two weeks ago the Glasgow climate conference wouldn’t amount to much, and I was right. It was billed as the “last chance” to save humanity, but it ended with China and India teaming up to water down language calling for phasing out the use of coal. The final language talks about how coal will be ‘phased down’, not ‘out’.
So there were two skunks at this garden party, but it was all completely foreseeable when you remember both China and India are building coal-fired power plants like crazy. Estimates vary, but China is building at least 95 new coal plants and India is building 28. You can add to that 23 more in Indonesia and dozens elsewhere. Add it all up and you get 195 new coal plants being built around the world, as we speak.
China already has over a thousand coal plants. India ranks second with 281, the U.S. third with 252, and 475 in the next nine countries combined. No wonder U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in January the U.S. could go to zero carbon emissions tomorrow and it wouldn’t make any difference, not when 90 percent of global emissions come from outside the U.S.
Speaking of John Kerry, we were treated during the conference to the pathetic spectacle of him desperate to get a deal, any kind of deal, with China. The dealhe got is big on hifalutin talk about ‘thinking big’ and ‘shouldering responsibility’, but short on specifics. China pledged to decrease its coal use. Good luck with that when China’s 95 new coal plants come on line. If we didn’t know Kerry’s ‘deal’ was worthless when it was announced, we certainly knew it when China and India watered down the final conference agreement. And for this worthless piece of paper Kerry explicitly stated he was willing to overlook China’s use of slave labor to produce solar panels. Swell guy.
Did the conferees act like climate change is a crisis? No. In addition to watering down the final language, the conferees made more worthless pledges to double the amount rich nations will pay poor nations for climate change. Which doesn’t mean a whole lot when you consider developed countries reneged on a previous pledge to deliver $100 billion in climate payments per year to developing countries by 2020. Meanwhile, the actions promised at the conference are insufficient to meet the conferee’s own goal of keeping the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. No matter. John Kerry declared mission accomplished, peace with honor, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I’ve said many times I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they act like it’s a crisis. They’re not acting like it and, therefore, have failed to make the case it really is a crisis. Yet Kerry & Friends want to turn the U.S. upside down to tilt at windmills. Kerry says the U.S. won’t have coal-fired power plants by 2030. Looks like former President Obama’s ‘war on coal’ has resumed. One of Joe Biden’s nominees said she wants coal and oil companies to go bankrupt to fight climate change.
The inmates are running the asylum. They’re chasing unicorns starting with the whole bogus notion of human-induced climate change, but this is what they’re really talking about: cutting your energy use by 90 percent, stopping economic growth entirely, keeping you from traveling, cutting your food by a third, and only allowing you to buy 9 pounds of clothing a year. Is that what you want?
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this isn’t about the climate. It’s about making you poor and keeping you under their thumb. Obama said he would give upa lot of his lifestyle to fight climate change. OK, you go first. When Obama and Kerry follow the climate crowd’s advice to own nothing and be happy about it, I will gladly follow suit. Until they do, they should just stop flapping their gums. It’s annoying.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-15 11:52:542021-11-15 11:52:54AWED NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections
COP 26 has finally come to an end. There is even a new agreement. Yet as he made his closing remarks COP 26 President Alok Sharma, MP hung his head and proclaimed through tears, “May I just say to all delegates, I apologize for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry.”
President Bidens’ climate envoy John Kerry tried to declare victory, but the Left is livid.
Swedish climate scold Greta Thunberg tweeted, “The #COP26 is over. Here’s a brief summary: Blah, blah, blah.”
The #COP26 is over. Here’s a brief summary: Blah, blah, blah.
But the real work continues outside these halls. And we will never give up, ever. https://t.co/EOne9OogiR
Minutes before nearly 200 nations adopted the final agreement, India, working with China, stepped in to protect coal.
Kerry has been making much of the fact that The Glasgow Climate Pact is the first climate agreement to actually name a fossil fuel. However, India amended the agreement to change “phase out” of coal to “phase down.” For China and India this actually means INCREASE coal. Both nations are expanding coal burning as fast as their economies can go. “Phase down” is the verbiage China suckered John Kerry into when China and the U.S. penned a side climate deal last week. Full text at CFACT.org. China promised Kerry to maybe think about phasing coal down during its 15th five year plan which doesn’t even start until 2026.
Here’s more of what has the climate-Left gnashing their teeth. The Glasgow Climate Pact:
Names coal, but not oil or gas;
Extends deadline for nations to submit new emissions reduction plans;
Does not fund reparations for “loss and damage” when poor nations experience natural disasters;
Does not mandate ongoing public climate finance;
Contains weasel words such as “unabated” fossil fuels and “inefficient” subsidies leaving plenty of wiggle room;
Climate computer models project current emissions commitments leave the world warming 2.4 degress C;
UN Secretary General António Guterres said limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C is “on life support.”
Disappointment on the Left is a sure indicator that the free world dodged a bullet. However, there’s plenty of danger still lurking in the Glasgow Agreement. Carbon carpetbaggers came away smiling.
The sums of money changing hands in the name of climate are staggering. John Kerry is talking about $130 TRILLION dollars, not only through government mandates and spending, but through private finance. Kerry’s true constituents: the people selling subsidized wind, solar, batteries, offsets, carbon credits and the rest are ecstatic.
They may not know how to alter the temperature of the Earth, but they do know how to make a buck.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-14 11:52:312021-11-14 11:52:31COP 26 President Apologizes in Tears after UN Conference Failure
The plan would simply waste money, create zero jobs on net, and do nothing to mitigate climate change.
The fate of President Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar social spending agenda, the “Build Back Better” plan, has consumed the political conversation in recent weeks. Amid all the furious attempts at reading political tea leaves, a curious fact has flown under the radar: The latest iteration of Biden’s plan includes one of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s worst ideas.
“Happy to announce creation of a US Civilian Climate Corps is now in the Build Back Better Act,” the far-left congresswoman recently tweeted. Referencing the public works “job creation” scheme first proposed as part of the Green New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez claimed the initiative will create 300,000 jobs while combating the “climate crisis” and “environmental injustice.”
Happy to announce creation of a US Civilian Climate Corps is now in the Build Back Better Act.🌎
Estimated to create 300k+ public jobs w/ Dept of Labor + Americorps to combat the climate crisis & enviro injustices.
Indeed, a perusal of White House communications makes it clear that the plan for a Civilian Climate Corps—not long ago considered a radical pipe dream—is now part of the president’s plan.
“The Build Back Better Framework will create a Civilian Climate Corps with over 300K members that look like America,” the official White House Twitter account wrote. “This workforce will conserve public lands, bolster community resilience, address the changing climate, and put good-paying union jobs within reach for more people.”
“Climate change has become a climate crisis,” Vice President Kamala Harris similarly said in a speech promoting the plan. “But today we know that this moment of crisis is also a moment of opportunity… an opportunity to create good, union jobs.”
“Once these bills are passed… young people will join our new Civilian Climate Corps,” she continued. “These are the opportunities we have within our grasp right now.”
.@VP Kamala Harris: “Once these bills are passed, plumbers will fill the jobs we need to replace all those lead pipes. Young people will join our new Civilian Climate Corps. These are the opportunities we have within our grasp right now.” pic.twitter.com/qwAOYTQXHD
The Build Back Better Framework will create a Civilian Climate Corps with over 300K members that look like America. This workforce will conserve public lands, bolster community resilience, address the changing climate, and put good-paying union jobs within reach for more people.
With the proposal gaining momentum in Washington, DC, it’s well worth examining its actual merits. And even a cursory glance reveals that in reality the plan would simply waste money, create zero jobs on net, and do nothing to mitigate climate change.
According to Fox News, the latest bill text allocates $8 billion in taxpayer funds for this Civilian Climate Corps initiative. That’s a sizable sum that could be spent elsewhere—or better yet, left in our pockets to begin with. Yet under the Biden-AOC plan, the federal government would use that $8 billion to create well-paying jobs for young people who want to be employed full-time doing environmental activism and community projects.
Yet the claim that this would “create” jobs is false, at least on net. Sure, it would “create” some jobs in this new Climate Corps. But the government cannot create resources out of thin air. Whatever money it spent to put these climate change activists to “work” would have to, directly or indirectly, come from elsewhere in the economy.
As Henry Hazlitt wrote in Economics in One Lesson, “It is highly improbable that the projects thought up by the bureaucrats will provide the same net addition to wealth and welfare, per dollar expended, as would have been provided by the taxpayers themselves, if they had been individually permitted to buy or have made what they themselves wanted, instead of being forced to surrender part of their earnings to the state.”
Simply put, a dollar spent paying a 19-year-old to plant flowers is a dollar not spent by a private company paying them to deliver food, and so on. So, there’s no reason at all to believe a Civilian Climate Corps would create jobs on net.
Perhaps most damning, the Civilian Climate Corps would make a statistically negligible difference in reducing US carbon emissions, the stated goal of the Biden administration’s plans. Even halting all US vehicle emissions would barely make a dent in global emission levels, and make-work schemes like this would have no noticeable impact, simply as a matter of scale. Even many supporters of the idea acknowledge this.
“Emissions reduction, obviously, is the goal we need to achieve for the sake of safety,” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. “To be clear, I support a Civilian Climate Corps. It just doesn’t measurably reduce emissions.”
So, if a Civilian Climate Corps wastes billions, creates zero jobs, and doesn’t even help the climate, why on Earth has President Biden included it in his spending agenda? Whatever his reasons, wasting $10 billion on AOC’s fever dreams is a raw deal for American taxpayers.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2021-11-13 23:51:232021-11-13 23:51:23One of AOC’s Worst Green New Deal Ideas is Included in Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ Plan
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