Environment Archives - Page 57 of 69

The Global Warming Question That Can Change People’s Minds

January 22, 2022

By Selwyn Duke

Late last year, I got into a discussion with a fellow who was quite sold on the idea that man’s activities were warming the Earth. While not a hardcore ideologue, it was apparent the gentleman had accepted the climate change narrative presented by mainstream media and believed we truly were imperiling the planet. I didn’t say much to him initially, as we were engaged in some recreation, but later on I resurrected the topic and told him I just wanted to pose one question.

“What is the ideal average temperature of the Earth”? I asked.

It was clear he was without an answer, so I explained my rationale. “If we don’t know what the Earth’s ideal average temperature is,” I stated, “how can we know if a given type of climate change — whether naturally occurring or induced by man — is good or bad? After all, we can’t then know whether it’s bringing us closer to or moving us further away from that ideal temperature.”

It was as if a little light bulb had lit up in his head, and he said, “You know, that’s a good question!”

I haven’t seen the man since, as we were just two ships passing in the night, and I don’t know how his thinking has evolved (or regressed) between then and now. I do know, however, that someone who’d seemed so confident and perhaps even unbending in his position had his mind opened with one simple question and a 20-second explanation.

Of course, part of the question’s beauty is that no one can answer it. There is no “ideal” average Earth temperature, only a range within which it must remain for life as we know it to exist. At the spectrum’s lower end, polar creatures proliferate; at its higher end, tropical animals do (though warmer temperatures do breed more life, which is why the tropics boast 10 times as many species as does the Arctic. Moreover, crop yields increase when CO₂ levels are higher).

This brings us to another important point: Apocalyptic warmist dogma is buttressed by the virtually unchallenged assumption that if man changes something “natural,” it is by definition bad. But this is prejudice. Most of us certainly don’t believe this, for instance, when humans cure disease and use science to preserve and extend human life (or that of our pets).

As for climate, there have been at least five major ice ages, and “the most recent one began approximately 3 million years ago and continues today (yes, we live in an ice age!),” informs the Utah Geological Survey. Then there was the Cryogenian period, during which the Earth was completely, or almost completely, covered with snow and ice. If man had existed during that time, would it have been bad if his activities had raised the temperature a couple of degrees?

Within ice ages are shorter term cycles known as glacials (colder periods) and interglacials (warmer ones); glacials last approximately 100,000 years while interglacials last about 10,000 to 30,000 years. We’re currently in an interglacial called the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,500 to 12,000 years ago. This means that we could, conceivably, be poised to soon enter another more frigid glacial period.

Now, again, were this mitigated by a couple of degrees via man’s activities, would this be a bad thing?

In point of fact, warmists suggest that such mitigation is a reality. For example, citing research, science news magazine Eos wrote in 2016 that our Holocene Epoch “may last much longer because of the increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases resulting from human activity.”

Once more, would this be bad? Why? What’s that ideal average Earth temperature that this climate change would supposedly be moving us further away from? If you’re a member of one of the vast majority of Earth’s species, those prospering in (relative) warmth, it sounds like good news.

The question in question won’t cut any ice (pun intended) with those emotionally invested in the doom-and-gloom global warming thesis. After all, “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into,” to paraphrase Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift. But with the more open-minded majority, the question can turn down the heat on the fear.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe or Parler, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

What’s With the False Reporting, Inside Climate News? Polar Bears Are Doing Well

January 19, 2022

By H. Sterling Burnett

A Google News search of the phrase “climate change,” today turns up a story in Inside Climate News claiming polar bears are declining due to climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth. Data show polar bear numbers have grown significantly during the recent modest warming.

The story, “Warming Trends: Climate Threats to Bears, Bugs and Bees, Plus a Giant Kite and an ER Surge,” covered a lot of topics, not all of them related directly to climate change. The first section of the story, however, claimed later than usual freezing conditions in the Hudson Bay in 2021 threatened the polar bear populations there.

Inside Climate News writes:

The Hudson Bay in northern Canada froze up later than normal this year, delaying polar bears’ hunting season by two to three weeks, a nonprofit polar bear conservation organization found.

When the ice on the bay is thick enough, polar bears living in Hudson Bay migrate out onto the ice to hunt for seals.

Last year marked the second-latest freeze-up on record of the Hudson Bay, after 2010.

Contrary to what is implied in the Inside Climate News story, data show polar bear numbers across the arctic region and for most sub-populations have increased dramatically since the 1970s, during the period of modest warming. The increase has occurred despite waxing and waning sea ice extent and normal historical variation in freeze up dates.

Research presented in Climate at a Glance: Polar Bears shows polar bear populations have increased dramatically during recent decades as the planet has warmed, quadrupling since 1950s. Polar bear populations have risen from between 5,000 and 10,000 bears in 1950 to between 22,000 and 31,000, today based on an estimate of the Polar Bear Monitoring Group.

Polar Bear researcher Susan Crockford, Ph.D., puts the present number of polar bears even higher writing in her report, State of The Polar Bear Report 2020:

[A] plausible and scientifically defensible ‘best-guess’ estimate at 2018, extrapolated from ‘known’ to ‘unknown’ subpopulations within sea ice ecoregions …, would be about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000), although a more pessimistic best-guess based on a greater variety of ecosystem traits (including prey diversity and sea ice cover) came out much lower, at 23,315 (range 15,972-31,212).

Polar bears evolved between 6 million years ago and 350,000 years ago, surviving and thriving in much warmer climate than today. Most recently, polar bears survived during the Holocene climatic optimum, from 9000 to 5000 years ago, which proxy data indicate was much warmer than at present.

Breaking the polar bear population numbers down by subpopulations, of which polar bear experts count 19 based on the different eco-regions they inhabit, 14 populations are best considered “presumed stable or increasing,” two subpopulations have “increased” or “likely increased,” and populations in three ecoregions are “stable or likely stable,” Crockford’s survey of the literature shows.

Inside Climate News restricts its reporting to the polar bear subpopulation in the Hudson Bay, saying Polar Bear International reports, in 2021, the ice did not form until early December which was the 2^nd latest freeze-up since detailed records have been kept in the Hudson Bay. Yet in 2020, Crockford reports, “the freeze-up of sea ice on Western Hudson Bay came as early in the autumn as it did in the 1980s (for the fourth year in a row) and sea-ice breakup in spring was also like the 1980s; polar bears onshore were in excellent condition.” Annual fluctuations in the timing and extent of sea ice formation are normal.

Inside Climate News fails to distinguish between the Southern Hudson Bay and the Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulations. Crockford’s report indicates although seasonal polar bear populations declined in the Western Hudson Bay between 1987 and 2004, their numbers have stabilized since then. The seasonal Southern Hudson Bay sub-population has been stable at around 1,000 bears since the 1980s. Contrary to later forming sea ice representing a threat to polar bear survival and thriving, Crockford reports:

Primary productivity in the Arctic has increased since 2002 because of longer ice-free periods (especially in the Laptev, East Siberian, Kara, and Chukchi Seas, but also in the Barents Sea and Hudson Bay), but hit records highs in 2020; more fodder for the entire Arctic food chain explains why polar bears, ringed and bearded seals, and walrus are thriving despite profound sea ice loss.

Groups, like PBI, fundraising off of the threat climate change supposedly poses to polar bears, have been warning of an impending collapse in polar bear numbers for nearly three decades now. Their predictions are refuted by the measured increase in polar bear numbers. Polar bears are thriving amidst modest warming: a fact, Inside Climate News, if it were being honest, would be reporting.

*****

This article was published by the Climate Realism, a production from the Heartland Institute, and is reproduced with permission.

Biden’s Handlers Ditch Greece’s EastMed Pipeline Project in Order to Appease Turkey

January 18, 2022

By Jihad Watch

Biden’s handlers: forever projecting weakness on the international stage.

US quietly ditches Greece’s EastMed pipeline project to ship Israeli gas to Europe

by Ragip Soylu, Middle East Eye, January 11, 2022:

The US government silently abandoned an eastern Mediterranean pipeline project that would carry Israeli gas through Cyprus to Europe this week by submitting a non-paper to Athens explaining its reasons, Middle East Eye has learned.

The US non-paper, according to the Greek media, described the project as a “primary source of tension” and something “destabilising” the region by putting Turkey and regional countries at loggerheads.

A non-paper is an unofficial diplomatic correspondence.

A Greek diplomat, speaking anonymously to Middle East Eye, said the media reports were exaggerations.

Greek public broadcaster ERT claimed that the non-paper also listed three reasons to explain why the US no longer supports the project: environmental concerns, lack of economic and commercial viability, and creating tensions in the region.

The project angered Ankara in 2020 after Greece, Israel and the Greek Cypriot administration signed a deal to build a 1,900-km long natural gas pipeline in the eastern Mediterranean, passing through disputed maritime territories claimed by both Turkey and Greece.

The Trump administration and its secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had been strong supporters of the project, as well as the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum that excludes Turkey, under the pretext that Europe needs to diversify its energy needs vis-a-vis Russia.

The US State Department, now under President Joe Biden, abruptly changed that policy on Sunday and said that Washington was shifting its focus to electricity interconnectors that can support both gas and renewable energy sources….

Global Warming: As Eastern U.S. Braces for Bone-Chilling Winter Storm

January 16, 2022

By John Eidson

Saturday, January 15, 2022: With much of the Eastern U.S. about to be hit with a bone-chilling winter storm, this weekend is an appropriate time to reflect on the frenetic hysteria that accompanied the blizzard of 2018.

Al Gore, Our Melting Planet and the Blizzard of 2018

Gore and other high profile climate frauds continue to furiously beat the drums of global warming alarmism.

If not for a complicit and totally corrupt western media, the man-made global warming theory would have been blown out of the water decades ago.

In early January 2018, a powerful blizzard caused severe disruptions along the East Coast of the United States, as snow and bitter cold weather set new records, with Erie, PA shattering its all-time snowfall record. The next month, Chicago tied a long-standing record with nine straight days of snow after chalking up its most frigid New Year’s Day in history. The Plains, Midwest and Northeast were hit with record-setting frigid temperatures, and the Deep South was gripped by sub-zero freezing that dumped snow, even in Florida.

Crying wolf … every decade or so

Halfway around the world, the Winter Olympics in South Korea rivaled the coldest Games ever, and Russia had to call out the army to help Moscow dig out of what was described as “the snowfall of the century.” Elsewhere, 13,000 tourists were stranded as heavy snow blocked all routes from a Swiss ski resort, and the Sahara Desert was blanketed with 15 inches of snow.

Flashback to just four years earlier, 2014, when TheNew York Times, a charter member of the climate crisis cabal, ran a terrifying article that predicted “the end of snow.” That dire forecast was preceded 14 years earlier, in 2000, by the UK Independent, another charter member of the climate crisis cabal, which reported that “Snowfalls are a thing of the past. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

In attempting to explain away the Blizzard of 2018, Al Gore said, “This is exactly what we should expect from global warming.” In his 2006 climate scaremongering movie, An Inconvenient Truth, he made no mention of exceptionally cold winters as a consequence of global warming. That was a totally new claim, one he pulled out of thin air when multiple frigid winters made a mockery of his prediction that cold winters and snow would disappear.

Dating to the early 1980s, Gore and other alleged experts have told us that the climate battle must be won “in the next decade” or by some future year, with no ifs, ands or buts regarding the contrived deadline. As reported by Climate Depot, citizens of western democracies have been the targets of a continuous barrage of grossly inaccurate climate warnings, each followed by more of the same:

● 1982: UN issues its first climate “tipping point” prediction, says time running out to save planet.

● 1989: UN issues revised tipping point, says only 10 years left to save planet; 19 years later, UN issues ANOTHER tipping point, says only 15 years left to save planet.

● 1989: Senior UN official Dr. Noel Brown: “Entire nations will be wiped from face of Earth” if no action taken by 2000.

● 2006: Al Gore issues doomsday warning: “Less than 10 years to save Earth.”

● 2007: UN IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri says tipping point imminent, planet to perish if no action taken by 2012.

● 2009: NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen: “Obama has only four years to save planet.”

● 2011: Prince Charles: “Only 96 months left to save the world.”

● 2019: UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés: “Only 11 years left to save planet.”

● 2019: U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “World will end in 12 years if no action taken.”

● 2020: Presidential candidate Joe Biden: “Only nine years left to save Earth.”

Gore: “I saw fish from the ocean swimming in the streets of Miami”

For four straight decades, a Who’s Who of climate carnival barkers have issued a constant drumbeat of apocalyptic warnings that climate collapse is “imminent” unless voters agree to stratospheric carbon energy taxes that will radically alter the lifestyle of all but the wealthiest Americans.

If these global warming quacks have you trembling in fear, here’s a slice of Earth’s climate history that will give you peace of mind. During the Pliocene Epoch—2.5 million-to-5.3 million years ago—global average temperatures were 2-3 degrees Celsius higher than today, and there were no humans using fossil fuels way back then.

There’s nothing this climate snake oil salesman won’t say to perpetuate the global warming hoax that’s enabled him to stuff his pockets with a staggering $300 million fortune. At the December 2015 New York Times DealBook conference, he said this:

I was in Miami a few weeks ago, and on a sunny day, fish from the ocean were swimming in some of the streets. The melting ice has now raised sea level to the point that quite a few coastal cities are already experiencing this.

41 Inconvenient Truths on the ‘New Energy Economy’

January 14, 2022

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.” He’s right.

A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.”

He’s right. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that.

Herein, then, is a summary of some of the bottom-line realities from the underlying math. (See the full report for explanations, documentation, and citations.)

Realities About the Scale of Energy Demand

1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.

2. The small two-percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period; solar and wind today supply less than two percent of the global energy.

3. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.

4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand.

5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” ten-fold.

6. Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.

7. Eliminating hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S. hydrocarbons use—America uses 16 percent of world energy.

8. Efficiency increases energy demand by making products & services cheaper: since 1990, global energy efficiency improved 33 percent, the economy grew 80 percent and global energy use is up 40 percent.

9. Efficiency increases energy demand: Since 1995, aviation fuel use/passenger-mile is down 70 percent, air traffic rose more than 10-fold, and global aviation fuel use rose over 50 percent.

10. Efficiency increases energy demand: since 1995, energy used per byte is down about 10,000-fold, but global data traffic rose about a million-fold; global electricity used for computing soared.

11. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50 percent, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.

12. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.

13. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. electric demand.

14. To make enough batteries to store two day’s worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).

15. Every $1 billion in aircraft produced leads to some $5 billion in aviation fuel consumed over two decades to operate them. Global spending on new jets is more than $50 billion a year—and rising.

16. Every $1 billion spent on data centers leads to $7 billion in electricity consumed over two decades. Global spending on data centers is more than $100 billion a year—and rising.

Realities about Energy Economics

17. Over a 30-year period, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar or wind produces 40 million and 55 million kWh respectively: $1 million worth of shale well produces enough natural gas to generate 300 million kWh over 30 years.

18. It costs about the same to build one shale well or two wind turbines: the latter, combined, produces 0.7 barrels of oil (equivalent energy) per hour, the shale rig averages 10 barrels of oil per hour.

19. It costs less than $0.50 to store a barrel of oil, or its equivalent in natural gas, but it costs $200 to store the equivalent energy of a barrel of oil in batteries.

20. Cost models for wind and solar assume, respectively, 41 percent and 29 percent capacity factors (i.e., how often they produce electricity). Real-world data reveal as much as ten percentage points less for both. That translates into $3 million less energy produced than assumed over a 20-year life of a 2-MW $3 million wind turbine.

21. In order to compensate for episodic wind/solar output, U.S. utilities are using oil- and gas-burning reciprocating engines (big cruise-ship-like diesels); three times as many have been added to the grid since 2000 as in the 50 years prior to that.

22. Wind-farm capacity factors have improved at about 0.7 percent per year; this small gain comes mainly from reducing the number of turbines per acre leading to a 50 percent increase in average land used to produce a wind-kilowatt-hour.

23. Over 90 percent of America’s electricity, and 99 percent of the power used in transportation, comes from sources that can easily supply energy to the economy any time the market demands it.

24. Wind and solar machines produce energy an average of 25 percent–30 percent of the time, and only when nature permits. Conventional power plants can operate nearly continuously and are available when needed.

25. The shale revolution collapsed the prices of natural gas & coal, the two fuels that produce 70 percent of U.S. electricity. But electric rates haven’t gone down, rising instead 20 percent since 2008. Direct and indirect subsidies for solar and wind consumed those savings.

Energy Physics… Inconvenient Realities

26. Politicians and pundits like to invoke “moonshot” language. But transforming the energy economy is not like putting a few people on the moon a few times. It is like putting all of humanity on the moon—permanently.

27. The common cliché: an energy tech disruption will echo the digital tech disruption. But information-producing machines and energy-producing machines involve profoundly different physics; the cliché is sillier than comparing apples to bowling balls.

28. If solar power scaled like computer-tech, a single postage-stamp-size solar array would power the Empire State Building. That only happens in comic books.

29. If batteries scaled like digital tech, a battery the size of a book, costing three cents, could power a jetliner to Asia. That only happens in comic books.

30. If combustion engines scaled like computers, a car engine would shrink to the size of an ant and produce a thousand-fold more horsepower; actual ant-sized engines produce 100,000 times less power.

31. No digital-like 10x gains exist for solar tech. Physics limit for solar cells (the Shockley-Queisser limit) is a max conversion of about 33 percent of photons into electrons; commercial cells today are at 26 percent.

32. No digital-like 10x gains exist for wind tech. Physics limit for wind turbines (the Betz limit) is a max capture of 60 percent of energy in moving air; commercial turbines achieve 45 percent.

33. No digital-like 10x gains exist for batteries: maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500 percent greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.

34. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.

35. At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.

36. Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).

37. Carrying the energy equivalent of the aviation fuel used by an aircraft flying to Asia would require $60 million worth of Tesla-type batteries weighing five times more than that aircraft.

38. It takes the energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil.

39. A battery-centric grid and car world means mining gigatons more of the earth to access lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, cobalt, etc.—and using millions of tons of oil and coal both in mining and to fabricate metals and concrete.

40. China dominates global battery production with its grid 70 percent coal-fueled: EVs using Chinese batteries will create more carbon-dioxide than saved by replacing oil-burning engines.

41. One would no more use helicopters for regular trans-Atlantic travel—doable with elaborately expensive logistics—than employ a nuclear reactor to power a train or photovoltaic systems to power a nation.

This article is republished with permission from Economics 21.

How can you take control of the world? Make Green the new Red!

January 14, 2022

By John Eidson

How can you take control of the world? By convincing the world’s people they will die if they don’t do what you say. And for the last four decades, that is what’s been done with climate alarmism, the greatest scientific hoax the world has ever seen, an international collusion to plunder trillions of dollars from the world’s greatest capitalist nation, all under the guise of “saving the planet.”

According to propaganda on the website of the World Economic Forum, the communist organization’s “Great Reset” initiative will save Earth from climate apocalypse by “resetting the direction of national economies.”

Translation: By using climate alarmism to frighten citizens of capitalist nations to acquiesce to communism. The article below contains shocking statements by three senior level UN climate officials that will leave your jaw on the floor.

Green is the new Red: The terrifying agenda behind climate alarmism

Twelve years ago, a climate research cheating scandal known as ‘Climategate 2009’ rocked the scientific world to the core. Hacked emails among highly influential scientists at the center of worldwide hysteria over climate change reportedly were rife with routine data tampering and other instances of flagrant scientific misconduct. Although the scientists implicated denied wrong-doing, emails hacked from computers at their employer, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, reportedly revealed a consistent pattern of climate data manipulation, conspiracies to falsify data and withhold findings that cast serious doubt on man-made global warming theory, to exaggerate the existence and threats posed by global warming, and to obstruct contrary research from appearing in scholarly publications. Aided and abetted by a complicit western media establishment, the climate crisis industry dismissed the scandal as much ado about nothing and continued beating the drums of climate hysteria as if nothing had happened.

Climategate 2009 tore off the fraudulent façade of global warming alarmism

The Climategate cheating scandal exposed man-made global warming theory for what it is: the most brazen scientific hoax in human history, an international collusion to destroy capitalism in the world’s largest capitalist nation to pave the way for that nation’s sovereignty being handed over to a global governing authority run by the United Nations. That is a serious charge on my part, so please allow me to justify it by citing the words of three high profile UN climate officials in the thick of the plot to strip away America’s sovereignty.

Christiana Figueres served as Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-16. In a frank admission that laid bare the stealth agenda behind climate alarmism, Figueres said during a February 2015 press conference in Brussels that the UN’s real purpose in promoting climate fear is to kill off capitalism throughout the world:

“This is the first time in human history that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally changing [getting rid of] the economic development model that has reigned since the Industrial Revolution”.

The economic model to which she referred is free-market capitalism. A year earlier, Figueres revealed what U.S. capitalism must be replaced with when she bitterly complained that America’s two-party constitutional system is hampering the UN’s climate objectives. She went on to cite China’s communist system as the kind of government America must have if the UN is to do as it pleases.

Figueres is not alone in embracing communism. Another high-level UN official had comments of his own about the stealth agenda behind climate alarmism. If you’re among those who believe climate alarmists when they tell you all they’re trying to do is save the planet, what Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer had to say will leave you feeling betrayed. In a Nov. 14, 2010 interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Edenhofer, co-chair of the UN IPCC’s Working Group III, made this stunning admission:

“One must free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. [What we’re doing] has almost nothing to do with the climate. We must state clearly that we use climate policy to [re]distribute de facto the world’s wealth.”

On the same date, Edenhofer added this:

“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with protecting the environment. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which [re]distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, one of the UN’s top climate officials, effectively admitted that the organization’s public position on climate change is a hoax. The same admission was made in July 2019 by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, who told Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) that the Green New Deal is not about saving the planet:

“It wasn’t originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Translation: The intent of the Green New Deal is not to “save the planet,” but rather to use climate alarmism as a pretext to dismantle America’s capitalist economy. Virtually the same sinister intent was expressed to reporters at the 2018 Climate Conference in Katowice, Poland by then-UN climate chief, Patricia Espinosa:

“We require deep transformations of economies and societies.”

Figueres, Edenhofer, Chakrabarti and Espinosa aren’t the only hardened communists to recognize the effectiveness of using environmental hysteria as a fig leaf to hide their true intent. In 1996, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev advocated using climate fear to create a global demand for communism:

“The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.”

The “new world order” to which he referred is global governance under the banner of the hammer and sickle, the same objective subsequently called for, in 2015, by then-UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres.

The Great Reset

Global governance is the objective of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which announced last year its “Great Reset” initiative. According to the organization’s website, the Great Reset will address challenges like global warming by resetting “the direction of national economies.” Translation: Using climate policy as a slight-of-hand means to force western nations, especially America, to give up capitalism in favor of communism.

At a September 2020 panel discussion hosted by the WEF and the UN, John Kerry, who would later be appointed as President Biden’s climate czar, said this about Biden’s intent to impose the Great Reset on America:

“Yes, the Great Reset will happen, and I think it will happen with greater speed and greater intensity than a lot of people imagine.”

The Great Reset is a desperate push to culminate the progressive dream of unifying the western world under communism. For that to occur, America’s sovereignty must be ceded to the UN, an organization infested from top to bottom with Marxist revolutionaries hell-bent on dismantling capitalist economies and national sovereignties wherever they exist. German chancellor Angela Merkel, a prominent member of the WEF, revealed the intent of the Great Reset when she said the following during a 2018 speech in Berlin:

“Nations must be ready to give up sovereignty.”

In other words, for a New World Order to impose its will on citizens of the western world, the sovereignty of the greatest crown jewel of them all—the United States of America—must be stripped away.

They’re coming for your liberty

The stunning pronouncements by Figueres, Edenhofer, and Espinosa and are all the evidence a rational mind needs to conclude that climate alarmism is being used as a Trojan horse to justify the stratospheric new carbon taxes clamored for by climate charlatans like Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Bill Gates, none of whom have denounced the profoundly anti-American sentiments of three of the UN’s top climate officials.

The words of one of those officials revealed that such taxes would be used not for environmental healing, but to fund the most massive redistribution of wealth in history, literally trillions of dollars extracted under false pretenses from hard-working U.S. taxpayers, and handed over to corrupt governments of every undeveloped nation on Earth, all in the guise of “climate aid.”

Powerful progressives in this country feel it’s not fair that billions of people in the world sleep on the ground in mud huts, while Americans sleep on soft mattresses in air-conditioned comfort. The progressive elites who feel that way also believe that America’s wealth must therefore be redistributed to an unprecedented extent to the world’s poor nations.

Progressives in high places are attempting the largest heist in human history, a collusion to plunder unprecedented sums from taxpayers of the world’s largest capitalist nation. Why? To implement on a global scale the mandate set forth in The Communist Manifesto:

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

The high profile progressives who push climate fear would have you believe they’re nothing more than environmentally-concerned Americans who would never even dream of participating in a traitorous attempt to turn their country communist. These Marxist wolves in sheep’s clothing have been lying to you, and now you know it. Their sinister intent is to use massive new global warming taxes to control every aspect of your life: where you’re allowed to live, the size of house you’re allowed to have, the thermostat settings in your home, the kind of car you’re allowed to buy, the amount of miles you’re allowed to drive, your freedom to travel by air, and the kind of food you’re allowed to eat. In short, they’re coming for your liberty.

Bottom line

No rational person can fail to see that the Democratic Party is using climate alarmism as a ruse to fundamentally transform the United States of America. But because the human ego is loathe to admit it’s been duped, many patriotic Democrats will continue allowing themselves to be led like sheep into the closing noose of the hammer and sickle. By the time they realize what happened, it will be too late.

Google Censors Climate Scientist

January 13, 2022

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Dr. Roy Spencer is a scientist, known as much for his unshakeable integrity, as for his brilliant work in climate science. He is also a good friend of CFACT.

He works with global temperature satellites at the University of Alabama at Huntsville / NASA. Together with his colleague John Christy, they maintain one of the most crucial global temperature datasets, one which is regularly relied on by the UN and scientists worldwide.

Dr. Spencer posts satellite temperature data to his website DRRoySpencer.com where he also posts useful information and discusses all things climate.

Google recently notified Dr. Spencer that it was demonetizing his website. Now, we’re not talking a fortune of money here. The website generated maybe enough money from Google AdSense ads to pay for its web hosting, spam filters and that sort of thing. The website was demonetized for “unreliable and harmful claims.”

This is part of Google’s new policy to demonetize climate skeptic websites. On October 7, 2021, Google announced it “will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

In other words, Google will dutifully do its part — as a loyal shill to the progressive establishment — to make life miserable for anyone who challenges, fact checks or questions the wild climate claims being made by the UN, EPA, and far-Left climate activists.

Dr. Spencer was shocked when Google finally shared the pages on his site that they found misleading. They were mainly the pages containing the actual raw satellite temperature data!

Dr. Spencer explains:

“This is obviously because some activists employed by Google (who probably weren’t even born when John Christy and I received both NASA and American Meteorological Society awards for our work) don’t like the answer our 43-yearlong satellite dataset gives. Never mind that our dataset remains one of the central global temperature datasets used by mainstream climate researchers in their work.”

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CENSORED UAH SATELLITE-BASED TEMPERATURE OF THE GLOBAL LOWERE ATHOMOSPHERE (VERSION 6.0)

Satellite data routinely reveals that climate computer models run hotter than measured reality.

Google has committed a serious transgression, not only against free speech and academic rights, but against science itself!

It is axiomatic that when data contradicts a hypothesis, it is the hypothesis which must change. Scientists must never alter or suppress data which contradicts a favored conclusion.

Google should immediately remonetize Roy Spencer’s website and stop interfering with the publication of scientific data and the free exchange of ideas in the climate debate.

COLUMN BY

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

January 10, 2022

By Jason Bordoff

If we believed our own rhetoric about the climate crisis, support for nuclear would be much higher.

If you still needed proof that nuclear energy has returned to the conversation after decades of disfavor, it came with an unexpected celebrity boost last month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Canadian singer Grimes separately used their star power to advocate against the closure of nuclear power plants, echoing growing pressure for California to reconsider plans to shut its last such plant. Over the weekend, Europe also saw a fresh boost for nuclear energy with the leaked draft of a European Commission plan to include zero-carbon nuclear energy on its list of what counts as a “green” investment.

Notwithstanding Germany’s long-planned closure of three of its remaining six nuclear plants on New Year’s Eve, even as Europe struggles with energy shortages, support from celebrities and the EU was just the latest in a string of good news for nuclear energy in 2021. In the United States, private investment in nuclear projects and companies reached eye-popping levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm became increasingly vocal in support of nuclear power as a zero-carbon energy source. In Europe, several countries—including France—recently announced new plans to build nuclear reactors in order to meet looming deadlines to decarbonize their electricity systems.

A decade after the Fukushima nuclear accident set back nuclear power’s prospects worldwide, the outlook may finally be brightening for three reasons: the urgency of meeting increasingly ambitious climate goals, significant advances in nuclear technology, and national security concerns about China’s and Russia’s growing leadership in nuclear power.

Until recently, nuclear power’s outlook seemed bleak. Following Fukushima, Japan suspended nearly all of its 50 nuclear reactors; today, only nine have resumed operations. Several other countries, most notably Germany, decided to phase out nuclear power. Still others, such as Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, scrapped plans to add new nuclear plants. Between 2011 and 2020, a total of 65 reactors were either shut down or did not have their operational lifetimes extended.

In the United States, the number of nuclear reactors peaked at more than 100 in 2012. Since then, 12 reactors have been shut down, while only one was added. (Nuclear power continues to supply about 20 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.) Cheap natural gas unlocked by the shale revolution and dramatic cost declines in wind and solar power have made it harder for nuclear power to compete. Meanwhile, projects to build new nuclear power plants in the United States have ballooned in cost, seen their timelines lengthened, or been scrapped altogether. Two reactors being built in Georgia are now projected to cost twice as much and take more than twice as long to complete as originally estimated. Two other reactors under construction in South Carolina were scrapped in 2017 after $9 billion in expenditures, leaving ratepayers with nothing to show for their money.

So, given all these setbacks, why the sudden new interest in nuclear power?

First, as the urgency to combat the climate crisis grows, there is growing recognition that the pathway to net-zero emissions will be faster, easier, and cheaper if nuclear energy is part of the mix of solutions.

As Grimes explained in her viral video calling for California to reverse its decision to shut the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, “This is crisis mode, and we should be using all the tools that we have.” She went on: “If we push the closure back by a decade, it will help the state decarbonize faster and make the transition to clean energy faster and cheaper.”

The pop star’s claims are backed up by analysis. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, global electricity use will need to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as cars, home heating, and other sectors are electrified. Vast amounts of electricity will also be required to make fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, to power sectors that are harder to electrify, such as ship transportation and steelmaking.

In Global Energy Crisis, Anti-Nuclear Chickens Come Home to Roost

In virtually every country that has closed nuclear plants, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.

Why This Energy Crisis Is Different

Climate change and the policies to curb it lie behind skyrocketing gas, coal, and electricity prices in Europe and Asia.

All that electricity must then come from zero-carbon sources. Solar and wind power can provide much of that but not all. They are intermittent, as the sun does not always shine nor the wind always blow, and face other limitations, such as the greater amount of land needed. Batteries, whose costs have fallen sharply, can store renewable energy for hours but not yet days or weeks to handle seasonal fluctuations or extended periods of low winds or gray skies.

Thus, the cheapest path to decarbonize electricity is to have some amount—estimates vary—of so-called firm generation: reliable sources that can produce low-carbon electricity on demand whenever it is needed. Today, nuclear power is the only carbon-free energy source operating at scale that can reliably deliver power at any time.

*****

By Jason Bordoff, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School.

Continue reading this article at Foreign Policy.

https://thepricklypear.org/wp-content/uploads/nuclear-power-plant-4535760__480.jpg 480 720 Jason Bordoff https://thepricklypear.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v12_404x90.png Jason Bordoff2022-01-10 01:55:442022-01-08 06:48:203 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

Virginia Leads the Way Up from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

January 6, 2022

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Energy ideology is one thing. Energy reality, another.

Just ask the motorists who spent a night stranded on I-95 in Virginia this week when winter dropped some epic snow if they’d rather have spent the night in an electric car.

Virginia foolishly joined eleven other states in a “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” which dramatically raised energy prices and covered pristine natural landscapes with inefficient wind turbines and solar panels. All without making any meaningful impact on the temperature of the Earth. The RGGI is a perfect poster child for “all pain no gain” policy making.

Gabriella Hoffman reports at CFACT.org in a piece that originally appeared in The Virginia Pilot:

“‘RGGI describes itself as a regional market for carbon, but it is really a carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers. It’s a bad deal for Virginians. It’s a bad deal for Virginia businesses,’ Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin said. ‘I promised to lower the cost of living in Virginia, and this is just the beginning.’”

Gabriella further reports that:

“Virginia’s continued participation in RGGI will result in residents paying more for their electricity bills. According to recent State Corporation Commission filings, participation in the RGGI program will raise energy costs to $4.37 a month, or $52.44 per year, if enacted on Sept. 1. When paired with the new — and costly — Virginia Clean Economy Act, the net-zero law slated to raise energy bills $800 a year by 2030, this spells disaster for Virginians currently paying more to heat and power their homes.”

CFACT’s close friend Collister (Terry) Johnson is a tireless Virginia energy advocate. Terry and his friends and allies did a brilliant job beating back plans to wreck Virginia’s energy infrastructure with the facts. Well done!

Virginia under Governor-elect Youngkin is waking up to energy reality… fast. Other states are heading for the RGGI exit as well.

Energy reality beats energy ideology every time.

MEDIA BALANCED NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

January 3, 2022

By John Droz, Jr.

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

Lots of really interesting material in this issue, but particularly note the red *** items below.

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

*** World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

*** COVID-19: What You Need To Know (Physicians for Informed Consent)

COVID-19 — Scientifically Proven Therapies:

*** Denial of Early Covid-19 Treatment – A Crime Against Humanity

*** The Left’s resistance to ivermectin is shameful

*** A Myth is born: How CDC, FDA, and Media wove a web of ivermectin lies that outlives the truth

*** Report: Did Dismissals of Safe Outpatient Drugs Cause Needless Covid Deaths? Dissenting Doctors Say Yes

*** Biden Ignores Science on COVID-19 Treatments and Vaccines

*** Hospitals Choosing Death Over Ivermectin

*** Study: Combination Therapy For COVID-19 Based on Ivermectin in an Australian Population

*** Study: 20-Week Study of Clinical Outcomes of Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment

Short video: What is Ivermectin?

Video: The Inexplicable Suppression of Several COVID-19 Treatments

FDA Ignored: Seventy-One (71) Scientific Ivermectin COVID-19 Studies

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** The Power of 3/10 of 1% of 74 million

US Election — State Issues:

Hearing to Ban Georgia’s Dominion Voting System Marred by False AG Claims, Irrelevant Judge Interruptions

Lawsuit Reveals Fulton County 2020 Absentee Ballot Results Were Physically Impossible and Files Were Modified

Court Fight Over Dead People on Voter Lists Heats Up in Michigan

Pennsylvania Court Will Allow Inspection of Fulton County Dominion Voting Machines

US Politics and Socialism:

*** Who is to Blame for the “Industrial Revolution”?

*** John F Kennedy vs today’s Democrats

*** Facebook Admits in Court that its Fact Checks are Just Opinions

How Do We Stop the Cancel Culture’s Formula: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity = DIE?

The Sandcastle

Why BBB Would Be Hazardous to Your Health

Video: Bowing Down to China (10 minutes)

Biden’s EPA Turned Its Science Advisory Boards Into Woke Green Groups

Judge Hears Opening Arguments on Biden Administration’s Alleged Purge of Industry from EPA Panels

Other US Politics and Related:

*** The Real Misinformation Problem

*** AP’s Hit Piece on RFK, Jr. Symbolizes Intellectual, Moral Collapse of Mainstream News Industry

*** Documentary: The Complete Documentary of What is Happening In This World

British Medical Journal on Facebook “fact check” ‘… inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible’

How Did the FBI End Up in This Mess?

The Danger of Nuclear War is Very Real

No, Congress should not codify ‘Chevron deference’

We Shouldn’t Allow Progressives to Limit Participation in Regulatory Process

Please—Stop the Coup Porn

The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed

Religion Related:

*** Why gratitude should be a part of your daily routine

*** Fake pastors and true

Christian Nationalism Is The Only Godly Option

Russia Fines Google With Record $100 Million For Corrupting Minors

Education Related:

*** Let the Buyer Beware!

*** No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Abundant Evidence Says Otherwise

*** How Marxists Captured the Universities and Will Soon Capture the Nation

Children are being ‘brainwashed’ by TikTok videos on ‘cool’ trans surgery viewed 26 billion times, campaigners claim

Many NC Students Are Missing out on Core Knowledge

Homeschooling Gifted Students: 9 Tips for Curriculum and Teaching

10 Books on Education That Are Worth Reading

Education Reform in 2022: Our Hopes for the New Year

Science and Misc Matters:

*** Implications of the retraction of a recent paper for scientific integrity in the White House

*** The Problem With Science is Scientists

If You Can’t Question It, Don’t Call It Science

EPA Announces Nationwide Monitoring Effort to Better Understand Extent of PFAS in Drinking Water

The Dirty Secret of America’s Clean Dishes

Dodge Is Cancelling The Hemi V8

Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…

If at any time you’d like to be added to (or taken off) the distribution of our popular, free Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

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

Note 2: For recent past Newsletter issues see 2020 Archives & 2021 Archives. To accommodate numerous requests received about prior articles over the twelve plus years of the Newsletter, we’ve put together archives since the beginning of the Newsletter — where you can search by year. For a detailed background about the Newsletter, please read this.

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

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

Inflation Soars as Team Biden Locks Up America’s Energy

December 30, 2021

By Craig Rucker

Within hours of taking office, President Biden made the supposed “climate crisis” his central focus and elimination of fossil fuels his primary “solution.”

To show he meant it, Biden undertook several radical measures right off the bat. First, he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline; then revoked leases and permits in Alaska and offshore areas; then he slowed or blocked leasing, drilling and fracking projects and pressured banks not to lend money to fossil fuel projects. His pick for Comptroller of the Currency (since withdrawn) wanted to nationalize our banking system, control energy and food prices, and bankrupt the petroleum industry.

The President also declared his ultimate goal: 80% hydrocarbon-free electricity generation by 2030, 100% by 2035, and all fossil fuel use eliminated nationwide by 2050. That means no coal or natural gas for generating electricity; no gasoline or diesel for vehicles; and no natural gas for factories, or for heating, cooking, water heating or emergency power in homes, hospitals, schools and businesses.

From all appearances, it seems the Administration is seeking to drag the US down – in the name of fairness, equity and climate stability – by eradicating the carbon-based fuels that provide 80% of all energy that powers America. They seem to think we Americans live too well, consume too much and are responsible for every severe weather event around the globe.

Have all their anti-energy policies had an impact? You betcha.

Regular gasoline averaged $2.17 per gallon in 2020 – and $3.49 in November 2021. It now costs $17 more to fill your tank than a year ago.

Natural gas prices shot from $2.61 in November 2020 on the Henry Hub to $5.51 in October 2021. Depending on how cold it gets, families will pay 30-50% more this winter to stay warm. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are advancing a regressive home heating stealth tax, in the form of new fees on methane production that will rise to $1,500 per ton of methane by 2025.

Natural gas is a primary ingredient in fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals, as well as in plastic packaging, pharmaceuticals, and hundreds of other products. No wonder liquid fertilizer prices have skyrocketed from $165 per ton delivered to Indiana farmers in October 2020 – to $550 a ton last month.

Animal feed costs are thus also in the stratosphere. So it’s no surprise that beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and farmed fish prices are also soaring.

How has the administration responded? President Biden wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate oil companies for possible “criminal conduct” and “profiteering.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki blamed “corporate greed” for soaring meat and poultry prices.

Mr. Biden’s Energy and Transportation Secretaries literally laughed off concerns about gasoline prices –saying families should just buy electric vehicles, which cost $50,000 to $100,000.

The President begged OPEC and Russia to boost their oil and gas production to help roll back prices – while he keeps America’s bounteous fossil fuels locked in the ground. They refused, and prices keep rising. So Mr. Biden recently took a different tack.

He now wants US oil companies to put more drilling rigs to work and increase drilling and production on leases they already have – despite the new regulations, fees and government foot-dragging, and despite Climate Envoy John Kerry and others pressuring banks and financial institutions to deny loans and refuse to invest in oil and gas companies.

American must switch to wind, solar and battery power, Team Biden insists. Prices are coming down, and they don’t pollute or need pipelines.

Wind, solar, and battery systems are heavily subsidized, via taxes and hidden fees. They aren’t subjected to the environmental studies, standards, lawsuits and penalties that apply to oil, gas, coal, and nuclear projects. Approvals are granted with minimal consideration of impacts on wildlife habitats and scenic vistas, raptor and bat deaths, or damage to human and animal health from subsonic turbine noise.

Those technologies are “clean, renewable, sustainable” we’re told. Right, only if we ignore the rampant pollution, habitat destruction, and child labor associated with mining and processing their non-renewable raw materials – all using fossil fuels and taking place overseas, mostly in China and Africa.

Moreover, notes Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., replacing all US fossil fuel use with electricity would require over five million 2.5-megawatt wind turbines, 650 feet tall, covering two-thirds of the continental USA – or solar panels sprawling across 40% of America – and thousands of miles of new transmission lines.

The Biden Administration’s claims and plans are beyond parody. Families and small businesses are already paying dearly. Prices are skyrocketing – not just for energy, but for all products and services. Inflation is at its highest level in 39 years, and the Producer Price Index rose nearly 10% since November 2020.

It’s time for the rest of America’s political class to quit being so callously indifferent.

*****

This article was published on December 23, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

Biden’s oil price heading to $100 a barrel. Read on …

December 28, 2021

By Save America Foundation

“Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream.” – Debby Boone

Unless the treasonous usurper in The Peoples House and his evil, satanic administration changes course on the insane energy agenda of theirs, oil will reach at least $100 a barrel in 2022. Right now it is hovering around $72 a barrel as the oil market weighs up if there will be massive closures and shutdowns universally due to the new China Virus Omicron variant which will affect consumption.

You will all remember that under the last fairly elected president, Donald J. Trump, the U.S. became a net exporter of oil. We could supply all our own needs and had plenty left over to export. Now however, due to the communist green policies of these extremists who stole the 2020 election, we are now buying approximately 37% of our oil needs from OPEC ( Not our friends ) and Russia ( Not our friend ) both of which are making huge profits from us as they ship their overpriced oil to us. Russia especially is ecstatic as it now has billions of extra income coming in to pour into their military. This as Pervy Joe is weakening ours.

Both OPEC and Russia can control the spigot to shorten our supply at will and manipulate the price we pay. Biden has begged them to increase production but they just laugh at the pathetic little man he is. They have us under their thumb.

2021, under the aforementioned Biden, has seen inflation soaring as supply chain issues, unconstitutional covid lockdowns and restrictions, whole sectors of businesses being destroyed, has given us inflation not seen since 1982 – and it is growing. Understand when the Government says inflation rose by 6.8% in November, that doesn’t include fuel, energy and food increases which we all know have gone up well into double digits. Hyper-Inflation is almost upon us. Pay increases nationally which were substantial, have all fallen behind the inflator figures and in many cases people are worse off now. Unfortunately the poorer, the middle class and all ethnic minorities have suffered the most under the illegal dictatorship in stolen power. That is the opposite of what happened under President Trump.

Saudi Arabian energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has hinted that they may cut production by 30 million barrels a day which would be catastrophic for our economy and our people. It would however enhance that cartels dominance in the global market for oil and gas energy.

Under President Trump, my President, inflation was kept low, contrary to many experts predictions, because the shale Revolution we created produced plentiful cheap oil and energy. Increases in normal businesses were kept offset by low energy costs. Simple!! Small and large businesses and corporations benefitted by our low cost oil and gas.

However, this administration made up of traitors, imbeciles, corrupt officials ( I am trying to be diplomatic here! ) are obsessed with the lies of Global Warming and supposed Climate Change. Alternative energy sources are just not ready for prime time!! We saw that in Texas. They cannot produce reliable energy in enough volume competitively priced to compete or replace fossil fuels. Period. Simple as that.

Since Biden took over the reins investment and much needed work and development in the fossil fuel industry has dried to a trickle. Biden holds responsibility for that and the resultant rises in the energy prices we have seen and are facing. Fears of new regulations, taxations and aggressive anti fossil fuel activities politically by this administration energy sector corporations are not willing to invest at the percentage needed. Right now investment is running just over 42% of what is needed. John Kerry, another slimeball politician and cowardly former Vietnam war liar on his non existent so called heroism, and now the climate czar, have been pressuring Wall Street, banks and financial institutions to cut investment and future investing in any fossil fuel and join or create a “Net-Zero Banking Alliance” Banks like BOA, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase among others hastened to join this alliance. There is a story about one large oil company being asked to close their account so that bank could reduce its carbon footprint. Insanity.

The climate control rules and regulations in Europe have forced prices of energy sky high. With the shorter production there is a distinct possibility that there may very well be major shortages of fuel this winter.

Combine that with the Russian oil economy booming and with their troops massing on the Ukrainian border readying for a likely invasion, Russia knows, despite feeble Joes pathetic threats about oil and energy sanctions should Russia invade, that a weakened Europe heavily relies now on Russia for gas and oil and will not risk their own countries by supporting energy sanctions on Russia energy supply’s as they will not want to be going without. Russia is in a great position greatly aided by Biden’s energy policies.

I guess Sniffer Joe likes to see our enemies strengthen while we contract.

Another aspect of our reduced oil production is other countries like China are being forced to burn dirtier fuel which increases pollution and counteracts any reductions in so called carbon footprint reductions by countries like America.

Nobody I know wants to harm planet earth but cyclical weather changes have been going on since the beginning of time. This whole green new deal and climate change rubbish is just about money, power, control and destroying the middle class and lower class citizens of the world. It is about a one world nation where the rich will become richer and more powerful and the rest of us will become property of the world government.

The above scenario is not something I could stand still and give into. I know all my friends and millions of Americans feel the same.

Let’s put a stop to this insanity in the mid term Elections. Let’s send the corrupt and extremist politicians where they belong. We know where that is America. Now let’s find the fortitude to accomplish that simple goal and let’s get on with Building a truly Better America, where capitalism trumps socialism and criminals, political included, are held accountable. Where we lead the world again in every aspect and we bury this insanity once and for all.

Do what needs doing America. It’s time to do the right thing by our Founding Fathers, the constitution and our kids.

Nuclear Power Is Green Energy

December 28, 2021

By Charlotte Whelan

The Washington Post recently published an article, “Is nuclear energy green? France and Germany lead opposing camps.” where they discuss the different approaches by the two nations to nuclear power. There’s renewed attention on the issue as France re-embraces nuclear power in response to the European energy crisis.

The article notes that Germany’s opposition to nuclear power is largely based on safety concerns. But nuclear power has proven to be incredibly safe and is a reliable, cheap source of carbon-free power.

Most striking is the difference in carbon emissions between the two countries:

Germany emits about twice as much carbon dioxide per capita as France does. When it phases out its last nuclear power plants next year, it will be forced to rely on coal and other polluting energy sources to fill much of the gap for years — which helps explain why the country continues to raze villages to make way for coal mines.

A chart from the article provides a striking comparison between the two countries:

Being anti-nuclear power is an inconsistent stance for anyone working to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. Nuclear power is a proven source of energy that will help us reduce carbon emissions and must be a large part of any clean energy plans both in the U.S. and abroad.

*****

This article was published on December 20, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Independent Women’s Forum.

ZEV Subsidies Fail Equity, Economics, and Environmental Tests

December 28, 2021

By Duggan Flanakin

Many have been saying for years that subsidies for zero-emissions (electric) vehicles [ZEV] pose unfair burdens on working Americans. Subsidizing (and mandating) an unwanted switch away from internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) while imposing diktats that have brought higher gasoline prices and record inflation also seems out of kilter with the widely championed tenet of equity.

But the lack of equity is not even the chief reason for ending EV subsidies, according to a new Manhattan Institute report from economist Jonathan A. Lesser, president of Continental Economics. “There is no economic basis for the billions of dollars spent subsidizing [the newest zero-emission vehicles].”

Lesser says that new ICVs today emit very little pollution, thanks to stringent emission standards and low-sulfur gasoline, and they will emit even less in the future. Moreover, ZEVs charged with the forecast mix of electric generation will emit more criteria air pollutants – sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates – than new ICVs.

As for the dreaded (but vital) carbon dioxide, ZEVs do emit less than ICVs, but the projected reduction in CO2 emissions – less than 1 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions – will have no measurable impact on climate, and hence no economic or environmental value.

Lesser is not the only one with data that ought to dim the ZEV subsidy lightbulb. Danish climate expert Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank, has long argued that the hype and mythologizing over ZEVs afflicts policy-making and leads to costly subsidies that produce little environmental benefit. Even in ZEV-happy Norway, the typical virtue-signaling ZEV owner drives the family ICV many more miles annually.

Swedish automaker Volvo compared its gasoline-powered XC40 with its fully electric C40, taking into account the extraction and processing of raw materials. Volvo found that manufacturing the C40 results in 70 percent more emissions than manufacturing the XC40 in the same factory on the same assembly line. The electric battery is the chief culprit.

If, Inside EVs suggests, the data presented by Volvo are any indication, it is quite likely that the manufacture of new ICVs is notably greener than that of all new ZEVs. The only apparent rationale for the subsidies is to favor subservient manufacturers or, perhaps, certain producers and exporters of ZEV components.

So why is President Biden, who claims to be a champion of the working class, pushing so hard for gazillions in new subsidies for ZEVs and ZEV charging stations? Subsidies, in general, have many downsides, notably that, by forcing the market in the “preferred” direction, they crowd out better ideas that might not yet be known to, or even thought of, by bureaucrats.

Admittedly, when Elon Musk rails against subsidies for electric vehicles, he is staring directly into the Biden Administration’s plan to provide tax incentives of up to $12,500 for union-built EVs that purchasers of his non-union vehicles would not receive. Tesla sales 2 years ago reached 200,000-vehicle threshold below which Tesla buyers could receive the current $7,500 federal credit, yet the company says it is prospering.

Musk now argues that the government should act more like a sports referee than a player on the field. Thus, he also opposes Biden’s huge layout for subsidized EV charging stations. But there may be yet another reason to deep-six yet another subsidy for wealthier EV owners, one that Musk himself once considered but that bureaucrats have not planned for.

Back in 2013, Musk unveiled a battery swap station designed about Tesla’s Model S, but few paid attention. The process proved to be complex and slow, and Musk switched its strategy to build out his Supercharger network. Other firms followed suit.

Others, notably Chinese automaker Nio, opted to develop the battery swap. Nio has completed more than 2 million battery swaps in China and is now building swapping stations in Europe. In the U.S., the battery swapping company Ample has until recently operated in “stealth” mode while raising $280 million in investment capital.

Ample founder Khaled Hassounah envisions placing battery swapping stations, each about the size of two parking spaces, at gasoline stations, grocery stores, and highway rest stops. A robotic arm will execute a “Lego-style” swap, replacing the spent battery with a freshly charged one in about 10 minutes. Ample uses small, lighter weight battery modules that can be added together to fit a wide range of vehicles.

Hassounah’s chief focus is on fleet vehicles. Not only does the battery swap system cut recharging time significantly, but fleet managers who opt in can avoid the cost of charging stations. Vehicles driven beyond the typical ZEV’s battery life may save significant sums via leasing. They also get the benefit of having the newest battery technology in their vehicles.

There are, of course, downsides. Many current and planned EV designs make the battery pack an integral part of the chassis. EV manufacturers may be disinclined to warrant vehicles with aftermarket batteries installed. And, of course, drivers can only swap out batteries where there are swapping stations. Pumping gas is still easier, quicker, and not subject to robot malfunction.

Moreover, swapping stations are not part of the Biden subsidy scheme – government rarely has any idea what the market is developing.

But isn’t that what Musk is belatedly joining in arguing? That government has no business being a player in trying to direct the evolution of American business. That means no subsidies – and no mandates, either.

*****

This article was published on December 19, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Coal Hit Record Highs in 2021

December 24, 2021

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

China and India drive coal to record highs.

Reports of the death of coal are, to quote Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated.”

In fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that coal is having its best year ever, propelled by insatiable demand from China and India.

Read the IEA’s full “Coal 2021” report at CFACT.org.

Here are a few eye-opening takeaways:

The price of coal more than doubled, hitting an all time high of $298 this fall, up from $81 last year
“Coal is the largest source of electricity generation”
Global coal power is “on course to increase by 9% to 10,350 terawatt-hours (TWh) – a new all-time high”
Coal is the “second largest source of primary energy”
China, which both produces and imports the most coal, increased its coal use another 9%
Chinese power accounts for “one-third of global coal consumption”
Chinese “overall coal use is more than half of the global total”
India, the number two coal user, increased coal 12%
“Global coal consumption is not on the Net Zero trajectory”

Click Here for a chart showing coal use by region with the IEA’s projections out to 2024

China and India value coal so highly that they worked together to scuttle tough anti-coal language at COP 26, the UN climate conference in Glasgow, prompting COP President Alok Sharma, MP, to issue a tear-filled apology.

While China and India ramp up their economies, the Biden Administration is strangling American energy production, crippling decades of work toward energy independence, and causing severe inflationary pressure.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (if that’s your thing) count for nothing with nations such as China and India eager to supply the goods we no longer manufacture… and expand their fossil fuel energy use as fast as their economies will allow.

COLUMN BY

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

Electric Vehicle Inanities, Insanities and Incoherence

December 23, 2021

By Craig J. Cantoni

The only green in the new Rivian truck is if it comes in that color.

For Americans in the upper percentiles of income, education, social awareness, and environmental awareness, electric vehicles (EVs) have become the latest status symbol, virtue signal, and silver bullet (green bullet?) for reducing global warming. This suggests that they might be just as susceptible to misleading advertising, emotionalism, and political manipulation as their fellow Americans in the lower percentiles—just as I have been snookered too many times in my life.

It’s not as easy to snooker me on environmental issues, however, because I once headed an influential environment group and dealt with the associated political game-playing, the media’s attention deficit disorder, and the public’s cognitive dissonance.

An example of dissonance is a new electric pickup truck made by Rivian, a company that has no vehicles in production but is already swamped with orders and is worth more than the entire planet, which is an exaggeration but not by much.

Speaking of the planet, vehicles like the Rivian truck will do more harm than good to the planet.

The car guy at the Wall Street Journal recently drove a test model of the truck. According to his review, the behemoth he tested has a target price of $76,865 and weighs “around” 7,000 lbs., which is about as much as the mammoth Ford Super Duty 250. Yet it has a payload of only 1,764 lbs., versus the Ford’s 4,500 lbs. This is a truck for show, not work, just as Land Rovers are for going to Whole Foods to buy gluten-free spaghetti, not for traversing the Serengeti.

The truck’s four electric motors generate 835 horsepower and rocket the 3.5 tons of aluminum, steel, plastic, glass and massive tires from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds. If someone on your block ends up owning one, expect the lights in the neighborhood to dim when its large batteries are recharged at night.

Of course, the truck’s carbon footprint will depend on what kind of power source it is plugged into; that is, whether the source is fossil fuels, windmills, solar panels, nuclear energy, or hydropower. Each of these has costs and benefits, but when all tradeoffs are considered, mini nuclear plants are the best option for producing the energy required by an industrial society and by poor countries that will need massive amounts of energy to industrialize to escape poverty.

The size of the truck’s carbon footprint goes beyond the energy expended to recharge its batteries. It includes the fossil fuels used to mine the natural resources that go into its parts, the fossil fuels used to manufacture those parts, and the fossil fuels used to assemble those parts. The bigger the vehicle, the more energy used to produce it.

Having worked in the mining and manufacturing industries, I’m familiar with the huge amounts of energy that the industries consume, as well as other impacts on the environment. Take tires, or more specifically, take one of the main ingredients in tires: carbon black. Resembling furnace soot, carbon black is produced by the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products. If you were to tour a carbon black plant, as I have, you’d come out looking like a coal miner, with the stuff even getting into your underwear.

Most carbon black plants are staffed by lower-percentile workers (a.k.a. deplorables) in the Texas panhandle and along the Gulf coast near Houston, far away from the Hamptons and other upper-percentile places—places where Rivian trucks with big tires will be parked someday in front of 15,000 square-foot houses owned by people who pretend they’re green.

Studies show that over their life expectancy, EVs will emit less carbon per miles driven than cars with internal combustion engines, with the actual reduction in carbon dependent on the power source used to recharge EVs batteries. However, it’s less clear that there are significant differences between the two in terms of the carbon emitted in their manufacturing and in the mining of necessary natural resources. EVs require fewer parts, because they lack the internal combustion engines, drive trains, radiators, water pumps, gas tanks, and fuel pumps of cars that run on gasoline; but the mining of lithium for their batteries takes a lot of energy and causes a lot of environmental harm.

There are also geopolitical issues with lithium, given that China controls something like 80% of its processing. Because demand for lithium has skyrocketed, prices of the material are up 240% for the year.

Another geopolitical issue is Canada’s complaint that the U.S. is subsidizing EVs in violation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, thus putting the Canadian auto industry at an unfair disadvantage. Canada’s complaint is in response to the EV tax credits in the Build Back Better legislation. EV buyers would get an $8,000 credit if the vehicle is made at a non-union U.S. plant, or $12,500 if made at a union plant. The credit drops to $500 if the vehicle’s battery isn’t made in the U.S.

Most of these political maneuvers and malinvestments would disappear if EV tax credits were eliminated and carbon taxes were instituted. Moreover, sales of land barges like the Rivian truck would fall, as would the hypocrisy of upper-percentile phonies.

Why California’s Move to Ban Gas-Powered Generators [and Lawn Equipment] Could Leave Californians in the Dark

December 21, 2021

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

“Excuse me,” says your landscaper. “The mower’s out of juice. Mind if I plug in?” You look from the immobile machine to your half-cut lawn. “Outlet’s over there,” you tell him. “But let’s knock $20 off your fee? What are we up to now, 25 cents a kilowatt-hour?”

Welcome to the future. Welcome to California.

The state, committed to net-zero emissions by 2045, is moving to ban sales of gas-powered landscaping equipment as early as 2024. This is not the first attempt. Politicians tried and failed to do the same in 2003. Since then, though, more than half of homeowners in the state have swapped out their consumer-grade equipment for “zero emission equipment” (ZEE), meaning, battery-powered weed whackers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and even lawn mowers.

Electric, Because It’s . . . Quiet?

Many make the switch because, although lower-powered and less reliable (do batteries ever die at the right time?), battery-powered equipment is less noisy. That’s what prompted Mayor Stewart Welch of Mountain Brook, Alabama to begin switching his town’s tools over to electric. The bellow of leaf blowers disturbed his tennis game with a friend who, as chance would have it, had previously complained about the town’s noisy equipment. The city has spent $18,000 over the last year outfitting its public works crew with electric trimmers, blowers, and more.

According to Stanley Black & Decker, sales of the company’s electric yard equipment jumped 75 percent between 2015 and 2020. But, although lots of people are making the switch of their own accord, they’re not doing it fast enough, according to California’s legislative assembly.

Stop and Recharge

The biggest holdouts are those who do landscaping for a living, and for good reason. I searched Husqavarna’s site high and low for battery run time info for its 550iBTX, which one landscaper reviewed as “The best electric blower on the market.” For $469? Not bad, I thought. After lots of web searching about the battery, I gave up and contacted support. Turns out, it does not come with one. The lowest-priced option will cost landscapers an extra $300 and lasts between thirty and sixty minutes. The one the associate recommended, though, costs $969 (yes, more than double the cost of the blower) and “lasts up to 3.5 hours,” he told me. That’s if you run it in “normal” mode, which is half the power of Husqavarna’s $459 gas blower; boost mode saps the power faster and is about 33 percent less powerful than the gas blower.

Some landscapers make electric work, and not just those whose equipment is paid for by taxpayers, as in Mountain Brook. Chris Regis, owner of Florida-based lawn care company Suntek, is able to charge customers between 10 and 20 percent more for all-electric lawn care. He says, “There are people who don’t care and say, ‘I just don’t want the noise.’” All power to them. That’s exactly how free markets work.

Given the numbers above, though, it would take a lot of lawns to make up one’s initial investment with only a 10 or 20 percent upcharge. But Regis’s investment is far greater. He has outfitted the company’s vans with solar panels for recharging batteries on the go—each van costing about $100,000. Reflecting on how much longer the same work now takes him, Jimi Layne of Mountain Brook’s crew asked, “Are we looking at dollars and cents?”

‘Expensive and Unreliable, Please’

That’s an even more pertinent question in California, where energy prices are the highest in the continental US. (23.11 cents per kilowatt-hour, as of June 2021). Gas is more expensive there, too, in large part because of penalizing policies, but researchers predict electricity prices can only rise in the golden state, thanks to a host of factors. Prices are high, in part, because the size of the state increases transmission costs, as do wildfires on mismanaged public lands that have knocked out critical infrastructure, requiring replacement.

But the biggest contributor to high prices is the state’s push to adopt wind and solar, which require big upfront investments but nonetheless necessitate a reliable backup for when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing.

This problem came to the fore in 2020 when, for two days, California’s three big energy companies instituted rolling blackouts across the state because the grid could not meet demand. It was a self-inflicted wound. Given the state’s environmental restrictions, many coal-fired power plants are being decommissioned, and thanks to irrational fears, they’re not being replaced with clean, reliable nuclear energy, either.

Instead, taxpayers are being forced to subsidize massive investments in “renewables,” and power companies make up much of the state’s inevitable shortfalls by buying energy from more reliable, fossil-fuel plants in neighboring states. Unfortunately for Californians, on August 14, 2020, when the sun set and solar farms went offline, these companies realized they had miscalculated how big that shortfall would be. Western states were in the grip of a heat wave, and as Californians reached for the AC dials, they lost power altogether.

A Deadly Mistake

Losing power is no minor inconvenience, particularly when you live in what is naturally a desert, and especially when it’s more than 100 degrees outside. It’s not just that people can’t charge their Teslas or their ZEE mowers. One 2020 study concluded that more than 5,500 Americans lose their lives due to extreme heat annually. Climate-related deaths are a key indicator of low climate resilience, the ability of a locale to deal with extreme temperatures and weather. And, of course, climate resilience is directly dependent on plentiful, affordable, reliable energy.

But, increasingly, that is what California is doing away with in favor of expensive, unreliable energy. Unsurprisingly, the poor suffer the most. Research done in 2020 shows that many in Los Angeles can’t afford air conditioners, and many who have them can’t afford to run them because electricity prices are so high. In fact, accounting for cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country, in large part because energy prices are so high. This, not in spite of the state’s adoption of “cheap” and “reliable” renewables, but because of it—because solar and wind are not cheap nor reliable and require a backup that is.

Cutting the Lifeline

Yet, with startling shortsightedness, the state assembly has sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that will effectively eliminate a go-to backup: gas-powered generators. The bill (AB-1346) lumps gas-powered generators in with the offending landscaping equipment and all other “small off-road engines,” referring to them as SOREs. It “encourages” the California Air Resources Board (the state’s own sort of EPA) to “adopt cost-effective and technologically feasible regulations to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new small off-road engines” and to consider “expected availability of zero-emission generators.”

Such generators do exist, but they are far more expensive, generate far less power, and most need to be recharged after just a few hours. Consider the GOAL ZERO YETI 3000X. It costs $3,400, and an additional $250 kit enables you to use it as a battery backup for your home. After all that, you can power a single refrigerator for less than 2.5 days, and that of course drops if you want to power, say, a few lightbulbs. By contrast, a Duromax XP10000HX can power your whole home—lights, appliances, and A/C system—continuously, running on either gasoline or propane, and it costs $1,400.

When the power went out last August, says Collin Blackwell of Eldorado Hills, California, “We went out and bought an $800 generator, so that way we could have the fridge powered up in the garage at least and be able to have food and everything in the house.” Mark Galloway of Cameron Park said he lives in a mountain community where losing power is fairly common. “You should have something, so having the backup generator and things like that—I think it’s on you to really take care of that,” he said. “It’s not like it’s something that you can’t plan for.”

But, if AB-1346 is signed into law, going out and buying an $800 generator will no longer be an option.

California legislators have not only cut ties with reality—failing to see that they’re heading for ever more blackouts—they also want to cut their citizens’ last lifeline to reliable power when these blackouts inevitably occur. California is committing energy suicide, and given that people rely on energy for just about everything, we shouldn’t be surprised by the toll this will take on human life.

COLUMN BY

Jon Hersey

Jon Hersey is managing editor of The Objective Standard, fellow and instructor at Objective Standard Institute, and Hazlitt fellow at Foundation for Economic Education.

Electric Cars vs. Gas Cars: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong?

December 21, 2021

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

What rings true intuitively isn’t always backed up by the numbers.

Joe Biden, the current front-runner of the Democratic 2020 field, promises the return of electric vehicle (EV) tax credits. The presidential candidate says that “a key barrier to further deployment of these greenhouse-gas reducing vehicles is the lack of charging stations and coordination across all levels of government.” Biden wants 500,000 new charging stations by the end of 2030, thereby incentivizing the use of electric cars beyond the advantages given when buying them.

As it stands—and depending on the state in which the car is bought and withholding the individual tax situation of the buyer—some people can save up to $10,000 on a new Tesla thanks to this tax incentive.

This policy introduced under the Obama administration had the intention of promoting electric vehicles in order to reduce carbon emissions, but what happened in the countries that eliminated the tax credits tells a different story. When Denmark got rid of its tax credits for electric vehicles, Tesla’s sales dropped by 94 percent. In Hong Kong, the company saw a decline of 95 percent as the city got rid of comparable tax advantages for those buying electric cars.

According to Biden, that is because the right user incentives aren’t there, notably charging stations. However, the countries involved have considerably more charging stations than the US: Denmark has 443 charging stations in its capital Copenhagen, as well as over 500 more across the rest of the country. As for Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reports:

The move [Tesla opening a super-charging car park in Hong Kong] followed the opening of Tesla’s first supercharger station – which can fully charge a Tesla in just 75 minutes […]. Currently there are 92 Tesla superchargers at 21 supercharger stations, with more than 400 public and shared charging points.

Clearly, the question of EV is not one of convenience but of price.

The Full Story

Norway has the largest fleet of electric vehicles in the world, making up 60 percent of all new sales this year. Reporting on the story, NPR writes that “10,732 [sold cars] were rated with zero emissions.”

The Institute of Transport Economics at the Norwegian Center for Transport Research lays out the ambition of carbon dioxide reduction through electric mobility.

For these vehicles a massive transition to electric engines can result in an up to a 97 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions and up to 76 per cent reduction in energy use per transport unit.

Adding to that, over 95 percent of Norway’s electricity comes from hydropower, of which 90 percent is publicly owned. That does not come without its downsides. As electricity consumption increases in Norway, the sector is unable to keep up. Last year, lack of rainfall and low wind speed exploded Norwegian electricity prices to the level of Germany (which is still in the process of phasing out nuclear energy). Norway then resorted to coal power, and as fossil fuel power imports exceeded energy export, Norway has actually seen an increase in CO2 emissions.

This is despite the fact that Norway’s climate and geography make it ideal for the production of renewables, which is not the case for every state in the US. However, electricity production is only half the story of EV.

The Batteries

Electric vehicle batteries need a multitude of resources to be manufactured. In the case of cobalt, the World Economic Forum has called out the extraction conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than half of the world’s cobalt comes from. Miners as young as seven years are suffering from chronic lung disease from exposure to cobalt dust. Not only does battery manufacturing account for 60 percent of the world’s cobalt use, but there are also no good solutions to replace it, which is something Elon Musk is struggling with.

This does not even address the extraction procedures, complications, ethical conditions, and emissions produced by the need for aluminum, manganese, nickel, graphite, and lithium carbonate.

With a European market estimated to reach a total of 1,200 gigawatt-hours per year, which is enough for 80 gigafactories with an average capacity of 15 gigawatt-hours per year, that need is set to increase exponentially.

The renowned German research institute IFO declared the eco-balance of diesel-powered vehicles to be superior to electric vehicles in a study released in April.

Petrol Cars

We know from the US Department of Energy that the average fuel economy of cars more than doubled from 1975 to 2018. Fuel economy is increasing while horsepower has also increased exponentially, making cars both cleaner and faster. In 2017, the average estimated real-world CO2 emission rate for all new vehicles fell by 3 grams per mile (g/mi) to 357 g/mi, the lowest level ever measured. View the Real-World Economy (MPG) and Real-World CO2 Emissions Chart (g/mi).

It doesn’t even matter which car brand you feel loyal to since all brands have made comparable improvements. View the Fuel Economy vs. CO2 Emissions Chart.

No wonder: As much as consumers might care about CO2 emissions, they are even more price-sensitive. Even those consumers who aren’t will eventually be swayed when they find out their car brand is costing them comparably excruciating amounts in fuel.

Electric cars won’t be the one-size-fits-all solution to our current transportation challenges—at least not for the foreseeable future. As both technologies have up-and downsides, we need to consider what innovation can realistically achieve before we make calls for bans or rushed replacements.

COLUMN BY

Bill Wirtz

Bill Wirtz is a Young Voices Advocate and a FEE Eugene S. Thorpe Fellow. His work has been featured in several outlets, including Newsweek, Rare, RealClear, CityAM, Le Monde and Le Figaro. He also works as a Policy Analyst for the Consumer Choice Center. Learn more about him at his website.

RELATED TWEET:

Last we heard we had only 12 years to extinction. Suddenly the goalposts have been moved to 50 years. No explanation for the change! Undoubtedly in 50 years they will be moved again. This is climate policy, bartender style! https://t.co/AyCJBTjOcE

— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) December 21, 2021

THE MEDIA BALANCED NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections

December 20, 2021

By John Droz, Jr.

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

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

Lots of really interesting material in this issue, but particularly note the red items below.

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

COVID-19 — Therapies:

*** Now we know why the establishment has always opposed early treatment

*** Dr. McCullough Describes ‘Sinister Ways’ Doctors Worldwide Are Restricted From Treating COVID Patients

*** Brazilian City Cuts Hospitalizations, Mortality In Half After Implementing Ivermectin To Everyone Pre-Vaccine

NY Times Reports that Merck COVID-19 Drug Can Mutate DNA, Cause Birth Defects and Male Infertility

Report Update: The FDA COVID-19 Drug Approval Process: Remdesivir vs Ivermectin

Ivermectin Fans Have a New Champion to Root for – 3CL Protease Inhibitor Tollovid

COVID-19 — Injections for Children:

*** 16,000 Physicians and Scientists Agree Kids Shouldn’t Get COVID Vaccine

*** Over 15,000 Physicians and Scientists Reach Consensus on Vaccinating Children and Natural Immunity

Dr. Robert Malone, Advises All Parents Strongly Against Vaccinating Children with COVID Injections

Israeli Public Emergency Council Position Paper: COVID-19 Vaccine for Children

COVID-19 — Injections vs Acquired Immunity:

*** 137 Research Studies Affirm Naturally Acquired Immunity to COVID-19: Documented, Linked, and Quoted

*** Rep Jordan Urges CDC To Do A Natural Immunity/Vaccine Study

Study: Acquired immunity is superior to injection immunity (also here)

Study: Vaccinated people have 600% higher risk of COVID-19 infection compared to those with natural immunity

COVID-19 — Injections (Other):

*** Pfizer COVID-19 Inoculations: “More Harm Than Good”

*** Japan Places Warning on COVID ‘Vaccines’

CDC now recommends avoiding Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine

160,000 Adverse Reactions from Early Pfizer COVID Vaccine Rollout

90% of all “COVID” deaths since August occurred in fully vaccinated

Study: Increased risk for COVID-19 breakthrough infection in fully vaccinated patients with substance use disorders

Study: COVID-19 vaccines drop below zero efficacy on spread by about 200 days

Study: The Pfizer mRNA vaccine: pharmacokinetics and toxicity

Study: COVID vaccination and age-stratified all-cause mortality risk

Could Immune System Erosion be Connected to the Injection?

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi – The COVID vaccines were designed to fail

COVID-19 — Injection Mandatess:

*** Powerful, short video about an acclaimed nurse being terminated

*** 37 Studies on Vaccine Efficacy that Raise Doubts on Vaccine Mandates

*** Forcing People Into COVID Vaccines Ignores Important Scientific Information

*** The Supreme Court’s New York State vax mandate ruling: A missed opportunity

Americans increasingly refuse to obey mandates in the name of fighting COVID

Defeat The Mandates DC March: January 23rd

NYS Bill Proposing Covid Concentration Camps

Mandatory vaccination spells the violent end of European liberalism

US Mega-Corporations Rush to Abandon Illegal Vax Mandates

As Many as 123,000 UK Healthcare Staff May Resign Rather Than Take the Jab

COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Fail the Jacobson Test

Supreme Court Declines Emergency Relief for NY Health Care Workers

Austrians age 14 and over who refuse Covid vaccines will be fined £1,000 per month

Military Members Seek New Injunction Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

UK Gov’t admits there are 23.5 Million unvaccinated people in England

COVID-19 — Models and Data:

*** The Science and Ethics Regarding the Risk Posed by Non-Vaccinated Individuals

*** CDC Admits That “Fully Vaccinated” Americans Are Super-Spreaders Carrying Deadly Variants And High Viral Loads

Virologist: Fully vaccinated are a major source of COVID virus transmission

Scotland: Vaccinated account for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 Deaths over the past 4 months

Some recent Pfizer Documents

COVID-19 — Omicron:

*** CDC: Most Reported US Omicron Cases Have been with the Fully Vaccinated

*** CDC Admits Omicron Spread Almost Entirely By The Vaccinated

*** Dr. Campbell: Optimize your immune system for Omicron!

Dr. Campbell: Omicron Predictions

Dr. Cambell: First Omicron Science

Danish Report on Omicron (see table 4)

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** Dr. Ben Carson: Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out

*** The Medical Profession Implodes

*** Dr. Meyer’s COVID-19 Preparation Toolkit

*** Robert Kennedy Jr.: US Intelligence Agencies and Military Were Involved With The Wuhan Lab Research

*** The pandemic will end when the digital monetary system is in place

Emails Expose How Dr Fauci And Mark Zuckerberg Colluded To Impose Control Over Pandemic Narrative

As International Trials Begin Against the Globalists Will a Return to Public Executions be Necessary?

Report: SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England

Efficacy, Effectiveness and Efficiency in the Health Care: The Need for an Agreement to Clarify its Meaning

‘Follow the Science’ a Potent Source of Authority for Politicians

Oregon Coming Through Exactly as Predicted — and It’s Bad for All of Us

Maskerade: Some Facts about Masks

Greed Energy Economics:

Industrial Wind Turbines Once Again are Up to Their Old Tricks

California To Slash Rooftop Solar Subsidies, Add New Fees

Wind & Solar Energy:

Green Energy Push Is Contributing To Forced Labor, Slavery

Offshore wind project go-ahead ‘will be disastrous’ for already-struggling seabirds

Nuclear Energy:

Is nuclear energy green? France and Germany lead opposing camps.

Fossil Fuel Energy:

*** Report: Fossil fuels for China, Decarbonization for everyone else

Biden’s New “Regressive” Methane Tax Will Raise Average American’s Gas Bill By 17%

Kawasaki to build industrial scale H2-capable gas turbines in Germany

California imported crude oil ranks as a major emissions generator

Global Coal Power Demand On Track For Record As Green Energy Transition Crumbles

Misc Energy:

Rush to green hydrogen masks mammoth plans to wood-chip the forests

Electric Batteries Are Not Emissions Free

Manmade Global Warming — Recent US Tornadoes:

Tornados Ravaged the South and Liberal America’s Reaction was Insanely Predictable

Short video: Kentucky Tornadoes, Climate Change and Pressure Systems

Meteorologist responds with data after Biden blames climate change for tornados

Tornado Tall Tales Being Spun Off Tragedy by Biden

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

*** Russia opposes linking climate and security issues at the UN (kudos to them!)

Does the CCP (China) control Extinction Rebellion?

Climate Dogma Killed Biden’s “Build Back Better”

Fossil fuels are not to blame for world’s climate issues

The East Slams the West’s Climate ‘Colonialism’

The Real Climate Crisis Isn’t What We’re Told; It’s Worse!

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** Heritage: Election Integrity Scorecard

*** The Big Truth: Election 2020 Really Was Rigged

Sinema pops Democrats’ filibuster trial balloon on voting rights

Senator Rubio Introduces Bill to Prohibit Foreign Citizens from Voting

New IRS Disclosures Confirm Flood of Private Money to Elections Offices from Zuckerberg Grantee

Legal Policy Focus: The Voting Rights Act

US Election — State Issues:

Whistleblower Claims 35,000 Votes Were Added To Democrat Totals In Pima County’s (Arizona) 2020 Election

PIMA County (Arizona) Election Integrity Hearing

US Politics and Socialism:

Whose fault is it that America is descending into Third World status?

Drifting Toward a Catastrophic American Defeat

The anti-American agenda of President Biden’s nominees

Other US Politics and Related:

Joe Manchin in talks with Republicans on filibuster reforms

How Government Bureaucracy and Media Wokeness Led to January 6

How the States Can Reform Health Care

DC Bar Restores Convicted FBI Russiagate Forger to ‘Good Standing’

Religion Related:

Anti-Christian hate crimes in Germany increased by nearly 150% in 2020

Education Related:

Three Ways to Teach Students How – Not What – to Think

Universities Have Forgotten Their Purpose: Pursuing the Contemplative Life

Harvard waives ACT, SAT admission requirement for graduating classes through 2030

The malicious, historically illiterate 1619 Project keeps rolling on

Science and Misc Matters:

*** Short video: The Government Just Took Away YOUR FREEDOM

All-Out Defense of “Chinese-Style Democracy” Exposes Cracks in Xi Jinping’s Armor

Video: Digital Book Burning and the Degradation of the Scientific Culture

Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…

If at any time you’d like to be added to (or taken off) the distribution of our popular, free Media Balance Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

How CO2 Supply Chain Mayhem Almost Caused a Meat Shortage in Britain

December 19, 2021

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

In recent months, many of us have faced empty shelves, long lines, and frustrating delays as supply chains have seized up around the country, and indeed the world. Some have argued that the government should step in to fix these issues, blaming the problems on “corporate greed” and “the free market”. But while it may be tempting to blame private companies for our current woes and see the government as the savior, the reality is not that simple. Indeed, far from being the solution, government intervention in the market is arguably the primary cause of these problems in the first place.

A good case study for this issue is Great Britain. Back in September, the nation’s supply chain issues got so bad that they almost had major disruptions in their food supply. The UK government has been intervening in an attempt to fix the problems in the short run, but the situation is still extremely precarious.

So who is responsible for these issues? Well, let’s follow the supply chain link-by-link and see if it can lead us to the culprit.

Link 1: Carbon Dioxide

The immediate problem that food producers are facing is a shortage of food-grade carbon dioxide (CO2). The meat industry is particularly affected by this shortage, since CO2 is used in many meat production processes. But aside from that, the gas also plays a key role in modified atmosphere packaging, which is used to prolong the shelf life of many food products. It’s also used in carbonated drinks (hence the name) like beer and soda, and in its solid form as dry ice it is used to keep fresh food cool during transportation.

Why is there a shortage of CO2? Well, most food-grade CO2 comes from fertilizer plants, because CO2 is a byproduct of the fertilizer manufacturing process. These plants, however, have been producing far less CO2 than normal. So to understand why there’s so little CO2, we need to investigate the fertilizer plants. This brings us to the next link in the chain.

Link 2: Fertilizer Plants

Two of the biggest fertilizer plants in the UK are owned by a company called CF Industries. Together, they normally produce about 60 percent of the UK’s food-grade CO2. However, these plants were actually shut down for a large part of September, which drastically reduced the UK’s CO2 production.

The reason they were shut down is because natural gas, an essential part of the fertilizer process, has been very expensive in recent months. With the price of this key input so high, it was actually uneconomical for the plants to operate, so they decided to shut down temporarily in hopes of restarting their operations once the price of natural gas came back down. But why is natural gas suddenly so expensive? This brings us to the third link in the chain.

Link 3: Natural Gas

First, to say that natural gas prices are high in Britain is really quite the understatement. According to Industry group Oil & Gas UK, wholesale prices for gas in September were up 250 percent since January, and had increased 70 percent since August. As one UK energy CEO remarked, this is “the most extreme energy market in decades.”

So what’s causing the high prices? A number of factors. High global demand has played a role, especially since roughly 60 percent of the UK’s natural gas supply is imported. Lower solar and wind output have also been factors, as well as outages at some nuclear stations. The cold winter in 2020 also resulted in depleted stocks (since people use natural gas to heat their homes), and several gas platforms in the North Sea have closed to perform maintenance that was paused because of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

But one of the biggest sources of price volatility is the dearth of natural gas storage facilities in the UK.

“The UK currently has very modest amounts of storage, less than 6% of annual demand.” writes Michael Bradshaw, a Professor of Global Energy at the University of Warwick. “In Germany, France, and Italy, storage covers about 20% of annual demand,” he continues for context. Another report noted that the UK has enough storage to last for about 7 days, whereas Germany and France have roughly 90 days of storage.

While storage is far from the only factor affecting natural gas prices, it certainly plays a significant role. But why does Britain have so little storage capacity? This brings us to the final link in the chain.

Link 4: Natural Gas Storage

One of the reasons for Britain’s low storage capacity is that a storage facility called Rough, which used to provide a significant percentage of the UKs natural gas storage, was decommissioned in 2017 as a result of age-related deterioration.

Industry leaders were concerned about the resulting lack of storage at the time, and have been warning about the issue ever since.

“Rough makes up an impressive 70% of the UK’s storage working gas volume,” Timera Energy noted back in 2017, when permanent closure was still being deliberated. “This can be contrasted with Rough’s contribution to the UK’s daily deliverability, at around 25%. And it is the deliverability that the UK market will miss most.”

They go on to explicitly discuss the likely impact of the closure on the price of natural gas. “The loss of deliverability should boost spot price volatility as it reduces the buffer of supply flexibility available to respond to swings in daily demand…The loss of working gas volume is likely to mean that supply shocks…have a sharper and more prolonged price impact.”

The need for more storage was reiterated in 2019 by another industry leader named InfraStrata Plc. “There is more demand in the market than we can satisfy,” said John Wood, the CEO of InfraStrata. “The market in the U.K. is sending out strong economic signals for additional gas storage capacity.”

So why wasn’t more storage built? Well, as it turns out, natural gas storage is taxed and regulated very heavily in the UK, much more so than other industries. Indeed, one of the largest gas storage operators in the country, called Storengy, explicitly called attention to these problems back in 2018, pointing out the “punitive” and “extortionate” tax levels that are applied to storage facilities as well as the numerous regulations that burden the industry.

As a result of these barriers, many potential storage projects have remained on the shelf, since they are prohibitively expensive in the current business environment. Thus, even though the demand is clearly there, the market has been unable to meet it, because taxes and regulations have severely crippled the industry.

This analysis is hardly exhaustive, of course. But at least with respect to the storage issue, it seems clear that government intervention in the market is the primary cause of the food supply chain disruptions.

Innumerable Antecedents

One of the interesting things about this story is how it highlights the plethora of people, items, and systems that work together to keep our grocery shelves full. First, we discovered that food producers rely on CO2. That led us to investigate fertilizer plants and the crazy natural gas market, and then from there we explored natural gas storage and learned about the many ways that government intervention has been crippling that industry. Of course, most people wouldn’t intuitively connect gas storage regulations with food availability, but the rippling unintended consequences of these policies are very real nonetheless.

In his famous essay “I, Pencil,” Leonard Read similarly draws attention to the “innumerable antecedents” of everyday items, such as the seemingly simple lead pencil.

“Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents,” Read wrote, speaking as the pencil. He goes on to discuss some of the many ancestors of the pencil, the people and things that went into producing it, and he points out how they all depend on one another. Indeed, you can’t mess with the trucking industry without impacting the production of pencils, just as you can’t mess with natural gas storage without impacting food supplies.

With that said, trucking and natural gas are not only ancestors of pencils and food. They are also ancestors of many other products, and this leads to an important insight. In reality, it’s actually somewhat misleading to speak of supply chains, as if the economy consisted of independent, linear processes. The economy is much more accurately characterized as one giant supply web, a multiplicity of interconnected processes that all depend on each other in various ways.

With this in mind, it quickly becomes apparent why interfering with the economy can be so dangerous. When the government breaks one part of the web, they aren’t just impacting one chain, they are creating countless unintended consequences, many of which are impossible to foresee.

If we’re lucky, those consequences will only lead to higher prices. If we’re not so lucky, empty grocery shelves await.

Addendum: Addressing the Problem

To address the looming crisis, the UK government ended up bailing out CF Industries, the company that owns the fertilizer plants. The deal, which was finalized on September 21, resulted in one of the two plants resuming operations, with the UK government providing “limited financial support,” which the Environment Secretary later clarified was “going to be into many millions, possibly the tens of millions [of euros].”

Since then, the government has brokered a deal between CF Industries and its CO2 buyers. Though the details are unclear, the government seems to be involved in setting the price of CO2, which would constitute even more intervention in the market.

But intervention is not the solution here. When governments intervene, they inevitably distort price signals, leading to increasingly inefficient outcomes. The real solution is for the government to stop causing the problem in the first place by removing the taxes and regulations that are standing in the way of the natural gas storage market.

Granted, it will take some time before the storage market can adjust, but even in the interim, the best way to address these problems is to let markets and prices do their thing.

COLUMN BY

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

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Link 1: Carbon Dioxide

Link 2: Fertilizer Plants

Link 3: Natural Gas

Link 4: Natural Gas Storage

Innumerable Antecedents

Addendum: Addressing the Problem

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