Climate alarmism provides an excuse for increased taxation of fossil fuel companies, which inevitably shift this cost burden to the consumer.

Sports coaches preach having “no memory.”  Meaning you have to forget your mistakes.

A football quarterback has to forget his last pass was an interception. Because he needs to think about his next pass.

Most, unfortunately, some of the least athletic people on the planet have taken this sports axiom to heart.  And unlike in sports – they demand we don’t remember either.

Behold the Democrats – and their “imminent doom” climate change predictions.

It is quite possible there has never been a more error-prone business – than the climate alarmism prediction business.

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions(Editor’s Note:  You need to read this.)

As the article demonstrates, Big Media has long been doing its part.  It has spent the last half-century jamming climate alarmism down our throats.  Trying to have us forget about the last failed prediction – by immediately pivoting to the next failed prediction.  No memory, remember?

A fun part of Big Media: They incessantly lie to us – and then poll us to see if the lies have taken.  And then they lie about the poll results – when their lies haven’t taken.

But Big Media doesn’t have to conduct the poll themselves.  They’ll happily lie in support of other Leftists polling and lying about it.

Progressive Pollster: 65 Percent of Likely Voters Would Back Polluters Tax

It’s a progressive pollster, so…

The progressive pollster and Big Media lyingly mash together two very different groups of respondents:

“A survey of likely voters found that 77 percent believe fossil fuel companies have “a lot” or “some” responsibility to address climate change, including 86 percent of Democratic respondents, 66 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of independents.

“When pollsters described a proposal to levy a $500 billion fee against major creators of emissions like Exxon, BP, Shell and Chevron, respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” supported such a measure, 65 percent to 25 percent. This included 83 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents in support.”

I have “a lot” of interest – and am “strongly” interested – in five million dollars.  I have “some” interest – and am “somewhat” interested – in five dollars.  Lumping these two groups together – is a lie.  The actual breakout – reveals the hugeness of the lie.

43% of all voters say energy companies have “a lot” of responsibility.  The rest (34%) say “some responsibility.”  So in fact a strong majority of voters agree that fossil fuel companies bear no – or a little – responsibility for the fake premise that is “climate change.” 

And the “a lot” alarmist number – is almost entirely made up Democrats.  They’re at 62% – compared to 39% of independents and 24% of Republicans.

So the entire presentation of this poll – is a lie.

Of course, Big Media does nothing in a vacuum.  Everything they do is in support of everything other Leftists-Democrats are doing.

And, of course, Leftists-Democrats never allow facts to get in the way of a good beating.  “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” – no matter how fake and un-serious the “crisis.”

This fake story on a fake poll on real taxes imposed in the name of fake “climate change” – follows immediately on the heels of Democrats proposing real taxes in the name of fake “climate change.”

Why should a half-century of climate alarmism being very, very wrong – get in the way of Democrats really taxing the crap out of us in the name of climate alarmism?  No memory, remember?

Senate Democrats to Introduce Measure Taxing Major Polluters:

“Senate Democrats are set to unveil legislation that would tax energy companies responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions to pay for the costs of climate disasters.”

Never mind the fact that NONE of the predicted climate disasters over fifty-plus years – have ever actually happened.

Never mind the fact that taxing real energy producers – means they will have to pass along the taxes to us…the real energy users.

So we will pay a lot more for energy – and the government will get a lot more of our money.

Which does nothing for the climate. 

But does a lot for the government.

Of course, they’re hoping we’ll forget all of this.

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This article was published on September 15, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Heartland Institute.

Editors’ Note: Progressives and the Green Industrial Complex are hell-bent on using your money (state subsidies) to force the public into “green energy” and particularly, electric cars. Instead of what occurred earlier at the turn of the 20th century when gasoline, kerosene, steam, and electric cars competed openly and fairly with each other, our elites want to cram their choices down our throats. But like every other decision, one must be aware of the trade-offs. One trade-off is that EV vehicles are not better for the environment. Another is the electrical grid is not prepared to support the widespread use of EVs. It appears that conversion to EVs favors China in many important ways. And now two other related issues:  The problem of intense and toxic fires and much higher overall insurance cost. Before you get bribed into using an EV, perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the negative trade-offs. Could it be the central planners don’t know any more about the environment than they did about Afghanistan, crime, inflation, and Covid? When the market makes a choice, trade-offs cannot be ignored as they play a key role in cost and consumer choice. Consumers voluntarily make choices and producers voluntarily comply with their wishes. What works can be maintained and that which does not work fails in the voluntary marketplace. This allowance for failure guides the market to correct and cost-effective conclusions. When the government makes the choice, it is one size fits all, backed by state subsidies and coercion. And as for failure, if recent history proves anything, it is that our elites that run our institutions are never held accountable for anything they do.

After a Volkswagen Golf (not an electric vehicle) caught fire in the underground car park in Eku-Platz, Germany, the city’s civil engineering department closed the car park for five months. Damages (all eventually paid for by insurance) amounted to 195,000 euros. As a condition for the reopening, however, the insurance company forbade the use of the underground garage by hybrid and electric vehicles.

There were several reasons. Lithium batteries can only be cooled with extinguishing water and continue to burn for several days. The car park’s ceiling is not high enough to pull out burning vehicles with heavy equipment. This means that every other vehicle in the car park, as well as the entire building, remains at risk of a fire or explosion that could have disastrous results. Yet as the fire protection report admitted, nobody had even considered the magnitude of the fire risk from lithium-ion batteries prior to the Golf fire.

The fire risk from electric vehicles is not just a German parking garage problem. Nearly a year ago the National Transportation Safety Board acknowledged that at least half of the nation’s fire departments are not equipped to put out battery-powered car (EV) fires. The NTSB too agreed that lithium-ion batteries burn with extraordinary ferocity; battery fires also release emissions of extremely toxic fluoride gas.

Last November Reuters reported that worldwide acceptance of EVs, despite government mandates and subsidies, is being threatened by a global string of fires from overheated batteries. The article included a list of recalls by major auto manufacturers and what their investigations found.

Hyundai recalled at least 74,000 Kona EVs, after 16 of them caught fire over a 2-year period, to upgrade their battery management systems. Of the first 23,000, Hyundai found 800 vehicles with battery defects requiring replacement of modules said the have a significant risk of an electrical short circuit.

Ford Motor Co. recalled 20,500 European Kuga plug-in hybrid EVs and suspended sales. Ford offered to replace the entire battery pack, identifying the root cause as a battery cell contamination in its supplier’s production process. The setback delayed the U.S. debut of the Escape SUV.

BMW’s recall was limited to about 4,500 plug-in hybrid EVs, admitting that debris may have entered the battery cells during production, which could lead to short-circuiting and a “thermal event.” BMW also recallefficd 26,000 other plug-in hybrids over potential battery problems.

In response to a petition filed pursuant to a class action lawsuit, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration recently probed potential defects in certain Tesla vehicles that could result in non-crash fires. The plaintiffs claim that Tesla limited the battery range of older vehicles via a software update to avoid a costly recall to fix alleged defective batteries.

Capping the list is General Motors, which initially recalled nearly 70,000 Chevy Bolt EVs over fire risks, with the fix limiting battery charges (and thus mileage) to 90 percent capacity. The NHTSA has also investigated why three Bolts caught fire while parked. GM says the problem was traced to a torn anode tab and a folded separator, both of which could occur at the same time and create conditions that could lead to a short in affected cells.

In August, GM announced a second recall of 73,000 more Bolt EVs (every Bolt ever made) to replace new battery modules; the fix could cost GM $1.8 billion. Moreover, GM has decided to idle Bolt production “due to the impact of the global chip shortage.” Meanwhile, GM has recommended that Bolt owners park their vehicles outside and limit battery charges to 90 percent or lower, at least until replacement batteries are ready and service appointments are scheduled.

The problem with this mandate is obvious. Those whose in-home EV charging stations are in their garages cannot exactly park their EVs outside and charge the vehicle at the same time. The same goes for EV chargers now located in underground garages. Moreover, the fixes typically reduce battery charging by at least 10 percent, further shortening the vehicle’s range.

One supposes that some EV owners could just move their charging stations outside, but who leaves a vehicle out in winter cold or summer heat when they have a perfectly good garage? Yet who wants to risk burning down the house to avoid scraping the windshield or putting their tushes on a hot car seat?

Earlier this year Value Penguin reported that auto insurance for EVs is on average about 23 percent more expensive than for an equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. This is despite the fact that the average EV is driven far fewer miles a year than ICE vehicles. In California, home to 40 percent of U.S. EVs, drivers average just 5,000 miles per year behind the EV’s steering wheel. For many, the EV is the second (or third) car. But will insurance companies also raise rates for EV owners with in-garage charging stations?

In the Golden State, embattled Governor Gavin Newsom a year ago issued an executive order that would ban the sale of ICE vehicles buy 2035, with enforcement left to state agencies. One problem with this mandate is that the California Air Resources Board may be able to implement rulemaking to ban ICE sales, but CARB has no authority over vehicle registration and no authority to set registration fees to make ICE vehicles more expensive.

President Joe Biden, too, has talked tough about a nationwide mandate for EVs, but he, too, may be in deep trouble with voters over a number of other issues. As more and more people learn that their EVs pose a fire risk by manufacturers telling them to park their EVs outside, it seems quite possible that voters will soon sour on any politician who mandates inconvenient outdoor charging to avoid the risk of setting their homes on fire.

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This article was published on September 10, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

Growing numbers of companies, banks, universities and investment houses are adopting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards and disclosure rules. They’re pressured to do so by activists, legislators and regulators. Many expect to get rich via taxpayer-subsidized “renewable” energy projects.

Nearly all hope to “greenwash” their reputations, by claiming they’ll “make the world a better place,” by reducing fossil fuel emissions, and thus planetary temperatures and extreme weather events.

They recently got a boost from the US House of Representatives. It voted 215-214 party-line to pass a bill supporting Securities and Exchange Commission plans to impose new ESG rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose “climate risks” allegedly caused by oil, gas and coal production and use. Some think the SEC might now give greater scrutiny to ESG climate claims and misconduct, but that seems unlikely.

Regardless, woke organizations need to wake up to climate, renewable energy and ESG realities.

The ever-more-hysterical climate and weather claims have been roundly debunked by Dr. Roy Spencer, Gregory Wrightstone, Marc Morano, Steven Koonin and others. But what’s truly outrageous about ESG is the way it studiously ignores the massive, widespread damage inflicted by pseudo-renewable energy.

Wind and sunlight certainly are clean, renewable and sustainable. But harnessing their highly dispersed, unpredictable, weather-dependent energy to meet humanity’s huge and growing energy needs absolutely is not. That requires lands and raw materials that are anything but renewable – using fuels and processes that are absolutely not clean, green, ecological or sustainable. Because they fail to recognize this, ESG programs are dishonest, even fraudulent – and must be reformed, investigated or scrapped.

Wind, solar and battery land and raw material requirements are astronomical. Onshore wind turbines require nine times more metals and minerals per megawatt than a modern combined-cycle gas power plant. One onshore 3-MW turbine foundation needs 600 cubic yards (1,500 tons) of concrete, plus rebar.

Offshore wind requires 14 times more materials per MW. Just the 2,100 850-foot-tall offshore turbines (30,000 megawatts) that President Biden wants to install by 2030 would require 110,000 tons of copper, plus millions of tons of steel, aluminum, fiberglass, cobalt, rare earth metals and other materials.

At an average of 0.44% copper in ore deposits worldwide, the copper alone would require mining and processing 25 million tons of ore, after removing 40 million tons of overburden to reach the ore bodies!

Add in materials for solar panels, more onshore and offshore wind turbines, backup battery systems, electric vehicles, transmission lines, and all-electric home heating and cooking systems – to run the entire USA, Europe and world – and the “green energy transformation” would require hundreds of billions of tons of metals, minerals and plastics, trillions of tons of ores, trillions of tons of overburden, and thousands of mines, processing plants and factories. Nearly all these operations employ fossil fuels.

America’s laws and attitudes make mining in the United States nearly impossible, even to support ESG-certified “green” energy facilities. That means most mining and processing will be done in Africa, Asia and Latin America, increasingly by Chinese companies. The manufacturing is done increasingly in China, which is why that country is building more coal-fired power plants every month.

Pseudo-clean-energy activities utilize hazardous chemicals and release toxic pollutants. They require vast volumes of water, often in the world’s most water-deprived regions. They cause acid mine drainage, create mountains of waste rock, and often result in vast “lakes” of toxic chemicals from refining the ores. Most are conducted under almost nonexistent pollution control, mined-land reclamation, endangered species, workplace safety, child and slave labor, and fair wage rules.

Cobalt mining already involves 40,000 African children, as young as four! Many Chinese solar panels are made with Uighur forced labor. ESG “green” aspirations would multiply this slavery many times over.

These travesties occur overseas – out of sight and out of mind – letting ESG activists and profiteers make incessant false claims that fossil fuel replacement energy is clean and virtuous. But when wind, solar and battery facilities are installed, adverse consequences will reverberate across the United States.

Hundreds of millions of acres of scenic, wildlife habitat and coastal areas would be impacted; millions of birds, bats, tortoises and other wildlife displaced, maimed and killed. And when their short productive lives are finished, billions of turbine blades, solar panels and batteries will be sent to gigantic landfills, because they cannot be recycled; their toxic metals and chemicals could leach out into soils, streams and groundwater. The same will happen in Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

Even on windy days, Mr. Biden’s 2,100 monstrous offshore turbines won’t meet New York State peak summertime electricity needs. Meeting just US coastal city needs would require tens of thousands of turbines. Dredge-and-fill operations associated with installing them would smother mollusks and other benthic species. Vibration noises would harm whale and porpoise navigation and communication. Their mere presence would create major safety issues for aircraft and fishing, naval and commercial vessels.

A single industrial solar facility near Fredericksburg, Virginia required clearcutting thousands of acres of forest habitat. Dominion Energy is planning solar facilities on Virginia acreage totaling one-fourth of Delaware. Solar installations proposed for the American Southwest would blanket millions of acres of desert habitats. Wind and solar operations would threaten or eradicate dozens of bird and other species that environmentalists have utilized for decades to stop drilling, fracking and pipeline projects.

Connecting far-flung wind, solar and battery installations to industrial centers and urban areas would require thousands of miles of new transmission lines – and still more steel, copper and concrete. Battery fires have already destroyed electric vehicles and homes. Imagine huge warehouses filled with thousands of battery modules erupting into enormous, uncontrollable conflagrations.

Biodiesel projects have already destroyed important orangutan habitats, and thousands of acres of US hardwood forest habitats have been turned into wood pellets for Britain’s Drax Power Plant.

Threatened, endangered, migratory and marine species must be protected – wherever mining, processing and manufacturing take place, and wherever “renewable” energy installations are contemplated. Human health impacts from infrasound and light flicker must guide decisions on how close to homes and businesses wind turbines may be installed.

Reformed ESG rules – call them Environment and Human Rights (EHR) principles – must require that all these issues are addressed for every wind, solar, battery, transmission and biofuel proposal.

People must know in advance how many turbines, panels, batteries and power lines are contemplated; how many tons of metals, minerals, concrete and plastics they will require; where those materials will come from; under what environmental, pollution, safety, wage and child labor standards. Companies and government agencies must certify that supply chains are free from child or slave labor.

Project-specific, comprehensive and cumulative US and global environmental studies must be conducted before any projects are approved, and must include regular, independent reviews of bird, bat, reptile, whale, porpoise and other wildlife displacements, injuries and deaths. Project studies must fully assess all environmental, human health, human rights and other impacts worldwide, and must not be fast-tracked.

These reality-based EHR principles will help ensure that any “green future” is founded on ethical standards that address all human and ecological consequences, and actually do make the world a better place. They can also help guide SEC investigations and prosecutions for ESG misconduct and fraud – and help spur much-needed mining in the United States, to reduce our reliance on China, Russia, Taliban Afghanistan and other adversarial countries for critical and strategic minerals.

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This article was published on September 6, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.