Environment Archives - Page 63 of 70

Biden Wrong On Fires and Ida

September 4, 2021

Hurricane Ida brought powerful wind and rain to Louisiana and drenched the Northeast.

Devastating fires have consumed California forests and burned people out of their homes.

Politicians and pressure groups, from President Biden on down, rushed to capitalize on people’s heart-rending losses, and exploit them to push the global warming narrative.

President Biden said,

“The past few days of Hurricane Ida and the unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey is yet another reminder these extreme storms and the climate crisis are here.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said,

“Global warming is upon us, and it’s going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and that’s why it’s so imperative that we pass the two bills.”

Embattled Governor Gary Newsom, speaking on the Caldor and Dixie fires, vowed to,

“continue to lead on climate change, and that is our resolve and commitment to take a backseat to no one in this country in terms of our commitment to radically change the way we produce and consume energy.”

There is a chorus of voices conflating our weather with climate in ways scientific data does not support.

Hurricane Ida strengthened over a warm Gulf of Mexico. Yet there is no trend that shows the Gulf warming in a meaningful way. This is U.S. government data. Could any number of wind turbines, solar panels, or electric vehicles have meaningfully altered this temperature data, or for that matter Hurricane Ida?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE NOAA GULF OF MEXICO TEMPERATURE CHART

Similarly, California rainfall always varies greatly from year to year. Here, for example, is the precipitation data for San Diego. Rainfall is low this year, yet not as low as many other years, some over a century ago. Who truly believes that taxes, redistribution or energy mandates could have meaningfully brought more or less rain? Would that even be desirable if they could?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SAN DIEGO ANNUAL RAINFALL 1850-2020

When Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans flooded, not because of climate change, but because aging levies and pumps failed. We spent the last sixteen years improving the levies and pumps. This year they held. That’s what genuine “infrastructure” investment looks like.

CFACT stands with everyone who has suffered loss from fire, wind or flood. Count on our thoughts, prayers and action.

We must manage our forests better, harden the New York City Subways against storm surge and rain as required, and continue to ensure our noble first responders have the equipment and planning they need to protect us.

There has always been extreme weather and always will.

Exploiting the suffering caused by nature’s fury to push radical redistribution and climate policies is shameful.

COLUMN BY

Craig Rucker

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

Greenhouse Saturation Research Could Kill The “Climate Emergency”

September 4, 2021

The “climate emergency” appears to have died, far out on the scientific frontier. Word of this death has yet to reach the mainstream.

Professors William van Wijngaarden (Canada) and William Happer (USA) have published some extremely important research on the radiation saturation of the major greenhouse gases. Their first report is titled simply “Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules”. It makes use of a major breakthrough in radiation physics.

Until recently the estimates of greenhouse potency were based on approximation bands of absorbed radiation wavelengths. Now the authors have done line by line spectral analysis, looking at over 300,000 individual wavelengths within these bands.

It turns out that saturation occurs much sooner than previously thought. In particular the primary greenhouse gases, CO2 and H2O, turn out to be “extremely saturated” at present atmospheric concentrations.

These results strongly suggest that the dangerous multi-degree warming assumed by the climate emergency simply cannot occur. Is CO2 significantly impotent? This should now be a major research question.

The paper is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16465. Their second paper — Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases — is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf

The second paper extends the research to include methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. All three have important climate policy implications, including agricultural policy. Methane in particular has become the target of a climate policy witch hunt. Professor Happer has an illuminating video on this topic. See my introduction and the video here: https://clintel.org/agriculture-policy-is-a-climate-change-witch-hunt/.

I first wrote about this ground breaking research a year ago, see my article: https://www.cfact.org/2020/09/26/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming/. Since then I have done a bit of research on their research. There is almost nothing on greenhouse saturation in the scientific literature and that needs to change.

Aside: there is a huge literature on “CO2 saturation” but it is about the saturation of porous rock during deep well injection. This is a big problem with so-called carbon sequestration, where CO2 is removed from our emissions and (hopefully) stored underground.

There is also some confusion. As explained below, saturation is not an absolute, rather it comes in degrees. There is no such thing as complete saturation, so when a scientist says CO2 is saturated they mean a lot saturated, not completely saturated. This is important because I have found several articles where the author says skeptics claim CO2 is saturated and then points out that it is not completely saturated. This is just a straw man argument because skeptics who know the science never claim complete saturation.

CO2 Saturation explained: The surface emits a limited number of photons (or units of radiation) of the sort that atmospheric CO2 absorbs. In effect the molecules are competing for the available photons. So as the number of CO2 molecules increases the absorption per molecule goes down. More and more molecules are looking to absorb the same number of radiation photons.

The greenhouse warming is based on the absorption not on the number of molecules. Thus the warming potency of the CO2 does not rise nearly as fast as the number of molecules. This diminishing effect is called “saturation”.

The warming first drops off rapidly as the number of molecules increases. This means most of the warming occurs when the number of molecules is relatively small, far fewer than we have today. After that the warming changes very little as more and more molecules are added. That is where we are today, with a little over 400 ppm of CO2 molecules. The CO2 is extremely saturated. Even doubling the number of molecules to over 800 ppm would have relatively little warming effect.

That H2O is also extremely saturated is very important. Much of the amplified warming built into the emergency computer predictions is based on a strong positive water vapor feedback from the relatively modest CO2 induced warming. But as water vapor is already extremely saturated this strong feedback cannot occur, even if the number of water vapor molecules increases a lot.

More broadly, all of the scary IPCC warming projections are entirely based on these five gases creating a lot of future warming. None of the climate models include the high degree of saturation found by Professors van Wijngaarden and Happer. And according to these researchers, their pioneering results are confirmed by satellite measurements of radiation.

In short it looks like the IPCC climate modeling is simply obsolete. The models need to be redone to include all this saturation. And of course there is a lot more research to be done on greenhouse saturation itself.

But in the meantime it looks like the so-called climate emergency is dead. It has been killed by a big breakthrough in radiation physics. The greenhouse effect does not work the way the scary computer models have all assumed, instead it is dominated by saturation.

This is how science is supposed to work: hypotheses die as science advances.

*****

This article was published on August 31, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow.

Environmentalism as Religion: Unpacking the Congregation

September 4, 2021

Dramatic headlines and images showing a deteriorating environment exist to demand swift, decisive, and large-scale action. We saw this approach in the 1960s when the first made-for-TV environmental crises showed oil-drenched seabirds on the California Coast and more recently in depressing videos depicting starving polar bears. Dramatic imagery has become the norm when discussing environmental issues.

We also see trends in editorial writing, discussions among political groups, changing business practices, and increasingly scholarly claims that also use dramatic imagery. At face value, these trends could indicate that the public demands dramatic governmental action on environmental issues. Some scholars, however, see this as more than mere increased public demand for government intervention, and they highlight similarities between environmentalism and religious movements. For example, Laurence Siegal states:

In the decades since modern environmentalism began, the movement has taken on some of the characteristics of a religion: claims not backed by evidence, self-denying behavior to assert goodness, (and a) focus on the supposed end of times.

Scholars have tuned into the general public’s zealous interest in the environment and more importantly, emphasis on government action, to push forward their own ideological goals under the guise of scholarship. Whereas the ultimate goal of scholarship is to mitigate climate change and improve sustainability, the reality is instead corrupted by thinly veiled ideology masquerading as scholarship, which is sure to distort any useful policy recommendations.

This phenomenon is illustrated by a recent study making the rounds in Science Daily and The Climate News Network. The authors, Vogel et al., claim that the world must decrease energy use to 27 gigajoules (GJ) per person in order to keep average global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a recommendation included in the Paris Agreement. Our current reality illustrates the outlandish nature of this suggestion. We are a far cry from this goal both in 2012, the year chosen for this study, as well as in 2019, the most recent year for available data. Here is a snapshot of current per person energy consumption (GJ):

2012: 2019:
United States: 285.59 United States: 287.63
China: 84.56 China: 98.83
Canada: 385.67 Canada: 379.94
Denmark: 127.97 Denmark: 120.73
Germany: 165.10 Germany: 157.33
Russia: 201.26 Russia: 204.32
India: 19.84 India: 24.92

Using these data, the authors pair what they view to be excessive energy use with a failure to meet basic human needs worldwide. In their own argument, they acknowledge that among the 108 countries studied, only 29 reach sufficient need satisfaction levels. In each case where need satisfaction is met, the country uses at least double the 27 GJ/cap of sustainable energy use, thereby creating a conundrum both for those concerned about the environment and human well-being.

The authors, however, provide a solution arguing that their research shows a complete overhaul of “the current political-economic regime,” would allow countries to meet needs at sustainable energy levels. Some of their recommendations include: universal basic services, minimum and maximum income thresholds, and higher taxes on wealth and inheritance.

These policy recommendations are not supported by the research and directly contradict a body of literature that argues economic growth, not government redistribution, is our way forward. Vogel et al. argue against the necessity for economic growth and even go as far as to support degrowth policies on the grounds that their model finds no link between economic growth and maximizing human need satisfaction and minimizing energy use.

In short, their proposed solution would punish affluent countries and favor a collective misery in which any market driven environmental improvements are crushed under the promise of equality and sustainable energy use.

Conversely, Laurence Siegel in Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance and the 2020 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) argue that economic prosperity allows countries to invest in new technologies and policies that improve not only environmental health but also the well-being of the people. Thus, if we want to continue to improve our relationship with the environment and human progress, we should be more supportive of economic growth and the entrepreneurship that drives it.

If the above relationship between economic prosperity, environmental health, and human well-being is the case, how can these authors claim the opposite? The most likely conclusion is that the authors allow an ideological bias to drive their research, a claim that is supported by their normative descriptions of affluent countries as examples of planned obsolescence, overproduction, and overconsumption as well as the authors’ obvious demonization of profit-making.

As Vogel et al. demonstrates, environmental issues can be exploited by the drama and religious nature of the movement. Unfortunately, academics, such as Vogel et al., have learned to use these tools to stretch their limited findings into a full-blown rallying cry for their own preferred policies; in this case, socialism on a global scale.

Report: Gov. Lujan Grisham’s Car Gets Less Than 13 mpg, Well Below 52 mpg She Seeks For All State Vehicles

August 29, 2021

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham drives a car with an average fuel economy of less than 13 mpg, according to records obtained by Power the Future and first reported by The Federalist.

At the same time, Lujan Grisham committed the state in 2019 to new energy efficiency standards that included requiring new cars sold in the state beginning this year to emit an average 52 mpg, a goal that hasn’t been achieved.

“While not as bad as John Kerry’s private jet, Gov. Lujan Grisham’s actions surely deserve an honorable mention for the most green hypocrisy in the country,” Power the Future Communications Director Larry Behrens told The Center Square.

Power the Future is a nonprofit organization that advocates for energy workers in the U.S. The group filed an Inspection of Public Records Act request with the governor’s office to obtain the information on the fuel economy of the vehicle Lujan Grisham uses. The state data revealed her vehicle averaged 12.65 miles per gallon between July 2020 and June 2021.

“This Governor has overseen nation-leading unemployment, long breadlines, and adoption of the radical green agenda that is hurting New Mexico’s working families,” Behrens said. “At the same time, she’s getting less than 14 mpg to drive around and lecture the rest of us on the climate. Make no mistake, her eco-left allies will stay quiet about her gas-guzzling ways because they care more about political power than being honest.”

Lujan Grisham’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Fox News and The New York Post reported earlier this month that John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate czar, has traveled in his private jet at least 20 times this year, emitting 30 times the amount of carbon of an average car.

*****

This article was published on August 26, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

Afghanistan Climate Nonsense

August 27, 2021

Leave it to Team Climate to exploit the crisis in Afghanistan and get everything wrong.

Marc Morano featured on Climate Depot a bizarre headline from Newsweek which implied that the Taliban might not be so bad after all. This is because, apparently, the Taliban wants to curry good will with the world community by fighting climate change! Pay no attention to the bombings, beatings and beheadings!

Newsweek quotes Taliban official Abdul Qahar Balkhi saying,

“‘We believe the world has a unique opportunity of rapprochement and coming together to tackle the challenges not only facing us but the entire humanity,’ Balkhi added, ‘and these challenges ranging from world security and climate change need the collective efforts of all.’”

So there you have it … the Taliban are really just a bunch of conscientious woke liberals. Unbelievable.

We also posted another typically hard-hitting column from Joanne Nova who mockingly asks us to “wake up to the new reality that solar panels can stop the Taliban.” Be sure to check it out.

A suicide bomber just detonated a bomb at the Kabul airport. There are multiple explosions and gunfire. That’s what the reality of evil extremism looks like. This has ZERO to do with climate.

Let’s hope President Biden’s mind-boggling bungling of the situation in Afghanistan, coupled with the horrific acts by evil extremists in that troubled land, rip the blinders off all of us and focuses us on what real tragedy looks like and how to fight it going forward.

COLUMN BY

Craig Rucker

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

Biden Climate Change Policy a ‘House of Cards’

August 24, 2021

“It’s getting late early,” said that great 20th century philosopher, Yogi Berra.

For President Joseph Biden, this nugget from the New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher sticks like butterscotch as his policy blunders pile up and Americans increasingly feel their baleful effects. They include the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, menacing inflation, the human tidal wave over the open southern border, the new coronavirus outbreak, and his war on American energy.

These are a few of many examples that suggest his presidency may soon implode, before his first year concludes. By contrast, it took Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon until their third and fifth years, respectively, for their presidencies to collapse beyond recovery.

President Biden’s war on American-produced energy is galling and—dare I say—un-American. This is because of two recent administration actions that contradict his purported climate policy and confirm the blizzard of lies about the implications of climate change.

First, last May the president lifted U.S. sanctions on companies that were constructing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which expands the market for Russian fossil fuel energy. That same Russia is governed by Vladimir Putin who we’ve been told incessantly for years is the worst dictator alive – until Mr. Biden gave him this energy gift for no discernable return benefit.

Then there was the president’s national security advisor, a man named Jake Sullivan, who last week called on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase production and exports in order to lower gasoline prices. OPEC, he said, “should move faster to restore the global supply of gasoline … higher gasoline prices, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global [economic] recovery.” The same day, the president’s top economic advisor urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the gasoline market for any illegal conduct.

Clearly, President Biden and his administration are starting to panic about rapidly increasing gas prices and broader inflation. They are so worried, their entreaty for more oil exposes their climate policy as a gigantic fraud.

Google up “Biden existential threat” and the results go on interminably. The president habitually claims that climate change is the “existential threat of our time.” This is dogma in his administration and for many in Congress. But does Mr. Biden really believe? His gift to Russia and mendicancy toward OPEC suggest otherwise.

From day one of his presidency, Mr. Biden set forth to act on his claim of climate catastrophe by curbing domestic energy production in oil, gas and coal, starting with executive orders to cancel construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and stop new energy leases on federal lands. Another order last January committed the U.S. to a “whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis” and established “climate considerations as an essential element in U.S. foreign policy and national security.”

Except when it’s not.

The Biden actions on Nord Stream 2 and OPEC reveal these climate directives to be at best, rhetorical; at worst, a lie.

Seven months later, energy prices are skyrocketing and Americans are feeling the pinch. This is no accident or happenstance.

The 12-month period through July, overall price inflation increased 5.4 percent, the highest in 13 years, while energy prices surged nearly 24 percent, more than four times the general rate. The ripple effect of skyrocketing energy prices will reverberate throughout the economy with each passing month, with higher manufacturing costs, higher shipping costs and more.

With inflation rearing its ugly head, maybe the “existential threat” of climate change is not so existential and not even a threat, after all. The claptrap about a “zero-carbon economy” by the Biden team becomes just that with their public plea for more carbon-spewing crude oil from overseas.

As former President Jimmy Carter learned more than 40 years ago, the inflation genie is very hard to put back into the bottle quickly and Americans do not react well.

It is one thing for President Biden and his team of adherents to Tweet about climate change and issue executive orders. When these and other policies take hold and the inflationary effects occur (as I predicted), their demand for more foreign oil is further evidence of a house of cards that is climate policy.

Sometimes presidential difficulties result from events beyond their control. Jimmy Carter did not abet inflation and Donald Trump did not unleash the coronavirus, but the issues engulfed them and cost them both re-election.

By contrast, Richard Nixon’s problems from the Watergate scandal were self-inflicted. So it is with President Biden’s climate policies and much else afflicting the nation.

Joe Biden became a U.S. Senator when Mr. Nixon was still president and he surely recalls the hapless Carter presidency shortly thereafter. Before it is too late, President Biden should jettison this fruitless climate crusade – something he never truly embraced while a 36-year senator. Rather than beg OPEC for more oil, the president should immediately re-open American oil and gas production and restore our nation’s energy independence.

COLUMN BY

Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26. Website: https://www.petermurphylgs.com/

Biden Clueless On Much More Than Afghanistan

August 24, 2021

The horrible tragedy in Afghanistan revealed a Biden Administration divorced from reality.

President Biden and his people not only failed to validly assess the ramifications of their actions, they froze like deer in headlights and proved unable to adapt and respond as new information became available.

Afghanistan turned the Biden team into a bunch of fact-challenged “Baghdad Bobs.”

As the Taliban took control of town after town and were approaching Kabul, State Department spokesman Ned Price could not process what was happening. On Friday (the thirteenth) he told NPR “The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces have 300,000 fighters at their disposal, 300,000… In fact, President Biden’s budget request for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces going forward has $3.3 billion of support… If you look at it on paper, they once again have over 300,000 troops. They have an air force. They have special forces. They have heavy equipment. The Taliban has almost none of this. The Taliban is a force of some 70,000 to 80,000, less than a third of the size of what the Afghan government can muster.”

Three days later President Ashraf Ghani had fled and the Taliban controlled Kabul.

Ned Price spent the last few years as Director of Policy and Communications at National Security Action, a left-wing think tank focused “on advancing American global leadership and opposing the reckless policies of the Trump Administration.” Price was one of President Biden’s earliest appointments. The Biden Administration is filled with feckless bureaucrats like Price.

The Biden Administration did not understand Afghanistan. They failed to formulate a valid plan for withdrawal, but worse, once proven wrong, they were unable to reassess and respond. “On paper” Kabul remained secure.

We can learn a great deal from Biden’s Afghanistan debacle.

The Biden Administration smugly lectures us on scores of topics as if they possess great insight to which we all must yield.

They are almost always WRONG. Unfortunately, unlike Afghanistan, it usually takes far longer to learn just how wrong they are.

Climate change is “an existential threat” Biden tells us with a wag of his finger. The science is settled and not to be discussed. Maybe on paper or computer models, Mister President, reality however, continues to reveal the models to be too hot, and the weather to be natural.

We must all switch to electric vehicles President Biden tells us, “there is no turning back .”

It is the Biden Administration’s climate policies that are actually making America less secure. Last week Biden had the audacity to call on OPEC to pump more oil, while he does everything to strangle American-made energy production to make us more dependent on nations who hate us.

As Biden forces us to adopt more inefficient, intermittent solar and wind and short-range electric vehicles, it also forces greater reliance on China. China has a near-monopoly on the rare Earth minerals necessary to make renewables and EVs. With China embracing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, expect the Chinese government move quickly to exploit Afghanistan’s vast resources including lithium and oil.

Here’s a frightening reality. Biden’s military and foreign policy bureaucracy that failed so dramatically, is MORE ABLE than the people running his energy, environment, economic, immigration, criminal justice and the rest of American policy.

Americans must wake up to the reality that left-wing policies do not work across the board.

Wrecking our electric grid is a terrible mistake. So are the higher taxes, new entitlements and waste in Biden’s $3.5 trillion spendapalooza bill.

Biden’s bureaucrats and left-wing zealots are dead wrong across the board and must be stopped before they do further damage.

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

August 23, 2021

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

Note 1: Each Newsletter now has a link, so it’s easy to share on social media. We’re also hoping that the new Newsletter format makes it easier to read.

Note 2: Today I’m releasing our new Report: an in-depth scientific analysis of the Medical Establishment’s handling of the COVID-19 matter.

Note 3: For multiple reasons, we STRONGLY recommend that you read this Newsletter on your computer, not your phone!

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Therapies:

Ivermectin is effective for COVID-19 when used early. Analysis of 63 studies

Directories of Physicians who may prescribe Ivermectin: here and here.

NIH Revises Treatment Guidelines for Ivermectin for the Treatment of COVID-19

The NIH Site for assessing “Antiviral Therapies”

US Election:

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

Report confirms 2020 abuses and RNC deploys ‘year-round’ election integrity unit

Report: Yes, the 2020 election was stolen

Election Analysis by Seth Keshel

Elections Need Meaningful Audits

Report: Nearly 15 Million Mail Ballots Went Unaccounted for in 2020 Election

Watch Some Highlights From Lindell’s Cyber Symposium

US Election — Arizona:

Arizona AG Investigates Maricopa County After They Fail To Submit Crucial Info

Arizona Audit: Eyewitness Testimony of the Power of God at Work

US Election — Georgia:

Georgia Voting Official Makes Excuses For Residents Who Illegally Voted in 2020

Georgia ballots rejected by machines were later altered by election workers

Fulton County Registration Chief Ralph Jones resigns

Two Truths and a Lie: Georgia’s Election Integrity Law

US Election — Other State Issues:

Analysis on 5 PA Counties shows Enough Fraudulent Ballots to Flip the State to Trump

Texas Senate Passes Bill in Favor of Forensic Audit

US Politics and Socialism:

Short Video: Colorado Springs father denounces critical race theory

Biden’s Cloward-Piven Immigration Agenda

Woke Politics Destroyed the Marine Corps I Knew

Medicine Is Getting Major Injections of Woke Ideology

Short video: Some Black Leaders discuss the benefits of the NRA

The Climate Leadership Council ‘Suspends’ ExxonMobil

What happened to ‘Yes we can’? Politics of victimhood has replaced optimism

Other US Politics and Related:

Short video: 10 Dumb Ways Our Government Spent Your Money!

Archive: The Intellectual Yet Idiot

Our Decaying Civilization

One of Google’s Top Engineers Reveals Insider Info

FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol disturbance was coordinated

Religion Related:

How Cultural Marxists In Our Midst Are Grinding Christianity Down

Guided by Faith, Divinity Student Fought His ‘Anti-Racist’ Seminary, and Won

Education Related:

Progressivism Surges Through America’s Law Schools

The Fight over Critical Race Theory in Education: A Fight for Our National Survival

Science and Misc Matters:

An Innovative Solution to the Failures of Peer Review

Science Journal Demands “Hate Crime” Laws to Shield Scientists from Public Criticism

Scientific Misconduct by the US Nat’l Academy of Sciences: Dr. Edward Calabrese

Beware approval of marijuana dispensaries

Famous Einstein equation used to create matter from light for first time

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 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 the WiseEnergy.org website) 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.

Can Anyone Be Trusted About Global Warming?

August 22, 2021

Certainly not large numbers of greens, politicians, climate bureaucrats, economists, elites in business and Hollywood, and left/right reporters and commentators.

A few decades ago, I headed an influential environmental group in the competitive media centers of New York City and northern New Jersey. To establish trust with the press, the public, and politicians, my four guiding principles for the group were: 1) be reasonable, 2) be nonpartisan, 3) stick with facts, and 4) recommend practical cost-effective solutions.

The principles worked, judging by the resulting widespread bipartisan political support and the extensive positive media coverage, including a New Jersey daily honoring me on its Sunday front page as “Community Service Volunteer of the Year.”

Oh my, how times have changed. Now when it comes to global warming, much of the American media and Western media, in general, seem more interested in alarmism than reasonableness, nonpartisanship, facts, and practical, cost-effective solutions.

A glaring example is how every incidence of extreme weather is attributed to global warming. More on this momentarily.

Make no mistake: Global warming is a serious problem, it is largely caused by humans, it could be contributing to such extreme weather events as drought and wildfires, and it might reach a tipping point where it significantly changes weather patterns and ocean currents, resulting in some parts of the world becoming less livable for humans and unlivable for other species unable to adjust or migrate.

(Admittedly, warming has some benefits and is certainly better for life on the planet than another Little Ice Age, but to make that case without being misunderstood or attacked as an idiot is beyond the scope or time frame of this commentary.)

Rush Limbaugh used to say that man can’t change the climate. He also said that he was 99.8% right in his thinking. Well, he was wrong about climate change.

In today’s binary America, if one side is wrong, the other side must be right. Therefore, if conservative Limbaugh was wrong about climate change, the opposite end of the political spectrum must be right about it.

That simplistic binary view didn’t hold up in the recent coverage of the flooding in Germany and elsewhere, or the drought in the western U.S., or the wildfires in Greece, in Algeria, and in the western U.S. Reporters and featured experts on PBS, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC, DW News, and other non-conservative sources emphatically said that global warming was the cause of these events.

That was a supposition or hypothesis, not a proven fact. And it was said without mentioning other possible causes or putting recent disasters in historical context by comparing their incidence and severity with the frequency and severity of disasters in the past.

Take wildfires in the western U.S., where conflagrations (and drought) have been common events in history. An example was the Great Fire of 1910. Here are excerpts from the U.S. Forest Service’s account of the fire:

No official cause was ever listed for the 1910 fire. But 1910 was also the driest year in anyone’s memory. Snows melted early and the spring rains never came.

By August, normally swift-running rivers had slowed to a crawl and many streams had simply disappeared into bedrock. A bad electrical storm the night of July 15 touched off a large number of fires in North Idaho.

It was one of the largest forest fires in American history. Maybe even one of the largest forest fires ever anywhere in the world. No one knows for sure, but even now, it is hard to put into words what it did. For two terrifying days and nights [sic] – August 20 and 21, 1910 – the fire raged across three million acres of virgin timberland in northern Idaho and western Montana.

Many thought the world would end, and for 86 fire victims, it did. Most of what was destroyed fell to hurricane-force winds that turned the fire into a blowtorch. Re-constructing what happened, leads to an almost impossible conclusion: Most of the devastation occurred in a six-hour period.

By noon on the twenty-first, daylight was dark as far north as Saskatoon, Canada, as far south as Denver, and as far east as Watertown, New York. To the west, the sky was so filled with smoke, ships 500 miles at sea could not navigate by the stars. Smoke turned the sun an eerie copper color in Boston. Soot fell on the ice in Greenland.

There were scores of other devastating wildfires in the early 20^th century and in the 19^th century, during a time when there was far less population, development and carbon emissions than today. For example, a fire near Edmonton, Canada, burned an estimated five million acres in 1920.

Even Wisconsin, a state not associated with wildfires, had a devastating fire in the drought year of 1871. Known as the Peshtigo Fire, the flames swept through a 60-mile stretch north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and a 50-mile stretch on the Door Peninsula, claiming an estimated 1,200 – 1,500 lives along the way. Many of those who jumped into the Peshtigo River to escape the flames were reported to have been boiled to death.

The history of wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters is extensive and easy to peruse with a quick internet search. Yet many reporters don’t seem willing to conduct fifteen minutes of research so they can put today’s disasters in historical context or at least qualify their comments about global warming.

Are they lazy? Unoriginal? Not intellectually curious? Or do they have an agenda? Whatever the reason, the result is that they can’t be trusted, just as climate deniers on the right can’t be trusted.

Also not worthy of trust are those who are silent about the pros and cons of a carbon tax and nuclear power while insisting that global warming can be stopped solely by solar energy, windmills, carbon capture, electric vehicles, all-electric homes, regulations galore, legions of government apparatchiks to administer the red tape, and extensive mining of lithium and other rare earth minerals—or reliance on China for the raw materials, which increases the chances of a military conflict if the Chinese ever wanted to restrict the supply, given the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and China.

Especially untrustworthy are the hypocritical elites in politics, business, and Hollywood who virtue signal about global warming while owning multiple mansions and flying by private jet.

Joining them are economists who hold that prosperity and a high standard of living depend on never-ending growth in population and material gooIf you dare to suggest that there might be limits to human expansion, economists counter by citing the famous bet of 1980 between economist Julian Simon and biology professor Paul Ehrlich, author of the “Population Bomb.”

Then there are those who deny that humans are causing serious environmental damage in many ways other than global warming, including, for example, the overfishing of oceans, the use of nitrates in industrial-scale farming, the growing of corn for ethanol, the over-reliance on monoculture crops, and the rapid depletion of ancient aquifers. These deniers can’t be trusted either.

That doesn’t leave many people to trust.

*****
Editor’s Note: We don’t always agree with everything our contributors have to say. Heck, we have days when we have trouble agreeing with ourselves. But The Prickly Pear is a big tent of conservative ideas and there is a legitimate school of thought (Bjorn Lomborg is a good example) that thinks mankind is influencing the environment but does not buy into the argument that socialism is the answer. For example, if the sea is rising, build sea walls. That is what the Dutch have done for centuries. That is a proper response if it is a natural change or one induced by mankind. It was a specific and targeted solution, not an arrogant attempt to change the entire climate of the earth and in the process to change the way people live by force. In short, there are cost-effective and freedom-respecting ways of doing environmental policy and ways to engage free enterprise, even if you do believe in anthropomorphic global warming or other man-influenced issues. The point of the following article is that getting a consensus on these issues is difficult because there is a lack of trust.

Dogma Masquerading As Science Undermines Public Trust

August 16, 2021

“I believe in science, Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks“, Joe Biden tweeted during the 2020 election campaign.

Even by Biden standards, that was a deceitful remark. Not only did his opponent spearhead the unexpectedly efficient development of the Covid vaccine, which has been the cornerstone of pandemic suppression ever since, but the Biden administration has already done the most damage of any in memory by politicizing “the Science“, thus weakening its credibility.

Real science isn’t some facts approved by experts but a philosophical framework for acquiring and evaluating knowledge that originated in the Enlightenment. Science emphasizes reason, observation, and methodical analysis rather than loyalty to the teachings of authorities.

But “the science“ is also an institution, the mainstream scientific establishment. It has value as a keeper of standards and liaison to the masses.

Like all humans, scientists can become absorbed in self-interest and groupthink. Real science has recently been threatened by a return to dogma science, the veneration of experts and the belief that if a consensus of scientists believe something, that makes it true.

Science history shows the tragic consequences when dissent is disallowed. Galileo in the 16th century was censured and tormented for defying the teaching of Ptolemy that the sun was the center of the universe. Millions of humans suffered needlessly for millennia because medical practice was based on the ancient teachings of Galen, while new observations and innovations were prohibited.

In spite of all the technical achievements and enhanced prestige of science, the struggle between open inquiry versus dogma-as-science is still with us. For those with trouble distinguishing the two, here’s a tip. Real science welcomes dissent, considering it essential to the advancement of knowledge. Dogma science resents noncompliance and tries to eliminate it.

Yet scientific conformity, the enemy of progress, is once again achieving widespread approval. We’re told that 97% of all climate scientists believe in global warming, which is code for: human activity is hurtling us toward a climate catastrophe that can only be avoided by radical changes in human behavior and consumption.

Although the scientific community has closed ranks around this view, many points remain debatable. Some unafraid scientists question the reliability of the models and/or the accuracy of underlying data. Others also question the feasibility of decarbonization when the world’s major polluters show zero interest in compliance and citizens’ movements worldwide already resist even modest sacrifices to avoid the threatened calamity.

But the alarmists arguing the necessity of a dystopian world of deprivation and oppression aren’t brooking any second thoughts. Those who have them are branded “deniers“, morally equivalent to Holocaust deniers. They are silenced and fired and scorned.

Non-standard opinions are branded as “misinformation“ and banished. When over 95% of federal climate research funding goes to committed climate alarmists, working scientists get the message.

Much of the dysfunction is recent. British science writer Matt Ridley remembers how “20 or 30 years ago, you could study how the ice ages happened and discuss competing theories“ without fear of reprisal. No longer.

The science of coronavirus disease too has become so politically charged that rational discussion is no longer possible. Remember that not long ago, Biden and Harris, our two top “science followers“, vowed to refuse the Covid vaccination if Trump was involved.

Those who disagree with the government/consensus line on early-stage medical management, the value of lockdowns, the necessity of school closures, or the need for masks are abruptly canceled. The scientific community was so anxious to make us believe that there was no possibility the virus could have originated in a Chinese lab that the notion was designated as “misinformation” until dogged investigation revealed otherwise. Oops.

Today, social media, in collaboration with the government, perform the work that was once the mission of the Inquisition: identifying heretics and punishing them. The common man is in a quandary. With so many people in white coats lending their credibility to the political domain, how can you know the truth?

There are real-world consequences to this intellectual chicanery. The distrust engendered has contributed to public skepticism over needed technologies like genetically modified food, nuclear power, and – yes – vaccines.

Galileo could have warned us.

*****

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

The Carbon Footprint Con

August 12, 2021

Whoever came up with the unscientific, fallacious idea of your “carbon footprint”? It was a lie to begin with because he or she was talking about how much carbon dioxide you created. As CO2 is what you exhale every minute and without it plants would not survive, they shortened it to “carbon” to make you think soot or coal dust. Yuck!

We are told your “carbon footprint” measures the impact of your existence on this planet, your damage to mother Earth, without which somehow the world would remain pristine and wonderful. Then you came along and ruined it. What the big black bear, the deer, or the squirrel does in nature is irrelevant to these people He is a bear, deer, or squirrel and he and all else in nature’s realm belongs. But not you.

Just by simply being here, walking the earth, breathing, we are supposedly damaging the Earth. Not enough people pay attention to the late, great Julian Simon who saw humans as having a primarily positive impact on our planet.

The human negative is a new idea manufactured by people who truly hate people. It has put dangerous roadblocks in the way of progress in so many areas and disciplines.

Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere, currently making up about 420 parts per million. So, are we polluting the environment simply by breathing? The people who are pushing this perverse idea purposely use the term “carbon pollution”. They never say carbon dioxide pollution because then people would pick up on its obvious non-harmful life-supporting side effects.

You want pollution, go to a third-world nation where environmental damage dwarfs most anything you have seen or imagined. These are the places that do not use large amounts of energy and they have often destroyed their environmental surroundings as a result. They have short life spans, a dirty existence, disease, and all of the maladies that we saw many decades ago in the western world. That world has now elevated itself out of the carbohydrate era, into the hydrocarbon era.

Eco-activists say, “Fossil fuels are bad!” Okay, what will take the place of these inexpensive, widely available energy sources? Fact check: There aren’t any.

In the well-known teen movie, “Back to the Future,” George McFly approaches a young lady in a malt shop and says “I am your density.” He misspoke (meaning to say “destiny”), but he was right on both counts. When it comes to energy, density is everything. And energy density has created our current destiny—a amazing modern world inconceivable to people who lived only a century ago.

It’s been calculated that the sunlight that hits the earth in only one hour could provide enough energy to power the entire world for a year. That could be true, but how are we going to harness large quantities of that energy resource? The sun’s light is highly diffuse. It doesn’t do anything for us (in the form of electricity) unless we can concentrate it. We can do this, but not on a scale required to reliably power our electrical system. We can only concentrate relatively small amounts of sunlight making small amounts of electricity—and then, only when the sun is shining.

In the popular sitcom “Big Bang Theory” guest star Bob Newhart powers a clock with a potato. It really can be done, but so what? The lovable, but not so bright Penny asks, “Couldn’t that solve the world’s energy crisis?” Newhart responds in his classic deadpan delivery, “NO”. Renewable technologies (primarily wind and solar) can only capture small amounts of the diffuse energy available. These technologies are no match for highly dense, prepacked fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, and coal. Uranium, made productive through a nuclear power plant, is even more dense. Density makes all the difference. Consequently, wind and solar technologies that capture diffuse energy are far more expensive when compared to oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium.

The other problem with renewables is that they are intermittent. On average they only produce power only about 25 to 35 percent of the time. Because the electric grid demands a constant, stable flow of electrons, there must be a reliable energy source to produce those electrons when wind and solar are taking one of their many unpredictable breaks. Natural gas is the primary energy source that fills in the gaps for unreliable wind and solar. Without it, the modern electrical grid could not function.

In the Texas freeze in February of 2021, the grid came within 4 minutes of completely crashing. It was saved by shutting off power to just enough users in order to balance what goes in with what goes out of the electric system. Four and a half million homes and businesses lost power, many of them for days. Hundreds of people died as the result of rolling blackouts. However, during that time natural gas increased its output by an astounding 450 percent! It did so while there was record usage of natural gas for home heating. Think of the many thousands of people who would have died in that frozen week if natural gas had not come to the rescue.

Unfortunately, many states (most notably Texas and California) have significantly increased the amount of unreliable wind and solar while not growing reliable baseload power sources—nuclear, coal, and natural gas. As a result, these states will be experiencing many more temporary blackouts in the years to come. The electric grid simply cannot function consistently with high levels of unreliable electricity generation that is not backed up by reliable sources.

We can best describe wind and solar as “supplemental electricity technologies”. Baseload power runs the grid and wind and solar are free riders. Natural gas is used to balance the system when wind and solar are not available. Keeping that backup power on standby raises the cost of electricity. The author of this article coined this as an electrical engineering rule of thumb with his writing partner Terigi Ciccone, the author of The Hitchhikers Journey Through Climate Change. The bottom line is that no wind or solar installation has ever displaced a conventional power plant.

Mark Mathis, in his documentary film “Fractured”, shows Germany’s effort to replace conventional power with wind, some of it offshore. This has been done throughout Europe and Australia, but they are all now backing off as electric prices have tripled. They bought the big lie that they could generate massive amounts of electricity with wind and solar power. But what they have purchased is much more expensive and less reliable electric grids. This is where the fraud of our dangerous carbon footprints are getting us.

NOTE: Portions of this article have been excerpted from the film FRACTURED with the permission of the producer and narrator Mark Mathis. It is simply the best 90 minutes one could spend to understand everything that is important about our energy resources. It is available at ClearEnergyAlliance.com.

*****

This article was published on August 3, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

AWED: The Media Balanced Newsletter on Energy, Science and the Environment

August 9, 2021

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

Note 1: Each issue now has a link, so it’s simple to share on social media. We’re also hoping that the new Newsletter format makes it easier to read.

Note 2: Our ten election integrity reports are at: Election-Integrity.info.

Please pass Election-Integrity.info onto your social media contacts…

Note 3: For multiple reasons, we STRONGLY recommend that you read this Newsletter on your computer, not your phone!

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Special Reports:

Short superior video: A clear counter-argument to getting the “vaccine”

Excellent: COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Really Work as Hoped

Very worthwhile: Plague Rats

Our Report: How the Medical Establishment Dropped the Ball re COVID-19

COVID-19 — Therapies:

Ivermectin is effective for COVID-19 when used early. Analysis of 61 studies

Double-blind study: Ivermectin reduces COVID-19’s duration and infectiousness

COVID: 90% of patients treated with new Israeli drug discharged in 5 days

COVID-19 — Vaccines:

COVID-19 Natural Immunity vs Vaccine Induced Immunity Guide

The Vaccine Causes The Virus To Be More Dangerous

COVID Outbreak On Carnival Cruise Despite ALL ABOARD Jabbed

CDC study shows 74% of people infected in MA Covid outbreak were fully vaccinated

Over 25% of COVID-19 cases in LA are fully vaccinated people

Are Vaccines Driving the Surge in New COVID Infections?

Poll: Most unvaccinated Americans believe vaccine riskier than virus

Kaiser Poll Shows It’s Not Republicans Who Are COVID Vaccine Resisters

Biden’s Vaccine Push: A Mandate with Destiny

Study: First postmortem study in a patient vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2

Document Reveals ‘Shocking’ Terms of Pfizer’s International Vaccine Agreements

Experts Warn of Increased Risks of Infertility, Death after COVID Vaccines

COVID-19 — Models and Data:

FDA Issues Recall for Defective COVID Tests Made by ‘World’s Largest Mfg’

Which masks protect against delta COVID-19 variant?

NYT: CDC Statistic is a Huge Exaggeration

Study finds unhealthy levels of carbon dioxide in kids wearing face masks

Johns Hopkins Study Found Zero COVID Deaths Among Healthy Kids

Startling Discovery Suggests 40% of US Wild Deer have had the Coronavirus

COVID-19 — Misc:

Tucker Carlson: This isn’t about the science, here’s proof

‘CDC Has Destroyed Their Credibility’

The COVID Lies: Who is Behind them and What They Want

How a Psychic Healer Convinced the Gov’t to Fund “Long Covid” Research

Why Did the WHO Alter Its Definition of “Herd Immunity?”

The coming Delta lockdown is designed to invoke nationwide protests…

China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows

Short video: Walkout Wednesday (Noon: August 11th)

The Nuremberg Code

Renewable Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:

Michigan denies permit for wind project over wildlife concerns

Renewables: Oh, the Waste!

Turbine noise goes on trial (in Australia)

Tesla big battery fire in Victoria under control after burning more than three days

Offshore Wind Turbine Noise Raises Concerns About Marine Life

Wind Energy:

Bradford (PA) says no to wind turbines

The Big Battery Myth: Why Battery Storage Can’t Save Intermittent Wind & Solar

‘I can see our industry disappearing’: US fishermen sound alarm at offshore wind

Offshore Wind Fight Shifts to NY Bight as Scallop Industry Calls for Changes

Sorry, But Those Wind and Solar Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

The Block Island wind project has largely shut down

North Dakota regulators order removal of wind turbine too close to residence

Solar Energy:

Major Report: Overview of Solar Energy Concerns

Behind The Rise Of U.S. Solar Power, A Mountain of Chinese Coal

Solar Framing Is A Problem No Matter How One Interprets It

TV Report: Home Solar Panel Pitfalls

True solar farmers sound alarm on ‘green energy’ panels

Nuclear Energy:

Short worthwhile video: The Green Atom

Company searching for ‘Holy Grail’ of energy

State, federal efforts “too late to save Exelon’s Illinois nuclear plants”

Fossil Fuel Energy:

Why Does Biden Want to Kill Our Oil and Gas?

If Coal Is Dead, Then Why Are Ships So Full Of It?

US DOE Drops $52.5 Million Green Hydrogen Bomb On Natural Gas

U.S. Interior secretary accused of defying federal judge’s oil lease ruling

Misc Energy:

Clean electricity standard would have ‘cataclysmic’ impact on state economies

RGGI is but the Classic “Solution in Search of a Problem”

Going Green Relies Heavily On Chinese Slave Labor

Germany’s Green Energy Shift Is More Fizzle Than Sizzle

The hydrogen economy is about to get weird

Energy CEO claims iron-air battery can “fully retire thermal assets”

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

Report debunking the IPCC

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality

Can we trust the climate scientists?

Bjorn Lomborg: The truth about extreme weather events

How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality

To Advance the Climate Agenda: Never Waste Bad Weather

Climate Change Doesn’t Cause All Disasters

The Greens threaten us with floods but fail to protect against them

IPCC’s Gold-Standard Temp Data: Last 7.25 Years World Has Been Cooling

Is the Earth Actually Getting Hotter?

Michael Mann’s Lawsuit Stumbles On

Study: Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person

Video: Claims carbon dioxide is destroying the planet are ‘antiscientific

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

Biden’s 30×30 Land Grab ’

Climate scientists prepare to clamp down on the world’s freedoms

Climate Scientist Warns ‘Next 20-30 Years Will Be Cold

Could Pacific NW Heat Wave, European Floods Have Been Caused by the Sun?

Earth’s interior is swallowing up more carbon than thought

Climate hyperbolists are finding the pandemic stole their thunder

CA Climate Initiative Support Drops Like Rock

Comments On Federal Scientific Integrity

China, India ignore UN deadline to update emissions targets in COP26 warning shot

Gratitude for CO2: It Continues to Feed the World

COP26 summit ‘too big’ to happen in person, warns climate change negotiator

ClimateClips.com: A collection of good short videos about climate

Short video: Floods, Heat Waves and an Ice Age

Video: Studying Sunspot Activity Cycles: Hindcasting and Forecasting

China rolls back climate policy, reopens closed coal mines as power demand surges

A climate test showing 70 % error in the calculated 2019 temperature

US Election:

Biden AG Threatens Prison Time for Anyone Organizing “Election Forensic Audits”

Gen. Flynn: 10 Indisputable Facts on the 2020 Election that Argue for Audits

10 Reasons to Question the Election

A.U.D.I.T. of Elections: Shock and Awe or Calm Before the Storm?

Evidence to be Presented to Citizens Grand Jury of Interstate Election Conspiracy

Justice Dept’s Guidance on Statutes Regarding Voting Methods and Audits

Majority vote ‘No’ on Democratic plan to federalize elections

HR4 – The Pelosi Power Grab Act

US Election — Arizona:

A.U.D.I.T. of Elections: Grassroots Pressure Begins to Pay Off

AZ Audit Update w AZ GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward, July 28, 2021

Maricopa: What happened to 443K excess ballots?

Senator Fann Explains Path to Decertification of 2020 Election Results

Arizona Senate liaison granted ‘full access’ to Maricopa audit

US Election — Other State Issues:

More votes counted than cast in Nevada 2020 General Election

Pulitzer Says He Has Funding for Kinematic Forensic Audit of Michigan

Trump Victory Margin in Michigan at 373,000 Votes

Zuckerberg-Funded Nonprofit Paid $11.8 Million to MI Dem Consulting Firms

PA County Declines Election Audit Without New Voting Machines

Texas Dems to huddle with Clintons, Abrams as they bid to regain momentum

US Politics and Socialism:

Nothing Is Ever As It Appears In China: Military Intimidation

The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us

GOP Reps Denied Entry to Prison Where Jan. 6 Prisoners Being Held

The Mayor: Police Protection for Me, not for Thee

Parents Defy “No National Anthem” at Softball Game

Why I Am Deleting All Content After 48 Hours

US Infrastructure Bill:

Just Say “NO” To This Corrupt Phony Infrastructure Bill!

Wharton School Analysis Destroys Budget Claim Underlying New Infrastructure Bill

Infrastructure Bill Contains Mileage Tax – Goal Is Make It Too Expensive To Drive

Other US Politics and Related:

Biden Follows Biles Example, and Quits Presidency to Focus on Mental Health

A Stark Report of Biden’s First Six Months in Office

A Conservative Plan to Replace the Progressive Welfare State in 2024

Report of Investigation into Allegations of Sexual Harassment of Gov Cuomo Racial Reckoning, Ignores Democratic Party Racism

Let’s not Force America’s Daughters to Register for the Draft

Religion Related:

Gender Ideology Run Amok

How Science Becomes Religion

Education Related:

How to Challenge a School Board in 3-5 Minutes

Academia’s hostility to intellectual diversity suffers a courtroom setback

Archive: Revolutionizing our K-12 Education System

Why Private Schools Have Gone Woke

Communism Overtakes Union-Controlled Government Schools

Science and Misc Matters:

The Tyranny of Consensus Thinking

3 near-term tech advances that could change the future

Archive: The Birth of Experimental Science

Does the Biden Administration Understand Inflation?

Strawman Arguments: What They Are and How to Counter Them

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 Newsletter, simply send me an email saying that.

Brnovich Files Petition Against Biden’s Undoing Of Trump-era Regulation

August 9, 2021

Attorney General Mark Brnovich is leading a coalition of attorneys general in filing a petition challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s “Delay Rule,” which postponed the Trump Administration’s Lead and Copper Rule Revisions (LCRR).

“While the Biden Administration talks a lot about preserving clean air and water for future generations, they have failed to ensure clean drinking water for our children now,” Brnovich said in a news release on Friday.

The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) said that the LCCR would have strengthened protections against lead and copper in drinking water. The news release read that lead exposure can permanently damage children’s brains, leading to developmental and behavioral issues.

The AGO said that in January 2021, the EPA finalized regulations that would have enacted stricter protections against lead under the Safe Water Drinking Act. When exceeded, the LCRR would have imposed a new “trigger level” that would have “require[d] public water systems to initiate actions to decrease their lead levels and take proactive steps to remove lead from the distribution system.” However, the Biden Administration delayed the effective date from March 15 to June 17, before the LCRR took effect, and then again to December 16. In addition, the EPA has not released a replacement for the LCRR, so a third delay is expected.

The AGO referenced the Flint Water Crisis beginning in 2014 to demonstrate the danger of lead in drinking water.

Brnovich and the attorneys general of Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, and Oklahoma argue that the “Delay Rule” is unlawful because they believe that it will result in “adverse health effects that exceed the reduced costs on water system operators,” and marks an “illegal attempt to kill the LCRR through serial delays, rather than following the necessary procedures for an outright repeal.”

Supporters of the rule say that the Trump-era LCCR exposed millions to toxic lead in drinking water.

“The EPA review of the wholly ineffective Lead and Copper rule is welcome, but we have a long way to go to carry out President Biden’s promise to pull 100 percent of the nation’s lead pipes out of the ground,” Erik D. Olson, Senior Strategic Director for Health with Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said. “Lead was taken out of gas and paint in the ‘70s; it’s long past time to get this notorious poison out of our water, starting with communities of color that are disproportionately exposed to lead.”

*****

This article was published on August 3, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

CFACT Exposes Climate Quislings at FreedomFest

August 8, 2021

There is a concerted effort underway by global warming campaigners to infiltrate the conservative and libertarian movements.

These alarmists in freedom’s clothing operate like the so-called “Lincoln Project.” They shamelessly parrot the Left and advance its agenda.

CFACT and the Heartland Institute took on two of them, the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) and C3, in a debate at FreedomFest in South Dakota.

CFACT’s Marc Morano floored ACC President Benji Backer when he said, “we have to go to the heart of this, and the heart of this is what Benji said, ‘there’s no debate of this among young people.’

Well, gee, what should we do then? I guess we’ll just agree and come up with our own ‘conservative’ solutions? No! There’s a reason young people are so indoctrinated into climate fear. It’s because the old people for 30 years have never shown concern for the climate. All of a sudden, the climate activists got real and said ‘let’s go after the young people, they’re more gullible.’ And that’s how they were able to convince a whole generation of young people that climate is a problem… My biggest concern is Benji sat beside Greta Thunberg at a Congressional hearing in 2019. He turned to Greta and thanked her for raising awareness of the climate issue for young people across the world. To me that was horrific. Greta Thunberg has done more to instill alarm in young people with scientific nonsense than any person in the world.”

You can hear the cheer this brought forth from the audience on the video we posted at YouTube.

Phony conservative / libertarian climate groups like ACC and C3 abandon sound science and pitch the Left’s propaganda, for instance falsely attributing natural, historically normal weather events to global warming.

Don’t be fooled by ACC, C3, or anyone else who tries to tell you the Left’s climate agenda is scientifically sound, or compatible with American values of individual freedom and limited government.

*****

This article was published on July 31, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

‘Biden’ Administration Surrenders to Germany on Russian Gas Pipeline

August 7, 2021

The Democrats are destroying us. Everyday a new fresh hell.

Biden Administration “Surrenders” to Germany on Russian Gas Pipeline

By Soeren Kern, August 4, 2021:

“The willingness of the administration to make decisions of this magnitude without consulting the countries most exposed will not be lost on other parts of the world. Jerusalem and Riyadh, for example, are no doubt already strategizing around the potential of facing a surprise similar to the one that Washington just delivered to Warsaw and Kyiv.” — Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, Foreign Policy, July 26, 2021.

“The lesson learned by Germany is that it can pursue its own inclinations of doing business with dictators regardless of principles and with no consequences from Washington. More dangerously, the lesson for Moscow and Beijing is that sanctions for international aggression will never be sustained for very long. The Biden administration has made the fragile international order even less secure.” — Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, Foreign Policy, July 26, 2021.

“The project creates conditions for Russia’s escalation of military aggression against Ukraine, as well as the continuation of a hybrid war against the EU and NATO…. This Russian pipeline threatens the national security not only of Ukraine, but also of all of Europe.” — Ukrainian Parliament, July 21, 2021.

“The U.S.-German deal is embarrassingly weak. It relies on a vague assurance that after Putin ramps up the blackmail enabled by the deal, Germany will take unspecified actions in response…. Overall, Biden handed Putin the biggest gift he’s received in years. He also signaled to Putin that when push comes to shove, the American president is weak and will bow to political pressure.” — U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Washington Examiner, July 22, 2021.

“Remarkably, Washington agreed to end its opposition to the project without any recognizable benefit in exchange: Merkel has neither promised increased engagement for NATO nor more clarity about China. The compromise between Biden and Merkel is not a compromise at all, but an American capitulation.” — Robin Alexander, Die Welt, July 21, 2021.

The Biden administration has reached an agreement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that allows for the completion of a controversial natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

The July 21 deal to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea, has angered the leaders of many countries in Eastern and Western Europe; they argue that it will effectively give Moscow a stranglehold over European gas supplies and open the continent to Russian blackmail.

Both the Obama and Trump administrations steadfastly opposed the pipeline on the grounds that, once completed, it would strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic and political influence over Europe.

The Trump administration was especially critical of the pipeline because it will funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.

The Biden administration’s abrupt reversal of long-standing bipartisan policy consensus has baffled observers from across the political aisle. Just one day before the Biden-Merkel deal was announced, State Department Spokesman Ned Price criticized the pipeline as a “Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russia’s influence over Europe’s energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki previously asserted that the Biden administration “continues to believe that Nord Stream 2 is a bad deal for Europe.”

The Biden administration has not explained why or how completion of the pipeline will promote American or European strategic interests. Geopolitical analysts on both sides of the Atlantic say that the pipeline deal will: 1) weaken American and strengthen Russian influence in Europe; 2) heighten divisions between the Eastern and Western European members of the European Union; 3) push some of the EU’s eastern periphery closer to China; 4) deprive Ukraine of the transit fees it now collects on gas pumped through an existing pipeline and thereby undermine Kiev’s struggle against Russian aggression; and 5) allow President Putin to strong-arm Germany and the European Union by turning off deliveries of natural gas whenever he wants.

The Biden-Merkel agreement will avert the resumption of sanctions that the U.S. Congress has mandated against Nord Stream 2 AG and its chief executive, Matthias Warnig, an ally of Putin. President Joe Biden waived those sanctions in May because, he said, they were “counter-productive” to U.S.-German relations. In exchange, Merkel, whose final term in office ends in September, offered only vague promises to protect Europe from potential Russian threats.

U.S. sanctions delayed completion of the 1,230-km (764-mile) pipeline by more than a year and added at least $1 billion to its cost. The €9.5 billion ($11.5 billion) project, which is 90% complete, was initially slated to become operational at the end of 2019, but was delayed after several key participants were threatened with U.S. sanctions and bailed out. As a result of the Biden-Merkel deal, Nord Stream 2 is now expected to be completed by the end of August 2021.

REACTIONS TO THE BIDEN-MERKEL DEAL

In an essay published by Foreign Policy, policy analysts Kiron Skinner and Russell Berman, wrote that by “surrendering” to Merkel on Nord Stream 2, Biden abandoned a bipartisan consensus, got nothing in return, and made the world less secure:

“Bipartisan opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was a cornerstone of the foreign policies of both the Obama and Trump administrations, an unambiguous response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s record of using gas deliveries as a weapon of coercion in Eastern Europe. The recent decision by the Biden administration to reverse the policy of its predecessors and to refrain from sanctioning participants in the pipeline project is nothing but a capitulation to pressure from Germany and a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The damage to American national interest will be profound….

“The willingness of the administration to make decisions of this magnitude without consulting the countries most exposed will not be lost on other parts of the world. Jerusalem and Riyadh, for example, are no doubt already strategizing around the potential of facing a surprise similar to the one that Washington just delivered to Warsaw and Kyiv….

“The lesson learned by Germany is that it can pursue its own inclinations of doing business with dictators regardless of principles and with no consequences from Washington. More dangerously, the lesson for Moscow and Beijing is that sanctions for international aggression will never be sustained for very long. The Biden administration has made the fragile international order even less secure.”

In a joint statement, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said that the Biden-Merkel deal “has created political, military and energy threats for Ukraine and Central Europe, while increasing Russia’s potential to destabilize the security situation in Europe, perpetuating divisions among NATO and European Union member states.”

The Ukrainian Parliament, in a two-page statement, said:

“Nord Stream 2 is a purely geopolitical project aimed at making Europe dependent on the Russian gas monopoly. Moscow is implementing this project with a view to exacerbating and strengthening discordances within the democratic and European communities. The Nord Stream 2 project is also a tool for projecting the military force of the Russian Federation against NATO countries in Russia’s priority, the Baltic Sea….

“The project creates conditions for Russia’s escalation of military aggression against Ukraine, as well as the continuation of a hybrid war against the EU and NATO. The commissioning of the pipeline will remove Ukraine’s important lever to contain Russia, making it vulnerable to the Kremlin’s anti-democratic and anti-reformist vision of Ukraine. This Russian pipeline threatens the national security not only of Ukraine, but also of all of Europe.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a fierce opponent of the pipeline, described the Biden-Merkel deal as “catastrophic” for U.S. strategic interests. In an opinion article published by the Washington Examiner, Cruz wrote:

“This decision is a total surrender to Putin. It is a multibillion-dollar gift that will keep on giving in perpetuity at the expense of the United States and our allies. It is a generational geopolitical mistake. Russian dictators, decades from now, will be reaping billions of dollars every year from President Joe Biden’s gift….

“The U.S.-German deal is embarrassingly weak. It relies on a vague assurance that after Putin ramps up the blackmail enabled by the deal, Germany will take unspecified actions in response. When asked for details of what such actions might be, the White House says it doesn’t want to specify because doing so would benefit Putin. Again, embarrassing.

“Overall, Biden handed Putin the biggest gift he’s received in years. He also signaled to Putin that when push comes to shove, the American president is weak and will bow to political pressure.”

European affairs columnist Wolfgang Münchau noted that the political cost of the U.S.-German deal on Nord Stream 2 will vastly exceed its commercial benefits:

“The Baltic States and Poland, as well as Ukraine, see the pipeline as a massive violation of their own security interests. The first consequence will be a strategic alliance between Poland and China. That has already started. China is the only security option left for Poland, as Russia and Germany are building a political axis that leaves Poland in the lurch — now with US support. As a sheer by-product, any attempt by the EU to forge a closer and common foreign security policy is doomed now….

“Biden and his foreign policy team believe, wrongly in my view, that they can co-opt Germany into their China strategy. They will discover that the candidate most likely to succeed Angela Merkel is even more of a mercantilist than she is. Armin Laschet stands in the tradition of German corporatism.”

Robin Alexander, columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt, noted:

“Remarkably, Washington agreed to end its opposition to the project without any recognizable benefit in exchange: Merkel has neither promised increased engagement for NATO nor more clarity about China. The compromise between Biden and Merkel is not a compromise at all, but an American capitulation.”

Veteran geopolitical analyst Andrew Michta warned that America’s capitulation on Nord Stream 2 will “redefine” Europe for years to come:

“The strategic myopia of the NS2 decision is disheartening, for it shows our inability to learn from Europe’s evolution over the past three decades. The stunning transformation of post-communist Europe after 1990 was possible not only because of the powerful appeal of democracy and markets, but above all because Russia was literally expelled from the region. It was that factor above all others that allowed for NATO and then EU enlargement to the East, thereby creating the conditions that transformed Central Europe from a hyperinflation-ridden economic basket case into the most rapidly growing part of the European Union. National security and state sovereignty were the sine qua non of the successful transformation of post-communist Central Europe. Furthermore, the emergence of Belarus and Ukraine alongside the Russian Federation offered the greatest opportunity to date for Russia itself to break out of the imperial cycle. So long as the sovereignty of Belarus and Ukraine were preserved, there would be no back-to-empire pathway for Moscow, with the Russian Federation having at least a shot at becoming a ‘normal’ nation-state….

“In light of the NS2 deal and what it signifies in geostrategic terms, Ukraine’s continued independence has been put further in question, while Belarus is no longer in a position to charter an even quasi-independent course of Russia, making a regional solution to the security equation in the region that favors NATO all but unattainable. And if Putin completes the process of re-assembling the Russian imperial core, his armor and missile installations will be right at NATO’s Eastern border.

“As one surveys Europe’s recent history, there are only a few policy decisions that in hindsight deserve to be called transformative, for they set in motion developments that would shape power relationships between states for years to come. We have not yet seen the full impact of the NS2 deal, but arguably the consequences of the US-German agreement will reverberate across Europe for years to come.”

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NORD STREAM 2

Nord Stream 2 is led by Russia’s Gazprom, with half of the funding provided by Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall, the Anglo-Dutch company Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s Engie.

Despite the multinational participation, the pipeline is essentially a German-Russian project promoted from its inception by Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which, even during the Cold War, viewed closer economic ties with Russia to defuse East-West tensions.

Germany’s former SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, a confidant of President Putin, has been Europe’s leading proponent of the pipeline. Schröder, who led Germany between 1998 and 2005, has been the Chairman of Shareholders’ Committee of Nord Stream since 2006. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil producer. He has used his connections in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to lobby for both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.

In 2017, when Nord Stream was suffering from several serious setbacks, the former SPD leader and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel revived the project, as did his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is now Germany’s president.

Germany’s current Social Democratic Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has criticized U.S. sanctions as foreign interference: “Decisions on European energy policy are made in Europe, not the USA. We fundamentally reject foreign interventions and sanctions with extraterritorial effects.”

Europe is, in fact, deeply divided over the Nord Stream project and Germany is in the minority position. Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to the EU, according to Eurostat. Just over 40% of EU imports of natural gas come from Russia, followed by Norway (at around 35%). Nord Stream 2, when combined with the existing Nord Stream 1, would concentrate 80% of the EU’s Russian-imported gas along that pipeline route.

Germany’s Nordic, Baltic and Eastern European neighbors have accused Berlin of ignoring their concerns that the pipeline is a threat to Europe’s energy security and that it will strengthen Gazprom’s already dominant position on the market.

In March 2016, the leaders of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, in a letter to the European Commission, warned that Nord Stream 2 would pose “risks for energy security in the region of central and eastern Europe” and generate “potentially destabilizing geopolitical consequences.”

A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

In December 2018, the European Parliament, by a vote of 433 to 105, condemned Nord Stream 2 as “a political project that poses a threat to European energy security.” It called for the project to be cancelled.

Nord Stream 2 should have been operational at the end of 2019, but the project was delayed after applications to lay pipes under Danish waters were left pending since April 2017. Nord Stream Chairman Gerhard Schroeder blamed U.S. political pressure on Denmark as the main reason for the delay in approving the permits. “Denmark is putting Europe’s energy security at risk,” he said.

After Denmark’s Social Democratic Party won the Danish general elections in June 2019, the new government removed the last major hurdle to complete the Russian-led project. In October 2019, the Danish Energy Agency approved a permit for Nord Stream to lay pipes in a 147-km section in the Danish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) southeast of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea.

In August 2020, after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union, Chancellor Merkel faced intense pressure to pull out of the pipeline project. Merkel said that the two issues should be “decoupled.” The Biden administration, apparently, agrees with Merkel on rewarding dictators and human rights violators with multibillion dollar business deals.

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Biden’s Baleful Border Betrayal

August 1, 2021

Is there anything the left won’t blame on its fantastical scapegoat, climate change? Don’t bet on it. Its latest dodge is blaming the border crisis, which it created, on the climate crisis, which it invented.

A Politico article is headlined, “It’s Not a Border Crisis. It’s a Climate Crisis.” That’s a convenient twofer. Never let an opportunity to blame a crisis on climate change go to waste. Well played.

But to the left, I guess the border catastrophe isn’t a crisis. How could you support open borders and think that the invasion by invitation is a crisis? How could America-resenting leftists regard the influx of millions of new Democrat voters a crisis? It would be like the Democrats being apoplectic over federal spending. Nope. Not gonna happen.

If only these migrants knew that leftist policies are on the way to turning this country into a socialist state—you know, the kind they’re escaping from.

But let’s quit playing games. This is very serious and getting more so every day. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that June border apprehension numbers reached a 21-year high, with more than 188,000 arrests and more than 1.1 million this year to date.

Even more troubling: This is not a seasonal spike, as Democrats have been saying. The numbers of crossings usually rise in the spring and then recede in the summer, but the numbers are still increasing. At this rate, we’ll break the 2006 record. President Joe Biden and his faithful party continue to deny, obfuscate, and deceive, but none of their rationalizations hold water—and they know it.

This is a crisis purely of their making; reversing former President Donald Trump’s border policies, emasculating Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and rolling out the red carpet for illegal immigrants is hardly going to deter attempted crossings. Indeed, we can trace these endless crossing spikes directly to these and Biden’s other wanton policies of scrapping the “Remain in Mexico” policy, ending border wall construction, and supporting the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Not that you would expect the left to be consistent, but it sure is a fair-weather opponent of COVID-19. Just as it never objected to maskless left-wing rioters or fleeing Texas Democrat lawmakers, it seems wholly indifferent to the hazards of COVID-19-infected migrants.

No, actually, those on the left are worse than indifferent. Here, they are COVID-19 enablers, given their plan to end Title 42, the law Trump invoked to refuse entry to immigrants with the virus.

This, despite knowing and even admitting that this action will cause a new influx of migrants and possibly result in the Department of Homeland Security having to process up to 1,200 family units a day. COVID-19 infection rates in emergency shelters for migrant youth are reportedly between 15% and 20%.

You don’t have to be a cynic to know that Democrats are pushing amnesty for reasons other than human compassion. And their methods are brazen and obscene. They are trying to sneak a “pathway to citizenship” into their reckless $3.5 trillion budget plan ostensibly to support families and generate job growth.

Never mind their audacity in pretending to be pro-jobs when their endless government handouts are keeping people from seeking employment and exacerbating the plight of businesses starved for workers. Never mind that amnesty will encourage even more migrants to stampede toward our border. But to include amnesty provisions in an infrastructure bill is insultingly deceitful.

Could an unintended consequence of Biden’s border disaster be a reconciliation between the Bushes and Trumps? Don’t be silly. Let’s not get carried away. But it is noteworthy that George P. Bush, Texas land commissioner and nephew of former President George W. Bush (no immigration hawk by anyone’s estimation), has sued the Biden administration for ending border wall construction in his state.

“Farmers and ranchers are long accustomed to illegal activity, but it’s reached a point where it’s not sustainable, and we need help from the federal government,” said Bush.

Well, what do you know. Isn’t it interesting, by the way, that in opposing the wall, Democrats claimed it was cruel and ineffective. How can it be cruel if it is ineffective? Why go to the trouble of tearing it down if it wasn’t working? Oh, that’s right. It was working.

Kudos to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his initiative to build a wall, and bravo to all those cruel people who donated $400,000 to the project in the first week. I wonder if they think it will be ineffective.

As the left and Democratic elected officials continue their scorched-earth assault on reasonable and sane public policies, hopefully more states and private individuals and entities will exercise self-help to combat this lunacy.

*****

This article was published on July 25, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Daily Signal.

CFACT Exposes Climate Quislings at Freedom Fest

July 31, 2021

The gloves were off at Freedom Fest in Rapid City, SD last week when CFACT and the Heartland Institute squared off against representatives of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) and the C3 Solutions organization in a climate change debate. At issue was how libertarians and conservatives should approach the climate change issue.

CFACT and Heartland have long opposed compromising with the Left on climate change. The two organizations oppose the ideas that the “science is settled” and “America needs to move forward” to aggressively tackle the climate “crisis.” ACC and C3, in contrast, believe that climate change is indeed a serious matter (and thus concede that the UN and Greens are correct on the science), but hope to promote solutions that are less extreme than a Green New Deal.

Throughout the discussion, neither side gave an inch. You can watch an excerpt of the debate here.

The debate began with James Taylor of the Heartland Institute delivering a litany of stats and data that debunked a host of climate claims dealing with temperature records, severe weather events such as hurricanes, drought, and other things. He was followed by Benji Backer of ACC who didn’t challenge his data, but instead focused on polls showing that young people, even conservatives and libertarians, believed the climate claims of those on the Left to be true. He then urged conservatives not to challenge the science, but rather to try and move young people into embracing “market-based” solutions instead of those proposed in the Green New Deal.

This lit a fuse under CFACT’s Morano. Morano took aim at the claim that there was a legitimate scientific consensus underpinning extreme climate claims, noting that “to cite these kind of climate authorities is kind of like saying ‘well if Fauci said it, or the World Health Organization said it, so therefore you can’t disagree’…this is the exact position of Google, Facebook and all that.”

Things got even more testy when Morano took aim at Backer’s premise that libertarians and conservatives should accept the fact that young people are not misinformed on the science.

“We have to go to the heart of this, and the heart of this is what Benji said, ‘there’s no debate of this among young people.’ Well gee, what should we do then? I guess we’ll just agree and come up with our own ‘conservative’ solutions? No! There’s a reason young people are so indoctrinated into climate fear. It’s because the old people for 30 years have never shown a concern for climate. All of a sudden, the climate activists got real and said ‘let’s go after the young people, they’re more gullible.’ And that’s how they were able to convince a whole generation of young people that climate is a problem.”

He even chided Backer for his praise of Greta Thunberg during a Congressional hearing.

“My biggest concern is Benji sat beside Greta Thunberg at a Congressional hearing in 2019. He turned to Greta and thanked her for raising awareness to the climate issue for young people across the world. To me that was horrific. Greta Thunberg has done more to instill alarm in young people with scientific nonsense than any person in the world.”

The audience erupted into hearty applause.

Backer shot back, defending his praise of Thunberg by saying: “I sat next to Greta Thunberg, instead of you, because you cherry-pick the science in a way that is very harmful to the people in this audience, and the people in America, who have been misled by you and James’ cherry-picking data through sources that are not real.”

Both James Taylor and Morano frequently cite NASA, UN IPCC and NOAA data to defend their positions.

After the debate, the discussion moved to a side event hosted by the Heartland Institute where James Taylor and John Hart were joined by CFACT president Craig Rucker to delve deeper into the issues that divide the two sides. In a much more conciliatory manner, the presenters each offered brief synopses of their positions and entertained numerous questions from an engaged audience.

Impossibly Inconsistent Climate Disaster Claims – an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Fantasy

July 30, 2021

Climate alarmists have a problem presenting a consistent narrative on the dangers supposed human-caused climate change poses.

Instead, they follow Lewis Carroll’s irrepressible and violent Red Queen down the climate change rabbit hole, as when in response to Alice’s statement that “one can’t believe impossible things,” she proudly proclaimed, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Replace the word “impossible” with “contradictory” and you’ll get my point. Over the past two decades, the mainstream media have regularly reported claims that human-caused climate change will bring on both the disappearance of snow and increased snowfall. In 2013, for example, The Daily Telegraph ran an article titled “Children Just Aren’t Going to Know What Snow Is” which was about a wild claim made by climate scientist Dr. David Viner in the year 2000. The blundering story has since been disappeared from The Independent, where it was originally published. In 2014, The New York Times ran an article titled “The End of Snow?” Each story claimed human-caused climate change would result in snow becoming a rare and possibly unheard-of event in the near future in places where snow has historically been common.

More recently, however, as we have documented at our Climate Realism website, climate scientists and their allies in the mainstream media have changed their story to explain multiple instances of record-setting cold and snowfall over the past decade. In the words of a Science Daily article, “Major northeastern U.S. snowstorms expected to continue with climate change.”

Climate change may contribute to making snowfall more common or less common, but it can’t do both. Importantly, hard data support neither the claim that climate change is causing a dearth of snow nor the claim it is causing extreme snowfall. Media hype to the contrary, there has been no significant trend in snowfall over the recent period of modest warming.

Moving on to other inglorious instances of oft-asserted contradictory climate change claims, in recent years the mainstream media have alternately claimed climate change will cause the water levels of the Great Lakes to rise and fall. Clearly, no contradiction there.

That’s not all. As duly reported by the unthinking media, experts have claimed climate change on and around the Great Lakes will cause both dangerously higher wind speeds and equally disruptive lower wind speeds.

Looking abroad, climate alarmists promote mutually exclusive disaster scenarios in India as being driven by climate change. Heartland Institute President James Taylor recently called out the media’s inconsistent statements about monsoon rains in South Asia. Taylor noted India Today recently claimed new research shows global warming will cause stronger Indian and South Asian monsoons and rainfall, which will wreak climate havoc in future decades. But in 2020, the Hindustan Times reported peer reviewed research demonstrated global warming will weaken monsoons and reduce monsoon rainfall, with disastrous effects.

In response to the contradictory claims, Taylor asked a fair question: “So, which is it? Does global warming strengthen monsoons and cause more rainfall, which we are told is bad? Or does global warming weaken monsoons and cause less rainfall, which we are told is bad?” Of course, another peer reviewed study found climate change has had almost no impact on monsoons.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of Wonderland fame exclaimed.

As award-winning meteorologist Anthony Watts pointed out recently, above- or below-average snowfall, monsoon rains, or rising or falling Great Lake levels or wind speeds may be indications of climate change, but only if a single, consistent direction of change is sustained over decades. If, instead, these patterns shift back and forth annually or every few years, that’s just normal weather.

Alarmists have to pick a unified narrative of disaster scenarios and stick with it. If data disprove the narrative, they must admit the theory of catastrophic human-caused global warming is wrong. As Watts said, “You can’t have it both ways.”

I’m weary of progressives desperately clinging to the theory of catastrophic climate change in the face of confounding data and contradictory predictions. I’m tired of their gross public displays of cognitive dissonance, twisting any unexpected weather event into further proof of climate change even when it is inconsistent with previous types of weather events they said climate change should cause or is causing.

Please, environmental socialists, move on to the next hobgoblin you will try to terrify the public within your continuing effort to expand the government’s, and by extension your own, power over peoples’ lives. I’m ready for a new mythical dragon to slay.

*****

This article was published on July 20, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from the Heartland Institute.

Biden’s 30×30 Land Grab

July 28, 2021

A little-noticed provision buried deep in President Biden’s January 27 executive order (EO), “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, Create Jobs, and Restore Scientific Integrity Across the Federal Government,” has emerged as one of the gravest threats facing ordinary Americans, at a time when such threats are legion.

The EO’s Sec. 219 sets the goal of “protecting” at least 30% of the nation’s land and water by 2030. Under “protection” means putting this land and water (mostly land) off limits to any productive use in perpetuity. To accomplish this goal, the federal government will have to buy up – through eminent domain or other pressures on landowners making them “willing sellers” of their property – millions of acres of private land.

Adding to the Federal Estate

In other words, to save the planet from what the Biden White House and the ruling class assures us is a “climate crisis,” we need to have the government gobble up more land and have it managed by bureaucrats in Washington. The federal government already owns about 27% (640 million acres) of the nation’s land, with the bulk administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and most of the rest taken up by the National Forest Service, National Park Service, and an assortment of wildlife refuges and military bases.

A short-sighted Congress – when was it never short-sighted? – replenished the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 2020, giving the feds an annual supply of cash with which it can socialize more private land. And in February, the Biden White House struck down a Trump-era rule giving local governments a say in federal land acquisitions within their jurisdictions.

Alarmed by what promises to be the biggest land grab in American history, governors from 15 states questioned whether the Biden administration has the legal authority for its 30 by 30 plan.

“[We] are not aware of any statutory or constitutional authority for the President, the U.S. Department of Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or any other federal agency to set aside 30 percent of all land and water in the United States,” the governors wrote in an open letter to Biden. “Nowhere in the laws of our nation is the authority delegated to the President or executive branch agencies to unilaterally change the policies governing land use in America.” The governors represent states stretching from Alaska and Idaho to Tennessee and Alabama.

The governors’ open letter follows a March 16 letter to Biden by 64 members of the Congressional Western Caucus, which underscored the special situation of western states, where 90% of federally-owned land is located.

“Western states will be disproportionately impacted by policies set in place to achieve the 30 by 30 goal, which we fear will impact revenues derived from jobs derived and jobs that depend on multiple-use public lands,” the letter states. “Our lands and our waters must remain open to activities that support our rural economies and help us achieve our agriculture, timber, recreation, energy, and mineral needs.”

The reference to the threat the 30 by 30 plan poses to predominantly rural jobs is key to understanding what the White House scheme is all about. Ultimately, 30 X 30 is about what writer Ron Arnold calls “rural cleansing.” Put enough regulatory pressure on natural-resource industries so that many are forced out of business, and you will also destroy the livelihoods of the people who make their living in those industries. Eventually, enough will leave and decamp for urban areas in search of work. This is how rural cleansing works, and the people behind 30 by 30 know it. Depopulated rural areas are exactly what they want.

And if out-and-out land acquisitions don’t do the trick, they have other tricks up their sleeve. By adding a few more carefully selected species to the Endangered Species List, land-use restrictions can be imposed on a species’ habitat that can cripple rural economies. The Biden administration is also preparing to bring back Obama’s Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule that will impose federal zoning on millions of acres of private land.

Ripple Effects

Nebraska Gov. Pete Rickets believes the 30 X 30 plan will leave economic devastation in its wake.

“Right now, 97% of Nebraska is privately owned, and if you wanted to set aside 30% of this in conservation, you would drive up land prices [and] make it more difficult for young people to get into production agriculture,” the Republican governor told a Daily Signal podcast (July 23). “You would certainly drive-up food prices [and] you’d drive up property taxes.”

COLUMN BY

Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

Top Global Energy Agency Calls for Phasing Out of All Gas-Powered Cars, Coal-Fired Plants

July 23, 2021

Fossil fuel use is a double-edged sword. Climate alarmists fixate on one edge and completely disregard the other.

A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) proposed a radical policy agenda last month:

Immediately end the approval of all new coal-fired power plants and oil and gas fields internationally.
Swiftly phase out all gasoline-powered vehicles.
Ban the sale of new oil and gas furnaces to heat buildings.

“That would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels — the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage,” says a recent New York Times article that discusses the IEA’s report.

And those were just a few of the extreme measures that the world’s leading energy agency said would be required to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Biden Administration’s “2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target” puts the United States in fairly close alignment with the IEA’s objectives. The White House’s target includes a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035 and a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050.

Our Fossil Fuel Economy

How radical is this agenda? Well, since the prices of some renewable energy sources have been falling rapidly relative to those of some fossil fuels, it is plausible that the global economy may shift somewhat away from fossil fuels on its own in the coming decades. But from the industrial revolution to the present day, fossil fuels have been absolutely central to global economic progress.

Enacting the IEA/Biden agenda would mean overturning the vast majority of our economy, roughly 84 percent of which still runs on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, as opposed to other energy sources such as wind and solar, which are far less reliable and applicable to a much narrower range of industrial uses.

As Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative, has written for the Brookings Institution, “The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century, before fossil fuels came into wide use. Human health and welfare have improved markedly, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in 1800 to almost 8 billion today. The fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy.”

But despite the central role of fossil fuels in humanity’s material wellbeing, the IEA and the Biden Administration believe that averting the most devastating effects of climate change will require public regulatory policy that shifts the economy almost entirely toward alternative energy sources.

Many experts believe that anthropogenic climate change is already responsible for intensified storms, heatwaves, droughts, and vector-borne diseases. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change earlier this year, it is likely that anthropogenic climate change has been responsible for about a third of human heat deaths since 1991. Such are the “catastrophic effects of climate change” expected by the IEA to worsen substantially over the next few decades, unless global civilization brings its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

But is there any way in which such colossal regulatory measures are likely to backfire? And how bad could such unintended consequences be? Could they be so bad as to exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the most catastrophic effects of climate change on human wellbeing?

Climate Danger Versus Climate Resilience

Reducing fossil fuel use may reduce the intensity of climate change, possibly including dangers such as intensified storms, droughts, and heat waves. But that’s not all it does. Using fewer fossil fuels also impacts how people are affected by those dangers: in other words, humanity’s level of “climate resilience.”

The exact definition of “climate resilience” is debated, but it typically includes adaptation to changing climate conditions, absorption of climate impact, and transformation of the environment using technological or scientific means. All of these resilience strategies are made possible by economic progress, including fossil fuel-led growth. With less access to abundant and reliable energy, civilization’s climate resilience would be substantially reduced.

The widespread availability of fossil fuels directly contributes trillions of dollars to the global economy each year, and indirectly contributes incalculably more by making countless other industries possible. This economic growth is continuously granting more and more communities access to better infrastructure, medicine, education, and other precious advantages against the dangers of an ever-changing environment. Fossil fuels, by allowing civilization to cheaply and reliably power its homes, vehicles, hospitals, factories, and other engines of human wellbeing, protect people from an ever-widening range of potential climate impacts.

The climate resilience side of the equation, despite being at least as significant as the climate danger side, is often ignored in the models of future climate impact. This is because, while it is difficult to model a changing climate, it is impossible to model the future of human ingenuity, which will be composed of decisions and insights that only the people of the future can possibly know.

How We’ve Done So Far

So which edge of the climate sword is sharper? Has the damage caused by climate change so far outweighed humanity’s progress building climate resilience?

According to research from the University of Oxford economist Max Roser and the University of Edinburgh geoscientist Hannah Ritchie, absolute global deaths from natural disasters have been going down almost every year between 1901 and 2018, even while the global population has exploded from roughly 1.6 billion to roughly 7.7 billion during that period.

This overall reduction in deaths by natural disaster, which accounts for floods, extreme weather, extreme temperature, earthquakes, and droughts, is similar to the consistent reduction in deaths by disease in recent decades (COVID-19 obviously overturned these disease data in 2020, but not in a way that’s directly relevant to climate change, since it is only vector-borne diseases that are directly exacerbated by climate change).

The data—which show climate-related deaths have been falling even while fossil fuel use has intensified climate change—suggest that so far climate danger has been no match for climate resilience in the battle over human wellbeing.

The Alarmist Assumption

The IEA, the Biden Administration, and others advocating for extreme near-term reductions in global fossil fuel use have one seldom-examined assumption at the foundation of their climate alarmism. This assumption is that despite climate resilience having consistently outpaced climate danger in the past, soon the tables will turn and climate danger will gain the upper hand.

It is widely believed that dangerous tipping points likely dwell in the future of environmental change. What is rarely factored in is that continued economic growth, facilitated in large part by fossil fuels, will likely continue to produce unpredictable technological and scientific breakthroughs, creating new forms of security and wellbeing, and at new scales.

The climate alarmists would have society sacrifice one of its most precious industries, and thus radically increase the price of electricity, food, housing, and countless other critical assets without which the global poor would be at the mercy of starvation and homelessness. These economic changes might sound weatherable to those of us who can afford frequent meals out and subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max all at the same time, but to the global poor, this is a matter of life and death.

As the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions.” History suggests that extremist energy agendas like the IEA’s and the Biden administration’s would lead us down such a road, making millions of poor people more vulnerable to climate threats in the name of mitigating those threats.

COLUMN BY

Saul Zimet

Saul Zimet is a Hazlitt Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and a graduate student in economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Therapies:

COVID-19 — Vaccines:

COVID-19 — Models and Data:

COVID-19 — Misc:

Greed Energy Economics:

Wind Energy:

Solar Energy:

Fossil Fuel Energy:

Misc Energy:

Manmade Global Warming — New IPCC Report:

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

US Election — HR4:

US Election:

US Election — Arizona:

US Election — Georgia:

US Election — Other State Issues:

US Politics and Socialism:

Other US Politics and Related:

Religion Related:

Education Related:

Science and Misc Matters:

— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —

COVID-19 — Special Reports:

COVID-19 — Therapies:

COVID-19 — Vaccines:

COVID-19 — Models and Data:

COVID-19 — Misc:

Renewable Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:

Wind Energy:

Solar Energy:

Nuclear Energy:

Fossil Fuel Energy:

Misc Energy:

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

US Election:

US Election — Arizona:

US Election — Other State Issues:

US Politics and Socialism:

US Infrastructure Bill:

Other US Politics and Related:

Religion Related:

Education Related:

Science and Misc Matters:

REACTIONS TO THE BIDEN-MERKEL DEAL

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NORD STREAM 2

Adding to the Federal Estate

Ripple Effects

Our Fossil Fuel Economy

Climate Danger Versus Climate Resilience

How We’ve Done So Far

The Alarmist Assumption

STAY INFORMED