RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/03/climate-change-on-trial/

On February 9, 2024, when a Washington DC jury found writers Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg guilty of defaming climate scientist Michael Mann (above) in articles and blogs about his work on climate change, the world’s reactions seemed to divide neatly into two distinct camps. 

Much the larger group that knew about the trial from its sparse and occasional coverage in the mainstream media could hardly be either surprised, let alone disturbed, that Steyn and Simberg had lost and received punitive damages for launching attacks on climate scientists and climate science with, as the New York Times reported, “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm”.

That morning’s AP media trailer for the trial’s climax, widely republished and copied, had been headlined as follows: “Jury to Decide on Climate Scientist Michael Mann’s Defamation Suit Over Comparison to Molester”. The story went on: “It’s been 12 years since a pair of conservative writers compared a prominent climate scientist to a convicted child molester for his depiction of global warming.” 

Scientist defamed as molester by conservatives, eh? That framing doesn’t quite do justice to both sides. Michael Mann is indeed a climate scientist of some reputation, and though Rand Simberg presented himself in court modestly as a simple researcher, Mark Steyn is a formidable commentator in leading newspapers throughout the Anglosphere on—inter alia—climate change, demography and popular culture. 

A smaller and more interested group was following the proceedings closely either in court or through the intensive internet coverage of news and commentary websites, including Steyn’s own website, but in particular Ann McElhinney’s and Phelim McAleer’s hour-long daily reconstruction of the trial with actors reading out court transcripts as a play—and an exciting one at that.

That group was amazed that the course of the trial they had been following (which certainly revealed lots of maliciousness, spite, ill-will and vengeance, not wholly or even mainly from the defendants) contrasted so markedly with its result. Instead of a verdict on defamation, they thought, the jury had delivered a public policy decision to protect climate science and scientists from criticism. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/22/grid-draining-electron-guzzlers-and-the-end-of-driving/

Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?

No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.

A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14. The front page article had the headline “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.” The gist is that various sources of new electricity demand are rapidly emerging, from data centers to EVs to AI. Demand for electricity is starting to rise, but wind and solar generators can’t be added to the grid fast enough to fulfill this demand. And thus utilities are starting to add large numbers of new natural gas plants.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/22/grid-draining-electron-guzzlers-and-the-end-of-driving/

In perfect Democratic Party form, the Biden administration has dropped another government burden on the private sector. Two days ago, the White House rolled out “the toughest-ever” automobile emissions standards. The objective, of course, is to force Americans to buy the cars that the ruling class wants them to drive. There’s a big problem here, though – the grid won’t be up to the task of keeping tens of millions of electric vehicles charged.

The headline from a Bloomberg story last week summed up the plan: “​​Biden Set to Crack Down on Auto Emissions to Accelerate EV Sales.”

Rules decreed by the Environmental Protection Agency are intended to “propel electric vehicle sales well beyond current levels,” says Bloomberg. “The EPA has projected that to meet proposed mandates, electric models would need to make up roughly two-thirds of car and light truck sales in 2032 — up from less than a tenth last year.”

This is no noble effort to prevent a climate catastrophe. Democrats, eco-activists and the thoroughly compromised media continually argue that we have to move to EVs to save the sky, but the federal rules and state mandates they propose and issue are part of a larger plan to drive Americans out of cars and into public transit, which is failing across the country.

There are a number of problems with the march to EV-topia. They’re not zero-emission vehicles, they’re an extravagant purchase, costly to repair, expensive to insure, hazardous to own, and they create a new class of hazmat problems.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-3-18-the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time-part-xxxii-sea-level-rise-edition

The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time is the fraud by which government functionaries alter data collected and previously reported in official data bases in order to support a narrative of impending catastrophic global warming. No other scientific fraud in world history comes close to this one in scope or significance. While prior frauds may have scored a crooked scientist some funding or maybe some temporary fame, this one drives trillions of dollars of worldwide government spending and seeks to transform the entire world economy. The prior 31 posts in this series are all collected for your reading enjoyment at this link. (They are in groups of six posts each, beginning with the most recent. After each six, you must go to the bottom and click the “NEXT” button to get the next six posts.)

Those prior 31 posts have all concerned alteration of one particular sort of data, namely temperature records. The posts document how, at station after station, previously-reported data have been altered to make earlier temperatures cooler and later ones warmer, and thus to show an enhanced warming trend (or in many cases to replace a cooling trend with a warming trend). The altered temperatures then form the basis for hockey-stick shaped charts of world temperatures, showing rapid recent warming, and for claims from NASA and NOAA and the media that the most recent year or month was the “warmest ever.”

But why should we really care that the earth’s atmosphere is getting a little warmer? The UN has supposedly set some kind of Maginot Line at a 1.5 deg C temperature increase from 20th century levels — an amount so small that you can barely feel it when it occurs each day. The 1.5 deg mark is just not that all that scary. So the bureaucrats and leftists need a Plan B to scare the bejeezus out of the people. Plan B is sea level rise.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/08/lesson-america-green-policies-crush-german-economy/

Germany’s gross domestic product has been falling since the third quarter of 2022, causing fears of the first 2-yearlong recession since the early 2000s. German farmers are openly protesting new climate regulations that would raise the price of diesel fuel, vital for tractors and farm machinery. This discontent is mirrored by the general public, which is opposed to higher energy costs that drag down the economy. Recent polls show a significant shift in public opinion that’s increasingly opposed to the coalition government.

Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate, where invariably one party secures a ruling majority, multiple German parties must form a coalition to reach the required 50%+1 majority threshold.

Currently, the Green Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Free Democratic Party comprise this coalition. The latest polls show all these parties polling far below their 2021 election results while the more right-leaning parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union and the Alternative for Germany, are surging in popularity.

The recent economic slowdown has resulted in widespread political discontent, and the core of the slowdown has been disastrous energy policy.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2024/03/unlike-warmists-numbers-dont-lie/

There is no ‘climate emergency’, just a man-made political weapon used to scare and indoctrinate children, pollute the minds of the ill-informed and gullible and allow politicians and aspiring social engineers to pursue their not-so-hidden agendas. A new study charting CO2 level and Sydney temperatures makes the case.

A new study, conducted by lead author Ian McNaughton, formerly senior scientist at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and John McRobert seeks to ascertain whether there is a meaningful relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures. The study, Temperature Measurements versus Population Growth & Carbon Dioxide Concentrations, completed in December 2023, examines the contentious claim, often made by climate change scientists, that the increase in temperatures of Planet Earth is determined by the increasing levels of carbon dioxide concentrations and other “green-house” gases.  

Controversy involving climate change continues to be widespread throughout the world.  There is no argument that the world’s climate is changing – always has, always will. The controversy centres on whether Carbon Dioxide (CO2) generated – actually recycled – by human activity is the cause of a more rapid change in climate that would not have occurred without the presence of humans, notably since  the Industrial Revolution commencing in the late 1700s.

For decades, the scientific debate about the threat of rising global temperatures from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has depended on estimation, the use of anomalies rather than actual and complex computer modelling of key variables.  The complexity of these calculations and reliability of the result are seen in the widely variable (and always above actual outcomes) predictive models.  The rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and rising surface temperatures as used by these calculations indicate a strong positive correlation, and modelling extrapolation of this relationship into the future shows alarming, exaggerated increases in global temperatures leading to widespread concern about ‘global warming’. Not unexpectedly, this has created a demand by the public for urgent action by governments to significantly reduce the concentration of atmospheric CO2 at a global level.

https://pjmedia.com/john-stossel/2024/03/06/the-renewable-scam-n4927051

“We’re building a clean energy future,” says President Joe Biden.

Who is “we”? 

Well, you pay for it.

He and his “green” cronies do most of the building. 

Lately, they’re pouring more of your money into “renewable energy.” They promise to give us “carbon-free power” from the sun and wind.

My new video illustrates some problems with that, using scenes from a new documentary series called “Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid.” 

Political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. notes, “It’s quite intuitive for people to understand that there’s a lot of power in solar energy. We feel the wind. The idea that you can get something for nothing, people find enormously appealing.”

Especially in California, where politicians now require all new homes to have solar panels, all new cars sold in 2035 to be zero-emission, and all the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/defacing-the-constitution-should-land-you-in-prison/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

Among this past week’s brainless and woke happenings (but I repeat myself), one event in particular stuck out. Two “climate activists” decided that desecrating the nation’s most sacred document, the U.S. Constitution, was the best way to garner support for their cause.

These two men — who look like malnourished vegans paying out-of-pocket for a Ph.D. in Peace Studies — dumped reddish-pink powder over themselves and the Constitution’s display case on Wednesday afternoon.

Why the reddish-pink powder? Who knows. (It probably symbolizes the blood of an endangered wombat, or something.) What is certain, however, is that the particulate substance has been hard to remove.

Subsequent analysis revealed that the powder dumped on the case was a mixture of pigment powder and cornstarch. The resulting substance was so fine that an industrial vacuum could hardly pick it up, nor could the powdered pigment be cleaned with water because it would just turn into paint.

While none of the substance penetrated the bulletproof case, the stunt still proved a headache for the Archives staff to clean and forced the National Archives to stay closed for days — a major letdown for all of the families visiting the capital with the express purpose of making a pilgrimage to the text’s temple.

The pasty duo enacted their stunt unhindered by the “security guards” at the National Archives. Nearly four minutes passed before the clods were stopped.