Displaying posts categorized under

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

The political exploitation of children The UN is using ‘children’s rights’ to advance the elites’ green agenda. Frank Furedi

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/05/the-political-exploitation-of-children/

In its wisdom, one of those unelected and unaccountable United Nations committees decided last week that children should have the right to take national governments to court for failing to tackle climate change.

Like many other international bodies and NGOs, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is effectively using children to voice its own political concerns. In its new report, it praises ‘the efforts of children’ for drawing ‘attention’ to ‘environmental crises’. It claims that it is children rather than adults who possess the kind of wisdom necessary to tackle the problems facing the planet. And it calls for the legal affirmation and validation of the authority of children. ‘[Children’s] demands for urgent and decisive measures to tackle global environmental harm should be realised’, it states.

In the view of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, adults are the problem and children are the solution. Its approach is therefore fully in line with the cultural trend of adultifying childhood, which reverses the roles of adults and children. Children are deemed wise and considerate, whereas adults are presented as selfish and indifferent to others.

Of course, the Committee on the Rights of the Child is not really interested in what children think. It is simply ventriloquising children to advance its own beliefs. The report claims that children complained of ‘the negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities’, and that they ‘asserted their right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’. The report quotes the children it ‘consulted’ as follows:

‘“The environment is our life.” “Adults [should] stop making decisions for the future they won’t experience. [We] are the key means [of] solving climate change, as it is [our] lives at stake.” “I would like to tell [adults] that we are the future generations and, if you destroy the planet, where will we live?!”’

‘The green movement is a disinformation campaign’ Michael Shellenberger explains why climate change is not the end of the world.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/04/the-green-movement-is-a-disinformation-campaign/

The planet is on fire – and it’s all our fault. That has become the abiding mantra of the climate movement. This summer, wildfires from Greece to Hawaii have been portrayed as nature’s punishment for mankind’s polluting activities. Each disaster has been treated as a portent of the End Times. Reining in human development, we’re told, is the only way to avert an even more serious catastrophe. But is there any truth to these apocalyptic claims?

Journalist and best-selling author Michel Shellenberger recently joined Brendan O’Neill to discuss all this and more in a special live episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. Below is an edited extract from their conversation. Watch the full episode here.

Brendan O’Neill: The recent wildfires across Europe and America are held up by many as proof that Mother Earth is punishing mankind. Is this another example of disinformation from the climate-change lobby?

Michael Shellenberger: In this case, the word ‘disinformation’ is certainly accurate. It is a type of organised lying that needs to be disproved.

There has been a concerted effort since the 1990s to convince people that climate change is making natural disasters worse. Yes, there is some evidence that climate change is causing more heatwaves and changes to precipitation. But a disaster is defined by two things: deaths and costs. And we’re not seeing an increase in either. In fact, deaths from extreme weather events have actually drastically declined over the past century. Only a few hundred people now die each year from natural disasters in the US, for example. So the climate movement is undeniably a disinformation campaign.

The hidden energy crisis By Dennis M. O’Connor

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/the_hidden_energy_crisis.html

America is wrestling with the worst energy crisis in its history, a period of high prices and limited supply.

America is wrestling with the worst energy crisis in its history, a period of high prices and limited supply. According to the Brookings Institution, in 2022, the average U.S. residential retail electricity price was 15.12 cents/kWh, an 11% increase from 13.66 cents/kWh in 2021. In the first three months of 2023, the average U.S. residential monthly electricity bill was $133, or 5% higher than for the same time in 2022. There is confusion with savings or cost expectation of solar and wind conversion, also government decisions have impacted the natural gas and energy supply. While electric vehicles are a much-touted solution for replacing oil, gasoline or diesel fuel contains 40 times the energy as a state-of-the-art battery. Questionable efforts are being made by utilities and government leadership to address our energy future. Critical solutions have been avoided and hidden. Fossil-fuel plants are closing faster than green alternatives can replace them. Producers of oil and gas can’t keep up with the confusion in supply. Fantasy thinking has taken hold of President Biden and Democrat leaders. Progressives and their media followers are guilty of denial concerning the reality of how to solve a potential climate/energy crisis.

Energy and climate change are complicated. Credible scientists challenge whether there is a climate crisis. The three U.S. electric grids are old and at capacity, and many power plants are outdated. California is one example of the problem. New plants have not been brought online due to environmentalists and demonization by politicians; some have even been targeted for shutdown.  Renewable energy has been identified as having benefits and can supply up to 35% of energy demand but is unreliable since it requires wind, sun, or flowing water.  It also creates energy storage and environmental issues. The Biden administration and Governor Gavin Newsom in California have embarked on plans to eliminate the use of gas and replace all transportation vehicles, garden tools, stoves, dryers’ etc. using electrical energy.  This approach will place an overwhelming timeline and demand on existing energy resources.  It will require a huge investment in new power plants, including the potential of nuclear.  This investment will create significant upward pressure on the cost of energy and create blackouts from poor planning

Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration By Naveen Athrappully

https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/over-1600-scientists-sign-no-climate-emergency-declaration-5482554?utm_

International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth, contrary to the popular alarmist narrative.

“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

“Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.

Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Real Reason Behind the ‘Climate Emergency’ Push

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

Climate Brainwashing Hammering K-12 school children nonstop about the dangers of climate change in every class – even math, art and gym. by Betsy McCaughey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/climate-brainwashing/

Hammering K-12 school children nonstop about the dangers of climate change in every class, even math, art and gym, is child abuse.

Barely one-third of fourth graders can read or do math at grade level, according to the latest national scores, but climate activists are demanding kids hear about global warming in every class. New Jersey mandates it, and now Connecticut is following suit as the school year opens. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams is requiring every public school participate in Climate Action Day.

The climate push is nakedly political, spearheaded in New Jersey by the governor’s wife, first lady Tammy Murphy, a founding member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. Lessons link urban heat islands to tree placement inequities, redlining and racism.

New York City holds out activist Greta Thunberg as a climate hero and role model, telling kids to “get involved in the global student climate action movement” and “get to know community leaders and register to vote.” Everything short of pre-enrolling kindergarteners in the Democratic Party. Parents should be outraged.

Climate change is the Left’s religion. The messaging is as heavy-handed as catechism in a religious school.

It’s also scary. Children are being told that global warming is killing their favorite animals. At Slackwood Elementary School in New Jersey, first graders are taught that transportation, heating, and raising livestock are “making Earth feel unwell.”

The reality is that these children are too young to comprehend the trade-offs of moving to zero carbon immediately. A first grader doesn’t know Mommy can’t afford an electric vehicle — average price $53,000.

Hurricane Season Means A Surge In Category 5 Climate Lies 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/29/hurricane-season-means-a-surge-in-category-5-climate-lies/

We’re about half way through the 2023 hurricane season, predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters to be a near-normal year, and it’s been rather quiet. But with a few storms brewing this week in the Atlantic, we expect to hear the usual shrieking from politicians, activists and the media, blaming the weather on man-caused climate change. Our suggestion is to pay no attention to the eco-screamers’ lamentations.

On Sunday, the National Hurricane Center issued advisories for a hurricane and a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean, and an advisory for a tropical storm in the Eastern Pacific. Of the three, the Atlantic storm Idalia seems to be the most dangerous. It could make landfall as a hurricane on the Gulf coast of Florida on Wednesday.

That could mean a life-changing disaster for thousands of Floridians. The climatistas, though, see opportunity in crisis. They never let a serious calamity go to waste. Before the weekend was over, the press was linking Idalia to “climate change,” which is of course code for “man-made global warming,” as if there had never been a hurricane before humans began burning fossil fuels.

The alarmist community has long insisted that weather is not the same as climate any time anyone ever pointed to mild summers and colder-than-usual winters as evidence that the global warming theory was bunk. But when it’s convenient for spreading fear, the same crowd takes isolated weather events and claims they are evidence that human activity is warming the planet.

Even in 2023, truth is still important to some of us, and the facts show that the global warming zealots are false prophets. Inconvenient to their con are data that show that death and destruction from climate-related disasters have fallen sharply over the last century. Annual fatalities from floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, and extreme temperatures have tumbled by nearly 98% over that era, from nearly 500,000 in the early 1920s to fewer than 12,000 in 2022. The details don’t fit the narrative, but when did that ever matter to the political left that continues to feed the fiction that man is setting his planet on fire?

Climate Cult Tyrants Are Still Worse Than COVID Tyrants By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/08/28/the-morning-briefing-climate-cult-tyrants-are-still-worse-than-covid-tyrants-n1722563

Freedom-loving Americans have had a rough go of it since the first arrival of the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu on our shores. The Trump/Fauci alliance made things bad enough, but the tyrannical flex got really bad when Joe Biden was installed in the presidency. As we have seen in recent weeks, the COVID fetish Left is attempting to relive its glory days of oppression.

With the stink of the pandemic government heavies still lingering so strongly, the Climate Cult thugs have been hoping to keep their campaign of error and terror continuing unabated without anyone noticing. We do occasionally discuss them here in the Briefing, but it’s time to check in again.

There is, of course, a lot of overlap between the COVID tyrants and the climate tyrants. The lefties do often like to specialize, however. The climate commies have been grifting in that lane for so long that they don’t really need to pay attention to any opportunities that may come along on the COVID panic front.

John Kerry — America’s Ugliest Trophy Wife — is tasked with demonizing anyone who questions the Climate Cult orthodoxy, and Ben wrote about his latest antics:

The corporate state is intent, apparently, on ramping up its propaganda against so-called “climate deniers,” presumably to set the rhetorical groundwork for more extreme legal and social action against them in the future. So it dispatched something called its “climate envoy,” John Kerry, to Scotland with that aim.

Democrats’ climate change blame game for Hawaii fire confronted by reality after Maui identifies cause White House clean energy czar John Podesta said Hawaii fires were ‘fueled by climate change’ By Thomas Catenacci

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-climate-change-blame-game-hawaii-fire-confronted-reality-maui-identifies-cause

Hawaiian officials attributed the cause of catastrophic wildfires to alleged failures from the state’s main power utility company and downed power lines this week after Democrats blamed the disaster on global warming.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the government of Maui County, Hawaii, alleged Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) and its subsidiaries failed to properly power down live electrical equipment amid a red flag windstorm earlier this month. Due to this failure, downed power lines operated by the utility company sparked a series of deadly fires on the island, the lawsuit claimed.

“The lawsuit alleges that the Defendants acted negligently by failing to power down their electrical equipment despite a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning on August 7th,” Maui County said in a release announcing its lawsuit. 

“The lawsuit further alleges HECO’s energized and downed power lines ignited dry fuel such as grass and brush, causing the fires,” the announcement added. “The lawsuit also alleges failure to maintain the system and power grid, which caused the systemic failures starting three different fires on August 8th.”

Maui County argued in the lawsuit that HECO has a duty “to properly maintain and repair the electric transmission lines, and other equipment including utility poles associated with their transmission of electricity, and to keep vegetation properly trimmed and maintained so as to prevent contact with overhead power lines and other electric equipment.”

However, Democratic lawmakers, a top White House official and Hawaii Gov. Josh Green have all blamed the event, which has claimed the lives of at least 115 people, on human-caused global warming.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the only one who got it right By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/vivek_ramaswamy_is_the_only_one_who_got_it_right.html

At the Republican presidential primary debate, Vivek Ramaswamy was the only person who gave the correct answer on whether climate change is caused by humans. He said the climate change agenda is a hoax and that more people die each year from the climate change agenda than from climate change itself. 

Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker at WaPo, was confused by this statement, as I expect almost all the media, educators, entertainers, and other Democrats were because they have been indoctrinated for decades that global warming and storms are causing massive harm and deaths throughout the World. 

The problem is they just repeat what they are told without ever asking questions or doing simple research.  The leftist agenda to control people has always been more important than the truth. 

Vivek Ramaswamy says ‘hoax’ agenda kills more people than climate change

We puzzled till our puzzler was sore — this claim makes no sense.

By Glenn Kessler

Since the media won’t do any research, I will do it for them. 

In 26 out of the 30 years between 1990 and 2020, there were fewer than 10,000 deaths from storms.  In 2020, there were a whopping 1,700 people who died worldwide from storms. 

In 2020, storms were the cause of death to more than 1.7 thousand people across the globe. In the past three decades, the highest annual death toll due to storms was registered in 1991, when storm events were responsible for the death of more than 146 thousand people worldwide. That year, a massive cyclone hit Bangladesh, becoming one of the deadliest storms of the century. The death count due to storms was also remarkably high in 2008, mainly associated with a cyclone which hit Myanmar in May.

To put the 1,700 deaths in perspective, 67 million people died in 2022 from all causes.  The 1,700 is less than one hundredth of one percent. 

1.5 Degrees Of Climate Fabrication

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/24/1-5-degrees-of-climate-fabrication/

Ghoulish scold John Kerry, the White House’s climate hobgoblin, has repeatedly warned that the world is not on track to contain a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in global temperature above the pre-industrial level, and this means disaster is looming. Others have made the same point, and the media just goes along for the ride. Their predictions are worthless, though. We know this because the United Nations told us so.

The rock-solid, undeniable fact is that it’s impossible to make long-term climate predictions, because our climate is ever changing and volatile. It says so in the Third Assessment Report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

And it has said this since 2001, when that report was put together.

Yet Kerry and his ilk, and we use that term with with greatest contempt we can muster, continue to tell us they can predict the global temperature of the future and it’s going to burn us all.

The alarmists point to the sentence that follows, which says, “Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.” They then claim that damning passage is taken out of context.