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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

California to ban natural gas appliances By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/california_to_ban_natural_gas_appliances.html

“Leftists may not like natural gas.  They may not like gas lighting.  But they sure love gaslighting…the rest of us.”

The hits just keep on coming for residents of the formerly Golden State.  Already besieged by high inflation and severe energy shortages, citizens of the erstwhile Land of Milk and Honey will soon face a ban on natural gas (except for Eric Swalwell’s).  The California Air Resources Board, or CARB, is planning to rid the state of natural gas heaters, stoves, and furnaces.  The Hill recently reported that the CARB passed a proposal that will lay the groundwork for phasing out gas-powered space and water heaters, and other such appliances, by 2030.  (I guess CARBs really are bad for you.)

But that’s not all.  If certain leftists get their way, and they often do, entire kitchens may be outlawed in the future.  If this is the case, the first state in the Union to ban them will undoubtedly be California.

Families may be abolished as well.  Erin Maglaque recently penned a positively glowing review of Sophie Lewis’s new communist manifesto screed, Abolish the Family, in which she pleaded, “Let us begin by abolishing our kitchens.”  She added, “If we begin by abolishing our kitchens, what else might we get a taste for destroying, and for creating?”  Let’s not find out.

Lewis, a “feminist thinker,” has stated that “[f]amily is a terrible way to satisfy our desire for love and care.”  Yes, it’s much better to be “loved” and cared for by the government.  Lewis doesn’t much care for heterosexual culture.  She believes that there can be no feminist future until the family — particularly the nuclear family — is abolished.  And she says, “It is a wonder we let fetuses inside us.”  (Memo to “feminists” like Lewis: If you don’t want a fetus inside you, you shouldn’t let a phallus inside you.)

John Podesta: Biden’s New Green Investment Czar by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18943/john-podesta-green-investment

In the Biden administration’s uncanny ability to put the wrong people in the wrong jobs, naming John Podesta to be the new “climate czar” might be its masterstroke.

With so much money at stake, you might have expected the administration to choose someone with a strong background in energy technologies or perhaps someone possessing deep experience in the energy business who can spot the good (and bad) uses for all that money.

Although Podesta is listed on the corporate records, he failed to disclose his membership on the board of Joule Stichting (the holding company) in his federal financial disclosure forms when he officially joined the Obama White House as a senior advisor in 2013.

What is concerning here is the pattern Podesta has established of being involved on both sides of the table, and transiting Washington’s revolving door. When the Biden administration chooses a “power broker” to be its decider over $370 billion worth of federal “investment” money that is intended to make green energy affordable, cost-effective, or competitive with fossil fuels, we should not be surprised if large portions of that money will eventually be traced back to connections those companies have with that aforementioned power broker.

This is why you do not want the federal government to have individuals who are not experts – who are operators and lobbyists – making important decisions like that. They will pass out cash to people who have made them money in the past, and who will make them money in the future, or who have employed their family members. It is corrupt and it is cronyism. When you give people the opportunity to hand out other people’s money, they are going to give it to families and friends. With Podesta, there is certainly a history of doing just that.

In the Biden administration’s uncanny ability to put the wrong people in the wrong jobs, naming John Podesta to be the new “climate czar” might be its masterstroke.

The White House announced recently that John Podesta will oversee $370 billion in clean energy investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act. This makes him the decision-maker for handing out money to make green energy a viable, cost-effective replacement for fossil fuels. Green energy subsidies and other government giveaways have been tried before, and failed, but not at this scale. With so much money at stake, you might have expected the administration to choose someone with a strong background in energy technologies or perhaps someone possessing deep experience in the energy business who can spot the good (and bad) uses for all that money.

Climate Week Is Over, But The Warming Cranks Are Still Out There

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/26/climate-week-is-over-but-the-warming-cranks-are-still-out-there/

Doughnut Day makes more sense.

Another Climate Week has come and gone, with Earth no cooler than it was before. But there is plenty to celebrate. Opportunities for virtue signaling, graft, prostituting science, and burning down capitalism have never been so vast.

Launched in New York City in 2009, and now aligned with the execrable United Nations, Climate Week, according to organizers’ telling, is “​​an ambitious platform for our mission to drive climate action,” and “fast.” It’s such a wonderful moment, that a particularly dim fellow set himself on fire Friday at the Laver Cup tennis tournament in London to protest the use of private jets in the United Kingdom. The Sun reported that “​​it’s believed the yob” who was momentarily aflame “was a climate change protester.”

Virtue signaling is generally a “luxury belief” that holds no cost. In this case, it came with some pain, and probably some regret. But virtue signaling is an important activity in the fight against global warming, even if it means that self-flambeing is in order.

The man was eventually dragged off the court. But the cameras got a good look at him, and what was seen, says author Michael Shellenberger, “​​is the face of climate narcissism.”

America is Successfully Pursuing ESG = Extreme Shortages Guaranteed Ronald Stein

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/america-is-successfully-pursuing-esg–extreme-shortages-guaranteed

Everything that needs electricity is made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. In an all-electric world, there will be nothing to power without oil.

Energy growth, electricity AND the products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil and the fuels to power ships, planes, militaries, and space programs, are directly linked to prosperity and well-being across the globe.

Today, most of the energy the world consumes is from hydrocarbons, with crude oil being the dominant source of transportation fuels. Today, crude oil is the ONLY source for the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil that makes more than 6,000 products for society.

President Biden’s U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projections are that world energy consumption of crude oil, coal, natural gas, electricity from renewables, and nuclear will grow by 56 percent between 2010 and 2040. Without any replacements or clones to what fossil fuels can provide the EIA forecasts that fossil fuels will continue to supply nearly 80 percent of world energy use through 2040

President Biden and Sacramento leaders, from Governor’s Brown, Schwarzenegger, and now Newsom, have supported reductions of in-state oil production. And all remain supportive of Biden’s pledge that “we are going to get rid of fossil fuels”.

Another way to interpret Biden and Newsom’s pledge for an all-electric world:

Biden and Newsom are oblivious to the reality that everything that needs electricity is made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. In an all-electric world with JUST wind and solar electricity from breezes and sunshine, there will be nothing to power.
Biden and Newsom believe that the products and fuels manufactured from fossil fuels, are supporting lifestyles and economies, are dangerous and polluting and is causing dangerous climate change.
Biden and Newsom believe that all the infrastructures developed in less than two centuries, from the products manufactured from crude oil, are not needed by future societies, such as medical, electronics, communications, and the many transportation infrastructures such as airlines, merchant ships, automobiles, trucks, military, the space program.
Biden and Newsom believe that an all-renewable electricity system from unreliable weather conditions, WITHOUT the products and fuels from fossil fuels, can work to support a modern economy.

Are We Just One Big Storm Away Climate Lockdowns?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/23/are-we-just-one-big-storm-away-climate-lockdowns/

While we never thought that the coronavirus pandemic was engineered to soften us up for harsher climate lockdowns to come later, we did note that our ruling class was watching our reactions to its repressive rules to see how far it could go the next time. Today we’re alarmed that “the next time” might be here soon.

In November 2020, we said we were afraid that the country was being conditioned to just take whatever is dished out by power-hungry officials, elected and unelected, and were troubled that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, could say “now is the time to do what you’re told” with minimal condemnation and no demands that he be fired.

Nearly two years later, it’s clear that our concerns were justified.

We find the evidence in a Sept. 14 World Economic Forum document topped by the title “‘My Carbon’: An approach for inclusive and sustainable cities.”

The report says there have been “significant developments” over the last five to seven years “on social, environment and technology fronts that could help realize” the goals “for shaping the future towards smart and sustainable cities.”

Example No. 1 was the public response to the pandemic lockdowns.

The West Mimics Mao, Takes a Green Leap Forward The green scramble to transform energy is reminiscent of China’s forced industrialization. By Helen Raleigh

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-west-mimics-mao-takes-a-green-leap-forward-clean-energy-china-communism-farming-industrialization-quota-11663767101?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The green movement’s rush to transform the energy economy while ignoring the laws of nature and economics calls to mind China’s ruinous Great Leap Forward. By 1957, Mao Zedong had grown impatient with his country’s slow industrial development relative to the West. He sought to transform China quickly from an agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse through forced industrialization and agricultural collectivization.

Steel production was a priority of the Great Leap Forward. Mao wanted China to surpass the U.K. in steel output within 15 years. Across the country, including in the village where my father lived, people tried to contribute to this goal by building small backyard furnaces. Each village had a production quota to meet, so everyone—including children and the elderly—pitched in. Using everything they could find to keep the furnaces burning, villagers melted down farming tools and cooking pots. These efforts yielded only pig iron, which had to be decarbonized to make steel. That was a process a backyard furnace couldn’t handle. The effort and resources were wasted.

The steel campaign diverted manpower from farming, even as the government ordered farmers to meet unrealistic quotas. Local party officials initially compelled farmers to experiment with ineffective and sometimes harmful techniques, such as deep plowing and sowing seeds much closer than usual. When these radical methods failed to increase yield and depleted the soil, local leaders had no choice but to lie to their political superiors about how much had been produced (a practice referred to as “launching a Sputnik”). Based on these false production figures, the state demanded villages sell more grain than they could spare. In a vicious circle, the more the local officials lied about their output, the higher the central government set the quotas. Farmers were forced to hand over every bit of grain they had, including the following year’s seeds, to meet the quotas. Resistance was violently suppressed.

The combination of lies, failed experiments, absence of labor and violent requisition practices led to famine. From 1959 through 1961, an estimated 30 million to 40 million Chinese people died from hunger. The Chinese government continues to refer to the famine as a natural disaster, pretending forces beyond their control were to blame for this man-made calamity.

China, not America, has the real emissions problem So why do Democrats keep passing legislation that will do nothing for the climate? Rupert Darwall

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/on-climate-change-democrats-ideology-delusional/

Hailed as America’s first comprehensive climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed by President Biden earlier this summer. It had been thirty years and sixty-five days since President George H.W. Bush signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro. The UNFCCC’s objective was to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” a threshold that the convention left undefined.

In 1992, the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 356.54 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Five years later saw the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first, last and only legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By then, carbon dioxide concentrations had risen to 363.88 ppmv.

The Clinton administration signed Kyoto but declined to submit the protocol to the Senate after senators unanimously adopted the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which stipulated that the United States should not sign any agreement that bound developed countries, but not developing ones, to emissions targets. From today’s perspective of net zero and the goal of reducing net emissions by 100 percent, the protocol was a modest affair. It required an overall reduction in developed country emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, and, thanks to a late intervention by Vice President Al Gore, 7 percent for the US. In fact, American carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise, peaking in 2005; in 2012, they were still 4.4 percent above their 1990 level.

In 2009, by which time carbon dioxide concentrations had reached 387.64 ppmv, the Copenhagen Climate Conference tried and failed to rectify the large and growing hole in the Kyoto Protocol. The aim was to reverse the decision of the convention’s first conference of parties in Berlin to exclude major emerging economies from making legally binding emissions commitments. Yet it was shot down by a coalition of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.

Climate Change and the Resolutely Blind Eye: Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/09/climate-change-and-the-determinedly-blind-eye/

Graham Lloyd, the environment editor at The Australian, has a moderately good record of digging up politically incorrect material which dispels this or that building block of the climate scam. He’s never shy of reporting increased coral on the GBR, for instance. I’m not sure how he survives. Glad he does. Sure, his newspaper is part of the problem, but any port in a storm.

This time the ‘wayward’ material is a study which gathers and analyses recent evidence on the effect of climate change on extreme weather events and, also, on agricultural productivity. It’s by some Italian scientists led by Gianluca Alimonti, from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and the University of Milan. The study can be found in The European Physical Journal Plus. It was published online on January 13, 2022. Its conclusions undermine the daily propaganda that passes for news on the mainstream media. No, that flooding is not unusual; nor is that bushfire; nor that hurricane; nor that drought.

Others have said much the same thing. Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg, as examples. However, the Alimonti study has a particular focus on extreme weather events which, I think, stands it somewhat apart. It’s well worth reading and promoting. We know that it’ll be otherwise buried; shunned — the practised technique of leftists. Indeed, so far as I’m aware, but for Lloyd’s piece, it had already been buried and shunned.

What’s the point, you might ask? No minds will be changed. Personally, I know it will not change the harping about the environment in the intercessory prayers at my church. It certainly won’t change the alarmist stance of the hierarchy of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. It won’t change the stance of the IPCC, the ABC or the BBC. Or the ACTU or Big Business. Or David Attenborough or the World Economic Forum.

So, what is the point? Simply to keep the truth on life support.

The Myth of Clean Clean garbage, clean energy and a dirty utopia. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-myth-of-clean/

‘Clean’, like ‘smart’, has become the prerequisite for all technology. Both are myths.

Smart technology is surveillance technology. It is not smarter because of its inherent qualities, but because it sends and receives data that allows it to be ‘smarter’ in manipulating users. The smart part of smart technology comes from human beings. So does the stupid part when people sacrifice their privacy and independence for the benefits of technology being shaped to them.

Clean energy is even more of a myth. The Inflation Increase Act doles out another stream of billions toward the inefficient forms of energy generation that the government has been subsidizing for over 50 years because some Madison Avenue ad agency branded them ‘clean’.

Energy is inherently clean and dirty. Making the inherent forces of the universe useful requires mining metal, cutting down trees, and turning fossil fuels into plastic to assemble machines. Once those machines are running, they will shed heat because ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’, that is how the second law of thermodynamics works. Not even Al Gore can evade entropy and not even the shiniest solar panel, sleekest wind turbines or smoothly humming Tesla will prevent energy from being wasted as it is transferred, stored or used to do one thing or another locally or nationally.

The only truly energy efficient energy comes from bioluminescent creatures like fireflies. We didn’t make them and despite all the boasts from technocrats, we can’t duplicate them.

Don’t Believe the Hype About Antarctica’s Melting Glaciers Two studies carefully explore the factors at play, but the headlines are only meant to raise alarm.Two studies carefully explore the factors at play, but the headlines are only meant to raise alarm. By Steven Koonin

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-believe-the-hype-about-antarcticas-melting-glaciers-ice-sheet-climate-change-global-warming-sea-levels-greenland-iceberg-ocean-11663618509?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Alarming reports that the Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking misrepresent the science under way to understand a very complex situation. Antarctica has been ice-covered for at least 30 million years. The ice sheet holds about 26.5 million gigatons of water (a gigaton is a billion metric tons, or about 2.2 trillion pounds). If it were to melt completely, sea levels would rise 190 feet. Such a change is many millennia in the future, if it comes at all.

Much more modest ice loss is normal in Antarctica. Each year, some 2,200 gigatons (or 0.01%) of the ice is discharged in the form of melt and icebergs, while snowfall adds almost the same amount. The difference between the discharge and addition each year is the ice sheet’s annual loss. That figure has been increasing in recent decades, from 40 gigatons a year in the 1980s to 250 gigatons a year in the 2010s.

But the increase is a small change in a complex and highly variable process. For example, Greenland’s annual loss has fluctuated significantly over the past century. And while the Antarctic losses seem stupendously large, the recent annual losses amount to 0.001% of the total ice and, if they continued at that rate, would raise sea level by only 3 inches over 100 years.