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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

A Deep Green Freeze Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

Canceling Keystone Does More Environmental Harm than Good Charlie Kirk

https://www.newsweek.com/canceling-keystone-does-more-environmental-harm-good-opinion-1568680

In President Joe Biden’s first week in office, with little more than the stroke of his pen, he took steps to revoke the permit of the Keystone XL pipeline. Of course, this policy doesn’t significantly protect the environment—the oil will still be transported—it was a virtue signal to climate change activists.

President Biden has been on the record stating that he wants to end fracking, as well as drilling and exploration for oil and natural gas. What Biden knows, but probably doesn’t care about, is that we actually need oil for most things in our daily lives. Things that may actually surprise you.

We need oil to make affordable clothes, cleaning products, soap, toothbrushes, shampoo, perfumes, nail polish, furniture, footballs, computers, cell phones, fertilizers, insecticides, car seats, heart valves, aspirin—even the plexiglass dividers that Biden wants restaurants to put up to maintain social distancing.

Crude oil, or oil in its unrefined state, is toxic to humans and animals, and destructive to the environment when spilled on land or in bodies of water. After crude oil is obtained, it must be transported safely and carefully to refineries to be chemically processed so that it can be used. It can be easily transported in one of three ways: by truck, by train or by pipeline.

Republicans Need to Stop Accepting Progressives’ ‘Facts’ How the self-proclaimed party of “science” is undermining democracy. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/republicans-need-stop-accepting-progressives-facts-bruce-thornton/

As the self-proclaimed party of “science,” progressives assert that their interpretations and explanations of people and events comprise “facts” that only the ignorant or evil refuse to believe. But this faith in science more often reflects the nostrums of scientism: contested ideas or beliefs that present themselves with the jargon, formulas, and quantitative data that characterize real scientific research, but that lack the reproducibility and established foundational facts that support authentic scientific research.

As such, these “facts” of scientism reflect ideological and political aims that appropriate the prestige and authority of science to camouflage their partisan prejudices. Unfortunately, too many Republicans in their public discourse and deliberations accept these “facts” as truth, thus empowering technocratic progressives by legitimizing their malign policies.

Climate change, of course, is a prominent example of this phenomenon. But anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming (ACGW)––the actual theory disguised by the banal, self-evident phrase “climate change”––is not a scientific fact, but a theory with some facts that support it, but others that challenge it. Our foundational knowledge of global climate as of now is too incomplete, and so is unable to create a predictive model because we do not yet fully understand or can quantify how all the numerous components that govern global climate over time interrelate. Yet based just on one element, human-created CO2 concentrations, warmists conclude that doomsday for the planet is around the corner.

Despite that uncertainty, too many Republicans accept the “scientific consensus” and “settled science” canards and support carbon taxes or other policies created by Joe Biden’s executive orders, like the ban on fracking. But carbon taxes, even if ACGW is true, will only increase the price of energy, while doing nothing about the true drivers of increased CO2––China and India.

Global Warming Alarmists Keep Letting Their Masks Slip, Reveal Their True Motivations

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/10/global-warming-alarmists-keep-letting-their-masks-slips/

Give the green shirts long enough and they will reveal their true intentions. This happened most recently when a Massachusetts official said “we have to break” the will of the average person to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s another in a long line of admissions made by the climatistas – thank you, Steven Hayward, for adding that descriptive term to our lexicon – that inadvertently exposes their authoritarian urges.

Ranting last month before the Vermont Climate Council, David Ismay, Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s undersecretary for climate change, said that “60% of our emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles,” produced by people on “the street” and seniors on fixed incomes. 

“There is no bad guy left,” he continued, “at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at, turn the screws on, and break their will so they stop emitting. That’s you, we have to break your will.”

He then added “I can’t even say that publicly.” Which itself says a lot.

Baker appeared to be unhappy with the comments and indicated that Ismay was going to get what we hope, but cannot assume, will be a stern a lecture from another administration official. But no one can, as lawyers like to say, unring that bell. Ismay’s comments are out there, and they disclose more than the alarmists want known.

John Kerry Emitted 302 Tons of CO2 to Save the Planet Sometimes you have to destroy the environment to save the environment.Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/john-kerry-emitted-302-tons-co2-save-planet-daniel-greenfield/

In his last year in office, Secretary of State John Kerry was touting the fact that he had traveled over 1.06 million miles and spent some 96 days in the air in the course of 3 years. The archived State Department site tallies Kerry’s total record at 1,417,576 miles and 126 days in the air.

Kerry spent more time flying in 3 years than the average American would in 50 years.

When the Air Force Boeing 757 which ferried Kerry around the world broke down for the fourth time, the media and the foreign policy establishment treated it as some sort of accomplishment.

That might have amounted to something if the ketchup gigolo had done anything in that time except jet around the world to give speeches about the importance of not jetting around the world. Kerry kept racking up miles by flying to Morocco to address the 22nd UN Climate Change Conference, to Indonesia to deliver a speech denouncing unbelievers in global warming, and to Paris to warn that the earth was about to be destroyed if people didn’t stop living like him.

Kerry’s flights would have powered all the appliances in 50 American homes for a year.

“It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Kerry recently retorted when a reporter asked him about flying his private jet to Iceland to receive an environmental award. Environmentalists don’t fly coach or even first class. They jet set.

Greta Thunberg admits to being a puppet, is now under investigation for collusion and conspiracy  By Ethan Huff

https://www.newstarget.com/2021-02-07-greta-thunberg-admits-puppet-investigation-collusion-conspiracy.html

Climate child Greta Thunberg is the subject of a new criminal investigation after she tweeted a list of her scripted marching orders, apparently accidentally, to her 4.8 million Twitter followers.

It appears as though the 18-year-old global warming activist was trying to tweet an “organic” post in support of the farmers protest in India when she mistakenly shared a document from her handlers outlining tactics for rallying left-wing Twitter users to join the movement.

“These are just some suggested posts, but feel free to tweet your own,” read the first bullet point on the document, which Greta quickly deleted once she realized, apparently, what she had done.

“It’s helpful if you add images or videos to your tweets (some images below),” the document went on to explain. “You can also tag others who can either reshare and/or the potential tags listed above to put pressure on them as well.”

Below these instructions was a series of sample tweets with a “CLICK HERE TO TWEET” button for each one. All Greta had to do, it appears, was click on one and pretend it was her own, and voila: instant support from her drone followers.

Are you ready for the climate lockdowns? It’s only a matter of time by Stephen L. Miller

https://spectator.us/topic/ready-climate-lockdowns-environment/?utm_source=Spectator+USA+Email+Signup&utm_campaign=

Last week President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords. This was a mostly symbolic gesture, as the same alarmism being pushed prior to the agreement in 2016 is still being pushed now while nation-states like China are still ignoring it. Now Biden administration climate envoy John Kerry, under fire for boarding a private jet to Iceland to accept a climate award, is telling the United States and the world that the conditions of the Paris agreement are ‘inadequate’.

As the global climate elite push eating bugs and staying home to save the Earth on the masses, it’s worth posing the question: what will be adequate? With the Global Economic Forum in Davos approaching in April, we’re going to start hearing terms such ‘Climate Equity’ and ‘Climate Reset’ (a play on the WEF’s Great Reset) more frequently. We’ll probably also start to hear calls for climate lockdowns. I know, right now that sounds completely preposterous, but don’t these kooky ideas always find a way to bleed into the mainstream? Fifteen Days to Slow the Sun!

The possibility of climate lockdowns is already being floated by some of our greatest thinkers. They see a confluence of global crises as an opportunity. The perfect storm caused by COVID-19 and the resulting global economic meltdown offers a chance to take what they see as bold and dramatic action to save the planet. The Biden administration will certainly use the consequences of COVID to push through some green legislation, but just as before, it will not be enough in the eyes of progressives. There must always be more.

Biden’s Magical Mystery Energy Plans By Gamaliel Isaac

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/bidens_magical_mystery_energy_plans.html

Days after eliminating tens of thousands of jobs by terminating the Keystone Pipeline and halting drilling on Federal Lands, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said “Today is ‘Climate Day’ at the White House and — which means that today is ‘Jobs Day’ at the White House.’” He explained that he would hire Americans to modernize the infrastructure so that it can withstand the increase in hurricanes resulting from global warming. As is true for all of his climate policies, this is delusional.

Increased hurricanes resulting from global warming? In the 51 years from 1915, 19 major hurricanes hit the Atlantic coast; in the 51 years to 2016, just seven did. In the last 11 years, only two hurricanes greater than category three hit the continental USA — a record low since 1900. From 1915 to 1926, 12 hit.

Biden said his administration would hire people to transform the American electrical sector to produce power without carbon pollution and provide rebates so that Americans would buy electric cars. He said jobs would be created for Americans to build electric charging stations all over the country. He plans to replace with electricity all the energy we get from gas.

Where is all that electricity going to come from? In the same speech, he answered that question. He said: “We’re going to take money and invest it in clean energy jobs in America — millions of jobs in wind, solar, and carbon capture” and “We need solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy.”

Science Betrayed The propaganda infecting K–12 science curricula, especially on the environment, won’t go away.Shepard Barbash

https://www.city-journal.org/k-12-science-curriculum-environment

It is a sad irony that the teaching of science in American schools is so unscientific. In a more rational world, children would learn about nature and a mode of inquiry—the scientific method—that would awaken them to the awe, fascination, and surprise that the universe should inspire. Instead, the chronic problems afflicting K–12 education and the growing politicization of science have pushed us ever further from that ideal.

Science has been misused and poorly taught for centuries. Capitalists in the United Kingdom espoused eugenics, Soviet Communists embraced Lysenkoism, and theists around the world credit the theory of Intelligent Design. The most enduring betrayal of science in the classroom today is biased teaching about the environment. Whereas eugenics was fueled by fear among the rich that the poor would overwhelm them, the fallacies of green education emanate from fear on the left that fossil-fuel companies and capitalism are ruining the planet. This fear has suffused curricula since the 1970s with an ever-growing list of alarms: pesticides, smog, water pollution, forest fires, species extinction, overpopulation, famine, rain forest destruction, natural resource scarcity, ozone depletion, acid rain, and the great absorbing panic of our time: global warming.

The choice and treatment of these topics reflect a worldview that teachers absorb early in their training. The mission of education, they’re told, is not to teach knowledge but to seek justice and make the world a better place. Their task is to show students that we are destroying the environment and to empower them to help save it, primarily through government action.

John Kerry, Global Warming Ghoul

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/02/john-kerry-global-warming-ghoul/

“But in choosing “one of the biggest gasbags in American politics,” a “lifelong joke” who is “singlehandedly responsible for massive amounts of terrible emissions,” Joe Biden and his handlers took asininity to another level. They showed they are as tone deaf as Kerry. And so goes the growing polarization of the United States.”

Presidential climate envoy John Kerry stirred up a black cloud last week when he said the workers who lost their jobs over the administration’s decision to shut down Keystone XL pipeline construction could just make solar panels instead. At least he didn’t tell them they should learn to code. But it was a cruel comment nonetheless, and representative of the political left’s careless destruction of livelihoods in service of their climate god.

At a news conference last week, Kerry said “what President Biden wants to do is make sure that those folks” who lost jobs “have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people who go to work to make the solar panels.” Unsaid yet clearly understood is the Democrats’ contempt for calloused-hand working class Americans – these “deplorables” just can’t make good decisions and need the guiding hand of government to help them avoid the briar patches and potholes of life.