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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science and Rationality By Charles Battig

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/a_winning_trifecta_for_climate_science_and_rationality_.html

Three recent authors, each coming from a strong environmental activist background, sound the common theme that the hyper-green environmental activists have cost us trillions and hurt the poor.

First there was Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans, then came Bjorn Lomborg’s False Alarm, and now Michael Schellenberger’s Apocalypse Never.  All three authors sound the common theme that the  hyper-green environmental activists who have captured, politicized, and monetized  the concern for the environment have, as Lomborg explains, created  a false climate  alarm  which has “costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet.”  To varying degrees, all three authors come from a strong environmental activist background, which observation makes their public revelations even more noteworthy.

Planet of the Humans, the recent film produced by Michael Moore, caused consternation and a considerable backlash from the green activists and their allied backers by pointing out how traditional energy companies had co-opted the environmental movement by donning a green alter-ego and embracing renewable energy.  By doing so, the corporations gained access to government funding/subsidies for wind turbine and commercial solar power installations and created a public relations victory for their vociferous eco-shareholders.  Moore’s revelation that the reality of needing to provide 24/7 reliable electricity to consumers ensures that fossil fuel plants will remain the primary energy sources because of the failure of wind or solar to provide power if there is no wind or sufficient sun.  Renewables do not displace reliable fossil-fuel power plants.  Consumers energy bills do not go down, but go up, when renewables are imposed.

Moore also documented that renewables require large amounts of rare earths, cement, and fossil fuel energy in their production.  They are both notoriously inefficient in land use, and impose destruction of large areas of native habitats.  Further environmental destruction is due to the fact that the best wind or solar location is often remote from the most needed consumer base, thereby requiring the construction  of massive electric transmission lines.  “Factories claiming to have gone ‘beyond coal’ again and again turn out to be relying on natural gas.”

The Climate Campaign Is Less And Less About  Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-18-biyb4kqu2wfj71beidexgg8exb

Here in the United States, the environmental movement has been completely taken over by the campaign to ban use of fossil fuels, with the stated goal of slowing or preventing “climate change.” But at this point, is the “climate” campaign really about the climate in any meaningful way? The alternative hypothesis is that the principal goal of the anti-fossil-fuel movement in the United States is destruction of the American freedom-based economic system, commonly going by the name of “capitalism.”

So let’s consider whether the anti-fossil-fuel campaign in the U.S. could really be about its avowed goal of saving the planet from climate change caused by greenhouse gases. If that were the case, then the campaigners would be principally focused on the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, mostly CO2, not only in the U.S. but in the world.

The campaigners are definitely focused on blocking any and all fossil fuel development in the United States. Environmental groups with what seem like infinite funding sources bring litigations on any and every possible theory to seek to block absolutely every proposed fossil fuel development in this country.

To illustrate the relentlessness of the litigation war, consider something called the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a multi-billion dollar project intended to deliver natural gas from sources in West Virginia over to the Atlantic coast of Virginia. An environmental group called the Cowpasture River Preservation Association, represented by environmental lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center, brought a suit to stop the pipeline on the ground that its permit to cross the Appalachian Trail, which had been granted by the Forest Service, was not properly authorized. As you are likely aware, earlier this week the Supreme Court ruled in that case that the Forest Service had the power to issue the permit.

COVID-19 Model Failures Show Why Climate Science Isn’t ‘Settled’ Scott Shepard

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/16/covid-19-model-failures-show-why-climate-science-isnt-settled/

The scientific models used to predict the global impact of the COVID-19 crisis have cast into acute doubt the idea of iron-clad, unquestionable scientific modeling itself. Model failure has had potentially catastrophic effects on the world economy. It should have similar effects on claims about the indubitable nature of climate-science models, and of policies ostensibly flowing from them.

One devastating example illustrates the problem with the COVID-19 models.  Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London published a report in mid-March based on an infectiousness model that predicted that without total lockdown, half a million Britons and 2.2. million Americans could die of the virus. His report was critical in guiding both Britain and many American states to take extreme lockdown measures, rather than milder and less economically destructive courses.

The model, and the report, turned out to be nonsense. The model was a poorly coded mess that contained vital errors and couldn’t be replicated. Meanwhile, Ferguson so little trusted his own predictions that his mistress continued to travel across London for assignations with him, in violation of rules based on his model and ignoring the risks that he himself had predicted.

All of this illustrates the profound danger of declaring apocalyptic models about natural (or potentially partly natural and partly human-assisted) processes “settled” and certain, and then making drastic policy and business decisions on that basis.

These lessons clearly translate to the climate-policy debate. Proponents of extreme climate action assure us that their models are irreproachable, the science is settled, and their policy path is required. But recent developments have taught us better.

The World Health Organization’s truth-cleansing pandemic By Rupert Darwall

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/502718-the-world-health-organizations-truth-cleansing-pandemic

You thought the World Health Organization’s job was direct and coordinate authority on global pandemics? Forget it. Last month, the WHO produced its “Manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19.” Far from addressing its own lamentable failure to halt the spread of the virus, the document is little more than a demand for a global Green New Deal dolled up in the garb of public health.

The pandemic, WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, tells us, is a reminder of “the intimate and delicate relationship between people and planet.” Efforts to make the world safer from another one are doomed unless they address “the critical interface between people and pathogens.” Human pressure on the environment, the WHO claims, increases the risk of new infectious diseases. Recovery plans from the pandemic should therefore “lessen our impact on the environment, so as to reduce the risk at source,” as if new deadly viruses are randomly transmitted from wild animals to people wandering through forests, rather than in Chinese wet markets or, in some instances, even cultivated in research labs. 

Arguing for a quick energy transition, the WHO says the costs of renewable energy are dropping. Exactly why, say, burning coal carries a higher risk of unleashing the next pandemic rather than cutting down forests from whence the COVID-19 virus supposedly came, in order to make way for wind farms, the WHO doesn’t say. As Michael Moore’s movie “Planet of the Humans” vividly shows, wind and solar require enormous land-takes and have huge environmental impacts.

But the WHO’s recovery manifesto isn’t about science and rationality. It’s the soul of Thomas Malthus entering public health. Restoring a pristine environment is the goal, humanity becomes the problem, and industrialization – by harnessing nature for the purpose of human flourishing – is the original sin. The WHO’s message that environmental degradation caused the pandemic is exactly what influential audiences in the West want to hear. 

An Endlessly Renewable Source of Green Agitprop Alan Moran

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/06/an-endlessly-renewable-source-of-green-agitprop/

Stoking the fires of renewable energy’s purported advantages is the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental outfit whose chief purpose is to serve as a spigot for endless propaganda. Its official message is that fossil fuel is an archaic source of electricity now being battered by upstart competitors wind and solar. Bear in mind that world electricity supply pans out at 38 per cent for coal, 23 per cent gas and 26 per cent hydro/nuclear. Wind/solar supply 10 per cent.

IRENA tirelessly advocates for renewables, saying they “could form a key component of economic stimulus packages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.” And in the purple prose so common with these green-spruiking agencies it claims, “Scaling up renewables can boost struggling economies. It can save money for consumers, pique the appetites of investors and create numerous high-quality new jobs.” Investment in renewables is amplified by other benefits, the story goes, as it is alleged to bring “health, sustainability and inclusive prosperity.” When it comes to renewables, no snake-oil salesman of old could hold a carbon-neutral candle to the likes of their modern green-lipped urgers.

IRENA would have us see renewable power installations as a key component of economic stimulus packages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that replacing one quarter of the world’s existing coal capacity with wind and solar would, in addition to cutting electricity costs, bestow a stimulus worth US$940 billion, or around one per cent of global GDP.

All this is, of course, is super-heated hot air billowing from the deep pockets of IRENA’s multi-government funding. It rests upon the sort of spurious arithmetic swallowed whole by Australian governments which, having granted regulatory favours to wind/solar, cheer the dynamiting of low-cost, dependable coal plants and the consequent price escalation and network unreliability.

Reality Is Gradually Catching Up To Green Energy Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-8-reality-is-gradually-catching-up-to-green-energy

If you dutifully read your U.S. mainstream media, you undoubtedly have the impression that “clean” and “green” energy is rapidly sweeping all before it, and soon will supplant fossil fuels in powering our economy. After all, many major states, including California and New York, have mandated some form of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, or in some cases even earlier. That’s only 30 years away. And reports are everywhere that investment in “renewables,” particularly wind and solar energy, continues to soar. For example, from Reuters in January we have “U.S. clean energy investment hits new record despite Trump administration views.” In the New York Times on May 13 it’s “In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.” The final victory of wind and solar over the evil fossil fuels mushttps://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-8-reality-is-gradually-catching-up-to-green-energy

Actually, that’s all a myth. The inherent high cost and unreliability of wind and solar energy mean that they are highly unlikely ever to be more than niche players in the overall energy picture. Politicians claim progressive virtue by commissioning vast farms of wind turbines and solar panels, at taxpayer or ratepayer expense, without anyone ever figuring out — or even addressing — how these things can run a fully functioning electrical grid without complete fossil fuel backup. And the electrical grid is the easy part. How about airplanes? How about steel mills? I’m looking for someone to demonstrate that this “net zero” thing is something more than a ridiculous fantasy, but I can’t find it.

To stay grounded in reality, there is no better source than the multiple-times-weekly email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Planet of the Censoring Humans The campaign to remove Michael Moore’s new documentary from the Internet – led by Moore’s erstwhile progressive “allies” – is a significant advance in the censorship revolution Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/planet-of-the-censoring-humans

On April 21st, 2020, just before the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, Oscar-winning director/producer Michael Moore released a new movie called Planet of the Humans. Directed by Jeff Gibbs, the film is a searing look at the ostensible failures of the environmentalist movement, to which Moore and Gibbs both belonged.

“Jeff and I were at the first Earth Day celebrations,” Moore laughs. “That’s how old we are.”

Distributed for free on YouTube, the film’s central argument is that the environmentalist movement, fattened by corporate donations, has become seduced by an industrialist delusion.

“The whole idea of the film was to ask a question – after fifty years of the environmentalist movement, how are we doing?” recounts Moore. “It looks like, not very well.”

Moore and Gibbs challenged the idea that both the planet and humankind’s current patterns of industrial production can be saved through the magic bullet of “renewable energy.” The film shows lurid examples of various deceptions, like the oft-used trick of replacing coal plants with new natural gas plants, which are then called “clean” or “green,” or the hideous trend of describing the burning of trees as a “renewable” energy source.

Environmentalists denounced the film as riddled with “lies” and “misinformation,” claiming among other things that Moore used old data to discredit green technology. A campaign to remove the film from circulation immediately took shape.

Bad Day At BlackRock? ESG investing is already taking a toll on state pension funds—now it might transform the world’s largest private asset manager, too. Rupert Darwall

https://www.city-journal.org/blackrock-esg-strategy

“I don’t give a damn what these powerful corporations tell us and I don’t care about their profit margin. We need to get out of these fossil fuels before it’s too late for everybody.” These are not the words of a Sunrise Movement activist, though they could easily be mistaken for one, but New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, speaking at an online People’s Assembly on BlackRock last week. The gathering of activists and advocates was intended to discuss strategies for pushing BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to make good on its promises to “place sustainability at the center” of its investment strategy. As environmental activists see it, the firm has a long way to go.

Stringer, an anti-fracking campaigner and protégé of Congressman Jerry Nadler, became comptroller in January 2014, when Bill de Blasio took over as mayor. He wanted to remake his office into “a think-tank for innovation and ideas,” Stringer declared on his first day. That’s a risky outlook for one assuming a position defined by law as the custodian of the city’s five pension funds, which totaled, in February 2020, $221.2 billion in assets. Early on, Stringer proclaimed a devotion to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing, and to finding investment managers dedicated to these principles. He launched a campaign on proxy access to enable shareholders to nominate directors—ticking the “G” for governance. He then moved on to the “S” with his Boardroom Accountability Project, writing to 151 companies asking that they disclose, among other things, the sexual orientation of their directors.

“E” for environment is the big one. When de Blasio announced in January 2018 that city pension funds would divest $5 billion worth of equity in fossil-fuel companies, Stringer justified the move by claiming retirees’ financial future was “linked to the sustainability of the planet.” The comptroller allocated 12 percent of the fund assets of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System—the largest of the city’s five pension funds—into the Developed Environmental Activist asset class, according to an American Council for Capital Formation report by Timothy Doyle. The move dragged down the fund’s already-poor investment returns. 

Virginia Is Deluding Itself About Green Energy Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-30-virginia-is-deluding-itself-about-green-energy

A few days ago I had a post about how tightening “green” energy regulations in Europe are gradually strangling sectors like the automobile and chemical industries. The post was titled “Europe Is Firmly Committed To Economic Suicide.” Here in the U.S., we have a large coterie of “blue” states that are hungering to follow the EU economic model — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and others. A latecomer to this party is Virginia.

In Virginia, you may be aware that in 2018, for the first time in a generation, the Democrats took control of both houses of the legislature. They wasted no time in passing a big chunk of the progressive agenda en masse, in the form of over a thousand bills that had been blocked by their adversaries for decades. The new laws cover everything from abortion to guns to the minimum wage to tax increases, and plenty more. Of course, at the top of the agenda, as it always seems to be, was “climate change.” To slay this particular dragon, Virginia now has the newly-enacted Virginia Clean Economy Act, or VCEA.

EU Will Use Coronavirus Pandemic Relief to Push Climate Change Agenda By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/29/eu-will-use-coronavirus-pandemic-relief-to-push-climate-change-agenda-n458940

The European Union has discovered what Democrats in America have known for years: never let a crisis go to waste.

In that spirit, the EU is presenting a massive relief package for European economies to help them get back on their feet following the coronavirus lockdowns.

But the plan isn’t designed solely to alleviate the crisis. It’s mainly structured to advance the EU’s climate change agenda to make the world safe for windmills…or something.

Guardian:

The EU’s plan seeks to pour money into emissions-busting sectors: €91bn (£81bn) a year for home energy efficiency and green heating, €25bn of renewable energy, and €20bn for clean cars over two years, plus 2m charging points in five years. Up to €60bn will go to zero-emissions trains and the production of 1m tonnes of clean hydrogen is planned.