RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/goodbye-green-new-deal/

After a couple of weeks of great economic sacrifice, it’s already proving hard for Americans to take. No one will sign up for a lifetime of it.

What will happen next with the coronavirus epidemic is unknown, but it seems certain to claim one very high-profile victim: the so-called Green New Deal.

Good riddance.

The current crisis in the U.S. economy is, in miniature but concentrated form, precisely what the Left has in mind in response to climate change: shutting down large sectors of the domestic and global economies through official writ, social pressure, and indirect means, in response to a crisis with potentially devastating and wide-ranging consequences for human life and human flourishing.

What is under way right now in response to the epidemic is in substance much like the Green New Deal and lesser versions of the same climate-change agenda: massive new government spending, political control of critical industries, emergency protocols modeled on wartime practice, etc.

But the characters of the two crises are basically different.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/27/if-the-covid-19-models-are-wrong-what-does-this-mean-for-climate-models/

It wasn’t long ago, just in recent days, in fact, that we were being told the coronavirus was going to kill more than 2 million Americans. But some researchers are indicating the forecasts of doom were driven by faulty models.

What then, are we supposed to make of the models that have been fueling the global warming hysteria?

The forecast used to predict 2.2 million U.S. deaths and 510,00 deaths in Great Britain was produced by Imperial College in London. It is “the epidemiological modeling which has informed policymaking in the United Kingdom and other countries in recent weeks.”

OK, but is the information reliable? Epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta is doubtful.

“I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” he said in the Financial Times.

Gupta’s team of researchers at Oxford believe both the hospitalization and mortality rates are much lower than the worst estimates, and immunity is more widespread than previously thought.

The Wall Street Journal has published an op-ed from professors of medicine at Stanford who said “projections of the death toll” reaching 2 million to 4 millon “could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” They believe “epidemiological modelers haven’t adequately adapted their estimates to account for” a number of important factors.

https://www.city-journal.org/banning-single-use-plastic-bags-covid-19

The ban on single-use plastic grocery bags is unsanitary—and it comes at the worst imaginable time.

The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those “sustainable” shopping bags that politicians and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses—and spread the viruses throughout the store.

Researchers have been warning for years about the risks of these bags spreading deadly viral and bacterial diseases, but public officials have ignored their concerns, determined to eliminate single-use bags and other plastic products despite their obvious advantages in reducing the spread of pathogens. In New York State, a new law took effect this month banning single-use plastic bags in most retail businesses, and this week Democratic state legislators advanced a bill that would force coffee shops to accept consumers’ reusable cups—a practice that Starbucks and other chains have wisely suspended to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.  

John Flanagan, the Republican leader of the New York State Senate, has criticized the new legislation and called for a suspension of the law banning plastic bags. “Senate Democrats’ desperate need to be green is unclean during the coronavirus outbreak,” he said Tuesday, but so far he’s been a lonely voice among public officials. 

The COVID-19 virus is just one of many pathogens that shoppers can spread unless they wash the bags regularly, which few people bother to do. Viruses and bacteria can survive in the tote bags up to nine days, according to one study of coronaviruses.

https://www.thepiratescove.us/2020/03/12/un-general-secretary-claims-climate-change-is-bigger-threat-than-coronavirus/

Because, this silly virus is a distraction from the Really Important Issue, which is why lots of global big wigs took long fossil fueled flights and limo rides

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, is worried that the coronavirus panic will distract people from the fight against climate change, which he says is far more important. Speaking in New York at the launch of a new UN climate report published on March 10, Guterres said, “We will not fight climate change with a virus.”

He was referring to a question about the coronavirus’ impact on the planet, and how there has been a drop in global greenhouse gas emissions due to the sudden economic slowdown. China’s CO2 emissions have dropped by a quarter, equal to 100 million metric tons. While this may have short-lived benefits for the planet, Guterres insisted that we cannot lose sight of the big picture.

“The disease is expected to be temporary, [but] climate change has been a phenomenon for many years, and will ‘remain with us for decades and require constant action’… Both [COVID-19 and climate change] require a determined response. Both must be defeated.” (snip)

Guterres said, “I call on everyone ― from government, civil society and business leaders to individual citizens – to heed these facts and take urgent action to halt the worst effects of climate change.” What’s interesting is that everyone is doing precisely this to deal with the spread of the coronavirus, which goes to show that governments, individuals, and businesses have the global capability to take rapid and strong action, but have lacked the will to do so until now. Now if only this momentum could be funnelled toward fighting climate change with the same dedication.

Except, Coronavirus is real. It may be very overblown in the scare factor, but, it is real, and more deadly than the flu, at least for older folks and those already sick. ‘Climate change’ is simply a way to scare people into allowing government to control their lives and take their money.

https://www.city-journal.org/banning-single-use-plastic-bags-covid-19

The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those “sustainable” shopping bags that politicians and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses—and spread the viruses throughout the store.

Researchers have been warning for years about the risks of these bags spreading deadly viral and bacterial diseases, but public officials have ignored their concerns, determined to eliminate single-use bags and other plastic products despite their obvious advantages in reducing the spread of pathogens. In New York State, a new law took effect this month banning single-use plastic bags in most retail businesses, and this week Democratic state legislators advanced a bill that would force coffee shops to accept consumers’ reusable cups—a practice that Starbucks and other chains have wisely suspended to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.  

John Flanagan, the Republican leader of the New York State Senate, has criticized the new legislation and called for a suspension of the law banning plastic bags. “Senate Democrats’ desperate need to be green is unclean during the coronavirus outbreak,” he said Tuesday, but so far he’s been a lonely voice among public officials. 

The COVID-19 virus is just one of many pathogens that shoppers can spread unless they wash the bags regularly, which few people bother to do. Viruses and bacteria can survive in the tote bags up to nine days, according to one study of coronaviruses.

The risk of spreading viruses was clearly demonstrated in a 2018 study published in the Journal of Environmental Health. The researchers, led by Ryan Sinclair of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, sent shoppers into three California grocery stores carrying polypropylene plastic tote bags that had been sprayed with a harmless surrogate of a virus.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/486409-growth-will-be-a-thing-of-the-past-if-businesses-choose-net-zero

Pledging “net zero” by 2050 to achieve compliance with the Paris Agreement on climate change is all the rage in the corporate world. BP has announced that it will be a net-zero company – that is, maintaining a balance between emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere – by the designated date. During its “Beyond Petroleum” days in the 2000s, BP made massive bets on renewable energy, ending in large write-downs in 2011. The lesson: An oil company doesn’t become a renewable-energy company. 

BP apparently hasn’t learned. In effect, its new CEO, Brian Looney, is sun-setting the world’s sixth-largest quoted oil company and Britain’s fifth-largest company by market capitalization. Nonetheless, BP’s move was welcomed by some of its most militant shareholders, led by the Church of England’s head investor, Edward Mason, who promptly urged investors to up the pressure on Exxon Mobil to disclose its emissions.

In fact, the Paris Agreement speaks only of “pursuing efforts” to limit the rise in average global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and achieving net-zero emissions sometime “in the second half of this century.” The more aggressive timetable came three years later, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produced its 1.5°C special report. In that document, the IPCC asserted that emissions must reach net zero by around 2050 and, by 2030, cut emissions by about 45 percent from 2010 levels.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/freeman-dyson-humanist-and-climate-change-heretic/

The death of physicist Freeman Dyson on February 28 has been noted by many publications, all of which highlighted his many contributions to science. Dyson, 96, was, without doubt, a genius. He was a polymath whose interests included mathematics, number theory, biology, physics, nuclear energy, space travel, weaponry, and arms control.

While all of those accomplishments are important, Dyson’s view of climate change — or rather, his view on carbon dioxide, economic development, and what he called “the humanist ethic” — also helped spark a new type of environmentalism, one that rejects the idea that carbon dioxide is the supreme villain.

Dyson was a skeptic on the issue of catastrophic climate change, a fact that was prominently noted in the obituaries published in the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Post called it his “apostasy on global warming.” It went on, saying that while Dyson did not “deny the Earth was warming,” he broke ranks because he didn’t believe “global warming is particularly dangerous.” That view, the Post said, “is not shared by the overwhelming majority of scientists.”  The Times said Dyson “confounded the scientific establishment by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man-made climate change.”