RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/the-green-agenda-would-punish-lower-income-households-the-most-experts-say/

The costs of rapidly transitioning the world economy from natural gas to green energy sources over the coming decades will fall onto lower-income households the most, a reality that even proponents of many of those environmental policies now acknowledge.

The governor of the Bank of Italy, Fabio Panetta, acknowledged the potential negative impacts of a transition to “net-zero” carbon emissions while addressing an international energy conference on Monday.

“In fact, most climate change mitigation policies, such as carbon pricing, put pressure on the energy bills of businesses and households,” said Panetta, a former member of the European Central Bank governing council. “The consumption baskets of less affluent households are heavily weighted toward energy goods. They will therefore be disproportionately affected by the gradual increase in energy costs required for the transition.”

European and American consumers felt the burden of higher energy costs when oil prices spiked two years ago during the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine and inflation reached levels not seen since the 1970s. Inflation remains a top issue for American and European voters, as incumbent parties across Europe face difficult election prospects because of populist backlash.

“It is quite telling that a [former] member of the European Central Bank Governing Council who believes all of the fictitious asserted benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions feels compelled to warn just how expensive and devastating to consumers — and especially lower income consumers — carbon dioxide reductions will be,” said James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, a free-market think-tank.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/13/warming-alarmists-again-give-away-their-objective/

What do the climate activists really want? Do they have nothing more in mind than a noble crusade to prevent the burning sky from falling on us? Or is the global warming scare just another piece of the revolution? It’s of course the latter. We know this because they’re constantly telling us it is.

The most recent admission comes from Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia, whose exhausting essay under the headline “To fix climate anxiety (and also climate change), we first have to fix individualism” was posted on Wednesday – yes, Sept. 11.

Xia dwells a great deal on “climate anxiety” caused by environmental events that have afflicted the planet since its creation but are now blamed on human progress through the combustion of fossil fuels. She worries “we’ll never go back to normal” without defining sufficiently “normal” – maybe because in a world that has never stopped changing there is no normal. She is angry, frustrated, helpless and exhausted. Earth is so doomed that she questions “whether I could ever justify bringing my own children into this world.”

And the answer to all this? Diminish individualism and elevate the collective.

Xia approvingly quotes Sarah Jaquette Ray, whom she identifies as a “an environmental humanist who chairs the environmental studies program at Cal Poly Humboldt,” which tells us a lot about the state of academia.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-political-cost-of-the-energy-transition

For physicists, energy is about the laws of nature; for engineers, it’s about manufacturing prowess. For citizens, however, energy is generally about money. Energy purchases are unavoidable—whether directly, by paying our electric bills or for gas in our cars, or indirectly, by paying for the energy costs embedded in food, vacations, and everything else. Politicians often use “pocketbook” language when talking to voters because they know how important lowering everyday costs are for most Americans. But does anyone believe that there won’t be a political cost from the embrace of “bold” energy policies that are sharply raising citizens’ energy bills?

To understand where current federal energy policies are taking the nation, we can look to the states, the “laboratories of democracy,” and especially to a group of them eagerly following California’s lead, putting into effect massive changes to energy policies.

Consider New Jersey. As its website brags, it has “one of the most ambitious Renewable Portfolio Standards in the country.” Earlier this summer, headlines featured news about citizens shocked at soaring electric bills, thanks to a state-approved price hike. And that’s just for starters. Early in August, PJM, the grid administrator that manages electricity for a 13-state region that includes New Jersey, reported the results of its auction for supplying next year’s wholesale power: the bids came in nearly ten times as high as last year.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/06/climate-indoctrination-accelerates-as-the-narrative-breaks-down/

The global warming alarmist cabal continues to spin its many yarns and press forward with its propaganda program. Maybe the zealots are becoming desperate because they see the facts aren’t lining up with their hyperbole.

Following the get-’em-while-they’re-young school of thought, the climate agitators are targeting kindergarteners. NASA’s Climate Kids webpage, for instance, says “global warming will affect everyone on Earth.” While admitting that “fossil fuels have changed the course of human history,” NASA also says “these good things come at a cost. The cost is pollution, the destruction of landscapes and natural habitats, oil spills in the ocean, and nasty fracking chemicals in the ground. Global warming will be the biggest problem of all.”

On another of the “Kids” pages, NASA claims that in an era of “rising” global temperatures, “almost all climate scientists agree that a big cause of that is the burning of fossil fuels. The warming could lead to rising sea levels, droughts, flooding, and more severe weather. It is a challenge that we will have to deal with in the coming years.”

Remember, this proselytizing is intended to program kindergarteners. And it’s only the beginning. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also dedicated to “educating” kids about “human-induced climate change” and making sure that they are afraid to burn fossil fuels.

This is the same NOAA that, according to the Daily Caller, “House Republicans are pressing … for answers about a signature dataset frequently cited as evidence that climate change is intensifying.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-9-2-economic-policy-is-the-key-to-growth-or-decline

What is Kamala Harris’s position on any important policy issue? It’s not so easy to figure out. She studiously avoids interviews and reporters’ questions. Go to Harris’s official campaign website, and it’s almost entirely about raising money, without a word about what she stands for. Back when she was in the Senate (January 2017-January 2021), and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2019-20, she made many definitive statements on various subjects (all in accord with the radical left wing of the Democratic Party). Now, it’s silence. Unidentified campaign spokespeople imply that her previous positions are no longer operative; but what is the new position?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/16/the-climate-of-lies-keeps-getting-hotter/

The New York Times recently published a long story warning that the planet’s climate tipping points are frighteningly near. The “great systems in the natural world,” the reporters say, “might be pushing toward collapse” due to man’s use of fossil fuel. Maybe so. Or the changes we’re seeing in the climate might be entirely natural.

But that won’t sell papers to a readership that suffers from a chronic and intellectually stunting case of confirmation bias.

The Times wants us to worry about the mass death of coral reefs, the abrupt thawing of permafrost, the collapse of Greenland ice, the breakup of West Antarctic ice, a sudden shift in the West African monsoon, loss of the Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of Atlantic currents.

And ​​when might disaster be visited on all these hot spots? Well, says the Times, it depends on a number of variables and in some cases the timeline is just “hard to predict.”

Or maybe impossible. But again, a story with that angle won’t stir up the true believers who beg to be stirred up. Only alarmist articles will do that.

We pick on the mighty New York Times here, but it’s the legacy media’s great pleasure to spread misleading information and conjecture about the climate. 

About the only truth we can know about the claims surrounding anthropogenic global warming is that it’s “political, not physical, science.”

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=fc702f390e

Even as I regularly repeat my calls for a Zero Emissions Grid Demonstration Project, I’m ready for the next move in the back and forth. Suppose someone claims that a steady zero emissions electricity supply has been achieved? How can we determine and verify whether that is true? The facts can be sufficiently complex, and the incentives sufficiently perverse, that fraudulent claims are to be expected.

Consider the simple case of El Hierro Island. They set out in 2008 with the objective of building a wind/storage electricity system that would provide the island with zero-emissions electricity. To this day, the website of the wind/storage electricity company, Gorona del Viento, proclaims on its opening page “An island 100% renewable energy.” Proceed through the website, and you will find lots of happy talk about tons of carbon emissions saved, and about hours of 100% renewable generation. But if you are persistent, and finally get to the detailed charts of the latest statistics, you find that the percent of electricity from the wind/storage system for the most recent full year (2023) was only 35%. Because El Hierro is an island, it lacks the ability to cheat by sneaking in some electricity from gas or coal from a neighboring state or country and not counting it.

But now consider the case Switch Inc., which is one of the largest (maybe the very largest) companies that specialize in operating data centers. Like its colleagues in Big Tech, Switch is obsessed with the desire to show its virtue by claiming to have “emissions” as low as possible, preferably zero. As I discussed previously in posts here and here, the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon all have the same obsession, and they all put out annual “sustainability” reports that loudly proclaim their virtue in the headlines and introductions; but then, all of them ultimately admit in the fine print that their emissions are actually increasing with the voracious energy demands of data centers and AI.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=f26d0984d8

As mentioned in my recent post from July 20, there are many data points gradually accumulating as to the lack of progress toward the so-called “green” economy. It has long been clear to people who think about it that the energy transition to “net zero” is a fantasy that will not occur. But the question remains of exactly how the mania will come to an end. Will the net zero fantasies of the climate cultists proceed at full speed until they crash into a wall of physical reality (e.g., blackouts)? Or instead will these fantasies gradually retreat as governments respond to voter pressure over costs and convenience, and as investors pull back as it becomes clear that projects cannot succeed financially?

A July 30 piece from John Miltimore of the American Institute for Economic Research supports the second alternative. The title is “Why the ‘Green Economy’ Is Suddenly in Retreat—in EU, US, and on Wall Street.” Meanwhile New York, at least for the moment, remains hell-bent on moving toward a full-on crash.

Miltimore’s piece collects data from multiple sources — notably the recent EU elections, EU regulatory changes, and actions of major U.S. investors. The most significant item in the piece relates to the withdrawal of several of the largest U.S. fund managers from something called Climate Action 100+. Climate Action 100+ describes itself as “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take appropriate action on climate change in order to mitigate financial risk and to maximize the long-term value of assets.” But it seems that in recent months some of the biggest investors have decided to change strategy. J.P. Morgan Chase and State Street have “pulled all funds” from Climate Action 100+ commitments, while their even larger colleague Black Rock “reduced its holdings and scaled back its ties to the group.” Miltimore cites a New York Times article from February quantifying the various withdrawals: “All told, the moves amount to a nearly $14 trillion exit from an organization meant to marshal Wall Street’s clout to expand the climate agenda.” $14 trillion is a big number in anybody’s book.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/26/never-underestimate-joes-ability-to-foul-things-up/

He just poured billions into climate grants that have no reason to exist.

Not long after the global temperature, which doesn’t actually exist in any statistically meaningful way, blew through the mark at which we are supposed to start burning, and days after a new paper showed that the global warming narrative is exactly backward, the Biden administration awarded $4.3 billion in climate grants. It’s the work of an incompetent.

As well as that of an ideologue, which is equally as dangerous, since ideologues tend to refuse to listen to reason.

In 2020, when Joe Biden was running for office, he was thoroughly sullied when Barack Obama, his boss of eight years, said “​​don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.” Over his three years and six months as president, Joe has amply demonstrated that Obama was correct. And he did it again this week, when his Environmental Protection Agency announced its “selected recipients of over $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition.”

We predict the funds will do none of those things. The entire “initiative is just one small piece of the vast economic waste of the falsely named Inflation Reduction Act, with its multi-trillion dollars of subsidies for uneconomic projects,” says blogger Manhattan Contrarian, who incisively likens it to Mao’s “Great Leap Foward.”