RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-1-12-updates-on-the-march-to-the-great-green-energy-future

The cries of climate alarm get ever louder and more urgent. (E.g., New York Times, January 9, “It’s confirmed: 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record and perhaps in the last 100,000 years. By far.”). We’re all about to boil! Something must be done!

OK, but then there is the proposed solution: Order up by government fiat that our current fully working and inexpensive energy system must be replaced with a never-demonstrated pipe dream conjured up by political science and gender studies majors who know nothing about how an energy system works. We’re far enough into this by now that some of the pieces are starting to blow up in dramatic fashion. Are we allowed to notice?

Here in New York, we got into this game mainly with two pieces of legislation, both enacted in 2018 — at the state level, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act; and in the City, Local Law 97. With both laws the pols set the deadlines for compliance at dates seemingly far in the future, expecting that they would no longer be around to be held accountable. The first of those two laws ordered up state-wide mandates for “decarbonizing” the economy, starting with a requirement for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030; and the second set limits for carbon emissions for buildings in New York City, some of which have just kicked in effective January 1, 2024. Sure enough, the Mayor at the time of enactment is gone, almost the entire City Council is gone (term limits), and the Governor at the time is also gone.

So where are we?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/11/the-cost-of-the-climate-cabal/

A year ago while in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, the administration’s climate functionary John Kerry said that “money, money, money, money, money, money, money” was needed for climate programs. That string of words actually corresponds with a sum, and it’s $150 trillion.

Go ahead, try to comprehend that number. It’s about 51/2 times the size of the U.S. economy, more than four times larger than the (always-growing) federal debt, and 150% of the world’s GDP. Or, according to Eric Worrall at the Watts Up With That? climate site, “if you spent $130 million every day since the death of Jesus Christ, just about now you would be approaching $100 trillion.”

That it will be spent over the next 26 years doesn’t mean that it’s not a significant, and economy-breaking, amount.

The immense size of the “need” matters little to the Davos crony crowd, which will meet for the 54th time next week. The gathering of the rich and powerful will spend its week schmoozing, trading favors and backslapping to become richer and more powerful. And of course talking about how much the world needs them and their special skills to solve the climate crisis they have fabricated, and how much of other people’s money they need to get the job done.

But let’s say the climate cabal gets the $150 trillion (after all, it’s only about $5 trillion a year) from taxpayers. What can we expect in return?

Economic struggles. Energy shortages. And zero impact on the climate.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/05/climate-crimes-and-misdemeanors/

There is no evidence, only speculation, that human emissions of greenhouse gases are overheating Earth. Despite this, there’s a growing movement to prosecute and incarcerate those who violate the rules set down by the climate zealots. It’s as if the Spanish Inquisition has changed the definition of heresy so that those who have a healthy skepticism of the global warming claims are now the targets of the office of the tribunal.

In jolly old England, “​​property owners who don’t comply with new energy rules may face prison,” says the London Telegraph. “Ministers want to grant powers to create new criminal offenses and increase penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets,” the Telegraph continues. “​​Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to” nearly $19,000 in U.S. dollars.
Three guest authors writing in CarbonBrief about “climate misinformation” said that justice for those who dare challenge the global warming narrative includes “bringing in a correction or a collaborative approach after the misinformation has been received, or even putting in place punishments, such as fines or imprisonment.”
Then there’s England’s lunatic Guardian newspaper. One of its climate correspondents has suggested “financial penalties or prison time” for oil company executives for their “40 years of lying about climate change,” as well as “the propagandists they’ve employed and the politicians they’ve funded” who so far “have largely escaped blame.”
The United Nations has wondered if “international criminal law” should “be used against those who promote this dangerous trend” of spreading “climate denial.”

Of course this nonsense isn’t new.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/04/collapse-of-used-ev-market-spells-doom-for-bidens-electric-car-dreams/

“The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are.” – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Just as President Joe Biden starts showering hundreds of billions more of taxpayers’ money to “electrify” the nation’s fleet of automobiles, the bottom is falling out of the EV market.

The latest indication is the sharp drop in prices for used EVs.

A report from iSeeCars.com, a search engine for auto buyers, found that the average price for all cars declined 5% in 2023 compared with 2022.

But the resale price EVs plunged 33%.

While a used EV sold for an average of $52,821 in 2022, it went for less than $35,000 in 2023, which means they can be had for just slightly more than the average price for all cars.

Even with this dramatic decline in prices, it took 40% longer to sell an EV in 2023 than it did the year before. Used gas-powered cars, in contrast, sold 10% faster than they did in 2022.

“This combination of lower prices and slower sales suggests EVs have hit a market demand threshold that will be difficult to break through,” said Karl Brauer, iSeeCars executive analyst.

Why is the used EV market in trouble? Bloomberg speculates that “Buyers are shunning them due to a lack of subsidies, a desire to wait for better technology, and continued shortfalls in charging infrastructures.”

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/12/29/biden-dept-of-energy-continues-war-on-consumers-new-fridge-freezer-and-fans-regulations-enacted/

We all know the routine. Water-saving toilets that don’t flush (flush twice), water/energy-saving dishwashers and clothes washers that don’t clean (run two cycles), lightbulbs that don’t light, dryers that don’t dry (run twice), and all the ancillary nonsense that comes from the intervention of the regulatory state.

What Biden and the progressive movement call the “green new deal” effort toward “sustainability,” including the ban on gas stoves and internal combustion engines, simply results in a diminished quality of life, a loss in lifestyle productivity, and the exact opposite outcome from their expressed/intended purpose.  It’s an abject mess of stupidity, pushed under the guise of environmentalism.

Today the Biden Dept of Energy (DOE) takes it one step further with rules and regulations on fridges, freezers and fans. {DOE LINK}

Residential Refrigerators and Freezers – The efficiency standards being adopted today for residential refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, and freezers, which have not been updated in over a decade, align with recommendations from a diverse set of stakeholders, including manufacturers, the manufacturing trade association, energy, environmental, and consumer advocacy groups, states, and utilities. Compliance will be required either January 31, 2029, or January 31, 2030, depending on the configuration of the refrigerator or freezer. The energy savings over 30 years of shipments is 5.6 quadrillion British thermal units, which represents a savings of 11% relative to the energy use of products currently on the market. DOE estimates that the standards would save consumers $36.4 billion over 30 years of shipments and result in cumulative emission reductions of nearly 101 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—an amount roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions of 12.7 million homes. 

https://pjmedia.com/miltharris/2023/12/27/a-new-kind-of-knot-head-ecosexual-woman-falls-in-love-with-an-oak-tree-n4925056

May–December relationships can be tough. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a term for a romantic relationship between two people with a considerable age difference. Many experts believe that these types of relationships can be especially difficult. Between societal pressures and different milestones, two individuals from differing decades might just have to try a little harder to make a relationship work for the long haul.

Sonja Semyonova, a 45-year-old woman from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, has found herself in one of these relationships, though hers is slightly more complicated. The one she is attracted to could be up to 55 years older than her. We can’t be sure, of course, because the only way to tell with any degree of accuracy would be to cut the one she loves in half and count the rings. You see, Semyonova identifies as ecosexual, and her beau is an oak tree. 

Isn’t it ironic that the same people who think folks who believe in two sexes are strange condone what people like Semyonova embrace? Rational thought eludes them.

Semyonova describes her relationship as erotic. While she has always felt lonely, the oak tree has filled that void. I should mention that Semyonova claims to be a self-intimacy guide, whatever that is. I shudder to think what she sets her clients up with, especially since she claims that what she feels for the tree is what she has always wanted in a person.

QUOTE: https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/12/24/al-gore-without-climate-action-we-could-lose-our-capacity-for-self-governance/#disqus_thread

Gore said, ‘The scientist who has warned us of these mega-storms and the floods and mudslides and droughts and the ice melting and the sea level rising and the storms getting stronger and the tropical diseases and climate and migrants crossing international borders in large numbers. They were dead right when they warned us about this, and so we need to pay more attention to them now.’

He continued, ‘Here is one thing they say: if we don’t take action, there could be as many as 1 billion climate refugees crossing international borders in the next several decades. Well, a few million have contributed to this wave of populist authoritarianism and dictatorships and so forth. What would a billion do? We can’t do this. We could lose our capacity for self-governance.’

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20222/global-warming-oil

[H]istory shows that civilizations based on recycling and no growth end up disappearing, the most glaring example being ancient Sumer.

Nuclear energy may sound attractive…. But the fact is that we still know little about its impact in the long run, especially when it comes to disposing of the waste it produces.

Since the Paris Conference of 2015, those leading the “save the planet” crusade have opted for a piecemeal approach to a problem that, if it exists, cannot be solved by diplomatic gimmicks, fixing sectorial targets such as a maximum of 2 degrees increase in global warming by an arbitrary date…

Even before it started, it was evident that the COP28 jamboree to “save the planet” would not satisfy the high expectations, some of them contradictory, of the 198 nations and dozens of non-governmental organizations attending the event with different agendas, including some hidden ones.

It is, therefore no surprise that some participants pronounced the event “a big failure” even before the conference president, the UAE’s Sheikh Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, struck the final gavel.

The next move was to blame “the Arabs” and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as a whole.

The fact, however, is that OPEC as a whole accounts for just over a third of global oil production.

Of the top oil producers, only two Saudi Arabia and Iraq are Arab states. The United States, Russia and Canada claim first, third and fourth slots as largest producers. Of the top 20 consumers of crude, oil only two, Indonesia and Iran, are OPEC members.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-green-churchs-dubai-synod/

The last two weeks the international climate-change hustlers met in Dubai for the UN’s COP 28 annual conclave that features apocalyptic prophecies, pie-in-the-sky policies, incontinent virtue-signaling, and international grifting.

Don’t expect this CO2-spewing confab to be any more useful than the last 27 COPs. It is, however, like them replete with shameless hypocrisy and embarrassing contradictions. The 400,000 attendees included a record-setting 97,000 “official delegates,” who mostly hectored hoi polloi for their selfish addiction to fossil fuels, and morally preen themselves for their own saintly concern about anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming, the harbinger of capitalism’s end times. Even more unseemly, the attendees likely set a record for CO2 emissions, surpassing Glasgow’s 103,500 tons set in 2021. According to the Daily Mail, this is “roughly what 8,000 Brits produce in a year.”

The embarrassment came from some remarks made by this year’s President, Dr. Sultan Al-Jaber, the UAE’s environment minister and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Repeating what climate “deniers”––the Orwellian word for real scientists–– have been saying for years, Al-Jaber last month commented on the Paris Accord’s’ goal to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030: “‘There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,’ Al-Jaber said at an online event on Nov. 21, “adding a pointed barb to the hosts that it would be impossible to stop burning fossil fuels and sustain economic development, ‘unless you want to take the world back into caves.’”

The warmist faithful, already disgruntled that the CEO of an oil company is presiding over their congregation, were further incensed that earlier ADNOC, as reported by the BBC, had announced that it “may drill 42% more by 2030, according to analysts considered the international gold standard in oil market intelligence,” and  “had already clearly stated plans to boost its production capacity by 7% over the next four years.”

Such heresy at the green synod, of course, drew a rebuke from the UN’s high priest, Secretary-General António Guterres. “The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” Guterres said. “Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe . . . . The science is clear.”

Here we have the tell that exposes the weakness of the “climate change” hypothesis. So does the phrase itself, which replaced “global warming” after the “pause” in temperature increases a few decades ago complicated the simplistic claim that large increases of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, as had occurred during the same period, automatically raised global temperatures. In fact, the science is not “clear,” nor is it “settled,” another go-to warmist cliché that has fallen victim to more recent challenges like theoretical physicist Steven Koonin’s 2021 Unsettled.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/12/cop28-climate-conference-dubai-fossil-fuel-emissions/

As the COP 28 climate shindig comes to a merciful end, history is truly unfolding, as Marx once remarked, as farce. The perfect image of the conference in oil-rich United Arab Emirates will always be the fate of the elite jets, caught out in a snowstorm while held at Munich. Of course, activist scientists now tell us that a predicted wave of big snows, just like the lack of snow, are true signs of the imminent climate crisis.

Such ideas will no doubt be embraced by the always entertaining media and academic clowns, along with neo-feudalists like King Charles and John Kerry who have no doubt embraced COP’s session on “responsible yachting”. Of course, we can expect to be treated to the usual predictions of utter disaster if we somehow do not eliminate fossil fuels entirely post haste. 

The focus on the long-term consequences of climate change largely ignores three critical, and more immediate, challenges that will also create a hellish world: shifts in global geopolitics, rising inequality throughout the west, and finally a call for the imposition of green restructuring from the commanding heights of the bureaucracy.

Climate policies, notably attempts to wipe out fossil fuels, have already placed oil autocracies like Russia and Iran at a growing advantage. Meanwhile, the coal-dependent Middle Kingdom China has expanded its market share in manufactured exports to roughly equal the US, Germany and Japan combined.

China, which now emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world, is not alone in embracing fossil fuels. Russia, Iran, India and a host of developing countries are increasingly open about expanding the use of fossil fuels,  including coal. Rather than leaving due to the climate crisis, people who run developing countries know their people are leaving mostly to escape poverty. As a result, these nations are more concerned with getting rich than begging for handouts from the plutocrats and bureaucrats of the West.