RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-epa-electric-vehicle-mandate-tailpipe-emissions-rule

In his March 4 address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump celebrated terminating Joe Biden’s “insane electric vehicle mandate.” A year ago, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency had finalized a rule, nominally about tailpipe emissions, that would have required 30 percent to 56 percent of all new light-duty consumer cars sold in the United States to be electric vehicles (EVs). Trump announced his intention to undo Biden’s EV overreach in his first week in office, as part of his executive order entitled “Unleashing American Energy.”

Biden’s rule would have brought chaos to the automotive industry, caused significant economic harm to millions of Americans, and put U.S. national security at risk. Repealing it will level the playing field in the EV market in ways that will benefit American consumers. According to Kelley Blue Book, the cheapest gasoline car available in America in 2025, the Nissan Versa, costs $18,300. The cheapest EV, the Nissan Leaf, costs $29,280—a staggering 60 percent more expensive.

The logistics of owning an EV are also complicated and time-consuming. EV chargers need to be installed at homes and apartment complexes, and charging a car can take more than 12 hours, compared with the less than five minutes it takes to fill up a tank of gas. The Leaf EV can travel 149 miles on a full charge; the Versa can go more than 375 miles on a full tank of gas, over 150 percent farther.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/26/challenging-the-climate-crisis-narrative/

According to the United Nations, “Climate change is a global emergency that goes beyond national borders.” From the World Economic Forum, “Urgent global action must be taken to reduce emissions and safeguard human health from the multi-pronged negative impacts of climate change globally.”

From every multinational institution in the world, we hear the same message. From the World Bank, “The world is battling a perfect storm of climate, conflict, economic, and nature crises.” From the World Health Organization, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat.”

A major problem with all this unanimity over this “emergency” is the fact that for at least half of all people living in Western nations in 2025, the UN, WEF, WHO, and World Bank have no credibility. We don’t want to “own nothing and be happy” as our middle class is crushed. We don’t want the only politically acceptable way to maintain national economic growth to rely on population replacement. And with only the slightest numeracy, we see apocalyptic proclamations as lacking substance.

For example, while 250,000 “additional deaths per year” is tragic, worldwide estimates of total deaths are not quite 70 million per year. These “additional deaths” constitute a 0.36 percent increase over that baseline, just over one-third of one percent. Not even a rounding error.

Similarly, an alarmist prediction from NASA is that “Antarctica is losing ice mass (melting) at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year, adding to sea level rise.” Let’s unpack that a bit. A billion tons is a gigaton, equivalent in volume to one cubic kilometer. So Antarctica is losing 150 cubic kilometers of ice per year. But Antarctica has an estimated total ice mass of 30 million cubic kilometers. Which means Antarctica is losing about one twenty-thousandth of one percent of its total ice mass per year. That is well below the accuracy of measurement. It is an estimate, and the conclusion it suggests is of no significance.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/24/the-global-warming-scare-hits-rock-bottom/

Our friend Steven Hayward, late of the great Power Line blog, university professor and incisive thinker, wrote a compelling essay last week about “The Nadir of the Climate Change Movement.” If anyone should know about the state of global warming hysteria, it would be Hayward. Here’s how he begins his argument:

The prevailing winds are blowing not toward more windmills but toward common sense on energy.

It is possible that the Trump administration is going to deal the death blows to the long-running climate change hysteria and government hostility to fossil fuels, not just in the United States but around the globe.

The Trump administration has moved well beyond merely supporting increased oil and natural gas production. It has also launched steps to dismantle the foundations of anti-energy climate policy, in particular, a proposed reversal of the so-called ‘endangerment finding’ that gave the EPA jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gases, which were never explicitly included in any of the various Clean Air Acts passed over the last 50 years. Trump’s EPA is also proposing to revise the EPA’s flawed ‘social cost of carbon’ analysis, which is used to justify costly green energy schemes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/every_dollar_spent_on_solar_energy_is_wasted.html

Solar electricity has big problems. Solar is intermittent. It stops working if clouds obscure the sun. It does not work at night. Solar works much better in the summer than in the winter. Solar is peaky. Electricity delivery peaks in the middle of the day and is weaker in the early morning or late afternoon.

Solar electricity is very expensive compared to electricity generated by natural gas or coal. Unsubsidized solar electricity costs about $150 per megawatt hour. Using natural gas, one can generate electricity for as little as $20 per megawatt hour — over seven times less. The high cost of solar is hidden by an extensive system of subsidies.

The intermittent delivery of electricity could be smoothed if it were possible to store the electricity for use when solar is not working. But it’s not possible. Bridging the times and seasons when solar is not working by means of storage is not remotely possible because the amount of storage needed would cost ten or even a hundred times more than the solar farms generating the electricity.

There is a demand for electricity storage. Storage can solve the peakiness problem that plagues solar. Because solar output surges in the middle of the day It will often overtax the ability of the local electrical grid to accept the electricity. The solution is time-shiftng batteries that store excessive midday power and release it later in the day or in the early evening. New solar plants in solar-heavy states are equipped with time-shifting batteries. Time-shifting batteries increase the cost of solar electricity by about a third.

The U.S. is spending about $50 billion per year on new solar electricity plants. The money comes from government subsidies and increased electricity rates. New solar plants with a capacity, or peak output, of 27 terrawatts were built in 2023. The solar plants are backed up by fossil-fuel plants capable of stepping in when solar is not working. If existing solar plants were razed, the electric grid would continue to work smoothly using the fossil-fuel plants that would otherwise be on backup duty for solar.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/19/revive-nuclear-energy-in-america/

he United States used to be the undisputed leader in nuclear power and still has more operating reactors than any other nation, with 94 currently in service. But in the last 35 years, only one new nuclear power plant has been built in the U.S.—Plant Vogtle in Georgia, which only recently began commercial operations.

Meanwhile, 25 nuclear reactors are under construction in China, seven in India, four each in Turkey, Egypt, and Russia, and two each in South Korea, Bangladesh, Japan, the UK, and Ukraine. The nations of Argentina, Brazil, France, Iran, and Slovakia are all building one plant at present.

When it comes to nuclear energy, the world is leaving the USA behind, and despite a recent return to sanity with the incoming Trump administration, conventional wisdom in the US is that nuclear power is too expensive and too dangerous. Both are incorrect.

In California, where insanity retains a firm grip on energy policy, one might think nuclear power would nonetheless be getting serious consideration. After all, nuclear energy doesn’t generate greenhouse gases, which is the official explanation for every imaginable mishap in the Golden State, from wildfires to alleged gender inequality. Is California serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions? If so, then maybe if the myths of high costs and excessive risk could be debunked, California could embrace nuclear energy. It isn’t as if there isn’t precedent.

California was once home to six nuclear power plants, generating a total of 5.8 gigawatts. Three of them, Humboldt Bay, Vallecitos, and Santa Susana, were small-scale, generating barely 100 megawatts in total. But San Onofre, with three reactors that could have been retrofitted, took its 2.6 gigawatts offline in 2012. The other big plant was Rancho Seco in the Sacramento Valley, generating 913 megawatts until it was taken offline in 1989. Now, instead of building more nuclear power plants, California’s last operating reactors at Diablo Canyon are scheduled for shutdown. In the face of hyperbolic opposition, PG&E has applied to renew its license for another 20 years. This final surviving nuclear power plant generates 2 gigawatts of baseload electricity. California’s grid has the capacity to absorb at least ten times this much continuous, nonstop power.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-16-energy-fantasy-versus-reality-in-woke-land-part-iii

JP Morgan Chase — that’s the largest bank in the country. It has been headed for almost 20 years by celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon. For much of the 20 years, Chase and Dimon have been known for their fealty to woke orthodoxies, at least in their official pronouncements. For example, here is a Forbes piece from October 2020 citing Dimon on the subject of “systemic racism.” (Pithy quote: “Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. . . . It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”)

The fealty to woke orthodoxies has in the past extended in particular to the subject of “climate change.” In April 2021 JPM put out a big announcement of plans to facilitate investment of some $2.5 trillion in what they called “climate action and sustainable development.” In October 2021, JPM joined the so-called Net Zero Banking Alliance, then being organized by the UN (led by Mark Carney), promising to starve fossil fuels of investment capital in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

But meanwhile, over at J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, they have a guy named Michael Cembalest, who currently has the title Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy. For some 15 years, Cembalest has put out an annual Report called the Annual Energy Paper. I have covered a couple of Cembalest’s prior reports, here for 2021, and here for 2022. The titles of both those posts included the words “Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land.” Cembalest is just out with the 2025 version of his Annual Energy Paper, so consider this to be Part III of this series.

These Reports by Cembalest are far from perfect. At a basic level, the Reports accept the ideas that there is a real energy transition going on, that it is somehow important, and that use of fossil fuels must eventually be eliminated. I don’t know if Cembalest really believes those things himself, or if accepting them for purposes of your public reports is the price of holding a highly-paid job at JPM. Either way, while I consider the failure to question those ideas to be a major flaw of these Reports, that failure does not prevent Cembalest from taking a serious and realistic look at many aspects of the supposed energy transition that are completely failing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21454/climate-change-grift

Perhaps the climate hoax is actually not about saving the environment? What is it, then?

Some environmental problems of pollution are clearly caused by man; the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), as in certain hairsprays for instance, on the ozone layer over the Antarctica. CFCs thin, or make a “hole,” in the planet’s ozone layer that protects the people from harmful ultraviolet rays. There is also the very real man-made problem of insoluble trash in the oceans. Generally, however, the problems of pollution are separate from those of climate change. Whatever can reasonably be done to curb man-made pollution should, of course, be advanced, but sometimes climate change and pollution overlap – seen by many, apparently, as an invitation to muddle and conflate them.

Climate change is largely caused by solar flares. So far, at least, there is not a blessed thing anyone can do about them. Many industries offer grants for papers that support the efficacy of their products that relate to climate change. Solar flares, regrettably, do not offer grants.

[Former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate] Kerry and his family flew on 48 trips and emitted more than 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide in just the 18 months between January 2021 and July 2022. Private jets “are 10 times more carbon intensive than airliners on average, and 50 times more polluting than trains,” according to a 2021 report. Kerry justified his polluting by declaring, unfortunately without a trace of irony, that private jets were the “only choice for somebody like me.”

The answer was supplied as early as 2015 by Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

That would mean the destruction of capitalism and the world economy, however long that takes.

When the global elites arrived in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023 to discuss the urgent need to declare climate emergencies, they did so using more than 150 private jets.

Any journalists or commentators who dare to question or oppose the climate change orthodoxy are immediately shunned as “climate deniers” and met in the legacy media with an instant end to their careers.

“What is, in my view, even more dangerous, is the quasi-scientific form that their many times refuted forecasts have taken upon themselves.” — Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, The New American, December 22, 2009.

Klaus stressed that environmentalism disguises itself as science. Under this disguise, it attempts to force its precepts on humanity. When it comes to global warming or climate change, that process is made easier: the topic is scientifically complex, which makes it hard for most people to refute the climate scammers.

“For the last 16 years, temperatures have been going down and the carbon dioxide has been going up and the crops have got greener and grow quicker. We’ve done plenty to smash up the planet, but there’s been no global warming caused by man…. I still say it’s poppycock! If you believe it, fine. But I don’t and there’s thousands like me.” — David Bellamy, English botanist and former BBC broadcaster, The Daily Mail, January 22, 2013.

It is no wonder that the climate change scam won the day. Few people have been willing to risk their livelihoods to fight against the manipulation.

Meanwhile, at the latest UN Climate Conference, COP29, which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024, the agenda to destroy the world’s economy and the West by forcing wealth redistribution made new strides…. [Developing countries] apparently demanded $1.3 trillion annually. In the words of energy expert Alex Epstein: “The basic idea here is what they call ‘climate reparations,’ which is the idea that the US and others have ruined the world with fossil fuels, and so we have to pay a trillion dollars a year to make up for it, which, by the way, if the US paid that, that’s $7,700 per household per year.”

Notably, China retained its status as a “developing country” at the COP29, thereby exposing the enormous extent of the climate hoax. According to the International Energy Agency, “China’s total CO2 emissions exceeded those of the advanced economies combined in 2020, and in 2023 were 15% higher.” In addition, while China continues to build more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the entire world combined, the West continues on the path of deindustrialization in the name of the climate.

Thankfully, President Donald Trump, once again, has withdrawn the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. As the past has shown, however, such a withdrawal holds no future guarantees. Trump also withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement during his first term, but President Joe Biden then brought the US back the first chance he got. For this reason, it is crucial that the current US administration do all it can to publish the truth about the climate scam and work towards ending it across the board.

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this January, Klaus Schwab’s wife, Hilde Schwab, opened the annual meeting with the assertion that Antarctica is melting.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/10/net-zero-is-a-big-fat-zero-for-economic-growth/

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions was going to save the planet at no cost. Turns out it’s an economy wrecker, which is more feature than bug for many a climate alarmist.

Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt, a London-based investment bank, took on the claim of Labour Party British Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who said that pursuing net zero greenhouse gas emissions didn’t require a deceleration of economic growth. What he found was “sad to say,” but he stands by the facts.

“The result of the UK’s decarbonization efforts appears to be weak economic growth, stalling living standards, high energy prices and deindustrialization – without denting rising global emissions,” he wrote last week in the Telegraph.

“Net zero is strangling our economy,” says the headline over Pickering’s column, because “limiting available electricity has stifled productivity.”

On the Peel Hunt website, Pickering explained that data from 189 countries indicated there is “a strong positive correlation between living standards and energy consumption – showing a clear link between falling energy capacity and weak productivity in the UK.” He notes that “the decline in UK electricity supply, which started in 2006, coincided with the start of structural weakness in productivity growth.”

Bluntly put, without cheap and reliable energy, which is what we get from fossil fuels, an economy turns sclerotic. Which is why the political left works so feverishly to end gas and oil. As we have said so many times before, the agenda behind cutting greenhouse gases is in actuality an assault on capitalism, which, as the legendary Milton Friedman famously said, is the only economic system that has enabled the masses to escape from “grinding poverty.”

https://quillette.com/2025/03/04/the-green-energy-delusion/

I. Physical Constraints

Energy is not just another commodity. It’s absolutely fundamental to our modern civilisation. Every thing we do—from feeding ourselves to staying warm to manufacturing medicines—requires energy input. And not all energy sources are created equal.

A barrel of oil contains about fifty times more energy than the most advanced viable battery of the same weight. This gap is never going to close significantly. It can’t. The energy a battery can supply is dependent on the flow of electrons between different materials, each of which can provide a certain number of electrons for any given weight. You can improve the battery’s charging time or durability or the number of times it can be charged before it starts to fail, but you can’t change the fundamental composition of the materials available any more than you can change lead into gold.

Batteries, then, are heavy and they’re going to remain that way. This is not a problem for many applications—including phones, laptops, and small household devices. In these cases, the lower energy density isn’t a major drawback since the devices are small and frequently rechargeable, and weight isn’t a limiting factor in their performance. But for things that need energy input to move—cars, trucks, planes—the extra weight creates a cascading series of problems. A heavier vehicle needs more energy to move, which means that it needs bigger batteries, which means adding yet more weight, which means that more energy is needed to move it. Thanks to this weight penalty, electric vehicles often require significantly more raw materials in their construction, and more energy in their day-to-day operation, than their advocates admit.

Aircraft face uniquely stringent weight considerations: every kilogramme of battery reduces payload capacity while, unlike fuel, batteries don’t become lighter during flight. So the reduced payload that would result from using batteries means fewer passengers or less cargo per flight, which in turn means we would need to schedule more flights to move the same number of people or amount of goods. In addition, aircraft combustion engines operate at relatively steady speeds—there’s not much acceleration or deceleration, no sitting in traffic, and no braking from which energy can be recouped. Since there is a direct relationship between weight and range or payload, aircraft are naturally incentivised to be as efficient as possible.

So battery-powered aircraft are unlikely to work well in the foreseeable future—but what about cars? It’s the policy in many developed countries to shift to electric vehicles—in the UK, they’re planning to ban new sales of internal combustion cars from 2035, and in Norway almost 90 percent of new car sales are electric due to carrot-and-stick policies. But from a full-system environmental perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Since not only are there weight penalties—batteries make cars heavier and heavier cars then require even bigger, heavier batteries to move—but there are issues of energy efficiency to take into account.