RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/earth_day_has_become_kind_of_a_joke.html

Fifty-three years ago, The Beatles broke up, and they started Earth Day conveniently on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday.  After all, what a better way to celebrate your hatred of capitalism than to schedule your big festival on commie #1’s birthday?  Anyway, I am not sure how Lenin would feel about all of the predictions about the Earth that were posted since then.  Let’s take a look:

Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”

—Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

—George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”

—Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

—New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

—Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/04/20/canadian-experts-blame-climate-change-on-capitalism-and-whiteness-n1688806

That Canada has become a veritable petri dish for Leftist change is undeniable. I fully expect that at some point, the issue will become a Trivial Pursuit question, should the game even survive into the 21st century and anyone feels like playing a board game in the near future. Canada has furthered its descent into a socialist dystopia by announcing who are the most vicious culprits when it comes to climate change. I’ll give you three guesses as to who the villains are in this melodrama.

Ding, ding ding! Times up! If you guessed “white supremacy” and “capitalism,” you win. Please contact the editors at PJ Media for your prize. Earlier in the week the Public Health Agency of Canada released a report about climate change and the dangers it poses to Canucks. The agency talked with the usual experts in order to obtain the desired results. Those results, as noted by The Post Millennial, were as follows:

The report alleged that white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, and racism were all “systemic drivers of negative health outcomes and climate change,” and therefore the only way forward is via a plan focused on “decolonizing, justice, and equity.”

Of course, it is. Did you expect another conclusion? The report includes comments from Isaac White, Jennifer Otoadese, and Dr. Heather Castleden, who calls herself a “white settlement scholar.” (They’re just pretty much picking these certifications out of a hat, now, aren’t they?) The group states, “…we acknowledge that we are uninvited land occupiers who by virtue of our identities contribute to the multiple manifestations of settler colonialism in our society.” The report also names capitalism, the patriarchy, and all of the usual suspects for climate change while claiming in eloquent, academic language that “big, bold, transformative action is needed now.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/21/celebrate-earth-day-with-bright-lights-and-the-joy-of-internal-combustion/

Saturday will mark the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, one full spin of the globe in which we are expected to celebrate the modern environmental movement. Yet that great cause, if we may paraphrase Eric Hoffer, became a business, then degenerated into a racket that not only became a haven for grifters but also a platform for scolds and eco-religion zealots. We strongly suggest that rather than spend a day exalting the inanimate Gaia, the West should mark it with recognition of how far human progress has brought us.

Closely related to Earth Day is Earth Hour, usually the last Saturday in March each year when the lights of “landmarks and homes across the world” are to be turned off from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time.

The usual scolds expect us “to spend 60 minutes doing something – anything – positive for our planet.” In other words, plunge the world back into pre-modern times. This might be productive if the point were to show how far man has come – and how far he will go backward if the green zealots get their way. Instead, it’s an opportunity to virtue signal and hector.

Economist Mark J. Perry has long suggested that we use Earth Day – which has become an airing of progressive grievances, which can be addressed only through leftist public policy – to “appreciate our fossil fuel energy treasures that come from the Earth’s natural environment.”

After all, Earth is where we’ve found the raw materials we needed to protect ourselves from the hostile environment around us and to pull ourselves out of poverty. It’s as if they had been stored there for us to use. Without energy provided by fossil fuels, man would not have advanced far beyond where he was just before the Industrial Revolution.

Let’s remember this by leaving the lights on and taking advantage of the blessings of the internal-combustion engine, an invention that has liberated man like no other.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/04/17/why_net_zero_is_not_a_rational_us_energy_policy_893528.html

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda. In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to “save” the climate. Although a recent Washington Post article suggests that wealth be viewed in terms of “joy, beauty, friendship, community, [and] closeness to flourishing nature,” impoverished individuals who cook with animal dung – such as 80% of the population in the African nation of Burkina-Fasso – aren’t likely to find much joy and beauty in economic misery. Granted, having to cook with animal dung ensures “closeness to nature,” although probably not the one the article’s author envisions.

Rather than approaching energy policy clearly, the U.S. (and most of the western world) is pursuing so-called “net zero” energy policies aiming to fully electrify western economies, while relying almost entirely on wind and solar power. The additional required electricity – after all, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun sets nightly – would supposedly be supplied by energy storage batteries or hydrogen-powered generators. Two factors drive these policies. 

First, there is climate hysteria, which promotes claims that have either proven to be false (the “end of snow” in Great Britain, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park) or posit extreme scenarios (complete agricultural collapse, massive sea level increases, more frequent hurricanes). The actual evidence is to the contrary, including increased agricultural yields, minimal sea level rise, and no increases in observed hurricane frequency. 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/04/19/save-the-planet-invest-in-fossil-fuels-n1688410

Earth Day is Saturday! Hooray?

“Saving humanity from the climate crisis,” says EarthDay.org, requires us to “push away from the dirty fossil fuel economy.”

Sounds logical.

But my latest video explains why doing that is cruel to poor people.  

“Three billion people in the world still use less electricity than a typical refrigerator,” explains Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” If they’re going to have “their first well-paying jobs … their first consistent supply of clean water … a modern life … that’s going to depend on fossil fuels.”

But the greens say we have a better replacement: wind and solar power. 

So I push back at Epstein: “Solar is getting cheaper all the time. It’s already cheaper than fossil fuels.”

“When we look at solar and wind around the world,” he answers, “it always correlates to rising prices and declining reliability. Why? Because solar and wind are intermittent. At any time, they can go near zero.”

That means wind turbines and solar farms don’t replace fossil fuel plants. You have to build them in addition to fossil fuel plants.

“We spent trillions of dollars in subsidies and mandates putting solar panels and wind turbines everywhere,” Epstein points out, “Yet we’re still having shortages of fossil fuels.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-electric-vehicle-battery-warranty-mandate-biden-administration-e501f?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Biden Administration is promoting electric vehicles as a vast technological improvement over internal-combustion engines. But then why is the Environmental Protection Agency requiring manufacturers to provide extended EV battery warranties and durability assurances?

Under the backdoor EV mandate the EPA rolled out last week, high-voltage batteries and electric powertrain components will be required to have an eight-year or 80,000-mile warranty. Auto makers will also have to certify that EV battery performance doesn’t decline by more than 20% over five years or 62,000 miles, and 30% over eight years or 100,000 miles.

The Clean Air Act specifies a warranty period of eight years or 80,000 miles for “major emission control components” such as catalytic converters. This is to ensure that cars with more use continue to meet tailpipe emission standards. But the law was never intended to apply to EVs because they don’t have tailpipe exhausts.

The Clean Air Act also lacks a warranty requirement for EV batteries, though they can rapidly degrade, especially when cars are left in the heat. Minor defects in battery cells can also cause batteries and even whole cars to be junked. Batteries can represent up to half of an EV’s cost so it’s often not worth replacing them.

Lightly-used batteries that have to be scrapped or replaced would negate the putative CO2 emissions reductions from EVs. Manufacturing batteries, their components and minerals consumes loads of energy—mostly from coal in China, where 77% of battery cell manufacturing and some 90% of rare earth mineral processing occurs.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/thirty_years_of_global_warming_prophecies.html

NBC News recently touted a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that says, “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.”  It further reported, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” This was echoed by Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “This is the stone cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world’s top climate experts.  We’re hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course.”

That’s the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at the Guardian, says, “Scientists have delivered a ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.”  She cited a report from the IPCC, comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists.

The U.N. again.

CBS News cited a study by Atmospheric scientist Dr. Walker Ashley at Northern Illinois University who predicts storms like the ones that tore through Mississippi, killing several dozen people, could become more common due to climate change.

Now let’s shift attention to hypocritical politicians who make predictions with their mouths and actions, beginning with Barack Obama.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts the sea level to rise by as much as 12″ in the next 30 years.  NOAA predicts the sea level rise, “…will create a profound shift in coastal flooding over the next 30 years by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland.  By 2050, ‘moderate’ (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today.”

But that information didn’t deter Obama from purchasing an oceanside mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.  The 7,000 square foot house is zero feet above sea level and about a quarter mile from the sea.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in 2019, “…there is an urgency needed in addressing man-made climate change, warning that it will ‘destroy the planet’ in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.” 

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2023/04/10/from-global-warming-to-global-cooling-to-global-warming-n2621739

Here is an interesting quote: 

“Snows are less frequent and less deep.  They often do not lie below the mountains more than one, two, or three days and very rarely a week.  They are remembered to be formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance.  The elderly inform me that the earth used to be covered with snow about three months every year.  The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do now.  [This] change…in the spring of the year is very fatal to fruits…I remember that when I was a small boy, say 60 years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter.” 

That was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1799, before fossil fuels dominated the energy industry, and when the earth’s population was far smaller than it is today.  From all indications, there was indeed notable warming in the 18th century from the previous “Little Ice Age” period.  

But let’s move ahead to the 20th century.  The weather changes, of course, and Paul Ehrlich, who was always wrong about everything he ever said, told us in 1969, “We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”   Twenty years passed, no blue steam, people were still on the earth.  I guess we were lucky.  And Ehrlich was rich.

Global cooling was the craze then.  Here are a few representative quotes from the 1970s:

Boston Globe (1970): “Air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century”

LA Times (Oct. 24, 1971): “New Ice Age Coming—It’s Already Getting Colder” 

Brown Science Dept. to the White House (1972): “Deep concern with the future of the world…falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age.”