RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/29/pay-attention-to-the-dutch-farmer-protests-because-america-is-next/

The same climate policies that are set to destroy private agriculture in the Netherlands are eventually coming to America.

Americans should start paying closer attention to the ongoing farmer protests in the Netherlands, which this week transformed long swaths of Dutch highways into what looked like a post-apocalyptic warzone: roadside fires raging out of control, manure and farming detritus heaped across highways, traffic stalled for miles, and massive protests across the country in support of the farmers.

Why is the Netherlands, of all places, experiencing such unrest? Americans need to understand what’s happening over there because the ruinous climate policies that triggered these protests are precisely what President Joe Biden and the Democrats have in mind for the United States.

Specifically, Dutch farmers are protesting a government plan to cut fertilizer use and reduce livestock numbers so drastically that it will force many farms out of business. Earlier this month, farmers used tractors and trucks to block highways and entrances to food distribution centers across the country, saying their livelihood and way of life are being targeted by the government.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/07/the-unaffordable-costs-of-free-renewables/

“There is simply no sound evidence for an imminent global threat from a catastrophic change in climate.  That is an idea based mainly on unvalidated computer modeling from some hundred-plus models no two of which agree and all of which incorporate multiple estimates, assumptions, and “adjustments”.  All but one of these have also predicted warming well above the subsequent record which actually occurred, and the one exception has simply been ignored.

In contrast, an abundance of clear, sound, uncontroversial evidence that refutes every major claim of a climate change crisis is readily accessible in thousands of scientific studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.  Unfortunately the sheer volume of relevant evidence, the technical language employed, and the submersion of sound evidence in a swill of pseudo-science from self-appointed climate “experts” has created such a morass of information and misinformation that several years of extensive reading plus a technical background are needed to begin to be able to sort what is sound confirmed scientific understanding from the hypothetical speculations, propaganda and outright fabrications of activists committed to a cause they deem to be more important than any sound evidence or reason.”

Throughout the 99.9 per cent of human existence before the recent widespread adoption of fossil fuels, almost every individual toiled at manual labour from mid-childhood until the end of life.  Even with the help of horses, mules, and oxen almost all of the population was needed in food production in order to sustain themselves and produce enough extra to support a small population of nobles and town dwellers. Today, in developed nations three-quarters or more of the population now live in large urban areas, and about half of the populace is no longer engaged in any productive activity.

As a group these overwhelmingly urban non-producers seem to be remarkably unfamiliar with even the most elementary understanding of the basic principles underlying the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fundamental to modern society. 

Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than in both the mainstream media and in government policies pertaining to renewable energy. Although the idea of cheap, clean, endlessly renewable energy is fantastically appealing, it is just that, a fantasy. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/biden-is-exacerbating-americas-energy-crisis

“I guarantee you — I guarantee you — we are going to end fossil fuel.”

So said then-candidate Joe Biden to environmental activists at a campaign rally in 2019. The president has yet to deliver on his promise to turn the entire U.S. energy system on its head, but given the record high gas prices at the fuel pump, he’s certainly made driving and powering homes punitively unavailable to low-income households.

The administration is keen on blaming the war in Ukraine for the hardships people are facing. This attempt is window dressing at best and blatant misinformation at worst. While European nations are heavily reliant on Russian gas in particular, the United States only used to get about 8% of its supplies from Russia. Most crude oil is imported here from Canada. Indeed, even Mexico is more important for America’s oil trade than President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Another striking difference with most European nations is the fact that the U.S. has its own oil reserves. In theory, this would mean more energy independence. However, oil drilling permits have been cut by more than half since Biden came to office. Biden says oil companies should feel encouraged to increase capacity. But the industry has hit back by revealing how the Biden administration delays its activities through actions such as initially banning and then slow-walking lease sales on federal land or making drilling permits more difficult to obtain.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/climate-change-alarmists-ramp-their-rhetoric-and-joseph-klein/

Climate change alarmists are using increasingly strident rhetoric and confrontational tactics in an effort to accelerate an end to the fossil fuel industry. The climate change alarmists believe that the disruptive methods of “civil disobedience” they employ are necessary in order to call attention to what they claim is an imminent existential threat to humanity caused by continued dependence on fossil fuels. These activists accuse the fossil fuel industry of profiting from the suffering of everyday people caused by fossil fuel emissions that are said to be wreaking havoc with the global climate. And they accuse government officials of complicity by not doing enough to force a very rapid transition to total reliance on renewable sources of clean energy, whatever the resulting huge costs and disastrous economic fallout turn out to be.

The doomsday prophesies are sounding more and more like a broken record. Take former Vice President Al Gore’s pronouncements, for example. In 2008, before teaming up with former President Barack Obama, Gore predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2013, which he pushed out a year further in his updated 2009 prophecy. President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry made a similarly dire prediction back in 2009, citing the projections of “scientists.” Gore and Kerry were way off the mark as usual.

According to data compiled by the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), as of mid-July 2022 there is still plenty of sea ice in the Arctic – extending 3.25 million square miles. “The decline rate of the extent through the first half of July was near the 1981 to 2010 average,” NSIDC reported, adding that the sea ice extent on July 17th was the highest since 2015.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/27/with-more-green-energy-plan-for-a-dark-future-and-sheltering-in-place/

It is no great revelation that nearly every Western leader is fully on board with the idea of the so-called “climate emergency.” Accordingly, they uniformly push the kind of major policy upheaval that is currently helping to raise energy costs as well as food prices.

Climate change, according to the “experts,” is caused primarily by automobiles with internal combustion engines, planes (except private jets), eating animal protein, and generating grid-scale energy from fossil fuels.

What, if this emergency really exists, is the plan to stop it?

First on the list is changing the main energy source for generating electricity. This means no more oil or coal, and eventually no more natural gas. Wind and solar power are the primary favorite alternatives; nuclear and hydroelectric tend to be disliked by environmentalists.

These weather-dependent sources of power are not dispatchable, meaning they cannot be turned up or down based on electricity demand like nuclear or fossil fuel systems. Currently, the United States generates about 12% of our energy from wind and solar.

https://quillette.com/2022/07/27/green-dreams-inflationary-realities/

We must find ways to combat climate change without incurring devastating inflation, greater class division, the immiseration of the middle class, and the destitution of the poor.

Global policy and politics, particularly in the high-income world, have been obsessed with dreams of a green economy. Imposing ever-more rigid methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the way to “save the planet” is almost unchallenged in the media, academia, and corporate boardrooms of the developed world. The results on the ground have been less convincing, as the price of everything—from energy and food to construction costs—rises to unsustainable levels and international trade slows as global recession looms. Billions now face immiseration, malnutrition, or starvation. Economist Isabel Schnabel calls this process “greenflation”—companies’ efforts to reduce emissions have driven up prices, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This has caused tremendous price pressure on rare earths, copper, and other materials critical to the production of batteries. The green lobby and its media supporters, meanwhile, like to claim that renewable energy is now economically competitive. But in places where strict green energy policies have been introduced, people end up with skyrocketing energy costs. In California, residents pay up to 80 percent above the US national average for electricity. Reliance on wind power has made even Texas’s grid vulnerable. Rather than learn from these experiences, other states, notably New York, have decided to adopt similar policies.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=9e1b84ac95

Connecticut is a small state, so you may not be paying sufficient attention to its heroic efforts to save the planet. Count on the Manhattan Contrarian to bring you up to date on the latest developments.

On Friday (July 22) Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed the just-passed bipartisan Clean Air Act for the state. Lamont and other state officials gathered in New Haven in 90+ degree heat to celebrate the great accomplishment. A State Senator named Will Haskell, who is a member of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, took the occasion to make the main point:

We cannot wait for Washington to step up and save the planet!

But how exactly is Connecticut going to accomplish that? After all, it has a population of only about 3.6 million. Its greenhouse gas emissions are in the range of about 41 MMTCO2e per year, which is well less than 0.1% of total world annual emissions of about 49,000 MMTCO2e. You could zero out Connecticut’s emissions entirely, and it wouldn’t even amount to a rounding error in the world total. Indeed, the increase that occurs each year in China’s CO2 emissions is a multiple of Connecticut’s total emissions. (According to Our World in Data here, from 2019 to 2020, latest years given, China’s CO2 emissions went from 10.49 to 10.67 billion tons, a one-year increase of about 180 million tons, or well more than four times the total annual emissions of Connecticut.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/environmentalism-environmental-hazard-daniel-greenfield/

20 years after voters rejected ‘toilet-to-tap’ water, Los Angeles Democrats brag that they will be the first city in the state to pipe toilet water to faucets for the sake of the environment.

As part of the city’s version of the Green New Deal, a majority of Los Angeles water will be ‘toilet-to-tap’. California Democrats, who refuse to build new dams or do anything to expand water resources, are set to spend at least $12 billion on what they describe as “locally sourced” water which certainly sounds nicer than toilet water. The environmentalist elites will go on drinking bottled water and it will be the city’s poor drinking out of the toilet.

Environmentalists insist that nothing can go wrong even though a 2019 NIH hosted survey noted that “there have been relatively few health-based studies evaluating the microbial risks associated with potable reuse” and that California wants to achieve “a benchmark level of public health protection of 1 infection in 10,000 people per year”. That’s 1,000 people in Los Angeles County. The risks include “pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and protozoa” transmitted via a fecal-oral route” including Hepatitis A. A new reservoir might cost $4 billion, but environmentalists would rather spend three times as much on their toilet-to-tap plan.

‘Toilet-to-tap’ is just one of the multitude of ways that environmentalism creates an environmental hazard, threatening public health and undermining life in California.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/26/you-will-own-nothing-and-like-it-the-real-clean-energy-future/

‘We’re going to build a different future with one — one with clean energy, good-paying jobs.”

That was President Joe Biden talking about the climate “crisis” and how it “is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.”

Right about the time Biden was giving this speech, the World Economic Forum painted a picture of what Biden’s future would look like.

Suffice it to say, if you like socialism, you’ll love it. Because it involves a radical transformation of our economy that brings the end of private ownership of things like cars, phones, laptops, and other electronic devices.

The WEF article begins by admitting something that the left usually refuses to acknowledge: There aren’t enough metals around to power everything with “clean energy.”