RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/the_utter_uselessness_of_climate_change_science_.html

As I have learned the hard way, the science behind climate change has no more predictive real-world value than the science behind COVID.  When put to the test, scientists cannot tell you what will happen next year, let alone next century, but that does not stop them from pretending they can.

Three years ago, my new neighbor here on Lake Erie asked if I wanted to go in with him on a seawall.  Having spent thirty summers on the Rust Belt Riviera, I politely declined.  As I explained, on only one occasion during those years had waves lapped against even the base of my heavily vegetated ten-foot bank.  Besides, walls cost a lot of money.

Although I have never trusted it, the science of climate change was on my side.  In 2002, National Geographic published a scary, much cited article titled “Down the Drain: The Incredible Shrinking Great Lakes.”  Someone seems to have pulled the plug on this article, as I learned about it only from reading a 2012 National Geographic article by Lisa Borre that identified the culprit for this shrinkage as climate change, “Warming Lakes: Climate Change and Variability Drive Low Water Levels on the Great Lakes.”

According to Ms. Barre, “Down the Drain” documented “declining lake levels and the potential economic and ecological consequences for the region.”  Ten years later, Barre tells us, “[t]he story continues to unfold, as water levels remain lower than normal.”  Barre’s article features several alarming images of stranded boats and sandy stretches where water once flowed.  On a dozen occasions in the article, Barre cites “climate change” as the likely explanation for the shrinking lakes.

A lengthy 2013 article by Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the shrinking Great Lakes affirmed that the debate was over.  “This is not a story about climate change,” Egan wrote.  “It is a story about climate changed.”

Citing various climate scientists, Egan described the reason for the shrinking trend this way: “[w]ith little to no protective ice cap, chilled air whooshing over relatively warm water leads to more cold-weather evaporation.  The result of this thermal avalanche triggered by just a tiny bump in air temperatures: the surface of the lake is literally going poof into the sky.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/16/it-pays-to-be-green-if-youre-a-wall-street-fat-cat-that-is/

America’s business community has always liked the color “green.” Traditionally, it was about earning U.S. dollars.  Today, it’s about brandishing a woke environmental image.

Perhaps nothing showcases this better than the trend toward “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) investments by those on Wall Street.  Particularly attractive to millennials, the pitch for investing in ESG’s is to not just “make money,” but “make the world a better place” while doing it.

A noble-sounding idea?  Perhaps.  But as Rupert Darwall points out in a newly released study “Capitalism, Socialism and ESG,” there’s more to this racket than meets the eye.

That notion of a “better” world from ESG investments applies only if you agree with progressive climate and social agendas. For those who identify as anything other than “liberal,” backing investment strategies to kill fracking jobs, attack red meat, and help promote a Green New Deal economy may prove a bit hard to swallow.

What about all that money to be made? Turns out it is less for your portfolio and more for the bottom line of Wall Street companies.

For example, BlackRock charges 46 cents annually for every $100 invested in its iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, while it charges just 4 cents for iShares linked to the S&P 500 in comparison.

It pays to be woke – if you’re a Wall Street fat cat, that is.

As for average Joe investors buying into these ESG stocks, their bottom lines aren’t as lucky.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/08/the-more-alarmists-talk-the-more-we-know-global-warming-is-a-scam/

It’s said that conspiracies can’t remain secret forever because someone eventually talks. This is certainly true of the global warming swindle. The climate fanatics have a habit of regularly revealing that they’re running a racket.

The most recent example occurred last month during a “Critical Climate Moment?” segment on CBS that featured its global warming “expert.” When asked why an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius in global temperature has been determined to be a tipping point, the network’s “climate specialist” admitted it’s a “symbolic” figure. 

“Because, I mean, humans chose it, we chose 1.5, we chose 2 degrees,” said meteorologist Jeff Berardelli, whose entire on-camera spiel was an exercise in fearmongering based on speculation.

So there it is. A number pulled out of the ether. No (real) science behind it. A benchmark used to do nothing more than frighten the public – a Menckenian hobgoblin.

It’s almost routine for the alarmists to give up the game. We’ve seen them inadvertently admit that the objective of the global warming scare is an opportunity to:

Abolish capitalism, “change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” and install a command-and-control economy. 
Change our political system.
Redistribute wealth.
“Build a better world” that will surely be based on economic and social central planning.
“Bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development.”
Pursue personal and religious ambitions – at the expense of others.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-6-3-california-may-be-crazy-in-its-climate-initiatives-but-new-york-wants-to-be-even-crazier

In the competition among the states to establish progressive and “woke” bona fides, California and New York run neck and neck for the lead positions. In no field is this more true than in the area of “climate change,” which as progressive public policy turns into a program to drive up the cost of energy, suppress fossil fuels and anything else that works (nuclear), and demand creation of a new fantasy energy system based on the wind and the sun.

In recent years, California has seemed to pull well ahead of New York in the accumulation of climate virtue. California has had a so-called “renewable portfolio standard” for its generation of electricity since way back in 2002, and has been aggressively building wind and solar generation facilities ever since. In 2018, thinking that the way to achieving lower carbon emissions is to cover the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, California upped its game with a bill known as SB 100, having the official title “The 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018.” Among other things, SB 100 called for a 100% carbon-emissions-free electricity sector by 2045. As reported here a few weeks ago, in March the California energy regulatory agencies jointly came out with plans to reach the 100% by 2045 goal. Meanwhile, the California Energy Commission reports that in 2020 California achieved a level of 36% of its electricity generation from renewables.

So are we here in New York just going to stand around and let our butts get kicked by these upstarts? No! But we have some serious catching up to do. New York wasn’t nearly so ambitious as California in building wind and solar facilities in the first two decades of the 21st century. By 2019 New York got some 29% of its electricity from “renewable” sources. But the large majority of that came from the gigantic hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls, which somehow is seen by environmental moralists as lacking in climate virtue; and in any event there isn’t another Niagara Falls waiting to have a big hydro plant attached. Time to get serious! So in July 2019 New York enacted something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), our own version of California’s SB 100.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/556003-us-energy-policy-and-the-pursuit-of-failureagain

We’ve been here before.  

The development of the Biden administration’s energy and climate policies is following a path set by the energy policies of the 1970s. That is not a good model to follow. Failure followed failure. Essentially U.S. energy policy has been created by a four-step process: 

First, an energy crisis is declared. Presidents and legislators feel the pressure to “do something.” 

Second, policy proposals that supposedly will provide a solution are announced. 

Third, assuming the sense of crisis lingers, extreme measures are passed in Congress or initiated by executive action, or both. 

Fourth, the measures prove ineffective and, although billions are spent, the measures are either repealed or just forgotten. In the meantime, market forces end the “crisis.” 

Presidents Nixon and Ford went through steps one and two. The Arab oil embargo and the subsequent gasoline shortages made it necessary for officials to offer radical ideas. But the end of the lines at gas stations and the fall in oil prices meant the end of the sense of crisis. That made officials reluctant to pursue the radical measures that had been proposed.  

It took the energy crisis of 1979-80 to follow the path to its conclusion. The return of gasoline shortages and sky-high energy prices induced President Carter to devise a comprehensive energy plan.  

Carter and his energy secretary believed that the U.S. and most of rest of the world were rapidly running out of oil and natural gas. All remaining oil and the wealth it entailed would go to the oil exporters (especially the hated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC), while we shivered in the dark.  

So drastic measures were needed. Carter’s policies, if enacted, were supposed to make the U.S. energy independent, but would have other virtues including protecting the American way of life. 

The major component of this plan was to replace two million barrels a day of oil imports with a substitute derived from processing American coal. These “synfuels” would cost $88 billion (inflation-adjusted $320 billion), a number then-Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger later admitted “came from nowhere.” Moreover, five different agencies of the government said that the synfuels goal wasn’t feasible.   

As distress at the pump (especially rising prices) continued, Congress passed most of Carter’s plan, including the creation of the Synfuels Corporation.  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-administration-to-cancel-oil-and-gas-leases-in-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/ar-AAKBBzA

The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, targeting one of President Donald Trump’s most significant environmental acts during his last days in office.

The move by the Interior Department, which could spark a major legal battle, dims the prospect of oil drilling in a pristine and politically charged expanse of Alaskan wilderness that Republicans and Democrats have fought over for four decades. The Trump administration auctioned off the right to drill in the refuge’s coastal plain — home to hundreds of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl as well as the southern Beaufort Sea’s remaining polar bears — just two weeks before President Biden was inaugurated.

Now the Biden administration is taking steps to block those leases, citing problems with the environmental review process. In Tuesday’s Interior Department order, Secretary Deb Haaland said that a review of the Trump administration’s leasing program in the wildlife refuge found “multiple legal deficiencies” including “insufficient analysis” required by environmental laws and a failure to assess other alternatives. Haaland’s order calls for a temporary moratorium on all activities related to those leases in order to conduct “a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.”

The step, coming just days after the Justice Department defended another drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, underscores the balancing act the new administration aims to strike as it slows fossil fuel development on public lands. While Biden has paused new federal oil and gas leasing and pledged to drastically cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, he has taken a much more cautious approach toward most oil and gas operations approved under his predecessor.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/26/those-dirty-electric-vehicles-and-green-hypocrisy/

There is much more to the electric vehicle story than the “EVs good, gasoline- and diesel-powered automobiles bad” narrative we’ve been fed. Truth in advertising would require electric cars to be shown surrounded by the Pig Pen-esque dirty cloud that they kick up.

The birthplace of most electric cars is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where the diamond trade has helped finance civil war. There, reports the Deseret News, “slave labor” is feeding “big tech’s quest for cobalt,” an element used in the batteries that drive EVs.

“Our children are dying like dogs,” a Congolese mother whose son and cousin died while working in the Congo’s cobalt mines, says the Deseret News. She and others have filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court that “insists companies are simply turning a blind eye to the egregious abuses that include children killed in tunnel collapses or losing limbs or suffering from other horrific injuries caused by mining accidents.”

The United Nations says that “nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves” are found in the Congo. The Deseret News says the figure is more than 60%. But it’s not the only element needed to build “green” batteries. They require lithium, natural graphite, and manganese, raw materials that are “highly concentrated,” according to the U.N., “in a few countries.”