RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/28/as_renewables_move_to_overtake_gas_a_pipeline_to_paralysis_123781.html

The embattled Atlantic Coast Pipeline begins its run in West Virginia. The steel tube built to ferry 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day weaves underground through mountain terrain toward its destination two states away in North Carolina. Then it stops, after only 30 miles but many millions of dollars into its journey.  

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline starts in West Virginia, but when and where it will ever finish has been thrown into doubt by a debate over how long it’s necessary to burn natural gas.

The most expensive natural gas pipeline project in America was halted two years ago after a federal appeals court yanked a permit that allowed it to cross two national forests, but the controversy rages on. The central issue is climate change – but in a sign of how much the debate has changed, this is not a battle between believers and deniers. Almost everyone, including CEOs, lawmakers and Wall Street analysts, agrees on the need to transition to renewable energy.

The fight is about how long it’s necessary to burn natural gas – a comparatively clean but growing source of atmospheric warming – before wind, solar and other clean energy can power America. In the rapidly changing economics of power, cheap natural gas –  once a wonder fuel enabling the shuttering of hundreds of dirtier coal plants nationwide – is itself being challenged by low-cost renewable energy, raising doubts in the minds of some over the need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline at all.  

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-26-greta-thunberg-or-naomi-seibt

Almost certainly, you have heard of Greta Thunberg.  Indeed, you undoubtedly know a lot about her.   She is the Swedish teenager who for more than a decade has suffered from various mental illnesses, including depression, Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even something called “selective mutism.”  Apparently, in between bouts of mental illness, at some point she became interested in the issue of climate change.  In late December 2018, at the age of 15, Greta suddenly sprang on the world stage, when she got invited to speak at a UN climate conference in New York.  That’s when we first got to see her trademark anger — fury, even — about what she perceived to be the crisis of the climate.  In 2019 she spent the year playing hooky from school and leading climate “strikes” and demonstrations wherever she could get an audience.  On September 23, 2019 she was back at the UN in New York giving a barn-burning speech letting everyone know how deeply furious she is that anyone is enjoying their life.  Here is some text from that speech:

[Y]ou all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

And what exactly was it that anyone had done to her to “steal [her] dreams and [her] childhood”? I’m still trying to figure that one out. My own inclination is to feel very sorry for this young lady. As a high-school age girl who hasn’t even attended school much of the time and hasn’t yet studied these things at all, she obviously has no real idea about whether “entire ecosystems are collapsing” or whether we are “in the beginning of a mass extinction.” Clearly, before her unhinged anger takes over everything and destroys her life, she needs to get some professional help with her mental issues. But that’s just my view.

Then there’s Naomi Seibt. You may not even have heard of her. She’s a little older than Greta — 19 to Greta’s 17 — and hails from the German state of North Rhine Westphalia.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/more_useless_energy_policies.html

The Australian Minister for Promoting Useless Energy thinks that hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and biofuels are priorities for energy policy and greenhouse gas reduction.

If that’s the best our leaders can come up with, Australia should have voted Green last election to speed the inevitable recession and blackouts that will eventually kill this tsunami of energy nonsense.

“Hydrogen” does not supply net energy — burning it can return some of the energy used to produce it from hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water. It is an expensive explosive gas that makes less sense than Snowy 2 — more energy in than out!

Moreover, we have no infrastructure that can safely store, distribute or use hydrogen in our transport fleet, energy network or smelters. Governments should not force energy consumers or taxpayers to promote Canberra’s thought bubbles — let the “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs risk their own or shareholders’ money.

“Carbon capture and storage” is another dumb idea. To capture CO2 emissions from coal, gas, or biomass power stations consumes a lot of energy to separate, store, pipe, and pump it underground (hoping it will stay there). It would be far better leave non-polluting CO2 in the lower atmosphere and surround every power station with crops and forests hungry for the CO2 plant food so essential to their growth.

Trying to extract CO2 from the atmosphere is even dumber because the mighty oceans will quickly release CO2 from their huge stores to restore equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Even if it could be done, it is a bad idea — why steal plant food from grass, crops, and forests?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/latest_warmist_scheme_record_climate_change_as_cause_of_death_on_death_certificates_.html

Perhaps inspired by the success of Coronavirus fearmongering in impoverishing the formerly prosperous West, global warming enthusiasts are beginning to agitate to list “climate change” as the cause of death on death certificates. The widely observed practice of listing Coronavirus as the cause of death for anyone who died with it, not necessarily of it, has worked wonders in scaring people into accepting previously unheard-of abrogation of constitutionally guaranteed rights.  

The seed for this propaganda offensive was just planted in a spinoff publication of The Lancet, the formerly prestigious British medical journal that has fallen to the forces of political correctness. In a letter appearing the The Lancet Planetary Health (hat tip: Breitbart), researchers at The Australian National University write:

National mortality records in Australia suggest substantial under-reporting of heat-related mortality. Less than 0·1% of 1·7 million deaths between 2006 and 2017 were attributed directly or indirectly to excessive natural heat (table). However, recent research indicates that official records underestimate the association at least 50-fold.

Understanding the degree to which environmental factors affect human health is important if the impact of climate change is to be fully appreciated. As severe environmental events become more common, correct reporting and attribution is needed for effective evidence-based responses and to guide local, national, and global adaptation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/green_electricity_delusions.html

With global warming the alleged science is so complicated that nobody, including the global warming scientists, can really understand what is going on. Green electricity, mostly solar and wind, is different. It’s relatively clear cut. No supercomputers spewing out terabytes of confusing data are needed.

Green electricity is quite useless. The latest trend in green electricity is wind or solar with battery backup. This green electricity costs about nine times more than the fossil fuel electricity it displaces. The true cost is hidden from the public by hidden subsidies and fake accounting. (My book, Dumb Energy, goes into great analytical detail.)

Green electricity is ineffective for preventing climate change. The climate change alarmists James Hansen and Michael Shellenberger make the case forcefully in this video. Hansen is the most important and most famous scientist warning against climate change. His followers consider him to be the greatest authority on the dangers of climate change. He calls wind and solar energy a “grotesque idea” and a “fantasy.”

It’s true that we won’t run out of wind or sunshine. That doesn’t mean that wind and sunshine are effective tools for making electricity. They aren’t. The exhaustion of fossil fuels has been predicted many times. The current situation is that fossil fuels are in great over supply and the prices have crashed to low levels. Natural gas, currently the most economical fossil fuel for generating electricity, is painfully cheap and is being extensively exported from the United States to other countries. Natural gas from wells, not served by pipelines to take it to market, is burned or flared to get rid of it. Only the more valuable oil is kept. Thanks to fracking, we have plenty of natural gas for the next 100-years.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/activist-investors-pressuring-asset-managers-to-vote-green/

Activist investors are pressuring asset managers to vote green, even if it harms the poor.

 B lackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is holding its annual general meeting this week. To help give itself a smooth ride, BlackRock’s leadership has struck a Faustian bargain with the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activists on its share register. But a smoother ride for BlackRock may mean a rougher ride for many of the companies in which it invests. In coronavirus-speak, in order to acquire immunity for itself, BlackRock opted to become an ESG super-spreader.

At the end of February, a pair of activist investors, Boston Trust Walden and Mercy Investment Services, announced that their “dialogue” with BlackRock had led to agreement, with BlackRock confirming that it would vote against boards with “unacceptable” positions on climate change. As a result, the two activist investors declared that they had withdrawn their shareholder resolution directed at BlackRock on climate change for this year.

Subsequently BlackRock appeared to have recognized the growing gravity of the current economic catastrophe and had second thoughts, at least for now. According to Reuters, last month BlackRock said it would ease up and allow companies to give a lower priority to environmental-sustainability reporting. “We recognize that in the near-term companies may need to reallocate resources to address immediate priorities in these uncertain times,” BlackRock said in a new stewardship document.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/clean_energy_via_legislative_diktat_.html

For those enamored by the clean electric-car,  smoke-and-mirrors “emission elsewhere scheme” comes  the recently enacted “Virginia Clean Economy Act”, which includes one of the largest energy storage targets in the country at 2.4 GW by 2035, and prompts state regulators to craft a carbon dioxide cap and trade program that meets the objectives of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

The act, which requires Virginia’s electric utilities and competitive suppliers to generate electricity from 100% renewable energy by 2050, passed on the same day that Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility, announced its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Carbon dioxide has been deemed a pollutant via legislative diktat.  Accordingly,  embedded in this legislation is language which prevents the Virginia State Corporation Commission from approving “any investor-owned utility to own, operate, or construct any electric generating unit that emits carbon as a byproduct of combusting fuel to generate electricity” until the state legislature has had a chance to review a report from the Air Pollution Control Board. Also embedded are escape clauses allowing fossil-fuel energy just in case the 100 per cent carbon-free dream mandate fails in the real world. In keeping with current virtuous political correctness and emotional zeitgeist, the bill also requires utilities and the commission to consider the social cost of carbon when reviewing the need for a new generation facility.

However, Dominion Virginia Power now says it may need to import energy from pollution-intensive sources out of state, even though nuclear power is part of the permitted energy mix.  The price tag for this legislated decree wrought via politically virtuous green posturing, environmental sloganeering, and pandering to climate activists now comes to light.  Get ready for acres of environmentally destructive solar panel installations which will fail to meet energy demand in the midst of winter, while decimating native habitat and leaching toxic chemicals into the soil.   Look to the new Warren Buffet  solar project in Arizona as the template for  yet another taxpayer billion dollar boondoggle promising pollution free energy (when the sun shines), and reliance on giga-battery installations when it does not.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/12/flummoxed-feds-freeze-out-frost-fix/

Courtesy of the polar vortex, unseasonably cold temperatures came to a broad swath of the country, from Texas to Maine, last week, causing frost damage to crops and ornamental plants. (And snow in New York City’s Central Park on May 9). Cherry and other fruit trees are particularly susceptible, and losses could be substantial.   

Frost damage to crops is not unusual; it causes American farmers to lose billions of dollars annually. Peaches, plums, citrus, and other crops are regularly threatened by frost in the Southeast, but California is also susceptible: A freeze there in January 2007 cost farmers more than $1 billion in losses of citrus, avocados, and strawberries, and a 1990 freeze that caused about $800 million in damage to agriculture resulted in the layoff of 12,000 citrus industry workers, including pickers, packers, harvesters, and salespeople. In 2002, lettuce prices around the country spiked after an unseasonable frost struck the Arizona and California deserts.

Technology could mitigate much of the damage, but government regulation has placed obstacles in the way of innovative solutions. Those obstacles illustrate what innovators are up against, and how flawed, unscientific public policy prevents science and technology from realizing their potential.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/blinded_by_doomsday_predictions_masquerading_as_science.html

Conservatives?  Anti-science?  No way!  Science created fuel-burning engines, harnessed electricity, and ushered in an industrial revolution that transformed the world.  Science found cures for malaria, tuberculosis, and polio; expanded the world’s food supply many times over; significantly lengthened life expectancy; and put men on the moon.  And then, just when it seemed nothing more was even possible, science — specifically computer technology — transformed the world yet again.  Cyber-wonders emerge on an almost daily basis, enhancing our lives in ways we could only have imagined a generation ago.

No, folks, we have no quarrel with science.  But we have a serious problem with something masquerading as science: the manipulation of facts and data to create fearful predictive models.  These “scientific” statistical models often tend to cast the freedom we enjoy in a negative light, and they almost always end up being wrong.  Let us amble down the Memory Lane of five decades and revisit some of the terrifying events the learned practitioners of this branch of science once assured us would occur.  No doubt, you will recall many of them:

By 1980, city-dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.

By 1985, air pollution will block 50% of the sunlight reaching Earth, causing global cooling.

By 1989, the population explosion and resulting food shortages will result in mass starvation (“The Great Die-Off”), in which 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, will perish.

By 1990, all lead, zinc, tin, silver, and gold reserves will be gone.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/climate-change-politics-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-extinction-capitalism/

To climate-shame corporations is to hobble economic dynamism.

Shutting down the whole global economy is the only way of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Centigrade, Yvo de Boer, the former United Nations climate chief, warned in the runup to the 2015 Paris climate conference. Thanks to COVID-19 we now have an inkling what that looks like. The conference went further and chose to write into the Paris agreement an aspiration to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. The 1.5°C backstory reveals much about the quality of what passes for science and gets enshrined in U.N. climate treaties — and is directly relevant to American corporations that now find themselves on the front line of the climate wars.

Nine weeks before the Copenhagen climate conference, the one where Barack Obama was going to slow the rise of the oceans, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives held the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. “We are trying to send our message to let the world know what is happening and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change isn’t checked,” Nasheed told reporters after resurfacing. It was part of a campaign by the Alliance of Small Island States claiming that climate change magnified the risk that their islands would drown.

The sinking-islands trope has been endlessly recycled by the U.N. for decades. In 1989, a U.N. official stated that entire nations could disappear by 2000 if global warming was not reversed. Like so many others, that prediction of climate catastrophe came and went. The failed prediction didn’t prevent the current U.N. secretary-general, António Guterres, from declaring last year, “We must stop Tuvalu from sinking.” There was no science behind 1.5°C and the sinking-island hypothesis. Studies show, here and here, that the Maldives and Tuvalu have increased in size. As the 25-year-old Charles Darwin might have told the U.N., coral atolls are formed by the slow subsidence of the ocean bed.

Having incorporated 1.5°C into the sacred texts of the U.N. climate process, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was charged with coming up with a scientific justification for it.