RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/there-is-no-climate-emergency-scientists-call-for-reasoned-debate-2_3100870.html

The message was clear: “There is no climate emergency.”

With those five simple words, a global network of scientistsand professionals attempted to inject reasonableness and decorum into what should be a robust discussion about a complex scientific and public policy issue, but has instead degenerated into an ever more intense mud-slinging contest over the years.

People on one side of the argument dismiss their opponents as wild-eyed socialists attempting to leverage public fear and ignorance to further their political agenda. On the opposite side, people dismiss those who disagree with their supposedly settled scientific conclusions as nothing more than knowing shills or ignorant dupes of evil energy interests.

In between those extremes that are so popular with armies of public relations professionals, who shape the messages of public interest groups and professional politicians to maximum effect, are a not-so-quiet silent majority of scientists and professionals who take a more measured, reasoned view of the science when considering the supposed climate emergency some say we’re facing.

A group of 500-some scientists and professionals signed on to the “European Climate Declaration” that was released last week. This simple, short, and understandable statement proposed how analysis of any public policy issue involving complex science should be approached from a reasoned, fact-based perspective.

Statements such as “97 percent of climatologists agree that anthropogenic climate change is occurring” isn’t a statement of fact, it’s an opinion twice removed. It’s an opinion that involves evaluation of the legitimacy of how the results of the poll in question were sorted to dismiss some answers and allow others, and it’s an opinion in terms of how representative the sample size is with respect to all climate professionals.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/07/greta

The Nobel committee has cheapened its Peace Prize by handing it to some questionable, even asinine, recipients in the last few decades. It will reach a new low if, as some are predicting, and even hoping, it chooses Greta Thunberg this week.

The British Daily Mail reported last week that, according to oddsmakers, she “is the one to beat” for the prize, which carries a $930,000 payout. It is not, however, a sure thing. Greta’s “youth, outspokenness and confrontational approach,” says Reuters, “present challenging questions for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.”

Given the committee’s record, though, it would be naive to think it won’t do the most foolish thing it possibly could. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with a few of the recent undeserving winners of the Nobel Peace Prize:

Yasser Arafat (1994), a known terrorist who shared the award with Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and continued to order terrorist attacks after receiving the prize.
Barack Obama (2009), “honored” just months after he took office, whose top accomplishments then, and remain to this day, nothing more than getting himself elected to public offices.
Al Gore (2007), a charlatan and hypocrite who has ridden climate hysterics to the peaks of wealth and acclaim.
And Rigoberta Menchu Tum (1992), the Guatemalan who claimed to be an advocate for the poor but whose “’achievements’ cited by the Nobel committee” were “later revealed to have” been largely made up, says the British Telegraph.

Her prospects were apparently boosted by her recent United Nations “speech.” Evidently being granted a bully pulpit in front of that body’s general assembly, then using it to hector, nag, scowl, and in general behave with the entitlement mindset of a “spoiled brat” screeching “how dare you” multiple times is an impressive feat.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/10/the-ipccs-seldom-mentioned-uncertainties/

The IPCC’s latest serve of climate catastrophism, released just before the UN General Assembly met in New York last month, ironically contained some good news. But not even “inadequate” models, “limited” observations, poor understanding, dodgy “projections” and revelations about “deep uncertainty” could rein in the hyperbole.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the UN agency that “assesses” the status of climate-change science and produces reports on it. It also prepares a Summary for Policymakers (SPM). This document is crafted to be digestible by climate bureaucrats, national leaders and the media, most of whom have been drip-fed alarmist rhetoric for years, if not decades.

The IPCC is an odd outfit. Created in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it is no surprise to learn its Secretariat is located in the latter’s Geneva building. Except for the Secretary Abdalah Mokssit, a Moroccan applied mathematician and meteorologist, most of its 18 staff seem to be “communications and media specialists” or administrators. The current chair is Hoesung Lee, a South Korean economist. He was elected in late 2015, after Rajendra Pachauri. resigned under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/09/poor-ignorant-exploited-scoldilocks/

It might come as a surprise to some, but Greta Thunberg isn’t the first teenager whose innocence has been tapped to wrap the Left’s agenda in persuasive emotionalism. Few these days recall Samantha Smith, the Maine 10-year-old who wrote in 1983 to USSR supremo Yuri Andropov to plead for world peace and nuke-free happiness. This happened when the Left was telling all and sundry that Ronald Reagan was intent on pushing the button and plunging the world into nuclear winter. Invited to visit Moscow, she was feted with fawning TV interviews, radio broadcasts, newspaper coverage and a trip to the Young Pioneers in Crimea, the best children’s resort in what was then the USSR.

The photogenic youngster was further hailed by international audiences, the meme being that the Soviets should resist responding in kind to the warmonger in the White House. She certainly proved useful to the Kremlin’s masters, this eager innocent advancing the notion, contrary to reality, of the USSR’s pacific nature. All this took place while Soviet troops were despoiling Afghanistan with their customary brutality.

The parallels between Samantha  and Greta are many. Both spoke about the fear and anxiety experienced by young people in the face of looming doom. Both were bathed in the sort of extraordinary, unqualified publicity that amounted to something close to beatification. Both found their fame granted unprecedented access to the rich and powerful. Both insisted that politicians were knowingly sowing the seeds of catastrophe. Both were cute and photogenic, endearing in their vulnerability and eagerness. Both sought to provoke deep-seated feelings of guilt in adults. And both were cynically manipulated by people hostile to the West’s liberal-democratic societies and their fellow travellers.

However, there are differences as well. Samantha was all sweetness and light. Speaking about the possibility of a nuclear war, she stressed a shared humanity rather than differences between potential combatants.

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/24/500-scientists-write-u-n-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.

Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/global-warming-childrens-crusade-bruce-thornton/

In 1212, thousands of children and teens in France and England set off for the Holy Land to convert Muslims to Christianity. Led by shepherds, these mostly poor and dispossessed young people headed for the Mediterranean, believing it would miraculously part and allow them to cross on dry land. Instead, the children, promised free passage by a couple of unscrupulous merchants, were sold into slavery or died in a shipwreck.

Last week’s Climate Strike by schoolchildren to “save the planet” is a grotesque parody of this legend of faith and courage, yet no more likely to accomplish anything useful. The strike was the first act of this week’s UN’s “Global Climate Week,” along with blocking traffic in DC (with the help of Antifa and Black Lives Matter), a “Youth Climate Summit,” and an orgy of hypocrisy at the UN General Assembly. No doubt we’ll see “world leaders” dramatically call for “global action,” then pass symbolic resolutions that, like every “climate summit” since 1979, will do absolutely nothing to lower temperatures enough to stop the warmists’ alleged apocalypse.

But instead of young pilgrims risking and losing their lives on behalf of their faith, the Climate “pilgrims” are mostly the global comfortable and affluent enjoying a day off from school as they preen and pontificate about a subject they know little about, and bask in the attention and flattery of important “grown-ups” like Hollywood stars and venal politicians equally ignorant about how global climate works.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/09/creepy-enviro-brat-throws-tantrums-un-some-reason-daniel-greenfield/

Creepy environmentalist brat Greta Thunberg, who belongs in school instead of living out her stage parents’ aspirations of fame, threw a tantrum at the UN.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg began her rant at the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit.

Thunberg is a privileged 16-year-old from one of the more prosperous countries in Europe. Her family is quite well-off. She’s now a famous brat and everyone has to pay attention to her tantrums. How exactly did anyone steal this near-adult’s childhood?

Like an evil Pippi Longstocking, Thunberg has been prepped to act like the leader of a children’s crusade. But she’s less Joan of Arc than one of the Children of the Corn, throwing hysterical tantrums and demanding that everyone listen to her, while castigating them as liars and hypocrites once they do.

Some might be tempted to say that this is not atypical behavior from a 16-year-old.

There’s some truth to that.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/plastic-straw-bans-posturing-scientifically-informed-global-effort-needed/

What’s needed is a proportionate, scientific approach — not mere posturing.

I suppose this is what they call a “First World problem,” so humor me. It’s 8.30 a.m. I’ve just finished at the gym. I’m in line to get my breakfast smoothie. I wait, as patient people ought, till the voice crieth “Order for Muh-dy,” and I think, as a kind person should, Close enough. I smile as my change is handed to me. I pout. I sip . . . then:

*$&*%#%! This straw is made of paper. And now — owing to an entirely foreseeable combination of suction and saliva — it is disintegrating in my mouth. Whose idea was this?!

Please don’t pretend. I know you know what I’m talking about . . .

Recall the following science from the 1967 hit movie The Graduate:

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/22/resist-being-brainwashed-on

Whether it’s the Green New Deal, in which climate change abatement is only one of several radical proposals, or the general brainwashing of the younger generations about the impending end of the world, the absence of rational analysis and the willful ignorance of facts is counterproductive. Rather than promoting a feasible approach to dealing with climate change, the magnitude of which remains uncertain, the focus is on unfeasible approaches and unachievable goals. Leaders from around the world will be at it in earnest this week during the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019.

Many approaches to climate change are analogous to saying that the best way to produce energy is to build perpetual-motion machines, which perform work indefinitely without an energy source — a concept that violates the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, the goal is laudable, but the means to achieve it is, literally, fantastic. In the case of climate change, the anti-hydrocarbon contingent seeks to violate basic tenets of science and economics.

The reality is that there are insurmountable or cost-prohibitive obstacles to the scale-up of renewable energy and to creating the necessary infrastructure for it. Here are some facts that provide a reality check:

Solar conversion to electricity is already more than 75% toward the maximum possible efficiency, according to the laws of physics. There are no possible breakthroughs that will reduce significantly the sheer numbers of solar panels needed to increase the overall power derived from the sun.
Likewise, with respect to efficiency, wind conversion to electricity is already approximately two-thirds of the way to the maximum physical limit. The number of wind turbines would need to increase massively.
A single wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of plastic (produced from hydrocarbons and not recyclable). Solar is even more resource consumptive.
The mining of silver, indium, and rare earths would have to soar by up to 20-fold over today’s yields just to meet the Paris climate accord’s goals. The mining process (for both those minerals and for battery materials) itself is dirty, ecologically destructive, and consumes significant amounts of hydrocarbon energy; and the plastic needed for solar and wind requires hydrocarbons.
No step-function improvement in batteries has been attained in spite of 25-plus years of huge investment, including that from dozens of innovative startup companies. Counting on a breakthrough at this point is probably wishful thinking.
To store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil, which can be stored in a $20 container at minimal cost, requires $200,000 and 10 tons of Tesla batteries.
Tesla’s “Gigafactory” produces only enough batteries in an entire year to store three minutes of U.S. power demand. That is not enough to handle a cloudy or calm day for the renewables, let alone provide the needed two months of backup. Proper backup would require the equivalent of almost 30,000 production-years of similar factories.
A single car requires 1,000 pounds of batteries. This, in turn, requires mining, moving, and processing some 500,000 pounds of raw materials. So, imagine scaling that up to provide batteries for a public utility the size of ConEd or Pacific Gas & Electric.
Neither batteries nor wind nor solar equipment lasts forever. Currently available, state-of-the-art batteries have a useful life of just seven years, leading to massive disposal and pollution issues. And all the steel and other elements of retired equipment need to go somewhere.
A shale-oil rig produces almost 15 times as much energy per hour/day/year as two 500-foot turbines turning in the wind. Putting it another way, one producing rig is the equivalent of 30 wind turbines.
Wind turbine farms are unsightly and kill huge numbers of birds.
The intermittent nature of wind and solar imposes huge infrastructure and operating costs due to the necessary continual re-balancing of the electrical grid. Extensive reliable backup sources are needed in the absence of massive batteries at every wind or solar site, which inevitably will consume hydrocarbons.