RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/09/a-scientists-week-at-the-vatican/

Ten years ago this month, I had the experience of a lifetime. I was one of a small group of scholars from around the world who were convened by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences for a “study week.” Our subject was “Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development.” As directed by Pope Benedict XVI, its purpose was “to evaluate benefits and risks of genetic engineering [GE] and of other agricultural practices on the basis of present scientific knowledge and of its potential for applications to improve food security and human welfare worldwide in the context of a sustainable development.”

The week was beyond fascinating. At the initial session, we participants were greeted by a cardinal who had spent decades in Rome, most recently as the Vatican’s official theologian. He was exceedingly warm and charming, and stressed the importance of technological advances to the poorest and most vulnerable populations. When I googled him, I had a shock: His most recent academic paper had been the introductory chapter in a book on exorcism. Clearly, I was outside my customary science-suffused bubble!

One evening toward to the end of the week, my girlfriend and I ventured outside the Vatican walls for dinner (we were housed—in separate single rooms—in the dormitory-like residence where cardinals and other visiting dignitaries stay). When we returned, we found that the gate through which we had exited was locked. We walked for a long way around the perimeter of the Vatican’s walls, looking for an open gate, and finally encountered a priest who offered to take us to the appropriate entrance. (It turned out that he was a bishop and the head of Catholic Charities worldwide.) When we arrived at our destination, I thanked him and apologized for the detour. He smiled and said, “You’re most welcome, my son; it’s a privilege to assist a pilgrim who has lost his way.” I felt like a bit-player in one of those old films in which Spencer Tracy and Bing Crosby played priests.

The result of the conference was, especially for the time, a rare, constructive melding of science, technology, religion, and humanistic principles. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ summary document included these salient conclusions (quoted verbatim):

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/hydrocarbons_beat_biofuels_on_all_counts.html

“Coal and oil are thus more enviro-friendly than biofuels.  Locking the gate on coal, oil, and gas while supporting policies that waste land, food crops, and water for motor fuels is environmental desecration.”

Coal and oil are made from plants and animals that died millions of years ago, when the atmosphere contained abundant carbon dioxide plant food.  They are now concentrated forms of energy that can be extracted from small areas of land.  Burning these natural hydro-carbons returns CO2 and fresh water to the atmosphere, thus greatly assisting global plant growth.  If we are lucky, these extra gases in the atmosphere may also slightly delay the start of Earth’s next cooling cycle, but this looks unlikely.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273676/scare-mongering-world-eco-warriors-jules-gomes

Yearning to play heroes in humanity’s oldest story.

What does the United Nations have in common with the Jehovah’s Witnesses? The Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted the world would end in 1975. The United Nations foretold how “entire nations would be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” Both forecasts failed the test of prophetic fulfillment.

A religious person who says the world is coming to an end is a crank. A secular person who says the world is coming to an end is an eco-warrior. A religious organization that says the end times are nigh is an apocalyptic cult for suicidal weirdos like the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas. A secular body counting down to the apocalypse is an environmental organization worthy of millions of dollars of government funding.

Welcome to the brave new cult of climate change alarmism where secular eco-warriors unabashedly embrace religious apocalypticism! I was poised to pen an essay on this new religious sect when I stumbled across Greta Thunberg—the Joan of Arc of environmentalism—and realized that apocalyptic hysteria was only part of the canonical narrative of climate change.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/the_solar_energy_racket.html

If solar energy were not propped up by various government policies and subsidies, no utility would buy it. Not only does solar not work at night, but it does not work if it is cloudy or if a cloud passes in front of the sun.

Utility-scale solar requires a large solar farm consisting of photovoltaic panels. For $100 million, one can buy a solar farm capable of generating about 80 megawatts of electric power when the sun is squarely shining on the panels. Depending on the geographical location and the climate, the average power generated will be about 18 megawatts, more during the day and nothing at night. More in summer and less in winter. If the power can be sold for $50 a megawatt-hour, about the cost of wholesale electricity generated by natural gas, the annual revenue earned by the plant would be $7.8 million. But why would anyone want to pay $50 per megawatt-hour for electricity that does not work at night or when the weather is bad? Better to buy it from a natural gas plant that one can count on.

How much would a utility really be willing to pay for erratic electricity from a solar farm? The answer is $20 per megawatt-hour or less. The reason is as follows. No utility would ever incorporate a solar plant to reliably provide electricity. Solar electricity is unreliable. But solar electricity, if it is cheap enough, could be used as a supplement to save fuel in a utility’s main natural gas plants. When the solar was working, some of the utility’s gas plants could be throttled back to save fuel. The fuel to generate a megawatt-hour of electricity in a modern natural gas plant costs about $20.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/global_cooling_california_snowpack_at_188.html

This is what comes of believing global warming predictions.

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) reported on May 2 that its Northern Sierra snowpack and water equivalent levels were 188 percent of average.

DWR conducted its fifth and final manual survey at Phillips Station near Sierra-Tahoe, recording a snow depth of 47 inches and a snow water equivalent (SWE) of 27.5 inches. The statewide average snowpack sits at 31 inches of SWE, which is 144 percent of average for this time of year.

The 2019 snowpack peaked on about March 31 and is the fifth largest on record, based on more than 250 manual snow surveys conducted each month. But there is a high probability for new snowfalls over the weekend and later next week.

California’s four northern reservoirs that include Trinity Lake, Lake Shasta, Lake Oroville, and Folsom Lake are already at about 93 percent of capacity and rising fast. Hydrologists estimate the April through July snowpack melt and river runoff will be at 158 percent of normal this year.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/30/why-climate-activists-wont-support-nuclear-power/

For several days in mid-April, downtown London was paralyzed by thousands of “climate activists” protesting the failure of the British government to act swiftly enough to combat climate change. In mid-March, thousands of students across the United States staged school “walkouts” to demand action on climate change as well.

These protests are ongoing, but the underlying logic is hard to see. The primary sources of anthropogenic CO2 are no longer Western nations, which are only responsible for about 30 percent of all global emissions. The biggest single culprit, if you want to call it that, is China, responsible for 28 percent of global emissions, nearly twice as much as the United States, and 28 times as much as the United Kingdom.

Rapidly industrializing India, responsible for 6 percent of global CO2 emissions, is on track to become the most populous nation on earth. The chances that China and India will sacrifice their national future in order to reduce CO2 emissions are zero. The same holds for every emerging nation, including the demographic heavyweights Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, along with all the rest.

The logic of these protestors also fails when it comes to the science of climate change, although to suggest something might be off in their thinking is heresy. So rather than point out that moderate warming might actually be beneficial to the planet, or that extreme weather is more highly correlated with a cooling planet, let’s accept all the popular wisdom with respect to “climate science.” So what? According to their own theories, it’s already too late. Climate alarmists have repeatedly said we had just a few years left—or else.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/29/global-warming-

The Washington Post, apparently written and edited by the descendants of Henny Penny, is advising us to “start planning for the fact that climate change is” going to cause natural disasters to become more destructive.

“The Environmental Protection Agency published a 150-page document this past week with a straightforward message for coping with the fallout from natural disasters across the country,” the Post reported over the weekend. “The language, included in guidance on how to address the debris left in the wake of floods, hurricanes and wildfires.”

Apparently we are to be not only supposed to be frightened by the report, we should also exasperated because it “is at odds with the rhetoric of the EPA’s own leader, Andrew Wheeler.”

But then being “at odds” with previous predictions of human-caused weather catastrophes means being in accord with reality.

Think of the headlines we’ve read through the years: Why Global Warming Can Mean Harsher Winter Weather (2009), Extreme Events Increase With Global Warming (2011), Extreme Weather Expected To Worsen With Climate Change (2011), Extreme Weather Tied To Climate Change (2012), Hurricanes Likely To Get Stronger & More Frequent (2013), Cllmate Change To Spawn More Hurricanes (2013), and Climate Change Causing Extreme Weather (2015).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-navy-veteran-went-to-prison-for-digging-ponds-in-the-mountains-11556317175

“I am haunted by waters,” wrote Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It,” his 1976 novel about growing up in a family of Montana fly fishermen. Joe Robertson was haunted by waters of a different kind—the kind that can land someone in federal prison without warning. These are “navigable waters,” which carry on their current the full force of federal power to bankrupt and jail people who meddle with them. The problem is that no one knows what they are.

Robertson, a Navy veteran who died in March at 80, spent 18 months in prison for getting the definition of “navigable waters” wrong. The land he owned in the Montana mountains was more than 40 miles from the nearest genuinely navigable river, but a trickle ran through it: the combined force of two garden hoses meandering down the slope in a channel about a foot deep and a foot wide.

Before he died, Robertson and his wife, Carrie, dug ponds in the path of their modest mountain trickle. The Environmental Protection Agency declared it a “navigable water” subject to the Clean Water Act and prosecuted him for “discharging” pollutants without a permit. He was found guilty in 2016. In addition to his 18 months in prison, Robertson was ordered to pay a $130,000 fine.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/25/earth-day-should-return-to-its-roots/

Last Monday, April 22, was Earth Day, a celebration conceived by then-U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson and first held in 1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship.” In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience. Most activities were organized at the grassroots level.

In recent years, however, Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for professional environmental activists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, proselytize, and raise money to sustain the movement. In the cacophony of false narratives and “alternative facts,” provability often takes a back seat to plausibility.

And then there’s the mindless publicity-seeking. Consider this headline from the local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles: “Protesters Climb, Glue Themselves To Globe Outside Universal Studios To Mark Earth Day.” And just plain old mindlessness: In San Francisco, the sub-theme for the day was, “Celebrate the Green New Deal,” one of the most poorly conceived, destructive political proposals in recent memory.

The Earth Day Network, which organizes Earth Day events and advocacy, regularly distorts or ignores science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its anti-technology, anti-corporate, Big Government agenda. With a 2019 theme of “Protect Our Species,” this year’s event was no exception. Ironically, “our species” seems not to refer to us humans, homo sapiens, but only to the other species on the planet, which we are destroying.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/going_green_and_socialism.html

In response to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s threat to make glass and steel skyscrapers “extinct” because “They have no place in our city or our Earth anymore,” the New York Post ran a cartoon depicting the mayor as Fred Flintstone presenting a building design made of rocks. A perfectly sound comment, given that those who proclaim themselves to be “progressives” are clearly rejecting the modern age and the true progress that has lifted humankind from millennia of abject poverty to abundance over the last few centuries. The process of advancement started in Western Europe with the rise of capitalism and has spread across the world. The process is not yet complete, as people even in the advanced nations still have unmet needs and desires. Indeed, the entire field of economics is based on the assumption that human wants are unlimited. The rise of the Green movement threatens to halt any further gains in material living standards and to roll back much of what has been accomplished since the Industrial Revolution.