RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/23/theres-more-to-story-than-climate-change-the-media-must-keep-pushing-and-asking-questions-about-the-lahaina-fires/

The legacy media, quick to attribute every natural disaster to climate change, has actually done some good reporting recently on the tragic wildfires that destroyed the town of Lahaina and killed probably more than 100 people as many are still missing. Media reports were not so honest at first.

In the initial days after Lahaina burned, of course, outlets like The New York Times breathlessly said climate change made Hawaii “a tinderbox.”

This is despite the fact that, regardless of the public perception of Hawaii that the Times authors give, “a far cry from the dry landscape normally associated with fire threats,” the island state is actually one of the most fire-prone in the country. This is due in large part to its unique geography, which allows eastern trade winds to dump water on the eastern volcanic slopes – leading to the familiar verdant rainforest. But the western sides of Maui and the other islands in the chain are a lot drier naturally, and are home to dry grassy hills.

This effect was compounded by a passing hurricane to the south. Because the wind goes from a high-pressure zone to a lower-pressure zone, the low pressures of Hurricane Dora far to the south aided in the accelerated downhill wind speeds on Maui. These high, dry winds knocked around power cables that may have led to the initial sparks, which were then turned into firestorms that swept downhill and through town. 

So, are hurricanes to blame? No. Despite media claims, data show hurricanes are not getting more frequent or extreme. Is drought the culprit? Also, not likely. While the Times cited a 2015 study that claimed Hawaii was seeing less rainfall, available drought severity and coverage data seem to refute this.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/when-humanity-becomes-the-enemy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

At the end of the 18th century, the economist Thomas Malthus predicted that the world’s population would outstrip food supplies unless the increasing number of people was checked by restraints such as war, famine or disease. As a result of his apocalyptic prediction, he thought that most people should die without reproducing.

In fact, although the world’s population has massively increased since then, hunger and the absolute poverty that produces starvation have declined. Science, progress and human ingenuity produced a dynamic which Malthus failed to foresee, along with other flaws in his thinking. So he has been proved spectacularly wrong. Everyone knows that… don’t they? 

Well, apparently not. From the readers’ comments thread below my column in this morning’s Times of London (£), it appears that most of them believe Malthus was right! Reader and after reader wrote it was obvious that the world’s resources were finite, and so it was obvious that there were too many people in the world as a result. 

The fact that the global catastrophe Malthus had predicted hadn’t happened was brushed aside. All that meant, they said, was that this hadn’t happened yet. But it would in the end!

This absence of reason is alarming; but it explains why so many have fallen for today’s corresponding myth of imminent global apocalypse: catastrophic man-made global warming. “Malthus was right!” tells us something very frightening about public ignorance, gullibility and the persistent grip of religion-substitute beliefs that are a byway to hell.

In my Times column, I wrote about the reaction of a leading British demographer, Professor Sarah Harper, to the 20-year low in the birthrate in England and Wales which reflects a long-term trend of falling birth rates across the world. 

Professor Harper commented that falling birthrates in the west were “good for . . . our planet”. Declining fertility in rich countries, she said, would help to address the “general over-consumption that we have at the moment”, which was having a negative impact on the world.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/18/the-maui-wildfires-are-proof-that-carbon-zealotry-can-kill/

Zero carbon zealotry can be dangerous to your health. In fact, in the hands of government officials, it can kill.

Ask the grieving families of Maui, the Hawaiian island ravaged by wildfires last week.

As the fires raged, liberal media blamed the devastation on climate change.

“How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii into a Tinderbox,” announced The New York Times. 

Sorry, the evidence is piling up that the opposite is true.

Zero carbon extremism diverted the island’s main electrical producer, Hawaiian Electric, from insulating wires, clearing areas around vulnerable transmission sites and taking other precautions to prevent wildfires it knew were likely to occur.  

It dithered on prevention, while pouring funds and manpower into meeting the Hawaiian government’s mandate that all electricity must be produced from renewables by 2045.

The death toll from Lahaina Fire has reached 111, but will go higher, because much of the island hasn’t  been searched. 

The fire’s already the deadliest in US history. But wildfires ignited by inadequately maintained electrical transmission systems — uninsulated wires, flimsy poles, out-of-control plant growth — have also devastated Texas, Colorado and California.

Six out of 20 recent wildfires in California, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85, the Kinkade fire in Sonoma in 2019 and the Dixie Fire in 2022, were caused by sparks due to aging transmission equipment and poor maintenance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-environmental-protection-supreme-court-regulation-unconstitutional-climate-change-administrative-state-biden-42f31ce3?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

In politics, inadvertently telling the truth is called a “gaffe.” Last year Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a remark in passing that gave away the Biden administration’s plans for enforcing its climate agenda through a “suite of rules” imposed under programs lacking any credible connection to climate. A few months later, a Supreme Court opinion transformed Mr. Regan’s indiscretion into justification for wholesale judicial repudiation of the Biden administration’s climate regulatory blitz.

Mr. Regan’s comment came on March 10, 2022, when he addressed the press following his keynote address to CERAWeek, a climate conference in Houston. A reporter asked about vulnerabilities of the EPA’s approach to installing climate regulation through the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was then awaiting judgment by the court. Mr. Regan replied that the agency had abandoned the idea of relying on any specific grant of regulatory authority. Instead it was in the process of tightening rules under numerous and varied regulatory programs all at once, pressuring disfavored operations to close and compelling investment consistent with the EPA’s desires.

Mr. Regan went on to cite rules to tighten regulation of mercury, ozone, soot, hazardous air pollutants, water effluent and coal ash under acknowledged congressional grants of authority. But he also called the “expedited retirement” of power plants “the best tool for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions” and opined that the “industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean-energy future?’ ”

This already reflected something of a scofflaw position. Congress never approved what Mr. Regan described. It became a serious problem when the justices struck down the Clean Power Plan in June. West Virginia v. EPA held that the agency didn’t have the authority it claimed to force power-plant closures by setting unmeetable emission standards and thus dictate, as the court had put it, “how Americans get their energy.”

Chief Justice John Roberts noted for the 6-3 majority that after Congress had repeatedly considered and rejected providing the agency authority to regulate power-sector greenhouse gases, the EPA claimed “to discover an unheralded power” that represented a “transformative expansion in [its] regulatory authority” to force “generation shifting.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/08/17/growing_alarm_that_bidens_net-zero_approach_could_get_scorched_by_red_chinas_green_energy_dominance_973447.html

President Biden’s stance toward China hardened this month when he issued an executive order prohibiting American investment in Chinese companies developing advanced technologies that could be used by the military.

But a growing chorus of critics, including some Democrats, argue that the administration’s effort to grapple with America’s foremost adversary is contradictory, illustrated in the White House’s Beijing-empowering pursuit of ambitious climate change goals. 

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, as the White House has called for, will almost assuredly make the United States dependent on China while enriching it.

China currently holds a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential to the Biden administration’s desired alternative energy transition. Energy experts believe that its dominance will become more entrenched in the years ahead because of domestic environmentalist opposition to perceived “dirty” mining and refining operations, and the Biden administration’s “clean energy” spending blitz – which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies. 

The Biden administration also considers it imperative to get buy-in from Beijing on dramatically reducing emissions, given it produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/17/a-climate-for-absolute-power/

How do we know that Joe Biden has made a verbal blunder? His lips were moving. There are so many slip-ups and absurdities coming out of his mouth that it’s hard to keep up. But one recent gaffe stands out: The president said last week during an interview with the Weather Channel that he had already “practically speaking” declared a climate emergency.

He of course hasn’t, but should he or another president do so, they would in effect also be declaring themselves to be an American kaiser who could issue tyrannical edicts with absolute power. They would be able to autocratically “deploy around 130 different powers,” says Climate Depot’s Marc Morano.

Operating under emergency climate powers, a president could halt “the export of crude oil … phase out all exports and imports of fossil fuels entirely … stop issuing permits for offshore oil and gas wells under already existing leases and halt all drilling immediately … marshaling funding under the DPA to deploy clean energy – for example, rooftop solar installations on low-income housing,” according to Morano.

He, or she, could also implement lockdowns similar to those forced on us during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s a truly frightening proposition. Worse than one-party rule, it would be one-man rule.

Which means that the green-on-the-outside, red-on-the-inside radicals are giddy over the proposition even as they feel Biden’s rhetoric is running too far ahead of his actions.

“Activists say nothing short of an emergency declaration will address deadly heat – and the fossil fuel dependency driving it,” gushes Grist, the “Pravda version of the Whole Earth Catalog.” They would be happy to see Biden “divert billions of dollars from the military toward constructing renewable energy projects.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/16/is-this-the-dumbest-sentence-ever-written-about-climate-change/

In reporting on a Montana case in which a judge ruled that the state had to include the climate effect of oil and gas permits before deciding on them, the Associated Press showed just how brain-dead the discussions of “global warming” have become.

District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in favor of several young plaintiffs – ranging in age from 5 to 22 – saying they “have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental-support system.”

As proof of the harm the plaintiffs are suffering, the order has a list of horribles that includes:

“Olivia expressed despair due to climate change.”
“Badge is anxious when he thinks about the future that he, and his potential children, will inherit.”
“Grace … is anxious about climate change.”
“Mica gets frustrated when he is required to stay indoors during the summer because of wildfire smoke.”

(Perhaps the judge should have ruled against the adults who are filling these poor children’s minds with climate alarmist fantasies, but that’s another story.)

The ruling was heralded by the likes of Julia Olson, executive director of the Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust, which has filed similar lawsuits in other states, who said: “Today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.”

(Apparently, after “global warming,” and “climate change,” and “climate crisis” failed to move the needle, the left is trying out “climate chaos.”)

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/scientific_censorship_reaches_new_heights.html

On February 15, 2023, David Malpass, the president of the World Bank, announced that he would retire one year early on June 1, 2023.  On July 21, 2023, Pablo Moreno, the director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, read the flyer that described the address that Dr. John F. Clauser was scheduled to give to the IMF on July 27, 2023.  As a result, he summarily canceled Dr. Clauser’s planned address.

What do Malpass and Clauser have in common?  They have both acknowledged that they do not believe in the global warming hypothesis.  What do these two organizations have in common?  Historically, they have both loaned substantial amounts of money to developing countries to fight health crises, hunger, and conflict.  What do certain U.S. and world politicians want to see changed to the lending practices of both organizations in the future?  A dramatic shift to funding alternative energy investment initiatives “to fight climate change.”  The United States has contributed $117 billion to the IMF quota.  In addition, the United States has contributed $44 billion to funds at the IMF that supplement quota resources.  As of February 11, 2022, the IMF had total lending commitments of around $239.2 billion (67% funded by the U.S.).  U.S. paid-in capital in the World Bank is $3.5 billion, and callable capital is $47.8 billion.

Who manage the sourcing of capital, the development of the loan packages, the processes to effectuate these loans, and get a fee for their efforts?  Global investment firms.  Want to understand the motivation behind the promotion of the global warming hypothesis?  Follow the money.

In Mr. Malpass’s case, in 2007, he made statements in which he said he did not believe that there is a link between carbon emissions and global warming.  In September 2022, when he was asked if he accepted the “overwhelming scientific consensus” that the burning of fossil fuels was causing global temperatures to rise, he responded, “I’m not a scientist.”  After his September 2022 remarks, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called for his removal.  “His support for fossil fuels and abject failure to fund climate action is unacceptable,” Mr. Markey said in a statement.  “Now, the World Bank must make up for his missteps and get ready to be part of the solution for a livable future.”  Former vice president Al Gore, who had also called Mr. Malpass a climate denier and campaigned for his removal, said in a statement that his departure “must be the first step toward true reform that places the climate crisis at the center of the bank’s work.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/11/environmentalists-broken-toys/

We’ve recently written quite a bit about electric vehicles’ many flaws – the reasons to hate them, their evil nature, the entire EV con. But they’re not the only green plaything that’s being exposed for the debacle they are. Windmills are just as troubled.

“All over the world, rural people are reacting with fury at the encroachment of large wind and solar projects on their homes and neighborhoods,” writes energy author Robert Bryce.

Last month, “thousands of Druze residents in the Golan Heights,” says Bryce, “rioted to stop the installation of a large wind project on their traditional lands.” Before that, a wind project in Colombia was “canceled after it met fierce opposition from the indigenous Wayuu communities.”

Bryce noted last week that over the last 10 days in the U.S., “local governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects.” According to his database, that makes 574 rejections or restrictions of ​​solar and wind projects in less than a decade. Most of them, 407, have been wind projects.

Bryce predicted the growth of resistance four years ago when he wrote in The Hill that protests in Hawaii then were “a harbinger of more clashes to come if governments attempt to install the colossal quantities of wind turbines and solar panels that would be needed to fuel the global economy.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/08/09/the-fake-climate-consensus-n1717386

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.”

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.

Media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.

“We found that the percent of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realized, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!”

“So, this hysteria is your fault!” I tell her.

“Not really,” she smiles. “They would have picked up on it anyways.”

But Curry’s “more intense” hurricanes gave them fuel.

“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”