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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE

How much more evidence does the press need that global warming is otherwise known as ‘the weather’? By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/how_much_more_evidence_does_the_press_need_that_global_warming_is_otherwise_known_as_the_weather.html

For 150 years, there has been exponential growth in the use of coal, oil, crude oil, gasoline, propane, and heating oil. There has been a massive increase in the use of cars, trucks, CO2, methane, the population, and numerous other things we are told cause an existential threat of rapid warming of the Earth. 

If all of the things that we are told cause warming actually did that, we would not see the record cold temperatures throughout  significant portions of the U.S. in October 2022.

Such as here:

Cold blast to bring record-breaking temperatures to large part of U.S. this week

The chilly temps could affect more than 60 million people as far west as Colorado and south into Florida, according to the National Weather Service.

High temperatures in Midwestern, Northeastern and even Southeastern states are expected to be 10 to 25 degrees below average, with low temperatures near freezing possible as far south in cities like Atlanta and Jackson, Mississippi.

How many pieces of scientific data are necessary that show the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally before this fraud ends, or before the media asks questions and does research instead of just repeating talking points?

John Kerry, Al Gore, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others should be asked the simple question: How do we have record cold temperatures after 150 years of the exponential growth of natural resources if that causes warming? 

If there is no correlation, there is no causation. 

The Green Energy Profiteering Scam “Green” Profits Can Only Rise if Citizens’ Freedoms Fall by J.B. Shurk

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19008/green-energy-profiteering

When governments limit drilling and mining for hydrocarbons in the ground, they manufacture scarcity.

When only certain wealthy individuals and companies can afford artificially expensive hydrocarbon energies as regular business costs, then budding entrepreneurs and small firms can no longer compete. Those at the peak of society’s wealth pyramid have a much easier time staying on top when the same natural sources of hydrocarbon energy once used to amass fortunes are now denied to those who would do the same.

A war on “fossil” fuels is a superb tactic for protecting private market share. It is a profitable ideological cause for fattening government revenues. And it is a constant source of income for environmental “nonprofits” and other special interests….

Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?

Can the global population stave off famine and starvation if farmers are forced to overhaul agricultural and livestock production methods in order to abide by “green” laws limiting the use or release of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and phosphate — molecules and compounds essential to basic farming and high crop yield fertilizers?

Ideology hijacks the market’s natural direction toward an objective and transparent “meeting of the minds.” There is an unspoken but unmistakable fraud. Until governments, including hostile adversaries such as Russia and the United States, conspired to limit the use of hydrocarbon energy and “go green,” the idea that anybody could turn a profit from the wind or sun would have seemed as absurd as a vendor selling rocks freely available all around us.

Are electric vehicles as powerful as their internal combustion engine counterparts? Can wind and solar energies really provide nations with reliable power grids robust enough to avoid rolling blackouts? Can plastics, heating oil, and most synthetic materials found around a home be magically manufactured without petroleum?

Can the global population stave off famine and starvation if farmers are forced to overhaul agricultural and livestock production methods in order to abide by “green” laws limiting the use or release of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, and phosphate — molecules and compounds essential to basic farming and high crop yield fertilizers?

In free markets, commodities bought and sold possess perceived value. When a buyer and seller reach an agreed upon price for any product, there is a “meeting of the minds.” The value of any natural raw material is proportional to its scarcity. The more of it there is, and the more easily it can be obtained, the less value it holds. A vendor who sells ordinary rocks cannot make a living when his product is found freely all over the ground. If he transacts in gold or silver, diamonds or rubies, however, his hard-to-find “rocks” are worth a small fortune. If only there were a way to turn ordinary rocks into valuable commodities!

There are, in fact, two well-known ways to do so. An unscrupulous vendor could simply paint ordinary rocks gold and pretend that common minerals are rare, and an unsuspecting customer might never be the wiser. Through fraud, the seller can hijack the perceived value of his goods and undermine the agreed “meeting of the minds” between himself and any deceived customer. His “precious” rocks actually hold no value but provide him with ill-gotten gains. Over time, however, this type of fraud does not last. More discerning customers eventually catch on to the ruse, and that information is shared among prospective buyers. And unless he is quick to move on to a new town with new buyers yet to be deceived, old swindled customers are likely to end his livelihood or much worse. Engaging in illicit fraud comes with serious personal risks.

Lies, Damn Lies and Climate Models: Greg Chapman

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/10/garbage-in-climate-science-out/

EXCERPT

“The world has less than a decade to change course to avoid irreversible ecological catastrophe, the UN warned today.” — The Guardian, Nov 28, 2007

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” — Yogi Berra

If your model’s initial assumptions are incorrect, how can you rely on it to make any prediction worth the effort of consulting? Not that peddling shoddy science bothers the swollen ranks of climateers. And why should they fret? Climate fear is a growth industry, meaning careers will advance so long as their rubbish in/garbage out findings are questioned.

Global extinction due to global warming has been predicted more times than the Labor Party has claimed it can cool the planet with a new tax.  But where do these predictions come from? If you thought it was just calculated from the simple, well known relationship between CO2 and solar energy absorption, you would only expect to see about 0.5o C increase from pre-industrial temperatures as a result of CO2 doubling, due to the logarithmic nature of the relationship. [1]

The runaway 3-6o C and higher temperature increase model predictions depend on coupled feedbacks from many other factors, including water vapour (the most important greenhouse gas), albedo (the proportion of energy reflected from the surface – e.g. more/less ice or clouds, more/less reflection) and aerosols, just to mention a few, which theoretically may amplify the small incremental CO2 heating effect.

Myth and ‘Following the Science’ The real nature of the apocalypse we’re facing. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/myth-and-following-the-science/

Increasingly over the last few centuries, science has become the dominant narrative of the West. The spectacular success of natural science in understanding, controlling, and transforming the material world has given science an authority that transcends the old certainties of faith, custom, and tradition. These authorities are now seen as retrograde, illiberal, and dangerous, the realm of superstition and myths that impede the ultimate triumph of progress and the utopia our cognitive elite “brights” who “follow the science” will create once the forces of reaction and unreason are corrected or eliminated.

Yet human nature––“the crooked timber,” as Kant put it, from which “nothing straight can be made”––continues to thwart this optimistic orthodoxy, partly because of our own hubris. We arrogantly claim more knowledge and wisdom and certainty than we actually have, even when talking about the natural world, let alone the unpredictable springs and consequences of our frequently irrational choices and actions.  Hence the beliefs and ideals that we think are the fruit of science and reason, often end up to be the detritus of old myths we dress up in the formulas and rhetoric of science.

In a time like the present––with a brutally destructive, potentially nuclear war in Ukraine, a looming global economic disaster, and especially an energy crisis created by our own irrational or venal polices that confuse science and myth––such policies are increasingly suicidal.

The threats to energy supplies, and the punitive costs of the fossil-fuel products that comprise 80% of all the energy we use, are a lesson in the dangers of claiming the unearned certainty of our science, and substituting gratify myths for established facts. Indeed, our current energy difficulties are the direct consequence of the progressives’ feckless “green” energy cult of zero-carbon emissions, and its misguided attempts to replace cheap, abundant fossil fuels with unreliable, expensive “renewable” solar and wind power.

Floods and droughts are nothing new By Viv Forbes

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/floods_and_droughts_are_nothing_new.html

There is nothing unusual about today’s floods, fires, droughts, homelessness, and hunger — they have always been part of the human story.  But satellite technology allows us to track them better, and our worldwide media revel in disaster reporting, bringing tearfully tragic scenes into every living room, every night.

Population growth means that more people are affected by weather extremes, but there is no evidence that floods and droughts are getting worse.

Written flood records go back to biblical times, and geological records go back for epochs.  Every floodplain today is a testament to previous floods.  The width of today’s floodplains and the depth of their alluvial soils show that there have been really huge floods in times past — and almost every society has stories of great floods.

Droughts (and the starvation they often cause) are also written into our history of famines, wars, and migrations.  They are also recorded in massive deposits of barren, wind-blown sandstone and loess.  Much of Earth’s surface was smothered by desert sands or vast ice sheets in times past.

El Niño droughts have been recognized as far back as 1525, but the famines of 1877–78 changed history in China and India, where people starved; granaries were looted; dynasties fell; cannibalism became common; and people ate roots, bark and carrion.

The first Europeans to explore Australia recorded smoke from hundreds of small bushfires and noted the beautiful grasslands and open forests created by earlier fires.  Observant ones also noted with awe the nests of flood rubbish caught high up in big gum trees.

The 1812–1820 El Niño droughts caused wars and migrations in Africa, and the 1844/46 El Niño drought changed the history of Australia.  Gregory Blaxland found a way across the Blue Mountains to discover the vast inland grasslands, while Charles Sturt suffered incredible hardships looking for “the Inland Sea” in central Australia during a drought.

Australia was later scarred by the Federation drought and the Millennium drought.

The 1852 flood in the Murrumbidgee River swept away the town of Gundagai, and the 1893 Bremer River Flood destroyed the Victoria Bridge and the Indooroopilly Bridge.  At least 60 people were killed when a flash flood destroyed the township of Clermont in 1916.  That whole town was relocated.

Proposed climate rule is bigger, badder deal than Manchin-Schumer climate bill by Rupert Darwall

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3688593-proposed-climate-rule-is-bigger-badder-deal-than-manchin-schumer-climate-bill%ef%bf%bc/

In his Florida v. Davos speech at last month’s National Conservatism conference, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) made important observations about the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing movement. He called it out as an attempt to use corporate and economic power to impose on society an ideological agenda that could not win at the ballot box. 

“Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise,” DeSantis argued. 

He warned of the danger from the growth of the administrative state, which he called the logical outcome of Congress abdicating its responsibility to hold the bureaucracy to account and letting it do much of the heavy legislating. 

In an opinion piece five days earlier, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lambasted such Republican critics of ESG. “Critics call it ‘woke capitalism,’” he wrote. “There’s just one problem. They don’t seem to understand capitalism. And flogging ESG is not only a terrible economic mistake. It will be a political loser too.” 

Bloomberg’s forecast will be tested when Florida voters decide whether to reelect DeSantis on Nov. 8. 

The battle has been joined and that is good news, because it signals a much-needed debate on ESG and its climate-policy component. 

Although Democrats hail passage of the Schumer-Manchin Inflation Reduction Act, far more consequential is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate-risk disclosure rule, currently being finalized. It will operate at the nexus of the administrative state, Wall Street and politically motivated institutional investors. The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), has 273 signatories with $61.3 trillion in assets under management.

We’re in the Climate Army Now This is not the first time the Democrats have raised the specter of Armageddon to shamelessly try to pass off their failed policies. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/14/were-in-the-climate-army-now/

During the Global War on Terror, when the United States was engaged battling terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left routinely lied to young voters that President George W. Bush in particular, and Republicans in general, were going to reinstitute the draft and send them to these active military theaters. The Left’s message was less than subtle: vote for Democrats or else the GOP will make sure you’re drafted and/or dead.

I was reminded of this in the heat of the 2020 election, when one of the Democrats’ smears was that an unstable President Trump was going to involve us in a war—likely a nuclear one. As during the Bush Administration, the scurrilous charge targeted young voters. What was different was that Trump was far less interventionist, and utilized American military power with significantly less frequency than did his predecessors. If one understands the Left’s tactics, Trump’s disinclination to use military power was not only insufficient to stop their “he’ll get us in a war” lie; it was, in fact, their reason for spreading it. (To those who contest this assessment of the Left’s tactics, does “Russiagate” ring a bell?)

Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats and their media cohorts are now using the prospect of nuclear war to try and prop up Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers, which threaten to drag his party’s federal and state candidates down to defeat. To wit, Biden opined to a gaggle of fat cat Democrats:

[For the] first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going. We’ve got a guy [Putin] I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.

Yes, if the Democrats’ stoking of “civil war” rhetoric isn’t enough to get their voters to the polls for the 2022 midterm elections, why not toss in the prospect of nuclear annihilation—along a path they and their minions have helped cement—even as they taunt the enemy to try to look like a tough guy? 

What could possibly go wrong?

Eco-Vandals Defaced a Van Gogh for the Stupidest Reason Ever and the Reactions Are Priceless By Stephen Green

Eco-vandals threw tomato soup on one of Van Gogh’s priceless “Sunflowers” paintings at Britain’s National Museum on Thursday, the latest in a long string of attacks on Western Civilization’s treasures.

The reason for the Van Gogh attack? Two members of Just Stop Oil attempted to destroy the artwork and glued themselves to the wall because they’re anti-oil and “Sunflowers” is an oil painting.

Get it?

Yeah, me neither.

The enemies of civilization are idiot vandal-savants with moral pretentious, dressed up like dues collectors from 1984′s Junior Anti-Sex League.

Here’s what passes for their thinking:

Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” had nothing to do with climate change, [Just Stop Oil spokesweasel Mel Carrington] said. It was simply “an iconic painting, by an iconic painter” and an attack on it would generate headlines. But the choice of soup was more symbolic, Carrington said: In Britain, many householders were struggling to pay fuel and food bills because of soaring inflation, and some could not even afford to heat up a can of soup. The government should be helping ordinary people deal with “the cost of living crisis,” rather than enabling fossil fuel extraction, she added.

Fortunately, the only damage done was “some minor damage to the frame,” according to an email released by the National Gallery. The painting itself sits safely behind glass.

I’ve been to the National Museum. I’ve seen “Sunflowers.” I’ve seen the protective glass. I’d rather have seen Van Gogh unencumbered, but I understand that the West’s treasures must be protected from the two-legged animals behind groups like Just Stop Oil.

Witness now your so-called moral betters, overgrown children still in need of a spanking:

Unavoidably, our “protestors” got what they wanted — the world talking about them.

But maybe not in the way they intended, if these selections from my Twitter timeline are any indication.

Enjoy.

Commander Salamander is one of my favorite milbloggers — one of my favorite bloggers, period. His suggestion is exactly what we ought to do, with the glued-down protestors as much on display as the art for visitors to the National Gallery.

I have to get a little more serious with this next one.

Please burn this line into your brain: “The vandalism or destruction of art is always an authoritarian act.”

Even some lefties can’t get behind this particularly stupid and futile act.

girl i’m down with the cause but van gogh was a broke mentally ill painter considered a failure until his death like what does he have to do with this https://t.co/cNpgoBKPd7

— matt (@mattxiv) October 14, 2022

Here’s another.

Kurt Schlichter has had quite enough, as you’ll see below. But it was one of the replies (also below) that really caught my eye.

Tom Clancy did just that to the environmental wackos who tried to wipe out humanity in Rainbow Six, and it’s an admirable solution. I’d also recommend no insect repellent, clothes, or food. Enjoy your nature, kids!

Oh, and ignore that comment from Ian Miles Cheong about the painting being “destroyed.” Ian provides good links and some solid content, but sometimes he plays a little fast and loose with the facts.

That’s enough for today, and I’m going to try not to lose any sleep wondering where Western Civilization’s children-with-daddy-issues will strike next.

The West is on the road to energy ruin Green policies have crippled Europe. They will do the same to America by Emmet Penney

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-west-is-on-the-road-to-energy-ruin/

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war and the sanctions it triggered, energy prices have skyrocketed. President Joe Biden has called this year’s high energy prices “Putin’s price hike.” British prime minister Liz Truss told households that their high energy bills were a fair price to pay for solidarity with Ukraine. Margrethe Vestager, vice president of the European Commission, has encouraged Europeans to take short, cold showers to conserve energy. “When you turn off the water, say ‘Take that, Putin!’” she urged.

But are the high prices really Putin’s fault? He didn’t sanction himself, after all. It’s the West that chose to cut itself off from the Russian fossil fuels upon which it had come to rely. Moreover, the sanctions have failed — Russia’s corporate profits leapt 25 percent between the imposition of the sanctions and the end of August.

So what are the origins of the current energy crisis? When did it really begin?

Let’s play a game. Guess which year these headlines are from: “Curtailed ammonia production in Antwerp and Ludwigshafen.” “High natural gas prices lead to a shutdown of British fertilizer plants.” “Diesel Shortage Amid Soaring Prices: Truck Stops Resort To Rationing.” If you guessed 2022, you’d be wrong. Those are all from September 2021.

The truth is that the energy crisis began to take effect late last year. A combination of post-Covid demand rebound, a wind drought in Europe and depleted fossil fuel storage on the continent all collided to put serious pressure on the world’s industrial systems. Add the longstanding overinvestment in unreliable renewables, nuclear plant closures across the world in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and a global drop of more than 50 percent in oil and gas investment — from $700 billion to $300 billion — between 2014 and last year, and you have everything you need to kick off a global energy crunch. Russian tank treads running from the Donbas to Kyiv just made it all worse.

Hurricane Ian reveals another problem with electric vehicles: They explode after hurricanes By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/hurricane_ian_reveals_another_problem_with_electric_vehicles_they_explode_after_hurricanes.html

Joe Biden and all his minions have allowed gas prices to go sky high in a fanatic quest to force Americans into electric vehicles.

One problem: They tend to explode after hurricanes.

That’s what Fox News found, citing warnings from local authorities about this latest health hazard from the purveyors of those who vow to make America “go green”:

A top Florida state official warned Thursday that firefighters have battled a number of fires caused by electric vehicle (EV) batteries waterlogged from Hurricane Ian.

EV batteries that have been waterlogged in the wake of the hurricane are at risk of corrosion, which could lead to unexpected fires, according to Jimmy Patronis, the state’s top financial officer and fire marshal. 

“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start,” Patronis tweeted Thursday. “That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale.”

Which isn’t much of an enticement to purchase an electric car. How many gas-powered vehicles put on that kind of a show after a hurricane?

It goes to show more of the unintended consequences on the road to green Utopia — and why it’s impractical to force such changes without ever considering all the things a consumer might consider. Being able to get out of a disaster zone in a hurry is pretty important to a lot of people who buy cars.