RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/greta-thunberg-is-a-joke/

Far from being the historic figure she and Time magazine imagine her to be, the climate-change spokeschild is attracting mockery.

‘Poll Finds Most People Would Rather Be Annihilated By Giant Tidal Wave Than Continue To Be Lectured By Climate Change Activists,” the Babylon Bee reported in December, adding in an attached news story that one man’s response to hearing “just 30 seconds of a Greta Thunberg lecture” was to scrawl on the survey form, “Come, sweet death.”

The Bee was, as usual, ahead of the pack, but these days it’s becoming common for even left-leaning comics to mock Thunberg. “Iconic”? “Courageous”? Nah. Just tiresome. Far from being a visionary difference-maker who put it all on the line for her righteous cause, Thunberg is increasingly being derided as just another hyperemotional, tantrum-prone, attention-seeking teen brat.

Joan of Arc became Veruca Salt.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2020/01/alarmed-and-dangerous/

Can we all agree that it is getting hotter? Facts matter and there is no point in agreeing on something that is wrong. However, the evidence seems clear to me. We now have 41 years of satellite data. I think we can rely on Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama in ensuring that the NASA satellite measuring program under their purview is throwing up honest data.

That data from the end of 1978 until the end of 2019 shows a trend warming of 0.013 degrees per year; in total 0.54 degrees over the forty-one years. At this rate the temperature would rise by 1.33 over a century. This would represent an acceleration in warming when compared with HADCRUT 4 data (land and ocean) which shows a trend of just 0.90 degrees over the whole period from 1850 to the near end of 2019.

But a degree of caution is warranted in saying that the last forty-one years is a guide to the future. I looked at the forty-one years from the end of 1899 to the end of 1940 (when the global temperature had a local peak) and found using HADRUT data that the temperature had risen by 0.40 degrees. This provided no guide at all to the next forty-one years, when the recorded temperature actually fell by 0.17 degrees. At the same time, to be clear, ‘up’ is the dominant theme since 1850.

Why there is warming is a separate question. Some look to the activity of the sun. I don’t know, I haven’t read anything convincing. Are the larger conglomerations of cities having heat-island effects? I assume so. A scientist friend of mine hypothesizes that world-wide large-scale irrigation may be contributing to water vapor in the atmosphere and thus may be part of the explanation. Again, I don’t know – which is what I would like a lot more people, more qualified than I, to be saying rather than stymieing debate by pretending that everything is certain and settled.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/07/climate-hysteria-is-a-backdoor-for-imposing-personal-interests-on-the-public/

The “fight” against global warming is not a selfless movement wholly focused on saving our world but a means for activists to impose their personal desires on the rest of us. They want to shut down farms, stop homebuilding, dictate what we can eat, and are eager to financially reward politically favored groups.

Our first stop on this tour of private crusades is in the United Kingdom, where Ian Boyd, a former chief scientific adviser for the government, is claiming, according to a recent British Guardian report, that “half of the nation’s farmland needs to be transformed into woodlands and natural habitat to fight the climate crisis and restore wildlife.”

“We need a large, radical transformation and we need to do it quickly, in the next decade” said the good professor.

Continued Boyd: “If anybody asked me: ‘If there is one thing I can do to help save the planet, what would it be?’ I would say just eat a lot less meat. It’s the easiest thing to do. I’ve done it.”

And we are therefore supposed to be impressed by his commitment and inspired to follow the great man.

Of course he’s not making the sacrifice alone. Others have chosen to cut back or eliminate their meat intake in the name of saving us from global warming. None were easily found at the last United Nations climate conference in Madrid, where “U.N. bureaucrats chow(ed) down on burgers – while attacking meat.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-martyrdom-of-saint-greta-of-sweden/

So Meat Loaf caused a little kerfuffle this weekend by saying he thought Greta Thunberg had been “brainwashed.”

I don’t know that should be a surprise, but it got me thinking about her again. I have a lot of sympathy for the kid.

For me, it started with seeing her picture. She’s small, slight, even scrawny; her head looks out of proportion to her body. She’s now 17 (as of 3 January) but she still looks childlike, prepubertal, younger than her 14-year-old sister. Frankly, she looks like she’s been in a concentration camp: malnourished over the long term.

Sure enough, reading a little about her, we find that she’s an Asperger’s child (I guess this month that’s now called “high-functioning autism”), she has obsessive-compulsive disorder, she stopped eating for months and still refuses to eat anything but certain specific things, in particular, a dish of pancakes filled with rice — but her OCD keeps her from eating if there’s a sticker or label on the package. She suffers from “selective mutism”, which means basically that there are situations in which she’s unable to speak.

She’s said that this means she only “speaks when she thinks it’s necessary.” This includes speaking to the UN General Assembly, but in interviews, her mother often speaks for her.

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/issues-2020-economic-consequences-fracking-ban-recession

“”A fracking ban, regardless of motivation, is anchored in magical thinking that non-hydrocarbon energy sources could fill a massive global energy shortfall if the U.S. exited the world stage as a major supplier of oil and natural gas. Both fuels will be critical for the global economy for decades to come. The key issue is not whether wind and solar can supply more energy—they can and will—but whether a future American administration would reverse the progress of the last decade in lowering energy prices and enhancing geopolitical stability.”

Reality

The extraction of oil and gas through the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (colloquially, “fracking”) has catapulted the United States into leadership of the world’s energy markets. Since 2007, fracking has doubled U.S. oil production and increased gas production by 60%. Instead of a major importer, America is rapidly becoming the largest exporter of oil and is expected to supply the majority of net new energy traded on global markets over the next two decades.

If the U.S. imposed a fracking ban, the supply disruption would trigger the biggest oil and natural gas price spikes in history—almost certainly by more than 200%—which would, in turn, tip the world into recession. Even the expectation that a ban could be enacted would destabilize markets. U.S. imports and the trade imbalance would soar, as would consumers’ spending on energy. To keep the lights on, America would have to nearly double the quantity of coal burned, as well as import up to 1 million barrels of oil per day for dual-fueled power plants that would lose access to natural gas.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/31/2019s-biggest-pop-culture-trend-climate-anxiety/

According to Grist, 2019 was officially the year the ‘climate crisis’ went mainstream. Grist makes a point that no longer is mention of the warming atmosphere, melting ice sheets, and acidifying oceans — along with the resulting human suffering — limited to the “environment” section of the newspaper.

‘Climate Crisis’ appeared everywhere in 2019. Climate Crisis came up in movies, songs, and books meant for widespread consumption and the ‘crisis got  major airtme from the Democratic presidential candidates. Grist explains that climate anxiety definitely blew up in 2019, in everything from pop hits to the Impossible Whopper.

TV

There has been no lack of climate change themes in some of the popular TV shows this year. Season 2 of HBO’s Big Little Lies spent an entire episode on the subject. The final season of The Affair jumped 30-plus years into the future to a climate change damaged Montauk.

New nature shows  came with a darker foreboding twist. Netflix’s nine-episode series Our Planet looked like Planet Earth at first glance. YouTube’s Hostile Planet series documents how animals adapt to extreme conditions, and blames ‘climate change.’

Books

This year, we saw a great deal of  books about the Green New Deal, including On by the Canadian, social activist, and well known critic of capitalism Naomi Klein. David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth had a broad reach, if its six-week stint on the New York Times’ nonfiction bestseller list (and 3 million copies sold) is any indication.

Movies

The 8th-highest-grossing movie of the year Frozen II, the sequel to Disney’s 2013 masterpiece Frozen, wherein Anna and Elsa must save their kingdom from a natural world that is “out of balance” by reckoning with their family’s harmful environmental legacy.

Fast food 

Fast food became a ‘climate crisis’, about how “cutting carbon-intensive animal products from your diet is one of the simplest ways to significantly reduce your carbon footprint, and beef became the worst sinner of 2019, with 20 times the climate impact of plant-based proteins like beans and soy. So replacing our hamburgers with processed faux meat made of soy-and-coconut-oil. 2019 might be the first year that fake burgers got big.”

Celebrities

Celebrities didn’t hesitate to speak up about climate change this year. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made the environment their ‘issue of the Month’ in July. They were blasted for being climate change hypocrites after taking two private jet trips in one week. Pictures emerged of the royal couple in Nice, on the French Riviera boarding with their son a 12-seater Cessna, which costs around $24,000. The Cessna would have generated seven times more carbon emissions per person than a standard commercial flight.

The 81-year-old-star Jane Fonda, wanted her chance in the limelight and first got arrested in October for protesting climate action” in solidarity with the Fridays for Future movement, the weekly school strike for climate action started by Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg.” Fonda has been protesting every Friday, getting arrested, and her famous friends — including Sam Waterson and Sally Fields — have been joining her.

Pop music

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” catchy tune even involves ‘climate change’ – Lil Nas claimed on Twitter . Other artists like “Billie Eilish” and “Lana Del Ray” included ‘climate anxiety’ in their music and used the burning planet as a backdrop against the usual pop-song stuff, like the triumphs and woes of growing up and falling in love. The 1975 teamed up with Greta Thunberg, youth activist and Time Person of the Year, to record a “song” that’s just her reading one of her speeches over background instrumentals.

This mass climate change charade shows no signs of slowing down, and will no doubt continue well into 2020.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/30/extinction-rebellion-founder-confirms-that-global-warming-is-voodoo-science/

Global warming protests, past the point of absurdity long ago, have become even more extreme thanks to a relatively new group from England. The founder’s background shows exactly why the organization has chosen to engage in the mindless behavior it’s become known for.

Though she has a doctorate in molecular biophysics, Extinction Rebellion architect Gail Bradbrook, called a “neo-pagan” by Britain’s Daily Mail, intentionally went down a path filled with folklore, superstition, tribal rites, and primitive hallucinogenics.

She’s a “lifelong activist,” reports CNN, who has “spent decades working on an array of social justice campaigns,” though few ever lead to real change. So, “in order to bring about real, radical change, Bradbrook felt like something inside her consciousness needed to be unlocked.”

In search of whatever she thought was missing, Bradbrook “traveled to the jungle-covered mountains of Costa Rica,” where she found “a psychedelic retreat.”

There she gulped “a flood dose of Iboga, a tree bark used to induce visions,”  consumed Kambo, “the poisonous secretion of a giant tree frog hailed for its healing powers,” and drank a “hallucinogenic brew” called ayahuasca.

“All,” reports CNN, “have been used in indigenous cultures for centuries as part of Shamanic spiritual rituals.”

In a story earlier this year, Bradbrook told the Daily Mail she had been focused on rabble rousing since 2010 and had “tried many things.” When “they didn’t work,” Bradbrook said she “went on a retreat and prayed in a deep way with some psychedelic medicines.” This appears to be the same event described by CNN, in which, under the influence of ayahuasca, Bradbrook sought the counsel of supernatural forces, praying for “the universe to show her the ‘codes for social change.’”

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/27/democrats-just-betrayed-working-class-americans-to-appease-environmentalists/

Congressional Democrats just betrayed America’s working class.

The House recently passed a series of bills banning offshore energy development, a significant source of employment for blue-collar Americans. Fueled by environmental fervor, these lawmakers are willing to sacrifice opportunities for their most important constituents.

There could be up to 90 billion barrels of oil and 328 trillion cubic feet of gas buried beneath federally owned sections of the ocean floor. That’s enough oil and natural gas to power the United States for over a decade. Ideally, energy companies would lease these underwater lands from the government and extract this bounty.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration outlawed energy development in over 90% of federal offshore territories. This policy prevents companies from accessing energy riches in the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans — as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

Soon after taking office, President Trump vowed to lift this ban and revamp offshore energy production. But House Democrats are doing their best to stop him. The bills they passed last month would ban energy development off of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Alaskan coasts.

These policies deny working-class Americans prime employment opportunities.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/26/the-hidden-agenda-behind-the-roundup-lawsuit-campaign/

Eliminating glyphosate would drastically reduce feed crop yields, prompting a major rise in food costs, especially meat. It would green-light more bad science and enrich more bottom-feeding lawyers while punishing farmers and consumers.

A Virginia lawyer arrested earlier this month for extortion should bring much-needed attention to one of the biggest legal, scientific, and environmental scams in recent memory: The case against Roundup, a weedkiller used on farms and open spaces in more than 160 countries around the world.

Timothy Litzenburg, a Charlottesville attorney, has been charged with threatening an unnamed company unless it paid his $200 million shakedown. The unidentified company, according to the federal indictment, manufactures glyphosate, the active chemical in Roundup.

Litzenburg warned he would use “media and other means to find plaintiffs to sue” the company if it didn’t pay up. “In exchange for the $200 million, Litzenburg allegedly indicated that he would not tell any existing or future clients about Company 1 or its purported role in manufacturing the product,” federal prosecutors said in a press release.

Litzenburg is one of hundreds of attorneys seeking to profit from alleged damages caused by the popular weedkiller. If you own a television, you’ve seen the commercials: Lawyers trolling for sufferers of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who’ve used Roundup. The ads warn that glyphosate contained in the Roundup formula is linked to the deadly cancer.