RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/16/the-elites-war-on-cars/

No human invention has expanded liberty like the automobile. That’s one of the reasons that the Western ruling class wants to end private ownership of cars. The other reason is just as insidious.

The main theater in the war on cars being waged by the elites is in California – of course. There, Gov. Gavin Newsom, with the support of the unelected state Air Resources Board, has outlawed the sale of new cars that run on fossil fuel. Beginning in 2035, all new automobile sales in the state will have to be powered by batteries.

This is unsustainable for a number of reasons, including the likelihood that there will not be enough energy for all the charging that will be needed, particularly as the state makes a foolish transition to an all-renewables electric grid. EVs are expensive, as well, out of the reach of many.

California has also put its drivers on a “road diet,” a shameleess and “aggressive push to herd as many Californians as possible into mass transit,” and continues to move forward with its “vanity high-speed rail project” that is hopelessly behind schedule, far over budget, and quickly becoming a monument to the state’s can’t-do-won’t-do backward-looking mindset. 

California policymakers have not been shy about trying to “make it easier and faster to build sustainable transportation projects that help get people out of their cars,” even though there has been no upswell of pleas from drivers asking for the government for any such help. Street parking is being reduced, lanes closed and entire streets have been shut down, and fuel tax revenues are routinely diverted to projects with no relation to car travel.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/09/are-we-finally-reaching-peak-climate-hysteria/

The madness of the greens is peaking. This week a leading eco-politician in the UK, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, referred to the building of a new coalmine as a ‘crime against humanity’. Take that in. Once upon a time it was mass murder, extermination, enslavement and the forced deportation of a people that were considered crimes against humanity. Now the building of a mine in Cumbria in north-west England that will create 500 new jobs and produce 2.8million tonnes of coal a year is referred to in such terms. Perhaps the coalmine bosses should be packed off to The Hague. Maybe the men who’ll dig the coal should be forced alongside the likes of ISIS to account for their genocidal behaviour.

We cannot let Ms Lucas’s crazed comments just slide by. We need to reflect on how we arrived at a situation where a mainstream politician, one feted by the media establishment, can liken digging for coal to crimes of extermination. It was in the Guardian – where else? – that Ms Lucas made her feverish claims. On Wednesday, when the government gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria mine, the first new coalmine in Britain for 30 years, Lucas wrote that the whole thing is ‘truly terrible’. This ‘climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine’ is nothing short of a ‘climate crime against humanity’, she said.

It isn’t though, is it? Sorry to be pedantic but it is not a crime to extract coal from the earth. If it were, the leaders of China – where they produce 13million tonnes of coal a day , rather putting into perspective the Cumbria mine’s 2.8million tonnes a year – would be languishing in the clink. I look forward to Ms Lucas performing a citizen’s arrest on Xi Jinping. It certainly is not a crime against humanity. That term entered popular usage during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. It refers to an act of evil of such enormity that it can be seen as an assault on all of humankind. Earth to Ms Lucas: extracting coal to make steel – what the Cumbria coal will mostly be used for – is not an affront to humankind. I’ll tell you what is an affront, though: speaking about the burning of coal in the same language that is used to refer to the burning of human beings. That, Caroline, is despicable.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/12/this_winter_we_will_see_the_dangerous_results_of_climate_alarmism_869598.html

Despite alarmist media claims, there is no evidence that a climate “crisis” looms in our future, let alone imminent danger of a climate catastrophe. Nevertheless, we are now witnessing decisions by the Biden administration and other countries that could endanger lives around the world this winter.

In an effort to reduce GHG emissions, the administration has taken actions resulting in a sharp decline in current and prospective investment in U.S. oil and natural gas production, raising prices for fossil fuels both in the U.S. and globally. This means that U.S. policies alone will cause severe increases in the price of fossil fuels used for heating homes, schools and businesses in Europe and elsewhere, risking serious illness and death for large portions of the world’s population, especially the poor. The Russian cut in deliveries of natural gas to Europe have exacerbated that effect. The New York Times (NYT) recently reported that people were cutting Europe’s forests for firewood because fossil fuels were too costly or unavailable. This reflects the desperation that unnecessary and shortsighted U.S. and European policies have created.

Yet, ignoring this reality and looking for alarming headlines, most daily media reports about climate change repeat the false claim that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will cause a climate catastrophe in the near future. With this as a foundation, it seems that every policy must be directed to preventing this “disaster.”

A recent article in the NYT, quoting a UN report, could be labelled Exhibit A. Titled “Climate Pledges Fizzle as Havoc Looms for Globe,” the opening paragraph, “Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing the Earth toward a future with more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heatwaves and species extinction,” uncritically accepts the UN’s unfounded alarmism. By ignoring the readily available relevant science summarized below, the NYT and others seem to be trying to scare the public into supporting desperate actions in America and abroad that ostensibly will prevent catastrophic global climate change.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/junk_science_lingers_one_warm_day_cited_as_reason_for_an_imminent_climate_catastrophe.html

The revelations from Twitter might be shocking, but it’s not much different from what the media has been doing for decades — picking and choosing what information to share in an effort to create a desired (leftist) narrative.

Just last week, The Washington Post used one warm day as evidence that mankind’s use of natural resources are causing Alaska to rapidly warm:

At the northern tip of Alaska, the city of Utqiagvik on Monday reached its warmest temperature ever observed between November and March, when the mercury shot up to 40 degrees — 36 degrees above the norm.

Since people pretending to be journalists won’t do research, I will. 

The highest daytime temperature in Utqiagvik in the next 15 days is 3 degrees. Temperatures are normal.

Basically, propagandists cherry picked one warm day to push an agenda that our use of natural resources caused the extra warm day. If the use of coal and oil caused the warm temperatures, they would have stayed elevated instead of immediately returning to normal.

https://quillette.com/2022/12/10/ts-time-the-green-movement-stopped-demonizing-nuclear/

During the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt (also known as COP27), ELLE UK Contributing Editor Aja Barber couldn’t contain her exasperation at news that pro-nuclear-power demonstrators were in attendance.

“They do this every COP,” she tweeted. “It’s mortifying every time! Nuclear power remains an environment[al] justice issue for me because only the poor end up with the plant and the waste within spitting distance of their neighbourhoods.”

Barber also claimed (falsely) that people living near nuclear power plants were suffering from “real unexplained cancers,” and that those who doubted this fact were racist whites who doubted the perspective of “brown and Black people.” (Barber ignored the fact that I’m brown myself.)

As the founder of Emergency Reactor, a UK-based group of pro-nuclear activists concerned about climate change, I felt the need to call Barber out for spreading misinformation. The people I’ve met who live near nuclear power stations are generally happy to have the jobs and other benefits that these facilities bring. Nuclear energy generation doesn’t emit greenhouse gases or any of the smog we commonly associate with fossil-fuel-based power plants. Modern construction and operating methods ensure that nuclear-power facilities are quiet and safe.

Yet to Barber, anyone who makes the case for nuclear power—including me—must be a “lobbyist.” Nicolas Haeringer of the anti-fossil-fuel group 350.org similarly accuses COP activists of being part of “an industrial lobby pretending to be a movement.” It’s as if these anti-nuclear environmentalists will only take others’ concern for the planet at face value if they’ve superglued themselves to a museum, blocked traffic, or spray-painted someone’s business.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/

As my last post reported, the Official Party Line from our government holds that we have this “100% Clean Electricity” thing about 90% solved. As the government-funded NREL put it in their August 30, 2022 press release, “[a] growing body of research has demonstrated that cost-effective high-renewable power systems are possible.” But then they admit that that statement does not cover what they call the “last 10% challenge” — providing for the worst seasonal droughts of sun and wind, that result in periods when there is no renewable power to meet around 10% of annual electricity demand. That last 10%, says NREL, will require one or more “technologies that have not yet been deployed at scale.”

But hey, we’ve got 90% of this renewable transition thing solved. How hard could figuring out that last 10% really be?

And on that basis the government has embarked upon forcing the closure of large numbers of power plants that use fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, as well as on suppressing exploration for fossil fuels and other things like pipelines and refineries. After all, if we’re transitioning at least 90% to renewables, we won’t need 90% of the fossil fuel infrastructure any more, will we?

Actually, that’s completely wrong. Until the full solution to the so-called “last 10% challenge” is in place, we need 100% of our fossil fuel backup infrastructure to remain in place, fully maintained, and ready to step in when the wind and sun fail.

Let’s take a brief look at what bridging the last piece of the renewable transition actually looks like.

NREL’s August 2022 Report titled “Examining Supply-Side Options to Achieve 100% Clean Electricity by 2035” lays out several scenarios for supposedly achieving that goal. For all the scenarios, the most important piece is the same: building and deploying lots more wind turbines and solar panels. (The scenarios differ in the degree of deployment of other elements like transmission lines, battery storage, carbon capture technology, and additional nuclear.). As foreseen by NREL, by 2035, total electricity generation capacity in the U.S. has more than tripled, with the large majority of the additions being wind and solar. There is substantial overbuilding of the wind and solar facilities, presumably to provide enough electricity on days of light wind or some clouds, while having large surpluses to discard on days of full wind and sun. Some storage has been provided, but mostly “diurnal” (intra-day) and not seasonal.

https://the-pipeline.org/decolonize-the-green-movement/

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find places where the Left’s rhetoric and ideals fail to align with their real-world actions. Their years of pearl clutching about election denialism after making a celebrity of election denier Stacey Abrams and, more recently, selecting election denier Hakeem Jeffries to replace Nancy Pelosi as Democratic House Leader are examples which come immediately to mind.

But there are darker examples. For instance, if you’ve spent any time in the presence of Leftist academics over the past quarter century, you have likely observed their obsession with colonial imperialism, which they contend to be among the greatest evils ever perpetuated by man. Though the major western empires were dismembered over the course of the 20th century, the Left’s fixation on imperialism is justified by the claim that that system has left indelible marks on both the imperialists and their former colonial subjects to this day. And yet, as Michael Schellenberg has pointed out, a form of imperialism is still alive and well…  and being practiced by prominent Left-leaning environmentalist governments:

The narrative is that imperialism is, by its very nature, exploitative, that it consisted of, in Shellenberger’s words, “rich nations taking raw materials from poor nations and leaving behind poverty rather than development.” While the historical reality might be more complicated than that presentation suggests, the modern day geo-political reality perfectly matches this critique. Keen-for-Green Germany is paying African nations not to use coal to help save the planet… and then using the coal itself.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/12/german-climate-alarmists-glue-themselves-to-munich-airport-runway-disrupt-flights/

Less than two weeks after shutting down Berlin airport, German climate activists stormed the airport in Munich and disrupted the air traffic in one of Europe’s busiest transit points.

On Thursday, German media outlets said that a gang of militant activists swarmed a runway and glued themselves to the tarmac. According to reports, police and fire brigade were rushed to the scene to free the glued militants from the runway.

The climate-extremist group “Last Generation,” which operates across Europe, took responsibility for the disruptive action. “Several activists of the “Last Generation” protest movement glued themselves on a runway at Munich Airport,” German state TV channel Tagesschau reported. “This led to the closure of the northern runway for about 45 minutes,” the broadcaster added.

German weekly Der Spiegel reported the details of the incident:

According to Munich Airport, one of the airport’s two runways has been shut down due to a climate protest. The activists have glued themselves to the runway north of the airport, an airport spokesperson said. The disruption in air traffic is to be expected.

The police went on a large-scale operation. “The activists are currently being removed [from the runway] by the police and taken into custody, ” the Upper Bavaria North police headquarters said.

Meanwhile, the police have disbanded the gathering, according to their own statement, and the disruption lasted less than an hour. The last person glued up [to the tarmac] was taken into custody of the airport police and fire brigade at 11:09 a.m. [Translated by the author]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pentagon-goes-to-climate-war-biden-administration-green-rule-weapons-contractors-11669835241?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The war in Ukraine is draining U.S. arms stockpiles while geopolitical risks grow. Yet the Biden Administration is worried about—you can’t make this up—the climate impact of U.S. weapons and wants to impose costly green mandates on federal contractors.

A little-noticed rule-making proposed by the Department of Defense, NASA and the General Services Administration last month would require federal contractors to disclose and reduce their CO2 emissions as well as climate financial risks. The rule would cover 5,766 contractors that have received at least $7.5 million from the feds in the prior year.

Smaller contractors would have to publicly report their so-called Scope 1 and 2 emissions—i.e., those they generate at their facilities and from the electricity and heating they use. Firms with larger contracts would also have to tabulate their upstream and downstream Scope 3 emissions, including those from customers, suppliers and products used in the field.

For example, weapons manufacturers would have to quantify and disclose the amount of CO2 generated from their own facilities; manufacturers that produce steel, computer chips and motors used in their weapons; propellants and fuel; and even munition storage areas. It’s unclear if CO2 emissions will influence procurement decisions.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2022/12/06/buying-a-country-home-a-few-important-tips-n1651343

Having decided to sell our city dwelling and purchase a new home in the country, my wife and I compiled a list of instructions for our real estate agent, almost as if we were house seekers on HGTV. Ample space was an obvious prerequisite. Reasonable proximity to an urban center for cultural, medical, and other needs and amenities was desirable — close but not too close, as semiotician Roland Barthes said about family. A congenial surrounding would be essential to avoid feng shui miseries.

The first item on the list, however, was absolutely crucial, namely, the solid assurance that a prospective wind farm anywhere in the vicinity would be out of the question. Governments and corporations have a way of staking out land to erect these atrocities without community consultation. The results are horrendous.

To begin with, wind turbines violate environmental principles, given that each turbine needs approximately 80 gallons of industrial oil and 12,000 gallons of PAO synthetic based on crude as a lubricant; the equipment to build windfarms runs on petroleum; there is no way to recycle the 150 ft. blades, which means landfill will be at a premium; and each turbine generates a humongous footprint. Some industry sources report that a wind farm typically requires up to 40 acres per megawatt of capacity. One must also factor in power substations and new access roads. All this apart from the fact that wind farms, for that matter solar panels as well, are not only eyesores but bird killers par excellence. Of course, we are not environmentalists but cannot help wondering how the Greenies square the desecration of the environment with their ostensible values. For the harm they do to the environment is immense.

If this were not bad enough, the insistent thrum of the rotating blades is known to produce psychological harm as well. I first became aware of the affliction some years back when a rural village in my native Quebec went collectively neurotic. The story made the middle pages of a few newspapers and then was quickly dropped. But there is no doubt that people who live near a wind farm suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, and nervous breakdowns, not to mention irrecoverable property depreciation. Which may explain why government ministers, corporate CEOs, and Green enthusiasts do not live anywhere near the installations they variously promote, build and profit from. They are dacha-smart.