RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/502718-the-world-health-organizations-truth-cleansing-pandemic

You thought the World Health Organization’s job was direct and coordinate authority on global pandemics? Forget it. Last month, the WHO produced its “Manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19.” Far from addressing its own lamentable failure to halt the spread of the virus, the document is little more than a demand for a global Green New Deal dolled up in the garb of public health.

The pandemic, WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, tells us, is a reminder of “the intimate and delicate relationship between people and planet.” Efforts to make the world safer from another one are doomed unless they address “the critical interface between people and pathogens.” Human pressure on the environment, the WHO claims, increases the risk of new infectious diseases. Recovery plans from the pandemic should therefore “lessen our impact on the environment, so as to reduce the risk at source,” as if new deadly viruses are randomly transmitted from wild animals to people wandering through forests, rather than in Chinese wet markets or, in some instances, even cultivated in research labs. 

Arguing for a quick energy transition, the WHO says the costs of renewable energy are dropping. Exactly why, say, burning coal carries a higher risk of unleashing the next pandemic rather than cutting down forests from whence the COVID-19 virus supposedly came, in order to make way for wind farms, the WHO doesn’t say. As Michael Moore’s movie “Planet of the Humans” vividly shows, wind and solar require enormous land-takes and have huge environmental impacts.

But the WHO’s recovery manifesto isn’t about science and rationality. It’s the soul of Thomas Malthus entering public health. Restoring a pristine environment is the goal, humanity becomes the problem, and industrialization – by harnessing nature for the purpose of human flourishing – is the original sin. The WHO’s message that environmental degradation caused the pandemic is exactly what influential audiences in the West want to hear. 

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-8-reality-is-gradually-catching-up-to-green-energy

If you dutifully read your U.S. mainstream media, you undoubtedly have the impression that “clean” and “green” energy is rapidly sweeping all before it, and soon will supplant fossil fuels in powering our economy. After all, many major states, including California and New York, have mandated some form of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, or in some cases even earlier. That’s only 30 years away. And reports are everywhere that investment in “renewables,” particularly wind and solar energy, continues to soar. For example, from Reuters in January we have “U.S. clean energy investment hits new record despite Trump administration views.” In the New York Times on May 13 it’s “In a First, Renewable Energy Is Poised to Eclipse Coal in U.S.” The final victory of wind and solar over the evil fossil fuels mushttps://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-8-reality-is-gradually-catching-up-to-green-energy

Actually, that’s all a myth. The inherent high cost and unreliability of wind and solar energy mean that they are highly unlikely ever to be more than niche players in the overall energy picture. Politicians claim progressive virtue by commissioning vast farms of wind turbines and solar panels, at taxpayer or ratepayer expense, without anyone ever figuring out — or even addressing — how these things can run a fully functioning electrical grid without complete fossil fuel backup. And the electrical grid is the easy part. How about airplanes? How about steel mills? I’m looking for someone to demonstrate that this “net zero” thing is something more than a ridiculous fantasy, but I can’t find it.

To stay grounded in reality, there is no better source than the multiple-times-weekly email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

https://www.city-journal.org/blackrock-esg-strategy

“I don’t give a damn what these powerful corporations tell us and I don’t care about their profit margin. We need to get out of these fossil fuels before it’s too late for everybody.” These are not the words of a Sunrise Movement activist, though they could easily be mistaken for one, but New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, speaking at an online People’s Assembly on BlackRock last week. The gathering of activists and advocates was intended to discuss strategies for pushing BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to make good on its promises to “place sustainability at the center” of its investment strategy. As environmental activists see it, the firm has a long way to go.

Stringer, an anti-fracking campaigner and protégé of Congressman Jerry Nadler, became comptroller in January 2014, when Bill de Blasio took over as mayor. He wanted to remake his office into “a think-tank for innovation and ideas,” Stringer declared on his first day. That’s a risky outlook for one assuming a position defined by law as the custodian of the city’s five pension funds, which totaled, in February 2020, $221.2 billion in assets. Early on, Stringer proclaimed a devotion to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing, and to finding investment managers dedicated to these principles. He launched a campaign on proxy access to enable shareholders to nominate directors—ticking the “G” for governance. He then moved on to the “S” with his Boardroom Accountability Project, writing to 151 companies asking that they disclose, among other things, the sexual orientation of their directors.

“E” for environment is the big one. When de Blasio announced in January 2018 that city pension funds would divest $5 billion worth of equity in fossil-fuel companies, Stringer justified the move by claiming retirees’ financial future was “linked to the sustainability of the planet.” The comptroller allocated 12 percent of the fund assets of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System—the largest of the city’s five pension funds—into the Developed Environmental Activist asset class, according to an American Council for Capital Formation report by Timothy Doyle. The move dragged down the fund’s already-poor investment returns. 

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-30-virginia-is-deluding-itself-about-green-energy

A few days ago I had a post about how tightening “green” energy regulations in Europe are gradually strangling sectors like the automobile and chemical industries. The post was titled “Europe Is Firmly Committed To Economic Suicide.” Here in the U.S., we have a large coterie of “blue” states that are hungering to follow the EU economic model — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and others. A latecomer to this party is Virginia.

In Virginia, you may be aware that in 2018, for the first time in a generation, the Democrats took control of both houses of the legislature. They wasted no time in passing a big chunk of the progressive agenda en masse, in the form of over a thousand bills that had been blocked by their adversaries for decades. The new laws cover everything from abortion to guns to the minimum wage to tax increases, and plenty more. Of course, at the top of the agenda, as it always seems to be, was “climate change.” To slay this particular dragon, Virginia now has the newly-enacted Virginia Clean Economy Act, or VCEA.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/29/eu-will-use-coronavirus-pandemic-relief-to-push-climate-change-agenda-n458940

The European Union has discovered what Democrats in America have known for years: never let a crisis go to waste.

In that spirit, the EU is presenting a massive relief package for European economies to help them get back on their feet following the coronavirus lockdowns.

But the plan isn’t designed solely to alleviate the crisis. It’s mainly structured to advance the EU’s climate change agenda to make the world safe for windmills…or something.

Guardian:

The EU’s plan seeks to pour money into emissions-busting sectors: €91bn (£81bn) a year for home energy efficiency and green heating, €25bn of renewable energy, and €20bn for clean cars over two years, plus 2m charging points in five years. Up to €60bn will go to zero-emissions trains and the production of 1m tonnes of clean hydrogen is planned.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/28/as_renewables_move_to_overtake_gas_a_pipeline_to_paralysis_123781.html

The embattled Atlantic Coast Pipeline begins its run in West Virginia. The steel tube built to ferry 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day weaves underground through mountain terrain toward its destination two states away in North Carolina. Then it stops, after only 30 miles but many millions of dollars into its journey.  

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline starts in West Virginia, but when and where it will ever finish has been thrown into doubt by a debate over how long it’s necessary to burn natural gas.

The most expensive natural gas pipeline project in America was halted two years ago after a federal appeals court yanked a permit that allowed it to cross two national forests, but the controversy rages on. The central issue is climate change – but in a sign of how much the debate has changed, this is not a battle between believers and deniers. Almost everyone, including CEOs, lawmakers and Wall Street analysts, agrees on the need to transition to renewable energy.

The fight is about how long it’s necessary to burn natural gas – a comparatively clean but growing source of atmospheric warming – before wind, solar and other clean energy can power America. In the rapidly changing economics of power, cheap natural gas –  once a wonder fuel enabling the shuttering of hundreds of dirtier coal plants nationwide – is itself being challenged by low-cost renewable energy, raising doubts in the minds of some over the need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline at all.  

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-26-greta-thunberg-or-naomi-seibt

Almost certainly, you have heard of Greta Thunberg.  Indeed, you undoubtedly know a lot about her.   She is the Swedish teenager who for more than a decade has suffered from various mental illnesses, including depression, Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even something called “selective mutism.”  Apparently, in between bouts of mental illness, at some point she became interested in the issue of climate change.  In late December 2018, at the age of 15, Greta suddenly sprang on the world stage, when she got invited to speak at a UN climate conference in New York.  That’s when we first got to see her trademark anger — fury, even — about what she perceived to be the crisis of the climate.  In 2019 she spent the year playing hooky from school and leading climate “strikes” and demonstrations wherever she could get an audience.  On September 23, 2019 she was back at the UN in New York giving a barn-burning speech letting everyone know how deeply furious she is that anyone is enjoying their life.  Here is some text from that speech:

[Y]ou all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

And what exactly was it that anyone had done to her to “steal [her] dreams and [her] childhood”? I’m still trying to figure that one out. My own inclination is to feel very sorry for this young lady. As a high-school age girl who hasn’t even attended school much of the time and hasn’t yet studied these things at all, she obviously has no real idea about whether “entire ecosystems are collapsing” or whether we are “in the beginning of a mass extinction.” Clearly, before her unhinged anger takes over everything and destroys her life, she needs to get some professional help with her mental issues. But that’s just my view.

Then there’s Naomi Seibt. You may not even have heard of her. She’s a little older than Greta — 19 to Greta’s 17 — and hails from the German state of North Rhine Westphalia.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/more_useless_energy_policies.html

The Australian Minister for Promoting Useless Energy thinks that hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and biofuels are priorities for energy policy and greenhouse gas reduction.

If that’s the best our leaders can come up with, Australia should have voted Green last election to speed the inevitable recession and blackouts that will eventually kill this tsunami of energy nonsense.

“Hydrogen” does not supply net energy — burning it can return some of the energy used to produce it from hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water. It is an expensive explosive gas that makes less sense than Snowy 2 — more energy in than out!

Moreover, we have no infrastructure that can safely store, distribute or use hydrogen in our transport fleet, energy network or smelters. Governments should not force energy consumers or taxpayers to promote Canberra’s thought bubbles — let the “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs risk their own or shareholders’ money.

“Carbon capture and storage” is another dumb idea. To capture CO2 emissions from coal, gas, or biomass power stations consumes a lot of energy to separate, store, pipe, and pump it underground (hoping it will stay there). It would be far better leave non-polluting CO2 in the lower atmosphere and surround every power station with crops and forests hungry for the CO2 plant food so essential to their growth.

Trying to extract CO2 from the atmosphere is even dumber because the mighty oceans will quickly release CO2 from their huge stores to restore equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Even if it could be done, it is a bad idea — why steal plant food from grass, crops, and forests?