The Climate Change Doomsday Cult: ‘The end of private car ownership and of meat-eating’

Watch: Morano on TV explains how climate agenda is pushing ‘the end of private car ownership’ & end of meat-eating:

Tipping Point with Kara McKinney on One America News – OAN – Broadcast April 26, 2022

Morano: “The whole climate agenda stripped bare is literally a self-immolation of your national security and your economic security.”

Morano on Buttigieg floating ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments: “What Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan…you’re going to be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Morano on: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets: “What Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking…They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insectsweeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

Morano: They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.”

Selected Highlights:

Morano on Buttigieg floating ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments“What Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan. And I can show you the Irish Times. I can show you multiple reports, the UK government reports, academic reports, the UK transport Secretary, all calling essentially for the end of private car ownership… you’re going to be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Morano on: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets“What Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking. Bill Gates, according to NBC News, is now America’s biggest farm ownerChina buying up U.S. farmland is probably a close second. They’re now trying to get a land monopoly by buying American farmland. What is the goal of the climate agenda? They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insectsweeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

So what’s happening is you’re seeing in Ireland, the actual blueprint, they want us to shut down domestic energy, agriculture and then we can rely on essentially 30 ingredients of processed fake food vegetable oil-based ‘meat’, which by the way, the World Economic Forum has said you can get a 3d printer and print several pounds of ‘fake meat a minute with these new printers. So this is very funny, but it’s a very serious agenda.

They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.”

Rough Transcript:

Kara McKinney, host of Tipping Point on OAN asks about man who set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court: see: Climate Activist Sets Himself On Fire

Marc Morano:  Well, this is actually it’s a much bigger part of the agenda. This is not just Pete Buttigieg virtue signaling. The whole climate agenda stripped bare is literally a self-immolation of your national security and your economic security. And that’s what we’re seeing firsthand.

The World Bank just came out today and said we are enduring the greatest shock to energy since the 1970s. And this is very much in large part due to Pete Buttigieg and this climate agenda. Now what he’s doing here is very telling. At Climate Depot, I have the whole background of what Buttigieg is actually up to with this monthly transportation payment that covers everything instead of a car payment — to replace your car payment — it is part of the plan.

And I can show you the Irish Times. I can show you multiple reports, the UK government reports, academic reports, the UK transport Secretary, all calling essentially for the end of private car ownership.

See below: 

Irish Times: Future of people driving around country in private cars is ‘fantasy built on cheap oil’

Climate lockdown: ‘It’s Time To Ban The Sale Of Pickup Trucks’ – ‘Shift away from relying on private vehicles entirely’

Business Insider mag: ‘Electric vehicles won’t save us — we need to get rid of cars completely’

May 2021: Climate lockdowns!? New International Energy Agency’s ‘Net-Zero’ report urges A shift away from private car use’

Climate Lockdowns: British Medical Journal Study Calls For ‘Substantially fewer journeys by car

Gates, Soros funded Professor: Prepare for the Coming ‘Climate Lockdowns’ – ‘Govts would limit private-vehicle use’

Flashback: Dem presidential candidate Andrew Yang: Climate Change May Require Elimination of Car Ownership – Suggests ‘constant roving fleet of electric cars’– “We might not own our own cars.”

So what Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg is brainstorming here, with his Star Trek references and everything else, he’s coming up with a plan that people are going to pay into this system and if you’re a good steward, you ride your bike a lot, you take the public transit, wear your mask and do all the things right, you’re going to get benefits — you’re going to get lower payments, you might even get dividends. (See: Buttigieg floats ‘monthly transportation payment’ that ‘covers everything’ to replace monthly car payments)

The whole gist of this is you’re going to be funding solar, wind, electric cars, you’re gonna be funding the end of not just the internal combustion engine but the end of private car ownership, which literally, group after group and the climate agenda is saying has to come to an end. Private car ownership has been called 20th-century outdated thinking.

Owning a car is outdated ’20th-century thinking’ & we must move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions, UK transport minister says

Kara McKinney: And also looking at the Supreme Court situation where that man, sadly tragically set himself on fire. Those injuries ended up being fatal and it breaks my heart and I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that people still work themselves up into that sort of a frenzy, even when we’ve seen It’s been decades now this point of doomsday predictions that have never come true. And also at the same time, the world’s biggest climate hysterics. They’re the ones who are all living on the oceans. They all own beachfront properties. They all have multimillion-dollar mansions on the very same property that they say will be underwater in a couple of years. And so I can’t take any of those people seriously and yet sadly, we still see people getting really worked up about it. Why do you think we still see such almost a religious seal about this?

Marc Morano: Well, a couple of things. First of all, you’re absolutely right. It’s a very bad image for people like President Obama and John Kerry and Al Gore to have seaside homes, multiple homes, doing everything they preach against and they’re obviously not worried about sea-level rise.

But this is very sad. The man who committed suicide in front of the Supreme Court was a climate activist and on his Facebook page, he had referred people to this online climate course he had taken with none other than Climategate professor and former UN scientist, Michael Mann. This is one of the media’s favorite go-to scientists. This was who influenced the man who killed himself.

See: Report: Climate Activist Sets Himself On Fire After Taking Michael Mann Climate Course &

Climate activist who set himself on fire at Supreme Court ‘edited a link to an online course’ taught by Climategate prof. Michael Mann

It doesn’t end there because what they’ve done is — in The Hill newspaper — a professor from the University of Nebraska in Omaha is saying get ready to see more climate terrorism responding to the man who killed himself. ‘The increasing infuriation of climate activists is warranted.’

Professor in The Hill: ‘Get ready to see more climate terrorism’ – ‘The increasing infuriation of climate activists is warranted’

So what they’ve done is they’ve literally got people convinced that the government isn’t doing enough and that we’re all going to die in some climate, emergency, or catastrophe, and that they need to do everything possible. As you mentioned, the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who self-immolated in protest. Climate activists want to draw attention, and now they’re willing to do this too.

Remember the whole climate movement — they couldn’t convince adults —  Gallup polling showed no real change in concern among adults since the late 1980s. But they went after kids because kids are a lot more gullible, and easy to scare and that’s why kids now are having psychological problems. The mainstream media loves to highlight all the teenagers and preteens with psychological problems because of their fear of climate change.

Kara McKinney: And now making matters worse, speaking of eco-terrorism, I mean, look who we have now heading up the Bureau of Land Management, a woman who herself was involved with eco-terrorism back in the 1990s. But also Northern Ireland, it seems they have to get rid of animals hundreds of 1000s perhaps make them disappear as if this was or China disappearing scientists and COVID.

It kind of reminds me of the Green New Deal with AOC. The first original copy we got of it was the same thing they need to get rid of cows because of their flatulence. This doesn’t sound very green to me. See: Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets – ‘Farming sector to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050’)

Marc Morano:  This is where you mentioned self-immolating their economy. The original Green New Deal actually used the words ‘farting cows’ in the original green New Deal release that they sent out and then they quickly like pulled it and tried to change it.

But here’s the thing, what Ireland is doing is literally by getting rid of their livestock is what the World Economic Forum, the Davos crowd, what Bill Gates are seeking. Bill Gates, according to NBC News, is now America’s biggest farm ownerChina buying up U.S. farmland is probably a close second. They’re now trying to get a land monopoly by buying American farmland. What is the goal of the climate agenda? They want us to stop eating meat. They want us to eat insectsweeds, and fake meat burgers. This is actually the goal of Bill Gates, who is now going to have huge sway as America’s largest farm owner to do this.

So what’s happening is you’re seeing in Ireland, the actual blueprint, they want us to shut down domestic energy, agriculture and then we can rely on essentially 30 ingredients of processed fake food vegetable oil-based ‘meat’, which by the way, the World Economic Forum has said you can get a 3d printer and print several pounds of ‘fake meat a minute with these new printers. So this is very funny, but it’s a very serious Marcagenda.

They want to cripple national economies. What is Europe now except energy crippled in the face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression? They’re almost helpless because they shut down their own energy and now we have them shutting down their own food supply. This is bonkers Kara. A to Z bonkers! I don’t know how else to use another word to describe what’s happening globally now because of the climate agenda.

Kara McKinney: I’m right there with you. Buttigieg, we’re talking about flying cars in the future. And I’m thinking No, it’s just gonna be living in the pod eating the bugs as you were saying it’s gonna mess the future.

Marc Morano: We don’t have a Jetson’s future. We have a Flintstone future within candles in the foot-powered cars. That’s where we’re headed.

Kara McKinney: Exactly. That’s exactly where we hare headed with all this green craziness. Marc, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

©Marc Morano, Climate Depot. All rights reserved.

Elon Musk: ‘We should not shut down nuclear power plants, we should reopen the ones that we’ve shut down’

Elon Musk did a broad interview (below) that was published on IsraelUnwired.com’s website by discussed during the interview the need for nuclear energy and re-opening any nuclear plants that have been shut down.

Watch:

We fully agree with Elon.

In our column America’s Energy Future: Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear we wrote:

America’s energy future is not in solar and wind power. Rather our energy needs are best met by oil, natural gas and nuclear power.

Let’s look at the current numbers to see where Americans get their energy from.

Here is a chart showing how much U.S. energy is produced by coal and coal byproducts.

ENERGY SOURCE BILLION KWH SHARE OF TOTAL
Coal 899 21.8%
Petroleum (total) 19 0.5%
Petroleum liquids 11 0.3%
Petroleum coke 7 0.2%

Here is a chart on how much of our energy is produced by solar and wind.

NOTE: hydropower is classified as a renewable. 1. Take away hydropower and wind and solar only account for 12.5% share. 2. When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing, solar and wind fail to produce power:

ENERGY SOURCE BILLION KWH SHARE OF TOTAL
Renewables (total) 792 19.8%
Wind 338 8.4%
Hydropower 291 7.3%
Solar (total) 91 2.3%

 According to U.S. Energy Information Administration 80.9% of our total energy needs are met by oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power.

ENERGY SOURCE BILLION KWH SHARE OF TOTAL
Total – all sources 4,116
Fossil fuels (total) 2,504 60.8%
Natural gas 1,575 38.3%
Coal 899 21.8%
Petroleum (total) 19 0.5%
Petroleum liquids 11 0.3%
Petroleum coke 7 0.2%
Other gases3 11 0.3%
Nuclear 778 18.9%
Renewables (total) 826 20.1%
Wind 380 9.2%
Hydropower 260 6.3%
Solar (total) 115 2.8%
Photovoltaic 112 2.8%
Solar thermal 3 0.1%
Biomass (total) 55 1.3%
Wood 37 0.9%
Landfill gas 10 0.2%
Municipal solid waste (biogenic) 6 0.2%
Other biomass waste 2 0.1%
Geothermal 16 0.4%
Pumped storage hydropower4 -5 -0.1%
Other sources5 12 0.3%

America’s Future is Nuclear

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) there are, as of December 31, 2020, 94 nuclear reactors operating at 56 nuclear power plants in 28 states. Thirty-two of the plants have two reactors, and three plants have three reactors. Nuclear power plants have supplied about 20% of total annual U.S. electricity since 1990.

America has not built any new nuclear power plants since 1990.

The EIA notes:

The United States generates more nuclear power than any other country

In 2019, 31 countries had commercial nuclear power plants, and in 14 of the countries, nuclear energy supplied at least 20% of their total annual electricity generation. The United States had the largest nuclear electricity generation capacity and generated more nuclear electricity than any other country. France, with the second-largest nuclear electricity generation capacity and second-highest nuclear electricity generation, had the largest share—about 70%—of total annual electricity generation from nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy is clean, efficient and reliable. It is also carbon free.

If America, like France, made the wise decision to begin building nuclear power plants to meet 100% of our power we would need to build an additional 500, plus or minus, nuclear power plants.

This national initiative would allow the United States to then use its oil and natural gas resources to fuel our cars, SUVs, trucks, trains, airplanes and other gasoline and diesel driven equipment, such as generators, and become energy independent.

We could also export all of our coal for use by other nations to meet their energy needs.

American consumers will continue to buy new and used vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Thus we as a nation must maintain and expand our ability to produce our own oil via on and off-shore drilling and fracking.

As more consumers go to all electric vehicles (EVs) and the charging stations needed to keep them running, whether in the home or on the road, the strain on our electric grid will increase.

We need more, not less, cheap and reliable power to fuel our economy, our communities and our nation.

Not to provide cheap and reliable power will lead to what we are seeing now, war in Ukraine.

The Bottom Line

America’s power lies in its ability to provide power to the engines of our current and future economic growth.

Starving America of power, makes America powerless. Starving our citizens of cheap and reliable power is a direct threat to our fiscal and national security.

To be powerful America needs powerful sources of energy. Nuclear, oil (for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels) and natural gas are the best and most accessible means to energy independence.

Energy independence translates into life, liberty and the pursuit of our collective happiness.

Without cheap and reliable power sources the lights in that city on the hill will most certainly go out – for everyone.

Powerup America.

©2022 Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Michael Shellenberger: The Anti-Civilizational Agenda Behind the Move Away From Nuclear Energy

Biden’s Wind-Solar-Powered U.S. Economy is a Dangerous Myth

In a Gatestone Institute column titled “A Mostly Wind- and Solar-Powered U.S. Economy Is a Dangerous FantasyFrancis Menton wrote:

When President Biden and other advocates of wind and solar generation speak, they appear to believe that the challenge posed is just a matter of currently having too much fossil fuel generation and not enough wind and solar; and therefore, accomplishing the transition to “net zero” will be a simple matter of building sufficient wind and solar facilities and having those facilities replace the current ones that use the fossil fuels.

They are completely wrong about that.

The proposed transition to “net zero” via wind and solar power is not only not easy, but is a total fantasy. It likely cannot occur at all without dramatically undermining our economy, lifestyle and security, and it certainly cannot occur at anything remotely approaching reasonable cost. At some point, the ongoing forced transition… will crash and burn.

[I]t doesn’t matter whether you build a million wind turbines and solar panels, or a billion, or a trillion. On a calm night, they will still produce nothing, and will require full back-up from some other source.

If you propose a predominantly wind/solar electricity system, where fossil fuel back-up is banned, you must, repeat must, address the question of energy storage. Without fossil fuel back-up, and with nuclear and hydro constrained, storage is the only remaining option. How much will be needed? How much will it cost? How long will the energy need to remain in storage before it is used?

There should be highly-detailed engineering studies of how the transition can be accomplished…. But the opposite is the case. At the current time, the government is paying little to no significant attention to the energy storage problem. There is no detailed engineering plan of how to accomplish the transition. There are no detailed government-supported studies of how much storage will be needed, or of what technology can accomplish the job, or of cost.

It gets worse:…. Ken Gregory calculated the cost of such a system as well over $100 trillion, before even getting to the question of whether battery technology exists that can store such amounts of energy for months on end and then discharge the energy over additional months. And even at that enormous cost, that calculation only applied to current levels of electricity consumption…. For purposes of comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is currently around $22 trillion per year.

In other words: we have a hundred-trillion-or-so dollar effort that under presidential directive must be fully up and running by 2035, with everybody’s light and heat and everything else dependent on success, and not only don’t we have any feasibility study or demonstration project, but we haven’t started the basic research yet, and the building where the basic research is to be conducted won’t be ready until 2025.

Meanwhile the country heads down a government-directed and coerced path of massively building wind turbines and solar panels, while forcing the closure of fully-functioning power plants burning coal, oil and natural gas. It is only a question of time before somewhere the system ceases to work…. [I]t is easy to see how the consequences could be dire. Will millions be left without heat in the dead of winter, in which case many will likely die? Will a fully-electrified transportation system get knocked out, stranding millions without ability to get to work? Will our military capabilities get disabled and enable some sort of attack?

No sane, let alone competent, government would ever be headed down this path.

Net-Zero is a Dangerous Myth

The (CFACT) echoed Mr. Menton in an article titled “Net-Zero and ESG are Worsening the Energy Crisis – and Weakening the West” by Rupert Darwall who wrote:

The day after President Biden announced that the United States would ban imports of Russian oil and gas, a group of eleven powerful European investment funds that includes Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, outlined plans to force Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, to cut its lending to oil and gas companies. The juxtaposition of these two events dramatizes the fundamental disunity of the West. At the same time as the Biden administration is sanctioning Russian oil and gas producers, Western investors are sanctioning Western ones. Under the banner of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing, the West’s capital is being deployed to create an artificial shortage of oil and gas produced by its companies and reward non-Western oil and gas producers such as Russia and Iran with higher prices. In doing so, the West is undermining its own security interests.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy markets were already extremely tight. In the past, high oil and gas prices stimulated a supply-side response leading to increased output and to prices falling back. This relationship has broken down. According to analysts at JP Morgan, capital spending by S&P Global 1200 energy companies peaked in 2015 at just over $400 billion and shrank to around $120 billion last year – less than half its previous trough of $250 billion in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, even though global demand is now around 15% higher than it was then.

[ … ]

Over the past decade and throughout the pandemic, investors could earn higher returns elsewhere, such as in tech – but with soaring prices, that assumption doesn’t hold any longer. In remarks to oil executives at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston last week, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm pointed the finger at Wall Street. “Your investors are demanding climate action,” she told an audience filled with executives of energy firms. To ESG investors, climate action means deliberately starving oil and gas producers of capital for non-financial reasons, leading to under-investment and rising prices.

[ … ]

The IEA’s net zero scenario for 2050 relies heavily on “ever-cheaper” wind and solar. Nuclear barely gets a look in, and the IEA magically solves the intermittency problem of wind and solar by not mentioning the word “intermittency” once in the report’s 224 pages. By ignoring the inherent limitations of weather-dependent electricity generation, the IEA gave its imprimatur to a green fantasy of near 100% renewable electricity generation, with fossil fuels playing an insignificant role in keeping the electrical grid stable and the lights on. This fiction was necessary to justify the report’s most quoted passage. “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development,” it said of its net zero pathway, meaning that “the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output – emissions reductions – from the operation of existing assets.”

The Bottom Line

This is a real “Let Them Eat Cake” moment for Transportation Department top dog Pete Buttigieg, as most Americans can’t afford electric cars and the infrastructure isn’t there for them in all parts of the country, but Buttigieg here reveals the Biden agenda.

He doesn’t care about skyrocketing gas prices because he wants to drive internal combustion engines out of existence anyway.

It’s part of the Green New Deal plan. The suffering he will cause by doing so is of little moment to Biden and Buttigieg; they won’t experience it. Neither will EPA top dog Michael Regan, who makes the plan clear.

In a column titled “Wind and Solar Power are the Welfare Dependents of the Energy World” CFACT reported:

[T]he wind and solar power industries each receive such enormous taxpayer subsidies that all other energy industries combined do not receive as much taxpayer pork as either wind or solar power alone. According to the U.S. Energy Information administration, the net subsidies for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power combined amount to only 1/9th of the amount of federal renewable energy subsidies (see Table 3: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf).

Zero-emissions is a dangerous myth and is unattainable as is going all solar and wind for our energy needs.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

AWED MEDIA BALANCED NEWSLETTER: We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Welcome! We cover COVID to Climate, as well as Energy to Elections.

Here is the link for this issue, so please share it on social media.

Particularly note the *** asterisked items *** below…


— This Newsletter’s Articles, by Topic —


Ukraine:

*** “Putin’s Price Hike” Is A False Narrative

The End of Western Domination

‘Monumental provocation’: How US and international policy-makers deliberately baited Putin to war

The Russia-Ukraine War: A New Geopolitics Of Finance And Energy Trade Emerges

Ukraine — What You Can Do:

Please sign Petition to hold Putin accountable

*** Pray for the safety of the Ukrainian people

*** A well-rated source to make a Ukraine donation

COVID-19 — Repeated Important Information:

My webpage (C19Science.info) with dozens of Science-based COVID-19 reports

*** World Council of Health: Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

*** COVID-19: What You Need To Know (Physicians for Informed Consent)

*** If you have received a COVID-19 injection, here’s how to Detox

*** Place Your US Order for Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests

COVID-19 — Therapies:

Effective treatments for COVID are now available. Why are they not being used?

COVID-19 — Injections:

*** Vaccines Degrade Your White Blood Cells and Immunity

*** Fully Vaxxed are Three Times More Likely to Die from COVID

*** The Arc of a Fraud

Video: 7 Patented Poisons in COVID-19 Injections

Fauci Admits “You Use Lockdowns To Get People Vaccinated

Short video: What’s Really in the Vaccines?

Report: 769 Athletes Have Collapsed During Competition In Past Year Alone

West Virginia Settles for $99 Million from Johnson & Johnson re Opiods

COVID-19 — Injection Mandates:

*** 6 Double Standards Public Health Officials Used to Justify COVID Vaccines

*** US Army doctor reveals medics were told not to report adverse COVID jab reactions

The mRNA vaccines potentially cause increased risk to infectious diseases and cancer

AstraZeneca: Millions of Immunocompromised People Can’t Be Vaccinated

COVID-19 — Masks:

*** Study: Plastics found in masks present in patients’ lungs

*** Federal Judge in Florida Voids US Mask Mandate for Planes, Other Travel

*** Judge Declares CDC’s Federal Travel Mask Mandate ‘Unlawful’ and Vacates It

Report: Famed Bangladesh Mask Study Excluded Crucial Data

CDC extending travel mask mandate 15 more days

COVID-19 — Models and Data:

*** COVID-19, overdoses pushed U.S. to highest death total ever

Data Shows Most COVID Deaths Occurred after The Rollout of Vaccines

How China May Be Manipulating Covid Death Data

Average Life Expectancy Nosedives By 2 Years Since 2019

The easy way to convince all of us “misinformation spreaders” we got it wrong about the COVID “vaccines”

Study: About 30% of COVID-19 patients suffer from ‘long COVID’

COVID-19 — Misc:

*** Video: We have Eight Months

*** Video: How to transcend the public psychosis

Holding WHO Accountable

Video: Watch The Water

U.S. renews COVID-19 public health emergency

Report: The Covid Lies

A Deep Dive Into the Wreckage of AIDS and its Parallels with COVID-19

Greed Energy Economics:

*** It’s time for transparency of the embedded costs of going “green”

*** The Coming Green-Energy Inflation

*** EPA used COVID-19 relief funds for grants promoting green infrastructure

Renewable energy prices soar as Ukraine war is the ‘last straw’ for the sector

North American renewable energy prices skyrocket nearly 30% in one year, threatening corporate and federal net zero ambitions

Report: The Cost of Green Levies

Renewable Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:

We Are Massacring Birds to Slow Climate Change. It’s Got to Stop

Green Energy’s Hidden Eagle Slaughter

Spain’s Wind Industry Slaughters Thousands of Endangered Birds With Impunity

Blood on the blades! Are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for ‘clean’ energy!

Wind Energy — Offshore:

Virginia SCC staff questions Dominion Energy’s offshore wind cost assumptions

Research paper on offshore wind costs gets an ‘F’

Hamptons Opponents Hound Offshore Wind-Power Project

Wind Energy — Other:

*** Addressing the high real cost of renewable generation

*** African Leaders Say No to Renewables

Green Dreams Kill People

Wind & Solar ‘Transition’ Means End of Reliable & Affordable Power

Renewables: the pandemic of wishful thinking

Forcing Wind and Solar on Developing Nations Hurts the Poor

Solar Energy:

***Virginia sets stricter runoff rules for solar facilities

*** SEIA reports ‘rapid degeneration’ of solar sector following federal anti-dumping investigation

As sticker shock for solar power looms, Maine lawmakers consider options

Is Virginia at a solar crossroads?

Nuclear Energy:

*** Bipartisan legislation to restore the U.S. as nuclear energy leader and partner

*** Coalition of Climate Hawks and Union Leaders Call for Nuclear Power in NY

*** Report: Reassessing Radiation Safety

Who is Afraid of Nuclear Waste?

Saving billions & protecting NY’s environment: Nuclear energy is the key

James Hansen: Nuclear power must be part of New York’s energy solution

Finland is on the Brink of a Nuclear Power ‘Game Changer’

Hydrogen Energy:

*** Report: Atmospheric implications of increased Hydrogen use

*** The great hydrogen swindle – ‘green’ gas is not what it seems

Do not become dependent on “green” Russia’s future LNG and Hydrogen exports

Green Hydrogen is a Dumb Idea if there Ever Was One!

Fossil Fuel Energy:

*** America’s Natural Gas Juggernaut

*** How I stopped The Washington Post from canceling me and my book, Fossil Future

Fossil Fuel divestment is premature

NY Natural Gas Hookup Ban Will Harm Lower Income Homeowners

Misc Energy:

*** American energy policy digging economic grave for folks

*** Climate, Energy and Survival

*** Experts question ‘green’ claims for electric vehicles

More energy insanity from Democrats

Southeast Europe turns to coal as energy crisis trumps climate commitments

Manmade Global Warming — Some Deceptions:

*** Report: Reject AR6

*** Earth day is a good time to remember what the predictions were 52 years ago

Short video: The Truth About the Little Ice Age

Explaining Mauna Loa CO2 Increases with Anthropogenic and Natural Influences

Study: Forest biophysical impacts far outweigh CO2 effects

Claim: Great Barrier Reef Devastated by Manmade Warming

Manmade Global Warming — Misc:

Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students: Facts on 30 Prominent Climate Topics

Time for a Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on the Paris Agreement

Biden Admin Prioritizes Climate Fantasies While Famine Threatens The World

Study: Impact of Line-width Narrowing on Climate Sensitivity

A short physicist video on AGW misinformation: Polarizing Jabber

US Election:

Election-Integrity.info (10 major election reports by our team of experts, plus much more!)

*** 18-month, data-driven probe concludes 2020 election was stolen

*** Election Watchdog Exposes 4.8M Ballot Harvesting Scheme in 6 States

*** Dissatisfied With Their Party, Wealthy Republican Donors Form Secret Coalitions

Zuckerberg money won’t be in next round of aid for elections

Big Tech Manipulation Still In Control Of Election Outcomes

Fighting Trump, Dems launch plan to elect thousands of local election supervisors

Voter Registration Drive: What’s Biden Hiding?

Voter ID is just common sense, but it needs the Supreme Court’s protection

US Election — State Issues:

Heritage’s Election Integrity Take Action Page (by State — with more to come)

1,634 Noncitizens Under Investigation for Attempting to Register to Vote in Georgia

Wisconsin redistricting: Republican-drawn maps picked by SCOWIS

US Politics and Socialism:

*** Short video: Three Ways to Fix America

*** Stupid Is As Stupid Does

On the Drive to a Skewed Distribution of Wealth: Trend and Consequences

Earth Day 2022: Investing in Poverty, Suffering, and Human Degradation

Flow of Fentanyl into American Communities Quadruples Under Biden

Bipartisan Group Of Senators Push Bill To Block Biden From Ending Trump Policy

Woke Politics:

*** Short video: Tucker —Elon Musk is putting everything on the line

Netflix Shares Plunge As Subscribers Flee; Elon Musk blames ‘Woke Mind Virus’

Woke investors threaten the West’s security

California’s Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

Rep Tenney: Good comments about Disney’s wokeness

Religion Related:

Short comedy video: Why you should NOT watch The Chosen

Education Related:

*** Why do people not respond to facts? logic? reason?

*** The US Test Mess

Homeschooling surge continues despite schools reopening

Climate alarmism posing as science education for children

Student-Debt ‘Cancellation’ Would Be a Moral, Economic, and Political Catastrophe

Video: Sex mis-education in NY schools

Book: Race to the Bottom

Science and Misc Matters:

*** The History of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Model Episode Guide

*** My doctor made me cry. It summed up everything that’s wrong with health care

The Continuing Importance of Thomas Sowell

Kentucky lawmakers override governor’s veto of bill banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports

The Collapse of Corporate Media & Citizen Free Press

Johnny Depp Court Testimony


Please use social media, etc. to pass on this Newsletter to other open-minded citizens…


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Note 3: See this extensive list of reasonable books on climate change. As a parallel effort, we have also put together a list of some good books related to industrial wind energy. Both topics are also extensively covered on my website: WiseEnergy.org.

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Copyright © 2022; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.org).

Twitter Bans Science and Knowledge to Promote Climate Change ‘Consensus’

“SCIENCE: Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

“CONSENSUS: General agreement; the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned.” – Meriam-Webster Dictionary.


Twitter has take off the gloves for Earth Day by banning ads that are scientifically true and instead will only promote “consensus” as approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to inform their decisions.

On April 24th, 2022 American Wire’s Melissa Fine reported:

In a move to coincide with Earth Day, Twitter has announced it will no longer accept advertisements on its platform that “contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”

In what the company calls a “climate-forward approach to ads,” Twitter stated in a blog posted Friday, “People around the world use Twitter to connect with others passionate about protecting our planet.”

“Last year, we introduced a dedicated Topic to help people find personalized conversations about climate change. … To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the blog reads.

Read the full article.

Climate Change Consensus Myths

Mark J. Perry, a scholar and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, listed in an article titled “18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day In 1970” the following “climate change consensus” myths:

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

  1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
  2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal environment.
  3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
  4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
  5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
  6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
  7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
  8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
  9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
  10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
  11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
  12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
  13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
  14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
  15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
  16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
  17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
  18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

The above 18 statements represented the best examples of the “consensus” on climate change in the 1970s.

So, has the world ended as Harvard biologist George Wald predicted? Of course not.

The Bottom Line

The offered 8 common sense proposals to alleviate climate change:

And thus ends the lesson on government climate change policy, myths, consensus and science.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

A Mostly Wind- and Solar-Powered U.S. Economy Is a Dangerous Fantasy

The Hidden Agenda Behind ‘Climate Change’

Why Even Liberals Should Be “Climate Change Skeptics”

18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day In 1970. Expect More This Year.

The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong.


CLICK HERE TO VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: ANNUAL CO2 EMMISSIONS IN THE U.S. FROM ENERGY CONSUMPTION, 1992 TO 2017

Today (Sunday, April 22) is Earth Day 2018 and time for my annual Earth Day post…..

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 48th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 18 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey.

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

MP: Let’s keep those spectacularly wrong predictions from the first Earth Day 1970 in mind when we’re bombarded in the next few days with media hype, and claims like this from the Earth Day website:

Global sea levels are rising at an alarmingly fast rate — 6.7 inches in the last century alone and going higher. Surface temperatures are setting new heat records about each year. The ice sheets continue to decline, glaciers are in retreat globally, and our oceans are more acidic than ever. We could go on…which is a whole other problem.

The majority of scientists are in agreement that human contributions to the greenhouse effect are the root cause. Essentially, gases in the atmosphere – such as methane and CO2 – trap heat and block it from escaping our planet.

So what happens next? More droughts and heat waves, which can have devastating effects on the poorest countries and communities. Hurricanes will intensify and occur more frequently. Sea levels could rise up to four feet by 2100 – and that’s a conservative estimate among experts.

What you probably won’t hear about from the Earth Day supporters is the amazing “decarbonization” of the United States over the last decade or so, as the falling CO2 emissions in the chart above illustrate, even as CO2 emissions from energy consumption have been rising throughout most of the rest of the world. Energy-related carbon emissions in the US have been falling since the 2007 peak, and were at their lowest level last year in a quarter century, going back to 1992. And the environmentalists and the “Earth Day” movement really had very little to do with this amazing “greening” of America. Rather, it’s mostly because of hydraulic fracturing and the increasing substitution of natural gas for coal as a fuel source for electric power, see related CD post here.

Finally, think about this question, posed by Ronald Bailey in 2000: What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030? Bailey predicts a much cleaner, and much richer future world, with less hunger and malnutrition, less poverty, and longer life expectancy, and with lower mineral and metal prices. But he makes one final prediction about Earth Day 2030: “There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak.” In other words, the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions will continue, promoted by the virtue signalling ”environmental grievance hustlers.”

Reprinted from AEI.

AUTHOR

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Twitter: Ads that ‘contradict the scientific consensus’ on climate change now prohibited

‘Trash, Human Waste And Needles’: Biden Ignores Environmental Crisis Facing Seattle During Earth Day Visit

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Myth That the Polar Bear Population Is Declining

The story of a resurgent polar bear population deserves to be told and applauded.


Many of us watched the viral video in horror. A starving polar bear scavenging for food on barren land, his ribs visible beneath a jaundiced white coat.

“This is what climate change looks like,” said National Geographic.

The magazine explained that because of melting sea ice, precipitated by climate change, more of these mammals are starving. They pointed to a new study in Science suggesting that polar bears require much greater caloric intake in their diet than previously believed.

The video, shot by photographers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier on Somerset Island, sparked outcry over the decimation of polar bears due to global warming.

The footage was viewed by 2.5 billion people, National Geographic estimated. The video remains the most viewed on National Geographic’s website—ever.

While many remember the footage of the polar bear, fewer are aware of what followed.

As Michele Moses recently explained in The New Yorker, scientists accused National Geographic of “being loose with the facts.” There was no evidence, many pointed out, that the bear’s condition was the result of climate change. The bear simply could have been old, ill, or suffering from a degenerative disease.

Mittermeier admitted as much a year later.

“I can’t say that this bear was starving because of climate change,” she wrote in National Geographic.

Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story—that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear.

Mittermeier was looking for visual evidence of the future she imagined, one ravaged by climate change. And she found it that day in a starving bear.

As Moses of The New Yorker points out, polar bears have become an “indisputable image of climate change.”

“The story of climate change has been told, in part, through pictures of polar bears,” Moses writes. “And no wonder: in their glittering icy habitat, they reflect the otherworldly beauty that rising temperatures threaten to destroy.”

That picture of a single starving bear arguably did more to advance the issue of climate change than any white paper or IPCC report could have. Unfortunately, the footage tells us relatively little about the actual state of the polar bear population.

While you’ll find no shortage of headlines declaring that polar bears face extinction, the numbers tell a different story.

Data from conservation groups and the government show that the polar bear population is roughly five times what it was in the 1950s and three or four times what it was in the 1970s when polar bears became protected under international treaty.

In fact, though polar bears were placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 2008 over concerns that its Arctic hunting grounds were being reduced by a warming climate, the polar bear population has been stable for the last three decades.

In 1984, the polar bear population was estimated at 25,000. In 2008, when polar bears were designated a protected species, The New York Times noted that number remained unchanged: “There are more than 25,000 bears in the Arctic, 15,500 of which roam within Canada’s territory.”

New estimates from the International Union for Conservation of Nature show a mid-point estimate of 26,500 (range: 22,000 to 31,000) in 2015. In The State of the Polar Report 2018, zoologist Susan J. Crockford says updates to IUCN data put the new global mid-point estimate at more than 30,000.

Even accepting the lower figure, the estimate is the highest since the polar bear became internationally protected in 1973.

CLICK HERE FOR THE NYT INFOGRAPHIC POLAR BEAR POPULAITON ESTIMATES 1950-2015

The health of the polar bear population runs counter to predictions from scholars who have said two-thirds of polar bears will disappear in coming decades because of warming temperatures and melting sea ice in the Arctic.

The good news that polar bears are thriving is unlikely to draw as much attention as images of a starving polar bear scrounging for food on Somerset Island. Nevertheless, the story of a resurgent polar bear population deserves to be told and applauded.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

RELATED ARTICLE: Twitter: Ads that ‘contradict the scientific consensus’ on climate change now prohibited

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Will solid-state batteries bail out electric vehicles? Electric cars currently have rather combustible batteries!

Recently, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a recall for electric-vehicle batteries made by LG Energy Solution of South Korea. Fires have been caused by some of these batteries, which are used in Mercedes, Hyundai, and General Motors products, among others.

The problem is that rare manufacturing defects can cause overheating and fires. An Associated Press article describing the recall notes that recalls made voluntarily by individual manufacturers for these batteries date back to February of 2020. In November of that year, GM began recalling over 140,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs to replace possibly defective LG batteries, and LG paid GM $2 billion in compensation.

The insurance industry obviously has a stake in this matter, and a small survey conducted by its Highway Loss Data Institute showed that the rate of fires for electric cars is about the same as it is for gasoline-burners:  0.2 per 1,000 insured vehicle years.

If the best you can say about electric car fires is that they’re no worse than fires in gas-powered ones, that’s faint praise.

Combustible

The underlying problem in electric-car battery fires is the technology. You may not be aware that the liquid or gel electrolyte in the type of lithium battery used in electric vehicles cannot be exposed to air without catching fire. This is one reason that manufacturing such a battery is so tricky.

Back when photographic film was the only way to take pictures, manufacturers figured out how to make hundreds of square yards of sensitive film every day in total darkness. But it wasn’t easy, and the fact that film never got as cheap as, say, toilet paper, had an incalculable effect on the entire industry.

Unless the electric-car business manages to break free of liquid-electrolyte batteries, it may find itself stuck in a similar rut. Except for the battery, an electric car is markedly cheaper to make than a fossil-fuel one. The electronics and the motors are much simpler than the corresponding parts of a gas-powered car.

But right now, the cheapest electrics on the market are many thousands of dollars more costly than an average gas model because of the darned battery, and so the vision of replacing most of our gas-guzzlers with electrics remains just that: a vision.

Potential alternative

On the technological horizon is a development that could change all that:  the solid-state battery. Michael Faraday himself (1791-1867) discovered that solid materials such as silver sulfide could act as electrolytes, which means that ions can move about through them under the influence of electric fields. But up to now, truly solid electrolytes (as opposed to the liquid or gel-like products used in most batteries today) have resisted commercialization for a number of reasons.

A significant milestone in the development of solid-state batteries happened when John Goodenough, who was one of the original developers of current lithium-battery technology, announced in 2017 that he had made a solid-state battery with a glass electrolyte. According to some sources, solid-state batteries could have up to 2.5 times the energy density of current lithium batteries, although it is not clear whether this is a volume or mass energy density.  Either way, it would mean that for the same size or weight battery, a car using a solid-state battery might have a longer driving range than a gasoline car with a typical gas tank.

No one knows yet how to make solid-state batteries cheaply. Thin-film technologies such as vacuum deposition are sometimes used, and while there is concern that such technologies may be difficult to scale, vacuum deposition in other manufacturing areas has been applied to rolls of plastic and other large-scale manufactured goods.  So it’s more a question of investment and effort than fundamental technological obstacles, I suspect.

Tall order

Several automakers, notably Volkswagen and Toyota, are investing heavily in solid-state battery technology. But they have the obstacle shared by all automakers that any product engineered for automotive use has to be a lot more durable and reliable than anything used in the military or even aerospace fields.

Do you think military tank drivers go ten thousand miles without needing any service, or astronauts think they’ll be able to ride their rockets for ten thousand launches without having any problems? Yet we start a car several times a day for years and expect nothing to go wrong.

It’s that kind of standard that every electric-vehicle battery is expected to meet, and the wonder is that they have come this far.  Pardon an old technologist for making a statement that is more intuitive than fact-based, but when I look at a typical EV battery that consists of several thousand individually-manufactured, hermetically sealed, and electrically insulated cells, I see a technology that is fundamentally immature.

Digital computers remained the expensive province of a few wealthy institutions until manufacturers learned to take the many thousands of largely similar components and integrate them onto a chip.

Pricey

I suspect that electric cars will also remain in the realm of the wealthy until solid-state batteries bring the core cost down to the point that people will want to buy them, not because they’re afraid of global warming or want something to match their Patek Phillipe watch, but because they’re cheaper and easier to run than gas-powered ones.

In the meantime, we’re going to have to put up with recalls like the ones for the LG batteries that catch fire on rare occasions, because it seems to be the nature of liquid-electrolyte lithium cells to do that once in a while.

The best manufacturers can do is to watch their processes and inspections rigorously and hope that a better technology will come along that will let them make batteries more like people make computer chips these days, rather than like photographic film was once made, under difficult and unique conditions that are hard to maintain for long.

This article has been republished from Engineering Ethics with permission.

AUTHOR

Karl D. Stephan

Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Woke investors threaten the West’s security

Since Russia attacked Ukraine two months ago, Western governments have been learning the hard way about the critical importance of energy to their national security. Germany’s 20-year, trillion-dollar “Energiewende” (Energy Transformation) has made its economy totally dependent on supplies of Russian natural gas and paralyzed its response to Russian aggression. French president Emmanuel Macron faces a tougher re-election fight this month thanks to soaring energy prices and failure to replace the nation’s aging fleet of nuclear power stations. The Biden administration is tapping America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to tamp down energy costs as inflation heads toward double digits.

As the West grapples with the energy implications of a hostile Sino-Russian alliance, the steering group of the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, whose members manage over $10.4 trillion of assets, issued a statement urging Western governments not to sacrifice climate goals for energy security. “The world is still heading for an excess of fossil fuel-based energy use that will vastly exceed the carbon budget needed to meet the 1.5° Celsius Paris agreement goal. This trend must be halted,” the United Nations-backed alliance said in its April 8 statement, arguing that “the national security argument for accelerating the net-zero transition has strengthened considerably.”

What, one might ask, is the standing of asset managers to opine on national security matters? They have no expertise in this domain. It turns out that their understanding of the economics of energy policy is defective, too.

The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance claims that development of new oil and gas reserves will lock in fossil fuel subsidies, exacerbating market distortions. In fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its 2021 net-zero report states that under its net-zero pathway, tax revenues from oil and gas retail sales fall by about 40% over the next twenty years. “Managing this decline will require long-term fiscal planning and budget reforms,” the IEA warns. Similarly, Britain’s Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that net zero policies will result in the loss of tax receipts representing 1.6% of GDP. So much for the fossil fuel subsidy myth. If fossil fuels were heavily subsidized, eliminating them would mean fossil fuel subsidies disappear. Instead, it’s tax revenues that would melt away to zero.

The net-zero investors cite figures for the decline in solar and wind energy costs. These numbers are based on so-called levelized cost of energy (LCOE), a metric that aims to measure a plant’s lifetime costs. Wind and solar power are intermittent, but LCOE metrics exclude the costs of intermittency, which increase the more wind and solar are put on the grid. Because wind and solar output responds to weather and not to demand, the value of this output declines the more installed wind and solar capacity is available. It was for these reasons that MIT professor of economics Paul Joskow concluded in a foundational 2011 paper that using LCOE metrics to compare intermittent and dispatchable generating technologies, such as coal and natural gas, is a “meaningless exercise.”

Wind and solar investors don’t need to understand the economics of the grid to make money – they are shielded from the intermittency costs their investments inflict on the rest of the grid, which is one reason why their views on energy policy can be taken with a pinch of salt. Their economic illiteracy does, however, make it easy for them to subscribe to the green fairy tale of 100% renewables. They’re not responsible for keeping the lights on – that depends on traditional power plants staying fueled up and ready to spin, which is what Germany can’t do without Russian gas. Adopt the net-zero alliance’s call for no new fossil-fuel investment, and the cost of energy is bound to spiral. And if the lights go out, politicians – not woke investors – get the blame.

Investors’ opinions on energy and national security would matter less if they didn’t have political power. Bloomberg opinion writer Matt Levine argues that asset managers of giant funds form a parallel system of government that exercises overlapping legislative powers with those of governments. These government-by-asset-managers, as Levine calls them, tell companies to do things they think are good for society as a whole, “making big collective decisions about how society should be run, not just business decisions but also decisions about the environment and workers’ rights and racial inequality and other controversial political topics.”

Foremost among these areas is climate policy. Although the Biden administration has set a net-zero goal, Congress has not legislated it, and it lacks the force of law. The absence of legislation passed by democratically accountable legislators, however, presents no barrier to government-by-asset-managers legislating climate policy for the companies in which they invest. “Investors are making net zero commitments for themselves and demanding that companies issue greenhouse gas reduction targets and transition plans for meeting those targets,” says the Reverend Kirsten Snow Spalding of the not-for-profit Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk and Sustainability.

Neither Spalding nor the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance make a case that forcing net-zero targets on companies will boost investor returns, demonstrating that this is not about investors’ traditional concerns – making money – but about pursuing politics by other means. In this, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is working hand in glove with woke climate investors. Commenting on the SEC’s newly proposed rule on climate-risk disclosure, Spalding says that for investors who have committed zero emissions by 2050, “this draft rule is absolutely critical.”

It’s no coincidence that SEC chair Gary Gensler chose Ceres to make his first appearance to talk about the SEC’s proposed rule. Of course, Gensler didn’t justify it in the same terms as Spalding. To have done so would have heightened the risk of the courts striking down the rule in subsequent litigation. Instead, Gensler attempted to justify the rule as bringing “some standardization to the conversation” and putting material climate information – the SEC issued guidance in 2010 on how companies should disclose such risks – in one place, saving investors the bother of piecing together the information from different sources. Gensler’s explanation, to put it politely, is an implausible one for imposing on corporate America what amounts to a parallel climate-reporting regime to the established framework of financial reporting. Whatever Gensler might say in public, the effect of the SEC rule – if implemented – would be to empower investors to impose net-zero targets on companies, to monitor progress in meeting them, and to hold company boards to account for them.

Unlike elected politicians, woke climate investors are not accountable for the effects of their climate policies: They exercise power without responsibility. This arrangement weakens America’s ability to respond to the geopolitical challenges of a revanchist Russia and an expansionist China. “We are on a war footing – an emergency,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm declared at the CERA energy conference in Houston last month. “We have to responsibly increase short-term supply where we can right now to stabilize the market and to minimize harm to American families.” Addressing oil executives in the audience, Granholm told them: “I hope your investors are saying these words to you as well: In this moment of crisis, we need more supply . . .  right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand.”

As Granholm suggested, woke investors have been trying to do the opposite. Despite the war in Ukraine, there has been no let-up in investor pressure on oil and gas companies to scale down their operations. Whatever criticisms might be made of the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Ukraine, it is responsible for taking the awesome decisions that war involves. Investors, by contrast, have no responsibility for the nation’s security and America’s ability to lead the West. By helping investors impose their desired energy policies on American oil and gas companies, the SEC is undermining the national security prerogatives of the Biden administration and eroding America’s ability to meet the challenges of a dangerous world. The SEC is playing in a domain that it has no business being in.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

Rupert Darwall

Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Blood on the blades! Are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for ‘clean’ energy!

GUESTS AND TOPICS

PAUL DRIESSEN

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of articles and books on energy, environmental and human rights issues.

TOPIC: Don’t Look Up! by Paul Driessen

GREGORY WRIGHTSTONE

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, Virginia and an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.. He is the best-selling author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know. Gregory is a geologist with more than 35 years spent investigating the Earth and its processes. He earned an undergraduate degree from Waynesburg University and a masters degree in geology from West Virginia University.

TOPIC: Blood on the blades: are thousands of dead bald eagles too high a price to pay for “clean” energy!

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

Bidens’ Stupidity on Gas Continues!

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” – William Shakespeare


Joe Biden, the usurper occupying, in my mind, the White House illegally, continues trying to pretend to be doing his best to get gas prices down. Remember, it’s an election year and he is about to get annihilated! Anyway. Trust me, everything he tries is just propaganda for the weak minded sheep out there who think the old man in his dotage is doing a good job!! None of it makes a real difference. It’s all charades. All a shell game where you gotta find the pea except there is no pea!

Let me explain.

First inflation and gas costs are not the sole fault of Putin or oil companies. His war is not helping but prices and inflation began their swift upward movement within hours of these leftists’ theft of our government and electoral system.

Secondly understand the gas prices we are seeing at the pumps are a direct result of this satanic administration and their energy policies on fossil fuels. They declared war on fossil fuels from the first moment they stole power. We all know, stopping drilling on federal land, no more permits, stopping construction of pipelines, putting so much red tape in front of lease holders to make it unprofitable. I could go on and on but my audience is smart and understands.

This administration sold its soul and our country to the extremists on the far left and have bought whole heartedly into the global warming lies. They say they are the party of science until science takes them in a different direction to their commie agenda. Then truthful science must be disregarded and mocked.

We see this by their choice to stop as much CLEAN production of oil here in my beloved United States of America and to buy oil from (a) our enemies and (b) from producers who will never produce oil as clean and safely as we do. Their lies and hypocrisy blow my mind as does the stupidity and ignorance of the sheep following them to the slaughter.

Let’s be honest here. If we had not made a big deal about us buying Russian fuel and therefore paying Russia’s military expansion tab in the Ukraine, we still would be. This administration is absolutely shameless. Then there is the Iranian deal they are trying to put together so as to get oil from Iran! By the way they are using China and Russia to negotiate that deal! You cannot make this stuff up.

Treason? You bet!

Oh. I forgot, they also want to buy oil from Venezuela and OPEC! All while we have enough right here for 100% of our needs plus a massive surplus we could export!

So, back to this administrations efforts to pretend they care!

That too is a lie.

They have authorized several releases of oil from our strategic reserves, oil that is there for emergencies, not to cover up terrible policy decisions in an election year. Thus they are damaging our national security – not that they care at all about that. The amounts amount to a tiny percentage of our daily use.

They have gone like the weak cowards they are on bended knees to OPEC begging them to increase production hoping that would bring the prices down. However, we were humiliated as a now weak nation multiple times as OPEC said no.

That wouldn’t have happened under Trump – in fact nothing we have seen the last 14 months or so would have happened under President Trump.

So. A brief resume of events so far before I come to their latest stupidity and lies. We have so much oil we can cleanly produce here that we cannot now obtain. We buy oil from our enemies that is produced without too much care about global warming and the pollution. We bought from Russia until the scandal came out. Now we want to buy oil from Iran, the worlds largest international sponsor of terrorism. Plus give them countless billions of dollars on top of that so they can become a nuclear armed state! Israel – look out, we are stabbing you in the back. Then we want to buy oil from Venezuela, a terrible socialist dictatorship that hates America. They will use those American Petro dollars to further keep their citizens down. Forcibly.

Everyone happy with those choices? I know I am not.

The latest scam is to allow ethanol fuel year round. This is fuel with a percentage of ethanol and sells for about 10c a gallon less. It is highly subsidized with tax payer money to the farmers.

Here is the kicker!

You get a little more performance BUT you do not get as many MPG out of it! Chicanery? Yep! Like a card shark.

Now they have just reversed course again and will begin offering for sale oil leases on federal land – again.

Hmmmmm ….. again, why? They are not reducing the red tape, cost and the years oil companies would need to start production, they are not allowing pipelines to be finished or started to move the oil cheaply once produced. These new announcements will produce more barriers and hoops for oil companies to jump through.

Most of the more significant areas of land with potentially the most easily and cheaply obtainable oil are not being included in the sales. The increased costs that will come with these leases will not encourage drilling as the oil cannot most likely be produced economically or for years. They are offering 173 parcels of land on 144000 acres which is an 80% reduction from the acreage originally stated. So not a big deal. By the way oil companies have to pay these leases monthly regardless to if they are actually drilling.

U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart said the following on Neil Cavuto’s show the other day after this latest Biden scam was proudly heralded by Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, that the oil crisis will be further compounded by this latest stupidity.

In his words from the Cavuto Show on Fox he said the following,

“I realize that the Secretary of Interior is very much on message with the rest of the Biden administration…which is we all pay 50% more for 80% less…she was very clear that’s what she was going to do for those oil and gas operators who were interested in doing work on federal lands, that we should be prepared to pay about 50% more in royalties and other fees that we already pay. At the same time, we’re only going to have access to about 20% of the current acreage that we have put forward to the secretary as potential oil and gas opportunities for us. It goes to this fundamental question of when we’re in a crisis like this, is this policy, will it do anything to increase production? And the answer is no…actually it will compound the problem. We have a short-term production shortfall right now. The Secretary’s actions that she announced yesterday will push this problem out three, five, seven, 10 years.”

You guys beginning to see it now? The lies. The propaganda? The chicanery?

The MSM will as always attempt to show Biden in a good light, showing how his wiseness and kindness plus his real concern for we, the people is coming out with these latest Team Biden solutions!!

DO NOT BUY INTO THAT.

TRUST ME.

THE ONLY THING THIS ADMINISTRATION CARES ABOUT IS THE TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF THIS CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

SIMPLY PUT – THEY ARE TRAITORS.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

How Mask Mandates Make a Mess of Things—Literally

Government-driven litter can quickly become pollution.


The mask mandate for all airplanes and public transit in the US was set to expire on April 18. But on Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended it for 15 days, citing an uptick in cases, especially of the “BA.2 omicron subvariant.”

“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency announced in a statement.

The government wants another 15 days to assess the spread. Sounds familiar.

The expiration of the order would have been a milestone in the protracted winding down of the government-driven mask culture that has reigned supreme throughout the world since early in the pandemic. The reign of the mask has had mixed results at best, most of which were unintended adverse consequences.

The most visible of these consequences has been mask litter, which sharply increased during the pandemic, according to a research study published December 2021 in the journal Nature Sustainability.

“The proportion of masks in litter increased by >80-fold as a result of COVID-19 legislation, from <0.01% to >0.8%,” the study found.

We’ve all seen it: the baby blue masks on the sidewalk and in the gutter, sometimes soaked with rainwater and caked with muck. It’s a disgusting eyesore: “visual pollution” is the technical term.

And it’s not only mask litter. The study also discussed gloves and wipes. And Singapore is dealing with another visual pollutant resulting from COVID mandates: sticker litter.

In August 2021, The Straits Times reported that, to comply with government rules prohibiting unvaccinated people from dining in, food courts were checking vaccination status at the entrance and marking the vaxxed with little stickers.

This method spread throughout the island nation. But now Singapore is dealing with an unintended consequence of its vaccine rules, as The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday:

“Outside, scores of discarded badges ended up stuck to railings, walls, signs, traffic-light posts—practically any surface within arm’s reach, even plants. Some of the rules were eased recently, but the unwanted pandemic souvenirs remain.

Beyond the visual blight, the stickers leave behind a gummy, hard-to-clean residue.”

As the Journal hinted, it is ironic that Singapore is dealing with gummy gunk in public spaces resulting from a draconian order, given that decades ago it famously issued another draconian order banning chewing gum… to prevent gummy gunk in public spaces.

Some may dismiss litter as a mere annoyance. But its visual pollution injects ugliness and chaos into our lives, mars the beauty and order humans naturally strive to create, and degrades our quality of life.

And litter can escalate into pollution that more directly impacts health. This is especially true for litter that accumulates on a massive scale due to sweeping government policies that impact human behavior en masse.

As the Nature Sustainability study warned:

“Littered items can be transported by weather conditions into drains and sewerage systems, creating potential blockages where they entangle with other solids (for example, leaf litter).”

Like I said, mask litter can be disgusting. And our natural disgust response is often a warning sign for unhygienic threats to our health. So it is no surprise that the study warned that litter can become “vectors for other pathogens and pollutants.”

The study lists several other negative environmental impacts, rounding out the list with microplastics:

“Chemical, physical and biological weathering will break the littered items down from macro-plastics (>5 mm) into micro-plastics (<0.5 mm) and nano-plastics (<100 nm) that have the potential to enter the lower food chain and have toxicological effects including the leaching of metals.”

Every soiled mask on the sidewalk should be a reminder that all government dictates have unintended consequences. Like debris, the adverse impacts of the COVID regime have accumulated, adding up to a mind-bogglingly immense total cost for society: in material security and prosperity, health (both physical and mental), and quality of life. It is long past time to clean up.

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Lockdown’ Europe [again] to punish Putin!

Report urges Europe to ‘ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights…ban car use within cities…reducing heating in buildings’

Lockdown 2.0: The “Switch Off Putin” RePlanet report: “We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport.”

“In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

Morano:

“This ‘Switch Off Putin’ report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.”

Climate Depot Special Report

By: Climate Depot -April 13, 2022 4:18 PM

A new report is urging Europe to hurt Putin by imposing COVID lockdown-inspired energy bans on Europeans. The RePlanet report, being touted by the UK Guardian, is calling for a “ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights,” imposing a ban on “car use within cities” and “reducing heating in buildings,” all while “fast-tracking solar & wind” power.  The RePlanet report is titled, “SWITCH OFF PUTIN: UKRAINE ENERGY SOLIDARITY PLAN – How we can stop funding Putin’s war machine.”

“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”

The report is explicit in its enchantment with COVID lockdowns. “In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

The report, which calls for “energy rationing” and claims it will be “rationing via fair shares,” apes the COVID template by stating, “We may need a state of emergency declared.” The report is open about how COVID lockdowns can be the model for so much of what progressives and government leaders want to impose on society.

The first tool in the tool kit for these European academic activists writing the report is resurrecting the COVID lockdowns. The report is calling for energy lockdowns to allegedly punish Russian President Vladimir Putin, but in doing so, Europe will deploy self-inflicted punishing energy lockdowns on itself.

The report boldly demands more government intrusion in the lives of Europeans, a massive expansion of a micro-managed economy and society will be achieved by extended energy rationing, strict limits on freedom of mobility, more economic disruption, unemployment, and inflation. But according to the authors of the report, it will be so worth it because the measures will somehow “switch off Putin.” Europe will commit energy and economic suicide, but it will all be to harm Putin. Take that Putin!

The West has long targeted itself for self-destruction using the climate scare but now the Russian invasion of Ukraine is opening up more opportunities for the West to further self-flagellate itself to achieve its “climate goals.” The report is music to the ears of the global leaders, World Economic Forum, academia, and the media, who have been desperate to keep the lockdowns humming along.

The report declares that “European economies are now on a war footing in terms of the rapidity of the energy transition.” But a war footing is another phrase for massive oppression of your citizens. See: Climate agenda seeks WW2 mobilization – ‘But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without disrupting or even destroying people’s lives’

A full return to a managed economy à la the 1970s is being demanded in the report, complete with energy restrictions and price caps. “Governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels,” the report explains.

The “Switch Off Putin” report sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns. Instead of opening Europe back up for domestic energy production, they are told to suffer and do with less and are prescribed the same failed lockdown-style policies they endured for COVID. It is odd how COVID ‘solutions’ also allegedly helped the climate and now the same solutions are being touted to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Let’s simplify this: The proposed ‘solutions’ to climate change, COVID, and now the Russian war are all exactly the same — more lockdowns, hammer the poor and middle class with more restrictions on travel, less freedom, and even more surrendering of power to unelected government regulators.

This “Switch Off Putin” report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.

Note: The authors of the “Switch Off Putin” report are Mark Lynas, Rauli Partanen, and Joris van Dorp.

 

The report’s co-author Mark Lynas is no stranger to extreme climate activism, having once hurled a cream pie in the face of “Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg over his dissenting climate views.

Watch the video below of Mark Lynas assaulting Lomborg with a pie during one of Lomborg’s talks.

 

#

Background: 

UK Guardian: Ban European flights and car use in cities to hurt Putin, report urges

Strong measures by Europe could quickly deprive Russia of oil and gas income worth billions, experts say

By Helena Horton Environment reporter

Excerpt:

Flights should be banned in continental Europe and car use banned in city centres to save energy and prevent Vladimir Putin profiting from fossil fuel sales, campaigners have said.

It would be possible for Europe to quickly end its reliance on oil and gas from Russia by taking strong measures, according to a report by the climate adviser Mark Lynas, energy analyst Rauli Partanen, and energy and sustainability installations specialist Joris van Dorp.

Policies include rationing, with everyone in Europe allowed the same minimum amount of energy to use, and limiting thermostats to 18C in winter.

The report’s authors said: “We conclude it is possible to eliminate Russian gas imports starting immediately in Europe. This will require an unprecedented level of European solidarity, a combination of a Marshall plan and a Berlin airlift to redistribute energy around the continent as needed and support the transition.”

The authors of the latest report from the RePlanet Research Institute, however, say such measures would reduce demand by 2.7m barrels a day in advanced economies, still substantially less than Russian oil exports to Europe.

The authors argue that we need to go further, and say they have worked out how to eliminate 25% of all oil use in Europe.

“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” they said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”

To replace the gas Europe buys from Russia, the authors recommend measures including stopping the nuclear phaseout in Germany, Sweden and Belgium, reducing heating in buildings by 4C, and a fast-track deployment of additional solar and wind generation.

RePlanet Report Excerpts: 

“We know that a rapid cessation of Russian fossil fuel imports will be painful for Europe.” …

“We will need dramatic measures to reduce demand, implemented via some form of energy rationing to ensure the burden is shared fairly and does not disproportionately hurt poorer households and countries.” …

“We may need a state of emergency declared, and an explicit political recognition that European economies are now on a war footing in terms of the rapidity of the energy transition. In some ways the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns, but with a different trajectory in the longer term.”

[ … ]

“Rationing via fair shares is the only alternative: governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels so that everyone gets a basic amount and those with less ability to pay are not simply cut off. Turning down thermostats will be difficult to mandate and enforce, but with only a certain amount of gas allowed per household the incentive to stick to it will be substantial. As with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

#

‘Rationing’: Enviros Push Radical Lifestyle Changes Amid Energy Crisis – The authors — two of which are from the eco group RePlanet Research Institute — also argued the Ukraine crisis highlighted the need for a rapid transition to clean energy alternatives. They said large-scale solar and wind projects should be immediately green-lit and constructed.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Intl Energy Agency report urges ENERGY LOCKDOWNS: ‘Banning use of private cars on Sundays…Reducing highway speed limits…more working from home…cutting business air travel’ & SUV ‘tax’

IEA report ‘A 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use’ excerpts: “Reducing highway speed limits by about 6 miles per hour; more working from home; street changes to encourage walking and cycling; car-free Sundays in cities and restrictions on other days; cutting transit fares; policies that encourage more carpooling; cutting business air travel; and more.” … “Governments have all the necessary tools at their disposal to put oil demand into decline in the coming years, which would support efforts to both strengthen energy security and achieve vital climate goals.” …

Restricting private cars’ use of roads in large cities to those with even number-plates some weekdays and to those with odd-numbered plates on other weekdays

Car-free Sundays in cities: Banning the use of private cars on Sundays

‘Tax’ SUVs: “Sales of SUVs also keep increasing…policies to address the rise in sales of such vehicles – such as specific registration and road taxes – are key.” …Ban installation of new oil boilers

This new 2022 report from IEA comes follows their 2021 report urging a form of climate lockdowns to battle global warming. The 2021 IEA report called for ‘behavioral changes’ to fight climate and ‘a shift away from private car use’ and ‘upper speed limits’ and thermostat controls; limits on hot water & more!.

From COVID Emergency to War & Back to ‘Climate Emergency’: House Dems want Biden to declare national ‘climate emergency’

Reality Check: ‘Climate lockdowns’ touted by Gates & Soros funded professors, Govts, media, & academia

Green New Deal disruption and destruction: Seeks WW2 mobilization – ‘But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without disrupting or even destroying people’s lives’

 

VIDEO: The Batwa paid the ultimate price to save gorillas. Do environmentalists care?

Which is more important: human beings or exotic species?


The Batwa are a group of pygmy people who have lived in central Africa for millennia. Their homeland spreads across what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shorter in stature than other Africans, they dwell in highland rainforests, where they survive by hunting small game and foraging for plants.

They are among the last Africans to adopt Western customs. Hence they are often unfairly portrayed as primitive and uncultured. Worse, in many of the countries in which they live, in each of which they are a tiny minority, they have been systematically mistreated and underserved by governments.

One wrenching example of such mistreatment is the misery of the Batwa in Uganda. In this country, the Batwa used to live in three large forests in the southwest of the country: Bwindi, Mgahinga and Echuuya.

In 1991, nearly all of them were forcefully evicted, often at gunpoint by rangers from the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The three forests were designated as national parks to protect the endangered mountain gorillas who shared them with the Batwa. Never mind that the Batwa weren’t a direct threat to the gorillas or other endangered species.

Having never adopted formal systems of land ownership, the Batwa lacked title to their forests. Clearly taking advantage of this, the government of Uganda did not compensate them and abandoned them on the edges of the forests, with neither land nor the skills with which to make a living outside the forest.

In the years that followed, many of the Batwa died, threatening the survival of the tribe itself. Of those that survived, many fell into drug abuse, begging and prostitution. They soon had the highest HIV prevalence rate of any ethnic group in Uganda. This is exacerbated by limited access to healthcare and education. Only 10 percent of Batwa children in Uganda are in formal education.

Alongside these losses must be added the greater loss of contact with the home and legacy of their ancestors, which for most of the younger generation is now alien. The only legal way for a Mtwa (singular for Batwa) to enter the forest now is as a guide, on the so-called Batwa Experience at the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, in which they re-enact the ways of their ancestors for curious tourists.

The mountain gorillas of Uganda, on the other hand, have gone on to multiply. They now number over 400, accounting for nearly half of the over 1,000 now living in the wild. The species is no longer listed as critically endangered. The sacrifice of the Batwa people to the cause of great ape conservation has paid off.

The government of Uganda charges tourists up to US$700 to observe the gorillas in their habitat. Practically none of this money ends up in Batwa hands.

The Batwa of Uganda are conservation refugees, silent victims of a global movement to save biodiversity at all costs. So silent is their suffering that it rarely even makes the footnotes when the recovery of the mountain gorilla is celebrated. Betrayed by their government and activists, their only hope now rests in the pity and goodwill of their neighbours and some NGOs.

With such support, the Batwa filed a case against the government in 2011. Ten years later, in August 2021, a five-judge bench of Uganda’s constitutional court unanimously ruled that the evictions had been illegal and that the Batwa had been treated inhumanely. It ordered the government to pay the Batwa “fair and just compensation” within 12 months.

The government intends to appeal the ruling.

This was no small victory. It marked the first substantial recognition of the unjust suffering of the Batwa. However, it is not obvious what “fair and just compensation” would look like for a people evicted from their forest home more than 30 years ago. The only fair and just compensation would be to have never been evicted at all.

So many years later, many of those who were directly wronged no longer live. Even in the best of circumstances, temporal distance from the injustice would complicate any attempt at optimal redress. Further delays, including the appeal by the government, only make things worse. Justice delayed is justice denied.

What’s more, the restoration of the Batwa’s forest home seems to be out of the question. Many older Batwa seem to be reconciled to this. This is not only because of their despair at the intransigence of the government, but also because the younger generations are unlikely to adopt the ways of their ancestors. Their alienation cannot be undone.

In any case, whatever happens from here on, the suffering of the Batwa should be a lesson for the environmental movement. The solutions we propose for the preservation of biodiversity often seem neat and well-considered, but they rarely are.

Unless we realise that future generations aren’t the only ones for whom we should protect the environment, we risk grievously harming present generations in the process.

AUTHOR

Mathew Otieno

Mathew Otieno writes from Kisumu, Kenya. More by Mathew Otieno

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Climate Campaigners Recommend Europe Ban Inter-Continental Flights and Car Use to ‘hurt Putin’

The only people who will be hurt by this are the Europeans who have no easy way to travel. The Western intelligentsia seems bent on committing civilizational suicide. If they aren’t able to force that suicide in response to Putin, they’ll find another angle.

Ban European flights and car use in cities to hurt Putin, report urges

by Helena Horton, Guardian, April 8, 2022:

Flights should be banned in continental Europe and car use banned in city centres to save energy and prevent Vladimir Putin profiting from fossil fuel sales, campaigners have said.

It would be possible for Europe to quickly end its reliance on oil and gas from Russia by taking strong measures, according to a report by the climate adviser Mark Lynas, energy analyst Rauli Partanen, and energy and sustainability installations specialist Joris van Dorp.

Policies include rationing, with everyone in Europe allowed the same minimum amount of energy to use, and limiting thermostats to 18C in winter.

“The biggest problem is gas. In total last year Europe imported 155 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia,” the authors said. Critics of the EU’s oil and gas policy have pointed out that hydrocarbon sales are financing the war in Ukraine.

Even the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said recently: “We’ve given Ukraine nearly €1bn. That might seem like a lot but €1bn is what we’re paying Putin every day for the energy he provides us with. Since the start of the war, we’ve given him €35bn [£29bn], compared to the €1bn we’ve given Ukraine to arm itself.”…

AUTHOR

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