VIDEO: Morano responds to Rolling Stone attack

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When the UN released a report claiming we are in for mass species extinction, CFACT’s Marc Morano checked the facts, posted them at Climate Depot and spoke about what he learned on Fox News.

Rolling Stone Magazine does not want you to hear what Marc learned.  They called him a “quack,” and demanded he be censored and silenced.

Marc responds:

I had just authored a special report with dissenting scientists of the UN report. As I said on Fox News, “The UN has juiced up the issue and put themselves in charge of solving. That’s called a self-interested lobbying organization.”

Dr. Patrick Moore is an internationally recognized environmentalist and co-founder of Greenpeace.  Morano reports that:

Moore bluntly mocked species extinction claims made by biologist Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University. Wilson estimated that up to 50,000 species go extinct every year based on computer models of the number of potential, but as yet undiscovered species in the world. Moore: “There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct. The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson’s computer at Harvard University. They’re actually electrons on a hard drive. I want a list of Latin names of actual species.”

The UN has made a specialty of hysterically demanding it be given vast sums of money and repressive bureaucratic control to combat climate and ecological Armageddons that exist only in the virtual world of its computer models.  When analysts like Marc Morano point out that real world observational science and environmental history fail to support the UN’s claims, the media and pressure groups demand they be silenced.

In its coverage of the UN species extinction report, CNN dredged up serial alarmist Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb in 1968.   Ehrlich has been predicting the end of the world over and over again for more than half a century.  Morano reminded everyone that Ehrlich may have one of the longest losing streaks of failed predictions known to science.

Bad science must be challenged by hard facts.

All voices must be heard… including Marc Morano’s.

RELATED ARTICLE: Rolling Stone mag rips Morano as a ‘quack’ & slams Fox News for allowing him on about UN species report – Morano responds

Media recycle climate species ‘extinction’ fears – Dredge up discredited Paul Ehrlich for interviews

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The UN has now officially expanded its mission now to include the “climate change” species extinction scare. The UN is once again calling for putting itself in charge of “solving” the newly hyped species “crisis.” “A huge transformation is needed across the economy and society to protect and restore nature, which provides people with food, medicines, and other materials, crop pollination, fresh water, and quality of life,” according to the new UN report. The AP quoted one of the activist scientists claiming “this is really our last chance to address all of that.” Hmmm. This is the same tactic the UN has used on climate for years. See:Every climate summit is hailed as the ‘last chance!’

This latest report has been touted as the IPCC for nature by the UN. “The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) included more than 450 researchers who used 15,000 scientific and government reports. The report’s summary had to be approved by representatives of all 109 nations,” the AP reported. Let’s repeat, “The report’s summary had to be approved by representatives of all 109 nations.” The same hijacking of science by politicians and UN bureaucrats that has always occurred in the UN IPCC climate reports. See: UN’s alleged scientific process features “government officials” having a say in each line of the report’s summary

But this is not the first time we have warned. As early as 1864, “tipping points” about the “extinction of the species”were issued.

But despite a massive track record of scientific failure about climate and species “crises” the UN, the media and the usual suspect scientists like failed overpopulation guru Paul Ehrlich are at it again.

(Why has Al Gore has gone silent on the extinction scare of polar bears? Gore featured the bears in 2006 film, but they were completely absent in his 2017 sequel. The reason?New Study: Polar bears ‘thriving’ as their numbers may have ‘quadrupled’ – Attempts to silence research)

Watch CNN clip – May 6, 2019: 

See: UN report urges ‘action’: Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk – 1 million species at risk of annihilation

Climate Depot’s Response – Some excerpts from Marc Morano’s new book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.”:

Coming Soon: The ‘IPCC for Biodiversity’ – ‘On May 6, long-awaited assessment of State of Nature will be released’ — Stay tuned to hear what it concludes’ – Answer? We are all going to die! Pay up!

Greenpeace Co-Founder mocks human extinction claim: ‘We are presently the most successful species on the planet’

Greenpeace Co-Founder & Ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore challenges specious species claims: ‘That is so 1970s. Paul Ehrlich is pathetic and has been crying wolf for decades. While he pontificated doom for starving millions in the 1970 from his Ivory Tower at Stanford.’

See: 1972 Article Unearthed: ‘Worse than Hitler’: ‘Population Bomb’ author Paul Ehrlich suggested adding a forced sterilization agent to ‘staple food’ and ‘water supply’ – Warned of ‘Unpredictable climatic effects’ — Called on U.S. to ‘de-develop’

2012: Time for Next Eco-Scare: ‘As the global warming bubble deflates, another scare is being inflated – species extinction’– ‘History shows that it is the destiny of most species to be destroyed by periodic natural calamities or competition from other species…No species has an assured place on Earth. Some species can adapt and survive – those unable to adapt are removed from the gene pool. Because of Earth’s long turbulent history, most species surviving today are not ‘fragile’ …

Moore, in an interview with Climate Depot, refuted the claims of the species study. “The biggest extinction events in the human era occurred 60,000 years ago when humans arrived in Australia, 10-15,000 years ago when humans arrived in the New World, 800 years ago when humans found New Zealand, and 250 years ago when Europeans brought exotic species to the Pacific Islands such as Hawaii,” Moore explained.

“Since species extinction became a broad social concern, coinciding with the extinction of the passenger pigeon, we have done a pretty good job of preventing species extinctions,” Moore explained.

“I quit my life-long subscription to National Geographic when they published a similar ‘sixth mass extinction’ article in February 1999. This [latest journal] Nature article just re-hashes this theme,” he added. Moore left Greenpeace in 1986 because he felt the organization had become too radical.

This is not the first time Moore has gone to battle over alarming claims of species extinction. In the 2000 documentary “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting The Myths”, Moore bluntly mocked species extinction claims made by biologist Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University. Wilson estimated that up to 50,000 species go extinct every year based on computer models of the number of potential but as yet undiscovered species in the world.

Moore said in 2000: “There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct. The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson’s computer at Harvard University. They’re actually electrons on a hard drive. I want a list of Latin names of actual species.” Moore was interviewed by reporter Marc Morano (now with Climate Depot) in the 2000 Amazon rainforest documentary:

Environmental activist Tim Keating of Rainforest Relief was asked in the 2000 documentary if he could name any of the alleged 50,000 species that have gone extinct and he was unable.

“No, we can’t [name them], because we don’t know what those species are. But most of the species that we’re talking about in those estimates are things like insects and even microorganisms, like bacteria,” Keating explained.

UK scientist Professor Philip Stott, emeritus professor of Biogeography at the University of London, dismissed current species claims in the 2000 Amazon rainforest documentary.

“The earth has gone through many periods of major extinctions, some much bigger in size than even being contemplated today,” Stott, the author of a book on tropical rainforests, said in the 2000 documentary.

“Change is necessary to keep up with change in nature itself. In other words, change is the essence. And the idea that we can keep all species that now exist would be anti-evolutionary, anti-nature and anti the very nature of the earth in which we live,” Stott said.

2012: Time for Next Eco-Scare?! Obama follows lead of green movement and demotes global warming –UN now says case for savingspecies ‘more powerful than climate change’

Flashback 2011: Next Eco-Scare is Here! ‘Biodiversity’: ‘The new Big Lie’: The green movement is ditching ‘Climate Change’ in favor of species extinction fears

2010: Next Eco-Scare is Here! ‘Biodiversity’: ‘The new Big Lie’: The green movement is ditching ‘Climate Change’ in favor of species extinction fears –‘The independent platform will in many ways mirror the UN IPCC’ and ‘provide gold standard reports to governments. ‘Gold standard’, eh? Now where have I heard that phrase before? — Suddenly it becomes clear why they kept Pachauri on at the IPCC. Because the IPCC simply doesn’t matter any more’ — ‘Not only does the great big new Biodiversity scam already have its own IPCC but it even has its own pseudoeconomic, panic-generating Stern Report.’

This is not the first time we have warned. As early as 1864, “tipping points” about the “extinction of the species” were issued.
“As early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh, sometimes said to be the father of American ecology, warned that the earth was ‘fast becoming an unfit home for its “noblest inhabitant,”’ and that unless men changed their ways it would be reduced ‘to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.’” – —MIT professor Leo Marx

Round-up of the failures of Paul Ehrlich

In 1974, Paul Ehrlich told the U.S. Senate he wouldn’t bet a nickel U.S. still around in 1994

Ehrlich to U.S. Senate 1974: ‘If we have 20 years — which I wouldn’t put a nickel on — but if we have 20 years, we’re already 10 years too late in starting to do something about it.’ – ‘One of the big problems is how do you generate a feeling of urgency…’

‘If bad weather continues in the Midwest this year, and if the monsoon should fail this year in India, as it might, then I think you’re going to see the age of scarcity and many of the changes I’m talking about coming on next winter.’

Paul Ehrlich’s Epic Fail: Why The ‘Population Bomb’ Never Exploded

Flashback: ‘Accurate Tribute to Paul Ehrlich: ‘Mad…Kook…Lunatic…Disgraced…Worse than Hitler…fear-monger…parasite on Academic system’

Flashback 1980: Paul Ehrlich calls oil ‘a resource which we know damn well is going to be gone in 20 or 30 years’ (By year 2000 or 2010) – Ehrlich 1980: ‘Do we really want to threaten to blow up the world over a resource which we know damn well is going to be gone in 20 or 30 years anyway?’ – ‘Every country is now overpopulated.’ – ‘There is a finite pie. The more mice you have nibbling at it the smaller every mouses’ share.’

Overpopulation Guru Paul Ehrlich: ‘Climate Change’ Will Force Humans To ‘Eat Bodies of Dead’–

Ehrlich predicts: Humans must soon begin contemplating “eat[ing] the bodies of your dead” after resources are depleted. Ehrlich claimed that scarcity of resources will get so bad that humans will need to drastically change our eating habits and agriculture. Instead, we will soon begin asking “is it perfectly okay to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry?” He added that humanity is “moving in that direction with a ridiculous speed.” And clearly, this man knows “ridiculous.”

1972 Article Unearthed: ‘Worse than Hitler’: ‘Population Bomb’ author Paul Ehrlich suggested adding a forced sterilization agent to ‘staple food’ and ‘water supply’ – Warned of ‘Unpredictable climatic effects’ — Called on U.S. to ‘de-develop’

In 1974 Senate testimony Holdren proposed ‘limits both on population size and materials use per person’

Flashback 1974-John Holdren testifies before Congress abt need for “population limitation & redistribution of wealth” – John Holdren 1974: ‘I find myself firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp’

NYT mocks Paul Ehrlich’s Overpopulation Fears: ‘Apocalyptic predictions fell as flat as ancient theories about shape of the Earth’ –

NYT:

‘In the 1960s, fears of overpopulation sparked campaigns for population control. But whatever became of the population bomb?’ …’One thing that happened on the road to doom was that the world figured out how to feed itself despite its rising numbers. No small measure of thanks belonged to Norman E. Borlaug, an American plant scientist whose breeding of high-yielding, disease-resistant crops led to the agricultural savior known as the Green Revolution.’

[ … ]

‘Fred Pearce, a British writer who specializes in global population. His concern is not that the world has too many people. In fact, birthrates are now below long-term replacement levels, or nearly so, across much of Earth, not just in the industrialized West and Japan but also in India, China, much of Southeast Asia, Latin America — just about everywhere except Africa, although even there the continent wide rates are declining. “Girls that are never born cannot have babies,” Mr. Pearce wrote in a 2010 book, “The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet’s Surprising Future”.

Warmist Paul Ehrlich on Rush Limbaugh’s and James Inhofe’s lack of fear of trace amounts of CO2: “They’re killing our grandkids”

PAUL EHRLICH BOMBS AGAIN: ‘In the more than four decades since The Population Bomb was published, the number of people inhabiting the Earth has more than doubled, but the death and poverty rates have dropped, and life expectancy has increased. Not only are we feeding more people than ever before, we’re doing it with less land’ – Meet the old  ‘consensus’, the same as the new ‘consensus’ — we’re all doomed! ‘Fears of overpopulation and its effect on the Earth’s ability to sustain human life peaked in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when the scientific ‘consensus’ was that overpopulation would result in large-scale famines. Paul Ehrlich, in his book The Population Bomb — which predicted that ‘hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’ in the ‘70s — articulated many of these concerns.

Ehrlich’s predictions proved false.’ ‘But Ehrlich did not learn his lesson: He is one of the scientists behind a statement titled, ;Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century,’ which was recently released by the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) — a working group of natural and social scientists at Stanford University. The report argues that “the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support systems is overwhelming” and that “human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.’

Paul Ehrlich admits it: ‘I am an alarmist. My colleagues are alarmists. We’re alarmed, and we’re frightened’ – Earlier this month, the biologist Paul Ehrlich used a similar defense after co-authoring a study that warned of a coming “annihilation” of vertebrates. “I am an alarmist,” Ehrlich told the Washington Post. “My colleagues are alarmists. We’re alarmed, and we’re frightened. And there’s no other way to put it.”

Flashback WaPo: Earth is on its way to the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs, scientists warn – Ehrlich said the point of the research is exactly that — to cause alarm. “I am an alarmist. My colleagues are alarmists. We’re alarmed, and we’re frightened. And there’s no other way to put it,” he said. “It’s largely a political and economic problem. We have a government that’s doing everything they can to push these things in the wrong direction. We have economists who think they can actually grow forever in a finite planet.”

How They Sold Paul Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’ – Threats of famine, dead children, bombs, nuclear war, & oblivion

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Big oil goes big green: Green groups rake in fossil fuel cash

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Climate alarmists often accuse skeptics, like myself and independent groups like CFACT, of being in the pay of Big Oil. This is completely false — we do not receive even a dime from them. It is part of the green fairy tale that skepticism only exists because the oil companies are funding it. That Exxon-Mobil threw a few million at various skeptical causes prior to 2007 is the standard example, but that was many years ago.  They have stopped sending any money whatsoever to skeptical causes since then.

So I did some digging and the reality turns out to be just the opposite. In fact the big oil companies are putting at least a billion dollars into alarmist projects and lobbying. Of course they have good commercial reasons, which are killing coal and making natural gas more “climate friendly.” After all, Big Oil is also Big Gas.

The central vehicle for moving these green billion dollars goes by a perfectly descriptive name — the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative or OGCI. If the false accusers were correct then “oil and gas” would never go together with “climate initiative” but there it is and it is very big.

OGCI members include these Big Oil names:

  • British Petroleum
  • Chevron
  • China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)
  • Eni
  • Equinor
  • Exxon Mobil Corporation
  • Occidental Petroleum
  • Pemex – Petróleos Mexicanos
  • Petroleo Brasileiro – PETROBRAS
  • Repsol
  • Royal Dutch Shell
  • Saudi Aramco
  • Total

Collectively they claim to produce 30% of the world’s oil and gas.

The OGCI website features a lineup of Corporate CEOs, just to show how seriously green they are. Their latest annual report has a letter from the CEOs, including this gem:

“As our ambition grows with the scale of the challenge, we look forward to working closely with policy-makers, regulators and all stakeholders to help develop the levers that can economically and sustainably accelerate the pace of the low carbon transition.”

OGCI was started in 2014, shortly after the famous Chesapeake Energy scandal. Chesapeake’s CEO was caught giving the Sierra Club millions of dollars to support the war on coal, but some Club members objected, given that they consider fossil fuels their enemy.

What seems to have happened is that the ever-wily big companies simply created their own green group. With a billion bucks in funding it may well be the biggest outfit in Big Green (not counting the green governments).

However, I also found that EDF is actively engaged with corporations, via its EDF+Business arm. In particular EDF has a huge methane reduction program — the Methane Challenge — that involves OGCI. This program is featured in the Sustainability Reports of several major oil companies. EDF is even building and launching their own satellite, cleverly called MethaneSAT.

EDF is clearly getting a lot of money for this. They say they get none directly from the companies, rather that they get it from unspecified “philanthropies.” Where these philanthropies get it may be a different story. They could easily be laundering Big Oil money. It may be telling that OGCI does not issue a financial report.

Space News actually asked EDF about this funding but got stonewalled. Here is their report:

“However, EDF has provided few details about how much MethaneSAT will cost or how it will be funded. The project received last year a grant from a new initiative called The Audacious Project, although the size of the award was not disclosed. An EDF spokesman did not respond to an inquiry about the financial status of the project.”

Having EDF on their side is certainly a big plus for Big Oil.

In any case it is clear that Big Oil is spending at least a billion dollars on green stuff, which is a lot of green. There is no evidence that the skeptics are getting anything, but if some are it is trivial in comparison. Meanwhile OGCI is getting at least a billion and EDF maybe many millions.

When it comes to skepticism, the simple fact is that roughly half of Americans do not accept climate alarmism, right up to the President. No one is paying for this widespread skepticism. As for Big Oil, they are putting big bucks into green climate initiatives, not skepticism. Conservatives do have their think tanks, which happily manage to find some funding, but not from Big Oil for climate skepticism.

That Big Oil is responsible for skepticism is just another part of the alarmist fantasy world.

Author

David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins click here. For over 100 prior articles for CFACT click here. Available for confidential research and consulting.

Batteries Can’t Make Wind and Solar Viable

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Utilities are starting to experiment with adding batteries to wind and solar projects. These storage projects are feeding the mistaken belief that batteries can cure the intermittency that makes wind and solar unworkable as a reliable source of power.

The reality is that these battery projects are trivial in size compared to what would actually be needed to make wind or solar reliable. The cost of battery based reliability would actually be stupendous, far more than we could ever afford.

Here are some simple numbers to make the point. The reality would be far more complex, but the magnitude would not change much.

First comes the cost of utility scale battery facilities. This is much more than just the cost of the batteries. At utility scale these are large, complex facilities. Connecting all of the batteries involved and getting them to work properly together is a big challenge in itself. AC-DC-AC conversions are also a big deal, plus there are buildings, transmission stuff, etc.

In many cases these costs are proprietary, but the U.S. Energy Information Administration has surveyed a number of these facilities. See their “U.S. Battery Storage Market Trends,” May 2018.

The reported costs are pretty wide ranging, but the average is close to $1,500 per KWh, so let’s use that round number.

Note that this is the cost per KWh of storage capacity, not the KWh cost of energy from the batteries taken over time, which is a very different matter. There is a lot of confusion on this point. The KWh cost of juice goes down as the batteries are cycled more often, but the cost of the battery facilities themselves does not change. In fact the cost may go up because batteries that can be cycled faster cost more.

At utility scale we are talking about megawatts, not kilowatts, so the battery cost is $1.5 million per MWh. By coincidence, $1.5 million per MW is also roughly the cost of a wind farm. Much follows from this.

A smallish wind farm might have generating capacity of 100 MW, so costing around $150 million. The cost of the batteries to make this farm a reliable power generator turns out to be much, much greater.

Suppose we want to store enough juice to back up the wind farm for just one day, when the wind speed is too low to generate any power. Let’s say we simply need 100 MW for 24 hours, or 2,400 MWh.

At $1.5 million per MWh that is a whopping $3,600 million or $3.6 billion. In short, the batteries cost 24 times more than the “backed up” wind farm costs. In fact in this case the battery cost will be the number of hours times the wind farm cost.

This huge cost certainly makes the wind farm unaffordable, but it gets much worse. Under standard conditions a wind farm produces no power around 25% of the time, due to low wind conditions. Low wind periods of up to a week are fairly common, created by stagnant huge high pressure systems. The power battery system has to be big enough to accommodate these long periods of no wind power.

A week has 168 hours so we need 16,800 MWh of battery storage capacity, at the enormous cost of $25.2 billion, just to make a $150 million wind farm reliable. This would obviously be absurd, which makes the whole idea of battery backup absurd. Even if the cost of batteries were to come way down, say by 90%, the cost would still be wildly prohibitive.

The battery systems that are being announced by major utilities are nothing like real backup. They seldom store even an hour’s worth of generated power (at great price). But they are often touted as being a big step toward making renewables reliable. This is either deep ignorance or pure deception.

Batteries simply cannot make renewables reliable. They cost too much.

Author

David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins click here. For over 100 prior articles for CFACT click here. Available for confidential research and consulting.

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EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission.

Latest Energy & Environmental News

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For the full version of: Energy and Environmental Newsletter please click on that link. To review some of the highlights, see below.

Here is a simply amazing announcement: an affordable machine that can produce drinkable water just from the air — and at 8±¢ per gallon!  See here and here.

Since there is such a diversity of interesting articles, I’m subdividing the most noteworthy material into several categories:

Energy —

The Green New Deal’s Bad Science
Study: Renewable Energy Mandates are a costly failure
Worldwide Buyer’s Remorse Sets in for Costly Renewable Energy
Solar Energy Threatened by Wind Energy
The true cost of solar (and wind)
Dead bats and how radical Green propaganda relies on tragedy porn
Hypothesis: Radical Greens are the Great Killers of Our Age
Russia’s not-so-secret plan to control the world’s energy
The true feasibility of moving away from fossil fuels
Why 100% renewable energy goals are not practical policies
Battery Foolishness
Short good video: False Choice Cafe
Short video: Green Signaling
US Chamber of Commerce: American Energy — Cleaner and Stronger
Natural Gas Pulls Away from Renewables – The Gap Has Never Been Wider
Next generation nuclear: 25MW, smaller, safer, can be sited anywhere
Powering the future – with no compromises

The Green New Deal (GND)—

The Green New Deal: Economics and Policy Analytics
John Stossel: Green Dreams
Short excellent video: Hilarious Spoof of AOC by 8 Year Old

The Presidential Committee on Climate Science (PCCS) —

CO2Coalition’s Letter of Support for the PCCS
It’s about time to review the evidence for man-made global warming
Climate review to be led by nuclear weapons expert

Global Warming (AGW) —

Lunacy as the New Orthodoxy
What Will It Take to End Anti-Science Insanity?
Climate Change Is Socialist Groupthink
Climate Change and the Ten Warning Signs for Cults
The noble corruption of climate science
Galileo and the Medicis brought Revolution and Truth
Environmental Hypocrites of the Left
Peter Ridd has defeated the Climate Inquisition — thanks to you
Study: Electric vehicles emit more CO2 than diesel vehicles!
Falsified Hypotheses Are Rejected In Science — Except for Climate Science

Misc (Education, Science, etc.) —

How to Teach Children about Climate Change
The K-12 Education Achievement Gap Fails to Close
Short Video: Preferred Pronouns or Prison
Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news
How Long Until We’re All Happy?
The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Education

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone. Some documents (e.g. PDFs) are easier to read on a computer. We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize issues.
Note 2: Our intention is to put some balance into what most people see from the mainstream media about energy and environmental issues… As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens, and link to this on your social media sites. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off this list, simply send me an email saying that.
Note 3: This Newsletter is intended to supplement the material on our website, WiseEnergy.org. The most important page there is the Winning page.
Note 4: I am not an attorney, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or our WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues.

MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Avengers Endgame’ has redeemed itself! A film that is pro-family, pro-humanity & patriotic

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In May, 2017 I did a column titled “Avengers ‘Infinity War’: Teaching children that mass slaughter is okay for all the wrong reasons.” I wrote:

I used to be a fan of Marvel comics. Not anymore. The reason is the latest edition of 18 films in Marvel studios Avengers series titled “Infinity War.” After watching the film I was very disturbed by the message. Here is a key exchange between Thanos, the alien invader/protagonist, and Dr. Strange, one of the Avengers:

Thanos: When we faced extinction I offered a solution

Dr. Stephen Strange: Genocide?

Thanos: But random, dispassion is fair for rich and poor a like. They called me a mad man. What I predict came unannounced.

Dr. Stephen Strange: Congratulations, you’re a prophet

Thanos: I’m a survivor

Dr. Stephen Strange: Who wants to murder trillions

Thanos: With all the six stones I can simply snap my fingers, they will all cease to exist. I call that… mercy.

Dr. Stephen Strange: Then what?

Thanos: [I] finally rest, watch the sunrise on an ungrateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest will.

In the end Thanos wins and trillions of people in the universe are slaughtered. The final scene is of Thanos in a green pasture admiring his work.

REDEMPTION

After watching “Avengers Endgame” I give credit to Marvel Studios for redeeming itself. While the film lasts 3 hours I was riveted to my seat.

Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame – Official Trailer.

The film picks up where “Infinity War” left off. The opening scenes are compelling. The film personalizes the catastrophic losses suffered by those who Thanos did not slaughter, the survivors. This reminded me of those who lost family and loved ones during the Holocaust, during the reigns of Joseph Stalin and Mao, the Armenian genocide and in the killing fields of Pol Pot.

Of course there really are no super heroes with super powers. But we have witnessed over our brief American history the actions of real heroes who have done extraordinary things. This is the lesson of mankind.

As English writer, poet and philosopher G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

What is behind mankind are the memories of those who were taken away from them by pure evil. Thanos, evil incarnate, slaughters half of all living creatures in the name of saving the universe from itself. This is not unlike those who today want to enslave all of mankind in the name of saving the planet earth (e.g. environmentalism, Green New Deal, One World Order).

MANKIND’S GOD GIVEN ABILITY TO THINK

As University of Maryland economist Julian Simon noted in his 1981 book that the human brain is the “ultimate resource.” And so it is in “Avengers Endgame.” We have seen the idea of time travel repeatedly in films. The fantasy of going back in time to stop evil is just that, a fantasy. “Avengers Endgame” pokes fun at  this fantasy and shows how, in part, how this is folly.

Of course this is Hollywood and all things are possible, even time travel to get a human redo.

The key to this film is redemption. The surviving Avengers know they failed in their quest to protect humanity. Their losses, on a personal level, drive them to use their own ultimate resources, their brains, to redeem themselves and put things right.

AVENGERS AS CRUSADERS

At the end all but two survive their quest for redemption. It reminded me of the Christian Crusades.

Thomas F. Madden, professor of Medieval History and Renaissance Studies as Saint Louis University, is a recognized expert on the Crusades. Professor Madden in his book “The Crusades Controversy: Setting the Record Straight” notes,

“Pope Urban II called the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war.” Why did they do it? For two reasons:

  1. The first was to redeem [free from oppression] the Christians of the East.
  2. The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ.

Professor Madden writes:

The word crusade is modern. Medieval crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher.

[ … ]

The re-conquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was understood by Christians as an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God.

Perhaps we as humans need to turn to the God Abraham for our redemption and not to Hollywood?

The 10 Warning Signs For Cults Applied To Climate Change

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By Will

Have you thought to yourself that the Climate Change movement seems more and more like a religious movement?

I have, so I researched how to identify a religious cult. Rick Ross, an expert on cults and intervention specialist, developed a list of ten warning signs for unsafe groups, which is published by the Cult Education Institute.

So let’s take a look at all ten signs and compare:

1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.

The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers such as Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio lack any formal scientific training whatsoever, and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. Yet no one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.

Child advocates such as Greta Thuneberg and the crudely indoctrinated children of the “Sunrise movement” are essentially sock puppets for their shameless activist handlers. Refuse to bend the knee to these tiny fascists, as Diane Feinstein most recently did, and the mainstream left will relentlessly attack you as an accessory to mass murder.

The authority of Climate Change leaders is entirely unmerited and absolute, yet no one is permitted to hold them accountable for their ignorance, inexperience, or brazen lies. Thus, the Climate Change movement clearly meets the first warning sign for unsafe groups.

2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.

The conclusions of the Climate Change movement may not be challenged or questioned under any circumstances. Those who dare scrutinize the conclusions, methodology, or prescriptions of “climate scientists” are categorically dismissed as a “Climate Denier”, an excommunicated untouchable whose opinion is no longer valid on any subject.

Questions and critical inquiry aren’t merely dismissed or refuted. The unfortunate heretic immediately experiences a relentless ad hominem onslaught of scorn and hatred from the political and media left, and is often subjected to accusations of outright murder. Simply question the effectiveness of a “carbon tax” and you may find yourself tied to a stake.

There is no tolerance for questioning the Climate Change movement, and thus it clearly meets the second warning sign for unsafe groups.

3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.

Hardly anyone knows just how much money is spent on “Climate research” every year. The cost is spread out among laughably useless study grants, wind and solar farm subsidies, carbon offset credits, “green” building code evaluation and enforcement, salaries for bureaucrats solely dedicated to “climate concerns”……you get the idea, it’s a lot of hazy money.

The abhorrent practice of “sue and settle” was a flat out money laundering scheme that allowed sympathetic government officials to transfer millions of tax dollars to radical leftist environmental groups. The practice only ended when the Trump administration used executive power to clamp down on it.

The total amount of yearly financial expenditure on the Climate Change movement is vague, difficult to track, and often carried out in unethical manners. Thus, the Climate Change movement exhibits the third warning sign for unsafe groups.

4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.

This one is pretty obvious. The Climate Change movement always shouts out revised and updated apocalypse predictions, eerily reminiscent of the stereotypical bum on the sidewalk with that “The End Is Near” sign. “The world will end in X years if we don’t do X” is the constant refrain. The years always pass, and the apocalypse never happens. Interestingly, this is a characteristic of multiple religious cults (such as the Seekers of Chicago, and the Order of the Solar Temple). At the moment, we apparently have 12 years to nationalize the entire economy and phase out fossil fuels before we all die a fiery death.

There’s also no shortage of conspiracy theories about who they consider to be Earth’s greatest saboteurs. They have an enemies list. The fossil fuel industry is at the top of it, with widespread tinfoil hat theories about oil companies burying patents for efficient renewable fuel recipes to keep us all guzzling gasoline.

The “repent or burn” doomsday preaching is the most well-known staple of the Climate Change movement, and quite clearly exemplifies the fourth warning sign for unsafe groups.

5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.

Climate alarmists who leave, step back from, or even lightly criticize the movement are immediately subjected to vicious smear campaigns. Dutch professor Richard Tol experienced this phenomenon firsthand when he removed his name from an IPCC climate report and criticized the reports excessively apocalyptic predictions.

The smear campaign was led by Bob Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change ‘This has all the characteristics of a smear campaign”, Tol said. “It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.”

The treatment of Professor Tol is not uncommon, and clearly demonstrates that the Climate Change movement exhibits the fifth warning sign for unsafe groups.

6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.

Professor Tol is not an anomaly. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, and countless other former IPCC in-crowd climate experts were subjected to smear campaigns from their colleagues and the news media for the crime of throwing cold water on the outlandish predictions of the Climate Change movement.

This pattern is all too familiar to anyone who has studied what happens to individuals who leave the Church of Scientology, and clearly meets the sixth warning sign for unsafe groups.

7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.

The abuses of the Climate Change movement are loud and proud. They vociferously attack their perceived enemies for public consumption, and are cheered on by fellow travelers in the journalism class. Most recently they brainwashed a bunch of kids and marched them into an octogenarian Democrat Senator’s office to beg not to be murdered by a ‘No’ vote on impossible legislation. Have you seen those kids in Diane Feinstein’s office? You should, it’s creepy, here they are.

These tantrums and protests aren’t only meant to rally supporters of the Climate Change movement. They are a form of intimidation, a tactic used to silence those who question the gospel. There is ample evidence that the Climate Change movement meets the seventh warning sign of an unsafe group.

8. Followers feel they can never be “good enough.”

The atonement process for Climate warriors always demands more. It started with using a recycling bin and grocery bags. Now, in 2019, being a good follower means imposing veganism on the masses and issuing fatwahs against innocuous objects such as plastic straws and grocery bags. Despite all the efforts of the faithful, Climate minions maintain a constant state of dread and despair, knowing they can never truly do enough to stop the coming doom.

Clearly, the eighth warning sign for unsafe groups applies to the Climate Change movement.

9. The group/leader is always right.

When have the climate leaders been called wrong for their failed predictions? Regardless of the weather, they are always intrinsically correct.

Flood? Climate Change. Drought? Climate Change.

No Snow? Climate Change. Too much snow? Climate Change.

Tornado? Climate Change. Hurricane? Climate Change. Lack of hurricanes? Climate Change.

See how this works?

One of the best aspects of the movement is “weather is climate until it isn’t”. The acolytes of Climate Change will point out the window in a heat wave and say, “See? We’re right!”

If a skeptic points out the window during a blizzard, the same acolytes will simply cry “Weather isn’t climate!” It’s a game they can never lose, one in which they are never wrong and always right.

Thus, the ninth warning sign for unsafe groups clearly applies.

10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.

The path to discovery for the Climate Change movement is an intentionally vague discipline referred to as “climate science”.

Did you carry out a study on gender and glaciers? Climate Science.

Did you think up the worst possible scenarios that have no actual chance of happening (actual portion of latest National Climate Assessment)? Climate Science.

Any “science” that confirms the tenets of the Climate Change movement is deemed “climate science”, while actual scientific research that disputes their conclusions is derided as “denialism”.

The tenth warning sign for unsafe groups is clearly met.

The Verdict: It’s a cult

According to the established, scientific guidelines developed by cult experts, the Climate Change movement fits the bill for a potentially unsafe group.

When I looked up these established warning signs, I honestly expected Climate Changeists to meet two or three of them, NOT TEN! The disturbingly religious nature of this supposedly “scientific” movement should alarm any thinking human being, especially since the movement now openly seeks to nationalize the entire economy.

It’s time for conservatives to realize what they are dealing with, and act accordingly. Rather than debating Climate Change activists, it may be time to start staging interventions.

If someone you know is a member of the Climate Change Movement, and you are interested in intervention strategies, please visit https://culteducation.com/prep_faq.html.

Printed by permission from Will, a nom de plume, who can be followed on Twitter at @Oil_Guns_Merica.

RELATED ARTICLE: On Earth Day, Gloomy Predictions Haven’t Come to Pass

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column by Will is republished with permission.

Environmental Impacts of Renewable Energy Technologies

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When it comes to generating electricity, it’s already given that renewable energy sources produce lesser amounts of global warming emissions than fossil fuel. By this reason, it has made renewable energy sources as a favored alternative. But, have you ever wondered about the harmful effects of renewable energy production and how a lot of us tend to overlook it?

In any case, the use of renewable energy sources has enormous environmental consequences. Tons of carbon dioxide or CO2 are produced from electricity generation. The mass exploitation of renewable sources of energy will surely create disastrous outcomes to the environment.

The impact of these alternatives may vary depending on its location, climate, and other factors. We should also consider the environmental effects of technologies we adopt. For you to know about the adverse impacts of substituting notoriously on renewable energy options, keep on reading.

Wind Power

Wind power is one of the cleanest ways to produce electricity.  For instance, when wind power is in use, it does not produce pollution and global warming emissions. Wind is also considered as an affordable, abundant, and inexhaustible energy source which makes it a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

However, the use of wind power has a variety of environmental impacts that need to be mitigated and recognized. Efficient wind power generation requires the construction of tall towers, which is greatly opposed by some people because it creates an unsightly appearance.

Also, the source of wind energy has caused thousands of birds and bats death from bumping into wind turbines due to the changes in air pressure generated by the spinning turbines. Keeping the wind turbines unmoving during the time of low wind speeds could reduce the number of deaths of birds and bats.

Additionally, when the wind stops blowing, electricity continues to be provided by other forms of generation, such as hydro or gas. These power serve as a backup generator for producing electricity. However, these powers also cause harmful effects on the environment.

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is energy sourced from the earth’s heat. Some plants are located near geothermally active spots. The impacts of these plants will vary depending on the conversion of cooling technology (water-cooled and air-cooled) and the conversion of resource to electricity (flash, direct, or binary).

Others require deep drilling to get to the heated resources. The drilling needs more extensive land use and introduces risks of shifting earth. Water-cooled plants may dump heated water back into the streams and rivers which will massively kill the wildlife.

Biomass for Electricity

Sources of biomass resources for manufacturing electricity are diverse. Including energy crops like switchgrass, forest products, agricultural waste, and urban waste. The kind of feedstock and how it is developed dramatically affect land use.

Biomass power plants share some similarities with fossil fuel power plants. People considered burning biomass as the best alternative to burning fossil fuels. The burning of animal and plant material to produce electricity can put pollutants into the air, like any fossil fuel plant.

Moreover, the fuel or the feedstock that goes into a plant can be controlled and monitored. If they are not appropriately managed, too much feedstock can be removed, which will result in harming the environment.

Solar Power

In comparison to conventional energy sources, solar power gives a more significant amount of environmental benefits, thus contributing to the sustainable development of human activities. However, the vast scale deployment of solar panels also has to face negative ecological implications.

Solar panels are typically placed on existing structures, but the new large-scale projects are planned to be built in open areas. These structures require land use, which dramatically impacts wildlife and habitat loss. Indeed, when we talk about the most plentiful source of energy in the world, the sun quickly crosses our minds.

Going solar is a great way to offset energy costs, but we must also consider the effects it can give to our environment. To know more about energy consumption and how to efficiently manage your energy needs, Astral Energy LLC and other energy providers can help you with it.

Even though solar panels are not actively generating much at night, they still work because the solar system is connected to the utility grid. Solar produces kilowatt hours of energy. An alternative backup plan for this is getting a battery which will serve as a storage of power that the sun creates and then use it at different hours of the day.

Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectric generation is often described as the ideal source of energy. Simple, non-pollutant, low operating cost and maintenance, and it runs as long as the rivers shall flow from the mountains to the sea.

There is always a definite adverse effect that arises from the creation of the reservoir and alteration of natural water flow. Hydroelectric stations generate electricity from exploiting the natural forces of gravity. Some issues are raised about altering the natural environment and loss of habitat for certain species.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power has been considered as an answer to the need for a clean energy source and domestic energy. However, the use of this form of electricity does not come without a set of consequences. These consequences could range from gaseous emissions, social problems, and environmental impacts.

Nuclear plants use diesel generators as a means for backup electric power in times of emergencies. These diesel generators release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which consist of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and others. These gases are considered as harmful to the environment.

Moreover, the setting up of a nuclear plant needs a wide and large area that is ideally situated near a natural water body. This kind of set-up usually ends up upsetting the ecological balance of the region and disturbing the natural habitat of some creatures. People living near the area where the nuclear plants are situated also feared the threat of being exposed to the unprecedented levels of radiation.

Takeaway

Renewable energy is considerably more environmentally friendly alternative than fossil fuel generation. However, renewable energy carries the risk of harming the natural environment. The impacts mentioned above are wide-ranging, extending from land and water use to animal habitat concerns.

We should learn to take good care of our environment as nature is continuously changing. By being efficient and clean in our ways, we allow future generations to experience the comfort we’re experiencing today.

The 97% Hoax: It’s time for us all to recognize the 97% con game

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BY DR. JAY LEHR:

We are confident that all of our readers have read or heard for a number of years that 97% of all scientists believe that mankind has played a role in changing the earth’s climate. While it should have been recognized long ago as an urban myth, one of those stories that hang around regardless of a lack of any supporting facts. Rarely a day goes that a global warming alarmists do not use it to promote their cause of enlarging government and reducing personal freedom through the promotion of fear about our future.

Many articles have been written to refute this claim but they all dig into the statistical weeds. Common sense alone should set you straight. If the reader wishes he or she read could read the original paper by Naomi Oreskes that started it all in Science Magazine in December of 2004. Be aware you might die laughing.

The biased folks who concluded from a truly bizarre survey of science literature that 97% of all authors believe in man caused global warming would have actually been better served had they concluded that 70% of all scientists believe in their premise. That would actually have been possible. However a little common sense should tell us that no large group of people on our planet could ever reach 97% agreement on anything. Yes anything, including the Earth being round rather than flat or the sun rising in the East rather than West, or even the Earth’s gravitational pull.

Simple proof of this erroneous talking point is provided by the Global Warming Petition Project at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in 2015. They obtained signatures on a Declaration from 31,478 American scientists, including 9,021 with Ph.D.s that stated they did not believe man kind had a significant impact on his climate. The declaration included the words: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human releases of carbon dioxide methane or other greenhouse gases are causing or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environment of the Earth.”

They made all the names available in a paper back book.It is rather doubtful that these people all comprise the 3% of non believers.

We do not doubt there are many scientists who do believe that man plays a major role in the determination of his climate. However, among the unsuspecting public who do not stop to consider what we are saying, the near universal comment of “the 97%” has done a lot of damage. It leads to poor anti fossil fuel legislation in states all across the nation. It leads to some states embracing the Paris Accord which would redistribute $3 trillion of American dollars to nations who use little fossil fuel. These American states could have none but zero impact on the planets thermometer but they can and will damage their state’s economy and their citizens standard of living.

The fraudulent 97% consensus is clearly a marketing ploy. What makes science different from religion is that only empirical evidence matters not opinion. Consensus does not matter at all in science.

It is not unique in science for incorrect views to hold forth for decades if not centuries before the crowds are turned back by incontrovertible evidence. Medical history is full of the minorities trying to make surgery safer by the simple effort of hand washing. Ulcers were long thought to be a result of type “A” personalities rather than requiring a specific bacteria to allow their development. Einstein himself fought an uphill battle with his theory of relativity. When 100 German scientists collaborated on a consensus to defeat him he said famously “If I were wrong one would have been enough”.

Give some thought to what we are saying next time you are confronted with this dangerous absurdity, which will likely be tomorrow.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Climate Cult

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission.

Hot Energy & Environmental News: Trump right on Wind Turbine Noise Causes Cancer, The Green New Deal & More…

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Our latest edition of: Energy and Environmental Newsletter is now online.

President Trump caused quite a stir in a recent speech when he said that wind turbine noise could cause cancer. Of course the press immediately attacked him as being ignorant, dishonest, anti-wind, etc.  Since I wasn’t sure about the facts, I decided to look into it and to talk to some experts. The conclusion is that there is good scientific evidence that he is right! (Note: any competent, honest journalist could have found what I discovered online.)

Since there is such a diversity of interesting newsworthy articles, I’m subdividing them into several categories:

Energy —

The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking

Global Warming (AGW) —

The Slow Walk to Silent Surrender

Misc (Education, Science, etc.) —

Why I Don’t “Believe” in “Science”

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone. Some documents (e.g. PDFs) are easier to read on a computer. We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc. to minimize issues.

Note 2: Our intention is to put some balance into what most people see from the mainstream media about energy and environmental issues… As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens, and link to this on your social media sites. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off this list, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 3: This Newsletter is intended to supplement the material on our website, WiseEnergy.org. The most important page there is the Winning page.

Note 4: I am not an attorney, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or our WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent licensed attorney when you are involved with legal issues.

The “Green” Whitehouse Agenda: The Enemies List

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The “Green Whitehouse” Agenda (full series)
The Enemies List | Green Pays | Sheldon’s Endgame

Summary: Americans are accustomed to politicians saying one thing and doing another. But arguments about the funding behind think tanks and advocacy organizations are perhaps the most one-sided of the recurring debates on Capitol Hill. Few are as outspoken on the issue as Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The wrinkle? Senator Whitehouse has a prolific portfolio of stocks that oddly aligns with industries he oversees.

Dealing with Our Political Enemies

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is a supporter of socialist New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND). A radical environmental/economic fantasy that proposes to tear up and rebuild the U.S. economy over a ten-year period, the GND price tag, according to a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, will check in at between $51 trillion and $93 trillion. The high-side estimate roughly equals the combined annual economic output of . . . Earth.

Sen. Whitehouse disputes the characterization that this is a “radical” proposal, telling Salon in February that the true radicals are the “misbehaving” Republicans deluded by their “fossil fuel funding.”

This is one of many examples where there’s an ironic (less charitably, we might say “hypocritical”) twist in the character of one of the nation’s most influential left-wing politicians. Whether he’s trying to turn a climate policy disagreement into a federal racketeering lawsuit, or sheepishly dodging responsibility when his money and his mouth seem to be running in different directions, Whitehouse can be relied upon to replace accountability with accusations, and to wield his power and privilege in the service of gaining more of both.

Whitehouse has been berating the energy industry since 2007 and is arguably the Senate’s most accomplished practitioner of climate panic. In a 2008 news release, he denounced the oil industry for its “obscene” profits and doing “little to invest in the alternative energy technologies that will help end our dependence on fossil fuels.” In an October 2009 floor speech pitching a “clean energy” proposal he warned his colleagues not to “sit idle” and be “beguiled by the money and spin of polluting industries.”

But as he was talking, Whitehouse owned between $250,000 and $800,000 in ten different oil and gas industry stocks. This is according to his 2008 financial disclosure forms, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics (the forms record a range of value for each investment, not a specific value). Giant oil and gas exploration and servicing firms, such as Devon Energy and Schlumberger Ltd, were two of his largest energy industry holdings.

For 2009, CRP reported his energy industry stock holdings at between $145,000 and $475,000.

So, while denouncing the energy company profits and preaching to the Senate about avoiding the beguiling money of the so-called “polluting industries,” his personal financial stake in “beguiling pollution” reportedly fell somewhere between “more than the value of most people’s homes” and “more than the total net worth of most Americans.”

This state of affairs seemed to hold until at least 2014, when he reported selling his stake in Schlumberger. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same year GoLocalProv, a news service in Providence, Rhode Island, began looking into whether Whitehouse’s investments squared with this ideology. In December 2014 they posted a report showing Whitehouse owned between $15,000 and $50,000 in Duke Energy (a large, coal-burning electric utility) as recently as the end of 2012.

Noting Whitehouse had (at that point) delivered “80 floor speeches about the adverse impact of global warming,” GoLocalProv speculated about the “conflict” between the politician’s “economic interests” and his “environmental pronouncements.”

Whitehouse usually escapes such media scrutiny. His complicated history with energy investments wasn’t mentioned in a March 2019 report in Roll Call, which gave critical examination to three Republican U.S. House members on a newly-formed “Select Committee on the Climate Crisis” because of their “personal investment in fossil fuel companies.” One of the three, Congressman Gary Palmer (R—Alabama), was questioned by the reporter due to his owning just $1,000 to $15,000 in each of three energy firms. This means Palmer’s total “personal investment” could be as small as the price of a cheap used car ($3,000) – hardly enough to motivate the congressman to become a cartoonish climate villain.

A Whitehouse staffer wouldn’t fess up to the specific details regarding what the boss owned and when, but tried to explain that it had been taken care of, saying “the Senator divested his investments from fossil fuels during the past couple of years” and “feels strongly about his work on environmental issues.”

Maybe critics should go easy on him: His heart’s in the right place, even if his wallet is still trying to catch up.

But where Whitehouse has been very generously willing to excuse his own complicity, while literally being an owner of the fossil fuel industry, he thinks the industry itself needs a knock on the door from the FBI.

Writing in the Washington Post in 2015, he proposed using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against energy companies that disagree with his climate policy agenda. A year later, during a March 2016 hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he asked then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch what the Department of Justice thought of this.

The stunning reply from President Obama’s top cop: “This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on.”

Richard Nixon analogies should be used sparingly but are sometimes too on-point to ignore. An infamous 1971 White House memo, titled “Dealing with our Political Enemies,” summarized what became known as Nixon’s “enemies list”—a plot to inflict IRS audits and other federal harassments on people whose only offense was disagreeing with a powerful politician.

“This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration,” wrote Nixon Administration lawyer John Dean. “Stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Almost five decades later, Sheldon Whitehouse seems to be using the Nixon White House as a role model. And the next time he gets friendly climate cultists in the White House willing to listen to him, he won’t just be coming after the companies who keep the economy humming with low-cost energy, but anyone who speaks up to defend the good work they’re doing.

He’s tried it already.

In July 2016, just a few months after Lynch assured him the FBI was taking him seriously, Whitehouse and 18 other Democratic senators (including former and current minority leaders Harry Reid of Nevada and Chuck Schumer of New York) spent two days on the floor of the Senate denouncing dozens of free enterprise policy organizations that disagree with Whitehouse’s environmental extremism. Special times were reserved for verbal lashings directed at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many others Whitehouse has elsewhere referred to as part of a “corrupt monster.”

Few relevant friends of the free market were excluded from this attack. In a joint letter responding to the assault, some of the think tanks denounced the creation of the “enemies list” by Whitehouse and the others, calling the Senators “tyrants” who were using their offices to “to bully and single out groups to blame rather than ideas to debate.”

In the next installment of The “Green” Whitehouse Agenda, learn how deep-pocketed environmentalist groups help support their man in the Senate.

COLUMN BY

Ken Braun

Ken Braun is CRC’s senior investigative researcher and authors profiles for InfluenceWatch.org and the Capital Research magazine. He previously worked for several free market policy organizations, spent six… + MORE BY KEN BRAUN.

EDITORS NOTE: This Capital Research Center column is republished with permission.

Indoctrinating Kids and Using Them as Props: Judge tosses kids’ lawsuit against Trump climate policies

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Rejecting a claim by Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council and attorneys representing two Pennsylvania school boys that people have a constitutionally guaranteed due process right to a “life-sustaining climate,” a federal Judge has dismissed a bizarre legal case challenging the Trump administration’s climate policies.

In his Fen. 19 decision, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Diamond said the plaintiffs lacked standing. And in dismissing the case, Clean Air Council v. United States, Judge Diamond granted the request by President Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, and other administration officials.

The case dates to November 2017 when the two boys, aged 7 and 11 at the time, attributed their respective ailments, severe allergies and asthma, to Trump administration policies rolling back Obama-era climate initiatives. Judge Diamond showed little patience with plaintiffs willing to clog up an already overburdened court system with an issue that was best dealt with outside the judicial sphere.

“A Policy Debate Best Left to the Political Process”

“Plaintiffs’ disagreement with the defendants is a policy debate best left to the political process,” Diamond wrote. “Because I have neither the authority nor the inclination to assume control of the Executive Branch, I will grant defendants’ motion.” Diamond scoffed at what he interpreted as a request by the plaintiffs that he “supervise any action that the President and his appointees take that might touch on ‘the environment.’”

Judge Diamond was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004.

Joseph Otis Minott, the Clean Air Council’s executive director and chief counsel, was defiant in defeat, claiming in a statement that Trump administration policies “are increasing U.S. contribution to climate change … and violating our constitutional rights.

Diamond Rebukes Judge in Controversial Oregon Ruling

As reported by Environment & Climate News (March 25), Judge Diamond did more than just dismiss Minott’s claims in the Pennsylvania case. He took the extraordinary step of rebuking U.S. District Court of Oregon Judge Ann Aiken for her ruling in Juliana v. United States, which involved 21 children suing the federal government over climate change. When Aiken ordered the lawsuit to trial in 2016, she said “the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” As pointed out by Climate Liability News (Feb. 20), Aiken’s ruling that the young plaintiffs had a Constitutional right to a livable climate was the first such ruling by a U.S. judge.

Pointing out that Aiken’s ruling is at odds with previous court decisions, Diamond wrote that “the Julianna Court certainly contravened or ignored longstanding precedent.” He added that guaranteeing a stable climate would be “apparently without limit.”

Diamond also took issue with the notion that the judiciary has a role in climate policy and criticized Aiken’s public trust claims in Juliana, saying it was an incorrect expansion of that doctrine beyond the traditional concept governing navigable waters.

“Plaintiffs seek to create an entirely new doctrine – investing the Federal Government with an affirmative duty to protect all land and resources within the United States,” Diamond wrote. “The Julianna Court alone has recognized this new doctrine. Again, the Court’s reasoning is less than persuasive.”

“Noble Lie on Steroids”

Christopher Horner, an attorney and senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is pleased that Judge Diamond singled out Judge Aiken’s Oregon ruling.

“The federal court in Pennsylvania threw the suit out and in the process was fairly direct in criticizing the Oregon judge’s activism in supporting the demand for a climate plan ‘without apparent limit,’” which if you know anything about the issue is the most alarming aspect – not even the most extreme treaties purport a detectable impact on climate even if you accept their fairly well-debunked assumptions,” Horner told Environment & Climate News. “Such a ruling would offer the ruling class a bottomless well of authority usurpation of liberty and suffering in the name of something it actually would not affect. It is the Noble Lie on steroids, possibly the most Noble Lie ever perpetrated.”

“Even if you accept arguendo the alarmists’ model assumptions, the U.S. disappearing would make no difference, with our sacrifice swamped by increases in the developing world,” he added. “Take into account their alarmist scenarios are proved wrong, and this is just a political prescription, not anything to do with climate. Climate is an excuse to abandon our democratic process of separation of powers, and not a very good one.”

In both the Pennsylvania and Oregon cases, children were recruited as plaintiffs to serve the agenda of climate alarmists. Seeing this for the exploitation that it clearly is, Judge Diamond took the trouble to lambaste Judge Aiken’s judicial recklessness in allowing the political ploy to serve as the basis of a far-reaching court decision.

COLUMN BY

BONNER R. COHEN, PH.D.

Bonner R. Cohen, PH. D. is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Sources.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-lawsuit/u-s-judge-dismisses-boys-lawsuit-against-trump-climate-rollbacks-idUSKCN1Q925A

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/02/20/pennsylvania-kids-climate-case/

RELATED ARTICLE: Winning the future begins with children of the present

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission.

Plastic Bag Bans Won’t Help the Environment, But They’ll Cause More Foodborne Illnesses

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Plastic bags are less than one percent of all litter.

New York lawmakers have followed California’s lead and decided to ban grocery stores from giving customers plastic bags. They hope shoppers will use their own cloth bags instead. This ban on plastic bags will harm shoppers in multiple ways.

As Daniel Frank sarcastically notes, “Reusable tote bags” can “cause food poisoning but at least they’re worse for the environment than plastic bags.” He cites Jon Passantino of BuzzFeed News, who observes, “Those cotton tote bags that are so trendy right now have to be used *131 times* before it has a smaller climate impact than a plastic bag used only once.” Yet, there are progressives who want to ban plastic grocery bags in favor of reusable cloth bags.

Plastic bags are less than one percent of all litter. Moreover, alternatives like cloth and paper bags are in many cases worse for the environment than plastic bags, and far worse for public health. That was illustrated by a 2011 legal settlement between plastic bag makers and an importer of reusable bags, ChicoBag. The plastic bag makers sued ChicoBag for its use of false claims about the recycling rate and environmental impacts of plastic grocery bags in its promotional materials. (Those false claims are also the basis for municipal bans and taxes on plastic bags.)

Under that settlement, ChicoBag was required to discontinue its use of its counterfeit EPA website and make corrections to its deceptive marketing claims, which had included sharing falsified government documents with schoolchildren. It was also required to disclose to consumers on its website that reusable bags, in fact, need to be washed.

Reusable bags “are a breeding ground for bacteria and pose public health risks — food poisoning, skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections,” noted a 2009 report.  Harmful bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and fecal coliform thrive in reusable bags unless they are washed after each use, according to an August 2011 peer-reviewed study, “Assessment of the Potential for Cross-contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags.”

Among the inaccurate claims that ChicoBag could no longer make after the settlement is one that contrasted the environmental impact of plastic versus reusable bags. Contrary to ChicoBag’s previous claims, a study done for the U.K. Environmental Agency showed it would take 7.5 years of using the same cloth bag (393 uses, assuming one grocery trip per week) to make it a better option than a plastic bag reused three times. See “Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags,” Executive Summary, 2nd page.

As an earlier report on the subject noted (see p. 60):

[A]ny decision to ban traditional polyethylene plastic grocery bags in favor of bags made from alternative materials (compostable plastic or recycled paper) will be counterproductive and result in a significant increase in environmental impacts across a number of categories from global warming effects to the use of precious potable water resources. … [T]he standard polyethylene grocery bag has significantly lower environmental impacts than a 30% recycled content paper bag and a compostable plastic bag.

cotton bag has a greater [harmful environmental] impact than the conventional [plastic] bag in seven of the nine impact categories even when used 173 times. … The impact was considerably larger in categories such as acidification and aquatic & terrestrial ecotoxicity due to the energy used to produce cotton yarn and the fertilisers used during the growth of the cotton (see p. 60).

Similarly,

Starch-polyester blend bags have a higher global warming potential and abiotic depletion than conventional polymer bags, due both to the increased weight of material in a bag and higher material production impacts (see Executive Summary).

As Environmental Protection noted in 2010:

Reusable grocery bags can serve as a breeding ground for dangerous food-borne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health, according to a joint food safety research report issued by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University. The study — which randomly tested reusable grocery bags carried by shoppers in the Los Angeles area, San Francisco, and Tucson, Ariz. — also found consumers were almost completely unaware of the need to regularly wash their bags.

“Our findings suggest a serious threat to public health, especially from coliform bacteria including E. coli, which were detected in half the bags sampled,” said Charles Gerba, Ph.D., a University of Arizona environmental microbiology professor and co-author of the study. “Furthermore, consumers are alarmingly unaware of these risks and the critical need to sanitize their bags after every use.” The bacteria levels found in reusable bags were significant enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even lead to death — a particular danger for young children, who are especially vulnerable to food-borne illnesses, he said.

The study also found that awareness of potential risks was very low. A full 97 percent of those interviewed have never washed or bleached their reusable bags, said Gerba, who added that thorough washing kills nearly all bacteria that accumulate in reusable bags.

Plastic bags are “less than 0.5% of the litter stream,” according to the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. That low percentage is confirmed by EPA data. (See, e.g., EPA, Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2009 Facts and Figures, p. 53, showing that the entire category of plastic sacks, wraps, and bags—including trash bags as well as grocery bags—together account for only a little over one percent of all municipal solid waste, and only a small fraction of overall plastics.)

This article is republished with permission from Liberty Unyielding. 

COLUMN BY

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission.

This Veteran, Who Supplied Water to Firefighters, Went to Prison for Digging Ponds [Video]

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An elderly veteran who ran a business supplying water to fight forest fires was prosecuted by the federal government and sent to prison for digging ponds on his own property, one of his lawyers says.

Joe Robertson, a Navy veteran from Montana, was 78 when he was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks.

His crime?

Robertson, whose business supplied water trucks to Montana firefighters, dug a series of small ponds close to his home in 2013 and 2014. The site was a wooded area near a channel, a foot wide and a foot deep, with two to three garden hoses’ worth of flow, according to court documents.

The U.S. government prosecuted Robertson for digging in proximity to “navigable waters” without a permit, a violation of the Clean Water Act administered by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Tony Francois, a senior attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit, public interest law firm specializing in property rights, described the events leading up to Robertson’s prosecution during a panel discussion Monday at The Heritage Foundation.

Also on the panel was Kevin Pierce, vice president of Hawkes Co., a Minnesota-based family business that harvests peat for golf course greens. Daren Bakst, Heritage’s senior research fellow for agriculture policy, was moderator of the event, called “Horror Stories of EPA and Corps Overreach under the Clean Water Act.”

Pacific Legal Foundation filed a petition on behalf of Robertson, asking the Supreme Court to review his case, which turns on the definition of “navigable waters.”

The Navy veteran argued that he didn’t violate the Clean Water Act because
digging the ponds did not discharge any soil to navigable waters, since the trickle in the channel didn’t constitute navigable waters.

The largest navigable body of water anywhere near the Robertson home is more than 40 miles away, Francois said.

Because Robertson lived in a wooded area that is “increasingly fire prone,” he was “concerned about the safety and vulnerability of his property,” Francois said. He built the ponds “with a view toward being well-prepared should a fire strike.”

The Supreme Court is expected to decide in April whether it will hear Robertson’s appeal.

Robertson, sentenced in 2016, completed his 18 months behind bars in late 2017.

He was still on parole for the next 20 months when he died March 18 at age 80 of natural causes, according to his widow.

Pacific Legal Foundation filed papers this week to substitute Robertson’s widow, Carri Robertson, as the petitioner in the appeal to the Supreme Court.

Another case Francois cited concerns a proposed road in Marquette County, Michigan. The project, known as CR-595, would shorten the travel time between a nickel mine and a refinery 22 miles away.

The only route now available to the mine, called Eagle Mine, is three times as long, Francois said. The nickel mine, currently the only one in the U.S., is expected to bring about $4 billion in economic activity to the county, according to Pacific Legal Foundation.

The Marquette County Road Commission’s CR-595 proposal called for  a direct road from the mine to a refinery.

“The new route would bypass the city of Marquette altogether, eliminate nearly 30 miles of travel per trip, a million and a half miles annually, as well as save 500,000 gallons of fuel per year,” Francois said.

Since the proposed route goes through wetlands, however, the road commission sought a wetlands permit under the Clean Water Act. The state approved the permit, but the EPA rejected it.

“The final version [of the commission’s planned route] proposed to protect 63 acres of wetlands for every acre the road project would disturb,” Francois said. “But the EPA continued to object to CR 595 because in their view the commission still had not provided adequate plans to minimize impacts, and that its 63-1 mitigation ratio was not a comprehensive mitigation plan that would sufficiently compensate for unavoidable impacts.”

The EPA vetoed the commission’s plan and the Supreme Court declined a petition from Pacific Legal Foundation to review that decision.

Pacific Legal Foundation also represented Hawkes Co. in a 2016 case before the high court. In a 8-0 decision, the justices ruled that landowners have a right to challenge wetland determinations made by federal agencies.

Pierce, the Hawkes Co. official, described a difficult and arduous process to prevail over opposition from the Army Corps of Engineers to secure a permit allowing the company to expand on a 200-acre peat mining site. The company began the application process in 2006.

“I really don’t like how it worked. No. 1, there was a lot of fabrication from the Corps people, Pierce said at the Heritage event, adding:

They actually went to the landowner that we had the option to buy the land with. They sent two people up from St. Paul to his house for two and half hours for a meeting to try to convince him to sell the real estate to someone else, while we got $200,000 already invested in a permit application.

And they gave names and numbers of people who would buy it for preservation to sell it out from under us. Well knowing that we had options to buy and contracts with that landowner, which then forced us to have to buy the land seven years before we got our permit and had to follow through on it.

When I confronted them about it, they literally lied to me and said, ‘We didn’t know you had a permit or an option to buy.’ But then later in the conversation, they say, ‘Well, we thought it ran out.’

Congress initially passed the Clean Water Act in 1948, but lawmakers greatly altered and expanded it into the current form with amendments in 1972.

The law “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters,” according to the EPA’s website.

Under the 1972 amendments, it is illegal to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters without a permit from the EPA. The Corps oversees the permitting process and shares enforcement authority with the EPA.

In 2015, the Obama administration implemented its Clean Water Rule, widely known as the Waters of the United States rule or WOTUS rule, which expanded the regulatory reach of the EPA and the Corps over bodies of water throughout the country.

The Trump administration has taken steps to withdraw the Obama administration’s rule and replace it with a new one that limits the regulatory reach of federal agencies.

Although Heritage’s Bakst said he approves of the Trump administration’s efforts, he has argued that it ultimately falls to Congress to clarify what waterways are subject to EPA regulations.

The Daily Signal sought comment for this report from both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We cannot comment on ongoing litigation even as it pertains to actions of the previous administration,” EPA spokesman James Hewitt said in an email. “However, EPA is moving forward with a replacement WOTUS rule to ensure farmers and ranchers have more certainty when it comes to federal jurisdiction over waters.”

A Corps spokesman said in an email that it would not comment on the Robertson case since it is still active and has nothing to add to the Hawkes case beyond what is already “a matter of public record.”

COLUMN BY

Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kevin. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC

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VIDEO: The Democrat’s Green No-Deal. They Lied!

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed a vote on H.Res. 109 Green New Deal co-sponsored by Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA). After the vote where no Senator voted for the bill, while all the Democrats voted “present” Senator McConnell posted this video.

The Democrats can’t bring themselves to even vote for it.

The Green New Deal is a hoax.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pelosi Introduces New Climate Bill One Day After Green New Deal Collapsed