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Someday our descendants will look back on the Age of Climate Change and marvel how a civilization with so much wealth, scientific knowledge, and sophisticated technologies could have willfully wrecked their economies and plunged themselves into poverty or extinction.
More astonishing to them, this civilizational suicide had been based on an unproven hypothesis like Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming––the idea that human-produced atmospheric CO2 emissions would destroy their civilization unless fossil fuels, the cheap, abundant energy that created the modern world, were abandoned.
Moreover, the portents of that future apocalypse are relentlessly multiplying across the rich Western nations, despite the ever-growing evidence that the hypothesis radically simplifies how a complex global climate works over space and time. More troubling, the proposed solution for lowering emissions enough to stave off the alleged disaster cannot be realized by eliminating fossil-fuels.
Thankfully, the election of Donald Trump offers hope that the suicidal “renewable” energy programs and policies will be rolled back.
For now, resistance to the zero net carbon narrative is growing. Even at the U.N.’s grand climate powwow held in Dubai in January, the UAE’s Minister of Industry, Dr. Sultan Al-Jaber, made the classic gaffe of speaking that truth out loud in front of the conclave of true believers. The Paris Accords’ goal to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 was a chimera: “‘There is no science out there, or no scenario out there that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5,’ Al-Jaber said at an online event on Nov. 21, “adding a pointed barb to the hosts that it would be impossible to stop burning fossil fuels and sustain economic development, ‘unless you want to take the world back into caves.’”
And if a government minister is an untrustworthy witness, listen to MIT professor of atmospheric science Richard Lindzen, and Princeton emeritus professor of physics William Happer, who wrote in 2021, “We are both scientists who can attest that the research literature does not support the claim of a climate emergency. Nor will there be one. None of the lurid predictions — dangerously accelerating sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather, more deadly forest fires, unprecedented warming, etc. — are any more accurate than the fire-and-brimstone sermons used to stoke fanaticism in medieval crusaders.”
But despite numerous other exposures of how dubious the science is, the Western nations continue to double-down on transitioning to “clean energy,” mostly by phasing out gas-powered automobiles and mandating they be replaced by electric vehicles through taxpayer-funded subsidies and draconian government regulations.
This distortion of the free market enriches a few green corporate rent-seekers, at the expense of consumers who have to pay more for electricity, gasoline, or the gas-powered automobiles they prefer to EVs dependent on intermittent energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines. Meanwhile, the higher costs for energy harms the whole economy, especially the automobile industry.
Just look at the straits that some of the world’s largest economies have put themselves in by pursuing net zero use of carbon. Great Britain, the seventh biggest economy in the world, “is killing its auto industry,” as the Wall Street Journal’s headline reads. Automaker Stellantis is closing a plant, at the cost of 1100 jobs. America’s Ford is shedding 800 at its British plant, and Nissan has warned the government that it also might scale back production.
Why? “The culprit,” the Journal writes, “as always these days, is the forced political march to electric vehicles. Britain requires manufacturers to steadily boost the proportion of EVs in their annual sales. Currently the quota is 22% and rising every year. Rishi Sunak’s Tory administration tried to push the final phase-out of new internal-combustion cars to 2035, but the new Labour Party government vows to bring the deadline back to 2030. Even the current quota is proving impossible to meet as consumers spurn EVs.”
An economy managed by government fiat, as the U.S.S.R. and every socialist country have shown, in the end will fail and drag the people’s wealth down with it. And bribing customers and manufacturers to purchase and build an unwanted product further burdens a nation’s fisc with more debt and misallocated resources. In the U.K., “The total cost to manufacturers of the mandate has hit nearly £6 billion this year, SMMT estimates: about £4 billion in discounts and sales incentives car companies offered to boost EV sales, and £1.8 in outright fines for each ‘excess’ internal-combustion car sold.”
Britain is just one of several European economies that are falling deeper and deeper into the “renewable energy” rabbit hole. In Germany, Volkswagen has been forced to shut down three factories at the cost of 10,000 jobs. And the U.S. during the Biden administration also took the country on a “renewable energy” and net-zero carbon bender as well. True to its status as the bellwether of every lefty lunatic fad, California under its failed governor is binging on the same toxic “global warming” brew, driving its economy and citizens towards a fiscal cliff.
Under the aegis of “climate action,” Governor Gavin Newsom, as the Wall Street Journal reports, and the Democrat-controlled state government have targeted two critical industries for California’s economy comprising “a perfect storm of laws, regulations and lawsuits designed to eliminate oil and farming.” But that’s not all: “Every essential foundation of a healthy, affordable economy is under attack. But rather than acknowledge this storm, California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing everything in his power to make it worse.”
Key to this assault is the unholy grail of net-zero carbon emissions, supported by billions in subsidies for “renewable” energy, and regulatory attacks on fossil fuel energy. “As a result, California’s households and businesses pay for the most expensive electricity and gasoline in the lower 48 states. It’s all for nothing. California still relies on oil and gas for 80% of its energy, a reliance on fossil fuel that is the same as the national average.”
That astonishing paradox of trying to get rid of the energy resources that provide 80% not just of the U.S.’s energy, but the whole world’s, is powerful evidence of how unscientific and incoherent the whole net-zero carbon pursuit is. Moreover, what reductions of carbon emissions that have already occurred result not from pie-in-the-sky expensive mandates or bribes to consumers and manufacturers to buy and produce electric cars, but from the development of shale fracking, which produces cleaner natural gas for generating electricity.
But that’s not all: California is “sitting on tens of trillions of cubic feet of reserves” of natural gas. “California used to produce 60% of the oil it consumed, but despite reserves estimated as high as 30 billion barrels, in-state production is down to 23% of consumption.”
As the Journal concludes, “These are the consequences of a state run by rent-seeking renewable-energy firms and the environmentalist fanatics that offer them political cover. Mr. Newsom’s climate action is hitting every industry and every household.”
Finally, these feckless “renewable energy” policies are damaging economies most of which are already confronting huge loads of debt, amassed over the years to pay for entitlement transfers that few politicians dare to pare back and reform. These costs also make financing the West’s military preparedness more difficult, exposing us to our enemies’ adventurism.
Adding the expense of discarding cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy––and the difficult, if not impossible, task of replacing carbon energy with “clean energy” and electric cars, for which there are nowhere near enough transmission lines, charging stations, and high-capacity battery storage––make our fiscal straits dire to the point of being suicidal. For as economist Herbert Stein famously said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
That’s especially true in our case, given our geopolitical rivals like China and Russia, who want to usurp the West’s preeminent role in global affairs. The former is perfectly happy to burn tons of dirty coal to generate electricity; while the latter sits on the world’s 8th largest oil reserves. Both are ruled by ruthless realists, and care nothing for our romantic environmentalism, and are immune to our arrogant virtue-signaling.
Thankfully, the election of Donald Trump offers hope that the suicidal “renewable” energy programs and policies will be rolled back. Apocalypse, like decline, is not a destiny but a choice. Trump established his realist climate policy bona fides during his first term, and strengthened them by his cabinet choices so far. By reprising those policy changes and making others, Trump can rein in the suicidal war on fossil fuels, and rev up our production and exports of energy to our allies, reducing Iran and Russia’s geopolitical leverage.
That’s how we can make the West––the freest and wealthiest civilization in history––great again.
Spurwing Plover says
Many Hard Line Eco-Freaks(Deep Ecologists)would just like it if Humans went the way of the Dodo and Go Extinct In fact Dooms day Cultists Paul Ehrlich(The Population Bomb) wants Americans to be sterilized in our Food and Drink
Louis Filaccio says
None of the AI results will agree with you. They’ll say you are a denier or there’s already scientific consensus. All the so called debunkers are using inaccurate, misinterpreted or misleading information. I read Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger. He was once an environmental activist from the San Francisco area. He did his research and found it all to be BS. Just switching to crappy fertilizer brought down the Sri Lanka gov’t, yet they still double down on it. Africa take the money and the gorillas are still dying because people are resorting to using charcoal to cook.
Madame DeFarge says
The question arises about how can we ever re-educate those that need to be propagandized by this chimera? Their lives are dependent on this fantasy. They are not intellectually acute enough (or too lazy) to review the situation and concede their errors.
The politicians rake in the cash so they will not change. It appears that we are stuck in a rut of a deteriorating society. They will not save the whales or the raptors, what other weapons have we?
rj says
Hopefully Britain and Germany will follow Trumps lead and end the reign of these greedy, power craven screwballs. They really aren’t screwballs tho it’s all in their plan to destroy democracy.
Mo de Profit says
Britain’s Liebour Party follow President Trump?
Not a chance, they, along with the whole of the EU are following the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals and implementing Agenda 2030 which openly calls for depopulation of the west.
Defund the UN & NATO now.
Gordon says
I know women who will buy dish soap for the sole reason that it says “new green packaging” on the label. As we discovered during the Kung Flu, we are surrounded by imbeciles.
Rob A says
And that’s just the way the left likes it. They measure success in the number of morons they can produce. You can sell imbeciles the contents of their own purses and wallets and they would think they’re getting a deal! They’re the lubricant that greases the skids of the democrat party, Without imbeciles, the democrat party would not exist!
Proof? Joe Biden and for that matter, Barack Obama!! The fact that those two mutts got elected is compelling proof that America has a serious imbecile problem that must be addressed sooner rather than later!
Snuffy Carter says
and the founding fathers warned us of this when they said that our Constitution will only work for an educated and moral population.
Frederick says
It is the Global Elites who are driving this entire hoax! Of course, their intent is to destroy civilization so it can be re-made with them as our rulers and overlords.
Steve Kardas says
The key point here that all us little people must understand is that the powerful, wealthy and elite will not be affected in the slightest by the policies and misery they force on us.
Snuffy Carter says
Gov. Newsom: “you mean like, during covid, when I went to restaurants that were closed to everyone else; wore no mask and sat elbow to elbow rather than six feet apart – yep, I guess you’re right – I wasn’t affected in the slightest by my own policies.”
John XY says
“Civilizational suicide”? I’m not so sure. All the damage comes from the left, and their primary backers in the Communist world, particularly Red China. They have no interest in dying with the rest of us; they get to burn all the dirty coal they want. This is about as much suicide as the Jonestown Massacre. Jones was also Marxist and he and his henchmen and women forced the Flavor Aid down the throats of 900 unwilling men women and children. There was more murder than suicide there.
Nearly every Democrat and some Republicans in Congress are in deep thrall to China … to the tune of tens of millions of bribery money. Nobody wants their dαmn electric vehicles that have no range, take hours to fill up, and catch fire in their garages.
Europe may already be dead, but it is the same there as here. It’s not suicide.
This is cold blooded mass murder.
MuggsSpongedice says
Monday this week, I drove across the desert in California to Arizona. No man’s land. The Outback of USA.
Better make sure your gas tank is full enough between stations.
No charging stations along the way.
I saw only one Tesla which surprised me.
The driver was pushing it and I wondered how fast the driver was depleting the charge on the vehicle at a high rate of speed gasoline powered vernicles can sustain?
Just as I thought that, the driver merged to the right lanes for slower traffic.
EV’s are great in metropolitan to suburban areas.
Open highways are gambles for EV drivers.
Pete Buttedge had $7.5 billion to build charging stations across USA. How many charging stations were built?
78.
Yet another treasonous RICO money laundering Ponzi schemes!
The Biden administration spent $7.5 billion to build eight electric vehicle charging stations.
Equal opportunity is wonderful in ethics and standards and is the grift of the BS to get ‘activists’ to get these grants that never and rarely go to the intent of the BS gaslighting slight of hand diversion.
Treasonous RICO!
Snuffy Carter says
Rump Ranger Pete: “hey, I was on maternity leave most of the time breast feeding my baby – I thought I would be around for a 2nd term if Harris won – I was going to build those charging stations then – see, as a liberal, I had good intentions – and that’s more important than actual results! hee hee hee!”
Larry says
EVs are not much good in extreme temperatures.
In winter they die because they discharge too rapidly, and in summer they don’t put out as much power, therefore you have to push them harder for the same speeds, and they die because they’ve discharged too rapidly.
Same end result, just from different causes.
Justin Swingle says
WAS IT ALL ABOUT CRONY CAPITALISM???
]
The myth of an independent Justice Department
By Jack Hellner
The Justice Department, under Garland, has clearly done what the boss ordered.
The green energy kickbacks have always been a massive scam, a way for Democrats, especially under Joe Biden and Barack Obama, to dole out huge amounts of our money to political supporters. There is zero evidence that this spending will change temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity, which is what they pretend, yet they funnel tax dollars to their political allies nonetheless.
Now we see a rush by the Justice Department to drop a case of obvious corruption on solar energy kickbacks. They can’t allow the people to see the truth. The following article details the pure corruption that the Biden administration is seeking to cover-up, This green fraud is clearly only the tip of the iceberg.
Exclusive — Crescent Dunes: Biden DOJ Moved on Election Night to Cover Up Alleged Solar Energy Scandal that Cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Millions
Justin Swingle says
FOLLOW THE MONEY AND YOU’RE LIKELY TO FIND A BIG DEM DONOR!
Biden Administration to Loan $6.6B to EV Maker Rivian to Build Georgia Factory That Automaker Paused
The Associated Press
26 Nov 2024
ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Energy will make a $6.6 billion loan to Rivian Automotive to build a factory in Georgia that had stalled as the startup electric vehicle maker struggled to become profitable.
It’s unclear whether the administration can complete the loan before Donald Trump becomes president again in less than two months, or whether the Trump administration might try to claw the money back.
THX 1138 says
There’s no such thing as crony capitalism. That term is simply designed to smear and blame capitalism for the sins of socialism and fascism.
Some of the biggest enemies of the Free Market are businessmen like Mark Zuckerberg. Just because you’re a very rich businessman does not make you a capitalist.
A crony fascist, or a crony socialist, even a crony monarchist, but not a capitalist.
MuggsSpongedice says
There is no editing option after submitting comments – so this one came back like a burp from last night’s pizza.
Monday this week, I drove across the desert in California to Arizona. No man’s land. The Outback of USA.
Better make sure your gas tank is full enough between stations.
No charging stations along the way.
I saw only one Tesla in the midst of no-man’s land, which surprised me.
The driver was pushing it and I wondered how fast the driver was depleting the charge on the vehicle at a high rate of speed gasoline powered vernicles can sustain?
Just as I thought that, the driver merged to the right lanes for slower traffic.
EV’s are great in metropolitan to suburban areas.
Open highways are gambles for EV drivers.
Pete Buttedge had $7.5 billion to build charging stations across USA. How many charging stations were built?
8.
Yet another treasonous RICO money laundering Ponzi schemes!
The Biden administration spent $7.5 billion to build eight electric vehicle charging stations.
Equal opportunity is wonderful in ethics and standards and is the grift of the BS to get ‘activists’ to get these grants that never and rarely go to the intent of the BS gaslighting slight of hand diversion.
Treasonous RICO!
Algorithmic Analyst says
A bazillion for each charging station 🙂
Spurwing Plover says
So just when will all those Eco-Freak Leaders and their Hollywood Supporters all going to go and live in Grass or Mud Huts and quit traveling all over the world leaving behind those Carbon Footprints
Gabrielle says
The universe, the earth and mankind are the creations of G-d Almighty, the one and only intelligent designer!
Man, in his oft evidenced arrogance, seeks to be god and actually concludes, sans corroborating evidence, that many of his fundamental assumptions are correct. Thus implementing “solutions” that create more deleterious results than the so called problem as they originally defined.
These rabid environmentalists are anything but real scientists and they are the purveyors of junk science and chicken little “the sky is falling” fear mongering selling, like the flimflam men of old, snake oil solutions to problems nonexistent in reality or in need of real scientific inquiry!!
As they seem deficient in even remedial biology, geology and other intimately related sciences, their categorical condemnations are finally reaching such absurd levels that common sense is starting to radically impact people and their dictates, knowingly causing more harm than good, are being challenged. As America has awakened, our people are revolting against the environmentalists controls weaponized, like lawfare, designed not to save the environment but to have controls over fundamental resources needed for life.
Whether you believe in an intelligent designer or not, I highly recommend the movie “God of Wonders” available to watch on YouTube. Produced by Christians, I hope you allow yourselves to engage in the absolute beauty and magnificence of creation as a welcome antidote to human arrogance and irrational lunacy! We have similarly tried to replicate from the original designer…but we are not HIM.
Annie45 says
Gabrielle – Good comment. Dr. Thornton discusses green tactics
of the Left such as EVs and elimination of fossil fuels. Which are
meant to enslave us. They have other tactics too like worship of
the ecosystem to affect what we eat, drink and how we live. Gaia
becomes their goddess while real God is made irrelevant.
The Left’s ultimate goal is Transhumanism – changing humans into
human hybrids. The WEF, Klaus Schwab and Yuval Harari tout this
as mankind’s future. There will be an interface of the human brain
controlled by machines and such creatures who are part robotic
and part human. People since time began have lusted to control
and rule over other people. With Transhumanism, they believe
they can become gods over others.
With all of that, it is striking that well into the 21st century Man still
cannot create life out of nothing or non-life. He can rearrange,
manipulate and replicate it – but not create it. Only the higher
consciousness of God our Creator has been able to do that.
Snuffy Carter says
yes. the story of creation in Genesis is the only logical explanation for the beginning of life – atheists have failed to offer any other explanation because the theory of evolution is disproved by the second law of thermodynamics, a scientific fact, not a theory.
Gabrielle says
Annie,
What you say is so true! Cloning an animal is not designing it, using computers to control the human brain does not negate the neshamah (our eternal soul) nor does it relegate the programmers as gods!
It remains to be seen how long before G-d Almighty asserts His ultimate dominion over all of His creation.
Jim says
The fact that they want to ban natural gas, a very clean-burning fossil fuel, tells you that it’s not about the environment, it’s about shutting down the West.
And by the way, I’m still waiting for The Coming Ice Age that literally EVERY SCIENTIST EVERYWHERE warned us about in the 1970s and 1980s.
Snuffy Carter says
yes, that was on the cover of Time magazine back then.
Spurwing Plover says
Eco-Freaks all need to be stranded in the Wilderness and with just the clothes on their backs for a Year
Ron Kelmell says
My entrance into the climate religion came in 1970. We were promised that the Amazon ‘rain forest’ would be gone by year 2000.
An associate just got back from business in South America. He said it took two hours in a jet to fly over a corner of that sacred, doomed forest.
I’ve repented and left that false religion.
Nick says
If the climate zealots really want to save the planet then they should all kill themselves.
Then we will be saved from those idiots.
You can’t change the weather by taxing the sky.
The sun is responsible for climate change, always has always will
The climate has a cycle, every thing has a cycle, the stock market, even women have cycles!
Why are people so stupid?
CharlieSeattle says
Most experts agree that 1,500 ppm is the maximum CO2 level for maximum plant growth, although any CO2 level between 1,000ppm and 1,500ppm will produce greatly improved results. Greenhouse CO2 levels are jacked up to enhance plant growth.
co2. earth/co2-ice-core-data
The average CO2 ppm level the last thousand up till 1841 years averaged approximately 280ppm. Since 1841 CO2 levels have increased to 422ppm in Jan. 2024. That helps plant growth.
Anything below 200ppm starves plant growth! Carbon dioxide is essential to the process of photosynthesis. Most plants grown indoors require a minimum CO2 concentration of 330 ppm to enable them to photosynthesise efficiently and produce energy in the form of carbohydrates. These concentrations of CO2 are enough for plants to grow and develop normally.
Millions of years ago CO2 ppm levels and temperature was much higher. Plants trived! Concentrations of CO 2 in the atmosphere were as high as 4,000 ppm during the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago, and as low as 180 ppm during the Quaternary glaciation of the last two million years. Ice core data does not lie!
Look it up! I just did. Greta Thunberg, Al Gore and Bill Gates are lying leftist frauds!
Industrial CO2 emissions since 1841 likely staved off an Ice Age!
CharlieSeattle says
Challenging Modern Climate Narratives: Forgotten 1937 Aerial Photos Expose Antarctic Anomaly
By UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF SCIENCE JUNE 11, 2024
https://scitechdaily.com/challenging-modern-climate-narratives-forgotten-1937-aerial-photos-expose-antarctic-anomaly/
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have utilized aerial photos from 1937 to analyze the stability and growth of East Antarctica’s ice, revealing that despite some signs of weakening, the ice has remained largely stable over almost a century, enhancing predictions of sea-level rise. Credit: Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø
More About the Study
Out of 2200 images photographed from seaplanes in 1937, 130 were selected for the analysis.
The researchers combined the historical photos with modern satellite data to create 3D reconstructions of the glaciers.
The Norwegian aerial images were supplemented with 165 aerial images of the same glaciers from Australian surveys conducted between 1950 and 1974. This allowed the researchers to examine the evolution of the glaciers over different periods and calculate historical ice flow speeds for selected glaciers.
Compared to modern data, the ice flow speeds are unchanged. While some glaciers have thinned over shorter intermediate periods of 10-20 years, they have remained stable or grown slightly in the long term, indicating a system in balance.
jcr says
WHY am I being TAXED to subsidize a car that that costs as much as my annual retirement income?
I am being taxed so someone earning $200K+ can drive around in an “e-” car.
A car that is “emissionless” only when moving. So “they” say.
Something needs to provide the electricity. And that is not pollution free. Let alone mining lithium, cobalt or copper.
Can anyone say “Solyndra?”
Robb G says
Sadly, this is the result of our educational institutions not teaching critical thinking and science. It’s all about feeling and not logic.
Rafe Champion says
A warning from The Energy Realists of Australia
Around the Western world, subsidised and mandated wind and solar power have been displacing conventional power in the electricity supply. Consequently, most of the grids in the west are moving towards a tipping point where the lights will flicker at nights when the wind is low. This is a “frog in the saucepan” effect and it only starts to worry people until it is too late. Too late for Britain and Germany certainly.
Consider the ABC of intermittent energy generation.
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of RE is broken on nights with little or no wind.
C. There is no feasible or affordable large-scale storage to bridge the gaps.
Therefor the green transition is impossible with current storage technology.
The rate of progress towards the tipping point will accelerate as demand is swelled by AI and electrification at large.
In Australia, the transition to unreliable wind and solar power has just hit the wall, while Britain and Germany have passed the tipping point and entered a “red zone,” keeping the lights on precariously with imports and deindustrialization to reduce demand.
The meteorologists never issued wind drought warnings and the irresponsible authorities never checked the wind supply! They even missed the Dunkelflautes that must have been known to mariners and millers for centuries!
https://www.flickerpower.com/images/The_endless_wind_drought_crippling_renewables___The_Spectator_Australia.pdf
There is an urgent need to find out why the meteorologists failed to warn us about wind droughts and why energy planners didn’t check. Imagine embarking on a major irrigation project without forensic investigation of the water supply including historical rainfall figures.