Commentary: Ruling Class Disturbance

WEF

The last few months have been interesting. We have started to see some very public disagreements among the world’s ruling classes. The gathering of elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has long fascinated observers and become a lightning rod for criticism, becoming a bogeyman of the right, as well as the hardcore, anticapitalist left. It is a front-row seat to the thinking and priorities of the world’s most powerful people.

In Davos, the world’s media, academic, political, and financial elites spend a few days in luxurious surroundings, praising themselves and forming a consensus on solutions to what they deem to be the problems of the world. This includes everything from facilitating mass migration, tackling global warming by moving away from fossil fuel energy, and the need for economic redistribution to the poor and the third world, all through the corporatist idea of “stakeholder capitalism.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Making Climate Change a Republican Issue in 2024

Out of sheer perversity, I follow stories in the Washington Post related to weather. It matters not what the weather brings, the cause is global warming (or climate change depending on the temperature of the disaster). Having a flood? Global warming. Got a heavy snow or ice storm? Climate change. They haven’t yet figured out how to blame earthquakes on global warming, but the mainstream media will probably find a cause and effect relationship somehow.

Read the full story

Biden Sets Leftist Tone for 2024 Re-Election Effort at Philadelphia Event

President Joe Biden held his first presidential re-election campaign event on Saturday at the Philadelphia Convention Center, making strong appeals to his left-wing base. 

Biden appeared alongside organized-labor activists and mentioned in the first few seconds of his oration that when he thinks of working Americans, he especially values the ones who associate with causes he finds politically congenial.

Read the full story

Commentary: As Toxic as It Is Effective, Governments Wield Fear to Control and Manipulate People

by Kathleen Marquardt   People are excited thinking about being able to live in alternative universes. Unbeknownst to them, they already do – and have been for most of their lives. Especially those born after the era when we wore our Texas Instrument calculators on our belts (our slide rules were put on the shelf to be oddities to show our children how we calculated in school) and built computers we bought in parts. Now, people who would have trouble putting a slot-car together can go to the Himalayas, try on clothes from their favorite store, play video games – all the while lying on a recliner in their basement. There is reality – the actual events as they happened. And there is what has long been, spun as reality, i.e., pharma-phantasmagoria, genders/sexes of more than two, and myriads of other factoids dressed as facts. All built upon the biggest lie fed to a now well-programmed public – manmade global warming. And virtual reality rules over factual reality. Think about it. Almost everything you read/hear in mainstream and social media, in schoolbooks, even in “juried” scientific and medical papers is a lie. Wrap your head around that – you don’t need…

Read the full story

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Hears Tax-Versus-Fee Arguments About Whether RGGI Can Stand

Arguing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday, one state agency alleged another improperly refused to publish an executive action implementing a de facto carbon tax, effectively halting the polcy. 

At issue is a decision made by the Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) not to publicize a regulation decreed by then-Governor Tom Wolf (D) entering the state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The LRB, which drafts all state legislation upon lawmakers’ requests and provides other policy reference services, declined to promulgate the rule enrolling the commonwealth in the multistate compact, citing a state House of Representatives resolution opposing it.

Read the full story

Pennsylvania’s Largest Coal Plant Closure Shows Effect of Coming De Facto Carbon-Tax

In July, the Homer City Generation LP Plant, Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired energy creator, will be taken offline, meaning 129 well-paying jobs will disappear in Pennsylvania’s fifth-poorest county of Indiana. 

This event, say free-market advocates and fossil-fuel supporters, should admonish Keystone State policymakers not to let the commonwealth let its abeyant membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) become active. The pact involving a dozen northeastern and mid-Atlantic states entails de facto taxation of carbon emissions. Even pre-implementation, industry experts explain, preparation for RGGI is killing otherwise viable power plants. 

Read the full story

Ohio Congressman Legislates Against Use of SEC for Social Policy

U.S. Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) is encouraging fellow congresspersons to get behind a resolution he introduced to shield American industry from new disclosure requirements meant to advance leftist environmental policy. 

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed requirements for publicly traded companies to disclose information about the “climate-related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on their business, results of operations, or financial condition….” 

Read the full story

Wisconsin Senator Johnson and Colleagues Urge White House to Reverse Major Climate Policies

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson wrote jointly with several colleagues to President Joe Biden this week urging him to reverse major elements of his anti-fossil-fuel agenda. 

The letter from the senators takes issue with several actions the White House has taken to hinder investment in and use of oil, natural gas and coal in an effort the administration insists is important to lessening global warming. 

Read the full story

Commentary: ‘Reasonable’ Concessions to Climate Hysteria Lack Any Reason at All

First, there is no climate emergency. Claims to the contrary are based on exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s warming effect and computer models that have proven unreliable.

As Republicans settle into the leadership of the new House of Representatives, we are hoping for clearer congressional thinking about the climate issue. However, there is work to do on the Conservative Climate Caucus.

Read the full story

Commentary: It’s Time to Take Down the Cult of Climate Change for Good

When you look at climate alarmists, there are really only two options: they either don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re lying.

The “Little Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’”-like cries of “existential threats” brought on by climate change would be hilarious, if it wasn’t for the disastrous impact from misguided actions to “fix” the problem. However, the fable about a youngster fabricating an emergency time and again isn’t that far off from today’s climate-change evangelists; they both need to recognize their stories are quickly losing credibility.

Read the full story

Republicans Introduce Bill to Defund John Kerry, Other Biden ‘Climate Tyrants’

Eight Republican House members have introduced legislation to defund climate czar John Kerry and other “climate tyrants“ inside the Biden administration, blaming them for an energy crisis that has sent gasoline soaring to $5 a gallon.

The group, led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for CZARS Act that would ban federal funding for any activity of the special presidential envoy for climate, including salary and both administrative and travel expenses.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Political Necessity of Trump’s Challenge of Climate Hysteria

Sin, punishment, redemption: as an ideology, environmentalism shares many features with organized religion. Falling after Easter this year, Earth Day, which was celebrated April 22, focuses on the sin-and-punishment parts of the trilogy. Redemption comes later, toward the end of each year, at the annual U.N. climate conferences that will save the planet.

On Earth Day this year, however, a loud dissenting voice was heard. Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event in Florida, Donald Trump attacked climate-change catastrophizing.

Read the full story

O’Neal Proposes Tax Credit to Offset RGGI Compliance Costs in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania state Rep. Timothy O’Neal (R-Washington) has indicated he’s drafting legislation to bestow tax credits on power plants to cover costs of complying with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Pennsylvania is among eleven northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to have joined RGGI, a compact to levy de facto taxes on electricity-generation facilities for emitting greenhouse gases — chiefly carbon dioxide and methane — which are associated with global warming. Because Keystone State legislators have balked at the program, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) announced in 2019 that he would enter the state into it using his own regulatory authority. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Commonwealth Court blocked the state’s entry into RGGI, insisting that Wolf breached the limits on his executive power, but the ruling is not ironclad as the Democrat-run state Supreme Court could reverse it.

Read the full story

Volvo Says Connecticut Following California Emissions Standards Would ‘Pose Problems’

In a podcast discussion with Motor Transport Association of Connecticut President Joe Sculley on Friday, Volvo Group North America spokesperson Dawn Fenton objected to the Constitution State following California’s carbon-emission regulations for trucks.

California is the only state possessing a waiver allowing it to establish its own emission controls which are stronger than those required by the federal Clean Air Act. Environmental progressives have backed the waiver, which former President Donald Trump rescinded and which President Joe Biden reactivated last month.

Read the full story

Commonwealth Court Blocks Pennsylvania’s Entry into Carbon Taxation Initiative

Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court this week blocked the state’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an 11-state compact requiring de facto taxation of power plants’ carbon emissions.

Gov. Tom Wolf (D) tried to effect Pennsylvania’s participation in the initiative by issuing an executive order in 2019, thus neglecting to seek approval of the Republican-led General Assembly. The court’s new opinion comes one day after the state Senate failed to override the governor’s veto of legislation letting the General Assembly end the state’s membership in the compact. Legislative leaders have argued that the governor’s unilateral action violated the state Constitution and were heartened upon hearing of the judges’ decision.

Read the full story

Pennsylvania Senate Falls Short of Two-Thirds Needed to Kill Greenhouse Gas Initiative

White smoke emitting from a couple of buildings

Most state senators voted to end Pennsylvania’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) on Monday but fell short of the two-thirds needed to succeed.

In 2019, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) initiated Pennsylvania’s entry into the 11-state compact to reduce carbon emissions by charging power plants for their discharge in hope of counteracting global warming. Unlike most of the other northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that participate in RGGI, the Keystone State’s governor could not get sufficient backing from state legislators for Pennsylvania’s membership and thus acted via executive order. Republicans and some Democrats have argued Wolf exceeded his constitutional authority in rebuffing the legislature.

Read the full story

State Senator Yaw Proposes Legal Framework for Carbon Capture in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania state Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport) indicated Wednesday he will soon introduce legislation to create a regulatory framework for “carbon capture” in the commonwealth.

Carbon capture is the process of catching carbon-dioxide discharge from fossil-fuel-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities for either reuse or storage so that the emissions don’t make it into the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming.

Read the full story

Industry and Unions Warn Pennsylvania Senate RGGI Will Kill Jobs, Hurt Consumers

Blue Collar Worker

In a rare moment of concord between industry and unions, representatives of both interests exhorted Pennsylvania state Senators on Tuesday to resist Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Eleven states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions have joined the pact to impose prices on carbon emissions for power plants. Unlike most member states, however, Pennsylvania entered into the agreement without legislative approval though an executive order by Gov. Tom Wolf (D) in 2019. The emissions pricing has not yet gone into effect; the governor wants to implement it in the next fiscal year.

Read the full story

Committee Votes to End Pipeline Bans, Check Pennsylvania Governor’s Power on Carbon Tax

A bipartisan majority of a Pennsylvania House of Representatives panel Monday passed several measures to increase fossil-fuel development in and exportation from the Keystone State.

One resolution, sponsored by state Rep. Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) would call upon Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) to terminate their states’ bans on the building of new conduits that could carry natural gas extracted in Pennsylvania. Other legislation offered by state Sen. Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) would ensure that legislators must approve Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state pact to which Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has committed the state by executive order. Implementation of RGGI entails effectively imposing a tax on carbon emissions.

Read the full story

Pennsylvania Lawmakers Opposing Greenhouse Gas Initiative Offer Alternative Policy

Lawmakers who have attempted to stop Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) are proposing alternative measures to mitigate carbon emissions in the Keystone State.

Representative Jim Struzzi has amended the anti-RGGI legislation he introduced last year to authorize spending $250 million from Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 Response Restricted Account on carbon-dioxide-reduction technologies and related items. Funded projects would include methane abatement, hydrogen-based infrastructure and stormwater mitigation as well as assistance to communities weathering electric-generation plant closures.

Read the full story

Industry Groups Raise Questions After Study on Gas Stoves

Industry groups and others are pushing back after a study found gas stoves contribute more to global warming than previously thought at a time when some elected officials are considering policies to limit natural gas connections.

The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, found methane that leaks from natural gas stoves in U.S. homes has a climate impact equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 gas-powered cars.

The study also tested emissions from stoves in homes. A Stanford news release that accompanied the study raised concerns about indoor air quality because of the levels of nitrogen oxides.

Read the full story

Commentary: Be Grateful for Global Warming

"It's not easy being green" sign in the middle of a crowd

Present-day warming has been termed a crisis, and modern economic development a cancer. But what if I told you that much of the recent advancement in human prosperity would have been impossible without the temperature increases of the last several hundred years?

A key to the sustenance of any society is food security. Today’s world should be grateful for today’s relative warmth as well as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels because both have been instrumental in propelling plant growth globally.

A review of human and climate history reveals a strong link between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of civilization—just opposite of what the climate doomsayers are telling you.

Read the full story

Governors Using Federal Coronavirus Relief Funds on ‘Global Warming’ Initiatives Instead

Several governors around the country are taking federal funds meant to combat the coronavirus and instead using the money to deal with so-called “global warming.”

Breitbart reports that, in addition to federal stimulus funds, such governors are taking advantage of budget surpluses as a result of tax collection and massive consumer spending following the end of most lockdowns. Among the most prominent governors engaging in such misuse of funds are Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.).

“The climate crisis is not an abstraction,” Inslee falsely claimed. “It is something that I and every governor in the United States, almost on a weekly basis, have to deal with.” Newsom, who has incorrectly described global warming as an “existential threat,” has proposed spending of up to $24 billion over the next five years, for such projects as electric school buses, more electric vehicle charging stations, and additional “clean energy” development and storage projects.

Read the full story

Commentary: Six Cultish Things Globalist Elites Want You to Look Forward to in 2022—and Beyond

The year is 2022. The place: a New York City so overpopulated that everyone is sleeping and dying on outdoor stairways. All sweating like pigs because of global warming. People have become unwitting cannibals because there is no more food. Elites still dine on delectables, but all that remains for the hoi polloi is the promise of a green wafer allegedly made of plankton, but in reality “It’s PEOPLE!!”

That’s the setting of the over-the-top 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” produced in the wake of Paul Ehrlich’s classic fear porn book The Population Bomb. Time has proven Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation due to population growth to be massively wrong. Ehrlich also lost his famous wager with the economist Julian Simon who predicted a more prosperous world. Still, Malthusian propaganda dies hard because it’s such an effective tool for social engineering.

“Soylent Green” is a random example, chosen because its year 2022 happens to be upon us. Certainly, dates and science used in science fiction have a heavy emphasis on fiction. The “Blade Runner” rebellion of genetically designed replicants was set in 2019. And, of course, Big Brother ruled in George Orwell’s 1984. Though much has come to pass, including genetic engineering and the surveillance state, there’s proof enough that we can’t predict the future with certainty.

Read the full story

Commentary: Three Environmental Doomsday Myths, Debunked

For many, thinking about the future of our planet is terrifying. According to a global survey reported by the BBC, 56 percent of young people believe that humanity is doomed because of climate change and 45 percent say that their anxiety about the climate affects their daily lives. Here in the US, the story is much the same; three-quarters of Americans believe that climate change will result in the extinction of man, and one in five millennials believe that that extinction will occur within their lifetime.

A college student recently wrote the following in a campus newspaper about her climate anxiety:

I stay up into the early hours of the morning, Googling some variation of “Is there hope for climate change,” and “Biden climate change plan good?” (…) I fret over every piece of waste I encounter, wondering whether I should trash it or wash it and hope it qualifies for the recycling bin. What if I wash the aluminum foil I heated leftover lasagna on, does it become recyclable then? The anxiety is crippling.

Read the full story

Democrats Laden $3.5 Trillion Budget Bill with ‘Green New Deal’ Handouts

Field of sunflowers with several wind turbines in the distance

Democrats have inserted numerous provisions and subsidy programs into their $3.5 trillion budget that would benefit green energy companies and speed the transition to renewables.

The Build Back Better Act would invest an estimated $295 billion of taxpayer money into a variety of clean energy programs in what would amount to the most sweeping climate effort passed by Congress, according to a House Committee on Energy and Commerce report. That price tag doesn’t factor in the other costly measures approved by the House Ways and Means, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Oversight and Transportation committees last month.

“This bill is crammed with green welfare subsidies, specifically for corporations and the wealthy,” House Ways and Means Ranking Member Kevin Brady told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

Read the full story

Commentary: A Green Conundrum for the Golden State

From left: U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Smokey Bear pose during an event honoring Gov. Schwarzenegger as an honorary Forest Ranger at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Wed., Oct. 29, 2013. Gov. Schwarzenegger is being honored for his signing and implementing the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and continued leadership on climate change since leaving office. USDA photo by Bob Nichols

In 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the landmark AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act.” Determined to leave a legacy that would ensure he remained welcome among the glitterati of Hollywood and Manhattan, Schwarzenegger may not have fully comprehended the forces he unleashed.

Under AB 32, California was required to “reduce its [greenhouse gas] emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.” Now, according to the “scoping plan” updated in 2017, California must “further reduce its GHG emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.”

The problem with such an ambitious plan is that achieving it will preclude ordinary Californians ever enjoying the lifestyle that people living in developed nations have earned and have come to expect. It will condemn Californians to chronic scarcity of energy, with repercussions that remain poorly understood by voters.

Read the full story

Commentary: Climate Change Activists Misrepresent Extreme Weather Events

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Ore., reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so.

To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, but to do so quickly. Within days of the June heat wave, the researchers released an analysis, declaring that the torrid spell “was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

World Weather Attribution and its alarming report were trumpeted by Time magazine, touted by the NOAA website  Climate.gov , and featured by CBS News, CNBC, Scientific American, CNN, the Washington Post, USAToday, and the New York Times, among others.

Read the full story

Tucson Now Requires New Homes to Have Electric Vehicle Outlets

Tucson will require all new constructions of one- and two-family homes, as well as townhomes, to be outfitted with electric vehicle charging outlets. The Tucson City Council finalized this decision in a unanimous vote during last Tuesday’s regular meeting.

According to the new requirement, Ordinance 11844, each one- to two-family dwelling and townhouse unit should have at least one “EV [Electric Vehicle] Ready Space,” with markers identifying the outlet as such. Builders wouldn’t have to provide any EV Ready Spaces if there aren’t on-site parking spaces.

Read the full story

Retired General Picked by Nancy Pelosi to Review Capitol Security Appears on Chinese Propaganda Network

Russel Honore

Chinese government officials and state-controlled media agencies have recently ramped up their rhetoric against the United States on the issue of climate change, portraying the U.S. as not doing enough to limit greenhouse emissions even though China is by far the world’s biggest polluter.

One shot fired in the propaganda war came this week in the form of an interview that CGTN America, the U.S. affiliate of the Beijing-controlled China Central Television (CCTV), conducted with retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré.

Honoré, who is founder of the environmental group Green Army, decried in the CGTN interview that a “large part” of the population in his native Louisiana denies the existence of climate change.

Read the full story

Commentary: Biden’s Fake Climate Apocalypse Has Real Consequences

With the wave of executive orders and legislation coming from the Biden administration, and the cultural antics of his woke supporters, Biden’s war on fossil fuels has received insufficient attention. Yet energy is the lifeblood of our economy, and making traditional energy sources vastly more expensive is the single most destructive aspect of Biden’s policies. If this country does not successfully mobilize against these policies, the vast majority will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.

Supposedly the assault on fossil fuels — via regulation; cancellation of pipelines; concocting a huge, wholly imaginary “social cost of carbon”; taxes; and solar and wind mandates — is necessary to save the planet from imminent catastrophe produced by man-made global warming.

Read the full story

Biden Pick for Interior Secretary Likely to Face Rocky Confirmation Hearing

U.S. Senate Republicans may use next week’s Interior confirmation hearing for Rep. Debra Haaland to air their grievances about the Biden administration’s energy policies, running the risk of alienating Native Americans in Western states.

GOP Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Steve Daines of Montana sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will hold the Tuesday hearing, and both have already raised objections that Haaland holds “radical” views. Daines vowed to block her progress in the Senate unless she addresses several issues that concern him.

Read the full story

Falling CO2 Emissions Expose ‘Global Warming’ Alarmism As Anti-Science

The “experts” that dominate government, big business, universities, and international institutions vitriolically insist that “science” purportedly establishes beyond doubt that carbon dioxide emissions are raising global temperatures and that the warmer earth will be catastrophic.

In 2020, the pandemic-induced shutdowns that inflicted so much economic harm, particularly on the Third World’s already poor, reduced CO2 emissions by a record-breaking 7 percent. Those demanding that Americans reduce emissions must be especially pleased: the U.S. led the world with a 12 percent reduction.

Read the full story

Commentary: Three Inconvenient Truths 60 Minutes Forgot to Mention in Its Story on California Wildfires and Climate Change

CBS journalist Scott Pelley recently visited Butte County, California, to report on the wildfires devastating the Golden State.

Government statistics show that more than 8,300 wildfires have burned some 4 million acres to date. The flames have claimed 31 lives and destroyed nearly 8,700 structures. One of those structures belonged to Fire Station 61 Chief Reed Rankin, who saw his home reduced to a charred skeleton after a September blaze.

Read the full story

Commentary: No, Antarctica Is Not ‘Rapidly Melting’

The BBC, which in September 2018 announced its decision to censor any reports by climate skeptics, continues to propagandize for climate alarmists. On March 12, BBC “Science Correspondent” Jonathan Amos published an alarming article entitled “Greenland and Antarctica ice loss accelerating.” According to Amos, “Earth’s great ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, are now losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s thanks to warming conditions.”

Read the full story

Climate Activists Want Michael Moore’s Doc Panning Green Energy Banned, Say It’s Chock Full of ‘Misinformation’

Anti-fossil fuel activists unsuccessfully attempted to browbeat the film producer behind a new Michael Moore documentary panning green energy into permanently removing the movie over claims that it contains pro-oil industry misinformation.

Activist Josh Fox, climate scientist Michael Mann, and other environmentalists signed onto a petition Friday asking the  producer to take down Planet of Humans, claiming Moore’s film relies on old data to claim solar and wind energy is dependent on fossil fuels. Films for Action initially nixed the film before putting it back online, saying the move was meant to engage in debate.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Politics, Science, and Politicized Science of Climate Change

One has to wonder if the shock and despair described in David Bowie’s 1971 hit, “Five Years,” would be the preferred collective mentality for humanity, at least if the relentless propaganda campaigns of climate change activists are successful. And one must admit they have powerful allies at their disposal. A climate alarm consensus informs America’s entire educational, entertainment, and media establishments, along with most corporate marketing, and most political platforms from the local city council to the United Nations.

Read the full story

Analysis: Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless

At a recent United Nations summit, 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg claimed that the Earth is on the brink of destruction and that older generations are betraying younger ones by not doing enough to stop climate change. The media has amplified these allegations by giving her speech broad, glowing coverage, but the fears she expressed are not grounded in reality.

Read the full story

Commentary: How Conservatives Can Protect the Environment and Win Voters, Too

Conservatives need to do a better job on the environment. That seems like a controversial thing to say, because usually when you hear a conservative speak positively about an issue closely identified with liberalism, it is the precursor to a sellout of conservative principles. How many times have you read an essay claiming to make “the conservative case” for some profoundly anti-conservative project like voting for Hillary Clinton or government-run healthcare?

Read the full story

Climate Experts Admit to Republican Congressman That Humans Aren’t Responsible for Past 20,000 Years of Global Warming

  During a Thursday hearing before the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL-05) got a panel of climate science experts to admit that “humans are not responsible for the Earth’s global warming that has occurred over the past 20,000 years.” All four of the experts who testified agreed that humans didn’t cause the global warming that began 20,000 years ago and continues through today. Additionally, Brooks pointed out that sea levels have risen an average of two feet per century over the past 20,000 years, which is “double the global warming enthusiasts’ claimed average sea level rise rate of one foot per century since 1993,” Brooks said. “The gist of the experts’ opinions is that the Earth was too lightly populated by humans to make humanity responsible for the Earth’s global warming that began 20,000 years ago,” Brooks sarcastically touted in a press release. During his line of questioning, Brooks asked the panel of experts if, in their judgment, human beings caused “the global warming that began 20,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum.” “No, no. Absolutely not. It is an example of spontaneous natural variability, one of the many ways that this whole…

Read the full story

Commentary: Magical Thinking Meets the Inconvenient Realities of the ‘New Energy Economy’

by Mark P. Mills   A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.” He’s right. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that. Herein, then, is a summary of some of the bottom-line realities from the underlying math. (See the full report for explanations, documentation, and citations.) Realities About the Scale of Energy Demand 1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the…

Read the full story

National Park Quietly Removed Warning That Glaciers ‘Will All Be Gone’ by 2020 After Years of Heavy Snowfall

by Michael Bastasch   The National Park Service (NPS) quietly removed a visitor center sign saying the glaciers at Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 due to climate change. As it turns out, higher-than-average snowfall in recent years upended computer model projections from the early 2000s that NPS based its claim glaciers “will all be gone by the year 2020,” federal officials said. “Glacier retreat in Glacier National Park speeds up and slows down with fluctuations in the local climate,” the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors Glacier National Park, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Those signs were based on the observation prior to 2010 that glaciers were shrinking more quickly than a computer model predicted they would,” USGS said. “Subsequently, larger than average snowfall over several winters slowed down that retreat rate and the 2020 date used in the NPS display does not apply anymore.” NPS updated signs at the St. Mary Visitor Center glacier exhibit over the winter. Sign changes meant the display warning glaciers would all disappear by 2020 now says: “When they completely disappear, however, will depend on how and when we act.” The total area of Glacier National Park covered in its iconic…

Read the full story

Minneapolis Official Calls for End to Car Ownership

  Sam Rockwell, president of the Minneapolis Planning Commission, suggested in a recent op-ed for The Star Tribune that in order “to save the planet, we have to get over cars.” “The way we live our lives is how we got into this climate catastrophe in the first place. Of course we have to change. And that means driving less, not just switching which model sedan we buy. It means transforming how our personal needs relate to stewardship of our Earth and our communities,” Rockwell said in the article. He was responding to a May 20 article published in The Star Tribune that “paints a picture of an electric-vehicle-filled world,” which he doesn’t think would be enough. Rockwell pointed to Minneapolis’ “2040 Plan,” which explains that “even with the adoption of electric cars, a 38% reduction in passenger miles traveled by automobile is needed.” “If we are obliged to reduce car travel—and perhaps even ownership—does that mean we’re stuck with Jordan’s ‘dreary post-apocalyptic future’? Only if you believe Paris, Vancouver, and New York fit that description. These communities and many others are built around comprehensive transit systems,” Rockwell continued. “Success of these systems, and the dense land uses that support…

Read the full story

Environmentalists Say Imprisoned Felons Should Be Able to Vote Because of Global Warming

by Michael Bastasch   Environmentalists joined the far-left campaign to give voting rights to incarcerated felons, arguing felon voting is crucial to fighting global warming. “Until each and every one of them have their voting rights restored, the movement for climate justice — and every progressive cause — will be severely disadvantaged,” Sabelo Narasimhan, digital campaign manager for 350.org, wrote in an email to supporters sent Monday. The group is now part of the effort, championed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, to allow millions of incarcerated felons to vote. Currently, only Maine and Vermont allow imprisoned felons to vote. 350.org is a far-left environmental group founded by activist Bill McKibben, a staunch Sanders supporter who once called former President Barack Obama a “climate denier” for allowing an oil company to explore for Arctic oil. “An assault on our democracy and the right to vote directly affects how we address the current climate crisis. When people can’t vote, fossil fuel billionaires win,” Narasimhan wrote in the email. The email directs supporters to sign onto a letter to Congress, demanding felons be allowed to vote while incarcerated. The online letter is supported by 350.org and other groups, including Common Cause, the Hip…

Read the full story

Minneapolis Wants to Ban New Drive-Thru Windows to Reduce Carbon Emissions

  Minneapolis wants to ban all new drive-thru windows citywide in order to cut down on carbon emissions produced by idling cars. The City Planning Commission has been considering a drive-thru ban since 2017, but the idea didn’t really start to come to fruition until the 2018 conversations surrounding the “Minneapolis 2040” comprehensive city plan. Now, according to a report prepared by the planning commission, a new ordinance wants to take language included in the comprehensive city plan and “expand the prohibition of new drive-through facilities to all zoning districts citywide.” “A text amendment that specifically addresses regulations is timely given the number of proposals for new drive-through facilities that have been considered by the City Planning Commission in the last few years and the undesirable impacts these uses have,” the report states. “Said impacts include noise, extended idling, proliferation of curb cuts, conflicts with pedestrians, and traffic generation.” The report lists seven pending proposals to build new drive-thru windows within city limits for businesses such as banks, pharmacies, coffee shops, and fast-food restaurants. Some, however, think the ban would have an adverse impact on the most vulnerable residents, such as the elderly and disabled, or even parents with young…

Read the full story

Al Gore to Address Harvard University Seniors at Class Day Celebration on May 29

  Calling Al Gore a “dedicated public servant” and other superlatives, The Harvard Gazette announced the former vice president will address graduating seniors on May 29 as part of the annual Class Day celebration, the day before Harvard University’s 368th commencement. Gore is a 1969 Harvard alumnus. In the lengthy laudatory article, the publication quoted the speaker selection committee co-chair: “It is an absolute honor to be able to welcome Al Gore as our Class Day speaker,” said Cleanna Crabill ’19, program marshal and co-chair of the speaker selection committee. “For more than four decades of service he has modeled leadership based on civic duty, commitment to the public good, and a persistent, forward-looking vision. What’s more, he has shown us the necessity of being a proactive citizen of the planet. We are unbelievably excited to have a speaker who has consistently challenged the moral imagination and continues the call to action for the most imminent issues of our future.” The story mentions Gore’s “leadership” and environmental activism. The Harvard Gazette failed to mention Gore’s misfires in environmental activism. In December 2018, The Tennessee Star reported on the city of Georgetown, Texas, which Gore profiled in his “An Inconvenient Sequel” for…

Read the full story