How 'Green' Is It
A Few Climate Truths
Most people I talk to are pretty common-sense about climate change. Do you wonder if the organizations that want more control (over what we eat and where we go) don’t use the media to induce fear in the gullible…
Below are some items (I’ve been collecting over several months) that can be shared if you know people who need to hear the other side, that the world is not going to end due to cows or due to humans’ carbon dioxide.
Of course , anyone can do their own research, and I always recommend it, but this is mostly for those who don’t even realize there is more to the story.
Going Green Requires Using Fossil Fuels
We all know it takes fossil fuel energy to make the electricity that EVs require. We know that the machinery to mine the minerals are run by fossil fuel. There is plenty of data on how this works. Now, this article takes a different perspective than I’ve seen before. Read more at Going Green Requires Using Fossil Fuels.
Excerpt:
Overreach is everywhere. Progressive climate policy may be the most egregious. Even without knowing the extent of climate change or humans’ impact, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) has become a widely accepted goal. But progressives are like children who want what they want now. They demand immediate, indiscriminate controls on fossil fuels, or even their abolition. They oversell renewables and conceal their true costs and environmental impact. Promoting electric vehicles, they harbor delusions of unlimited natural resources and magically appearing infrastructure. They pay no heed to the limitations of the power grid. They ignore other countries’ non-cooperation, and on and on. The American public pays a steep price for all this, now and for the foreseeable future.
Full article here.
Vanguard Group Inc., an American investment advisor with approximately $7 trillion in global assets under management, announced it has withdrawn from the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, “the main financial alliance on tackling climate change.”
Facing mounting pressure from Republican U.S. politicians over the company’s use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in picking and managing securities, plus evident investor confusion over Vanguard’s guiding investment philosophy and goals, Vanguard stated,
We have decided to withdraw from NZAM so that we can provide the clarity our investors desire about the role of index funds and about how we think about material risks, including climate-related risks—and to make clear that Vanguard speaks independently on matters of importance to our investors.
States were asking the federal government to look into Vanguard’s activities, NewsBusters reports:
[I]n November, 13 Republican attorneys general “filed a rare motion” asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “to prevent” Vanguard from purchasing shares of publicly listed utility companies due to its particular obsession with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. NZAM members [have] reportedly committed to “achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
Bloomberg speculated Vanguard’s size and influence in the investment industry will make its exit from NZAM a setback for the group’s attempt to force an end to the production and financing of fossil fuels. Vanguard insists its withdrawal “will not affect our commitment to helping our investors navigate the risks that climate change can pose to their long-term returns.”
Despite the prominence the mainstream media generally give to climate change and climate policy, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and CBS Evening News did not cover Vanguard’s decision on the day it was announced, in contrast with all the prominent the financial press outlets, NewsBusters notes.
SOURCE: NewsBusters; Reuters
Unreliable
The TPPF take: The Texas electric grid doesn’t need more unreliable power; it needs more reliable power.
“Energy producers have moved away from reliable fossil fuels and toward unreliable renewables because it’s nearly impossible to compete with taxpayer-funded subsidies tipping the scales so heavily,” writes state Rep. Jared Patterson for The Cannon Online. “The Texas Legislature must resist the siren song of renewable energy subsidies and shift its focus to affordable, reliable sources like natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear — the only generators we can count on to perform when we actually need them.”
The New Trend Plaguing Young People: Eco-Anxiety
Excerpt:
”…kids are coming in due to attempted suicide from the fear of climate change. Additionally, she reported that at least three young patients attempted a drug overdose because of climate distress. Altogether, 75% of young people fear that “the future is frightening” because of climate change.”
As 2022 draws to a close, Roger Pielke Jr., Ph.D. has done the world a service by summarizing the year’s extreme weather conditions before government bureaucrats start to hype climate alarm based on the misleading use of cherrypicked data. Pielke compares this year’s weather to the long-term trends for various types of extreme weather, writing,
[I]t is not too early to look back at how 2022 looks in a historical context.
I wanted to get this out before NOAA blasts out its “billion-dollar disaster” press kit, along with the implication that damage from disasters tells us something about extreme weather.
If you want to understand trends in extreme weather, look at weather data, not economic data.
In a few words, extreme weather in 2022 in the U.S. has been pretty normal. Some extreme weather phenomena occurred at a rate or intensity greater than historical averages, but many occurred less.
Pielke finds that in 2022,
Maximum temperatures were slightly higher than the historical average but lower than those experienced in the 1930s.
The severity and extent of drought were slightly above the average for the twenty-first century, but over the past 100 years drought has modestly declined in the continental United Sates. (See figure below.)
The number and intensity of tropical cyclones were average to below-average in 2022. (See table below.)
The incidence of tornadoes was below the average of 2005-2021.
Hail was below the average of 2005-2021, with each of the last 11 years being below that average.
The incidence of strong winds was slightly higher than the average since 2005, though six of the last 10 years have experienced below-average winds.
Fire was consistent with the post-2000 average.
Although the full data is not yet available, the preliminary data suggest flooding and extreme precipitation in 2022 were consistent with the post-2000 average.
In short, 2022’s extreme weather rates were well within the norm for the twenty-first century and even for the past 100 years.
It is worth noting Pielke’s findings for 2022 are consistent with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s AR6 report concluded regarding extreme weather over the past century: no discernible climate change impact on extreme weather events, and no confidence that extreme weather trends can be attributed to human activities.
SOURCE: The Honest Broker
Green Energy Revolution Hits Energy Reality Wall
If carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are causing dangerous climate change, China is the straw that stirs the drink. China emits more carbon dioxide than all the developed countries on Earth combined.
Read more here.
Offshore Wind Projects Hurt Ocean Life; COP 27 WILL END UP AS FLOP 27
A recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications found offshore wind industrial facilities do previously unrecognized harm to marine ecosystems.
A team of scientists from various German research institutes and universities examined industrial wind projects in the North Sea, where the world’s largest offshore wind project is found.
Running multiple simulations through mathematical models, the scientists analyzed the “systematic, large-scale, time-integrated response of the ocean to large OWF [offshore wind farm] clusters,” concluding the “results provide evidence that the ongoing off shore wind farm developments can have a substantial impact on the structuring of coastal marine ecosystems on basin scales.”
The model simulations indicate the “wind wake” effect of OWFs (the effect turbines individually and collectively have on wind speeds, ocean currents, and sea life) could reduce annual primary productivity—the ability of microbial life, algae, phytoplankton, plants, and animals to obtain food and flourish—in the area encompassed by and beyond the wind farms by 10 percent or more. Less food for endangered whales and other ocean creatures is not a good thing.
The same modeling indicates OWFs slow ocean currents, resulting in less cycling of dissolved oxygen in affected areas and thereby reducing oxygen concentrations. Lower oxygen levels are bad for marine life.
Separately, these negative effects on the marine ecosystem in OWF areas indicate the OWFs will harm many species and disrupt ecosystem interconnections. Cumulatively, the harm will probably be much greater, including making it harder for endangered species such as the North Atlantic right whale to recover or even survive.
SOURCES: Townhall; Nature Communications
No, America Does Not Owe the World Climate ‘Reparations’
The climate change movement is really a climate change hustle that’s all about money, columnist Stephen Moore says.
I’ve made the case in previous columns that the climate change movement is mostly a climate change hustle. Let’s be real. None of this is about changing the temperature of the Earth. Even the most naive environmental activist can’t really believe that building windmills and driving Teslas is going to cool the planet.
This is all about money. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of government handouts.
That was never more blatantly transparent than at this year’s sham COP 27 climate conference in Egypt, which was attended by more than 20,000 delegates and activists from more than 100 countries. The only agreement that the delegates could reach was a hollow “commitment” from the rich Western nations—by that they mean the United States—to give “reparation” money to the poor nations of the world.
If you’ve never heard of this loony concept before, the theory is that America owes the rest of the world money for burning fossil fuels over the last hundred or so years.
Huh? These were the fossil fuels that provided America with the energy to save humanity from fascism and communism during World War I, World War II and the Cold War. These energy sources are what have powered the industrial age, bringing light, heat and air conditioning. And they have powered our infrastructure, factories, an abundant food supply and a technology revolution. Add to that our drugs and vaccines, which have saved many hundreds of millions of lives globally.
It was the fossil fuel energy revolution of the last century that supplied America with the wealth and financial resources to provide some half a trillion dollars of disaster and foreign aid to seemingly every area of the rest of the world. And now, President Joe Biden’s dunces are agreeing with foreigners that we owe them money?
America should be getting reparation payments. Not the other way around.
Read more at No, America Does Not Owe the World Climate ‘Reparations’.
Other sources:
Biden Admin Quietly Greenlights Plan to Build Huge Gulf Oil Terminal
The Climate Alarmists Are Deeply Disturbed People
Global warming pseudoscience is poised to wreck the US economy
More Research Confirms Climate Models Run Too Hot, Expected Warming is Not Alarming
Two peer-reviewed papers from 2022 confirm what previous research has shown and IPCC modelers admit: climate model projections of temperatures run too hot. Because the findings are not alarming, these studies have received little media attention.
In a study published in Climate Dynamics, Nicholas Lewis uses a Bayesian method of statistical analysis to estimate "climate sensitivity" to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from preindustrial levels, and its effect on temperatures. Bayesian analysis combines prior information about a phenomenon and established parameters to assign probabilities to a future range of events. The result of this analysis, as described by the author:
The resulting estimates of long-term climate sensitivity are much lower and better constrained (median 2.16°C, 17–83% range 1.75–2.7°C, 5–95% range 1.55–3.2°C) than in Sherwood et al. and in AR6 (central value 3°C, very likely range 2.0–5.0°C). This sensitivity to the assumptions employed implies that climate sensitivity remains difficult to ascertain, and that values between 1.5°C and 2°C are quite plausible.
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters compares the simulated outputs of 38 widely used climate models under low, medium, and high climate sensitivity estimates, with the ERA5 dataset for 1980 through 2021 produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The ERA5 dataset provides hourly estimates of numerous atmospheric, land, and oceanic climate variables.
The author found climate models that assume high or medium climate sensitivity produce results inconsistent with global temperature and climate data. The models’ temperature projections are far too high. As a result, the author concludes the models "should not be used for implementing policies based on their scenario forecasts."
Although climate models with built-in low climate sensitivity perform better, producing results that more closely correspond with the measured data, they too are unsatisfactory because the results run too hot. If policymakers use the low-sensitivity models even though they are "not optimal," they should not be stampeded into making bad energy policy decisions: the models’ simulated outputs are for a modest, quite "unalarming" warming for the next few decades.
One wonders how many studies must show climate models are seriously flawed, or how many times modelers must grudgingly admit their models don’t accurately simulate the climate, before the IPCC and the media admit governments should not use their projections of future climate conditions in setting energy and environmental policies.
SOURCES: Geophysical Research Letters; Climate Dynamics
Mining for Cobalt:
https://sharylattkisson.com/2022/10/watch-mining-for-cobalt/
https://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/mineral-mining (9-minute video)
'Cobalt Red' describes the 'horror show' of mining the element in the DRC
npr.org
February 2, 2023 - In his new book, Cobalt Red, Kara writes that much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called "artisanal" miners — freelance workers who do extremely dangerous labor for the equivalent of just a few dollars a day. Read more here.
Keep Cash Alive
Until next time…
Please share your thoughts in the comments. Or email me, and let’s have a problem-solving conversation. I welcome ‘letters to the editor’ type emails and may publish yours. I hope we can create a caucus with positive, back-to-the-founders’-dream-for-America results. Have a topic you want to know more about?
You can always see everything on the website, ellenleyrer.substack.com.
Thanks again for reading! I’m glad you’re here!
Blessings,
Ellen
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I like Bjorn Lomborg - Recommend: False Alarm and the Best Things First.