Climate Hypocrisy

[GURPS]

The Thing That's Not Happening Is Totally Happening: Edmonton Council Considering 15-Minute Cities Policy​

How many times have we been told the 'environmentally friendly' notion of a '15-minute city' was just a right-wing conspiracy? Many, many times.

The media scolded the right for calling such things 'tyrannical' (they are).

Well, now Edmonton, Canada's city council is considering a proposal for those 15-minute communities that were just a conspiracy.






From Rebel News:

An email blast confirmed that Edmonton will move on to next steps for its proposed 15-minute communities.
"District plans are key in bringing The City Plan's 'Community of Communities' vision to life by laying the foundation for 15-minute communities,” the email explained.
Last February, the city announced it would divide its 400 neighborhoods into many 15-minute cities, calling it a "necessary tool."
According to the District Planning Guide, building a "community of communities — small towns in our big city" is a multi-year project to accommodate people.
"This vision is for new and current residents to enjoy more housing, recreation, education and employment opportunities in all of Edmonton’s districts and to have more travel options within and across districts," reads the email.

If the Left and the media (but we repeat ourselves) says something is simply a 'conspiracy' theory, it'll be public policy within six months.

 

[GURPS]

UN Says Melting Arctic Ice Is Key Indicator of Climate Change—But It’s Not Melting​

CO2 and Sea Ice​

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to record Arctic sea ice yearly minimums in September, at the end of the summer melt season. The measurement is based on sea ice extent, which is the square mileage of ice covering the Arctic Ocean during a specified time.

In September 1979, the NOAA reported that the Arctic sea ice yearly minimum was 2.72 million square miles. At that same time, CO2 concentrations were 337.1 parts per million (ppm), according to The Nature Conservancy.

Nearly 20 years later, in 1996, CO2 concentrations had risen to 362.58 ppm, and the September Arctic sea ice yearly minimum had increased to 2.93 million square miles.

After 1996, the sea ice extent declined until 2007, with the most significant drop occurring between 2006 and 2007—from 2.26 million square miles in 2006 to 1.65 million square miles by 2007. CO2 concentrations were 383.37 ppm.

After the 2007 results were released, the American Geophysical Union issued a report warning that the Arctic may be “on the verge” of a fundamental change, and images of starving polar bears stranded on floating ice slabs became commonplace.





Due in part to their declining habitat, on May 15, 2008, polar bears were listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
But the sea ice extent recordings in the Septembers of 2008 and 2009 increased, and despite hitting a record low in 2012, from 2007 to 2023, sea ice declines have been close to zero.

In September 2023—during what NOAA’s Ms. Kapnick called “by far” the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record—the Arctic sea ice yearly minimum was 1.69 million square miles, an increase of about 40,000 square miles from 2007. CO2 was 421.55 ppm in 2023.

Mr. Jensen said that a couple of years ago, he started to make and post charts and diagrams with the NSIDC’s data to provide people with simple visual representations.

“My first diagram I did send to NSIDC but I got no reaction from that organization. It surprised me. It has also surprised me that many people, including scientists and even friends, are difficult to convince that the sea ice has been unchanged since 2007, although I use the same official data also used by the IPCC,” Mr. Jensen said.

“They are brainwashed by the many alarmist news articles telling about a decrease in the Arctic sea ice, and [by] their great respect for the U.N. organization IPCC.”

Mr. Geisel said he’s concerned some scientists and policymakers are using “a very precise, almost microanalysis on a very, very macro situation.”

“We’re looking at processes that change over decades, and we’re trying to understand how we’re going to respond this year,” Mr. Geisel said.

 

[GURPS]

Climate Initiatives In Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Will Cost Over $400 Billion More Than Initially Expected, CBO Says​

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revealed the increased $428 billion cost in its budget and economic outlook for the next decade. The agency admitted that its projections were subject to change, citing variables such as the pace of deployment and use of low-emissions technologies and electric vehicles, as well as the number of taxpayers who have yet to claim certain tax credits enacted in the IRA.

“The budgetary effects of energy-related tax provisions remain highly uncertain,” stated CBO.

The CBO originally estimated in 2022 that the IRA’s climate and energy provisions would cost around $400 billion. However, other corporations and organizations said that number was far too low.

Shortly after CBO issued its estimate, the global investment banking company Credit Suisse estimated the climate initiatives would cost over $800 billion. That number is closer to CBO’s most recent estimate.

Other recent, outside estimates have been higher. An August report from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business predicted that the IRA’s climate and energy provisions would cost taxpayers over $1 trillion.

The CBO explained that technical revisions resulted in the substantially higher projections, most of which ($224 billion) arose from clean vehicle tax credits and revenues from excise taxes on gasoline. Of that total, $151 billion came from reductions in projected revenues and $73 billion came from increases in projected outlays.

Much of the higher projections came from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal last year to impose more stringent vehicle emissions standards beginning with the 2027 model year.

 

[GURPS]

The Verdict Against Mark Steyn Effectively Stifles Speech In America​

By Huck Davenport


Some background: Michael Mann co-wrote a paper in 1999 using tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature (thicker rings, warmer temperatures) to show that over the last 1000 years, temperatures declined slightly until 1960 when they dramatically spiked up—the shape of what would infamously be called the “Hockey Stick.”

The IPCC featured Mann’s work prominently in their 2001 report. It catapulted Mann to stardom and ignited the radical climate-industrial-political complex. The resulting Green agenda has consumed trillions and turned everyone’s life upside down.

The problem was that hundreds of scientists were highly critical of Mann’s work. Stephen McIntyre, for one, an Oxford-educated PhD in mathematics, published several papers, one in the same journal that published Mann’s original paper, concluding Mann’s result “lacks statistically significance,” and worse, he showed that Mann’s data manipulation “is so strong that a hockey-stick … is nearly always generated from (trendless) red noise.”

For McIntyre’s efforts, Mann called him “a professional liar,” a “denier-for-hire,” a “heinous climate villain,” “a barely perceptible $hitstain,” “a horrible, horrible person,” and a “white supremacist.” Comments like this were not isolated: Professor Emeritus Judith Curry, whom Mann called a climate denier, testified that Mann “violated norms of science and codes of professional conduct repeatedly and egregiously.” (The testimony can be found at 16:35 at the link.)

A few years later, emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia. One email read, “Let’s use Mike’s trick to hide the decline.” Mann’s data “trick” would come to be known as Climategate. The tree-ring data showed decreasing temperatures after 1960, not increasing temperatures. Mann had removed the post-1960 tree-ring data, replacing it with temperature data, and smoothed the curve to give the appearance of a Hockey Stick. The backlash was immediate and devastating (don’t miss the music video).

Berkeley professor Richard Muller presented a lecture to his students rebuking Mann’s work:

They deceived the scientists, they deceived the public… The justification [for inserting temperature data] would not have survived peer review in any journal I’m willing to publish in… You’re not allowed to do this in science.

[clip]


Mann asserted he suffered actual damages, but the evidence at trial showed that his income increased. Additionally, per his resume, Mann was appointed Distinguished Professor at Pennsylvania State University and received over 70 other “Honors and Awards.” His attorneys showed the jury a lost grant for an astronomical sum but probing revealed that the amount lost was quite different, as Steyn explained in his closing argument:

Did I say $9,713,924? I meant, in fact, $112,000. Michael Mann purports to be able to tell you the correct temperature for the year 1403 to within point 00 whatever of a degree, but after 12 years in the witness box, under oath, he can’t tell you the value of a supposed lost grant proposal to within $9.5M.

Mann also testified that he was the victim of a mean look once while shopping at Wegmans. Steyn addressed that point, too, in his closing argument:

He told you he had a traumatizing experience in aisle 9 of his local supermarket. So traumatizing that he remembers it vividly 12 years later. We don’t know whether the guy gave him a mean look, as he put it, did so because he reads Rand Simberg or because Mann cut him off in the parking lot. We don’t know whether he shot that mean look because he reads Mark Steyn, or because Mann beat him to the last avocado.

At trial’s end Mann’s attorney—whom Mann has not paid since the suit was filed—implored the jury to award punitive damages, not for defamation, but rather that “these attacks on climate scientists have to stop.”

Mann’s suit is one amongst many that effectively threatens to silence those who criticize the Green agenda. Before this suit, the climate cabal had sued professor of climatology Tim Ball in Canada. The case was against Ball was dismissed with prejudice because the plaintiff failed to prosecute it, and the court ordered Mann to pay attorney’s fees which, at last report, he seemed disinclined to do.

Many prominent men have been appalled by the brazen censorship of the climate elites. Ivar Giaever, an actual Nobel Prize winner, spoke up after attending the 2008 IPCC Conference, issuing a statement that Mark Steyn included in his book, A Disgrace to the Profession: The World’s Scientists—in their own words—On Michael E. Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage to Science: “I was horrified by what I learned... Global Warming has become a new religion—because you can’t discuss it, and that’s not right.” In protest, “I resigned from the Physical Society and I hope I can get one or two of you to resign as well.” Incidentally, Steyn’s book has been excised from the Wikipedia entry on Steyn.

 

[GURPS]

As Americans Struggle Financially, Climate Agenda Set to Spark New Food Price Hikes, Analysts Say​

The report projects that the cost base of this farm will escalate from $192,000 to $257,000 as a result. As costs trickle down to consumers, the grocery bill for a family of four would increase from $8,320 to $9,650—a 15 percent increase.

“It’s important for people to understand that when you’re raising costs to farmers, that is being passed on to consumers of food, and some types of food are going to be impacted more,” Mr. Hederman said. “So for example, beef is going to go up more than oranges because if you’re raising the cost of corn, that’s an input to beef, so beef suffers a double whammy.”

The average price of ground beef increased from $3.97 per pound in January 2021 to $5.03 per pound in January 2024, according to Federal Reserve statistics.

Beef a Luxury​

Climate activists often oppose animal farming for this reason, and within that category, beef is the number one target. Of all livestock, beef produces the most greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for about 60 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from farming, studies suggest.
Jais Valeur, CEO of Danish Crown, Europe’s top meat processor, told Denmark’s Berlingske newspaper in 2021 that beef will soon become a luxury because of the emissions from producing it.





“It will be a bit like champagne, namely a luxury product,” Mr. Valeur said. “The beef cattle will be a luxury product that we eat when we need to pamper ourselves.”

Many farmers have argued that, while larger corporate farms may be able to weather the additional pricing pressure, net zero policies will be particularly harmful to smaller farms, which will concentrate food production among an ever smaller number of producers.

 

[GURPS]

JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock drop out of massive UN climate alliance in stunning move​

JPMorgan Chase and institutional investors BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) on Thursday announced that they are quitting or, in the case of BlackRock, substantially scaling back involvement in a massive United Nations climate alliance formed to combat global warming through corporate sustainability agreements.

In a statement, the New York-based JPMorgan Chase explained that it would exit the so-called Climate Action 100+ investor group because of the expansion of its in-house sustainability team and the establishment of its climate risk framework in recent years. BlackRock and State Street, which both manage trillions of dollars in assets, said the alliance's climate initiatives had gone too far, expressing concern about potential legal issues as well.

The stunning announcements come as the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and worldwide face an onslaught of pressure from consumer advocates and Republican states over their environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities.

"The firm has built a team of 40 dedicated sustainable investing professionals, including investment stewardship specialists who also leverage one of the largest buy side research teams in the industry," the bank said in a statement shared with FOX Business. "Given these strengths and the evolution of its own stewardship capabilities, JPMAM (JP Morgan Asset Management) has determined that it will no longer participate in Climate Action 100+ engagements."

 

[Salmon]

Climate change is real, and an existential threat to our survival. Seriously, though, we really need to curtail, and hopefully eliminate, air travel. The carbon footprint offsets any convenience flying might have.

 

[Kyle]

Climate change is real, and an existential threat to our survival. Seriously, though, we really need to curtail, and hopefully eliminate, air travel. The carbon footprint offsets any convenience flying might have.

Pray At That Alter!

 

[Salmon]

Pray At That Alter!

I will not!

 

[Kyle]

I will not!

Yet, you just did!

 

[Salmon]

Yet, you just did!

We live in a country where there’s a constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. Therefore, I don’t like to be accused of being at an altar.

 

[Kyle]

We live in a country where there’s a constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. Therefore, I don’t like to be accused of being at an altar.

My First amendment says tough ####.

You pray at the alter of climate worship, you get called on being one of it's cult members.

 

[Ken King]

We live in a country where there’s a constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state.

Care to show that guarantee. You should be able to if it exists.

 

[GURPS]

Scientists Hope to Fight Climate Change by Dumping Chemicals in the Ocean



Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts are planning an experiment in which they will dump approximately 6,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide — a common ingredient in soaps, cleansers, and chemical pipe cleaners — into the waters off of Martha’s Vineyard.

The experiment is a part of WHOI’s LOC-NESS project, which seeks to ascertain whether artificial alkalinity enhancement of the Earth’s oceans can help in global efforts to address so-called global warming, which climate activists claim is leading to out-of-control climate change.

The scientists at WHOI seek to determine if the world’s oceans can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it, where it might have less of an effect on the Earth’s climate system.

“Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) leverages a natural process to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by adding an alkaline solution to the sea surface,” says WHOI’s website. “The ocean’s pH (level of acidity/alkalinity) governs its ability to take up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In fact, the ocean has naturally absorbed as much as one-quarter to one-third of human emissions since the dawn of the Industrial Age.”

The experimental process is not considered a solution to the scourge of climate change but a supplemental strategy, possibly giving the world more time to get off of fossil fuels in favor of energy sources such as wind and solar.

“While emission reductions are key to minimizing human impact on Earth’s climate, it has become clear in recent years that drastic emission reductions must be supplemented by efforts to actively remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to meet internationally accepted targets outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement and reaffirmed at the conclusion of the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai,” WHOI’s website declares.

WHOI scientist Adam Subhas is set to be the lead investigator on the project, which is slated for August if the permitting process goes as planned. Subhas compared the world’s climate situation to a case of heartburn.

“When you have heartburn, you eat a Tums that dissolves and makes the liquid in your stomach less acidic,” Subhas told The Wall Street Journal. “By analogy, we’re adding this alkaline material to seawater, and it is letting the ocean take up more CO2 without provoking more ocean acidification. Everything that we’re seeing so far is that it is environmentally safe.”

The project has already released 250 gallons of Rhodamine WT, a fluorescent dye, into the same waters off of Martha’s Vineyard last August to see if the treated waters could be reasonably tracked. The next phase of the experiment will see more Rhodamine WT, along with the sodium hydroxide, with a subsequent and larger test tentatively scheduled for the Gulf of Maine in 2025.

 

[GURPS]

Biden Pulls The Plug On EVs



While there is plenty of conjecture and speculation, there is no science that says replacing fossil-fuel powered vehicles with EVs will have a salutary effect on the climate. The EV manufacturing chain is one long line of carbon-dioxide emissions. From the extraction of raw materials using equipment that burns fossil fuels, to the assembly process, to the charging, operating, and then eventual disposal of EVs, their environmental impact is far from benign. The truth is they are as dirty, if not more so, than conventional automobiles.

EV mandates, including those in California and in a few copycat states, are straight up abuses of power. Yet there is never an acknowledgment from the progressive left that consumers’ choices are being taken from them. As we have asked before, where do government officials, both elected and unelected, derive the authority to tell Americans what vehicles they cannot own and what vehicles they must own? And as we have answered before, there is none.

At the same time, there is no Democrat, activist, mainstream media reporter, editor or talking head who will admit that a growing EV regime will: cause power shortages and send rising future electricity prices even higher; financially overload the poor and middle classes; and accelerate street and highway damage.

The market is already saturated with EVs even though there are only about 2.5 million of them. Outside the virtue-signaling enclaves of wealth along California’s coast and in a few other blue political zones, Americans have largely rejected them.

They’re acutely aware of hassles of charging, the financial headaches of the costly repairs, the long, hot fires they can burst into, the steep insurance premiums, the shocking sticker prices. They’ve seen how cold weather renders the EVs as so much dead metal abandoned on the side of the road, the scenes reminiscent of German roadways littered with unreliable communist-built Trabants that had been abandoned by their owners who “traded” them for Western cars after East Germany collapsed.

If Biden is reelected, he won’t back down. He might take things slower than he originally planned, but the overall objective will remain the same. So would any other Democrat who might take his place in the 2024 campaign. The best – though not the only – way to cut the cord entirely is to elect the Republican opponent. Never Trumpers in the Republican Party need to remember this in November.

 

[GURPS]

Joe Biden’s Signature Climate Bill Has Been A Boon To China’s Battery Market​

Since the law was enacted, imports of Chinese components for electric vehicles to the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to a review of government data by The Washington Free Beacon. The data call into question whether the IRA has failed at one of its key goals.

China is a major supplier of rare earth minerals that are used in green energy technology, such as solar panels, electric cars, and wind turbines. While imports for components that use rare earth minerals have risen over the course of Biden’s presidency, the increase became more pronounced after the implementation of the IRA.

Chinese lithium-ion battery imports to the U.S. averaged $473 million per month from January 2021 when Biden took office through July 2022. The next month, Biden signed the IRA into law. Since then, Chinese lithium-ion battery imports have averaged over $1 billion per month, according to the Free Beacon.

In addition to batteries, China is benefitting from the IRA through mining companies in Africa.

“Nearly 70 percent of cobalt is produced in Africa, mainly in the Congo,” James Madison Institute senior vice president Sal Nuzzo told the Free Beacon. “Okay, so the country may be friendly. However, the mine is owned by a Chinese conglomerate or a multinational controlled by the Chinese government. So you can put the regulation in place — it’s got to be sourced from a friendly country. But who owns the facility that the materials are coming out of?”

 

[GURPS]

Suddenly, as the economy’s nose-cone turns back Earthward and heads down, big corporations are ditching — not just ESG — but now their climate pledges too. In bunches. Yesterday’s New York Times carried the story, dramatically headlined:







Calling the sudden corporate change in appetite for wasting profits on the lunatic schemes of climate peddlers a “flip-flop,” the Times seemed peeved and disappointed. The paper blamed the sudden and unexpected loss of climate interest on … wait for it … Republicans! Of course. Oh, and lawyers.

A pesky awkwardly-named group, the ‘Climate Action 100+,’ has been collecting Fortune 100 companies that “pledge” to adopt expensive, useless, and money-wasting green policies. But conservative lawyers have been claiming all this concerted corporate action violates antitrust laws, and on top of that, is usually not in the shareholders’ best interests. Directors, after all, are responsible to shareholders rather than to The Earth, which does not pay their oversized salaries or vote or attend shareholder meetings.

Even if it wanted to pay the Directors, I’m not sure The Earth could even get a bank account, since The Earth includes Russia. Ick.

On Friday, JPMorgan, Blackrock, State Street, and Pimco all pulled out of the Climate Action 100+ group. On the same day. Which doesn’t show concerted action, at all, so stop whining. Oh, and Goldman Sachs ‘declined to comment’ on Saturday, which is not a good sign for that one, either.

While the Times framed the story as bad news, it’s actually terrific news, and it is significant progress. Virtue-signaling climate boondoggles are getting unaffordable.

As I’ve often said, we don’t have many problems that a good recession won’t fix.

☕️ SUDDENLY ☙ Tuesday, February 20, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

A packed roundup! Open AI's video creating tool shocks world; corporate climate-chucking shocks libs; media hides Ukraine defeat under dead Russian; Texas shocks with huge border move; and lots more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

And more from The Wall Street Journal:

If President Biden’s electric-vehicle mandate is as popular as progressives claim, why are they trying to censor critics who want to inform the public about the mandate’s costs?
That’s the story this week, after the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) launched ads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Montana to educate Americans about the Administration’s back-door EV mandate. Mr. Biden is “rushing to ban new gas-powered cars” and wants “to force you into an electric vehicle,” one ad says.
The Biden team doth protest. “There is no EV mandate,” a Biden campaign official declared. No? The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed greenhouse gas emissions standards that would effectively require that EVs make up two-thirds of auto maker sales by 2032. The standards will “accelerate the transition to electric vehicles,” EPA said.

We've written about EVs before -- their batteries failing, or causing massive fires, or being more expensive than gas powered vehicles (and that's just the cost of charging them, never mind replacement batteries or retrofitting your home to properly charge the vehicles). Never mind the ethical issues surrounding the mining required to build EV batteries. Or the fact auto manufacturers, dealers, and even car rental companies shying away from EVs.

A difference of opinion on a government mandate is not 'misinformation', and that Climate Power knows this. 'Misinformation' is a catch-all term for 'facts and opinions the Left doesn't like', and they'll silence you for saying them outloud.

First Amendment Anyone? Climate Activists Threaten Broadcasters to Defend Biden EV Mandate

twitchy.com

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

This Climate Scientist Was on Top of the World...and Then She Was Forced to Change Her Data​

Judith Curry was earning a fat salary at Georgia Tech as a researcher and earned the adoration of her colleagues when her data suggested a 60 percent increase in hurricanes due to global warming. These findings were distributed in 2005, the same year as the Hurricane Katrina disaster, emphasizing weather-related climate change hysterics.

“So this hysteria [over weather and climate change] is your fault,” said Stossel.

“Well, sort of. Not really. They would have picked up on it anyways, Curry replied.

With her initial research adopted as gospel, she described being treated like a “rock star,” flown nationwide to deliver lectures and speak with elected officials about her work. However, some people noted gaps in Ms. Curry’s research, which she re-analyzed and concluded her critics were right.

“Part of it was bad data; part of it is natural climate variability,” she told John Stossel. She later concluded that fossil fuels aren’t evil. Curry is now considered a climate denier by the Left. And by that, we mean she appears to be old school, meaning all the information must be analyzed to make a proper conclusion, not cherry-pick data points to facilitate a manufactured consensus being thrust upon us by the environmental Left. That’s why she was cast out as a pariah.