A Big Picture Reminder on Climate Change

We are in the brief warm period of the Pleistocene Ice Age called the Holocene.  We are constantly being told that a 1.5C temperature increase means the end of human civilization.  In order to prevent that, we must embrace a substantial decrease in our standard of living.  Let us examine the temperature record of the past and where we stand amid the temperature cycles of natural forces:

 

The claim that a 1.5C temperature increase means the end of humanity might be tempered against the catastrophe of a 8 - 11C temperature decrease that appears to await mankind in the not too distant future.  In comparison, the warming would be welcome.  Actually, such a warming would likely do more good than harm even compared to our present temperatures.

Should the natural temperature drop of past ice age cycles occur, mankind will find it most difficult to maintain a human population anywhere near 8 billion human souls as food production will surely shrink.  Let us have warmth as long as possible!

Phillip Pilkington: The green-energy bubble is about to burst — and thanks to Biden, taxpayers will suffer

Phillip Pilkington has written an admirably rational evaluation of the IRA, the fragility of the renewable energy industry, and the horrible consequences for the American people. I recommend reading his NY Post opinion article entitled The green-energy bubble is about to burst -- and thanks to Biden, taxpayers will suffer.

This calamity is perpetrated based on the failed hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming. That hypothesis has made prediction after prediction that failed actual observation. By the scientific method, this means the hypothesis is itself false.

This is not surprising, since the physics behind the argument is wrong. Additions of CO2 to the atmosphere do not provide added warming at present levels of CO2, since its cooling effects are about equal to the warming effects at the present CO2 concentrations. Almost everyone ignores the cooling effects. Modest warming would actually be good. Added atmospheric CO2 is highly beneficial to plant growth and therefore to all animal life, including humans.

How can so many scientists and economists get so much wrong? But they sure have. Note that contrary to claims, there is no real consensus. Only warming projections get published, but even those projections do not agree well with one another. This is not consensus. This is confusion. It is proof of ignorance.

This Country? My Country. Our Country.

The media appears to be mandating a style manual that requires them to say "This country" whenever they refer to the United States of America.  Whatever happened to "My country" or "Our country?"

Whatever happened to Americans having a commitment to the USA?  How could you better signal your lack of investment in the United States of American than by constantly referring to it as "This country?"

The people of Fox, CNN, NPR, ABC, and CBS all refer to "My country" as "This country."  We need to ask ourselves why are they so blatantly telling us that they have no deep stakes in the country whose central principle is a respect for the many and broad rights of the individual?  Yes, many of those media people are authoritarians with a commitment to destroying the American Principle.  Many are the political evolution of slaveholders, the enforcers of Jim Crow laws, educational segregation (Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden and a host of other Southern Democrats), segregation within the government (Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt), the creation of the welfare state and its chains of dependency (FDR, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Obama), including the discouragement of two-parent families, and a host who argue that some ethnic groups and females are unable to compete in a free market and must be provided with government-enforced advantages.

But why are the Fox people, who buy into at least much of the American Principle, going blindly along with this alienation for individual rights and for all those individual freedoms that the United States of America advanced more assiduously than other nations did throughout its history?  Apparently, they do not understand how they are signaling their own lack of integrity to the most important commitment a civilized people can make.

Freedom-loving Americans must take adamant possession of the American Principle that every American has many and broad rights which no combination of elitist and no-nothing authoritarians should be allowed to suppress.  We should be proud to be Americans, to embrace the American Principle, and to call the United States of America "My country."  When talking to other individuals who share these values with us, as all good people should, we should speak of "Our country."  Do not allow the authoritarians to dictate an alienated style of speech designed to sever our commitment to the American Principle and our country's proud history of pursuing and adhering to it.

Independence Day Sullied by a Climate Change Lying Attack Upon Our Independence

The media has been abuzz with claims that this 4th of July was the hottest 4th of July ever.  Given the well-known heat waves of 1936 and 1966, along with memories of many other summers hotter than I have experienced in recent years, I was pretty sure this was one more in a long list of desperate lies to try and keep the myth of catastrophic man-made global warming alive.  It is that myth which the Biden administration, the Democratic Party in general, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and many a kleptocracy have been using as a justification for attacking the many and broad rights of the individual to promote a collectivist lowering of the standard of living of all mankind.  Independence Day is anathema to these people, so it must have been very tempting to turn it into an object lesson for catastrophic man-made (man guilty) global warming.

The vigilant CO2 Coalition has looked into the claims that this 4th of July was the hottest 4th of July ever.  Using the data available in the U. S. Historical Climatology Network, NOAA NCEI, for the Lower 48 US states, the maximum average temperature among the weather stations is for the 4th of July:

This chart does not have the 4 July 2023 data point yet, since NOAA apparently has not yet provided such recent data.  Let us suppose that 4 July 2023 actually was the hottest recorded US 4th of July, though I suspect that is not the case.  That would only be significant for the claim of catastrophic man-made global warming if it were part of a 4th of July warming trend.  Now, despite the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere throughout the period 1890 to 2022, the maximum average temperature on the 4th of July has been nearly constant over the 1895 to 2022 period of time.  The trend line has actually shown a small decrease with time!

The CO2 Coalition has provided us with another way of looking at the temperature record for the 4th of July:

This chart shows the percentage of the weather stations recording temperatures greater than 100F on the 4th of July from 1895 to 2022.  This percentage also has a downward trendline.  

If the temperatures of the U.S. 4th of Julys have a story to tell, it is that the U.S. is slowly cooling.  If CO2 is the thermostat controlling the climate, then the cooling effects of CO2 have become dominant over increased warming effects at the concentrations reached by about 1950.  This would imply that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 for which its warming effect reaches a maximum is about 310 ppm.  Above that concentration, additional atmospheric CO2 causes cooling. Of course, choosing a single day of the year is not the best way to determine whether the U.S. is warming or cooling over more than 12 decades.  But it is a much better indicator than the one single 4th of July of one year that the priests of catastrophic man-made global warming have offered the world as proof of global warming due to man's CO2 emissions.

The catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis has been proven false many, many times.  It is based on a misunderstanding of thermal radiation, the ignorance of CO2 cooling effects, poor surface temperature records, misguided temperature record manipulations, a wanton neglect of the benefits of atmospheric CO2, an overestimation of the economic harms of warming, and a fervor to reduce mankind's ability to use the resources of the Earth to improve the human standard of living.

Yet Americans continue to leave northern states for the warming climates of southern states.  Apparently, humans prosper in warmth.  Imagine that.

Acts of Heroism in the Face of Recent Consensus Demands

 Jeffrey A. Tucker wrote a marvelous article: 

Jay Bhattacharya: A Rare Act of Heroism in the Pandemic Era

It is very much worth reading at Savvy Street, which is a publication website which is often worth reading.  The article is primarily a discussion of the absolute demand for consensus on the response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, despite the massive errors of that demanded response.  Those who stood against the tide lost badly in their careers, but fought the good fight heroically.

There is a parallel to this quote from the article that I will comment on below:

The popular press began to go after him savagely, smearing both the study and his motivations (this later became outright censorship). At this point, he began to realize the intensity of the campaign against dissent and the push for full unity in favor of the policy response. It was not like normal times when scientists could disagree. This was something different, something fully militarized, when a “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” consensus was being demanded by every institution. That meant no heresies against orthodoxy were allowed.

The reaction to critics, such as myself, of catastrophic man-made global warming, now called vaguely and unscientifically climate change, was similar, though a bit longer in developing. There is a difference between being told we will all die in 10 years and being told we will all die in the next few months. Nonetheless, professors lost their jobs or lost their funding. Critics in industry lost contracts, other business, and promotions. All of the critics were accused of being on the take from the oil and gas industries, despite the fact that those industries turned tail quickly. Most of the active critics from academia became active only after they retired, but then many died within a few years, so their opposition was of brief duration.

Just as the consensus response to SARS-CoV-2 was in massive error, so too has been that of attributing to additions of atmospheric CO2 the power to bring on a catastrophe for mankind. The rapid saturation of the warming effects, ignoring cooling effects while exaggerating warming effects due to fundamental physics errors, manipulating the surface temperature record to warm it in the present and cool it in the past, ignoring the advantages of a warmer climate and of more plant nourishment from the atmosphere, claiming much greater increases in atmospheric CO2 than is likely, greatly over-estimating property damage due to rising oceans, falsely claiming severe weather events have and will increase, and even claiming that more people will die from heat while disregarding that fewer will die from cold -- these are some examples of the massive errors of those claiming a looming climate disaster due to the use of carbon-based fuels, concrete, and meats.

Legalized climate grifting by Paul Driessen

 Legalized climate grifting 

Bill Gates and climatist collaborators are taking taxpayers and consumers on trillion-dollar rides 

Paul Driessen

Grifters have long fascinated us. Operating outside accepted moral standards, they excel at persuading their “marks” to hand valuables over willingly. If they ever represented a “distinctly American ethos,” they’ve been supplanted by con artists seeking bank accounts for funds abandoned by Nigerian princes. 

Their artful dodging is epitomized by Frank Abagnale daring the FBI to “catch me if you can,” Anna Delvey inventing Anna Sorokin, Redford and Newman masterminding their famous Sting, and dirty, rotten scoundrels like Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenn Headly.  

However, they were all pikers compared to the billion-dollar stratagems being carried off by Climate Armageddon grifters like Bill Gates, Al Gore, Elon Musk and Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry. 

Their long cons are not only unprecedented in size and complexity. They represent the greatest wealth transfer in history, from poor and middle class families to the wealthiest on Earth. Most important, the plundering has been legalized by laws, regulations, treaties and executive orders, often implemented at the behest of the schemers and their lobbyists.

(You have to wonder how Mark Twain would update his suggestion that “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”) 

They and their politician, activist, scientist, corporate and media allies profit mightily, but legally, if not unethically, from foundation grants, government payouts and subsidies, and taxpayer and consumer payments based on claims that Earth faces manmade climate cataclysms. That most of us are willingly giving money to mandated “renewable energy” schemes and other corrupt practices is questionable. 

Microsoft co-founder Gates’ estimated 2022 post-divorce net worth of some $130 billion enables him to donate hundreds of millions to social, health, environmental and corporate media causes. That usually shields him from tough questions. 

But BBC media editor Amol Rajan recently asked Mr. Gates to answer charges that he’s “a hypocrite,” for claiming to be “a climate change campaigner” while traveling the world on his luxurious private jets – often to confabs where global elites discuss how we commoners can enjoy simpler, fossil-fuel-free lives: what size our homes can be, how and how much we can heat them, what foods we can eat and how we can cook them, what cars we can drive, whether we can fly anywhere on vacation, what our kids will learn in school, and more. 

Caught flatfooted, Gates defended his use of fuel-guzzling, carbon-spewing jetliners by claiming he purchases “carbon credits” to offset his profligate energy consumption. He also said he visits Africa and Asia to learn about farming and malaria, and spends billions on “climate innovations.” 

Indeed, Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need” calls for replacing beef with synthetic meat. Cattle emit methane, a greenhouse gas (00.00019% of Earth’s atmosphere) – so people should eat fake meat processed from vegetable oil, veggies and insects. 

You may say, That’s disgusting. But Mr. Gates will profit mightily if his “recommendation” is adopted. He’s a major investor in farmland and the imitation meat company Impossible Foods, as is Mr. Gore. 

How cool! Wealthy elites can save the world and get richer at the same time! 

Beyond Meat’s stock may be down more than 75% from its one-time high, but investors will likely bring  in lots more cash via new “climate-saving” diktats, while consumers are left holding bags of rotting bug and lab-grown burgers. 

Carbon offsets? In the real world they’re part of the problem, not the solution. They don’t help Main Street; they too help rich Climate Armageddon Club members become wealthier. 

Gates Foundation grants could prevent extensive African misery, brain damage and death from malaria, by spotting disease outbreaks and eradicating Anopheles mosquito infestations – today. But it’s spending millions trying to engineer plasmodium-resistant mosquitoes, which may pay off a decade from now. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. continues pocketing billions selling and trading carbon credits. In fact, between 2015 and 2020, the company received $1.3 billion from selling credits to other companies – more than twice what it earned from automotive sales. Times sure have changed since manufacturing tycoons got rich selling products, instead of hawking climate indulgences. 

Musk also loves flying in private jets. Last summer, he even took a 9-minute, 55-mile flight from San Francisco to San Jose, instead of driving a Tesla. Wags might say that goes well with the way he and others have made a science of lobbying government agencies to subsidize fire-prone electric cars. 

It’s all to protect the environment, of course – which is why Gore, Gates, Musk and Kerry think they’re entitled to travel by private jet and limousine. We’re also supposed to ignore how their cars and lifestyles are based on metals extracted and processed with African child labor and lakes of toxic chemicals. 

Since Al Gore left the vice president’s office, he’s hauled in some $330 million railing about “rain bombs” and “boiling oceans,” and shilling for government and corporate “investments” in “green energy” that’s also reliant on supply chains running through Africa and China. 

Never forget this fundamental rule: Wind and sunshine are clean, renewable and sustainable. However, harnessing these unreliable, weather-dependent energy sources to power modern economies requires millions of tons of metals and minerals extracted from billions of tons of ores, mostly using dirty, polluting processes in countries that are conveniently out of sight and mind. 

In short, nothing about “renewable energy” is clean, renewable, sustainable, fair or equitable. 

Moreover, the “climate crisis” is based on computer models that predict hurricane, tornado, flood, drought, sea level rise and other disasters vastly greater than the world is actually experiencing. The models also ignore five great ice ages and interglacial periods, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, the Anasazi and Mayan droughts, and other inconvenient climate truths. 

Topping it off, China, Russia and India are burning cheap coal to industrialize, lift people out of poverty, and leave climate-obsessed Western nations in the economic and military dust. Even if the West went totally Net Zero, it wouldn’t reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases even one part per million.  

The climate change movement’s deceptions and contradictions seem to have no bounds – and know no apparent limits to how much loot they can rake in by lobbying federal, state and local governments, banks and financial institutions; waging media warfare; and engaging in political science with similarly minded legislators and regulators who control climate and energy laws, mandates, grants and subsidies. 

What about ESG, financial disclosure, SVB, Credit Suisse, fiduciary responsibility, and accountability? 

How can the general public be so oblivious to all of this?

FTX founder and alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried revealed the secret. He avoided media and regulator scrutiny by donating to influential media outlets, the way Bill Gates does. That garners favorable press and social media – which also ignore, cancel and deplatform critics and skeptics. 

Fortunately, gutsy interrogators like Rajan are discovering and publicizing what most of the bought-and-paid-for “journalist classes” still won’t. This helps more people see behind the curtain and find the self-interest, self-dealing and pseudo-science that create the scary climate crisis monsters. 

Climate Armageddon Club games are costing us trillions of dollars, in the name of saving people and planet. Hopefully, more real journalists, troves of Twitter emails (this time kudos to Mr. Musk!) and congressional investigations will save taxpayers and families from additional costly, destructive policies. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights. 

Are you frightened by the high temperatures of our time?

 Then you need a bit of historical perspective.  Examine the temperature history of the last 4 thousand years recorded in the ice and plotted by the CO2 Coalition:

Civilizations around the world flourished during the Minoan Warm Period.  Many collapsed and people starved when that warm period ended.  Athens prospered only in the late, warmer part of the Greek Dark Ages above.  Then Roman civilization flourished during the early Roman Warm Period enough to coast through the dip in temperatures in the Roman Warm Period and then collapse as that warm period came to an end.  Then followed another colder, hard-life period, before there was a substantial recovery of European civilization during the Medieval Warm Period, only for human lives to become more marginal when the Little Ice Age struck Europe.  The Industrial Age began about the time of the sudden rise in temperatures that ends this record of ice temperatures.  The increase in temperatures then was not the result of the initial puny industrialization, but more likely was a significant contributor to the conditions that allowed men to make the innovations and investments needed to begin industrialization.

Warm temperatures have generally been kind to mankind, while colder temperatures have brought great hardship.  We should be happy that we are enjoying a time of warming temperatures, though those temperatures are still cooler than they were in many historically known times in man's past.

The American Education System and the Mental Health of Our Children

Here is yet another way the American education system is harming our children:

https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/01/03/school-attendance-suicide/?omhide=true