Washington Post: Climate Change is Fueling Super Hurricanes -- Is it really?

The Washington Post on 30 September 2022, claimed that "climate change is fueling the creation of super hurricanes."  The article says that "as waters warm, 7 super storms have lashed the U.S. since 2017."

The article argues that ocean water is warming, apparently due to global warming, not either warming or cooling climate change.  It argues that hurricanes draw their energy from warm water and therefore become stronger and more frequent.  Yes, hurricanes do draw their energy from warm water, but they also require wind shear to form as hurricanes.  Since global warming does not much affect the temperature of oceans in tropical regions due to the moderating effects of the water cycle, while it does increase temperatures in the mid-latitudes, the wind shear cause of hurricanes is actually reduced.  So what is the historic data on hurricanes?  Let us look at the record for hurricanes that had landfalls on Florida:

Maybe you can see the catastrophic increase if the data is plotted as curves rather than as bars?

I must confess that the frequency of major landfalling hurricanes does not appear to have increased, unless you only look at the timeline beginning about 1980.  It seems undeniable that the frequency of all hurricanes since the 1870s has decreased.  But, perhaps the focus on Florida is the problem.  Let us look at the data for hurricanes landing anywhere on the U.S.

Do you see a dramatic increase in hurricanes or in major hurricanes in this data?  Once again, it seems clear that the total hurricane frequency is actually decreasing.  The major hurricanes do not seem to be changing much at all.

Almost anyone at all serious about climate issues agrees that a five-year span of time is still just weather, while it takes a minimum of 30 years to be considered climate.  Note that the Washington Post article was claiming that a 5-year span of hurricane history was proof of man-made global warming, which they ridiculously call climate change.  Actually, 30 years is just enough to cover the shortest of the climate cycles, so any real climate argument ought to cover a period of quite a few 30-year cycles.

Let us examine the historic data on ocean surface temperatures, since the Washington Post argument says hurricane strength and frequency are just a function of ocean surface temperatures.

According to this data, the ocean temperatures have increased.  They did not change much from 1850 to about 1900.  There was a decrease in temperatures from 1900 to 1910, then an increase in temperature from then until the mid-1940s, then was nearly constant from then until the late 1970s, with another increase from then until about 2010.  Based on the Washington Post's claim that warmer water fuels hurricanes, the increase in water temperature from 1910 to the mid-1940s should have caused a significant increase in hurricanes.  Do you see that in the landfall hurricane charts above?  If the effect is there, it sure is small.  Then again, where is the major increase in landfalling hurricanes from the late 1970s through 2010 compared to earlier periods?

If mankind's use of carbon-based fuels is the cause of warming oceans, what huge increase in fossil fuels caused the warming from 1910 to the mid-1940s?  Europe was not producing very much for several years following WWI and then no one was during the 1930s.  Most of the world's population was not much more industrial than it had been in the 1800s.  So, how did this rapid ocean warming occur during this period?  I cannot see a good argument for it being due to man's use of carbon-based fuels.

Let us look at the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1958 and see if we can see a correlation between the CO2 concentration and the ocean surface temperatures.

The catastrophic man-made global warming argument is that carbon dioxide is the thermostat for the Earth's temperature, presumably including the 71% of the Earth's surface covered by water.  Any claim that CO2 in the atmosphere causes an increase in the temperature has to acknowledge that the warming effect requires more and more carbon dioxide for a given temperature increase.  The actual increase in CO2 in this record is a bit faster than linear, but it is not exponential or at all close to it.  So, all ocean temperature increases ought to be gradual and constant (or even dropping off) from 1958 to the present.  Yet for much of this time, there was no increase in ocean water temperature.  Then in the late 1970s the temperature takes off a bit in the ocean temperature record, but where was the acceleration in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?

One can only conclude that there is no scientific evidence that CO2 controls the temperature of the oceans and there is none that warming oceans are enough to cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.  Therefore, there is no reason to claim that man's use of carbon-based fuels is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

It is very strange that so many people claim to be scientific experts who yet believe in this nonsense.  It is also very strange that so many people who have no knowledge about such matters are nonetheless strong believers in the adamant claims of those who claim to know the science, without themselves believing they have any need to understand the science themselves.

Bringing Britain's Energy Woes to America?

Bringing Britain’s woes to America?
 
Will Biden-AOC energy policies do to Americans what UK climate obsession is doing to Brits?
 
Paul Driessen
 
Virginia enacted a Clean Economy Act; other states have implemented similar laws. AOC demands a national Green New Deal; President Biden is imposing one via executive decree. The United Kingdom is determined to reach Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions; the European Union is pursuing a Green Deal.
 
All these policies send energy prices rocketing upward, eliminating jobs and killing people. Instead of reducing emissions, they simply move them overseas, where they combine with massive air and water pollution, habitat destruction and wildlife decimation – as China and other countries burn more coal, oil and gas every year, to improve their people’s living standards ... and to mine and process raw materials for the wind turbines, solar panels and battery modules they manufacture for climate-obsessed nations.
 
The net result: Progress toward global Net Zero is zero – worse than zero – and all the lost jobs, rising poverty, reduced living standards and policy-driven deaths are for nothing.
 
President Biden wants hydrocarbon-free electricity generation by 2035, and elimination of all fossil fuel extraction and use by 2050. That means no gasoline or diesel vehicles; no natural gas to power factories or heat, warm water and cook in homes, hospitals and businesses; no petrochemical feedstocks for fertilizers, plastics, pharmaceuticals and thousands of other essential, everyday products.
 
All US energy will be provided by wind, solar and battery power – millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of battery modules, sprawling across continental United States and along its coasts. Petrochemicals will come from crops planted on millions of acres of former wildlife habitat.
 
To drive this extreme agenda, Team Biden has canceled pipelines, leases and permits; pressured banks to stop lending money for drilling; and issued scores of regulations that delay and drive up costs for fossil fuel projects – while making it easy for industrial-scale wind and solar installations to get permits. Prices for energy, transportation, food, services and used cars predictably shot up. Inflation and consumer prices reached 40-year highs.
 
Henry Hub natural gas prices doubled from $2.61 per mcf (thousand cubic feet or million BTUs) in November 2020 to $5.51 in October 2021, before falling to $4.75 in January 2022, as skyrocketing global prices spurred drilling, fracking and production on US state and private lands. Regular gasoline averaged $2.17 a gallon nationwide in 2020 – but hit $3.39/gal ($4.38 in California) in the same timeframe.
 
As Americans fret and fume over the needlessly high prices – and wonder what the future might hold – they can look to the UK and EU (a) to count their blessings for comparatively low prices today and (b) to ponder how continued climate-centric policies could impact American livelihoods and living standards.
 
Britain and continental Europe have already embraced a wind-and-solar future, closed coal and nuclear power plants, and banned fracking for the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas beneath their feet, while North Sea production keeps falling. They have reaped the whirlwind from those callously inept policies.
 
(It is illuminating and ironic that Russian organizations finance many US, UK and EU anti-fracking disinformation campaigns, funneling funds through a Bermuda law firm, a shell company and the Sea Change Foundation to the Sierra Club, Climate Action Network and other groups.)
 
Britain and Europe’s vaunted wind turbines have been generating electricity at a dismal 14% of “nameplate capacity” – providing power three hours a day, one day a week, four days a month, in short spurts, at completely unpredictable times. Their wintertime solar power has been equally sporadic and unpredictable. No modern society can function on such energy.
 
The huge gaps have been plugged with gas- and coal-fired generation, with much of the gas coming from Russia and the USA. But Asia also wants the gas, and Russia is playing Ukraine/Nord Stream 2 pipeline politics with its gas, tightening supplies as demand soars. UK and EU home and business gas and electricity prices are in the stratosphere – five to ten times the Biden Era prices Americans are paying.
 
Luckily for families and businesses, Britain’s Office of Gas & Electric Markets (Ofgem) regulates how much utility companies can charge. But that often means keeping household, hospital, school and business energy prices well below the utilities’ actual costs – with predictable results.
 
Experts say the average annual household bill of £1,277 ($1,755) could surge to £1,865 ($2,530) when the current price cap is raised in April 2022 – for homes and apartments that are much smaller than US counterparts, in a climate with much less extreme summer and winter temperatures than in much of the United States. Annual bills could exceed £2,000 ($2,715) or much more at Ofgem’s August review.
 
National Energy Action says this could put more than 6 million UK households (nearly one-fourth of all households) in “fuel poverty” – unable to afford proper heat, and often having to choose between heating or eating, even when cold indoor temperatures put their health and lives at risk.
 
For families that want budgetary certainty, the average 12-month fixed deal for a typical household now costs almost £2,500 ($3,430). But the UK’s second-biggest energy supplier’s most recent fixed-rate offer is almost £4,200 ($5,750)! That’s because natural gas and electricity generation costs are expected to keep rising – and because utilities must pay wind turbine operators “constraint payments” to turn turbines off whenever they generate more power than the grid needs and can absorb!
 
The month-ahead natural gas price at the Dutch TTF hub (a European benchmark for trading gas) recently hit €93.3 ($107) per megawatt-hour. That’s $31 an mcf – more than six times the January 2022 Henry Hub price. Just a month earlier, the European day-ahead gas price reached $61 per mcf!
 
No wonder 30 UK energy suppliers went bankrupt by the end of 2021 – leaving families and businesses scrambling to find new suppliers, at skyrocketing prices for heating and cooking. When utilities cannot charge customers anywhere near operating costs, they go belly-up.
 
No wonder two-thirds of UK renters struggle to pay their energy bills, and 400,000 more UK households were in danger of losing their gas and electricity provider before last Christmas. People are “genuinely terrified” about rising energy costs. Excess winter energy-poverty death tolls are likely to set new records.
 
Health and living standards in Britain and Europe will likely get far worse. In addition to insane energy costs, wages and environmental regulation costs are much higher than in Asia. Ceramic, steel, aluminum, automotive and other energy-intensive companies and industries are becoming uncompetitive. Manufacturing, jobs, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are just moving to Asia.
 
Climate and energy politics, combined with fierce global demand, make it unlikely that Europe’s energy prices will go down. And while the EU recently voted to define natural gas and nuclear power as “sustainable,” acquiring affordable gas and building new nuclear plants will take years and be battled every step of the way. Rolling blackouts could become as common as in California.
 
British politicians “rail at energy costs” and argue about trimming them at the margins, says journalist Madeline Grant, perhaps by reducing the 5% VAT on energy or the 25% green-social subsidy levies on electricity bills. But they “dare not question the green policies” that cause energy price increases, end up taking no action, and then slap hefty new “pollution taxes” on gas and diesel vehicles.
 
Britain and Europe need to drill and frack their vast shale deposits. Having shut down their older nuclear plants, they must start building small modular reactors. The rest of the developed world needs to take similar actions – and not only because China, India and the rest of the developing world are not about to give up fossil fuels and rely on unreliable wind and solar power, but to save jobs and lives.
 
Otherwise, Britain’s Christmas just past will be its, Europe’s and America’s Christmas future, forever. Scrooge learned from Marley. Will Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, AOC and their lot learn from reality?
 

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

Charles' Comment:  There seems to be no end to the destruction of lives and society that radical environmentalists and the believers in the false catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis work with so much dedication to accomplish!

Does Nitrogen Dioxide Cause Asthma in Children?

The Hill -- Equilibrium/Stability, an environmental report put out by The Hill, makes the following claims:

The burden of pollution falls particularly hard on children, according to another Lancet study, which found that the pollutant nitrogen dioxide, or NO2 — a common byproduct of burning fossil fuels in cars and power plants ­­– has led to almost 2 million additional cases of childhood asthma.

The link in the quote is to the Medical press and an article by George Washington University which claims after a picture of smokestacks billowing what appears to be horrible pollutants, but may well be nothing but water vapor, especially given the lighting conditions:

Nearly 2 million new cases of pediatric asthma every year may be caused by a traffic-related air pollutant, a problem particularly important in big cities around the world, according to a new study published today. The study is the first to estimate the burden of pediatric asthma cases caused by this pollutant in more than 13,000 cities from Los Angeles to Mumbai.

"Our study found that nitrogen dioxide puts children at risk of developing asthma and the problem is especially acute in urban areas," Susan Anenberg, a co-lead author of the article and a professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University, said. "The findings suggest that clean air must be a critical part of strategies aimed at keeping children healthy."

Examining the link in this last quote, we go to the paper in The Lancet entitled Long-term trends in urban NO2 concentrations and associated paediatric asthma incidence: estimates from global datasets.  What do we find here?

NO₂ itself has been associated with adverse health outcomes including asthma exacerbation.  Epidemiological studies have also found associations between transportation-related air pollutants and new onset asthma in children.  Toxicological and gene environment research indicates that transportation-related air pollutants cause airway inflammation and remodelling due to oxidative stress, resulting in asthma development in some individuals.  Epidemiological studies are generally consistent in their finding that NO₂ is significantly associated with paediatric asthma incidence, whereas the evidence for other transportation-related air pollutants (eg, PM_2·5) is more mixed.  Although the putative agent causing asthma in the traffic-related air pollution mixture is unknown, NO₂ could serve as a surrogate for other pollutants causing observed health effects.

I added the bold in each of the above quotes to emphasize the slippery impression that nitrogen dioxide is a cause of childhood asthma.  The first article in The Hill -- Equilibrium/Stability implies that it is a cause of childhood asthma.  The second article says it may be a cause in one paragraph and then says it puts children at risk of developing asthma, which means that it is a cause of asthma.  The Lancet paper implies that NO2 is somehow "associated" with asthma exacerbation, but then says that the agent causing asthma in traffic-related air pollution is unknown.  Nonetheless, the gist of the paper is that NO2 causes 2 million additional cases of childhood asthma.

The CDC still says that the cause of childhood asthma is unknown. It says:

While we don’t know what causes asthma, we do know how to prevent asthma attacks or at least make them less severe.

The bottom line is that we do not know that NO2 is causing asthma.  But, the radical environmentalists and the proponents of the failed catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis very much want to create the impression that this product of carbon-based fuel combustion is poisoning children.  The game is a parallel to the darkening of water vapor emissions from smokestacks to make them look like evil pollutants.  It is like the construction of a case against coal-fired power plants based on their mercury emissions that I blew out of the water years ago on this blog.

There are far too many people politicizing science and, in the process, falsifying science.

On Mercury from coal-fired power plants, see:

Evaluating the Mercury Emissions Danger from Coal-Fired Power Plants

The EPA's Newest Environmental Vendetta Against Coal

Coal-Fired Power Plants Produce Insignificant Mercury

Science Theory Unbound by Test -- The Story of the Man-Made Global Warming Hypothesis

In 1988, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that NASA climate models indicated a tendency for heatwave drought situations in the Southeast and the Midwest USA in the late 1980s and the 1990s.  This prediction proved wrong.

Also in 1988, James Hansen, testified to our Congress that the Washington, D.C. area would go from 35 days a year warmer the 90F to 85 days a year in the next 50 to 60 years.  He also said the ocean will rise between one and six feet.  We are 32 years into that 50 to 60 years and so far the average number of days warmer than 90F has decreased.  According to NOAA, the rise in sea level from 1988 to 2020 was 9.81 cm or 3.86 inches. Once again, 32 years into that 50 to 60 year prediction, the rise of sea level is running way behind the low end of the prediction.

About the same time, James Hansen, told a reporter the West Side Highway running along the Hudson River on Manhattan Island would be underwater in 20 years.  The windows of Manhattan Buildings would all have tape across them due to the high winds.  I have been in Manhattan a number of times since the start of 2020.  Neither of these predictions have come to fruition.  

In June 2008, Hansen claimed there would be no Artic sea ice in the summer in 5 to 10 years.  Al Gore, not to be outdone, predicted that the entire North polar ice cap would be gone in 5 years. U.S. Navy scientists predicted the Artic could lose its summer sea ice in 2016.  In 2020 there was still considerable summer sea ice at the seasonal minimum, as there has been every year since 2008.  

In 2009, Prince Charles said we had 8 years to save the world.  Damn, we lost the world in 2017.

In 2014, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said we had 500 days to avoid climate chaos.

Joe "The Great Idiot" Biden, Hanoi John Kerry, the stark raving mad 8 years to doomsday AOC, and the entire Elite of the Democratic Socialist Party claim that man-made global warming is an "existential" threat to planet Earth.  Where Trump may have exaggerated his Inaugeration crowd, Biden told us the massive lie that there is an existential threat to the Earth due to our use of carbon fuels.  This existential threat requires him to drag us back into the Paris Climate Accord, though it is an unratified treaty.  Of course, these politicians are just shills and mooks who have zero understanding of the science of radiative heat transfer.

Supposedly, the principal claim that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is true is the claim that its effects have been modeled correctly in their many global climate computer models.  They recently claimed these models are good at predicting the surface temperature, but the science the models are supposed to represent makes predictions of the atmospheric temperature throughout the atmosphere, not just at the surface.  What is more, the surface temperature record has been strongly biased upward in recent times and downward in the past, making it a very unreliable temperature record.  The atmospheric temperature record is much more a global record and has not been manipulated and affected by urban heat island effects in the way the surface temperature record has been.  So once again, let us present this comparison of the model temperature predictions for the atmosphere and actual temperature measurements of the atmospheric temperature:

The supposedly science-based global computer models predict much greater temperature increases than have been found in the measurements.  The scientific method demands that we declare the hypothesis of  catastrophic man-made global warming a failed hypothesis due its long history of failed predictions.  In other words, the continued belief in catastrophic man-made global warming is anti-science because it has ignored a basic requirement of the scientific method.

Why are its advocates claiming this anti-science belief is justification for putting more than 10,000 Keystone XL Pipeline workers into the already massive pool of the unemployed?  Why are they denying the livelihoods of some already who earn a living extracting oil and gas from federal lands and offshore fields and many in the future whose oil and gas jobs will not be created as a result?  Why are they damaging the earnings of the many people who provide goods and services to these carbon fuel industries and their employees?  Why are they forcing transportation costs for all Americans to rise greatly?  Why are they causing the energy costs to run our businesses and to operate our homes to increase drastically?  Why are they pushing a future of electricity brown-outs and black-outs upon us?  Why are they advocating spreading solar panels and wind generators over huge acreages of the nation?  Why do they now no longer care how many birds and bats are killed by wind generators?  Why do they want to saddle us with electric vehicles with their massive purchase cost, limited range, inconvenient recharging requirements, and massive repair costs?  Why do they not care about the massive damage to our future economy and the many jobs which will be lost, the many jobs that will not be created, and the many advances in other areas of human endeavor that will never come about because of a very harmful energy policy?

The answer is the desire for the Great Reset.  These advocates want what the World Economic Forum is advocating, which is an end to capitalism, an end to personal property, an end to individual rights, and a complete dependence upon government controlled by a socialist Elite.  Biden plagiarized his Build Back Better campaign slogan from the World Economic Forum for a reason.  Biden is not a creative man.  He has never created or built anything.  His specialty is the destruction of things built and created by others.  Even in his speeches and writings, he has a long history as a plagiarist.  So, it is entirely to be expected that the kind of people who are behind the World Economic Forum have made him their point man, albeit with many socialist managers, for exercising the program of the World Economic Forum upon the USA.  This program is absolutely evil and absolutely un-American.  Carrying it through is massively unconstitutional.  It will be extremely deleterious to the Welfare of the People of the USA.  Yet, it is moving forward rapidly under the Biden Regime.

Biden Promises to Destroy Fossil Fuels Industries in 4-year Transition Period Ending in 2025

Many people will say that he said no such thing. Literally, he did not say this. However, rational individuals will see that this four-year transition period is the implication of the things he said, but would never have the courage to say explicitly. 

What did he explicitly say? Let us list his key statements:

"I would transition away from the oil industry, yes."

"It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time, over time."

"I'd stop giving to the oil industry, I'd stop giving them federal subsidies."

"We need other industries to transition to get to ultimately a complete zero emissions by 2025."

"The point is, look, we have to move toward a net-zero emissions.  The first place to do that by the year 2035 is in energy production, by 2050 totally."

Biden's energy plan does not literally call for shutting down the entire oil and gas and coal industries by 2025.  It calls for zero-emissions with a fantasy that one will develop a huge industry that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The cost of actually sucking carbon dioxide, plant food, from the atmosphere will be gigantic.  It will have a huge negative impact on farming as well.  The materials that will hold the carbon dioxide will have to be mined at great cost, or great caverns will have to be created to hold the removed carbon dioxide.  The sequestration of carbon dioxide will have major environmental costs itself.

How will the otherworldly costs of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere be borne?  If it is to be borne by the American taxpayer, that would be a subsidy to the oil, gas, and coal industries, in the left's viewpoint.  Since Biden pledges no subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries, they will have to pay the incredible costs for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  This will cause the costs of oil, gas, and coal to skyrocket.  Skyrocketing costs means much lower usage of oil, gas, and coal.  This means many, many oil, gas, and coal workers will become unemployed.  It means that many people who transport oil, gas, coal, and products made from them will become unemployed.  Those towns and cities which presently support these industries will have massive unemployment.  As West Virginia has suffered greatly from the travails of coal under prohibitive governmental mandated expenses, so will many other areas be devastated.  Western Pennsylvania, eastern and southern Ohio, North Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana will be very hard hit.

All of this is to happen in a crash manner by 2025, according to what Biden said in the debate.  Some say he was confused and meant to say by 2035, the date he gave for zero-emissions in energy production.  Maybe he was confused and careless.  Maybe the differing dates are because the huge changes in energy production to create tens of thousands of wind generators, huge photovoltaic farms, bank after bank of batteries, and the means to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in massive quantities will cause the generation of a huge load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Making cement blocks huge enough to anchor those wind generators releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, for instance.  Mining the materials for huge, sweeping banks of batteries, for the materials to make wind generators, and to make photovoltaic farms requires an incredible amount of energy use.  So, maybe Biden is saying the oil, gas, and coal industries must be zero-emissions by 2025, but the totally changed energy industry as a whole will not have to be zero-emissions until 2035.  That would make sense, if the U.S. economy could survive such wrenching changes in a 14 year period.  But it cannot do so.  Trump is right that this would cause our economy to falter badly.  We would be in for a never-ending depression.

Stop and think about the consequences of skyrocketing energy costs.  All of our transportation costs will go up greatly.  Manufacturing operations require considerable energy and they require that it be dependable.  A power outage can destroy all of the materials or products in a production process at the time of power failure.  A laboratory, such as mine, can lose many hours of time when an analysis process is stopped in mid-stream and a unique sample is destroyed.  The cost of virtually every product must go up as its production cost goes up and the transportation cost to get it to the customer goes up.  One of the reasons Americans have higher incomes than the vast majority of people around the world is because we have a lower cost of energy and a more dependable supply of energy than almost any other country.  Under Biden's energy plan, manufacturers will have no choice but to move many manufacturing and support jobs out of the U.S.  That situation will be even worse than it was under the Obama/Biden administration.  When manufacturing goes overseas, the support technology also goes overseas.  Engineering and science jobs in support of manufacturing disappear, along with the knowledge to make things.  The U.S. will lose the knowledge that has given us the very superior standard of living we have.

As I have shown in many posts on this blog, the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis has been proven to be wrong.  The Earth energy budgets that summarize the understanding of the so-called consensus violate physics.  The climate models based on their wrong ideas of physics, keep making wrong predictions about the temperatures in the atmosphere and about future temperatures.  Of course they do, because they do not understand the physics of thermal radiation, convection in air, and they even violate energy conservation.  Even if one does not understand the physics, as very few people do, the scientific method says the hypothesis is wrong because the model predictions have been wrong.

Of course the insanity of the Biden energy plan does not stand alone among his insane policy ideas.  Biden will hit the American economy with a slew of new regulations with a massive expansion of the Swamp Creature regulatory state.  Regulations are a huge expense burden on business already.  Small businesses cannot even know what the regulations are because they do not have the means to monitor the avalanche of new regulations and interpretations of regulations that occur each year.  Businesses that want to make large investments are afraid to do so, because the new operations they want to create may take years to be in place (in large part due to regulations) and then take years to make back their initial investment.  What arbitrary, irrationally expensive regulations relative to any benefits will come down the pike and wipe out their investment?  Politicians rarely think about the consequences of their actions, except as far as the next election at most.  A lifetime politician like Biden is not even capable of thinking about the destructive nature of his ideas.  The actions President Trump has taken to moderate the burdens of federal regulations are a much under-esteemed effect of his administration.

Another idiot's delight is a national minimum wage of $15 an hour, which was backed by Biden in the debate and has widespread support in the Democratic Party.  As I have previously written on this blog, the cost of living in the U.S. varies hugely across the country.  A business in NYC or one in San Francisco is much more likely to be able to justify paying an employee $15 an hour than is a small business in Okmulgee, Oklahoma or Arco, Idaho or Rising Sun, Mississippi.  The $15/hour Biden plan is a way to depopulate rural America and to force everyone into huge metropolitan areas where the cost of living is much higher, but one can also often earn more money.  Unfortunately, this actually tends to result in a real lowering of the standard of living of many people, especially the very poorer people that the $15/hour proposal pretends to help.  The resident of NYC with a mean income earns less real income than does the mean income earning American when you correct for the higher cost of living!  For a person of mean income, moving from Oklahoma to NYC actually lowers your standard of living, despite the fact you will likely be paid more.

President Trump understands the basic principles that allow our economy to flourish and that allow Americans to enjoy an increasing standard of living.  Joe Biden does not.

Biden Flies Across America to Rally with Ten People Causing Climate Catastrophe

For a man who tells us that the Earth and Mankind face an existential crisis due to the use of fossil fuels, Joe Biden does not hesitate to fly across the United States to give a "rally" for ten followers.  Our energy future is to be put on a starvation diet, while Joe Biden spews carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Is this just his megalomania, consistent with his belief that the American People do not deserve to know whether he will pack the Supreme Court?  Or does this mean Joe understands that the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming theory is really just a scam for the Socialist Democratic Party to gain more power for the government, which is about to be "I am the Democratic Party" Joe Biden?

Because if Joe Biden is the Democratic Party, then rest assured that Joe Biden, if elected President, will be the Government.  There will be no more need for sharing power with the Supreme Court and the Congress then there is a need for Joe Biden to share power with multiple leaders, factions, and individuals in the Democratic Party.

No Plan B for Planet A by Paul Driessen

Replacing fossil fuels with “renewable” energy would devastate the only planet we’ve got

Environmentalists and Green New Deal [GND] proponents like to say we must take care of the Earth, because “There is no Planet B.” Above all, they insist, we must eliminate fossil fuels, which they say are causing climate change worse than the all-natural ice ages, Medieval Warm Period or anything else in history.

Their Plan A is simple: No fossil fuels. Keep them in the ground. More than a few Democrat presidential aspirants have said they would begin implementing that diktat their very first day in the White House.

Their Plan B is more complex: Replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, biofuel and battery power – their supposedly renewable, sustainable alternatives to oil, gas and coal. Apparently by waving a magic wand.

We don’t have a Planet B. And they don’t really have a Plan B. They just assume and expect that this monumental transformation will simply happen. Wind, solar, battery and biofuel technologies represent the natural evolution toward previously unimaginable energy sources – and they will become more efficient over time. Trust us, they say.

Ask them for details, and their responses range from evasive to delusional, disingenuous – and outrage that you would dare ask. The truth is, they don’t have a clue. They’ve never really thought about it. It’s never occurred to them that these technologies require raw materials that have to be dug out of the ground, which means mining, which they vigorously oppose (except by dictators in faraway countries).

They’re lawyers, lawmakers, enforcers. But most have never been in a mine, oilfield or factory, probably not even on a farm. They think dinner comes from a grocery store, electricity from a wall socket, and they can just pass laws requiring that the new energy materialize as needed. And it will happen Presto!

It’s similar to the way they handle climate change. Their models, reports and headlines bear little or no resemblance to the real world outside our windows – on temperatures, hurricanes, tornadoes, sea levels, crops or polar bears. But the crisis is real, the science is settled, and anyone who disagrees is a denier.

So for the moment, Let’s not challenge their climate or fossil fuel ideologies. Let’s just ask: How exactly are you going to make this happen? How will you ensure that your Plan A won’t destroy our economy, jobs and living standards? And your Plan B won’t devastate the only planet we’ve got? I’ll say it again:

(1) Abundant, reliable, affordable, mostly fossil fuel energy is the lifeblood of our modern, prosperous, functioning, safe, healthy, fully employed America. Upend that, and you upend people’s lives, destroy their jobs, send their living standards on a downward spiral.

(2) Wind and sunshine may be renewable, sustainable and eco-friendly. But the lands, habitats, wildlife, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, transmission lines, raw materials, mines and laborers required or impacted to harness this intermittent, weather-dependent energy to benefit humanity absolutely are not.

(3) The supposed cure they say we must adopt is far worse than the climate disease they claim we have.

Using wind power to replace the 3.9 billion megawatt-hours that Americans consumed in 2018, coal and gas-fired backup power plants, natural gas for home heating, coal and gas for factories, and gasoline for vehicles – while generating enough extra electricity every windy day to charge batteries for just seven straight windless days – would require some 14 million 1.8-MW wind turbines.

Those turbines would sprawl across three-fourths of the Lower 48 US states – and require 15 billion tons of steel, concrete and other raw materials. They would wipe out eagles, hawks, bats and other species.

Go offshore instead, and we’d need a couple million truly monstrous 10-MW turbines, standing in water 20-100 feet deep or on huge platforms in deeper water, up and down our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Not as many of the beasts, but each one a lot bigger – requiring vastly more materials per turbine.

A Category 4 hurricane going up the Atlantic seaboard would wipe out a lot of them – leaving much of the country without power for months or years, until wrecks got removed and new turbines installed.

Using solar to generate just the 3.9 billion MWh would require completely blanketing an area the size of New Jersey with sunbeam-tracking Nellis Air Force Base panels – if the Sun were shining at high-noon summertime Arizona intensity 24/7/365. (That doesn’t include the extra power demands listed for wind.)

Solar uses toxic chemicals during manufacturing and in the panels: lead, cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide and many others. They could leach out into soils and waters during thunderstorms, hail storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and when panels are dismantled and hauled off to landfills or recycling centers. Recycling panels and wind turbines presents major challenges.

Using batteries to back up sufficient power to supply U.S. electricity needs for just seven straight windless days would require more than 1 billion half-ton Tesla-style batteries. That means still more raw materials, hazardous chemicals and toxic metals.

Bringing electricity from those facilities, and connecting a nationwide GND grid, would require thousands of miles of new transmission lines – onshore and underwater – and even more raw materials.

Providing those materials would result in the biggest expansion in mining the United States and world have ever seen: removing hundreds of billions of tons of overburden, and processing tens of billions of tons of ore – mostly using fossil fuels. Where we get those materials is also a major problem.

If we continue to ban mining under modern laws and regulations here in America, those materials will continue to be extracted in places like Inner Mongolia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, largely under Chinese control – under labor, wage, health, safety, environmental and reclamation standards that no Western nation tolerates today. There’ll be serious pollution, toxics, habitat losses and dead wildlife.

Even worse, just to mine cobalt for today’s cell phone, computer, Tesla and other battery requirements, over 40,000 Congolese children and their parents work at slave wages, risk cave-ins, and get covered constantly in toxic and radioactive mud , dust, water and air. Many die. The mine sites in Congo and Mongolia have become vast toxic wastelands. The ore processing facilities are just as horrific.

Meeting GND demands would multiply these horrors many times over. Will Green New Dealers require that all these metals and minerals be responsibly and sustainably sourced, at fair wages, with no child labor – as they do for T-shirts and coffee? Will they now permit exploration and mining in the USA?

Meeting basic ecological and human rights standards would send GND energy prices soaring. It would multiply cell phone, laptop, Tesla and GND costs five times over. But how long can Green New Dealers remain clueless and indifferent about these abuses?

Up to now, this has all been out of sight, out of mind, in someone else’s backyard, in some squalid far-off country, with other people and their kids doing the dirty, dangerous work of providing essential raw materials. That lets AOC, Senator Warren, Al Gore, Michael Mann, Greenpeace and other “climate crisis-renewable energy” profiteers preen about climate justice, sustainability and saving Planet Earth.

They refuse to discuss the bogus hockey stick temperature graph; the ways Mann & Co. manipulated and hid data, and deleted incriminating emails; their inability to separate human influences from the powerful natural forces that have caused climate changes throughout history; or the absurd notion that the 0.01% of Earth’s atmosphere that is carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use over the past 50 years is somehow responsible for every extreme weather event today. But they won’t be able to ignore this fraud forever.

Meanwhile, we sure are going to be discussing the massive resource demands, ecological harm and human rights abuses that the climate alarm industry would impose in the name of protecting the Earth and stabilizing its perpetually unstable climate. We won’t let them dodge those issues in 2020.

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

My Comments:

I cannot fathom the degree to which the proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming are willing to ignore the many and colossal failures of the predictions of their hypothesis and its clear violations of basic physics.  Ignoring reality is itself immoral, but in the name of their failed theory, they are overtly prepared to cause irreparable damage to the welfare of mankind and the welfare of the Earth's many other animals.

They want the power to pursue the GND or similar harmful policies so badly they are willing to absolutely contradict the motives they have often claimed make their environmental and economic policies moral.  The harm to humans will fall most heavily on those who have lower incomes.  They will be most likely to lose their jobs in the extraction, transportation, power, manufacturing, and construction industries.  The harm of the GND will cause an increase in economic inequality.

I do not believe that income equality is a moral goal, but I do believe that it is immoral for government to pursue policies that are particularly harmful to any of its citizens, most certainly including those with lower incomes.  Everyone deserves the exercise of their right to pursue the earning of a living.  Governments should not be constantly erecting barriers to the efforts of the people to be productive.

Those who are willing to ignore the reality of physics and the scientific method are also willing to ignore every rational moral principle.  We see that very clearly in the policies of those who insist upon using force justified by a demonstrated false hypothesis to do horrible damage to the people and other animals of this Earth.

A Couple of Climate Change Nuggets

Mark Mills, Real Clear Energy, 8 November 2019:

...since 2007, American fracking technology has added 500 percent more energy to markets than have all of the planet’s wind and solar farms combined.

I cannot help but wonder why Americans have invested so much in fracking when so many are claiming that wind and solar generate power more inexpensively.  If consumers are buying those more expensive fracking industry energy products, are they doing it because they believe wind and solar power are immoral?  Are they being repelled by the socialism behind wind and solar power?  Or is it simply that wind and solar are really more expensive than fracking energy products and a great big socialist lie is being revealed?



Roger Pielke, Jr., Forbes, 31 October 2019:  

The data show that direct economic losses from weather and climate-related disasters have declined (based on a linear trend) over the past 30 years from slightly under 0.3% of global GDP to slightly under 0.2% of global GDP.

The catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is in desperate need of showing an increase of weather and climate-related disasters of at least a few percent of worldwide GDP to even come close to justifying the draconian decreases in the many other aspects of our well-being that hydrocarbon fuels buttress.  Yet they cannot even demonstrate a couple tenths of a percent hit to global GDP over the last 30 years.  Just how gullible do these alarmist socialists think we are?  

Well they do call us the Deplorables and Denialists and many another nasty name, so it is pretty clear they do not respect us much.  I well remember, when I was but a child, realizing that those who do not respect me, are not worthy of my respect.

Climategate: Ten years later by Dr. Kelvin Kemm

Climate alarmists are still promoting junk science, fossil fuel bans and wealth redistribution

This month marks the tenth anniversary of “Climategate” – the release of thousands of emails to and from climate scientists who had been (and still are) collaborating and colluding to create a manmade climate crisis that exists in their minds and computer models, but not in the real world. The scandal should have ended climate catastrophism. Instead, it was studiously buried by politicians, scientists, activists and crony capitalists, who will rake in trillions of dollars from the exaggerations and fakery, while exempting themselves from the damage they are inflicting on everyday families.

Few people know the Inconvenient Facts about the supposed manmade climate and extreme weather “crisis.” For example, since 1998, average global temperatures have risen by a mere few hundredths of a degree. (For a time, they even declined slightly.) Yet all we hear is baseless rhetoric about manmade carbon dioxide causing global warming and climate changes that pose existential threats to humanity, wildlife and planet. Based on this, we are told we must stop using fossil fuels to power economic growth and better living standards. This is bad news for Africa and the world.

We keep hearing that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause rising global temperatures. But satellite data show no such thing. In fact, computer model predictions for 2019 are almost a half degree Celsius (0.9 degrees F) above actual satellite measurements. Even worse, anytime a scientist raises questions about the alleged crisis, he or she is denounced as a “climate change denier.”

A major source of data supporting the human CO2- induced warming proposition came from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

Then on the morning of 17 November 2009 a Pandora’s box of embarrassing CRU information exploded onto the world scene. A computer hacker penetrated the university’s computer system and took 61 Megs of material that showed the CRU had been manipulating scientific information to make global warming appear to be the fault of mankind and industrial CO2. Among many other scandals, the shocking leaked emails showed then-CRU-director Prof. Phil Jones boasting of using statistical “tricks” to remove evidence of observed declines in global temperatures.

In another email, he advocated deleting data rather than providing it to scientists who did not share his view and might criticize his analyses. Non-alarmist scientists had to invoke British freedom of information laws to get the information. Jones was later suspended, and former British Chancellor Lord Lawson called for a Government enquiry into the embarrassing exposé.

The affair became known as “Climategate,” and a group of American University students even posted a YouTube song, “Hide the Decline,” mocking the CRU and climate modeler Dr. Michael Mann, whose use of the phrase “hide the decline” in temperatures had been found in the hacked emails.

So what is the truth? If one considers the composition of the atmosphere and equates it to the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the extra plant-fertilizing CO2 added to the atmosphere since California became the 31st state of the United States in 1850 is less than the thickness of tiles under the Tower.

Can this tiny increase really explain any observed global warming since the Little Ice Age ended, and the modern industrial era began? Since California became a state, the measured global rise in atmospheric temperature has been less than 1⁰C. But most of this increase occurred prior to 1940, and average planetary temperatures fell from around 1943 until about 1978, leading to a global cooling scare. Temperatures rose slightly until 1998, then mostly remained stable, even as carbon dioxide levels continued to rise. Rising CO2 levels and temperature variations do not correlate very well at all.  

Moreover, during the well-documented Medieval Warm Period from about 950 to 1350, warmer global temperatures allowed Viking farmers to raise crops and tend cattle in Greenland. The equally well documented 500-year Little Ice Age starved and froze the Vikings out of Greenland, before reaching its coldest point, the Maunder Minimum, 1645-1715. That’s when England’s River Thames regularly froze over, Norwegian farmers demanded compensation for lands buried by advancing glaciers, and priests performed exorcism rituals to keep alpine glaciers away from villages. Paintings from the era show crowds of people ice skating and driving horse-drawn carriages on the Thames.

Industry and automobile emissions obviously played no role in either the MWP or the LIA.

These dramatic events should ring warning bells for any competent, honest scientist. If the Medieval Warm Period occurred without industrial CO2 driving it, why should industrial CO2 be causing any observed warming today? Europe’s great plague wiped out nearly a quarter of its population during the Little Ice Age. The warm period brought prosperity and record crops, while cold years brought misery, famine and death.

Ten years before Climategate, Dr. Mann released a computer-generated graph purporting to show global temperatures over the previous 1500 years. His graph mysteriously made the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Maunder extreme cold years disappear – and planetary temperatures spike suddenly the last couple decades of twentieth century. The graph had the shape of a hockey stick, was published worldwide and became a centerpiece for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Many scientists were highly suspicious of the hockey stick claims. Two of them, Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, completely discredited Mann’s computer program and revisionist history. Of course, that did not stop former US vice president Al Gore from using the discredited graph in his doom and gloom climate change movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The hacked CRU emails also showed exchanges between Mann and Jones, in which they discussed how to intimidate editors who wanted to publish scientific views contrary to theirs, to suppress any contradictory studies. In one email, Jones expressed his desire to get rid of the “troublesome editor” of the Climate Research journal for daring to publish differing views. The editor got sacked.

When University of Colorado climate skeptic Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. asked the CRU for its original temperature readings, he was told the data had been (conveniently) lost. Lost!?! Do professionals lose something as valuable as original data? Many suspected they just didn’t want anyone to expose their clever manipulations and fabrications.

But if industrial carbon dioxide did not cause recent global warming, what did? A Danish research group, led by Prof. Henrik Svensmark, has found a very credible match between levels of sunspot activity (giant magnetic storms) on our Sun and global temperatures over the last fifteen hundred years. This all-natural mechanism actually fits the evidence! How terribly inconvenient for alarmists.

Cosmic rays from deep space constantly impinge on the Earth’s upper atmosphere and produce clouds, much like high-flying jets leave white contrails behind their engines. More clouds can trap heat, but they also cause global cooling because not as much sunlight strikes the Earth. More sunspots mean a stronger magnetic shield, therefore fewer cosmic rays reaching Earth, thus less cloud cover and more global warming. The Sun is currently in a near-record period of low sunspot activity.

All sorts of interest groups are suppressing this information. Maybe worse, when Climategate broke, “climate justice” campaigner for Friends of the Earth Emma Brindal said bluntly: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.” Not protecting Earth from manmade CO2 emissions or natural and manmade climate change – but redistributing wealth and resources, according to formulas that self-appointed ruling elites decide is “socially just.”

Climate campaigners also oppose “excessive” air travel for business or pleasure, 4x4 vehicles as “unnecessary luxuries,” and modern homes for Africans. Some even say Africans must continue living in mud huts and avoid the use of electricity and modern farming technologies. Minor US actor Ed Begley has said “Africans should have solar power where they need it most: on their huts.” They, Al Gore, Phil Jones and Mike Mann are exempted from these restrictions, of course.

Real social justice and human rights mean everyone has access to abundant, reliable, affordable energy, especially universally important electricity. Not from expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels. From fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.

We in the developing world will no longer let climate truth be suppressed. We will not allow loud, radical activists to put the brakes on African economic development, jobs, and improved health and living standards, in the name of advancing their anti-human, wealth redistribution agendas.

Dr. Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and CEO of Nuclear Africa (Pty) Ltd, a project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. He does consultancy work in strategic development.