Month: March 2023

The UN supports Malthusian disinformation about climate and energy and censoring accurate information that debunks it because it fears overpopulation

By Michael Shellenberger, March 20, 2023

The United States government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), within the Department of Homeland Security, is raising the alarm about the threat of “foreign influence” that is “leveraging misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.”

CISA defines “malinformation” as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In 2021, CISA, along with the White House and private sector partners, successfully persuaded Facebook and Twitter to censor accurate information about the origins of the SARS-2 coronavirus and Covid vaccines.

And yet CISA is failing to do its job when censoring malinformation, misinformation, and disinformation about climate change, including by “threat actors,” often funded or employed by foreign governments. A Google survey of over 2,300 people conducted last year by the nonpartisan research organization Environmental Progress, which I founded and lead, found that 53% of people surveyed in the U.S.… Read the rest

No global problem is more exaggerated than climate change. At its current rates, climate change is less dangerous than efforts to mitigate it

By Michael Shellenberger, Unherd.com, Nov. 3, 2021

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No global problem has ever been more exaggerated than climate change. As it has gone from being an obscure scientific question to a theme in popular culture, we’ve lost all sense of perspective.

Here are the facts: in Europe, emissions in 2020 were 26% below 1990 levels. In the United States, emissions in 2020 were 22% below 2005 levels. Emissions are likely to start declining, too, in developing nations, including China and India, within the next decade. Most nations’ emissions will be bigger this year than last, due to post-Covid economic growth. But global emissions are still likely to peak within the next decade.

And the result will be a much smaller increase in global average temperatures than almost anyone predicted just five years ago.… Read the rest

The true conflict today is not between humankind and Mother Earth. It’s between the needs of ordinary people and the fantasies of a global elite that dolls up its loss of faith in industry and progress as ‘climate-change activism’

By Bren­dan O’Neill, National Post, March 23, 2023

Bren­dan O’Neill is chief po­lit­i­cal writer of Spiked and host of the Spiked pod­cast, The Bren­dan O’Neill Show.

Here we go again. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a new document — the final part of its mammoth sixth report — and we all know what that means. More doomsday porn in the papers. More shroud-waving from eco-agitators. More warnings of imminent apocalypse. The climate cult has not disappointed. Our world is on the “brink of catastrophic warming,” cries the Washington Post. We’re headed for “climate disaster,” warns the BBC. The “climate time bomb” is ticking, says UN secretary-general António Guterres.… Read the rest

‘Staggering rise in climate-related disasters’ due mainly to more people living in disaster-prone place. Even so, deaths from climate-related events are way down!

By Ronald Bailey, Reason.com, Oct. 14, 2020

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“We are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people,” assert the authors of “Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019,” a new report issued on behalf of the United Nations (U.N.) Office of Disaster Risk Reduction. “This report focuses primarily on the staggering rise in climate-related disasters over the last twenty years,” the authors add. The report is based on data collected in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) curated by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters located at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

The U.N. and Louvain researchers tally the toll of death and destruction from all natural disasters over the past 20 years. Between 2000 to 2019, there were 7,348 major recorded natural disaster events killing 1.23 million people with economic losses amounting to approximately $2.97 trillion.… Read the rest

This article, appearing on Judith Curry’s Climate, Etc. website, assesses the probable costs and feasibility of the Net Zero by 2050 approach in the United States. Its conclusion? Net Zero is a pipe dream.

By Michael J. Kelly, Climate, Etc., March 4, 2023

In this article, I imagine that I have been appointed the first CEO of a new agency set up by the United States Federal Government with the explicit goal of actually delivering a Net Zero CO2 Emissions Economy by 2050.

My first task is to scope the project and to estimate the assets required to succeed. This is the result of that exercise, and includes a discussion of some consequences that flow from the scale and timescale for meeting the target.

The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $12T (trillion) for electrification projects and $35T for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, a work-force comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers, and the bill of specialist materials is of a size that for the USA alone is several times the global annual production of many key minerals.… Read the rest

Even the IPCC has abandoned its extreme warming scenarios. Now if only climate extremists and the media would do the same.

By Anders Bolling, Warp News, Aug. 15, 2022

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Climate research is partly about documenting what has happened, partly about predicting what will happen. In a previous article in this series, the state of knowledge regarding extreme weather phenomena is described, i.e. what has happened.

The media likes to produce headlines about extreme weather events. But an equally popular genre is forecasts about the future. They are based on data models, where certain assumptions have been entered and certain results have come out.

When such research is referenced, the conclusions are often described as something we almost know will happen. It is questionable regardless of how the studies were done, but what makes matters worse is that the basic assumption that has been fed in is alarmingly often lacking connection to reality.… Read the rest

If Conservatives win the next election, they should cancel the growth-inhibiting carbon tax and focus, again, on restoring Canada’s economic prosperity

By Ron Barmby, P. Eng.

Dear Mr. Poilievre,

There will probably be a federal election in Canada in the coming months as Justin Trudeau’s government is in a minority position with waning support.

His past three successful elections have all included fighting climate change as a key and winning platform. His current legislative agenda indicates his next campaign will have the same focus.

As Leader of the Official Opposition, and in the best position to form a new government, you are currently advocating eliminating Trudeau’s national carbon tax and “letting technology handle CO2 emissions.”

That is probably a strategy to avoid playing to Trudeau’s strength, which is instilling fear of climate change in the voting public. But you could take it further by highlighting Trudeau’s main climate weakness: he misrepresents, or is willingly ignorant of, the science of climate change.… Read the rest

Below is the Executive Summary of “The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the U.S.A.”, which examines the Tanton Report. For the pdf of the full article click here.

By Ken Gregory, P.Eng., Aug. 23, 2022

Many governments have made promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind generated electricity and to electrify the economy. A report by Thomas Tanton estimates a capital cost of US$36.4 trillion for the U.S.A. economy to meet net zero emissions using wind and solar power.

This study identifies several errors in the Tanton report and provides new capital cost estimates using 2019 and 2020 hourly electricity generation data rather than annual average conditions as was done in the Tanton report. … Read the rest

Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth. That means eliminating single-passenger vehicles.

By Allysia Fin­ley, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13, 2023

Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.

The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.… Read the rest