Month: January 2025

Freeland and Carney may ‘axe’ the consumer carbon tax, but they’ll likely keep all the other anti-carbon policies on the books

By Robert Lyman, National Post, Jan. 23, 2025

Filmmaker and comedian Woody Allen often uses a rhetorical technique called a switcheroo. A switcheroo is a sudden unexpected variation or reversal of words, in Woody’s case used for humorous effect. For example, he once claimed that he carried a bullet in his breast pocket because someone once threw a bible at him and the bullet saved his life.

The aspiring leaders of the Liberal party are no strangers to the technique.… Read more

Even climate doomsayers don’t believe their hype any more—why should the general public?

By Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 28, 2025

Momentous social movements begin to die the moment adherents figure out their leaders don’t believe what they say. Liberal Protestantism’s long decline started in the 1950s, when congregants began to wonder if their ministers still believed the old creeds (they didn’t). Communism dies wherever it’s tried because sooner or later the proletariat realize their self-appointed champions aren’t particularly interested in equality. Many sects and cults dwindle the moment their supposedly ascetic leaders are revealed to be libertines.

Something similar is happening to climate ideology.… Read more

At a time when governments are facing increased costs for pensions, education, health care and defence, spending 25% of GDP on Net Zero climate policies makes no sense

By Bjorn Lomborg, National Post, Jan. 21, 2025

Across the world, public finances are stretched dangerously thin. Per person growth continues dropping while costs are climbing for pensions, education, health care, and defence. These urgent priorities could easily require an additional three to six per cent of GDP. Yet green campaigners are loudly calling for governments to spend up to 25 per cent of our GDP choking growth in the name of climate change.… Read more

‘If CO2 is such a good climate driver, why doesn’t it drive the climate good?’ CO₂concentrations may contribute to temperature changes, but they do not drive the climate

By Ron Davison, Friends of Science, January 2024

The alarmist narrative (more accurately a mantra) is simple. Humanity’s fossil fuel use is almost exclusively responsible for the atmospheric Greenhouse Gas (primarily CO₂) concentration rise since the pre-industrial era. Notwithstanding that the narrative ignores water (roughly 95% of the Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere), those rising concentrations will lead to catastrophically high temperatures and complete global ecosystem destruction. … Read more

The United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, Germany, and many other countries are abandoning Net Zero policies that are increasing energy costs for their citizens

By Pilita Clark, National Post, Dec. 26, 2024

A few days after Donald Trump won the United States election, I was at the UN climate COP in Azerbaijan where I ran into the head of a climate change think-tank who said something unexpected.

He told me his U.S. team had adopted the same communications guidelines the group used in China, where independent research groups tread carefully to avoid rattling Beijing’s authoritarian regime. His U.S. staff had to ensure all public comments were politically neutral, and avoid any moves that could be construed as overt attacks on the administration.… Read more

Nuclear power has raised both hope and deep distrust. Can it make a comeback as energy needs increase? Review of The Power of Nuclear, by Marco Visscher, Bloomsbury Sigma, 320 pages, $28 (US)

BY JAMES B. MEIGS, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 04, 2025

THE INDIAN POINT nuclear power plant, on the banks of the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City, first opened in 1962 and was greatly expanded in the 1970s. For many years it was a monument to technological optimism. On a site smaller than that of a shopping mall, the plant’s two reactors could produce over 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply more than a quarter of the city’s power needs—safely and reliably, without a trace of emissions.… Read more

Unlike claims of green campaigners, consumer’ power bills go up—way up—when nations increase their reliance on ‘renewables’ like solar and wind

By Bjorn Lomborg , Wall Street Journal, Jan. 02, 2025

As nations use more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power, a strange thing happens: Our power bills get more expensive. This exposes the environmentalist lie that renewables have already outmatched fossil fuels and that the “green transition” is irreversible even under a second Trump administration.… Read more