Posts

The Big Green Lie about carbon dioxide

The Big Green Lie that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is so pervasive that even those considered skeptics generally adhere to the orthodoxy, differing not in their stated belief that CO2 is a pollutant but only in how calamitous a pollutant it is

By Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon, Epoch Times, August 2, 2022

Almost every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, pays homage to the Big Green Lie. So do all the past and remaining Conservative candidates vying to be prime minister of the UK and every candidate currently vying for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. So does virtually all of the mainstream press.… Read more

Think we can get to Net Zero without a working prototype? Think again

Our politicians think they can just order up a functioning wind/solar electricity system and assume that backup energy storage devices will magically get invented and it will all work fine and not be financially ruinous, all by some arbitrarily ordered date in the 2030s

By Francis Menton, July 28, 2022

From the Manhattan Contrarian

The single most astounding universal failure of all jurisdictions pursuing Net Zero is the failure to pursue any sort of working prototype or demonstration project of a Net Zero electricity system before committing the entire jurisdiction to the project on the basis of a blank check to be paid by the taxpayers and ratepayers.… Read more

James Lovelock: From ultra-alarmist to realist

Lovelock outraged many Greens by criticizing as irrational the green movement’s fear of nuclear generation as a way to reduce carbon emissions

By Paul MacRae

James Lovelock, the inventor of the “Gaia” theory of planetary wholeness, died July 26, 2022, at the age of 103.

Lovelock, a medical doctor and ecologist, came to prominence with his theory of “Gaia,” which proposed that thanks to human consciousness the Earth had achieved a kind of sentience. He wrote that he was not “thinking of the Earth as alive in a sentient way, or even alive like an animal or a bacterium,”1 but Gaia is nonetheless a “vast being who in her entirety has the power to maintain our planet as a fit and comfortable habitat for life” and she is “now through us awake and aware of herself.”… Read more

Green governments are using ‘carbon footprint’ ideology to destroy agriculture—and freedom

By Leslyn Lewis, July 14, 2022

Climate Realists of Victoria does not take an official position on the Conservative Party of Canada leadership contest. However, this blog (which has been edited for length) by candidate Leslyn Lewis on the farmers’ protests in Holland and Sri Lanka is worth reading.

The obsession with carbon footprints has led to the extreme policies in Holland and is one of the driving forces towards the shift to digital currency—so that every activity, every purchase can be tracked for its “carbon footprint”.

This is what happened in Holland and Sri Lanka to calculate that farming was bad for the environment.… Read more

‘There is no climate crisis.’ A Q&A with Steven Koonin

By James Pethokoukis and Steven E. Koonin, AEIdeas, December 20, 2021

Is the world going to end in 10 years or 20 years? Absolutely not.

“The science is settled on climate change,” eco-pessimists tell us. But can science ever really be settled? In this episode, I’m joined by Steven E. Koonin to discuss the consensus within the climate science community, popular misconceptions about the climate, and how we should respond to warming global temperatures given the costs climate change will impose down the road and the costs of cutting our carbon emissions today.

Steve is a professor at New York University and a non-resident senior fellow here at the American Enterprise Institute.… Read more

Wind power fails the test in Ontario—again

On July 7, 2022, wind, solar and biofuels delivered only 3.3% of the province’s electricity needs

By Parker Gallant, National Post, July 12, 2022

Older readers will remember Frank Sinatra’s 1966 hit Summer Wind, with English lyrics by Johnny Mercer from the German original (Der Sommerwind). The song was about changeability and time passing. In the end, Sinatra/mercer concluded, the summer wind was a “fickle friend.”

It’s a tune Ontario power generators may be humming these days as they try to meet electricity demands with — an annual seasonal occurrence — wind falling off in the province.

Wind’s summer sag was evident on July 7, as Ontario’s industrial wind turbines (IWT), which have a total generating capacity of about 15.6 per cent of Ontario’s total supply when all sources of energy are operating flat-out, were at the bottom of the heap in respect to generation.… Read more

Want to fight climate change? Go nuclear!

By Bryan Walsh, Vox, July 12, 2022

Germany’s decision to restart old coal plants rather than extend the life of its nuclear power facilities reflects a failure of environmental priorities

Peel away the politics and the passion, the doomsaying and the denialism, and climate change largely boils down to this: energy. To avoid the chances of catastrophic climate change while ensuring the world can continue to grow — especially for poor people who live in chronically energy-starved areas — we’ll need to produce ever more energy from sources that emit little or no greenhouse gases.

It’s that simple — and, of course, that complicated.… Read more

Sri Lanka latest victim of ‘green’ ESG policies

By Michael Shellenberger, July 12, 2022

Sri Lanka has fallen as, last week, thousands of protesters stormed the presidential palace and ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The proximate reason for the chaos is that the nation is bankrupt, suffering its worst financial crisis in decades. Millions are struggling to buy food, medicine and fuel. Between June 2021 to June 2022, food prices rose by 80 percent. Last month, annual inflation hit nearly 55 percent. Since the start of the pandemic, half a million people have fallen into poverty.

The underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders—starting with former President Maithripala Sirisena and continuing with his successor, the deposed Rajapaksa—fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture and “ESG,” which refers to investments made following supposedly higher Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria.… Read more

‘Existential’ climate crisis? Alarmist nonsense, mate

By Richard Alston

The Australian, June 29, 2022

Most people don’t have time to research issues, let alone complex and confusing ones such as climate change. They therefore become vulnerable to doomsday proclamations

The term existential was popularized in the 20th century by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed that because there was no god, existence was absurd, life had no meaning and the individual therefore faced an existential crisis. In psychology, existential crises are inner conflicts characterised by the impression that life lacks meaning.

But in the climate wars a word that once had settled harmlessly in the realm of philosophy has become weaponised, wheeled out by climate catastrophists to herald imminent doom.… Read more