Catch the left violating their own “book of rules” in the climate debate

By Tom Harris January 19, 2025

 

If those of us who do not believe in the so-called “climate emergency” are to win the day, we need to take a page out of “Rules for Radicals – A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals.” Written in 1971 by Chicago-based community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals” included the crucially important Rule #4:

“Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.”

As discussed in part 1 of this series, progressives say that their “book of rules” includes basing their assertions on the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But alarmists’ fears about increasing floods, extreme rainfall, heat waves, intense storms and forest fires are, in fact, not supported by the UN IPCC. So, making them live up to their own rules, we need to call them on this every time.

I also discussed how we must hold leftists to their own book of rules when it comes to social justice, especially caring for the poor, the elderly and those who are disadvantaged in society. We do this by pointing out that, of the $1.27 trillion USD spent on climate finance in 2022/2023, only a paltry 5% went exclusively to helping poor people adapt to climate change, however caused, a clear social justice violation. Similarly, progressives need to be held to account for the violations in social justice that occur as a result of:

1. The huge increase in electricity rates that is the natural result of the transition to wind and solar power, which hurts the poor and those on fixed incomes the most 
2. The diversion of food crops to the production of biofuels, causing food shortages and soaring prices 
3. The human rights abuses in developing countries that accompany the production of electric vehicle batteries as well as wind and solar power equipment 
4. The ruining of well water on farms in the vicinity of wind turbines.

Another item in climate alarmists’ “book of rules” is the requirement that they are helping protect the environment and wildlife when they promote wind and solar power and grid-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). Yet nothing could be further from the truth and we should hold them to account for this in public meetings, etc.

In their 2021 book, “‘Clean’ Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support ‘Clean’ Energy,” authors Ronald Stein and Todd Royal explain:

“Green energy uses materials from some of the worst ecological and human rights offenders that exist on Earth… The volume of wind turbine waste is projected to soar in years to come, with mining and manufacturing waste, service waste, and end-of-life waste being the major sources. It is estimated that there will be 43 million metric tons just of [wind turbine] blade waste worldwide by 2050.”

Lithium ion-based batteries used in BESS systems rely on a mix of materials that require massive amounts of energy to mine, transport, process and refine, far greater than the extraction and transport of oil and natural gas. Consequently, while batteries are often portrayed by manufacturers as generating no greenhouse gases, even the left-leaning Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has pointed out that: “Mining and processing the minerals, plus the battery manufacturing process, involve substantial emissions of carbon.”

The CBC cites Jennifer Dunn at Northwestern University’s Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience, who explained: “The material that helps power the battery is produced from a number of different metals, things like nickel and cobalt and lithium.” And of course, China controls most of the lithium and cobalt, which are often produced with no environmental standards, and often employ child labor and near-slave labor and follow practically no health and safety safeguards. University of Houston Professor Larry Bell reports (“China Targets US Weakness for Afghan Rare Earths, Taiwan Chips,” America out Loud, September 25, 2021):

“China has amassed stunning control over 70% of the world’s lithium supplies and 85% of rare earths supply chains to dominate global industries and jobs that depend on them.”

Mining and mineral processing of lithium also requires large volumes of water and can pose contamination risks from mine drainage and wastewater discharge. Readers are encouraged to watch the 2020 documentary film “Planet of the Humans” by left-wing film producer Michael Moore. This 2-minute clip from Moore’s movie demonstrates that, when you consider how these machines are made, and the huge volumes of toxic waste that is released when they are manufactured, wind and solar power may very well be the dirtiest and most environmentally destructive energy sources on the planet.

But perhaps the greatest lie we hear from “green energy” advocates is that the contribution of Industrial Wind Turbines [IWTs] to bird and bat mortality is negligible. In reality, IWTs cause mass slaughter of these animals, especially raptors such as golden eagles, which the Ontario government labeled as “Endangered.”

Here are some statistics:

According to a 2004 study by leading expert, Dr. Shawn Smallwood, financed by the California Energy Commission, an average of 116 Golden Eagles are killed every year by collisions with turbine blades at Altamont Pass Wind Station in California. Extrapolating that number, well over 3,000 eagles have been destroyed since the wind facility was built in the eighties. Other birds killed at Altamont Pass per year include: 

• 300 hawks 
• 333 kestrels 
• 380 owls 
• 2,526 doves 
• 2,557 meadow larks

And the situation is no better in other countries. Mark Duchamp, President, Save the Eagles International Chairman, World Council for Nature, tells us that birds are killed in Spain at a rate of about 200 birds per turbine per year. It is twice that number for bats, which die simply by flying in the low-pressure zone beside the blades which causes their lungs burst.

The slaughter of birds and bats by wind turbines is a powerful issue to bring up in public meetings with politicians. Click here to watch a superb example of a member of the public—retired teacher Karen Bourdeau—confronting candidates for Ottawa mayor with this issue. Note especially the pathetic answer from the leading candidate for mayor, climate activist Catherine McKenney.

Ms. Bourdeau was so effective because she applied, not only rule #4, “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules,” but also rules #2 and #3 which are:

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty of your opponent.

As one would expect of a teacher, Ms. Bourdeau did her homework before asking her question and so knew far more about the issue than any of the candidates for mayor. Consequently, she came across as strong and confident while McKenney looked hopelessly uninformed. 

 

 

Saul Alinsky must be rolling over in his grave that concerned citizens from the right of the political spectrum are using his rules to defeat the left. Let’s keep doing exactly that!

____________________

Note: In part 3 of this series on the use of Alinsky’s rule #4, I will discuss how to take advantage of the left’s supposed support for:

• Tolerance of alternative lifestyles & opinions • Rejection of authority & absolutism

If It's Green, It's Not Gold!

By Rich Kozlovich

For more years than I can remember I've stated that going green is a failure. Why? First, I'm not opposed to anyone who has the desire to go green in their lives.  I just don't want their fetishes to destroy my life.  

If they want to live without electricity, no running water, or clean water, inadequate agriculture, no roads, no mechanical transportation, no air conditioning, no flush toilets, central heat of any of the other things we take for granted, all of which we really like I might add, that's fine with me.  There is a list of countries that can already provide that lifestyle for them, but don't impose that lifestyle on me, or America. 

One thing I understood from the beginning of all this.  If all this green clabber really could work, it wouldn't have needed to be subsidized. Some businessman would have undertaken it all without government assistance.  I believed, and stated, all this was doomed from the beginning, and lo and behold, the bug man was right....again!  Imagine that.

Green Dreams Going up in Smoke  - October 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker - Wind and solar are both terrible methods of generating electricity, both expensive and unreliable. The one thing that can make the situation worse is the drive to electrify everything, including motor vehicles. The impracticality of this “green” vision has become blindingly obvious, and the “green” movement has begun to fall apart. Steve noted this afternoon the collapsing share prices of renewable energy companies. Here are some more indications...............

Has EV Boom Jumped The Shark? I & I Editorial Board October 27, 2023 - Many people have climbed aboard the electric-vehicle bandwagon, lured by promises of pristine air and cheap, easy-to-use electricity that make EVs seem inevitable. But now, after years of spending billions on subsidies and shaming people into buying into our inevitable all-electric future, some are slamming on the brakes — surprisingly, including many of the biggest companies in the industry. The global companies, recipients of massive subsidies to support fossil-fuel abolition, are backing away from their support.............

Green district in green city in green state is buying … DIESEL school buses! - Boulder, Colorado, is as leftist as a community can be in a state that's put its weight behind the climate change campaign. It promotes green ideology throughout its services. And inside the community is a green school district, which cooperates with the climate change ideology enthusiastically.....

Greenwashing: The Lies We Tell of Recycling and the Climate Past industry failures reveal the folly of “renewables.” By John Klar Oct 23, 2023 - n gauging the promises of climate rescue by corporations and non-governmental organizations, citizens must reflect upon the track record of past technological projects peddled as the cure to all that ails us. EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels are touted as absolutely necessary to save the planet. Yet the boondoggle of the ethanol “industry,” the “cash-to-clunkers” program, and other much-ballyhooed technological solutions reveal a history of big promises concealing negative returns. So when The Lego Group abandoned its efforts to make its best-selling toys from recycled bottles recently, we wondered if perhaps the vaunted recycling industry is over-promising and under-delivering as well........

 The Daily Chart: More Red Ink for Green Energy - October 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward = Yesterday we noted here the green energy fiasco of Siemens and a couple other renewable energy companies, but it turns out the damage is being seen across the board. Just a couple years ago everyone piled into green energy companies because they were said to be the future, while traditional oil, gas, and coal companies were doomed to long term decline, and who would want to have “stranded investments” in »

GM Backtracks on Biden’s Green Energy Agenda After Investing Billion$ - John Binder 31 Oct 2023 - After investing billions to adhere to President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda, General Motors (GM) is backtracking on all fronts when it comes to Electric Vehicles (EVs). As GM was the last of the Big Three to strike a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW), the automaker’s green energy dreams — championed by the Biden administration — have come crumbling down. GM CEO Mary Barra, a close ally of Biden’s, has said the automaker will not begin to attempt to produce 400,000 EVs from 2022 through mid-2024 as initially planned. GM is also delaying retooling its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, to build EV pickup trucks.............

My Take- And will Mary Mary quite contrary be fired? Will the stockholders demand someone be held accountable for this insanity? Let's try and get this right....at least once...please.   I and many others predicted all this EV claptrap was inevitably going to be a loser, and so if I knew that would be the outcome, how could these highly educated, wealthy, and powerful people not know it? 

Brazil’s big cats latest victims of wind turbines

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. September 22nd, 2023 @ CFACT 120 Comments

To the well-documented slaughter of birds and bats by wind turbines and the growing threat to marine life posed by the proliferation of offshore wind power, we can add the jaguars and pumas of northeastern Brazil being wantonly sacrificed in the name of “clean,” “climate friendly” renewable energy.

The hot, semi-arid, wind-swept Caatinga is a far cry from the steamy, dense jungles of Brazil’s Amazon region to the south. Pumas and Jaguars have adapted to the Caatinga’s harsh environment and thrived there as apex predators since time immemorial. But they are now facing extinction thanks to Chinese and European wind-power developers who are making the region uninhabitable for the big cats. The spinning, 150-foot-long blades atop the outsiders’ wind turbines are scaring the pumas and jaguars away from the area’s scarce sources of water, forcing them to abandon their lairs and roam vast distances across dusty plains in search of life-sustaining rivers and streams.

“The weaker perish along the way. Others venture closer to villages, where locals have started laying traps to protect their small herds of goats and sheep, often their only form of survival in this impoverished region,” The Wall Street Journal reported (Sept. 18).

Environmental Costs

Brazil is expected to become the world’s fourth-largest wind-power producer by 2027, behind China, the U.S., and Germany, according to the Brazilian Wind Power Association. But the country’s embrace of renewable energy is coming with a steep environmental cost. The wind turbines being installed on compacted sand dunes along the country’s northern coast pose a threat to underground reservoirs. Conservationists, many of whom welcomed wind-energy development, are now having second thoughts. And indigenous groups are holding nationwide protests against the installation of wind turbines on lands they claim as their own.

People convicted of killing jaguars, pumas, and other wild animals in Brazil can land in jail for up to 18 months, but enforcement of the law is lax. Wind developers are indirectly killing lots of big cats by driving them out of their habitat, but there have been no prosecutions to date. As for the villagers setting traps for jaguars and pumas trying to escape the wind turbines, they quickly bury or burn the dead animals, and wildlife rangers are none the wiser. Meanwhile, the number of pumas and jaguars in the Caatinga continues to drop.

“While the big cats are still plentiful in the Amazon and in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, those in the Caatinga are unique, having adapted to cope with the intense heat,” the Journal notes. “The disappearance of the felines would throw the region’s ecosystem out of whack, leading to a proliferation of animals that serve as prey, such as the wild boar, deer, and armadillos, said Felipe Melo, a researcher at the Federal University of Pernambuco who has studied the impact of the wind-power industry on the Caatinga.”

Eyes Wide Shut

The notion that installing industrial-scale wind-power facilities along Brazil’s northeastern coast – or any place else, for that matter – will have any effect on the world’s climate is absurd. But the monstrosities, along with their solar-array equivalents, are having a profound and harmful effect on wildlife. All of this is far removed from the posh c suites of wind-power developers in Europe and China who, unlike the big cats and villagers in the Caatinga, have the luxury of closing their eyes to the havoc they are wreaking.

Author

• 
  Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

  View all posts

 

Green Industry Greater Hoax Than Covid Vax

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Psalm 56:3

  by Robert Socha September 20, 2023 @ Daily Rant

We believe, culturally and with cultish fanaticism, that carbon dioxide is such a formidable enemy we should eliminate any possibility of human contribution to its increase. Thus, the push for a carbon-neutral society. Modern convenience can never afford this option, but postulating assuages guilt. The root cause of this hegemony is supposedly protecting life, but its nefarious undertones reek of an irrational fear of death, subjugation, and control.

Never mind the hidden dangers of our deceptively named green energy solutions: birds killed by windmills, whales possibly killed by oceanic windmills or their construction practices, and people enslaved and killed in horrific conditions mining the rare earth minerals necessary to battery production. The defenders of everything green postulate that the number of birds killed by these green energy projects pales compared to other maladies and natural predators and that whale deaths attributed to offshore wind farms are ill-conceived is a grotesque duplicity. The battery industry ignores the slavish conditions that persist in countries like the Congo to mine the rare earth minerals required for production. Imagine for a moment if the oil industry was accused, without evidence, of complicity in any one of these disorders; the outcry would be deafening.

Consider popular culture’s fanaticism with social media influencing and platform-based income. In 2019, a gaming platform that streams people playing video games permanently banned a user with over 300,000 followers because she dared to agree with a comment on her feed that asked her to confirm there are only two genders. The controversial player didn’t even initiate the gender dysphoria conversation; she simply replied to an inquiry and was banned. Conservative commentators have had to scramble for years to overcome demonetization from powerful platforms like YouTube. Remember, in 2018, the conservative site prageru.com sued Google/YouTube for violating its free speech rights by demonetizing and shadow-banning some of their five-minute videos. The judge summarily dismissed it because he ruled private organizations are not bound by the First Amendment, therefore affording autonomy concerning what they deem appropriate material on their platforms.

Will phone companies be allowed to disconnect party-line phone calls or video conferences when the service provider intercepts and perceives the speech to be inconsistent with their values? This is unthinkable, but, with the advent of digital technology, every word spoken through a mobile device is intercepted, recorded, and logged. I have also learned that every keystroke is subversively recorded from any device. Is it farfetched to think this way?

Back to gender dysphoria: one central underlying causation for the anomaly is that people want to be seen, seeking significance. They want their lives to have purpose and meaning and are trying to find a way out of the shadows, the fear of being alone, from obscurity to prominence. Bruce Jenner’s life is a perfect example. Living in the shadow of Kardashian’s fame, he found a way to garner the spotlight, at least for a moment. In his case, the fear of insignificance and loneliness is expressed in the most tragic form: self-mutilation. The fact that men like Mr. Jenner are willing to exert themselves to maintain the lie is astonishing.

Fear of war, economic collapse, social unrest, carjacking, mugging, petty theft, ethnic targeting, viral outbreak, political upheaval, and insignificance is vying for our submission to its paralyzing effect so that we will retreat to inept solitude.

Fear causes governments to overreact and restrict industry and liberty, imposing their overthought regulations to correct any manufactured wrong, breeding distrust and animosity. Fear causes protestors to impede the rights of others to engage their conceived abhorrence to modernity and promote its destruction, usually impeding innocent lives in the process. Fear causes corporate hegemonies to restrict and erase competing ideals. Fear compels ethnic violence and cows its detractors. Fear quells ambition and kills the spirit.

The Proverbs encourage us to “trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). The Prophet Isaiah encourages us, “For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, Saying to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you” (Isaiah 41:13).

We are not obligated to acquiesce to fear and must speak up even when it invites negative consequences, especially when our conscience compels us toward action.

child sexual exploitation     Christian     Climate Hoax     homosexuality     Political, Christian and Conservative Issues

 

Robert Socha  (so-ha), was born in southern California. He served 5 years 3 months active duty in the United States Air Force; honorably. After his service he took an Associate’s Degree in Practical Theology, where, through his studies, developed a deep love of God and Country and sincere appreciation of the value of Liberty. Robert and his beloved wife of 21-plus years are raising 4 beautiful Texan children. They moved to Hillsdale, Michigan, in 2013, to put their children in Hillsdale Academy. Robert is a sales professional. He and his wife consider Michigan a hidden gem, and absolutely love this city and state (current political environment notwithstanding) they’ve adopted.

Offshore wind is neither clean, nor Green and doesn’t cut CO2 emissions

By Craig Rucker August 20th, 2023 @ CFACT 115 Comments 

America is preparing to spend trillions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to install thousands of offshore wind turbines – for illusory benefits.

Advocates claim offshore wind energy is clean and sustainable. Wind itself certainly is, but that doesn’t mean getting energy from wind is.

A single 12 MW (megawatts) offshore wind turbine is taller than the Washington Monument, weighs around 4,000 tons, and requires mining and processing millions of tons of iron, copper, aluminum, rare earths, and other ores, with much of the work done in Africa and China using fossil fuels and near-slave labor.

Relying on wind just to provide electricity to power New York state on a hot summer day would require 30,000 megawatts. That means 2,500 Haliade-X 12 MW offshore turbines and all the materials that go into them. Powering the entire U.S. would require a-100 times more than that.

These numbers are huge, but the situation is actually much worse.

This is because offshore turbines generate less than 40% of their “rated capacity.” Why? Because often there’s no wind at all for hours or days at a time. This requires a lot of extra capacity, which means many more windmills will have to be erected to charge millions of huge batteries, to ensure stable, reliable electricity supplies.

Once constructed, those turbines would hardly be earth-or human-friendly, either. They would severely impact aviation, shipping, fishing, submarines, and whales. They’re hardly benign power sources.

“But,” say wind proponents, “wind energy is our salvation, because it will cut down on CO2 emissions and protect us from the greatest threat to Mother Earth – global warming!”

Sounds reasonable … at least to those who suffer from climate anxiety. But not so fast.

A new study by energy analyst David Wojick devastates this repeatedly invoked justification for offshore wind. His report, “How Offshore Wind Drives Up Global Carbon Emissions,” explains why adding offshore wind to our energy mix “will likely increase global CO2 emissions.”

First, notes Wojick, any local CO2 reduction from offshore wind turbines will be small, because intermittent winds force gas-fired backup power plants we rely on now into up-and-down generation mode, hour after hour, day after day, and remain in standby mode otherwise. That highly inefficient arrangement burns excess fuel and emits excess CO2.

Second, building huge offshore wind facilities requires mining, processing, smelting, fabrication, installation, repair, replacement, decommissioning, landfilling – and transportation every step of the way. Almost everything up to installation is increasingly done overseas, nearly 100% with fossil fuels and few emission controls.

That’s because the U.S. sets much higher standards than in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for mining permits, coal and gas use, environmental protection, workplace safety, wages, and human rights.

Dr. Wojick reviews New Jersey’s plan for 11,000 MW of offshore wind power. That’s if the electricity turbines could generate if the wind blows 24/7, instead of the more likely one-third of the time annually. But that “nameplate capacity” would require 917 Haliade-X or 1,834 6 MW turbines, assuming coastal residents don’t veto them.

Suppose the 6 MW behemoths utilize monopile towers some 30 feet in diameter and 300 feet long, fixed to the seafloor and used to support the rotor and three 300-foot blades. Each tower would weigh around 2,500 tons before being filled with almost 15,000 tons of concrete.

Making steel and cement for such monstrosities, Wojick notes, would require enormous amounts of energy, resulting in extensive CO2 emissions. Just producing those materials would cause about 14,000 tons of CO2 per monopile.

That means every 1,000 monopiles would result in 14,000,000 tons of CO2 just for the steel and concrete – not including the other wind turbine and electricity transmission components.

None of that includes materials for the gas-fired generators or millions of battery modules that would be needed to stabilize New Jersey’s electrical grid and back up turbines every time the wind dies down or gets so strong during storms that turbines must be idled.

In addition, a no-fossil fuels economy would require electricity generation, electric vehicles, home heating, water heating, and cooking – all dependent on wind (and solar) power – and batteries that must be charged constantly by those same sources.

That means today’s electricity requirements – and raw materials demands – would have to be doubled or tripled to run a Net Zero society.

Those clamoring about a “climate crisis” maintain it’s a global problem. Therefore, any proposed solution should thoroughly and carefully examine raw material requirements, mining needs, costs, and global benefits, all through landfilling turbine blades and other non-recyclable components.

Dr. Wojick’s study exposes the frightening fact that an honest, complete analysis of offshore wind costs and benefits, including purported atmospheric CO2 reductions, has never even been attempted.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author 

   

Craig Ruckeris a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

View all posts

 Crucker@cfact.org

 

Bloomberg finances and coopts state attorneys general

State AGs aid Bloomberg quest for ‘green’ energy that threatens planet, wildlife and people

Paul Driessen

When you’ve built a financial information and media empire and become the world’s seventh richest person, you get to say dumb things, like suggesting that farming is easy: “You dig a hole, put a seed in, put dirt on top, add water – and up comes the corn.”

Being ultra-wealthy also shields Michael Bloomberg from any fallout from the climate and energy policies he pursues so zealously. He will doubtless be able to afford electricity at any price for his multiple mansions, from any source, backed up by thousands of battery modules to cover the repeated blackouts his policies will unleash. The other 99.9% won’t be so fortunate.

Mr. Bloomberg bankrolls campaigns against coal and natural gas; supports efforts to populate the Biden Administration with rogue regulators equally intent on “transforming” America’s energy system, society and living standards; and champions ESG principles for financial firms, companies and investors. His company even has Sustainability and ESG & Climate divisions. Mr. Bloomberg serves as UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, enabling him to advance his agendas internationally.

ESG (Environmental Social Governance) helps unelected asset managers use their control over trillions of investment dollars to pressure companies, lenders and consumers to embrace far-left activist versions of public welfare and justice, even if it causes clients’ portfolio values to decline. ESG is a subversive way to bypass legislatures, voters and democratic processes, to impose unpopular political and ideological agendas, often in violation of fiduciary obligations.

ESG opposes fossil fuels, insisting they are causing climate cataclysms. Any company in that business, or offering to finance a drilling project, gets blackballed. But companies building or financing “clean, green” energy score in the ESG stratosphere – even though most such projects destroy vast swaths of wildlife habitats, involve slave and child labor, and leave widespread toxic pollution in their wake. ESG human rights, ecological and climate justice principles are duplicitous and hypocritical.

As New York City mayor, Mr. Bloomberg infamously advocated exorbitant taxes on large sugary drinks, claiming they lead to obesity and thus to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and premature death. He simply wanted to help poor people live longer, he asserted, by making Big Gulps less affordable.

It’s thus puzzling that he now wants to banish reliable, affordable gas heat and coal- and gas-generated electricity for heating and air conditioning – in favor of pricey, weather-dependent wind and solar power, backed up by outrageously expensive batteries. Those policies shorten lives.

Even if manmade or natural climate change causes average global temperatures to climb 2-3 degrees, modern technologies would keep us safely comfortable. But if laws, policies and ESG pressures make heating and AC inaccessible or unaffordable, indoor temperatures can soar 15-25 degrees in summertime and drop as precipitously in wintertime. People die – and cold is far deadlier than heat.

When people, especially the elderly, cannot heat their homes properly, they can perish from hypothermia or illnesses they would likely survive if they weren’t so cold. The Economist calculated that expensive energy may have killed 68,000 more Europeans than Covid did last winter.

LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) will help the poorest families – until the subsidy money runs out – but not middle/working classes, and not small businesses.

Even worse, three billion people worldwide still do not have access to reliable, affordable electricity. Message to climate zealots like Mr. Bloomberg: Access to intermittent, unpredictable wind/solar electricity doesn’t count, especially if it’s only enough to charge a cell phone or power a lightbulb or one-cubic-foot refrigerator. Lack of access to sustained, affordable energy kills.

The billionaire’s legal power grab is even more insidious and dangerous to democracy.

In 2017 he began covertly funding New York University Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, which provides grants to progressive (Democrat) state attorneys general, enabling them to hire “special assistant” AGs or “fellows.”

The Center’s mission is to provide “direct legal assistance” to interested AGs “on specific administrative, judicial or legislative matters involving clean energy, climate change and environmental interests of regional and national significance,” when AGs say they lack sufficient public funds to hire such help.

NYU now says “the fellows’ sole duty of loyalty is to the attorney general in whose office they serve.” However, these partisan Bloomberg grants pay salaries and “generous benefits packages” to “special assistants” whose functions are dictated by the Center; address specified “regional and national” issues normally beyond the purview of state AGs; are routinely coordinated with energy and climate activists and donors to those causes; and often launch “public nuisance” or RICO litigation against oil companies, to the detriment of targeted industries and the consumers and ratepayers who depend on their products, within the AGs’ home states and in distant states and communities.

It is the Bloomberg agenda that is being served, by grants that effectively conscript and coopt the public authority and power of the attorney general’s offices.

As a 2022 report by the American Tort Reform Foundation notes, “These SAAGs are private attorneys placed in public positions to exercise government authority. Yet, they are not independent or impartial because their mandate is to carry out an overtly political agenda funded by wealthy private donors.”

This “unique” arrangement, the Foundation continues, “allows well-heeled individuals and organizations to commandeer state and local police powers to target opponents with whom they disagree, raising the specter of corruption and fundamental unfairness in what should be public enforcement of the law.”

Those same considerations also appear to raise fundamental ethical, legal and constitutional issues. They certainly raise questions about laws governing gifts, campaign contributions and bribes – and where Bloomberg-funded lawyers are involved in prosecutions, serious due-process concerns.

And yet the NYU Center has already placed at least 11 special assistants in eight state attorney general offices, which have filed at least 20 lawsuits against a few selected oil companies, charging them with “climate denial” or causing planetary warming, rising seas, more frequent and intense hurricanes and tornadoes, and other “offenses.”

This litigation ignores the actions of hundreds of other oil and gas companies across the globe; steadily rising emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing nations; the role of natural forces and emissions from wind turbine, solar panel and battery mining, processing and manufacturing; the lack of evidence to support claims of a climate “crisis” or more frequent and violent storms; and the fact that these issues should be litigated in federal courts or relegated to a democratic political process.

The US Supreme Court recently had an opportunity to quash this rampant litigation, but it chose not to review the state and local cases and send them to federal courts. The seemingly endless lawsuits and acrimony are creating a legal, constitutional, scientific and public policy nightmare for businesses, consumers, courts, states and the nation.

Rest assured, billionaires like Bloomberg, Gates, Kerry, Zuckerberg and Soros – who demand that we commoners give up our cars, gas stoves and furnaces, steaks, air travel and suburban homes – don’t intend to give up anything.

Let’s hope the pro-America governors, AGs, legislators, judges and business groups battling ESG and other woke campaigns tackle this NYU Impact Center hornets nest as well..

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

 

Germans Have Given Up On “Green” Energy

April 8, 2023 by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy, Germany

 

 Not the German government, which continues on a collision course with reality. But Germans have figured out that the green dream is turning into a nightmare. This report is on a survey of Germans done by forsa:

An overwhelming majority of the German population is of the opinion that a successful energy transition is not realistic. According to a Forsa survey, 88 percent of respondents share this view.

88 percent! That is stunning.

The Germans have less and less confidence in the Federal Government’s plans for the energy transition. Only ten percent still believe that renewable energy systems such as photovoltaics and wind power can adequately meet the country’s energy needs.

In 2011, 39 percent of respondents were still optimistic and 61 percent skeptical.

Even among the supporters of the Greens, skepticism now prevails, reports the world.

A majority of 59 percent of respondents continue to support the use of natural gas as an energy source in Germany. 57 percent are in favor of a continuation of nuclear energy.

The German government’s green dreams promise to destroy that country’s economy:

The industrial unions IG Metall, IGBCE and IG BAU fear hundreds of thousands of job losses and site closures due to the high electricity prices in Germany in international comparison, especially in energy-intensive industries such as the steel, chemical or building materials industry.

So far, Germany’s government is persisting in its green delusions, but a collision with reality is inevitable. The question is what will be left of Germany’s economy when the green dream is finally abandoned. For more on the unfeasibility of generating and storing enough wind energy to power an economy, see this post by Francis Menton, which focuses on the U.K........... To Read More.... .

 

Greens refuse to discuss recycling renewables and restoring mining locations to pristine condition

By Ronald Stein |March 19th, 2023 46 Comments @ CFACT

The reality is that all the mineral products and metals needed to make wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. Decommissioning and restoration of those mining landscapes back to their original pristine condition is not in the cards in developing countries. Recycling of worn-out turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries, in wealthy countries is also not in the cards.

The sites for the mining of materials required to build wind, solar, and EV batteries are under minimal to nonexistent labor, wage, environmental, reclamation, and worker health and safety regulations. The mere extraction of those exotic minerals presents social challenges, human rights abuses, and environmental degradations worldwide, but are of no significance to the wealthy countries benefiting from those “green” materials.

The climate cult COULD seek decommissioning and restoration standards in those developing countries down to the last dandelion, just like we have for decommissioned mines, oil, and nuclear sites in America, but the climate cult avoids the same in developing countries.

The life cycle for renewable electricity like wind and solar runs from design, procurement, and construction, through operations and maintenance, and repair, as well as the life ending decommissioning and disposal, but again, recycling and restoration of the landscaping back to its original pristine condition, is also not in the cards in the wealthy countries that are going green.

Since the blades and panels and EV batteries are very difficult to recycle, the waste stream created by them is a mounting problem. According to a 2017 study published in the scientific journal Waste Management, the world’s wind industry alone will be producing 43 million tons of blade waste annually by 2050.

Those worn out wind turbines will be the equivalent weight of 215,000 locomotives. The demand of the wealthy economies for more wind turbines are projected to cause 43 million tons of blade waste worldwide by 2050 with China possessing 40 percent of the waste, Europe 25 percent, the United States 16 percent, and the rest of the world 19 percent.

The size and weight of the blades vary, but the average length is around 120 feet, and they weigh around five tons. Some of the largest can be as long as a football field and weigh 20 tons.  Currently, there are no scalable, cost-effective technologies to recycle the blades, and most of them are going to landfills.

Those 1,000-pound EV batteries present similar challenges. With more than 40 percent of all EV’s in America being located in California, there are no EV-battery recycling plants in California, and only five up and running nationwide, according to CalEPA. That’s even though used lithium-ion batteries contain valuable minerals that otherwise must be mined from the earth, mostly from overseas operations in developing countries. The” throw away” society is alive and well in America.

With wealthy countries obsessed with a “green” society, it looks like decommissioning, recycling, and restoration of the mining landscapes in developing countries and renewable generating sites in developed countries back to their original pristine conditions is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.

The vast majority of these critical minerals and elements are mined abroad, and almost all the refining of them is done by China alone.

What’s more, China is the largest single provider of most of the critical minerals and rare earths used around the globe, and is almost the only refiner of such products. This means minerals and rare earth elements mined elsewhere, often with Chinese funding, are shipped to China for processing into usable materials. Much of the mining and refining of materials in China is produced by forced or slave labor, often of persecuted religious minorities, like Falun Gong followers and Uighurs.

The Biden administration declared October 4, 2022 that batteries from China may be tainted by child labor, yet the American government continues to enforce mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks to go green, that provides financial incentives for developing countries to continue their current practices of inflicting environmental degradation to their local landscapes, force labor atrocities upon their workforce.

Concerning China, the Biden administration acknowledged the problem of slave labor, having signed the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021.  Now, the Biden administration is leaning more on Africa to counter China’s control over U.S. energy.

Still, the reality of today’s globalized supply chain and America’s financial incentives that continuously encourage further exploitations of humanity and the environment makes it almost a certainty the massive green energy transition being pushed by the Biden administration will be built with minerals and parts produced using Chinese and/or African slave labor.

With insufficient intelligence on the ground in China or Africa to track forced-labor manufacturing, and less still the raw materials, wealthy countries will continue to exploit the folks with yellow, brown, and black skin in developing countries.

In economic terms, the wealthier countries climate hysteria is imposing severe negative externalities on developing countries. Ethically, the West’s climate obsession is immorally condemning present generations of impoverished peoples and nations to continued perjury and early deaths in the years ahead. Make no mistake, this ruse exists to further enrich people in developed countries while they simultaneously exploit those in developing countries.

Author

• Ronald Stein

  Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”

 

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

There are some things that no matter what we see on the news or read in the newspapers simply aren't so. For those who aren't sure at what I mean....let me outline a few.

Those who advocate green issues, lie. The journalists, who promote green issues, lie. The big corporations, who support them in order to cash in on various green schemes, lie. The bureaucrats, who are their cat’s paws, lie. The politicians who write legislation the greenies support, lie. Everything you read in the newspapers, see on the news is a lie. Not necessarily lies of commission, although they are blatantly guilty of that also, but it is mostly lies of omission. All of these lies build up until we are faced with disasters that should have been perfectly predictable to everyone, and they would have been if everyone had been told the truth.

However, here are some things you can be sure are absolutely true. Green is a neo-pagan secular religion and to be green is to be irrational and misanthropic! We really do need to get that!

I will be keeping Steve Milloy's outline of the e-mails of the global warming "scientists" in the Observations From the Back Row posts since he regularly updates that link as new e-mails come out. As you read them ask yourself...does the word "lie" come to mind?

Here are my picks for the day. Enjoy!

Radical feminists seem to assume that men are hostile to women. But what would they say to the fact that most of the women on the Titanic were saved, and most of the men perished -- due to rules written by men and enforced by men on the sinking ship? Thomas Sowell

Climategate 2.0 is here! (Last updated at 12:10 pm on 12-02)
by Steve Milloy More devastating Climategate e-mails were released today. We’ve covered juicy ones in the posts listed below. More on the way. Read ‘em all. They validate EVERYTHING the skeptics have been saying. Viva les sceptiques

The Problem With China Envy

In 2008, I wrote a book called "Liberal Fascism." That title came from H.G. Wells, one of the most important socialist writers in the English language. He believed, as did his fellow Fabian socialists, that Western democratic capitalism had outlived its usefulness.

Russia afraid shale gas will dent their market

Too late. The US now has abundant domestic supplies, freeing liquified nat gas cargoes onto the international market where they compete with Russian supplies.

Disasters Keep Hitting Clean Energy Scam

It’s hard to keep up with all the disasters plaguing “clean” technology. We’ve highlighted some of them in previous columns, but now find ourselves overwhelmed with bad news for the green-at-any-cost crowd. So periodically we’ll provide a “renewable roundup,” reading and deconstructing the latest developments so you don’t have to.

• Running on Empty: Electric Cars
• Tilting at Windmills: Subsidized Failure
• Dimming Solar Prospects
• Global Warming Burn Out

Senate Republicans to Obama: Get Out of Keystone XL Pipeline's Way

Senate Republicans yesterday told President Obama to release his partisan stranglehold on the Keystone XL Pipeline project, and backed up their demands with new legislation to force quick action…….The permitting and approval process has dragged on for three years, and TransCanada has already agreed to 57 special conditions imposed by the State Department, said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Ohio Treasurer: Washington Targets Ohio Shale Gas
“Job-killers win, American workers lose.”  Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Republic Steel to add 450 jobs to Lorain as oil and gas exploration booms.” This story reported Republic Steel’s announcement of new jobs in one of Ohio’s hardest-hit counties, to manufacture products in support of the state’s growing oil and gas industry.  In the Marion Star: “Ohio national forest halts sale of drilling rights.” This story reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to suspend the auction of leases for oil and gas drilling on more than 3,000 acres of federal land in the most economically depressed region of Ohio.

###

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

As always I attempt to put a face on the news that clarifies what is happening.  There are so many stories out there on every issue you can imagine, and I have the desire to go after each and every issue that confront mankind, each and every story, each and every bit of misdirection, misinformation and propaganda...but I have a job that interferes with my life. So these are my only picks for the day.

How going green goes against the environment
Going green has nasty un-environmental consequences that rank-and-file greenies either don't know or don't care about. For example, those multi-acre wind farms not only kill millions of birds while delivering a mere fraction of the electricity compared to nearly every other power source but 420 of them in Pennsylvania killed 10,000 bats last year….Meanwhile, localities nationwide are banning both paper and plastic bags, forcing grocery shoppers to switch to those reusable cloth bags….according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (PDF), reusable bags require far more energy and other resources to manufacture, and consume energy and water to wash them, so they must be used 103 times before yielding environmental benefits over paper or plastic bags (studies show they're typically reused 51 times)…….

Watching The Wheels Come Off The Green Machine
The body count continues to rise as the Green Jobs Revolution sputters its way to the end of a disastrous 2011. Few seemed to notice last week when the electric vehicle maker A123 Systems—poster child for successful clean tech investing—“temporarily” laid off 125 workers at its flagship manufacturing plants in Michigan on the eve of the Thanksgiving media break. It also reduced its earnings guidance for 2011 by $45 million, because its anchor customer, Fisker Automotive, “unexpectedly” delayed the production ramp-up for its Karma luxury electric car—again…… [EPA] Overruled Congress? Yes, by declaring carbon dioxide—the stuff you and I breathe out and plants breath in—a pollutant, the EPA seeks to trump Congress’s 2007 CAFE legislation by twisting the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act beyond all recognition, thereby granting itself authority to enact fuel economy standards where none exists. Meanwhile, it dares a dysfunctional Congress to halt this unconstitutional power grab.

Prepare To Have That Puddle in Your Back Yard Regulated’
Just as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has used the Clean Air Act to broaden the scope of their authority way beyond its original intention with rules like MACT and CSAPR, the Clean Water Act is becoming a tool of overreach by the out of control agency. Barack Obama and the EPA’s Lisa Jackson have made it clear through their actions that they will circumvent the legislature by using regulatory enforcement to enact Obama’s green dreams, and now it seems that circumvention includes the Supreme Court of the United States………… The Barrasso-Heller Amendment, introduced by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), was created to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA from incorporating those Obama changes into the regulatory guidelines, which serves the purpose of distinguishing precisely what the Supreme Court had already covered when it established the clear limitations of the Act.

Dump the EPA
Like a bad lover, the EPA is a nagging, beguiling mooch. The EPA unconstitutionally barged into our lives and we need to break free from this destructive relationship; let’s give the EPA a two-letter title beginning with ‘E’ and ending with ‘X.’

President Nixon formed a group called the President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization to help him sidestep Congress and mold public policy. On April 29, 1970, the Council wrote a memo advising Nixon to establish: “an Environmental Protection Administration, a new independent agency of the Executive Branch. … [and the] Executive Branch should be so structured that a high order of public interest is served in making policy, rather than a narrower advocacy position.”

My Take - I know I ran this the other day, but I love the sentiment and after posting the previous two articles I doubt that there will be any sane people who would disagree.

Sen. Hoeven says EPA not looking to halt fracking
With all due respect, the good Senator ought to wake up and smell up EPA is shoveling his way.

Is transparency bad for science?
We started to take this seriously until we saw that Guardian columnist and Climategate 2.0 character George Monbiot was involved.

Thomas Sowell: Principles over ‘seizing the center'
It used to be common for people to urge us to learn "the lessons of history." But history gets much less attention these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness. Even among those who still invoke the lessons of history, some read those lessons very differently from others. Talk show host Michael Medved, for example, apparently thinks the Republicans need a centrist presidential candidate in 2012. He said, "Most political battles are won by seizing the center." Moreover, he added: "Anyone who believes otherwise ignores the electoral experience of the last 50 years."

Who's the Most Conservative of Them All?
"Newt Gingrich is a bad bet because he will embarrass the Republican Party. He will do so through things he has already said and done and in ways we cannot predict except to be sure -- because character will win out -- that they will happen. No sooner had Republicans, with a huge boost from Gingrich, achieved the long-denied prize of control of the House of Representatives than Gingrich embarrassed the party by signing a $4.5 million book deal. Though an effective, even inspired, backbencher in Congress, Gingrich proved an incompetent and sometimes petulant leader. Gingrich was the only speaker of the House in U.S. history to be removed by his own party. It wasn't a cabal of liberals who forced him out, but Dick Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay and John Boehner…..

10 Of The Best Economics Quotes From Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an extraordinary Nobel Prize-winning economist whose ideas helped underpin modern conservative economic theory. His contributions to economics and the conservative movement cannot be underestimated. Sadly, Milton Friedman passed away a little more than five years ago at the ripe old age of 94. Although Friedman is no longer with us, his words, his ideas, and his legacy live on. In honor of Friedman, here are some of his best quotations.

10) "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."…….

Finally...this came in last night from Jeff Stier. I keep wondering what is wrong with the minds of these people. It isn't their job to decide what foods people eat. As for the activists, including the "journalist" and the attorney; for them to be so virulent and obsessed with this I have to believe they must be insane. RK

The Happy Meal Ban Flops
San Francisco's ban on McDonald's Happy Meals goes into effect today. But because the law bans only giving away toys with certain meals, restaurants are set to comply with the law by selling the toys. Now, not only can kids still get toys with their burger and fries, but McDonald's will earn an extra dime per sale and donate the funds to its charity, the Ronald McDonald House. Unsurprisingly, the Occupy McDonald's crowd is furious. The San Francisco Examiner's Joshua Sabatini claims that McDonald's is "skirting" the law, while self-styled public-health lawyer Michele Simon alleges that McDonald's is "exploiting" kids.



###