How Environmental Organizations Are Destroying The Environment - "only developed countries have ever cleaned up their own environment. Only when a country’s inhabitants are adequately fed and clothed and sheltered from the storms can they afford to think about the environment. And far from cleaning up the environment as wealthy countries can afford to do, people in poor countries are very destructive to the environment. Folks in poor countries will burn every tree if they have to, and you would too if your kids were crying. They will eat every monkey and consume the chimpanzees as the final course, and you would too if your family were starving. They will bemoan the necessity, they don’t like doing it any more than you or I would … but they will do it... given that poverty is the greatest threat to the global environment, the inescapable conclusion is that the only way the global environment stands a chance is if poor countries can develop economically. And that is why the anti-development, pro-expensive energy stance of the large environmental NGOs is one of the great environmental tragedies of our times... It’s what happens when big money hits a poor country—the environment gets screwed, whether it’s logging, fishing, or mining. Until the country is wealthy enough to feed its citizens and to protect itself, its resources are always on sale to the lowest bidder … by which I mean the bidder with the lowest morals. Now, I started this sad tale for a reason, to give substance to the damage that poverty does to the environment. When you can buy an island council for ten grand a man and there are literally millions of dollars at stake, that council will get bought no matter how hard I fight against it. Per capita GDP in the Solomons is about $600 annually, it’s classed as an “LDC”, a Least Developed Country … and in a country where ten thousand dollars is almost twenty years wages, you can buy many people for ten large … That is one of the main reasons that I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time working overseas trying to alleviate global poverty. I do it for the people first, but I do it for the environment second. And that is why I feel so personally betrayed by the current mindless push for expensive energy, a push led by the very organizations I’ve supported because back in the day, they actually used to be for the environment, not against it. Raising energy prices is the most regressive taxation I know of. The poorer you are, the harder you are hit by rising energy costs, and the more the poor suffer, the more the environment bears the brunt... I say that history will not look kindly on those people and organizations who are currently impoverishing the poor and damaging the environment in a futile fight against CO2, even if the perpetrators are wealthy and melanin-deficient and just running over with oodles of good intentions"
Climate Activists Glue Themselves to a Tanker Full of Cooking Oil Mistaking It For Crude Oil - "British activists glued themselves to an oil tanker in Essex... These protestors are part of a Just Stop Oil offshoot called Extinction Rebellion"
The meaning behind Extinction Rebellion’s red-robed protesters - "The action has already managed to focus the world’s media on the urgent need to tackle climate change and that’s thanks in part to one of its most striking visuals – ghostly-white figures cloaked in scarlet-red, drifting gracefully through lines of police and crowds of demonstrators... Each dancer’s face is painted a deathly-pale white with rosy cheeks and red lips. “It gave us the means to have these really expressional faces,” Doug says, “and obviously when you put people in those masks their faces become something else. I was looking through the photos afterwards, and you can relate them all to different archetypes or classical Greek characters.”"
Definitely not a cult
Biodegradable VS Plastic Shrink Film: Pros And Cons - "Bio-Films Are Generally More Expensive Than Traditional Shrink Films
Bio-polymer-based shrink films like those detailed above are few and far between. There are currently only a few brands available. And they can be pricey when compared to traditional plastic films.
Biodegradable Shrink Films Have Not Been Tested Extensively In Real World Applications
These bio-films are not commonly used on many packaging lines the world over (yet). So, these new materials have not been put to the test in many real-world applications. It is unclear if they will be able to offer the same qualities that plastic film provides. Those qualities include strength, clarity, gloss, haze, and other related elements."
To Wrap Or to Not Wrap Cucumbers? - "For cucumbers transported from Spain and sold in Switzerland, our investigations in the form of a life cycle assessment study showed that the plastic wrapping has a rather low environmental impact (only about 1%) in comparison to the total environmental impacts of the fruit from grower to grocer. Hence, each cucumber that has to be thrown away has the equivalent environmental impact of 93 plastic cucumber wraps. We found that plastic wrapping protects the environment more by saving more cucumbers from spoilage than it harms the environment by the additional use of plastic"
Save the environment. Use single use plastic
How the case for carbon taxes falls apart - “The ‘CO2 greening effect’ is the incontrovertible fact that plants grow better and are more drought-resistant. For plausible estimates of this greening effect, and once again using the IPCC’s own climate models, it’s at least possible that the ‘social cost’ of carbon is negative (i.e. there’s a positive rather than a negative externality). If this is true, we should subsidize emissions rather than tax them.”
Europe's Dependence on Russian Natural Gas: Perspectives and Recommendations for a Long-term Strategy - "The European Union 27 currently rely on Russia for almost 38% of their imported natural gas; this dependency will become significantly greater if European states implement their currently formulated energy policies. With plans to phase out nuclear power in several European countries, the EU goal to reduce coal consumption thereby lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and the depletion of domestic sources of gas, reliance on Russia will rise to 50 to 60% of all gas imports within the next two decades if different energy policies are not adopted"
From 2008. It became worse due to the folly of renewables, but they just double down
Environmentalists try to block gas too, so they want everyone to freeze to death. One claimed that if there was not enough electricity, we could turn off porch lights and TVs. Environmentalism leads to a lower quality of life. But since they want everyone to be forced to use electric cars, they also want everyone to be forced to stay at home when there isn't enough electricity
The Sirius Report on Twitter - "Clown show continues: After Brussels via Russian sanctions continues to cause deindustrialisation of Europe, it now wants to rollout its Green Deal Industrial Plan in earnest designed to ensure EU is a pioneer in cutting carbon emissions and technology to achieve these aims."
Philip Cross: The moral argument for fossil fuels - "The perspective philosophy brings is summarized in an exchange Epstein had with Barbara Boxer, the Democratic Senator from California. Boxer challenged his credentials, saying “this is the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. I think it’s interesting we have a philosopher here talking about an issue,” to which Epstein justified philosophy’s relevance by saying its role was “to teach you how to think more clearly.” Clear thinking about fossil fuels and the importance of energy to humans is in short supply in all public forums today. Epstein argues most discussion about fossil fuels is muddled and wrong-headed because the elites who control the debate, including media, pop-scientists, politicians and teachers, all simplify, misrepresent and sensationalize the often contradictory or inconclusive results of scientific research in this area. Worse, they present only the negative side effects of fossil fuels, ignoring their huge benefits in extending life expectancy, raising living standards and enabling the enormous recent increase of human population. There is a clear contradiction between this all but complete one-sidedness and how the same elites evaluate vaccines and antibiotics — which is to concede they have some side effects but to conclude their overall benefits overwhelm the downside. Epstein argues that applying the same balanced approach to fossil fuels should lead to a similar conclusion — yet elite opinion fiercely resists acknowledging the fuels’ benefits. One symptom of this anti-fossil fuel bias is how erroneous forecasts never lead to accountability. In the 1970s, experts cautioned about the impending doom of global cooling — just as global temperatures began to rise. Then groups such as the Club of Rome claimed the world would soon run out of fossil fuels — only to see global production expand as technology made new sources readily available. Still others, such as Greenpeace, warned that pollution from fossil fuels would poison our air, land and water — though pollution levels have since fallen. Meanwhile, the actual trajectory of global warming has not followed the path predicted by most models, which is hardly surprising given their embryonic state. From his philosopher’s perspective, Epstein argues we should be concerned about climate danger not climate change. The planet has long been an inhospitable place for humans. Far from being a Garden of Eden, life before the widespread deployment of fossil fuels truly was “nasty, brutish, and short” in the words of Thomas Hobbes. Thanks to improvement in everything from shelter to clothing, climate-related deaths have fallen 98 per cent over the past century. The places that remain most at risk from climate danger are poor countries such as Bangladesh, not rich communities living along coastlines. The high incomes generated by energy consumption allow humans to protect themselves from natural dangers and diseases. By focusing on climate change and not climate danger, environmentalists end up condemning all human impacts on the planet. According to Epstein, this leads to the blanket rejection of all energy sources, not just fossil fuels. The result is the near impossibility of building nuclear reactors (despite their having the safest record of any energy source) and growing resistance even to renewables such as hydro dams and solar and wind farms. The low energy density of renewable energy sources compared with fossil fuels requires that they take up huge tracts of land, which spawns opposition due to the loss of green space and wilderness. The logical conclusion of opposition to all forms of energy development is that we humans suffer either an enormous drop in our living standard as we return to Hobbes’ state of nature or a large involuntary reduction in our numbers. Epstein calls either outcome “anti-human.” Epstein argues it is immoral to condemn three billion people to remain in extreme poverty of less than $2 a day by denying them access to the benefits of more energy from fossil fuels. In practical terms, improving their material lives means developing fossil fuels, which have a huge advantage over renewable alternatives in affordability, reliability and scalability. The reason fossil fuels account for over 80 per cent of global energy consumption today, just as they did 50 years ago, is simple: they are the best source of energy. Even as rich countries limit their use of the very fossil fuels that underpinned their own flourishing, emerging nations consume more of them than ever. Energy — the ability to do work — is the basis of economic growth and improved living standards. Instead of apologizing for energy consumption, Fossil Future argues the moral thing to do is develop as much energy as possible."
Trust a philosopher to make the case for the misanthropy of environmentalism. Misanthropic environmentalists calling humans a virus that must be exterminated means nothing, of course
Justin Hart on Twitter - "Oh look. Alibaba Group Pres. J. Michael Evans at the WEF in Davos planning to track your carbon footprint: "Where are they traveling? How are they traveling? What are they eating? What are they consuming? Individual carbon footprint tracker… stay tuned!”"
Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief - "The chief executive of JP Morgan has suggested that governments should seize private land to build wind and solar farms in order to meet net zero targets. Jamie Dimon, the longstanding boss of the Wall Street titan who donates to the Democratic Party, said green energy projects must be fast-tracked as the window for averting the most costly impacts of global climate change is closing... The proposal is unusual, especially coming from the longest-serving chief executive of a Wall Street bank, and could stir controversy as states in the US seek to crackdown on seizure orders... In December, Vanguard, the world’s second largest asset manager, pulled out of Mark Carney’s global climate change alliance, saying the group’s full-blooded commitment to tackling climate change resulted “in confusion about the views of individual investment firms”."
Meme - "When aliens see us putting up windmills again after we have harnessed fission.
This is the most ghetto shit I've ever seen in my life"
The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "f you thought there’s no way Green New Deal is actually dumb enough to post a picture of the first gasoline-powered scooter and label it the first electric scooter, we’ll you’d be wrong! That’s exactly what they did (and this wasn’t April Fools). ▪️This is an Autoped, which was launched in America in 1915, it was the first mass-produced motor scooter... As for calling the switch to internal combustion engines and fossil fuels “a lost century,” that’s a bizarre way to portray the most spectacular increase in human flourishing in human history. It’s not just dumb, its ugly and anti-human to its core"
Sustainable aviation fuel costs more but consumers willing to pay: IATA - "Walsh said airlines had ordered 14 billion liters of SAF. “I think that addresses the issue of whether airlines will buy the product,” he said. Walsh noted this was happening even though the price of SAF was “about two and a half times the price of jet kerosene. When you factor in the cost of carbon, you’re looking at maybe … twice the price of kerosene.”... There are major concerns in some quarters that an increased uptake of SAF could, among other things, result in significant deforestation and create a squeeze on crops crucial to the production of food."
Modern day sumptuary laws strike again. When they force everyone to use it they will still gaslight consumers that they are voluntarily paying for it. And when food prices rise as a result of this, it will the fault of greedy companies
Meme - "Climate change will kill us if we don't implement Marxism immediately."
"How about nuclear power *sets fire to nuclear*"
"I don't want nuclear power. I want Marxism."
Historically we have evidence for this, but they also betray their motivations when they pretend that they would "create a better world for nothing"
Meme - "CALIFORNIA 2035 *Electric Car towing diesel generator*"
Do Renewable Portfolio Standards Deliver Cost-Effective Carbon Abatement? - "The most prevalent and perhaps most popular climate policies in the U.S. are Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that mandate that renewables (e.g., wind and solar) produce a specified share of electricity, yet little is known about their efficiency. Using the most comprehensive data set ever compiled and a difference-in-differences style research design, we find that electricity prices are 11% higher seven years after RPS passage, largely due to indirect grid integration costs (e.g., transmission and intermittency). On the benefit side, carbon emissions are 10-25% lower. The cost per ton of CO2 abatement ranges from $58-$298 and is generally above $100."
A climate change hystericst alleged conflict of interest in the OECD's analysis of system costs for renewable energy (naturally, what environmental groups say never has a conflict of interest). But study after study comes to the same conclusion on intermittency and system costs
Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States - "the extent to which solar and wind can contribute to the generation mix will be constrained by the temporal and spatial variability of solar and wind resources, along with the timing and location of electricity demand and other features of the electricity system (e.g., transmission grid, energy storage, demand management, dispatchable power, reliability requirements, etc.)... We find that achieving ~80% of demand met by solar and wind requires a US-wide transmission grid or 12 hours worth of energy storage (!5.4 TW h). Beyond 80%, the required amount of energy storage or excess solar/wind generating capacity needed to overcome seasonal and weather- driven variabilities increases rapidly. Today this would be very costly."
California needs clean firm power, and so does the rest of the world. – Clean Air Task Force
When they commission energy experts from Princeton and Stanford Universities and a consulting firm and despite different approaches, they all came to the same conclusion for California: you need "carbon-free electricity sources that don’t depend on the weather", otherwise you get "high system costs and loss of reliability"
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Despite the large number of news stories claiming all sorts of momentary calamities as the result of global warming, the global average temperature has declined noticeably in the last seven years. It’s true that 2016 was the “warmest year on record” (based on how it is currently estimated). The following few years were labeled as “second warmest”, “third warmest”, etc.; hiding that there was a downward trend in temperatures. That will likely change the next couple of years as the Pacific Ocean shifts from a ‘La Niña’ circulation to an ‘El Niño’ circulation. This shift does raise the global average temperature (as it is currently estimated) and it’s probable that a new hottest year will happen, if it’s strong enough, in the next two years. After the alarmist headlines have subsided there will be a decline in temperatures again, though not as low as 2021. The Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age and some of it is likely due to human influence. How much damage and benefit (there is both) is worthy of debate, but right size the alarmist headlines when they appear. Politicians and activists, unfortunately, have been using alarmist rhetoric to convince voters to approve of expensive public works projects and policies with little to show for their last promises."
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Let’s have some real talk about reducing carbon in the atmosphere. A lot of it is little more than a scam. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the quickest, most human friendly, and most environmentally friendly way to reduce putting carbon into the atmosphere is an aggressive nuclear power program. But not everything in a modern economy can run on electricity. The density of energy in fossil fuels allows planes to carry humans and cargo long distances quickly. Fossil fuels are needed to run large machinery. With a stated goal of becoming ‘carbon neutral’, governments are leaning on ‘offsets’ to counter the carbon being put in the air. At their core, these programs involve making energy more expensive and giving the ‘surplus’ money to poorer nations to plant trees and stuff. Here are the dirty secrets of ‘carbon offsets’:
• They are popular with Wall Street as they would become a lucrative item to buy and sell.
• They are popular with politicians because they give the impression of ‘doing something’ while controlling the collection and the distribution of funds generates political power.
• The people hurt most are the poor who do not have the disposable income to pay for increased energy and product costs.
• And, way to bury the lede, carbon offset programs don’t work. Planting trees does almost nothing to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Half of the carbon captured is respired back into the atmosphere, while decay and fire returns much of the rest. Increasing tree canopies also decreases the planet’s albedo, causing more light waves to convert to long wave infrared heat — increasing the global average temperature.
What you aren’t told...
The rain forests aren’t the ‘world’s lungs’. Almost all of the earth’s net oxygen production comes from plankton. There are scientists working on ways to use plankton to remove carbon from the air. In short, these carbon offset programs don’t work and hurt the poor by raising the cost of energy. But they are a great source of revenue for financial institutions and politicians."
Unfortunately the other "solutions" we are given are even worse, e.g. crippling the economy and driving energy prices through the roof through a dependence on "renewables"
Energy chaos: the shape of things to come | The Spectator Australia - "Australian governments have made energy policies focused on achieving higher shares of renewable energy that they claim is the cheapest source of power... Subsidies that amount to $6.9 billion per year have propelled wind and solar, which had virtually no market presence 20 years ago, to their current market share of 27 percent. The CSIRO and other bodies claim that these are the cheapest forms of electricity, but the absurdity of this is demonstrable – the market shares of wind and solar would be negligible without these subsidies. And the subsidies themselves amount to over one-third of what electricity generation would cost if renewable requirements did not push up prices. A recent study from the UK identifies a similar magnitude of costs to support renewables (which now provide 36 percent of the nation’s electricity)... Among major countries, only Germany, which has gone even further down the renewables path, has higher energy prices. As in Australia, the UK’s growth in subsidized renewables has brought an accelerating increase in prices. That process in both countries predated the Ukraine War... Australia’s ballooning energy costs are entirely self-inflicted. They are caused by years of bowing to green ideology:
increasing taxes on coal and gas;
discrimination against coal and gas by requiring increasing quantities be incorporated in consumers’ supplies, this month amplified by obligating an additional 30 percent cut in emissions from the 215 firms that account for some 28 percent of electricity demand;
governmental legislative and policy impediments on new mines for coal and gas (as well as the embargo on nuclear) and by government-appointed judges’ rulings on new mine proposals;
government electricity purchasing that excludes supplies generated by coal or gas.
Australia, like many other countries, is dreaming up new restraints on the use of hydrocarbons. Among these are bans proposed (and already legislated in South Australia) on gas ovens. The rationale for these bans is that, though gas has lower CO2 emissions than coal, an electricity supply comprising solar/wind generation is claimed to have no emissions. Governments, panicked by the failure of their interventionist energy policies to bring about the low costs they and their advisers confidently projected, have now introduced price caps on coal and gas. With no sense of irony, the objective is to maintain hydrocarbon generators that are being driven out of business by governments’ discriminatory energy policies. The measures exemplify a Hayekian ‘road-to-serfdom’ process, whereby interventions require consequential additional measures. Having seen policies preventing hydrocarbon developments bring shortages and ballooning prices, the Commonwealth implemented price caps. Predictably, the price caps cause supply shortages in an industry that has been prevented from developing new supplies by government embargoes that have been in place for over a decade."
A climate change hystericist claimed the declining cost of Australian energy showed that more renewables didn't make energy more expensive. But even the somewhat lower prices in Q1 and Q2 2023 are still higher than more than a few quarters back
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "Wild claims spread faster and wider. A common theme is making long term predictions over short term trends. Another is failing to recognize that humans make adjustments when pain points occur. The Earth was undergoing a cooling period which, coincidentally, ended about the time that temperature measuring satellites went live in 1978. Air and water pollution controls kick in when a society reaches a certain level of prosperity. If something starts to become rare, the price goes up causing either new sources to emerge or replacements to enter the marketplace. And in the case of this graphic... future warming has consistently been overestimated just as future CO2 emissions have been underestimated."
Meme - "For those that missed it, let's Recap:
1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989
1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources by 2000
1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish 1970s: Killer Bees!
1970: Ice Age By 2000
1970: America Subject to Water Rationing by 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
1972: New Ice Age By 2070
1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
1974: Another Ice Age?
1974: Ozone Depletion a 'Great Peril to Life
1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 90s
1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes
1980: Peak Oil In 2000
1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they're not)
1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
1989: New York City's West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it's not)
1996: Peak Oil in 2020
2000: Children Won't Know what Snow Is
2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don't Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
2002: Peak Oil in 2010
2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
2005: Manhattan Underwater by 2015
2006: Super Hurricanes!
2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to 'Save The Planet From Catastrophe'
2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015
2014: Only 500 Days Before 'Climate Chaos
2019: Hey Greta, we need you to convince them it's really going to happen this time"
This is from 50 Years of Failed Doomsday, Eco-pocalyptic Predictions; the So-called ‘experts’ Are 0-50, with citations for each. just resorted chronologically (the original list is all over the place). But like all doomsday cults, the cope is strong
