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Climate Denial: A Measured Response


DanteEstonia

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If you wish to have a discussion about how bad humans are at managing our environment and pollution, I would be happy to listen to you, or this guy.  But I will not seriously listen to someone who right out of the gate asserts mankind is responsible for climate change and the science is settled.  

There is no denying that the climate is changing.  As I have said before (and been told how wrong I am) mankind, no matter how hard we all try, does not have the influence over nature in the same level that was able to remove all of the ice that once covered northern Indiana, and pushed it all the way into Canada.

 

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Just now, Muda69 said:

Yet you can now say the last 2 are?  How exactly?  

I thought one of the tenets of scientific inquiry was that nothing it truly ever "settled"?

The entire purpose of that comment was to highlight the straw man that the cartoon used for the 1st example. 

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  • 2 years later...

This loony old bat needs to stick to her acting......"There would be no climate crisis if it wasn't for racism" 

https://nypost.com/2023/05/30/jane-fonda-blames-white-men-racism-for-climate-change/

Jane Fonda issued a stark warning about climate change on Saturday while placing the blame on white men.

“We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest — Global South, people on islands, poor people of color,” the “Book Club: The Next Chapter” actress said at the Cannes Film Festival.

“It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men [behind this].”

The two-time Oscar winner added that climate change would not be possible without racism or the patriarchy, in which “white men,” she said, are at the top.

“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way,” she argued. “White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”

The 85-year-old actress has made headlines for her activism since the Vietnam War, when critics branded her “Hanoi Jane” for posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun that made it seem like she would shoot down US planes.

Meanwhile, at Cannes, the “80 For Brady” star urged everyone to rally around environmental justice.

“It’s important because we have to get out of the silos — feminists over here, environmentalists over here. That’s what I learned when I started being an activist around the Vietnam War,” she said.

“The more you go down any issue, whatever it is, you realize that it’s all connected. And if we solve the climate crisis, and we haven’t solved those other things, we’re gonna be in trouble.”

This is not the first time Fonda — who has been arrested several times while participating in climate change protests — has connected climate change to social injustice.

In January, she said everything — such as “sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia” and “the war” — is related.

“And if you really get into it, and study it and learn about it and the history of it and everything’s connected. There’d be no climate crisis if it wasn’t for racism,” she stated on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”

“Where would they put the poison and the pollution?” Fonda continued. “They’re not gonna put it in Bel Air. They’ve got to find some place where poor people or indigenous people or people of color are living. Put it there. They can’t fight back. And that’s why a big part of the climate movement now has to do with climate justice.”

Earlier this month, the “Grace and Frankie” actress called for “all hands on deck” as the climate emergency continues.

The social justice warrior told Page Six she didn’t understand “how you could not” protest.

“I have grandchildren,” she said at the premiere of “Book Club: The Next Chapter.” “I love animals, I love nature. We’re going to destroy it all if we don’t.”

 

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  • 2 months later...

"If congress won't act, I will"  Is a mantra for any President with a "D" after his name.......

https://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-environmental-protection-supreme-court-regulation-unconstitutional-climate-change-administrative-state-biden-42f31ce3?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The EPA Defies the Supreme Court

The agency imposes a ‘suite’ of climate policies and doesn’t even try to hide its own lawlessness.

Chris Horner

Aug. 17, 2023 6:41 pm ET

In politics, inadvertently telling the truth is called a “gaffe.” Last year Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a remark in passing that gave away the Biden administration’s plans for enforcing its climate agenda through a “suite of rules” imposed under programs lacking any credible connection to climate. A few months later, a Supreme Court opinion transformed Mr. Regan’s indiscretion into justification for wholesale judicial repudiation of the Biden administration’s climate regulatory blitz.

Mr. Regan’s comment came on March 10, 2022, when he addressed the press following his keynote address to CERAWeek, a climate conference in Houston. A reporter asked about vulnerabilities of the EPA’s approach to installing climate regulation through the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was then awaiting judgment by the court. Mr. Regan replied that the agency had abandoned the idea of relying on any specific grant of regulatory authority. Instead it was in the process of tightening rules under numerous and varied regulatory programs all at once, pressuring disfavored operations to close and compelling investment consistent with the EPA’s desires.

Mr. Regan went on to cite rules to tighten regulation of mercury, ozone, soot, hazardous air pollutants, water effluent and coal ash under acknowledged congressional grants of authority. But he also called the “expedited retirement” of power plants “the best tool for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions” and opined that the “industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean-energy future?’ ”

This already reflected something of a scofflaw position. Congress never approved what Mr. Regan described. It became a serious problem when the justices struck down the Clean Power Plan in June. West Virginia v. EPA held that the agency didn’t have the authority it claimed to force power-plant closures by setting unmeetable emission standards and thus dictate, as the court had put it, “how Americans get their energy.”

Chief Justice John Roberts noted for the 6-3 majority that after Congress had repeatedly considered and rejected providing the agency authority to regulate power-sector greenhouse gases, the EPA claimed “to discover an unheralded power” that represented a “transformative expansion in [its] regulatory authority” to force “generation shifting.”

The court invoked the major-questions doctrine—a principle grounded in the separation of powers—which states that when a regulatory agency seeks to impose burdens of “economic and political significance,” there is “reason to hesitate.” If an agency can’t point to “clear congressional authorization,” the authority doesn’t exist.

Many climate activists took the lesson that they should stop bragging about clever regulatory approaches. Two weeks after West Virginia v. EPA came out, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a funereal webinar in which panelists warned about candid outbursts turning up in Supreme Court reversals, mentioning such statements as President Obama’s “if Congress won’t act soon . . . I will,” and Mr. Biden’s then-chief of staff Ron Klain’s tweeting about “the ultimate work-around” of constitutional limits to impose Covid vaccine mandates. Several panelists urged activists to be careful in their press releases and to not let appointees’ cheerleading “get out in front of the lawyers.”

That’s good advice, but the administration appears undeterred. Records obtained by policy groups I represent in Freedom of Information Act litigation show Mr. Biden’s EPA team came in with this plan to hit fossil generation with a barrage of disparate regulations as a climate strategy. One impressively prescient email sent the day after Mr. Biden’s election by law professor and soon-to-be Biden climate advisor Ann Carlson laid out the approach, even using the phrase “suite of climate policies.”

Two weeks into Mr. Biden’s term, a PowerPoint slide show—given by a lawyer named Joe Goffman, who is hailed in media profiles as the administration’s “law whisperer” because “his specialty is teaching old laws to do new tricks”—detailed a plan of tightening regulation on power plants by using solid waste, water and even visibility standards. The audience for his plan to blitz fossil power generation with these non-climate programs? The White House Climate Office. FOIA records also include activist correspondence to Mr. Goffman specifically urging the EPA to tighten “haze” rules as a back door for the climate agenda, which EPA appears to be doing.

Long-held plans are hard to let go. Despite the court’s rejection of each authority the administration has claimed so far to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, one email written during the immediate post-West Virginia scramble refers to “EPA’s CAA toolbox” for “Power Sector GHG Reductions.” (The abbreviations stand for Clean Air Act and greenhouse gas.)

West Virginia v. EPA addressed power the agency claimed under a specific rule, but the opinion’s scope extends far beyond that rule. The justices flatly stated that trying to force the plant-closure agenda Mr. Regan described, for which the EPA can cite no statutory mandate, presents a “major question” requiring a clear congressional statement of authority.

Academics now call on Mr. Biden to ignore the Supreme Court. His EPA is doing so, while also ignoring Congress. It seems inevitable the court will confront this latest gambit to evade constitutional limits. As always, the question will be how much lasting harm the EPA can inflict before the courts act to stop it.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

With our current President's adherence to the left's climate agenda, SF can see this coming potentially before he leaves office.......

https://www.wsj.com/articles/real-climate-change-catastrophism-hasnt-been-tried-biden-emergency-global-warming-environment-b485421a?mod=hp_opin_pos_6#cxrecs_s

The Climate-Change ‘Emergency’ Is Coming for You

We’ve not fully arrived at crazytown. But the urge to curtail individual freedom is visible in countless blueprints for a controlled future.

Two years ago during Covid lockdowns, I wrote about climate control freaks, facetiously anticipating a future headline: “Bad CO2 Day, Lockdowns Enforced.” A joke that would never happen, right? Well . . .

Last month President Biden was asked on the Weather Channel if he was ready to declare a national climate emergency and responded, “We’ve already done that.” Asked again if he declared a climate emergency, he said, “Practically speaking, yes.” There is no official emergency, but the president certainly thinks we need one.

The fawning press gave him a break—he didn’t really mean that, did he? But the notion of a national emergency today isn’t farfetched. The United Nations website blares: “What you need to know about the Climate Emergency.” The European Parliament has declared one. So have hundreds of jurisdictions in at least 39 countries, including the U.K., Canada, Japan and Bangladesh. Climate-activist teenager Greta Thunberg gave away the game in 2019 when she said, “I want you to panic,” and, “I want you to act as if you would in a crisis.” Emergencies are an excuse to do whatever you want.

U.S. presidents can declare national emergencies, as spelled out in the 1976 National Emergencies Act, but they must be explicit: “When the President declares a national emergency, no powers or authorities made available by statute for use in the event of an emergency shall be exercised unless and until the President specifies the provisions of law under which he proposes that he, or other officers will act.” I’ve searched far and wide for such provisions and can’t find them.

No matter, we’re living as if we’re already under emergency conditions. As of Aug. 1, the Biden administration has halted the sale of lightbulbs with less than 45 lumens of brightness per watt. Incandescent bulbs don’t make the cut and are now banned. Thomas Alva Edison is rolling over in his grave. Will electricity be rationed next?

Oops, too late. In September 2022, the California Independent System Operator—which runs the state’s power grid, attached to sporadic renewables—declared an “energy emergency alert,” urging residents to ration power from 4 to 9 p.m. In March, the European Union mandated energy consumption be cut by 11.7% by 2030. Brits are urged to turn their heat off at night for “emissions savings.” The Swiss considered jail time if your thermostat is set above 66 degrees in the winter. Sit in the cold and dark and like it! And wait till you see the menu. The EU already allows crickets and mealworm larvae as food. Are high-protein maggots next?

This nonsense could never happen in the U.S., could it? Well, in 2016, New York University professor Matthew Liao suggested, “possibly we can use human engineering to make the case that we’re intolerant to certain kinds of meat.” He even suggested deploying a “Lone Star tick where, if it bites you, you will become allergic to meat.”

Add to the mix the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which has an “ambitious target in 2030” of no meat, no dairy, no private vehicles and only “three new clothing items per person per year.” Plus one short flight every three years. That sounds like climate lockdowns to me. Who are these kooks? “A global network of nearly 100 mayors” including 14 in America: Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Houston; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Washington and Seattle. Michael Bloomberg is president of the board. Better stock up on socks while you can.

When you declare an emergency, anything goes. The Biden administration pushes electric vehicles, and this summer we had a glut of them—inventories were 92 days, double what is typical. As of midyear, Ford had 116 days of unsold Mustang Mach-Es. Maybe because saner Americans are becoming preppers and loading up on good old gasoline-fired cars before California’s Advanced Clean Cars II Regulations, which other states follow, outlaws them in 2035. Vroom, vroom.

Emergency-preparedness edicts abound: Gas stove bans. No plastic bottles for sale at San Francisco Airport. A new proposal from New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection would effectively ban coal- and wood-fired pizza ovens. A city official reports that fewer than 100 restaurants would have to install prohibitively expensive emissions controls, so it must be a real emergency if New York is tracking down these last few ounces of carbon.

Climate lockdowns still sound like crazytown, but the urge to curtail individual freedom is visible in countless government, media and think-tank blueprints for a controlled future. Saner minds should prevail—the Climate Emergency Act of 2021 evidently died in committee—but we need constant vigilance to stand guard against the climate-excuse assaults on our liberties. To show how adolescent this has become, last year Swiss Environmental Minister Simonetta Sommaruga suggested that residents “shower together” to save energy. OK, now we’re getting somewhere.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.

 
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17 hours ago, swordfish said:

The Swiss considered jail time if your thermostat is set above 66 degrees in the winter. 

 

I have a family member who lives in the EU, and their heating oil costs rose so high last winter they had to keep the thermostat around 60 in order to makes ends meet.  

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  • 5 months later...

Total EV's are a bust for carmakers - Ford is losing $47,000 per unit which is incredibly damaging to a manufacturer. 

SF, usually when renting vehicles while travelling, will many times opt for a hybrid, and really like the gas mileage they achieve, especially on the normal 2 - 3 hour drive from an airport to a customer.  I have not tried an EV, and quite frankly would be terrified of the question of where to charge one when on the road in an unfamiliar rural area.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/cars/article-13056613/Ford-EV-Toyota-record-profits.html

Ford has said it will slash spending on EVs because it can't sell enough to offset costs - as it revealed it lost $47,000 on each electric car it sold last quarter.

CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday the company would instead ramp up investment in hybrid cars - copying a business strategy long favored by the drivetrain's godfather, Toyota.

Starting with the Prius more than 25 years ago, Toyota has been a staunch proponent of hybrid cars and highly cautious of EVs. That caution may have been wise.

Just this week the world's largest automaker forecast it will have its most profitable year on record thanks to hybrid sales - with earnings of $30.3 billion in the fiscal year ending March.

Ford's 'Model e' division on the other hand - which oversees production of the fully electric Mach-E and F-150 Lightning - is deep in the red. 

In 2024, it lost an enormous $4.7 billion, Ford revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report. This year, it expects total losses to increase to between $5 billion and $5.5 billion.

In the last quarter of 2023, it sold just 34,000 cars but incurred losses of $1.6 billion, meaning it lost on average $47,000 for each electric car it sold.

That is more than it lost per EV sale in both the second and third quarters of last year and means the company's electric division is moving in the opposite direction of profitability.

While it's expected for a new EV maker to incur losses in the early stages of manufacturing, for the business to be viable in the long term those losses will eventually need to be turned into gains.

Ford previously hoped it could bring its electric car division to earn profits of 8 percent by 2026, but Farley was frank in dashing those targets on Tuesday.

'I think that's clear. I don't think anybody believes that by 2026 we can bridge from here to 8 percent,' he told investors.

As such, Farley said the company would invest more heavily in hybrids, since their margins are 'much higher than EV margins' and demand is high.

'Hybrids will play an increasingly important role in our industry's transition and will be here for the long run,' he said.

When Toyota on Tuesday announced its huge profits, it emphasized how high demand for hybrids and limited production meant they were flying off dealer lots.

'As a realistic solution, hybrids are still favored by our customers,' said Toyota executive vice president Yoichi Miyazaki.

In January, Toyota's former CEO and current chairman Akio Toyoda told reporters the Japanese company would not follow the West's example of focusing excessively on battery electric vehicles.

Over the last year, Ford's share price has fallen by about 10 percent, while Toyota's is up by around 51 percent. 

While Ford is not abandoning its EV plans altogether, CFO John Lawley did say its new 'second generation' electric cars would not arrive until consumer demand was high enough.

'Our gen two vehicles... won't launch unless we can get to a profit,' said Lawley. In fact, Ford's huge third-quarter losses came even though year-on-year sales were up by around 4,000 units.

Ford will now need to sell as many electric vehicles as possible to minimize its losses going forward. Selling EVs also allows the company to sell more internal combustion engine models without being penalized by federal regulators.

'We can sell up to a dozen [internal combustion engine] F-150s or other [internal combustion engine] profitable vehicles for every Lightning we sell,' said Lawler, referring to the fully electric version of its best-selling pickup truck.

In fact, while the most recent quarter was bad news for Model e, Ford's other two divisions, 'Ford Pro' and 'Ford Blue' which sell gas-burning cars fared much better and enjoyed profits.

They made $7.2 billion and $7.5 billion respectively. Ford Pro, which oversees the commercial side of the business, including Super Duty trucks, was described by Farley as a 'profit juggernaut' during the call.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

John Kerry claimed that people would "feel better" about the ongoing war in Ukraine if Russia would "make a greater effort to reduce emissions."

Scary to think this guy was once (kinda) close to being our President.......

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kerry-says-people-feel-better-about-ukraine-war-russia-reduce-emissions?fbclid=IwAR1oRgSm8MwmMpxivaQ-ye883M74oB7gt9nsB-6gdheDmBgm6SMnDXedeRw

Outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry claimed that people would "feel better" about the ongoing war in Ukraine if Russia would "make a greater effort to reduce emissions."

"If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are going to be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions now," Kerry said during a foreign press briefing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., his last as the SPEC, as he departed from the position Wednesday to reportedly join President Biden's presidential re-election campaign.

"Maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point in time," he said. 

 

 

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